This last year was one of magic and challenge. Watching the Tree of Life healing workshops begin to unfold at grass roots where people with scant resources began to take up the role of healing their communities. Seeing the integrity and self respect that allows people to carry the responsibility of this healing without reward or recognition. And it has been hard, and many have had to give up – but there has been this strange sense of knowing that ‘we can be better than this – wider than this’.

I have found it both inspiring and hard to watch.

But harder to watch, has been the edge where funder and grassroots activist meet. (The first world and the third world?/ old thinking and new thinking?). The world of checks and balances, of project proposals and programmes, and promises, and signed agreements and collecting receipts for the bus fare to town for the woman who was recently raped. The world of black and white, right and wrong, operating at the slow pace of the last person who has been on holiday, and has had a week to recover.

And seeing what happens to the people working in the  risky places living on a few hundred US$ a month or less – and who are made to wait two and a half months on a three month contract before any payment is made. Who have to leave their accommodation, and take their children out of school, but who carry on going.

This relationship is made all the more unbalanced because it is delivered as a gift from the knowing to the unknowing, from the benevolent to the victims. It is not support for the work of the warriors for peace.

There is no dignity in this!

Walking the grey clouds, wondering where  these two worlds meet.

And then towards the end of this year we began to be touched by magic – when amazing individuals acted with love and trust – and we were held in place by their contributions – and we made it through – to another place where we may get funding.  We are blessed.

Magic doesn’t fit in boxes
it streams in clouds

flowing with our dreams
not  our control

it is not held in place by our rules and regulations
but in  the trust of our common intentions

a place without boundaries
in a web of shared resources

living in a moment
- never re-gathered
soaring  the edges
on outspread wings

magic doesn’t fit in boxes
it comes from circles of love

This entry was posted on March 25th, 2010 at 12:23 pm by Bev Reeler and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.