Update from East Africa (April 2008)

I've relocated for at least the next 6-8 months or so to Kenya... no, please do not believe what you see on CNN (in general, actually). The entire country is not aflame.

After an intensely challenging time of painful upheaveal and struggle on almost every front in my life in 2007 in which I tripped over my own enthusiasm and did not take enough time to mourn some deep losses... well, I began 2008 with the realization that I had to start from the ground up and get re-centred, and that meant I needed to shut up and start following all my own good advice. So following the motto of whoever it was who said "90% of success is just showing up", I just showed up -- in India for a while, then in New Zealand for a long and wonderful rest with my family there, and I began doing sensible things like eating simply, sleeping enough each night, and enjoying daily hugs.

At long last, I have begun to feel my energy returning -- and with it, the reactivation of my nearly-dormant writing muscle! After my long, long silence, I've finally resurfaced. I feel the resurgence of my usual "tales from the road" writings coming soon...

So here I am at the UN Office in Nairobi (UNON), and about to undertake a half-year project working with my extraordinary friend and (by mutual adoption agreement) brother, Karun. I'm halfway through my MA in Human Security and Peacebuilding but have chosen for personal reasons to take 2008 off and to go back and complete the second half of the intensive curriculum from Jan-Jun 2009 instead. 2008 is being reserved for adventures and new experiences in my chosen "second career" field of peacebuilding, humanitarian work, and international development.

I promise a much more colourful (and also possibly irreverent and rambling) tale soon to catch you up on my travels in such far-flung locales as Nelson, BC, Colorado Springs, CO, India, and New Zealand. The traffic in Mumbai alone is worth one whole email.

If any of you intrepid explorers out there have been contemplating a vacation to Africa, then let me be the first to encourage you to come to Kenya... you could not pick a better time for great deals at some of East Africa's most wonderful locations, and seriously, the place ain't going up in smoke, don't buy into that media hype.

I would really like also to send out a broad-spectrum, but heartfelt, thank you to all of you who have extended your support morally, financially and materially to my undertakings as Fundraising Coordinator with my MA class at RRU for "Blueprint for Peace", our student-founded organization working in partnership with students in Uganda to assist internally displaced-persons in the North of that war-torn country. Speaking of Uganda -- with the reports of the LRA leader signing a peace agreement, I am praying for long-overdue demilitarization and the rebuilding of torn lives there and invite you all to give a moment's thought and prayer to the same...

Why She Rages Against the Dying of the Light (July 2007)

This week I am spending time in Victoria with Paz, my adored professor and the academic head (and founder) of my MA program here at Royal Roads. As I type, I am gazing out the window of the Peace House, the program's cottage/HQ on the University grounds... outside, the peacocks have reproduced and are chaperoning their small fuzzy babies carefully from field to field. A cloudless blue sky floats like a halo over this impossibly peaceful part of our world. The ocean is a few hundred yards from me, visible through the fruit trees and over the ivy-covered "castle" walls that extend around our little village campus.

Meanwhile, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, violence against women by militia and rebel groups, police and civilian men alike is growing like a malignant tumour. Sexual assault of such a horrific nature that it would make us retch to witness it, or want to tear out our eyes, has escalated to the point that it is nearly the norm. In fact, it is an established norm of life in the DRC.

Humans do this: we wear grooves for ourselves and then we lie down in them, we work them day by day until we are in so deep that on either side of us are steep walls and we wonder how we will get out. Or we stop even wondering. Or we are born inside the groove someone else wore before us, and never even lift our heads to notice that there is a landscape above and beyond our particular rut.

Still, while there is breath there is hope. Surely it is no accident that the words for breath and spirit are closely linked in so many languages. Lately, I dream at night of the work of Paolo Freire, educator and liberator, exiled for a time from his native Brazil for his radical approach that allowed oppressed peasants to become not only literate but also critical thinking, questioning, free agents of transformation of their own reality... to actually raise their heads above the walls of the deep rut into which they had been born and to see clearly that it was worn not inevitably, not because some people are simply no more than peasants while others - somehow superior - are in power, but because of systemic inequalities and flagrantly unfair practices (sociocultural habits, or ruts, we might say) had perpetuated their particular circumstances. Oh, the danger of a freed mind. It might ask for better. It might ask why.

Why, for instance, are we always asking about the 'unsustainable' costs of socialized healthcare, welfare and such, and ironically mumbling at the same time about rising personal taxes, but never asking what has happened to tax money that used to be the major source of government income and has dried up over the past 50 years: corporate taxes? Is it really so unquestioably alright and just that our constructed system called neoliberal capitalism should quite logically produce, by the simple rules of its own game (which we define, or fail to control and modify, at our peril), mega transnational corporations that elude nation-state governmental taxes at every turn, enriching the less-than-1% of the world who hold all the shares, at the expense of those governments' abilities to care for their people "sustainably"? Why do we cry foul at every government's corruption scandals, failures, the slow slog of bureaucracy... but fail to take note of these nebulous above-the-state-level megacompanies that suck capital out of states as the consuming public buys their stuff, but then fail to contribute to the public good through normal taxation, thus weakening the ability of governments to act as we'd like them to? And then applaud these corporations when they dole out the barest fraction of their profits to "charity"... or worse, to public institutions starving for tax dollar support, like hospitals, or schools... but with strings of course. There is a very, very big difference between a public institution funded through tax dollars by even a reasonably functional government, and one tied to the agendas and whims of privately donated monies.

This is not, however it may sound, an anti-corporate rant. There are always great leaders, and some corporations will be the ones to evolve beyond the current quagmire and help bring things forward. There are even some companies I genuinely love, for the spirit of kindness and continuous evolution that infuses their way of doing business, and even despite their flaws and the blindness they may have to the current system's inherent pitfalls. Corporations need to change, and some of them, a few, will do it willingly because it is the right thing to do and they are led by wise people. Others won't.

What we need is a united front of humanity and the will to honestly ask why. We need desperately to close the huge chasms through which private wealth collection has slipped. We need to ask ourselves what good it is doing anyone -- the apparently 'wealthy' who live behind high and guarded walls included -- to not only allow but to condone and actively promote the pursuit of more and more and more privately 'owned' capital, stuff, and land.... which ends up in the hands of fewer and fewer and fewer. Why do we persist in our make believe of 'ownership' in this extreme manifestation, why do we persist in our fallacious and self-destructive assumption that the world's many miracles are here for us to use as we see fit without conscience or repercussion? Surely we are here to serve each other and our world, to be part of the world and one of its many miracles.

Nature corrects all errors. We cannot beat her into submission, for on her we depend for breath. For spirit. With every meter we dig into our Mother for metal ores, we may as well be pushing blades into our own skin; every billowing smokestack is a plastic bag we put over our own mouth and nose and choke upon. Will we actually pursue this suicide course to its end? I wonder. We are due for a terrible correction to our maniacal course; Mother Earth and Father Sky surround us, mirrors that show us plainly the consequences of our choices; in the end, if annihilation is truly our collective 'bottoming out' in our addiction to ownership and resource control, then we will perish, physically, as the ultimate correction to our compounding errors. And presumably give ourselves a big shake and talking-to in the world beyond: "we were given Earth and we killed ourselves by abusing her and each other???" D-OH! We will slap our own forehead like Homer, no doubt, as we consider from our non-dimensional vantage-point the irony of it all.

Still, while I breathe, I hope. The answer to every rape, literal or figurative, human or environmental, must lie in some combination of fierce desire to protect and to heal, of asking "why" and honest assessment of the error and habit that have allowed this to happen, of working through to forgiveness, and finally of choosing again - differently, lesson learned. To climb out of these ruts, fill them in with new earth, and walk on an even green field together instead.

Paz is struggling for life. Her cancer has spread, she is in terrible pain. She is irritable, exhausted, and wondering why she has so little patience. She wants to live, to keep doing her work. She won't go gentle into that good night. And I understand. I look out the window of her office cottage here and the fields become transparent to my inner eye. Through them I see other worlds where she has walked: I see her fleeing from Chile after the Pinochet coup (which heralded in an experiment in almost pure neoliberal capitalism, by the way, that was lauded by far-right commentators when it happened... tell that to the sisters and mothers of the disappeared); I see her meeting with ex-LRA militia and abducted children in Northern Uganda, I see her teaching peasants with the Freirian methodology not just to read but to become free and questioning, to awaken. She is a bridge between the actual events and the theories we are studying and our young and sheltered minds. She brings everything to life, even as she is fighting for her own.

We all know we have so little time with her, and that ultimately she alone can make peace with her own end. If ever anyone had 'done enough' in one life, it is surely Paz. Still, as I sit beside her, taking notes and planning for our workshop on Departments of Peace... I know why she rages against the dying of the light.

If you've managed to read this far, friends, please take a moment to offer up a prayer for Peace, and a prayer for Paz. We need them both.

All Hail Athena! (June 2007)

Well here I am at the end of Week 2 of intensive residency with the 26 people who I'll be going on this MA journey with for the next 2 years. My sub-group of 4, the one I'll be working in for the foreseeable future, rocks. We are four amazing women and we have called ourselves (we had to name our groups): ATHENA. Yes, we are wise. And yes, we kick ass. We are the only group who got 30/30 on our group presentation (the one on Tuesday of this week for marks, vs. the one I describe later in this email that we did today). That Tuesday presentation went all the way through economic theories and history, to current world realities of globalization and transnationalization, to the effects and outcomes of the current world political and economic systems. Whew.

On another note, attached is a charming piece of fine art by Jer (if any of you don't know who my friend Jer is or how we connect, see Facebook for details!), which I'm seriously considering putting on business cards in future. [This is a reference to the photo called "Melanda the Builder: Of Peace, which is one of my older profile photos on FB.] And I particularly enjoyed his suggestion that I be absolutely literal about my security brief and put a one sentence statement on a piece of paper and lock it in a box and hand it in.

I am giving this some real thought as I google "India" and peruse CIA, Canadian Government, and various think tank websites for information on India's activities any and all that might relate to security issues that would affect Canada. Certainly the Sikh separatist terrorist groups are the obvious first thought, but as I dig deeper I see movement towards a large Asian trade bloc, and I wonder.... if India joined fully and sorted out its beefs with China (borders, and the are-you-supplying-Pakistan with nuclear stuff question), would the US be even more paranoid than it alread is about an Asian hegemony.... or what if India's current and largely licit poppy production became somehow destablized and illicit (like Afghanistan's is currently), would that make it yet another target for the "War on Drugs" approach of trying to destroy the opium/heroin source? Hmmm... the locked box is looking pretty attractive just now, and not so much for putting my brief in it as for locking myself inside and not coming out.

I am also struggling to produce a valid thesis statement for my International Law paper. I have chosen (shock, surprise!), Religious Freedom as my topic, and the question is really "do we need a Convention?". Currently, this is stated in the UN Charter and a few other places (Human Rights, I think) in about one sentence... so the principle exists in some proto form, regardless of how many states have signed on (or not!). There is also a Declaration on this topic gathering dust at the UN which has never come to the General Assembly basically because no states are championing its cause. If it became a Declaration, it might one day become a Convention which states could then sign onto.... is there any point in pushing forward a Declaration on this topic if it is not high enough on anyone's agenda? If it was moved ahead as a declaration and then a Convention followed, what % of states would sign on anyway? On the flipside, how else do we create international customary law (accepted norms by which we can measure the appropriateness of states' actions and behaviours) except this way? Is there a way to turn this on its head and seek examples of where religious freedom and tolerance are working well on a grassroots level within or between states, without any external rules having been applied but solely through local regulation and/or negotiations between governing bodies, and translate those precedents of up into the international scene? Obviously my assumption on which all the rest depends is that the UN Charter and Human Rights actually ARE valid, generally accepted norms (despite the fact that many states, the US in particular amongst the central powerful ones, have never signed on as parties to much of this stuff). It is from this same assumption that other Declarations and Conventions arose and went forward, such as the Rights of the Child (which, by the way, ALBERTA as an independent party under Ralph Klein's government REFUSED to be party to when Canada federally DID accept!!!! Go figure.) But back to Religion - how do we define it safely so that it cannot be interpreted in a way that runs counter to Human Rights, if some fundamentalist wing of any religion decides that women or children are not persons?

I am sunburnt. Today the Athenas took the class outside for some "under the tree learning", giving a nod back towards the roots of pedagogy but also reminding us all that most of the world learns outdoors, without benefit (or hindrance) of pen and paper. We had them work on laying out a whole variety of topics and issues (which we had written on big construction paper circles... ok we did use some pen and paper in our teaching!) on the grass and moving them around while discussing how they connect. Poverty, human trafficking, political unrest, water pollution, fuel accessibility, infant mortality, refugee flows, natural disasters, corruption, food scarcity, internally displaced peoples.... those kinds of fun things! It was amazing the discussion that came out of it and how we worked through the interconnectedness of all things.

I think the main learnings we are taking away from this residency will be essentially the following:

• everything connects to everything, everything, everything!
• perspective and environment as well as individual and collective ideologies shape perception, which creates our reality
• in human-created systems, the observer is also a participant shaping the outcome so social sciences require constant learning, awareness and evolution and cannot be said to be perfect or 'final' since we are both the authors of them and the participants in them and are affected by their outcomes when we let the systems supposedly 'run themselves' (e.g. 'free market', 'neoliberalism'... in practice loosely translated as "rich get richer poor get poorer middle class disappears too bad so sad")
• therefore the only truly humanitarian intervention is actually literally seeing it from the perspective of the group you are trying to help FIRST, then asking "what are your objectives" and sharing knowledge, perspective, technology and so on to help achieve those aims; in turn asking for learnings to apply 'back home'; and leaving when you're asked to rather than causing damage by 'trying to help'
• only by sharing all possible perspectives can we even begin to see the whole picture and "know" anything together... so we had best start now with that sharing and get on with it! Then we can actually begin evolving our systems of governance and interaction, rather than creating static ideologies and systems and then fighting to maintain or overthrow them!

Which only makes me all the more excited to see what comes in the next two years of learning...

The Totem of Resurrection and Other Mysteries (May 2007)

Someone commented that the peacock is a symbol of resurrection and wise vision, and is closely associated with the phoenix (which is already one of my most deeply beloved symbols from mythology; eternal rebirth and recreation). Well, at last I understand that my totem animal has been trying to communicate with me and I was just thinking it made for funny stories to write home about! Now I get it and I'll be more watchful for future peacock "coincidences" in my life!

Sunday. I can hardly believe I have been here a whole week and that it has ONLY been one week. This open letter/email journal is my way of reflecting and deepening the experiences... but I hope you feel free to reflect back to me and share yours as well.

It seems like a long time ago that I sat in the class feeling like I must be the moron they let into the program by accident ("What the hell do I have to bring to this program? They are going to find out I'm clueless any minute now...") The group has gelled, bonds are forming, healthy clashes of viewpoint come out, openness is growing. It is still amusing to see all the interpersonal drama, the dynamics that shift and move as people's assumptions and personalities bounce off each other. Someone is very attached to defending WHY the military does X or Y the way it does; someone feels the need to justify what it's like to work in a particular job and environment that makes it 'impossible' to achieve a certain objective.... it is fascinating.

Yesterday, Saturday, we had an all-day workshop with a Chilean woman who runs a local theatre group called Puente ("bridge"). She works in a style of theatre developed by a fellow Latin American, and now used worldwide in therapeutic work, post-conflict resolution, and political processes, called "Theatre of the Opressed." Oppressed is a word that middle and upper class North Americans are terribly uncomfortable with, as is the word 'victim'. People in many South American countries, on the other hand, have a great deal of experience with overt oppression and victimhood and find it an enormously empowering space in which to change their relationship with oppression, to find their power. So it's interesting right from the start the reactions to even just the name of the theatre!

We started with games of movement. Stand in a circle and see how people arrange themselves... why is there always a gap on either side of the 'instructor'? A power dynamic. Some people stand close, others have wide spaces between them. Then begin pair exercises like mirroring - one person moves and the other is their perfect mirror image; then switch who leads the movement; then see if you can get to there being NO leader but just in-sync mirror image movement on both sides. "Hypnotizer", where you have to keep your nose exactly the same distance from the palm of my hand, so my moving my hand makes you move to follow it... then have large groups of people doing the 'following' and only one person moving his/her palm -- notice that the larger the group, the larger the perccentage of them who cannot actually see the hand of the 'leader' but are taking their cues and following those in front of them. Hmmm!

Then sculpting. Put another person into a particular position - they are 'clay' and do not resist but take the shape given to them and hold it. Then sculpt yourself - walk around and the leader says a word "love", "family", "anger", "generosity", "forest" -- and sculpt yourself instantly into the form that represents that word for you and freeze.

Then in groups, sculpt a scene together to represent a word ("vulnerability", for example), by each self-sculpting and then fitting the self-sculptures into a whole image. An outside group views it and says what words come up for them, then are given the opportunity to 'intervene' in 10 seconds. What do they do? Change people's positions, remove or add people (sculptures)... but the sculptures in the scene must stay 'true' to their character's intentions and needs, so if it feels 'wrong' for them to be interfered with during the intervention, they resist. After the intervention, everyone in the scene (whether intervened with or not) says how they felt about it. What comes out is amazing: "we felt abandoned because she took that person out but left us", "I felt violated and forced to move away from the scene", "I did not know what was going on because the intervention was happening to other people some distance away from me and I was confused." The perceptions of those viewing the scene are coloured by their own biases -- so whether they are right in thinking that this one person or that group need XYZ kind of 'help' is a cloudy matter. The ramifications for going to do humanitarian work in areas where conflict has affected communities and individuals are obvious.

Towards the end of the day we acted out scenes with words and were invited to intervene in any way we wished by saying "stop" at whatever we thought was the critical moment where something could be changed and stepping in either to replace or add a character. At the end of the day it became clear how this type of theatre can be (and is) used to allow people who have experienced oppression to work through the situation again -- to replace themselves in the situation and figure out how they could have done it differently so as not to have experienced oppression but instead to have maintained their dignity. I could see through the day how incredible a tool this could be in humanitarian work to resolve issues for both the aggressors and victims in conflicts...

I have not done it any justice with my words, I know. But it was wonderful. It is great to involve kinesthetic learning as well as the auditory/visual that most of the classroom stuff involves.

Our three concurrent courses are the foundation class, Human Security and Mutual Vulnerability, International Law, and Post Cold-War Conflict. My group is giving a presentation on Tuesday covering the global political economic system, capitalism 'then' and transnational capitalism 'now', the relationship of developed and undeveloped (groups, peoples, states) and the issues this causes for human security (What happens when huge chain outsources work to sweatshops in undeveloped countries? Lower prices, inhuman conditions for those who make the products, loss of jobs in the developed country where the products go, and increased profits for the company. What happens when that company is discovered NOT to be checking 100% of its imported goods for dangerous items in compliance with US security regulations because it would 'lower profits'? Some human security issues, obviously, on all sides of the cycle of developed and un-developed!) My paper for that course is going to be on tourism & human security (I got to choose that topic, might as well start where I have some knowledge!)

I also have to give a 'security brief' on India to our Conflict class, where we are as a group creating a worldwide brief on all major issues that face Canada from a security perspective and where we see these heading in the next 5-15 years. (We learned about the "Intelligence Cycle" and how intelligence officers gather data, select from it, and conduct predictive analyses of the intelligence... but I feel rather underqualifed to now go ahead and apply this to the entire country of India. Oh well, I guess I will learn as I go!)

For International Law, I have to submit a draft outline of a paper on Religioius Freedom under International Law (at least I got to choose my topic there... but Oh God where do I start now that I chose THAT topic? Maybe if the prof is in a humourous mood I can submit it in the form of a prayer.)

The level of discussion, the dialogue, the analytical and critical processes we are going through as a group are exciting beyond my wildest dreams and I feel like my mind is opening out in all directions... like my inner eye is changing shape and orientation to embrace both more breadth and depth.

Last night I allowed myself to collapse into bed at 8PM and sleep for 12 hours... and this morning I finally enjoyed the privilege of visiting my lovely friend (and host) Anna's church for worship and hearing her give an inspired and brilliant sermon. This time of year is the "Pentecost", which I understand is often considered the "birthday of the church" and has to do with Holy Spirit. Both the breath and wind of spirit, which moves in surprising and unpredictable ways, and with the 'catching fire' of the soul that happens when Spirit is present (or when we allow it to be present, I might add!). Wind and fire... which of course work very well with my newly identified totem animal, the peacock/phoenix, which is reborn from its own ashes cyclically. I have not been baptized nor christened nor confirmed (I don't know which of those terms belong to all or some or specific denominaions, either). I wouldn't have known Pentecost from the Pope until today, probably. I am a beginner, a 'toddler' in faith, as my friend Kimberley so sweetly and accurately puts it. But I do know Spirit. And I know that my dear friend Ms. Constantin brings Spirit and Love into her every action and word... that her ability to bring play, humour, kindness and connectedness into her church's community is an inspiration in the truest sense (inspire coming from Latin to breathe... the root word of spirit as well... worth dwelling on a while, not intellectually but reflectively). The United Church, a uniquely Canadian approach, is inclusive -- communion uses grape juice rather than wine so as not to exclude anyone, for example.

Anna's sermon contained a challenge to grow beyond our comfort zones, to really mean it, to catch fire. She asked us in the middle of it to turn to those around us, look them in the eye, and say "you are God's beloved, blessed by the Holy Spirit". And you know what? I absolutely said and meant it. Sweet little elderly and frail Mrs. Cooke beside me reached out and held my hand and said with slightly teary eyes "you are really good at that." And she was right. Imagine what the world would be like if no matter what words we were saying (I am tired. How are you today? What is on the agenda? I have something for you. Would you be willing to stop doing that? Hello.) were said with the Breath of Holy Spirit?

Well, I hope I'm getting closer to that. Because the reason I'm here taking this program is more than to learn (though it IS to learn), and more than to grow and open my perspective (though it IS that too)... I'm here because I'm attempting to BE a prayer for peace in my every thought, word and action... and this is where God led me when I asked for the Universe to guide me on that particular path.

Sending lots of love in all directions!

Peacebuilding (May 2007)

Peacocks AGAIN!

The Universe is telling me something through peacocks, and I just need to figure out what. There are multiple resident peacocks here at Royal Roads, and unsurprisingly, from past experience, one of them has taken a fancy to me. It fans out its tail as I pass by and makes attempts to follow me. Do I have peacock pheromones or something?

Anyway, our day began in the Castle Drawing Room (if you have seen X-Men, you know where I am studying... Xavier's school for Mutants. Appropriately enough.) The setting is astonishingly beautiful, and the drawing room looks out across the gardens to the sea beyond. There is a real quiet here, a green lively stillness that envelops us.

Our lead instructor, the head of this program, is named Paz Buttedahl. Born in Chile in '42, she is one of many girls of that era named Peace, as we learned when we opened the icebreaking with an introduction of ourselves and a telling the story behind our names. It's a lovely way to get to know people -- named for parents, aunts, uncles, friends, events... and last names that were changed several generations back to make it easier to get around in the 'new world' after immigration...

My own name stories are ones I love so it was fun to tell them: First, envision my parents walking along a beach discussing names in Summer 1975. Mother tosses around boys names (Christopher, Aaron), Father insists SHE IS A GIRL. Long silence. Mother notices colour of dusk sky is like Peach Melba and the word "melba" escapes her lips. Seconds later, Father says "Melanda!" and there it ends. There is no other name discussed from that point on, and three months later I am born and given my name. I have often thought "gosh I'm glad I DID turn out as a girl... imagine being a boy named Melanda!". Only to end up in the South Rift Valley in Kenya at age 31 and find that it's quite a common name in the Maasai tribe. FOR BOYS. (As I wrote in another Kenya tale.) As I type just now I am sitting outside at a picnic bench/table and remembering the day. My thoughts are punctuated by peaocks' honking calls.

We were welcomed with a performance on a closed brass drum, apparently something invented by Swiss instrument makers in recent years. Followed by a live telling of a Buddhist fable about the interconnectedness of all things (in which a crow poops on the head of a high Brahman priest and a sleepy watch girl causes the royal elephants to get burnt, and crow genocide erupts until a bodhisattva in crow form visits the king to sort it out. Long story, for another day.)

But don't get the wrong idea -- this is not a granola flake class. The readings list on International Law, Post-Cold-War Conflict, and umpteen trillion articles and government policy papers (some of 300-plus pages) is no picnic and will be working my brain fully. But we also had time to hike the trails down to the dock, listen to a reading (an excerpt from a poem called "Let Your Life Speak" and some of Parker Palmer's writings -- he is an unorthodox and highy successful educator in the US, from what I know) and then do some journalling as we sat in the sun with the sound of splishy water critters below and chattery winged things flying 'round above.

We also did some 'deep listening' in pairs, sitting in silence for 3 minutes while the other person first "unpacked" by telling all about what he or she is leaving behind in coming here. Then about what he or she is bringing along.

I discovered as I spoke that I am in some ways leaving behind a whole life. A beautiful life I have loved immensely. A life well lived. A family of several hundred people I came to know by working with them. A decade of growing into my own skin. And I also learned that I'm taking the heart of that with me, too. The love, friendship, learnings and community -- all are alive and well inside me.

And what will I bring back when these three weeks are done? How will I integrate it into my life? I'm excited to find out, and a bit nervous too. I am just taking the first few steps of my journey of the next whole chapter of my life. But unlike the last time (when I set tentative foot in hotels and thought "I guess I will just work for a while at something, until I am ready to face University again and finish my Latin degree..." and had NO idea where I was headed), this time I have a real sense of my purpose, even if I can only see a few steps ahead. I sense the heart of what I'm aiming for as I go. It is both more comforting, and more exciting, and scarier in some ways, than 10 years ago when I was mostly clueless.

The program outline looks incredible! Our second residency will be here in Victoria again in November, but the 3rd and final one, prior to our 6 month overseas field work placements, will be in Uganda!!!! We go as a group to the University of Makerere, where my friend Flora (with whom I worked at Wajee Nature Park this January) studied. So I will be back in Africa again so soon -- April 2008. Some of the 6 month projects that previous years' students have done look extraordinary, and I'm already tingling with anticipation about where mine might be and what I might do.

The faculty are amazing. They have so much depth of experience and breadth of vision. Some of the instructors have decades of military experience; others are playwrights and human rights activists; others worked in government, NGOs and the UN. They are from all over the world and have so much to share -- but every one of them reemphasizes that RRU is a place for lifelong learning, and that they come to each class to learn as much as to teach.

One of my laughs today came when we did the Myers-Briggs type indicator thing. As usual, I am an INFP (borderline I/E, so severely "N" that I can leap tall facts in a single bound of intuition, rather firmly F, and really terribly P except at work when I have to cultivate some J attributes now and then). [Later note: I am an ENFP, always have been, always will be; I used to get false Introvert readings.] For those of you who have not done this -- DO IT. There are online sites where you can test yourself. Anyway the booklet we were given on types has "Myers Briggs Type Prayers" and mine reads:

"Lord, please help me to finish everything I sta

[Later note: the prayer for an ENFP is: "God,help me to keep my mind on one th -oh look a bird! -ing at a time."]

(Let's see... I know at least 3 INTPs, so here is your prayer: "Lord, help me be less independent, but let me do it my way." And for the multiple ESTJs in my life: "God, help me try not to run everything. But if You need some help, just ask.")

I love it here. I am exactly where I need to be at this moment and I'm grateful for everything I am experiencing. And thank you for reading along so I can feel I'm sharing it with people in my life. Please do send me stories from your corners of the world so I can keep up from here on what you are doing!