Champions

adorn

Security

Pilgrims...

Life

Foreigners? Countrymen.

Pace | Progress?

Intimacy

Reverie

Home-carers

Mount Mukuru; Zambia

Significant

Why should I feel discouraged?

Why should the shadows come?
Why should my heart be lonely,
and long for heav’n and home,

When Jesus is my portion?
My constant Friend is He:
His eye is on the sparrow,
and I know He watches me

Civilla D. Martin, 1905

Insight

Over the last five years, one recurring question has filled me with singular distress: "so, what is it exactly that you do?". It would be so much easier to select from any number of other options - teacher, accountant, bricklayer. Certainly the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker had all their bases covered. But, how to describe the role of a facilitation team? How to simply articulate the process of community counselling that stimulates, supports and transfers local community response?

In my search of an effective definition , I have been humbled by the simple wisdom of ordinary people whose intuition so perfectly captures our process with an economy that transcends words.

*

"It's a little difficult to explain, Lunga". I am talking with 11-year old Lunga at a camp for children affected by HIV outside of Cape Town, South Africa. Lunga's still gaze is a study in too-early maturity, and when he next speaks it is with the quiet confidence of an old soul. "It's not that difficult", he replies. "I think I understand. You are the people who come to visit our mothers where they are working hard in the townships. When they are feeling tired, you tell them they are doing a good job, and not to give up. And it gives them strength to go on."

*

Zachary is my 6-year old son who was learning about Careers at school. In the midst of friends whose parents were dentists, jewellery-sellers, art-teachers, Zachary explained that his Daddy travelled a lot. "He travels to visit people who are sad because the people they love got sick and died. And he listens to them and helps them feel better."

*

In the urban township of Crossroads in South Africa, we were invited into a home by Andrew, a 40-year old widower who lived alone in a corrugated-iron shack. In the sweltering heat of the single-roomed dwelling, he asked us what we were bringing to give to the community. We clarified that we had been invited by some other community members - to visit; to learn. To learn about life, their lives, his life in this place. An hour later, as we exchanged goodbyes in the manner of long-time friends, Andrew called me away from the group and whispered, in a tone almost conspiratorial: "I thought you people were like all the others who come here with their promises and their solutions. No one ever comes here to ask us what we think. But you people are like door-keepers - you only help us open the door so the real light can shine inside".

Ties

"There is a tide in the affairs of men which,

Taken at the flood

Leads on to fortune

On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."

- Julius Caesar, Shakespeare

No special affinity for subtlety is needed these days - no sophisticated sense for nuance or special gift for discernment - to recognise that we're in flux. What to some may feel like conflict, may actually be necessary to reveal Movement and stimulate response.

Amidst all the tides presently pulling and pushing people and organisations -within and without - there's a burgeoning sense of intimacy and fellowship and camaraderie, a fresh current - threatening to some - that brings rich, full Life..a pathway to unrestrained Freedom and Fullness, and community. Together.

The awakening of slumbering vision. The (re)Birth of Movement. The whisper of private challenge, over corporate responsibility. The promise of inspired adventure and bold endeavour.

Is it too much to hope - too premaure, too idealistic - that a transformative Movement is being reanimated, not through the redemption of its structures, but through the renewal of its people?

Oh, for more than a small taste of that conviction that moved Booth to a life less ordinary in those first days of The Salvation Army. That intense - almost obsessive - restlessness; the discontent that compels; the confidence that Grace can transform us, and our part of the world, if only we would take that Tide at the flood.

"On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."

Anticipation

The Soccer World Cup comes to the Mother City in 2010. Fever-pitch anticipation electrifies the air. Everyone's in the game!

Valentine

To LOVE and to COMFORT

To HONOUR and to KEEP

To CHERISH

In SICKNESS and in HEALTH

For RICHER or POORER

For BETTER or WORSE

In SADNESS and JOY

Forsaking all others

Only ever to each other

Until death.

Humour

Boys. What's with that?

Laundry

Veil

Revolution?

From the lips of children.....

All in favour?

Homestead

Versatile

The many faces of Madame Pauline Mavitu-Massamba, a heroine of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A champion of community. A role-model par excellence.

Pauline is proof-positive that one person can become all things to all people - so adaptable, and responsive, and sensitive so as to be a human chameleon. Comfortable with young or old, prostitute or politician, downcast or dignitary, she is the picture of grace and elegance.

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