Recife!

So, time plays tricks on all of us. Recife, two years later, I left it, much the same as I found it. Perhaps it was me that was more affected by time and space in the North East of Brazil. So many miraculous things have happened, that they might have to come out in anecdotal form little by little, as it should have earlier. I have arrived in Europe, and am facing the challenge of reverse culture shock, of settling back into a community (communities) that I was missing from for a good amount of time, and thought that perhaps I could continue with the blogging, and in fact be better at it on a continent when there is roaming WiFi in most places, and a cup of coffee comes with free internet. I haven't been hit hard yet with anything in particular. I find it a little funny that I can't get away with making up facts and statistics because everyone has an iphone or the android equivalent, or perhaps the hybrid of the two, and a whole world of facts and figures are available. So far,

A friend of mine, a very good friend, one from before I became Christian, or a capoeirista, a grass-roots kind of friend, came to my church one Sunday a good while ago. She listened to the sermon, probably more carefully than half the congregation, or even I did, and afterwards I asked her what she thought of it. She replied to me, politically correctly, and with sensitivity to my feelings, that it had been interesting, but that she preferred the sermons at her mums home church. Why? Because they were always about love and happiness, and our sermon this week, although not directly dealing with hell, had been very fire and brimstones anyway. Hmm, this was almost three years ago, and I still remember that Sunday. Funny. Today isn't about teaching preachers how or what to teach, heaven knows I haven't a clue, and if anyone, I recognise the importance of balanced teaching. No, today is about sharing some love and happiness - because really that is a basis of my faith, whether i

What gets me every time, is that just when you are ready to celebrate someone's happiness, someone else's injustice enters. A daily combat against hunger, ill health, against loneliness, hopelessness, poverty, inequality, and you get over the hurdle, you witness an obstacle removed, you begin to rejoice for all that is good in this world, you turn around, and notice that the distortion has taken a-hold of someone new. Wonderful things have happened, miracles, people healed, families fed, houses rebuilt by the community. Some of our kids graduating school and moving on to study at university. We are proud to see accomplishment, proud to see healthy and happy children playing, communicating and relating better then they were a year ago. I stopped for two days and saw all the good that was happening in Tejipio despite the material difficulties, and was filled with joy.The community is rebuilding itself after the floods, families are moving back in to their houses, the schools have

Embaixo tambem uma tentativa de tradição em portugues! Another address to the Nobility It all starts in a silence in the distance, All that moves is the inner reason He feels trapped, deceived, without true existence, Enslaved only to mechanism. Seduced and captured by the institution, Indebted to constant debtors Slavery a cage with no absolution, Visible to a world which is weary. The cry starts as a strangled roar of thunder, That seems to re-split the curtain. Remembering the liberation wonder, That was already freely given. The fight begins for enlightenment new, For an original covenant. One that it craves and is long overdue Saturated by equality. The revolutionary buries the living with the pain The thread of remorse strains not breaking. No treatment or condition that is too humane Is without mercy to be given Until the purpose, and comfort are gained The wisdom shows the error of ways But already the institution is restrained And no one knows if there is lasting grace. And si

So, I have had a couple of months of writers block, and then remembered that I am not a writer, so that´s not a good enough excuse. I thought then, that maybe it was because I didn´t have anything insightful to write about, and then realised that I was probably giving my previous blogs a little too much credit, and insight is really rather relative anyway. Then I thought that maybe I was a little too busy to write a blog, and although I would agree that that was the case, I think that also, I am a little lazy. So, that was my thought process, almost every day for the last couple of months. But here we are today, I had a cup of coffee, class was cancelled, and I have no credit on my phone to organize anything else, a free evening, courtesey of the weather! And now, to think of something relatively insightful to write... Hmmm.. Well, as Judith and Adrian are off on sending country assingment, I am currently living in their flat, looking after the family (almost lost Felix one day, which

I have been thinking a lot about the amazing difficulty that it is to raise children. really it seem to be getting harder and harder as the generations pass. But I think that it comes from fear, we have begun to fear everything that we do, that everything that we say will psychologically damage the children we live/work with, every single moment that we cohabit with them, like they are almost a completely different species until they hit 18. A species that is so susceptible and fragile that they will not survive a heavy word, or that they are so placid that they will not survive with soft ones either. I spent the last weekend at a friends house in Olinda, a city north of Recife where I train capoeira. We had a workshop with a Mestre from Bahia. Waking up with the sun on Saturday, at a friends house, at some ridiculous hot but early hour of the morning I lay in bed listening to the morning noises, which are so beautiful to me here in Brazil, but this time I was not as pleased with them

Hei there! Wow, its been a little while! It was Christmas, and then it was my 4 weeks off, and now I am in Limbo. But the good kind of limbo, the kind where you feel empowered and that whatever comes next can only be good, and if it isnt, you can change it all so that it is. Cryptic I know ;) We are currently in a process of change and modification, and until there is a more solidified plan of this, I think its better that I dont confuse everyone, anyone, with a serious of presuppositions and nonesense, so, Ill let you know about things, when I have a frimer grip on it myself. So, instead I have decided to inaugurate 2011 blogging with a rant, as usual, why change it if it works right? Legalism, it started out like one of this little itches, maybe at the top of your arm, or like a fly buzzing around when really you wanted to consentrate on something a little more important, but It wasnt one of those things that you concentrated on, much, then it became like that little thud in your hea