.... the midnight hour has past here at the Wilson Mansions and I have not blogged this day.
I will be failing if I do not dribble my thoughts from these keys to your screen - into your eyeballs and slipping down into your soul .........
Joan is away spending another w/e with her ailing Mother and I am now striving for head space and catching deep breaths at the end of the day ......
I am in recovery from a busy week and need to switch back on tomorrow so I can prepare for a busy week ahead and followed by a week in Norway - this time in a Bergen and Voss.
I am sipping a from a glass of Vodka. It is the best Vodka in the world.
Because I have travelled and worked in several European countries - I have been treated to the local brews as I have moved around. You have to do this you know - receive the local hospitality.
Poland has a Vodka which is the only one I have enjoyed. It is called ZUBROWKA - BISON and it has a trademark sliver of grass in every bottle.
A beautiful human gave me a bottle this week. If you are reading this David - bigup thanx.
Really appreciate. (He didn't even let me pay for it!)
Saw Patrick today. We will see each other three times in four months. Then he returns to Paraguay only to return home for good in January 2008.
We level fived together. So fluid. So real. So flowing. So beautiful.
In the midst of all this - he asked me a question, one of many, but this one made me dig deep.
"What revelation have you had in your life in the past five years?"
hmmmmmmm stink.
I scanned my life over those years ........... so much change and what can I say?
I need to think about this in some depth but ............ I did answer the question there and then ......... knowing I will need to dig the crates deeper to really answer the question for myself.
I those five years - the last five years
I have given 7 months notice and resigned my job without knowing what I would be doing in the future.
I did know and believe what I intended to do.
That was Training and Group Work.
But I knew, and Joan was in all this equally, that we were not willing to sacrifice freedom for security.
After 39 years of living in Residential work - we had no home of our own, and here I was resigning ............. - no job - no home ......... a story to be told .........
The revelation, the one of many which I chose to disclose to Patrick, was .......
I have been conducting Group Work with humans in special need. This is what I left 'Community Leadership' to do after thirty five or more years ........
I have come to realise that when working with those who are broken, homeless - cut off from social networks, friends and family and addicted - shattered confidence - low self esteem - health fragile .......... that I cannot work with them without sharing my own weaknesses - imperfection.
When starting a group session which they have freely come to, I need to start the sharing exercise by first setting a base line of openness and reality MYSELF!
Then I have had to get in-touch with my own abilities and disabilities - and share them with these beautiful humans. That then becomes a leveller "I am not the only one in this hostel who feels pain and inferior" thinks the others. "It is comforting to hear that I am not the only one who is all messed up" feels the others on the group .......
That is the revelation.
Choosing the road of self revelation.
The model coming from "He who was rich became poor ........."
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