A wonderful Kenyan woman, Karambu Ringera, visited the community of the Findhorn Foundation to join The Way of Council workshop last year. We’re delighted to welcome Karambu back to participate in the Holistic Centres Gathering.
Karambu says, “I want to learn as much as I can because I want to create a centre similar to Findhorn in Meru, Kenya. I want to be able to do things that bring peace and wellbeing into people’s lives. I have lots to learn, but my heart resonates with such spaces.”
The story of International Peace Initiatives (IPI) is about RECLAIMING wastelands and TRANSFORMING lives. “When I think of my work with International Peace Initiatives, I recognized that I had built the Amani Community Children’s Home (ACH) for orphans in a space called ‘rocky, unproductive, barren, and forsaken for it had nothing to offer.’ It was community land that had been abandoned and left to overgrow with bushes.”
The orphans and vulnerable children I take care of and the women living with HIV/AIDS I work with, they too are a form of wasteland – people who are abandoned and discriminated against because they are orphans who lost their parents to HIV/AIDS. Similarly, the women living with HIV/AIDS have experienced discrimination because of their status. They and their children are always on the edge, not knowing how long their mother will live, unsure if they will get their next meal or money to pay their next term’s school fees.
We also have societal wasteland. We have chosen to not build a world where equity and equality for social justice reigns. The institutions and systems we have put in place exclude, instead of INCLUDE. We have forgotten to love the poor amongst us. We have the responsibility as human beings to recognize we are part of the healing of the whole – humans and Earth – because we are intricately inter-connected with Earth, Cosmos and humans. Our actions as human beings will either make or break our Earth, and ourselves as the human family.
We are being called to RE-CONNECT with, RE-CLAIM and RE-MEMBER our Highest Self. Our Highest Self IS the Light and Love of the Divine within. Once we re-connect with this Light (GOD), we bring healing. Love (GOD) is the path to the healing of the Whole. The healing of our bodies IS the healing of Mother Earth. CO-CREATING the healing of ourselves and Earth together in RELATIONSHIP in COMMUNITY is the gift each one of us is invited to offer today.
The Amani Community Children’s Homes (ACH) and the women’s groups IPI has created are such spaces. We reclaim deserted land and people and offer them an opportunity to RE-CLAIM themselves, to RE-MEMBER themselves, to RE-BUILD their confidence and self-esteem. We offer a space for them to KNOW who they REALLY are again so that they can claim their rightful place in this world as true and worthy members of the family of God, Mother Earth and humanity. We invite the ‘other’ to partner with us to co-create, co-reclaim, co-reconfigure and co-remember, so that together we may transform these spaces in our lives, families and communities.
Karambu will be giving a presentation in the Universal Hall, Findhorn Foundation, along with Kitezh Children’s Community in Russia, on Thursday 10th May at 7.30pm. For more details please contact christine.lines@findhorn.org
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