Burden Of Peace

a documentary I narrated this year, will air on Kenya's Citizen TV this Sunday (December 13th), and next Sunday (December 20th), at 12.45pm.

It captures the voices of Kenyan women, across the country, recounting their experiences of the post-election violence. Gang rape, displacement, dispossession, heartbreak - and survival. Their courage and tenacity, as they continue to demand justice, are extraordinary.

It's harrowing to watch, and listen to. Each of the stories reduced us to tears, numbness, incoherent rage. As we worked on it, I kept recalling Audre Lorde:

this eye is not for weeping
though tears are on my face
it must record everything

And thinking that the whole work of the mediation agreement, and now, the involvement of the international criminal court, is to bring us to look at the unbearable. Listen to the unspeakable. Feel in entirety what they trigger in us. Over and over again, until our facade of separation crumbles. Until we can no longer believe that we are removed, protected, from violation. Until we cease to pretend that we are not complicit in every violence.

We have chosen each other
and the edge of each others battles
the war is the same
if we lose
someday women's blood will congeal
upon a dead planet
if we win
there is no telling
we seek beyond history
for a new and more possible meeting

---Sister Outsider, Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde

The DVD will be available for order shortly, from Pambazuka Press.

lightness of fall

From the book I'm reading at the moment, by two teachers I respect profoundly, Stephen and Ondrea Levine:

But in truth, relationship is the art of falling down. Or more accurately, the art of picking oneself up lightly. Our growth is measured in the lightness of the fall and the tenderness of our resurrection.

--Embracing The Beloved

The metaphor of falling lightly evokes the teachings of martial arts. Reminds me that relationship, with work, with a person, with a situation, can always be a dojo - a space for building skills through constant practice and engagement, moving towards mastery. The rules of sparring under which I trained with the Guardian Angels in London are equally applicable to relationships:

First, non-injury - for yourself and your partner.

Second, respect - for the space and everyone in it.

Third - we're all students and we're all teachers. Everyone is here to learn.

Fourth - If you injure your partner by accident, then you are out of training for as long as they are.

Fifth - you don't learn by watching others. You learn by participation, practice, mistakes, falling down and getting up. As many times as it takes.

And the tenderness of our resurrection is a hauntingly beautiful phrase. It wants to be a book title.