Intern’s Note: This story was so full of correspondence and imagery that I couldn’t fit everything I thought into a short article! If you are up for a longer read,  here is the uncut version.

A child sees the world in terms of bad and good, wrong and right. When she grows up she can see the nuances of morality and ethics and sometimes must argue over the distinction between bad and good. This transition can be a difficult and long road but it can lead to a strength and courage that would be impossible to find without the experience of growing up.

In the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg it is revealed that the stories of the word are representative and hold an inner meaning. Using Swedenborg’s science of correspondences I have found one possible inner meaning for another ancient text; the story of Jorinde and Joringel, a German folk story which was first recorded in writing by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Continue reading Out of the Witch’s Castle →

I grew up in a household with many books. Especially children’s books.

One of my Mama’s favourites, and mine too, is a sweet book called Miss Rumphius.
In this book, a little girl dreams of growing up and traveling and seeing the world like her sea-Captain-artist Grandpa, and then when she is old, living in a house by the sea as he does. He tells her there is also a special thing she must do…she must make the world a more beautiful place.

“‘All right’ said Alice, but she did not know what that would be.”

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Little Alice Rumphius grows up and has many travel adventures and experiences…and eventually gets older, and lives in a little house by the sea that she just loves. She hurts her back, and becomes ill, and as she lies in bed getting better, she wonders (worries?) what she will do to fulfill the important thing her Grandfather charged her with…to make the world a more beautiful place.

Continue reading Real Life…(when I grow up) →

I’ve been reflecting quite a bit recently on how often peace is found and lived out in the tensions between two extremes. Truth and Good. Faith and Charity. Love and Wisdom. The natural world and the spiritual world. This life and the next. God’s sovereignty and humanity’s free-will.

These meditations have application in every area of my life, but a recently highlighted one for me has been in my role as a parent.

Some days I’m a terrible parent.

Other days I’m a great one!

Really, it’s more like moments than days. Minutes. Seconds. Parenting is made up of a thousand, no a million, tiny moments, small decisions, reactions, these tiny, minute, seemingly insignificant seconds that add up, that can be so big, that can be the pin head on which lives change and destinies turn and worlds stop… Continue reading Peace in Tension: Parenting →

Deep in the night in the privacy of my sheets I confessed—I really don’t know anything. This would become the theme for my life in 2017. There was a growing comfort inside of me in the understanding that I am not in charge of anything. Just weeks into acknowledging the state of my unconsciousness I would be woken up rather abruptly by a couple of suits at my work activating their positional power to rescind the offer they made to pay for my Masters of Business Administration qualification—at one of the most prestigious Business Schools in South Africa. It was stated in their subsidized Education policy that they will support the development of their employees to give rise to a competent human capital that can tactically and strategically bring real time transformation to the lives of ordinary South Africans. What the policy forgot to relay was that there was an invisible quota to the amount that can be used to subsidize transformation; and only sub-standard institutions will get preference. There in the boardroom I put on my business brain and was ready to debate and poke holes into their bureaucratic ways. Critically engaging made-up minds allows for greater opportunity of forced consciousness in one’s own biases. I refer to this type of consciousness as the light that glows when truth meets ignorance.

I did not get to the glow immediately, first there was a storm; a raging tear storm that filled my aching reality. The obvious solution was to drop out of school. How was I going to cover tuition, books and the global study tour without my development agenda partner? This was an ultimate betrayal; for a woman that has survived life’s most hurtful surprises before now; this pain was fresh… like the road less travelled. I sensed a new way of thinking creeping into my alertness, like the dimness of my light forcing its way into life—I felt a warm glow of light emerging into my consciousness. This new light was forcefully announced to me through the pain that accompanied the possibility of dropping out. I began to look beyond the teary storm and the choking pain for a solution. Then I remembered! I don’t know anything. Continue reading Emerging Consciousness →