#UULent - #worship

#UULent - #teamwork

If you want to go fast go alone.

If you want to go far go together.

African proverb

#UULent - #home

#UULent - #action

Action: the distance between dream and reality

#UULent - #hunger

For today's word I had no option but to post this photo. It was taken in Ng'ombe, a small township of Lusaka, Zambia. Ng'ombe was the community FP Lexington was paired with through Communities Without Borders (CBWB). Two years earlier two children in the community died from starvation.

That event was the trigger which made CWB rethink it's focus on education and realize that without food in their bellies these kids would learn nothing. So a feeding program was instituted as part of the support for the Ng'ombe community.

The children who died were probably in the cohort of kids shown in this photo. These were no longer starving to death but they knew hunger every day.

#UULent - #vulnerability

Had never heard the term Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) before Bethany and I travelled with CWB to Zambia in 2005, but ever since then vulnerable has always conjured up a very specific feeling.

These two where inseperable whenever we visited the Garden compound and I was never sure if they where Double Orphans meaning both parents were dead, Single Orphans meaning one parent had not yet succumbed to AIDS, or merely Vulnerable which meant they could fall into on of the other categories at any moment.

#UULent - #honesty

#UULent - #inspiration

I obviously should have looked at the mind map yesterday when this post was due.

#UULent - #patience

a haiku


Patience is a skill 

Taught to us all while waiting.

Failure is common.

#UULent - #freedom

For the full interactive experience go to www.freedomhouse.org

#UULent - #awareness

The Fish

Elizabeth Bishop, 1911 - 1979

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
—the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly—
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
—It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
—if you could call it a lip—
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels—until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

#UULent - #struggle

A quote from a classic novel addressing the internal struggle between good and evil in man.

#UULent - #awe

Sometimes awe is like - 

... so often ends up like  -

#UULent - #memory

LOL. I found two funny things when I went looking for a memory.

The first photo is on the back of a postcard showing European itinerary from my trip in 1978. One of the highlights was being in St Marks Sq when the smoke came up from the Vatican announcing that John Paul 1 had been elected.

The second is the advert I respond to which ended up with me moving to Bermuda and ultimately the U.S. after meeting Sally on the island while I was working there.

#UULent - #failure

Appropriately I forgot make this posting yesterday.

#UULent - #heart

The only poem I ever learned by heart and remembered.

Wilfred Owen

The Chances

I mind as 'ow the night afore that show
Us five got talking, — we was in the know,
"Over the top to-morrer; boys, we're for it,
First wave we are, first ruddy wave; that's tore it."
"Ah well," says Jimmy, — an' 'e's seen some scrappin' —
"There ain't more nor five things as can 'appen;
Ye get knocked out; else wounded — bad or cushy;
Scuppered; or nowt except yer feeling mushy."

One of us got the knock-out, blown to chops.
T'other was hurt, like, losin' both 'is props.
An' one, to use the word of 'ypocrites,
'Ad the misfortoon to be took by Fritz.
Now me, I wasn't scratched, praise God Almighty
(Though next time please I'll thank 'im for a blighty),
But poor young Jim, 'e's livin' an' 'e's not;
'E reckoned 'e'd five chances, an' 'e's 'ad;
'E's wounded, killed, and pris'ner, all the lot —
The ruddy lot all rolled in one. Jim's mad.

#UULent - #abundance