I just come back from a lovely early morning walk on the beach of Hoi An,
At six in the morning it was already quite hot, but after a refreshing swim in the warm ocean, it was really nice to walk along the shore,
I tried to imagine all the rivers flowing into the sea…the Perfume river, the Mekong, the Red River…
Most of these rivers come down from the Himalayas. Do some start in Bhutan? I tried to imagine walking up to their source
and being back with Tho in BhutanJ
I do miss him a lot,
So where did the “source “ of Eurasia take its start?
It is hard to imagine where things start…so many conditions have
to come together, nothing comes out of nothing
It is also impossible to imagine where things end….something can not become nothing…right? (I learnt this from Thay…)
As I wrote in one of my previous blogs, Tho
and me have lived and worked in field of special education for almost all our professional life.
For 12 years we lived with our two children and some special education students with 7 children-teenagers living with severe disabilities like in a family.
It was in a Camphill community.
It was not an “easy”life, but this is where I learnt so much! I learnt professionally about special education but most of all I learnt about myself, my limitations, about the complexity of human
nature and the wonders of community life.
This certainly is one of the “sources” of our work with Eurasia.
The other “source” I have also been talking about already, is the “ancestors”.
Tho’s roots are in this country. And our ancestors are truly present in our lives.
There is Thay, of course, as a source of inspiration of transformation and healing.
And then actually it all started with a smile
and a tear!
Yes A TEAR and a SMILE
After Tho’s first trip back to Vietnam in 1982, I remember him coming back so deeply touched by the suffering of his country. It was only a few years after the war.
I
remember him telling to a group of friends about this suffering and then he cried…
When I saw him cry , I knew that he would have to do something to relieve some of this suffering.
And then the smile…a
few years later in 1991, we visited Vietnam with Tho’s family. Tho’s uncle (I already mentioned him ) wanted us to meet some social projects that we might support.
Some catholic nuns had a project with lepers. The presentation
was in Vietnamese (no powerpoint in this time…) and it was VERY LONG.
I was a bit bored and started smiling back to one of these nuns sitting opposite me…I smiled, she smiled back…and we just SMILED along!
After the talk ended we walked up to each other took each other in our arms, like we have always known each other. She said to me : please help me!
Tho’s family was in a hurry (the talk was VERY long and we were late) and Tho’s
father said to me : quick quick..let’s go,
So this encounter with this nun was just a few minutes…but it changed the course of our lives…
Because we did help her!
La suite la
prochaine fois...to be continued