Thursday, May 08, 2008
8th May
I was walking to meditation this evening through the beautiful light of late spring.
My heart was filled to overflowing by the beauty of the evening - by the light, by the blossom on the trees... and also by disturbing images I saw on the evening's news.. of the devastation and the suffering in Burma, and the fact that it's rulers are delaying aid because they fear its arrival might threaten their power.
and I was thinking back to the weekend I spent in berlin, in the Transgender European Conference.. an amazing, inspiring event for me, 180 of us in this town hall, assembling from 65 countries...
Many of us had the saddest story to tell of persecution in their home countries. others, even in apparently safer places, are still living in fear. Living double lives whose terrible barriers they could briefly dissolve.
We were aware of the history of Berlin. How under the nazis people like us were judged not fit to live, and were rounded up and killed.
Of how there are many, many more of us who could not appear: because if they show themselves in public they rujn the gravest danger of being killed. By angry mobs; by thugs; by their own outraged families.
I felt such a sense of pride standing there, at belonging to a progressive and peaceful country like Scxotland. And of gratitude, at amazement at my good fortune... a sense of being blessed. A sense of somehow not knowing quite how to respond to all this good fortune; except an obligation to appreciate it and use my freedom to reach out as best I can to the world.
My heart is very full these days.
I was walking to meditation this evening through the beautiful light of late spring.
My heart was filled to overflowing by the beauty of the evening - by the light, by the blossom on the trees... and also by disturbing images I saw on the evening's news.. of the devastation and the suffering in Burma, and the fact that it's rulers are delaying aid because they fear its arrival might threaten their power.
and I was thinking back to the weekend I spent in berlin, in the Transgender European Conference.. an amazing, inspiring event for me, 180 of us in this town hall, assembling from 65 countries...
Many of us had the saddest story to tell of persecution in their home countries. others, even in apparently safer places, are still living in fear. Living double lives whose terrible barriers they could briefly dissolve.
We were aware of the history of Berlin. How under the nazis people like us were judged not fit to live, and were rounded up and killed.
Of how there are many, many more of us who could not appear: because if they show themselves in public they rujn the gravest danger of being killed. By angry mobs; by thugs; by their own outraged families.
I felt such a sense of pride standing there, at belonging to a progressive and peaceful country like Scxotland. And of gratitude, at amazement at my good fortune... a sense of being blessed. A sense of somehow not knowing quite how to respond to all this good fortune; except an obligation to appreciate it and use my freedom to reach out as best I can to the world.
My heart is very full these days.
Labels: in Berlin
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