PhotoFundraising – so that we don’t remain so helpless

Over 70 years ago a very kind and progressive nation opened its borders to my grandfather who was fleeing from war-ravaged Poland. It was there, in Zurich, Switzerland, far from his native country that he was educated into a skilled medical doctor. If he had been ignored back then, I would most likely never have been born and neither would all the children of the people that he healed in his lifetime.

When we look at the humanitarian crises and the different positions that people take on them, my husband always concludes that “It all comes down to one basic question: how much do we value human life?”

And I think he’s right. How much do we value human life?

I’ve been listening and watching the news over the last few days and been feeling totally helpless over it. There is a strong urge in me to help so much so that I couldn’t sleep very well for the last few nights. I was thinking what I could do for the people in danger, what I could offer. My heart runs towards them. I’d like to be there on the Mediterranean Sea helping to rescue them from the boats or in Munich greeting the refugees and finding them accommodation, but I have a little child that my husband and I look after and at the moment he is far too small to be left without his mama.

It occurred to me yesterday that all I can do is to do fundraising. Using the skills that I have.

In September I will be fundraising for Doctors Without Borders / Medecins Sans Frontieres (just because they are so effective in managing help) by swapping my photographic skills for funds for the charity. The idea is simple: if I take photographs for you this month, I’d like you to donate as much as you think the photographs are worth to Doctors Without Borders via my Just Giving page.

If you would like some photographs taken of you, your loved-ones or your business or products, contact me through Facebook or my Contact pages to arrange a time and date. I am based in Derby, UK.

Let’s save lives together!

Under the clouds we are all small people.

(If you are from Derby, UK, please could you share this post with your friends. Thank you so so much!)

The spiritual dimension of childhood

We talk a lot about how to best bring up our children. We talk a lot about their diet, about their clothes, schooling, meaningful playtime and sleep patterns. We are continuously preoccupied with their self-esteem and skills development but we hardly ever address their spiritual side, hardly ever ask questions about it. I sometimes feel that it is almost a taboo to talk about spirituality for the fear of being recognised as a potential or practicing believer.

I am a practicing believer. I go to church. Once it was part of my cultural practice and upbringing (being brought up in a Catholic family with Catholic values), now it is my choice. I don’t feel constrained by my religion, I feel guided in some manner but not constrained. In fact I am often plagued with doubt but a few years ago a solid seed has been planted in me and now there is a tree growing there, a very healthy tree that supports my core and blossoms with my regular visits before God.

I belong to a gentle and a very balanced community built from people from all over the world: Europe, India, Nigeria, Brazil and the States, to name just a few. We are all there sitting in one church, connected before God, equal before God. It is a very powerful sensation. It is a very powerful understanding. I take my son to church and I think he sees what I am seeing. He sees and breathes this so powerful a statement of equality – for him there is no other world, no other world than the multicultural one, no other than the equal one.

I have got friends of all religions and persuasions, in fact my best friends are of different persuasions to mine but it does not prevent us valuing each other’s friendship or having deep conversations on the topics related to believing, disbelieving and non-believing. Our ability to develop different views and feelings related to the metaphysical is what makes us so wonderfully multidimensional. I want my son to be able to position himself towards the metaphysical with as much knowledge and experience as he can get himself, and as much understanding as I can offer him and so I take him to church (I know that there are other ways, but that is mine). Someone told me once that they stopped attending church because church should be for the people and not people for the church. The main message that I get from the place that I go to is not that people are for the church but that people are for the people. That people are for the people. This is what I would like my son to take with him.

We are very fortunate to live in a multicultural and multi-faith city. The city which totally overwhelmed me when I first arrived here, the city which I am totally indebted to for making me open-minded and curious of differences, and as many British cities this one is also great at coexistence but would definitely benefit from more face-to-face dialogue. I don’t know how it is in schools these days, but I know what it looks like in playgrounds and play spaces. Mums gravitate towards those that look like them. How about breaking that habit? How about initiating conversations that join us together? Getting to know that lonely-sitting, iphone-flicking everymama? Where she’s from, what she values and most importantly why she is alone.

Complaints and Gratitude

People who complain are not necessarily unhappy. Often, they just try to strike a relationship with others through complaining. Sharing suffering, even about the little things, can be bond-creating and frequently functions as a conversation starter, an icebreaker.

– The bus is late again…
– Oh yes, it was delayed yesterday too… They even wrote about it in the local newspaper how unreliable the buses are these days….Do you read XYZ?
– XYZ, oh yes , I do. Would you believe it if I tell you that I have its very first issue.

And here… the connection is triggered, the conversation unfolds, the stranger at the bus stop is no longer a stranger but someone who we share suffering with and the discomfort of our day-to-day experiences. In that sense the complaint is an invitation to a longer dialogue. It is not its conclusion. It’s just a start…

I do a fair deal of complaining in my life. Recently perhaps a bit too much. (You see… I even complain about my habit of complaining :) ))))))) But I think that disappointments are part of life and it’s good to notice them and share them too. There is something quite artificial in noticing only the bright side. March is the time when we complain a lot in our northern hemisphere. Because our days are not quite long yet, our flowers our not entirely out, and to be honest our strength and resilience to cope with challenges ahead has probably only just started building up. In March, we only manage to lift our smiles up from our heavy woolly scarves, and it takes another month or two for this smile to establish itself and for more cheery conversations to emerge.

Complaints are not always a sign of unhappiness, but are often a sign of a struggle of sorts. These struggles are part of our human stories and they are bound to happen somewhere in the process of realizing our new ventures. This is usually when most complaining goes on. When we are at the beginning of those journeys. Gratitude comes later…

…and it’s great that it does.

This is my Easter Egg for you Lovely Readers. Thank you for your messages, conversations and kind words. My doctoral research is developing very very slowly (but surely) so I still cannot offer regular postings in this space. I hope you are all well and that you’ll have lovely Easter. Best wishes and feel free to leave a complaint ;) x Alicja

Thankful Tuesday: Places and destinations

“I reread the Odyssey… which I had first read in school and remembered as a story of a homecoming. But it is not a story of a homecoming. How could the Greeks who knew that one never enters the same river twice, believe in homecoming? Odysseus does not return home to stay, but to set off again.” Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

Last week we just ate clementines. Well, we did other things too but it felt as if it was all that we did. When you have the flu, you want to eat citrus fruits all the time, don’t you? It is really lovely to see that no food is dismissed when its eating is preceded by having an opportunity to peel it, and garlic is no exception (at least not in my toddler’s case).

As our noses were running and temperatures went high, we had to say no to a few events and cancel one too. I must admit I have grown so fond of our little communities recently that I have found it quite painful to stay at home.

There are times however that we find it difficult to appreciate our back and forth travelling. Journeys to work, shops, schools and nurseries. But as much as we love home, as much as we find it easier to return than to set off, there is no doubt that we also meet ourselves in other places. These days even if my journeys are only to the nearest park, I am grateful for having them. For having opportunities to set off. To be in motion. In a physical or metaphorical sense.

They say that small children learn an awful lot while discussing with their mothers all the things that happen on the other side of the window. Quickly, they are drawn outside… they find their favourite places… just as adults do.

Today I am grateful for those places and our destinations that pull us out of bed every morning and make us meet ourselves and meet each other. We belong to the world that’s greater than our home. We must set off.

Thankful Tuesday series was started by Life With The Crew. Pop over to her blog to read about her adventures.

Nothing New: Final reflections on my attempts at buying nothing new for almost a year

As the autumn is slowly coming to its end and the winter air sneaks into our house through nooks, crannies and keyholes, I am bringing out our old coats, hats, scarves and jumpers and I am bracing us for the winter. In fact I am surprised how long we’ve managed to survive just with our summer jackets, running around with bare necks and heads uncovered. It’s been by all means one of the warmest Novembers I’ve experienced in the UK.

The year is almost over and I’ve been thinking about the journey that I have taken through embracing the Nothing New Project and how much I’ve gained because of it. (Almost) all the goods that I’ve bought this year were not new, but the direction my thoughts have taken me in were new to me. To be truthful, I’ve started liking myself a bit more towards the end of this year as I felt I’ve been a part of something meaningful… maybe even a small part of a big social change. I hope I was. I hope I still am.

If I had to list one thing that I’ve learnt or re-learnt through this project, I would fail at the task, as it’s just impossible to encapsulate the outcome of this project in one line. It would never do it justice. I can hear some of you saying: ‘But come on Alicja, give us three things, three things that you’ve learnt from the Nothing New Project. How would you encourage others to go about it?’ My answer would be: Try to do these things:

1. Engage
2. Maintain
3. Connect

Engage with what you have. More often than not we crave for new things because we forget about the things that we already have. We walk through our rooms oblivious to their contents. There are books that are unread, films not yet watched, CDs hardly ever listened to. Give those items your attention. You have probably bought them with a strong purpose of engaging with them. Give yourself time to do it. The Nothing New Project made it very clear to me that buying is not becoming – that the act of buying something does not change us; it does not make us something else other than just a consumer. To change we need to engage with what we’ve invested in. Only our efforts lead to creations which bring about change. Having a house will never equal having a home if we don’t breathe life into it.

Maintain. This is something that I have had the biggest problem with for as long as my mind can recall. I rush from one job to another, from one project to another, from one occasion to another and my mind is so scattered that I’ve hardly ever given time to the maintenance tasks. Maintenance means to “keep things in being”. To do this we should repair, preserve, clean and conserve what we already have. One thing is to possess something, it’s quite another to give it a long and good life.

Connect with people. Search for or create communities where you can share, swap, circulate items. Enrich others. Sign up to Freecycle or other groups to keep things out of landfill. Use libraries, toy libraries, tool hires. We really don’t need to possess everything. Realistically, we do not have space for everything. In her beautiful post Surrender Sash Milne, the initiator of the Nothing New Project, wrote “Make every transaction an opportunity for human connection. With connection comes relationships, with relationships comes community.” This to me is the core message of the Nothing New Project. Often we hide in our homes with things that we have, with things that could be shared or offered to others (not only goods but also time and talents). When we show to others what we have, who we are, we realise that we have a lot and collectively we have everything. It’s so easy to feel unloved, it’s so easy to feel lonely when all we do is anonymous shopping, and then hiding and hording.

The Nothing New Project made me reach out and learn. I’ve started two groups in my communities and joined another. One of the two groups is doing really well, the other one… will be too (one day). You don’t always need to start a group, just attend the events that are going on in your area already. You are showing your support and openness for friendship through that. Be ambitious for your communities. Just because it must start from someone. Could it be you?

I’ve been following Sash Milne at Inked in Colour and her Nothing New Project for months now. I’ve embraced her ideas because they are simply great. Pop over to her blog for wonderful insights, great photography and writing.

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