Sakartvelo 5/24/10

The last couple of days have been filled with preparations for our first Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) workshops. We've been to market to buy food & supplies for our AVP participants. Yesterday Maia and I met with two former AVP facilitators that Maia knows. Both were shocked by the thought of facilitating an AVP workshop without receiving a stipend for doing the work of AVP. We shared our understanding that AVP is a volunteer program for both facilitators and participants, explaining why that is important including that is it one way in which we maintain equality. We lifted up our own experiences that when the work comes from a place of love for and belief in the work and those we are working with that it is very different than when it is driven by a need or desire for money. I don't know if these two women will return. Today we spent the day planning for our first workshop and meeting with our translator, Natalie. Natalie seems very excited and enthusiastic not only to be working with us but about our process. Tomorrow we begin. Our first workshop will run from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm for the next three days with facilitators beginning a half hour earlier and staying a half hour later. They will take place in the flat where we are staying. We will begin with some of the Friends from Tbilisi Worship Group and two refugees for a total of ten participants. The first workshop will be in Russian with the remaining four in Georgian. The second workshop will be an all female workshop with refugees. Then we'll do a training for facilitators (T for F) followed by two more workshops, one with refugees and another with orphans. This feels very exciting and challenging and I believe good work will be done by all. The flat that I am staying in has one main room approximately 12" X 20" (The space we're using for the first three workshops as well.) with a tiny kitchen and bathroom attached.  I find myself reminded that each of us carries a measure of the Truth and that for me, there is only that which I think I know, for only God holds all Truth and the Truth as I understand it shifts as the tide of my journey ebbs and flows. I know that when I look for; listen for the truth in another that I will find it and that when I set my expectation; my belief so that I will see negative that probably is what I will find. Toltec wisdom says that we lie to ourselves each time that we say "I'm only human, I'm not perfect." They say that each time we say this that is simply an excuse that lets us off the hook. I believe that we are made in God's image and therefore, at our core, we are perfect if only at that place where we find "that of God within". And so, we are called to work our hardest to reach our full potential: to reach perfection - to be at one with God.