Enjoolata...
I am sitting on the top of the Imlil Lodge, on the roof in the bright sunlight...
The sound of chanting - which a bit resembles wailing to my ears - is echoing out from the Mosque calling the people to prayer, where they go, out off fear perhaps... Habit maybe, because it is what they do, their family, their family before them and the people of the village... Because of what it gives them, how it informs their lives and supports the belief systems they live within...
We do not fully know, not speaking their language, I can only make this all up...
I was brought up going to church, and firstly I went because I was taken along, it was what we did as a family, and then I went for awhile because it was fun, and I was part of the church youth group... Then for some time more, I went out of fear 'god fearing'... I even took communion making sure that the bread touched my wedding ring, because my husband wasn't a 'believer', and so I misguidedly took communion for him too!
Until I stopped going, from one Sunday to the next....
The Sunday came when I didn't go to church...
I was running in the hills above Bath City, and I stopped and looked all around me and in that moment I let go of the constraints of fear that I had let religion place upon me...
And I was free to set off along an entirely different fork in the road on my journey to spiritual growth...
It is always in one moment that we let go... We could let go now of all that holds us, that keeps us constrained, tense, locked into our fear.
In one moment we could be free.
We could let go...
My friend Ange sent me an email today, and in it she shared a Maasai word she has just discovered whilst reading about Kenya... The word Enjoolata, which means, ‘the joy felt when something hidden becomes known, when something concealed becomes revealed.’
In this next moment we could know ourselves, and reveal our true nature and live in joy always....
Sitting here in the heat of the midday sun, it's hard to think how cold my hands were running down through the village of Imlil today...
Only a mile away from here and the shopkeepers and cafe owners are more westernised;
this was evident in the way they related to us...
Keen for us to stop and buy their wares...
As we ran, and then walked too some of the way up again, I commented to Anadi that the slow pace of life could be mistaken by westerners for something it isn't...
'Something spiritual or mindful, whereas it is simply people 'getting living handled' as best they can, with the resources and education available to them...
Because Anadi and I don't watch television at the moment in this phase of our life... It took me awhile to notice that there are no televisions in Imlil Lodge...
I have however been pleasantly surprised to find a washing machine up here in a little room off the roof terrace...
We will need to drape it all over the chairs to dry... Ismail and I have already agreed this...
I am thankful there are no other guests to consider!
And sitting here in the sun with the stillness of the mountain I recognise that Anadi and I have chosen this life so that anything we have concealed within us, might be revealed...
We have nowhere to hide and so we know ourselves better each day...
Enjoolata
