Road Maps

Friday, January 25, 2008

Welcome to our blog

Please join us on the road to making our world one that we can all be proud of. There are many interactive techniques we will offer in the coming months for you to learn more about your healing path to purpose. I hope you will be inspired to share your journeys with us.

In July 2001, Reverend Liz Walker and Rev. Dr. Gloria White-Hammond were invited by Zurich-based human rights organization, Christian Solidarity International, to travel to southern Sudan to take part in a slave redemption mission. As part of a delegation of several other African-American ministers, Liz and Gloria participated in the liberation of over 6,700 enslaved women and children. Bearing witness to the untenable realities of slavery taking place in the 21st century changed their lives forever. Liz Walker Journey Productions, My Sisters Keeper and the girls’ school we are building in Sudan, our film “A Glory From the God” all grew from those first steps on the road with no road map.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

"Let that love be your Road map and lead you down the road."
We each have a story to tell.



We each have a story to tell.

“Love everybody, all the time, in front of God.” translated into Dinka sounds this way; Nyan Niarraan even. Akol riec even. Nhialic Nhom. The simple yet profound message is in a song written by Country singer Big Kenny and taught to the Dinka people on Kenny's recent trip with Liz Walker to Sudan. The message expresses the spirit of our journeys to purpose. These journeys are inspired by the circumstances of others and the expression of our gifts.

Telling My Story

The morning after Christmas in 2004, I woke up with a plan to ride my bicycle down the dirt road and take a walk on the beach. I was in Southern India. It was a dream come true to return to visit Auroville, a small international city with people from 35 nations. For days prior we were awakened at 3:30 a.m by the insistent blare of loud music from behind our guest house. The microphones and speakers were calling the Tamils from the villages all around to work and prayer.

At breakfast with my friends, before I got on my bike, we heard that there were rooms in another guest house on a hill that was away from the noisy din. We postponed our beach plans and jumped at the chance to change locations. I remembered, as I moved my suit case, twenty five years before when I first stayed on that hill that I could look down at the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. In the 25 years since my last visit the trees had grown so tall and thick I could not see the darkening sky or the angry sea. We had no idea that as we wheeled our belongings to our new rooms the waves just below the tree line raged against our shores.

On December 26, 2004, the Tsunami rocked the world. Within hours 225,000 people were dead in eleven countries. It was the largest earthquake ever recorded. There were two waves. Everyone on the beach thought the first huge wave was a fluke. It came way up on the land capturing everything in its path and went out just as suddenly. When the swell subsided, it created the illusion of a shore line miles out from the actual beach. Fish were jumping on the sands.

Villagers, thinking there was only one wave, ran into the unexpected second while they gathered the fish. This wave, more violent and faster than the first, did not stop at the same boundary and destroyed everything in its path. On the Indian mainland, more than 8,800 people were confirmed dead with thousands more still missing. Many people were injured and in shock. The frantic search for lost loved ones began. Bearing witness to the untenable realities of the ravaging of nature changed our lives forever.

Initially, with no electricity, cell phones or computers we believed the rumors that a bomb had been dropped in the middle of the ocean. Our terrified families back in the United States knew more from the television reports about what had caused this disaster than we did. They tried unsuccessfully to reach us.

As soon as the water subsided and the roads cleared for cars we went to the shores to check on our friends in beach villages. Stunned villagers and animals walked dazed on the tree strewn sides of the roads. Pavement ripped like paper laid on the side of the road. Our immediate shocked reaction was to do what we could. We raked mud, hauled water, gathered filthy clothes from the bushes to wash, collected tattered family photos and children’s toys from the tops of water shredded trees. The next days we set up tents for shelter, tried to place lost children, distributed blankets and limited but dry bedding.

I could not bear the suffering. We cried, we prayed, we listened to the voices of trauma and loss. There was something deeply disconcerting about being safe with only the inconvenience of no water or power while tragedy was all around me. I knew I had to do something more.

Children, newly sheltered in tents and taken into the homes of families left intact, screamed all night. As a certified coach with years of experience I had training in stress and trauma. There were no counselors or therapists and few medical people. Nothing could have prepared me for this.

I could not leave what I had seen. My return ticket date expired. I stayed to work with traumatized mothers and their children. These children grew up on the ocean and could not imagine returning. They would wake up in the night crying “ sharks, sharks!” and their mothers and fathers, in shock themselves, were unable to understand or to console them.

In the next days we held and calmed the children, and gave them toys, crayons and paper. Reopening makeshift schools we brought their friends together to see that they were alive and well. Seeing their friends for the first time they laughed the laughter of children who were finally beginning to feel safe. They started to tell their stories. They thought the big shards of broken glass, carried by the force of the flooding water, were sharks crashing through their windows and doors. While the elders frantically swam them to safety, the glass cut them. Sharks were all they could imagine. Telling their stories they began the long journey to healing.

A man who has become my dear friend, a 6’2” tourist from Belgium, was sleeping in a cabana on the beach. The wave tore the roof from his hut and threw him from his mattress. He hung on to life from the branch of a palm tree. The water subsided. He let go and dropped to earth unscathed. Looking vacant and lost we sat under the banyan tree and he began to tell me his story.

There is a healing power in telling our stories. There is also healing for all of us who have the honor of silently listening without trying to fix or to change. We bear witness compassionately and become healers.

We all have amazing experiences and stories to tell. Liz, Gloria and I were on roads with no Road Maps. We heard a call in a way that we could not even begin to know would set our paths to purpose. We never knew who we would meet on our road and from that experience, how we would all come to the same place not long after, giving our gifts and our skills to make a difference.

We share the vision that we might inspire others to find their own path and purpose. One thing that I know for sure is that expressing your gifts and skills in the world is healing. Sharing your story heals and inspires other people.

Maya Balle, MCC, CPCC c)2008

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Life Lessons:

To be on the Road we sometimes just head out. We put on our walking shoes, pack only the bare essentials in our pockets and go. No maps, no idea of where we will end up but the adventure and having no clear direction, compass or map is what begins this journey. There has been an invitation, and maybe even unknowingly, you said yes.

Then there are those times when there is something that is stirring deep inside of us that is almost a nag, it is deep discontent. It will not let you rest. It may appear late at night and get you stalking the refrigerator or wake you from a sound sleep. Your experience may not have shaken the earth like genocide or a Tsunami but it is yours.

Many of us may try to ignore our discontent. Some times it is not noticeable and lies dormant. It shows up in extreme behavior. For example, there are times when you are seemingly calm. Out of no where you have an abrupt response to someone who certainly did not provoke your impatience or (I know we shudder at imagining ME doing this) blowing your horn at the old person with a cane who is crossing too slowly in the cross walk in front of you. A part of you shows up wearing impolite and disrespectful rudeness.

That nagging voice demands to be heard. Some times I know it is my soul call. It is just like a call on your cell phone except you can't look down at your phone and quickly identify who is calling and make a decision that you are in a movie or a meeting and just too busy to answer.

The phone will not say GOD CALLING and give you a choice to let it go right to voice mail! What if you really did look at your caller ID or know the familiar ring tone and it said “GOD calling”?

It is unlike any other voice within us because it will not automatically go over to voice mail and wait until later. It will not take no for an answer.

The voice will keep at us and when unanswered for long enough appears as illness, injury, sleepless nights, drinking too much, shopping too much or eating too much, too late, in front of the TV you are not even watching. We may be cavalier enough to continue trying to ignore or even be so bold to try abolition! Abolishing these calls to another corner of one’s psyche (or wherever they go when we try such stupid acts!) does no good.

Ignoring the voice is like putting off surgery that you really need. Excuses are easy to find. "It is the wrong season, I am too busy, I can’t afford it, my kids, family, co-workers, boss, and lovers can not be without me."

After the surgery people say “I don’t know why I waited so long. I can’t believe that I was in pain for so long and I feel great now.”

We are on the same road. Why do we let ourselves stay in pain or deep discomfort for so long? There are often good answers to that question. We just are not ready. We need some time to be in the moments of our discontent. By leaping to action we are not allowing the seeds to winter and gestate in a way that will become a full bloomed flower in spring or that ripe perfect fruit in summer.

Some times the tendency to leap to action, to get out of pain, is as dangerous as not answering the call. Only you will know and getting to know yourself well enough and honestly enough is a part of the journey.

Maybe it is time to surrender to that deeper voice, the one that is connected to God. Maybe you do not use the word “God.” What matters is not what I believe but what you believe. Creating this Road Map is about claiming your own words. It is claiming Faith and Love and throwing your head back and laughing at yourself out loud and with a great “gaffaw” at being a total “duffus” for not stopping and listening and making that change! Humor will always be a saving grace.

”Love everybody, all the time, in front of God.” To begin this process I add this to Big Kenny's song, "Love and honor yourself all of the time, in front of God. Let that love be your Road Map and lead you down the road."

If you do not love what you are doing and who you are doing it with, hold that as a sign post to your heart. Our hearts never steer us wrong.

Maya Balle, MCC, CPCC c)2008

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Answer Journeys: Road Maps to Purpose

These questions are designed to help you find your 'Road Map'. Do it your way by journaling, writing on a scrap of paper at your local coffee haunt, typing on your computer. Put on music and dance your answer. Light a candle, pick up paints and color your answers!

Some questions may have no answers but are provocative and bring responses in other ways. Going deeper is a process of beginning to truly acknowledge how you know the answer.
How and where do answers show up for you?

Here are some questions to start the process.

Describe an experience that has rocked your world?

How did you react to that experience?

Who was there to support you?

How has that experience helped you give to others in your life?

Has it lead you to questioning your purpose?.....…how?

Is that experience laying dormant waiting for you to tell your story?

What is the one thing you know that you should do that you have not done?

Please share your stories with us. The 'Road Maps' blog is for you to begin your journey to healing and purpose.

Maya Balle, MCC, CPCC c)2008