Thank you Matt

Today I say farewell to my Co-director and Co founder of Empathy Action.

We had the initial idea for this charity around 7.5 years ago and the last five and half years have been about building a foundation for this.

The idea that we're never going to solve the world's biggest problems without concerned people and that there is a growing dispassion, apathy, quick to judge any effort as futile and not worthwhile, and the countless delegating of our responsibilities... we had a vision to see an end to poverty, brought about by concerted, compassionate, community action. We'd both grown within deprived backgrounds. We've also both seen the sheer force of concerned people to that deprivation to make a world of difference that lasts into the next generations. It was more than just the actions and efforts. It was almost like looking directly into the face of "hope".

It's funny as some of the early names that we thought we right for the organisation were "The Ripple Effect" or "The Empathy Foundation"... (there were a few cryptic ones like "Petrachor" or "Pebble"... but we'll leave that!). But our name 'Empathy Action' says it all. That's exaclty what we both said. It says what we want to do. I recall that exact moment when we realised that we needed to stop being clever with this and embrace our name... this is who we are.. and start to grow with this identity.

We realised this as we were in the business of partnerships at that time and we saw the ones that worked were down to the energy and drive of the people. I once heard someone "say we need good champions and the resources to make a world of difference, but if you were to ask me to choose, I'd choose champions as good ones will find the resources."

We sought to anchor the whole movement in empathy and particulalry based on the old proverb "to understand another you must first walk a mile in their shoes". We'd been involved in projects that were using empathy and we saw what a powerful force it could be to help build understanding and cultivate that compassionate action.

One of Matt's finest moments was stating these beliefs on the global stage at a UN summit (see the video beneath).

The other thing is we're both volunteers...  and that's perhaps the real miracle of all this... the whole operation is entirely built on that 'will' to see a different world. Our whole team choose to do this. And it's not just the team too but its that bunch of others who have enabled each of us to step out and up to serve. Both Matt and I have both been supported financially and much much more by a small bunch of people who got behind us. Somehow that togetherness has taught us much more than any course that we could have done to bolster our credentials. It certainly not the money that has motivated us (nor our team)... but something much deeper: our belief and conviction of this mission. 

Thanks Matt and I will miss directing along side you but know that you will always be a co-founder and my friend. I promise that the best is yet to come for Empathy Action building upon the strong foundation that you have laid.

Excelsior!

By Parties unknown

I was recently shown this picture called "By Parties Unknown" by Hale Woodruff. It depicts a lynched black man left on the doorstep of a church.

The significance of 'a tree' and 'hanging from a tree' are deep within the Christian tradition. But for me it's the unknown person here that seems to be powerful when I look at this picture.

My friend who shared this with me said the following (she cites James Cone's reference to it in his book 'The Cross and The Lynching Tree'):

For Cone, this imagery is something that black artists and poets and writers and musicians could see clearly and spoke about clearly, but theologians and ordinary Christians did not...

You can’t see it too well here but where the rope in the Parties Unknown image meets the ground, flowers are growing. There is beauty to be found in the midst of pain.
 
As James Cone writes: “The beauty in black existence is as real as the brutality, and the beauty prevents the brutality from having the final word. Black suffering needs radical and creative voices, prophetic advocates who can tell brutal and beautiful stories of how oppressed black people survived with a measure of dignity when they were not meant to. Who are we? Why are we here? And what must we do to achieve our full humanity in a world that denies it?”