India

I am standing here in my hotel window at the southern most point of the Sub Continent, with tears - a mixture of vulnerability and excitement at the same time. It is 6am, I am waiting for the sun to rise out of the sea. Directly in front of me at an angle of 40°, there is the new moon with its symbolic potential for new directions, possibilities and hope. On my right is the statue of a great poet rising 1330 feet (440m) from a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, or is it the Arabian Sea. I’m not sure as I am at the point where 3 seas intermingle. One day 4 years ago a wave as high as this statue engulfed this shore line.

Within walking distance to my right is the new Mahatma Ghandi memorial. There are Christian church bells sounding in the distance and a group of Hindi men have gathered on a rooftop.

The horizon is pinking and fragile boats are leaving a tiny harbour that would have looked like lego on the morning of the tsunami.

I hold fears around our ecovillage journey and also a feeling around the awesomeness of this planet and its inhabitants and I recall some words (were they Ghandi’s?) about shrinking into my smallness not serving myself or my fellow man.

There is cloud on the horizon and I wait as the new day meets the new moon. The shore is lined with people probably full of similar hopes and ambitions to mine. Some men arrive to commence their daily work on rebuilding a house on the southern tip of India that originally was not built strongly enough to withstand a wave the size of which locals hadn’t seen before. Can we build a modest ecovillage, with a ripple effect that might just help take our wonderful human consciousness and unity forward..........YES we can!