From where do they arise, these inner, life changing, life creating, brain changing bubbles of thought, inspiring action.

How does my voice suddenly sing like an angel, with a song I have never heard before, when asked if I want to open myself to God? It must have hidden somewhere – deep in my lungs, until released in bubbles of pure sound.

How is it possible to visit a strange and unknown, abandoned place in an unknown land and yet have it feel so familiar to me. Moreover, that it pulls me back repeatedly, through life changing years of war, destruction and hard work and to be there many years later, not, as planned with my children, but with my grandchildren and later with thousands of children, who come to visit our Silk Museum, restored on that very abandoned place of a casual visit. What mysterious bubbles have the strength to do all that?

How do the bubbles of painful memory rise in me, through generations of my ancestors’ unfinished and unresolved lives and remind me of what still needs to be understood, resolved and compassionately laid to rest?  And what about the forceful stream of joy, which also bubbles up and the many gifts that are carried with them from those deep burial grounds.

(Tomorrow at the same place I shall be running a Healing the Wounds of Healing workshop for forty people including Syrian refugee teachers).

It is a marvellous mystery to be living from the Inside out!

By Alexandra Asseily

Governor and co-founder of the Centre for Lebanese Studies Studies – Healing the Wounds of History program, Oxford University, UK and Lebanon www.healingwoundsofhistory.org

Alexandra Asseily spoke in a panel on the topic “BRIDGING DIVIDES – Dialogue for Peace and Mutual Engagement” and held a workshop on the topic of “What is my responsibility for Peace” at the 3^rd Spirit of Humanity Forum, Iceland, April 2017