Ahmed Time

Sister

The clock on Ahmed's wall reads 6.10, the batteries ran out years ago, now at least it shows the right time twice a day every day, 365.

Ahmed's time is slowed down to a snails pace both physically and metaphorically, severely injured by a landmine many years ago he was confined to a wheel chair and dependence on care. In the other sense of the phrase, Ahmed's days are long, the clock may as well not exist for him, so he lives in a space of hope and expectation, far removed from the fast pace of our lives in the western world.

Ahmed lives in a centre for victims of war and land mines, in a remote outpost in the Sahara desert in Africa. To be with him is to feel time slow down, to experience a fraction of his life is to feel the earth's spin turn to slow motion upon its axis. Here it becomes possible to experience Eckhart Tolle's real meaning of the Power of Now.

Ahmed

Ahmed shares his temporary home with 130+ other victims of mans inhumanity. They too live on Ahmed time, a place where a morning feels like a long day, where tomorrow seems like a week away. And their time apart from the painful reality of disability through trauma, is to some degree spent in wonderment at the world around them, perhaps even a sense of disbelief at the way we have co-created a world where disparity and exclusion are norms.

Ahmed smiled like a Cheshire Cat when I returned the other month, there was that moment of brotherhood, of friendship and love in the eternal now that brought me to tears of appreciation and sadness at our pending separation. Such is the way of the world today, we meet one another upon our path but all life is in transience, our moments together fleeting, even if we're together for a life time, our three score years and ten are but moments in a very, very big picture.

Ahmed like billions of souls alive today lives in a space that is cut off from our attention, separate from our day to day experience but never the less a part of the one race we call humanity, the one species we call mankind. Like Ahmed feels hope, dreams of freedom or life experiences beyond the walls of his remote desert hospital centre, billions of souls are praying for someone to come, dreaming of a gift from God, hoping for a sign of light at the end of their tunnels.

You are the light they dream of, we are the lights, each of us with the ability to respond, the ability to show compassion and love and friendship  for our fellow life travellers. You are the person, the angel that could mean the world to someone, you don't have to save the world or protest against anything, all it takes is all that you are to shine through from within you.

Ahmed time is only ever now, every day forever and in this now we have 3 options, to watch what happens, to make something happen or to wonder what happened. Life is just events, events, events. By following your heart you will make something happen and that something will make a powerful difference in the world. Now as always we live in a space of cause and effect.

Prayer