(be) Benevolution
Beauty
“When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us… The quality of our looking determines what we come to see.” ― Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
Come O Beauty, break open and embolden our hearts.
Beauty is a collection of posts on aesthetic and expansive experiences. Benevolution as art, poetry, travel and emotions catalyzing the synergy of evolution. You will find prose, pictures, poetry, audio and video here.
Recent beauty posts
Hope and disappointment: simultaneous possibilities?
Sometimes the depth of what we face, the challenges related to climate change and our civilisation, breaks through. It's painful. At the same time there's much potential and possibilitiy. Even at this late stage for action. Can we hold such a dilemma - hope and...
Putting the Kenya Crossing Blog to Bed
Ah, a fresh new baby year…may we meet it as such, with tenderness, love, and no small amount of wonder. I wanted to share a few final reflections on our trip to Kenya and some of my favorite pictures as a way of tipping my hat to this adventure. Thank you for your...
Unite The People Concert 2012
Better late than never? I hope so! The last leg of our Kenya adventure took us west to Kisumu to help document the preparations for a very important fund raising concert. After returning to the states we lingered longer than expected in the welcoming nest of Pony,...
Kaputiei Town – Home is Where the Hope Is
Named after one of the Masaii tribes in the area, Kaputiei was conceived from Ingrid’s belief that “you can’t move out of poverty if you are living in hell.” The land for Kaputiei was acquired through great travail (and that is a story all on its own) in 2002 and is...
Culture Shock Kenya Style, Part 2
Editorial note: In a previous blog I stated that the population in Kibera slum is close to 2 million. There appears to be quite a bit of disagreement and uncertainty on this figure. A 2009 census put the number much lower: around 171,000. That may reflect the many...
Culture Shock Kenya Style, Part 1
Swahili language and greetings lesson of the day: Mzungu-a European, but really any white person Mutatu-Mini-van straight out of Mad Max, people packed in like sardines, a “solicitor” hanging out of the open door shrieking for potential customers, drives on sidewalks...
Back From the Bush
Giraffe trivia, match the following: Maasai Giraffe, Reticulated Giraffe, Rothschild Giraffe The most endangered subspecies, Can interbreed with other giraffe subspecies, The largest subspecies (answers at the end of the blog) The sadness of leaving our new friends...
The Maasai: Fierce Warriors, Gentle Pastoralists
Swahili lesson of the day: Manyatta-House Boma-Family compound Ngombe-Cow Mbuzi-Goat The Maasai people living in the Maasai Mara region today hail from a very old ethnic group of semi-nomadic people located in Kenya and northern Tanzania who...
Content
Beauty, transforming ~ benefit
Benevolution’s beauty stories primarily feature pieces that move and break open our hearts. We know our lives, our communties and our world changes through emotional responses. Rarely does logic wholly dictate our actions or values. So our expansive collection features:
- Other places, travel, the cultural insights alonside the dissonance these create.
- Poetry for glimpses into our souls and creating more expansive understandings.
- Our mental agility to hold seemingly mutually incompatible ideas simultaneously.
Click to see: travel, poetry and mental agility examples.
Catalysing, inspiring ~ benevolution
The stories for positive change on this site are across 3 broad categories:
- Beauty – that’s this page! See above for details and stories.
- Benevolutionaries – superstars, accidental heroes, inspiring intellects and everyone between. People breaking boundaries.
- Business – it’s meta-modern baby! Conscious collaborative climate and socially sane business is outcompeting our old modern model.
Background ~ better be…
(be) Benevolution aims to assist our deep longing. We are responding to a pervasive sense of the tragedies of our time and, simultaneously, experiencing an ardent awareness of possibilities. The site, its stories and perspectives are to help our agency and engagement – with the painful and the promising – for practical, ethical flourishing.
Stories from before 2019 are drawn from Kings Catch Fire and Greenmode – some of our previous explorations and engagements in personal, family, species, socitey and global thriving.
Festina Lente
Make haste – slowly, powerfully, minimally
“Hasten slowly” said Augustus. Oh, this is hard. To imagine what can be created, to hold back, to act; to engage means delving into both despair and hope. That’s where we’re challenged to see the powerful in what we do which is always minimal and micro. Feeling adequate in the face of manifest inadequacy. Weaving together the pieces that hasten, slowly and steadily, benevolution.
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