Good morning blind wisdom seekers!

A few years ago I attended a Be the Change workshop with the wonderful Chris Le Breton, a coach with a big world view who was spending time in Dunedin. Chris held this one day workshop on a Saturday, which I attended with other coaching friends. At one stage, we were all taken into a school hall, that Chris had prepared for us, with big posters on the wall with categories such as women, indigenous, spiritual, European, disability etc. We were all asked to pick our top three and to go into one of those. With too many of us going into the “women” section Chris asked us if we could choose another category. I chose disability, while one of my coaching friends chose indigenous. There I was, all alone, in the disability corner, feeling quite isolated. Then I thought “I am a lone voice” and then after a moment I thought “Hang on a minute Julie, if you are a lone voice, that makes you a leader!” I quickly felt better about standing alone, before we were asked to regroup. My friend who had stood under the indigenous poster, came over to collect me and we began talking. Me about standing on my own, her about indigenous wisdom! Then it struck me, “if indigenous people have wisdom, then blind people must have wisdom as well!”

And so……..

Blind wisdom was born!

Later in the day we did a stream of consciousness which has resulted in the following blind wisdom prayer of thanks.

Very often in Maori Dom, spirits of the ancestors are welcomed to a meeting space, to sit over the room while we are all gathered together. This weekend I had the blessed job of being MC at the Parents of Vision Impaired conference in Wellington, where I opened with this Blind Wisdom prayer of thanks, to welcome those of our blind past to enter our place of meeting.

Here it is for you now:

We welcome to this space our blind ancestors, for their stories and actions that have taught us not to be afraid of our dark, but to live in our light.

We remember all blind people who have inspired us to be fearless and who have shown us that doing things in different ways is where we find our true source of power.

We give thanks to the creativity this brings into our lives and opens our hearts to diversity.

We are grateful for our triumphs and our happiness but most of all we give gratitude for the sense of peace our blind wisdom brings us.

Yeah to blind wisdom!

And thank you for being open to blind wisdom!

Jx

Blind Wisdom International Stacked.pdf