When Life Gives You Lemons…
I would like to give you a recipe for the best darn lemonade ever — it’s about community, asking, giving and thriving.
4 years ago I moved to a remote little village in the klein Karoo, South Africa. I soon learnt that there was a really great switched on bunch of people staying here (with exception to the local loons, drama queens and negative nellies — if you’ve ever had a taste of remote country living, you’ll know what I mean).
I soon felt very at home in this quaint little outback town.
Recently I started my very own ‘Power of 8’ meditation group — the original concept brought to us by Lynne McTaggart (read more here:Are You Ready For Peace? Join Lynne McTaggart For the Largest Group Intention in the History of Mankind!).
We meet once a month and each member gets a turn to set an intention (which could be to lower the crime in the village, sending healing energy to abundance for all — the sky is the limit and we’ve been fairly successful!).
Our meetings bring much joy to us all and we have a safe place to discuss things that are a little ‘off the wall’. There is a sense of trust and sisterhood/brotherhood.
Yes Cherie, but what about the lemonade?
Hang on a tick…
The Secret Ingredient
After one of these meetings, I decided to pour myself a glass of lemon water.
I suddenly realized I had forgotten to get lemon juice from the store. I decided to put out a distress call to my neighbourhood whatsapp group (btw — I strongly suggest you create a neighbourhood whatsapp group, it’s really useful as long as you keep it light and friendly) asking if anyone perhaps had a lemon tree and lemons to sell me — cause, frankly, why not?
Within an hour I had a BIG bag of the juiciest, organic lemons from my neighbour a couple of houses up. She wouldn’t even hear of accepting payment for them. It was a good thing I had just celebrated my birthday and had brought her a couple of pieces of chocolate cake to compensate for such anticipated generosity!
She reminded me that I gave her apricots last season from my overburdened tree to which I replied that she was always more than welcome every season to come and fill a box.
She said I was welcome to her lemons any time.
I feel all warm and fuzzy inside as I’m writing this ’cause this is just the life, isn’t it — straight out of a Waltons episode!
Living the Dream
It’s what I’ve always wanted — a sense of true community. It overwhelms me how generous and delightful people can be in a world where everything seems to be collapsing in chaos and tumult, we can actually take back control by looking out for each other.
We have the power to create community wherever we are.
The ingredient to making the best lemonade on the planet is to reach out to people on your doorstep. The only positive change we can be sure of creating is the way we live, communicate with and help each other out from the small things to the larger things — to respect each others differences and to look out for each other.
If everyone can do this and create peace neighbourhood by neighbourhood — we most certainly will have the ability to thrive.
You can now hear Cherie Roe Dirksen on Big Indie Giant radio as she reads out select articles on air.
She also gives weekly news headline updates taken directly from the Conscious Life News site, so be sure to tune in.
Cherie Roe Dirksen is a self-empowerment author/columnist/radio presenter, multi-media artist and musician from South Africa.
To date, she has published 3 self-help and motivational books and brings out weekly inspirational blogs at her site www.cherieroedirksen.com. Get stuck into finding your passion, purpose and joy by downloading some of those books gratis when you click HERE.
Her ambition is to help you to connect with your innate gift of creativity and living the life you came here to experience by taking responsibility for your actions and becoming the co-creator of your reality. You can follow Cherie on Facebook(The Art of Empowerment — for article updates). She has an official art Facebook page (Cherie Roe Dirksen – for new art updates). You can also check out her Facebook band page at Templeton Universe.
Cherie posts a new article on CLN every Thursday. To view her articles, click HERE.
This article (Rekindling the Human Spirit with Lemons) was originally written for and published by Conscious Life News and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author Cherie Roe Dirksen and ConsciousLifeNews.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this Copyright/Creative Commons.
