Hostages and hostage takers
Cathy Buckle, Letters from Zimbabwe, November 20th, 2020
http://cathybuckle.co.zw/hostages-and-hostage-takers/
Dear Family and Friends,
For the past fortnight we’ve been melting in Zimbabwe as we wait for the rain to move down the continent and bring us some relief.
Early in the mornings when the temperature is still around 16 degrees Celsius we look up at the wide blue sky and wonder if we’ll get wet that day.
The summer birds are back in abundance with Louries, Mousebirds and Barbets feasting on the ripening figs and plums, spoiling more than they eat, and under the avocado trees the White Eyes, Bulbuls and Starlings take turns to scoop out mouthfuls of green gold from fallen fruit.
By mid day the temperatures are up in the thirties, humidity is in the sixties and even the birds stop moving. In the afternoons clouds gather, teasing us again; the skies go grey, then purple and then disappear into the horizon.
Meeting an old man in the burning sun a few days ago we sat under a tree in the shade and caught up.
We hadn’t seen each other for some time and he told me how hard his life had got in the last year.
It was devastating to hear him talk about how his government pension which was US$150 eighteen months ago was now only worth US$30 a month, converted into Zimbabwe dollars by the same government he gave forty years of his life in service to.
“It’s not even enough for my medicines every month,” he said. “They have forgotten us, ” he went on and I didn’t need to ask him who ‘they’ were and he didn’t need to tell me and we both watched tight lipped as a brand new SUV with tinted windows and government number plates sped past us.
We talked about our families, the cost of food and the desperate wait for the rain to come so that the crops could be planted and help ease our plight.
When it was time to go I asked the old man if I could take him somewhere. He needed to go to the hospital to see if they could help him with the un-ceasing pain in his legs.
It took a while to get the old man into the car, helping hands to lift him, support him, turn him and pass him his walking stick and hat which had fallen off in the process. At the hospital I wasn’t allowed to drive in and the old man wasn’t allowed to walk in (because of Covid they said).
He was told to wait outside the hospital gates and a nurse would come and asses him when it was his turn.
There was nowhere to sit, no shade, no benches, no chairs, just a low culvert lining the hospital gateway where 30 or 40 others already waited.
“Don’t forget me,” he said as we parted; “I won’t” I replied, both our eyes damp with tears. How low we have sunk in our beautiful Zimbabwe, how can we have come to this three years after the exit of Robert Mugabe, forty years after Independence.
As I write this letter children have gone back to school and teachers have gone back to work, finally having no option but to accept the government’s pay offer which will see them earning less than half of what they were earning eighteen months ago when the government converted all our US dollars to Zimbabwe dollars in pension funds, bank accounts, savings and salaries.
In a damning statement, the PTUZ (Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe) said: “The agreement between the government and the Apex Council (umbrella body that brings together all civil service unions) is a classic example of hostages and a hostage taker.
The two have put a gun to the heads of teachers, provincial education directors, district school inspectors and school heads and now thank them for their ‘understanding’.”
As it was for the doctors, then the nurses so it is now also the same for the teachers, the backbone of our land, beaten down, broken down, beholden for crumbs brushed off the table.
But, despite it all, there is hope and today it came from High Court Judge Tawanda Chitapi who granted bail to award winning, corruption exposing journalist Hopewell Chin’ono who had been held in prison for the past two weeks.
Justice Chitapi said it was wrong for Magistrate Gofa to rule that Hopewell had a propensity to commit offences when she had denied him bail.
Until next time, thanks for reading this Letter From Zimbabwe, now in its 20th year, and my books about life in Zimbabwe, a country in waiting, love cathy 20th November 2020. Copyright © Cathy Buckle. http://cathybuckle.co.zw/
For information on my books about Zimbabwe and my Beautiful Zimbabwe 2021 calendar please visit my website http://cathybuckle.co.zw/books/ and watch out for the usual Black Friday discounts in the coming days from publishers LULU. www.lulu.com/spotlight/CathyBuckle2018
The Violet Flame: Operation Torch
Within and Without
Writing Love with St. Germaine and the Violet Flame
As Keeper of the Violet Flame, St. Germaine urges us to torch everything not of love — in meditation and daily life — within/without.
St. Germaine, through Linda Dillon, channel for the Council of Love says, with the energy of the Violet Flame, which can be the Bonfire, the Torch or the Single Flame, we can change a Universe, let alone a planet, or an individual.
The Violet Flame helps us to make peace with our fears, our ego, to forgive everything.
Within the action of torching is understanding of ‘the old,’ and the knowing to let go everything that is not of love.
When we take the higher condition of the Divine Flame, we see our core issues and the false grids are situational responses, beliefs and constructs, limitations, fears that we are not Loved enough or cared enough or powerful enough.
Bringing the energy of the Sacred Flame to our sorrows and fears, the doubt, whatever is not of love, dissolves our core issues and the entrenched beliefs – the illusion.
The Violet Flame is inspiration, transmutation, transformation, transubstantiation, forgiveness of self, others, situations, fire within for the burning away of all karma, past, present and future.
It is passion, freedom, healing and creation.
The Violet Flame is the essence of the unknowable
at that point of Conjunction and Love Creation
with the Mother, and a way for us to know
the Love of the Father, as well.
St. Germaine (1)
St. Germaine explains how to use the Violet Flame. He implies that activity in the Middle East, for example, could be connected to our own lack of self worth:
“Now what you are doing is basically your work — that you are taking care of, say the Middle East, or lack of self-worth, it is literally like you are looking over your shoulder, a mythical monster that is chasing you and you torch it — because it does not have substance, not real substance any longer.”
He says that we are torching patterns of behaviour with truth:
“It is an idea. It is a pattern of behaviour that you are truly torching but it is looking over your shoulder, sometimes you turn around to do the Michael work, and yes, you use his Flame on my torch, but you are torching anything, eliminating anything, igniting it, so that it doesn’t exist.”
Understanding and using the Sacred Flames to see the Truth of Who We Are is so powerful that we literally change our world.
We are changing what is not of love
in our external reality.
Bonfire Photo by Sophia
St. Germaine says our perspective is limited as to how effective the Sacred Flames are:
“Now you say to me in a very practical way, ‘Well St. Germaine does that mean if I do this every day — that we of Earth do this every day — that war in the Middle East will cease?’
“And that is exactly what I am telling you.
“You have no idea how limited your perspective on how effective these tools that we give you can be.”
Daily use of the Sacred Flames, he says, can bring about peace within, peace without, and all the wonderful other attributes of the higher dimensions:
“In the higher dimensions there is a purity, so there is no pollution, there is no war, there is no hunger, there is no poverty. Now take each of those and think of the opposite on the spectrum.
“There is sharing of resources. There is the glowing beauty of Gaia and of human beings in the fullness of their health. That is why we’re asking you to bring in your new body.
“There is no war. There is community and unity, the more you live in the acceptance of that reality.
“This is not about denial, this is about you declaring and choosing to live elsewhere.
“There is no hunger. There is plenty for all. There is shelter for all.” (2)
All of this is within us.
Invoking St. Germaine, sitting and listening in meditation in the Violet Bonfire for as little as 10 minutes a day, can give us better understanding of lack of self-worth and lack of self-love.
We can also use the Violet Torch during daily life for distress with friends, family, co-workers, all situations not of love.
Using the Violet Flame, torching our core issues and the false grids, we come to know the truth of Who We Are, within/without, the creation of Nova Being/Nova Earth where there is simply ecstasy, bliss, harmony — peace, Love, joy — balance.
An Invocation
I invoke St. Germaine and the Violet Flame
for elimination of lack of self-love
and lack of self-worth,
forgiveness of EVERYTHING,
LOVE CREATION with the Mother,
knowing our WORTH, the Father,
joy — gratitude for life purpose
equally in BALANCE,
charity for self,
community.
Thank you, St. Germaine,
Keeper of the Violet Flame
and the I Am Presence
Footnotes
(1) “St. Germaine Asks, ‘What Is Love Really?’” channeled by Linda Dillon for the Council of Love, January 17, 2014, http://counciloflove.com/2014/01/st-germaine-asks-what-is-love-really/
(2) “St. Germaine Reminds Us… We Are Multi-Dimensional, Inter-Dimensional Beings…”, channeled by Linda Dillon for the Council of Love, July 19, 2014, http://counciloflove.com/2014/07/st-germaine-reminds-us-we-are-multi-dimensional-inter-dimensional-beings/