Darkness cannot drive out darkness,

I woke up this morning and went on a run in the Arboretum. On my way there I encountered a rather nice police person with a big AK47.  It was a bit scary because I am afraid of any size gun but the big guns scare me even more. I am trying to reconcile the contradiction of smiling and being friendly with holding a gun that could shoot anyone at anytime.  The arboretum was nice, quiet, cool, and green. 
Then we headed to the Shine Center.  I spent the morning co-leading the men's group. One of the participants in the group reminded me of one of my favorite quotes. 

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” 

― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The men's group continued to discuss the post election violence as it was nominations day here. It turns out that some of the nominations were canceled today and will be rescheduled for tomorrow. There were more police around today and as far as we know there weren't any acts of violence.  The group ended with talking about peace and how you must be peace to create peace.  Tomorrow we will be working with the men and women, leading a power yoga practice, working on how to use the information they have learned from the workshops in their outreaches in the slums.  This has been deep work and transformative and I am so grateful that the teachers have opened up in the ways they have. 

We were supposed to go to Gracious School today and tomorrow but because of nominations day here and the potential for violence at polling stations we aren't going to be able to go to the outreach at the school this week. We are sad about this but we are hoping to go next week to see the children and teach one last time before we head back to NC.

Since we couldn't go to Gracious school we headed to the forest and went on a beautiful hike. It was so nice to be out in the fresh air and be surrounded by lush forest. It was a nice way to end a the day.  We are so glad you are enjoying our blog and we'll keep posting as we have updates.