Many years ago (38 years ago to be precise) I was part of a singing group that was blessed with a young and highly accomplished violinist.  First a disclaimer: I'm not a musician and it was a long time ago so, musicians, bear with me if I get the detail or terminology incorrect. He arrived one day with a violin which had only just been completed by a master violin-maker for an older, professional violinist. He told us he had been given it for a year to "play it in" for its new owner.  He explained that this was a great privilege as he was being entrusted with the task of playing this instrument until the very cells of the timber from which it was made became alligned to the music played on it. It was critical not to drop it or bang it as this would undo all that good work. 

I thought about this in relation to my own ambition for the final chapters of my life.  I want to be "played in" through loving until my life and being are fully attuned to love. 

So what actually is love? This is where language fails. I am, within my Christian tradition, a mystic. That is, I seek to experience God, not merely serve God. I am 67 and have been praying for as long as I can remember. All that time I have been seeking to journey into God and God's love. 

The more I do so the more I would say love us an emptying. It is an outpouring, from your heart first, which is reflected in outpouring from your material resources.  The tricky thing about that is this can be misunderstood as self-negation, as saying you do not matter, your needs do not matter. Jesus seems to teach "self-denial" and that has been a strong, and I think very damaging, emphasis in 2000 years of Christian teaching. In fact when I was a child we sang a song in "Sunday School" with these terrible words,
                                                                 "Jesus and Others and You
                                                            what a wonderful way to spell JOY,
                                                                     Jesus and Others and You
                                                            in the heart of each girl and each boy.
                                                              "J" is for Jesus for he has first place.
                                                              "O" is for others we meet face to face.
                                                                   "Y" is for you, in whatever you do,
                                                                     put yourself LAST and spell JOY."
The problem with this is that it teaches children they are less worthy than anyone else in this picture to be the recipient of love. We are not. We are each as worthy of receiving love and another.  Love is lavish and generous. There is something joyfully reckless about love. We need to experience a lavish, reckless, outpouring of love toward us before we are ready to give it, to pour out love from our own heart, our own life.

Jesus spoke his words of "denying self", of "taking up our cross" and following him into a context in which to follow him could well result in death. So he was speaking about a real cost. He was warning would-be followers to "count the cost", to check they had it in them to go the distance with him or not start out on that journey.  He also was addressing these words, particularly, to men, who were used to being served, not used to serving. 

Sadly we have spent 2000 years turning this into a culture of self-negation, of thinking of ourselves as unworthy of being loved lavishly. We have also used this teaching to reinforce the oppression of women and people lower in the social heap. We have taught them to serve.....US, to know their place in relation to US.

Love is also delight. There is a beautiful line in the Jewish Wisdom in which "Dame Wisdom" and God are delighting in humanity which they have made. We need to "get" this in the core of our beings, that we are DELIGHTFUL to God. Love for others is delighting in them, enjoying them, and letting them know how delightful they are to us and how much joy they bring us. Love, if it is real and genuine, leaves others feeling like they are the most important person in the world, at least to us in that moment.  This is because, when we know we are "delightful" we can lavish delight on others. We can truly enjoy all kinds of people. It does not on how attractive they are. It is inherent in their humanity. They are delightful because they are human. 

Love is also adoration. This is where it connects, perhaps the only place it connects well, with romantic love. Romantic love is not really about the other's needs. It is about brain chemicals that get released into our system and create such lovely feelings in us that we think this person is perfect for us. Until the drugs wear off! Yet the adoration that is natural in romantic love is something we all yearn for. We love to be loved like that. We love to be "adored" by someone. And we can gift another this. We can find things in them which are "adorable".

These are some of the qualities I find as I journey into God, a lavish, reckless, outpouring of Godself from the abundance that is God, a delighting in humanity, and an adoration. Is it possible for God to "adore" us? Do we adore our children when they are new babies? Do we adore them sometimes when they don't know we are watching them? Yes, we do. And God adores. 

I pray each morning opening myself to God and to love and in part of my daily meditation I use the words, "Loving, adoring, delighting, outpouring". This is the music I want to play in me until the very cells of my body become alligned to it.                                                           

One of the things I launched this website for was to build a global community of people committed to Living in Love. I am a devout Christian. For Christians, love for God comes first and is the source of everything else. Yet this community is not only for Christians, and not only for religious people. So it is what Jesus called "the second most important commandment" (in the Jewish Torah) that is the basis for this community: Love your neighbour as you love yourself.  I have friends who I call my kindred who hold all kinds of beliefs or who are atheists, agnostics, or humanists. I call them my kin because of their practice of kindness. They care that the world has so much suffering. They act to change the world, reduce suffering, and increase happiness.  So I am searching for people like this. I am wanting to connect with them and connect them to one another. I am wanting to share ideas and skill and work together to do something special in the world. And I see Social Media as a tool for this. It may not be designed to bring rich and poor, powerful and powerless, together, we have to "engineer" that kind of connection. However I hope Social Media will naturally bring together those who wish to show kindness and work for justice in global relationships. 

I am wanting to find people willing to risk a radical obedience to love. I am not speaking of Jesus "new" commandment specifically to his followers that they should "Lay down their lives for one another" as he laid down his life for them. This is so open to abuse and an unhealthy kind of self-negation that I do not wish to point to that ideal in this community. Difficult enough is a radical commitment to simply love our neighbour AS WE LOVE OURSELVES.  This does not call for self-negation. Yet in a world in which I am part of the 1% that consumes 99% of the earths resources it is a quite scary commitment to make. What would it cost us, personally, to do our bit to even such impossibly unequal scales? Could we survive such sacrifice? 99% of the world are expected to survive far worse than a global "median". Yet it seems inconceivable to reduce my own consumption to what would be an equitable median.

So I want to suggest a more personal and realistic path for those beginning this journey or who are already on it and want to go deeper into love.

• Begin with friendship. Just as you might take, for the first time, the scary step of greeting and conversing respectfully with someone who lives on the street, I want to help those who would like to befriend others in poor communities to do so safely.  Safe friendship with those who are poor does not begin with giving money. It must not when on social media. Unfortunately, most of the people who ask you for money online are scammers. Others have genuine needs but are not truthful about those needs. So there has to be a careful process of "due dilligence" before giving money to people you only meet online. 
• Weed out the scammers and opportunists and allow a few friendships to grow.  In time what you will find is that you can get to know a few people so well that it does feel safe to give them money. Be aware, though, that there are scammers who "play the long game" and build trust over several months before they even mention money. FInally, they will make "a play" and ask for money in a way that seems plausable. So one of the things I want to offer in this community is support to discern who are genuine friends with genuine needs. 
  
• Often scammers will try to build a romantic relationship so steer of those. Or, at least, look for romantic connections online as a completely separate goal and keep money right out of it! The reason scammers use romantic trust is because the old adage "love is blind" is actually supported by solid neuro-science. The brain chemicals released by what science calls "limerence" tend to attach us to a feeling we so want to preserve that we ignore the warning signs we actually see from the beginning.  
• Assess what loving another as we love ourselves means for us. When we have confidence that we have built some real friendships with people who are genuinely poor and powerless to change their situation, then comes the challenging work of reflecting on our budgetting and asking what loving them as we love ourselves means for us.  The way I ask myself this question is to reflect on things I enjoy and imagine myself enjoying these things while my friends are experiencing deprivation. Some things I used to set aside money for each pay day have gone. I no longer have those things in my budget. That has freed significant money to give to others in need. 
• There are some traps in this. I have found one can become so frugal in this process that there are no margins for miscalculating one's own future needs. I have, for example, found I grossly underestimated car costs.  And my budget was so tight I had nowhere to take this from. So we do need to save some "for a rainy day" even though this is a luxury our poor friends do not have.
• Take care of yourself first. This is a principle that all disaster plans (including those on aircraft) include. Take care of yourself first so that you are free to effectively care for others. In a local community disaster we take care of ourself, then our household, then reach out to our family elsewhere, then check on others in our street, and so on. 
• Mental health needs are real needs. An area I have had to revisit is what I need for my own mental health. One of the first things I cut out of my budget, because it did not seem to have integrity when some of my friends had no food, was money set aside for coffees and eating at my local pub. I kept a small amount for one fortnightly meal with one person dear to me. I have found this is not enough. I live alone an allow myself few pleasures and I have found, when I am mentally and emotionally low, I sometimes actually need to have a meal at my local. It felt wrong to enjoy this when some of my friends had not food. And the habit of spending this just because I can is gone. And, when I know my friends have not food, I will sometimes fast a meal and pray for them as I feel my tummy complain. Yet I have had to revisit my budget and make space for those times when "taking care of myself first so that I can care for others" includes doing what I need to do for my mental health.
• Live in love in relationships of love. This is not about legalism and measuring what we enjoy against others. It is not about self-negation. It is about real relationships with people who have very little, who are suffering deprivation, who have no power to change their situation and living in love in relationships of love,                                                                            

Poverty is firstly about powerlessness. Poverty does not arise from the inequitable distribution of food but from disempowering people, taking away their power over their own land, their own food producing resources. Colonisation and “Cash Crop” loans have in common a mentality of “civilizing” a people while stripping them of power over their own land. So, ultimately, we destroy poverty by empowering people to change their own lives. Promoting “economic growth” at a national level will never “trickle down” to those at the bottom of the heap. However, while I tend towards the "left" there is a weakness in left wing ideology which sees wealth as like a cake of a set size which simply needs to be divided equitably. What happens when we think like that is that we disempower people and teach them to be dependent upon endless handouts. And then the wealth of a whole community diminishes. The cake, actually, gets smaller and smaller. The economy of the whole nation shrinks. Wealth can be created at a grass roots level through empowering people to start their own small business ventures, through nurturing entrepreneurship. Many marginalized women throughout the world have been empowered by helping them start small businesses and helping them survive the pitfalls of running and sustaining a small business. Small business people have to work incredibly hard to succeed, way harder that the average wage earner. Yet for poor people who have lived with no power, and no hope of changing their situation, such a hard road is a welcome one, a road that give hope of a different future. And if we multiply small business in a community, we grow the wealth of that whole nation from the bottom up instead of pouring money into the hands of those who already have the most power. With this kind of grass roots help we reduce the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest in a nation while growing the whole nation’s wealth.

The name comes from a letter in the Bible from someone called John. He
says, “God is love, and those who abide [live/remain] in love abide in God,
and God abides in them.” 1

This is a wonderfully inclusive statement in a letter which is far from
inclusive. It says ANYONE who lives in love, whatever their belief or
philosophy of life, lives in God and God lives in them. And the same letter is
very clear about what it means to live in love.

“We know love by this, that he [that’s Jesus] laid down his life for
us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does
God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a
brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us
love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” 2

For me, my kindred in faith are not necessarily those who share my
Christian beliefs. They are those who, in the words of John, “do what is
true.” 3 For me, to “believe in Jesus” means to follow in his way of life, his
compassionate action and radical inclusion, whether consciously or not. I
know many Christian “believers” who are not my “kindred” in this sense of
“doing” love. And I have many dear friends who are atheists, humanists,
Pantheists, Animists, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindus, Wiccans, Pagans,
Sharmans (the list goes on and on) who are my kindred because they “do
what is true”. They live in love.

But why this website? Aren’t there enough humanitarian organizations
already? Yes and no. Elsewhere in the website I speak of how we respond
to rough sleepers who we see as we walk down the street. In Jesus
teaching our neighbour is whoever we encounter. When we encounter a
person who lives on the street we have a choice to close or open our heart.
There may be many seemingly justifiable reasons why we choose to walk
past without engaging with them. Most of them spring from fear of the
unknown. We fear what will happen if we open our heart, what will be
asked of us if we look them in the eye and greet them, what will happen to
our plans for the day or evening if we acknowledge them as a fellow human
being as deserving of dignity and respect as we are. We fear this unknown
person, their unknown life, and the unknown consequences of opening our
heart to them.

This is also what we fear when we hear of vast numbers of people,
especially vulnerable women and children in Africa and other parts of the
world suffering the most terrible hunger and disease. The unimaginable
numbers of those who are suffering are just too overwhelming to face.
Easier to give what money we feel we can spare to one of the large
humanitarian organizations that brings such needs to our attention. And
this is a good thing to do. The larger humanitarian organizations do
wonderful work. Yet it is their workers in poor communities who truly get to
look poor people in the eye, to greet them and acknowledge them as fellow
human beings deserving of the same dignity and respect as themselves.
They have already accepted the consequences of opening their hearts to
them. It is good to give money to such organizations, lots of money! They
are all terribly underfunded. Yet somehow it a bit like giving money to the
city mission and then walking past the person who lives on the street.
I am creating this website in the hope of empowering people who share my
heart to use social media safely to look a person or family in another
country who are poor “in the eye”, to greet them and treat them with dignity
and respect, to make friends with them, to stand with them in their
suffering, and with those in their own communities who have given their
lives to helping people like them.

This is the first thing this website is about. It is about using social media,
safely, to forge friendships between people who are poor and vulnerable
and people who are relatively wealthy, powerful and privileged.
The tricky bit is the consequence of such friendship. In the end we have to
ask, “Can I know that it is safe to also give money to those who are poor
and vulnerable when I have only met them online. The standard answer is
a resounding “NO!” It is not safe, ever, to give money to people who ask for
it online who we do not know in real life.
​
The second goal of this website is to do what is possible to change that, to
make it safe, one person at a time, one project at a time, to give money to
empower people, give them hope, and change their lives.

Uganda is not the only country with poverty. It is simply the “near edge” that
I have begun with. I began a year ago (defying my children and friends’
advice) to accept friend requests from people I met online who I had never
met in real life. I further defied the advice regarding those who give the
slightest hint of being scammers. The standard advice is to just block them
immediately. I took a different pathway and, while I gave none of them
money, I gave them the benefit of the doubt until I was sure they were a
scammer. In this way I received a rich and valuable education in the
patterns scammers follow, and in some of the more common scams and
how they proceed. The result is that that I can recognize most scammers in
the first two or three messages. Some are immediately recognizable from
the content of their very first message and can be blocked and reported
immediately. I still give others the benefit of the doubt so I can continue my
education!

It is simply how the year unfolded that once I had weeded out the
scammers (and those who lost interest when I told them I could not give
them money) I was left, mostly, with a group of friends in Uganda.
First of all I befriended James Kiige, a Bible teacher like me who works
unpaid for his Church and writes a column called “Soul Food”. Eventually I
met his wife and children, his elderly parents and the woman who shares
her home with them. Serendipitously my dear friend Kiige and his family
live in Kampala where the Extreme High school is located. So while I had
grown trust Kayemba personally enough to give my own money to help him
I did not feel I could ask the same of others. SO I asked Kiige to pay him a
visit. Kiige interviewed Kayemba as Kayemab showed him around the
school and videod the whole process. A lovely detail is that Kiige and
Kayemab found they grew up in the same area.
​
That visit was the first of two in which Kiige has interviewed for me
someone who runs a project and is asking for money and support.
Then there was a friend request from “Kasola Peter Okocha, mayor of Jinja
City”. A friend told me, “Well that one is a scammer for sure. Just block
him!” Then out of curiosity he did a Google search or two and found the
incredible Ugandan news story of a very outspoken comedian and radio
talk back host who was persuaded by his friends to stand for mayor. The
people elected him and ousted the ruling party.
Here’s a piece of the political upset!

  (Source: | THE INDEPENDENT | Jinja, Uganda | The Jinja Chief Magistrate’s court has dismissed an application
demanding for a vote recount in the Jinja City Mayoral seat.) 
The application was filed by Robert Kanusu, the former National Resistance Movement-NRM flag bearer
who was defeated by National Unity Platform’s-NUP, Peter Kasolo. Kasolo won the race with 11,899 votes followed by Forum for Democratic Change’s-FDC Frank Nabwiso with 10,398 votes while Kanusu garnered 9,810 votes. However, Kanusu’s lawyer, Martin Asingwire argued that there were discrepancies in the declaration of results forms in 22 polling stations, which robbed Kanusu victory. Kanusu further alleged that, during the process of tallying results, his client attempted to notify the returning officer, Jennifer Kyobutungi about the anomalies but she instead paid a deaf ear. However the Electoral Commission’s lawyer, Patrick Wetaka told the court that, Kyobutungi swore an
affidavit in reply stating that, the applicant and his agents were present during the tallying of results, where the results of his fellow contenders’ declaration of results forms tallied with those being read out by EC officials. While delivering her ruling, the Jinja Chief Magistrate Catherine Agwero stated that Kanusu lacked specific figures of the ballot papers which he wanted EC to recount and that he had not indicated in his application what exactly the court should address. Meanwhile, Kasolo’s lawyers led by Alex Luganda accused the applicant of attempting to manipulate the court into granting him victory, yet he lacked clear evidence to show cause. 

If you Google Kasola Peter Okocha you may also find some YouTube videos like Peter’s swearing in as mayor, a reassurance to his fans as a comedian that he won't quit comedy after being elected in Jinja! 

​One of the first things Peter did was found the “Kasola Foundation” to work with maternal health, education, health care, domestic violence reduction, and other areas of need in Jinja City.  Peter is a truly courageous human being. I have tried in vain to find a western humanitarian organisation to partner with the Kasola Foundation. It is, like all these things, underfunded.

I met Pastor Shahid and his wife Saima, a wonderful couple doing amazing humanitarian work in Pakistan. Then I met Kayemba Enock, the coordinator of the UNSFP and teacher at Extreme High. There were others in other countries but they have not sustained contact. I even befriended one young African who tried his hand at a military scam on me. The military scam to a single woman generally begins with a photo of a very muscular looking US military Colonel (usually on a peace keeping or secret mission somewhere) a lot of romantic complements and pet names, and an attempt to build a fake romantic attachment and trust. Eventually there will be a request to pay money to a third party to get a parcel delivered to you which will be very lucrative when it arrives (which it never will) but will cost you a significant sum right now. This poor unsuspecting young man started with the pet names and complements. I immediately told him I am a trans woman and lesbian and not interested in men so if he wanted friendship that was fine but he could desist immediately with the pet name and romantic talk or I would block him. That ruined his script but he did his best to make it up as he went along! Next I told him, “Now we both know you are not Colonel so and so on a peace keeping mission in such and such a country so, if you would really like to be my friend, why don’t you tell me your real name and where you actually live.” At that point he replied, “I’m scared mam!” And that began one of the more unusual friendships I have made in the past year. I became his “aunty” and met his family and heard his whole sad story. Unfortunately I have not yet felt I can be more than a friend to this young man even though he has very real financial needs. He is an unemployed tradesperson trying to support a family and wants to start his own business. This is precisely the kind of thing I would love to support. But I have no one in his country to visit this young man and do the basic "due dilligence"  one must do before giving to those one meets online. That is simply the reality of our online world and what I hope, one person at a time, one organization at a time, to change.

In Uganda and in Pakistan the plight of children is horrifying: children orphaned by HIV/AIDS now learning to live and survive on the streets, children sent out by their poor families to beg, and as “street workers”, and, in Pakistan, thousands of children sent out to work in brick kilns. African women and elders are also terribly vulnerable. The largest number of orphans and street children are girls and this reflects the status and powerlessness of women in Uganda.

​Many elders, both women and men, have HIV/AIDS. And so many of their adult children have no work and cannot provide for their medical treatment. So they are immuno-compromised and die of whatever disease claims them as was the case throughout the western world before we had treatment for HIV/AIDS. We lost an entire generation of gay people. Only now are we facing the challenges of caring for our queer elders because there weren’t very many left to care for until now.

In Africa HIV/AIDS is not only a disease of the queer community but of the entire population. So safe sex education is hugely important yet meets a great deal of denial and resistance in a population which is very devout and conservative yet in which sexual behaviour, in practice, still reflects deeply held beliefs and values around male virility and of course the simply reality that, in poor nations, having many children is one’s life insurance policy for old age.

The Uganda Nutrition School Feeding Program [US spelling seems to dominate Uganda along with other things US!] began with the recognition that to empower these vulnerable street children the key was education but they could not learn on empty stomachs. So from the outset UNSFP had this dual focus of educating children and feeding them, ensuring they had at least one nutritious meal each day. That single “nutritious meal” each day is normally beans and posho. Posho is the Uganda name for a Semolina like food enjoyed throughout Africa made from maize flour. The two are mixed together providing protein and carbohydrates. And the children express such gratitude for this meal. It’s not a lot to ask of those of us who have more, to help make sure they always get that meal. Yet so often, including today as I write this, Kayemba faces a new month with no money to buy the next months beans and posho. Hence this current idea and Givealittle fundraiser to help Kayemba buy four acres of land to grow their own food at the same time as teaching the young people farming and gardening skills.

From the outset UNSFP has been largely run by volunteers so that any funds received from other countries can go straight to buying food. Those who are paid are mostly paid from local fundraising, especially from the adult children who have graduated and made lives for themselves in the
community. The school also hires out its brass band and choir which helps a little.

So Live in Love will also be a volunteer organisation so far as that remains practical. It will always be non-profit. I expect it to continue to be the part of my working life that costs me money rather than earns me money! However I would really love it if Live in Love could somehow pay one key person in Uganda to do what he has been doing for nothing, my fear friend Kiige who is a qualified, yet unemployed accountant, in the process of gaining his auditor’s qualification, and who has the most perceptive instincts in the questions he asks when he visits places I ask him to “check out” for me who are asking for support for their projects.

And that brings be back to the beginning. I did not create this website as a funnel for western money that salves consciences without any need to engage personally with people who are poor. I created this website to help make it safe for people who share my heart of love for those who are poor to first of all befriend them, get to know them, treat them with dignity and respect and, perhaps in time, help change their lives.
Scripture references: 
​1/ 1 John 4:16b
2/ 1 John 3:16-18
3/ John 3:21

​Some extracts from the old CCALP website

Child neglect is the biggest crisis facing the world. It is even worse than corruption. Neglected children grow to become armed robbers or street children. Neglected children end up not going to school or dropping out early leading to future unskilled or semi-skilled labour force. They therefore, are potentially trapped in poverty circles since they are likely to attract very low pay wages that hardly cater for their individual basic needs as well as for their immediate families. ..
Children are the sacrificial lambs when families breakdown. Because they have no political right to be heard and no vote, they are usually marginalized
More than 150 million children between the ages of five and 14 years work for a living in developing countries, with half of the number working full time. About 1.8 million children are also exploited in prostitution and pornography and 1.2 million others become victims of trafficking annually
It’s the work of CCALP to serve as an advocate for children to release them from their spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty and to enable them to become responsible adults…
I always thought that beggars were those who were homeless – but these are not beggars. They are working children. These children work on the streets everyday and their number is increasing. I never saw these many beggars when I was growing up. Maybe it is the population. But now the street kids are everywhere, outside restaurants, outside malls and at traffic signals. Either begging or collecting scarps for selling Many children are selling scraps, but in my heart I feel angry with the parents for allowing this. At times I have seen that the parents are fit and fine and are simply using their kids…
Target group

• Children living with HIV/AIDS
• Street children
• Children living in excessive poverty
• Orphans and vulnerable children
• Children selling scraps (children working on streets)
• Working children (house girls, house boys, children working in stone quarries)

Every child has the right to education without discrimination. In Uganda, huge numbers of children are denied this right by their parents or guardian, yet the government of Uganda provides free education to every primary child…
Some reasons why children work on streets
The street children are not always homeless, but simply poor like the majority of other children. They explain that [their] parents are unemployed. They send their kids to beg, collect and sell scraps because they know that children earn more money as people do not like to give to adults. Also, people look more kindly on child street hawkers, and as a result the kids earn more money.
What the rural poor who come in droves into the city need is proper training.
In Uganda children are seen as insurance policies. Hence the rush to get married early and have children so that they can be made to work and support the family. The parents who force the children to work have no shame because they are uneducated and have themselves done that for 12-15 years. So they think it is normal.