Climate Change and Poverty

Southeast Asia oneworld.net
It is an utter tragedy that those who are not responsible in polluting the planet and bringing on the adverse effect of systematic pollution are the very ones who will bear the brunt of climate disaster.

Today is Blog Action Day 2009. A day when thousands of bloggers across the world will blog about the chosen topic for this year, "Climate Change". This is not a topic that I know a lot about. Like all of us I know that it is happening and at least some of the responsibility for this change lies at my feet. I know that using fossil fuels and eating meat, especially factory farmed meat, add greatly to the sum of human causes for climate change. So I eat very little meat or fish and am trying to grow more of our food and buy more locally. But when it comes to fossil fuel use I plead guilty as charged. We live in the woods and when we go to town it is a long way (24 miles round trip). We try to limit our trips to two a week. Then there is the infrequent air travel of family coming to visit and our also infrequent vacations.

On Saturday Jim and I leave for our long-awaited trip to California. We plan to spend five days at Esalen Institute at a workshop for couples led by Gangaji and her partner Eli, then spend a few days in and around San Francisco. We will drive to Kansas City, 300 miles away and then fly to San Francisco. That's a lot of carbon exchanges, right! An article on this subject in Ode, the magazine informs us

According to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, an independent group of scientists that advises the British government, emissions from aircraft will likely be one of the major contributors to global warming by the year 2050. According to USA Today, on a flight from New York to Denver, a commercial jet generates between “840 to 1,660 pounds of carbon dioxide per passenger. That’s about what an SUV generates in a month.”

This trip seems extravagant in many ways. Yet, we decided to go for it. It has been 11 years since we took a real vacation like this. I can't help but think that in another eleven years the world will be a very different place. Flying to San Francisco or anywhere may be a luxury as it once was, only for the very wealthy. Also if we are still living, we will have moved from the older adult to the old adult stage of life and may not be able to travel. So off we go on Saturday even though it seems a bit like fiddling while Rome burns. How did art ever get so literal?

One of the huge and largely unrecognized issues surrounding global climate change, one that has has been essentially unaddressed, is the injustice of the consequences of our consumption. The US is responsible for 21% of the world's energy consumption with 4.6% of the world's population. As a comparison, India consumes 3.1% of the energy with 16.6% of the population. We in the US are definitely the high consumers of the world. Yet as already has been seen in recent climate disasters, the poor people of the earth are the first victims of our consumption. We have a great moral responsibility to all of these people. Jim Wallis, theologian and editor of Sojourner Magazine spoke out about this responsibility at a meeting with Democratic senators last week. These were his words:

Put Poor People on the Climate Change Agenda
by Jim Wallis 10-15-2009

Thanks for the invitation. You have, I am sure, heard us speak about creation care as the commitment we have to the environment. Most of us believe that human-caused climate change is a threat to God’s creation. Religious leaders actually do listen to scientists, and they are telling us that the pace of climate change is all happening even faster than expected. A good climate bill could signal a whole new direction and could even be a “three-for.”
It could protect the environment and begin to slow and eventually even reverse the dangerous and deadly impact of climate change.
It could create important and meaningful green energy jobs, many of which could be an opportunity for low-income and undereducated people, and also be good paying work.
It could change our foreign policy, which has been dominated by successive wars over oil. This could begin to decrease our dependency on foreign oil.
But here is the heart of the moral issue for many of us. Simply put, those around the world who have contributed least to global warming and climate change will be the most and first to be impacted by the consequences of it all. Sadly, it’s an old story. We, the affluent, create the problem, and the poor pay the price for our sins. It is wrong, and it is a sin — ours.
Yet the amount of money to help poor people and countries mitigate or adapt to climate changes being proposed in this legislation is not nearly enough (through the emissions “cap and trade” penalties that wealthy countries would have to pay). The numbers are not clear yet in your bill, but the amount of funds directed toward “adaptations” for the poorest countries in the House bill (which came before the Senate bill) is pitiful — really pitiful. It is wholly and woefully inadequate.
This is such an important issue for us that some in the faith community are considering not supporting this bill at all. They have called me to say that they might not support the final bill unless you do much better in the Senate. So if you hear anything from us today, hear that. Your Senate bill must do better — much better — for the poorest of God’s children.
Read entire speech here.
Take action here.

Love Your Neighbor - It's Universal

Click below to watch the video
Charter for Compassion

The Charter for Compassion springs from the dream of Karen Armstrong, well-known religious scholar. She is the current winner of the prestigious TED award (find out more about TED here) which calls on the recipient to create a dream for the world and then gives them funding and other support to help accomplish their dream. Armstrong's dream is for all the faith traditions of the world to return to their natural root of compassion. As a means to accomplish this goal the "Charter of Compassion" was created by Armstrong in dialogue with people from all over the world. It is to be unveiled November 12th. Please check it out and if possible do what you can to make this dream happen.

The Story of Stuff

click here to watch "The Story of Stuff"
This is the best economics lesson I have ever seen in my life! Can you imagine how things could change if this was taught in our schools? Please watch it if you can and then think of ways you could get it out to as many people as possible.

A recent New York Times article on the video and its creator Annie Leonard says,

"So far, six million people have viewed the film at its site, storyofstuff.com, and millions more have seen it on YouTube. More than 7,000 schools, churches and others have ordered a DVD version, and hundreds of teachers have written Ms. Leonard to say they have assigned students to view it on the Web.

It has also won support from independent groups that advise teachers on curriculum choices. Facing the Future, a curriculum developer for schools in all 50 states, is drafting lesson plans based on the video. And Ms. Leonard has a contract with Simon & Schuster to write a book based on the video.

The enthusiasm is not universal. In January, a school board in Missoula County, Mont., decided that screening the video treaded on academic freedom after a parent complained that its message was anticapitalist.

But many educators say the video is a boon to teachers as they struggle to address the gap in what textbooks say about the environment and what science has revealed in recent years."

(read the entire article here)

Today I started putting away my summer clothes and taking out the fall stuff. We are headed for a vacation to California in a couple of weeks, our first vacation in over ten years. So I started to think about how dowdy my Arkansas thrift store clothes might look in California. I started to wonder if I should go shopping for some new duds. I have plenty of clothes to keep me warm and dry of course. So maybe I will just "make due" now that I have been newly inspired by this great little video. I bet none of those chic Californians will even notice.

Let Us Be the Change We Want to See

Today I am posting an article from Truthdig.com by Robert Scheer. I wrote my own version of this article last week but then couldn't bring myself to post it. I was feeling too sorry for President Obama because of the vile attacks against him. But after reading Robert Scheer's article, I believe that this is something that has to be said. Its just another case of "The Emperor Has No Clothes". Everybody with a brain sees it. Now who is going to speak out and demand that this President serve the people? Its too important to let it all slide by because he is the first African-American president or because the right wing fundamentalist crazies are so out of control. We need Obama to step up to the plate and bat for the people not the corporations and powerful. That is not too much to ask. He wanted to serve us so let's tell him in no uncertain terms what we need. Just like every other politician I have encountered, he is not going to do the right thing just because he is a nice guy. There is too much pressure on him to go the way of the insurance companies or the bankers or the Wall Streeters or the arms merchants. We have to learn to put on our own pressure even if we would like it to be different.

I, like everyone I know who voted for Obama, want a president who is on our side, who works for us and for the people at the very bottom of the power pyramid. He talks like that and we love it. But of course as my mother told me maybe a million times, "actions speak louder than words." We have to look at the president's actions and not be fooled by his rhetoric. I hate to say it, but it is clear as day to me. We have to push this man to be the president we want him to be or it ain't gonna' happen.


Obama’s Presidency Isn’t Too Big to Fail

Posted on Sep 15, 2009
By Robert Scheer

A president has only so much capital to expend, both in tax dollars and public tolerance, and Barack Obama is dangerously overdrawn. He has tried to have it all on three fronts, and his administration is in serious danger of going bankrupt. He has blundered into a deepening quagmire in Afghanistan, has continued the Bush policy of buying off Wall Street hustlers instead of confronting them and is now on the cusp of bargaining away the so-called public option, the reform component of his health care program.

Those are not happy sentences to write for one who is still on the e-mail list of campaign supporters urged to back the president in the face of attacks that are stupidly small-minded. But to remain silent about his errors, just because most of his critics are so vile, is hardly an example of constructive concern for him or the country.

Yes, Obama was presented with a series of crises not of his making but for which he is now being held accountable. He is not a “socialist” who grew the federal budget to astronomical proportions. That is the legacy of George W. Bush, who raised the military budget to its highest level since World War II despite the end of the Cold War and the lack of a formidable military opponent— a legacy of debt compounded by Bush’s decision to first ignore the banking meltdown and then to engage in a welfare-for-Wall-Street bailout. And it was Bush who gave the pharmaceutical companies the gift of a very expensive government subsidy for seniors’ drugs.

But what is nerve-racking about Obama is that even though he campaigned against Bush’s follies he has now embraced them. He hasn’t yet managed to significantly reduce the U.S. obligation in Iraq and has committed to making a potentially costlier error by ratcheting up America’s “nation-building” role in Afghanistan.

Just as he was burdened with the Afghanistan situation, Obama was saddled with a banking crisis he didn’t cause, and the worst that can be said of his attempted solutions to the financial mess is that they were inherited from Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. But Obama, who raised questions before his election about the propriety of a plan that would rescue the banks but ignore the plight of ordinary folks, has adopted that very approach as president. He elevated Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, the two Democrats most closely aligned with Paulson’s policy, to top positions in his government.

Obama’s proposed new regulations, while containing some kind words about better informing consumers, do not portend any breakup of the “too big to fail companies” whose problems were permitted to fester by previous deregulatory measures. His answer is to increase the regulatory capacities of the Federal Reserve, which failed to use its already existing and considerable powers to avoid the debacle.

The promise is that next time the Fed will behave better. As Obama put it Monday, “So our plan would put the cost of a firm’s failures on those who own its stock and loaned it money. And if taxpayers ever had to step in again to prevent a second Great Depression, the financial industry will have to pay the taxpayer back every cent.”
Why not now? And why has he accepted the Wall Street line that all this represents a “collective failure,” as if the con men and the conned had equal responsibility? According to Obama, “It was a failure of responsibility that led homebuyers and derivative traders alike to take reckless risks that they couldn’t afford to take. It was a collective failure of responsibility in Washington, on Wall Street, and across America that led to the near-collapse of our financial system one year ago.” Hogwash. The chicanery of the financial system, securitizing highly suspect mortgages, was codified into laws that made the hustle legal.

That insistence on equating the swindled with the swindlers is also what is wrong with the evolving health care reform plan. The assumption from the beginning, when Obama reached out to insurance companies to come up with a deal, was that they had the interest of their customers at heart. They don’t, and it is the purpose of government regulation in the area of health as well as banking to even the scales between the powerful corporations and the consumers from whom they profit. That is the purpose of a public option worth its name.

Without a government program as a check on medical costs, Obama will end up with a variant of the Massachusetts program, one that forces consumers to sign up with private insurers and costs 33 percent more than the national average. He will have furthered the Bush legacy of cultivating an ever more expensive big government without improving how the people are served.

August 29, Saturday - A Small Group of Citizens

Here is a photo from our little demo in Jasper, AR today in support of health care for all. There were eight of us, Jim of course was there but he is the photographer so I am holding both of our signs. You can click on the picture and enlarge if you want to read all the signs. Hopefully this is going on all over the nation. The reception in Jasper was cordial with about half the people driving by without looking, another half honking and giving the thumbs up. Just a couple of thumbs down and no other fingers that I saw. Do you think this is what Margaret Mead had in mind when she said:“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”? I hope she is right because this thing is getting really weird.

August 21 Plus ca change...

Sunrise Over Berlin photo by Hanson59

The other night I woke up in the middle of the night with the feeling of impending doom. I didn't go to bed with it, it came upon me in the night. It felt like a sudden serious case of depression complete with uncontrollable crying and hopelessness. I tried for a couple of hours to get back to sleep. But, as usual, my mind had other plans. It wanted to review in sordid detail the subject of my despair. This matter happens not to be personal but communal so to speak. I was utterly distraught over the state of discourse on national health care reform. This sounds funny, but it is not. If you have been alive in America for the last month you know the scene. The vitriolic, mean-spirited, contentious and down-right evil nature of the health care debate has unnerved me. I know that it is fueled by professional lobbyists, the hired guns of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies who want to keep their profits coming no matter what the cost to the American people. Their lies are spouted by Fox News, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbough, and especially on the Internet. But, excuse me, does that mean that so many people have to believe them? Why can't people choose to act in their own best interest? Are we as a nation really that stupid? These are of course rhetorical questions from the middle of the night.

I laid in bed and longed for a nation where we could have reasoned debate. There are plenty of real reasons to criticize the proposed health care bills. Why do we have to be side-tracked by ridiculous lies about the bill allowing the government to kill your grandmother, leave veterans without care, stand between you and your doctor and then get into your bank account? I might be extra sensitive to this craziness since I live in a place where my neighbors make copies of these lies from the Internet and pass them out to the community just in case we haven't heard them on Fox News or The Rush Limbaugh Show.

The morning after my sleepless night I read the Daily Lectionary from the Episcopal Church as has been my practice for the last six months or so. These are daily Bible readings chosen for each day of the year. Since I have never been a Bible reader, I am learning a lot. On that bleary eyed morning after my sleepless night the designated Old Testament reading was Psalm 140. It was supposedly prayed by King David. But don't you think it would be a perfect prayer for Barack Obama right now?

Psalm 140
To the leader. A Psalm of David.

1 Deliver me, O Lord, from evildoers;
protect me from those who are violent,
2 who plan evil things in their minds
and stir up wars continually.
3 They make their tongue sharp as a snake’s,
and under their lips is the venom of vipers.
Selah

4 Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked;
protect me from the violent
who have planned my downfall.
5 The arrogant have hidden a trap for me,
and with cords they have spread a net;*
along the road they have set snares for me.
Selah

6 I say to the Lord, ‘You are my God;
give ear, O Lord, to the voice of my supplications.’
7 O Lord, my Lord, my strong deliverer,
you have covered my head in the day of battle.
8 Do not grant, O Lord, the desires of the wicked;
do not further their evil plot.*
Selah

9 Those who surround me lift up their heads;*
let the mischief of their lips overwhelm them!
10 Let burning coals fall on them!
Let them be flung into pits, no more to rise!
11 Do not let the slanderer be established in the land;
let evil speedily hunt down the violent!

12 I know that the Lord maintains the cause of the needy,
and executes justice for the poor.
13 Surely the righteous shall give thanks to your name;
the upright shall live in your presence.

New Revised Standard Version (Anglicized Edition), copyright 1989

Maybe we could leave out the part about "Let burning coals fall on them! Let them be flung into pits, no more to rise!", but it is a satisfying mental image, I must admit. The French have a saying that seems to apply to this health care reform fiasco as well as to many other situations especially in politics, "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" (The more things seem to change, the more they stay the same.) We could just leave it at that. Just say along with at least half the country, "Whatever". Right now the debate on health care is so vicious and mean that I feel like giving up. That seems like the sanest response. However, not being completely sane, I just wrote another letter to the editor and I am planning to go to one more rally in support of the public option for health care, carry my sign, "Do the Right Thing, Health Care for Everyone!", and hope that someone doesn't hit me.

Acknowledging the light of a new day, I have started to think about alternatives to the contentiousness that has infected our country. Perhaps teaching young people the arts of mediation and listening to others might be the most radical thing we can do right now. There are already some good people doing this and lots of helpful resources. Check out one great program here. God knows it is needed. I can begin to see a glimmer of hope for civil decision making in the US in the future. If we worked really hard maybe we could even prove the French wrong for once. That would be satisfying. Just say No! to "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" we could say. America finally joined the rest of the developed world and found a way to provide health care for all her people! It's amazing how things look a little brighter after the sun comes up.

August 13. Thursday - Lest We Forget

artwork by Hiroshima bombing survivor

For the last week I have been thinking about what I might do to remember the 64th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US military, that occurred on Aug 6 and Aug 9, 1945, the year before I was born. When I lived in Colorado I often helped to organize a memorial gathering in honor of the victims of the bombing. That had a kind of soothing effect on my grief. What can you do but be a witness to the atrocity of war and especially this kind of unthinkable mass destruction of innocent life in all of its holy manifestation? Now that I live in the deep woods, I can't really organize a gathering. So I thought I would dedicate this essay to the memory of the 200,000 people who died and the equal number of survivors of those August days in 1945 when life on this planet was changed forever.

This morning when I was doing the research for this essay, I watched one of those old black and white news shorts that they used to show before the main feature in movie theaters. This one was created just days after the bombing. The camera pans the razed cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the narrator extols the obvious immense power of America’s bomb. Cement buildings were turned to dust and steel girders were “twisted and bent like pipe cleaners”. As the camera moves past the site of a former factory in Hiroshima the narrator mentions, almost as an aside, that 20,000 people had worked in this factory. Other than this there is no mention of victims. As banal as most of the narration is, surprisingly at the end very end it asks a profound question. With rising ominous orchestral drama in the background, a man in US military uniform traces with chalk the outline of a human body which had been incinerated into the sidewalk, and the narrator booms in his deep voice, “Unparalleled progress or unparalleled destruction, atomic power puts the question squarely to mankind!”

Sixty some years later we still have not faced this question and its consequences. The generation of people who lived through the experience of the bomb is passing. For the most part we have failed to listen to their story. In 1995 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bombings, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC planned an educational exhibit about the 1945 bombings of Japan. After months of planning, the exhibit was scrapped due to controversy over graphic photos of victims, a school girl’s charred lunch box and the mention of scholarly historical studies some of which suggest that the bombings may not have been necessary to end the war. Americans are not yet ready to take a hard look at what our country did and why, and the unthinkable consequences of these acts. Yet, this very failure to face the truth, this national cowardliness or lack of stomach for the truth, may also be keeping us from seeing the truth of our current situation in regard to the ominous threat to our world posed by nuclear weapons.

According to Nuclearfiles.org a project of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the, there are approximately 31,000 nuclear warheads in the world today. Of these 13,000 are deployed and 4,600 are on high alert, meaning they can be launched within minutes. Each of these warheads has the destructive power of 100,000 to 400,000 tons of TNT. In comparison, the bombs dropped in 1945 had the force of 15,000 tons of TNT. There are eight nuclear armed countries in the world including, the US, Russia, Britain, France, Israel, China, Pakistan and India. Ninety-five percent of the nuclear warheads are in the US and Russia. In addition, according to the International Panel on Fissile Materials, substantial quantities of highly enriched uranium used to make the bombs, remain in more than 40 non-weapon states. There are varying accounts of how much enriched plutonium is actually missing. Most likely, non-state terrorists have access to some of this missing plutonium, if not the means to manufacture a nuclear weapon. The state of the world in terms of the risk of nuclear holocaust is dire. In fact,there is a doomsday clock, maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and used to symbolize our proximity to global annihilation. Currently this symbolic clock is set at 5 minutes to midnight.

Any day is a good day to start to look this beast in the eye, but August seems particularly appropriate. It is incredibly difficult work. I think that the only way we can do this is to gather the necessary courage from each other. The issue is not only about how many thousands of nuclear warheads are aimed at us, and at our perceived enemies. It is about the hopes and dreams we each have for our children and their children and for the future of human life on this planet. We must learn to tell our stories and above all to listen. Surely, we will come to find mutual benefit in nuclear disarmament, ending forever the nightmare of nuclear weapons. Governments and corporations will not then be able to convince us that we need these weapons of mass destruction for our safety. We will together see the lie.

Toward this end, an enlightening documentary film has been released by HBO, “White Light, Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” directed by Japanese American, Steven Ozakazi. It premiered on television on Aug 6, the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and will run throughout August. This film tells the stories of 14 of the 200,000 survivors of the bombs. In an interview on YouTube Okazaki said that he has been trying to produce this film for ten years. Neither US or Japanese movie companies wanted to get involved, saying that the people were not ready for this. Then last year, to his relief and surprise, the proposal was accepted by HBO and he was given free reign to tell the story through the eyes of the survivors. He says, “The conversation is never about people’s lives. It is about just strategy, as if war is just strategy and battles won or lost. The point of the show is to put a human face on it and to show the real tragedy of it.”

After watching the trailer and the interview of Mr. Okazaki, I feel that these survivors have something important to tell us. I don’t have HBO so I will have to wait to get it from NetFlix. I am sure that in a way it won’t be easy to watch. But in another way, it will be so beautiful, a story of human courage. Here is a site that shows some of the art work of survivors. You can see immediately the pain they experienced and also the beauty of the human spirit. We do not get this kind of opportunity very often so if you are able, please watch this movie and encourage your friends and family to watch it also.

White Light/Black Rain airs August 13 at 11:30 a.m. and 11 p.m.; August 19 at 3 p.m. and August 22 at 4 p.m.. It also plays on HBO2 August 16 at 12:30 a.m. and August 20 at 8 p.m. All times are Eastern Standard Time. You can of course also purchase the video from Amazon or HBO or rent it from NetFlix and maybe your local video store.

Although the situation is dire, it is not hopeless. After their meeting in July Presidents Obama and Putin announced a preliminary agreement to reduce each of their respective country's nuclear stockpiles by thirty percent. This is a pretty big deal.
Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a Washington foundation focused on nuclear-weapons reduction and nonproliferation said, “They’ve hit the sweet spot in finding numbers that will be a significant reduction and likely to get the necessary support in their respective parliaments,” In fact, the numbers announced Monday, Mr. Cirincione notes, “amount to a 30 percent reduction in the nuclear arsenals of the two countries that possess 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.”

Even on this hot August day there is reason for hope, while at the same time being aware that if these cuts are made, there will still be enough nuclear weapons in the world to destroy all life on the planet many times over. It seems to be the gift of our times to live with this kind of paradox. Just exactly what is hope in the face of the kinds of issues which face us? A thirty percent reduction sounds good for today, and we will work for total nuclear disarmament as we celebrate. We have examples of courage to guide us. Even when their loved ones and entire world disintegrated before their eyes, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not give up. Their lives give us courage. Isn't that part of what it means when we call ourselves the human “family”? We take our courage and support from each other especially in the things that are too big to look at alone. I am grateful that even a few of these people were able to speak to the world before their voices are gone forever.

Thursday July 30 - Looking Deeply into our National Health

Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh


National health care is very much in the news right now. I hope that congress can come up with a workable system that gives all Americans access to excellent health care. Our present system is, like almost every enterprise in this country, geared more to profit than to service. It is not so much broken as it is wrong. I think most Americans agree that something must be done to provide good health care for all the people.

In looking at the health care dilemma as with so many tough situations, I find it very helpful to follow the advise of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh and look more deeply into the problem, to really sit with it quietly and contemplate. It seems to me the first thing we must see in this deeper look is that what we really want and need is not so much national health care as national health. The health of our people is poor and I do not believe that a national health care system as proposed in any of the versions before congress even begins to address our ill-health. Prevention of illness or maintaining health needs to be a top priority in each person's life and it should be the top priority of any national health care plan.

So why aren't we healthy or more bluntly why are we so sick? Let's just take one common disease, type II diabetes which is reaching epidemic proportions in this country. The Center for Disease Control says that 20.8 million people which is 7% of the US population has been diagnosed with type II diabetes. WOW! As a nurse I would bet that nearly every one of those 20.8 million people received some education with their diagnosis even if it wasn't optimum. They did hear, "eat less and exercise more". You even hear that on TV almost daily. For many people with this disease the cure is really that simple. Yet we all continue to overeat and sit around even when we know how bad it is for us. I want to point out that I certainly include myself in this "we" who struggle with over-eating and weight problems. My weight has yo-yoed for the last 20 years as I gain weight, then diet to lose the extra pounds and then gain them back again. As most of us, I love all kinds of food and tastes and experiences of eating. Let's just say that today I am on top of my addiction but tomorrow or even this afternoon is a still up for grabs. I know first hand how hard it is to keep up a healthy lifestyle. It is work and it takes a lot of support and intention. You could say, just like it takes a community to raise a child, it takes a community to live healthily. Almost universally I would say we do not have that kind of community in this country.

Two thirds of US adults are overweight with a BMI over 25 and one-third of those is obese with a BMI over 30. That means that less than one third of Americans is in the range of healthy weight, BMI of 18.5 to 24.9. Thus we suffer the health consequences of heart and kidney disease and diabetes. These statistics come from WIN - Weight Control Information Network which is from the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Since I was a nurse for twenty-six years and just retired a few months ago, I would like to share just one of my many experiences with this problem. For the last five years I worked as a home care nurse in one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states in the US. Still many people here have health care provided through either Medicare or Medicaid programs. I don't think that a national health care system modeled on the present system of health care would change things very much here. I saw many, many people suffering the consequences of obesity and poor nutrition. So that I do not violate any one's confidentiality I will use a compilation of situations. But this story even though it doesn't represent one individual is not an exaggeration of what kinds of things happen frequently.

This man was relatively young by my standards these days, about 50 years old. He weighed over 300 pounds. When I saw him he had already had diabetes for 10 years which caused kidney failure requiring dialysis treatments three times a week at our local hospital 25 miles from his home. The usual cost estimate for dialysis is about $150.00 per session. Home care nurses like myself came to his home daily to do dressing changes on a foot ulcer that was refusing to heal. Some of the creams that were used on his wound cost over $100.00 an ounce. We continued to see him daily for over a year. Each nursing visit cost Medicare about $150.00. Since the foot ulcer was not healing he was started on hyperbaric chamber treatments weekly at a hospital 100 miles away. These treatments cost about $1000.00 each time.

During all of this time this man continued to overeat and disregard his elevated blood sugars, often stopping to have hamburgers, french fries and shake at a fast food restaurant on his way home from treatment. Due to his poorly controlled diabetes he also had significant heart disease and was hospitalized several times for heart problems. He finally had to have a foot amputation which again did not heal, so eventually they had to amputate his leg. He spent some months in a nursing home and then again returned home. Obviously by this time he was very ill. Yet he and his family continued to believe that if he could just get the right medical treatment he could get back to being active in his community. Eventually he ended up back in the hospital with pneumonia. He was put on a ventilator when he could not breathe for himself. Even after weeks his family did not want to disconnect the ventilator because of his wishes to have everything possible done for him. It was months before he finally died. A very sad story. Sadly also a very expensive story for the "health care system". The family's finances were used up early in his disease. Essentially his entire bill was paid for publicly. If this is the kind of health care Americans are expecting, I believe any national health care program will fail.

Since 1990 there has been a 76% increase in type II diabetes in the age group of 30 to 40 year olds. So how many more people are there each day who live out a variation of the above story? And why? The most obvious answer to me is that we have become a nation of addicts. We are addicted to over-eating and unhealthy food. This is one of the big problems that I believe a true national health care program would address. How can we get back to health? In the quote below from his book Living Buddha, Living Christ Thich Nhat Hanh is speaking about drug addiction but I think his words apply to the problem of any addiction that is causing us harm.

"Drug users know how destructive their habit is, but they cannot stop. There is so much pain and loneliness inside them, and the use of alcohol and drugs helps them to forget for a while... trying to stop the drug traffic is not the best use of our resources. Offering education, wholesome alternatives, and hope, and encouraging people to practice the Fifth Precept ( this is a precept on mindful consumption) are much better solutions. To restore our balance and transform the pain and loneliness that are already in us, we have to study and practice the art of touching and ingesting the refreshing, nourishing, and healing elements that are already available. We have to practice together as a family, a community, and a nation. The practice of mindful consuming should become part of our national health policy. Making it so should be a top priority..."

At first glance like most of this gentle teachers words, they seem too simple, almost child-like. But on deeper consideration, I believe there is much here for us to consider. What would it mean to have a health care system that offered "education, wholesome alternatives, hope and encouragement" to practice a precept of mindful consumption? What would it mean to make mindful consuming a "top nation health priority"? How can we learn to practice "the art of touching and ingesting the refreshing, nourishing and healing elements that are already available."? These are discussions that our communities need to have. We can not just leave it to our congress people. It is clear that they are influenced by corporations with their zeal for greater profits. This is another case where that old bumper sticker hits the mark, "If the people lead the leaders will follow." We each need to take responsibility for our health and make a contribution to the health of our community. Maybe the politicians will see the light some day but we can't count on it. We have to start creating the health we want for yourselves and our communities.

Of course I clearly understand that we cannot prevent all illness and we are not guilty for getting sick. Poverty and violence in one's life take a tremendous toll on a person's health. We don't have complete control over the quality of our air, water or our food or the predispositions of our genetics. But we do need to take some personal responsibility for those many aspects of our health and our nations health over which we have some control. In our society it seems like blasphemy to suggest that our body is not our own. Individualism is one of our gods. But just listen to a little bit different view again from Thich Nhat Hanh in his book The World We Have.

In modern life people think that their bodies belong to them, and they can do anything they want to themselves. "We have the right to live our own lives", they say. The law supports such a declaration; that is one of the manifestations of individualism. But according to the teachings of the Buddha, your body is not yours. Your body belongs to your ancestors, your parents and future generations. It also belongs to society and to the other living beings. All of them have come together - the trees, the clouds, the soil, everything to bring about the presence of this body....Keeping your body healthy is a way of expressing gratitude and loyalty to the whole cosmos, to all ancestors and to future generations. If we are healthy everyone can benefit from it...

You may not agree that your body is not our own. But I think everyone can agree that if we are healthy everyone can benefit from it. As I think about this new way of approaching health, I realize how many of the essential questions and issues are not individual but are questions for the whole community. Should we let corporations profit from selling soda and candy in our schools or serving our children milk laden with growth hormones and antibiotics? How can we support our local growers and farmer's markets which provide us with healthy food? What should we serve at our community gatherings? How can we support people who need to make changes in their lives to get more healthy? I would like to see real health taught in our schools, in our hospitals and clinics, our churches and community centers. Obviously the questions and issues are far-reaching and many, but we need to start talking and making some changes. Since our president is pushing for national health care reform maybe we can also talk about real lasting reform and the deep questions we need to address in order to achieve an acceptable level of national health.

July 9, Thursday - Lesson #2

A rocky monster in Bomarzo Park, Italy, photo by Robert Fogliardi (click on picture to enlarge)

There are in life many things over which we have no control. In fact that might be the first big lesson that most of us need to learn. There are also some things in life, over which we are the only one who has any control. This may certainly be the second big life lesson. We all have our tendencies to either try to control everything or refuse to take control over anything. For much of my life I have been one of the former types, totally exhausted most of the time from trying to keep everything together. Believe me it's hard and most importantly, it doesn't work. One thing I have noticed from talking with my friends, control is a pretty common addiction

More than any other situation, being the mom of a son with mental health and addiction problems has taught me the lesson of letting go, not once but over and over again. I cannot ensure that he has a safe place to live, adequate food, or even that he does not kill himself in the process of satisfying his addictions. There is no bottom line, absolutely nothing to hang onto. Anything could happen and much of that anything has already happened.

I was first aware of his drug problems when he was twelve. He's now nearly forty. I could not even begin to tell the story of what he has been through. Note I did not say what "we" have been through. That's progress. He has been through scores of treatment programs, hospitals, jails and violent, horrific situations on the street. When he was younger, I felt as crazy as he was most of the time. As he got older, very gradually, I was able to create some space between us, to extricate myself from the craziness some of the time. I never stopped loving him. I just started noticing that nothing I did to help ever made any difference. It is a humbling experience not to be able to help your child. But by the time he was thirty-five I pretty much had it figured out and had my control impulse under control. Have you ever noticed that someone up there seems to be watching these things, so that as soon as you have one life lesson under your belt you get sent a package marked "Lesson #2"?

Lesson #2 in this case came in the adorable package of a baby boy. In other words my son who was barely able to navigate the world on his own, now has a child. This means of course that his decisions, however misguided, now affect not only him, they directly affect a little boy. When the baby was born, I rallied to help with essential needs. Now a year and a half later, they live one step from the street. I want my son to get a job and take care of his child. But I know this may not happen.

On Monday I am leaving for Minnesota to visit them. Since my "fix-it" mode of control is not totally dormant at this point, I started to think of ways I could help the situation. I spoke with my son about the possibility of his entering a treatment program to start the process of being a responsible dad. He didn't say no. So I made an appointment for an intake assessment at a facility that specializes in the treatment of mental illness complicated by drug addiction.

For a couple of days I went around congratulating myself for being a helpful mom and grandma. But that didn't last. Today my son called to tell me that he is not going to the appointment because he has been through a million treatment programs and what he really needs is a job, not a program. I tried to explain that he can't get or hold a job given his present state of addiction. He thinks other people won't notice. As we talked, I felt the old lesson come back. It is time to back off and stop trying so hard to control something over which I have no control. I could probably talk him into going to the assessment interview. But as soon as his addiction is confronted in the program he will be out of there. I'm pretty sure that this little dream of things getting better for my son and grandson is not going to happen in this way.

Letting go is hard, but not as hard as it used to be. Part of the difference is my maturity, a euphemism for aging. But also some of the difference is a benefit of my spiritual practice, especially silent meditation. Sitting in meditation, and continually letting go of thoughts as they arise is good practice for letting go in real life. Maybe that's why they call it "practice". Letting go of my plan to help seems easier than it used to be. I still have an ache in my heart, still a glimmer of hope that something good may come of this. But I am very clear that what I need to do now is to "let go, and let God" as they say in Twelve-Step teachings.

I came upon some appropriate words of wisdom in a little book that I have been reading over the last few weeks. Notes From the Song of Life by Tolbert McCarroll is a book of thirty short lessons. These lessons are meant to be read and contemplated one a day for a month. A few days ago the lesson was entitled "Detachment". So I went back today to reread it. Sure enough, the shoe fits:

To detach from your preoccupations is to have faith in the life process and to know that you are a part of it. Through detachment you do not forsake people and your environment. Detachment is a means of connecting with them at a deeper level. For it is not people or things that distract you, but your desires. It is from these desires that you must learn to detach.
Desires are like demons. There are many demons, each with his own name and characteristics. Some are called respectability, security, superiority, control, recognition, stubbornness; all creatures from the hell of self-centeredness. These are the demons that separate you from people and life.

When I go for my visit to Minnesota next week I trust that there will be one less demon separating me from my son, my grandson and our life together for that time. All the problems will still be there. But I will try to be there too. That may be the best gift I can give them both.

July 3, Friday - Picking Blueberries

Necessary preparations include long-sleeved shirt, straw hat, sun lotion and water bottle. U-Pick-It farmer gives me two plastic gallon buckets with smiling instructions to pick all the purple from each bush that I start. I agree to his conditions.

Row on row of person-sized, evenly spaced berry bushes with wide newly mowed grass paths between the rows. At eight-thirty AM the sun, already warm, casts a west-sided shadow beside each bush. Two straw-hatted, early bird ladies already picking on the far end, voices barely audible. Snatches of conversation drift through the clear morning air, "good-old boy", "even he voted for Obama". Choose a row far from the talkers. Fingers move haltingly at first seeking the plumpest, most purple delights nestled among the unripe green berries. Notice the flawless blue sky, the still air, the creeping heat. Berries plunk! plunk! plunk! on the bottom of the plastic bucket.

Listen to birds singing and some noisy black birds stealing berries farther down the row. Sit down cross-legged in the grass to pick the lower berries. Bend, squat, stand, bend, squat, sit. Send out a little prayer for a cloud. Then notice that it probably isn't going to happen in such a clear sky. Change prayer request to a pleasant breeze. A little cool breeze passes by touching my face. Smile.

Endless picking, newly discovering that blueberries are quite small. There are thousands in a gallon. First bucket finally full. No, it can hold a few more. Fifteen minutes later, now it is full! Return to the car with over-flowing bucket of berries. Think about leaving. Then think about blueberries for breakfast all through the long winter. Decide to stay. Return to berry bushes with water bottle in hand.

Ten O'clock, shadows beside the bushes getting smaller, sun heating up. No birds singing just more squawks from the thieving black birds down the line. Suddenly remember that I have not yet tasted the berries. Internal conversation, "is it OK to eat the berries while I pick them?" Decide that everyone would do this so it must be OK. Pop a couple of the smaller ones into my mouth, saving the big ones for winter of course. Yum! There is nothing like the taste of blueberry. Memory of camping with my kids in Michigan and picking wild blueberries for our breakfast. Nostalgic for the days of camping with the kids.

Feeling a little heat sick. Picking more while sitting down and looking for that shrinking shadow next to each bush. Developing pride in "my" beautiful blueberries. After all this work do I really have to pay for them too? Think suddenly about migrant workers, all the people who pick our fruits and vegetables so that we can go into air-conditioned stores and buy them. There's so much we don't know about every piece of food we eat. It must be really hard work to pick in the heat day after day for hours on end. Vow to learn more about where my food comes from and be more aware of what I am buying at the store.

Return with my two full buckets to the farmer. We have a really fine conversation about the rewards and trials of small farmers. He tells me how he likes to try growing heirloom plants and unusual varieties but that it is hard to sell them at the Farmer's Market in Harrison because most people want the standard variety they know from the super market. He grew a great Austrian variety of pink eggplant last year but everyone asked for the purple kind they were used to. He said the pink variety was sweet and tender with skin that did not get tough. We talked about possible ways to educate folks about new varieties, maybe with recipes or even clandestinely slipping something new into their bag to see if they would try it and come back for more the next week. We conclude that America's food production and consumption is in a sorry state and that the work he is doing as a small local grower is very important. I pay for my berries and both of us seem quite satisfied with our morning.

Cloudless sky, bright sun,
blueberries hide from busy fingers.
Heart discovers the juice.

To learn more about our food and buying local check out some of these great sites:

LOCAL HARVEST where you can find a list of local growers near you

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and family

Small Planet Institute with Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe

FOOD FIRST - Institute for Food and Development Policy

June 26, Tuesday

One of my favorite things about this spring and summer has been my Wednesday lunches with a new friend. By now it has made itself into a little ritual. We arrive at the Thai restaurant at 12:30. At 3 o'clock our dishes have been removed and the restaurant is empty except for us. I urgently have to pee from all the water I have been drinking since our waiter has filled my glass continually for the last two and a half hours. My friend and I haven't even noticed the time. We just talk and listen. In fact we could probably go on talking non-stop for another couple of hours. Getting to know a new friend has some of the same feelings as falling in love. We enjoy hearing the details of each others lives past and present as well as the details of our plans and dreams. It's energizing and fun.

This Wednesday we talked at length about gardening which is a mutual passion, about her overbooked schedule and decisions about which activities she could drop and which were serving her well, about where to buy fresh blueberries, about our respective challenges in our spiritual lives. We talked and listened and exchanged our best thinking on the matters at hand. Then at one point we talked about someone we know (a good friend of hers and someone I barely know) who is leaving her two children, ages ten and fourteen, in the care of her ex-husband and his new wife. She is leaving them essentially for four years while she joins the Air Force to pursue her career. My friend seemed to think that this was a difficult decision but probably necessary. I thought it was totally absurd, wrong, an unthinkable sin against Motherhood, stupid, crazy and insane. In other words, I kind of had a strong reaction. As I talked animatedly I could see my friend question her own acceptance of the "difficult decision". I said, "She didn't have to leave her kids! She could have taken a job at UPS or at Burger King, for God's sake!" Shortly after my little outburst we parted with no hard feelings, I believe. But she may have been a bit perplexed about my intense reaction.

On my drive home, thinking about the whole gamut of our conversation, I started to do some self-reflection about my strong reaction. I don't even know these kids that I assume will be devastated by their mother's departure. I don't know the woman really. In other words, it's none of my business, I am not involved. Yet, I can't really describe how strongly I felt that this was wrong. Well, a little reflection is usually a good thing when your emotions come charging out in righteous indignation.

I thought about the whole "idea" of a mother leaving her children. Can you think of anything worse save abuse or murder? Well, I can't. Just maybe that's because my grandmother left her children. This was in fact about 100 years ago. My father's mom, Emma Rose, according to the stories I have heard, was fed up with her life married to Moses Absalom Beauregard, my grandfather. He was a riverboat gambler on the Mississippi. They lived in the north woods of Minnesota near the town of Thief River Falls. Think isolated and very cold and harsh, 100 years ago. Moses came home every few months and they got pregnant about as often as possible in those early years. Sometimes he brought money and they celebrated. Often he was broke and ate the food she was doling out carefully to last through the winter.

They had five children, the oldest Del was eight, the youngest Warren was a baby and my Dad, Walter was three when Emma decided to take her children to the Catholic orphanage in Duluth and put them up for adoption. I always wanted to believe that she had no other options. But my only cousin who is twenty years older than me and remembers our grandmother, tells me that she was offered a house and job by people in her community, that she was in fact a very selfish woman. It's hard to know the truth of her life. We do know that she had decided to accept an offer of marriage from a devoutly religious man who said he would take her and the baby but not the other kids. So she left the oldest four children at the orphanage and went on about her life.

My dad spent four years at the orphanage. When he was seven a childless farm couple came looking for farm workers. They took my dad and his brother and said they would keep the one who worked the hardest. Dad's nine year old brother Harvey ran away the next day and was on his own the rest of his life. My dad stayed and worked for this couple until he too ran away at the age of fourteen. He joined the Army stating his age as sixteen. After two years in the Army he again found his brother Harvey. Along with many others they rode the rails across the country many times, working at whatever job was available and sleeping where they found a place.

My dad and his brothers and sisters had a pretty hard childhood. Yet he was a great father to me, loving, kind and gentle. But his deep sadness was palpable in our family. This kind of sadness is an inheritance almost like a genetic code passed along from parent to child. It's part of my heart and bones and every cell in my body. My parents sadness is and always will be part of my life. It all reminds me of a quote from the Old Testament in Exodus 34: 6,7 when God directed Moses to go to the top of Mt Sinai alone:

And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord, The God merciful and compassionate, long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth. Keeping mercy for thousands of generations, forgiving sins and transgressions, who by no means justifies the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon the children's children, to the third and fourth generation.

Far from describing a vengeful God, from my current viewpoint I get an understanding of what some may call the Law of Karma, "what comes around goes around" or natural consequences of our actions. Some of our actions have such long arms. At my age I can see the lives of five generations, two before me and two following me. Seeing how my grandmother's actions influenced my own reaction in a conversation with a friend over 100 years later is sobering indeed.

This may be one reason why elders are so important in a community. They keep the memory of events past that are shaping the reactions of the present. So much of that valuable memory is languishing today, unappreciated. Perhaps, and I say just perhaps, that is why a young woman is leaving her two children to further her career; or why most of us in the developed world continue to consume, mindlessly depleting the Earth's riches meant to be shared with future generations; or why our nation's military can drop bombs on villages thousands of miles away, killing innocent people while we sleep peacefully in our beds, leaving the effects of our actions to be "visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon the children's children to the third and fourth generation."

In the past I have always thought that this Bible verse portrayed a cruel and sadistic God punishing innocent children for the sins of their fore bearers. Now from the advantage of being able to see forward and back the five generations that have touched my life, what I see is not an external cruel God but rather that it is our innate connection with All which dictates that our actions positive or negative have long-reaching effect. We are not separate and our actions affect more than ourselves, more than we can even comprehend. This also happily means that our acts and words of love, compassion, creativity and wisdom have equally long reaching arms connecting us to generations to come and making our lives and actions bigger than we are.

I can't say what is really right for the young woman whose dilemma between career and family started my contemplation. But what is really valuable for me is to see my own strong reaction and where it might have come from. When I can do that, which is certainly not all the time, it helps me act and speak from awareness instead of ignorance. And that can't hurt.

June 18, Thursday - Thoughts on Giving

A World of Possibilities 1 - acrylic on canvas by Jim Rose-Foreman

A World of Possibilities 2 - acrylic on canvas by Jim Rose-Foreman


Quite a number of years ago, even twenty years ago, I was having tea at my house with a friend, kind of an ordinary event. But I remember that the energy in our conversation was electric. We were communicating deep feelings and passions about our lives, really listening and enjoying each other's company. At one point we were standing in the dining room and my friend commented on how much she liked the sweater I was wearing. It was a big, fluffy, hand knit, lamb's wool, traditional Icelandic sweater. Beautiful indeed. Suddenly I pulled off my sweater and slipped it over her head. Helping her into it I assured her that it was a gift. Just as quickly she removed her necklace of turquoise carved birds handmade by an old man she had come to know at the Zuni Pueblo where she made yearly trips to the sacred corn dance. She placed it around my neck. The necklace was beautiful and meaningful. We were both moved. This was the cleanest moment of gift giving I have ever experienced. No thinking, just pure heart. I still have the necklace though I have moved away and lost touch with my friend. That moment between us lives in me every time I see her gift.

Its funny how clearly I remember that moment. Surely there have been many other times when the gift and the moment were just perfect. Yet over the years I have noticed how messy giving can sometimes get. This is often most true when we give through a so called charity. The connection which was so vibrant between my friend and I is non-existent or blunted by the distance and facelessness of the encounter. And sometimes it is blunted because the gift is made out of obligation or guilt.

Recently I read an article in Christianity Today written by Richard Stern president of World Vision a Christian aide organization. In the article entitled, "We are not Commanded to be a Docent in the Art Museum, We are Commanded to Love the Poor", he takes members of the Christian churches to task for not responding seriously to the crisis of children in the world. This man is not a dummy when it comes to marketing. He has been a CEO of major corporations for 25 years and head of World Vision for 10 years. So one would expect that when he writes to an audience of prospective donors he would try to make them feel good about themselves, tell them touching stories of how their money is helping children far away in order to wheedle his way a bit deeper into their pocketbooks. He doesn't do that. He spends his time telling it like it is.

Twenty-six thousand children die of starvation or preventable disease every day. As he reminds us, this is like 100 airliners crashing every day. Our society gets very upset over even one airliner crash and goes to great lengths to retrieve the black box for clues to the cause and to assure all that the problem will be remedied. Yet we don't do much at all about the daily deaths of 26,000 children. He went on to seriously question the priorities of his Christian audience:

Our church bulletins read like the table of contents for Psychology Today: support groups for pornography addictions and eating disorders, Taekwondo, aerobics, and on and on. Our churches are increasingly meeting all of our needs but decreasingly going out to change the world.

The message is not that these are not good things to do, the message is, Hello! Wake Up! There are children dying! It seems kind of like ironing the table cloth while the house is burning down. It is not a bad thing to do, it is just not what is needed right now.

So I am wondering why we are not taking this global crisis seriously. These are some of the reasons I came up with:
1. It is too overwhelming to think about.
2. It is mostly far away and our national, corporate controlled media ignores it so we do too.
3. Many of us feel overburdened with what we are doing just to get through the day.
4. We may feel that this culling of the weakest is the way of nature or of God since there are already too many people on the Earth.

There seems to be some truth in all of these reasons for inaction. So I wonder then if there is any reason to act. I answered myself with another question. If even one of those 26,000 children was your child or grandchild, how would those reasons for hanging back sound to you? Looking over at the picture on my desk of that amazing beautiful, loving little boy who is my grandson, suddenly my heart bursts open with gratitude. I want to give to every child in the world, not our of guilt but out of gratitude for all the blessings of this life. I look around me and see this beautiful planet, my own clean water and healthy food, the flowers out my window, my loving partner, our healthy children and grandchildren. It reminds me of how I felt that day when I spontaneously gave away my sweater. It seems that true generosity pours forth spontaneously from a full heart.

Here I am again with a full heart for the plight of children half way around the world. What to do? Beyond giving the small amount of money that we are able to give and signing petitions on the Internet and of course holding these unknown children in my heart and prayers - all good and valid responses, I can't really think of any other response. It sounds kind of lame doesn't it?? My ego definitely wants it to be more flamboyant, for me to be special instead of just a worker ant. I want to be the queen bee of giving. Then of course I remember the key fact I tend to forget, I am not alone in all this. I am just one tiny drop in the ocean of love that is the Universe.

So our small monthly pledge to Oxfam and signing the petition to support a vitally needed bill The Senator Paul Simon Clean Water Act of 2009 will be my contribution today. This bill could be our national response to those 26,000 unnecessary childhood deaths every day. If it is passed by the US Senate, over 100 million people will get access to clean water for the first time ever. Clean water means vastly improved child health and survival. Eighty percent of preventable childhood deaths from disease are caused by dirty water. This would be a major step for our nation to take. Yet there is a real danger that the bill will die in committee for lack of co-sponsors. This is where we can help right now. There are five co-sponsors so far and at least twenty are needed before it will be taken seriously by the Senate. At the One site you can sign a petition that goes to your senators asking them to co-sponsor the bill. There are already have over 75,000 signatures. A personal letter to your senators is probably even more effective if you have the time.

From that long ago memory of the gift exchange with my friend Jeannie I understand the connection between gratitude and the gift. Gratefulness happens spontaneously when we are truly present to our life. It opens us up and allows whatever gift we have to come forth from us. I never thought of gratitude as being that important. I thought that changing the world came from hard work and tenacity. Those help of course. But gratitude is what makes everything flow. Perhaps those Christian churches that Richard Stern was talking about should be teaching and practicing gratitude. Perhaps if gratitude was returned to a place of importance in our culture, taught to our children and practiced by all, we would be able to respond naturally to the needs of children and families and our planet Earth. Br. David Steindl-Rast,OSB Benedictine monk and teacher, has known this secret of gratitude for a long time. He has a web site Gratefulness.org where the subject is explored extensively. There he writes, "Gratitude is thinking in tune with the cosmic intelligence that inspires us in grateful moments. It can change more than a mood; it can change a world."

Now I wonder if my friend Jeannie still has that Icelandic sweater and if she ever thinks of that day when we had tea. If she does, wonder where it leads her? I'd like to find her again and have that conversation.

June 13, Saturday

Kadyn and Grandma - 9 months


It's sometimes shocking for me to think that I have three grown children who are nearing middle age. In my heart of course they are still my children and I want to protect them from a world gone mad. Like every parent I want for them a world that is safe and supports them as they make their way through life. I also have a grandchild Kadyn who is 14 months old. Of course he is beautiful, smart, loving and full of joy and amazement. I want his life to be good, for there to be enough clean water and air and healthy food, loving people and opportunities to make a profound connection to this Earth and all her blessings. Like you, I want this inheritance for every child. I do not want their lives to be burdened with seemingly uncontrollable global calamities. Yet the reality is that the world we are passing to the next generations is in deep trouble. Most environmental leaders agree the planet will survive. But the survival of human life on Earth is tenuous. This is not what we want to hear. We don't even want to think about it. Yet if we are serious about our concern for the children, we need to look deeply at the human dilemma.

The unthinkable issue of the survival of human life on Earth does not seem as yet to have a name that we all recognize. There are many people talking about and working on smaller pieces of this problem, but only a few brave leaders are naming the beast and actually facing it. Two of these visionaries whose work I have studied, Marshall Vian Summers and Joanna Macy, approach the subject of the possible end of human life in very different ways. Their teachings are equally compelling and equally necessary. I am tempted to simplify things and call these approaches the Masculine and the Feminine even while acknowledging that is over simplification.

In his pending book Great Waves of Change, Marshall Vian Summers identifies 7 great waves of change which individually or collectively could inundate the human race and much of life on this planet. The waves he sees are: 1. Economic hardship and instability, 2. Peak oil and declining resources, 3. Climate change and catastrophic weather, 4. Escalating worldwide conflict, 5. Loss of arable land and fresh water, 6. Collapse of biodiversity and 7. Destruction of the natural environment.

Summers is a teacher who does not pull any punches. While I do not agree with everything he says, I do admire his ability to look right in the eye of the monster. Other social change leaders often use vague language when speaking of the challenges that face humanity at this time or concentrate on only one of the issues like global warming thus never addressing the absolute dire nature of our circumstances. Summers does not mince words when he speaks of the probable consequences of the collective effect of these "great waves of change". As he states in this book, economic collapse may lead to failed states, military take-overs of governments; declining resources of course may lead to all out world war and the ultimate destruction of life; weather change may lead to loss of millions of acres of land thus creating hundreds of thousands of refugees, famine, disease and again conflict. The list goes on. Each of these changes has terrifying consequences. We all know this in the back of our hearts somewhere but we don't often let that knowledge come out into the light.

There is an unwritten social rule especially in the US: don't talk about anything that brings up the fear, "no downers". I am not suggesting that we all get together and talk endlessly about how bad things are. I am suggesting that our addiction to keeping things pleasant is getting in the way of identifying the problems and working together to fight for our lives, or more accurately the lives of our children and grandchildren. Because there are so many things going on at once, no one person or group has "the" answer. Marshall Summers has devoted his life to a teaching that comes through him but is not from him by his own report. This teaching is aimed at helping people listen to their inner Wisdom specifically for the purpose of making the necessary contribution that only they can make toward the ultimate solution of the human dilemma. He says,

The first great challenge is to face the great challenge without insisting on solutions, without fighting against the truth of what you see, without blaming other people or expecting someone else to take care of the problem for you.

Yet from what I have observed most people are not able to take the news straight up and then get to work on the problem as he suggests.

This is where the work of Joanna Macy is absolutely brilliant. She also has devoted her life to helping people see how bad things are for us, to grieve the loss of the safe world we wanted, to accept the world that we have and then to roll up our sleeves and get to work on whatever piece of the solution we can see and manifest. In the book she wrote with Molly Young Brown, Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World, they put forward a map for transformation of our human culture, what she calls a "Great Turning.. an epochal shift from a self-destructive industrial growth society to a life-sustaining society." According to their map, the transformation of our world starts right in our own heart. The path leads from the broken heart to the joy of working together to first envisioning the world we want for our children and then working together to manifest that world.

This book is filled with tools to help us heal our hearts, find our own vision and skills, overcome our lethargy and pain and get down to work. Like Summers who uses the practices in Steps to Knowledge to get people ready to listen to their own inner inner knowing, Macy and her students use the practices in Coming Back to Life as preparation for the work of change. In Chapter 7 which is entitled "Despair Work: Owning and Honoring Our Pain for the World" they relate a short anecdote of the Zen poet and teacher Thich Nhat Hahn. He was asked,

What do we need to do to save our world? His questioners expected him to identify the best strategies to pursue in social and environmental action, but Thich Nhat Hahn's answer was this, " What we most need to do is to hear the Earth crying."

Macy's work helps us not only to hear the Earth's cries, but our own cries and screams of fear as well.

This book, which summarizes 20 years of work is filled with exercises and activities to bring up the fear and the pain and heal it. Whether one uses these practices or some other avenue for healing, it seems necessary to face the fear and heal the pain before you start to confront the beast. Otherwise the work is overwhelming and you may be lead by your fear rather than your inner knowing. Fear and pain unrecognized and unconscious is what got us into the situation we are in. It is time we faced the fear.

Personally I feel that Marshall Summer's teaching has a great danger of returning us to the fear. I am sure in the hands of a very adept student the fear can be transformed with his work. For me Joanna Macy's work is more suited to my nature. There are many paths to the door of inner knowing and fearlessness. Each of us must find our own and then join with others to do our work. It is imperative. As both of these visionary teachers tell us, this work is not just our challenge, it is our opportunity. But as we all have experienced, you can't even take advantage of an opportunity unless you are ready.

Somehow I can't just leave it here without talking about the mystery of it all. So far it all sounds cut and dried. Learn this and do this and then all is well. The fact is as I see it, we do not even know who we are or where we are going or why we are here. We may be seeing just a tiny grain of sand in the entire sand painting of life. We have to keep putting ourselves back in perspective. Poetry is always good for this. Many poems could help us here but for some reason I immediately thought of this poem by Ranier Maria Rilke. I want to share it with you.

The Man Watching

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler's sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

by Rainer Maria Rilke

One thing I want to do in July when I go to visit Kadyn and his parents is to introduce him to poetry. I think he's going to need it.

June 5, Friday

In the Greater Universe All Life is for Contribution,acrylic
by Jim Rose-Foreman, 2007

Yesterday for the first time in 20 years or so I sat down and really looked at our personal finances. This is on the list of things I want to do just below having a complete root canal. My budget plan has always been to live far enough below my income that I never have to keep track of what goes in or out. But now that both of us are retired that's getting harder to do. It's time to figure it all out. And of course I now have more time than money which is convenient.

At the same time that I'm looking at our family budget, I've decided to take a look at the world economic crisis. Now this is even farther down on my list, somewhere below being in the same room with Dick Chaney. But my dear friend Carolyn Bninski, a dedicated activist for peace and justice, has this way of making it seem almost appealing to look at the hard things in life like nuclear weapons, war, racism and corporate greed. I am starting off my quest of understanding the economic crisis with a book Carolyn recommended by David Korten entitled Agenda for a New Economy: from Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth. The book cover proclaims: "Why Wall Street Can't Be Fixed and How to Replace it."

Reading a book on economics is not as bad as you might think. In fact there is not one graph in the whole book which makes me feel better right away. Korten has a knack for explaining the problem and also communicating the vision of a better way using language that is understandable as well as deep, wide and inclusive reflecting thorough knowledge and understanding of the issue.

To summarize, Korten lays much of the blame for our current global economic crisis on Wall Street which has created what he calls "phantom wealth" or wealth created without production of anything of real value. He states:

It is easy to confuse money with the real wealth for which it can be exchanged - our labor, ideas, land, gold, health care, food and all other things with value in their own right. The illusions of phantom wealth are so convincing that most Wall Street Players believe the wealth they are creating is real."

Phantom wealth is everywhere in our economy creating the fortunes of the extremely wealthy while simultaneously deflating the value of real labor and goods. I am not the first to liken this scenario to the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. We are currently at the point where the curtain is falling down and the Wizards of Wall Street are pumping away trying desperately to keep their illusive world from collapse. It's over. They just don't know it yet. The sooner we understand this and start work to create a new, intentional, ethical, community based system, the better.

Korten outlines a 12 step process to begin this economic transformation. Step one is the umbrella for the other steps: "Redirect the focus of economic policy from growing phantom wealth to growing real wealth." To accomplish this he recommends a process he calls "liberating Main Street". Main Street is defined as small local businesses and even small corporations with strong ties to a local community. The goal is for local communities to achieve economic self-reliance by supplying local people with their needs and, through a system of fair trade, exchange surpluses with other communities. This is a human scale economics that even I can understand.

Barak Obama came to the US Presidency with a mandate for change. Certainly many things are different than in the past administration. Yet many things including the unquestioning faith in Wall Street and phantom wealth have not changed. Green technology, promoted by Obama, while needed, is after all just another technological fix. It is not fundamental change of the system. Anyone who looks deeply at the state of Planet Earth and human culture right now can see that a techno fix, a tweak, will not work. Korten in a statement on his web site says unequivocally: "We face a race against time between the awakening of the Earth Community consciousness and the spread of social and environmental collapse. Our window of opportunity could slam shut at any time with chilling finality." The last chapter of his book is entitled, "When the People Lead the Leaders Will follow". So there it is again, "we are the ones we have been waiting for" as the Hopi Elder's Prophecy tells us. We know this is true. It puts the economic crisis in context. "The Great Turning", this required change in human consciousness, involves a fundamental change in the trajectory of human cultural evolution - away from the trajectory of Empire to that of Community. Use your imagination if you will, to conjure up what that might mean in your own life.

That takes me back to my own family budget. My retirement fund, like those of many Americans, is in a mutual fund which invests in Wall Street. The fund like all others has taken a dive this year. I could wait to see if it goes back up and play the game with the Wizard for a while longer. Or I could take it out of that dying system altogether and invest in my community through municipal bonds or even a community bank. After all, that investment small as it is, represents a lot of hard work by both myself and my mom. We both earned our money serving people. What a crazy paradox to have that same money now serve the dark side of human endeavor. There is no Wizard behind the curtain, just a bunch of skinny guys in black suits sipping Starbucks for a little while longer. Its time to leave the Wizard to his ultimate demise, claim the lion's courage and make a change.

June 1, Monday

1952 Dad and me

Four months ago I retired from my job as a home health nurse. I had been nursing for 25 years ever since my youngest child started to school. Nursing was an amazing opportunity for service. At the same time, for me anyway, it was very stressful. It's only now after stopping for a while that I can see how stressed I was. One of the consequences of stressful work in the world is that significant inner work piles up unattended. Being a mom of three and working as a nurse made my life so full that there was no time to process much of anything. Now in the relative quiet of my life in the woods there is time to look deeply at those places where I had only peeked before.

So in the last few days I've decided to start out with one of the big ones and take a look at death. This was triggered by the fact that last Sunday was the 35th anniversary of my father's death. Every year I remember those last days of his life. He was 70. It was 1974 and I was 28 years old, a mother of two four year olds and a five year old. I lived with my husband and kids in a clapboard house in rural Mississippi with no laundry or even potable water. My husband taught at Tougaloo College and I volunteered to register rural voters for the Mississippi Freedom Democrats Party. I thought we were helping to save the world or something like that. It was all-consuming.

One day I got a call from my mom saying that Dad was very ill and in the hospital. She wanted me to come home right away. So I went. They had just moved from Minneapolis where I grew up to a small town in Northern Minnesota where Dad planned to fish for the rest of his life. He went to the hospital for a routine cardiac procedure. The admission chest x-ray showed a spot on his lung which they identified as cancer. On Dad's 70th birthday, May 21st they performed surgery to remove part of his lung but found massive caner through out his thorax and closed him up without removing anything. Ten days later he died on May 31st, 1974.

The ten days that Dad was in the hospital were crazy. Mostly I was crazy. I need to preface this part of the story by saying that, as an only child I was unusually close to my father. He was my source of absolute unconditional love. I thought he was all-powerful and all-knowing and all-wise. Kind of like the standard version of God. This adoration continued right up until my marriage. At 28 when I was called back home these feelings were barely below the surface.

I remember years earlier my grandfather died and our huge extended family sat in the hospital waiting room. I was 15, yet in front of my all my aunts and uncles and cousins I sat on my dad's lap and cried, "Don't ever leave me!" The fear of losing my father was deep. I quickly buried the fear and never looked at it again until he died. Even then I barely peeked at it; I was on the run.

At this point I've had quite a lot of experience with death as a nurse and EMT, even working in hospice for 3 years. I've read many books of the apparently required reading list on death and dying, taken a 5 day workshop with death guru Elizabeth Kubler Ross and nearly completed an MA in grief counseling. I know we all handle the death of our people differently, but when my dad was dying I was pretty much of a mess. In the hospital I sat with him day and night until they asked me to leave. I was hostile to the hospital staff, plainly they were not doing their job of making him better. I sat by his bed and cried which must have made him fell terrible since he never wanted to see me hurt. Even though I was not a religious person, I tried praying over him, saying the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm plaintively. I made pilgrimages to the hospital chapel to plead and bargain with God to save my dad. Nothing worked. When he finally died I remember feeling totally defeated. Mom and I stuffed his clothes into a paper sack and left the hospital in a daze.

Over the years the memories of my dad both living and dying have faded some. Mom and I had 30 more years together - time enough to evolve into friends before she died at age 88. I did better with her death. Again it happened quickly with eight days of vigil in the hospital. We had a hospice room. I played soft music, did as many of her personal cares as I could, talked with her gently and let her go. I could see that she was ready and at peace. We had done our work as much as possible.

As Jim and I age I realize we have a lot of work to do to get to the point of welcoming our own and each other's deaths - not in a morbid sense, but in a sense of being complete with this life. I'm not planning on either of us dying anytime soon but I also don't want to close the door to that possibility because closing the door to that possibility puts a big lid on the possibilities of living. Fear does that. The possibilities of death are all around; the possibilities of life are also everywhere and plenty, and they are related.

There is a song that keeps coming to me by the Arkansas Benedictine nun, Macrina Wiederkehr in her book Seven Sacred Pauses:

Put everything in order
as day begins to fade.
All things are passing,
moment to moment,
breath by breath.
All things are passing,
moment by moment,
birth to death.
Take off that cloak of fear,
the divine strength you seek is here,
and you know you are dying to live,
you know you are dying to live.
So put everything in order as day begins to fade.

The words in this song that really get to me are :"And know you are dying to live." Macrina must see these as important too because she repeats them, "...and you know you are dying to live."

I can see that I have made some progress over the years in my acceptance of death. But you know, it feels like there is a big piece that hasn't been looked at or faced. There is a significant Buddhist practice that I have so far managed to avoid. Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn gives us an explanation of this meditation:

The Buddhist Sutra of Mindfulness speaks about the meditation on the corpse: meditate on the decomposition of the body, how the body bloats and turns violet, how it is eaten by worms until only bits of blood and flesh still cling to the bones, meditate up to the point where only white bones remain, which in turn are slowly worn away and turn into dust. Meditate like that, knowing that your own body will undergo the same process. Meditate on the corpse until you are calm and at peace, until your mind and heart are light and tranquil and a smile appears on your face. Thus, by overcoming revulsion and fear, life will be seen as infinitely precious, every second of it worth living.

Granted at first or second glance this is not an appealing practice. I have to admit that I have avoided it for years. It always seemed too macabre. Of course the whole point is not to make yourself miserable but to release yourself from the fear, to let yourself finally live. And "you know you are dying to live."

God, or the Universe, if you prefer, has already helped me accept my death by giving me gradual loses to observe - the keenness of my eyesight, the sharpness of my memory, the swiftness of my gait have all gradually diminished. It's hard to deny, although we all try. What kindness! Helping me to see that this body, mind and personality are impermanent, easing me along. Perhaps now I am ready for the corpse meditation. I have hundreds of oak, hickory and walnut teachers and the perfect place to decay right here in the woods. Perhaps someday soon I will post a blog piece on the progress of my decay complete with photos.