Fourteen Recommendations When Facing Climate Tragedy
Fourteen Recommendations When Facing Climate Tragedy
Editor’s addition: The concept of Deep Adaptation to impending societal breakdown due to climate disruption is spreading around the world. It was first coined in a speech by Professor Jem Bendell in December 2016, but spread rapidly since his Deep Adaptation Paper went viral. His paper has influenced climate thinkers worldwide, including Extinction Rebellion. It is recommended reading. In his lengthy post, After Climate Despair – One Tale Of What Can Emerge, Dr. Bendell reflects on his personal journey. This is an excerpt, reprinted with his kind permission.
…Come the summer of ‘17 I knew I had not given myself space to explore the “deep adaptation” agenda as much as I had wanted to. Within that, I had not developed the kind of equanimity – or peace of mind – about climate chaos that would mean I could work on it directly. I realise many other people must be in this situation.
I see equanimity as important if we are to respond to changing realities without fear, anger or sadness clouding our judgement. I see equanimity as a means of usefulness rather than simply coping emotionally. Where might that equanimity come from? In the past few months I have been in discussions and correspondence with people as I explore the spiritual or metaphysical perspectives that might make some sense in the face of our climate tragedy. I was fortunate enough that my University agreed for me to take a year unpaid leave from September 2017, and this has allowed me time to reflect, read, discuss, as well as participate in various meditative practices. In particular, I have been exploring the idea of “interbeing”, a term from Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn and popularized by author Charles Eisenstein. Being asked by Charles for feedback on a first draft of his book on climate change also prompted me to clarify some thoughts. So here goes…
Interbeing is a word describing a conscious experience of being more than our physical body and separate mind. It is another way of describing higher consciousness, so as to emphasize its more embodied form. The idea is fairly well established in non-Abrahamic spiritual traditions, as well as within the more gnostic threads of Abrahamic religions. The idea is that although we experience ourselves as separate due to our senses, consciousness is not limited to our brains or bodies. Rather, it is like a field of magnetism or gravity. Moreover, it may be like a field that is not limited in time and space as magnetism or gravity are, instead encompassing all of existence. From this perspective it can be said that consciousness is having an experience of itself through us.
How might interbeing raise you from the threat of depression if you sense the end of everything one can contribute to due to near-term extinction of the human race and the majority of species? Not by making us feel more as one with all humans who will be born to die young. Or more as one with all dogs and cats who will starve to death. Nor by feeling more as one with all the birds in the trees who will die of heat exhaustion. Or more at one with those landscapes we most enjoy seeing and experiencing which will transform out of recognition. Or more as one with the wonderful culture of ideas that we have enjoyed learning and contributing to, but that will vanish into ruins like other lost civilizations. The more we experience interbeing with all these deeply important things, the more we may suffer. An answer may lie in our sense of what there “is” to inter-be with. There are no half measures with interbeing. All is one, as that great phrase explains.
OK, you might say, “We are at one with everything. And if we are lucky we might experience states of consciousness where that feels real to us. But how does that help us deal emotionally with the loss of civilization, the mass extinction of other species and potentially even human extinction?”
I think the answer lies in whether we see that greater consciousness as a source. In particular, does consciousness exist as an original phenomenon that gave rise to matter (and so lies within it, finding new forms through it), or does consciousness arise out of matter (which logically would imply randomly). There is a lot of support in the history of human thought for the former view of consciousness giving rise to matter. Now there is a lot of new scientific evidence for that view, including the latest in evolutionary biology and in quantum physics (which I will summarize elsewhere). If we have the view that consciousness gave rise to and works through matter, then we see how it gave rise to species, all humans and all civilizations. Therefore we are one with the potential for all things.
Thich Nhat Hahn has suggested we take time to reflect on the number of civilizations that have collapsed in the past. We could walk around the ruins, or watch a video of someone doing so. Imagine the thousands of lives, with the joys, heartaches, intense discussions, hopes for the future and stories of the past. All so intense at the time and all now gone. Then consider how these civilizations have kept arising again and again in different places and times. There appears to be an underlying impulse towards them. Or let’s go a step further. Take a moment to reflect on the way our planetary ecosystem has kept producing hominids, most of which never evolved into humans but went extinct. They were bipedal large brained animals with opposable thumbs and in many cases the desires to draw and to burn. Therefore, some scientists are beginning to consider whether evolution is entirely random. That doesn’t imply an anthropomorphic God that designs species, but a field of consciousness that gives rise to similar patterns of life.
In one ancient tradition this is called the Akashic Record. It means that who we are and what we do now is both influenced by and will influence an eternal record that pervades all time and space. If a collective consciousness is understood and experienced in this way, the pain of the passing of life as-we-know-it may be lessened. Because we are one with the source consciousness that gives rise to all life and will do so again and again.
Many people who are troubled by climate change are “environmentalists” and many such people are interested in reconnecting with non human “nature” as a means of sensing our interbeing. While this can be a useful first step, it may extend the awareness of self only partially in both time and space and could lead to new waves of pain, anger, sadness, distraction, and therefore distorted thinking on what to do now. Therefore, the climate tragedy invites us to see interbeing as all or nothing. You might rightly point out that I am at risk of proposing a worldview because it makes one feel better. This subjective distortion is the root of confirmation bias as well as the flaw of so many religions. “It must be right because it feels wonderful.” I currently have no answer to that problem, apart from that I know in my own life I have not arrived at this perspective quickly as a means of tranquility. Indeed, I think the more I embrace it and bring it into my daily consciousness, the implications may not be so easy after all.
The pain associated with an awareness of climate tragedy may be deadened with this perspective on total interbeing, but there remains a question of meaning for our individual lives. Given that our previous ideas of purpose and meaning have been shaken with the awareness of impending collapse, most people would seek a new basis for the meaning of their lives. That is something I will need to spend more time on this year, perhaps always. But I am already wondering whether our meaning can be found within a purpose of approaching this moment with as much awakened connection to universal source consciousness as possible. In that way, contributing to the Akashic memory of that source consciousness at an unusual time in existence. I have a feeling that such an approach would involve heightened compassion and wonder. I also sense that the positive “vision” for what we can work towards while accepting a coming collapse will be about communities that nurture that compassion and wonder. But it is something I need to reflect on and discuss some more.
The perspective I have just expressed assumes some “free will” within us. Or to put it another way, some ability for original phenomena to be created by us, within us, to then add back to the source consciousness. How is it possible for there to be any agency in a part of a whole if all is one? How would we know if our view that we have free will isn’t actually determined for us? We don’t. But if we didn’t have free will to exist in ways that create novel input into the akashic record, then what is the consciousness within individual organic lifeforms for? Perhaps nothing. Or perhaps simply to express the intention of the whole. And that is what I have to conclude at this time: I do not know if there is any individual agency. Nevertheless, the implication is that to approach life from from a heightened connection to source consciousness will more likely align with the purpose of source consciousness, if there is one. Now is when we begin to speculate. It appears that source consciousness tends to diversify the complexity of matter. It appears it creates sentient beings who wish to avoid pain and experience pleasure.
It appears that the process of unfolding complexity leads to new forms of reflective consciousness. Therefore, I could choose a purpose to reduce suffering, promote joy, enable reflection, and unleash emergence. This does not sound so different from the great wisdom traditions, as well as the common sense knowledge of most people I know, if not deluded by obsessions over race, nation, politics, status, wealth or religious correctness.
I am currently in Ubud, Bali, which attracts many spiritual seekers from around the world. It is a Hindu island, with an animist flavor, and many religiously observant families. Many of the foreigners participate in what some would call “new age” spiritual practices, such as shamanic breathwork or cacao ceremonies. Despite that, I have not yet discussed any of what I have written above with the people I meet here. Because I have often felt lonelier with people who are overtly on a spiritual path. When I hear of their focus on positive thinking, visioning, and being in touch with one’s body and emotions, I wonder if this is naive and self-serving. Yet the effect is nice enough and I don’t want to upset them. It is a cliche that some of the people with the most needs and fears gravitate to either religious devotion or new age spirituality. I do not think the worldview I have described in my writing today is an immediately self-serving one. It would be far easier to dismiss climate tragedy as hype and block it out as one does a warrior pose while breathing incense. I am discovering, therefore, that I may need to be proactive if I want to be part of a community of “spiritual” people, approaching life in full awareness of the climate tragedy.
Fourteen recommendations when facing the possibility of climate tragedy
Here are fourteen recommendations based on what has been helping me, or what, in hindsight, I think could have helped me!
- Return to, or explore afresh, the idea of a divine or a spirit or a consciousness or a God that is prior to the Earth and moves through the Universe right now and forever more. Do so without seeking a simple story of explanation but a sense of faith that there is an existence and a meaning beyond our culture, our species and our planet. Such ‘faith’ helps anyone to experience and process the inevitable difficulties and traumas of life.
- Listen to those stories from people both past and present who tell us that despair is not the end and therefore does not have to be avoided. Recognise how many spiritual traditions see despair as a gateway to our growth.
- Beware when people are promoting their views on what they think the implications of information will be, rather than views on the information itself. The impacts of certain information about climate on other people’s motivations are not certain, and in many cases the darkest analyses have triggered a new level of creativity and boldness. Instead, look at the information and analysis directly for yourself, without second guessing what some interpretations might lead to.
- Recognize that any emotional or intellectual resistance you may experience to information which implies catastrophe may come from what you have been consciously or subconsciously telling yourself about your own self-worth, purpose and meaning. Then remember how your views of yourself and the world have evolved through your life and still can.
- Don’t panic. Give yourself time to evolve both personally and professionally in response to your emerging awareness, but ensure you stay connected to a group or an activity which keeps reminding you of the basis for your emerging awareness.
- Recognize there is much work ahead for you to reconstitute concepts of meaning and what’s good and to align your life with those. It will not happen overnight, yet it will not happen if you do not give time to this work. There may be some time needed to bridge your existing life with the way you will want to live in future.
- Plan more time and resources for you to do things which inspire wonder at life. This could be more time in beautiful environments, or with uplifting music, or in contemplation, or through creative writing, or being with loved ones and close friends. That means freeing up time from other activities such as TV, social media and mainstream news. It may also mean downshifting from your workload.
- Look for opportunities for supported self-reflection and sense-making. This is because your worldview and self identity will undoubtedly transform overtime as you process the new information and analysis.
- Expect a catharsis, both personal and professional. This will occur because the subconscious or conscious limits that you placed on yourself until now will be lifted. Go with that rush of energy and creativity, but be vigilant that those new activities don’t become so consuming they distract you from the personal work you still need to do.
- If you are a mission-driven professional in fields related to environment or social justice then expect that you may be driven to rebuild a sense of self worth and that this need of the ego, while natural and potentially useful, could become a frantic distraction.
- Expect a change in your personal relationships and how you spend your spare time. Some forms of small talk and light-hearted social interaction with acquaintances may seem pointless, while you may wish to spend more time with close friends and family. While for some this could be a welcome rebalancing, for others this can become a vector of reclusiveness and loneliness. Therefore it is important to find new ways of connecting with people on the new levels that feel meaningful to you.
- Create a positive vision of people sharing compassion, love and play. It may feel that an eco-tragic outlook means you cannot have any meaningful vision of a better future for yourself, your community, or humanity. An absence of something positive to work towards can be destabilising and limiting. Some people will think you are depressed – or depressing – and need some “positive thinking”. For a personal vision, the answer may lie in developing a vision for how you will be approaching life, rather than imagining attributes of a lifestyle. This may parallel the dimensions of a collective vision. A future full of love and learning, rather than flying cars and fancy robots, could be a way to imagine a more beautiful world. And remember, the future will still be beautiful in its own way, no matter what life forms are in it – or if your favourite town is under water!
- Don’t get dogmatic and avoid those who do. That comes from recognising that our terms for phenomena are not the same as the phenomena themselves. The words we use imply things which may have effects on us but aren’t necessarily so. Words like nearterm, civilisation, collapse, and tragedy, are our words, and may trigger ideas, images and emotions which aren’t inevitable consequences of the phenomena being described (more on that “social constructionism” later).
- Do not prioritise maintaining your own mental and physical situation at the expense of the need to act in solidarity with future generations who will live with the future we are creating for them.
Burning Man | What We've Learned
Burning Man | What We’ve Learned
Sisyphus is a mythological figure, an ancient Greek king who was so clever that he was constantly fooling and tricking the gods. Long myth short, eventually he died, because clever only gets you so far, and was given a special punishment in Hades: he was eternally condemned to roll a giant boulder up a steep hill, and every time he was about to reach the top, the boulder would slip from his grasp and roll back to the bottom, and he’d have to start over again. All his labor was in vain, all his best efforts futile.
In 1942, French philosopher and novelist Albert Camus wrote an essay titled The Myth of Sisyphus in which he used Sisyphus as a metaphor to describe the absurdity of the human condition. We are searching for truth and beauty and clarity in a world that is empty and devoid not just of God but of any truth and value at all.
Camus concluded his essay by saying that even though we are all Sisyphus, we can be happy anyway. We can embrace the absurdity, and make our choices, and find satisfaction in the futile struggle to raise that boulder up the mountain, again and again.
The evidence from the experiment of Burning Man is conclusive: we can do better than this. Burning Man is a better offer. Even if Camus’s basic description of our existential condition is correct, we don’t want to live that way. Burning Man shows how we don’t have to. It is a prototype demonstrating how we can live very different lives than the myth of Sisyphus allows.
Paying attention is the very minimum qualification for doing this. The place where you have to get started individually. There is no replacement for it. There is no hack for it. It is where participation begins, and culture only belongs to those who participate in it.
GALLERY | Scott London Photography, Best of Burning Man
It doesn’t matter what you know; it matters whether you are learning. It doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor, but whether you are giving. It doesn’t matter whether you are good, but whether you are being good. Doing good.
This activity is not to achieve a specific outcome; it is to keep practicing skills that are unconditional—things we value and do for their own sake—rather than transactional. Learning unconditional skills is fundamentally different from learning transactional ones. As we all have discovered in this life, you can’t make someone care. You can’t force someone to love. You can’t compel someone to be curious or conscientious. You can only make them go through the motions of these things, which is far less effective and just as likely to cause resentment and resistance. You can force someone to learn how to do arithmetic, but you can’t make them be interested in math.
The only way you can actually encourage someone to practice unconditional skills, rather than practicing the appearance of having such skills in front of an authority figure, is to give them the opportunity to practice authentically, which means putting them in an environment in which this is possible. This means putting them in an environment in which one can discover and experiment with one’s own unique intrinsic motivation. As they discover and explore what matters to them, as they practice doing what they care about and achieving mastery with it, they internalize the unconditional skills that make it possible for them to truly participate in a culture. They seek out expertise, they find communities of shared passion, they pool resources to create more interesting projects, they contribute and give. People whose primary motivations and skills come from extrinsically motivated tasks have no reason to stop the world from sinking if they’re able to profit from the waves. People whose primary motivations and skills come from intrinsically motivated goals have practiced sacrificing the needs of the moment for something greater than themselves.
Burning Man is not a noun, it’s a verb, because really all culture is a set of verbs. So we do not get to stop. We keep going, improving, making things better, recognizing that there will be imperfections and trade-offs and still working, with no end point in either sight or mind, to practice being the people and communities we want to be. No matter how good you get, you will always be an amateur, trying to learn new ways to do it better.
Burning Man is a proof of concept demonstrating that a culture that tries to keep people in their place is far less effective and unifying than a culture that tries to put people in a position where they can find their own meaningful goals and make choices that are meaningful to them. This is what we have demonstrated. Burning Man is supported by an army of volunteers, tens of thousands that we know of, around the world, representing every income level and station of life, liberal and conservative and apolitical. It has donors ranging from the superwealthy to people struggling to get by. Burning Man has thrived because this dynamic works. People who discover what is important to them when they work with you, who can make meaningful choices as a result of your presence in their life, and who feel that there is still room for them with you as they grow and change as a result of these choices, will stand by you through hell.
You often get more from people, much more, when you engage in unconditional relationships with them than you ever do from transactional ones. We overlook that in our default world because we do not practice the skills that lead to unconditional relationships. We are bad at them.
Happiness, let us remember, is found in working at your capacity toward a goal you find meaningful. Burning Man culture spreads because we have more fun, because that fun is good for people in ways that are meaningful to them, and because anyone can play. These things are all that it takes to develop the skills in people that are, as they are mastered, the essence of a thriving culture.
But let’s not discount the competence of artists to do this work. Art, like laughter, like love, is the epitome of something we do for its own sake and thus has unconditional value. Art is also the epitome of creative tension. Often it is possible to use art to practice vital cultural skills that are not yet imagined, let alone understood, anywhere else. Of course Burning Man started out as an art experiment; what starts out as art becomes culture.
We don’t need a blueprint, we don’t want a master plan, we just need to practice the skills and create the kind of spaces we want to live in, and share them. And if you don’t know what those skills and spaces are yet, make art and give it away to find out. That’s how Burning Man started. Then find someone doing something interesting that you do not understand at all, and ask: “How can I help?” That’s how it grew. Out of these simple acts, individuals and cultures can place themselves in creative tension and grow together.
Above all, do not be Sisyphus. Don’t let the role you are assigned isolate you from others.
Don’t accept the need to manufacture plastic happiness out of meaningless, passionless pursuits. Don’t turn yourself into a commodity. Practice reaching out to the world around you. Develop skills that create conditions out of which things you and others genuinely care about, deeply and passionately, can emerge. Over and over again.
PHOTOGRAPHY | courtesy, Scott London (www.scottlondon.com)
EXCERPTS | from The Scene That Became Cities, by Caveat Magister
published by North Atlantic Books, copyright ©2019. Reprinted by permission of publisher.
Thich Nhat Hanh's Code of Global Ethics
Editor’s note | At the turning of the Millennium, the United Nations chose Thich Nhat Hanh’s code of global ethics, the Five Mindfulness Trainings, as the foundation for a non-sectarian ethical path for humanity. Along with several Nobel Peace Prize laureates, he helped to create Unesco’s Manifesto 2000 which includes the sprit of the five trainings and has been signed by 75-million people.
Pause, Breathe, Smile
the golden rule
We’re ethically motivated when our intentions are based on conscious values. But where do our values come from? Often, we learn our values through role models, our family, our ancestry, and society. I can also explore values in daily interactions, such as when someone asks me questions about myself. I listen deeply, as what people choose to ask reflects what they value.
Actually, many sets of ethical guidelines might all be boiled down to one: The Golden Rule. From Christianity to Islam, from Baha’i to Zoroastrianism, and from indigenous spirituality to humanist existentialism, this is like a golden thread running through civilizations, like a single figure in a complex carpet interwoven by the diverse cultures on our blue planet.
The Golden Rule is a tenet that advises us to treat others as we would want them to treat us. Its nondual wisdom of seeing others as not different from ourselves clears our view. And it’s an agreement: we are all in this together. This reintroduces us to our relationality. Our personal experiences of it will vary, of course. For instance, anyone routinely mistreated could have more experiential insight into it than me. Yet the value of the Golden Rule doesn’t vary. It’s one truth, with multiple applications. Its value becomes bankable when we realize that it begins with us. Setting intention from such an active, awakened perspective surely results in our becoming better people.
To identify with other beings as closely as you do yourself . . . world peace, as simple as that.
mindfulness trainings
With vigorous motivation as a base and the Golden Rule as our pole star, we look for training. How can we clarify and apply our intentions in daily life? Fortunately, we inherit classic precedents. For example, all three Abrahamic religions teach ten primary precepts.* We might boil these down into five themes:
1 Reverence for life
2 Generosity
3 Love
4 Communication
5 Sobriety
Some mindfulness practitioners review these every morning, perhaps from a sheet of paper by the bathroom mirror that might read something like this:
On behalf of myself and all beings, I intend to refrain from consciously hurting anyone.
I intend to refrain from overtly or covertly taking what is not mine.
I intend to abstain from sexuality that is exploitive or abusive.
I intend to be sure that my speech is kind as well as true.
I intend to refrain from addictive behaviors that confuse my mind and lead to heedlessness.
Such mindfulness trainings outline a gold standard against which we can measure truth, and our responsibility to it, for regular review. I’d like to share a version as envisioned and revisioned over the years by Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village community. They’re invaluable for studying, observing, and realizing our aspirations to become warm, trustworthy, authentic human beings, for ourselves and others. I consider them as my universal survival kit. As you’ll see, they’re quite contemporary. They serve as sturdy, dynamic, daily points of departure for awakening mindfulness.
My weekly circle reads and discusses them every full moon. Thousands of mindfulness practitioners engage them regularly. Please offer them your serene mind, your open heart, and a reflective ear, open to what resonates within.
The Five Mindfulness Trainings of Thich Nhat Hanh
THE FIRST MINDFULNESS TRAINING Reverence for Life
Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating the insight of interbeing and compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, or in my way of life. Seeing that harmful actions arise from anger, fear, greed, and intolerance, which in turn come from dualistic and discriminative thinking, I will cultivate openness, nondiscrimination, and nonattachment to views in order to transform violence, fanaticism, and dogmatism in myself and in the world.
THE SECOND MINDFULNESS TRAINING True Happiness
Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing, and oppression, I am committed to practicing generosity in my thinking, speaking, and acting. I am determined not to steal and not to possess anything that should belong to others, and I will share my time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need. I will practice looking deeply to see that the happiness and suffering of others are not separate from my own happiness and suffering; that true happiness is not possible without understanding and compassion; and that running after wealth, fame, power, and sensual pleasures can bring much suffering and despair. I am aware that happiness depends on my mental attitude and not on external conditions, and that I can live happily in the present moment simply by remembering that I already have more than enough conditions to be happy. I am committed to practicing Right Livelihood so that I can help reduce the suffering of living beings on Earth and reverse the process of global warming.
THE THIRD MINDFULNESS TRAINING True Love
Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, I am committed to cultivating responsibility and learning ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families, and society. Knowing that sexual desire is not love, and that sexual activity motivated by craving always harms myself as well as others, I am determined not to engage in sexual relations without true love and a deep, long-term commitment made known to my family and friends. I will do everything in my power to protect children from sexual abuse and to prevent couples and families from being broken by sexual misconduct. Seeing that body and mind are one, I am committed to learning appropriate ways to take care of my sexual energy and cultivating lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and inclusiveness — which are the four basic elements of true love —
for my greater happiness and the greater happiness of others. Practicing true love, we know that we will continue beautifully into the future.
THE FOURTH MINDFULNESS TRAINING Loving Speech and Deep Listening
Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I am committed to cultivating loving speech and compassionate listening in order to relieve suffering and to promote reconciliation and peace in myself and among other people, ethnic and religious groups, and nations. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I am committed to speaking truthfully using words that inspire confidence, joy, and hope. When anger is manifesting in me, I am determined not to speak. I will practice mindful breathing and walking in order to recognize and to look deeply into my anger. I know that the roots of anger can be found in my wrong perceptions and lack of understanding of the suffering in myself and in the other person. I will speak and listen in a way that can help myself and the other person to transform suffering and see the way out of difficult situations. I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to utter words that can cause division or discord. I will practice Right Diligence to nourish my capacity for understanding, love, joy, and inclusiveness and gradually transform the anger, violence, and fear that lie deep in my consciousness.
THE FIFTH MINDFULNESS TRAINING Nourishment and Healing
Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I am committed to cultivating good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I will practice looking deeply into how I consume the Four Kinds of Nutriments, namely edible foods, sense impressions, volition, and consciousness. I am determined not to gamble, or to use alcohol, drugs, or any other products that contain toxins, such as certain websites, electronic games, TV programs, films, magazines, books, and conversations. I will practice coming back to the present moment to be in touch with the refreshing, healing, and nourishing elements in me and around me, not letting regrets and sorrow drag me back into the past nor letting anxieties, fear, or craving pull me out of the present moment. I am determined not to try to cover up loneliness, anxiety, or other suffering by losing myself in consumption. I will contemplate interbeing and consume in a way that preserves peace, joy, and well-being in my body and consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family, my society, and the Earth.
trainings for a creative, fulfilling, beneficial lifestyle
Mindfulness trainings are voluntary, pragmatic, and relational. They resonate harmoniously with equivalents found in a range of spiritual traditions. Yet they’re bottom-up, rather than top-down. Lived experience rather than dogma or decree is their standard. They’re not motivated by punishment or reward but by self-improvement.
Each training is titled with a primary virtue, an aspiration for the best within each of us. Then each begins in recognizing how suffering is always present from the get-go, implicitly, to be understood and transformed. Each also points us toward what’s beneficial and steers us away from what’s harmful. In reality, wholesome and unwholesome are marbled together. So there’s healthy wisdom in maintaining a nondual perspective that sees how one implies the other, as two sides of the same coin.
Of course, situations are not always clear-cut. We may not always know what to do. Still, we have models to draw upon. We can apply our natural goodness as recognized in previous situations to current similar situations by extension. What’s useful in a traffic jam (patience, for instance) may also apply at an office meeting. This process implies ethics can be a lifestyle of continual creative discovery.
look around
Mindfulness isn’t necessarily about awakening within our interior life only. Otherwise it might be considered merely navel-gazing. Awakening wisdom teaches me how my exterior and interior life are not separate. What happens in the world is happening within me, and vice versa. A committed, engaged practice of mindfulness invites me to observe and work with the imbalances implicit in social relations. Social conditions often require proper study for skillful observation and practice to take place. Independent scholar Ed Ng has deftly articulated some of these conditions as “personal exposure to vulnerability, uneven material conditions, power relations, and my position in all of it.” Mindfulness practice provides a safe space of refuge in which I can awaken, and stay woke, to such themes in my lived world.
And mindfulness shows me how hope need not be just an emotion or belief, but a conscious course of action, for confirmation. Without such hope, I don’t know how I would survive.
a path with a heart
Awakening mindfulness takes courage. And in the root of the word courage we can hear the French word for heart: coeur. So mindfulness trainings encourage us to listen fearlessly to our heart. In setting intention, I ground myself in my breathing to be in touch with my body’s heart, where I feel my intentions usually connect from; my actions tend to connect from my physical center, below my navel. Awareness of vital body centers leads me away from the concept that everything’s happening in my cranium.
Sincere and truthful, heartful and wise, mindfulness trainings open us to healing and transformation, for ourselves and our relations. For instance, the trainings encourage us to notice where we hurt. Too often we flinch and look away from our suffering or hide it under a bandage or medicate it or fill it up with stuff. Easy ways out. They’re the status quo of a mass culture of entertainment, which discounts true virtue and preys instead on greed and fear, cynicism and despair. Yet it’s our soft spots of vulnerability that reveal to us our heart, our core capacity for true goodness. If we don’t resist confronting our hurts but recognize and even contend with them, here’s where we “build our humanity and keep it alive,” as author Maxine Hong Kingston puts it.
If these trainings don’t provoke questions, listen deeper. For instance, what does “reverence for life” say about war? Abortion? Vegetarianism? Might “being made known to family and friends” compromise a gay relationship that doesn’t want to be outed? Is a recreational drug alright if it doesn’t contain toxins? And so on. Mindfulness trainings are to be wrestled with, tested through action, then viewed in the mirror of life’s continual, creative feedback. This means to study, observe, and practice being human. No more, no less.
speaking from personal experience
I’ve incorporated mindfulness trainings into my regular routine formally since 1996. I can attest to their being one of the most concrete ways I know of practicing mindfulness. I never fail to marvel at how closely integrated their guidelines are for the development of both my moral values and my consciousness, and how powerful this can be for overcoming suffering. I might add that Thich Nhat Hanh uses “trainings” as another word the Buddha used besides “precepts” to describe these practices.
I’d like to give the last word here on precepts, in general, to my dear contemporary Frank Ostaseski, who defines his own five precepts for service as “invitations.” (That works too.) Cofounder of America’s first Buddhist hospice, he’s gone on to become a world-class teacher for all of us wanting to know what death can teach us about living fully. Leading retreats, he often begins with traditional precepts. He explains:
Mindfulness does not set us free . . . wisdom does. So it’s helpful to have a basis for wisdom, and ethics can be such a support. Also the mindfulness develops our understanding of the precepts, and so there is this symbiotic exchange between precepts and mindfulness practice. Finally there is power in a vow, which is what the precepts are . . . a way of living by vow. They strengthen commitment, which gives rise to faith, which generates increased energy, which supports mindfulness, which deepens calmness, which allows for the cultivation of insight and developing wisdom.
*The Hebrew for the “Ten Commandments” is Aseret HaDibbrot — the ten sayings, utterances, or statements. The word dibbrot itself bears no connotation of punishment or reward. You could say it’s the way the Beloved has of showing us the way things are (so follow the Way).
From Pause, Breathe, Smile: Awakening Mindfulness When Meditation Is Not Enough by Gary Gach / Sounds True / September 2018/ Reprinted by permission of publisher.
“A lovely offering of wisdom, practices, and kindness to help foster a mindful life and a compassionate heart.” – JACK KORNFIELD author of No Time Like the Present
Shut It Down: Stories From a Fierce, Loving Resistance
Many of us [who participated in actions at Standing Rock] drew from years of grassroots organizing experience, including a model of horizontal networking. In more recent years, with the rise of the nonprofit model, it has been difficult to get people to understand the power of small self-organized groups as an ongoing structure for our movements—yet this model has been a vital part of some of the most successful people-powered movements in recent years, including the climate justice movement, Occupy, and Black Lives Matter. The model [we] used at Standing Rock was similar to how some of us organized in Ferguson in advance of the non-indictment of Michael Brown’s murderer. It was a combination of mass meetings/assemblies and mass trainings to gather folks together, build affinity groups, and share a common language, analysis, and organizing strategies.
As a white person participating in these movements, it has been helpful for me to think of this type of organizing as both conscious and transformative. By conscious organizing I refer to the intentional, day-to-day work of building a culture that restores our humanity. Our movements can’t only be about the practical outcomes. If we don’t succeed in stopping the pipelines, or Black Snake (the desired practical outcome), the movement is still important because we have organized ourselves according to a different vision of how the world can be.
To be conscious, organizing needs to understand the roots of the Power Over mentality of the empire we are living in. We have been colonized, colorized, capitalized, and gendered, and those same dynamics continue today in all sorts of groups, including groups within our social justice movements. Conscious organizing acknowledges these realities and is deliberate in practices of decolonization, undoing white supremacy and patriarchy, healing trauma, and redistributing resources. All of this creates the patterns for healthier relations and living conditions.
Conscious organizing addresses the most fundamental need we have as humans to belong to a community. We need to be wanted, accepted, nourished, included, loved, and secure in knowing that we belong and that we are good enough. When we have these things, we can feel fully present, curious, and engaged. Our connection and love for one another give us the courage to take incredible risks. We have all been raised in a culture of violence and hate, propagated by a country that values guns over people, that has the highest incarceration rate in the world, that invades, bombs, and spreads war, death, and destruction. Conscious organizing is how we fight and transform this oppression and trauma into life-feeding energy.
To accomplish this, we must understand that we have differences, and that this is a strength. We are not all starting in the same place, and we cannot all take the same risks. We need to shift the dynamics of power and space to prioritize the leadership, vision, and voices of those who have been most impacted, ensuring that their agency is paramount. We must also understand that within our difference we are all the same—we are human.
Organizing that is transformative allows people to experience their power, Power Within. Once they embrace their power, it’s so much easier to imagine different realities. We first imagine, and then actively transform ourselves and the world as we know it by manifesting our dreams.
These truths about conscious, transformative organizing aren’t just abstractions; they guide my strategies as a horizontal direct-action organizer and help me understand how to welcome people into our movements. Organizing is all about relationships, and building relationships builds trust. Conscious organizing allows people to experience and express their anger, pain, and fears, as well as love, compassion, and courage, as we create new patterns and practices. Our fears, rooted in separation, lead to judgement. Fear is a powerful obstacle to overcome. Organizing starts with simply having a conversation, listening, asking questions, and then agitating or guiding into commitment and action. When we cross lines of divide, whether it is race, gender, sexual preference, class, age, or ability, there is enormous power. This is how we heal separation and fragmentation.
Table 10.1 How Organizing Transforms
| UNORGANIZED PEOPLE MAY FEEL . . . | ORGANIZERS CAN . . . | ORGANIZED PEOPLE FEEL . . . |
| Confused | Interpret | Understood |
| Apathetic | Motivate | Active |
| Scared | Challenge | Confident |
| Divided | Unify | Unified |
| Unmotivated | Plan | Purposeful |
Ron Chisom, co-founder of the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, says that an organizer is simply anyone who brings together two or more people for a collective purpose. An anti-racist organizer knows it’s not just about how many people you’re organizing, but the way you’re organizing—uprooting and undoing the inequities and injustices as we work.
White people are not taught about colonization or racism, what they are, how they work, or how you can undo them. Nobody is taught this in school, really. We can bridge this divide, and it starts with learning our history, then developing a shared analysis and a common language. Chisom says that “issues are tissues,” meaning that people with privilege can choose their issues, but front-line communities often don’t have a choice because for them fighting for “issues” is literally a matter of saving their lives. In either case, if we don’t have a humane organizing process that builds power and community instead of fear and dependence, we are missing the boat.
Conscious, transformative organizing requires courage because it means going against the grain of how things are typically done. For a white organizer, this means understanding our unearned power and privilege and the way we have been indoctrinated into believing we’re superior and therefore entitled—the legacy of settler colonialism, which taught that Indigenous land was for the taking. For people of color, this means transforming the generational trauma of violence and of being taught you are inferior. Becoming conscious means keeping the dynamics of internalized oppression transparent and having relationships that are healing and can hold you accountable in a loving way.
Most people see accountability as a negative thing, like you have done something wrong. I see it as a gift and a process of sharing what we’re doing and learning, especially from our mistakes, for the benefit of the whole group.
In our Power Over society, people believe democracy is about representation. We think that somebody else is in power, and therefore our problems are somebody else’s responsibility. If something is wrong, we feel powerless to fix it, always waiting for someone else to solve the problem, leading to resentment, weakness, apathy, or anger. Organizing is the process of inspiring people to look within and find the power they need to take action and make decisions about their lives.
The ongoing process of conscious, transformative organizing typically includes:
Moving people from indifference, powerlessness, rage, or victimization into a clear identification of the problems and solutions.
Asking people questions and listening. This often leads people to the information they need to know.
Getting people to identify their vision for the future and then developing a realistic and collective plan to get there using simple, achievable steps.
Remembering that organizing is not about “helping” people, it’s about laying down the challenges and making the choices clear. It is working with, not for.
Organizers can create situations, or “containers” (such as participation in direct actions), that allow people to experience their power and to take action despite their fears. Anger directed is a key to change; it arises out of what we care for, what we love, and what has hurt us. Unconscious fear can stop all action.
In her talks about revolutionary love, the civil rights activist Valarie Kaur says that joy is the gift of love, grief is the price of love, and anger is the force that protects love.
In my experience, conscious organizing can happen only within a nurturing community structure with authentic relationships. The Pledge of Resistance taught me the importance of relationship building in organizing, and everything I have experienced has only deepened my belief that organizing is only as powerful as the relationships in the network. This is where the affinity group model comes in—small groups of individuals making a commitment to one another for emotional support, exploring our hopes and fears, strategizing, and making plans and decisions together. All of this requires intentionality and a shared understanding that staying connected as humans is how we transform the empire.
I’ve always loved the simple framework of the United Farm Workers (the labor union for farmworkers in the US) whose acronym about the basics of organizing is AHUY! I think about it often because these four words really capture the spirit of conscious organizing:
AHUY!
ANGER. Righteous anger that exposes injustice and propels action.
HOPE that another world is possible and that together we can make
things better.
URGENCY. Knowing that injustice has existed for hundreds of years,
yet we still need to act in the now, continuously, to mitigate damage
while creating alternatives.
YOU can make a difference. Not tomorrow, not when you are braver, but
today. You already have everything you need! You have gifts; you are a gift.
Organizing is a process of emergence where things percolate from the bottom up. The more interactions we get going, the greater the potential for change. Organizers power-map communities, meet new people, connect others, and identify and recruit people who are willing to become more active. Organizers must be inclusive, welcoming, and purposeful. Organizing provides the glue that moves us from individual agents to collective actors working together as a potent force for change. People Power is what it is called, and this is sacred work.
The above excerpt is from Lisa Fithian’s new book Shut It Down: Stories From a Fierce, Loving Resistance (Chelsea Green Publishing, September 2019) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher.
And, here are several purchasing links for you to choose from:
Wordery (free international shipping)
Kendra Smith | The Disappearing Art of Living
If you’ve never heard of Kendra Smith no one would be surprised, but listening to her enduring music from decades ago, you cannot help but to feel the reverence in Kendra’s lyrics, be captivated by her haunting melodies and lulled by soothing drowsy tempos. Her music remains a fresh, timeless, psychedelically tinged trip.
As a reclusive artist, she’s a mysterious figure, revered, mythologized, and missed with a fervor that most artists would marvel at.
She began making music in 1979 as a bass player in a short lived punk outfit called The Suspects, quickly moving on to form a new band in 1981 called The Dream Syndicate. Their brand of infectious jangle rock immediately caught the ear of record labels and positioned them at the epicenter of a west coast music scene known as The Paisley Underground. Just as the accolades began, Kendra Smith abruptly left the band. In 1985 she re-emerged with Dave Roback, former frontman for another Paisley underground group, The Rain Parade. Initially calling themselves Clay Allison, they eventually settled on the name Opal. The album, Opal – Early Recordings, is a shining example of Kendra’s artistic scope and sway with 12 songs that highlighted her emerging artistic sensibilities and song stylings. Songs like ‘Strange Delight’ ‘Fell From The Sun,’ ‘My Only Friend,’ and ‘Grains Of Sand’ are timeless, haunting and immediately memorable. When it was released, suddenly we had a sense of Kendra Smith as an experimental artist with realms, sounds and instruments to explore.
Early on, during the promotional tour for their brand new full length LP Happy Nightmare, Baby, Kendra had misgivings and creative differences, so again she and the band parted ways. Her next release didn’t appear until 1992 and it came in the form of a mini – LP dubbed Kendra Smith Presents The Guild of Temporal Adventurers. It was 6 songs (and 3 brief sonic ‘interludes’) that built on Kendra’s dreamy, sense of beauty, mysticism and experimentation. Shimmery songs like ‘Iridescence’, ‘Stars Are In Your Eyes’ and the meditative dirge- like ‘Earth Same Breath’ seemed to pick up where Opal – Early Recordings left off. It delineated Kendra’s power to make her music in her own way and on her own terms just as it marked the time of her near complete disappearance. By 1992 Kendra had left city life and had begun to live more deliberately and simply. The release of her one solo LP called Five Ways of Disappearing in 1995, post-dated her departure.
Kendra had long since abandoned life in Los Angeles for a remote, off-grid cabin she built in Northern California. She has been there for three decades now, living off of solar power, pumping her water, growing her own food, tending to her dog, cats, and a donkey.
Late in 2017, surprisingly, she reappeared with The Dream Syndicate for two live shows, singing a song that she had penned the lyrics to. That song is called ‘Kendra’s Dream.’ Perhaps even more surprisingly, last year she was featured on a film soundtrack with a new song called ‘Moon Boat’, a custom piece she wrote for director Debra Granik. It plays liltingly over the end credits of Debra’s film Without A Trace.
Kendra’s voice has deepened, much like Marianne Faithfull’s, and these days her lyrics are filled with wonder and awe. In her own words below, Kendra Smith tells us of the deliberations of her daily life and artistic choices.
Kendra Says:
If you get intimate with a piece of land you get super attached to it’s well-being. Part of the culture I experienced here is having this large piece of land, more than 30 acres of wooded hilly stuff and a very small part of that is dedicated to humans, the rest is dedicated to whatever life belongs there – from owls to salamanders to whatever Earth Spirits you might believe live in nature. Old gods retreat to places that are uninhabited so we leave most of it alone except to walk it. It will always have a huge effect on what I think and create along with my isolation which is not complete! I have a circle of friends here but even in the city I was a solitary person. I’m slowly building things up here. I just got my first refrigerator 2 years ago. I lived on 80 watts of DC power for 20 years. There’s no hot running water. Everybody says “That must be horrible! It would be easy to change it.” Well yeah, it’s easy to change but you change one thing, other things change. Not having a refrigerator was no big inconvenience, as I ate mostly out of my garden. I’m getting a bit more open-minded about change but I don’t see there’s ever going to be a city style house here.
Since 1995 I’ve gone through periods where I didn’t do any music at all. Then I went through a period where I was mostly studying Central Asian and Persian classical music and working with instruments we made here and all along I’ve had my pump organs which I keep getting more and more of. They’re cumbersome obviously. It seems in the last year or so that I’ve entered a new era in my existence and fate keeps tossing projects in front of me. I said what the hell and then I saw how easy it is now. Technology has changed so much. I love strictly analog music and have friends who have analog studios but now I can set up in my solar powered cabin. I’m just now acquiring the tools. I’ve got good musicians and we call ourselves The Magician’s Orchestra. We’ve done a lot of stuff some of it on weird found instruments. I believe in keeping it primitive. I’m determined to just use the technology I need.
I’m aware that people wonder about me. I’m really happy to see new generations of people who enjoy what I’ve done. I’ve always felt that my fan base was very special and dedicated in a strange way, as I’m not everybody’s taste. I always consider it an honor that I’m playing for those people who I always assumed are kind of unusual in their own way too.
Reprinted with permission from UNCUT Magazine
Deusner, Stephen. “Catching up with Kendra Smith”, Oct. 2017: 83. Print
It’s a beautiful dream… Kendra returns to the stage with The Dream Syndicate, El Rey Theater, LA, 12/15/2017 – photo © Deb Frazen
MOONBOAT
MOON BOAT | Kendra Smith, The Magician’s Orchestra
I wandered this world green and wild
and the things in my mind are
like a red sun go down.
Oh and I, I know you must go.
And I think I know why…
but I don’t know why.
Still I am thinking we both share a moon and a star.
May you be safe, may we both find a place with a heart.
Here, where treasures a-bound
in the things I have found, a leaf, a song come from a-bove…
In the wood, where secrets crawl
the Earth so small, a place, a home, a dream my own…
There’ll be a tree that joins you and me from a-far.
And I am certain we all share a moon and a star
KENDRA'S DREAM
KENDRA’S DREAM | The Dream Syndicate feat. Kendra Smith
…Like a memory of music fled
I see three giants mount the hill.
They first reveal their massive heads
then stride as kings before me still.
In frozen awe I watch them near;
A stag
An ox
And rampant bear.
Find the others
meeting there.
Creature guise in
dreamer’s lair.
Where Dreamers dream a
dream of dreaming.
Rewrite a fate of
random weaving.
And bright self dreams with
every breathing.
I keep having the same dream.
I keep having the same dream.
It’s a beautiful dream
Kathy Thaden | An Inner Fire
‘At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.’ (Episcopal Book of Common Prayer p. 370)
These words from the Eucharistic Prayer articulate the environmental focus and inspiration for much of Kathy Thaden’s mosaic art. She writes, “As an artist, my work is informed by my Christian faith – expressing awe at creation and the Creator, as well as responsibility, a divine call to stewardship of all that we have been given. As a mosaicist, I treasure glass and stone scraps or discarded items from our ‘throw-away’ consumer culture. It is important to me that nothing be wasted, finding beauty in what was once broken.”
Linking her art to her faith Thaden says she tries to be always open to God’s possibilities, giving rise to sacred art formed in prayer. “How do I discuss the impact of environmental issues – on both our natural surroundings and the rest of humanity? What can I contribute to the narrative of healing and restoration? By imagination and inspiration, I believe as artists we can be truth-tellers.”
Using found objects, discards, and glass remnants or other unique materials Thaden creates something new. Mixing a variety of materials enables her to tell a visual story. “Working with these fragments is transforming. The pieces are broken, change shape, fit together, and then made whole again. There are no leftovers. This is my voice, my vision, my life – exploding with precious bits and pieces assembled over time.”
Thaden’s study of fine arts and degree in Commercial Art first led her to a career in broadcast design. For 25 years, Thaden worked in television as art director, animator, and graphic designer, winning numerous honors for design, including seven Emmy Awards. Seeking something more tactile she was drawn to contemporary mosaic art 17 years ago, finding her way back to fine art.
Thaden often crafts her mosaics on hand-formed substrates as with Rising and Fragile Earth. The irregular shapes offer a more organic sense to the pieces.
Incorporating natural elements such as fossils, twigs, tree bark, river stones, slate or shells also speaks to the beauty of Creation as in Living Water, inspired by the fight for water rights at Standing Rock. Fragile Earth and Earth in Pieces were born out of the Eucharistic prayer above regarding this, “our island home.”
In Oasis the three gold pieces of smalti on the horizon are a reminder of the Trinity. The spiritual desert is lonely, foreboding place. But within the solitude, there is a sense of the Creator, glimmers of hope, and the realization that we are never alone. Sanctuary offers a sacred place of refuge, shelter and protection.
“The Lord built his sanctuary like the heights, like the earth that he established forever.” Psalm 78:69
Found objects can include a zipper (Ripple Effect), or bits of broken auto glass (Rising), or colorful magazine paper bits as in Living Water and Fragile Earth. Thaden does use more traditional materials as well, combining stained glass, smalti (both Italian and Mexican glass), millefiori, beads or marble as in Oasis, Sanctuary and Ripple Effect.
What You Cross the Street to Avoid
You assume that a blind man can sing
and that he can afford a guitar.
You say, “Less is more”
to a woman whose children need new shoes.
You don’t listen to your daughter’s questions.
She stops asking them.
The one time I went without eating
my thoughts ran away from me.
Handed a bowl of soup, I felt its weight.
I nearly dropped it.
W.C. Handy’s song about St. Louis
doesn’t mention his empty belly
or how stiff his back was
from sleeping on cobblestones under a bridge.
He sang of a man whose heart
was a rock cast in the sea.
A Long Convalescence
It is the small things tell you you are home—
cotton sheets, linen clouds, Dutch rabbits
nibbling greens. It is close to sunset
when you remember why you went away.
Never again, I swear on the Bible,
I hear you say to yourself as if no one
listens. Mama hurries the last crumbs
into a basket, sister sings her song.
However many hours He wore that crown—
that’s how long you lay anesthetized
while the surgeon scraped nerves and stretched bones.
Meanwhile the jackrabbit comes to blend in
against tan grounds and cottonwood. Windows
hold a million trees full of ganglia.
Accept that for now you will be going
between only two rooms—one with a bed,
one with a sink. Its grave porcelain eye.
New Spirit, Wise Action
Dear Reader,
The times we live in ask much of us. How can we know the best ways to respond to the converging crises we face? How can we live lives of deep meaning and joy in the midst of confusion and pain, and be catalysts for positive change?
If you practice on a spiritual or ethical path, you already see that chasing wealth, power, or egoic pleasure has lost the appeal it may have held earlier in life. You have been called in a new direction, your heart-strings vibrating to a more complex chord. And as activists, you have felt the recent shifts away from ‘sustainability’ and ‘reform’ to ever more sober purpose: resilience, restoration, ‘deep adaptation’, alliance-building, and taking personal inventory of what you are willing to ‘lose’, as you make space for the new. How will you integrate and transcend all you have learned? How will your metamorphosis unfold, and what will you become?
The Fall edition of Kosmos Quarterly explores the dynamic between our inner work and outer actions. Creating this edition, we kept our focus on emergent ways of being and doing in these challenging times. For veteran activists like Lisa Fithian, this takes the form ‘conscious organizing’; for Professor Jem Bendell, it is a personal set of skills for surviving climate despair. In the Nevada desert, ‘burners’ annually create and dismantle a post-apocalyptic city for artists and lovers. Gary Gach follows Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s Five Mindfulness Trainings – a global ethic for humanity. Extinction Rebellion uses Holacracy, a framework for decentralized decision-making developed by Brian Robertson. And enigmatic musical artist Kendra Smith, chooses life off-grid, ‘chopping wood and carrying water’.
Each of these actions, among others, is a valid response as we navigate the liminal space between the disintegrating ‘flat’ worldview of objective rationalism that allowed us to marginalize anyone and anything that did not conform to its model of progress, and the incoming convulsive energy of a new integral era. How we ‘show up’ now is nothing less than the greatest test ever faced by a known species. Unlike the dinosaurs, we alone have the capacity to awaken, to cherish our living Earth, and to recognize our interdependence with all Life.
Never have the stakes been so high, the choices so profound.
For elders like me, there is restitution to be made, an inner and outer reckoning for decades of naïve belief in man-made systems of modernity. The least I can offer now is my full being, in service to Life for all the days I am given. For young people, the test is far more severe. They know that a dark night of the world soul lurks on the horizon, to be endured and ultimately transcended, only by the wildest love and most creative, painful birth-effort imaginable.
Many young people tell me they are reluctant to bring new lives into the world. That is understandable, yet consider this – our care and teaching of children, in loving families and communities, is very likely the most important practice we can offer the world at this time. Laughter, joy, family, warmth, stability, ceremony. Each new generation is the prayer of Creation. Let us focus our loving attention on all children and work to protect all beings.
Our wise actions matter, and only our sincere inner work can reveal the way forward. It is the mission of Kosmos to walk together on the path of transformation. Join us!
Please join me also in wishing Nancy Roof, our beloved founder and Editor Emeritus, a very happy 90th birthday. This wise world-server is a beacon of light to anyone touched by her vision and her love.
In Gratitude,
Rhonda Fabian
Editor
God Becomes a Hairdresser
Things are going badly. Handbasket badly.
What sort of things? you ask.
The usual: the Red Sox season, war, those wild cells
proliferating to kill.
So God borrows scissors from the Three Fates
and opens a salon downtown, unisex, no less.
People come and sit in the chairs under nylon bibs
like agreeable oversized babies while God runs
His holy fingers through their hair.
He clips and snips and sprays them with lotions.
He twiddles and crunches and poufs, and holds
up a mirror behind, until His clients look and see
that it is good.
At 8 p.m, God combs out a last perm, accepts a tip,
and pulls down the shades.
So has His work made this world any better?
Beats me.
Previously published in Gold Man Review and How I Became An Historian, Cherry Grove, 2014.