in the course of human events

On the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the United States, many people also like to remember and to celebrate our interdependence, also called "interbeing."

In Congress, July 4, 1776. The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred. to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

listening softens

From Taking Our Places: the Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up by Zen teacher Zoketsu Norman Fischer (and here is beautiful teaching I found there, just now, that he gave on the four levels of Torah interpretation that I also mentioned in my d'var below)

Listening is magic. It turns a person from an object outside, opaque or dimly threatening, into an intimate experience, and therefore into a friend. In this way, listening softens and transforms the listener.

the most whole heart

I had the great fortune, and fun, to have been part of a group of people from my synagogue who chose to step into our "official" roles in the community as B'nei Mitzvah ("children of the commandment" or, a deeper meaning that Rabbi Tedhttp://www.rabbitedfalcon.com/ uses for Mitzvah, based on the word's linguistic root, is "path of connectedness"). The seven of us and our teacher, Amy, studied and sang and ate delicious food together and got to know and love each other for over a year, and two weeks ago welcomed family, friends, and our amazing community to co-create with us a space and time of powerful and very sweet blessing. It felt to me afterwards as if we'd all managed to catch and ride a huge wave together, and make it smoothly to shore, after a really long time of paddling in the sun and the rain (and sometimes in circles).

Each of us did a little talk (a "d'var," which means "word") about our "birth portion"--the part of the Torah that was being read the week that we were born. (You can enter your birthdate and find yours, here--Rabbi Ted teaches that our birth portion, like an astrological chart, contains seeds of wisdom that will bloom and ripen in specific and particular ways for each of us.) All of our little talks were very different, and came together to make a beautiful mosaic of meaning and experiences. Here's the transcript of my "word" (well, pretty much - I forget to look at my notes when I'm talking) (and my birth portion is Eikev, Deuteronomy 7:12 to 11:25) :

Shabbat shalom! which means, Shabbat “hello”, Shabbat "peace", and Shabbat "wholeness".
Thank you to everyone here for sharing your radiant and singular presence with us—as Rabbi Ted said in a workshop the other night, this community is “a community of Presence.” My special thanks to my mother, and mother-in-law and father-in-law, and my sister (in this photo with me) and my brother-in-law, for coming from far away to be here today. And, to my husband Robert and our boys who have always been at the heart of my spiritual journey.

Jewish mystical tradition teaches us—and when I say “Jewish mystical tradition,” I really mean, “what I’ve learned from Rabbi Ted and the Bet Alef community,” because even if I read or heard some of the teachings years ago, they’ve only really made sense since being here—The tradition teaches us that every story in the Torah contains the essence of the wisdom of the whole; and not only that, but every word, every letter, and even the spaces between and around the letters, contain the essence of the whole teaching. Some of the teachers also say that every person and every being is like a letter of the Torah—so, each of us is a Way in, to the Whole thing, and the space between us, the relationships we have with things and with each other, are all ways in to the Whole, too.

As my friends Joel and Michelle often teach, "anywhere you dig deeply enough will take you Home”

The Jewish tradition gives us an amazing and beautiful framework for doing that digging, which consists of four layers of interpretation that I’m going to apply to my birth portion. I’ll touch on the first two just briefly, since it’s really the deeper two that make my “homing instinct” start to hum:

∑ The first layer is “P'shat” in Hebrew, which means “Simple”. This is the literal, surface understanding. I think of this as corresponding to the skin of the body (and you’ll see why I’m using body metaphors in a moment)

∑ The next layer is “Remez,” which means “Hint”. Where we start to see that the place where we’re digging is connected to lots of other places… so I think of this as being like the connective tissue of the body.

∑ The third layer is “Drash” or “Midrash,” which means “Search” or “Interpretation.” Now we’re looking between the lines, paying more attention to the spaces between. This is the realm of metaphor, poetry, archetypal energies. To me this corresponds to the internal organs, because in Chinese medicine--which is my other spiritual training and practice—the internal organs are respected as beings, with spirits, and functions, and minds of their own. Just like what we’ve all experienced, when we have a gut intuition that’s different from what our mind believes; or when our Heart or Lungs or Stomach, or some one of the other organs, tells us very clearly that it needs something or other, and right now, regardless of what the rest of the bodymind was happy to go along with…So we respect the organs as one of the ways that the universal archetypal energies move in us.

∑ The Fourth, last layer is “Sod,” which means “Secret” or “Hidden.” This is the most interior, deepest, and the vastest, realm—because here we begin to glimpse eternity. I think this level is the Heart. Which is one of the family of organs, but is also special amongst organs—in Chinese medicine, the Heart is the place where Heaven and Earth meet; it embodies the archetypal energy of the Emperor/Empress, who is the one with the most direct connection to the Way of Heaven—which in Hebrew we could translate as “Torah.”

My “birth portion” is in the section where Moses is giving reminders to the people, since they’ll be leaving the wilderness without him. Reminders to be good, to be grateful, to take care of the orphan and the widow and the stranger in their midst. And, it includes this very curious line, which in English is translated variously as: "remove the barriers of your heart," or "cut away the thickening around your heart," but which in Hebrew says literally to "circumcise the foreskin of your heart."

There are many many tribal and personal resonances that I could follow here, all of them like trails homeward, and so I’m just going to pick a single one.

Skipping the first two levels and entering in at the “Drash”/ ”Archetypal”/ ”Internal Organs” level:

It so happens that, in Chinese medicine, the tissue around the Heart, the Pericardium, which we also call the Heart Protector, is an important organ whose job is to choose what parts of the outside world will be allowed in through the Inner Gate, into the most private chambers of the Heart. In terms of our everyday lives, this is the energy of love & intimate relationship, and of our connection to what we allow to touch our Hearts.

In one school of thought of our medicine, we “diagnose” (or, “appreciate”) every human being as most strongly embodying the archetypal energy of one or two of the twelve main organs.
And in a play of cosmic resonance—one of those “serendipitous non-accidental accidents” that Margie spoke of—one of the organic energies I’ve been “diagnosed” with embodying most is this very one, the Heart Protector, that shows up in such an interesting way in my birth portion.
Because this is an energy given to me pay a lot of attention to, and to wrestle with, and to learn from, I can say from experience that one thing I'm pretty sure of is that there are many ways that the Heart Protector opens, allowing access to the Heart—“cutting” is maybe one way…Reb Nachman of Bratslav, whom Roger quoted, also said, “the most whole heart is the broken heart” (and btw, it’s not the Heart that breaks, it’s the Heart Protector). So, there’s breaking; and there’s also melting, and there’s softening. And maybe most pertinently for us, there’s choosing—just as the regular ritual circumcision doesn’t just happen all by itself, but is a tribal, and sometimes personal, choice.
“I Open My Heart to This Moment” (this is the song co-written by Rabbi Ted, which we opened the service with) is something we do on purpose, with intention.

To finish with just a glimpse into the level of Sod, the Secret and the Heart—which is probably more accessible in silence than in words, anyway—because this is the level we arrive to, when the Heart Protector is opened wide to the whole world, and the World can touch the deepest part of the One Heart, when we’ve gone all the way down, and all the way in, and we’ve come all the way Home, what we find in is that the whole manifest world is already in there with us. The One manifesting as the Many, and the Many remembering ourselves to be the One.

Like in this “secret teaching” my Zen friend Paul gave me the other day—because, you know what, all the Many secret teachings--of course--lead to this same One Heart:
That what we think of as the world outside of us…is really our own tender, sensitive, heart, born out from our own being, and into the world, and there it is, all over the world, disguised as the Many.

I Open My Heart to This Moment—and we’re all in there together.

Shabbat Shalom.

A big hug and deep bow to my dance partners Anya, Margie, Alan, Roger, Peter, Meli and Amy. I'm glad we did it, I'm glad it's done, and I'm so glad it was with you.

nothing more

From StoryPeople's Brian Andreas:

...If there is any secret to this life I live, this is it: the sound of what cannot be seen sings within everything that can. & there is nothing more to it than that.

pass the bread

Here is a chunk of the clear-eyed and compassionate baccalaureate address given by Bill Moyers to the graduates of Hamilton College last week. (Read the whole text, transcribed at Common Dreams [News and Views for the Progressive Community] to understand the context of the title).

...The hardest struggle of all is to reconcile life's polar realities. I love books, Beethoven, and chocolate brownies. Yet how do I justify my pleasure in these in a world where millions are illiterate, the music never plays, and children go hungry through the night? How do I live sanely in a world so unsafe for so many?

I don't know what they taught you here at Hamilton about all this, but I trust you are not leaving here without thinking about how you will respond to the dissonance in our culture, the rivalry between beauty and bestiality in the world, and the conflicts in your own soul. All of us have to choose sides on this journey. But the question is not so much who we are going to fight against as it is which side of our own nature will we nurture: The side that can grow weary and even cynical and believe that everything is futile, or the side that for all the vulgarity, brutality, and cruelty, yearns to affirm, connect and signify. Albert Camus got it right: There is beauty in the world as well as humiliation, "And we have to strive, hard as it is, not to be unfaithful...in the presence of one or the other".

That's really what brings me here this afternoon. I did put myself in your place, and asked what I'd want a stranger from another generation to tell me if I had to sit through his speech. Well, I'd want to hear the truth: The truth is, life's a tough act, the world's a hard place, and along the way you will meet a fair share of fools, knaves and clowns--even act the fool yourself from time to time when your guard is down or you've had too much wine. I'd like to be told that I will experience separation, loss and betrayal, that I'll wonder at times where have all the flowers gone.

I would want to be told that while life includes a lot of luck, life is more than luck. It is sacrifice, study, and work; appointments kept, deadlines met, promises honored. I'd like to be told that it's okay to love your country right or wrong, but it's not right to be silent when your country is wrong. And I would like to be encouraged not to give up on the American experience. To remember that the same culture which produced the Ku Klux Klan, Tom DeLay and Abu Ghraib, also brought forth the Peace Corps, Martin Luther King and Hamilton College.

And I would like to be told that there is more to this life than I can see, earn, or learn in my time. That beyond the day-to-day spectacle are cosmic mysteries we don't understand. That in the meantime--and the meantime is where we live--we infinitesimal particles of creation carry on the miracle of loving, laughing and being here now, by giving, sharing and growing now.

everest peace project summits 10

The Everest Peace Project, an interfaith, international, multicultural embodiment of the power of cooperation, courage and friendship to achieve extraordinary goals, is celebrating the successful summit of Mount Everest by ten of their climbing team yesterday. The team includes South African Selebelo Selamolela, who is only the second black African to ever reach the summit of Everest, David (Dudu) Yifra and Micha Yaniv who are now the second and third Israelis to summit Everest, and Ali Bushnaq, who by reaching beyond the advanced base camp (he had to turn back from his summit attempt due to pneumonia) has climbed higher than any other Palestinian person.

The brainchild of American Buddhist Lance Trumbull, the team previously climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and will continue to on to Peace Climbs on the highest peaks of each of the other continents. From their website:

"We will climb together not as individuals who belong only to this or that nation or faith, but as a team who all share a common home: the earth. By bringing people together from different cultures we will be setting an inspirational example of courage, friendship and teamwork - and through our Peace Climbs show the world that people from various faiths can live together, work together, and depend on each other while doing something extraordinary..."

They are also raising funds for Room to Read, an organization which has partnered with rural communities all across Asia by providing challenge grants and donating expertise to build schools, establish libraries and fill them with donated books, establish computer and language labs, and provide scholarships to underprivileged girls.

David (Dudu) Yifrach, Ali Bushnaq, and Micha Yaniv holding the Israeli and Palestinian flags joined together

Little update: Yifrach waved this flag on the summit & there's a great photo of that at OnTheFace

(Thank you to my friend and "bnai mitzvah sister" Margie for sending me this story, via the United Religions Initiative)

there is no other art

Invisible Work

~ Alison Luterman ~

Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don't mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
the life that goes on between them,
I think all the time about invisible work.
About the young mother on Welfare
I interviewed years ago,
who said, "It's hard.
You bring him to the park,
run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,
and there's no one
to say what a good job you're doing,
how you were patient and loving
for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."
And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself
because I am lonely,
when all the while,
as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried
by great winds across the sky,
thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,
the slow, unglamorous work of healing,
the way worms in the garden
tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe
and bees ransack this world into being,
while owls and poets stalk shadows,
our loneliest labors under the moon.

There are mothers
for everything, and the sea
is a mother too,
whispering and whispering to us
long after we have stopped listening.
I stopped and let myself lean
a moment, against the blue
shoulder of the air. The work
of my heart
is the work of the world's heart.
There is no other art.

(from: The Largest Possible Life)
(and thank you to Joe Riley and his Panhala poem a day subscription service)

inspiration of the day

Signs of Light/Inspiration of the Day ("Welcome to a good news portal! Extraordinary, positive changes are happening all around the world and are often overlooked. Come in and get inspired with uplifting stories ...") which is one of the good works of CharityFocus ("an experiment in the joy of giving"), links to this exquisite and poignant photo essay of beauty and joy and love:

The real does not die, the unreal never lived. --Nisargadatta Maharaj

Inspiration of the Day: She walked down the wedding aisle, without once stopping to use her oxygen tank. 21-year-old Katie Kirkpatrick made it to the altar, holding off cancer to celebrate the happiest day of her life. She had already survived cancer once, only to have it return to her lungs and invade her heart. Her organs were shutting down, but this was not going to stop her from fulfilling her dream of marrying Nick Godwin, her high school sweetheart. Five days after the wedding, she died peacefully among loved ones.The touching 12-photo picture story shares Katie and Nick's remarkable journey.

delight, delectability, fellowship, love, kiss and sweetness: strange fire

From two weeks ago, Rabbi Shefa Gold's words on Parashat Tzav:

Our practice for the week of Tzav is to journey to the fire on the altar of your heart and listen to its voice.

Tzav asks us to enter within and inspect the condition of the innermost fire upon the altar of the heart. We are challenged to look at our lives and ask the serious and probing questions about what supports that fire as well as what puts it out.

This week, Parashat Shimini:

--Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron, took each of them his censer, and put fire in it, and put incense on it, and offered strange fire before G-d, which He commanded them not. And a fire went out from G-d, and consumed them, and they died before G-d. (Leviticus 10:1-2)

They approached the Supernal Light out of their great love of the Holy, and thereby died. Thus they died by "divine kiss" such as experienced by the perfectly righteous; it is only that the righteous die when the divine kiss approaches them, while they died by their approaching it... Although they sensed their own demise, this did not prevent them from drawing near to G-d in attachment, delight, delectability, fellowship, love, kiss and sweetness, to the point that their souls ceased from them. (Ohr HaChaim)(via Chabad.org)

A Solar Prominence, Astronomy Picture of the Day

little mirrors

My dear colleague Karen, who is the psychotherapist and resident artist in our practice, gave me this question yesterday evening, like one of the gifts--long strings of little mirrors, colored glass beads, a piece of an exotic pastry a client baked for her, pretty finds from the thrift store--that she leaves on my desk sometimes:

If someone could see into your heart, the deepest part of you, and really see what it is that you've been trying to do all this time, what is it that they would thank you for?

I am thanked for for that, I think. For being willing to look in the heart-part of people, and to appreciate and bless their particularness (which is their own genius) and for being a warm and kind and not-sticky place where people can glide and blow through and sidle up as themselves without any guilt or shame. I don't manage to do it all the time, but I am practicing.

Because of this practice, and by being both lucky and picky, I have surrounded myself with friends and relations who are good heart-seers too (which brings to mind jack/zen's Ecology of Friends post), and I do get to have reflected back to me in a way that feels just right, what it is that I think I'm doing. How healing, and therefore how on-goingly necessary, it is to be perceived as true by other people. And how hard it is sometimes to acknowledge that the loving reflection is true.

What would you be thanked for? Who is already thanking you, and are you able to breathe it all the way in? recent

energy with the delight to weave itself into this

From an essay by John Seed, founder of the Rainforest Information Centre in Australia and co-author of Thinking Like a Mountain-- Towards a Council of All Beings:

"The Council of All Beings is the ceremonies and rituals that bring our deep ecology to life. Here we have a practice where we approach a leaf as though approaching our revered zen master. We breathe to this leaf the oxidized carbon of our body. We do so with the gratitude and the generosity that is the signature, the clue to the Nature of which we are a fragment.

As we add consciousness to the ancient processes of sharing respiration, we savor the leaf in our imagination. Now we must notice and then lay aside our prejudice that humans are the only ones capable of consciousness in this transaction, this holy communion that accompanies our every breath. We consciously nourish a leaf and invite the leaf to nourish us, not just with the oxygen it creates, but with futher communications.

(...)

Plants! Herbs!
Of course they feed us! Of course they heal us! Of course they get us high! We've been co-operating together for eons before arrogance and amnesia set in, they are the manner in which we are rooted in biology, they mediate between us and the sun.

...Ahhh, photosynthesis! Back to the ultimate miracle of sunlight itself, energy with the propensity, the delight, to weave itself into all this."

baby fronds of Japanese Painted Fern Athyrium niponicum "Pictum"
spilling out of the ground in the spring

synchrony shuffle

One of the books I have been reading lately is a long, fascinating and rigorous exploration of synchronicity as demonstrated by the correlations between the world soul and the human soul: between the movements and alignments of the planets, and human cultural, political, historical events.

It would take a little too much thinking to write about it right now, though.

Simpler is to look around and see the little things around me that are currently, for just this moment, synchronous. Kind of an i-Pod shuffle way of looking at things. Sometimes random juxtapositions, like, which friends' names are in my email inbox next to each other, or how the themes of my patients on today's schedule mesh or match. Other times the moment is filled with the results of my own stream of not-so-consciousness. Like, looking at what tabs I have opened in my browser during the course of the day, following my impulsive sparks of wondering. Now they are sitting next to each other, related like lilypads in a pond. Right now there are these:

The "Events" page of Mosaic: Voices of Youth, Voice of Community. Mesmerizing, street-wise, funny storyteller and mythologist Michael Meade will be doing a presentation in his series "Peace and Poetics", called "Faith and Destiny: The Two Agreements in Life" on Friday 4/14 at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center.

The next two tabs are Gmail and Bloglines.

Then, an article by Stephen Harrod Buhner of the Foundation for Gaian Studies, on Depth Diagnosis. A little snippet:

"During this part of the depth diagnosis process it is no longer necessary to actually be in the presence of the phenomenon being studied. It is carried daily within you in the imagination. This is also why the first moment of contact is so important. That initial perceiving and the moods that it generated remain with a sparkling clarity within the participatory heart. The emergence of the demanded mode of representation takes time. Depth diagnosis, for me, can take from fifteen minutes to a month or more, depending on the person and the problem. (The average is about two weeks.)"

The next tab is the BerkanaExchange, on the first of three pages containing A Smorgasbord of Art of Hosting Resources, inspired by a rich few hours the Imagine Cascadia host team got to spend with the Art of Hosting's Toke Moller, last week. From Toke's paper "What Gifts Could Learning and Courage Bring Our Societies?":

"Here are some of my assumptions about creating learning space and starting conversations that matter…

• In this time, the ways in which we are together have become very speedy, uninspired and often unconscious of what is really meaningful to us - this gives us little space to be present in the Now – to be present to ourselves and each other.
• When we open space and time to each other around our own meaning, inspiration and consciousness is already there to greet us.
• We need to be fully present, connected to ourselves and each other, to have the inspiration and courage to know and decide what to create and do at this time, that will benefit all and not just me…..
• I cannot give if I do not have the surplus of love, challenge and freedom in human community with others.
• Life wants to give its best to what is alive and let die what is no more needed.
• When I let myself become the dialogue, the process and the learning I am in, that experience gives birth to conscious action ……..that will make a difference."

Next tab: the commencement address from last June's Harvard Divinity School graduation, by Dr. Kimberly Potter (that one's been open for a few days now!):

"The study of religion has never been a "field" for me as much as it has been a labyrinth. Having entered this maze, like many other scholars, I have never truly emerged, lost in a world well beyond my comprehension or "control," but whose twists and turns I continue to follow because I must, sensing that there is somewhere, hidden deep down, a chamber I probably should avoid but cannot. To study religion is to encounter a fire—a funeral pyre at times, the burning nest of a phoenix at others; a river of ashes into which I wade at dawn straining to hear the Gayatri mantra; an alchemical crucible; a Pentecostal shout; a frog's splash, awakening Basho. It is the majesty of the Kol Nidre or the Ethiopian Orthodox liturgy; the first steps of the hajj; a Maori war outrigger flying across the surf, the realm of the sea god Tangaroa..."

Then, the website of Dottore Massimo Mangialavore, brilliant Italian surgeon and homeopath. You will have to go over there to read his articles and interviews, since all his material is copyrighted.

The last open tab is the Blogger tab~~but not for long...good night!

the integrator blog

Welcome to my friend John Weeks, blogging about integrative medicine at TheIntegratorBlog.com. John has been in the rough and tumble thick of things in the field of CAM ("complementary and alternative medicine"), and Integrative Medicine, for more than 20 years as a consultant, journalist, relationship-builder and policy influencer. And just as importantly, as the supportive spouse of one of the leaders of the naturopathic profession, Dr. Jeana Kimball.

The Integrator Blog's mission is: " Shaping an Industry, Creating Health" and its vision is based on the one that John helped shape as the executive director of The National Education Dialogue to Advance Integrated Health Care: Creating Common Ground (good work with a very long name!)

"We envision a healthcare system that is multidisciplinary and enhances competence, mutual respect and collaboration across all healthcare disciplines. This system will deliver effective care that is patient-centered, focused on health creation and healing and readily accessible to all populations."

He's only been blogging for a few weeks and there is already a ton of information there. Important reading for anyone interested in the history, business and public policy aspects of integrative and collaborative medicine and the creation of a healthy health-care system.

the starting point of anything that matters

Thank you to Danya Ruttenberg for linking to this beautiful speech, When the Wounded Emerge as Healers: The Study of Religion is Like a Labyrinth, given by Dr. Kimberly Potter, to the graduating class of the Harvard Divinity School:

...So, as long as I thought I could impart to you something oracular about the future—your future—something splendid or clever or wise, I never had this opportunity. That day did not come until all I could tell you about was the one thing that I truly can say I know, and that is the broken heart. Even if a broken heart does not lie in your past or present, it awaits you in your future, at some place, at some time when you will almost certainly be unprepared. But in myth, in ritual, and in theology, the broken heart is not a regrettable symptom of derailment, but is rather the starting point of anything that matters. As Laurette Séjourné describes the heart in ancient Mesoamerica: "The heart is the place of union where the luminous consciousness is made. . . . Human existence must reach out to transcend the world of forms that conceal the ultimate reality. This reality lives in the heart and must be set free at whatever cost. . . . Thus to reach one's heart, to possess oneself of it, means to penetrate into spiritual life. The operation is extremely painful, and that is why the heart is always represented as wounded, and why the drops of blood issuing from it are so significant that they alone are a sufficient symbol for it."

....

Looking deep into the religious traditions of the world, one learns that we need not fear these initiations, these times of breaking apart. The soul cannot grow or change without them. What the human ego or the human body experience as traumas, the soul instantly recognizes as opportunities to shed what is no longer needed. When the heart is broken, the soul is released from its prior constellations. It begins the ancient process of dissolution, dismemberment, and new life. The soul rushes toward rebirth. This is not a comfortable process. But it is a normal one.

In the words of Jalaja Bonheim: "[M]ake no mistake: those who tell us we can have whatever we want, be whoever we want to be, and have full control of our lives are merely playing into our desire to avoid the discomfort of feeling our vulnerability. True wholeness has nothing to do with getting what we want. Paradoxically, we achieve true wholeness only by embracing our fragility and sometimes our brokenness. Wholeness is a natural radiance of Love, and Love demands that we allow the destruction of our old self for the sake of the new. 'If anyone needs a head, the lover leaps up to offer his,' says the mystic and poet Kabir. Life did not intend for us to be inviolable, but to be used for fodder for its workings. We are meant to be chewed up and digested and transformed into the blood and sinews of the world."

The Torah portion that I'll be chanting from and giving a little talk on in June includes Moses telling the people "cut away the thickening around your heart" (literally: "circumsize the foreskin of your heart" "umal'tem et orlat l'vavechem") so I am thinking a lot about what it is to be open-hearted in this world that is so full, about the open heart and the broken heart and the heart that is somehow cut open, in analogy to the covenant of circumcision...I have a feeling that what blogging there is here in the next couple of months might be a lot of rumination on heart stuff...

spring tonic

Springtime is traditionally considered to be a good time to "cleanse the liver", or give it a nice restorative rest. One helpful practice is to choose not to eat foods that overstimulate the liver and gall bladder for at least a week or two -- fried and fatty foods, rich and sugary and salty foods, alcohol -- that is, those dark-of-winter holiday things that the bodymind craves for insulation and comfort when it's dark and cold and wet out for months on end. Not to mention dark.

As the sap begins to rise and the days grow lighter and muddier, our bodies begin to crave lightness, too, and to get the sludginess moving out. Eating bitter spring greens (dandelion, arugula, endive, chicory, mustard greens, and romaine lettuce is a little bit bitter too), which are little and tender and not so painfully bitter at this time of year, is a good way to gently stimulate liver secretion (bile production), which ferries out through the bowels many of the metabolic waste products the liver generates in its everyday intelligence.

Another plant food/medicine we prescribe often as a a liver/bowel/blood tonic is radix Arctium lappa, or burdock root. For a liver cleanse regime, burdock root is used in fluid extract or tea form, but for everyday you can also find beautiful long burdock roots (gobo in Japanese) at an Asian grocery store like Uwajimaya, or a natural foods grocery like our Puget Consumers Coop, and include it in your exotic vegetable repetoire. Here is a Japanese recipe I like, which is not a "liver cleanse" recipe because of the oil, sugar, sake and soy sauce (hmm--that's pretty much everything that's in it)

Burdock or Carrot Kinpira (Kinpira Gobo or Ninjin) (adapted from Japanese Cooking, A Simple Art, by Shizuo Tsuji):

1 medium burdock root, or 3 medium carrots, (I usually include both and sometimes I add turnip or rutabaga or parsnip or some other rooty veg) peeled or very well-scrubbed
Oil for stir-frying
Cooking sake, a few TB
Soy sauce, a few TB
Sugar (I like brown sugar or sometimes honey in this recipe), 1 TB
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes or "Shichimi," Japanese "seven-spice mixture" which contains red pepper, roasted orange peel, yellow sesame seed, black sesame seed, Japanese pepper, seaweed, ginger, all ground up into sprinkles.
Sesame seeds and a scallion or two, sliced up, for garnish

Whittle the burdock into shavings, as if you were sharpening a huge pencil, and put the pieces in a bowl of water to keep them from turning too dark. I usually roll-cut them, but they are more delicate and not so chewy if you use the shaving method. I like them chewy. Cut the carrots, if using, into julienne or roll-cut them too. To roll-cut, you slice off a piece of the end, at an angle, then roll the vegetable a quarter turn or so, slice off another angled piece, etc. This makes for a lot of the tender & delicious inner-vegetable surface area to hit the hot oil when you get to the stir-fry step, but the pieces are more substantial and interesting than the eqivalent-sized regular slice.

Heat a frying pan over high heat and add a few TB of oil, swirl to coat the bottom and when it's hot and ripply, throw in the vegetables and stir-fry for a few minutes until they start to soften up. You might have to turn down the heat a little to prevent scorching, depending on how sticky your pan is.

Then add the sake, soy sauce, and sugar or honey, reduce heat to medium high, and stir-fry till the liquid is thick and almost all reduced. If it sticks and scorches, add a little more sake. Flavor to taste with the red pepper or seven-spice sprinkles.

I like to add a spoonful of not-ground-up sesame seeds and some finely sliced scallion on top. Oh, but in the batch that's pictured I also added mushrooms (tasted good, texture was just OK) and I was out of sesame seeds.

Good hot or at room temp, with a little sake (good drinking sake, not cheap cooking sake) or Japanese beer (another reason not to be doing a cleanse when you make this dish!)

time large and small

Caffeine is time's Viagra.

Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle columnist, in his Notes and Errata column this week called "Let's All Get ADD! What do coffee, cell phones, the Net, stress and sleep drugs have in common? You, silly" adds,

We equate deranged, caffeinated busyness with smarts, with success, when in fact the exact opposite is true. Just ask the yogis, the gurus, the healers of the past 5,000 years: It is actually when you calm the mind, clear things out, breathe deep and sleep deeper and clean out the toxins and the caffeine and the Ambien, that's when real wisdom, real intuition comes your way. The rest is just, well, noise. Happy delicious annoying caffeinated sexy fun infuriating obnoxious unstoppable noise, but still noise.

But not to worry. They'll soon develop a pill to block that, too.

The amazing and adorable Eric Francis, who is my favorite astrologer, and used to live on Vashon Island near Seattle, but now lives mostly in Paris and sometimes in Brussels, talks about time this week, too, in an essay on the coming lunar and solar eclipses:

A lunar eclipse presents a nice image of the concentration of time, which we can work with consciously. It begins as a Full Moon. Then, perhaps half an hour later, the Moon is dark; then half an hour after that, it is full again. It's as if we live a month of experience in two hours. But if you consider that the effects of the eclipse radiate out, it's more like we live through the energetic equivalent of a year in a day. Imagine if that actually happened, how disoriented you might feel: going to bed and waking up a year later.

In a sense, we get an antidote to 'speeding time' by pushing the concentration even further. An eclipse is like a massive homeopathic dose of time.

Read the rest of the Eclipse Trip here.

making up stories, and glass like light compressed

"Bless the spirit that makes connections,
for truly we live in what we imagine."
Rainer Maria Rilke
(as always, thank you to Joe at Panhala for sending out the perfect selection each morning)
(the archive of which is unfortuntately no longer public due to copyright complaints, but you can subscribe to the daily poem by sending a blank email to Panhala-subscribe at yahoogroups.com)

I have just lately been trying to pay attention to some of the stories I make up from moment to moment--most of the time, they are such passing thoughts and I never see them again. But if, as Rilke says, our true lives are in our imaginings, then by letting mine slip by without noting them I might be missing parts of my life!

Today on the way home from my friend Roger Nachman's studio (visit Roger's site and look at his glowingly beautiful glass art--such a "healing art") I drove past a few schools whose playgrounds were full of shouting and laughing and the running bodies of children let outside on a beautiful day--yes, today was actually a sunny day in Seattle ;-)

At one of the schools (on NW 80th, near Aurora, or maybe it was near Greenwood), on the edge of the sidewalk between the chain-link fence surrounding the playground, and the very trafficky city street, were a series of rectangular grass strips. One of the rectangles (just one!) was popping with many scattered white and yellow daffodils, and blue crocuses, a tiny patch of meadow in the city. In my imagination, I clearly saw a group of children and their teacher on a much colder day some months ago, carefully or haphazardly digging holes and dropping flower bulbs into them (or not--maybe just digging to dig) and then being thrilled to see their class project emerge from the ground like magic. I am always entirely thrilled to see something I've planted peek its tender new self out of the ground, and I'm so glad that the children there (or, in my imagination, anyway) got to have that feeling, too. And really glad for as many more signs of spring as I can find, or make up.

halfway up the mountain

Thoughtful and provocative new webl, Radical Torah: Sources for the Jewish Social Action Community, "features multiple takes on parshat hashavua (the weekly Torah portion), as seen through the lens of progressive religious and political viewpoints. The project seeks to create a resource of authentically Jewish responses to pertinent social justice issues, timed in accordance with their relevancy to the Jewish calendar."

From this week's parashah, Mishpatim, Danya Ruttenberg writes "Beyond Mysticism":

"...Right after the vision of God, Moses continues up the mountain, leaving his friends behind...He ascended higher up the mountain. Into a place not about visions, but about commandments. Into a place not about experiences, but rather, covenant. Moses, here, accepts his (and Israel's) half of the responsibility for a relationship with the Divine. It's not about getting something cool (theophany, mysticism) but rather agreeing to give something...Moses, after all, didn't just see God, he spoke to God "panim al panim," face to face. He didn't just have an experience of God, he had a relationship with God. And while theophany is fleeting, sometimes hard to control, a relationship is something more stable, lasting, and accessible at all times. Mystical experience is great, but it's only halfway up the mountain. Perhaps every now and again it's worth asking ourselves what we might be able to offer God, instead."

happy red fire dog year

Happy Red Fire Dog Year, the first day of the Lunar New Year 4704!

Donut, who is also known as Donut-Ponut (lying with her Hedgehog)

how the heart hardens

I have wrestled a bit with the part of the Moses-Pharoah-Exodus story where it says that "god hardened Pharoah's heart"--in that case, whose responsibility is it that the Egyptian people in the myth suffer through all those plagues? Whose choice was it, if Pharoah would have given in, but for his heart being hardened against his will?

So, I am happy to read this interpretation from a much more muscular wrestler than I am, Rabbi Arthur Waskow of The Shalom Center. This piece of his is posted at a new group blog, Radical Torah, "a weblog which features multiple takes on parshat hashavua (the weekly Torah portion), as seen through the lens of progressive religious and political viewpoints. The project seeks to create a resource of authentically Jewish responses to pertinent social justice issues, timed in accordance with their relevancy to the Jewish calendar."

Perhaps the greatest archetypal tale in all of human culture about addiction to top-down, unaccountable power is the story of Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus.

Now, today, we are seeing this tale lived out before our own eyes. The present government of the United States has become so addicted to its own power, so swept away by its own arrogance, that it is playing out the tale of Pharaoh.

And the US government is not alone: the present government of Iran is talking like Pharaoh; Al Qaeda acts like a mini-Pharaoh.

Pharaoh begins by hardening his own heart to the plight of the poor and powerless, and after a series of disasters (the "plagues") brought on by his own arrogance, his addiction takes over.

God – read "Reality" – takes over, and from then on it is God Who hardens his heart.

What is this like? — Use heroin once, twice, thrice – and you are making a free choice. But at some point the addiction takes over, Reality takes over, God takes over. Now it is the heroin that is doing you, not you doing heroin.

If you choose hard-heartedness so long you get addicted to it, at some point you are no longer choosing: God, Reality, is hardening your heart.

...

Even when Pharaoh's own advisers shriek at him, "You are destroying Egypt!" he can no longer turn back.

Pharaoh has so addicted himself to his own uncontrollable power that he can no longer make a free choice. Unfortunately, when people who have great power insulate themselves in arrogance, the disasters they create do not wound only themselves. They wound the whole society...

Read the rest here.

slow light

Hmmm. Not blogging for a few weeks is a tiny bit like not sending out holiday cards for the past 4 or 5 years (or maybe it is 6). The time has been so full, I wonder: where shall I start?

But that's too daunting. Instead, I'll just start here, and say that this morning the sky was clear--so rare in the past few months--and the sun was angled low in the sky like it is all winter, and casually brilliant. I so much appreciate days like today when none of my things-to-do are too precisely time-bound. How luxurious to roll very slowly along in the morning commute traffic, and not feel hurried. To be able to notice all of the trees growing on the freeway covers and be filled by the sunlight glinting on the mountains and the lake, and know that it will be fine with my friend Jana whether I arrive at her house at 9 or 9:30 or later.

By lunchtime it was raining again (though the chill was warmed by getting to have lunch with Rabbi Ted!)

And now, in the dark, I'm still full of the slow light of this morning.

This Pillar of Sun, taken in Maine by Lucy Orloski, is from the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day site

floating past the bridges

"...You know how a good bass player is just there, in the music, not the main thing but just a continual presence. This dissertation is always there, no matter where I live or what I do for work or how I feel.

Okay, so I was working on my dissertation the other day, and I encountered a new reality. Stepped right through the filmiest of barriers to this other side.

I realized that I'm done. This dissertation is done."

Congratulations, Jeff! I'm so glad you're inviting us back to cross the rio-grandio with you again!

life is the only way to rise on wings

A lovely selection via Panhala, by Polish poet and Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska:

A Note

Life is the only way
to get covered in leaves,
catch your breath on the sand,
rise on wings;

to be a dog,
or stroke its warm fur;

to tell pain
from everything it's not;

to squeeze inside events,
dawdle in views,
to seek the least of all possible mistakes.

An extraordinary chance
to remember for a moment
a conversation held
with the lamp switched off;

and if only once
to stumble upon a stone,
end up soaked in one downpour or another,

mislay your keys in the grass;
and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;
and to keep on not knowing
something important.

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

everything is waiting

My friend Bruce said something in an ImagineCascadia (more on that another time) email conversation that reminded me of this favorite poem by Whidbey Island poet David Whyte :

(I first got to hear David recite this in his wonderful and inimitable style during a conversational presentation that was recorded and is available as "A Change for the Better: Poetry & the Reimagination of Midlife"):

EVERYTHING IS WAITING FOR YOU
(After Derek Mahon)

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

NJ teasing the Pacific

sugared ice

The hummingbird feeder outside our dining room window had ice in it the other day! But only partially, and only till the afternoon. The hummingbirds who live in our neighborhood are the most audible birds around at this time of year, with their chp chp chp chp chp coming from various high-up places.

An Improbable Prayer

From Phelim McDermott, artistic co-director of Improbable, a theater company in the UK-- an open space manifesto from before he knew about "open space":

An Improbable Prayer.

We will say we don’t know when we don’t know.
We will say we are scared when we are scared.
We will not pretend everything is ok when it isn’t.
We will never ask a performer to do something we wouldn’t be prepared to do ourselves.
We love performers.
We believe they often know more than the director.
We love the audience.
We believe they often know more than either the performers or the director.
Anyone is free to leave at anytime.
It is better to leave than to be there and not really be present.
If someone leaves we will do it.
A comedy store joke in serious theatre is just as valuable as serious theatre at the comedy store.
We will never do something just to be different.
We will be prepared to be obvious.
When things get scary we will stay awake.
When things get scary we will look after each other not ourselves.
We will have a good time.
The audience see everything.

metaphorest walk

With the light and warmth of gathering around glowing embers on a dark winter day: I am grateful to see that Chris Weaver at metaphorest walk is blogging again.

preparing for liftoff

it is the night of la guadalupana
and each one of a trillion brown oak leaves
(now on the ground) turns
his leathered elder face in a light wind
to face the sky, eyelids closed beneath
the endless black branches of his mother
tree as she swings under the clouds,
each old face awaiting a kiss
from a snowflake, spiraling
downward from the unseen stars,
a gift

for a job well done

posted by chris weaver dec 11 2005

gratitude experiment

My friend Emma sent me the link to Stacey Robyn's very sweet Go Gratitude Experiment, a "journey together into the core of Gratitude," which begins with this brief flash video.

Inspired by Masaru Emoto's photos of water crystals, which he says are evidence of water taking on the shape of the intentions and energies poured into it, Stacey Robyn describes her vision of:

"... a wake of Gratitude rolling across our planet, re-connecting our water bodies to Love . Passed person to person, heartbeat by heartbeat, this wake would roll through our bodies - mostly water - to create a massive tide of change by simply focusing on Gratitude."

gratitude-water-crystal
masaru emoto

habitat jam

The government of Canada will be hosting the 3rd session of the United Nations World Urban Forum, in Vancouver from June 19-23, 2006, with the theme of "Our Future: Sustainable Cities -- Turning Ideas into Action.

As part of the preparations for the Forum, the Canadian government, IBM, and UN-HABITAT (the United Nations Human Settlement Programme) are sponsoring what they hope will be the largest internet conversation to date, the "Habitat Jam", beginning tomorrow, Dec. 1, through Dec. 3. Anyone who wants to add their voice is invited to participate, and input will be gathered and analyzed in order to influence the agenda of the Forum in June.

"The Habitat JAM is about adding your ideas into the global conversation about the future of our cities. It's about having your say on important issues that affect you. It's about building new global networks of people who wouldn't have connected before. It's about working together across the globe to find solutions to critical urban problems."

I think registration is still open, till 15:00 GMT (7 am here PST)