Buddha's Advice to his Son -- Passage from the Majhima Nikaya

Develop a state of mind like the earth,
Rahula. For on the earth people throw
clean and unclean things, dung and urine,
spittle, pus and blood, and the earth is not
troubled or repelled or disgusted. And as
you grow like the earth no contacts with
pleasant or unpleasant will lay hold of your
mind or stick to it.

Simply you should develop a state of
mind like water, for people throw all manner
of clean and unclean things into water
and it is not troubled or repelled or disgusted.
And similarly with fire, which burns all things,
clean and unclean, and with air, which blows upon
them all, and with space,
which is nowhere established.

Develop the state of mind of friendliness,
Rahula, for, as you do so, ill-will will
grow less; and of compassion, for thus vexation
will grow less; and of joy, for thus
aversion will grow less; and of equanimity,
for thus repugnance will grow less.

- Gautama Buddha

L'Arche in Nigeria?

Happy Hogmanay!

I've been planning to write a post about cordwood building, permaculture, and a new dream for cooperative farming in Virginia (creating a debt free home base here from which to plan towards our work in Africa). Yet again, I've been inspired by the most recent interview on Speaking of Faith, which explores the L'Arche movement founded by beloved Canadian philosopher and Catholic social innovator Jean Vanier.

L'Arche is a model of residential community founded through principles of love and acceptance, expressed through caring relationships between "core members" (people with mental or intellectual disabilities) and "assistant members" who provide support in a context of mutual transformation. Like the Catholic Worker Movement (that I've been in love with for years), L'Arche has its roots in the best kind of Christian theology. A faith-based core provides a foundation of resilience and optimism, but people of all or no faiths have been drawn to participate. Hearing Vanier describe his experiences living in L'Arche communities, I can't help but relate his words to mindfulness practice. Attention to the body, acceptance, kindness, care... This could be an extraordinary model to incorporate into whatever home we build in Nigeria, where people with disabilities are still so often shunned and cast out of families and other havens. L'Arche already exists in Africa, in Uganda, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, and Zimbabwe.

I've added "living for a year as an assistant in a L'Arche community" to my cluster of lifelong dreams - right up there with cycling across America and building a home with our own hands. Speaking of which: cordwood construction = next post.

"You see the big thing for me is to love reality and not live in the imagination -- not live in what could have been or what should have been or what can be -- and somewhere to love reality, and then discover that god is present." - Jean Vanier

last minute gift idea? consider giving water to those who need it most

A few years ago an old friend of mine - Ariane Kirtley - encountered the human face of climate change, and in response she founded Amman Imman: Water is Hope, an organization that drills wells to provide life-giving water to the people on this planet who need it most. The people of the Azawak in Niger are directly impacted by climate change, which has shortened the rainy season in an environment where survival was already difficult. Amman Imman's work is intelligent, effective, and inspiring. It focuses on local collaborations and on harnessing the ingenuity and compassion of volunteers. The result is low operating costs, with funds going directly to support the borehole projects that deliver water to thousands of people and animals and usher in other development projects. Through a beautiful initiative called Wells of Love, Montessori school children become Heroes of Compassion motivated to learn, teach, and fundraise to support their brothers and sisters in Niger. Just $50 can help ensure a child has clean water to drink...

The Bill McKibben Reader

Recently heard an interview with Bill McKibben on one of my favorite radio programs, Speaking of Faith.

McKibben is an American environmentalist and writer now organizing internationally to help folks locally build community alternatives to the choices that fuel climate change.

Anyone want to join us in using (or getting) a public library card and delving into the works of Bill McKibben? A Bill McKibben reading group - via potluck or skype? A chance to clarify our understanding of climate change and to contemplate our strategies for living a more integrated, neighborly, sustaining and sustainable life?

Here's a wee preview in which McKibben describes his most recent book *eaarth* (so spelled because our planet is now so radically different from the orb captured in those early iconic photographs from space -- the ones we grew up with -- that it needs a new name):

"I make the case that we’re going to have to figure out how to stop focusing our economies on growth, and start thinking about survival. That means embracing local, smaller-scale ways of living, like it or not. Happily, there’s much to like. Think about food: Americans this past year embraced gardening: seed sales more than doubled. Think about energy: Instead of relying on a few centralized power plants, we’re quickly heading for a nation of solar panels and small windmills, of neighbors generating power for their neighbors.

We’ve built a new Eaarth. It’s not as nice as the old one; it’s the greatest mistake humans have ever made, one that we will pay for literally forever. We live on a new planet. But we have to live on it. So we better start understanding what the hell is going on."

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...in Nigeria?

Hello out there, and Happy Midwinter!!!

So, we're resurrecting the Nija blog. Now, '...in Nigeria' will become a space in which to educate ourselves and to imagine present and future possibilities. We are dreaming towards a living and livelihood of community, interconnectedness, engagement, and integrity back in West Africa. We are also practicing creating and inhabiting those qualities now, where we are, among the mountains of central Virginia. We are practicing to be more whole, to have more of ourselves and our lives present in the moments that pass, to be more ourselves and more each other, to listen and engage authentically with self and land and other, even as all of it changes all the time.

We wish to invite our loved and admired ones, (near and far, known and unknown), to interact with our dreams and despairs through this blog. We want your ideas -- links to sites that inspire you, information about practices that motivate you. We also want to listen and be listened to around those embodied practices that upset and pain us, that hold us back from stepping into what we are. All of it is important, and welcome.

We want to invite you to help us and to participate with us. Anything is possible. Want to follow this blog? Want to help us create an ecovillage in Nigeria's lush greenbelt? Want to cycle through West Africa with us - and interrogate what such a journey might achieve? Want to share and celebrate what you are already doing and dreaming - right here, right now?

Here are some ideas to get us started:

*Possible vocations and orientations*

volunteer emt brigades manned by university students
organic farming
permaculture
climate organizing
recycling
direct democracy
create a space for workshoping
create a space for resting
hydrology
oral history
alternative energies
mindfulness practicing and teaching -- acceptance
the work that reconnects
drama - playback, theatre of the oppressed, clowning, drama for development
photo-journalism (documenting the dying practice of facial marking)
cooperative business
social enterprise
sailing to london and cycling to nigeria
environmental negotiation and mediation

Comments? Additions? Revisions?

Thank you for visiting...