I'm finally returning to finish Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," and it's exhilarating to learn of all these social movements and rebellions I've never heard of. Like unwrapping gifts of possibility. Also very painful. Recently, the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army had a training in Charlottesville, and a gaggle of "clownvassers" visited low income "minority" neighborhoods to register people for the upcoming Dialogue on Race. It was wonderful to share some of these beloved skills with new friends here, and it opened up a real sense of possibility. Charlottesville is surprisingly alive with all kinds of rebellious and progressive politics. An urban communitarian network of cooperative anarchists, various neighborhood associations focused on mutual aid and autonomy in the legacy of the civil rights movement, various artists and writers working creatively for social change, tons of non-profits, a new popular education center forming in the countryside near here, a new age book shop that runs a prison books project, a blossoming local food movement with transition town potential, engaged buddhism, environmental negotiation, bicycle activists, clowns without borders, a city government supporting a race and reconciliation project embracing action for change, and the list goes on... It's exciting. I still often have the urge to flee (wrought from my conditioned transience), but I think we have a good thing going on in this place. An idea is percolating to band with others and create a cooperative for mapping cville projects and alliances and then offering capacity-building process and storytelling training -- playback theatre, theatre of the oppressed, oral history, ethnography, writing, documentary... I feel more connected than ever to the sense of value in acting locally, but also strategically and holistically. Perhaps it's Howard Zinn's storytelling, tales of brave folks coming together in relation to their circumstances. Women walking out of mills to stop the overseer from turning back the clock.

value noticing
value opening
value not knowing
value beginning again

Tricky Business

It has been an interesting week of noticing the terrible tension in my mind - human minds? - between practicing acceptance of life as it is - right now - and dreaming about what might be possible. This is a very tricky business for all of us, and for me there is the tricky circumstance of finding myself deeply drawn to two challenging ideological/spiritual/material traditions: Buddhism and anarchism. The first teaches radical acceptance and the practice of peace-making through an honest encounter with suffering from the inside out. The second is often utopic and dreamy, often (though not always or necessarily) drawing its power from a spatialization of self in opposition to oppressive forces deemed to cause our suffering. In theory, I am very excited about the places where these teachers intersect, and I am also increasingly aware of how they can both gnaw on my poor mind. My intellect endlessly concretizes and grasps for the possible, imagining potential states of being as places I can construct and control. Yet the life force really comes from the surprising moments of practicing freedom, kindness... moments that we can't really hold up and point to, can't really discuss or describe. Moments of deep interconnection and peace, when we cultivate and celebrate, feeling acceptance and revolution at once. I know I want my life to be a journey of learning to create the conditions for a greater aliveness to these moments, and to do so in mutuality with others. To do so with kindness. I also know I am doing that, small small. And that I probably think too much about it.

So. I have various new models in my mind for future work in the world. I do want to record those, to create a map from which to design the little one can design. I also need to place them within the context I am trying to point to here. My life right now is like that of a less experienced meditator sitting on a cushion. There is mindfulness, yes, but at every stabbing pain she pulls herself away, adjusts a little bit, delighting in the release of pain, not yet having complete faith that another just as bad will soon return. Not yet having complete faith that the painful sensation, however bad, has come with a power to purify and a promise to always leave in the end. My life right now is like that of a fledgling anarchist. Angry at the reality in which she finds herself. Unsure what to do with her surge of urgency. Confident in her radicalism. Brilliant, reactive, and almost certainly mistaking the root of the problem.

I long and grasp for community, yet I rarely rest my hand on my heart.

I keep tinkering with the compass. Why not turn my face to where it points?

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."

X