Dayle in Limoux – Day # 47

The village people…nope, he ruined that phrase, too…the townspeople, when they meet in the in the little place  [pronounced ‘ploss’], or square, down below without devices or agenda, are doing way more than nothing, they are doing everything. They c o m m u n i c a t e face-to-face with deep compassion and care for one another, and their tribe. They laugh, they dialogue…sometimes with incredible passion…sometimes silence. And it goes on for hours. They sit under the trees with their cool, cross natural ventilations and circulation, living with the heat not against.

    🌱

And I thought of them when I read an email from one of my favorite beings on the planet right now, Baratunde Thurston, a writer and cultural critic. He contributes to PUCK. I learned of him watching Brian William’s ’11th Hour’ where he appeared a number of times with clarity and perspective, which, to me, was always right on. He wrote so beautifully from a place of anguish after witnessing the violent slap on the Oscar stage.

   🌱

I was reminded of the French townspeople here in Limoux when he writes about his travels these summer months in Europe, particularly in Southern France/Spain when he refers to the blistering heat and the climate breakdown. I had some other things to share with you today, yet, I find his writing so profound and important, as well as in alignment with my own thoughts and feelings right now, I decided to share his email, as well as an event he has planned for NYC in September, free for those who join virtually. Sending him a virtual {hug} for that; thank you, Baratunde.

And this is Baratunde’s information about his NYC event next month. And for those of us who can only attend virtually, there is no cost.

_________________

This September 21-24, I’ll be hosting Unfinished Live in NYC. This is an immersive live and digital event that, like me, exists at the intersection of technology, art, ideas, and impact. If you don’t think the future should be a foregone conclusion decided by a handful of tech companies hoarding all the things, consider joining. 

See you soon!

unfinished.com

I saw this synopsis from TMZ today posted after Bill Maher’s HBO show last night. I’ve been feeling this while in France. That is, no online shopping. Everything, every consumption, is purchased locally. And very little processed food. Haven’t seen one Amazon truck or van, even though I understand they do deliver to the area. The point is, the U.S. is catastrophic in its collective energy use, fossil fuel pollution, and junk food, especially in comparison to other countries.

[Bill Maher]

TMZ 

The “Real Time” host went scorched earth on people who like to order 9 pairs of pants to find the one that fits just right … only to return the other 8. Those boxes go somewhere … yep, landfills, oceans … not good.

The visual tells the story … buy a small item, it comes in a big box. Buy 3 items … you get 3 big boxes. When you add it up, it’s kind of an environmental disaster.

And, then there’s the human toll … Americans don’t leave their homes like they used to because it’s easier to push a button than to start a car and drive to a mall. Thing is … Americans have become way more isolated, and it’s taking a mental toll, because we are social creatures who increasingly have stopped socializing.”

Dayle in Limoux – Day #32

BBC

‘The Notre-Dame Cathedral is on track to open its doors to worshippers and the public in 2024, says France’s culture minister.

The 13th Century Paris monument caught fire in April 2019, sparking a vast outpouring of emotion.

Since then, a huge restoration project has been carried out aiming to restore it to its previous design.’

Wonderful news! In time, too, for the Summer Olympics in Paris.

UN

Today, remembering the anniversary of Hiroshima, particularly poignant after the startling reminder from the UN chief that humanity is ‘one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.’

“It is totally unacceptable for states in possession of nuclear weapons to admit the possibility of a nuclear war,” António Guterres underscored early on Saturday in Japan at a ceremony marking the 77th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Land grabs, borders, and bored male leaders who are pained by their quest for power and greed and violence.

From Dorothy Day:

“Mr, Truman was jubilant. President Truman. True man; what a strange name, come to think of it. We refer to Jesus Christ as true God and true Man. Truman is a true man of his time in that he was jubilant. He was not a son of God, brother of Christ, brother of the Japanese, jubilating as he did. He went from table to table on the cruiser which was bringing him home from the Big Three conference, telling the great news; “jubilant” the newspapers said. Jubilate Deo. We have killed 318,000 Japanese.”

—Dorothy Day, editorial following Hiroshima bomb [Posted on social media by Robert Ellsberg, Orbis Books]

‘God is that which promotes life, evil is that which destroys it.’

-Albert Schweitzer [1875-1965]

‘Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.’ –Bhagavad Gita

D I V I N E   F E M I N I N E 🥀

‘There is no day on which I grow not

Finer and more pure,

For this world holds no nobler lady

Than she whom I do serve and I adore.

And these – the words I speak –

Come singing from an open heart.’

-Troubadour Arnaut Daniel, 1180-1200

(Translation by Henry Lincoln.]

‘Throughout history, the quest for beauty, loe and truth has struggled to survive amid the quest for dominance and greed. During the medieval era, the dominant powers of church and state burned the last Templars. They burned thousands of Cathars, and they burned Joan of Arc, who tried to liberate her people from foreign rule. They even tried to ban the poetry and songs of the troubadours. But the spirit of truth would not be silenced and rose again and again, from the dust and ashes, rising from the half remembered promise patterned in the blood, held in the heart. Always they return, with the flame of hope for a better world filled with compassion, beauty and a song of love returning to the land […] a new earth and return to Beauty.’

-Ani Williams, harpist and singer, who has recorded more than two dozen albums of original sacred music based on ancient spiritual traditions.

Bonne nuit.

🌙

Dayle in Limoux – Day #11

First, this.

Hard praying Joe Manchin is her first case. If he’s still alive. If we are.

NYTimes

How One Senator Doomed the Democrats’ Climate Plan

Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia led his party and his president through months of tortured talks, with nothing to show for it as the planet dangerously heats up. [Click image for article-paywall removed.]

Sidebar. When Lebron James made the comment about Brittney Griner I said out loud,  “Right on.” He backtracked because of the flack. But he spoke truth. 100%.

“Now, how could she feel like America has her back? I would be feeling like, ‘Do I even want to go back to America?'”

Same.

Las fleurs from the marche in Limoux!

Lovely market in the square today and every Friday morning. This market is a little more utilitarian than the Tuesday markets, i.e., local produce, fabrics, flowers, clothes, eye glasses…incense! I was able to stroll through the market and drink two cafe au lait’s before the 100 + degree mark. Yikes. Europe is burning. In France, literally.

French President Emmanuel Macron today:

Solidarity is national: three thousand firefighters from all over France are fighting the fires that are hitting the south of the country. I salute their courage and their commitment alongside elected officials. At the front, they save lives. We are thinking of them and of the evacuated residents.

Solidarity is European: a year ago, when Greece was facing terrible fires, we mobilized as Europeans. This noon, aircraft from the Greek rescue forces arrived in the south to support the action of our firefighters.

REUTERS

Wildfires rage in southwestern France with over 1,700 hectares burnt

About 600 firefighters, supported by six water-bomber aircraft, were on Wednesday battling to bring under control two wildfires in southwestern France, which have already burnt more than 1,700 hectares [4,200 acres] and prompted the evacuation of thousands of tourists.

“Important human and material resources are being deployed to master the fires (…) local and national reinforcements are expected,” said the local authority for the Gironde department, where the blazes are raging.

France, already hit by a series of wildfires over the last few weeks, is suffering – like the rest of Europe – from a second heatwave in as many months. [It’s brutal. -dayle]

The biggest of the two Gironde fires is around the town of Landiras, south of Bordeaux, where roads have been closed and 500 residents evacuated, with the blaze having already burnt more than 1,000 hectares.

The other one is along the Atlantic Coast, close to the iconic “Dune du Pilat” – the tallest sand dune in Europe – located in the Arcachon Bay area, above which heavy clouds of dark smoke were seen rising in the sky.

That fire has already burnt 700 hectares and led to the preventive evacuation of 6,000 people from five surrounding campsites. They were brought for shelter to a local exhibition centre.

“Other campers woke us up at around 0430 in the morning. We had to leave immediately and quickly choose what to take with us. I had forgotten my ID, luckily someone took it for me. But I don’t have my phone (…) and we don’t know what is going to happen,” Christelle, one of the evacuated tourists, told BFM TV.

[Those villages and towns close to forests were not allowed to display fireworks for Bastille Day.]

Wildfires raged across tinder-dry country in Portugal, Spain, France and Croatia, burning homes and threatening livelihoods, as much of Europe baked in a heatwave that has pushed temperatures into the mid 40Cs in some countries. [Reuters] 40C is equivalent to 104 in Fahrenheit. -dayle 

From NBC NEWS:

Over 20 wildfires are burning in Portugal and Spain, and around half of Portugal has been placed under a red weather alert.

~

More captures from the marche today. Love Limoux.

And a very hot kitty. ღ

Yes, please. Want!

Le Tour is getting closer! Tuesday, étape 16. Can’t wait. 🚴🏻

From étape 12 yesterday, Alpe d’Huez. Good thing Covid is over. 😐

It’s like a Where’s Waldo’ image. Try to find Sepp, Jonas, and Tadej.

#Anxiety #Why #Sepp’sFace

In the newsletter from the Flourish Foundation this month, a social-profit in Sun Valley, Idaho [Hailey], Harry Dreyfuss, the creative director at Flourish Foundation, shares his quarantine epiphany on love, relationships, and self…all ONE.

I inadvertently ‘met’ Harry once when I opened the door of his home thinking it was my book club’s meeting place that month. I remember seeing this amazing light blue guitar lying on the dining room table. Cool. Then Harry came down the stairs. Oops. Yikes. Awkward. He couldn’t have been k i n d e r. “I think you want the house next door.” Yep. :)

This is a sweet message I read today from Harry; wanted to share.

 

More on Kindness… Marrying Yourself There was a moment during quarantine when I had an epiphany concerning love and relationships: whether I ever find a long-term romantic partner or not, there is one person to whom I am already in an arranged marriage—myself. Myself and I are stuck together, and like it or not, I need to make this relationship work. I have no other choice.    So, I made a vow to my brain. It went something like this. “I may wish you were smarter, and kinder, and full of better angels, but I can’t actually force you to do anything. Instead, I must live with the ideas you have, the impulses you have, and the body that you have. What I can do, however, is make a vow to honor those creative ideas, good or bad. You churn out the ideas, and I promise to act upon them.”    I did this mainly concerning writing. I vowed to write down all my brain’s ideas as an act of loyalty, without judgment about how bad or good they were. There’s a kind of mantra created by Julia Cameron for artists to use towards their inner muse: “You take care of the quality; I’ll take care of the quantity.” This means you will guarantee to actualize all the ideas your muse creates, and your muse will try to ensure that at least 20% of those ideas are actually usable.    I was made to think about that vow and that internal wedding as I read Ryan’s piece about kindness last week. As he puts it, there are constantly moments where our minds generate an urge to do a kind thing, but it is then up to our conscious mind to actualize that impulse or not. My vow concerned artistic impulses, but there is a similar relationship possible here. Your mind—your bride or groom—is offering you an idea for how you can best love the world in that moment. What would happen if you made a vow to honor those ideas when they cropped up?    It may be a hassle. It involves interrupting your day, your business as usual. But the interruption is a sweet one, hazardous and vulnerable as it may be. And we all know what it is like to get into a groove of kindness. Taking those risks, allowing yourself to creatively engage in a loving way with the world, ultimately can lead to an ecstatic feeling, a minor form of bliss, which can make each day an exciting one.    Perhaps the most inspiring thing I’ve ever heard said about love comes from Toni Morrison, who is urging people to recognize the ecstatic and moral obligation we have to honor our need to love one another:   People say, “‘I didn’t ask to be born.’ I think we did, and that’s why we’re here. We are here, and we have to do something nurturing that we respect before we go. We must. It is more interesting, more complicated, more intellectually demanding and more morally demanding to love somebody, to take care of somebody, to make one other person feel good… Love just seems to make life not just livable, but a gallant, gallant event.   Have a nice life, Harry

https://www.flourishfoundation.org

❀

Dayle in Limoux – Day #10

Bastille Day!

After days of revelry leading up to le 14 juillet and a local military parade with dignities early this morning, the village of Limoux was quiet. And hot. So hot. 39 C which is 102 Fahrenheit. Another solid week of heat coming up, too. The planet is burning. And the leaders dance, and the Buffetts and Kochs double down on oil. Don’t look up. ‘This is what we call a planet killer.’

This from inews.co.uk:

“Early models indicate a ‘heat dome’ is building over Europe that would trap the continent into high temperatures into August and could create the conditions for a record-breaking summer of blistering heat to rival that of summer 2003.”

https://inews.co.uk/news/more-heatwaves-hit-uk-july-august-met-office-warns-1738108

You might want to do some research on this one.

‘We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.’

-R. Buckminster Fuller

From Seth Godin, contributor in the book:

“On Saturday, in dozens of countries around the world, the volunteers behind the Carbon Almanac will be holding book signings to celebrate the launch of this project. I’ll be doing three, and I hope you’ll stop by and say hello if you can. It’s a world record signing because it’s the only world we’ve got–and we are all authors of our future.”

[To learn more visit thecarbonalmanac.org.]

Back to Bastille and note from Pete at Radical Tea Towel.

‘For centuries before 1789, politics in the Kingdom of France concerned itself with kings and noblemen.

The common people, on the other hand, were counted as nothing – and the same was true across Europe.

It wasn’t that the masses were blindly submissive to their exclusion. Bread riots and peasant revolts – like the French jacqueries – were a regular occurrence.

There were even a few organized political movements by the working classes, like the Levellers and Diggers during the English Revolution.

But it wasn’t until the Parisian masses stormed the Bastille prison that the people entered into European politics in such a way that they could never be expelled again.’

‘Things weren’t going to plan for the King.

He had wanted the three Estates – clergy, nobility, and commoners – to rubber stamp his fiscal measures and go home.

But the Third Estate – the common people – wanted something in return.

In June 1789, members of the Third Estate began to call themselves the ‘National Assembly’ – they did, after all, represent the vast majority of the French population.

They also took the famous Tennis Court Oath, a promise not to disband until France had a new constitution.

Reactionary nobles close to the King became nervous.
He had wanted the three Estates – clergy, nobility, and commoners – to rubber stamp his fiscal measures and go home.

But the Third Estate – the common people – wanted something in return.

There were mass protests in Paris on the 12 July, attacking royal offices. The French soldiers in the city did nothing to intervene – perhaps because they supported the revolutionaries. (Sound familiar? 1.6.21 during the insurgency. -dayle)

The next day, a citizen’s militia was formed, and the Marquis de Lafayette elected its commander.

It was not by the hired soldiers of some foreign aristocratic elite, but by the French people themselves.’

Longue vie à la France❗️

It starts to cool off–oh, you know, to about 90–around 10 pm. So, although getting dark, went exploring along the river Aude. More captures!

Le Pont Neuf is the oldest in the town of Limoux that connects the two cities, being the villa is completely divided by the river Aude. Dating back to the 1400’s, it originally was made entirely of wood. Often, the Church of Saint Martin in its view.

▲ More history on this capture soon. :)

And the tour! Starts to head west after the teams climbed Alpe d’Huez today. Incredible beauty in this country. Why can’t we just stop everything, pas plus, and save the planet. Nothing else matters if we don’t. I mean, nothing. What are we doing.

Choose your life. 💛

Amidst everything, Just a few countries away, Ukraine. And loosing Liza.

‘Her name was Liza.
She was 3 years old.
Her mother survived but her leg was blown off and she is fighting for her life in intensive care.’

[Social media post.]

The picture of Liza on the left was taken about an hour before Putin’s missile strike  killed her.

Borders, power, and evil. When does this stop?

“Terrorist attacks, infrastructure destruction and civilians massacre. […] Cannot defeat Armed Forces in battle, so it resorts to barbarism.”

-M. Podolyak, Adviser to the Head of the Office of President of Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Pas plus.

Friday, February 11th, 2022

No one knows your path but you. The mystery belongs to you only, unveiled by you in pieces through time, through the span of your life. Your way is innate. Your navigation is inside-out. ~Jennifer Rose

“Compassion, then, is love at work. Compassion is a sweet gracious working in love, mingled with abundant kindness; for compassion works at taking care of us and makes all things become good. Compassion allows us to fail measurably and in as much as we fail, in so much we fall…”

-Julian of Norwich

“The great (wo)man knew not that (s)he was great. It took a century or two for that fact to appear. What (s)he did (s)he did because (s)he must; it was the most natural think in the world, and grew out of the circumstances of the moment. But now, every thing (s)he did, even to the lifting of (her) his finger or the eating of bread, looks large, all-related, and is called an institution.”

-Emerson

“A solitary sojourn in the country is, especially at this moment, only half really, because the sense of harmlessness in being with nature is lost to us. The influence on us of nature’s quiet, insistent presence is, from the start, overwhelmed by or knowledge of the unspeakable human fate that, night and day, irrevocably unfolds.”

-Rilke

Needs Improvement
The Economic Giants Must Do Better than Meh

by Bill McKibben

No one expects small businesses to be the leaders on climate change, though of course a noble handful are. It’s the giants—who have enormous brands to protect, and large margins to cover the cost of changing—that need to be out front. The ones with big ad campaigns with lots of windmills and penguins and cheerful shots of the smiling future. The ones who have made a lot of noise about ‘net zero.’ And how are they doing? Meh.

The New Climate Institute, a European think tank, just released a study of 25 of the biggest companies on earth, ranging from the shipping giant Maersk to the bookshelf giant Ikea to the stare-at-your-palm giant Apple. These titans account for 5 percent of the world’s carbon emissions all by themselves. And they’re not dropping those emissions anywhere near fast enough.

In fact, the report finds that for many companies the promised 100% reduction will look more like 40%. “It is not clear these reductions take us beyond business as usual,” Thomas Day, the researcher who compliled the report, toldthe Guardian. “We were very disappointed and surprised.” The “over-use of offsetting” was one of the main reasons most companies were marked down, said Day—i.e., these companies were promising to buy and protect forests. Except that too many credits go for forests that were never going to be cut down in the first place, or for forests that burn up in fires.

Two more notes: these companies are also often cash-rich, and there’s not yet been a proper accounting of how that money sitting in the bank is unwittingly underwriting the fossil fuel industry. And these companies don’t just make things—they also buy political influence with vast fleets of lobbyists. Too many of those lobbyists fanned out across Washington in recent months to wreck the Build Back Better bill—it was a target of the Business Roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce and of most of the Fortune 500, because it dares to raise corporate tax rates a smidge to pay for, you know, a working planet for capitalists to plunder, I mean consumers to live on, I mean—you know. As Rolling Stone pointed out at the height of the BBB battle in the fall, many of the tech execs who spoke loudest about the climate crisis were blocking the most useful effort so far to stop it.

The very low comedy of this particular drama was highlighted late in January when Biden hosted CEOs at the White House to build support for some version that Prime Minister Manchin might be persuaded to support. Mary Barra, the CEO of GM, was on hand—GM had actually supported the bill because it handed over a goodly sum for EVs. But Barra had also just taken over the rotating chairmanship of the Business Roundtable, which is the toppest of top CEOs, and as Politico reported, she was not planning to push the organization to change its implacable opposition.

“General Motors has been very clear about our support for Build Back Better, particularly the climate change provisions that will accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles and support to build out US supply chain,” Jeannine Ginivan, a spokesperson for General Motors, told Politico. “Mary was at the White House this week to support Build Back Better. She was there in her role as chair and CEO of General Motors.” And, as its part of this farcical pas de deux, the spokesperson for the Business Roundtable duly explained that of course they’d like the “climate investments” too but not if “Congress adopts the sweeping and anticompetitive tax increases included in the House-passed bill.”

One assumes that Nero’s tune was more on-pitch than this.

#

COP26 🌏

‘Earth, isn’t this what you want: an invisible arising in us … what is your urgent command, if not transformation?’ -Rilke, Ninth Duino Elegy

For centuries we have been content to patch up holes temporarily (making ourselves feel benevolent) while in fact maintaining the institutional structures that created the holes to begin with (disempowering those on the margins). Now it has caught up with us. —Fr Richard Rohr, Center for Action & Contemplation

The cosmic common good provides a larger moral perspective, but it also exhorts us to “sink our roots deeper” into our native place and to work for the good of our place on Earth. —Daniel Scheid, theologian

Washington Post

“The bipartisan measure to improve the nation’s roads, bridges, ports and broadband connections won passage after liberals allowed the vote. The package, crafted by Democrats and Republicans, fulfills a major campaign promise for President Biden. It cleared the Senate on a bipartisan basis in August.”

The infrastructure plan costs $1.2 trillion over eight years, with $550 billion in new spending:

• $110 billion for roads, bridges and other infrastructure fix-ups. Of that, $40 billion is new funding for bridge repair, replacement and rehab.
• $73 billion for electric grid and power structures.
• $66 billion for rail.
• $65 billion for broadband.
• $55 billion for water infrastructure.
• $21 billion for environmental remediation.
• $47 billion for flooding and coastal resiliency, as well as “climate resiliency,” including protections against fires.
• $39 billion to modernize transit — the largest federal investment in public transit in history, according to the White House.
• $7.5 billion for electric vehicles and EV charging … $2.5 billion for zero-emission buses … $2.5 billion for low-emission buses … $2.5 billion for ferries.

‘We are but one thread within it.’

‘To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee.’

-Emily Dickinson

“I used to think that environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are 

• selfishness
• greed
• apathy

and to deal with these, we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”

-James Gustave Speth, environmental lawyer and advocate

Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.

World Resources Institute

Since 1989 David Suzuki has been calling for action and urgency.

“Transformational paradigm shift:

That respect for nature and interdependent with it must be our top priority.”

https://davidsuzuki.org

Nature was our touchstone and our reference pint and dictated the way we interacted with it. But as economics and politics have increasingly come to dominate our decisions and actions, we have lost our sinse of place in the world and our reverence for nature.

-David Suzuki

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.

-Chief Seattle, 1854

Our Planet. 🌱

How can we not do everything in our power to keep her safe?

G

A

I

A

[200-year-old Wisteria in Japan.]

COVID, CLIMATE & COMPASSION

We need to focus and fix all three.

From Eric Holthaus:

Original art for The Phoenix is by Laila Arêde.

Our time here on this beautiful planet is so temporary.

If there’s anything that 2020 taught us, it’s that while time is fleeting for everyone,

it’s the way society is structured

that determines how fleeting it is, and for whom. The overlapping tragedies of Covid-19, police brutality, and the climate emergency don’t fall equally on everyone, and

it’s up to us to change that system

to ensure everyone here gets the chance to thrive that they deserve.

That’s the heart of climate justice.

Our window for revolutionary repair of our planet’s atmosphere and biosphere – caused by centuries of excesses brought by capitalism, patriarchy, misogyny, imperialism, and racism – is bound by physics. We can (and should!) argue about the best ways to get to a zero-carbon world as quickly as possible, but we can’t argue with the fact that current global policies will deliver a planet that’s incompatible with a safe future for billions of people who did the least to cause the climate emergency.

This is what we’re fighting for: Indigenous sovereignty, regenerative care of the land, shelter, equity, joy. All the basics that people need to live a good life. A vision for a bread and roses future for everyone.

Getting started with that journey isn’t hard.

The point is only that you show up.

We need everyone to be a part of this transformation in their own way.

At the same time, becoming a Climate Person isn’t easy. But it’s some of the most important work in the history of the world. You don’t get to give up, but you do get to ask for help.

If living your best life includes making the world more life-sustaining for every creature we share this beautiful planet with, the rest of this post will help you get started.

Meteorologist and climate journalist Eric Holthaus describes himself as “a meteorologist who strives to foster understanding of humanity’s connection to the atmosphere.” Here he delivers a monologue on climate change and his mission to remind everyone that we are all in this fight together. Eric wants to change the narrative of climate change from being “one of inevitable disaster to one of possibility.”

Author Allysha Lavino and a thought for 2021:

And what do we want to bring with us?

Courage? 

Wisdom?

Tenacity? 

This is the year we feather our nests – it’s time to take care of ourSelves, our families, our communities, and our environments.

❀

Climate and Covid and Lies

“Days like today are when revolutions are born. A better world is possible.”

-Eric Holthaus, author and climate correspondent

[Photo taken in Ketchum, Idaho.]

grace.

‘I lack the peace of simple things. I am never wholly in place. I find no peace or grace. We sell the world to buy fire, our way lighted by burning men, and that has bent my mind and made me think of darkness and wish for the dumb life of roots.’

-Wendell Berry

[Sun Valley, Idaho]

Zero Sum

All has been leveled to equal meaninglessness. But it is not quite the same. It is not that all is “one,” but all is “zero.”

Everything adds up to zero. Indeed, even the state, in the end, is zero.

Freedom is then to live and die for zero. Is that I want: to be beaten, imprisoned, or shot for zero?

But to be shot for zero is not a matter of choice. It is not something one is required either to “want” or “not want.” It is not even something one is able to freeze.

Zero swallow shudders hundreds of thousands of victims every year, and the police take care of the details.

Suddenly, mysteriously, without reason, your time comes, and while you are still desperately trying to make up your own mind what you imagine you might possibly be dying for, you are stalled up by zero.

Perhaps, subjectively, you have tried to convince yourself and have not wasted time convincing others. Nobody else is interested.

What I have said so far concerns execution for a “political crime.” But death in war, in the same way, is a kind of execution for nothing, a meaningless extinction, a swallowing up zero.

The Society of Zero

Thomas Merton

All will come again into its strength:

the field undivided, the waters undimmed,

the trees towering and the walls built low.

And in the valleys, people as strong

and varied as the land.

And no churches where God

is imprisoned and lamented

like a trapped and wounded animal.

-Rilke

From the Book of Hours II, 25

#DirtbagDiaries

My passion has grown to encompass filmmaking, community storytelling and social media. The West’s mountains, deserts and forests are my office. My goal is to nurture, strengthen and empower connections with the natural world. Simply put, I want people to shut their laptops and turn off their iPhones and go live the life they daydream about.

https://dirtbagdiaries.com

‘…we see what we believe.’

We think that we believe what we see. Actually, the opposite is true: we begin with belief, and then we see. What do you believe?

-Judith Lasater, PhD.

Think about trust…whom you put your trust in. Trust is earned.

-Alexandra Stoddard

ELIZA ANYANGWE:

‘Corporations and billionaires get tax cuts while convincing individuals that our consumer choices make the world a better place.

Today, managing editor Eliza Anyangwe makes one thing clear: we must let go of our misguided devotion to personal agency and take action alongside other people if we want to bring these systems down.

History shows that the only way to change the system is to stand with the people around us and fight it head on.

Individual action isn’t bad or meaningless – it’s completely natural – but it’s no substitute for tax reform, migration policy reform, criminal justice reform, intellectual property law reform, international trade law reform and so on.

It’s clear that when we have the means, we’re happy to act – recycle, buy ethical, go green – but we need to think beyond our individual actions and choices and learn to talk, plan, and get to work alongside others if anything is going to change.

On occasion, falling down the rabbit hole that is Instagram yields positive results. It was there, on the social media platform, where I learned that American writer Anand Giridharadas would be speaking in Amsterdam. And, as though the gods of procrastination were this once glad to reward me for my fealty, the event would be free.

And so off I went to listen to the best-selling author of Winners Take All Read a summary of the book here talk about the fallacy of “win-win”. Our economic model, Giridharadas explained, was indeed creating winners – who were winning by greater margins than they’d ever done at any other period in human history. Read stats about global inequality from the international NGO, OxfamBut, there were also losers, left to gather up the crumbs from under the table; and a new entrepreneurial class who believed in their ability to “do well and do good”.

[…]

(American writer Anand) Giridharadas offered an answer: perhaps the success of our current system was in part thanks to the ability of that system to focus our attentions on personal agency rather than systemic transformation.

I believed in the power of my own agency: if the social enterprise lark didn’t work, I would choose an employer with a moral compass. And I would be a better consumer; picking products and services that were good for people and planet. Politicians didn’t listen, I reasoned, but corporations did, and they were in charge anyway, so I would vote with my “spending power” – boycotting those brands who had poor records on the things I cared about, and rewarding with my meagre income those companies who took their social responsibility seriously.

We scarcely consider the fact that for all of its virtues, ethical or conscious consumerism is no substitute for tax reform, migration policy reform, criminal justice reform, intellectual property law reform, international trade law reform and so on. What we have contented ourselves with doing instead is essentially playing the same game (consumerism) by the same rules (I buy, therefore I am). We’ve simply changed the ball (ethical products and services).

My guess is that we fear that if we weren’t doing this – buying better, recycling more, eating less meat – we would be doing nothing at all. We have lost sight of the value, or even the possibility, of collective action and it’s easy to see why.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

But (this) will force me to reimagine what good I can do alongside other people, rather than in spite of them. I will see and hear the challenges of those who are most intimately affected by the issues, and maybe one day, when one of us has a grand idea that can “bring the whole system down”, we’ll know other foot soldiers who can stand alongside us.’

https://thecorrespondent.com/102/we-need-to-let-go-of-our-misguided-devotion-to-personal-agency/448868442-92556139

Rev. Masando Hiraoka, Mile Hi Church in Lakewood, Colorado:

“I’ve got to make a confession: I often find it hard to relate with the religious figures of the past. Feeling this, I can also breathe into the vows of the Buddhist who takes refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha as my grandfather took refuge in the Colorado, the only state that welcomed Japanese Americans during World War Ii.

This is why I love Colorado, why I take such pride in where I’m form. It was sanctuary, like the sanctuary that Medina became for Muhammad, peace be upon him, and the first Muslims who were expelled from their home, their holy land of Mecca, because they were considered a threat.

The restoration of dignity and the seeking of safety is part of our legacy.

I believe we know how do do this togetherness. We’ve been taking refuge in each other forever. So we continue this great tradition of staring over again and again and let the ancient ones of the past come back alive in the present through us.

The story of peace is encoded in our DNA. Refuge is written on our bones.”

Center for Action & Contemplation:

“Religion is undergoing a massive shift in perspective . . . as wrenching as the Copernican revolution, which required humanity to bid farewell to an Earth-centered understanding of our place in the cosmos. The religious revolution on the horizon today might well be called the “Evidential Reformation.” We humbly shift away from a human-centric, ethnocentric, and shortsighted view of what is important. At the same time, we expand our very identities to encompass the immense journey of life made known by the full range of sciences. In so doing, we all become elders of a sort, instinctively willing to do whatever it takes to pass on a world of health and opportunities no lesser than the one into which we were born.” –The Rev. Michael Dowd, Eco-theologian

Fr. Richard Rohr:

An evidential worldview has become crucial. We now know that evolutionary and ecological processes are at the root of life and human culture. To disregard, to dishonor, these processes through our own determined ignorance and cultural/religious self-focus is an evil that will bring untold suffering to countless generations of our own kind and all our relations. We must denounce such a legacy. Ours is thus a call to . . . sacred activism. [Twenty-five] years ago, Carl Sagan both chided and encouraged us in this way:

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed.” . . . A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge. [1]

[1] Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (Random House Publishing: 1994), 50.

More from Fr. Rohr:

“However, if we truly want to be a part of the “Evidential Reformation,” we must each do our part to understand and share the ways science and our faith affirm one another.”

The universe is a single reality—one long sweeping spectacular process of interconnected events. The universe is not a place where evolution happens; it is evolution happening. It is not a stage on which dramas unfold; it is the unfolding drama itself. . . . This [great cosmological] story shows us in the deepest possible sense that we are all sisters and brothers—fashioned from the same stellar dust, energized by the same star, nourished by the same planet, endowed with the same genetic code, and threatened by the same evils. This story . . . humbles us before the magnitude and complexity of creation. . . . It bewilders us with the improbability of our existence, astonishes us with the interdependence of all things, and makes us feel grateful for the lives we have. And not the least of all, it inspires us to express our gratitude to the past by accepting a solemn and collective responsibility for the future. —Loyal Rue [1]

[1] Loyal Rue, Everybody’s Story: Wising Up to the Epic of Evolution (SUNY Press: 2000), 42-43.

A New Urgency

In a 2017 letter he wrote to the New York Review of Books, Wendell Berry called an article’s characterization of the “southernization” of rural Americans — presumably making them sexist, racist, and increasingly uneducated — as “provincial, uninformed, and irresponsible.” Instead of continuing to ignore their plight, Berry suggests, we ought to acknowledge the plundering of these rural regions by their urban neighbors. “Rural America is a colony,” Berry wrote, “and its economy is a colonial economy.”

The writer and activist Michael Pollan — who was greatly influenced by Berry — suggests that Berry remains a singular sort of truth-teller.

The 85-year-old writer doesn’t own a TV, computer, or cellphone. If you call the landline at his country home in Port Royal, you won’t reach an answering machine. When he reads this profile, it will be because someone else printed it out. And, if his general approach to life is any indication, he will probably take his time.

It’s virtually impossible to imagine life in the modern world without our technological accessories, but Berry has consistently presented this spartan circumstance as a compelling proposition: An unplugged life, rooted in nature, he has argued, is the key to fulfillment.

He has insisted on individual responsibility: Indeed, Berry contends climate change advocates don’t go far enough and that “the origin of climate change is human laziness” — a view now widely adopted by those who would ban straws and limit their air travel.

If you ask the average person in Kentucky what he or she knows about Berry, those who have heard of him will tell you he’s a poet, or novelist, activist, environmentalist, or farmer. The truth is that Berry is a Renaissance man, skilled at all of it.

Bill McKibben’s environmental activism was spurred after his wife gave him a copy of Berry’s 1979 essay collection Home Economics, which offered ideas on how we can live a simple and grounded life at home. “There’s no writer working in the English language I admire as much,” McKibben says.

For the author Barbara Kingsolver, he’s something more: A fellow Kentuckian whose writings she turned to, she wrote in an email, “after I left home and learned with a shock that the outside world looks down on us.

“Decade after decade, I keep running up against the bigotry of American mainstream culture against Appalachians, farmers, and rural life, and I always come back to Wendell for solace,” she wrote. “Quietly and without bitterness he brings me home to myself, reminding me that all the ‘hillbilly elegies’ in the world can’t touch the strength of our souls or the poetry of our language.”

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/10/2/20862854/wendell-berry-climate-change-port-royal-michael-pollan

What is our plan?

‘Exactly when we began a style of production and consumption that would eventually ravage planet earth, he decided to love the earth and live simply and barefoot upon it. Francis of Assisi is a Prime Attractor to what we really want, what we definitely need, and who we finally are. And, apparently, he did it all with a “perfect joy” that comes from letting go of the ego!’ -Richard Rohr, Center for Action & Contemplation

The change in my own inner climate. -Thomas Merton

Will future generations distinguish between those who didn’t believe in the science of global warming and those who said they accepted the science but failed to change their lives in response?

In We Are the Weather, Jonathan Safran Foer explores the central global dilemma of our time in a surprising, deeply personal, and urgent new way. The task of saving the planet will involve a great reckoning with ourselves―with our all-too-human reluctance to sacrifice immediate comfort for the sake of the future. We have, he reveals, turned our planet into a farm for growing animal products, and the consequences are catastrophic. Only collective action will save our home and way of life.

UK, US and European studies claim our meat consumption should be reduced by 90%, and dairy consumption by 60%. Two meals a day should be vegetarian, and think about a family climate plan. One couple a month out from their wedding day came up with theirs at book signing:

• Vegetarian meals
• Vegan meals 2x per week
• Driving less than 1,000 miles a year
• Only two kids

Jonathan’s response? “Holy crap. I don’t have a plan.”

“An ode to collective action, persuasively asking readers to take a hard look at our own role in the climate crisis and its solutions.” ―Kate Wheeling, The New Republic

Sam Sanders interviewed Jonathan on “It’s Been a Minute”. Follow the link to about 16:00 into the program.

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510317/its-been-a-minute-with-sam-sanders

The Correspondent

#Unbreaking

Climate change is about how we treat each other

by Eric Holthaus

’What this moment needs, more than anything, is moral clarity. […] American media was curiously obsessed with President DT’s stubborn insistence that Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama.

Seen through the lens of climate inaction, against a backdrop of unfettered economic growth, one can only conclude that climate change is an intentional act, in which the media is complicit.

‘We need to know, viscerally, that we can no longer abandon our neighbours in their time of greatest need. We need to relearn our interdependence. There is the alternative. The way to write this story that doesn’t end in apocalypse.’

https://thecorrespondent.com/34/climate-change-is-about-how-we-treat-each-other/149622814-e324a49f

Cathedral thinking.

Greta Thunberg, speaking to Europe’s political leaders ahead of European parliament elections in May on Tuesday, April 16th.

Referring to Monday’s fire at Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral in her speech, Greta called for “cathedral thinking” to tackle climate change.

“It is still not too late to act. It will take a far-reaching vision, it will take courage, it will take fierce, fierce determination to act now, to lay the foundations where we may not know all the details about how to shape the ceiling,” she said. “In other words it will take cathedral thinking. I ask you to please wake up and make changes required possible.”

[The Guardian]

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/16/greta-thunberg-urges-eu-leaders-wake-up-climate-change-school-strike-movement?CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter&__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR3BY0QakyrtIp_ARG1Hbz1ux51ZxdG3DOJfNMT0C3A6lmAABh-MTDlETn8

❧

Only after the last tree has been cut down,

Only after the last river has been poisoned,

Only after the last fish has been caught,

Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.

– Cree Indian Prophecy

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/15/notre-dame-fire-paris-france-cathedral