Power to the Matriarchy ❁

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Arise, all women who have hearts!

P l o u g h:

“In the United States, the origins of the official holiday go back to 1870, when Julia Ward Howe – an abolitionist best remembered as the poet who wrote “Battle Hymn of the Republic” – worked to establish a Mother’s Peace Day. Howe dedicated the celebration to the eradication of war, and organized festivities in Boston for years.

In 1907, Anna Jarvis, of Philadelphia, began the campaign to have Mother’s Day officially recognized, and in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson did this, proclaiming it a national holiday and a “public expression of our love and reverence for all mothers.”

This the proclamation Ward-Howe wrote in 1870, which explains, in her own impassioned words, the goals of the original holiday.”

Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

https://www.plough.com

Chapter 3, let’s go!

“For Mother’s Day, my mom would like the activism of her youth to not be for nothing.”

Wisdom is the mother of all good things.

“In this time of excessive patriarchy, may wisdom prevail over folly, love over fear, compassion over hate, justice over injustice, the mammal brain over the reptilian brains so that future generations may thrive.” -Matthew Fox

Rilke:

I love the dark hours of my being.

My mind deepens into them.

There I can find, as in old letters,

the days of my life, already lived,

and held like a legend, and understood.

Anne Baring:

“The Latin word for ‘Mother’ comes from ‘mater’ (matter)…Divine Wisdom…Holy Spirit.”

Ilia Delio

“The biggest step in the evolution of human morality was the move from interpersonal relations to a focus on the greater good.”

On Children

Your children are not your children
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself
They come through you but not from you
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you
You may give them your love but not your thoughts
For they have their own thoughts
You may house their bodies but not their souls
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams
You may strive to be like them
But seek not to make them like you
For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday. -Kahlil Gibran

jai

Friday, May 6th, 2022

♀︎

“I know that I say this all the time, but that’s only because it’s what gets me through the times when everything seems to be on fire.

No one is coming to save us

That’s why we have to save each other.”

-Eva

Director of Cybersecurity EFF

[Electronic Frontier Foundation]

Go forth to what? To uncertainty,

to a country with no connections to us

and indifferent to the dramas of our life.

Is this the start of a new life?

-Rilke

“Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.”

-William James

“Because modern man is in a state of uncertainty, we must not be too quick to think that what he

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wants it absolute certainty at any price.”

-Thomas Merton

#MustRead

AXIOS

‘If the leaked [Alito] draft becomes law, court orders could arrive at tech firms seeking info about people searching for emergency contraception, or seen near a suspected abortion clinic.

Anyone who is pregnant and has a miscarriage might find prosecutors seeking their internet search or other data to determine whether a provider delivered illegal services.

Experts say it may be time to rethink period-tracking apps and to rely more on incognito mode in browsers, turning off location tracking and understanding your options for data deletion.’

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am-cf39f73a-503b-418e-b2ae-d37e9e68a91e.html?chunk=1&utm_term=emshare#story1

‘What you can do: Experts say it may be time to rethink period-tracking apps and to rely more on incognito mode in browsers, turning off location tracking and understanding your options for data deletion.

The Digital Defense Fund has a detailed set of recommendations:

This page is organized into different security-related threats. You can jump to the ones that most concern you. Along with each scenario is a list of digital security tips to neutralize the threat.

These are possible concerns you might have.

https://digitaldefensefund.org/ddf-guides/abortion-privacy/#block-yui_3_17_2_1_1651771016254_439983

🌷Practicing resurrection.

“A rabbi friend taught this prayer to me many years ago. The Jews did not speak God’s name, but breathed it:

Inhale=Yah

Exhale=Weh

“God’s name was the first and last word to pass their lips. By your very breathing, you are praying and participating in God’s grace. You are whoo are are, living God’s presence, in the simplify and persistence of breath.

God creates things that continue to create themselves.”

-Fr Richard Rohr, Center for Action & Contemplation

What Did Easter Mean to Early Quakers?

Quakers insisted that the spirit of Christ that was experienced by Jesus’s disciples after the resurrection, by Paul on the road to Damascus, and in gatherings of the early Church, is universally available to everyone in all ages, locations, and cultures.

For early Quakers, Christ was not tied just to Jesus, but, as with the Word in the Gospel of John [Gospel of Mary Magdalene-dayle], was present from the beginning and is manifest in the prophets of Judaism and other religious traditions. One might say today it does not matter if the resurrection of Jesus was physical or spiritual, for, from the beginning, Quakers have insisted that Christ’s spirit can be experienced by any of us anywhere. Hence Mary Fisher, one of Quakerism’s founding Valiant Sixty, felt confident she could minister to the Sultan of Turkey, because he would know the same universal spirit of God or Christ that she did.

Let us then think of the risen Christ  [consciousness] as a transforming experience of the Divine that is available on any day of the year without regard to religion or theology.

What Did Easter Mean to Early Quakers?

[The Beloved Companion/The Complete Gospel of Mary Magdalene,

by Jehanne de Quillan]

The Gospel of Mary

In our present age, we stand at a crossroads in our history. No one can deny, as well at our world today, that all about us we see turmoil and suffering, war and economic exploitation, corruption and greed; while torture, rape, and murder have become politically justifiable weapons of war. In our clearest moments, we must recognize that these are the first signs of the collapse of our social and economic forms and institutions. Perhaps, in the midst of this seemingly endless change of chaotic events, we need to look very closely at the value sand beliefs that have brought us to this place. For only be amning our past can we come to understand our present, and perhaps, by learning from our mistakes, begin to change our future.

Pink Moon 

ღ

‘Focus on the feminine aspects of beauty, forgiveness, compassion and healing.’

-Power Path

‘All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.’

-Julian of Norwich

‘History is set on an inherently positive and hopeful tangent.’

-Fr Richard Rohr

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‘Ever again, though we’ve learned the landscape of love

and the lament in the churchyards names

and the terrible, silent abs where the others have fallen;

ever again we walk out, two together,

under the ancient trees, ever again find a place

among wildflowers, under heaven’s gaze.’

The origin of the order can be traced to Mount Carmel in northwestern Israel, where a number of devout men, apparently former pilgrims and Crusaders, established themselves near the traditional fountain of Elijah about 1155; they lived in separate cells or huts and observed vows of silence, seclusion, abstinence, and austerity. Soon, however, the losses of the Crusading armies in Palestine made Mount Carmel unsafe for the Western hermits, and around 1240 they set out for Cyprus, Sicily, France, and England. [Britannica]

Carmelite philosopher Edith Stein:

“I do not exist of myself, and of myself I am nothing. Every moment I stand before nothingness, so that every moment I must be dowered anew with being … This nothing being of mine, this frail received being, is being … It thirsts not only for endless continuation of its being but for full session of being.”

St. Teresa of Ávila

Of all the movements in the Carmelite order, by far the most important and far-reaching in its results was the reform initiated by St. Teresa of Ávila. [Britannica]

Ileo Delio:

“For Stein, the very existence of ‘I’ means the ‘I’ is not alone; the ‘I’ experiences loneliness only when it becomes unconscious of its very existence.”

French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil:

“Whoever says ‘I’ lies.”

[The Unbearable Wholeness of Being, p. 61.]

A final thought in memory of my late sweet friend Marilyn Andrews:

“How do we give thanks and give back to other earth — G A I A ❀ — and the cosmos and all the blessings our species has inherited?”

Rabbi Abraham Heschel teaches that a prophets primary task is to interfere.

Julian of Norwich, by calling us to interfere with patriarchy and heal the wounds that it has wracked upon human history and the human soul and the earth, beckons us from folly to wisdom. Are we listening?” -Matthew Fox

Are we practicing resurrection? -dayle

🌻

‘For never was a horror experienced without an angel stepping in from the opposite direction to witness it with me.’

-Rilke

This is an incredible time where the opportunity to bring in miracles and magic is strong.

Power comes from spirit and your essence and is fed and supported by the elements and energies more powerful than you such as the sun, the earth, nature, the stars, your imagination etc. You can be empowered or allow yourself to be disempowered through a trauma, karma or lessons, but another person cannot truly give or take away your power as they cannot ever truly give you any.

We have a tremendous opportunity to move through this and access the amazing landscape of love.

-Power Path

Krista Tippett reflecting on her time with poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Mary Oliver.

Life had moved forward, as it does. It was now composed of ingredients, as it always is, that neither she nor I would have been able to imagine.

‘We’re in yet another moment in the life of the world where we might unsee the beauty or imagine it overshadowed, defeated, or simply less powerful than what would steal it from us, blot it out. What a gift to re-summon Mary Oliver’s presence for this time. I hope you feel that, too.”

Listen.

Mary Oliver — “I got saved by the beauty of the world.”

From Global Citizen ⭕️

APRIL 8TH, 2022

Center for Action & Contemplation

‘Our fears offer us an invitation to engage with the discomfort of the inner places. Will you give your fear a chance to speak to you?  

Ask, What is this trying to show me? or What else might be going on? Give yourself some time, and delve into the fear.’

Catastrophization

And it’s exhausting. Catastrophe fatigue sets in, and we end up losing interest and drifting away, until the next emergency arrives.

Catastrophization ends up distracting us from the long-term systemic work we signed up to do. It’s a signal that we care about what’s happening right now, but it also keeps us from focusing on what’s going to happen soon.

The best way to care is to persist in bending the culture and our systems to improve things over time.

-Seth Godin

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.

#

MLK DAY 2022

Life takes pride in not appearing uncomplicated. If it relied on simplicity, it probably would not succeed in moving us to do all those things that we are not easily moved to do.

-Rilke

Seth Godin:

“The Way Things Are…”

That’s how culture perpetuates injustice and indignity. Because that’s just the way things are around here.

But the status quo isn’t permanent. The world doesn’t stay the way it was. It changes.

And it’s been changing faster than ever.

It doesn’t change because the status quo sub-committee had a meeting and decided to change it.

It changes when someone decides that the way things are around here needs to change, and simply and bravely begins to do something differently.

And then someone else follows along.

Dan Rather:

I fear that the elevation of Dr. King to the pantheon of great Americans who have national birthday celebrations has come at a subtle cost. These days almost no public official would dare speak ill of Dr. King. However I worry that this universal acclaim has deadened the radicalism of Dr. King’s message. And by radicalism, I mean that what he espoused was far outside what was then the mainstream. It still is.

We must remember that he was a deeply contentious person at the time of his death. Dr. King would not, could not, suppress the moral clarity with which he saw the world. His messages about racial prejudice and social justice were not welcome in most corridors of power. He was a danger to the status quo and many who benefited from it. He not only preached powerfully about the necessity for racial healing and integration. He also issued stirring rhetoric from his pulpit on the need for economic fairness across racial lines. And he was a fierce critic of the Vietnam War.

So today, please don’t revere Dr. King the American saint. Please engage with Dr. King as the unique vessel for a message America was long overdue to hear.

[Steady/Substack]

https://steady.substack.com/p/remembering-dr-king?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo3NzQxODc2LCJwb3N0X2lkIjo0NzE0OTE5OCwiXyI6Imc5NzkxIiwiaWF0IjoxNjQyNDUxOTY0LCJleHAiOjE2NDI0NTU1NjQsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0yNDc4ODEiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0._IKTFNkcwaZtjY4vR8egOl8Fssc0Ssv3U-tauVb9tEA

Our Turn Now

Marianne Williamson:

Those words should ring like clarion calls to all of us today. Our task is not merely to celebrate the ideals of Martin Luther King Jr., but to commit ourselves to their realization. And that means much more than just tweeting a quote, or making an instagram post. It means developing what Dr. King described as “tough minds and tender hearts.” It means committing to routing out not only systems of injustice in the world, but also the hatred in our own hearts. Dr. King said that a basic tenet of non-violent philosophy is that “self-purification must precede political action.” In his words, we need both “a quantitative change in our circumstances and a qualitative shift in our souls.”

Dr. King was the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., remember, a Baptist preacher whose political vision was rooted in his understanding of the gospel of Christ. “It is time,” he said, “to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of human civilization.” That love – that new love – was a social love, a love that would heal not only personal but also political and social relationships as well. He found inspiration for that possibility in the work of Mahatma Gandhi, traveling to India to study the principles of non-violence and bringing them back for application to the struggle for Civil Rights in the United States in the 1960’s.

So many of the struggles to which Dr. King dedicated his life, and for which he ultimately died, are struggles that are with us still. Surely he could be talking about America today with comments such as this: “If they give it to poor people, they call it a handout; if they give it to rich people, they call it a subsidy.” Or, “If it happens to rich people, they call it a Depression; if it happens to poor people, they call it a social problem.” Or how about this? In describing America in 1967, Dr. King described the “three evils” of racism, consumerism/poverty, and militarism/war. As those not the main challenges that are with us now? He called for a “radical revolution of values” then, just as we need to call for one now.

The struggle is in our hands. The dream is in our hands. The hope is in our hands.

MLK Day 2022. It’s our turn now.

‘…the ultimate goal (was) the establishment of the beloved community.” Such a notion was not a religious platitude; it was a political strategy.

For a full look at Dr. King’s writings and speeches, I highly recommend A Testament of Hope.’ -Marianne

The longer I live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of existence up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small and possibly inconspicuous word through which everything we had struggled to learn and everything we had failed to understand will be transformed suddenly into magnificent sense.

-Rilke

Thoughts…

‘The Soul works through a kind of “psychic DNA,” which manifests on many planes…our bodies, our personalities, our dreams…using all of it to work out the karma of the Soul.’

-Ram Dass

‘God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please…you can never have both.’

And…

‘The great majority of men are not original, for they are not primary, have not assumed their own vows, but are secondaries…grow up and grow old in seeming and following; and when they die they occupy themselves to the last with what others will think, and whether Mr. A and Mr. B will go their funeral.’

-Emerson

‘There is no more wretched prison than the fear of hurting someone who loves you.’

-Rilke

Paula Modersohn-Becker(1876–1907), an early expressionist painter, became acquainted with Rilke in Worpswede and Paris, and painted his portrait in 1906.

2021’s end.

♡

Rilke:

I have seen for some time

how everything changes.

There is that which arises and acts,

kills and causes grief.

[…]

Now it is empty where I stand

and look down the avenue.

Almost as far as the farthest ocean

I can see the heavy

forbidding sky.

Thomas Merton:

When God allows us to fall back into our own confusion of desires and judgments and temptations, we carry a scar over the place where that joy exulted for a moment in our hearts.

The scar burn us.

The sore would ache within us, and we remember that we have allen back into what we are no and are not yet allowed to remain where god would have us below.

We long for the place he had destined for us, and weep with desire for the time when his pure poverty will catch us and hold us in its liberty and never let us go, when we will never fall back from the Paradise of the simple and the little children into the forum of prudence, where the wise of this world go up and own in sorrow and set their traps for a happiness that cannot exit.

Krista Tippet.

On Being.

It remains such a hard, strange time in the life of the world. I cleave as best I can to my “muscular hope,” yet this past year has not lived up to the vision I had for the “beyond” of 2020. It was, I suppose, a dream of moving past the pandemic. Not a return to some old or new undesired “normal,” but at least a page turned, a new chapter opened. We are still, and again, in a liminal time and space — an in-between time of rupture and searching and unmourned losses and so many callings yet to heed, so much change to absorb and propel

Even as I am brokenhearted and uncertain at this juncture in the life of the world, I am ever grateful for the accompaniment you offer me in the mysterious, miraculous ether…

And I am, yes, looking forward to the beyond of this year. I will meet you here again on the other side. I wish you a restorative sacred holiday season, Christmastime, and New Year — and if that is not possible, as much kindness and gentleness toward yourself as you can possibly muster.

Be safe, friends. Mourn. Embrace. Love. Maybe even allow a little bit of hope. ~dayle

Hope is holding in creative tension everything that is with what could and should be, and every day taking some action to narrow the distance between the two. -Parker Palmer

#NativeAmericanHeritageDay

“Native Americans are the keepers of traditions and defenders of our natural resources. This Native American Heritage Day, I honor our culture and our ancestors. At the Interior, we will continue to include Indigenous knowledge as we protect our lands for future generations.”

-Secretary Deb Haaland, 54th Secretary of the Interior, 35th generation New Mexican, Pueblo of Laguna Tribe

[Image: Lakota Man/Twitter]

‘That’s what gods do, they spin threads of ruin through the fabric of our lives, all to make songs for generations to come.’ -Anthony Doerr ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’, p.439

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PCSD

“We’re still in the genocide. It’s still happening; we’re still doing it.”

Why?

We need to look at our “individual power in relation to the world.” -Rose

Rilke: “…blessed our those who stood quietly in the rain. Theirs shall be the harvest; for them the fruits. They will outlast pomp and power, whose meaning and structures will crumble. When all else is exhausted and bled of purpose, they will lift their hands, they have survived.”

Mixed-media artist Rose B. Simpson lives and works from her home at Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico.

(This piece was commissioned for the the Conspire conference, Center for Action and Contemplation, in New Mexico.)

https://www.rosebsimpson.com/about

[Rose B. Simpson, Holding it Together (detail), 2016, sculpture]

Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ

All our relations

The Last Archive

Jill Lepore, historian and Harvard professor

“Indigenous paradigm, a paradigm about relationships–all things are kin, rocks the skies, trees, family…”

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-last-archive/id1506207997?i=1000540005084

LATIMES

“The Indigenous Serrano Language Was All But Gone, This Man is Resurrecting It.”

BY NATHAN SOLIS

When Ernest Siva was a boy on the Morongo Reservation in Riverside County, he listened to the music and stories of his ancestors, who had lived in Southern California long before the land was called by that name.

He recalls running around a ceremonial fire on the reservation at age 5 as a weeklong ceremony honoring those who had died the previous year culminated with the burning of images in their likeness. Dollar bills and coins were thrown into the fire in tribute as tribal elders sang songs reserved for special occasions. Siva and his cousin chased after the singed money that fluttered out of the flames, largely ignoring the traditional lyrics in the background.

The specific words and rhythms are now distant memories for the 84-year-old Siva, a Cahuilla/Serrano Native American.

Siva is working to change that. For the last 25 years, the Banning resident has been a tribal historian with the Morongo Band of Mission Indians.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-11-25/a-resurrection-of-the-indigenous-language-of-the-serrano-people

CIVIL EATS

In the face of climate change and persistent droughts, a growing number of people from Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico and elsewhere are adopting the traditional farming practice.

Historic Zuni waffle gardens, circa 1919. (Photo courtesy of Kirk Bemis)

“It’s going to be difficult, but in the meantime, we still have to do what we can to find ways to adapt and live with it. And I think that the waffle gardens are one tool for us to make it through.”

(The) hope is for every household within the Zuni village to have a backyard garden, and that such a shift could cut a family’s need to shop for groceries in half.

“A small, 4-by-8 [foot] garden will get you a good four to five buckets full of corn, which is not enough to completely live off, but enough to feed our families, survive, and carry out our traditions.” He also thinks it’s important for the Zuni people to lessen dependence on grocery stores, which the pandemic showed are vulnerable to supply chain disruptions.

The Resurgence of Waffle Gardens Is Helping Indigenous Farmers Grow Food with Less Water

Maria Popova

The Marginalian

“Ever since we climbed down from the trees, we have been looking up to them to understand ourselves and our place in the universe. “Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree,” Hermann Hesse wrote a century ago in his sublime sylvan love letter, affirming that “when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.”

Centuries, millennia before Hesse — before Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Prize for her courageously enacted conviction that “a tree is a little bit of the future,” before scientists uncovered the astonishing language of trees, before Western artists saw in tree silhouettes a Rorschach test for what we are — the indigenous artists and storytellers of the Gond tribe in central India have been reverencing the secret lives of trees as portals into the inner life of nature, into the wildness of our own nature, into a supra-natural universe of myth and magic.”

The Secret Life of Trees: Stunning Sylvan Drawings by Indigenous Artists Based on Indian Mythology

Thanks + Giving

Science of Mind

‘Stop and contemplate the reality that every single thing right now around us–every chair, rug, lamp and table–was first an idea, and then someone set about to make it. Every piece of art, every movie, book and video game was first an idea, and then someone followed the inspiration and created it. Every moment of laughter, every conversation, every connection between us is first an impulse of love, and then we decide to be part of it. Every child, every smile, every time we hold hands, overcome a challenge and thrive beyond a heartbreak is an expression of life. Even a weed poking through the concrete or the act of sitting by a deathbed can be a sacred moment when we behold life and are grateful.’

Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World, spoken intro.

“What a Wonderful World” [1970 Spoken Introduction Version] along with Oliver Nelson’s Orchestra is a song written by Bob Thiele (as George Douglas) and George David Weiss. It was first recorded by Louis Armstrong and released as a single in 1967. Thiele and Weiss were both prominent in the music world (Thiele as a producer and Weiss as a composer/performer). Armstrong’s recording was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. Intended as an antidote for the increasingly racially and politically charged climate of everyday life in the United States, the song also has a hopeful, optimistic tone with regard to the future, with reference to babies being born into the world and having much to look forward to. The song was initially offered to Tony Bennett, who turned it down. Thereafter, it was offered to Louis Armstrong. -RoundMidnightTV

https://youtu.be/2nGKqH26xlg

The Way of Chaung Tzu [Thomas Merton]

In the age when life on earth was full, no one paid any special attention to worthy men, nor did they single out the man of ability.

Rulers were simply the highest branches on the tree, and the people were like deer in the woods. They were honest and righteous without realizing that they were ‘doing their duty.’ 

they loved each other and did not know that this was ‘love of neighbor.’ They deceived no one, yet they did not know they were ‘ben to are trusted.’

They were reliable and did not know that this was ‘good faith.’ they lived freely together giving and taking, and did not know that they were generous. For this reason their deeds have not been narrated. They made no history.

They simply lived, lived simply, in the TAO of being. -dayle

“On this side of death we play roles. So long as we seek to please the audience, death, who needs no approval, plays us.” -Rilke

Matt Haig, author and journalist:

Look at the sky; remind yourself of the cosmos. Seek vastness at every opportunity in order to see the smallness of yourself.

“Today, say grace thinking about the Earth, about every plant, animal and person who made it possible to enjoy the things you are grateful for. Recognize this as Spirit’s Grace during Itself into and through all creation.”

-Science of Mind

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.

Hope is a muscle.

Widening Circles

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

“Alone, a bean is just a vine, squash an oversized leaf. Only when standing together with corn does a whole emerge which transcends the individual.”

-Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Center for Action & Contemplation

One of the goals that is emphasized in our culture is finding answers—solving problems, answering questions, removing doubt. We want to know who, what, when, where, and why—and we want to know now. When we listen, we are trained to listen for the answers. . . .

Reflective listening distinguishes a response from an answer. It is a practice to get to know your inner voice, and it takes time and patience.

“Not knowing what to do is the work for you now.” -Francesca

@duanalla

“Live the questions now. Perhaps you then may gradually, without noticing, one day in the future live into the answers.” -Rilke

@onbeing

H A P P Y  S U M M E R  S O L T I C E ❗️

Every morning is an opportunity for tender grace.

What are you going to do that will bring grace, order, and beauty to your day?

-A. Stoddard

R

I

L

K

E

I can only measure the world in terms of longing.

Active Fractals

“Fractals can be found throughout nature; they are a complex network of patterns and relationships that portray the incremental growth of life. Found in snowflakes, trees, oceans and clouds, it can be used to understand rules and formulas that govern the environment at various scales.

Active fractals can be used as a model for the endlessly morphing network of modern behaviors in cities over time, from local to global scales. By defining the parameters and limits of fractal infrastructures, we can start to change spatial systems while still accommodating for individual variety and temporal growth.” –Sirenia Yookyung Kim

Rilke

Four our ancestors, a house, a fountain, even clothing, a coat, was much more intimate. Each thing, almost, was a vessel in which what was human found and defined itself.

Now, From America, empty, indifferent things sweep in…pretend things, life-traps…a house, in the American sense, an American apple, a grapevine, bears no relation to the hope and contemplation with which our ancestors informed and behold them.

November 13, 1925

Prayer, meditation, and a new moon.

Rilke:

‘Let the farthest, oldest, most ancient 

ancestors speak to us!

And let us be listeners at last, humans

finally able to hear.’

Power Path

New Moon in Aquarius is Thursday at February 11th, Mountain Standard Time at 12:05PM (MST) This New Moon invites us to explore our emotional freedom. Emotional freedom is being free of what we think we should have done, could have done, are sorry we did not do, are sorry we did, are shameful or resentful about a past situation, or just simply out of sorts and not feeling good about something we cannot do anything about. If you are not emotionally free, you are stuck. And if you are stuck you cannot move forward. This is an amazing time of movement, thinking outside the box and finding new solutions to old challenges. Instead of being mired in the past and feeling bad about something, use the momentum to spark a creative idea, project or collaboration. Share your visions with others to give them voice and expression. Take some time to sing and dance and move your body in expressive ways. Pay attention to your feet, hands, ankles and forearms. They are the extremities of your body that propel you forward and symbolize your ability to move yourself along your path. You may want to say hello to them and actively support them in movement. If you are feeling stuck, reflect on what is keeping you emotionally imprisoned through disappointment, regret, shame and blame, and do whatever you can to forgive and forget. Blessings, Lena

Green seedling growing on the moon and stars. Elements of this image furnished by NASA

 

A glass ceiling broken.

‘And with the silence of stars I enfold your cities made by time.’

-Rilke

From our young Los Angeles poet laureate:

“Here’s to the women who have climbed my hills before.” 

The text of 22-year-old Amanda Gorman’s poem, “The Hill We Climb,” in full.

When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?

The loss we carry. A sea we must wade.

We braved the belly of the beast.

We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.

And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.

Somehow we do it.

Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.

We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.

And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.

We are striving to forge our union with purpose.

To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.

And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.

We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.

We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.

We seek harm to none and harmony for all.

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true.

That even as we grieved, we grew.

That even as we hurt, we hoped.

That even as we tired, we tried.

That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.

Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.

Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.

If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.

That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.

It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.

It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.

We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation, rather than share it.

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.

And this effort very nearly succeeded.

But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.

In this truth, in this faith we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.

This is the era of just redemption.

We feared at its inception.

We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour.

But within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.

So, while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?

We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.

We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, become the future.

Our blunders become their burdens.

But one thing is certain.

If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.

So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.

Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.

We will rise from the golden hills of the West.

We will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution.

We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.

We will rise from the sun-baked South.

We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.

And every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful.

When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid.

The new dawn balloons as we free it.

For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.

If only we’re brave enough to be it.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves with all nations.”

Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, Saturday, March 4, 1865

“The great privilege of the Americans does not simply consist in their being more enlightened than other nations, but in their being able to repair the faults they may commit.”

-Alexis Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835, Beinecke Library, Yale

Masha Gessen, The New Yorker:

‘Both times the poem (Amanda Gorman) raises “democracy,” Gorman pairs the word with “delay,” which tells us that democracy is a thing expected, anticipated—not a thing that we have built, or possessed, but a dream. This is not the way that politicians or even political theorists usually use the word “democracy,” but it is one way that philosophers have used it. Jacques Derrida, the French deconstructionist, used the term “democracy to come.” Democracy, he wrote, was always forged and threatened by contradictory forces and thus is always “deferred,” always out of reach even in societies that adopt democracy as their governing principle.’

My take away from President Biden’s inaugural speech today:

Recent weeks and months have taught us a painful lesson. There is truth and there are lies, lies told for power and for profit. And each of us has a duty and responsibility, as citizens, as Americans, and especially as leaders, leaders who have pledged to honor our Constitution and protect our nation, to defend the truth and defeat the lies.

“So now what do we do? We don’t forget, we remember EVERYTHING that has brought us to this moment.”

Brook Gladstone, On The Media

Amen.

Unity?

Documentary film maker Ken Burns:

“I used to think there were three great crises: the Civil War, the Depression and the Second World War in American life. I would add this. And maybe this is the very, very worst. But at the same time, we just keep going forward. There is no other option but to endure.” [NPR]

‘Well, darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable, and lightness has a call that’s hard to hear.’

-Indigo Girls

American politics has reached a moment of existential uncertainty. Beyond the headlines and news alerts are problems bigger than any one administration—problems that stem from the deep tensions and challenges in America’s political institutions.

It’s time to reevaluate and revisit how we think about American democracy. The Founding Fathers did their best, but the hosts of a new podcast, “Politics in Question,” have some ideas, too. They discuss political reforms in this first-of-its-kind show that asks the very biggest questions.

Join hosts Lee Drutman, Julia Azari, and James Wallner, three lively experts on American political institutions and reform, as they imagine and argue over what American politics could look like if citizens questioned everything.

There are a lot of podcasts about the daily chaos. But “Politics in Question” is the first to step back and think big about the basic structures and processes of democracy — and to take nothing for granted.

This podcast is part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.

“From all the thoughts of ‘I’ and ‘man,’ that man finds utter peace.”

Bhagavad Gita

Dear Dayle,

The extremist behavior and violence that took place in Washington, D.C. on January 6 was truly shocking and worthy of condemnation—many have already done so. The whole world is transfixed, bearing witness to the awful and extraordinary unfolding of history.

In my previous letters I wrote about the DISORDER that is already upon us, as well as the consequences that ensue when illusions of power and privilege co-opt and distort Christianity. At the Center for Action and Contemplation, we are free to speak in great part because we are not beholden to the usual constituencies. Using the brilliant metaphor from the Hebrew Scriptures, we are “outside the camp” of either political party, any need to influence an election, and, by the grace of God, any negative or fear-based church pressure from Rome, Santa Fe, or Assisi.

We are also, like few other organizations, free from the coercion of donors and finance, thanks to almost thirty-three years of operating with our priorities clearly in view to all who cared to study or read our publications. Blessedly, our donors have not run for cover over time, but only increased in numbers, continuing to join us—even from outside the usual camps of both religion and politics.

Few people enjoy such freedom of living and teaching from the edge of the inside. This is the unique position that a prophetic charism holds and for which it is responsible; it is structurally quite rare, and therefore we must use it.

“Moses used to take the tent, and pitch it outside the camp, at some distance from the camp. . . . Anyone who wanted to consult Yahweh would go to this tent of meeting outside the camp.” (Exodus 33:7)

The “tent of meeting” is the initial image and metaphor that eventually became our much later notion of “church.” Moses had the prescience and courage to move the place of hearing God outside and at a distance from the court of common religious and civic opinion—this was the original genius that inspired the entire Jewish prophetic tradition. It is quite different than the mere liberal and conservative positions, and often even at odds with them. Most of liberalism is based on a secular foundation of knowledge, and most of conservatism is identified with boundary-keeping, order, and control. By contrast, Prophecy and Gospel are rooted in a contemplative and non-dual way of knowing—a way of being in the world that is utterly free and grounded in the compassion of God.

The early desert fathers and mothers imitated both Moses and Jesus by fleeing to Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Cappadocia—and some as far as Ireland and Scotland. Beginning in the 4th century, we Christians surrendered our unique and free perspective to the Roman and Byzantine Empires. In the desert and outside the camp, these people discovered what we now call “contemplation”: the alternative mind and the alternative community to the status quo—then and now—of money, power, and war.

The free and graced position found in the tent of meeting is what allowed Jesus and all prophets in his lineage to speak from a minority position. It is always less desirable, compared to the comfortable and enjoyable places at the center and the top; yet it is the Jesus stance, and the place where all Franciscans follow after him.

“Let us go to him, therefore, outside the camp, and be willing to share in his degradation.” (Hebrews 13:13)

For many people, religion as a “cosmic egg” capable of holding universal Truth, collective and personal meaning, is broken. Now, the cracks in this very “uncosmic egg” are rapidly spreading in all directions. Delusions enthrall us and inherent deceit becomes overwhelmingly apparent and manifest in the nihilism of our postmodern age, the denial of science and reasonableness, and the denial of the pandemic that now assaults us all. The very future of the meanings of words and truth are at stake, as specifically exemplified by Trumpism in its many forms.

We must again move with Jesus outside the camp and even be willing to “share in his degradation” if that be God’s will. We must trust that the one who has called us into this present moment will also sustain us and lead us through it.

“Yahweh would speak with Moses face to face [outside the camp] as a young man speaks with his friend. And then Moses would return to the camp.” (Exodus 33:11)

This is the primary vocation of the Center for Action and Contemplation. We invite you to join us—first, in the tent of meeting outside the camp for prayer, dialogue, and deep discernment. Then, like Moses, we must all choose to “return to the camp,” where all of our brothers and sisters live and die.

[Father Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation]

“The tasks that have been entrusted to us are often difficult. Almost everything that matters is difficult, and everything matters.”
-Rilke

“I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.” -Course of Miracles

(As taught my Marianne Williamson.)

We begin again.

POWER PATH

The New Moon in Sagittarius with a total Solar Eclipse (seen in parts of South America and Africa) is Monday, December 14th at 9:16AM Mountain Standard Time (MST).

This is a tricky new moon, magnified by the solar eclipse but really good for spiritual prayers and work.

The positive aspects are the potential for an uplifting of energy and vibration into an experience of great unity, spiritual connection and personal clarity of action. The negative aspects and ones to watch out for include delusion, addictions, despair and a very confused and foggy mind.

Work with your spiritual practices even though they may not be focused on anything solid or particular. Prayers for improvement may be enough. The practice itself will give you a sense of purpose and grounding. Work with the sun as the powerful masculine that works with the feminine aspect of the moon.

Do what you can during this powerful time to become clear on your actions and inspired by your imagination and your intentions. Put boundaries against others’ delusions and projections and watch your own. You may want to spend some quality time by yourself, out in nature if you can, or at least in a place where you feel supported and nurtured with little interference from others.

Think of this time as the completion of some chapter in your life and allow what is dissolving to release. Make space for something new.

Blessings.

The Power Path Seminars™ & School Of Shamanism

RILKE

Be patient and trust the great and indelible solitude at work in you. This will be a nameless influence in all that lies ahead of you to experience and accomplish, rather as if the blood of our ancestors moves in us and combines with us, in the unique, unrepeatable being that at every turn of life that we are.

Dec. 26, 1908

☆☆¸.•*¨*•☆☆•*¨*•.¸¸☆☆

Our country’s soul runs deep.

He will watch as his towers crumble to the ground and we melt down the gold-tinted glass and steel to create a gorgeous bridge across our southern border. His golf courses will be transformed into highly diversified ecosystems where sophisticated natural reciprocity, not small men, reign. Everything he built his personal brand around–unlimited wealth and toxic masculinity and an anemic sort of freedom defined by individualism–will become compost for the new world we grow. His worldview will become so archaic as to be understood as the twisted mythology that it is.

-Courtney Martin, author and activist 

[“Weird drawing I did while listening to the “debate” last night.” -Courtney]

https://www.courtneyemartin.com

“Some Pain is simply the normal grief of human existence. That is pain I try to make room for. I honor my grief.”

-Marianne Williamson

“What happens next depends on each one of us…and all of us together.”

-Upswell/Fetzer Institute

“Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?”

-Mary Oliver

“Stop grumbling among yourselves.”

-Gospel of John 6:43

“No miracles, please.

Just let your laws

become clearer

from generation to generation.”

-Rilke

“We can only consider things so long. After a while, all the information…all the options and opinions…will begin to weight us down. After our deeper eyes have seen the situation, all the well-meaning voices telling us what we should or should not do will start to feel like strings we can’t cut through.

The only way to know what awaits us is to live it.”

-Mark Nepo

This morning, finding peace in the chaos, calm in the inevitable. We will get through the pain and suffering the next few months politically and socially, and many more for COVID. Our country’s spirit runs deep. We know it will be painful and frightening. Yet, as Courtney Martin writes, all of this will become ‘compost for the new world we grow.’ We choose now, in this moment, how, and what, we want to grow.

-dayle

❀