Strongheart

My Wish For Us All For 2012

2011-12-31T11:04:00.000-08:00

My wish for each of us in 2012 is happiness -- an increasingly authentic, evolving, deepening happiness rooted in growing consciousness of compassion, love, beauty, joy, truth, caring, and our connection with all beings and all that is. My wish is also that we grow in our awareness of suffering - the suffering within ourselves and that of other beings - and that through this growing awareness we experience our courage, our circle of caring, and our capacity for compassion expand. I am aware that many of us as conservatives, as progressives, as human beings have grown disillusioned with President Obama, with there being no sense of any emerging Reagan or perceived wisdom in any potential leader of the Founding Fathers. Yet, perhaps in all this we are each being asked to become the leaders we have been waiting for. In the midst of national and global violence, poverty, and environmental destruction, I see more and more that our true enemies are not people, but rather are to be found in ideologies, hatred, and ignorance. May we each grow in the antidote to these poisons. May we grow in consciousness of the beauty of our true nature. This is my wish for us all in 2012. ♥

Long Ties to Koch Brothers Key to Cain's Campaign

2011-10-16T15:07:00.000-07:00

It continues to be true that, in choosing to inform ourselves, there is an imperative to follow the money:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/16/1027000/-Koch-raising-Cain?via=search
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/extensive-ties-powerful-koch-group-boost-cain-14746710

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Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain has cast himself as the outsider, the pizza magnate with real-world experience who will bring fresh ideas to the nation's capital. But Cain's economic ideas, support and organization have close ties to two billionaire brothers who bankroll right-leaning causes through their group Americans for Prosperity. ~ Ryan J. Foley

Don't Think of a Pig: Why "Corporate Greed" Is the Wrong Frame

2011-10-16T14:57:00.000-07:00

By Frances Moore Lappé and Anthony Lappé

As the Occupy Wall Street enters its fourth week, the meta-narrative around the rapidly spreading movement is beginning to take shape. From CNN to Fox News to many protestors themselves, one central slogan is sticking: corporate greed.

During an inspiring visit to Zoccutti Park, we saw abundant posters with slogans like "Another Mother Against Corporate Greed" to "Corporate Greed is the Vampire."

OWS has historic potential. It's already succeeding in raising questions typically buried by the mainstream media. We want it to gain power fast, but much will depend on how its core message gets framed. As linguist George Lakoff argued in his seminal book Don't Think of an Elephant, "frames" have enormous power.

Unfortunately, smashing "corporate greed" is not only limiting, but we fear it's bound to fail. The "we are virtuous, you are evil" message is admittedly, a great way to get people fired up. But does it get us where we need to go?

Recall, by contrast, the Civil Rights movement. Dr. King didn't rail against the racists; he demanded the end to laws that allowed racists to damage people. Going to great lengths not to demonize foes, he called on Americans to live up to our own ideals.

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frances-moore-lappe/wall-street-greed-_b_1007164.html

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So let's call the crisis what it is: the rise of privately held government.
It's happened in part because for decades Americans have been told, and too many got swept up in the fairy tale, that we have to turn over our fate to a force that works on its own without us: the market. It's "magic," Ronald Reagan assured us, is all we need.
Once we buy that notion, we're done for, for wealth accrues to wealth to wealth until we end up with a society that a 2005 Citigroup report famously dubbed a "Plutonomy," in which the top 1 percent control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. And an America where inequality is now greater than in Pakistan or Egypt, according to the World Bank. ~ Frances Moore Lappé

10 Myths That Keep Us From Creating The World We Want

2011-10-16T14:49:00.000-07:00

by Frances Moore Lappe

From "Diet for a Small Planet" exactly 40 years ago, it dawned on me that humans are actively creating the scarcity we say we are trying to escape. Whoa! Why would our bright species do such a thing? Researching my new book, "EcoMind, Changing the Way We Think to Create the World We Want" (Nation Books), I discovered that it is the power of ideas. I learned that neuroscientists are increasingly finding that while most of us think that "seeing is believing," that, no, for human beings "believing is seeing." Our core ideas about how the world works determine, literally, what we can see and what we can't. From this groundbreaking science, I argue that some of our most common assumptions are perversely aligned with nature, including human nature. They block us from seeing possibilities emerging all around us--the solutions in front of our noses. Here are 10 of those ideas and ways that an eco-mind--one that thinks in connectedness and continuous change--might rethink them. I welcome your response.

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frances-moore-lappe/world-myths_b_974239.html

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Myth #1: Renewable energy would take too long. Our economy is hurting now and we can't afford to wait.

Truth: ...Today, 95% of Costa Rica's electricity comes from renewable sources, and Germany is set to reach nearly 40% of its electricity from renewable in a decade. Then visualize what's still untapped: The sun's energy reaching earth over just five days is greater than all proven reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas.

Open Letter to that 53% Guy

2011-10-16T14:37:00.000-07:00

by Max Udargo

Hello,

I briefly visited the “We are the 53%” website, but I first saw your face on a liberal blog. Your picture is quite popular on liberal blogs. I think it’s because of the expression on your face. I don’t know if you meant to look pugnacious or if we’re just projecting that on you, but I think that’s what gets our attention.

In the picture, you’re holding up a sheet of paper that says:

I am a former Marine.

I work two jobs.

I don’t have health insurance.

I worked 60-70 hours a week for 8 years to pay my way through college.

I haven’t had 4 consecutive days off in over 4 years.

But I don’t blame Wall Street.

Suck it up you whiners.

I am the 53%.

God bless the USA!

I wanted to respond to you as a liberal. Because, although I think you’ve made yourself clear and I think I understand you, you don’t seem to understand me at all. I hope you will read this and understand me better, and maybe understand the Occupy Wall Street movement better.

More: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/12/1025555/-Open-Letter-to-that-53-Guy

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"The commitment we’ve made to the working class since the 1940s is something that we should both support and be willing to fight for, whether we are liberal or conservative. We should both be willing to fight for the American Dream. And we should agree that anybody trying to steal that dream from us is to be resisted, not defended." ~ Max Udargo

Some thoughts on joy and sorrow...

2011-10-15T15:26:00.000-07:00

When I had not begun to open to the grief in my own heart, when emotions - especially strong ones - scared me to death, I was incapable of sitting with yours. I have a lot of empathy today for what it is to live without having made friends with and embraced my own broken heart. As we grow older, it is my experience and belief that the cost of not being on a heart path only increases, showing up in illness, addictions, depression, broken relationships, etc. because our relationship with ourselves is broken. Many of us grew up in families who did not teach and support us in striving to be wholly who we are. And we certainly live in a grief phobic culture, one which tells us that something is wrong if we are in grief and we need to just have a drink, go shopping, turn on the TV, have sex, caretake someone else, get religion, exercise, work, or any host of other activities - some of which can be healthy - but which can also often take us outside of ourselves in the form of distracting us from that which most needs attending. I'm just so grateful to have been on a path for many years now of making friends with my own grief. And no longer being afraid of yours. Joy and sorrow are intertwined and both equally as necessary to being Alive...

Kahlil Gibran says it beautifully here: http://www.katsandogz.com/onjoy.html

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In the Aftermath of 9-11...

2011-09-12T21:45:00.000-07:00

I have been learning to be more courageous, to look more deeply, to discern, to expand my circle of caring, to be more humble & more conscious. I am filled with greater gratitude for each day & greater consciousness of it's gifts. I am passionate about cultivating & nurturing love within myself such that the ripples I send out into this beautiful world will increasingly be kind, compassionate, loving. I hold my loved ones in my heart with even greater tenderness. How has 9-11 changed you? ♥

Bolivia Set to Pass Historic 'Law of Mother Earth' Which Will Grant Nature Equal Rights to Humans

2011-09-10T09:11:00.000-07:00

by Keph Senett

With the cooperation of politicians and grassroots organizations, Bolivia is set to pass the Law of Mother Earth which will grant nature the same rights and protections as humans. The piece of legislation, called la Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra, is intended to encourage a radical shift in conservation attitudes and actions, to enforce new control measures on industry, and to reduce environmental destruction.

The law redefines natural resources as blessings and confers the same rights to nature as to human beings, including: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered. Perhaps the most controversial point is the right "to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities".

In late 2005 Bolivia elected its first indigenous president, Evo Morales. Morales is an outspoken champion for environmental protection, petitioning for substantive change within his country and at the United Nations. Bolivia, one of South America's poorest countries, has long had to contend with the consequences of destructive industrial practices and climate change, but despite the best efforts of Morales and members of his administration, their concerns have largely been ignored at the UN.

More: http://www.pvpulse.com/en/news/world-news/bolivia-set-to-pass-historic-law-of-mother-earth-which-will-grant-nature-equal-rights-to-humans#.TmKtp_8Rnty.facebook

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Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca: "Our grandparents taught us that we belong to a big family of plants and animals. We believe that everything in the planet forms part of a big family. We indigenous people can contribute to solving the energy, climate, food and financial crises with our values." May we all follow this wisdom!

Hafiz: Wise Men Keep Talking About

2011-06-24T17:17:00.000-07:00

WISE MEN KEEP TALKING ABOUT

Time is the shop

Where everyone works hard

To build enough love

To break the

Shackle.

Wise men keep talking about

Wanting to meet Her.

Women sometimes pronounce the word God

A little differently:

They can use more feeling and skill

With the heart-lute.

All the world's movements,

Apparent chaos, and suffering I now know happen

In the Splendid Unison:

Our tambourines are striking

The same thigh.

Hafiz stands

At a juncture in this poem.

There are a thousand new wheels I could craft

On a wagon

And place you in -

Lead you to a glimpse of the culture

And seasons in another dimension.

Yet again God

Will have to drop you back at the shop

Where you still have work

With

Love.

~ Hafiz ~

(The Gift -- versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Wise_Men_Keep_Talking.html

Doctors to McDonald's: Stop Making Our Kids Sick

2011-05-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

Frances Moore Lappe
Author, "Diet For A Small Planet"

This week an open letter to McDonald's signed by 550 health professionals appears in full-page ads in newspapers across the country. Their message? Real simple: "Stop making the next generation sick--retire Ronald and the rest of your junk food marketing to kids," said signer Dr. Steven K. Rothschild, Associate Professor of Preventative Medicine at Rush Medical College.

The letter's signers also include Dr. William C. Roberts, Editor-in-Chief of The American Journal of Cardiology, Dr. Walter Willett, Chair of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health and Dr. Deborah Burnet, Chief of General Medicine and a pediatrician at University of Chicago, as well as the Hollywood immortalized doctor, Patch Adams.

Their letter coincides with a McDonald's shareholder meeting in Chicago where 14 institutional investors will introduce the first resolution ever to call on a major corporation to deal with its public health impacts as well as shareholder liabilities for these impact could carry.

In a campaign coordinated by Boston-based Corporate Accountability International, the doctors describe the epidemic that alarms them: A full third of American kids are obese. And thanks to diets high in McDonald's-style fast-food it's estimated that one in three American newborns will develop Type II Diabetes in their lifetime.

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frances-moore-lappe/doctors-to-mcdonalds-stop_b_863396.html?

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"I've grown certain that the root of all fear is that we've been forced to deny who we are... Even the fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of not having lived authentically and fully." ~ Frances Moore Lappé

John O'Donohue: For a New Beginning

2011-05-16T06:17:00.000-07:00

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,

Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,

And out you stepped onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream,

A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

~ John O'Donohue ~

(To Bless the Space Between Us)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/For_a_New_Beginning.html

Mary Oliver: Spring

2011-05-15T20:58:00.001-07:00

Spring

Somewhere

a black bear

has just risen from sleep

and is staring

down the mountain.

All night

in the brisk and shallow restlessness

of early spring

I think of her,

her four black fists

flicking the gravel,

her tongue

like a red fire

touching the grass,

the cold water.

There is only one question:

how to love this world.

I think of her

rising

like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against

the silence

of the trees.

Whatever else

my life is

with its poems

and its music

and its cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness

coming

down the mountain,

breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her –

her white teeth,

her wordlessness,

her perfect love.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(House of Light)

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/Spring.html

Robert Bly: Warning To The Reader

2011-05-15T15:04:00.000-07:00

Sometimes farm granaries become especially beautiful when all the oats or wheat are gone, and wind has swept the rough floor clean. Standing inside, we see around us, coming in through the cracks between shrunken wall boards, bands or strips of sunlight. So in a poem about imprisonment, one sees a little light.

But how many birds have died trapped in these granaries. The bird, seeing freedom in the light, flutters up the walls and falls back again and again. The way out is where the rats enter and leave; but the rat's hole is low to the floor. Writers, be careful then by showing the sunlight on the walls not to promise the anxious and panicky blackbirds a way out!

I say to the reader, beware. Readers who love poems of light may sit hunched in the corner with nothing in their gizzards for four days, light failing, the eyes glazed...

They may end as a mound of feathers and a skull on the open boardwood floor...

-- Robert Bly

Quotes In Living With Humility and Compassion

2011-05-15T14:23:00.001-07:00

Stephen Levine

Quotes

"We are motivated more by aversion to the unpleasant than by a will toward truth, freedom, or healing. We are constantly attempting to escape our life, to avoid rather than enter our pain, and we wonder why it is so difficult to be fully alive."

"Simply touching a difficult memory with some slight willingness to heal begins to soften the holding and tension around it."

"Those who insist they've got their 'shit together' are usually standing in it at the time."

"When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone’s pain, it become compassion."

"If there is a single definition of healing it is to enter with mercy and awareness those pains, mental and physical, from which we have withdrawn in judgment and dismay."

"There is nothing noble about suffering except the love and forgiveness with which we meet it."

"God is not someone or something separate but is the suchness in each moment, the underlying reality."

"That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom."

"Our life is composed of events and states of mind. How we appraise our life from our deathbed will be predicated not only on what came to us in life but how we lived with it. It will not be simply illness or health, riches or poverty, good luck or bad, which ultimately define whether we believe we have had a good life or not, but the quality of our relationship to these situations: the attitudes of our states of mind."

"How soon will we accept this opportunity to be fully alive before we die?"

More: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/4169.Stephen_Levine

Making a Living (Economy)

2011-05-15T14:01:00.000-07:00

By David Korten

We’re wasting our resources subsidizing a war economy, sprawl, and consumerism. What we could do differently in a living economy.

In a world rushing toward environmental and social collapse, there is no place for war, speculation, auto-dependent sprawl, toxic contamination, and wasteful consumption —activities that generate a major portion of current GDP. This massive misallocation of resources is an artifact of a mistaken belief that human prosperity is maximized by unrestrained global competition for resources, markets, and money to drive growth in the consumption of whatever goods and services generate the greatest private financial profit.

The living economy frame shifts the focus from making money to making a living. This simple shift in perspective shines a spotlight on the many ways we can simultaneously improve the quality of our lives while reducing our human burden on the biosphere.

More: http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/making-a-living-economy?utm_source=wkly20110513&utm_medium=yesemail&utm_campaign=titleKorten

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In a living economy, the rights and interests of living communities of living, breathing people engaged in a living exchange with the natural systems of their bioregion properly take priority over the presumed rights of artificial corporate entities that value life only as a marketable commodity and operate by the moral code of a malignant cancer. Protecting the boundaries of the community from intrusion by predatory corporations is an essential function of any responsible government. ~ David Korten

John O'Donohue: For Lost Friends

2011-03-14T19:02:00.000-07:00

For Lost Friends

As twilight makes a rainbow robe

From the concealed colors of day

In order for time to stay alive

Within the dark weight of night,

May we lose no one we love

From the shelter of our hearts.

When we love another heart

And allow it to love us,

We journey deep below time

Into that eternal weave

Where nothing unravels.

May we have the grace to see

Despite the hurt of rupture,

The searing of anger,

And the empty disappointment,

That whoever we have loved,

Such love can never quench.

Though a door may have closed,

Closed between us,

May we be able to view

Our lost friends with eyes

Wise with calming grace;

Forgive them the damage

We were left to inherit;

Free ourselves from the chains

Of forlorn resentment;

Bring warmth again to

Where the heart has frozen

In order that beyond the walls

Of our cherished hurt

And chosen distance

We may be able to

Celebrate the gifts they brought,

Learn and grow from the pain,

And prosper into difference,

Wishing them the peace

Where spirit can summon

Beauty from wounded space.

~ John O'Donohue ~

(To Bless the Space Between Us)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/For_Lost_Friends.html

Old Age is a Gift

2011-03-06T12:50:00.000-08:00

Thank you to my dear friend, Lynn, who first shared this with me...

The other day a young person asked me how I felt about being old. I was taken aback, for I do not think of myself as old. Upon seeing my reaction, she was immediately embarrassed, but I explained that it was an interesting question, and I would ponder it, and let her know.

Old Age, I've decided, is a gift.I am now, probably for the first time in my life, the person I have always wanted to be.

Oh, not my body ... the wrinkles, the baggy eyes, and the sagging butt. And often I am taken aback by that old person that lives in my mirror (who looks like my mother!), but I don't agonize over those things for long.

I would never trade my amazing friends,my wonderful life, my loving family for less gray hair or a flatter belly. As I've aged, I've become kinder to myself, and less critical of myself. I've become my own friend. I don't chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn't need,but looks so avante garde on my patio. I am entitled to a treat, to be messy, to be extravagant.

I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging.

Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 AM and sleep until noon?I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60 &70's,and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love ... I will.I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set.They, too, will get old.I know I am sometimes forgetful.But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And I eventually remember the important things.

Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when somebody's beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.

I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turning gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face.

So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver.As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think.

I don't question myself anymore. I've even earned the right to be wrong. So, to answer your question,I like being old — it has set me free.I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day (if I feel like it).

(Contributed by Gabrielle who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico)

http://www.inspirationline.com/EZINE/19MAY2008.htm

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When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space. - Pema Chodron

The Blue

2011-03-02T06:56:00.000-08:00

The Blue

You can have Egypt and Nantucket.

The only place I want to visit is The Blue,

not the Wild Blue Yonder that seduces pilots,

but that zone where the unexpected dwells,

waiting to come out of it in the shape of bolts.

I want to walk its azure perimeter

where the unanticipated is coiled, on the mark,

ready to spring into the predicitable homes of earth.

I want to stroll through the pale indigo light

examining all the accidents about to rocket into time,

all the forgotten names about to fly from tongues.

I will scrutinize all the surprises of the future

and watch the brainstorms gathering darkly,

ready to hit the heads of inventors

laboring in their crackpot shacks.

A jaded traveler with an invisible passport,

I am at home with this heaven of the unforeseen,

waiting for the next whoosh of sudden departure

when, with no advance warning, to tiny augery,

the unpredictable plummets into our lives

from somewhere that looks like sky.

~ Billy Collins ~

(The Apple That Astonished Paris)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/The_Blue.html

Mary Oliver: The Poet Dreams of the Mountain

2011-02-26T13:47:00.000-08:00

The Poet Dreams of the Mountain

Sometimes I grow weary of the days with all their fits and starts.

I want to climb some old grey mountain, slowly, taking

the rest of my life to do it, resting often, sleeping

under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.

I want to see how many stars are still in the sky

that we have smothered for years now, forgiving it all,

and peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.

All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!

How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.

I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.

In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(Swan)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/The_Poet_Drems_of_the_Mountain.html

More Powerful Than We Know: Interview with Tim DeChristopher

2011-02-26T13:29:00.000-08:00

by Brooke Jarvis

Facing jail time for civil disobedience, Tim DeChristopher on why “we have more than enough power” to stop the fossil fuel industry.

Two years ago, in the waning days of the Bush administration, Tim DeChristopher was a 27-year-old college student who went to a protest. The rights to extract oil and gas from public lands in Utah were being auctioned off, and DeChristopher, concerned about the eventual impact of those fossil fuels on climate change, was determined to stop the auction. Someone mistook him for a bidder and offered him an auction paddle. He began bidding on land parcels, eventually winning 22,500 acres (for a total bid of $1.8 million, which he had no intention—or means—to pay) and calling attention to what the Department of the Interior later determined was an illegitimate auction.

On Monday, a federal court will convene to decide if DeChristopher is guilty of two felonies for his actions that day, charges that could land him in prison for up to 10 years and lead to fines of $750,000. You might think that kind of consequence would dampen someone's resolve, but DeChristopher is more convinced than ever that ordinary people have the power to stop even the most entrenched interests—provided we recognize that power.

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Brooke Jarvis: From Tunisia to Egypt to Wisconsin, this is certainly a time when the power of people’s movements is evident—and particularly the quick, viral way they can spread as the success of one movement inspires another to begin. What can we learn from the uprisings of recent weeks?

Tim DeChristopher: Throughout the few weeks of the uprising in Egypt, there was never really any doubt that the protesters would eventually take out Mubarak. It was totally clear: They knew they had this level of power and were committed to exercising it. What we're missing is that commitment to exercising the citizen power that we already have. In Egypt, once they made the decision that they were going to be a powerful force, there was no stopping them.

More: http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/more-powerful-than-we-know-interview-with-tim-dechristopher?utm_source=wkly20110225&utm_medium=yesemail&utm_campaign=titleJarvis

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The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow. - Jim Hightower

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. - Mohandas K. Gandhi

A Little Meditation Goes a Long Way

2011-02-26T13:09:00.000-08:00

by Jason Marsh

A new study offers the strongest evidence to date that meditation can change the structure of your brain.

I consider myself something of a prospective meditator—meaning that a serious meditation practice is always something I’m about to start… next week.

So for years, I’ve been making a mental note of new studies showing that meditation can literally change our brain structure in ways that might boost concentration, memory, and positive emotions.

The results seem enticing enough to make anyone drop into the full lotus position—until you read the fine print: Much of this research involves people who have meditated for thousands of hours over many years; some of it zeroes in on Olympic-level meditators who have clocked 10,000 hours or more. Pretty daunting.

Well, a new study offers some hope—and makes the benefits of meditation seem within reach even for a novice like me.

The study, published last month in the journal Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, suggests that meditating for just 30 minutes a day for eight weeks can increase the density of gray matter in brain regions associated with memory, stress, and empathy.

More: http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/a-little-meditation-goes-a-long-way?utm_source=wkly20110225&utm_medium=yesemail&utm_campaign=titleMarsh

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What's encouraging about meditation is that even if we shut down, we can no longer shut down in ignorance. We see very clearly that we're closing off. That in itself begins to illuminate the darkness of ignorance.... Everything is material for the seed of happiness, if you look into it with inquisitiveness and curiosity. The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment. There always is the potential to create an environment of blame -- or one that is conducive to loving-kindness.

- Pema Chodron

The Question by Rumi

2011-02-10T07:07:00.001-08:00

One Dervish to another, What was your vision of God's presence?

I haven't seen anything.

But for the sake of conversation, I'll tell you a story.

God's presence is there in front of me, a fire on the left,

a lovely stream on the right.

One group walks towards the fire, into the fire,

another toward the sweet flowing water.

No one knows which are blessed and which not.

Whoever walks into the fire appears suddenly in the stream.

A head goes under on the water surface, that head pokes out of the fire.

Most people guard against going into the fire,

and so end up in it.

Those who love the water of pleasure and make it their devotion are

cheated with this reversal.

The trickery goes further.

The voice of the fire tells the truth saying, I am not fire.

I am fountainhed. Come into me and don't mind the sparks.

If you are a friend of God, fire is your water.

You should wish to have a hundred thousand sets of mothwings,

so you could burn them away, one set a night.

The moth sees light and goes into the fire.

You should see fire and go toward the light.

Fire is what of God is world-consuming.

Water, world-protecting.

Somehow each gives the appearance of the other.

To these eyes you have now, what looks like water burns.

What looks like fire is a great relief to be inside.

You've seen a magician make a bowl of rice seem a dish

full of tiny live worms.

Before an assembly with one breath he made a floor swarm

with scorpians that weren't there.

How much more amazing God's tricks.

Generation after generation lies down defeated, they think,

but they're like a woman underneath a man, circling him.

One molecule-mote-second thinking of God's reversal

of comfort and pain is better than attending any ritual.

That splinter of intelligence is substance.

The fire and water themselves:

Accidental, done with mirrors.

http://people.tribe.net/230e8b7b-b0bb-475c-9b5a-3272772a947d/blog/f80db51b-e6e0-45c4-bd79-bda00d1460ef

The New American Oligarchy

2011-02-05T14:58:00.000-08:00

This is a powerful article, well worth the read. Please consider passing on...

**************

by: Andy Kroll TomDispatch Op-Ed

There is a war underway. I'm not talking about Washington’s bloody misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, but a war within our own borders. It’s a war fought on the airwaves, on television and radio and over the Internet, a war of words and images, of half-truth, innuendo, and raging lies. I'm talking about a political war, pitting liberals against conservatives, Democrats against Republicans. I'm talking about a spending war, fueled by stealthy front groups and deep-pocketed anonymous donors. It’s a war that's poised to topple what's left of American democracy.

The right wing won the opening battle. In the 2010 midterm elections, shadowy outside organizations (who didn’t have to disclose their donors until well after Election Day, if at all) backing Republican candidates doled out $190 million, outspending their adversaries by a more than two-to-one margin, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. American Action Network, operated by Republican consultant Fred Malek and former Republican Senator Norm Coleman, spent $26 million; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce plunked down $33 million; and Karl Rove's American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS shelled out a combined $38.6 million. Their investments in conservative candidates across the country paid off: the 62 House seats and six Senate seats claimed by Republicans were the most in the postwar era -- literally, a historic victory.

Knocked out of their complacency, no longer basking in the glow of Barack Obama's 2008 victory, wealthy Democrats are now plotting their response. Left-wing media mogul David Brock plans to create an outside group dubbed American Bridge in response to Rove's Crossroads outfits that will fight in the trenches of 2012 campaign spending. Many more outfits like Brock's will surely follow, as liberal and centrist Democrats brace for a promised $500 million onslaught by the Chamber of Commerce and others of its ilk.

Even the Obama administration, which shunned outside groups in 2008, has opened the door to a covert spending war. The Democrats will now fight fire with fire. "Is small money better? You bet. But we're in a fucking fight," Democratic strategist and fundraiser Harold Ickes told me recently. "And if you're in a fistfight, then you're in a fistfight, and you use all legal means available."

The endgame here, of course, is non-stop war. No longer will outside groups come and go every two years. Now, such groups will be running attack ads, sending out mailers, and deploying robo-calls year-round in what is going to become a perpetual campaign to sway voters and elect friendly lawmakers. "We're definitely building a foundation," was how American Crossroads president Steven Law put it.

This is what nowadays passes for the heart and soul of American democracy. It used to be that citizens in large numbers, mobilized by labor unions or political parties or a single uniting cause, determined the course of American politics. After World War II, a swelling middle class was the most powerful voting bloc, while, in those same decades, the working and middle classes enjoyed comparatively greater economic prosperity than their wealthy counterparts. Kiss all that goodbye. We're now a country run by rich people.

More: http://www.truth-out.org/andy-kroll-the-new-american-oligarchy65597

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"What the present Supreme Court, itself the fruit of successive tax-cutting and deregulating administrations, has ensured is this: that in an American “democracy,” only the public will remain in the dark. Even for dedicated reporters, tracking down these groups is like chasing shadows: official addresses lead to P.O. boxes; phone calls go unreturned; doors are shut in your face." ~ Andy Kroll

Egypt: Lessons in Democracy

2011-02-05T14:41:00.000-08:00

by Stephen Zunes

Could 2011 be to the Arab world what 1989 was to Eastern Europe?

Together, the unarmed insurrection that overthrew the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia and the ongoing uprising in Egypt have dramatically altered the way many in the West view prospects for democratization in the Middle East. The dramatic events of recent weeks have illustrated that for democracy to come to the Arab world, it will come not from foreign intervention or sanctimonious statements from Washington, but from Arab peoples themselves.

While many observers have acknowledged how unarmed pro-democracy insurrections helped bring democracy to Eastern Europe, Latin America, and parts of Asia and Africa, they had discounted the chances of such movements in the region, despite Tunisia being far from the first.

There has actually been a long history of nonviolent pro-democracy struggle in North Africa and the Middle East. Egypt wrested its independence from Great Britain as a result of a massive nonviolent resistance campaign launched in 1919. In Sudan, military dictators were ousted in nonviolent insurrections in 1964 and 1985, though the democratic experiments that followed were cut short by military coups a few years later. In 1991, in a nonviolent struggle succeeded in ousting the Traore dictatorship in Mali, despite the massacre of hundreds of peaceful protesters by the armed forces. Though it is one of the poorest countries in the world, Mali has been one of the most stable and democratic countries in the region ever since. The recently published book Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggle, Democratization and Governance in the Middle East documents numerous other popular pro-democracy movements throughout the Arab world.

The current struggle in Egypt—the center of Arab media, scholarship, and culture—has enormous ramifications for the region as a whole. The predominantly young secular activists who initiated the struggle reject not only the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak but also conservative Islamist leaders; they have put together a broad coalition of young and old, Muslim and Christian, poor and middle class to challenge a brutal corrupt regime which has held power for nearly thirty years. Like-minded civil society activists are organizing elsewhere. Indeed, 2011 could be to the Arab world what 1989 was to Eastern Europe.

More: http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/egypt-lessons-in-democracy?utm_source=wkly20110204&utm_medium=yesemail&utm_campaign=titleZunes

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"As long as the United States remains the world's No.1 supplier of security assistance to repressive governments in the Middle East and elsewhere, the need for massive nonviolent action in support for freedom and democracy may be no greater than here." ~ Stephen Zunes

A Poem: Love After Love

2011-01-30T22:08:00.000-08:00

Thank you to Ron for sharing this beautiful one with me...

which I am moved to pass on....

******************

Love After Love

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

And say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

~ Derek Walcott

I share this on the 33rd anniversary of my twin brother's death....

Sabbaths 1985, V -- Wendell Berry

2011-01-19T21:03:00.000-08:00

How long does it take to make the woods?

As long as it takes to make the world.

The woods is present as the world is, the presence

of all its past and of all its time to come.

It is always finished, it is always being made, the act

of its making forever greater than the act of its destruction.

It is a part of eternity for its end and beginning

belong to the end and beginning of all things,

the beginning lost in the end, the end in the beginning.

What is the way to the woods, how do you go there?

By climbing up through the six days’ field,

kept in all the body’s years, the body’s

sorrow, weariness, and joy. By passing through

the narrow gate on the far side of that field

where the pasture grass of the body’s life gives way

to the high, original standing of the trees.

By coming into the shadow, the shadow

of the grace of the strait way’s ending,

the shadow of the mercy of light.

Why must the gate be narrow?

Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened.

To come into the woods you must leave behind

the six days’ world, all of it, all of its plans and hopes.

You must come without weapon or tool, alone,

expecting nothing, remembering nothing,

into the ease of sight, the brotherhood of eye and leaf.

~ Wendell Berry ~

(A Timbered Choir)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Sabbaths_1985_V.html

In this New Year...

2011-01-06T06:36:00.000-08:00

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

~ Blaise Pascal ~

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Waiting_to_Be_Known.html

Fra Giovanni: Written Christmas Eve, 1513

2010-12-24T12:55:00.000-08:00

Tahquamenon Falls

Written on Christmas Eve, 1513

I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep.
There is nothing I can give you which you have not. But there

is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today.

Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in

this present little instant. Take peace! The gloom of the world is

but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is

radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see.
And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering,
cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and

you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom,

with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand

that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty,

believe me, that angel's hand is there. The gift is there and the wonder

of an overshadowing presence. Your joys, too, be not content

with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its

covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.

Courage then to claim it; that is all! But courage you have,

and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together,

wending through unknown country home.

And so, at this time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends

greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that

for you, now and forever, the day breaks and shadows flee away.

~ Fra Giovanni ~

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Written_on_Christmas_Eve.html

Mary Oliver: White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field

2010-12-01T06:23:00.000-08:00

White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field

Coming down out of the freezing sky

with its depths of light,

like an angel, or a Buddha with wings,

it was beautiful, and accurate,

striking the snow and whatever was there

with a force that left the imprint

of the tips of its wings — five feet apart —

and the grabbing thrust of its feet,

and the indentation of what had been running

through the white valleys of the snow —

and then it rose, gracefully,

and flew back to the frozen marshes

to lurk there, like a little lighthouse,

in the blue shadows —

so I thought:

maybe death isn't darkness, after all,

but so much light wrapping itself around us —

as soft as feathers —

that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking,

and shut our eyes, not without amazement,

and let ourselves be carried,

as through the translucence of mica,

to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow,

that is nothing but light — scalding, aortal light —

in which we are washed and washed

out of our bones.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(House of Light)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/White_Owl_Flies.html

Full of Thanks!

2010-11-29T17:50:00.000-08:00

Reflecting on all the good things in life!

Full of Thanks

I’m full
Full of thanks
Full of dreams, full of memories
And full of the cool air I breathed today.

Full of the earth under my feet
And the touch of a friend reaching out
Full of the child that looked at me with wonder
More and more I see how much I really have
I have more books than I’ll ever read
More clothes than I have occasion
More light shining upon me than I will ever see
I have more food than I can savor
I have more memories than I can remember
I have more dreams than I can live
I am full . . .
full of thanks . . .
and thank-full!

Thanks!

~Ilan Shamir ~

http://www.yourtruenature.com/

http://www.facebook.com/notes/your-true-nature/full-of-thanks/177121148966846

Rumi: On a Day When the Wind is Perfect

2010-11-29T16:50:00.000-08:00

ON A DAY WHEN THE WIND IS PERFECT

On a day
when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a
day.

My eyes are like the sun that makes promises;
the promise of life
that it always
keeps

each morning.

The living heart gives to us as does that luminous sphere,
both caress the earth with great
tenderness.

This is a breeze that can enter the soul.
This love I know plays a drum. Arms move around me;
who can contain their self before my beauty?

Peace is wonderful,
but ecstatic dance is more fun, and less narcissistic;
gregarious He makes our lips.

On a day when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open
and the love starts.

Today is such
a day.

~ Rumi ~

(Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West by Daniel Ladinsky)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/On_a_Day.html

"Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks" by Wendell Potter

2010-11-26T09:06:00.000-08:00

Photo I took of Wendell Potter 8/29/09, Portland, Oregon

I had the privilege of seeing Wendell Potter speak here in Portland in August 2009. He is a truthteller and American hero. Wendell Potter's journey from the "dark side" to the "insurance industry's worst nightmare" speaks powerfully of this man's integrity, courage, caring, and commitment to work for a just world. I am now very excited to learn of his new book and that he will again be touring all over the country, including here in Portland again on Tuesday, December 7th at Powell’s Books at 7:30 pm. I hope to see some of you there. For a complete list of appearances, please go here: http://wendellpotter.com/media-events/. Peace ~ Molly

********************

By Pamela Jean

"My name is Wendell Potter and for 20 years I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies, and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick -- all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors."

That's how he introduced himself to a Senate committee.

As a senior vice president of CIGNA, Potter had access to the inner workings of major insurance companies.

He had walked away from a six-figure salary and two decades as an insurance executive because he could no longer abide the routine practices of an industry where the needs of sick and suffering Americans take a backseat to the bottom line. The last straw: when he visited a rural health clinic and saw hundreds of Americans standing in line in the rain to receive treatment in stalls built for livestock.

Now, Wendell Potter is the insurance industry's worst nightmare.

Potter first made national headlines with his scorching testimony before the Senate panel on health care reform. This credible managed care insider explained to the senators how health insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, how they flout regulations designed to protect patients, and how they skew and corrupt the political debate with multibillion-dollar PR campaigns designed to spread disinformation.

More: http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2010/11/deadly_spin_an_insurance_compa.html

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Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. ~ Albert Einstein

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. ~ Maya Angelou

It takes two to speak truth -- one to speak and another to hear. ~ Henry David Thoreau

"Death of the Liberal Class" by Chris Hedges

2010-11-26T08:35:00.000-08:00

I have met Chris Hedges and, several times, Thom Hartmann, and also have several books by both authors. On Thanksgiving day I was grateful to have listened to an interview on Thom's national radio show that Thom did with Chris Hedges on his Chris' latest book. The American media does not interview the likes of Chris Hedges, Amy Goodman, Bill Moyers, Arundhati Roy, David Korten, Riane Eisler, or Howard Zinn (now deceased). Truthtellers who illuminate shadows along with strengths and hope are essential. Yet, we Americans remain largely uninformed, and I share this with the humility of knowing I have also been deeply in the dark about so much of what matters. There can be no solutions for problems denied or unknown. And, meanwhile on Thanksgiving day while many of us were blessed with being brim-full of yummy meals and loving company, millions more in America and worldwide suffer in poverty. I post this in honor and deep caring for their suffering. And I ask what compassionate action each of us can take in light of their plight? What does caring look like for you? For me, today, I am called to share this post.

Peace ~ Molly

******************

Book Excerpt
Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges

published on truthdig

In a traditional democracy, the liberal class functions as a safety valve. It makes piecemeal and incremental reform possible. It offers hope for change and proposes gradual steps toward greater equality. It endows the state and the mechanisms of power with virtue. It also serves as an attack dog that discredits radical social movements, making the liberal class a useful component within the power elite.

But the assault by the corporate state on the democratic state has claimed the liberal class as one of its victims. Corporate power forgot that the liberal class, when it functions, gives legitimacy to the power elite. And reducing the liberal class to courtiers or mandarins, who have nothing to offer but empty rhetoric, shuts off this safety valve and forces discontent to find other outlets that often end in violence. The inability of the liberal class to acknowledge that corporations have wrested power from the hands of citizens, that the Constitution and its guarantees of personal liberty have become irrelevant, and that the phrase consent of the governed is meaningless, has left it speaking and acting in ways that no longer correspond to reality. It has lent its voice to hollow acts of political theater, and the pretense that democratic debate and choice continue to exist.

The liberal class refuses to recognize the obvious because it does not want to lose its comfortable and often well-paid perch. Churches and universities—in elite schools such as Princeton, professors can earn $180,000 a year—enjoy tax-exempt status as long as they refrain from overt political critiques. Labor leaders make lavish salaries and are considered junior partners within corporate capitalism as long as they do not speak in the language of class struggle. Politicians, like generals, are loyal to the demands of the corporate state in power and retire to become millionaires as lobbyists or corporate managers. Artists who use their talents to foster the myths and illusions that bombard our society live comfortably in the Hollywood Hills.

The media, the church, the university, the Democratic Party, the arts, and labor unions—the pillars of the liberal class—have been bought off with corporate money and promises of scraps tossed to them by the narrow circles of power. Journalists, who prize access to the powerful more than they prize truth, report lies and propaganda to propel us into a war in Iraq. Many of these same journalists assured us it was prudent to entrust our life savings to a financial system run by speculators and thieves. Those life savings were gutted. The media, catering to corporate advertisers and sponsors, at the same time renders invisible whole sections of the population whose misery, poverty, and grievances should be the principal focus of journalism.

In the name of tolerance—a word the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., never used—the liberal church and the synagogue refuse to denounce Christian heretics who acculturate the Christian religion with the worst aspects of consumerism, nationalism, greed, imperial hubris, violence, and bigotry. These institutions accept globalization and unfettered capitalism as natural law. Liberal religious institutions, which should concern themselves with justice, embrace a cloying personal piety expressed in a how-is-it-with-me kind of spirituality and small, self-righteous acts of publicly conspicuous charity. Years spent in seminary or rabbinical schools, years devoted to the study of ethics, justice, and morality, prove useless when it comes time to stand up to corporate forces that usurp religious and moral language for financial and political gain.

Universities no longer train students to think critically, to examine and critique systems of power and cultural and political assumptions, to ask the broad questions of meaning and morality once sustained by the humanities. These institutions have transformed themselves into vocational schools. They have become breeding grounds for systems managers trained to serve the corporate state. In a Faustian bargain with corporate power, many of these universities have swelled their endowments and the budgets of many of their departments with billions in corporate and government dollars. College presidents, paid enormous salaries as if they were the heads of corporations, are judged almost solely on their ability to raise money. In return, these universities, like the media and religious institutions, not only remain silent about corporate power but also condemn as “political” all within their walls who question corporate malfeasance and the excesses of unfettered capitalism.

More: http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_death_of_the_liberal_class_20101029/http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_death_of_the_liberal_class_20101029/

********************

The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet. ~ Mark Twain

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road -- the one less traveled by -- offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth. ~ Rachel Carson

A Prayer for Thanksgiving

2010-11-24T23:49:00.000-08:00

A Prayer

Let me do my work each day;

And if the darkened hours of despair overcome me,

May I not forget the strength that comforted me

In the desolation of other times.

May I still remember the bright hours that found me

Walking over the silent hills of my childhood,

Or dreaming on the margin of the quiet river,

When a light glowed within me,

And I promised my early God to have courage

Amid the tempests of the changing years.

Spare me from bitterness

And from the sharp passions of unguarded moments.

May I not forget that poverty and riches are of the spirit.

Though the world may know me not,

May my thoughts and actions be such

As shall keep me friendly with myself.

Lift my eyes from the earth,

And let me not forget the uses of the stars.

Forbid that I should judge others,

Lest I condemn myself.

Let me not follow the clamor of the world,

But walk calmly in my path.

Give me a few good friends who will love me for what I am;

And keep ever burning before my vagrant steps

The kindly light of hope.

And though age and infirmity overtake me,

And I come not within sight of the castle of my dreams,

Teach me still to be thankful for life,

And for times olden memories that are good and sweet;

And may the evening's twilight find me gentle still.

~ Max Ehrmann ~

http://www.inspirationalwordsofwisdom.com/gratitude-prayer.html

The Two Most Essential, Abhorrent, Intolerable Lies Of George W. Bush's Memoir

2010-11-23T23:12:00.000-08:00

I share this article because it is my experience that in every crisis there is both danger and opportunity. My belief is that the invitation to us all is to embrace what is to be learned from the trauma which has impacted us all through such things as war and torture. May there be more truth telling. May there be more and more of us who are courageous enough to hear, see, and bear the horrors of what truth can hold. And may we individually and collectively grow to step up to do our part in transforming such horrors by holding all of us accountable. May we work to create genuine transformation and a world which our grandchildren will be grateful to inherit.

Peace ~ Molly

***************

by Dan Froomkin

WASHINGTON -- These days, when we think of George W. Bush, we think mostly of what a horrible mess he made of the economy. But his even more tragic legacy is the loss of our moral authority, and the transformation of the United States of America from global champion of human rights into an outlaw nation.

History is likely to judge Bush most harshly for two things in particular: Launching a war against a country that had not attacked us, and approving the use of cruel and inhumane interrogation techniques.

And that's why the two most essential lies -- among the many -- in his new memoir are that he had a legitimate reason to invade Iraq, and that he had a legitimate reason to torture detainees.
Neither is remotely true. But Bush must figure that if he keeps making the case for himself -- particularly if it goes largely unrebutted by the traditional media, as it has thus far -- then perhaps he can blunt history's verdict.

It may even be working. Extrapolating from the response to the book, former vice president Dick Cheney on Tuesday told a crowd gathered for Bush's presidential library groundbreaking in Dallas that "judgments are a little more measured than they were" and that "history is coming around."

The 'Decision' to Go to War

In "Decision Points," Bush describes the invasion of Iraq as something he came to support only reluctantly and after a long period of reflection. This is a flat-out lie. Anyone who paid any attention to the news at the time knew Bush was dead-set on war long before he sent in the troops in March 2003. And there is now an abundant amount of documentation, in the form of leaks, unclassified memos, witness interviews and other people's memoirs to prove it.

The historical record clearly shows that Bush had long harbored a desire to strike out at Saddam Hussein, was trying to link Iraq to 9/11 within a day of the terrorist attacks, and finally found the excuse he was looking for in skewed intelligence about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The only real question is whether he actively deceived the American public and the world -- or whether he was so passionate about selling the public on the war that he intentionally blinded himself to how brazenly Vice President Cheney had politicized and abused the intelligence process.

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/22/the-two-most-esssential-a_n_786219.html

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Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. ~ Bishop Desmond Tutu

Mary Oliver: Gratitude

2010-11-21T20:05:00.000-08:00

Gratitude

What did you notice?

The dew snail;

the low-flying sparrow;

the bat, on the wind, in the dark;

big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest performance;

the soft toad, patient in the hot sand;

the sweet-hungry ants;

the uproar of mice in the empty house;

the tin music of the cricket’s body;

the blouse of the goldenrod.

What did you hear?

The thrush greeting the morning;

the little bluebirds in their hot box;

the salty talk of the wren,

then the deep cup of the hour of silence.

What did you admire?

The oaks, letting down their dark and hairy fruit;

the carrot, rising in its elongated waist;

the onion, sheet after sheet, curved inward to the

pale green wand;

at the end of summer the brassy dust, the almost liquid

beauty of the flowers;

then the ferns, scrawned black by the frost.

What astonished you?

The swallows making their dip and turn over the water.

What would you like to see again?

My dog: her energy and exuberance, her willingness,

her language beyond all nimbleness of tongue, her

recklessness, her loyalty, her sweetness, her

sturdy legs, her curled black lip, her snap.

What was most tender?

Queen Anne’s lace, with its parsnip root;

the everlasting in its bonnets of wool;

the kinks and turns of the tupelo’s body;

the tall, blank banks of sand;

the clam, clamped down.

What was most wonderful?

The sea, and its wide shoulders;

the sea and its triangles;

the sea lying back on its long athlete’s spine.

What did you think was happening?

The green breast of the hummingbird;

the eye of the pond;

the wet face of the lily;

the bright, puckered knee of the broken oak;

the red tulip of the fox’s mouth;

the up-swing, the down-pour, the frayed sleeve

of the first snow—

so the gods shake us from our sleep.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(What Do We Know)

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/Gratitude.html

Legal Pros Say No to Citizens United

2010-11-21T20:04:00.000-08:00

by Jeffrey D. Clements and Ben T. Clements

Experts call for Constitutional amendment to take back democracy from corporations.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC, corporate money has poured into the 2010 elections in unprecedented amounts. Now, a bipartisan group of leading law professors, former state attorneys general, former prosecutors, and prominent attorneys from across the country has signed a letter calling on Congress to consider a Constitutional amendment to overrule Citizens United and return elections and government to the people. We joined that call because the notion of “corporate rights” expressed in Citizens United is antithetical to Constitutional principles of free speech, democracy, and self-government.

In that case, the Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibits restrictions on so-called “independent expenditures” by corporations to attempt to defeat or elect candidates. The Court equated corporations with people for purposes of free speech rights and struck down key provisions of the federal Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.

The creation of absolute corporate “speech” rights to spend money on elections is contrary to Constitutional principles and to the American vision of self-government by free people. That vision cannot coexist with elections dominated by hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate electioneering money.

More: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/what-happy-families-know/legal-pros-say-no-to-citizens-united?utm_source=wkly20101119&utm_medium=yesemail&utm_campaign=titleClements

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What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

The great danger for American democracy is not from the protesters. That democracy is too poorly realized for us to consider critics -- even rebels -- as the chief problem. Its fulfillment requires us all, living in an ossified system which sustains too much killing and too much selfishness, to join the protest. ~ Howard Zinn

It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America. ~ Molly Ivins

William Stafford: Cutting Loose

2010-11-18T22:05:00.000-08:00

Cutting Loose

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,

you sing. For no reason, you accept

the way of being lost, cutting loose

from all else and electing a world

where you go where you want to.

Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder

that a steady center is holding

all else. If you listen, that sound

will tell you where it is and you

can slide your way past trouble.

Certain twisted monsters

always bar the path -- but that's when

you get going best, glad to be lost,

learning how real it is

here on earth, again and again.

~ William Stafford ~

(Dancing With Joy, ed. by Roger Housden)

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/Cutting_Loose.html

World's Power Brokers Hold Annual Summit Where They Show Each Other Their Penises

2010-11-18T21:17:00.000-08:00

Okay, this one's just a bit beyond my "norm"... but I just had to do it...!

International titans of industry, media, and politics examine one another's genitals.

ST. MORITZ, SWITZERLAND—One hundred fifty of the world's most powerful people in the fields of politics, banking, business, and media met this past weekend at an exclusive Swiss resort for the 54th annual invitation-only summit where they show each other their penises.

This year's meeting was chaired by a committee that included Rupert Murdoch, former U.S. national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, oil heir David H. Koch, and Japanese finance minister Yoshihiko Noda, all of whom presided over the traditional penis-showing ceremony that has for decades been a banner event for the most influential international power brokers.

"I always look forward to this crucial and productive gathering," said industrialist and banker Jacob Wallenberg of the Swedish Wallenbergs, a prominent European family that has wielded significant clout in global financial and political affairs for more than two centuries. "To see the penises of so many like-minded, forward-thinking men and to show them my own penis—this is what keeps the global wheels of industry and ingenuity turning."

"After all, these are inarguably the most important penises of our time," Wallenberg added before unzipping his tuxedo pants and heading back into a scrum of other immensely powerful and wealthy men already gazing contemplatively at one another's exposed genitalia.

As it does every year, the ceremony followed a strict a system of seniority wherein members first reveal their sex organs to the seated committee and assembled invitees before the floor is opened up for general penis exposition. The honor of the showing of the first penis this year was given to billionaire real estate mogul Leonard Litwin, 95, the oldest member in attendance.

The annual penis-showing summit has a rich history, having first been held in 1957 at a Lake Tahoe chateau owned by American banker David Rockefeller, Sr. of the hugely influential six-generation Rockefeller oil dynasty. According to Rockefeller, the gathering was born of the simple idea that "the people who hold the most sway over the direction of world affairs ought naturally to have some sense of what each other's penises look like."

More: http://www.theonion.com/articles/worlds-power-brokers-hold-annual-summit-where-they,18474/

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I have always noticed that people will never laugh at anything that is not based on truth. ~ Will Rogers

A Poem...

2010-11-18T20:19:00.000-08:00

Earth, isn't this what you want? To arise in us, invisible?

Is it not your dream, to enter us so wholly

there's nothing left outside us to see?

What, if not transformation,

is your deepest purpose? Earth, my love,

I want that too. Believe me,

no more of your springtimes are needed

to win me over - even one flower

is more than enough. Before I was named

I belonged to you. I seek no other law

but yours, and know I can trust

the death you will bring.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

BePeace & The Rasur Foundation International

2010-11-13T19:43:00.001-08:00

This was so hopeful, so beautiful to hear of. May we follow these footsteps. Blessed be... Molly

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BePeace® is a practice that combines a scientifically proven method for "feeling peace" with a clear path for "speaking peace" that creates an authentic, compassionate connection. As we learn this practice, we are empowered to pass it on, to "teach peace".

The Rasur Foundation was founded by Rita Marie Johnson, a U.S. citizen who went to Costa Rica in 1993 to help strengthen its national model of peace. As a result, a new “peace package” is now being implemented: a Ministry for Peace that collaborates with a national Academy for Peace, which trains peace teachers in the schools to teach the practice of BePeace in each community. This new government infrastructure, coupled with grassroots peace skills, is inspiring hope around the world as people realize that similar models could be replicated in their countries.

The Rasur Foundation, named after the epic poem Rasur or Week of Splendor by Roberto Brenes Mesén, has inspired the foundation’s work. This prophetic poem tells the story of a master teacher, Rasur, who teaches the Costa Rican children how to be peacemakers. The children pass this knowledge on to their parents and soon their village is transformed into a culture of peace.

VISION: A world where every child practices peace and passes this gift to the next generation.

MISSION: Attracting, training and supporting natural peace teachers to evoke the wisdom and compassion in children through the practice of BePeace.

MOTTO: Before directing the lightning in the sky, we must first harness the storms in our own hearts.

In 2002, Johnson discovered a powerful synergy between coherence for “feeling peace” and connection to universal needs through empathy and honesty for “speaking peace.” Inspired by this combination, she developed the practice of BePeace. She founded the Academy for Peace of Costa Rica as a project of the Rasur Foundation, with the vision of developing Rasurs, master peace teachers to provide BePeace training in every community.

As teachers, students, parents and other citizens learn BePeace, their social and emotional intelligence is enhanced, empowering them to make conscious choices toward peace in their daily lives. Now the Ministry of Education in Costa Rica is implementingBePeace in the national school system. In 2009, Rasur Foundation International began supporting other countries to establish their own academies, which include developing Rasurs and teaching BePeace.

News of this practice is spreading rapidly. In the last three years, BePeace® has been taught to 26 graduate students from 16 countries at the United Nations University for Peace and 38 representatives from 10 countries at the 2009 Summit of the Global Alliance of Ministries and Departments for Peace. It has been initiated in ten states in the USA, as well as Canada, Europe and Central America.

More: http://www.rasurinternational.org/

Academy For Peace: http://academyforpeacecr.org/about.html

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We believe that to become more peaceful nations we must begin within ourselves and that teaching our children is the logical first step to shifting generational violence into lasting peace.

~ Roberto Brenes Mesén

William Stafford: The Way It Is

2010-11-11T11:45:00.000-08:00

The Gift

Time wants to show you a different country. It's the one

that your life conceals, the one waiting outside

when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at

in her crochet design, the one almost found

over at the edge of the music, after the sermon.

It's the way life is, and you have it, a few years given.

You get killed now and then, violated

in various ways. (And sometimes it's turn about.)

You get tired of that. Long-suffering, you wait

and pray, and maybe good things come - maybe

the hurt slackens and you hardly feel it any more.

You have a breath without pain. It is called happiness.

It's a balance, the taking and passing along,

the composting of where you've been and how people

and weather treated you. It's a country where

you already are, bringing where you have been.

Time offers this gift in its millions of ways,

turning the world, moving the air, calling,

every morning, "Here, take it, it's yours."

~ William Stafford ~

(The Way It Is)

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/The_Gift.html

Beatitudes for Veterans Day

2010-11-11T11:19:00.000-08:00

This is a powerful, powerful article which I share in honor of all veterans and in honor of all who have been affected by war - which means all of us everywhere. The ripples of war know no bounds, as do those of peace. May we all grow in our capacity to be true peacemakers, beginning within our own hearts. Peace... Molly

by Patricia Hynes for Buzzflash

Blessed is the veteran of World War I, who spent his life exposing the horrors of war for those who fight in it and the willful deceit of those who declare it and seek stature from it. In his first anti-war novel, Erich Maria Remarque wrote "I see how peoples are set against each other...foolishly, innocently, obediently slaying each other ...While they [the promoters and boosters of war] continued to talk and write, we saw the wounded and dying...The wrong people do the fighting." All Quiet on the Western Front was banned in Nazi Germany.

Blessed are the children of veterans who break the code of silence on the war that never ends: Living with the "attendant nightmares" of their veteran fathers and being "the objects of their war-ridden rage and war-honed violence." War Is Not Over When It's Overchronicles, through interviews and photos, the spill over of brutal violence against girls and women in five war-ruined countries. The author Ann Jones' own life was "darkened by war." Her thrice-decorated WWI-veteran father turned his war-fed anger and violence on her and her mother.

Blessed is the World War II combat veteran who turned his revulsion at the racism of boot camp and the brutality of war into a life of non-violent activism for Civil Rights and radical witness for peace. Philip Berrigan believed "...there will be no healing for veterans until we disavow war completely, until we disarm the bomb and the killing machine and ourselves." His lifelong question: "Can I remedy my violence, can I heal myself until I try to heal the body of humankind from the curse of war?"

Blessed is the writer Anonymous for her courage in exposing a taboo subject: The mass rape of an estimated 100,000 women in Berlin (of which she was one) by conquering Russian soldiers over a period of 7 weeks, and the mass rejection of these women, as shameless and besmirched, by returning German men who were emasculated by defeat. A Woman in Berlin was rejected by German publishers and published only years later in the United States. The author did not reveal her name because of fear of threats and reprisals.

Blessed is the daughter of two hibakusha, the shunned Japanese survivors of atomic bombs, who has assumed the mantle of speaking out against nuclear weapons and for world peace. The bombs scarred her parents, both mentally and physically; her father lashed out and her mother withdrew into depression. "For me," says Miyako Taguchi, who is founder of Hibakusha Stories from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Future Generations, "I always live with the effects, the reality of the bomb and the modern arsenals of more than 27,000 nuclear weapons. No matter who has them, we are all their victims."

Blessed are all the veterans against wars, current and past, and those who have returned to the countries and peoples they harmed to make reparation. Blessed are the Veterans for Peace who will walk from November 2-11 in rural Maine to bear witness to the human tragedy that recent wars have caused for local villages, towns and families, including unprecedented rates of suicide among soldiers serving in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and the many suffering from war-related PTSD, head trauma, and sexual assault.

More: http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/11927

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A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and loose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. ~ Abraham Lincoln

All beings tremble before violence. All fear death. All love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do? ~ The Buddha

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. ~ Carl Jung

Heartland Security

2010-11-11T09:44:00.000-08:00

On Veteran's Day I am filled with reflections. I remember walking the cemetery when we buried Brigadier General Frederick Smith Strong, Jr., my grandfather, on what would have been his 99th birthday at West Point to a 21 gun solute. So many crosses... As 1 in every 2-3 Americans will receive a diagnosis of cancer at some point in their lifetimes, my mind also moves to thoughts of how we passionately seek "the cure" for cancers while dancing around, at best, any conversation related to digging into the messiness of what can be the causes. There is this other side, this darker side of so much... which we often distract, deny, justify looking away from. Now, today, on Veteran's Day, I reflect on the deeper causes of war and what may ultimately lead us all to embrace, heal, and transform ourselves, creating ripples, actions, insights, wisdom that will lead us away from war and toward creating genuine peace. Namaste... Molly

America Needs a Department of Heartland Security!

by Steve Bhaerman
(also known as Swami Beyondananda, the "Cosmic Comic.")

Heartland Security is the love-based counterpoint to the fear-based context of "Homeland Security."

Both ancient spiritual wisdom and modern "new edge" science point us toward humanity's next evolutionary understanding that we are all cells in the body of humanity.

In recognizing we are interconnected and ultimately all benefit from the same beneficial conditions, we understand that our true security is in the land of the heart.

By seeing we are all in this together, and living our collective and individual lives from this understanding, we can evolve human life on this planet towards greater health, wealth, happiness and functionality.

Far from being a pie-in-the-sky ideal, this is a feet-on-the-ground real deal -- provided we learn to use the three most underutilized human resources on the planet: love, imagination and cooperation.

The world is being transformed before our very eyes, and right under our feet. Just as surely as the caterpillar becomes the butterfly, humankind is morphing into a new species. The old caterpillar structure is falling apart, and the new butterfly is cohering, coalescing and emerging. We are the "imaginal cells" that will become the butterfly.

Heartland Security: Who, What and Why?

The practical purpose of Heartland Security is to empower a new "moral majority" reflecting the values at the foundation of every religion, spiritual path and ethical system -- some version of the Golden Rule. In doing so, we seek to reestablish the missing piece in government by the people -- the "heart core" values of we the people!

In this next evolutionary phase, we collectively recognize that self-interest and planetary interest are one and the same. We empower individuals to gain greater freedom and greater security by weaving their own aspirations, skills and desires with the larger story being written.

With no imposition from the top down, this coherent "central voice" of humanity can arise from the grassroots up so we can achieve the highest potential of humanity -- to institute the practice of love and cultivate the Garden we have been given.

To do this, we must collectively withdraw our energy from trying to "fix" the caterpillar, and instead gather our energy, attention and resources so that the butterfly emerges. Heartland Security is a new context for refocusing our focus:
Heart represents our universal spiritual foundation, the vast and untapped resource of love and connection.

Land represents a restorative, sustainable economy that empowers a mutually beneficial partnership between human and biosphere.

Security represents our evolution from the single cell "every-cell-for-itself" philosophy to the multi-cell "we're-all-in-this-together." In doing so, we move from survival of the fittest to thrival of the fittingest, from mutually-assured destruction to mutually-assured survival.

More: http://wakeuplaughing.com/heartland-security.php

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War and peace start in the human heart - and whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications. ~ Pema Chodron

Mary Oliver: The Journey

2010-11-11T09:31:00.000-08:00

I have found that only by first attending to my own suffering

can I grow to live and spread peace...

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice --

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do --

determined to save

the only life you could save.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(Dream Work)

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/The_Journey.html

Rumi: Begin

2010-11-10T21:22:00.000-08:00

BEGIN

This is now. Now is,

all there is. Don't wait for Then;

strike the spark, light the fire.

Sit at the Beloved's table,

feast with gusto, drink your fill

then dance

the way branches

of jasmine and cypress

dance in a spring wind.

The green earth

is your cloth;

tailor your robe

with dignity and grace.

~ Rumi ~

(adapted by Jose Orez from a version by Coleman Barks in The Soul of Rumi)

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/Begin.html

U.N. Human Rights Council Issues Recommendations To U.S.

2010-11-10T20:49:00.000-08:00

Considering the often narcissistic tendencies of our nation, I found this illuminating, powerful, and true. Solutions only arise when problems are seen, named, embraced, healed, transformed. May we Americans increasingly have the courage to look in the mirror and make conscious choices to simply work to be kind and to truly care. May our grounding in compassionate action grow. Peace~ Molly

********

GENEVA--(ENEWSPF)--November 9, 2010. The U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) today issued a set of recommendations for the United States to bring its human rights policies and practices in line with international standards. The recommendations are the result of the first-ever participation by the U.S. in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, which involves a thorough assessment of a nation's human rights record. The American Civil Liberties Union, which was in Geneva last week to observe the UPR process, welcomed U.S. participation as an important step toward protecting human rights at home.

The following can be attributed to Laura W. Murphy, Director of the Washington Legislative Office:

"The UPR process provides an opportunity for the United States to identify human rights violations, develop real solutions and bring our policies in line with international human rights standards. The Obama administration should set a good example by working with Congress and state and local governments to translate human rights commitments into domestic laws and policies that will have a positive impact on all people in America.

"The following can be attributed to Jamil Dakwar, Director of the ACLU Human Rights Program:
"While the Obama administration should be commended for its participation in the UPR, in order to lead by example, this international engagement must be followed by concrete domestic policies and actions and a commitment to fixing all domestic human rights abuses. The administration must take immediate and specific presidential actions to ensure domestic human rights are effectively monitored and enforced within the United States."

The ACLU called on the government to heed the recommendations of the HRC, including to:

- ensure accountability for not just the interrogators who used torture but also the senior Bush administration officials who authorized it, provide reparations for victims of torture, close Guantánamo and end indefinite detention without charge or trial, and end the discredited military commissions;
- end racial and ethnic profiling, especially in the enforcement of immigration laws – including the termination of Secure Communities and 287(g) programs;
- impose a federal moratorium on the death penalty as a first step towards nationwide abolition, and address serious flaws in the administration of the death penalty including racial bias, under-funded indigent defense programs, conditions on death row and a lack of full access to federal courts;
- take concrete steps to ratify human rights treaties, especially the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities;
- take concrete measures to address racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system, including the disproportionate representation of minorities and inhumane prison conditions;
enhance efforts to address disparities in access to social and economic rights and take concrete and effective measures to ensure that minorities enjoy equal access to quality education, health care and housing;
- establish a national civil and human rights commission by transforming the existing U.S. commission on civil rights into an independent human rights monitoring body; and
- issue an executive order on human rights to effectively and transparently coordinate U.S. follow-up on the UPR recommendations, as well as full implementation of ratified treaties including the Race Convention, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture on the federal, state and local levels.

Source: aclu.org

http://www.enewspf.com/latest-news/latest-national/19773-un-human-rights-council-issues-recommendations-to-us-.html

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The most decisive actions of our life ... are most often unconsidered actions. ~ Andre Gide

Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit. ~ Baltasar Gracian

All serious daring starts from within. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Missing: A Vision of Economic Possibility

2010-11-10T20:31:00.000-08:00

by David Korten

This election showed us that neither of our two major parties has a credible vision for our economic future. And that’s why this is a moment of opportunity.

It is now the morning after. Republicans, as expected, are celebrating a sweeping victory. Democrats are licking their wounds. Meanwhile, record numbers of people are still contending with the hardships of unemployment and foreclosure with no relief in sight. And the nation braces for deepening political gridlock.

It is a moment of opportunity for America to set a new course and for a young President Barack Obama to establish his place in history as a path-breaking leader.

So how does electoral failure and political gridlock create a moment of opportunity?

We are a nation consumed by short-term thinking and fragmented political contests centered on narrowly defined issues. Neither of our two major parties has a credible vision for the economic future of our nation.

The Republicans offer only their standard prescription of tax cuts for the rich, a rollback of regulations on predatory corporations, and elimination of the social safety net—a proven prescription for further job loss and devastation of the middle class.

The Democrats have no identifiable program for economic recovery, let alone for adapting our economy to the dramatic demographic, environmental, economic, and political changes that rule out any chance of a return to pre-2008 business as usual.

In an insightful interview, Populist historian Lawrence Goodwyn suggests that this creates a historic opportunity. He observes that bankers have been a dominant ruling power throughout much of our national history and a barrier to realizing the democratic ideal on which our nation was founded. It has not been within the power of any American president to break their hold due to lack of an adequate public understanding of the nature of the problem.

More: http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/missing-a-vision-of-economic-possibility?utm_source=wkly20101105&utm_medium=yesemail&utm_campaign=titleKorten

David Korten is co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, president of the People-Centered Development Forum, and a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE). His books include Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World.

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The emerging vision calls for a fundamental economic restructuring to put life values ahead of financial values, give the creation of sustainable livelihoods for working people priority over bonuses for Wall Street traders, and root the power to create and allocate money in people and community rather than in Wall Street financial institutions. David Brancaccio has documented impressive examples in a PBS television special titled "Fixing the Future" scheduled to be aired on November 18, 2010. ~ David Korten

Ranier Maria Rilke: I Love the Dark Hours

2010-11-09T06:38:00.000-08:00

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.

Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that's wide and timeless.

So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:

a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.

~ Ranier Maria Rilke ~

(Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Love_the_Dark_Hours.html

A Prayer

2010-11-07T11:02:00.000-08:00

A Prayer

Let me do my work each day;
and if the darkened hours
of despair overcome me, may I
not forget the strength
that comforted me in the
desolation of other times.

May I still remember the bright
hours that found me walking
over the silent hills of my
childhood, or dreaming on the
margin of a quiet river,
when a light glowed within me,
and I promised my early God
to have courage amid the
tempests of the changing years.

Spare me from bitterness
and from the sharp passions of
unguarded moments. May
I not forget that poverty and
riches are of the spirit.
Though the world knows me not,
may my thoughts and actions
be such as shall keep me friendly
with myself.

Lift up my eyes
from the earth, and let me not
forget the uses of the stars.
Forbid that I should judge others
lest I condemn myself.
Let me not follow the clamor of
the world, but walk calmly
in my path.

Give me a few friends
who will love me for what
I am; and keep ever burning
before my vagrant steps
the kindly light of hope.

And though age and infirmity
overtake me, and I come not within
sight of the castle of my dreams,
teach me still to be thankful
for life, and for time's olden
memories that are good and
sweet; and may the evening's
twilight find me gentle still.

~ Max Ehrmann ~

(The Desiderata of Happiness)

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/A_Prayer_Ehrmann.html

Family of Secrets by Russ Baker

2010-11-07T10:48:00.000-08:00

Book Bomb: Exposing the Bush Empire

After Barack Obama won the White House in 2008, many thought George Bush's political empire was over - like Darth Vader's Galactic Empire at the end of the original Star Wars.

But in last week's election, Bush's Empire Struck Back.

The "Architect" of stolen election 2010 was Karl Rove. He raised and spent hundreds of millions in secret money, sat at FOX spinning lies, and ran smear attack ads to defeat Democrats and elect a new generation of rightwing Republicans who are loyal to him.

Who is Karl Rove? The mastermind of the Bush Empire and strategist for the billionaires and bureaucrats behind it. Where did Rove's money come from? The same billionaires and bureaucrats who put the Bushes in power for 12 years - and are determined to do it again.

More: http://www.democrats.com/book-bomb-exposing-the-bush-empire

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In war, truth is the first casualty. ~ Aeschylus

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. ~ Albert Einstein

“Obama’s Wars”: The Real Story Bob Woodward Won’t Tell

2010-11-07T10:29:00.000-08:00

By Russ Baker

Just one year before the publication of “Obama’s Wars,” Bob Woodward became a player in his own book-in-progress. He morphed into his true identity: Warrior Bob. Actually, there’s an even deeper persona, Agent Woodward — but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

In June of 2009, Woodward traveled to Afghanistan with General Jim Jones, President Obama’s National Security adviser, to meet with General Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of forces there. Why did Jones allow this journalist to accompany him? Because Jones knew that Woodward could be counted on to deliver the company line — the military line. In fact, Jones was essentially Woodward’s patron.

The New Republic’s Gabriel Sherman wrote at the time that "…Jones was a guest of Woodward at his wife Elsa Walsh’s fiftieth birthday party held at Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee’s house. He and Elsa were glued to Jones at the cocktail party before the dinner started…"

In September of last year, McChrystal (or someone close to him) leaked to Woodward a document that essentially forced President Obama’s hand. Obama wanted time to consider all options on what to do about Afghanistan. But the leak, publicizing the military’s “confidential” assertion that a troop increase was essential, cast the die, and Obama had to go along. Nobody was happier than the Pentagon — and, it should be said, its allies in the vast military contracting establishment.

More: http://whowhatwhy.com/2010/09/30/%E2%80%9Cobama%E2%80%99s-wars%E2%80%9D-the-real-story-bob-woodward-won%E2%80%99t-tell/

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... And so things will continue, same as they ever were. Endless war, no substantive reforms. Unless we wake up to our own victimhood. ~ Russ Baker

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

To tell the truth is revolutionary. ~ Antonio Gramsci

2010-11-02T20:50:00.000-07:00

Invocation

Let us try what it is to be true to gravity,

to grace, to the given, faithful to our own voices,

to lines making the map of our furrowed tongue.

Turned toward the root of a single word, refusing

solemnity and slogans, let us honor what hides

and does not come easy to speech. The pebbles

we hold in our mouths help us to practice song,

and we sing to the sea. May the things of this world

be preserved to us, their beautiful secret

vocabularies. We are dreaming it over and new,

the language of our tribe, music we hear

we can only acknowledge. May the naming powers

be granted. Our words are feathers that fly

on our breath. Let them go in a holy direction.

~ Jeanne Lohmann ~

(Between Silence and Answer)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Invocation.html

What's Behind the Tea Party's Ire?

2010-11-02T15:20:00.000-07:00

By Eugene Robinson

The first African American president takes office, and almost immediately we see the birth of a big, passionate national movement - overwhelmingly white and lavishly funded - that tries its best to delegitimize that president, seeks to thwart his every initiative, and manages to bring the discredited and moribund opposition party roaring back to life. Coincidence?

Not a chance. But also not that simple.

First, I'll state the obvious: It's not racist to criticize President Obama, it's not racist to have conservative views, and it's not racist to join the Tea Party. But there's something about the nature and tone of the most vitriolic attacks on the president that I believe is distinctive - and difficult to explain without asking whether race is playing a role.

One thing that struck me from the beginning about the Tea Party rhetoric is the idea of reclaiming something that has been taken away.

At a recent campaign rally in Paducah, Ky., Senate candidate Rand Paul, a darling of the Tea Party movement, drew thunderous applause when he said that if Republicans win, "we get to go to Washington and take back our government."

Take it back from whom? Maybe he thinks it goes without saying, because he didn't say.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/01/AR2010110105086.html?referrer=emailarticle

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If you don't speak out now when it matters, when would it matter for you to speak out? ~ Jim Hightower

The pretense in disputed elections is that the great conflict is between the two major parties. The reality is that there is a much bigger conflict that the two parties jointly wage against large numbers of Americans who are represented by neither party and against powerless millions around the world. ~ Howard Zinn

Transformation is only valid if it is carried out with the people, not for them. Liberation is like a childbirth, and a painful one. The person who emerges is a new person: no longer either oppressor or oppressed, but a person in the process of achieving freedom. It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. ~ Paulo Freire

Hope

2010-11-02T08:45:00.001-07:00

I am moved to share this poem, especially in light of today being election day and my awareness that there will be millions who unknowingly vote against the caring of the children, one another, and this precious Earth we all share. And yet, there remains the fog that weaves its peaceful web through autumn leaves out my window this morning... reminders of beauty. And hope. Blessed be... Molly

Hope

It hovers in dark corners

before the lights are turned on,

it shakes sleep from its eyes

and drops from mushroom gills,

it explodes in the starry heads

of dandelions turned sages,

it sticks to the wings of green angels

that sail from the tops of maples.

It sprouts in each occluded eye

of the many-eyed potato,

it lives in each earthworm segment

surviving cruelty,

it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog,

it is the mouth that inflates the lungs

of the child that has just been born.

It is the singular gift

we cannot destroy in ourselves,

the argument that refutes death,

the genius that invents the future,

all we know of God.

It is the serum which makes us swear

not to betray one another;

it is in this poem, trying to speak.

~ Lisel Mueller ~

(Alive Together: New and Selected Poems)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Hope.html

Rumi: My Heart Is So Small

2010-11-01T21:14:00.000-07:00

My heart is so small

it's almost invisible.

How can You place

such big sorrows in it?

"Look," He answered,

"your eyes are even smaller,

yet they behold the world."

~ Rumi ~

(Whispers of the Beloved by Maryam & Azima Melita Kolin)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/My_heart_is_so_small.html

The Republican War on Reality

2010-11-01T20:49:00.000-07:00

This article is powerful and by someone I have deep respect and gratitude for. Peace...

by Paul Loeb
Author of Soul of a Citizen

Everett Dirksen is one of my heroes. The Senate Republican leader from 1959 to 1969, he pushed strongly for Vietnam escalation and took conservative stands that I'd have strongly disagreed with on economic issues. But he joined Lyndon Johnson in going to the mat to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights bills, and for that I admire him immensely.

Today's Republicans are far from Everett Dirksen, and that's a shame. Beyond political differences with Obama and the Democrats, they've been making war on reality itself, which should be a major issue of the campaign's final days. Consider these examples:

- The myth of Obama as secret foreign-born Muslim: If 45 percent of Republicans think Obama wasn't born in this country and 57 percent think he's a secret Muslim, there's a reason. It's not just that Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have been spouting crazy lies, but that the overwhelming majority of Republican leaders have been silent, so as not to damp the fervor of those outraged at Obama's mere presence in the White House. Yes, a few have bluntly said it's nonsense, like Hawaii's Republican Governor Linda Lingle, South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, and Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck. But most have responded with a wink and nod, saying Obama's the legitimate president or that he's a Christian "as far as I know," or in Senator James Inhof's words that the birthers "have a point." They've refused to publicly challenge a belief that fuels so much grassroots Republican energy.

- Denial of Global Climate change: Dino Rossi, Washington State Senator Patty Murray's Republican challenger, recently told the Seattle Times that he couldn't take a stand on climate change because it's still being debated between "scientists and pseudo scientists." Agreed. On the one side you have the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the British, German, and Norwegian academies of science, the Japanese, French, Indian, Brazilian, Australian equivalents, and the major scientific organizations of every nation in the world, not to mention such dangerously radical groups as the American Chemical Society, American Meteorological Society, and the American Statistical Association, not to mention the Department of Defense, all of whom say that human-caused climate change is a real and unprecedented danger that's rapidly getting worse.

On the side of the skeptics you have a handful of scientists funded by Exxon, the coal companies, the Koch Brothers and other corporate sponsors who want to maintain business as usual. They claim the jury's still out, and do this in a year when a fifth of Pakistan was flooded, when Russians fled Moscow because runaway forest fires made the air impossible to breathe, and when much of the US suffered both record temperature levels and extreme weather events like massive floods, tornadoes and ice storms. But Rossi sided with the pseudo-scientists, as has practically every other Republican Senate candidate on an issue that should cross political lines. Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Roy Blunt, Marco Rubio, Linda McMahon, Pat Toomey, Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, Carly Fiorina, Christine O'Donnell, Joe Miller and Rossi -- every one of them has questioned the reality of the crisis and therefore the need to act. Even some who once took strong stands, like John McCain, have muted their voices to appease their hard right base. While European conservative parties lambaste their more left opponents for not doing enough, the Republicans remain in denial on the ultimate issue of our lifetime.

- Denial of our economic crisis and of its roots: The Republicans are certainly talking about the crisis. It benefits them politically. But they're also denying the urgency of doing anything to assist those who cannot find jobs no matter how hard they try, or to acknowledge the roots of the crash in policies spearheaded by Bush and the Republicans. They focus particularly on the bank bailouts while refusing to acknowledge that they were voted in on Bush's watch with major Republican support. They also near universally parroted the talking points of the banks in trying their best to stop or gut the Financial Reform Bill that makes such bailouts less likely in the future I'd call a refusal to rein in tax breaks for corporations shipping jobs overseas a similar fundamental denial of the relationship between actions and consequences. Granted, Clinton era deregulation and treaties like NAFTA have helped erode America's industrial base. But it's still a major denial of reality to pretend to support Main Street while doing the direct bidding of those whose sole interest is protecting their right to make as much as they can off predatory speculation.

- Denial of the threats to our democracy by the power of unlimited wealth: You could say Republican stands on this are just a question of opposing government regulation. But it takes some massive level of denial to claim that it does no harm to the public good to allow corporations to buy and sell politicians of either party like baseball trading cards. In an even greater affront to reality, Republicans who've long claimed that transparency solves the problems of opening up the floodgates to unlimited cash have fought unanimously against the barest attempts to impose this accountability through the DISCLOSE Act, a bill that would have at least required ads to list the names of their prime corporate backers. As a result, groups like the US Chamber of Commerce, Karl Rove's American Crossroads, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, and new front groups that spring up daily have been flooding the airwaves with commercials paid for by corporate donors whose identity is masked. These ads will elect Republican candidates, or so their backers hope. They will also provide a subtle or not so subtle incentive for Democrats to avoid challenging corporate interests. Yet not a single Republican was willing to vote for the DISCLOSE Act, which remains one vote short of passage.

This denial has been going on for a while. Remember the Bush administration's contempt for "the reality based community." But if there's an antidote to this assault on reality and to the paid lies that fuel it, it's citizen participation. If enough of us knock on doors, make phone calls, talk to coworkers and neighbors, and otherwise reach out beyond the core converted (or at least get sympathetic voters to the polls), there's a chance that this denial of reality will backfire, and that the Everett Dirksens of the Republican Party will regain the upper hand. If we're silent, we allow reality itself to become hostage to delusion, and our country and planet to pay the price.

***

Paul Loeb is the author of the wholly updated new edition of Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in Challenging Times (St Martin's Press, April 2010), and The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, which the History Channel and the American Book Association named the #3 political book of 2004. See www.paulloeb.org.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-loeb/the-republican-war-on-rea_b_775695.html

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"Those who make us believe that anything’s possible and fire our imagination over the long haul, are often the ones who have survived the bleakest of circumstances. The men and women who have every reason to despair, but don’t, may have the most to teach us, not only about how to hold true to our beliefs, but about how such a life can bring about seemingly impossible social change. " — Paul Rogat Loeb, from The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear

Anatomy of an Uprising

2010-11-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

By Alan Brinkley

Trying to describe the ideas of the Tea Party movement is a bit like a blind man trying to describe the elephant. The movement, like the elephant, exists. But no one, not even the Tea Partiers themselves, can seem to get hands around the whole of it. Jonathan Raban, who attended the first National Tea Party Convention and wrote about it in The New York Review of Books, was struck by how little agreement there was among “members” as they talked about their griev ances and aspirations. And yet the Tea Party uprising is the most visible and energized political phenomenon of the last year. Whether it will remain a viable movement remains to be seen, but it shows no sign yet of running out of steam.

What lies behind the Tea Party movement? Some of it is purely partisan. It has close ties to the Republican Party. It is opportunistically promoted by Fox News. One of its best-known leaders is Dick Armey, former Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives, who spent much of the last year or so promoting the new movement through FreedomWorks, an organization he helped to create. Its program is presented in “Give Us Liberty,” by Armey and the group’s president, Matt Kibbe. It is a simple set of goals, consistent with those professed by Republicans over the last 25 years: “lower taxes, less government, more freedom.” But if that were all there were to the Tea Partiers, they would be indistinguishable from the Republican Party itself.

Kate Zernike, a national correspondent for The New York Times, has interviewed a number of Tea Partiers in an effort to understand what they believe and what they want. Her book, “Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America,” is an anecdotal description of the movement, supplemented by an April 2010 New York Times/CBS News poll (already a generation away from the fast-moving character of the insurgents). Her interviews, too few to be of any statistical significance, are nevertheless illuminating as a picture of how different some Tea Partiers are from the Republican establishment’s view of the movement.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/books/review/Brinkley-t.html?_r=1

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Democracy is not something that happens, you know, just at election time, and it's not something that happens just with one event. It's an ongoing building process. But it also ought to be a part of our culture, a part of our lives. ~ Jim Hightower

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions... We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. ~ Edward R. Murrow

Do what you love, and you will find the way to get it out to the world. ~ Judy Collins

The Invitation

2010-10-30T14:17:00.000-07:00

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
"Yes."

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.
　

By Oriah © Mountain Dreaming,
from the book The Invitation

http://www.oriahmountaindreamer.com/

Mary Oliver: Fall Song

2010-10-12T22:56:00.000-07:00

Fall Song

Another year gone, leaving everywhere

its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply

in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island

of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering

in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds

and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time's measure

painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing

to stay - how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever

in these momentary pastures.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(American Primitive)

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/Fall_Song.html

The Force That Fights Deep-Pocketed Polluters and Wins

2010-10-05T22:30:00.000-07:00

by Robert Redford

Recently, the OpenSecrets blog revealed that the oil and gas industry poured $174 million into the political system in 2009. We don't have numbers for 2010 yet, but we do know that oil companies have put up most of the $8.2 million raised to block California's clean energy law --a law that passed with bipartisan support and was signed by a Republican governor.

When one dirty industry can purchase that much influence, who will step into the ring for average Americans? Who will say that public health and public interest matter more than private industries' desire to pollute?

I am a firm believer in the ability of citizens to stand up for themselves and fight against the tide of corporate pressure. But sometimes, we need an expert to help carry our voices into the courtroom and into Congress.

For four decades, John Adams has been one of those voices. Since he helped launch NRDC in 1970, Adams has been the toughest, most tenacious champion of the notion that Americans should be able to drink safe water, breathe clean air, buy products free of toxic chemicals, and protect our natural heritage.

In a new book called A Force for Nature, Adams and his wife Patricia explain how they helped build the modern environmental movement. Their account of how NRDC wrote the laws and won the battles that cleaned up the environment is galvanizing -- a bracing reminder of how much can be accomplished by dedicated individuals.

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-redford/the-force-that-fights-dee_b_750748.html

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Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. ~ Bishop Desmond Tutu

Hafiz: Not With Wings

2010-10-05T22:19:00.000-07:00

Not With Wings

Here soar

Not with wings,

But with your moving hands and feet

And sweating brows -

Standing by your Beloved's side

Reaching out to comfort this world

With your cup of solace

Drawn from your vast reservoir of Truth.

Here soar

Not with your eyes and senses

That turn their backs

On the earth's sweet stumbling dance

Which needs you.

Here love, O here love,

With your mouth tender and open upon your lover,

And with your heart on duty

To the souls of rivers, children, forest animals,

All the shy feathered ones and laughing, jumping,

Shining fish.

O here, pilgrim,

Love

On this holy battleground of life

Where there are bleeding men

Who are calling for a sacred drink,

A gentle word or touch from man

or God.

Hafiz, why just serve and play with angels?

They are already content.

Brew your knowledge well for men

With aching minds and guts,

And for those wayfarers who have gained

The rare courageous thirsts

That can never be relinquished

Until Union!

Hafiz,Leave your recipes in golden drums.

Tie those barrels to the backs of camels

Who will keep circumambulating the worlds,

Giving nourishment

To all our tender wondrous spheres.

O here love, O love right here.

Find your happiness, dear wayfarer,

With your beautiful lips and body

So sweetly opened,

Yielding their vital gifts upon

This magnificent

Earth.

~ Hafiz ~

(The Subject Tonight is Love - versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Not_With_Wings.html

Get To Know A Muslim

2010-10-05T21:45:00.000-07:00

I am moved to do a post on this man and this article after hearing an interview with him on KPOJ's morning show. Peace ~ Molly

Get To Know A Muslim

By Tom Krattenmaker

A strong work ethic, devotion to God and family, conservative views on abortion and sexuality — on these scores and more, the newcomers would appear to be right in stride with the traditional-values folk in Anytown, USA.

In view of the Christian gospel followed by most of the established residents, you might assume they’d extend a hand of hospitality. You certainly wouldn’t expect them to resist the newcomers’ worship centers, would you? Or squander an opportunity to enlist potential allies in the fight against the country’s inexorable drift toward coarseness and secularism?

These perfectly logical thoughts might run through your mind until you learned that the newcomers in question often have Middle Eastern-sounding names, wear beards or head scarves, and take their spiritual cues from the Quran. And then you’d know that the situation was bound to play out on a whole different frequency. At flashpoints from Temecula, Calif., to Gainesville, Fla., to New York, N.Y., and all along the low road in between, mongers of fear and haters of the “other” are sounding the alarm about Islam with a new level of intensity. To hear it from conservative spokesman Newt Gingrich and those of a similar persuasion, the Muslims between our shores are bent on taking over the country and imposing their “un-American” values.

This demonizing and demagoguery is beneath us. My plea to those tempted to fall for the beware-of-all-Muslims hype: Get to know someone before you decide to fear and hate him.

More: http://tomkrattenmaker.com/?p=398

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If you’re fortunate enough to have Muslim neighbors or co-workers, you’ve probably come to see that they have as much in common with suicide bombers as your friend at church has in common with the supposed Christians who bombed the Atlanta Olympics and murdered an abortion doctor at his church. ~ Tom Krattenmaker

Hate is a disease. It is fear's messenger and it makes us do terrible things in a shadow of our better selves, of what we could be. ~ Colin Farrell

There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings. Fear grows in darkness; if you think there's a bogeyman around, turn on the light. Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live. ~ Dorothy Thompson

Mary Oliver: Evidence (Part I)

2010-09-29T21:22:00.000-07:00

Pyramid Lake, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Evidence

I.

Where do I live? If I had no address, as many people

do not, I could nevertheless say that I lived in the

same town as the lilies of the field, and the still

waters.

Spring, and all through the neighborhood now there are

strong men tending flowers.

Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue. But

all beautiful things, inherently, have this function -

to excite the viewers toward sublime thought. Glory

to the world, that good teacher.

Among the swans there is none called the least, or

the greatest.

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in

singing, especially when singing is not necessarily

prescribed.

As for the body, it is solid and strong and curious

and full of detail; it wants to polish itself; it

wants to love another body; it is the only vessel in

the world that can hold, in a a mix of power and

sweetness: words, song, gesture, passion, ideas,

ingenuity, devotion, merriment, vanity, and virtue.

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(Evidence)

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/Evidence_I.html

Daily

2010-09-26T14:22:00.000-07:00

Daily

These shriveled seeds we plant,

corn kernel, dried bean,

poke into loosened soil,

cover over with measured fingertips

These T-shirts we fold into

perfect white squares

These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips

This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl

This bed whose covers I straighten

smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket

and nothing hangs out

This envelope I address

so the name balances like a cloud

in the center of sky

This page I type and retype

This table I dust till the scarred wood shines

This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again

like flags we share, a country so close

no one needs to name it

The days are nouns: touch them

The hands are churches that worship the world

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

(The Words Under the Words)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Daily.html

We Need Millennium Development RIGHTS, Not Just Goals

2010-09-26T13:54:00.001-07:00

Millennium Development Rights would transform the global struggle against poverty and provide accountability for governments, corporations, and others who deny those rights.

by Phyllis Bennis

President Obama’s speech at the UN’s summit on development acknowledged the “progress that has been made toward achieving certain Millennium Development Goals,” but cautioned that “we must also face the fact that progress towards other goals that were set has not come nearly fast enough. Not for the hundreds of thousands of women who lose their lives every year simply giving birth. Not for the millions of children who die from the agony of malnutrition. Not for the nearly one billion people who endure the misery of chronic hunger.”

The Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, were part of the UN’s ambitious yet profoundly insufficient fifteen-year anti-poverty plan of 2000. The MDGs set out the goals of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal mortality, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability, and creating a global partnership for development—all by 2015.

But except for some anecdotal improvements in a few countries, the MDGs as a global effort to end extreme poverty by 2015 have so far failed. President Obama was, however understated, absolutely right when he said that the goals have not been met “nearly fast enough.” UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon sounded a note of desperation, telling the summit that it was essential that “promises made become promises kept,” because the “consequences of doing otherwise are profound: death, illness and despair, needless suffering, lost opportunities for millions upon millions of people.”

More: http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/we-need-millennium-development-rights-not-just-goals?utm_source=wkly20100924&utm_medium=yesemail&utm_campaign=titleBennis

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Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere... A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good. ~ Vaclav Havel

One of the Most Important Issues Impacting American Democracy

2010-09-26T11:22:00.000-07:00

I am very disheartened with the news that the passage of the Disclosure Act has failed. And this on the heals of the Citizens United successful fight in which the Supreme Court voted 5-4 on January 21, 2010 to grant the rights of people to corporations. Many of us know how threatened, how increasingly imperiled the American democracy is. And many do not. And of the many Americans who know something is wrong, a large percentage also believe the corporate funded media propaganda that it is Muslims or liberals or gays or Obama, etc., etc. who are the real threat. I am compelled to do this post as one small way to stand up to the huge forces who are rooted in greed and power, who disseminate vast misinformation, distraction, and propaganda on the American public, and who want anything but democracy in America or anywhere else. May we all increasingly inform ourselves and spread the word in ways that are in support of creating a nation and a world that works for all.

Peace ~ Molly

******************

Corporations vs People

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 50 (2010), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court holding that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited under the First Amendment.

The dissenting opinion by Justice Stevens [21] was joined by Justice Ginsburg, Justice Breyer, and Justice Sotomayor. It concurred in the Court's decision to sustain BCRA's disclosure provisions and in Part IV of its opinion, but dissented with the principal holding of the majority opinion. The 90-page dissent held that the Court's ruling "threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution." The dissent also argued that the Court's declaring of BCRA §203 to be facially unconstitutional was a ruling on a question not brought before them by the litigants, and so they "changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law."

Stevens concluded his dissent with:
At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission

This landmark decision, approved by a 5-4 margin (with all 5 conservative Supreme Court Justices voting in favor), could unleash a torrent of corporate and union cash into the political realm and transform how campaigns for president and Congress are fought in the coming years.

"It's the most major Supreme Court decision in the area of campaign finance in decades — and a significant First Amendment decision," says Nathaniel Persily, a political scientist and law professor at Columbia University.

The new ruling blurs the lines between corporate and individual contributions in political campaigns. It also strikes down part of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that banned unions and corporations from paying for political ads in the waning days of campaigns.

More: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122805666

What we are seeing are just the initial stages of what will result in, among other things, a flood of corporate campaign cash. Conservative groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Karl Rove-backed American Crossroads, are gearing up to spend $300 million to hammer Democratic candidates in 2010, according to a Democratic Party memo obtained by The Washington Post.

There is no way private citizens can match the resources available to corporations to make their voices heard. That's why a public backlash against the Citizens United decision is so critical. Progressives -- galvanized by the brazen activism of the court -- have responded by organizing around a far-reaching pro-democracy platform and have already scored some important wins.

MoveOn has also embarked on what it calls its "most ambitious campaign ever" -- focused on overturning the court's decision through a constitutional amendment and passing the Fair Elections Now Act, which would bar participating congressional candidates from accepting contributions larger than $100 and allow them to run honest campaigns with a blend of small donations and public funds. (The Nation, of which I am the editor and publisher, is a coalition partner in this campaign.) Right now, the campaign is pursuing a goal of getting 100 members of Congress and candidates to sign a pledge endorsing this agenda before the congressional recess ends on Sept. 10.

Passing the Disclose Act -- which was recently defeated by yet another Republican filibuster -- would be a modest step in the right direction; it requires corporations to show how they spend money in elections. But the deep reforms needed to truly put democracy back in the hands of the people will require a long and tough-minded struggle by all small-d democrats.

In the mean time, corporations are free to do a lot more than just donate to less-regulated 527's. They have a blank check. As President Obama noted in his most recent weekly address, the Citizens United decision "allows big corporations to . . . buy millions of dollars worth of TV ads -- and worst of all, they don't even have to reveal who is actually paying for them. You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation. You don't know if it's BP. You don't know if it's a big insurance company or a Wall Street bank. A group can hide behind a phony name like 'Citizens for a Better Future,' even if a more accurate name would be 'Corporations for Weaker Oversight.' "

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/24/AR2010082405642.html

President Barack Obama is imploring Republican senators to allow a vote on new campaign finance disclosure requirements, warning them not to resort to political delaying tactics that would block the legislation.

Speaking in the Rose Garden on Monday, Obama said that by standing in the way of the bill, Republicans would be giving special interest groups increased sway in Washington.
"Corporate lobbyists will be able to tell members of Congress, if they don't vote the right way, they will face an onslaught of negative ads in their next campaign," Obama said. "And all too often, no one will actually know who's behind those ads."

The bill would impose new donor and contribution disclosure requirements on nearly all organizations that air political ads independently of candidates or the political parties. The legislation would require the sponsor of the ad to appear in it and take responsibility for it. Obama argued that the bill would also reduce foreign influence over American elections.

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/27/disclose-act-faces-gop-fi_n_660461.html

Other important resources:
- Citizens United: People Strike Back
http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/citizens-united-people-strike-back
- Real People v. Corporate “People”: The Fight Is On
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/water-solutions/real-people-v.-corporate-people-the-fight-is-on
- U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 111th Congress - 2nd Session (who voted for and against the Disclosure Act)
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=2&vote=00240
-GOP lives up to expectations in votes today
http://webkit.dailykos.com/stories/2010/9/23/904679/-GOP-lives-up-to-expectations-in-votes-today.html

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The crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career. - Albert Einstein

We need to find the courage to say NO to the things and people that are not serving us if we want to rediscover ourselves and live our lives with authenticity. - Barbara De Angelis

This is a very important practice. Live your daily life in a way that you never lose yourself. When you are carried away with your worries, fears, cravings, anger, and desire, you run away from yourself and you lose yourself. The practice is always to go back to oneself. - Thich Nhat Hanh

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. - Albert Einstein

Hope arouses, as nothing else can arouse, a passion for the possible. - William Sloane Coffin

Solar

2010-09-22T21:25:00.000-07:00

Solar

On a gray day, when the sun

has been abducted, and it’s chill

end-of-the-world weather,

I must be the sun.

I must be the one

to encourage the young

sidetracked physicist

working his father’s cash register

to come up with a law of nature

that says brain waves can change

the dismal sky. I must be the one

to remind the ginger plant

not to rest on the reputation

of its pungent roots, but to unveil

those buttery tendrils from the other world.

When the sky is an iron lid

I must be the one to simmer

in the piquant juices of possibility,

though the ingredients are unknown

and the day begins with a yawn.

I must issue forth a warmth

without discrimination, and any guarantee

it will come back to me.

On a dark day I must be willing

to keep my disposition light,

I have to be at the very least

on stray intact ray

of local energy, one small

but critical fraction

of illumination. Even on a day

that doesn’t look gray

but still lacks comfort or sense,

I have to be the sun,

I have to shine as if

sorry life itself depended on it.

I have to make all the difference.

~ Thomas Centolella ~

(Views from along the Middle Way)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Solar.html

Envisioning MLK’s Dream in Today's World

2010-09-22T21:01:00.000-07:00

This woman is one of my heroes...

by Grace Lee Boggs

We must begin the radical revolution of values

that King called for, against the giant triplets of

racism, materialism, and militarism.

What might Martin Luther King Jr. have said of the demonstrations in Washington two weeks ago?

This is a question worth exploring because King’s legacy was claimed by participants in both demonstrations: the massive, overwhelmingly white “Restore Honor to America/Turn back to God” rally at the Lincoln Memorial, promoted by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin AND the much smaller, mostly African American one in the football field of nearby Dunbar High School, led by Al Sharpton.

To begin with, I believe King would have made the same speech to both gatherings. The secret of his leadership was that he spoke to the humanity in everyone, regardless of race or class. That’s why a national holiday has been named for him.

I also believe that in 2010, 47 years after King’s famous “I have a Dream” speech, given during the 1963 March on Washington, he would have talked mainly not about his and our dream for overcoming racial discrimination and segregation, but about the huge and unprecedented challenges, choices and responsibilities we face in the light of today’s grim realities:

- Our two lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which we have not only killed and wounded thousands of Americans, but killed, wounded, and ruined the lives of millions of Iraqis;
- The billions of dollars we have squandered on these wars of choice to the point that we are now forced to cut back on elementary domestic needs like fire stations, street lighting, and salaries for teachers and other public employees;
- The floods and mudslides in Pakistan, China and Iowa that are the result of global warming, i.e., our refusal to acknowledge ecological limits to economic growth;
- The tens of millions of Americans who are unemployed and underemployed because we have allowed corporations not only to replace human beings with robots but also to export jobs overseas in order to make higher profits;
- The escalating violence against Latinos and Arab Americans as times get tougher.

These catastrophes have made it increasingly urgent that we Americans begin making the radical revolution of values against the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism which King called for in his 1967 “Time to break the silence” anti-Vietnam War speech at Riverside Church.

How do we begin this radical revolution?

I believe that MLK would have recognized that this crisis, like most crises, is not only a danger but an opportunity.

It is our opportunity to recognize that by giving priority to economics over community in the last 300-400 years we have deviated from the path that has enabled the human race to survive and evolve.

More: http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/grace-lee-boggs/envisioning-mlks-dream-in-todays-world?utm_source=wkly20100917&utm_medium=yesemail&utm_campaign=titleBoggs

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I was born female 94 years ago to immigrant parents above my father’s Chinese American restaurant in Providence, R.I. My mother could not read or write because there were no schools for females in her little Chinese village. When I cried, the waiters said, “Leave her on the hillside to die; she’s only a girl.” That’s how I learned early on about living for change.

... In the last 25 years my life has centered around the movement to rebuild, redefine and respirit a de-industrialized Detroit from the ground up. Because Detroit is so devastated, it is a city where you sink into despair or embrace the conviction that, as human beings, we have the power within us to build the world anew.

~ Grace Lee Boggs ~

A Physics

2010-09-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

Lower Yellowstone Falls

A Physics

When you get down to it, Earth

has our own great ranges

of feeling - Rocky, Smoky, Blue -

and a heart that can melt stones.

The still pools fill with sky,

as if aloof, and we have eyes

for all of this - and more, for Earth's

reminding moon. We too are ruled

by such attractions - spun and swaddled,

rocked and lent a light. We run

our clocks on wheels, our trains

on time. But all the while we want

to love each other endlessly - not only for

a hundred years, not only six feet up and down.

We want the suns and moons of silver

in ourselves, not only counted coins in a cup. The whole

idea of love was not to fall. And neither was

the whole idea of God. We put him well

above ourselves, because we meant,

in time, to measure up.

~ Heather McHugh ~

(Hinge and Sign: Poems, 1968-1993)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/A_Physics.html

The New McCarthyism

2010-09-22T20:33:00.000-07:00

by Peter Beinart

The politics of mosques and Korans show America to be in

the worst spasm of paranoia and bigotry since the Cold War.
Peter Beinart on the political roots of the enemy within.

With each new attack on a mosque, each new anti-Muslim slur by a prominent politician or pundit, each new poll showing that large swaths of Americans think President Obama is lying about his faith, it becomes clearer that we are in the midst of a national psychosis: the worst spasm of paranoia and bigotry of the post-Cold War age. The interesting question is: Why now?

The answer lies in the intersection of isolationism and war. At first glance, it seems odd that America is witnessing this eruption of anti-Muslim hate now rather than immediately after the 9/11 attacks. But historically, it’s not odd at all. Consider the “red scares” of the early and mid-20th century. In April 1917, the United States entered World War I. That fall, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. But it wasn’t until more than a year later, in November 1919, that Woodrow Wilson’s attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, began arresting and deporting thousands of communists, anarchists, immigrants, and labor radicals.

The hysteria that fueled the Palmer Raids resulted partly from World War I itself, which produced a wave of ultra-nationalism, initially targeting Americans of German descent. But by late 1919, Americans had soured on the war. Palmer’s raids began, in fact, the very month that the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles, thus spurning Wilson’s effort to permanently entangle the United States in European affairs. Less than 18 months after that, Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, which virtually cut off immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe. The paranoid anti-communism of the Palmer Raids, in other words, represented an inversion of the jingoism spawned by war. Frustrated in their efforts to remake Europe, Americans turned their fury inward, redirecting it toward the “enemy within,” which could be defeated at lower cost in money and blood.

The awful irony is that persecuting Muslims at home

actually endangers American security, just as the

red scares of the mid-20th century aided the USSR.

More: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-12/new-mccarthyism-palin-gingrich-and-us-paranoid-politics/

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On the morning of Yom Kippur, we Jews read the following, from Leviticus: “The he-goat designated by lot for Azazel shall be stood alive before Hashem, to provide atonement through it.” It’s an ancient idea, the scapegoat, onto which the nation transfers its burdens and sins. Now we Americans have a new one, the American Muslim, and a new set of sins for which we will, I pray, one day atone. ~ Peter Beinart

Hafiz: TIRED OF SPEAKING SWEETLY

2010-09-16T20:23:00.000-07:00

TIRED OF SPEAKING SWEETLY

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,

Break all our teacup talk of God.

If you had the courage and

Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,

He would just drag you around the room

By your hair,

Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world

That bring you no joy.

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly

And wants to rip to shreds

All your erroneous notions of truth

That make you fight within yourself, dear one,

And with others,

Causing the world to weep

On too many fine days.

God wants to manhandle us,

Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself

And practice His dropkick.

The Beloved sometimes wants

To do us a great favor:

Hold us upside down

And shake all the nonsense out.

But when we hear

He is in such a “playful drunken mood”

Most everyone I know

Quickly packs their bags and hightails it

Out of town.

~ Hafiz ~

(The Gift – versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Tired.html

We Are Many: Chris Jordan Captures Our Blessed Unrest

2010-09-16T20:04:00.000-07:00

A striking depiction of one million organizations

working for a better world.

Photographer Chris Jordan is most famous for his efforts to portray the enormous and usually incomprehensible scale of human impact on the Earth. His shots of albatross choked by plastic on Midway Island create a personal connection to a global problem; his Running the Numbers series brings statistics about material consumption to life.

Jordan recently released a new work that tries to convey a fact that's just as mind-boggling, but much more heartening: the number of people working to build a more just and sustainable world. E Pluribus Unum is 24 feet square, composed of aluminum panels laser etched with the names of "one million organizations around the world that are devoted to peace, environmental stewardship, social justice, and the preservation of diverse and indigenous culture. The actual number of such organizations is unknown, but estimates range between one and two million, and growing."

Jordan pulled on the work of Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, who has created a database of 130,000 such organizations. Jordan writes:
The purpose of this piece is to visualize the vast network of altruistic human organizations in every country, city, and community around the world, all working in parallel together. Despite their enormous diversity of size, focus, and geographic location, these organizations are all united around a set of core values that places compassion and stewardship as highest priorities. The hundreds of millions of individuals who are creating and running these organizations bring a nourishing culture of passion, imagination, and citizenship to this process. In that way I think of this piece as being like a compass, pointing toward a true source of hope and inspiration for our times.

More: http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/we-are-many-chris-jordan-captures-our-blessed-unrest?utm_source=wkly20100716&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=titleVideo

Art, Grief, and Transformation

An interview with Chris Jordan

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"One of the fundamental problems of our world, underlying a lot of the disasters that are happening, is that we’re disconnected from what we feel. I think it would be fair to say that American culture is the culture that is most detached from its feelings of any culture in the world. We've become separated from nature and urbanized in this weird, new, overwhelming way—and the only way many of us have found to cope is to disconnect from the anxiety and the fear." ~ Chris Jordan

America Without a Middle Class

2010-09-16T19:45:00.000-07:00

by Elizabeth Warren

Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to

oversee the banking bailouts

Can you imagine an America without a strong middle class? If you can, would it still be America as we know it?

Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can't make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street.

Families have survived the ups and downs of economic booms and busts for a long time, but the fall-behind during the busts has gotten worse while the surge-ahead during the booms has stalled out. In the boom of the 1960s, for example, median family income jumped by 33% (adjusted for inflation). But the boom of the 2000s resulted in an almost-imperceptible 1.6% increase for the typical family. While Wall Street executives and others who owned lots of stock celebrated how good the recovery was for them, middle class families were left empty-handed.

The crisis facing the middle class started more than a generation ago. Even as productivity rose, the wages of the average fully-employed male have been flat since the 1970s.

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-warren/america-without-a-middle_b_377829.html

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Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963