BAN: Another Important Resource

This is another important organization that I had not previously heard of until hearing activist and author Annie Leonard speak this past week in Portland. BAN stands for Basel Action Network. From the website:

What is BAN?
BAN is the world's only organization focused on confronting the global environmental injustice and economic inefficiency of toxic trade (toxic wastes, products and technologies) and its devastating impacts. Working at the nexus of human rights and environment, we confront the issues of environmental justice at a macro level, preventing disproportionate and unsustainable dumping of the world's toxic waste and pollution on our global village's poorest residents. At the same time we actively promote the sustainable and just solutions to our consumption and waste crises -- banning waste trade, while promoting green, toxic free and democratic design of consumer products.

BAN is a 501(c)3 charitable organization of the United States, based in Seattle, Washington

Our Mission:
BAN works to prevent the globalization of the toxic chemical crisis. We work in opposition to toxic trade in toxic wastes, toxic products and toxic technologies, that are exported from rich to poorer countries. Alternatively, we work to ensure national self-sufficiency in waste management through clean production and toxics use reductions and in support of the principle of global environmental justice -- where no peoples or environments are dispro-portionately poisoned and polluted due to the dictates of unbridled market forces and trade.

Please go here for more information:

http://www.ban.org/index.html

* * *

No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.

~ Amelia Earhart

I believe that to meet the challenges of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for oneself, one's own family or nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace.

~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

The Story of Bottled Water

I just learned about "The Story of Bottled Water" when I saw activist and author Annie Leonard speak here in Portland. From the website:

The Story of Bottled Water, releasing March 22, 2010 on storyofbottledwater.org, employs the Story of Stuff style to tell the story of manufactured demand—how you get Americans to buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week when it already flows from the tap. Over seven minutes, the film explores the bottled water industry’s attacks on tap water and its use of seductive, environmental-themed advertising to cover up the mountains of plastic waste it produces. The film concludes with a call to ‘take back the tap,’ not only by making a personal commitment to avoid bottled water, but by supporting investments in clean, available tap water for all.

Please go here for more information and to view the film:

http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater/

This is an important film. Please consider sharing with others. Thank you. Peace ~ Molly

* * *

In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.

~ Albert Einstein

The Story of Stuff

Warmest Greetings

On March 22nd I had the privilege of seeing Annie Leonard speak at Powell's here in Portland. I am deeply drawn to those individuals who are making such a huge impact by inspiring more and more of us to become increasingly informed and then to act. Annie Leonard is one such courageous and passionate person who is making a big difference in the world! Her Internet film "The Story of Stuff" has been seen by over 8 million people worldwide and is now available in over 12 languages. Annie Leonard's book The Story of Stuff is also now available. I was definitely moved to purchase this important new book.

I was amazed by Annie Leonard's story and the research she has done over the past 20+ years and all over the world that enables her to look at clothing, cell phones, bottled water, and just about anything and have an idea of what it is made of and where it came from. I had no idea, for instance, the toxic mix that goes into making cell phones.

I did know that the United States comprises 5% of the global population and yet consumes approximately 30% of the world's resources. I hadn't thought of how we also create 30% of the world's waste.

Annie is but one more passionate voice encouraging us to look at the cost of our unsustainable lifestyle, the cost to ourselves and the planet of consumerism run wild. Annie points out that studies of Americans points to parallels of how our happiness has gone down as our addiction to things has gone up. She goes on to define studies which have revealed what actually brings happiness to us as human beings: meaningful relationships, a sense of purpose, coming together with shared goals. Amen.

Annie Leonard contrasted the consumer parts of ourselves with the citizen parts of ourselves. She spoke of how American culture reflects the cost of the corporate driven media which have seized the American Dream and made it into something profoundly distorted and toxic. Annie points to the relentless drive in American culture to feed the consumer part of ourselves communicating that we need this new product to be happy, beautiful, sexy, young, loved, etc. Meanwhile, the citizen part of ourselves has atrophied. Annie emphasizes how we need to be inspired to re-engage and nourish our citizen selves.

Please go here for more information: http://www.storyofstuff.com/.

I am deeply grateful to Annie Leonard and the information, challenge, and invitation that she offers to each of us to join her in creating a world that will benefit all of us now and generations to come. And as Thom Hartmann would say - Tag, we are all it!

Peace & blessings ~ Molly

* * *

Hear me, four quarters of the world - a relative I am! Give me the strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is! Give me the eyes to see and the strength to understand, that I may be like you. With your power only can I face the winds.

~ Black Elk, (1863-1950) Oglala Sioux holy man

If the earth does grow inhospitable toward human presence, it is primarily because we have lost our sense of courtesy toward the earth and its inhabitants.

~ Thomas Berry

Why Conservative Christians So Often Fail the Common Good

This is a powerful article. My hope and prayer is that more and more of us will seek to increasingly align our actions with our words, which is certainly a humbling, challenging, but important process for us all. May we grow individually and collectively in caring, courage, and compassionate action... Peace & blessings ~ Molly

* * *

Why Conservative Christians So Often Fail the Common Good (Part 2)

Richard T. Hughes
Richard Hughes is Senior Fellow in the Ernest Boyer Center at Messiah College.

This two-part series of articles is based on Hughes' recent book, Christian America and the Kingdom of God (Illinois 2009).

In part 1 of this article, we posed this riddle: why do so many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians -- people who clearly honor the Bible -- so often disregard the two requirements that are central to the biblical vision of the kingdom of God, namely peacemaking and justice for the poor? (Part one is here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-t-hughes/a-riddle-of-life-and-deat_b_487476.html.)

Why Focus on "Conservative Christians"?

Some readers quite correctly pointed out that conservatives tend to be more generous toward the poor than liberals, but to frame the issue like that only muddles it. The Bible never suggests that we adequately fulfill our responsibilities through "generosity" toward the poor. Rather, the Bible summons Christians to radical solidarity with the poor and radical opposition to those demonic, systemic structures -- what the Bible calls "the principalities and powers -- that sustain the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and the dispossessed.

Historically, Christians in the United States -- both liberal and conservative -- have been extraordinarily reluctant to take up that battle. To appreciate this point, one need only consider the American church's long, 350-year complicity in slavery and segregation.

Further, to claim that conservatives are more generous than liberals sidesteps the fact that neither group is all that generous toward the poor to begin with. It also sidesteps the fact that neither conservative Christians nor liberal Christians are called to compare themselves with one another. Instead, if Christians are serious about following Jesus, the only meaningful comparison is with Jesus' picture of the kingdom of God, and when measured by that standard, American Christians across the board -- liberals and conservatives alike -- fall woefully short.

Why, then, would I write a two-part article that singles out conservative rather than liberal Christians for a comparison with that biblical vision. First, conservative Christians are typically far more adamant than liberals in their claims that they are "Bible-believing Christians" who take the Bible seriously at every point. It is therefore fair to ask how successfully they live out a theme that stands at the center of the biblical text -- the biblical vision of the kingdom.

The second consideration is perhaps even more important. For almost forty years, the most visible representatives of the Christian religion in the United States have been conservatives, not liberals. I have in mind the electronic evangelists -- those leaders of the Christian Right like Jerry Falwell, Jim Bakker, James Kennedy, Pat Robertson, and a host of others -- who have been extraordinarily vocal about their vision of the United States as a Christian nation. Not once have I heard any of those preachers define the Christian religion in terms of either (1) peacemaking or (2) justice for the oppressed, the poor, the marginalized, and those who suffer at the hands of the world's elites -- themes that are central to the biblical vision of the kingdom of God.

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-t-hughes/why-conservative-christia_b_500004.html

* * *

Whether you believe in God or not does not matter so much, whether you believe in Buddha or not does not matter so much. You must lead a good life.

~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose.

~ Bishop Desmond Tutu

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.

~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A Prayer

A Prayer

I want to be ever a child

I want to feel an eternal friendship

for the raindrops, the flowers,

the insects, the snowflakes.

I want to be keenly interested in everything,

with mind and muscle ever alert,

forgetting my troubles in the next moment.

The stars and the sea, the ponds and the trees,

the birds and the animals, are my comrades.

Though my muscles may stiffen, though my skin may

wrinkle, may I never find myself yawning

at life.

~Toyohiko Kagawa ~

(Songs from the Slums, trans. by Lois Erickson)


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

Spring by Mary Oliver

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)

Web version at www.Panhala.net/Archive/Spring.html

The Spring

The Spring

(After Rilke)

Spring has returned! Everything has returned!

The earth, just like a schoolgirl, memorizes

Poems, so many poems. ... Look, she has learned

So many famous poems, she has earned so many prizes!

Teacher was strict. We delighted in the white

Of the old man's beard, bright like the snow's:

Now we may ask which names are wrong, or right

For "blue," for "apple," for "ripe." She knows, she knows!

Lucky earth, let out of school, now you must play

Hide-and-seek with all the children every day:

You must hide that we may seek you: we will! We will!

The happiest child will hold you. She knows all the things

You taught her: the word for "hope," and for "believe,"

Are still upon her tongue. She sings and sings and sings.

~ Delmore Schwartz ~

(Last & Lost Poems)

Web version at www.Panhala.net/Archive/The_Spring.html

DMHP - The Diagnostic Manual of Human Potential

Warmest Greetings

I am moved to post this piece which I found in The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology by Jack Kornfield. It is my experience that hardly a soul, whether in the "mental health" field or not, hasn't been touched personally or with someone we know by a diagnosis arising out of the DSM-IV, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition . As spoken of here, there are options beyond what we are often familiar with and limited by here in Western culture. We all have much to learn. This is a hopeful reflection of greater possibilities...

Peace & blessings ~ Molly

* * *

Even now, the transcendent domain of human experience is virtually absent from the maps of Western psychology except for a small number of phulosophers and religious specialists. In part this is the legacy of the European Enlightenment, with its elevation of reason, its long effort to separate science from religion. While this separation has brought enormous benefit, it has also left science, and much of Western learning, at sea regarding the inner life. Science developed computers and put us on the moon, it gave us antibiotics and antidepressants, but it cannot guide us i matters of virtue, love, inner meaning, or spiritual understanding.

In the last century, a handful of visionary psychologists from Carl Jung to Abraham Maslow and Stanislav Grof reintroduced these realms to Western science. But it is time to go further. When my wife, Liana, a Jungian, was studying for her psychology exams, she was disturbed by the limitations of the DSM-IV, the standard psychiatric reference text. She was inspired to consider a vision of an alternative manual of positive mental health. With Buddhist psychology as our guide, we could do so. We could take the hundreds of pages of psychological problems listed in the DSM-IV and create a positive counterart called the DMHP - the Diagnostic Manual of Human Potential. In counterpart to the 35 forms of depressive and bipolar disorders, there would be 35 positive forms of emotional and mental happiness - states of contentment, joy, rapture, gratitude, and extreme well-being. In place of aggression and paranoia would be highly developed capacities of trust, love, generosity, and selflessness. In place of hallucinations and psychosis would be the many forms of benevolent visions and sounds. These inner awakenings would be catalogued, from the still small voice of the divine to angelic choirs, from inspiring visions of gods and bodhisattvas to access to creative imagination and illuminated inner realms of understanding and light. In place of sleep disorders and amnesia, there would be extensive descriptions of wakefulness and lucid dreaming. Instead of anxiety disorders, there would be multiple categories of fearlessness, equanimity, dignity, and inner strength. Our psychologists don't speak of these possibilities, and we don't have an understanding of how they can be developed....

* * *

The real blessing appears when we can bring the experiences of the transcendental to illuminate the miracle of the ordinary.

~ Jack Kornfield ~

In Honor of My Brother... and You

On January 30th, 1978, my twin brother, John, ended his life. This coming week John would have turned 59 years old. The blessing below is in honor of my brother... and us all. Namaste ~ Molly

Beannacht

("Blessing")

On the day when

the weight deadens

on your shoulders

and you stumble,

may the clay dance

to balance you.

And when your eyes

freeze behind

the grey window

and the ghost of loss

gets in to you,

may a flock of colours,

indigo, red, green,

and azure blue

come to awaken in you

a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays

in the currach of thought

and a stain of ocean

blackens beneath you,

may there come across the waters

a path of yellow moonlight

to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

may the clarity of light be yours,

may the fluency of the ocean be yours,

may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow

wind work these words

of love around you,

an invisible cloak

to mind your life.

~ John O'Donohue ~

(Echoes of Memory)


Web archive of Panhala postings: www.panhala.net/Archive/Beannacht.html

The Journey

The Journey

Above the mountains

the geese turn into

the light again

Painting their

black silhouettes

on an open sky.

Sometimes everything

has to be

inscribed across

the heavens

so you can find

the one line

already written

inside you.

Sometimes it takes

a great sky

to find that

small, bright

and indescribable

wedge of freedom

in your own heart.

Sometimes with

the bones of the black

sticks left when the fire

has gone out

someone has written

something new

in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving

you are arriving.

~ David Whyte ~

(House of Belonging) (For my Aunt Barbara on her birthday)

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