Common Dreams: Bill Moyers & Michael Winship - "Sandy Hook Promise: There Will Be Change"

This is another powerful article reflective of the shadow of America. In my perspective, it is deeply important that we continue to illuminate the woundedness of our culture with the intention to inspire awareness, healing, awakening and transformation. Tag, we are all it! ~ Molly

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Published on Friday, May 3, 2013 by Common Dreams

Sandy Hook Promise: There Will Be Change

by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

This week, we spent time with Francine and David Wheeler, parents of six-year-old Ben Wheeler, one of the 20 children and six educators shot and killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Francine and David moved from New York City to Newtown to raise a family somewhere safe. They could never have imagined that in that quiet place on a Friday morning, just days before Christmas, gunfire would take their younger son’s life.Francine and David Wheeler and their sons, Nate and Ben, in 2012. (Courtesy of the Wheeler Family)

The Wheelers’ courage and commitment deeply touched us. Since their son’s death, they have managed to cope with memory and hold together their lives — and the life of their surviving son, Nate — with uncommon grace. Along with other Newtown families, they lobbied the Connecticut state legislature — which now has the toughest gun law in America — and in Washington, they walked the halls of Capitol Hill, urging senators to vote yes for the amendment that would expand the use of background checks for people buying guns.

Although a majority favored the legislation, they fell six votes short of the 60 votes necessary for passage, but the Newtown families, friends and neighbors do not intend to quit. They are part of a growing nationwide movement committed to changing our gun culture. They call itSandy Hook Promise. “America is in desperate need of a new path forward to address our epidemic of gun violence,” they write. And then comes the promise: “THIS TIME THERE WILL BE CHANGE.”

You want to believe with all your heart that this is one promise that will be kept. But arrayed against them are mighty forces, mountains of money, a corrupted political system, and habits deeply ingrained in the human psyche.

That Minnesota radio host who told the Newtown families “to go to hell” is hardly alone in placing his freedom to own weapons over a child’s right to live. The gun industry’s most conspicuous pitchman, Wayne LaPierre, is the walking embodiment of the sociopathic mentality, one radically devoid of empathy. His National Rifle Association spent $18.6 million on the 2012 elections and then at least $800,000 lobbying the Federal government in just the first three months of this year — pushing back against those like Sandy Hook Promise who have been calling for change after the Newtown massacre.

But Gregg Lee Carter, the editor of the encyclopedia Guns in American Society, told the Center for Public Integrity:

“The issue is not so much how much the NRA gives any senator or member of the House, it’s how they can make their lives miserable. And how they make their lives miserable is they e-mail ’em, they call ’em, they fax ’em, they show up at meetings… They’re much more activist than the other side and that’s what really produces their gains.”

 For the full article, please go here: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/03-9

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 We must become the change we seek in the world. ~ Mohandas Gandhi

Truthout: The Political Roots of American Obesity

There are so many symptoms of our culture which reflect how what has become "normal" in American society harms us and other beings in our country and around the world. My prayer is that we will increasingly inform ourselves, lower our tolerance for that which is unhealthy, and connect with greater truths and our higher wisdom. My prayer, always, is that we humans will increasingly awaken and work together to create a world which increasingly cares for all. Namaste ~ Molly

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The Political Roots of American Obesity

Saturday, 04 May 2013 00:00By E. Douglas Kihn, Truthout | Op-Ed

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(Image: Obesity X-ray via ShutterstocThe term obesity is defined as a count of 30 or above on a mathematical scale (called BMI, or Body Mass Index) that combines weight and height measurements of individuals. The term overweight is used to describe the BMI of people who fall in between obese and normal.

Over the past three decades, the obesity rate in America has by all accounts climbed to astronomical proportions. Over a third of Americans are officially overweight and another 35.7 percent are obese, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Conventional experts blame the "wrong food," bad genes, lack of exercise, chemicals in food, and this or that hormone for the problem.

If these factors play any role at all in stoking the epidemic of fat in American, they are themselves only transmission agents and facilitators for the deeper causes. Over the past 30 years, the standard prescription of diet, exercise and increased nutritional education haven't solved the problem. In fact, it hasn't even slowed it down and could even be contributing to the difficulties.

To really beat it, we have to ask why and when. To discern the fundamental causes of the obesity epidemic in the United States, we will need to go back in history and unearth its beginnings, to find out exactly when it all started. Then we can ask it why.

When we do, we will discover that the obesity epidemic in America is essentially a mental health problem, whose underlying causes are economic and political.

Please go here for the full article:  http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16149-the-political-roots-of-american-obesity

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"The United States, which spends far more money on medical care than other advanced industrialized countries, has the sickest residents in every category of unwellness." - Douglas Kin

Jack Kornfield: Tending Ourselves, We Tend the World; Tending the World, We Tend Ourselves

With Jack Kornfield and friends Olivia and Jenn at one of Jack's events,

-  "The Psychology of the Awakened Heart" -

Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon, April 21st, 2013

The below is excerpted from Jack Kornfield's book,

"The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology."

I share this not because anyone need be Buddhist. Rather because these principles

hold a depth of wisdom that transcends any religious dogma and moves deeply

into the roots of awakening, consciousness, compassion and kindness,

and living the peace we all wish to see in the world. Blessed be. ♥ Molly

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This is a twenty-third principle of Buddhist psychology:

There is no separation between inner and outer, self and other. 

Tending ourselves, we tend the world.

Tending the world, we tend ourselves.
♥

     If we want to act wisely in the world, the first step is to learn to quiet the mind. If our actions are born from anger, grasping, fear and aggression, they will perpetuate the problems. How many revolutions have overthrown oppressive regimes, to then turn around and become the new oppressors? Only when our minds and hearts are peaceful can we expect peace to come through the actions we take.

     ... When we react to insecurity and terrorism with fear we worsen the problem, we create a frightened, barricaded society - a fortress America. Instead we can use courage and compassion to respond calmly, with both prudent action and a fearless heart.

     The quieting of the mind is a political act. The world does not need more oil or energy or food. It needs less greed, less hatred, less ignorance. Even if we have inwardly taken on the political bitterness or cynicism that exists externally, we can stop and begin to heal our own suffering, our own fear, with compassion. Through meditation and inner transformation, we can learn to make our own hearts a place of peace and integrity. Each of us knows how to do this. As Gandhi acknowledged, "I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills." It is our inner nobility and steadiness that we must call on in our personal and collective difficulties.

     Once we learn to quiet our minds, the second step for the bodhisattva is seeing the truth. We deliberately turn toward the difficulties of the world and shine the light of understanding. "The enemy," said Ajahn Chah, "is delusion." Delusion blames others, creates enemies, and fosters separation. The truth is that we are not separate. War, economic injustice, and environmental destruction stem from the illusion of separateness. It is delusion that separates us from other human tribes and from the trees and the oceans on this increasingly small planet. When we look truthfully, we can also see that no amount of material and scientific advancement will solve our problems alone. New computer networks, innovative fuels, and biological advances can just as easily be diverted to create new weapons, exacerbate conflicts, and speed environmental degradation. Economic and political change will fail unless we also find a way to transform our consciousness. It is a delusion that endless greed and profit, hatred and war will somehow protect us and bring happiness...

     Training in mindfulness, integrity, generosity, and respect can create a healthy society... We must courageously envision a world where all children have proper care and food, where instead of an arms race our creative efforts are put into conflict resolution. We must see how individuals of all castes, tribes, races, and orientations can be treated with equal respect and opportunity...A bodhisattva commits to heal suffering undaunted by outward appearances of failure and success...
     The work of both Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. was founded on these principles, on non-harming as a path to happiness... If we meet together in harmony and respect, care for the vulnerable among us, tend to the environment, and respect our citizens and neighbors, we will thrive and prosper. A strong and stable society arises through mutual generosity, not gross inequality... Whenever a few people are committed to the vision of a free and just humanity, transformation can happen, despite the greatest odds...
     We are limited only by our imagination. Yes, there will always be a shadow. Yes, greed and fear and ignorance will be part of our psychology. But there are ways we can live wisely. For the bodhisattva, raising a family, running a conscious business, and righting an injustice all can contribute to the fabric of the whole. Every one of us can sense this potential. Human beings can live with more compassion, with more care for one another, with less prejudice and racism and fear. There are wise ways of solving conflict that await our hands and hearts.

~ Jack Kornfiel, The Wise Heart

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Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. 

 - President Dwight Eisenhower      

The problem with the world is that we draw our family circle too small.

- Mother Teresa 

When the world is seen with the eyes of a bodhisattva,

  there is no I and other, there is just us.

- Jack Kornfield 

Thich Nhat Hanh: There is Nothing That is Not You

You are what you want to become. Why search anymore? You are a wonderful manifestation. The whole universe has come together to make your existence possible. There is nothing that is not you. The kingdom of God, the Pure Land, nirvana, happiness, and liberation are all you.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Stephen Jenkinson: Grief and the Love of Life Are Twins

Stephen Jenkinson
 

Here’s the revolution: What if grief is a skill, in the same way that love is a skill, something that must be learned and cultivated and taught? What if grief is the natural order of things, a way of loving life anyway? Grief and the love of life are twins, natural human skills that can be learned first by being on the receiving end and feeling worthy of them, later by practicing them when you run short of understanding. In a time like ours, grieving is a subversive act.

 - Stephen Jenkinson,  
Author, Harvard-educated theologian, end-of-life care educator,  
teacher, storyteller, spiritual activist, ceremonialist and founder of 
the Orphan Wisdom School, a teaching house and learning house 
for the skills of deep living and making human culture.

  
 From http://orphanwisdom.com/event/daylong-teaching-illiterate-grief-the-long-dark-shadow-of-being-from-nowhere/ 

More: http://orphanwisdom.com/

and http://www.nfb.ca/film/griefwalker/

   
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 "Grief: It's how you love all those things in life that end."

~ Stephen Jenkinson

Thich Nhat Hanh: The Seed Is Already There

You cannot transmit wisdom and insight to another person. 

The seed is already there. A good teacher touches the seed, 

allowing it to wake up, to sprout, and to grow.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

 

from Thich Nhat Hanh gems

Our Own Life Has to be the Message

Every one of us can do something  
to protect and care for our planet. 
We have to live in such a way   
that a future will be possible for 
our children and our grandchildren.
 
Our own life has to be our message.
 
- Thich Nhat Hanh

Mary Oliver: Five A.M. in the Pinewoods

Five A.M. in the Pinewoods

 

I'd seen
their hoofprints in the deep
needles and knew
they ended the long night

 

under the pines, walking
like two mute
and beautiful women toward
the deeper woods, so I

 

got up in the dark and
went there. They came
slowly down the hill
and looked at me sitting under

 

the blue trees, shyly
they stepped
closer and stared
from under their thick lashes and even

 

nibbled some damp
tassels of weeds. This
is not a poem about a dream,
though it could be.

 

This is a poem about the world
that is ours, or could be.
Finally
one of them — I swear it! —

 

would have come to my arms.
But the other
stamped sharp hoof in the
pine needles like

 

the tap of sanity,
and they went off together through
the trees. When I woke
I was alone,

 

I was thinking:
so this is how you swim inward,
so this is how you flow outward,
so this is how you pray.

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

 

(House of Light) 

 

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

Khalil Gibran: Strong Souls

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; 

the most massive characters are seared with scars.

- Khalil Gibran

from Wisdom of the Sacred Feminine

Tell Your Love

Tell your LOVE to everybody.

  

- Rumi

♥

from Rumi Quotes