“W​e Will Not Give Up”: AOC, Vanessa Nakate Lead Calls at Massive NY Climate Rally to End Fossil Fuels

 So Powerful!

We continue our coverage of the March to End Fossil Fuels, where protesters noted the United States is projected to account for more than one-third of planned global oil and gas expansion from today through 2050. It is the top oil and gas producer in the world, one of just 20 countries that will be responsible for 90% of new fossil fuel production over the next few decades. We feature speeches from Sunday’s rally by Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate and Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They were among more than 75,000 attendees of what was the largest climate mobilization in the world since 2020. “We call upon countries, and in particular the United States, to end new development of fossil fuels that are destroying livelihoods and lives, because we cannot eat coal and we cannot drink oil,” said Nakate, while Ocasio-Cortez said ongoing grassroots mobilization “too big and too radical to ignore” is needed to end fossil fuels and begin a just transition to a green economy.

Please go here for the original program and full transcript: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/9/18/march_to_end_fossil_fuels_aoc

In Gratitude For My Beloved Husband

 

Today we leave for one week on beautiful

Lopez Island in the San Juans.

And on Thursday, September 14th

Ron and I will celebrate our 10th wedding

anniversary. Deepest love and gratitude

for Ron, my beloved husband.

I am extraordinarily blessed.

💗🙏💗 Molly

Chelan Harkin: The Feminine Is Here

Coming out of ceremony this past weekend, I am moved to share once again this powerful poem by the deeply gifted Chelan Hawkin. Indeed, the Feminine Is Here! Blessed be. 🙏💗 Molly

Photo by Molly

The Feminine Is Here

The Feminine is here

to crack open your body,

women AND men

and finally release the poison

of every ancient uncleaned wound.

The Feminine is here

to crack open your old ideologies

and shoot new life through you

like a seed

hard and closed for so many years

and suddenly kissed into transformation

by the great destruction

of light

The Feminine is here to pull you

from the measured, surveyed land

at the edge

of the wild forest

of your dreams

and finally toss you

into the mapless territory

of your heart

The Feminine is here

to lay your impressive

certificates of learning

at the feet of inner knowing

to pluck you from the discipleship

of an outward master

and lay you at the altar

of truth

that has been waiting latent

so eager to erupt

from your soul

The Feminine is here

to remind you that God

can live in the earth, in the hips

in the deepest shadows.

That she is planted

like a wild rose

in the darkest

furrows

of your pain,

to reteach you

to mother your frailties

rather than dominate them,

bring the wound from exile

into embrace.

The Feminine is here to bring you home

just as you are now

to undo conditions

around enoughness

to undo every patriarchal corset

cinched around your voice and spirit

and return you to the full belly

of your sacred breath.

The Feminine is here to reunite

tenderness with power

to help you source this

from the great hidden sea within

for you to feel the intimacy of God

pulsing her embodied song

through the rivers of your blood

and back to the holy ocean

of your heart.

The Feminine is here to tell us

in no uncertain terms

we are carrying new wisdom,

a gestation of God

in the womb of our consciousness

and a great, never before seen beauty

is soon due

to be born.

— Chelan Harkin

* * *

https://chelanharkin.com/

Racist Shootings “Don’t Happen in a Vacuum”: Bishop Barber on DeSantis, Trump & Those Who Spread Hate

Such an excellent program and vitally 

important interview. ― Molly

As federal law enforcement opens an investigation into the Jacksonville, Florida, shooting where a white gunman killed three Black people at a Dollar General as a possible hate crime and act of domestic violent extremism, we speak with civil rights leader Bishop William Barber about the increasing number of racist attacks in America fueled by racism. “There is this history of not just who kills, but what kills and what creates the atmosphere,” says Barber, who calls for a political movement of love to force out hateful politicians. Barber specifically condemns the Republican Party and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for attacking cultural issues as a distraction for policy failures. “The racist rhetoric and the culture wars and the hatred toward women, the hatred toward immigrants, the hatred toward the trans community is a form of deflection,” says Barber. “He’s decided that this is his way to office: distraction, division, deflection, focusing on culture wars so that he cannot be labeled as a failed governor.”

Please go here for the original interview and full transcript: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/9/5/rev_william_barber_jacksonville_florida_shooting

Sharon Salzberg: A Dedication to Kindness

 May we all increasingly be the peace 

our world yearns for. 🙏 Molly

Photo by Molly

A Dedication to Kindness

A dedication to kindness offers us a chance to try to make a real difference despite the obstacles and unhappiness we might face. No matter what our belief systems, actions, or status, we are joined together in this world through the strands of relationship and interconnection. That suffering child, orphaned through a tsunami, who we see in Indonesia or Sri Lanka is part of our lives, as we must not forget that. There is nothing that just happens only "there" anymore - not a war, not an exploitation of the weak, not a disease, not a hope for change. We need to stop reinforcing the sense of dehumanization, of "us" and "them," of separation that leads to wanton cruelty in the first place.

And if tomorrow is going to look any better than today, we must realize that the currency for compassion isn't what someone does, right or wrong - it is the very fact that that person exists. Commitment to the possibility of kindness cannot be discarded as foolish or irrelevant, even in troubling times when we often can't find easy answers. If we abandon the force of kindness as we confront cruelty, we won't learn anything to take into tomorrow - not from history, not from one another, not from life.

Even if we are encountering cruelty, we must try to understand its roots and determine not to be the same as those acting it out. We must determine not to simply keep perpetrating the forces of separation and disregard. If we don't make the effort, what will we really have accomplished?...

We can all keep on trying, through the extension of lovingkindness to others, and make the effort to pay attention to them in an inclusive way rather than splitting them off into the "other" - the "different" ones who can be hurt with impunity. This doesn't at all mean that we will like everybody or acquiesce to everyitng that he or she does. It doesn't mean that we become complacent or passive about naming wrongdoing as wrong or about seeking change, sometimes very forcefully, with our whole heart.

Practicing lovingkindness does mean that we learn to see the lives of others, really see them, as related to our own lives. It means that we open up to the possibility of caring for others not just because we like them or admire them or are indebted to them in some way, but because our lives are inextricably linked to one another's. We use the practice of lovingkindness meditation as a way to recover our innermost knowledge of that linkage as we dissolve the barriers we have been upholding and genuinely awaken to how connected we all are.

― Sharon Salzberg

Excerpted from The Force of Kindness:

Change Your Life with Love & Compassion

Angeles Arrien: There Comes a Time

 There comes a time in the spiritual journey when

you start making choices from a very different place.

And if a choice lines up so that it supports truth, health,

happiness, wisdom, and love, it's the right choice.

― Angeles Arrien

William Faulkner: Never Be Afraid

 

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth 

and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. 

If people all over the world...would do this, 

it would change the earth.

― William Faulkner

Mark Nepo: When We Heal Ourselves

Photo by Molly

When We Heal Ourselves

Each of us carries some wisdom waiting 

to be discovered at the center of our experience.  

Everything we meet, if faced and held, 

reveals a part of that wisdom.

When we heal ourselves,

we heal the world.

― Mark Nepo

Kilian McDonnell: Perfection, Perfection

 

Perfection, Perfection
 

I have had it with perfection.
I have packed my bags,
I am out of here.
Gone.

As certain as rain
will make you wet,
perfection will do you
in.

It droppeth not as dew
upon the summer grass
to give liberty and green 
joy.

Perfection straineth out
the quality of mercy,
withers rapture at its 
birth.

Before the battle is half begun,
cold probity thinks
it can’t be won, concedes the
war.

I’ve handed in my notice,
given back my keys,
signed my severance check, I 
quit.

Hints I could have taken:
Even the perfect chiseled form of
Michelangelo’s radiant David
squints,

the Venus de Milo
has no arms,
the Liberty Bell is
cracked.
 

― Father Kilian McDonnell 

bell hooks: A Wise and Loving Politics

 

Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys. Love cannot exist in any relationship that is based on domination and coercion. Males cannot love themselves in patriarchal culture if their very self-definition relies on submission to patriarchal rules. When men embrace feminist thinking and practice, which emphasizes the value of mutual growth and self-actualization in all relationships, their emotional well-being will be enhanced. A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving.

― bell hooks