#191 Breathe

Dear all,

Having a bit more discretionary time this summer has had an unexpected downside: more opportunities to second-guess my choices about how I use my time. Am I using my hours to the highest good? With everything that’s wrong in the world, can I afford to slack off? Finding my way through these old voices and current worries is definitely a work in progress. It helps to remember that a key to transformation is deep connection—to each other and to the earth.

I’m making great kale-basil pesto to share, the peach tree that I planted in the public front bed of the community garden has been bountiful, I’m finding more buddies to work on the public banking project (let me know if you’re interested!), my new book—Money and Soul—is coming out at the end of the month, I’m blessed with good work and an abundance of caring and loving friends, relatives and colleagues. It’s good to know you are there.

Love,
Pamela





Breathe

I was listening to a friend who is at the center of a youth climate movement. He was feeling stressed about all the logistical challenges of pulling off big collaborative actions, wishing that there could be more time to reflect—and just breathe. He was hungry to experience more flow and resonance as he went through his days, and wistful that he didn’t sense a similar hunger for spiritual grounding in more of his fellow activists.

I had just come from a meeting where I felt both that hunger and that grounding. It was a group of mostly black and brown urban farmers, reaching toward a vision of cooperative organization and work. All the standard rules of the game of living—compete, entertain, pose, position, defend—had somehow been suspended, as we engaged in a common effort to seek truth and find a way forward toward a greater good. On the floor were topics not just of rewriting by-laws and reorganizing decision-making protocols, but of patience, relationships and willingness to be changed. Whether speaking, asking questions or listening, everyone was intent on growing their understanding, ready for transformation. There was openness in the room, space to breathe.

My friend shared, almost in passing, something he’d done that morning that he was pleased with. It was a potentially challenging meeting of people who needed to find common ground to make a decision. They chatted for a while, building connection. Then he suggested that they pause and take a moment for reflection. Into that quiet moment he offered a word of thanks—and they were able to move on to complete the task.

I think this story provides a clue to his earlier question. Even if it is unexpressed, we can see evidence of this hunger for grounding all around us. Some people are just too filled with work and worry to be able to notice; others are casting about desperately, but at a loss for how to even imagine or name the possibility; others may even be fighting against it, as a “luxury” in these perilous times. But we all need to breathe. As systems of oppression bear down on us more and more heavily, the struggle to breathe in what we need for survival is becoming more immediate, more pressing, and more widespread.

The preparation that went into that farmer coop meeting, and the tone that was set, provided food for my soul. The few minutes my friend took to invite that group to ground itself helped them complete their work. Anything we can do to break our bondage to the rules of the game— to invite others to connect with their best selves and a greater reality, to provide good air—is a gift.  As we help fill that deep hunger, we are creating badly-needed space in which people can breathe, and new possibilities can grow.





Rec room circle

He lived in this nursing home
for nine years,
wanted, at ninety-eight,
to pass without a scene.

Yet here we are
in a circle in the rec room
sharing stories.
His son did it for the staff,
so they could say goodbye.
Others came for love of the son.

Simple stories
of food, opera, bingo—
the courage of an old man
the humanity of care-givers
the love of a son
all brought to life
in this rec room circle.





Dare to Imagine:  A new economy is possible!
The Happy Planet Index

Created in 2008, the Happy Planet Index examines sustainable happiness on a national level, ranking 143 countries according to three measurements: how happy its citizens are, how long they live, and how much of the planet’s resources they each consume. The HPI multiplies years of life expectancy by life satisfaction (as measured by the Gallup Poll and the World Values Survey), to obtain “Happy Life Years,” which are then divided by pressure on ecosystems, as measured by the ecological footprint. The ecological footprint, in turn, measures how much land and water it takes to provide for each person.

The Happy Planet Index “strips down the economy to what really matters,” says New Economics Foundation researcher Saamah Abdallah. It measures “what goes in, in terms of resource use, and the outcomes that are important, which are happy and healthy lives for us all. In this way, it reminds us that the economy is there for a purpose—and that is to improve our lives.”

https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/climate-action/why-costa-rica-tops-the-happiness-index-20190131





Some things that have made me hopeful recently

Japanese American elders who have been protesting the repeat of history as the Administration detains immigrants in internment camps from World War II.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/24/1866919/-Japanese-Americans-protest-outside-former-internment-camp-Stop-repeating-history

A Kenya court’s ruling to stop the Lamu coal plant, a win for environmental activists and local communities who for three years argued that the coal plant would pollute the air, damage the fragile marine ecosystem, and devastate fishing communities.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/kenya-court-stops-china-backed-lamu-coal-plant-project/ar-AADut6v

A Correct the Record initiative, in which social media companies would have to make sure that all users who see false information on their feeds are also later presented with fact-checks.
http://time.com/5540995/correct-the-record-polling-fake-news/

The energy and momentum of the youth climate movement, Sunrise, which can be joined at https://actionnetwork.org/forms/join-us-112?source=direct_link&





Resources


Money and Soul
My new book (based on a talk and a pamphlet of the same name) available via on-line distributors July 30


Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8


Money and Soul
A transcript of a keynote address I delivered at a Quaker conference in New Mexico, June 2017
https://westernfriend.org/media/money-and-soul-unabridged


Toward a Right Relationship with Finance 
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.

The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth.  However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy.  This book:
    • offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
    • frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
    • suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
    • invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness?  Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?

To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.



More resources

www.findingsteadyground.org

Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide.  http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide 

Posts on other web/blog sites:

In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.

            http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust

        http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby

Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years:  https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)