Dear all,
I can't express how excited I am to be witnessing the early signs of spring. And what with the garden calling, and our son Tim and his partner and toddler back from Nicaragua and staying in our house, it's hard to remember to pay attention to the rest of my life!
I'm also excited about the possibilities of doing scary things together. What could be more human than banding together to try things that test our skills and courage? I'd just love to see that energy directed toward the really big and real challenges in our world, rather than made-up ones. On that note, what I'm trying in this essay seems a little scarier than usual--but I'm on the lookout for other things as well, and other people to do them with. I wish you the same!
Love,
Pamela
Is life sacred?
One of our proudest accomplishments as an advanced technological society is our ever-advancing ability to save human lives. When an individual life is at stake, especially in a medical situation, our willingness and our capacity to harness enormous resource to save that life is incredible. There is much here to value. Yet some distortions have crept into our attitude about life that have disturbing consequences in the long term.
As a species, we are under a delusion that we’ve broken free of the web that constrained all life before us. We think we have changed the rules of the game, with a powerful new card that we can play forever. In reality, what has enabled us to get to this point of technological and biomedical sophistication has been the ability to link advances in human knowledge with the abundant energy of fossil fuels. Our distant plant relatives, millions of years ago, were unknowingly creating with their dead bodies a legacy for the future, and our species discovered the buried treasure.
It was this legacy that has allowed us the luxury to take on our current attitudes. We have the knowledge and technological capacity to save damaged human lives and prolong fragile and old ones beyond what those who came before could dream of. In the process, we have come to see death as a defeat, as the ultimate affront in our quest to master our environment. With such an attitude, life becomes a test: the longer we can prolong it, the greater our success.
It seems critical to acknowledge that such assumptions about life are supported by this one-time legacy, and that our free turns are running out. Among our best gifts to the future may be a sturdier and more lasting vision of what is sacred about life, less fragility in the face of loss, and more willingness to ascribe sacredness to other life forms.
Families who have undergone terrible losses and found their way forward to a place of resilience can be models for a new normal. Their strength and courage are our birthright. They have learned something that our overall culture is desperately in need of: beloved life is lost, and we have the capacity to come out stronger for it. Death is not a defeat. Loss is something than can enrich the whole if we’re willing to love all out, and face the suffering head on. Rather than being dependent on—or feeling entitled to—outside forces to fix or avoid hard things, we need to build up the courage to face them.
What if the frontiers of our evolution lie not in technical advances to prolong fragile human lives more successfully, but in better maintaining the health of the whole biosphere, in claiming all life as sacred? And if all life is sacred, then death is part of what makes it possible. I think of the ancient trees that fall and nurture life on the forest floor. I think of how we human beings are all made of recycled materials, all part of that same miraculous whole.
I believe there will have to come a time when we are more willing to let an individual human life go. What this means for decisions about prolonging any one life I can’t see clearly, but I would rather start having these hard conversations than pretend they’ll never have to happen. Otherwise, it will continue to be the poor and the powerless—both human and non-human—whose lives become expendable by default.
With a shift away from a single-minded goal of prolonging human lives, we may find our concept of the sacred both expanded out to include the whole web of life and honed in to those moments when we are most fully alive. After all, what could be more sacred than the opportunity to connect, the opportunity to love and be loved, the opportunity to serve, the opportunity to appreciate the joys of life while we are here?
Imagine -- A new economy is possible!
Rolling Jubilee and Strike Debt
Strike Debt was launched on the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street’s eviction from Zuccotti Park—with a fundraising effort for a new Rolling Jubilee. Through accumulated donations of $700,000, they have now cancelled almost $32 million in debt. Starting with medical debt, they moved on to student debt, using $100,000 to buy $4 million in privately-owned debt owed by more than 2,700 Everest College students. Purchasing this debt from secondary markets for pennies on the dollar—just the way collection agencies do—they then simply canceled it.
Moving on from Rolling Jubilee, Strike Debt’s latest project is the Debt Collective, which aims to build collective power in the face of personal debt. As we learn where our money goes, who is profiting from those payments, and who stands to lose when we don’t pay, we can work together to renegotiate our payments or even demand the cancellation of illegitimate debts.
http://rollingjubilee.org/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
Prince Charles of England, whose recent speech in Kentucky raised penetrating questions about the economic and philosophical assumptions that have brought human civilization to our current showdown with the earth. http://wfpl.org/transcript-prince-charles-speech-louisville/
The capacity of cities to demonstrate pragmatism and lead the way in solving critical social problems, i.e., with immigration IDs, and increases in the minimum wage.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/cities-are-now/look-to-the-cities-tackling-our-biggest-problems
Rajendra Singh, who has been working to reestablish traditional water catchment systems in an arid state of northwestern India, and has brought an eco-system—and whole villages with it—back to life. http://tarunbharatsangh.in/dark-zone-to-flow/
How my decision to say hello to everyone I sit next to on the trolley—and be open to more—has challenged my perception of myself, and opened up new connections and possibilities.
More resources
Recent 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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Monday, March 9, 2015
#141 Pioneers
Dear loved ones.
In reflecting on the past month, I have three offerings. First, I'm proud to have contributed my editing skills to a new booklet, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow, by my friend Daniel Hunter. Check it out at Amazon. Second, I'm excited about how an understanding of the connections between racism, justice and environmental threats seems to be exploding these days. Finally, I've been noticing how scarcity holds the seeds of thankfulness: a bad cold has made me more than usually appreciative of returning health; bitter weather makes above freezing temperatures seem downright balmy; having family far away makes every contact more sweet. I wish you all healthy doses of scarcity and thankfulness.
Love,
Pamela
Pioneers
I’ve always struggled when the conversation turned to ethnic identity. My family has been in this country so long that it’s hard to name anything outside of some generic connection to the British Isles. I remember the surprise of visiting my husband’s Pennsylvania Dutch relatives and discovering that they, and the whole community around them, had distinctive foods, expressions, art forms, and customs—something that seemed totally lacking in mine.
I’ve had a similar struggle around reclaiming language. I love language, and would love to reclaim one but, so far as I know, my family has always spoken English. Yet there’s a big idea here that resonates with me: in order to think well about people from other countries, and about the larger environment, it helps to have some emotional connection to “home” and “people” ourselves.
I had the opportunity in a small group recently to explore this issue of claiming our people. My grandparents grow up on dirt farms in the Midwest, and I’ve always felt a connection with the pioneers. I particularly love pioneer women, with all their strength, resilience, creativity, versatility and capacity to work hard. My grandmother is the one I knew who was closest to that experience.
I thought of the loom that my great uncle built for her, that she used for making rag rugs. I remember how she taught us as children to weave those rugs, using long balls of rag strips and working the simple but serviceable loom that my great uncle had figured out how to make. What a great lesson in competence, thrift and agency! What a heritage to treasure!
As I thought of my great-grandparents settling in Kansas and Oklahoma, suddenly, and for the first time, I made the connection with my history lessons. I remembered the image of covered wagons lining up on the Oklahoma border, ready to stake a claim to the newly-available Indian land. These good people, my people, were taking land that was available because the Indians were being removed.
The earliest story that’s told of my family, probably from the mid-1800’s, is of a premature baby who was bundled into a feather comforter and put in the wagon heading west and, amazingly, survived. It’s a story of resilience. So now I’m thinking, they were living in Ohio or Indiana, which used to be where Indians lived, and they’re heading west, to another place where Indians lived.
In an effort earlier this fall to try to breathe some life into who my people were, I found a book in the library of letters from a Quaker woman who moved from Maryland to eastern Ohio in the 1820’s. She talks about how hard her husband worked grubbing stumps out of the earth, so they could plant their crops. And now I’m thinking, those were the eastern woodlands that some group of Indians loved and called home.
It grieves my heart. While they may never have personally killed Indians, there they were, right in the middle of a genocidal movement across the country. I can’t give up on the goodness of my people. Those qualities that I have cherished, and that were significant in shaping who I am—strength, resilience, love of good work, an ability to put hand and mind together to create something new, an appreciation for the gifts of the land—can still be cherished. But the story of my people, working to create good lives as they moved west, cannot be separated from the unbearable losses suffered by the natives of this land as a result of that movement. Somehow I have to hold them both.
I’ve known for a long time that we need to do a better job of coming to terms with our nation’s history of genocide, but it’s been a theoretical understanding. Now, as I reach to claim my people more fully, suddenly it has become real.
The knock
My eye was caught
by the women’s stillness.
Why would she just stand there
in our little city park
gazing up
in the bitter cold?
I passed
and then my ear picked up
the hollow knocking
of a woodpecker.
I turned back to join her
looking up
into the tall tall trees.
We never saw that woodpecker
but together
we were witnesses
to life abundant
in a city park
in winter.
Imagine -- A new economy is possible!
Anchors and coops
An "anchor institution" is a large non-profit institution, classically a university or hospital, that is bound by place--unlike a corporation which has a lot of resources, but can easily move. Anchor institutions have more job creation potential and stability than most corporations, which local governments are always trying to lure away from their neighbors with sweeter tax deals. Supporting the community economy can come to be seen as a basic part of being such an institution.
In Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood—which is a poor, mostly black neighborhood with high unemployment and an average income of about $20,000—there now exists a complex of worker-owned and environmentally conscious companies called the Evergreen Cooperatives. The greenhouse, the laundry and the solar installation company employ over 80 community members, and all serve the three anchor institutions in the neighborhood—two major hospitals and a university. Those anchor institutions, which together purchase about $3 billion in goods and services a year, did their purchasing until recently almost entirely outside the community.
http://www.garalperovitz.com/2014/06/cooperative-economy-conversation-gar-alperovitz/ http://evergreencooperatives.com/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
President Obama's veto of the Keystone XL pipeline. Also the victory of a local group, Earth Quaker Action Team, in their five-year campaign to get PNC Bank to stop investing in Appalachian mountaintop removal. http://www.eqat.org/
Chile's decision, following three years of nationwide student protests, to make college tuition-free and to prohibit for-profit school from receiving public funds.
http://www.attn.com/stories/836/chile-makes-college-tuition-free?utm_source=social&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=usu
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission's vote to classify the Internet in such a way that it can be regulated like a public utility with protection for all users (Net Neutrality), despite extreme opposition from the wealthy telecom industry, but with enormous grassroots support.
The word that Norway's sovereign wealth fund -- at $850 billion, the world's largest -- is divesting from coal and tar sands companies on climate grounds. 350.org
The expansion to Nigeria of an enormously effective Quaker-based grassroots peace-building effort in East Africa, in cooperation with Brethren and Mennonites. http://aglifpt.org/rfk/?p=440
More resources
Recent 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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
In reflecting on the past month, I have three offerings. First, I'm proud to have contributed my editing skills to a new booklet, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow, by my friend Daniel Hunter. Check it out at Amazon. Second, I'm excited about how an understanding of the connections between racism, justice and environmental threats seems to be exploding these days. Finally, I've been noticing how scarcity holds the seeds of thankfulness: a bad cold has made me more than usually appreciative of returning health; bitter weather makes above freezing temperatures seem downright balmy; having family far away makes every contact more sweet. I wish you all healthy doses of scarcity and thankfulness.
Love,
Pamela
Pioneers
I’ve always struggled when the conversation turned to ethnic identity. My family has been in this country so long that it’s hard to name anything outside of some generic connection to the British Isles. I remember the surprise of visiting my husband’s Pennsylvania Dutch relatives and discovering that they, and the whole community around them, had distinctive foods, expressions, art forms, and customs—something that seemed totally lacking in mine.
I’ve had a similar struggle around reclaiming language. I love language, and would love to reclaim one but, so far as I know, my family has always spoken English. Yet there’s a big idea here that resonates with me: in order to think well about people from other countries, and about the larger environment, it helps to have some emotional connection to “home” and “people” ourselves.
I had the opportunity in a small group recently to explore this issue of claiming our people. My grandparents grow up on dirt farms in the Midwest, and I’ve always felt a connection with the pioneers. I particularly love pioneer women, with all their strength, resilience, creativity, versatility and capacity to work hard. My grandmother is the one I knew who was closest to that experience.
I thought of the loom that my great uncle built for her, that she used for making rag rugs. I remember how she taught us as children to weave those rugs, using long balls of rag strips and working the simple but serviceable loom that my great uncle had figured out how to make. What a great lesson in competence, thrift and agency! What a heritage to treasure!
As I thought of my great-grandparents settling in Kansas and Oklahoma, suddenly, and for the first time, I made the connection with my history lessons. I remembered the image of covered wagons lining up on the Oklahoma border, ready to stake a claim to the newly-available Indian land. These good people, my people, were taking land that was available because the Indians were being removed.
The earliest story that’s told of my family, probably from the mid-1800’s, is of a premature baby who was bundled into a feather comforter and put in the wagon heading west and, amazingly, survived. It’s a story of resilience. So now I’m thinking, they were living in Ohio or Indiana, which used to be where Indians lived, and they’re heading west, to another place where Indians lived.
In an effort earlier this fall to try to breathe some life into who my people were, I found a book in the library of letters from a Quaker woman who moved from Maryland to eastern Ohio in the 1820’s. She talks about how hard her husband worked grubbing stumps out of the earth, so they could plant their crops. And now I’m thinking, those were the eastern woodlands that some group of Indians loved and called home.
It grieves my heart. While they may never have personally killed Indians, there they were, right in the middle of a genocidal movement across the country. I can’t give up on the goodness of my people. Those qualities that I have cherished, and that were significant in shaping who I am—strength, resilience, love of good work, an ability to put hand and mind together to create something new, an appreciation for the gifts of the land—can still be cherished. But the story of my people, working to create good lives as they moved west, cannot be separated from the unbearable losses suffered by the natives of this land as a result of that movement. Somehow I have to hold them both.
I’ve known for a long time that we need to do a better job of coming to terms with our nation’s history of genocide, but it’s been a theoretical understanding. Now, as I reach to claim my people more fully, suddenly it has become real.
The knock
My eye was caught
by the women’s stillness.
Why would she just stand there
in our little city park
gazing up
in the bitter cold?
I passed
and then my ear picked up
the hollow knocking
of a woodpecker.
I turned back to join her
looking up
into the tall tall trees.
We never saw that woodpecker
but together
we were witnesses
to life abundant
in a city park
in winter.
Imagine -- A new economy is possible!
Anchors and coops
An "anchor institution" is a large non-profit institution, classically a university or hospital, that is bound by place--unlike a corporation which has a lot of resources, but can easily move. Anchor institutions have more job creation potential and stability than most corporations, which local governments are always trying to lure away from their neighbors with sweeter tax deals. Supporting the community economy can come to be seen as a basic part of being such an institution.
In Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood—which is a poor, mostly black neighborhood with high unemployment and an average income of about $20,000—there now exists a complex of worker-owned and environmentally conscious companies called the Evergreen Cooperatives. The greenhouse, the laundry and the solar installation company employ over 80 community members, and all serve the three anchor institutions in the neighborhood—two major hospitals and a university. Those anchor institutions, which together purchase about $3 billion in goods and services a year, did their purchasing until recently almost entirely outside the community.
http://www.garalperovitz.com/2014/06/cooperative-economy-conversation-gar-alperovitz/ http://evergreencooperatives.com/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
President Obama's veto of the Keystone XL pipeline. Also the victory of a local group, Earth Quaker Action Team, in their five-year campaign to get PNC Bank to stop investing in Appalachian mountaintop removal. http://www.eqat.org/
Chile's decision, following three years of nationwide student protests, to make college tuition-free and to prohibit for-profit school from receiving public funds.
http://www.attn.com/stories/836/chile-makes-college-tuition-free?utm_source=social&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=usu
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission's vote to classify the Internet in such a way that it can be regulated like a public utility with protection for all users (Net Neutrality), despite extreme opposition from the wealthy telecom industry, but with enormous grassroots support.
The word that Norway's sovereign wealth fund -- at $850 billion, the world's largest -- is divesting from coal and tar sands companies on climate grounds. 350.org
The expansion to Nigeria of an enormously effective Quaker-based grassroots peace-building effort in East Africa, in cooperation with Brethren and Mennonites. http://aglifpt.org/rfk/?p=440
More resources
Recent 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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Sunday, February 1, 2015
#140 Love and mastery
Dear all,
We are freshly home from a rich ten days with our son Tim and his family in Nicaragua, thankful, as always, for the role of loved ones in helping us find our way more deeply into the hearts of local communities than we could ever do on our own. Coming home to cold and wealth, it was the wealth that was harder to adjust to.
It took me hardly any time this month to think of four things that made me hopeful. In the face of challenges that seem overwhelming, change may be afoot in this world.
Love,
Pamela
Love and mastery
The conversation had turned to trauma and healing, and a pastor of an urban church was asked how he approached the perpetrators of trauma. “That’s a hard one”, he said, and he paused. “I just try to love them, right where they’re at.” He took a deep breath and leaned back. “Just love them, love them, love them, love them.” He paused again. “I can’t heal them. God is the one who does the healing. But if I can do my part, and love them just the way they are, then maybe they will be more open to God’s healing work.”
On the way home, my friend, another pastor who knew this man, said, “You know, that’s really what he does. His theology is pretty conservative. He has a struggle with my work of welcoming GLBTQ folks. But he keeps reaching out in love.”
As I soaked up the simplicity of the model this man had offered, my thoughts turned to mastery. I can’t imagine many other career helpers responding with such humility. How many more would have jumped right in and explained their particular methodology or fix? How did we come to be so committed to—and seduced by—the vision of mastery?
I guess it shouldn’t be surprising. We seem to have a built-in drive toward mastery when we are born—to master mobility, to master language and communication, to master an understanding of our environment, and then to bend that environment to our will to the extent that we can.
Yet we have ended up with delusions of grandeur. With all the expanded knowledge of the scientific revolution, and all the added power of the industrial revolution, we’ve come to believe that we can bend the most complex systems to our will, that we can gain mastery over anything. The things we are able to do are incredible—and scary. The misjudgments we have made as a species on the basis of an assumption of mastery are coming back to haunt us more and more.
Perhaps our ultimate challenge is to understand what is not ours to master, and where our role may be to simply build our connections and our love. I think of our children and what they most need from us. I think of our earth and what will allow it to flourish. I think of those around us who do things beyond our understanding and how they might heal. I think of this good man taking a deep breath, leaning back, and deciding just to love.
Breadcrumbs
Almost home from the park
recycling our holiday greens
I met a pair with a Christmas tree
told them where the pile was growing
then, looking down
saw a tiny pinecone.
Our branches had been festooned
with ones just such as this.
I could see another a little way beyond
and then another.
I followed the pinecones
as they led me surely, surely
to the steps of a house—
our house—
covered in a generous layer
of needles and pinecones.
It was a sure sign
I had found my way home.
Imagine--A new economy is possible!
Fair Food
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has pressured Florida’s tomato growers, through enlisting the might of major restaurant chains and retailers, to increase wages for their 30,000 workers, and to follow strict standards that mandate rest breaks and forbid sexual harassment and verbal abuse.
The Coalition started with a four-year boycott of Taco Bell, which agreed in 2005 to pay an extra penny a pound for tomatoes to help increase workers’ wages. Through their expanded Fair Food Program, the big companies have pledged to buy only from growers who follow the new standards, paying them an extra penny a pound, which goes to the pickers, and to drop any suppliers that violate the standards. Since the program’s inception, its system of inspections and decisions issued by a former judge has resulted in suspensions for several growers, including one that failed to adopt a payroll system to ensure pickers were paid for all the time they worked.
“When I first visited Immokalee, I heard appalling stories of abuse and modern slavery,” said Susan L. Marquis, dean of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, a public policy institution in Santa Monica, Calif. “But now the tomato fields in Immokalee are probably the best working environment in American agriculture.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/business/in-florida-tomato-fields-a-penny-buys-progress.html?_r=0
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
A Nicaraguan fisherman who knows and loves the mangrove swamp ecosystem that supports his livelihood.
The election in Greece that successfully harnessed a popular desire for the government to serve the welfare of the people rather than the interests of financial institutions.
An initiative near Albany, New York that combines black farmers, teen restitution, prison visiting and healthy foods.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/radical-farmers-use-fresh-food-fight-racial-injustice-black-lives-matter
The continued growth of the fossil fuel divestment campaign, with around 200 institutions globally, with a combined asset size of well over $50 billion, having now committed to divest. http://gofossilfree.org/media/, and http://gofossilfree.org/commitments/
More resources
Recent 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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
We are freshly home from a rich ten days with our son Tim and his family in Nicaragua, thankful, as always, for the role of loved ones in helping us find our way more deeply into the hearts of local communities than we could ever do on our own. Coming home to cold and wealth, it was the wealth that was harder to adjust to.
It took me hardly any time this month to think of four things that made me hopeful. In the face of challenges that seem overwhelming, change may be afoot in this world.
Love,
Pamela
Love and mastery
The conversation had turned to trauma and healing, and a pastor of an urban church was asked how he approached the perpetrators of trauma. “That’s a hard one”, he said, and he paused. “I just try to love them, right where they’re at.” He took a deep breath and leaned back. “Just love them, love them, love them, love them.” He paused again. “I can’t heal them. God is the one who does the healing. But if I can do my part, and love them just the way they are, then maybe they will be more open to God’s healing work.”
On the way home, my friend, another pastor who knew this man, said, “You know, that’s really what he does. His theology is pretty conservative. He has a struggle with my work of welcoming GLBTQ folks. But he keeps reaching out in love.”
As I soaked up the simplicity of the model this man had offered, my thoughts turned to mastery. I can’t imagine many other career helpers responding with such humility. How many more would have jumped right in and explained their particular methodology or fix? How did we come to be so committed to—and seduced by—the vision of mastery?
I guess it shouldn’t be surprising. We seem to have a built-in drive toward mastery when we are born—to master mobility, to master language and communication, to master an understanding of our environment, and then to bend that environment to our will to the extent that we can.
Yet we have ended up with delusions of grandeur. With all the expanded knowledge of the scientific revolution, and all the added power of the industrial revolution, we’ve come to believe that we can bend the most complex systems to our will, that we can gain mastery over anything. The things we are able to do are incredible—and scary. The misjudgments we have made as a species on the basis of an assumption of mastery are coming back to haunt us more and more.
Perhaps our ultimate challenge is to understand what is not ours to master, and where our role may be to simply build our connections and our love. I think of our children and what they most need from us. I think of our earth and what will allow it to flourish. I think of those around us who do things beyond our understanding and how they might heal. I think of this good man taking a deep breath, leaning back, and deciding just to love.
Breadcrumbs
Almost home from the park
recycling our holiday greens
I met a pair with a Christmas tree
told them where the pile was growing
then, looking down
saw a tiny pinecone.
Our branches had been festooned
with ones just such as this.
I could see another a little way beyond
and then another.
I followed the pinecones
as they led me surely, surely
to the steps of a house—
our house—
covered in a generous layer
of needles and pinecones.
It was a sure sign
I had found my way home.
Imagine--A new economy is possible!
Fair Food
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has pressured Florida’s tomato growers, through enlisting the might of major restaurant chains and retailers, to increase wages for their 30,000 workers, and to follow strict standards that mandate rest breaks and forbid sexual harassment and verbal abuse.
The Coalition started with a four-year boycott of Taco Bell, which agreed in 2005 to pay an extra penny a pound for tomatoes to help increase workers’ wages. Through their expanded Fair Food Program, the big companies have pledged to buy only from growers who follow the new standards, paying them an extra penny a pound, which goes to the pickers, and to drop any suppliers that violate the standards. Since the program’s inception, its system of inspections and decisions issued by a former judge has resulted in suspensions for several growers, including one that failed to adopt a payroll system to ensure pickers were paid for all the time they worked.
“When I first visited Immokalee, I heard appalling stories of abuse and modern slavery,” said Susan L. Marquis, dean of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, a public policy institution in Santa Monica, Calif. “But now the tomato fields in Immokalee are probably the best working environment in American agriculture.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/business/in-florida-tomato-fields-a-penny-buys-progress.html?_r=0
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
A Nicaraguan fisherman who knows and loves the mangrove swamp ecosystem that supports his livelihood.
The election in Greece that successfully harnessed a popular desire for the government to serve the welfare of the people rather than the interests of financial institutions.
An initiative near Albany, New York that combines black farmers, teen restitution, prison visiting and healthy foods.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/radical-farmers-use-fresh-food-fight-racial-injustice-black-lives-matter
The continued growth of the fossil fuel divestment campaign, with around 200 institutions globally, with a combined asset size of well over $50 billion, having now committed to divest. http://gofossilfree.org/media/, and http://gofossilfree.org/commitments/
More resources
Recent 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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Sunday, January 4, 2015
#139 Carrying our load
Dear all,
One of my highlights of this past month was living with an almost-two-year-old whose language growth is exploding--in both English and Spanish! Watching how totally relaxed and unworried he was about learning and communicating in two languages simultaneously was an amazing reminder of how we're hard-wired from the beginning to learn and enjoy learning, and how our smallest children are reminders to us of what is possible.
In the Resources section below, there is a link to a new blog post, and a new URL for my parenting website, Our Children Ourselves. Enjoy!
Love,
Pamela
Carrying our load
Living in this world, it’s easy to feel overburdened. There’s so much to be done. How do we find our way amid all the temptations to blame, take on too much, and avoid things that seem just too hard?
I’ve come to the conclusion that blame is a pretty useless concept. Putting attention on what should have been done in the past just doesn’t encourage powerful thinking about the present and the future. If unmet responsibilities continue to impact our lives, then there is a whole spectrum of options for moving forward: live with it, offer a direct challenge, take on a project of changing the conditions for the future, work on opening the space for apologies and/or reparation, gather help to make the change, do it ourselves.
That said, it’s hard to discern what is fine to carry on my shoulders, and what is unrealistic, or unfair, or too much, or just not my responsibility. Recently, after completing years of hard work in a leadership position in a group, everyone just assumed that I would pick up leadership in another place that had need—because they knew I was capable. It made me mad. After several months of stubborn resistance, I realized that I actually had a vision for how to accomplish that piece of work, very different from how it had been done in the past. Seeing that I could give a gift that had value to me, I offered to take leadership if the group would join in my vision—which they did. Having found a way to freely choose that responsibility, from a position of power, my whole attitude about the work involved was transformed.
There’s a lesson here about choice, about taking off of our shoulders the responsibilities that don’t belong there (put on us by others when we were young, or assumed because there seemed to be no other option), and taking on what we choose in the present, based on our best thinking, our abilities, our love, and our vision for the future.
Then there are situations where we find ourselves with too much on our shoulders in the present and no way to refuse to handle it—the result of forces totally outside our control. In these situations, the big lesson for me is about getting help (a key missing ingredient when I was young). I would guess that one of the biggest difficulties many of us have with taking on responsibility is in imagining the possibility of getting the help we need.
I’ve recently realized that my feelings from childhood of being totally alone with tasks that seem too hard can get me into trouble. At times I feel so overwhelmed by a challenging demand that I try to avoid it altogether—like not even opening a letter from some intimidating bureaucracy. I’m trying to remember now, as soon as I recognize that familiar sinking feeling, to reach out and break the isolation, then do what needs to be done.
Maybe we all need to check what we’re carrying, dump out some of that heavy weight that doesn’t belong to us (like trying to make our parents happy), and pick up some of the pieces that lie waiting to be done. If we can remember that we have the power to make adult choices and get help in the present, everything looks more possible. I do believe that we all can find our way to carrying our piece of the world’s responsibility gladly, and without chafing at the load.
Look-alike
Airport run for my sweetie:
Not yet out of the neighborhood
someone walking toward me
a block away
catches my eye.
Something is so familiar
in the way he moves.
There’s time to wonder
Had I mistaken the time?
Did he tire of waiting, find a ride in?
As I approach
I see a man of quite a different age
and color.
I pass on reassured
by the mistake I didn’t make, about the time—
and the one I did.
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Artisanal Energy
In just a dozen years, industrial-powerhouse Germany has replaced around 31 percent of its nuclear and fossil fuel generated electricity with a dynamic, decentralized patchwork of more than two million small and medium-scale renewables producers — businesses, villages and towns, co-ops, individuals, green investment funds, and farmers — whose numbers grow by the month. Their output is distributed through a tightly-knit smart grid. The composition of supply changes from minute to minute depending on weather, demand, and other factors from one corner of the country to the other.
The evolution began in 1998, when the EU mandated the liberalization of Europe’s energy markets. Forced to unbundle production and distribution, the four dominant utilities relinquished control of the grid, and opened the market to a wave of new entrants. Then German legislation in 2000 guaranteed renewables a fixed, higher-than-market price for 20 years, and stipulated that grid operators buy green energy from producers as small as a Bavarian dairy farmer with a PV panel on his cow shed. With the phase-out of Germany’s nuclear reactors, it is (dirty) coal--and not (cleaner) natural gas--that has helped renewables cover supply.
Though a master plan never existed, this plan is working, Germany has one of the lowest rates of blackouts in the world, and is exporting more electricity than ever before. Thinking small might have cracked the renewable energy puzzle.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/31/germanys-revolution-in-small-batch-artisanal-energy/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The support by Catholic Relief Services in the Central African Republic of a two-year program of Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities, a dynamic grassroots peacebuilding effort that has brought together perpetrators and victims in Rwanda, Burundi, Congo and Kenya—with transformative results. aglifpt.org/rfk/?p=406
Governor Cuomo’s announcement on December 17, of a ban on fracking in New York State.
A new collaborative venture, Fresh Start Foods West Philadelphia, which will provide fresh and healthy prepared meals for local schools while offering culinary apprenticeship jobs that provide living wages with benefits to out-of-work young adults. http://phennd.org/update/fresh-start-foods-west-philadelphia/
The Netherlands has joined Tasmania, Mexico and Russia in saying no to Monsanto and banning herbicides like RoundUp. http://inhabitat.com/the-netherlands-says-no-to-monsanto-bans-roundup-herbicide/
More resources
Recent 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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
One of my highlights of this past month was living with an almost-two-year-old whose language growth is exploding--in both English and Spanish! Watching how totally relaxed and unworried he was about learning and communicating in two languages simultaneously was an amazing reminder of how we're hard-wired from the beginning to learn and enjoy learning, and how our smallest children are reminders to us of what is possible.
In the Resources section below, there is a link to a new blog post, and a new URL for my parenting website, Our Children Ourselves. Enjoy!
Love,
Pamela
Carrying our load
Living in this world, it’s easy to feel overburdened. There’s so much to be done. How do we find our way amid all the temptations to blame, take on too much, and avoid things that seem just too hard?
I’ve come to the conclusion that blame is a pretty useless concept. Putting attention on what should have been done in the past just doesn’t encourage powerful thinking about the present and the future. If unmet responsibilities continue to impact our lives, then there is a whole spectrum of options for moving forward: live with it, offer a direct challenge, take on a project of changing the conditions for the future, work on opening the space for apologies and/or reparation, gather help to make the change, do it ourselves.
That said, it’s hard to discern what is fine to carry on my shoulders, and what is unrealistic, or unfair, or too much, or just not my responsibility. Recently, after completing years of hard work in a leadership position in a group, everyone just assumed that I would pick up leadership in another place that had need—because they knew I was capable. It made me mad. After several months of stubborn resistance, I realized that I actually had a vision for how to accomplish that piece of work, very different from how it had been done in the past. Seeing that I could give a gift that had value to me, I offered to take leadership if the group would join in my vision—which they did. Having found a way to freely choose that responsibility, from a position of power, my whole attitude about the work involved was transformed.
There’s a lesson here about choice, about taking off of our shoulders the responsibilities that don’t belong there (put on us by others when we were young, or assumed because there seemed to be no other option), and taking on what we choose in the present, based on our best thinking, our abilities, our love, and our vision for the future.
Then there are situations where we find ourselves with too much on our shoulders in the present and no way to refuse to handle it—the result of forces totally outside our control. In these situations, the big lesson for me is about getting help (a key missing ingredient when I was young). I would guess that one of the biggest difficulties many of us have with taking on responsibility is in imagining the possibility of getting the help we need.
I’ve recently realized that my feelings from childhood of being totally alone with tasks that seem too hard can get me into trouble. At times I feel so overwhelmed by a challenging demand that I try to avoid it altogether—like not even opening a letter from some intimidating bureaucracy. I’m trying to remember now, as soon as I recognize that familiar sinking feeling, to reach out and break the isolation, then do what needs to be done.
Maybe we all need to check what we’re carrying, dump out some of that heavy weight that doesn’t belong to us (like trying to make our parents happy), and pick up some of the pieces that lie waiting to be done. If we can remember that we have the power to make adult choices and get help in the present, everything looks more possible. I do believe that we all can find our way to carrying our piece of the world’s responsibility gladly, and without chafing at the load.
Look-alike
Airport run for my sweetie:
Not yet out of the neighborhood
someone walking toward me
a block away
catches my eye.
Something is so familiar
in the way he moves.
There’s time to wonder
Had I mistaken the time?
Did he tire of waiting, find a ride in?
As I approach
I see a man of quite a different age
and color.
I pass on reassured
by the mistake I didn’t make, about the time—
and the one I did.
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Artisanal Energy
In just a dozen years, industrial-powerhouse Germany has replaced around 31 percent of its nuclear and fossil fuel generated electricity with a dynamic, decentralized patchwork of more than two million small and medium-scale renewables producers — businesses, villages and towns, co-ops, individuals, green investment funds, and farmers — whose numbers grow by the month. Their output is distributed through a tightly-knit smart grid. The composition of supply changes from minute to minute depending on weather, demand, and other factors from one corner of the country to the other.
The evolution began in 1998, when the EU mandated the liberalization of Europe’s energy markets. Forced to unbundle production and distribution, the four dominant utilities relinquished control of the grid, and opened the market to a wave of new entrants. Then German legislation in 2000 guaranteed renewables a fixed, higher-than-market price for 20 years, and stipulated that grid operators buy green energy from producers as small as a Bavarian dairy farmer with a PV panel on his cow shed. With the phase-out of Germany’s nuclear reactors, it is (dirty) coal--and not (cleaner) natural gas--that has helped renewables cover supply.
Though a master plan never existed, this plan is working, Germany has one of the lowest rates of blackouts in the world, and is exporting more electricity than ever before. Thinking small might have cracked the renewable energy puzzle.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/31/germanys-revolution-in-small-batch-artisanal-energy/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The support by Catholic Relief Services in the Central African Republic of a two-year program of Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities, a dynamic grassroots peacebuilding effort that has brought together perpetrators and victims in Rwanda, Burundi, Congo and Kenya—with transformative results. aglifpt.org/rfk/?p=406
Governor Cuomo’s announcement on December 17, of a ban on fracking in New York State.
A new collaborative venture, Fresh Start Foods West Philadelphia, which will provide fresh and healthy prepared meals for local schools while offering culinary apprenticeship jobs that provide living wages with benefits to out-of-work young adults. http://phennd.org/update/fresh-start-foods-west-philadelphia/
The Netherlands has joined Tasmania, Mexico and Russia in saying no to Monsanto and banning herbicides like RoundUp. http://inhabitat.com/the-netherlands-says-no-to-monsanto-bans-roundup-herbicide/
More resources
Recent 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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Thursday, December 11, 2014
#138 Big enough
Dear all,
From a pre-Thanksgiving dinner with our oldest son Paul and some of his friends, to holiday time with Chuck's extended family, to a long lovely afternoon and evening yesterday with old friends (another extended family), to today's anticipation of the arrival of our son Tim and his wife and toddler for a month's visit from Nicaragua, I am feeling richly blessed by human connection. And my walk this morning reminded me, as always, of my connection with the natural world around me.
How good it is to be embedded in community!
Love,
Pamela
Big enough
I was having one of my—not uncommon—moments of feeling just too little. The world was looking pretty bleak and its problems pretty big. Economic inequality, racism, climate change—how could I possibly hope to make any difference in the face of enormous forces like these?
A friend was listening to me, and as I shared my sense of helplessness and hopelessness, my wish to not even turn my head in the direction of these big painful wrongs that I could do nothing about, I was able to hear myself in a new way. I sounded like a very little girl. The voice inside me that was speaking was a voice from my childhood.
It makes perfect sense. I was too little then. The forces that governed my life were way beyond my control. I saw the things that weren’t working right—for me, for my family—and had no way of making them better. In my particular situation, I didn’t even see a way to complain. So I did my best, learned my own set of survival skills, put my head down, and found my way, for better or for worse, into adulthood.
Now this isn’t to say that my life has been bleak. Far from it. I’ve experienced love in a variety of wonderful forms, found many meaningful ways to spend my time, gotten pleasure from the talents of countless people on this earth, been nurtured by the richness of the natural world. As an adult, I’ve discovered that I’m not helpless, that I can make things happen in the circles around me. I’ve continued to look for ways to address these big evils, but through all those years I’ve still carried that image of myself as just not big enough.
I remember my pivotal “aha moment” about the relationship between climate change and despair: the feelings of despair that come up so quickly around climate change are not its creation. Those feelings were with us long before we had ever imagined the possibility of the end of life on earth as we know it. They are old feelings from our childhood—when things were that scary, and we felt that small. I find the concept so refreshing: the feelings of despair that come up in the face of climate change are not inevitable. They are ours to change. Climate change is just an irresistible magnet for those old fears—which are always looking for a convenient place to attach in the present.
This is not to say that we don’t have a problem, or that the challenges we face are insignificant. As the big international forces that have brought us to this point grow in their interconnections and global impact, the threats are very real and significant—to say the least! But what if we are big enough?
I’m helped by recognizing a similar trajectory behind climate change, economic inequality and racism. It starts with an assumption of separation and a goal of mastery—in relation to both other human beings and the environment. Those who have more justify their right to it, then they work to protect what they have. Those assumptions and goals lead to injustice and trauma on a massive scale—for both people and the earth. The systems that have been built on these foundations are enormous and complex, but underlying them are human dynamics that can be understood, faced and changed. Systems that have been built can be dismantled, and people who have done damage and been damaged can be healed.
What if this is just the right sized challenge for grown-ups like us? What if each of us gets to be our own full loving human self in relation to these big issues? What if we assumed that we were big enough? Big enough to look at what’s wrong; to understand; to say what we think; to apply what we know to our personal choices; to engage with our friends, colleagues and neighbors, and gather others around good programs; to be players on the public stage?
In the process, we’ll have to get good at teasing out the sticky old voices of despair from the reality of interesting and important challenges in the present. Those voices from our childhood may be the biggest thing that’s holding back our world. It was true back then: we were too little. What good news that we’re now big enough!
Bread and life
You would think that I of all people
earth-loving
thrifty
do-it yourselfer
would be a baker of bread.
And yet I’m not
that is, I wasn’t.
Mixing together
stuff from a store
has never drawn me.
Then I was transformed by a
sourdough starter
given by a friend.
Putting flour, salt and water
in the service of
this wild life form
I became a partner in creation,
the flavor of the bread
a wonder
beyond my control.
Imagine--A new economy is possible!
Postal banking
Physical and operational structures already exist that could help USPS offer basic financial services: prepaid debit cards, mobile transactions, new check cashing services, savings accounts, and even simple, small-dollar loans. A successful U.S. Postal Saving System existed from 1911-1967. Every money order you deliver confirms this heritage—postal banking is as American as apple pie—and similar schemes operate overseas today, including in Germany, Japan, Switzerland, and the UK.
According to a Pew survey, 38 percent of the US population—88 million people—either have no bank accounts (the “unbanked”) or are at least partially dependent upon high-cost services like payday lending (the “underbanked”). In 2012, underbanked households spent almost 10% of their annual income solely on interest and fees for alternative financial services like payday lending.
Thirty-one percent of the unbanked said they would open an account at their local post office branch. Eighty-one percent of the underbanked said they would use USPS to cash checks, 79 percent percent to pay bills, and 71 percent would choose postal loans over payday loans. The U.S. Conference of Mayors has endorsed the idea, and legislation is pending in Congress.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/the-return-of-the-postal-bank
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
How the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has pressured Florida’s tomato growers, through enlisting the might of major restaurant chains and retailers, to increase wages for their 30,000 workers and follow strict standards that mandate rest breaks and forbid sexual harassment and verbal abuse.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/business/in-florida-tomato-fields-a-penny-buys-progress.html?_r=0
Learning that 85,000 trees have been planted by one women's agricultural cooperative in Nicaragua, and knowing that this is just one of many such efforts around the world.
The New Economy movement--a diverse set of communities (native climate justice activists, union leaders, coop leaders from the deep South, urban farmers, small businesses, sustainability activists) coming together in shared recognition that our economic structures are the root cause of many different crises.
http://neweconomy.net/new-economy-coalition
How one person's story of humanity in a conflict-ridden far-away place (Gaza, Iraqi Kurdistan) can allow those who hear to open their minds and hearts to that place.
More resources
Recent posts on other web/blog sites:
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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL--should be live soon.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
From a pre-Thanksgiving dinner with our oldest son Paul and some of his friends, to holiday time with Chuck's extended family, to a long lovely afternoon and evening yesterday with old friends (another extended family), to today's anticipation of the arrival of our son Tim and his wife and toddler for a month's visit from Nicaragua, I am feeling richly blessed by human connection. And my walk this morning reminded me, as always, of my connection with the natural world around me.
How good it is to be embedded in community!
Love,
Pamela
Big enough
I was having one of my—not uncommon—moments of feeling just too little. The world was looking pretty bleak and its problems pretty big. Economic inequality, racism, climate change—how could I possibly hope to make any difference in the face of enormous forces like these?
A friend was listening to me, and as I shared my sense of helplessness and hopelessness, my wish to not even turn my head in the direction of these big painful wrongs that I could do nothing about, I was able to hear myself in a new way. I sounded like a very little girl. The voice inside me that was speaking was a voice from my childhood.
It makes perfect sense. I was too little then. The forces that governed my life were way beyond my control. I saw the things that weren’t working right—for me, for my family—and had no way of making them better. In my particular situation, I didn’t even see a way to complain. So I did my best, learned my own set of survival skills, put my head down, and found my way, for better or for worse, into adulthood.
Now this isn’t to say that my life has been bleak. Far from it. I’ve experienced love in a variety of wonderful forms, found many meaningful ways to spend my time, gotten pleasure from the talents of countless people on this earth, been nurtured by the richness of the natural world. As an adult, I’ve discovered that I’m not helpless, that I can make things happen in the circles around me. I’ve continued to look for ways to address these big evils, but through all those years I’ve still carried that image of myself as just not big enough.
I remember my pivotal “aha moment” about the relationship between climate change and despair: the feelings of despair that come up so quickly around climate change are not its creation. Those feelings were with us long before we had ever imagined the possibility of the end of life on earth as we know it. They are old feelings from our childhood—when things were that scary, and we felt that small. I find the concept so refreshing: the feelings of despair that come up in the face of climate change are not inevitable. They are ours to change. Climate change is just an irresistible magnet for those old fears—which are always looking for a convenient place to attach in the present.
This is not to say that we don’t have a problem, or that the challenges we face are insignificant. As the big international forces that have brought us to this point grow in their interconnections and global impact, the threats are very real and significant—to say the least! But what if we are big enough?
I’m helped by recognizing a similar trajectory behind climate change, economic inequality and racism. It starts with an assumption of separation and a goal of mastery—in relation to both other human beings and the environment. Those who have more justify their right to it, then they work to protect what they have. Those assumptions and goals lead to injustice and trauma on a massive scale—for both people and the earth. The systems that have been built on these foundations are enormous and complex, but underlying them are human dynamics that can be understood, faced and changed. Systems that have been built can be dismantled, and people who have done damage and been damaged can be healed.
What if this is just the right sized challenge for grown-ups like us? What if each of us gets to be our own full loving human self in relation to these big issues? What if we assumed that we were big enough? Big enough to look at what’s wrong; to understand; to say what we think; to apply what we know to our personal choices; to engage with our friends, colleagues and neighbors, and gather others around good programs; to be players on the public stage?
In the process, we’ll have to get good at teasing out the sticky old voices of despair from the reality of interesting and important challenges in the present. Those voices from our childhood may be the biggest thing that’s holding back our world. It was true back then: we were too little. What good news that we’re now big enough!
Bread and life
You would think that I of all people
earth-loving
thrifty
do-it yourselfer
would be a baker of bread.
And yet I’m not
that is, I wasn’t.
Mixing together
stuff from a store
has never drawn me.
Then I was transformed by a
sourdough starter
given by a friend.
Putting flour, salt and water
in the service of
this wild life form
I became a partner in creation,
the flavor of the bread
a wonder
beyond my control.
Imagine--A new economy is possible!
Postal banking
Physical and operational structures already exist that could help USPS offer basic financial services: prepaid debit cards, mobile transactions, new check cashing services, savings accounts, and even simple, small-dollar loans. A successful U.S. Postal Saving System existed from 1911-1967. Every money order you deliver confirms this heritage—postal banking is as American as apple pie—and similar schemes operate overseas today, including in Germany, Japan, Switzerland, and the UK.
According to a Pew survey, 38 percent of the US population—88 million people—either have no bank accounts (the “unbanked”) or are at least partially dependent upon high-cost services like payday lending (the “underbanked”). In 2012, underbanked households spent almost 10% of their annual income solely on interest and fees for alternative financial services like payday lending.
Thirty-one percent of the unbanked said they would open an account at their local post office branch. Eighty-one percent of the underbanked said they would use USPS to cash checks, 79 percent percent to pay bills, and 71 percent would choose postal loans over payday loans. The U.S. Conference of Mayors has endorsed the idea, and legislation is pending in Congress.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/the-return-of-the-postal-bank
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
How the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has pressured Florida’s tomato growers, through enlisting the might of major restaurant chains and retailers, to increase wages for their 30,000 workers and follow strict standards that mandate rest breaks and forbid sexual harassment and verbal abuse.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/business/in-florida-tomato-fields-a-penny-buys-progress.html?_r=0
Learning that 85,000 trees have been planted by one women's agricultural cooperative in Nicaragua, and knowing that this is just one of many such efforts around the world.
The New Economy movement--a diverse set of communities (native climate justice activists, union leaders, coop leaders from the deep South, urban farmers, small businesses, sustainability activists) coming together in shared recognition that our economic structures are the root cause of many different crises.
http://neweconomy.net/new-economy-coalition
How one person's story of humanity in a conflict-ridden far-away place (Gaza, Iraqi Kurdistan) can allow those who hear to open their minds and hearts to that place.
More resources
Recent posts on other web/blog sites:
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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL--should be live soon.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Monday, November 3, 2014
#137 Goodness and Neglect
Dear all,
As my mind turns toward a season of thanksgiving, I find myself thankful for a number of things--
--our dear friend from Northern Uganda, who is here in Philadelphia for the fall,
--the fruits of my intention to act against mass incarceration, with doors opening up that I am able and glad to walk through,
--the chance to visit with local youth as we work together at Mill Creek Farm, providing affordable produce for the neighbors and free gleanings for the local soup kitchen,
--and always, the beauty of our natural world.
I will you rich things to be thankful for as well.
Love,
Pamela
Goodness and neglect
I neglected my backyard last summer. There were perfectly good reasons for it, and I’m not second-guessing the choices I made that had it low on my list. But the longer I neglected it the harder it became to choose to pay attention. I felt bad about that neglect, and facing the result of it was painful.
When a blessedly open day arrived in October, my feet finally took me out the back door and down the steps. What an unkempt jungle! The clouds of tiny white flies on the kale in my little kitchen garden were the worst. How could I have been so irresponsible in tending a living thing for which I was responsible? I found myself doing everything else except getting out the detergent spray for that tedious job. I realized that I was mad.
I was mad at the need for all that work—but mostly I was mad at the image of myself that was reflected back to me. So the flies, and at the kale that had attracted them, got the brunt of it.
Once I could notice that I was directing my anger at that innocent kale, my mind actually got a little space to think about this phenomenon. I doubt I’m the only one. Why do I get mad at what (or who) I care about and don’t treat well? I think it’s because I would choose to believe that I’m a good person, and what is reflected back to me calls that into question. To protect my goodness, I blame the one I’ve treated badly.
It’s logical, in a twisted kind of way. And it makes me wonder how much this dynamic underlies neglect and abuse in many other places. How many people who treat loved ones badly have fallen into a pattern of responding to their own less-than-thoughtful behavior by lashing out at those with whom they have fallen short? How many people in privileged social positions defend what they haven’t earned by finding fault with those who have less?
I’m happy to say that while there’s still more do to, my backyard looks 100% better. It reflects well on me, and my eyes can now rest there in pleasure. I’m no longer mad at the kale, which I did finally get to spraying that afternoon (though I notice that it could use a second treatment now).
Perhaps most important, I have a personal and visceral understanding of how easy it is to try to protect our goodness when we’re in the wrong by projecting that wrong onto others—and how easily that can lead to even more neglectful and hurtful behavior.
It's not right. But in my heart of hearts, I know that I’m not a bad person. Perhaps my next step is to go out and just apologize to the kale—then give it another spray.
Habitat
I thought we were planting
just for beauty--
big bright sunflowers
that call out their glory in August
when others have faded away
Yet here on a busy street
in a front yard smaller than
a double bed, I find
a goldfinch family has found a home,
a perfect place to tweet
and flit and dine on seeds.
The ones I planted in our big common bed
reached for the sun and bloomed
and then grew fat with seeds
Birds came here too, and bees,
and then, first day of fall,
a squirrel had hunkered down
busy with a big seed head
storing up for leaner times.
As one who planted just for beauty
I have learned
that sunflowers
have more to give.
Imagine--A new economy is possible!
Municipal Ownership
This fall, the small city of Somerset, Kentucky, drew national attention when it opened a municipally owned and operated fuel center in an effort to drive down gas prices for local residents. While Somerset’s publicly owned gas station is the first of its kind in a good many years, it draws upon a rich tradition in the United States of municipal enterprises that reduce costs for local residents, provide services for those underserved or exploited by private operators, and allow for community participation in economic decision-making.
Historically, municipal ownership and operation of strategically important industries and services was commonplace in America’s cities. Often these included subways, trolleys, buses, power plants, power lines, telephone networks, water and sanitation systems, railroads, ice plants, bus and train stations, freight shipping facilities, grocery stores, coal distribution companies, and lodging houses. One legacy of this approach is represented in the 2,000 municipally owned electric utilities, which, together with co-ops, supply more than 25 percent of the nation’s electricity.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/commonomics/kentucky-town-beats-high-gas-prices-by-opening-a-public-gas-station
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
The new Polish Jewish museum in Warsaw that focuses on 1000 years of vibrant Jewish life and culture in Poland before World War II. http://news.yahoo.com/polish-israeli-presidents-open-jewish-museum-warsaw-023149586.html
Urban farms, the networks in which they are embedded, and the networks they grow around them.
The persistent, effective, on-the-ground peacemaking that is waged in East Africa by the African Great Lakes Initiative, in conflicts that seem intractable from the outside. http://aglifpt.org/publications.htm
The $18.5 million in personal debt that has been bought and forgiven since 2012 by Debt Jubilee for just $300,000 on the secondary debt market, where lenders sell unpaid bills to collectors for just pennies on the dollar. http://rollingjubilee.org/
More resources
Recent posts on other web/blog sites:
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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.org, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
As my mind turns toward a season of thanksgiving, I find myself thankful for a number of things--
--our dear friend from Northern Uganda, who is here in Philadelphia for the fall,
--the fruits of my intention to act against mass incarceration, with doors opening up that I am able and glad to walk through,
--the chance to visit with local youth as we work together at Mill Creek Farm, providing affordable produce for the neighbors and free gleanings for the local soup kitchen,
--and always, the beauty of our natural world.
I will you rich things to be thankful for as well.
Love,
Pamela
Goodness and neglect
I neglected my backyard last summer. There were perfectly good reasons for it, and I’m not second-guessing the choices I made that had it low on my list. But the longer I neglected it the harder it became to choose to pay attention. I felt bad about that neglect, and facing the result of it was painful.
When a blessedly open day arrived in October, my feet finally took me out the back door and down the steps. What an unkempt jungle! The clouds of tiny white flies on the kale in my little kitchen garden were the worst. How could I have been so irresponsible in tending a living thing for which I was responsible? I found myself doing everything else except getting out the detergent spray for that tedious job. I realized that I was mad.
I was mad at the need for all that work—but mostly I was mad at the image of myself that was reflected back to me. So the flies, and at the kale that had attracted them, got the brunt of it.
Once I could notice that I was directing my anger at that innocent kale, my mind actually got a little space to think about this phenomenon. I doubt I’m the only one. Why do I get mad at what (or who) I care about and don’t treat well? I think it’s because I would choose to believe that I’m a good person, and what is reflected back to me calls that into question. To protect my goodness, I blame the one I’ve treated badly.
It’s logical, in a twisted kind of way. And it makes me wonder how much this dynamic underlies neglect and abuse in many other places. How many people who treat loved ones badly have fallen into a pattern of responding to their own less-than-thoughtful behavior by lashing out at those with whom they have fallen short? How many people in privileged social positions defend what they haven’t earned by finding fault with those who have less?
I’m happy to say that while there’s still more do to, my backyard looks 100% better. It reflects well on me, and my eyes can now rest there in pleasure. I’m no longer mad at the kale, which I did finally get to spraying that afternoon (though I notice that it could use a second treatment now).
Perhaps most important, I have a personal and visceral understanding of how easy it is to try to protect our goodness when we’re in the wrong by projecting that wrong onto others—and how easily that can lead to even more neglectful and hurtful behavior.
It's not right. But in my heart of hearts, I know that I’m not a bad person. Perhaps my next step is to go out and just apologize to the kale—then give it another spray.
Habitat
I thought we were planting
just for beauty--
big bright sunflowers
that call out their glory in August
when others have faded away
Yet here on a busy street
in a front yard smaller than
a double bed, I find
a goldfinch family has found a home,
a perfect place to tweet
and flit and dine on seeds.
The ones I planted in our big common bed
reached for the sun and bloomed
and then grew fat with seeds
Birds came here too, and bees,
and then, first day of fall,
a squirrel had hunkered down
busy with a big seed head
storing up for leaner times.
As one who planted just for beauty
I have learned
that sunflowers
have more to give.
Imagine--A new economy is possible!
Municipal Ownership
This fall, the small city of Somerset, Kentucky, drew national attention when it opened a municipally owned and operated fuel center in an effort to drive down gas prices for local residents. While Somerset’s publicly owned gas station is the first of its kind in a good many years, it draws upon a rich tradition in the United States of municipal enterprises that reduce costs for local residents, provide services for those underserved or exploited by private operators, and allow for community participation in economic decision-making.
Historically, municipal ownership and operation of strategically important industries and services was commonplace in America’s cities. Often these included subways, trolleys, buses, power plants, power lines, telephone networks, water and sanitation systems, railroads, ice plants, bus and train stations, freight shipping facilities, grocery stores, coal distribution companies, and lodging houses. One legacy of this approach is represented in the 2,000 municipally owned electric utilities, which, together with co-ops, supply more than 25 percent of the nation’s electricity.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/commonomics/kentucky-town-beats-high-gas-prices-by-opening-a-public-gas-station
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
The new Polish Jewish museum in Warsaw that focuses on 1000 years of vibrant Jewish life and culture in Poland before World War II. http://news.yahoo.com/polish-israeli-presidents-open-jewish-museum-warsaw-023149586.html
Urban farms, the networks in which they are embedded, and the networks they grow around them.
The persistent, effective, on-the-ground peacemaking that is waged in East Africa by the African Great Lakes Initiative, in conflicts that seem intractable from the outside. http://aglifpt.org/publications.htm
The $18.5 million in personal debt that has been bought and forgiven since 2012 by Debt Jubilee for just $300,000 on the secondary debt market, where lenders sell unpaid bills to collectors for just pennies on the dollar. http://rollingjubilee.org/
More resources
Recent posts on other web/blog sites:
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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.org, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
#136 Becoming Experts
Dear all,
My big news of the month was a week in Nicaragua in early September supporting my son Tim and his family, with the biggest highlight being around 20-month-old Emilio as his language spiked, mostly in Spanish! And by this week, I'm feeling like all the pieces of my post-summer life have been picked back up, and am hopeful that there might even be room for them all.
It was a privilege to be at the big climate march in New York City, and it is a delight to be present to our part of the world turning toward the beauty of fall.
Love,
Pamela
Becoming experts
This spring, before my toddler grandson moved to Nicaragua, I loved taking him out to our community garden, and spending time just being present to the world around us. We smelled the flowers, dug in the dirt, watched the birds flying around, and listened to their songs. He was paying close attention, and the more he looked and listened, the more he took in. As he started to pick up language, among his first twenty words were bird, flower and smell.
Another toddler I know got interested in cars at an early age. He noticed, asked questions, took in and sorted new information, asked more, and now, at age three, can name every make and style as he walks down the street. This phenomenon of people becoming experts at what they pay attention to is everywhere: people who listen to the news each day and know everything about every bad thing that is happening; people who refuse to listen to news, but watch sports instead, and are experts on every team and every player; people who follow the celebrities and know every detail about their movies and their private lives; people who pursue a hobby and become experts in their own little realm.
I think there’s an issue of power here. In a world awash in information, it’s nice to feel like you have mastery over some little bit of it. On the other hand, we can easily give up on whole areas where we despair of mastery. If we don’t know anything about it, don’t have a handle on it, we’re not likely to choose to pay attention to it.
There are areas where we’ve gotten the message that we don’t have aptitude, science for some, arts for others, and areas that we are actually discouraged from investigating. (“Pay no attention to the little man behind the screen,” says Oz the Great and Powerful…) I think of the economists who turn away questions and criticism of their models and policies with proprietary warnings that they must be trusted, that only the experts can be expected to understand.
Yet, despite any obstacle in our path, we can still decide to grow into our own unlikely experts. The bottom line is that we get to choose where we put our attention. We can attune our ears and eyes to what we want to become experts on, knowing that it’s possible to get ever better at what we pay attention to.
If time is a limiting factor, we may choose to withdraw attention from one activity in order to put it on another. Since I don’t want to be an expert on despair, I don’t watch the TV news. Since I do want to be an expert on what gives people hope, I have found ever more places to look, and take the time to look attentively.
What if we chose to pay attention to, and become experts on, that which makes us whole? In choosing to put attention on my place with our neighbors in this ecosystem that we share, I am coming to learn the birds. I am no expert. Far from it! How to pull discreet sounds out of background noise that I often don’t even notice, much less to connect those sounds with a shape and a name, seems like a daunting task. But I also know that the choice is mine. If it’s important enough to me to know my neighbors, I can decide to pay attention, and that blur in the background will begin to resolve into recognizable living beings.
I miss taking my toddler to the garden, but I’m glad to have played a role in inviting him to put his attention there. And the other morning I heard a new bird call, and for the first time in my life, could put a name to that bird.
Gullsonabeach
Eyes idly resting
at the shore
on a vast and changeless scene
A darker gull is crying
another joins it, crying too
and then a third appears in
regulation gray and white
The first two turn
their cries gain purpose.
Suddenly
the scene slips into focus
and I see.
These two are babies
waiting to be fed.
Mama’s throat works
her babes fight for her beak
over and over
till she walks off
to the water line
to peck and eat,
replenishing.
A sight to common to be seen
has resolved into
a family.
Imagine--A new economy is possible!
Thomas Paine, on Property
“There are two kinds of property,” Paine contended. “Firstly, natural property, or that which comes to us from the Creator of the universe—such as the earth, air, water. Secondly, artificial or acquired property—the invention of men.” The latter kind of property must necessarily be distributed unequally, but the first kind rightfully belonged to everyone equally, Paine thought. It was the “legitimate birthright” of every man and woman, “not charity but a right.”
Paine’s genius was to invent a way to distribute income from shared ownership of natural property. He proposed a “National Fund” to pay every man and woman fifteen pounds at age twenty-one and ten pounds a year after age fifty-five. (These sums are roughly equal to $17,500 and $11,667, respectively, today.) Revenue for the fund would come from “ground rent” paid by land-owners, the privatizers of natural wealth. Paine even showed mathematically how this could work. Presciently, Paine recognized that land, air, and water could be monetized, not just for the benefit of a few but for the good of all. Further, he saw that this could be done at a national level. This was a remarkable feat of analysis and imagining.
Excerpted from With Liberty and Dividends for All, by Peter Barnes
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
The doubling of fossil fuel divestment commitments since January 2014, with181 institutions and local governments and 656 individuals representing over $50 billion dollars having pledged to divest to-date, including the $860 million Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which was built on the Standard Oil fortune.
http://gofossilfree.org/50-billion/
The SoKind registry, an alternative gift registry where instead of giving stuff, people can give more meaningful gifts - of time, of services, etc. www.sokindregistry.org/
A law signed by the Tennessee governor in May providing two years of tuition at a community college or college of applied technology for any high school graduate who agrees to work with a mentor, complete eight hours of community service, and maintain at least a C average.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-end-of-poverty/the-enchanted-land-where-community-college-is-free-tennessee
The stories of Israeli soldiers who have refused to serve in the West Bank and Gaza. (Breaking Ranks, Ronit Chacham)
More resources
Recent posts on other web/blog sites:
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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.org, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
My big news of the month was a week in Nicaragua in early September supporting my son Tim and his family, with the biggest highlight being around 20-month-old Emilio as his language spiked, mostly in Spanish! And by this week, I'm feeling like all the pieces of my post-summer life have been picked back up, and am hopeful that there might even be room for them all.
It was a privilege to be at the big climate march in New York City, and it is a delight to be present to our part of the world turning toward the beauty of fall.
Love,
Pamela
Becoming experts
This spring, before my toddler grandson moved to Nicaragua, I loved taking him out to our community garden, and spending time just being present to the world around us. We smelled the flowers, dug in the dirt, watched the birds flying around, and listened to their songs. He was paying close attention, and the more he looked and listened, the more he took in. As he started to pick up language, among his first twenty words were bird, flower and smell.
Another toddler I know got interested in cars at an early age. He noticed, asked questions, took in and sorted new information, asked more, and now, at age three, can name every make and style as he walks down the street. This phenomenon of people becoming experts at what they pay attention to is everywhere: people who listen to the news each day and know everything about every bad thing that is happening; people who refuse to listen to news, but watch sports instead, and are experts on every team and every player; people who follow the celebrities and know every detail about their movies and their private lives; people who pursue a hobby and become experts in their own little realm.
I think there’s an issue of power here. In a world awash in information, it’s nice to feel like you have mastery over some little bit of it. On the other hand, we can easily give up on whole areas where we despair of mastery. If we don’t know anything about it, don’t have a handle on it, we’re not likely to choose to pay attention to it.
There are areas where we’ve gotten the message that we don’t have aptitude, science for some, arts for others, and areas that we are actually discouraged from investigating. (“Pay no attention to the little man behind the screen,” says Oz the Great and Powerful…) I think of the economists who turn away questions and criticism of their models and policies with proprietary warnings that they must be trusted, that only the experts can be expected to understand.
Yet, despite any obstacle in our path, we can still decide to grow into our own unlikely experts. The bottom line is that we get to choose where we put our attention. We can attune our ears and eyes to what we want to become experts on, knowing that it’s possible to get ever better at what we pay attention to.
If time is a limiting factor, we may choose to withdraw attention from one activity in order to put it on another. Since I don’t want to be an expert on despair, I don’t watch the TV news. Since I do want to be an expert on what gives people hope, I have found ever more places to look, and take the time to look attentively.
What if we chose to pay attention to, and become experts on, that which makes us whole? In choosing to put attention on my place with our neighbors in this ecosystem that we share, I am coming to learn the birds. I am no expert. Far from it! How to pull discreet sounds out of background noise that I often don’t even notice, much less to connect those sounds with a shape and a name, seems like a daunting task. But I also know that the choice is mine. If it’s important enough to me to know my neighbors, I can decide to pay attention, and that blur in the background will begin to resolve into recognizable living beings.
I miss taking my toddler to the garden, but I’m glad to have played a role in inviting him to put his attention there. And the other morning I heard a new bird call, and for the first time in my life, could put a name to that bird.
Gullsonabeach
Eyes idly resting
at the shore
on a vast and changeless scene
A darker gull is crying
another joins it, crying too
and then a third appears in
regulation gray and white
The first two turn
their cries gain purpose.
Suddenly
the scene slips into focus
and I see.
These two are babies
waiting to be fed.
Mama’s throat works
her babes fight for her beak
over and over
till she walks off
to the water line
to peck and eat,
replenishing.
A sight to common to be seen
has resolved into
a family.
Imagine--A new economy is possible!
Thomas Paine, on Property
“There are two kinds of property,” Paine contended. “Firstly, natural property, or that which comes to us from the Creator of the universe—such as the earth, air, water. Secondly, artificial or acquired property—the invention of men.” The latter kind of property must necessarily be distributed unequally, but the first kind rightfully belonged to everyone equally, Paine thought. It was the “legitimate birthright” of every man and woman, “not charity but a right.”
Paine’s genius was to invent a way to distribute income from shared ownership of natural property. He proposed a “National Fund” to pay every man and woman fifteen pounds at age twenty-one and ten pounds a year after age fifty-five. (These sums are roughly equal to $17,500 and $11,667, respectively, today.) Revenue for the fund would come from “ground rent” paid by land-owners, the privatizers of natural wealth. Paine even showed mathematically how this could work. Presciently, Paine recognized that land, air, and water could be monetized, not just for the benefit of a few but for the good of all. Further, he saw that this could be done at a national level. This was a remarkable feat of analysis and imagining.
Excerpted from With Liberty and Dividends for All, by Peter Barnes
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
The doubling of fossil fuel divestment commitments since January 2014, with181 institutions and local governments and 656 individuals representing over $50 billion dollars having pledged to divest to-date, including the $860 million Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which was built on the Standard Oil fortune.
http://gofossilfree.org/50-billion/
The SoKind registry, an alternative gift registry where instead of giving stuff, people can give more meaningful gifts - of time, of services, etc. www.sokindregistry.org/
A law signed by the Tennessee governor in May providing two years of tuition at a community college or college of applied technology for any high school graduate who agrees to work with a mentor, complete eight hours of community service, and maintain at least a C average.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-end-of-poverty/the-enchanted-land-where-community-college-is-free-tennessee
The stories of Israeli soldiers who have refused to serve in the West Bank and Gaza. (Breaking Ranks, Ronit Chacham)
More resources
Recent posts on other web/blog sites:
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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.org, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
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