Category: Activism

Heal the Land & the People? Racism says “Not Here!”

Three years ago, a friend returned from a conference, thrust a book at me, said “You must read this!” – and shifted my perspective on the world.

The book was Cosmosophia, by the Rev. Dr. Theodore Richards (see my Great Reads page for a review). Shortly afterward I contacted Dr. Richads directly… and that was the beginning of a rich connection. Since then I’ve studied under his direction, and helped to promote his work, and have been deeply moved by his writings on the Wisdom Education tradition, and the way he has been putting this tradition into practice in the Chicago Wisdom Project.

An important aspect of the CWP vision is to help children connect not only to their inner wisdom and their ancestral wisdom, but also to the wisdom of the land through practicing permaculture: the Project has been working for some time now toward starting a permaculture farm in Baroda, Michigan.

Having studied permaculture with the Earth Activist Training, I’ve personally experienced the magic that this integrative approach to agriculture and human culture can work…not only in healing the land, but also in healing and empowering those who work the land, as well as raising the consciousness, sustainability and resilience of the surrounding community. It’s work that affirms the message of Martin Luther King, Jr. at its deepest meaning: that we are one people and we are all related to every other being.

So it was with shock that I read the following blog post from Dr. Richards this morning…and I ask you to join me in supporting his petition:

Dr King’s Work Continues: Forty-eight Years Later, Still “Not Welcome”

Dr King’s Work Continues: Forty-eight Years Later, Still “Not Welcome”

“NOT Welcome!” read the email. I stared at it for a while. We were not welcome to build our farm in Baroda, Michigan, apparently. Even though, in the same email, the neighbor claims he does not know what we are doing. [“It is not clear to me what the complete objectives are for this project, who will be ‘farming’ this land, and why you thought it would be appropriate placement in my front yard! NOT welcome at all.” – Gregory Davis]

But hey, I thought, this is just one neighbor. No big deal. But then I got the call from Mike Moran. Mike is running the farm in Michigan and had just returned from a hearing with the town board. A dozen or so neighbors had showed up, bringing pictures they’d printed from our website, bringing wild accusations about what our plans, bringing, most significantly, fear and ignorance that we’d been taught was a thing of the past. I’d seen “Eyes on the Prize.” I knew that when my wife’s family moved to a white neighborhood in Chicago in the eighties she’d faced similar prejudices. But this was 2014. Dr King’s birthday is celebrated as a big, collective “thank you” for getting rid of this kind of thing, or perhaps as a “Day of Service” where people do nice things like feed the homeless. But addressing issues of systemic racism and exclusion are not really part of the narrative.

(read more)

Please sign this petition to ask the town of Baroda to give Wisdom Farm a fair hearing.

Theodore Richards is the director and founder of The Chicago Wisdom Project. He is the author of several books, most recently Creatively Maladjusted: The Wisdom Education Movement Manifesto, finalist for the USA Book Award. His second novel, The Conversions, is to be released in October. He is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including two Independent Publisher Awards, The USA Book Award, and the Nautilus Book Award. He lives in Chicago with his wife and daughters.

As the New Year Approaches, Many Changes

The past year has been a time of completion for so many aspects of my life…most recently, finishing the last independent studies and project of excellence toward my Master’s degree in Applied Healing Arts (now the School of Philosophy and Healing in Action) at the Maryland University for Integrative Health.

I entered the program one year after my husband’s passing, with the intent to reinvent myself and recreate my life…and it has succeeded. During my time in that program, I tapped into my deepest values and purpose for living, and connected with teachers who have changed my life forever: the Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox, Deena Metzger, and Theodore Richards (none of whom are on the faculty of MUIH, but all of whom, amazingly and generously, agreed to work with me remotely as adjuncts).

I am graduating with a book in the works, and a deeper work evolving, feeling profound gratitude for the journey of the past few years, and all the many people who have supported…

So what now? For the moment, a time of retreat and regrouping, while I work out the balancing of this deeper work with my existing copywriting service for sustainable businesses, healing practices, and eco-spiritual nonprofits, Your Words’ Worth. The long-range goal: to build a life in service to the Planet and the People, fostering conscious connection to the Divine embodied in creation through my own work and support of others of like mind.

So SoulPaths will be changing in this direction, offering new conversation circles, talks, book reviews, and promotions of outside events through the Shift Network and others….stay tuned, friends.

The Challenge of Bearing Loving Witness

This past Sunday, a sparkling and bone-chilling day, I went out to the woods with a good friend – a wise man in precarious health, who walks with Death pacing his footsteps. We were going in hopes of meeting with others, to join in a loving circle for the Earth. We waited; no one came. Eventually we went to the spot we’d chosen for the ritual, and after some heart-to-heart conversation on the way things were going in the world, offered our own energy-gifts and prayers to the Mother, and left.

I am still processing the non-event. Was it my (admittedly fuzzy) directions? The short notice? The distance to drive? The chilly temperature? Or was it a simpler, deeper reason: fear of the event itself? Fear of stepping out of LOA lockstep and admitting the truth of what is happening, much less taking any steps in response?

I’d begun my invitation by doing the unthinkable: pointing out the dire situations we’re facing on all too many fronts, and the likelihood that some “negative” feelings (i.e., grief) could quite possibly be involved, and the need for prayers and love to be gifted to the Divine embodied in this precious planet in such devastating pain.

(I’m intentionally not addressing the scientific reasons for the event, which are abundantly documented in brilliant sites such as the Science and Environmental Health Network, Helen Caldicott, M.D.,  Words for a Better World, RAN.org, Commondreams.org, and many others, all of whose articles I share on Facebook.)

But why come out for such a sad purpose? Crowds have come out in positive action against Keystone XL, Monsanto, and fracking. CEOs, local and national legislators, SCOTUS and POTUS, and world leaders are barraged by incessant petitions. The planned removal of the fuel rods from Fukushima’s damaged Unit 4 requires trained nuclear engineers and operators willing to sacrifice their lives (or health at the very least), not ordinary citizens.

What can the ordinary person do beyond what is being done?

LOVE THE EARTH. Over and over again, this is the guidance I am receiving: LOVE THE EARTH.

In the past seven years I have stood by the deathbeds of my husband and my mother, dying of congestive heart failure, and beside the coffins of two aunts, who passed after battles with cancer. In this same period, I have held six of my cats while they died or were put to sleep (due to old age and cancer). I have received a hard education in bearing witness to the passage of a beloved.

While I do not believe that the planet herself will die, it is widely recognized that we are in the midst of mass extinctions in the sea and on land…and that these may quite possibly include the human race. Whatever life forms will survive or evolve out of these devastating earth changes will be very different from those we know now.

Like it or not, to be in any real sense human, we must recognize all that is in the process of passing.  Today’s blame-games and denial seem tantamount to squabbling over our Mother’s impending change, projecting the blame for all that is failing in her body…all the physical abuse and depletion she has suffered over the centuries of sustaining her greedy, willful children.

To clarify: not standing with her as we did at my mother’s bedside, engaging in the painful yet comforting interactions of apology, forgiveness, deep listening and loving and blessing, but rather retreating to another room to stage cathartic psycho-performances focused on her worsening condition and our own self-blame or self-justification, or the imperative of gouging one last demand from her.

What a horrible, futile way to spend the precious time as it ticks remorselessly past.

What if, instead, we humans chose to spend these days in intentional appreciation – yes, sending petitions, protesting, taking all the outward “warrior” actions, but also setting aside time to be spent as gently and sensitively as humanly possible, loving and nurturing  the Earth and her beings in the face of death.

Nearly two years before, I had taken another approach with my husband as he lay drugged and unconscious, fighting massive sepsis two months after heroic, experimental heart surgery. I engaged full-scale in LOA strategy, refusing point-blank to believe at any time that death was a possibility. I gathered teams of Reiki and other energy practitioners, and called on our worldwide community for prayers at each “bump in the road.” When the drugs could do no more, hearing the doctors’ urging to turn off life support was like reaching a sheer drop-off at the end of an elevated expressway …I was still racing ahead, but with nothing beneath me…falling, instead, through open air. There could be no conversation, no exchange of forgiveness and blessing – only my repeated “I’m sorry” between sobs as I watched his heart monitor slow, then flatline. It took months to come to terms with the reality of his passing. I still struggle to connect at a deep level, inwardly bracing myself for loss yet again.

But these were the deaths of single human beings…not the death of massive numbers of individual humans, plants and animals, entire species, ecosystems, even potentially life as we know it on Earth.

How do the two connect? As I see it, faced with death, we have four basic options:

  • To despair, blaming self and others, wallowing in the expectation of loss
  • To relentlessly and remorselessly deny the inevitability of any ending
  • To value life more highly and live more purposefully, resisting death as long as possible while seeing it as the wise advisor who gives meaning to life
  • To connect with a larger picture in which nothing happens in isolation and everything is connected, in which death may be the gateway through which an individual’s – or a species’ – influence and impact transcend the body…as I came to see it was for my mother and husband.

It is easiest, least risky, least painful, to choose the first two, focusing on the patient as object or victim, focusing on the external body, disease process, and overwhelming physical needs, imagining and projecting the patient’s experience (or distancing oneself with the platitude “I can’t imagine what you must be going through”), or worse, speaking of the patient as if s/he were an empty, unaware thing in the bed, rather interacting directly with the whole person as a total mind/body/spirit entity.

It is terrifying to engage with another human being as they stand with their toes curled at the brink of the unknown…hanging ten at the drop edge of yonder …how much more terrifying to engage directly with a planet whose compromised ecosystems are in similar condition…  especially when this whole culture is based on the belief that the Earth is an unaware, unconscious object? Couldn’t this be done by indoor workshops or energy circles, safely in centrally-heated rooms?

My experience: reading a hospice handbook on the dying process – even doing a guided visualization on death — is very different from standing at a loved one’s deathbed with eyes and heart open. Reading of a rainforest being slashed and burned is very different from sitting in a secluded glade and feeling the screams of a single tree being dismembered by loggers, or struggling through deep muddy tire tracks and crushed underbrush to touch the stumps and shreds of trees hauled away. Reading even the most heart-wrenchingly written petition on the death of our watersheds is very different from standing on the cracked earth of a dried-up streambed and bearing witness to the dying trees and silence of wildlife dead or fled.

The wisdom of the imagination is very different from the wisdom of the heart and spirit connecting to the wisdom of the Earth – in the moment, on the spot, having the courage and vulnerability to bear witness to devastating realities and listen without theory or preconception or interpretation to the guidance of the Earth regarding appropriate and necessary action in response.

What results from this distancing, I ask? Consciousness can be righteously raised in theory with no resulting actual action, personal cost or long-term outward effect.  There are those who say that the brain does not know the difference between reality and ritual (or process)…while this may be true for some, I have not experienced this beyond a very limited degree. A guided visualization or process, like divination – I say – is necessarily limited by the inward filters of the person visualizing…unless support is given to weaken those filters and facilitate an opening to new insights.

I say – for Pity’s sake – it’s time to go out to the woods and the water, to love, to grieve and to bear witness, to invite the wisdom of the Earth to speak in sacred space, and to listen!

At the very least, this wisdom can speak of meeting extinction with dignity, “not go(ing) gently into that good night.” At best – witnessing the Spirit-based actions of Idle No More, who is to say that Earth wisdom, if humbly and sincerely sought, may not guide us to answers? And who has not heard of the “exceptional patients” who were given weeks or months to live, and who, supported by love and prayers, made a miraculous turn-around?

The next Loving Circle will be offered on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, again at 2:00 p.m. The place in Maryland will be announced within a day or two. Watch for the Facebook event and Calendar event here.

Indigenous Elders and Medicine Peoples Council Statement on Fukushima (reblogging)

Reblogging from http://www.indigenousaction.org/indigenous-elders-and-medicine-peoples-council-statement-on-fukushima/ – This Message Must Be Heard!
October 31, 2013
Council Statement
This statement reflects the wisdom of the Spiritual People of the Earth, of North and South America, working in unity to restore peace, harmony and balance for our collective future and for all living beings. This statement is written in black and white with a foreign language that is not our own and does not convey the full depth of our concerns.The Creator created the People of the Earth into the Land at the beginning of Creation and gave us a way of life. This way of life has been passed down generation-to-generation since the beginning. We have not honored this way of life through our own actions and we must live these original instructions in order to restore universal balance and harmony. We are a part of Creation; thus, if we break the Laws of Creation, we destroy ourselves.

We, the Original Caretakers of Mother Earth, have no choice but to follow and uphold the Original Instructions, which sustains the continuity of Life. We recognize our umbilical connection to Mother Earth and understand that she is the source of life, not a resource to be exploited.

We speak on behalf of all Creation today, to communicate an urgent message that man has gone too far, placing us in the state of survival. We warned that one day you would not be able to control what you have created. That day is here.

Not heeding warnings from both Nature and the People of the Earth keeps us on the path of self destruction. This self destructive path has led to the Fukushima nuclear crisis, Gulf oil spill, tar sands devastation, pipeline failures, impacts of carbon dioxide emissions and the destruction of ground water through hydraulic fracking, just to name a few. In
addition, these activities and development continue to cause the deterioration and destruction of sacred places and sacred waters that are vital for Life.

Powerful technologies are out of control and are threatening the future of all life. The Fukushima nuclear crisis alone is a threat to the future of humanity. Yet, our concern goes far beyond this single threat. Our concern is with the cumulative and compounding devastation that is being wrought by the actions of human beings around the world.

It is the combination of resource extraction, genetically modified organisms, moral failures, pollution, introduction of invasive species and much much more that are threatening the future of life on Earth. The compounding of bad decisions and their corresponding actions are extremely short-sighted. They do not consider the future generations and they do not respect or honor the Creator’s Natural Law.

We strongly urge for the governmental authorities to respond with an open invitation to work and consult with us to solve the world’s problems, without war. We must stop waging war against Mother Earth, and ourselves.

We acknowledge that all of these devastating actions originated in human beings who are living without regard for the Earth as the source of life.
They have strayed from the Original Instructions by casting aside the Creator’s Natural Law. It is now critical for humanity to acknowledge that we have created a path to self destruction. We must restore the Original Instructions in our lives to halt this devastation.

The sanctity of the Original Instructions has been violated. As a result, the Spiritual People of the Earth were called ceremonially to come together at the home of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle. These Spiritual Leaders and those that carry great responsibility for their people from both North and South America came together with the sacred fire for four days at the end of September 2013 to fulfill their sacred responsibilities.

During this time it was revealed that the spirit of destruction gained its’ strength by our spiritually disconnected actions. We are all responsible in varying degrees for calling forth this spirit of destruction, thus we are all bound to begin restoring what we have damaged by helping one another recover our sacred responsibility to the Earth.

We, the Original Caretakers of Mother Earth, offer our spiritual insight, wisdom and vision to the global community to help guide the actions
needed to overcome the current threats to all life.

We only have to look at our own bodies to recognize the sacred purpose
of water on Mother Earth. We respect and honor our spiritual relationship
with the lifeblood of Mother Earth. One does not sell or contaminate their
mother’s blood. These capitalistic actions must stop and we must recover
our sacred relationship with the Spirit of Water.

The People of the Earth understand that the Fukushima nuclear crisis continues to threaten the future of all life. We understand the full implications of this crisis even with the suppression of information and the filtering of truth by the corporate owned media and Nation States. We strongly urge the media, corporations and Nation States to acknowledge and convey the true facts that threaten us, so that the international
community may work together to resolve this crisis, based on the foundation of Truth.

We urge the international community, government of Japan and TEPCO to unify efforts to stabilize and re-mediate the nuclear threat posed at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. To ensure that the Japanese government and TEPCO are supported with qualified personnel and information, we urge the inclusion of today’s nuclear experts from around the world to collaborate, advise and provide technical assistance to prevent further radioactive contamination or worse, a nuclear explosion that may have apocalyptic consequences.

The foundation for peace will be strengthened by restoring the Original Instructions in ourselves Prophecies have been shared and sacred instructions were given. We, the People of the Earth, were instructed that the original wisdom must be shared again when imbalance and disharmony are upon Mother Earth.

In 1994 the sacred white buffalo, the giver of the sacred pipe, returned to the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people bringing forth the sacred message that the winds of change are here. Since that time many more messengers in the form of white animals have come, telling us to wake up my children. It is time. So listen for the sacred instruction.

All Life is sacred. We come into Life as sacred beings. When we abuse the
sacredness of Life we affect all Creation We urge all Nations and human beings around the world to work with us, the Original Caretakers of Mother Earth, to restore the Original Instructions and uphold the Creator’s Natural Law as a foundation for all decision making, from this point forward.

Our collective future as human beings is in our hands, we must address the Fukushima nuclear crisis and all actions that may violate the Creator’s Natural Law. We have reached the crossroads of life and the end of our existence. We will avert this potentially catastrophic nuclear disaster by coming together with good minds and prayer as a global community of all faiths.

We are the People of the Earth united under the Creator’s Law with a sacred covenant to protect and a responsibility to extend Life for all future generations. We are expressing deep concern for our shared future and urge everyone to awaken spiritually. We must work in unity to help Mother Earth heal so that she can bring back balance and harmony
for all her children.

View the original statement with signatures here (PDF): COUNCIL_FUKUSHIMA_STATEMENT_OCT_2013.(http://www.indigenousaction.org/indigenous-elders-and-medicine-peoples-council-statement-on-fukushima/council_fukushima_statement_oct_2013/)

Representatives of the Council

Chief Arvol Looking Horse
19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe
Spiritual Leader
The Great Sioux Nation

Bobby C. Billie
Clan Leader and Spiritual Leader
Council of the Original Miccosukee
Simanolee Nation Aboriginal Peoples

Faith Spotted Eagle, Tunkan Inajin Win
Brave Heart Society Grandmother/Headswoman & Ihanktonwan Treaty Council
Ihanktonwan Dakota from the Oceti Sakowin

7 Council Fires
– ADDITIONAL SIGNATURES TO FOLLOW –
Number of Views: 1100

 

Loving Circle for the Earth

Trees from the boreal forest of Alberta, Canada, cut and stacked like matchsticks to make way for a new Tar Sands excavation.

I usually do something at this time of year around the Day of the Dead/Samhain/All Souls, toward honoring our ancestors. This year, however, I have been haunted by accounts of the dying of the ocean…the razing of the forests for Tar Sands and toilet tissue, for oil and hydropower…the massive injustices being perpetrated by the U.S. government.

I’ve been silenced by sheer overwhelm at the enormity of the social and environmental destruction…and I have heard so many others expressing similar feelings of overwhelm and despair.

The words that have kept coming back to me are: “We need to be loving them in their passing.” Not only fighting to save the beings that are dying, the species that are being extinguished, the planet herself in the vast wounding of extraction and contamination, but also sending them specifically LOVING energy in the recognition that it may be too late.

So on Saturday, while I was on a woods-walking retreat, the guidance came: to offer a Reiki/energy sending afternoon this coming weekend in an outdoor setting, specifically focused on sending LOVE via whichever healing modality(ies) we practice, to those beings/elements of our earth, known and unknown, that are so direly on the edge…or tipped/tipping already.

Part of this may look like grieving, and I suspect that some grief release may be involved for what has already been lost. But the deeper intent is to give the sort of love and cherishing that one gives a hospice patient – aware that all things end, that our species is responsible for too many ends, and loving fiercely those beings that remain.

Just that – LOVING. And who knows but that such love might make a difference?

So I’m inviting you to join me in spirit or in person on the afternoon of Sunday Nov 3, at 2:00 in the Avalon area of Patapsco State Park (see the location info below) for a meditation/healing circle for the Mother.

We’ll begin with a brief song/drumming ritual to unite our energies and intentions, and we will close with song and drumming, so please bring a drum or percussion instrument if you have one!

If you feel so called, you might also bring a small natural object (e.g., a stone, a crystal, a pine cone, a seashell, a handful of tobacco or cornmeal, worm tea, etc.) to charge with your loving intention and give to the Earth.

Or if you aren’t nearby, and want to take part at that time at a distance, please join us remotely. To register for this event, please go to https://www.facebook.com/events/175404279330553/.

Please share this invitation! For more information, email me at philahoopes @ gmail.com.

Thank you!

“Someday someone will isolate the frequency of love and build a machine to transmit it. Calling it Smith’s Healing Rays, they will charge to beam it at our injured parts. And we may forget it was ours all the time. But for now, we will call it TREE.

The fabricated TREE will not be as effective as what we can develop within ourselves. For TREE is individual, each person sending that love particular to her/his being and no computer can simulate the variety, tenderness and efficaciousness of the heart. TREE is particular, but it is also collective, not the act of one person, but of several, not exclusively an act of intimacy, but also of community. And TREE is not what we have associated with healing, the sucking into our own healthy bodies of a disease occupying another, but rather the loving saturation of the other body with the healing light originating in the heart.”

– Deena Metzger, TREE: Essays & Pieces

_________________________________________

Here is the webpage for the Avalon area of Patapsco:

http://www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/central/patapscoavalon.asp

We’ll meet at the Visitor Center and then go from there – for this reason, it’s important that you arrive at 2:00! There are two places where we could do the actual circle – at the Cascade Falls nearby, or right by the Patapsco. We’ll need to play it by ear, depending on the number of people (partiers, hikers, etc) in the area at the time and the energy of the group.

Patapsco State Park – Avalon Entrance
5120 South Street
Arbutus, MD 21227

Link: <https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode&q=Patapsco+Valley+State+Park%2C+5120+South+Street%2C+Arbutus%2C+MD+21227&aq&sll=39.21972%2C-76.704998&sspn=0.110648%2C0.200157&vpsrc=0&ie=UTF8&hq=Patapsco+Valley+State+Park%2C+5120+South+Street%2C+Arbutus%2C+MD+21227&hnear&radius=15000&ll=39.247941%2C-76.68354&spn=0.110604%2C0.200157&t=m&z=12&iwloc=A&cid=14954589578245953755>

 

 

Supporting Those Who Support the Change

For a long time now – going back to this site’s .wordpress.com days – I’ve been promoting occasional events and organizations that spoke deeply to my heart and soul. And today, after a weekend of life-changing personal shifts, SoulPaths is taking the first steps toward its next incarnation – celebrating those who are driving the Great Change our world so badly needs.

I’m thrilled to share the news that Starhawk, under whose direction I spent a life-changing two weeks studying the principles of permaculture design at Earth Activist Training – Starhawk, the culture-changing voice of Goddess spirituality and earth consciousness who led ritual at the WTO protests in Seattle and set up the (permaculture-based) camp for Occupy at McPherson Square in DC – Starhawk, who’s held a vision for empowered, peaceful, grassroots actions for decades now, has now published her book on the topic…

Starhawk will be offering a telecourse on Empowerment Through Collaboration: How to Create Transformative Community through the Evolver Network and Living Mandala, July 2 through August 6, online as a webinar.

Whether you are a street activist, a Transition Town participant, or working out the principles of sustainable living with an intentional household or eco-village, in this course you can “learn how to make your participation in groups, in all of its aspects, an expression of your highest ideals.”

If you have any desire at all to help create the global change that is so badly needed, don’t miss this training. She and her guest speakers will be giving interactive mentoring on topics such as…

  • The Balance of Power and Responsibility
  • Communication and Trust
  • Empowering Leadership
  • Conflict, Trauma, and Dealing with Difficult People
  • Meetings and Facilitation

Oh – and in the interest of full disclosure, yes, as an ambassador of the Evolver Network, I will receive a small commission if you do sign up…..but that’s not why I’m making this announcement. I’m making it because Starhawk’s work is profound and powerful, because it is helping to create the peaceful change our world needs, and because it needs and deserves to be shared widely. Seriously – don’t miss this training.

Three Protestors’ Choice Presages a Planet’s Fate

(Posted March 28 as One Woman’s Choice Presages a Planet’s Fate)

This is the story of Idle No More hunger strikers Jeannette Pilot,  Chief Theresa Spence, and Grand Elder Raymond Robinson, each of whom concluded prolonged hunger- and/or thirst-strikes as directed by Spirit, with the realization that their  lives and voices would have a greater impact than their deaths.  Their protests speak for every nation and people – from Canada to Arkansas, to Brazil, Peru and Ecuador, Nigeria and Australia – whose land and water are stolen and desecrated and poisoned for the sake of oil.

Jeannette Pilot is almost certainly dying as I write…and her choice to lay down her life for the Land and her People has haunted me now for weeks. Not only for the tragedy of her death, but also its implications for the world.

Jeannette Pilot

The story broke quietly, and has had no follow-ups: only Idle No More initially ran the news that Mme. Pilot had chosen to move from her 2-1/2 month hunger strike into also declining fluids, in an effort to force the Harper administration to cease its assaults on Canadian land, water, and Indigenous  sovereignty.

Describing herself simply as an Innu woman from Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam, Mme. Pilot declared herself

ready to go to the end so that the rights of the First Nations are recognized, and to fight alongside the IDLE NO MORE movement for the people and the future generations. I demand that Harper’s Conservative government stop its modification of certain laws and its imposition of others without first consulting the people who will be affected by them.

She went on to list a series of draconian laws that sweep away environmental protections (such as the Navigation Protection Act, which under the guise of “removing red tape” also removes protections from any waterway that is not navigable – i.e., protecting navigation but opening the land and water to exploitation) while whittling away the sovereign rights of Indigenous peoples on the land (such as the Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act, which aims to impose non-Native social and property-ownership concepts on DSCN0020Traditional Native communities on the reserves).

View of the Labradorian boreal forest, 2006

She closed her statement with a heart-wrenching account of the desecration being wreaked upon the boreal forest following the wholesale removal of environmental protections:

…I demand a moratorium on the massive deforestation of the boreal forest in Nitassinan and the province of Québec. The state of the forests, the pace of deforestation, and the carelessness of the band councils and the government call to mind the tragedies in Malaysia or the Amazon. To satisfy the companies’ insatiable thirst, the government is still issuing logging permits. These permits could endanger fragile ecosystems and threaten indigenous peoples’ traditional lifestyles. Because, as Innu, we must preserve the link between Pappassik and Atik, we condemn the fact that the government of Québec, the government of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the federal government of Canada are threatening our age-old relationship with Atik by making Labrador a forbidden area, forbidding us from hunting caribou on that territory.

Make no mistake: she is describing ecocide and genocide. No other terms can be used. And Mme. Pilot, in laying down her life for the sake of the land and her people’s right to practice their ancient traditions on the land, is sounding a wake-up call – even though her statement has generated only a small acknowledgement in Parliament, as opposed to the storm of reposts throughout the blogosphere.

Water on Earth: the large drop represents all of Earth’s water; the small drop shows all fresh water; the tiny spot below it indicates the fresh water available for use.

But it is the powerful statement contained in the way she has chosen to die that haunts me: thirst.

Of all the elements on this planet today, none is under greater attack than water. Only 3% of all the water on Earth is fresh and usable by humans; of that, only 0.007% is available for use.  Of that, the vast majority is used for energy, agriculture and industry.

The entire process of producing fossil fuel energy, from extracting fuel to generating power, demands massive use of water. Of that water, little or none emerges in any useable condition ; most is irredeemably toxic and must be disposed of in some way – often poisoning available groundwater.

Before the new legislation, Canada’s Navigable Waters Protection Act covered more than 2 million lakes and over 8,500 rivers across the country. The new law, C-45, covers only 97 lakes and 62 rivers, leaving Canada’s share of the world’s fresh water wide open to the massive depletion required for energy production, whether through Tar Sands extraction, fracking, or uranium mining.

As the Harper government prepares to consume Canada’s wealth of water for energy production, and poison what is left — echoing what is being done wholesale by governmental fiat and international trade in the U.S., South America, and elsewhere around the globe —  Jeannette Pilot’s terminal water fast presages the thirst that we will all experience if we do not act to stop our equally suicidal destruction of Earth’s water supply in our greedy and obsolete quest for fossil fuel energy.
_____________________________________________________
Update: 4/6/13 – Jeannette Pilot/Shanet Pilouss was the second of the First Nations peoples of Canada to undertake a hunger strike to the end, demanding that the Harper government alter its ecocidal/genocidal course against the land, water and indigenous peoples of the half-continent his administration rules. She was the first to stat a thirst strike…and halted her strike at a promise of support  from the Ghislain Picard, Chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador (AFNQL ), and  Chief Georges-Ernest Grégoire and the Board of Uashat mak mani Utenam.

I just learned with grief that another First Nations elder is hunger- and thirst-striking to protest the Harper government’s juggernaut-like overrunning of Indigenous rights. Grand Elder Raymond Robinson, who first began fasting with Chief Theresa Spence, is edging nearer to death while the most government officials can seem to say is “We hope he stops” – while completely ignoring the message  that he, Jeannette Pilot, and Chief Spence have been risking their lives to send.

To quote the Cree proverb: “Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money”.

Nor can we drink it. Nor can we breathe it.

Let me close with the words of Indigenous  peoples from around the world on the scarcity and sacredness of water.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Midpoint: Winter to Spring

Decompressing after a long day of passionate work, promoting a client’s upcoming seminar series, I stumble on an article and video and step through a window in time…

Twenty-eight years ago I was singing these songs in a living-room folk band with the man I would later marry. Today, seven years and a few weeks after his death, I listen to these songs as I have so many times before, and remember exactly the feel and taste and smell of those days…the feeling of being young, newly on my own, intoxicated with freedom and love and music and art and a liberated, bohemian lifestyle after a so-conservative childhood.

A new friend, another widow, said to me recently that when her husband died, “the technicolor went out of her life.” I know what she means, as I work now to regain my zest, confidence, intentionality, sense of living from my heart.

Unused memberships in singles networks still occasionally beckon – do I want to go out on nervous, hesitant coffee dates, hoping I will recognize a kindred spirit across a crowded room as I did once, 29 years ago? Not really. I’m still looking for someone whose powdered bones I and a group of family and friends sprinkled into a river seven years ago.

Work is the best medicine now, as spirit and serendipity guide my copy writing business into new directions and new clientele… changemakers serving Spirit and creation. Still emerging from a deep dark period, I simply follow the energy, discovering tools for growth and transformation, finding new confidence in my inner resources, witnessing miracles taking place in magical connections and undreamed-of developments. We’re a week past Imbolc, ancient turning-point from winter toward spring. The daffodils’ greenery has emerged and buds are forming; some enterprising forsythia are already blooming.

Awhile back I posted an invitation to a support circle for widows who are transitioning from deep loss into finding their voice and purpose for living…that invitation hasn’t been forgotten. In keeping with a circle of empowerment to honor our inner knowing and the wisdom gained from our scars, I’m looking toward the week of spring equinox, March 16 – 22. Bring flowers to hold the intention of your blossoming, eggs for the promise of new beginnings.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YuaZcylk_o]

Our Responsibility, Our Power

I shut down another conversation the other day on Facebook. Didn’t intend to do it…but my comment was one of those that are met with embarrassed averted eyes and even more embarrassed silences.

No, I wasn’t sharing the intimate details of my health,  sex life, or bathroom habits. I wasn’t evangelizing or objecting to the exclusive holiday greeting “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Easter” or what have you (though I do object to such exclusivity, early and often).

So what taboo did I break in this supposedly taboo-free society? I responded to a friend’s posting of Elaine Boosler’s comment: “When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It’s a whole different way of thinking.”

I pointed out that even if women hold ourselves aloof from macho male militarism, as long as we are purchasing goods that are kept artificially cheap by American companies’ outsourcing to regions with lower standards of living, extracting fossil fuels, minerals, tropical woods and other resources from impoverished nations that are happy to sell off their virgin ecosystems for desperately needed cash, and employing workers in sweatshops at below-living wages, that we, the nonviolent women, are morally responsible for the militarism that protects the companies that provide these goods.

It’s the truth that nobody wants to acknowledge. It’s so much easier to blame somebody else – Extremists in Congress, the Military,  the unchecked Corporations otherwise known as The Bigs – Big Oil, Big Coal,  Big Agro, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big X – Big Y – Big Z  – when the truth is that none of these powerful perceived villains would ever have gotten their power or grown to their cancerous size without our buy-in…our votes (or non-votes)…our taxes…our energy and dietary and health care choices…our “therapeutic” shopping…feeding them.

But what other choice do we have in our society, we ask? Surely we need oil to run our cars, warm our houses, make the uncountable numbers of plastic and resin and synthetic-fabric products that fill our homes and offices and hospitals and …well, you get the idea…our society is based on petroleum products! Surely we need coal to keep our lights on and our appliances and  computers running – how can a few (hundred) mountaintops and valley ecosystems and species compare to the importance of keeping the power on? Surely we need industrial agriculture to feed our families – not to mention the hungry of the world, isn’t Monsanto solving the problem of world hunger with their genetic tinkering? And pharmaceuticals keep our symptoms at bay, and insurance pays for the rising costs of modern healthcare…well, some of them, anyway…

It all comes down to the core belief that we don’t really have any other options. We’re not in a position to argue – we just have to make the best of the godawful, toxic situation we’ve got, with the Bigs getting bigger every day, the planet getting more compromised every day, more ecosystems and species failing every day, while our balances of money – and hope – grow smaller every day.

And the popular solutions? Work! Shop! Eat! Watch television! Go to the movies or the casino!  Pump up that flabby sixpack at the gym or on WII Fit! Invade another country on World of Warcraft!  Ingest narcotic substances! Reality is a nightmare, so let’s go virtual, or numb out completely! And maybe before it all goes down, science will have found a way to get us off this planet to embrace mankind’s Destiny: despoiling other planets, having trashed our Mother Earth.

What a grim scenario…no wonder nobody wants to talk about it! With our eyes myopically fixed on the situation-as-it-is, our energy and our brainpower enmeshed in our jobs, we’re frantically scrabbling to save what we have, make small changes  (sure, we say, I’m eco-conscious! I’ve swapped all my lightbulbs and I’m a real nut about recycling!).  But God forbid we challenge any core certitudes (least of all our own) or consider making deep changes in our lives….

….because we can’t.…

But what if we do have other options? Maybe, as theologian Matthew Fox proposes in Original Blessing, this apparent hopelessness, this paralyzing “I can’t-ism” itself stems from a self-negating certitude* that needs challenging: the certitude that we, ourselves, are somehow insufficient, powerless, not capable of self-motivation, self-management, direct connection with the Divine. The certitude that we need others, more powerful,  richer, more authoritative, more degreed, more ecclesiastically accredited, to employ us, direct us and control things for us.  The certitude that we are isolated individuals who cannot change our own lives… much less our society…much less our world. The certitude that we, alone, personally need to control and drive any change we initiate, and that this is a crushing, impossible responsibility.

As Betty Friedan wrote – “Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women’s denigration of themselves.” Or rather, make that humans’ denigration of ourselves….

But what if we can come up with other solutions…or notice the solutions that already exist, right under our noses…solutions that might start with lightbulbs and recycling, sure, but go much, much deeper….? What if we start to believe that our imaginations, our intent, our love – not just our anger and frustration – can move mountains?

What if, when we (metaphorically) pray for rain, we start carrying umbrellas?

Awhile back I attended an afternoon symposium called Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream, and just recently trained as a facilitator. It’s a multimedia, interactive program developed by the Pachamama Alliance, bringing together the best of millenia-old indigenous wisdom with the most visionary concepts of the modern scientific worldview to create an environmentally sustainable, socially just, spiritually fulfilling culture on the Earth.

In one portion of the symposium, we gather together with others in our community to discuss and discover what we are already doing – and can do. We link up our ideas, campaigns, organizations. Most important, we discover that we are not alone…that there is a groundswell of likeminded people stirring at the grassroots level, group after group arising to save one aspect of the planet, or to care for one group of the People…and another…and another…

We watch Paul Hawken’s “Blessed Unrest” speech and realize that millions of such organizations are working today around the earth…as the Achuar people who initiated the Pachamama Alliance say, it is the spirit of the conscious planet taking action to protect herself, and her life forms…inspiring people to do the work that is needed, guiding them along the way to find the right connections and resources…

We. Are. Not. Alone.

I could quote Goethe at this point, about the Universe acting to support us once we commit ourselves…but instead, I’ll close this post with a story.

Last week I went on a two-day retreat with a very wise and unassuming holy woman. I was struggling with my own forms of confusion and “I can’t-ism” – moving from work with one Teacher to seek a stronger connection to the Light within. In our conversations, she urged me to ask for inner guidance, and listen not only with my mind but also with  my heart and body…to sit in “eyeball to eyeball” conversation with Spirit, however I experienced Spirit, and seek the inner voice, not in desperation or begging or presumptive problem-solving, but in silence.

After our conversation, she sent me to seek and follow inner guidance for the day – whether  to sit indoors and read, meditate, and journal, or go outside to walk the grounds and connect with the Earth for grounding and direction.

So I went outside, asking for direction, noting the springs that arose from the ground and cut across the fields toward a wetland at the bottom of the property. Drawn to follow them, I stood at the bank of a small stream, barely a foot wide, and felt led to step over it, onto a small island completely surrounded by small separate streams. Ahead of me, two trees called to my attention. I approached, and between the trees found a pile of rusted metal junk, and felt the inner calling to remove it.

“How?” I asked, and the inner leading directed me back to the house…where my hostess was talking with her neighbor, a farmer who had been working  for years on cleaning up and restoring the wetland. He was delighted to provide a wheelbarrow and practical advice for the job.  My hostess provided work gloves and boots, and thus supplied, I had the pile cleared within a couple of hours, receiving further guidance in every quandary.

The message was clear: ask for guidance and it would come, step by step…if I consciously remained focused and aware. Whether I chose to say it came from God, Goddess, the Earth, the Universe, the Unified Field, what have you, the guidance came. I was not alone – guided by the Divine, the Earth, and helped by the People, and I could create a change. Yes, a small change…but a change, a beginning.

I believe that this is the key to real and lasting change, not on behalf of the planet, but in partnership with Spirit, the People, and the sentient Earth….and that each of us is capable of that partnership.

And I would like to invite your stories of similar experiences, if you are willing. If you feel called to share, please add them in the Comments below, or email them to me at phila @ soulpathsthejourney.org. Together we can create an empowering affirmation of partnership that goes beyond our individual abilities.

Thank you!

______________

* Matthew Fox, Original Blessing (Santa Fe, NM. Bear & Company, 1983) p. 120