On Valentines Day it feels like others join us in our outward celebration of love. I remember when we first asked someone to take on promoting our book, Sacred Commerce, they agreed to do so but however requested we change or take out the word LOVE. After all, you couldn't really mix that with business! Well, we shared that without the LOVE it wouldn't be who we are or what we are up to.
For us the Sacred is LOVE.
Love of all.
In recent weeks, I have found myself wishing for a resolution of the violence in the world. I have wished that both the police and protestors at the occupy encampments across the nation could find a way to practice non-violence in their actions. I have often wished that economists, politicians, and those in academia would practice non-violence in their suppositions, beliefs, and attitudes. And, like many of you, I have wished that the people around me (close friends, family, people next to me on the bus) could practice non-violence day to day in their interactions.
It isn’t every day that you hear great music with a real message. I mean, not everyone is John Lennon or Bob Marley – right?
That’s what I thought, but I had to think again when Erin Ross introduced me to Luminaries, a Venice based consciousness-expanding Hip Hop group whose history as teachers, social workers, activists, MCs, and instruments of service informs their music and their message. These are not just incredible musicians, but messengers of hope, whose song titles on their debut album, “One,” read like a list of mantras: “Everything is One,” “Only Love,” “Show the World,” “Peace” and “Be the Change.”
In the Abounding River Logbook, one of the six currents is creation. We say that active creativity is essential to achieving abundance. We must both actively create things in the world, and actively see and create a vision of abundance. I access creativity through taking personal responsibility. I take responsibility for how I’m acting, what I’m producing, but also what I am actively creating and envisioning. I take responsibility for my vision of the world, and recognize that I can not only create a new vision, but recognize that I have been actively creating my vision of the world all along.
I created a design that was six years in the making that I made become my vision of the world. Out of my education and work in social justice, I envisioned an invasive tree that took too much from the soil. The tree represented the power structures and oppressive systems I wasn’t committed to. In my design (see second image) I created a tearing up of the tree through various metaphorical imagery (vines tugging down the branches, something rotting away the roots… branches being cut off). All of these metaphors I lived by- on how to deconstruct the tree that I saw as being damaging to the overall environment.
And deconstruction is how my life looked for 6 years. I used criticism against everything without much idea for how to instill hope or rebirth after the death of the system. I used various methods of social change to address problems that I saw, and constantly came across seeing that I was never bringing answers or solutions to them. My experience of the world was through that vision that I was actively creating and recreating. Two weeks ago I really noticed that my tree metaphor wasn’t working for me to create hope. So I set off to find a new image, a rebirth of the tree, or something that I was committed to. I created the image above, the conclusion of the oppressive tree, and a new habitat for a rebirth. In my vision, the roots have been torn away to where all is left is love. Rooted in love, a new sprout is born and there is pure possibility.
As a means to re-train myself in my new vision, I’m taking on the 365 day challenge. Every day for the next year I am creating a piece of art with this new image. Every day through this creativity I am actively creating hope in the world by transforming my vision and by physically expressing my vision to others. I am day by day re-inscribing a new belief through my repeated creations.
The Idea for the practice of 365 projects came from Noah Scalin, who took on creating one image every day with a different medium himself, and then created a journal to encourage others. Check out the book here; check out some of the variations of my design here. This week I invite you to look at what belief you have that’s causing you suffering. Taking responsibility for it as your creation and not truth is empowering. What can you actively create in its place? What belief can you adopt that serves you and serves the planet? We say that a belief is a thought practiced over and over again. What new thought can you begin with today?
WOW! Over the past few weeks I’ve been getting my PhD in Not Taking it Personally. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a powerful declaration of what I’m up to in the world and how I am using my physical body to portray it and be the change I wish to see in the world. I am proud and empowered by literally taking Gandhi’s words into my life and make my life be dedicated to rupturing the oppressions that I feel and see in the world. How this shows up, is that I don’t shave my legs and I’ve recently tried stopping plucking the hairs from my chin. It has taken me several steps to get to this place of first noticing where I’m feeling disempowered, then making a difference, and now- speaking out about it. I thought that I had it all figured out, that I was on top of any feeling of unworthiness and truly in my power as a woman fully in choice and freedom around my body. Well, rarely are we ever done and finished with learning lessons. As I’ve heard time and time again- as soon as you declare something, everything else shows up.
Immediately after posting I found comments on my blog that were hateful and degrading to me and my commitment. I found that a link to my blog was mentioned on another website with dozens of responses and reactions to my commitment with disgust and hatred. I felt attacked, alone, diminished, defensive, angry… and then I recognized what work there is to do from my seat. My emotional reaction to the circumstances of their comments is my work to push through. It’s human to feel sadness with criticism and defensive with aggressive words… and it’s my job to stay in my commitments and weather the storm. As Kindred Spirit reminds me, upsets are not personal:
The Raw Food Family are a couple of parents, Katie and Ka, and their four beautiful children, who have been enjoying a lifestyle full of raw foods and travel together for over 6 years.
Their journey began when their second child, Jaro, developed a persistent cough, and was diagnosed with asthma. "Our small, pure son with asthma? I just thought 'I don't want this to be true! I want to have two healthy children and not to worry all the time." Ka opened himself to guidance, and found it while perusing his mother's bookshelf: "If you want to be healthy, forget about cooking."
Jaro bounced back quickly, and was a vibrant healthy baby by the time he was 2. The family decided that they were all committed to living vibrant, healthy lives together, and transitioned from 80% raw, to 90%, to 100%.
This week I encourage you to be courageously transparent. Consider that we create walls surrounding our authentic selves in fear of not being loved. As Matthew Engelhart says, all we are ever really saying is “love me” or “I love you”. I’m beginning to notice that most of us are so caught up in ourselves, trying to conceal parts of ourselves in fear of not being loved that we don’t look up to see others.
Sometimes I feel so alone that I never open my eyes to see that I am constantly in community and there are millions feeling the same way. What will it take for us to be loved? Be ourselves! This week I invite you to open up to your truest self, whatever that means to you. If there is something that you are hiding in fear of judgment, then you are not giving others the opportunity to love all of you, to love you to the core. I invite you to crack your castle walls and lower your defenses to be seen for who you truly are. Maybe this means thinning a mask of makeup for a day. Maybe this means expressing when you are hurt. Maybe, just maybe, it means telling someone that you love them. How funny we are in our aim to be loved and yet withhold loving. It’s up to us to break the cycle. My invitation to you is to lower your walls and connect more deeply with those around you. Imagine a community of people truly knowing each other and having such a safe container to love each other in. Know that the only thing at stake in speaking up is your ego. Remember that we love you, that you are powerful, that you are perfect. Thank you for who you are, and for who you aren’t.
Sometimes being with the upset of others is easy for me. When my best friend, or my lover come to me, complaining, afraid and resistant, sometimes a soft smile will grace my face. Of course, I’m not happy that they are upset, but I am able to stand and watch their stormy emotions, be present for their experience of fear and separation, and smile at the beautifully human experience that they get to have, and that they will watch me have some day. I choose loving them unconditionally, and so I choose to be present for their upsets too.
With other people – coworkers, acquaintances, and friends’ partners - it can be more challenging to hold the seat of unconditional love. I think part of the challenge here comes from my ego trying to insist that, “I didn’t choose these people!” Speaking from experience, I can say that it is much harder for me to be present for someone’s upset when I feel like I didn't choose them and want them to go away.
Today, I am practicing choosing people that are a stretch for me to love. It allows me to accept my coworkers upset when I can see that I choose them to do my life’s work with. I can be more patient with a friend’s partner when I see that I choose them, as a human being who is trying to live in integrity and learn about love. As for those acquaintances that I just want to go away? Maybe I can choose them, choose being their friend, and in doing so choose the parts of me that are afraid to be left out.
Numbers have a way of making me space out, they've always astounded me; but breast cancer statistics just floor me. In reading them, I feel suddenly on high-alert. “About 1 in 8 women in the United States (12%) will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime,” according to the CDC, and “for women in the U.S., breast cancer death rates are higher than those for any other cancer, besides lung cancer.” This is where I need to pause and take a breath. There’s a story in these statistics, waiting to be told, and I want it to find me... It’s not the story of cancer survivors, powerful as those stories may be, and it’s not the story where we all Race for the Cure, raising money to conquer this insidious disease with science. It’s not even an exposé about the endocrine-disrupting chemicals in our bottled water, the electromagnetic energies that we are bathed in as city-dwellers, or the soy products you should-no wait, shouldn’t, OK, maybe should, be eating. This is a love story, through and through. This is the story about how collectively, we women have forgotten to love and adore the most life-giving and comforting parts of our bodies. Not with a sweet indifference, or an appreciative nod, but through the dis-ease story that women across the western world are telling themselves about how their breasts are NOT ENOUGH. Of course, this story comes in as many forms as there are women: too much, uneven, marked by time, too attention grabbing, invisible... Our breasts endure these repetitive thought patterns on a daily basis and I can't help but assume what affect they are having on our health. While we may never go under the knife in the quest for some cultural breast ideal, even highly conscious and evolved women can get sucked into the trap of dishonoring our bodies. I know that I still can. I have seen how water crystals change when exposed to loving and unloving thoughts (and if you haven’t, please check out Messages from Water by Masaru Emoto) and as a health educator, I understand holistic interconnection. Yet, I’m still not immune from sending less-than-adoring messages to my own body. Battling the constant wave of disempowering affirmations embedded in our culture seems to be an unending practice as long as I’m still working, living, and playing within it. The Abounding River teaches us that sometimes the strong medicine we need is CONSCIOUS AFFIRMATION that re-aligns us with the positive flow of life. To battle an epidemic of negative affirmation, we need powerful CONSCIOUS medicine. Can you imagine that we have the power to change these statistics just by changing the way we are collectively "talking to" our bodies? Love may not heal all, but it certainly illumines the places that need healing. My commitment is to taking a stand for all of the women and girls in my life, even the ones who have done their share of Women’s Movement curriculum. We get to be the change. Through our conscious re-claiming of the life-force in our bodies, we can pave the way for women everywhere to find healing relationships to womanhood, sexuality, and empowerment. It starts with us. I invite the women reading this post to take on a healing affirmation practice with me, based on the Hawaiian Ho’oponopono, for the next 30 days. I'm calling it the "Breast Friends Practice". Once a day, sit, take a few long, deep breaths with your eyes closed and repeat these words, for 5 minutes, or until you feel complete: “Please forgive me. I love you. You are healthy, whole, complete, filled with love and light. You are beautiful just as you are. ” Thank you for taking on loving yourself. Thank you for changing the world.
I'm not sure what is more amazing about this film: what its about, or how it was made.
Love Lunch Community follows a group of visionary parents who came together in the 1990s to organize and change the way Berkeley children eat in school. Over the course of four years, chips, cheetos, and fried foods gave way to organic vegetable soups, salad bars, and fresh entrees made daily from scratch. But that is not the whole story.
The Love Lunch Community series was started by a collective of filmmakers who came together to record this story from the perspectives of students, parents, faculty, staff, administration, and the surrounding community. Their goal was to cast a wide net, and to sacrifice the appeal of one story for the reality of many stories. The final product is a series of webisodes, each with its own message and miracle. You can view these for free on their website, where they can be reused and re-shared under creative commons licensing.