I am writing this as an elder in our community, and am thanking you in advance for listening with open hearts. My intention is to empower you and to take a stand.

I have read your letters and heard your requests in regards to Occupy Oakland's General Strike. I appreciate your passion, commitment and urgency. Here is what I would like for you to consider:

As individuals we have great freedom in standing up for what we believe in and support. We are free to take great risks and be responsible for whatever consequences there may be. We are free to make our choices. I celebrate this freedom.

So first - the story. Yes! The story, who can i be without the story? A man in the wilderness sitting squatted in padmasana meditating about the self... Of course the story, once you succeeded, transforms into the path. The story is the funny thing we get to remember. The story is what puts bunions in the feet of our ego. The story, once expressed, is ether released into reality, and whoever gets to witness (if they are well enrolled) can help you reach the greatest goal. 

My name is Andrew, I’m a brand new employee at Cafe Gratitude’s central office, and I want to share some inspiration with you. What inspires me is compassionate food--food that’s kind to the soil it’s planted in, the people who prepare it, and the hungry bodies that make it part of them. This inspiration has lead me to work with Cafe Gratitude, and also with another organization re-imagining good food, and one I’ll talk about today: the Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive, or CoFED, which empowers college students to launch food cooperatives.

What both these organizations have in common is that they empower people to transform their lives, with compassionate food as a catalyst. We like to call the Cafe a school of transformation disguised as a restaurant, because our core mission isn’t to sell you food - our aim is to give you tools to shape your life how you want it to be. Part of actively taking control of your life involves loving yourself, and a key part of loving yourself is feeding yourself really awesome food. So when you decide that you’re worthy of nourishing your body, mind and soul with meals that are kind to the Earth and her animal and human inhabitants - meals that make you feel and function great - you’re taking the first step on the journey of self-transformation.

I am inspired by a great friend of mine who has the courage to make an incredible journey and goal for himself, follow through, and listen and change it when the people he cares about ask him to stop.  My friend Garrett took it upon himself to walk a pilgrimage from his hometown in Vista, CA in San Diego county all the way up to Portland Oregon.  I am floored by his incredible goal and his commitment to this journey as he’s been walking since June to make his way north as what he calls “a journey without and a journey within”.  He spent most of the walk without even a sleeping bag and has slept many of his nights on the streets and eating canned food as he finds it.  Garrett is a gentle soul whom I have always looked to for guidance in unconditional love.  He’s housed many homeless men in his home and has an unstoppable lifelong devotion to being in service to the planet.  He met with me last night after over 300 miles of walking since June and told me about his decision to stop his journey. 

Garrett is beginning his training to become a friar for Saint Frances.  During his plan for this journey his advisor requested that he not walk the pilgrimage in concern for his safety and in need of his services elsewhere.  Garrett told me how he felt conflicted around wanting to make the trek, and knowing how powerful the journey is for him… and also respecting and honoring the request of his supervisor.  Garrett chose to obey his advisor’s wishes and concluded his journey in the middle of California, not reaching his goal to reach Portland and travel through the Missions.

What especially inspires me about Garrett’s story is actually his ability to be open-minded while being focus on his goal.  I typically witness in myself a drive that gets so strongly intent on the outcome of my goal that I never look up or take into consideration any other input or any change in direction.  I admire Garrett for his ability to walk with selflessness, and then him stopping and releasing his personal goal to be in service where people ask of him.

In the past few days, I decided to recommit myself to a pretty simple practice. A quick note about simple practices: what I mean when I say “simple” is that it requires one or two steps, like sitting meditation, or washing my dishes within 24 hours. The joy with simple practices, of course, is that they hold my entire world in their exercise. If we take on that the way we do one thing is the way we do all things, simple is just an optical illusion. The stuff we’re working on is going to show up whether we’re orchestrating a complex, multi-million business model, or in “chop wood, carry water.” So in a way, “simple practice” is more of a reassurance to my resistance. Don’t worry; I tell myself, it’s a simple practice! Then it’s harder to talk myself out of it (though it seems my ego can wiggle its way out of anything) and it feels more manageable. It’s all just talk though, after all, since the big results are the same present moments strung together as small results, but it’s helpful talk.

That being said, my practice has been not fudging with time. I have a habit of saying, “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” when there’s really very little chance I could get there in less than fifteen. I’m usually fudging five or ten minutes, and most often this happens with friends, not with work or professional relationships. I noticed this habit and didn’t like where it landed me: rushed, contracted, and lying. For me, this is more work on wise speech - “fudging” is easier to allow myself than “lying”, but they’re the same thing. Fudging is only different from lying in the amount I’ve deemed it acceptable to not be in line with the truth. Well, I’m playing the big game here, so I know that if something is off, even just a little, that’s where my current path is to more freedom. (That’s what I love so much about things being off-center -- I have a beautiful treasure map of the place I’m getting to dig in and grow.)

At Cafe Gratitude, our goal is to be "The Space for All of It."  What we mean is that we can not always choose what or who shows up at our door, but we can choose to be an invitation to whatever shows up, and to greet it with joy and gratitude.

In 1987, Issan Dorsey, a Zen teacher and former Drag Queen, invited a homeless student dying from AIDS to live in what was then the Hartford Street Zen Center.  Issan, a charismatic and colorful leader, founded Maitri there, in the heart of the Castro, and when he passed, left a group of followers devoted to deal with whatever came to the door.  They started the hospice because death came to the door.

Maitri has been providing residential hospice care to patients suffering with AIDS since 1987. They have provided a final home to over 900 people with AIDS, and  14 of their 15 hospice beds are reserved for people who are HUD-defined as low income. They are the only facility in California to offer AIDS-specific residential care to the community.

I recently moved to San Francisco and, in doing so, realized that I can get around just fine without a car. So, after 25 years of being a car owner, I decided to take what may seem like a monumental leap in this auto-centric culture and sold my car.

After selling my trusty Toyota Corolla in L.A. a few weeks ago, I easily found a rideshare to the bay area - door to door - and haven't looked back since. The only thing I miss, really, is the relationship I had with my car (seeing as it was kind of like my second home), but I don't miss anything else about it whatsoever.

Honestly, it's been relatively easy, and I can definitely say it's an absolutely liberating feeling. These first weeks have been glorious! I no longer have to deal with finding parking spaces or buying gas (unless, of course, I'm using someone else's vehicle), nor do I have to consider insurance, registration, roadside service, repair or maintenance expenses. I've managed to navigate shopping and errands, help my daughter move from Berkeley to San Francisco, celebrate the holidays in the mountains - all using public transportation, friends' cars or ridesharing.

I must also give big props to the Muni and BART systems because they have made it so easy to navigate my new city. I took my very first ride on Muni to spend the afternoon at the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park a couple weeks ago and it was as easy as pie! And, to boot, on the way, I got to have an educational conversation about San Francisco neighborhoods with a lovely man who just moved here two years ago and said that every day he's as delighted to be here as he was when he arrived. I can understand why... especially without the burden of a car.

There's something delightful about being "forced" to reach out more, to utilize my community and to not isolate in my little "car bubble." I've had the opportunity to have wonderful conversations in car rides as well as on the bus and to contribute to someone else's life with rich conversations, gas money or by buying them coffee or lunch in exchange for a ride.

I haven't yet rented a car or used a service like City Car Share or Zipcar, but I figure I'm saving about $300 per month having made this leap, including covering my public transportation expenses. I also calculated that I'm saving almost 200 pounds per week in carbon emissions (that's over 10,000 pounds per year!),

In addition to those savings, I now get two side benefits I didn't bargain for...
1. More exercise!
2. More time to work!
It's like I got a gym membership and a chauffeur for the cost of a bus or BART ticket. How cool is that?

Going carless has been one of the best decisions I've made and has provided more benefits than I had anticipated. I encourage you, if you don't absolutely need to use a car every day, to consider doing the same. At the beginning of this new decade, we have so many opportunities to make small or large choices that can have profound positive effects on our lives and the lives of those around us.

So, my question is... What kind of commitment can you make to lighten your footprint on the planet? Perhaps yours isn't as drastic as giving up your car, perhaps it is. Regardless, though, what might you do - either one big, decisive action or a new daily practice - that would galvanize your commitment to easing up on our environment?

It's pretty easy if you think about it... all it takes is three steps:
1. Getting that you matter- that your actions and choices (no matter how small) have an impact.
2. Being willing to commit to making different choices, regardless of how small or big they are.
3. Taking consistent action in alignment with those choices.

Let me know how it's going! I'd love to hear!


You can comment on this blog page or send your story to me at erin@gettingthatyoumatter.com. You can also visit our website, www.getthatyoumatter.com, to learn about what we're up to and be part of the Get That You Matter team.

Happy New Year to everyone,

I am so grateful for how we can use the end of one year and the beginning of another to align ourselves with our mission, our passion, our opportunities to start again.