ONE WORDSMITH Writing to simply change the world...

Releasing the Second Edition of Words and Violence

2011-09-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

It's like watching your baby go from infancy to a toddler by finding her "legs" in order to walk. Words and Violence in its second edition is certainly up and walking! It was the most popular feature this past year at Voices Education Project and with the contributors now in the project and those lined up, it will become even more valuable.

My goal this year is to find antidotes to bullying. It's not enough to just point out where we are going wrong, but to give people a way to do it better. This year's entry "Talking Circle" is the beginning and highlights a way to use words and circles in healing the human spirit. It is the message of Chief Seattle in practice-- that we are all brothers and that the earth is an interconnected web of life.

Others writers and journalists have contributed this year including an exciting new writer who blogs about being a single dad in modern culture. I am a fan of Dan Pearce and his blog Single Dad Laughing. Dan's work now appears at Voices Education Project: Dan Pearce Memoirs of A Bullied Kid

When I was in Chicago and Gary this summer, I was interviewed by Larry Nimmer about Voices Education Project and hopefully Voices will find its way into the documentary he is filming. Voices' Words and Violence and Larry's documentary are both works-in-progress. Contributors are welcome to submit work for consideration. And if you don't know how to write your experience, no worries. That's what editors are for. (That would be me.) So if you just get the story on paper, we can work with it. And that is what Voices is all about-- changing the world one story at a time.

Our new film at Voices Education Project

2011-09-10T07:56:00.000-07:00

Man Behind the Myth from Walking Moon Studios on Vimeo.

Tabloid Taliban: Is Media the Newest From of Terrorism?

2011-08-26T04:23:00.000-07:00

Words can, and often are, used as weapons. We have seen what happens when there is a call to arms, an incitement to war, a rousing speech from a dictator who condemns part of his own population, racial epithets and hate speech, an organized and violent response to bullying by classmates in schools.

When words are used as weapons, we are all down wind of an ecosystem in which we live, work and pursue leisure that is made toxic by the introduction of cynicism, greed and bullying of real people. Bullying is now epidemic and not just on playgrounds and classrooms. It is on the front pages of newspapers getting their material used to dismember live people in a public forum from hacking and other illegal means. It is in reality TV, "mock"umentaries, and "harmless" comedy routines.

Are we creating a culture without compassion? What are we role modeling to youth? What are the children learning? Yes, they are watching.

A three part series on media that asks the tough questions:

When the Empire Strikes Will the People Strike Back?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-barbara-kaufmann/when-the-empire-strikes-w_1_b_900710.html

Shocking Secrets Revealed: Illegal Means Used to Carve Up Live Humans for Human Consumption
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-barbara-kaufmann/shocking-secrets-revealed_b_924555.html

Power to the People Works When People Claim the Power
With Co-Author Matt Semino
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-barbara-kaufmann/power-to-the-people-works_b_931929.html

Wisconsin and the Sleeping Giant

2011-03-15T07:14:00.000-07:00

It seems Wisconsin has become ground zero for a new movement that is a push to bring true democracy back with a few new amendments: Integrity, truth, fairness, accurateness and not manipulation in media, an end to partisan politics, a voice for the people, leaders who listen, human rights, civil rights, civility, inclusion not exclusion, a shift in power from leaders to constituents, acknowledgement of human worth...

Is there an app for that?

Read about Barbara's immersion experience at the Wisconsin Capitol Rally:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-barbara-kaufmann/wisconsin-weekend-rally-more-philosophy-than-politics_b_835469.html

Speaking of Violence- Words in the Wake of Tuscon's Tragedy

2011-03-14T06:51:00.000-07:00

There are words and phrases in every language that convey the intention of violence. In colloquialisms, slang and everyday speech we find violent references and military metaphors. When did our casual language get so violent? It is worth examining our speech for indicators of violence. The result may surprise you. The Huffington Post featured my article after the shootings in Arizona that many speculate were politically motivated by a climate of violent rhetoric. What do you say?

Huffington Post- Speaking of Violence

Bullying is Not Just for Playgrounds

2011-03-13T05:59:00.000-07:00

Working on the "Words and Violence" Curriculum for the last year has made me acutely aware of the power and impact of words.

The power of words has been recently demonstrated with a worldwide protest against the use of an image and program that crossed a line of civilty and a in the worldwide focus and discussion about a fallen leader-- U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

People are dead including a nine year old girl because for whatever deranged reason, someone found what someone else was saying unacceptable and tried to silence a voice. People died in the crossfire. Crossfire and crosshairs-- those were the buzzwords. They are words that hold charge. And the words we speak should be examined for their lethalness-- just like any other wielded weapon. We can maim, harm and murder people with the weaponry of words.

Words harm or they heal. Words bully. And sometimes they kill.

See my article on bullying with words and images at the Huffington Post...

Bullying- It's Not Just for Playgrounds Anymore

If They Asked you to "Come Change the World" would you RSVP?

2011-03-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

How many times do we receive an offer to change the world? To make it a better place? To reach the hearts and hands of people across the globe? If that moment comes, the question is first of all, do we recognize this opportunity for what it is? Or do we spin around and look behind us to see whom "they" are talking to? Who me?

If and when that moment arrives what would you do? Laugh? Grin sheepishly? Stammer? Put your nose back in your book? Pick that fuzz from your navel?

It's not widely believed that one person can change the world. Such a giant idea is hard to wrap one's head around, no? Because we expect a full marching band with the arrival of that kind of announcment or invitation, maybe we miss it when it is whispered in ordinary company or flickers by in a fleeting moment. Would you know it if it arrived in your life? And would you RSVP?

Revolutions are begun by one person showing up for life and engaging their passion. For example, a friend of mine who is a teacher showed up at the Madison, Wisconsin capitol building with her shaman's drum and a sign about democracy. She began beating her drum in the rotunda. As she beat and played and talked with people, more and more drummers came, more people joined her until a few weeks later, there were an estimated 100,000 people on the Saturday I joined the rally marching and chanting to 'take democracy back.'

In Egypt a few people rallied and a movement spread accross a nation, and then a continent. From Wisconsin to the Middle East and North Africa, people are fed up with corruption and the archetypal human shadow and are standing up, speaking out and giving voice to clamor for a better way. Some know what they want and some don't. Some suspect a major change is needed but they don't know what. Some feel the winds of change at their back and they stagger for a bit, then ultimately finding their balance. And they walk forward even when the way isn't clear, even when the goal isn't in sight, and even when they walk alone.

They change the world. They make it a better place. They push the race forward. They grab us by the neck and force us to join the human race. They are my heroes. One such group of heros lives at Voices Education Project- a global humanitarian organization, peacemaking institution and pedagogical institute. Their fingers are courageous, their reach is global.

Voices is a noisy symphony in a world buzzing with discord.

Here's how the conversation went:

Marilyn: (Director of Voices Education Project) "I think this is important work in the world."

Me: "I agree; this is all about changing the narrative on the planet; about creating a more humane world."

"I think this article is a beginning. This feels like an important peacemaking mission."

"I believe that too. In fact, I think this kind of work needs to be available in every school in the country. It should be in a curriculum, Marilyn, available to students everwhere."

"So let's write it."

Oh that would be amazing if Voices would do that curriculum."

"No, no, not Voices. I mean we will write it-- together; you and Voices. Would you consider spearheading a project like that?"

So there you have it-- that one shimmering moment arrives, hangs in the air quivering like the invisible wings of a butterfly. What do you say in that moment?

Well, you say "yes," of course. Knees trembling, hands shaking, heart pounding, you say... "yes."

And the breath that is exhaled in that one hovering moment, breathes life into an idea and life takes it from there.

"Words and Violence" Curriculum Cover and outline

Preface- What is the power of words?

Why this curriculum; why is it important?

And it's available and free for download.

Not On My Watch: The enemy who saved the world

2010-12-03T21:41:00.000-08:00

Voices Education Project is about story and tell stories is what I do. It is the story that lends us our humanity. Here is a Playback story for Voices and a thank you for my life to Mr. Petrov...

Read the: "Playback" Feature: Stories that should be told

Visual poetry: A New Video

2010-11-20T20:52:00.000-08:00

I have discovered a new artistic medium- visual poetry.
This is the new video I produced for Voices Education Project which was a collaborative work with another artist. Enjoy and share!

A Way With Words

2010-11-19T07:34:00.000-08:00

In 2009 I wrote a case study for George Washington University's School of Business Womens' Studies Program. The case was accepted and I became a founding case author for the "Hot Mamas" program at GWU.

GWU's Women's Business School Program includes "Hot Mamas" and "Cool Daddy's" who are authors and mentors for business students. Their goal is to build the largest case study library in the world and they are well on their way.

They invited me back this year and asked for a new case study and I was pleased to author a new case and to announce the inauguration of the Voices Education Project "Words and Violence" Curriculum that is now available for free at Voices Education Project http://www.voiceseducation.org/ to schools. That curriculum was a project for the last year and remains a work in progress.

The case study for George Washington University:

"A Way With Words" is available online at:
http://www.hotmommasproject.org/caseview/B--Kaufmann-One-Wordsmith-A-Way-with-Words--a-writer-with-one-goal-only-to-simply-change-the-world-.aspx

Barbara's Award Winning Story...

2010-11-09T11:34:00.000-08:00

Tickle Monster Therapy won the first place Curtis Brown award for short story in 2008. It now inspires nurses as a front page feature at Scrubs Magazine...

Read Maddie's story at Scrubs Magazine

Bullying Begins with Words

2010-10-06T16:49:00.000-07:00

"Where do they get these ideas?"

October is Anti-Bullying Month and I've heard some version of that question repeated over and over in different environments. Adults are shocked and shaken when they find out the magnitude of bullying that takes place in schools, on civic campuses, and in cyberspace. The latest trend is suicide by bullying. A number of young people have taken their own lives because this form of terrorism is so unbearable.

------------------

We just lost another youth to suicide here. The person was bullied in school and in her social life and she took her own life because she was discovering herself and her sexuality and found her budding affections were for the same gender. She was called “fag” and teased and “outed” by peers.

This scenario has repeated itself all over the United States and has prompted many professionals, teachers, legal analysts and leaders to develop materials for youth to combat bullying. The materials are coming from reputable sources like the Southern Poverty Law Center and Voices Education Project and accompany a new movement called “It Gets Better” which gives youth a forum and hope that life is better after high school. It is designed to let kids hang on while being battered with words.

Of course the communities are aghast at this trend. Neighborhoods are shocked. Schools and educators and clergy are outraged by this behavior of children terrorizing other children. They are concerned about the predator mentality and cruelty exhibited by youth. They wonder how youth can have developed this aggression and cruelty at such a young age? They are confounded, dumbfounded and are at a loss to understand it. Shock and outrage accompany the trauma and drama of it and prevent a real examination of this trend toward human indifference and lack of empathy for others.

Something really important is being missed in this movement...
Why do kids lack empathy? How is it they are not making human and humane connections? Where do kids get the idea that bullying someone else is permissible social discourse? That revealing someone’s secret life, struggles and woundedness is acceptable? That exposing it with glee is entertainment? Where do these kids get such ideas?

They get it from witnessing terrorism. By their role models. By the adults around them demonstrating how it is done. Yes those same adults—who are shocked at the behavior of some youngsters who take pleasure in the torture of other youngsters. They are the adults who cut people off in traffic and make hand signals that have nothing to do with courtesy. They are the parents whose daily TV diet includes reality shows where people are bullied by competing against or scheming and scamming other people. They are the same ones who watch TV sports that erupt in to fist fights or the grownups who armchair referee championship wrestling. They are just as likely to tune into the program that hosts a competition to make someone the idol and latest star in the entertainment industry while spitting cruel critiques and making fun and even film montages of the less than talented only to laugh, humiliate and make fun of them at their own expense.

These are the parents whose programming includes the insider celebrity shows that mock and hold up to scrutiny the daily lives and dramas of celebrities while a fresh faced and smiling reporter ridicules and gleefully reports their missteps to an audience hungry for gossip and fodder in salacious or sensationalized story. These are same people think nothing of tossing the latest tabloid into their grocery cart in the checkout line—that tabloid that exploits people who are gifted not for the purpose of thanking them for sharing their genius but for denigrating them for fun and profit.

Celebrities and sports figures make good targets for the bullying they endure on a public stage. The famous deserve it don’t they? How dare they be so famous! So talented! And while we are enamored with their entertainment genius, we secretly envy their fame and hate them for it? The celebrities can't possibly defend themselves against all who would take advantage of them, ride on the coattails of their fame, or condemn them; what are they going to do—spend every day in court while their gift of music or art goes ungiven? Can they personally speak to you or come to your home and debate the veracity of the latest gossip, story or allegations? Can they plead with you to not believe the latest invented story about them contrived only to sell copy? Can they ask to be left alone; how effective would that be? Are they in a position to expect your empathy or compassion while their lives are being held up to public scrutiny and sometimes dissected by analysts who don’t know them and have never met them? Accusations are not truths but labels take hold and follow those in the public eye for years even without substance or in the wake of being disproven. Once something is introduced into the collective memory, it is hard, if not impossible to extract it.

How short is our collective memory. Once upon a time there was a Princess who used all her talent and all her fame in service to humanitarian and social change to uplift the value of human life. That was the Peoples' Princess who died in a car crash while being chased by those salivating over the photos that would expose the latest tidbit about her private life. We did not personally know her but we fondly called her “Lady Di.” She was ours and she was abruptly ripped from our lives while being hunted and chased for sport and profit. Lest we forget how our appetite for the latest gossip caused the woman’s death. Not me you say? If you’ve ever bought a gossip magazine or watched celebrity TV, you are complicit. The exploitation of the famous and celebrities is a national and global pastime that goes unexamined for its consequences to the human and to our humanity.

There was another humanitarian who gave $300 million of his fortune to children and children’s hospitals and causes round the world. He was someone whose love for children was twisted and made ugly by an industry only interested in selling stories and increasing ratings in their magazines and newspapers. Someone who to this day is called by the ugliest of words despite being exonerated in a court of law where a prosecutor piled on false charges hoping something would stick and he could make a name for himself by the claim of putting away the most famous man in the world. The press got it wrong. And they didn’t report that his accusers were extortionists out to grab cash from the deepest and most famous pockets on the planet. They called him “Wacko Jacko” and “freak,” accused him of trying to change his race when in reality, he had a skin disease that kills the cells that produce skin color and protect the tender flesh underneath from burning by the sun’s harsh rays. They made fun of the umbrella and mask that saved his life. A fickle public with a short attention span demands that celebrities hide any evidence of aging so as to stay in front of the camera and in the spotlight. It makes people change their face to avoid being "washed up"—and then makes fun of people who have “work done” to keep that famous face fresh and relevant in an industry that values surface beauty only. That is the same public that focused on the changing face—while missing the message in the man’s lyrics that were prayers while his music the means of praying for change and a more human and humane world.

Bullying is not just for school children anymore. Sometimes it takes place on a global stage. It occurs when the investigative reporter is told by his producer to "ask the tough questions” or they are told to “hold their feet to the fire" in a dialogue that is more brow beating than news gathering. It is in the pundits who pander and the talking heads who offer their opinion while the network plays it over and over until it becomes the popular “truth.”

The daily diet of cops and murders, investigations and desperations of housewives and others, horror and bad news, and forming gangs or tribes who “gang up” on reality contestants in order exclude them and demonstrate group dismissal and banishment. Exclusion and excommunication is made a game. That kind of “sport” looks a lot like the sport taking place on lots of playgrounds only with a younger audience.

So where do they get their ideas? Hmmm. Good question. ‘The tribe has spoken.’ And the children were listening.

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If you want to create a better world and more humane human dialogue on this planet check out the curriculum at Voices Education Project. You might be very surprised at what you find.

http://voiceseducation.org/content/words-and-violence

The Essence is In the EYE of the beholder

2010-07-11T10:36:00.000-07:00

Art that is memorable and gets your attention is usually speaking the language of "soul." Soul Speak is a real language and its lexicon is semiotic.

Unforgettable art, not always from the vaults of the masters, employs the semiotics of archetypal images and cross cultural phenomena. Themes that are universal find their way into the stunning works that are then interpreted personally sometimes without the realization that there is a subliminal message and that it just may be universal.

Art is in the eye of the beholder, or is it? Maybe it's the eye of the cosmos- for what is man but a reflection of God or God's way of looking back on itself? The cosmic mirror. Soulspeak art can and often does shatter convention. Its purpose is to awaken, or better yet to startle awake.

Artworks have not just chronicled history, they have changed history. Artist ofen compose because they have something to say. Art can sometimes say it better than words. If words could describe the thing, it wouldn't need to be painted or photographed or sculpted. So it follows that art should be appreciated silently, without words. It is meant to be breathed in, savored with breath held and then exhaled empty of its juciness. The observer of a stunning piece of art should have to carry cloth-- not to wipe only the brow but one's chin.

When semiosis and synchronicity combine that is a seminal soulspeak moment. It is magic and it is saying "pay attention here." It is a crossroads of the cosmos and the human soul that opens an invisible portal to a soul-expanding experience. One leaves that moment changed never to return to the being that inhabited the body even just a moment ago. That being is nevermore and in its place is a new human.

The human soul arranges these moments for the individual human and the collective human soul arranges them for humanity. When a powerful seminotic piece of art or a trend is introduced into a culture, that culture is forever changed. From that moment on, the language is richer, the lexicon fuller, and the magic genie who arrived is not going back to the bottle.

Seminal work thrust into the cultural matrix can disturb, agitate, irritate; it can also bring cause to celebrate. Seminal semiotic soulspeak connotes a moment that begs to be seized and squeezed for all its nectar. That nectar is not always sweet for sometimes there are those who introduce an irritant deliberately in order to provoke and by provoking, change things.

Words are a form of art too. Sculpting with words is an artform. A wordsmith must use language and assemble it in a configuration to convey a semblance of something even though it will never be that something. By virtue of its being a description of the thing, it will necessarily be one step removed from the thing. Like an artist who sketches a likeness that will never be the actual object being conveyed, the essence of it is what the artist wants to communicate.

So where is the essence? Is it... in the paint? The brush? The idea? Is it inherent in the project? Is it in the artist? In the conveyance? Words can communicate but do they capture the essence? It is my belief that the essence is actually wordless. It is in the energy-- the energetic exchange between artist and observer. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder but there is much more in the eyes of the beholder, and much more than the eyes of the beholder engaged-- the essence is in the energy that impacts the beholder! Sometimes it is an engagement of communion.

Good art has an impact. Successful writing zaps the reader. Successful music is transcendent. Successful paintings evoke emotion and the most successful evoke movement or energy. Rare art can provoke a hypnotic stare with a unwillingness to blink or take the eye off of the work. It is the psyche groping absentmindedly without looking for a chair because one must... sit.

High art changes the world spiritually. The most evocative and powerful work communicates a feeling that makes one compelled to move or do or change something to its higher form. The best art is compelling. It compels us to feel, to move, to think, to act. It moves us. It moves energy. It shakes the atoms! (Is it a wave or particle? It's both!)

Did you encounter something that moved you, touched your heart, moved you to tears, caused you to do something, feel something? Did it cause you to act from your heart? From your soul? Did it give you pause? Did it convince? Inform? Change a perspective? Was it memorable? Did you incorporate it into yourself and your experience? Has it become a part of you? Did it pull you in? High art integrates, has humanity, is soulful and shifts something within. As a result the beholder is forever changed and new. That being is running a new energy within as a result of the encounter. The how and why are in the energy, the what is in the intention... and that's another conversation. The question begged is what was intended?

To use a metaphor (a unique and often successful artistic conveyance,) when the path of the arrow is uncluttered and clear, there is force behind the release, the archer is skilled, the arrow must of necessity, hit the mark as intended. The arrow does not know good or evil or the intention of its use... only the archer knows. The arrow is going to impact. And the target will never ever return to its original and pristine state.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

2010-05-15T21:36:00.000-07:00

She whispers a silver light on the meadow where the mist rises as I stop and listen intently to the silence. Really listen. Really silent. My feet seem to glide or lightly dance along the dirt road as I wind my way around the garden toward my hermitage ‘Holy Angels.’ I need them. The darkness is friendly and I inhale big gulps of it. The moon is a harsh mistress. She follows, a stealth presence: always there, always silent, always palpable, always Present. She hails to my heart and I turn my back as I choose to ignore her.

This place has been home for a long time—more than two decades. The sanctuary was quiet and St. Francis was the only figure in the chapel silo as I slipped out into the night. I hear my own footfalls as I make my way through the night to a place that is safe, that wraps me in a friendly coolness and breathes my heart in the vastness of its call. It happens every time: they offer a flashlight and I decline. I have never needed one here. Even on the nights when there is no moon I have never needed one. There are some places that generate their own light from within and this is one of them. Seeing through the darkness is no problem in some places. For two decades I have wandered here at night without a flashlight never losing my way, never not seeing the path.

This is the only place on Earth that I know of where it is so quiet that in Winter, if you stop crunching through the snow and slow your breath, you can hear the snow falling. Yes, hear it. Do you know what falling snow sounds like? A thousand micro-bells that tinkle ever so lightly as their crystalline forms cascade through the air to land softly with a tiny “tink” on pine boughs.

I reach my cabin and open the porch screen, the hinge squeak echoing across the night signaling my arrival to Miranda who is huddled in the corner waiting for me. She comes easily and quickly, licking my hand welcoming me home and insists that I scratch her ears hello by positioning them squarely in my palm. She asks nothing of me except love and an occasional ear scratch. Small price to pay for perpetual unconditional love. I sink into the Adirondack and pull the comforter round me. I lift my heels to the ledge and settle back into the quiet. ‘Randy’ places her jaw on my thigh and sighs deeply as I feel her body shiver.

I match her shudder as Randy, ever the Retriever, retrieves a metaphor from the night for the poet in me. She reminds me that we can send a man up there—to the moon and safely retrieve them even when their odds are slender, but we can’t retrieve our human shadow. We can’t leash it obediently to our sides as we walk through this adventure called life—not even for a moment. Its unruly snarling and snapping jaws sometimes beg a muzzle for it cannot be taken into polite company for lack of civil and simple housetraining.

The shadow should be off limits here in this sacred place. In fact, nothing of its kind should be allowed here. This should be safe haven. This is a place where the human spirit is elevated and celebrated and the soul takes a breath that is long and deep and cool like water. Even here I am reminded of how ardently we defile our salvation: love.

Something calls across the space and something behind me answers. Was it a Screech Owl and her mate? A badger growling because dinner is late? Or is it my mind that momentarily squeaked on the hinges of its gate as it just whooshed out into the cosmos sparkling above my head? I feel kind of empty as I imagine a leaky mind must feel. Maybe my mind has decided this is just too much to ask. Maybe the shadow is supposed to win. Maybe humankind is destined to be crushed by the weight of it. Maybe the darkness is our destiny. Maybe Darth was right. Or maybe I need a different kind of flashlight, one to pop a light saber. Maybe we underestimate the power of the dark side. The valley of the shadow is upon us.

She taps my shoulder. I ignore her once again for she has come to mean something else for me—a sphere reflecting the light certainly, but more. She is something I never knew before. Someone I never knew. She is the goddess, the grandmother, the mystic queen and a symbolic home for someone I have come to know in reflection, as reflection. She is now too: the dancer, the magician, the alchemist, the song, the shaman, and king—he who walks her in dance across the night. I know he is there. I know he is waiting. The moon is a harsh mistress.

Case Notes GWU Women's Studies: When I Am A Grownup I Will Do Something

2010-04-08T21:34:00.000-07:00

Case Study: George Washington University Women’s Studies Business Program
Title: When I Am a Grownup I Will Do Something
B. Kaufmann Founding Case Author

When I Am a Grownup I Will Do Something

“She shuddered and pulled the comforter up to her chin where it felt like a little barrier from harm. An illusion, of course, but comforting. Even in winter the drapes stayed open and the lights off. How she loved the night sky. And she found the darkness friendly. The harsh reality of the daylight didn’t lend itself well to dreaming. It seemed important to dream, to wonder at the world, at nature, to gaze at the stars and remember that someone, another child perhaps somewhere in the world, was at this very moment also imagining the future. Was he too, imagining a world of peace? Was she also dreaming of a place where all the humans get along?

She didn’t much like the way things were. She was disgusted with adults and the way they acted. Or didn’t act. Didn’t they know this wasn’t right? This steady rant of threats, of fear, of hating the enemy. They kept building more and bigger nukes and tested faster and better missiles. “Don’t the grownups know these things kill people? When you drop a 50 megaton bomb on a city it doesn’t kill just soldiers! It kills everybody. And afterward nobody can live there for a thousand years! Do the adults think this is OK? Wise? Heck, do they think this is human?”

She was too old for her youth. She felt a constant vague fatigue. Weary from the air raid sirens, radiation symbols, fall-out shelters and practice drills. As if there was a way to run from this! Or a reason to live if you survived it! It’s a horrible thing to do to kids—scare them this way and let them inherit a broken world. When Mr. Khrushchev pounded his shoe on the podium and roared “we
will bury you,” she wondered why a grownup who didn’t even know her would want to bury her. What could she, a kid, do? The grownups were in charge of the world. Why didn’t the grownups do something?

One night after prayers she choked back the tears, she decided, for the last time. She took a deep shuddering breath, turned her face to the night sky and pledged to the stars and to the future… ‘When I am a grownup I will do something…’”

So well into my teen years, vows and with the fears buried, I knew only the defiance of the adolescent. Nothing changed. The “cold war” never heated up nor did it thaw. The icy trickle of terror in the background of life never melted. No teen I knew expected to make it to adulthood. Who wanted to anyway? You couldn’t trust anybody over thirty: they represented the staleness and stalemate of the world—the establishment, a name given to everything ugly about the world according to adults.

My late teens mixed music, musicians and marijuana. My “Flower Children” friends and I tuned out the world of hatred, divisiveness, looming war. For the first time since I could remember, I felt good; I felt happy; I felt almost safe; and being alive was fun! Surrounded by like minds, we felt insulated from the establishment who hated us and despised our ways about as much as we despised theirs. But their way certainly wasn’t working!

We knew that youth had the answer: “peace and love,” but we were too naïve and misguided to pull it off. Why didn’t they get it? It was so clear, so simple. Well, if we couldn’t convince the world, we couldn’t live with it; if we couldn’t live with it, we would drop out of it. We hunkered against the world tuning it all out. What a relief it was—a little slice of idyllic world. Until Charles Manson and Richard Nixon—Manson who made “communes”and living in community in peace something freaky and evil; Nixon who made “youth” enemies of the state. The bubble burst and all the safety leaked out along with the counter culture idealistic enthusiasm.

Years later a friend asked me if I wanted to help with her dream—establishing a sister city relationship with a city in Russia. Something from the secret realms of dreams long abandoned stirred…“When I am a grownup, I will do something.” For the next two decades, as member and Executive Officer, I made peace with the enemy. I did fundraisers, concerts, performances, artwork, wrote grants, arranged travel exchanges— whatever was needed, I did it. I hung out with Russians. I met military, doctors, teachers, cops, business people, closet feminists, communists, and even KGB. Many late night conversations and vodkas later, I learned that my Russian friends felt the same way I did—disillusioned, betrayed and angry with their government, and bone weary of the cold war. Together we vowed to build something better, something lasting; something warm.

My last act for the partnership was to write and administrate a quarter of a million dollar USAID grant for a program within the START II Treaty Cooperative Threat Reduction mission—a Russian-American weapons reduction program to decommission WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction.) One target was a chemical weapons storage facility near our Russian sister city. Our grant built the goodwill and social infrastructure. At the close of the twentieth century, and the cusp of the millennium, I found myself standing in Red Square below St. Basil’s Cathedral. That towering icon used to strike terror for me for so many years; now it inspired awe. I watched history being made in a national press conference and then toured a secret location with American and Russian military leaders where the facility was being built. Decades of hope and hard work came together in an instant. I pinched myself. Hard. I swallowed. Hard. And I heard a faint child’s voice echo from far in the past, a raw and spontaneous promise made to the stars… “When I am a grownup, I will do something…”

Along on that trip was a local non-profit director who embodied the ugly American. Controlling, arrogant and self-involved, she insisted on being the center of attention. Used to European spas, she had little understanding and even less tolerance for the trappings of third world reality. She caused a scene in customs (a dangerous practice in a country easy to disappear in), complained about all the arrangements and accommodations, made culturally insensitive remarks, and talked incessantly in the background—even during national military press conferences. And she really disliked me. Her branch of a national humanitarian organization was, however, essential to our local partnership. She wanted me gone from the project and made her feelings public. The HMO that was invited to join the partnership in the late stages meanwhile hijacked the project and uninvited the founding group whose work and dedication built the program. I had seen it coming and had been holding depression at bay with medications that caused lots of side effects and personality changes that I did not see coming. Grassroots programs work because of the spirit that inhabits them. Corporate projects meanwhile, have all the nuances of PR and big business where spirit vacates the form.

When I arrived home, I and the remaining founders were thanked and released. They would now “take it from here.” When my life mission collapsed, so did I. What did my life mean now? What does a disillusioned wounded grassroots peacemaker do when it feels like her life is over, her life mission gone? She falls headlong into the ripping blackness, curls up into a fetal position and makes the abyss home.

I was battling a broken spirit; I had PTSD. My soul was gone. I fired God. I couldn’t see past the pain. I didn’t know until much later that wounded healers are the best kind of healers. I felt dead inside. I needed something to animate my life again, to animate me. Finally, I joined a seminary, a community of Spiritual Peacemakers, and I went looking for the missing pieces of me. I missed my mission and feeling connected to something bigger. I began to reclaim me, but couldn’t find God anywhere.

“Look,” I railed at God, “if my life is truly about peacemaking then my mission isn’t over. But I have no clue what direction I’m going in or what I’m supposed to do. My life feels meaningless; there is no juice in it, no juice in me. If you don’t show up right now, show me where I am going, what I am supposed to be doing and show me in a way that is clear and unmistakable, I am outta here!” I had no plan to take my own life but I felt as if I could will an ending. Life is about meaning and I had none.

Soon after my “conversation” with God, the founder of a worldwide network emailed me, encouraging me to consider becoming a consultant. The network is a way to share one’s message with the world. The mission is to create a critical mass of messengers willing to show up and share their unique message to create a new species on Planet Earth—the new and improved human. “When I am a grownup I will do something…”

Case Discussion questions:

Do people tend to define themselves through their “roles?” Jobs? Titles? How is that beneficial? Problematic?

Is there an antidote to feeling helpless or hopeless? What might that be?

Is there friendliness in darkness? In darkness of spirit? What is its purpose? How might it be transformative? How might it transform a person?
What is personal responsibility? What is collective responsibility? Discuss the difference and similarities. How do you demonstrate each?

Is there such a thing as a “life purpose?” A “life mission?” How do you think that applies to you? To others? How would finding your life mission change your life?

Can one person change the world? Discuss why/why not. Can you give examples?

Raising Voices

2010-03-23T21:15:00.000-07:00

Voices Education Project is on a simple mission: to lift up humanity and make the world a better place. They do that via the arts, humanities and social sciences using education, by teaching empathy, with communication that nurtures understandings for positive change between and among peoples of the world. Voices aims to transform how we manage conflict on this planet. They shine a light where more light is needed. And they do it with culture and elegance.

The arts can say what history books cannot in a voice that speaks past the human mind to the far reaches of soul. They say it with texture, with energy, with savvy, with sparkle and so much more and they do it leaving the humanity of it gloriously intact. Voices is all about the art of humanity and the making of humans. Their recent feature length documentary sharply etches and gives voice to the experience of war with poignant vignettes from those who live it.

So in the spirit of Voices and in the interest of encouraging us to be a little more human, a little more soulful and a little more aware, they have generously agreed to feature my “work and art in the service of humanity” with the publication and featuring of two recent pieces: One about a WMD Weapon that I believe warrants closer examination and another to recognize an often overlooked humanitarian genius and man of our time who, as it turns out, was a spiritual messenger hiding in plain sight.

At Voices you will meet a community of peacemakers, visionaries, humanitarians, leaders, way-showers, and responsible global citizens, Voices raises their voices to lift up and acknowledge the vast expanse of the human spirit. I believe in Voices because I stubbornly believe in us. It is with great pride and pleasure that I introduce you to a beacon for humanity- Voices Education Project.

Introduction and Editor's Blog: http://www.voiceseducation.org/content/new-version-weapon-mass-destruction
You may find the two features...

A New Version of a Weapon of Mass Destruction: http://www.voiceseducation.org/content/new-version-weapon-mass-destruction

Michael Jackson: Spiritual Messenger Hiding in Plain Sight: http://www.voiceseducation.org/content/michael-jackson-spiritual-messenger-hiding-plain-sight

And you may find my poetry in the online book Waging Peace at Voices in Wartime: http://voiceseducation.org/content/waging-peace

And if you like what you find at Voices, you might want to do what I did and “Make that change in Michael’s name” by leaving a donation in Michael’s memory: https://voiceseducation.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=3

A New Violence and WMD (Weapon of Mass Destruction)

2010-03-17T09:37:00.000-07:00

An Introduction to the Arsenal:
Yes, I have met the enemy and I can assure you he is us. I wrote about it in the book Looking Back: History through the eyes of those who lived it. I have seen weapons of mass destruction stockpiled for human doom. I have walked through a secret location with a military escort in a place in Siberia where a decommissioning facility was being built, a place that I could never find again and had better not. I have sat in the corner of a restaurant in Russia with an American Commander holding a laptop connected to God-knows-where while he sorted through its data to find some things that had recently been declassified so he could show me; there were some things he couldn't show me. The large shells that held chemical weapons were about my size; the smaller ones that would turn the Super Bowl into a morgue, were about the size of wine bottles. I have stood in assemblies holding two wine bottles and wearing a gas mask in order to make a point.

But now I have identified another kind of violence and even more scary weapon of mass destruction. It was revealed while doing some new research. My advice: be afraid; be very afraid for this weapon is a heat seeking predator. Why is it so dangerous? Because it is 'friendly fire'; it's constructed so as to do the most damage in short bursts; it isn't aimed at an enemy but at one of our own. It's a stealth weapon that can come out of nowhere and take away your life. Yes it could happen to you in your fifteen minutes of fame and your six degrees of separation. What is it?

The media.

The Mission: Human Suffering

Suffering is one of those common denominators and levelers for all of humanity. Humans know misery; humans suffer. Suffering comes in many forms: physical maladies that cause bodily pain, mental anguish, psychic wounding, imaginal fears, ecological dilemmas, circumstantial misfortune, and self inflicted injury or defeat. Some suffering appears to be accidental or resulting from particular twists of fate. Some suffering is wielded for political reasons, some for profit.

One may be born into poverty which appears to be a geographical accident of birth; one may be born with deformity or acquire a handicap that sometimes is genetic and sometimes an acquired calamity; one may be subject to many kinds of accidents and mishaps through a lifetime; risk taking required by culture may elevate the incidence of accidents leading to unfortunate outcomes. And certainly these misfortunes are hard to comprehend or assimilate.

We ask “why?” Why has a particular circumstance visited one person and not another? We search for meaning in suffering because we do not want to believe in its randomness or senselessness. Even when misery is an accident of nature in some way, it is not easy to accept and only the most spiritually advanced among us can embrace it. I only knew two: a nun who taught meditation, founder of a spiritual retreat center who held gratitude for her creeping blindness as it assisted in her quest for enlightenment. No longer able to see the outside world, she was forced to focus on the internal one and this greatly accelerated her spiritual growth. Ram Dass has said of his stroke that limited his movement; he had to learn to stand still to know the Presence.

We affix blame when misfortune visits. We have blamed fate, circumstances, ourselves, God, karma, luck, Satan, the gods and goddesses and more through time. We tend to link character to fortune: ‘How could this happen; she is such a good person? She doesn’t deserve this.’ We sometimes try to link character to deserving dark times. When misfortune befalls someone we don’t like we declare facetiously: ‘It couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.’

The kind of suffering that is far more difficult to comprehend, for even the most tepidly moral person, is suffering heaped upon someone deliberately by another person. And the worst of those is the individual who with malice, plots in order to heap suffering on another for undeserved gain or something for which they have no claim or entitlement.

But there is another kind of suffering that is perpetrated upon another that constitutes the most vile purpose of all: entertainment. There have been many dark figures in history who have deliberately heaped suffering upon others: Hitler, Stalin, Bin Laden, Ivan the Terrible, come to mind. But mostly their reasons were political. There is, however, one famous figure in history known for inflicting suffering for sheer entertainment: Vlad the Impaler. According to the records, atrocities committed by Vlad to at least eighty thousand people include torturing, burning, skinning, roasting, and boiling people, feeding people the flesh of their friends or relatives, cutting off limbs, and drowning and skinning the feet, then putting salt on them and letting goats lick off the salt.

Pathologically sadistic, Vlad was highly entertained by watching people suffer. But his favorite voyeur pastime was impaling people on stakes. He perfected a method of using oil to make the stake slick so that it could be threaded cleverly in a way that would not pierce a vital organ but would keep the person alive for hours, even days. When impaling women with children, he often threaded their babies on the end of the state jutting from their own chest. In this way, the mother was able to witness the horrific death of her infant before her own death. Vlad customarily ordered his meals and dined near the victims as he particularly enjoyed watching them squirm and hearing the screams while eating.

Method of Deployment:
Yes, it’s hard to wrap your mind around that kind of depravity. Depravity comes in many flavors; there is even a contemporary kind that involves sadistic pleasure from entertainment. How much of a leap is it from sadistically impaling someone on a stake and inflicting maximum pain for your viewing pleasure to deliberately impaling someone on the cross of public humiliation, then periodically poking around and reopening the wounds to siphon all the psychic puss for encore? There is something lewd, salacious and obscene about the practice of impaling celebrities with today’s tabloid yellow pornography.

Have you noticed that currently the most popular genre in books and movies in our culture is Vampirism? We love to watch blood-letting and find it sexy? Does the irony of that escape you? Does the clamoring for tabloid gossip about our favorite celebrities satisfy some animalistic urge? It’s simply Neanderthal; no, more reptilian. There is something slimy about a culture supporting an industry that operates like a meat-market surgically slicing up pieces of people for human consumption. Stalking people with a voyeur's delight, carving them up, and feeding on their lives is cannibalism! There is nothing redeemable even human about engaging in a voyeurism that destroys people, their work, their lives and their futures. And our future.

It’s the kind of practice that deliberately looks for the lowest form of humanity. It gleefully attaches itself to its latest popular victim and sucks the life force from them. The worst offenders are journalists who deliberately hurl questions and insults designed to inflame the celebrity, already upset, so as to get even more lurid footage or copy for consumption.

Consumption of tabloid fodder and gossip is the kind of hobby that people engage in without thinking about the impact of their actions. Few think about the consequences of their indulging in the misguided practice of buying dirt rag magazines, watching tabloid TV, clamoring for the latest gossip about their celebrity interests. And reality TV is hardly ever a slice of my reality. How about yours?

Collateral Damage:
If we would think before we consume this stuff or clamor for more we might realize what is lost because of it, what futures are preempted because of it: What gifts do talented people withhold because they are afraid to venture into the public venue? How many performers hold back from introducing new or avant garde art for fear of public opinion? How many people deny they have a personal problem and delay or avoid treatment because if they checked themselves into a rehab facility, their personal lives would be splayed in headlines? How many great politicians have not run for public office because of the uncharitable scrutiny they face? How many books are not written because of the celebrity well known authors enjoy or because they might end up on someone's hit list? How many who have been excoriated by tabloid journalism give up on new work, new discoveries, maybe on humanity itself?

The tabloid frenzy over President Clinton’s indiscretion caused his impeachment. A president was impeached for behavior in his private life. And a beloved president of history was again exposed for private liaisons while in office. Is that our business? These kinds of “exposures” take down good men. Clinton subsequently has marshaled global humanitarian efforts responsible for saving the lives of millions. Had he been humiliated beyond repair and faded into obscurity because of a human failing what would we have lost?

Do you remember Vince Foster? Vince Foster was the Deputy White House Counsel for the Clintons who investigated the Travel office corruption charges on behalf of Hillary Clinton. He became so despondent over the affair that he committed suicide. His suicide resignation note read “I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport.”

Lady Diana was a favorite target of the tabloid press that insisted on focusing their spotlight on rumors of anorexia, bulimia and depression instead of her humanitarian work with children and eliminating land mines. And all this yellow press, while she was trying to hold together a marriage to a royal husband who was carrying a torch for someone else! What young new bride would navigate all that well? The Paparazzi haunted Diana endlessly and hunted her down on the night she died. Her driver had been drinking and certainly alcohol contributed to the accident. But the driver would not have been speeding if the Paparazzi had not been stalking and chasing Diana. And after the accident they helped to cause, they continued snapping pictures as she lay dying in the back seat.

And then there’s the most recent and visible casualty of the tabloid press: Michael Jackson. Deeply traumatized by the events of his life, by relentless exploitation by tabloid America, by rabid officials who anticipated their own fame in taking down a famous celebrity, dispirited by the treatment of his face, skin color, his home, his work, his life and even his innocence, Michael had trouble sleeping at night. The two cases brought against Michael alleging impropriety with children brought the tabloids down on a gentle humanitarian whose life was about saving and healing children. A man who was singing “Heal the World” in Super Bowl performances and promoting peace in his concerts.

At his 2005 trial, hundreds of reporters drooling over anticipated juicy headlines, descended on the courthouse periphery. For five months they circled like vultures waiting to pick the bones from the carcass of his life served up in a trial with charges that never should have been brought. Michael simply wasn’t guilty.

Prison for someone like Michael Jackson would have been a death sentence. He lived month after month with that threat while the media conveniently left out newsworthy trial developments proving his innocence. Jermaine Jackson, Michael’s brother says he watched the light gradually go out of Michael’s eyes during the trial. A bone-weary, dispirited and traumatized father took his children and left his homeland, leaving behind a grueling trial, a justice system that failed to protect him from extortion, a media that impaled him and left him hanging exposed despite his innocence. He lost a home he cherished and shared for joy because he could no longer live there, the closeness to beloved Jackson family, and his country. A family with a history of extortion of other celebrities had targeted Michael and law enforcement with the media as accomplice, seduced by the allure of celebrity, played life and death games for sport.

How many Vince Fosters are there? What did we lose when we lost Diana and Michael? The loss is incalculable. Diana was the people’s princess and Michael was the most famous humanitarian in the world. They both were devoted to human welfare and social reform especially for children. Their work on this planet is legion and legendary as is their support of charities and generous philanthropy. Neither one had to, but they used their fame for all of humanity, for the elimination of pain, misery and suffering. And how did we thank these global messengers? We killed them.

Early Warning System:
Yellow press and you know who you are: here is your WMD Early Warning: More and more people are waking up on this planet. More humans are courting their own spirituality and enlightenment. Put your finger on that pulse because that heartbeat of humanity is our future. And I guarantee that you will not be here then. Unless you change your methods and reinvent your genre, you will be irrelevant. I promise you we, humanity, are far more than your narrow definition could ever imagine. We are tired of low slung dramas that don't work, a higher game awaits us and viewed from here, it sparkles.

Your imaginings are wrong; we are better than that! It’s sad enough that pain and misery visits every single life on this planet. We no longer wish to deliberately inflict it. Not for sport. You want to keep us down and drinking your Kool-Aid? You want us obedient to your doctrine? You think that is really going to work? We want to change. We are growing up and we don't want publications and media that slay people for fun. We are tired of the doom and gloom of people’s wounded humanity; we would like to hear about their brilliance. It's time. We want to applaud human contributions to art and life. We want to respect public figures more and be mature enough to allow them some dignity and privacy.

Decommissioning the Weapon:
We have a request media: We want you to stop inviting us where we don’t belong. We want you to give us the facts without the hype and sensationalism that by someone else’s arrogant determination censors what we are entitled to. We resent being spoon fed untruths so that somebody can sell a vile product and get fat paychecks because we are believed sophomoric. We resent being duped and treated like a commodity: like a consumer pig fattened up with garbage for the purpose of someone else’s slaughter. We are intelligent people; we would really like the facts and to decide for ourselves who and what we value.

Stop belittling us and all of humanity with your de-evolution. And now that we have all allowed the devolved media to destroy people who were national treasures and we have jeopardized a more bedazzled future because of the contributions they can no longer make, we are asking you to please stop killing people on our behalf. No, we are demanding it. We want no part in it. We want to breathe clear air not tainted with the stench of tabloid slaughter. We don't want to sit down to our dinner like Vlad, while tabloid TV shows dangle impaled flailing celebrity bodies in front of us during our meal. We don't want to feel that guilt or shame. We want to be part of creating a world we can live with and we can tell you it's not this one.

Peacekeeping Force:
We want to create a world where art is esteemed in whatever form, where beauty is a common pleasure, where the human mind and spirit is elevated; no, revered and we want help with that. We want a world where people’s woundedness is cradled with tenderness not exposed with glee. We want you to listen to us, to help us celebrate the human spirit, not feel ashamed of it. We all feel the winds changing and we want you to stop blowing us in the wrong direction. We want you to support us... humanity. We want you to do that by elevating the art of communication back to where it belongs and to feature and be the change we long to see in the world.

We have seen enough of what your weapons of mass destruction can do to a person and a world when they are unleashed. They destroy humanity. Ours. The create vacuums in the future where human treasures might have walked. We are asking you, the media… the latest incarnation of a WMD to decommission your arsenal and help us to make peace with ourselves... with the rest of the members of our human family. And please, help us to close the door on a shadowy era now past. We are ready to be the change we wish to see in the world. We need you now to convey not the darkness of our species, but our brilliance to us.

(c) 2010 & beyond B. Kaufmann, One Wordsmith

Michael: Thank You for the Mirror- more thoughts about Michael and "This Is It"

2009-10-31T15:13:00.000-07:00

Once again I stand guilty of not appreciating someone enough until they are gone never to return. And so it is with Michael. I call him by his first name now because I know him personally—but only so after his passing and only after seeing his movie “This is It.”

I finally understand Michael the man, both the human being and the creative genius, and I see the incredibly wide love for people and the planet… that came from this singular figure.

One listen to the lyrics of his songs will tell what the man was made of…

“Heal the World
Make it a better place
For you and for me and the entire human race.
There are people dying
If you care enough for the living
Make a little space
Make a better place.”

“When they say why, why? Tell ‘em that it’s human nature.
Why, why do you do me this way?”

“I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change.”

I sat in the parking lot and cried for most of an hour after leaving the movie. I didn't know why. The tears were not voluntary. In the theatre I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want the magic to leak away. I didn’t want him to be gone.

I felt the finality of that curtain call and realized that I couldn’t have another chance with him—to rescind my doubt. I wanted forgiveness for ever having it. I felt immobile with sadness—in betraying him, in overlooking him, in dismissing him, in questioning him, in doubting him. The tears were because... there are no do overs. Because the world lost something un-named and un-namable with his passing. Because it was something bright. Because Michael held so much love. Because I felt his loneliness. His vulnerability. But mostly I grieved for the light gone out in the world. I still do.

I had always wondered if Michael was guilty of the things people accused him of doing. I had agonized over my own feelings, my own revulsion if the accusations were true. Over the what ifs. You see, I grew up with the Jackson 5 and my children gew up with Michael's music. I felt if Michael was guilty it would be a personal betrayal and a betrayal of my children. I rejoiced when he was finally found “not guilty” but not everyone accepted his innocence and I confess, in the back of my mind in a little corner, I always wondered. Accusation does that- creates doubt.

After seeing “This is It” I now know the truth. Michael Jackson never deliberately hurt anybody. Ever. I didn’t miss his incredible kindness to musicians in his band; his “we’ll get it done” assurance to his musical director who wanted his contribution to be perfect because it was, after all, Michael Jackson he was trying to please. I saw his infinite patience with the singers, musicians and dancers as he worked hands on with them to polish their performances. I heard the patronizing tones in the voices of people addressing him and his gracious and patient replies. I heard Michael the leader, teacher and master who used metaphor to help them feel his intentions. I heard Michael the guru who urged them to share the spotlight and shine with their own talent. I saw his hands say what his words could not and I watched the tender and not so tender genius in those gestures and those hands.

Michael was beloved and adored by millions-- fans and friends. That love and a kind of artist-to-artist admiration beamed from the sparse audience that made up his cast and crew for the concert tour that was to be "This is It." Michael was teaching them as well as rehearsing. His absolute clarity was stunning. His understanding of transcendentalism, mystery, creative tension and especially using magic and metaphor to take people to places beyond ordinary awareness and through the tunnel of emotion-- to a place they had never been and never imagined was genius. All of us have that talent somewhere inside us but convention, tradition, condition and cultural boundaries can prevent us from going there. Performance anxiety runs much deeper than stage fright. His clarity in performance and leadership was humble perfection.

Because of his early recognition and financial success, very few of the limits and demands of everyday life that press upon us and drain juice from our imagination, wonder and creative impulse touched Michael. Michael's stardom began very early in life; his childhood was anything but average. And with his talent, he cultivated unrestricted access to most of the world and certainly to the creative realm of wonder and invention. Living most of his life without healthy boundaries brought great aspirations and ambition but also intense pain, betrayed trust and the anguish of being constantly misunderstood.

Michael pushed the envelope; he pushed relentlessly and hard. He was showman, businessman and genius. The grand genius of his works, and especially his concerts were the transcendental experiences. "Transendental" takes us somewhere else beyond the personal self, to a place where the self and the world become something more and we become something more. Michael was loved for what he showed us was possible. He was the man in the mirror and the one holding it up for us to look. Are we all so far out from childhood that we don’t remember?

How do you pay for children’s’ artificial limbs and transplants in an unknown act in an unknown hospital in an unknown country meanwhile bearing an accusation of deliberately causing harm to children? How do you navigate the vitriolic damnation of some who haven’t heard you were found not guilty? Or couldn’t hear it because of their own shadow? When it would never occur to you to hurt a little boy because you, yourself conspire to always embody the magic and wonder for the "boy" in all of them and for the sake of all of them? We all have to bear sometime that one searing and rending wound, the loss of innocence. Was your innocence so great that it took that to destroy it? Did it require that much shadow to cover the light that you were? How do you ever return to Neverland? I guess you don’t.

I always loved his dancing but wondered why the sexual “beyond innuendo” in some of it. Watching him in the act of creation—I now understand that it comes from the passion of someone who “rocks it” not because he wanted to or had to but because that was what came through him, through his body. The driving beat of Michael’s music carries an intensity that demands the body move, gyrate, leap, growl and grind. The intensity centers in the groin and solar plexus because it comes from the “seat of emotion.” Intensely emotional, it is the language of pure passion. Hindis have a name for that passionate grinding, grounding energy that rises from the place in the human body where spirit meets matter, where physicality meets soul. It’s the energy of gestation, birth, genesis, of force and forceful release—that rises into and becomes creation. It’s the impulse energy that rushes hot and upward along the backbone from the groin and solar plexus. It is the place of the Kundalini force, the juice of life. And it’s explosive. Like orgasm, that creation energy sends waves of physical earthquakes up the backbone. It is obvious that Michael felt it in his music; it exploded through the music, through him and through his body.

“This is It” left me with some questions:

How do you live with the paradox that millions of people around the world love you but you cannot leave your home? How do you never push a cart down the aisle in a grocery store? Never enter a music store where your recordings are on sale? Never go to a baseball game, a parade, a zoo or picnic in a park with your children? How do you never be left alone yet be so very, very alone? How do you write so well of loneliness? And when you’re with people, how do you sort out if someone is being authentic with you or playing to your public persona? How do you be so painfully shy and have such massive talent that it cannot be contained? How do you never say no when and because the music hounds and haunts until it comes through you? How do you rehearse for hours to exhaustion because you can’t NOT share the bigness of your creative genius with the world? How do you stand up and be a superstar in a world with so much shadow? How do you keep writing lines that highlight or attack that shadow? How do you survive when the shadow turns on you? I understand now it was a calling—the kind that no one could turn their back on because it possesses them. Oh yes, Michael was called. Look at his lyrics—most of them are prayer.

And how do you live so naked in public light knowing that for some, you are everything and for others, you will never be enough? How do you remain steadfast in the the beacon called “public scrutiny” allowing yourself to be a larger than life target for opportunists? How do you bear continuing vilification perpetuated by unscrupulous exploiters when the unthinkable accusation doesn’t even live in your consciousness, your world? How do you come to show up for court another day to listen to them excoriate you, shred your very personhood, destroy who you are being? How do you get out of bed? Out of your pajamas? How do you reconcile being accused alone even if found “not guilty” of unspeakable acts to children when you have always loved children because of their wonder, their innocence? How do you trust ever again after someone gained your confidence and left the best part of you on the cutting room floor and called the remainder tabloid film a documentary of your life? How do you survive a mad dog mentality in the legal system bent on destroying you? The very system that is supposed to protect you? How then do you gather up the carelessly flung about pieces of your life? And in the midst of it, or in its aftermath, how do you even show up for life?

Maybe you become a recluse and look for something to dull the pain and make the brutality and exhaustion go away. Maybe to make the world go away for awhile. Maybe you even find a doctor or two who will give a little something that helps to ease your woundedness while you try to heal yourself. Can the missing chunks of flesh chewed by those who wanted a pound, be patched? How deep is the wound? Weary soul deep or just weary bone deep?

How do you bear a lifetime of insults, slurs and lies too many to address and too tormenting to allow inside because it would paralyze you? How do you not let it harden your heart? How do you bear comments about your face? My god, your face! The only thing you can be in, express to the world, telegraph your emotions with. How do you live with Lupus, a disease that wants to consume your body and Vitiligo, a disease that mars your face? The face that presents you to the world, the face you make a living with? How do you live under umbrellas because the sun makes the blotching of your skin that much worse? When you do the best you can with the laser treatments that are necessary but that make your skin appear bleached and whiter? Now that the disease has left you with more white than black skin in large blotches, and the doctors have avised that the best treatment is to zap the dark skin with lasers to even it out, how do you bear the accusations that you have become a trader to your race? How do you then navigate being the butt of thousands of jokes and unkind remarks that impale you? How do you survive without one single day in the sun romping at the beach? I wish "we" could have loved and accepted you just the way you were. I wish we could have cradled you and your face with our minds. But the world is not kind to blemish and imperfection. But you knew that didn't you Michael? Being the perfectionist and artist you were, you kept changing your face. You always empathized with the dowtrodden, disabled and disfigured-- you were closer to them than any of us knew. You hid it from us so well.

How do you explain to a world that is too far gone and will never be innocent enough again to understand that boys loved to hang out with you because you are a legend? A bigger than life greatness that gives them hope in the descending despair of childhood and adolescence, a someone who gives them something undefined to aspire to? That, yes, they see the Peter Pan in you, love you because of it, and want to be close to you because you embody that unabashed joy and wonder that they feel slipping from them. The thing that the world-in-becoming-grown up lost when it lost the innocence of simple “believing?” How do you explain that boys are hanging out to hang onto something so gossamer that it can't be defined? But you too, know what it is and want them to have it just a little longer. How do you explain that they are beginning to discover that if they let go of you, (more what you represent) they will have to confront the despairing reality that they don’t care much for this world the way it is either.

Oh, yes you were eccentric, Michael. And sheltered. Creative geniuses usually are. Yes, you marched to your own drummer. Only because you didn’t like the beat or the vibe of this planet, the one you landed on at birth. Yes, you were Peter Pan in the flesh but only because the world was not a place where you could live, where your fragile spirit could be nourished or thrive. Peter Pan held more sanity than the real world. Yet up until the very end, you were still trying to make it a better place! It would have been so much easier to turn your back on a world that didn’t understand you. It would have been understandable. Even expected. But then you always were a master of the unexpected. How is it, Michael that you could or would continue to care?

That Michael Jackson was truly a contradiction is understated but evident in his last appearance. His humility, clarity, unassuming and egoless private persona certainly “contradicts” the moments he “rocks it.” His shyness contradicts his superstar status. In “This is It,” Michael is truly being Michael— the contradiction. The glory. What if that Michael truly never understood the dark energies that come from minds that cannot comprehend true innocence and genuine naiveté? The creative or creation impulse? What an incredible gift to the world yet the world didn’t appreciate him well—both lion and lamb. Yes,the world crucified yet another of our lambs who was a (oh yes he was!) light unto the world. And then again, perhaps Michael did understand. He sang, after all, about “human nature.”

And maybe we never knew him until now. Until he was gone. Until “This is It.” Were he still here, I would not have met the real Michael. I would not have known him. I would not have seen the genius, the creative impulse, the clarity of leadership, the ownership of the awesome power and responsibility that he knew he held. I would not have known the Michael in the Music as well as the music in Michael. I wince when I think about the number of times the man put himself out there not knowing if what would return would be revulsion or love. And yet he was staging a comeback—he was willing to give the world and us another chance. And it would have brought him back to us and us back to him; of that I am sure. Would the world have appreciated that magnanimity of the risk, the gift? We will never know. At least he never gave up on the world. On us.

I wonder who now will take over his role-- not as the "King of Pop" but as the world's cheerleader and hummanitarian? What language will she speak? How will he get the world's attention? Michael spoke in the language of music. It was because of the language he spoke that he was able to reach the masses. Because he was so widely beloved, Michael was able to mobilize forces, bring people together, and create story in the most unusual and spectacular ways. He was a man with a mission and because of who he was, he was able to command audiences of millions. He used music- a popular and universal language to trumpet his message. He used it to reach just the right audience- youth. Michael understood that young people hold the hope for the future and the world. And his message was about healing the world, caring for children and that "we are one." He was able to spread it universally to many generations and peoples around the globe. Who now is capable of that? We know in a quiet and secret place that there will never be another Michael. We, the world, didn't cherish him enough, in fact we didn't treat him very well and now he is gone.

Watching the movie, something Michael never intended for release, made me feel a little like a voyeur watching a man preparing to expose his soul to judgment. I felt like I had trespassed into sacred space. But I am grateful for it. I feel like I now know the soul of this man called Michael. He loved big. Oh, I always loved his talent, but I didn’t love Michael, the man. It wasn't enough.

And my final gift from Michael is the realization that “Man in the Mirror” which has to be my favorite song, has an even deeper message than “be the change you wish to see in the world” of Gandhi. There are some people on this planet who saw his light earlier, longer and who never doubted because they had to have seen in Michael, the reflection of their own light. Just like those to whom he reflected their darkest shadow. I wish it hadn’t taken his death to bring me the bright light that was Michael Jackson and the mirror of mine. I just didn't love him as much as he loved me.

(c) ~ Barbara Kaufmann 2009 and beyond

Goodbye Michael- a tribute

Art in the Service of Hope and Humanity

2009-02-26T11:45:00.000-08:00

Chapbook of Poetry "We're All in This Together(c)"
Original artwork and copy by Barbara

Painting: "Vision of the Madonna"
Acrylic on board

Featured on Posters, book covers

This painting that is almost 5 feet X 5 feet hangs at the Christine Center
a sanctuary and spiritual retreat center in Northern Wisconsin.

"Gaia" the sculpture

Limited Edition
Gaia Sculpture
Cast from Ceramic Mold
Designed with sacred geometry and spiritual symbolism
(The pyramid shape denotes the spiritual alchemy of resurrection and ascension, the apex of this pyramid intesects the core of the earth, the four corners of the sculpture signify the four corners of the world the four major races holding up the world.)
The "Gaia" scupture made its inagural appearance at the Plenary Session of the Soviet-American Citizen's Summmit in Moscow in the nineteen eighties. Since then it has become an award for those who would, by their work on the planet, make the world a better place. It has graced the mantels of some of the most enlightened visionaries on Earth.

Pet Planet (TM)

Pet Planet (TM)
Remember the Pet Rock?
Here's a "pet" that is the biggest rock there is... "Pet Planet"

(Comes with "Care & Feeding Instructions")

PET PLANET CARE AND FEEDING INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Keep your planet's oceans, waters, lakes, rivers and streams teeming with healthy life and free from toxins, wastes, and pollution.
2. Do not explode nuclear, hydrogen or other destructive devices in your planet's fragile atmosphere. These devices threaten both biological life and the life of your planet.
3. Do not discharge any products into your planet's thin layer of atmosphere that might harm its protective layers including the ozone.
4. Do not spread toxic products on your planet's land, in its atmosphere or under its surface.
5. Make sure all of your planet's artificially produced energy and power sources are clean, secure and safe.
6. Respect the natural world of your planet and use the generosity of nature wisely. If you use the natural resources on your planet to enhance human life, do so in a respectful nonviolent way and arrange for its replenishment.
7. Treat the human forms on your planet as though they are your own brothers and sisters with the same mother and father. In reality, they all came from the same source. The birthplace of human life is the cosmos; your planet was the terrestrial womb.
8. Do not allow conflict to come between the members of your planet's global village or make war against any species--human or otherwise.
9. Treat all forms of life on your planet as if they are sacred species—possibly the products of a divine creation.
10. Do not concern yourself about how the various sub-groups of the human species on your planet explain the great mysteries of existence. They may recognize a supernatural, divine or creative intelligence, or a creator in their mysteries. They may call this creative intelligence or creator by different names and worship or practice devotion to whatever they believe in different ways. This is as it should be and makes your planet a place of wonderfully interesting diversity and creativity.
11. Allow all species on your planet to live out their lives in the manner of their natural order. The human species is the only one which has evolved to a level of consciousness that allows for self-determination and will. This means that individuals, groups, or societies of these humans will live in ways that they themselves, determine. Understand that this is the natural order of their evolution and allow them to live as they choose so long as there Is no harm created.
12. Learn to respect and love all the mineral, vegetable, animal and human existence on your planet. And love your planet itself as if she were the mother and nurturer of all life. She is.

Artwork from:
"Harmony" annual Peace Concert
Lawrence Chapel, Appleton, WI

Did You Get the Invitation?

2009-02-22T12:26:00.000-08:00

The only way I can explain my obsession is to take you to the scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind where Richard Dreyfuss is eating dinner with his family and he begins to sculpt Devil’s Tower in his mashed potatoes.

His family watches his antics, mouths agape as they begin to think he has just slipped over the edge of sanity.

The central theme in the movie is that everyone receives a message and it’s the same message but for each person, the form the message comes in is different.

The message is actually an invitation. The movie is about an invitation that the characters receive through their intuition. It’s an invitation from an unknown intelligence in the cosmos to be at a site near Devil’s Tower, Wyoming on a certain date and after dark. The movie’s characters don’t know each other, they don’t understand their own obsession with the image of the well-known landscape feature, and they certainly don’t understand what the message means. All they know is they are magnetically drawn to a place and share a compulsion to be there… at Devil’s Tower, one night in time, and at the same time.

My obsession, fixation and artistic compulsion with an image began in 1972 and it too, came right out of the cosmos—actually, from NASA. It was one of those moments that many people tend to remember vividly by recalling where they were in the first instant they witnessed something significant. It’s a memory trigger like… “Do you remember where you were when… “the planes hit the towers? ... “Kennedy was shot?” …”the Challenger exploded?” In a moment like that, in a brief second the breath involuntarily and violently sucks itself in, the belly tightens, and perhaps the eyes even began to water. The initial strike of awe from that first encounter may have since waned, but I argue that it was one of the most significant moments in modern history and a turning point for humanity. I also argue that this intuitive message was received by everyone on Earth the moment they first saw it. And it is still transmitting its invitation to this day.

The iconic image captured by the crew of Apollo 17 on December 17, 1972 held a message for the whole world. It said without words… “We are one.” The image showed no delineations called “countries,” no dividing lines, no geological survey boundaries that distinguish “territory” or “place” belonging to only one peoples, one tribe. It looked at once both beautiful and vulnerable. It was the first time in history we, meaning humanity, saw the reality of our puny existence. From the perspective the photograph was taken, a human thumb could erase the entire planet from the camera’s frame and blot it out of existence. For the first time, humanity found itself looking back at itself, and on itself. The clear hues of brilliant blue and the cotton candy wispy white clouds conveyed something that caused all who viewed it for the first time, an instantaneous sucking in of air... the spontaneous in-breath of awe and epiphany.

The image began to appear everywhere at once. The “Blue Marble” as photograph # AS17-148-22726 is known, appeared on the cover of most of the newspapers in the world on that first weekend following NASA's release of Apollo 17 mission photos. It graced the Whole Earth Catalogue and Time Magazine’s cover where a story appeared about the flight, the pictures taken and credits for the photos. To this day, it is unclear which member of the crew actually took the photo. It was that view of the Earth that Edgar Mitchell witnessed from the face of the Moon that inspired him to found the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Mitchell had a mystical experience on his way back to the earth from its moon where he “knew” with as much scientific certainty as any standard mathematic equation that the whole earth comprised a living system, a kind of manifestation of consciousness in a conscious Universe. That view of earth and viewpoint gave rise to the Gaia Hypothesis and the evolution of consciousness on the planet, skillfully articulated by Peter Russell in his books The Global Brain and From Science to God.

When I first saw the image, a feeling shot through me that I am not able to describe to this day. The impact held an electric kind of charge, yet it wasn’t electricity that ran through me. And not only did my breath do involuntary things but so did my hands. I began impulsively to create the image everywhere, like the character in Close Encounters, in order to capture and convey its iconic and astounding message for the world. The Blue Marble photograph changed the rules of the game. It changed the world. It changed humanity. It changed life as we know it. It defines something diaphanous and gossamer that we haven’t come to know even yet.

That image inspired so many people to contribute to changing the paradigm on this planet. The way we do it will never be the same since the appearance of that image-- the icon for the new century. The message has been received. It has motivated many humans via its non-verbal and non-vocal message, whether they realize it or not—and some don’t. But many do. And those have stepped up to speak for, and give voice to a planet who cannot speak in words but who clearly, through the evolutionary gyrations and explorations of its own race of humans, can now speak for herself via that haunting image that says in an inherently loud and clear way that things have, and must, change. It is not only a message. Just like in Close Encounters, it is a direct and singular invitation. The invitation is… “Come change the world.” Tell me, do you hear it? Do you feel the spirit of Gaia? Did you get the invitation? Can you find your way to the meeting? To the place where we all meet up? Will you RSVP? How?

I Cry Because I Want my Face to Shine- A letter to President Obama

2009-01-16T11:00:00.000-08:00

Mr. President,

I watched you at the Democratic National Convention and I watched you in Chicago's Grant Park after the election. I called my daughter in Denver (a block from the convention) and she wanted to know... "Mother, why are you crying?"

I cry because I can hear clearly, a new kind of sound… a collective and harmonious esprit de` corps that has the potential to lift the voice of American past the low drone of despair that has played in the background of our days for far too long. It is a new verse for America, one that could amplify our voice facing forward toward tomorrow and toward a new reality so lyrical that I can hear it sing. For those who have ears to hear, Mr. President… say it loud and proud and let them hear.

I cry because I could see a look on the faces in those crowds… the faces of optimism, of faith. I could see them imagining an individual and collective picture of hope-- hunkering down ready to homestead perhaps just over the next rise, their eyes fixed on the point of hope where the eyes and horizon meet. Those faces reflected the majesty of America at another place and time. And maybe again at a place and time reserved for us in the not-too-distant future? Perhaps as soon as at the turning of the year? For those who have eyes to see, Mr. President… beam it with crystal clarity and let them see.

I cry because I know that we have lived with something diaphanous, something that we cannot quite put our finger on, for so long now that we don't even notice it's there. The America of late-- formerly a hero, a leader, a once brightly lighted beacon of hope-- has fallen from grace, a casualty of friendly fire. America's majesty has suffered and her principles have suffered, adulterated at the hands of those who measure power with the yardstick of fear, success by the hammer of conflict and who trade America's long term destiny as a symbol of freedom in situ, for short term might and egoic gain. For those who have a heart to feel, Mr. President… do it with passion and let them feel.

I cry for America. “She is the crippled freedom-fighter,” I told my daughter, “she is the archetype of wounded healer. She is an eagle once majestic in flight, now with broken wing. She is a candle of hope now flickering dim. She is a country without a soul. I mourn the loss of America's soul. It has been sold out from under her and it falls to us now, and you, to retrieve it and restore it to her.”

I cry too, because all of a sudden I realize I am battle weary from holding in abeyance, an enemy that I can't see-- one that is there in the shadows and one I can't even identify. But I know he is one of us. I want America's soul back. I want back the hope that I once knew.

I cry because I did not know how badly I wanted that until I saw the uplifted and shining faces at the Democratic National Convention and Grant Park-- so much hope in those faces. Some so young, so shining, and all so filled with full frontal optimism. I remembered another time, another place where I saw faces uplifted and shining with hope in that same way toward a man called Martin, and a man called Kennedy, and another called Kennedy.

I cry because I remember being one of those faces-- uplifted and full of hope. I want to feel that hope once more. I want to feel the real America in your Inagural speech and in your presidency. And most of all, Mr. President, once again, I want my face to shine.
~ © B. Kaufmann

When I Am a Grownup I Will Do Something

2008-12-02T07:29:00.001-08:00

Barbara's decades of work as a peace advocate is featured in author Kay Kennedy's new anthology-- a compilation of stories about events in history as seen through the eyes of those who lived it.

The START II Treaty (cooperative threat reduction) targeted a site near our sister city for the building of a decommissioning plant to render weaponry harmless. When a previous site in Russia had attempted to build such a facility, Russian citizens who didn’t understand the plan and were afraid of the project successfully protested and closed down the plant. (It was great to see fledgling democracy at work, but the efforts in the case of stalling a bilateral mutual weapons elimination plan were misguided due to lack of information, education and misunderstandings.)

By the time START II came along, our sister city organization already had a decade of cooperative Russian-American relationship building experience. Mutually cooperative partnerships already existed between our municipal organizations—police and firefighters, mayor and city leaders. We already had healthcare, educational, social and business bridges with frequent personnel exchanges in the oblast (section) where the plant was scheduled to be built. USAID funded our project for $250,000.

As Executive Secretary with the Sister Cities program, Barbara wrote the grant and became the grant administrator for funding the foundational social infrastructure for a cooperative effort between cities that supported building a chemical weapons decommissioning plant in her sister city region in Russia. USAID funded the project as an adjunct to the Cooperative Threat Reduction START II Treaty between the United States and Russia. Her story appears in Kay Kennedy's new anthology Looking Back.

You may read the entire story here...

WHEN I AM A GROWNUP I WILL DO SOMETHING

“What will it feel like to be vaporized? Will it hurt? Will I know right away that I am dead? My family will be dead too. Will we all go to heaven together? What about Jody, my dog? Will she come too?” The never-ending cycle of uninvited thoughts and the heart pounding fear was a nightly ritual. I tried to shift my focus to the coolness of summer sheets and pulled the comforter up to my chin. Even in summer I insisted on a blanket or comforter. Maybe in my young mind, the extra cover or extra weight would somehow protect me. An illusion can save you sometimes, even when you’re dealing with insanity.

My generation accepted the inevitability of nuclear war. None of us actually expected to make it to adulthood. We were surrounded by icons of fear—radiation symbols, evacuation drills and sirens—that high pitched and eerie wail that pierced the air resurrecting with each blast, the sickening feeling in my stomach and chest. I was nauseous for most of my childhood.

The image of Khrushchev pounding his shoe and screaming “We will bury you” was burned into our memory. The cold war was a daily reality with daily reminders. I didn’t understand how Russians and Americans could vow to annihilate one another when each knew nothing of the other. I couldn’t understand how the grownups who were in charge of the world could allow a philosophical disagreement to destroy the entire planet! I wondered if Russian kids were as scared as I was. I knew this wasn’t right and it wasn’t a good way to run the world. Why didn’t the grownups DO SOMETHING?!

One night after prayers, I made a vow. I vowed that if I lived long enough to be a grownup, I would do something. As a young adult, I joined the anti-war movement. My peers were dying daily in Viet Nam and after denouncing the legacy of complacency that characterized the youth of the fifties, my generation became angry—damn angry. We questioned, protested, rebelled against the hypocrisy of their government and the passivity of our parents. I believe the “Summer of Love” of 1967 was a pivotal point in social history.

We had hypocrisy fatigue, war fatigue and we sought to move toward love, peace and caring in any form. Tired of passivity and living with post traumatic stress from the constant threat of disintegration of not only us, but all of life, we rebelled. We took drugs because we had grown up with nuclear holocaust and impending doom in the collective human psyche, with no laughter, no promise of hope, and no future. We needed a break from too much reality. Tolerance faded for anything not genuine. It was an incredible time, an incredible counterculture and a very loud declaration to the world that this generation demanded change! My generation began a movement toward community and of inclusion—forming groups and communes because we could no longer tolerate divisiveness. The sixties defined a generation that wanted the grownups to do it differently. I was a flower child and I loved how it felt; for the first time, I thought more about love, hope and life than I did about death. We lived intensely, with love, and in the moment. It was a transcendental time that marked a transcendental birth in the human psyche.

I remained a transcendentalist throughout the stages of my life. The moon landing in 1969 had a profound impact on me; I saw the first picture of the earth over the horizon of the moon and knew that I was looking at an awe- inspiring spiritual icon heralding a new way of being in the world. An artist, I recreated in my work the theme of one life, one planet and respect for all life. Some of my creations ended up on posters and book covers or given as awards to champions of social justice and some ended up at citizen’s summits in Moscow. My daughter and I joined the Peace Child project and I helped found our local sister cities chapter as we partnered with a city in Russia and we began cultural exchanges. My children grew up with a peace activist and with Russians.

I learned later that indeed my Russian counterparts lay awake many nights with the same questions I had. We both felt betrayed by our governments. As we learned to trust each other, my Russian friends and I watched the world evolve through the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet coup and the democratization of Russia.

In the late nineties, one of the doctors in the program discovered that our sister city was located near a secret city where chemical weapons were stockpiled. The U.S. government was deeply committed to the Start II Treaty then—an agreement between the two countries to reduce their weapons stockpiles by cooperatively building decommissioning plants. An Executive Officer, I wrote a grant for USAID to fund a partnership between our city and the new city in Russia targeted for such a facility. Suspicious from past relations with Americans, the Russians had successfully halted the building of a similar plant in another city by employing the tactics of civil disobedience. I was thrilled for their new found freedoms, but alarmed by their misguided efforts to halt the mutual U.S. and Russian decommissioning of weapons of mass destruction. Since we, in Sister Cities had long ago made friends with Russian institutions in the area and had a 10 year successful track record of citizen diplomacy, maybe we could extend that fellowship to governmental institutions.

My dream of being a grownup and doing something came true at the dawning of the 21st century. Our grant funded, I found myself standing in Red Square looking at St. Basil’s Cathedral with a feeling of awe instead of the terror the image conjured in my childhood. I sat in a meeting with two army generals—a Russian and American who announced to the Russian media, their cooperative effort to begin destroying stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. I had a long distrust of the military and its leaders but I stood in a secret location looking at a construction site knowing that the project was in very good hands, the hands of two men who knew the stakes and came from a place of heart and honor.

I heard Russians acknowledge that for them too, this was a monumental historical moment, and they also felt humbled to be a small part of it. Now a grownup, I had fulfilled my promise to do something. There was no laughter when as a child, I thought about “Russians.” As a grownup I have laughed much and often with them. That particular “doing something” ended in a pub somewhere in Siberia the night before departure. I confessed to my Russian friend the story about my childhood and the dream of grownups doing something. I thanked her for her intrepid courage and asked her how did she do it? Her answer as we both dissolved into hysterics: “You forget my friend, I learned it from a Capitalist. This is a free county; and I can do anything I want!”

A Confession Letter to Friends.. I Am an Addict

2008-05-20T08:27:00.000-07:00

Hi my friend,

This is a difficult letter to write but I have decided to come clean.

After a great deal of anguish and soul searching, I have accepted that the only way to overcome this problem is to admit to myself and others that the problem exists..

I think I have an addiction and I am asking for your help.... It's like a monkey on your back alright-- that stalking compulsion that demands that you get the next fix, and soon. I'll admit it, I am addicted. But I can't help myself, really I can't. I've tried to kick the habit but haven't had any luck. I quit smoking several years ago. They say smoking cessation is the hardest; don't you believe it. That was a snap compared to this urge, this gotta-have-it-now compulsion. It grabs you hard and doesn't let go. Oh and I'll have to admit I do get satisfaction from even just the licking; I mean, how can you resist? I am hopelessly hooked. I've been known to call friends all hours of the day and night if I need to feel that huge whole-body rush, the tingle, the delirious stupor from having even just one because I don't have one right now.

It's embarrassing to have to beg because the gnawing need is so great. Sometimes I just have to get my hands on one! I will do just about anything to support my habit. I've even come close to stealing one especially if they are little ones-- small enough to stuff into your bag and carry out unnoticed.

Unless you have been there like me, you don't understand the exquisite pain of not being able to get that urge under control, of not being able to give it up. I'm telling you, it controls your life. I've tried kicking the habit cold-turkey but the withdrawal symptoms are so severe that I really don't think it can be done alone.

I think I need help and I when I was finally able to admit I was hooked, there was nowhere to go for treatment. They have lots of support groups for people who are addicted or are somehow affected by addiction. There are groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Food-aholics Anonymous, Al-Anon, Al-A-Teen, Adult Children of Alcoholics, and so many more........ but there is nothing out there for addicts like me. There is nowhere to turn, no one who understands, nowhere to go for help.

This is really hard to admit but I've been known to buy special ice creams or treats to bribe people into letting me get near what I crave so I can sneak even a little bit of that feeling of ecstasy. I admit I'm shameless when it comes to getting what I need. I will even borrow them from other people on the pretense of being charitable and caring for them out of kindness and generosity but it is a con. My real agenda is to get my hands on them in order to get a little lick and satisfy those urges.

I was beginning to think there is no help for me, that I am doomed to live this way the rest of my life.... lying, conning and cheating just to get my urges satisfied. I am ready to give up. I have reached bottom. I admit I am powerless over this addiction and I am ready to surrender my life, turn it over to Dog... er... uh....oops....ahem... pardon the dyslexic flip....God as I understand him.

Yes, I am finally ready to admit it now... I need help and I am asking you to help me and support me as I work to give up this dependency. Since there is no program for people like me, I have decided to develop my own. Here goes....

My name is Barbara and I am powerless over dogs. I am ready to admit that sometimes I need a doggy fix. I am trying hard to give up those eyes that get you, or the floppy ears, the furry feel of their hair or the antics when they play with you. That puppy paw in your face and puppy muzzle in your neck feeling when you pick them up. And especially their ooooh... puppy breath.... ecstacy in a lick! I am wondering if you could lend me your dog so that I can work on this problem?

Forever grateful for your assistance,
Barbara

Death At The Window

2008-05-06T06:58:00.000-07:00

I heard the dull sickening thud,
swallowed hard that last sip
as “Oh no!” involuntarily hissed
through the opening in my lips.
I rose slowly from the bed,
slow motion to the window
to see if injury was waiting.

But I couldn’t see from there
so I stepped outside
surveyed the stones and bushes
and almost missed you…
a speckle of feathers,
a trickle of blood,
but still warm
now in my gloved hands.

I willed the Reiki
through your body,
said a prayer
and held you for awhile
cursing death
as if that could hold it back
or stem the tide
of life force leaking.

Retrieved the Rescue Remedy
and the stethoscope
holding it to your breast
only to hear nothing
but the moan
that leaked from me.

As if I needed another reminder
that death can come knocking
at the window
silent and uninvited
arrive between sips,
turn instantly bitter the taste,
the cup so innocent--
a simple hope of morning coffee.

I Heard Grandma in the Tea

2008-05-02T19:16:00.000-07:00

I wonder where that teapot is
the wedding gift
god awful olive green
circa 1970
like my marriage
also circa seventies
eventually lost its steam.

In the back of my mind
that green whistle shrill
mimicking grandma’s pot
and bringing back
a capsule in time
her two room flat
train whistle in the dark
the tick of the clock
the new pendulum grandpa made
when that timekeeper lost its tock.

The sound of sirens
from down in the street
the squeak of the springs
climbing up on the bed
nestled in the corner
of the living room
and the plaintive wail
of the barely weaned puppy
she brought in from the cold
and kept.

The scratch of the squirrel
with claws on the glass
looking for nuts
through the window
she fed them from.
The sound of a waif
who finds sanctuary
and wishes life were easy as that
while sobs find their way
from a chest that hurts
and is too small
and too young
to contain them.

The squeal of the hinges on the oven door
as she takes out the pie to cool.
The ice box door clicking shut
as she pours cold milk for me
and sips her tea
while telling of the apple picking
rhubarb and sugar
and sensory stories
sweet and robust
much like the liquid
and to a sensitive child
drinking very much like love.

First Place in Curtis Brown Literary Short Story Contest Awarded to Barbara

2008-03-11T18:39:00.000-07:00

First place in the Curtis Brown Literary Short Story Contest was awarded to Barbara last week for her story about Maddie, a handicapped little girl with a neuromuscular disease who is dependent on a ventilator to breathe. Contest entries were to address the subject of "Invention" or "Inventiveness." Barbara's entry was about the Tickle Monster who assists with Maddie's exercises, massage and rib mobilization. An offer to publish is being considered with Maddie's mom having the last word.

ARE YOU A MESSENGER ?

2008-02-11T22:07:00.000-08:00

Are you one of the ones we have been waiting for? When we save humanity, save the world, and create peace on the planet, I am convinced the method will be surprisingly unconventional. Would you agree that the methods for destroying it are surprisingly unconventional? Terrorism? Chemical weapons? Nukes? Suicide bombers? Global Climate change? And do these things sound like the products of rational minds, rational actions?

The twentieth century fostered a collective consciousness born of fear and limitation. The perpetual threat and cold war caused us to ask not “how can we create a lasting global peace?” but rather: “how can we extend our survival, and for how long?” Feel the difference?

There is an energy field that is formed when living in a particular space and repetition and reinforcement anchors that energy field into reality. It then develops a resonance and is felt by all within its field and its harmonics. That field creates an attractor field that draws matching resonance to itself. Violence begets violence, war begets war. (If you don’t believe in resonance and attractor fields in a space, walk into a room where someone has just been violent or a fight has taken place and check what your body feels and what it wants to do.)

Peace doesn’t come out of mutually assured threat or destruction, abeyance does. The cold war held “war” in abeyance. When your psyche explores the idea of abeyance born of mutually assured destruction, what happens to your body? Does it relax? Does it tighten up? Pay attention to your breath, what is it doing?

What if the idea of mutually shared stewardship (humans being stewards of, and sponsors for the sanctity of all life on the planet) was the current paradigm in collective consciousness? If you knew that in every mind was the idea “this is my planet, my home; all things and beings on the planet are precious to me. It is my responsibility to feel and act out of respect for all life and beings on my planet.” If you imagine that world, now what happens to your body? Tense or relaxed? What happens to your breath?

So the mechanism for knowing is already within you and your body has the knowledge. It knows individually and we know collectively what is best for us and for the planet. Now how to create a collective consciousness or a change in collective consciousness? Create critical mass, a tipping point. Critical mass occurs when a movement has gained so much forward momentum that there is no stopping it and change becomes inevitable. Creating critical mass is easier than it looks. Consider linguistics, for example—how long did it take words “like” or “cool” or “awesome” to morph into forms barely related to their originals? Or to change “I’m up for that” to “I’m down with that?” It appears repetition and referral might do it. In some cases a single use or event has the potential to change all old programming instantly. Does “shock and awe” mean the same to you now as it used to? Invent some new words or phrases or change the meaning and voila, a new culture!

Another shift that has to happen is beginning to not see “other.” Historically we humans have focused on our differences. We made a game of making someone “other.” And if someone is other, there is less empathy and compassion because of the artificial separation created between me and “other.” Narcissism, anthropocentrism and superiority thrive in a culture of “other.” Is that "other" making hardwired? Apparently not if you observe what happens in most critical circumstances where people unite in a tragedy. People usually rally in favor of the human spirit. What if we habitually looked at how alike we are?

I know whereof I speak because I grew up fearing and seeing Russians as “other,” yet fifteen years into my international sister city work; I embraced them (literally) as friends. Ideologies and beliefs had the potential to destroy a planet! People wouldn’t! So it is possible that ideas and beliefs can rescue humanity. But it’s the twenty first century now and time to go beyond just rescue and work toward evolving the spirit of humanity.

Margaret Mead said, accurately, “A handful of dedicated people can change the world.” I know it works because a handful of us did it. We worked toward decommissioning weapons of mass destruction in Russia at a time when Americans didn’t go to Russia. It was also a powerful symbolic dismantling of hatred and fear. There is a key and secret in the venue of creation and manifestation—whatever we tend to keep in our minds (ideas) becomes manifest materially in our world. Create and hate an enemy and you will create a need to build things like weapons to destroy them. We have to manipulate matter and atoms and physically manifest things that are extensions of the mind to employ our ideas in the world. We dismantle destructive ideas by giving people ways to stay in their hearts, not in their heads, and foster stewardship and responsibility for what is created between and among peoples. Head to head can destroy a planet, heart to heart will save it, soul to soul will create miracles.

There is a new movement afoot. It is a movement to "make soul" on the planet. Soul making involves presenting ways for humans and humanity to aspire to a higher and more worthy incarnation of itself. We are about filled up on the diet of fear. We are fatigued with violence. We are insisting on green products and green methods. We are fed up with pollution, deforestation, abusive power, jealousy, and hatred. We are sick to death of terrorism as a means of influencing and trying to force something upon us. By having darkness of the human spirit demonstrated to us on this planet so boldly, we are learning that we want to create better. And we are becoming something else. What is the next step? Developing like mindedness and stewardship for all life and affairs on the planet. How to do that? Through personal growth—growing the soul, if you will.There are those people who have showed up on the planet from time to time who are obvious change agents. The Buddhists might call them bodhisattvas—enlightened or wisdom beings. There were great masters who lived among us, some of them saints and saviors of antiquity.

Do you think the way-showers stopped coming at some point in the past? There have always been those who come and they are here now as modern day masters and bodhisattvas who live among us this very moment. Some of them know they are messengers and some of them demonstrate the wisdom but may not know they are. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi introduced Eastern spirituality and meditation to the West and changed an entire culture. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Gorbachev, the Beatles, Michael Jackson and others spring to mind as global change agents but there are other bodhisattvas or messengers—Mattie Stepanek, a boy who wrote poetry about peace, Samantha Smith, a schoolgirl who wrote an appeal to Gorbachev to end the cold war, Matthew Shepherd’s mother, who lost her son to a hate crime, for example. These were ordinary people who had a message and arose to an invitation or calling to share it.

And what about you and me? There is a new breed of human about the planet and about the business of change and evolution. There are ones who are here to take us from darkening of the human spirit to lightening of it. The Hopi have said “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” That, I believe, is a great truth. And I don’t think we have to wait any longer. There are messengers on this planet. They look like ordinary people and in many cases are ordinary people who have messages to share with the rest of us. We (yes you and I) may even be one of them!

There is information, offered by many, that can inspire us to aspire to a higher incarnation of ourselves. These messengers have ideas. They teach classes. They inspire others. They are healers. They hold seminars and workshops and experiential weekends and they provide opportunities for us to heal nourish and grow our souls so that collectively we become a race of humans who are higher incarnations of humanity. When there are enough of us on the planet who are higher incarnations of the human, there will be no more darkness because our light collectively will not permit it. You can’t flood darkness into a room that is lit but you can open the door to light in order for it to overtake and expel the darkness.

There are implications when something expands exponentially or reaches critical mass and there are theorems, laws, harmonics and theories to prove that something can affect mass consciousness once introduced into a world. It appears to be a matter of frequency and fields and the resonance created from acts of ritual and light making. (Light making as bringing to light, pointing to, or lifting up something in order to create critical mass and a resonance field toward the goal of soul making, healing, enlightenment and peace within and with humanity and the planet.)

There are messengers here now to help us do that. They are out there and there, and like the “Cultural Creatives” they recognize each other, find each other and find consumers for their messages but they do not necessarily know that they are part of a greater movement. Their messages are about the business of healing, inspiring and fostering soul—an individual soul, soul to soul, and the soul of the planet. Do you suppose if we heal the soul of the individual we could heal the soul of the human race, and perhaps the soul of the planet?

We are cosmic beings; we are the link between the human and the Divine. We carry the remembrances, the blueprint, the codes, the hope for future races and times. Our horizons are not bound by only the seen world and the physical, we are emissaries of the sacredness of life, having yet to discover ourselves. We are indeed the ones we have been waiting for. We are the bringers of the new golden dawn. We are the only ones who can change our structure from the supreme rein of capital, commerce, logic, divisiveness and one dimensional living to the recognition of inclusion, a global society based on mutual respect, consideration and humanity that recognizes and reveres the interconnected web of life.

The way of the soul is where dialogue replaces war and compassion replaces indifference, the circle of inclusion and equanimity replaces the hierarchical structures and self is recognized as the seat of the soul, the planet is recognized as its expression and the affairs of humans carries a new and more worthy message.

Do you know the way of the soul? Do you walk that path? Do you change the world? How? Are you a messenger? Are you one of the ones we have been waiting for? Then what are YOU waiting for?

When I Am a Grownup I Will Do Something- Excerpt from short story from "Looking Back"

2008-02-05T16:56:00.000-08:00

Looking Back, an Anthology by Kay Kennedy that features stories from the 1940s forward, is a unique view of history-- through the lens of the contributors who lived those stories and who watched history unfold. Some knew they were watching history being made and some only learned it in retrospect and upon reflection.

My contribution was a short story......... When I Am a Grownup I Will Do Something-- a recounting of my work as an Executive Officer with Sister Cities building Russian-American medical, educational and social exchanges, that chronicles my trip to Siberia to build social infrastructure for a local decommissioning facility for weapons of mass destruction as the writer and administrator of a grant from USAID (United States Agency for International Development.)

Two of my poems also appear in Looking Back......... The Wall: Viet Nam War Memorial; Missle Silo in North Dakota

Here is one...

MISSLE SILO IN NORTH DAKOTA

Lonely, cold, deserted,
empty road goes nowhere
through empty fields
some farmer’s land
leased for doom,
the nearest house
ten miles away.

We stop the car
near frosty wheat fields
golden in summer,
Dakota glory—
barren now
like this feeling
in my belly.

Eerie silence
surrounds a chain-link fence,
narrow access lane
parts frozen earth,
leads to cold gray steel
fifty yards from sanity.

I wrap my courage round me,
pull tight my coat
as if I could keep out this cold
or the fear.
Tell my friend to wait,
must do this alone.

Take a step toward ominous,
this inconceivable object
from inconceivable minds.
There is nothing human here,
only icy wind that shrieks
monuments to failure.

Chain-link security,
barbed wire madness,
locks a dome-like structure,
cold-steel-nightmare under ground,
one of countless others
poised to kill half a planet—
people without faces,
humans without names.

I try to rein an insane mind
that begins to wander
toward the unthinkable.
Imagination not in check
replays archival footage,
rears a metal monster
from this darkened hole
that must end close to hell.

An unfamiliar feeling
shakes my body violent
not from cold
or Dakota winters.
My hand reaches toward the sky
as if one hand could stop it
pull it back to earth
or muffle the rising scream.

For a copy of the book see... http://boomersrememberhistory.blogspot.com/

TELLULAH- A dog saved by a hand from heaven

2008-01-30T23:10:00.000-08:00

I was starting to panic. Flipping on the flashers, I got out of the van. Not satisfied with honking at her, traffic began to honk at me. One couple smiled sweetly as they passed through the danger zone. Perhaps they thought this was funny. I was not amused

I had spent the last few minutes trying to herd this strangely behaving German Shepherd out of the center of the highway. She wouldn’t move off the road, trotting toward me instead, oblivious to the dangers. She was in pretty bad shape—ribs protruding, bony prominences on her hips jutting up out of her pelvic girdle. I could have spanned her hind quarters with my hands, the thumbs touching, she was so thin.

"He had all kinds of dogs, why?”

“Well, you’re probably not going to believe this, but… ” I began, and I told her the story.

"Are you a dog person?" she asked.

"Yes, I suppose you could say that; they call me the Doggi Lama,” I replied. I heard a belly laugh come from the other end of the line.

“Well, Dick was an animal lover too,” the woman said, “he used to find lost dogs, take them in, rehabilitate them and find homes for them. Maybe this was one of his rescue dogs. What kind of dog is it? The collar’s orange plastic, right? Those are the ones he used. Is the dog’s name on the tag? Male or female? Friendly?”

I answered all her questions and asked a few of my own. We concluded that this was pretty strange and that we didn’t quite know what to make of it. Tobi introduced herself and told me a little about their family. She and her husband were visiting from the East Coast and were planning to stay for awhile. She wanted to relay our conversation to her husband, Dick’s son. “It’s really odd how this happened. It’s actually bizarre.”

“Tobi, It gets even stranger,” I said gingerly, “Today I stayed longer at work than usual. Had I left on time, I would have missed this animal completely. And how do you account for the fact that Dick used to save dogs and this dog has a collar with his name? And something else… the Rabies and kennel tags are from 1988 and 1990. It’s 2007; you do the math—that would make this dog 20 years old. That’s not possible. I fully expected to tell this dog’s owner that I found his dog and find him happy to have her back. But it’s obvious that this dog has a different story. If she is not a runaway or lost, then somebody has mistreated her in which case, she is not going back anywhere near where I picked her up. I don’t feel I can keep her; my Black Lab Max died and I’m still not over it. I’m not ready; and especially not to have an elderly dog that I would lose soon.” We agreed to talk later and hung up.

Tobi’s husband called that evening to ask how the Shepherd was doing. I reported that she had just eaten her second big bowl of food and was back in the kennel, that her hair was coming out in clumps after a bath and nutritionally she was in real trouble. She loved the brushing but it was nowhere near completion and I already had enough hair to make a whole extra dog. Brian didn’t think the family would want her, and he asked what I would like to do. If I didn’t want her, he suggested either my local shelter or his. The shelter in his city was a no kill shelter and if I wanted, he offered to come and get her. “If she goes to the shelter here,” I said, “she will be euthanized. She’s too weak, old and malnourished to be adoptable. She’s been so mistreated I couldn’t bear her being euthanized; I vote for your shelter.” He agreed. They would come the following day.

I had to work so I left her in the kennel and in the care of my neighbor while Dick’s family came to collect her. As I backed the van out of the driveway she stood still as a statue staring directly at me until I drove away. My heart shattered. After work my neighbor filled me in. “It’s not his dog,” he said of her deceased guardian, “his family said it is his collar all right, but that’s not his dog. They are really nice people,” he said, "I gave them the envelope with the shelter donation."

Tobi called later to say “I have named her. I called her Tellulah all the way home. What a sweet animal. She’s here and I am going to keep her for a couple of days.”

“So you named her,” I laughed, “on the way home? That’s dangerous! You realize of course, that this is now your dog.” Tobi laughed and basically said how could you not bond with such a sweetheart?

A week later I learned that Tobi had tried to adopt her but Tellulah was dog aggressive and they couldn’t keep her because of their other two dogs. Tellulah would have to live at the shelter. At least she would live out her last days in comfort and with people who loved animals. And Tobi could visit her.

I wasn’t sure what to make of any of it. Curious, I went back to the place where I picked up Tellulah on the road and what I found left me trembling all the way home. About twenty years ago there was a notorious local animal abuse case. The case is public record. Ervin Stebane was what they call a Class B dealer who sold animals for feed and dogs for human consumption to people transplanted from other cultures. He captured animals and traded in their misery. Arrested on animal cruelty charges, his license was revoked and all his animals confiscated by the Department of Agriculture. The story made headlines for weeks and was since chronicled in a book.

The presiding judge was sickened by Stebane’s treatment of animals— how he store-housed but never fed them because he wouldn’t spend money on doomed animals. As part of his sentence, the judge forbade Stebane to ever deal in animal trading or own animals again. The animals looked skeletal when his farm was shut down, their pictures all over the papers. When I went back to find the place where I picked up Tellulah, I discovered it was right in front of the Stebane homestead. I came home and told my neighbor who launched a secret reconnaissance mission to hear dogs barking in the night. That mission was for evidence for the Department of Agriculture.

So how is it that Tellulah showed up on the road coincidentally at the very moment I, the “Doggi Lama” was passing through? How is it she had a piece of broken twine around her neck and was wearing a collar bearing a deceased lifelong dog rescuer’s name? How is it she never hesitated to approach or come with me? How is it she happened to be in front of a farm notorious for animal cruelty? How is it my neighbor just happens to be former Special Forces Army?

His methods may be a bit more unconventional now and he recruited an unlikely assistant named Tellulah, but I think Dick is still in the business of rescuing dogs.

Feline Testemonial for Humanity

2007-09-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

He was standing over the saw finishing a cut and didn’t immediately notice me walking toward him. His hermitage, built twenty years or so ago, is in the midst of a remodeling, getting a second story. I stood still for a few moments admiring his handiwork while watching him in motion. It’s a labor of love and it shows in his movement, in his work—focused, intense, flowing.

The sweat beads up on his brow but he doesn’t look uncomfortable. The sun, speckling the forest floor, lights a glistening strand of moist graying hair that falls in tight ringlets framing his face. He senses someone’s presence and turns to face the direction of the intrusion. His face explodes into a smile as he notices me standing there. And the bluest eyes I have ever seen sparkle in recognition. “How are you?” I ask, “How’s the project going?”

“Hey neighbor,” he grins, “I’m great and even better now that you’re here.” One gets the feeling every visitor is greeted in this way. It’s part of his nature. “What brings you here on this glorious day; are you staying at the center?”

Glorious describes this September day, the weather is mild, the sun bright and warm as it trickles through the tall canopy that stretches over top of the forest, the land we both call home. The land borders a spiritual retreat center where we both came to find the Divine two decades ago. Our land adjoins but he lives up here year round now and I visit occasionally. “Is this the year you put something up?” he asks.

“Maybe,” I answer. “Still trying to decide what, where and who I want to be when I grow up.” Discovered something new—Cobb Housing; heard of it?” For years I’ve explored building styles—adobe, straw bale, yurts, foam buildings, log cabins and more. We have this conversation whenever I show up to visit the land I bought when my children were small, intending to move there some day when they were grown. They are grown and someday is here but nothing stands on the land as yet.

David looks healthy and happy, fit and tanned. This was not always so. He moved here from the city where he worked as an architect. The years of stress and fast-paced living almost squeezed the life out of his heart and he became gravely ill. Linked for two decades with the spiritual retreat center that borders our properties, David discovered on an extended visit that he could not go back, could no longer live in the city and allow it to suck the life from his body, the Life from his life.

He lived and worked at the retreat center for awhile in exchange for housing and meals while healing from his illness. He eventually purchased the little plot of land beside mine and began constructing a new life. Soon after he became the architect of his dream drawing up plans for expanding and modernizing the very rustic hermitage, building a model from the plans, ordering pre-fab parts and beginning construction. It’s a spiritual journey for him—the path of spirit, manifestation and creating beauty from raw wood. The dream gives him something to do that brings him satisfaction; the immersion, the work, gives him joy.

His clothing is tattered, his boot soles flapping as he walks, his face unshaven, hair wild in tight but not necessarily obedient curls. He looks every bit the hermit with very little left of the pin-stripe professional architect of his previous life. Nature has done him proud, healing his body and his spirit as he let go of the city and its frantic lifestyle. The solar panels that connect to his hermitage allow him only 2 hours of electricity for reading at night. He retires early and gets up at dawn. Here in the forest with no TV, no amenities and in raw communion with nature, he becomes a lone student of life-- learning from the natural world how things are elegant when simple, how precious is life and how truly tangible is Spirit. This quest has gentled him, given him a balance rare for a male socialized in a concrete world—perfect yin/yang, anima/animus—humanimal. It’s quite the transformation.

From behind us a low howl emanates from the tall grass and a caramel and white feline emerges from the forest. “Meet Fosdick,” says David, “he’s come for supper. This guy showed up one day and I made the mistake of petting him. He’s been hanging around ever since. I’ve tried discouraging him but he doesn’t give up easily.”

“Marshmallow,” I tease, “He has obviously adopted you. Cats do that, you know; you don’t adopt them, it’s the other way around. Besides, this one’s a consummate strategist, David—winter’s coming.” I smile because the urban David would have had no interest in any animal, and certainly not in making one a pet. His face brightens briefly then flickers a hint of pain. “I didn’t want to encourage him; I wasn’t eager to have another friend. Not after Bob.”

“Who’s Bob?” I query, searching David’s face, I detect another wave of pain, barely discernable, cross his face. “Another cat? Where is he?”

“Bob was my friend for more than a year,” David says, “he hung out with me, he took care of the mice in the hermitage, and I was learning his ways, his language. He was teaching me. One day he crawled home from quite a distance by the look of him when he got here. His back legs were dragging out behind him useless, his fur was bloody and his skin almost rubbed off. The vet said he’d been hit by some spray from a shotgun. After he was wounded he crawled all the way home. We thought maybe he’d live given some rest, water and food but after awhile he refused to eat. He died in my lap a few days later.” The look on this gentle man’s face cannot be described; the raw pain in the air was palpable.

The anger that coursed my body was immediate and vitriolic. My dinner lurched back up into my throat. “Are you saying somebody deliberately targeted him? Someone around here? In the neighborhood of a sanctuary, a retreat center? Who would do such a thing?”

“I don’t know,” David replies, his voice hardly a whisper, “I know most of the people for miles around and I don’t think I personally know anybody who’d do that. I don’t know what happened but the vet said for sure that he was wounded when somebody shot at him. He crawled all the way home—it looked like a long time. He was a mess. The vet cleaned him up, treated him and said we’d have to wait to see if the swelling would go down or if he’d ever walk again but he didn’t think so. At first he took a little water, a little food, but then he refused everything. During those last days whenever I’d move, he'd crawl over next to me. I think he considered this home and he wanted to make it home to die; he was a good friend. He taught me a lot.”

“People!” I spit, “there is no excuse for that kind of cruelty! It’s unconscionable! So somebody was out hunting or practicing and shot at a stray cat not even thinking that perhaps it was somebody’s pet?”

“Somebody’s friend!” David corrects me. “Not my pet, my friend. He was nobody’s pet. He was definitely his own cat with his own personality. He was like a person with fur. He was teaching me his world, his language. We had a mutually respectful relationship. He caught the mice, I gave him shelter. I fed him dinner, he kept me company. He wandered off on his adventures and I welcomed him back when he returned. He was my friend. I never understood how much he considered me a friend until the end.

A shotgun meant that a grownup, someone who knew better and not a boy recklessly and randomly shooting BBs, was demonstrating violence in sanctuary. “Terrorism in the forest,” I thought. I found it more than a little unsettling that someone in the neighborhood of a spiritual sanctuary found it so easy to use violence against innocence. A shiver began somewhere deep inside me and found its way to the surface. “David, I said, “I am so very, very sorry for more reasons than I can put into words. I hear lots of stories about animals having more humanity than their human counterparts. But there’s more to this story and I’m not sure yet what that is. I think it’s a lesson for us all. What a gift Bob gave you; and you him.”

The steely indifferent personality of the big city couldn’t break this man. Grave illness didn’t break him. If something could break the spirit of this gentle soul of a man, it would be this—his mortally wounded animal friend, Bob, crawled home to his human friend, on his belly. Mortally wounded animals, especially feral ones, crawl off into quiet cover to die alone. Bob’s testimony says a lot about both characters in this story. And after reaching the arms of his human friend, Bob chooses to die rather than be handicapped or burden his human benefactor. You find that kind of loyalty or bond from a dog, perhaps; but a feral cat? What kind of human engenders that?

It seems especially cruel that mean spiritedness would find its way here to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the forest on consecrated land. “I will write the story,” I promise David. “The world needs to hear it. To know what is possible within human-animal relations. To understand how a thoughtless act of cruelty toward an animal wounds the soul of each human—the one who saw only nuisance while another called him friend. To recognize soul in the sanctity of the human-animal bond and what it can transcend. “I am so sorry, David, for the loss of your friend,” I say meekly to David knowing that he has lost much more than a friend here.

I glance at Fosdick who is sunning himself in the lacy sunlight. I say a prayer for the little fur-ball and ask the guardian angel of cats to come and please protect him for the rest of his natural life. There is another prayer for David, for this man who became a hermit to escape the mean streets of the city only to suffer another assault to his heart in his home in the wilderness. “May his heart be healed from a new kind of wound that this time isn’t physical but bleeds and leaves a hole just the same. May he be healed of something I cannot name. And may the person who took away his friend and something nameless someday read this story.”

Dog Fighting, Violence and Vick

2007-07-26T01:56:00.000-07:00

Outrage won’t cover it; depravity won’t describe it. What possible joy or thrill can be derived from watching dogs chew on, bite and attack each other with the intent to kill? What kind of parent takes his youngster along to witness the “sport” of dog fighting? And why would someone who makes millions as a star quarterback with a National Football League team care about a $20,000 purse for his winning dog? Obviously it’s not for the money, then why is he involved in dog fighting? There can only be one reason—to satiate a sadistic appetite for blood sport and gore satisfied by watching animals socialized to tear each other apart and kill within an enclosed space from which there is no escape.

Michael Vick is a sports figure. For a living, he runs around a grassy (or carpeted) field and throws a ball to other people who make the same kind of living. And he is paid millions for this activity. Cushy work if you can get it.

What his dogs did for a living isn’t so cushy. At his Bad Newz Kennels the dogs got to be teased, poked, beaten, and thrown in a pen with their muzzle duct-taped shut so that they cannot bite while other dogs chew on them for practice. And when they are made mean enough they are placed in a wooden cell with no way out to face another dog who is also vicious, made so with the same methods-- by humans. If the dog does not perform well, it’s dowsed with water and electrocuted. According to the indictment, execution of Vick’s dogs was frequent and by sadistic means—electrocution, hanging, body slamming. Does this remind you of anything? It’s reminiscent of what the Romans did to Christians in the coliseum. The lions got to tear apart Christians and the audience got to watch, for sport. Thumbs down for a gladiator who didn’t perform! Is dog fighting so different? Different species, same barbarism!

If you thought the Romans were uncivilized, consider that this is the 21st century in America! Dog fighting is illegal for good reason; it is usually associated with drug dealing and other illegal trafficking. But it’s the violence to innocent live beings that is staggering. What kind of mind believes that this brand of violence is “normal?” Is entertaining? Anyone who condones Michael Vick or his hobby is as guilty as he is, by association. Violence made into sport has no place in a civilized culture. Anyone who perpetrates violence on any sentient being is not someone to lift up as a hero in the sports arena or any other arena.

Animals feel pain, have emotions, form bonds, establish social groups, and dogs protect and often rescue humans. Animals can’t speak vocally to humans to communicate how they feel about domestication and human-animal interaction. Some animals’ treatment at the hands of humans is abysmal and lacks mercy and compassion due to ignorance or a primitive mind set that hasn’t recognized them as sentient beings with rights. But any human individual, no matter how Cro-Magnon, can see the harm in fighting dogs for bloody sport. Dogs are not born mean. And they can’t consent! Any person, civilized or not, can reason enough to know that when animals are made aggressive, are forced to participate in fighting with the intent to kill for sport, that activity is not only amoral but depraved.

When rescued from fighting, dogs cannot be rehabilitated and can never be trusted with humans again. They live with perpetual fear, aggression and hyper vigilance. The only fate they therefore face is euthanasia as a way to end their misery and miserable lives. These dogs never know a kind word, an affectionate touch or the loyalty and joy animals can experience in a positive human-animal bond that fosters mutual joy for each partner. They are never to know comfort or companionship as they view other dogs as threats and indeed they are all killers. Trained to be so, sadly, by a human who exploits them to satisfy sadistic appetites.

Children who witness cruelty to animals, torture or killing of animals develop PTSD—Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Studies have shown a direct link between cruelty to animals and domestic violence. Between domestic violence and spousal homicide. Does domestic violence and spousal homicide bring to mind another NFL star quarterback? Apparently if one can be desensitized to the cruel treatment of animals, it can make beating a spouse easier. So, those fathers who took their children to Bad Newz Kennels were practicing, demonstrating and role modeling violence to youth. They were making future violence against partners and the ‘hood easier.

Michael Vick promoted violence in his ‘hood! Unfortunately because Vick is a national figure, his neighborhood is the entire country. Yes, I call for the NFL to expel Vick. Take away his millions. Get him (and quickly) out of the spotlight and hero’s role of a sports figure who made it big. Remove him as someone whom youth look up to and emulate. Youth need someone positive to revere and imitate. This is especially urgent for black youth whose only models these days seem to be rappers who spew misogyny and adopt “gangsta” behaviors, and sports figures-- some of whom have unsavory habits.

Michael Vick is even more culpable than Imus whose comment about “nappy-headed hos” finished his career. The argument of innocent until proven guilty is a precept for court, not for life. Tangible evidence of dogs and fighting paraphernalia seized from Vick’s estate is indisputable evidence of cruelty to animals (put mildly) and of Vick’s part in it. I think the judge may find it hard to penetrate Vick’s mindset with any punishment that fits the crime or that will help him “get it.” The NFL should expel him but I wouldn’t expect that to reach his Neanderthal mindset either.

There is nothing “manly” about exploiting innocent beings for twisted gratification. There is nothing admirable about perpetrating violence on those who can’t protest or refuse. There is nothing funny, cute, laughable or “marketable” in torture and killing, at least not in a civilized world. People like Vick and his cohorts do not “get” the sanctity of life or the meaning of “bully.” They only seem to understand when someone speaks their language or stoops to their level. A fitting punishment in that world would be to have Vick bound and gagged while one of his Cujos is let loose to do what he has been trained to do best while the whole event is broadcast on Pay-Per-View with proceeds going to animal shelters. Lucky for Vick that the justice system and culture he lives in is far more humane and civilized here in the 21st century than he and his cronies demonstrated by their sick hobby. The only good thing that can come out of this is public outrage and a re-examination of what is meant by and valued in “sports.”

"Looking Back" Anthology just released by the publisher.

2007-07-19T13:51:00.000-07:00

A Kay Kennedy fan, I was honored when she chose some of my work to include in her new anthology "Looking Back- 1940-2005 History as seen through the eyes of those who lived it."

The book has just been released! You can read an excerpt and order the book at http://www.booklocker.com/books/3056.html

I've read Looking Back and this book is rich with experiences lived by and chronicled in prose and poetry in Kay's new book.

When I was in high school and college the American history classes were stale and boring and involved a memorization and regurgitation of dates that coincided with events that had no life! I never quite understood how the professors could be excited about history! As chalk flew everywhere and teachers eyes shone and bodies became animated while recounting events of the past, I wondered "what was I missing?" Why didn't my imagination catch fire like theirs did; why did I feel I had to drag myself to class daily to listen to someone drone on and on about events that had no humanity, no connection, no magic?

World history managed to pique my interest with its fascinating cultural traditions, beliefs and diversity. How the world had unfolded, how humanity had developed, now that was exciting! I especially resonated with anything about ancient Egypt; I still do. In college and in seminary, world history and events were viewed through the eyes of human philosophy and myth. Now that made history come alive.

If only Kay's kind of book had been available back in high school... To re-live events through the eyes of someone actually living them in real time lends a rich mixture of energy, philosophy and myth-- it brings history alive. Wish someone had tried that methodology before.

I caught the excitement in what Kay was proposing and I submitted a few things having lived through some history that changed the world and the future and introduced the concept of peace as not just a way to feel, but a way to live upon the planet.

And the Animals Shall Teach Us

2007-07-16T10:32:00.001-07:00

THE ANIMALS SHALL TEACH US

A new way to live in the world is being birthed and a new awareness is dawning in the collective psyche and on the planet. Humans are becoming weary of the way things are and long for spirituality and wholeness in their lives evidenced by the trends toward naturalness, alternative healing and community. Penelope Smith calls it “God is on the move.” Penelope Smith is the author and “guru” of animal communication with 30 years experience in human-animal-nature bonding. There is definitely a link between animals, nature, wholeness and spirituality. Mahatma Gandhi once said “the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be measured by the way its animals are treated.”

Animals certainly stir passionate feelings in humans. That’s good news. The bad news is that not all of that passion is merciful. Think for a moment about all the ways that animals impact human life—as companions, experimental subjects for laboratory tests, farming, hunting, safaris, mass production of commodities, as food for human consumption, as pets, as service animals, as breeders and livestock, entertainment and movies. Now think about your personal relationship to animals. What we are learning as animal communicators in a “new” and popular field, is that animals too, have feelings. They feel, can be passionate, have opinions, love and sometimes exist to teach their human companions.

The “new” field of animal communication is not new. Many native and indigenous cultures have communicated not only with animals, but with all of life. Native Americans are the people most widely known by the general population as people who communicated with the spirit of animals, places and spaces. The spirit of a thing was called “Manitou.” The Manitou of a place or thing could talk to the Indian contacting it through prayer or thought. For example to “make rain” was to pray to the spirit in charge of weather and to visualize the rain coming and falling—this ritual and accompanying movement often took the appearance of a dance. Natives talked to animals, rocks, canyons, mountains, rivers and vast areas of terrain. The Shamans of the tribe often translated for their peoples the reply received from the spirit of whatever they wished to speak with or listen to. The Shamans were considered Medicine Men and Women and were equivalent to a combination of village priest, doctor and wise elder.

It turns out that the Shamans were just making use of, and honing an innate ability that all of us have. It is even theorized by some that humans once upon a time communicated non-vocally and telepathically and that they didn’t begin using language until it was invented out of necessity and to record history. It is also being discovered and proven through the field of physics and quantum reality, that all things are inextricably connected and that the Universe appears to be a grand hologram. So both Jesus and Chief Seattle were right when they said that whatever you do to others, you do to me, yourself and the whole web of life. The least of these means those who cannot speak for themselves and those who suffer at the hands of others. That would include infants, small children the disabled and animals.

If you think about it, I’m sure there have been times when you knew exactly and without a doubt, what your companion animal was thinking. And often the behavior followed and proved your hunch. That is animal communication in its simplest form. Like any other muscle that strengthens with use, this form of communication can be developed and honed. Maybe someday we will all have the ability to talk to animals and if we do, they have much to teach us. Humans have unfortunately been taught the model of anthropocentrism which loosely translated means that we believe we are the center of the universe and that all things are relevant only to us. It also supposes that we have “dominion” over the earth which we have taken to mean “ruling power, authority or control.” That is precisely the patriarchal and hierarchical thinking that has gotten us into trouble with global climate change, oil consumption and our current eco-crisis. We often do not employ simple dignity, merciful treatment and humane methods of governing the lives of animals. We might find ourselves horrified if we knew all the intricacies of how animals become our food. We might demand more mercy; we are their stewards and we can do better.

Shifting the philosophy from “dominion” to “stewardship” softens the viewpoint and approach, makes a huge difference and begs a much different outcome. When we take on stewardship, we tend to take care of, and show mercy to nature and beings that are helpless or dependent in the wake of human contact. Historically, the human philosophy of “dominion over” has assigned other humans with differences like darker skin or of inferior gender to be lesser beings and even possessions. Some cultures and institutions still carry remnants of that philosophy. A sense of ownership has conferred slavery, domestic serfdom, and inferiority to “superior” humans. Recent research has found a link in our culture between animal abuse and domestic violence. A monumental human price is paid for ignoring the dignity and worth of all beings. What if it turns out that one day we regret what we have done to animals because we mistakenly thought them dumb unfeeling and inferior? Is that potential discovery really so outrageous? DNA, the human genome, cloning and other bio-sciences were once outrageous.

It is incumbent upon us to learn about the animals who touch our lives and to allow them to bring out the best in us—for that is what they do best. We are capable of treating animals abysmally or being indifferent to their misery in situations we place them in and then think little of it. They are sentient beings and some day we will treat them with the respect and dignity that they deserve and honors their place in our lives. Until then the least we can do to our animal brethren is to show them compassion and mercy by treating all of them humanely and demanding that all others do the same. The current spiritual leaders of this planet are alert to how the treatment of animals relates to human capacity for violence or peacemaking. The Dalai Lama, in the tradition of Gandhi has now requested all Tibetans to give up harvesting the fur of animals for clothing. There is more to the world of nature and animals that any of us realizes. There is more to the earth and its stewardship than a treasure trove of resources for human harvesting. There is more to places and spaces than the average human can see or imagine. Our ancestors knew it and lived lives of reverence for all life. We would do well to learn their secrets. If you lived perpetually from this place of reverence, how would it change your life, your world, our world?

I Have Met the Soul In Passing

2007-07-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

I HAVE MET THE SOUL IN PASSING

I am in awe of the human body. It more than fascinates me. I can’t fathom the intelligence required for a biological mechanism to work in perfect synchronicity with multiple thousands, even millions of microscopic, cellular, hormonal, electrical, chemical, organic, and systemic decisions. How does a single organism make selections and movements in its best interest and on its life enhancing behalf continuously with dynamic accuracy and precision for twenty four hours per day 365 days per year over the average life span of about 77 years or more?

My fascination led me to study the brain and mind, to delve into psychology and to a practice in neurological, neuro-rehab, addiction and eventually psych nursing. I found the mind and psyche as fascinating if not more fascinating than studying the body.

But through the years, I intuited that there was more to the human than the body-mind and human intelligence, there was some kind of spirit or life force that inhabited the body. And I was convinced of its intelligence and suspected there were multiple levels to this human spirit.

One day while on duty, I met the human soul. My elderly patient required a bed bath and as I turned her over for the last time while bathing her, I noticed her skin had begun to mottle. Mottling looks like splotchy blue areas under the skin and indicates poor circulation. Her breathing had become very quiet, barely audible. She no longer responded to stimulation of voice or touch. I knew intuitively she was in the preliminary stages of departing life. Her family was notified and they gathered at bedside to support her transition. They literally cheered her on and told her it was OK to go; they released her to leave this earth and be with God.

That remarkable family tenderly kissed their loved one and said their goodbyes. I am convinced that her death was so easy and beautiful because of how her family handled her passing. Her breathing changed once again and they called me to the bedside. I took out my stethoscope and placed it over her heart. There was a faint heartbeat still audible and as I listened to count the beats, there was a strange glow visible from her solar plexus. Her heartbeat slowed and I watched in silence as a globe of light looking very much like a dandelion seed coalesced and exited her solar plexus and floated upward toward the ceiling. I watched it curiously until I blinked at which point it disappeared. I looked beseechingly at the faces surrounding the bed searching for any sign to confirm that they had also seen what I had just seen. There was no look of recognition. I listened to the cavity of her heart that was now completely still. I managed to keep my professional composure long enough to confirm her passing to them mumbling that I was so sorry for their loss whereupon they hugged me and thanked me for everything. As I embraced each person, I looked into their eyes. There was no indication on anyone’s face that they had witnessed the same thing I had. I kept silent about it and I left the room shaken and barely under my own power.

I know there is a human soul. I have met it. I have seen its brilliance. At the moment of death something exits the body. It looks very much like a Dandelion flower gone to seed with all the radiating spokes and connections only it is made of light, not fluff. I have only seen it at the instant of death that one time and I am convinced I was privileged to see it then only because the woman was so loved and celebrated by her family that they were able to encourage her to make her transition gracefully and gratefully from this earth. I have been present at many deaths, but none like that one. There is something transcendental about the human being. The human body is a container that contains something, many things. Theologians and anthropologists would concur that there is a transcendental piece of something residing in the human and that it transmigrates, transfigures or undergoes some kind of metamorphosis at death. All cultures of the earth have evidenced similar beliefs of life beyond this “mortal coil.”

My experience with death in the hospital, while it confirmed the existence of a soul for me, raised more questions than answers… How is it that a biological entity on a lonely planet in a particular galaxy in the vast Universe evolved to self consciousness and determinism? How is it that some people display an unusual kind of innate compassion, empathy or seem to live from their hearts? How is it that some don’t? Where does generosity of spirit come from? Why do some people seem to lack soul or a soul?

What distinguishes the human from other mammals and primates? How is it that the human mind is self-reflective when other animals live in the moment and cannot determine their futures or fates? What is at work in the human that is not duplicated in any other intelligent life? Does the soul inhabit the body? Or does the body live within a soul that surrounds it invisibly? When someone has no light in their eyes or they seem deadened in spirit does that indicate a damaged soul? A missing soul? Does the soul come back to inhabit a new body? Three fourths of the world believes in reincarnation; why? And the one fourth that doesn’t, why not?

Who were the soul experts? They were not in the field of science obviously but historically speaking, scientific method was a relatively new concept. Who were the soul keepers of the past? What did they know of the soul? Did the soul get sick the same way a body can get sick? If so, then who doctored to the soul?

Where exactly does one find a soul doctor? In the church? The Vatican? In a cave in the Himalayas? In the mountains of Siberia? In an Ashram in India? If you meet the Soul Doctor along the road, kill him?

Questions and Questing in capital letters. This is what led to an exploration, a journey, an excursion through time and space, to the pick-mining of gems from sparkling minds, a leap into the abyss and a climb up to higher dimensions. And out of darkness comes light? Maybe out of light comes light. It was a long time ago that I met the soul for the first time. Lifetimes ago. Now a minister, shaman and wordsmith, I know a place where “the doctor is in.” A theologian studies the celestial realms; a shaman makes regular visits.

Award Winning Short Story: Trading Faith With A Tibetan Monk

2007-07-11T08:56:00.000-07:00

Togden (left)

First Place Award Adult Division "Everybody's Different" Unity in Diversity Short Story Contest 2000-2001 sponsored by the Epilepsy Foundation

TRADING FAITH WITH A TIBETAN MONK

“Not so very cold here,” he said, still in shirt sleeve’s and appearing very comfortable in mid-October. It had been raining all day and I was bundled knees to neck.

“Yes,” I answered, “not like the Himalayas.” I thought about Mount Everest because it was my only reference for ‘the Himalayas’, about the climbers they had found after the disastrous 1996 expedition. Everest was so cold that the rescuers couldn’t even bury the corpses. The most they could hope for was that the later snows would respectfully cover their bodies. I suspected that even in Wisconsin winters, I could never know cold the way he knew cold—Himalayan cold.

I had come to Spring Green to take my friend Togden, a Tibetan Buddhist Monk, to see the Dalai Lama who was holding public forums. I would take a vow of non-violence, simplicity, and respect for the oneness of all life with His Holiness, himself. And Togden would be at the side of his Master and later in audience with the Tibetan equivalent of the Pope. I was breathless because as an escort, I was bestowed the privilege and honor of observing.

The day before the vows and audience, Togden and I sat on the patio of Global View, a small Asian artifact shop tucked into the rolling hills of Spring Green across the driveway from Mahayana Dharma Center, a small Buddhist Temple. “East meets West," I quipped, “in the rolling hills of Spring Green, Wisconsin.”

Togden had led meditation that morning. He and two other Tibetan Monks guided a handful of people through morning rituals of meditation and chanting. The Dharma Center was a splendid sacred space, the tapestries ornate and symbolic, the incense pungent, the brass offering bowls gleaming in the candlelight. The altar was crowded with Buddha, mala beads, pictures of the Dalai Lama, the homeland.

Togden was small of stature, his dark brown eyes penetrating, his skin light ochre-brown. He looked at once holy, studious, vulnerable in his magenta and saffron robe, his tiny feet tucked into sandals. There is something different about Asian men. They stand and sit straight and proud yet their demeanor is humble. Asian holy men move like music—harmonic, smooth, sensitive, not stiff and formal like Westerners. Their bodies are a perfect blend of yin and yang. They have integrated their anima and when walking, lead with their whole bodies, not their head and neck like Americans do. Truly intuitive, humble Tibetan Monks vow to serve, and they seem to know what you want or need almost before you do. They are instinctive when it comes to attending to your comfort. All creatures are sacred to them, deserving of comfort, care. They blend heart and mind effortlessly. Buddha mind, Buddha heart. They don’t leap into action paternally and patronizingly (yang) to fix your problems with the attitude of ‘let me lead you through this.’ They want to know you with a curiosity and innocence that puts you immediately at ease. They seem to relish conversation while radiating warmth in human interaction. Tibetan Monks travel the world in their robes carrying only small pouches hanging at their sides that hold a passport and all their belongings.

I asked a thousand questions. Where was he from? At what age had he entered the monastery? What was his homeland like? The people? He answered politely, seemed pleased that I was interested. Originally from Nepal, he entered the monastery at about age seven. His people were Sherpas. A simple people, they lived beneath the mountains and raised sheep. “Tibet much different than America. Tibetan people not have things; very simple life. Tourists come here to import shop, buy things. Is funny, very strange. This is not way of Tibetans. Tibetans practice non-attachment; especially monks from monastery, this is way of life. Many thing clutter life. Clutter mind. What Americans do with all this things?”

I laughed. “They collect them, put them on display in their homes. I know, this must seem very odd to you and all the monks here.”

“Yes, this is many unusual to me. Attachment to things a strange path of life, how do you call this? Togden many confused.”

“I guess you could call it the American way. It is a philosophy that behaves as though he who has a lot of money and more things is successful and deemed superior to others. I know, it is counterproductive to a level plane, to the oneness of beings. Try to not let us Americanize you too much,” I laughed, “how will you keep from getting contaminated, tainted?”

“We take vows of simplicity and simple faith. Simple way of life. We vow everyone and everything important. All life. Not think one superior to other. We treat all life same, with many respect. We not live with attachment to anything.”

“It seems like a wonderful way to live. Simplicity. No commercialism,” I thought out loud. “But Togden, I already see signs of Western contamination,” I laughed, “you seemed to attach yourself pretty well to the Diet Coke I brought; I noticed you and Kelsung drank the whole carton.”

The grin that flashed covered his whole face, and his eyes sparkled black with mischief. “But Barbara, I not collect Diet Coke; I drink with non-attachment.”

As we walked together, East meeting West, time evaporated along with the rain; the sun emerged from the clouds. His eyes scanned the terrain—hilly, green, the Autumn leaves burning in the sunlight. In contrast, cloudiness covered his face, but only for an instant. That fleeting moment spoke volumes. We had been talking about his homeland and I knew he couldn’t return. None of the religious could; Tibet now belonged to China after the invasion of the nineteen fifties. None of them had a home—people without a country. Togden was a man without a home. China had raided and raped Tibet. The Chinese had killed thousands, burned temples, executed monks Mafia-style as they prayed—tried to assassinate a whole culture. “East meets East,” I thought, “in cultural and religious genocide.” I wanted to reach out to him, comfort him, say something soothing. But I didn’t know if it was culturally acceptable to hug a monk. So I hugged him with my mind.

“Togden, please don’t think it impossible. Anything is possible; remember Tiananmen Square? Remember the cold war? Russia? The Berlin Wall? I can tell you from experience that it’s not the Chinese people any more than it was the Russian people. It’s the government. The Russian government too, suppressed religion in that country. Churches were closed and boarded up. But people know how to behave morally even when their governments don’t. It’s only a matter of time. More and more Chinese youth are being educated. I went to college with a Chinese woman who was a little girl during the Cultural Revolution in China. She remembers, and she is embarrassed by her own country. Now with computers and the global network of the Internet, it’s getting harder and harder to hide, to keep what you’re doing secret. And there was the movie—‘Seven Years in Tibet’; it was very popular. How did you like the movie?”

Lama Gnawang from the same Dharma Center had played a part in the movie. Togden grinned. “Ah, yes, Brad Pitt; very popular,” he said still grinning. “Hollywood. Lama Gnawang think very artificial this movie; not truly Buddhist. Like actors playing to cameras. It did not seem real to us.”

He knew very well how real and secure my position was, how shaky his own. He knew that America had a piece of paper, the Constitution, that no matter who was in power, it ensured that a democratic government would continue. No militant radical could seize power, control the army, occupy a small defenseless country. We took a moral stand on things like bigger more powerful countries invading small countries, didn’t we? Our constitution and values about freedom and democracy were eminently ethical, weren’t they? Our country valued, was founded on, religious freedom, wasn’t it? Weren’t we the global police? It struck me how proud we are without reason or evidence, how nationalistic, how arrogant. I look at him bleakly and apologized for China’s ‘most favored trade’ status. I explained how we believed that we couldn’t afford to be an enemy with China. That nothing changes if you stay enemies. As if he didn’t know all this already. As if it didn’t sting. “Maybe Hong Kong will make a difference. It’s too visible, too affluent. Maybe the modernization, education and economics of Hong Kong will influence Chinese thought. It’s too visible to withstand blatant oppression. And more and more, the young Chinese are becoming educated. Moscow reminds me of Hong Kong; there are parallels. It’s just a matter of time. I hope it is during our lifetime, Togden. In my life span, I went from crying myself to sleep because the adults had made these bombs to destroy others with, to watching the Berlin Wall crumble. I have faith. You of all people, must have it too,” I said before I could censor that ugly Americanism.

I knew how strategic Tibet was to the Chinese. They used the land where monasteries once stood to dump their nuclear waste. I didn’t feel too comfortable with nuclear materials sitting near the top of Everest, the highest peak in the world. ‘Down’ from the Himalayas and ‘downwind’ from Everest meant the whole planet.

“Yes,” Togden nodded, “and the Chinese government is now paying educated Chinese to go to Tibet, to live there. No one wants to live in Tibet because of the climate but they’re moving there because of the money the Chinese government gives them. Our people are not educated are given no opportunities to become educated. They are a simple people.”

I knew only too well the tactics of power mongers who maneuver and manipulate, and sometimes use methods that assassinate their ‘rivals’ and strangle their voice in the world. I knew that well meaning innocent people who perceived themselves as powerless either in the past or currently were especially vulnerable targets of those tactics and can unwittingly give power to territorial and aggrandizing leaders. I knew too, that tactic had worked in may organizations, situations, civilizations and countries. And I knew how well it worked from experience, knowing that whatever the cause or outcome, almost any American would somehow take the “high moral ground.” Many times I had watched in wonder at the ability of the human mind to rationalize its’ acts; I never underestimate it anymore. I wondered too, what Carl Sagan might have said, what Steven Hawking might say now. For centuries, Tibet has been a strategic peaceful buffer zone where many opposing ideologies of the world geographically meet. It seemed an abomination, anathema to me to dump the by-products of nuclear violence in the most peaceful territory on Earth. How must that feel to the Tibetan Monks? To the Dalai Lama?

I was to learn the next day. The Dalai Lama talked about the path that Buddhist’s take. It is a path of steadfast teaching and non-violence. It is a way to mirror to others the darkness that they won’t recognize in themselves or the light that lives there too that has potential brilliance. That is why he is so great a target of hatred. He teaches about duality and that there are not only two ways to solve problems—fight or flee. He is a wise, wise soul. His sense of humor reminds me of old bones—sharp edged, mysterious and cutting. He may teach with words, but he teaches more loudly by example. He is truly one of the last great spiritual leaders on the planet today. Like my friend Togden, the Dalai Lama too, is a man without a home.

When Togden left His Holiness he walked yet more lightly on his feet (as if that were possible.) “Barbara,” he said, “Someday you come to Nepal. With me. You will like Himalayas.”

The chill I felt next was not from the cold, and I answered my fiend’s invitation this way: “I will go with you when you go first and bring back to America an authentic Sherpa coat. Being the American that I am, just call it a ‘thing’ thing.”

Becoming a Writer was like...My God I'm Somebody's Mother!

2007-07-07T08:30:00.000-07:00

They were sparkling souls-- those who encouraged, chided, leaned on, threatened and goaded me over the years. Wonderful mentors, professors and teachers showed up when the student was ready. They used whatever method worked at the time. But mostly they said one word: “Write!”

Thus the one word smith (One Wordsmith) born of the frustration (Write!) of “elders.”

I remember when my Art Teacher said to me, “You must practice saying ‘I am an artist’ until you believe it fully yourself.” (gulp) One day I just no longer choked out the words; they came out quite nicely. That was the day I sold my first painting.

I loved poetry, read a library of poets and began to write it. For the first few years, my musings sounded stiff and like a child’s hand had written them. Once again I tried the method that had worked for me. “I am a poet.” (double gulp) The first time I was published in an anthology, they called me to ask if I would read my work at a reception for the authors. Oh Nooooooooooo! Poetry was a performance art? Who knew! How to go from closet artist to public speaker? And a little voice said: “How much do you love poetry?” Geez.

And to this day, when something is published I feel like I did that day in the hospital when they handed me this squalling, pink, fragile little body wrapped in a blanket and I thought “Oh my GOD I’m somebody’s mother!”

Matters Are Soul Deep Now

2007-06-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

MATTERS ARE SOUL DEEP NOW

Publication: Healthy Thoughts (Summer 2007 Issue 42-7)

What does it mean to have “soul?” It’s hard to describe, isn’t it? But we do know it, don’t we? To have a meeting of the minds is significant toward cooperation and to have heart to heart communication is even better but what happens when we make a soul connection. Feel the difference? You can feel the difference when something is on a soul level. Mind to mind occurs on an intellectual level, heart to heart is with feeling and perhaps love, but a soul connection registers in your body. It happens on a very deep level.

If you check in with your body, it has a binary system, a kind of “field.” Your body does not know how to lie and it recognizes truth. It has an intelligence far beyond the mind or heart. This binary system will tell you “yes” or “no,” “off” or “on,” “good” or “bad” if something is soulful or not, and so on. It is a deeper knowing. You can feel into or simply know in order to discern whether something has soul or not. If I ask you which of something has more soul could you discern that? Ok, let’s play. Choose which has more soul…

Saturday afternoon at the mall/ Walking along the river
Lunch at McDonalds/ Mom’s homemade potato leek soup
Coca Cola/ Glass of water
Paving the driveway/ Planting new trees
Reading a tabloid magazine/ Reading a book of poetry
The afternoon at your senior’s center/ Going to a matinee movie

Soulful things are life affirming, life giving, life enhancing and things that are not soulful are life draining, life impairing, life depleting.

Let’s amplify this game a little to make it interesting. Which is soulful and which is not? Giving the other driver the digit or paying the toll for the driver behind you? Cutting someone off in traffic or motioning for the other driver to go first? Buying a gift certificate meal for a homeless person or taking the family shopping at Wal-Mart? Shoveling snow from your vacationing neighbor’s driveway or yelling at their dog to get out of your yard? Buying and donating children’s books to your local library or buying new video games for the kids? Taking your elderly neighbor to the pharmacy or taking the family to video village? Throwing your detergent bottle in the basement trash bin or walking it upstairs to the recycling container? (Plastic takes 1000 years to begin to decompose in a landfill.) Taking the kids to the zoo or visiting the local animal shelter?

Now let’s really raise the stakes even higher where it may not seem so comfortable…Which is soulful and which is not? Making war on another country or using diplomacy and international pressure to get the country to conform to peaceful standards? Engaging in terrorism or sending aid to an area plagued with drought, poverty and illness? Using genocide to rid your country of unwanted elements or welcoming refugees? Vowing to wipe out all of those who profess to a certain religion or studying a religion to know what makes its followers “tick?” Using force and weapons to eradicate problems or using initial restraint and then reaching out with heart and soul connections to understand the problems? Making someone who is “other,” “looks other” or “believes other” the enemy or making connections to know and understand this “other.”

When the stakes get high the issues get tough don’t they? And the best choices are not always clearly discernable. With some soulful choices the stakes are negligible and with others the ramifications are enormous. How does anyone know what to do? If a leader has heart and especially soul, what are the likely outcomes? If a leader lacks heart or lacks soul, what are the likely outcomes? These are not easy questions nor are the answers blatantly clear. A bully on the playground is much different from a tyrant on the world stage, right? Or is it the same thing only to what degree on a horizontal axis?

Can people have soul? Can a country? What happens to a person whose soul is sick or who suffers from soul loss? What happens to a country when its soul is sick or it has lost its soul? What happens when a people have lost their soul and their leader is a bully with no soul? What happens when a country with soul gets a leader with no soul? Or the opposite occurs? What happens to people who live in a place where there has never been soul with leaders who have never been soulful? What happens when suddenly they are now free to have soul?

There are symptoms of individual soul loss. Individuals can lose parts of their soul through experiences in their lives. Pieces and parts of their soul can leave, be taken by someone else, go into hibernation and lose the ability to function usually from a trauma or overwhelming experience. The symptoms of individual soul loss are:

• Difficulty staying present or focusing

• Feeling numb, weak or dispirited

• Chronic depression, hopelessness, sadness

• Depressed immune system, chronic fatigue or illnesses

• Having been a sickly or chronically ill child

• Memory gaps, missing chunks of life

• Struggling with addictions

• Internal emptiness or void

• Feeling stuck and trouble moving on

• Phobias or irrational fears

• Chronic lack of vitality

• Feeling alienated from yourself or your body

Soul loss can occur from events impacting a life and at any age or stage. Events where overwhelming fear, trauma and helplessness were experienced can cause soul loss:

Childhood trauma or bullying
Natural or man made disasters
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Wartime experiences
Incest
Rape
Loss of home or security
Experiencing or witnessing violence
The killing of a person or an animal or witnessing it
Physical abuse
Mental and emotional abu
Experiencing or witnessing domestic violence
Being the victim of a crime
Spiritual violence
Overwhelming or prolonged fear
Victimization by a stalker
Being restrained or held hostage
Loss of a loved one
Accidents or injuries
Surgery, anesthesia, amputation or loss of body parts or functions

And what do you suppose might happen when whole groups of people experience traumatic events or live with persistent stress or fear—perhaps a region, a culture, or a country? What happens when a country suffers soul loss? What would that people, region, culture or country look like? How would it operate in the world? What if a person, people, culture or country never developed soul? What if they lived from a state of raw survival throughout their whole existence? What would that look like and how would it play out in the world? A deadening of the soul has immense consequences for both individuals and groups of individuals.

So we see that soul or having soul is important. We see that exercising that quality of soul is important. Growing the soul or soulfulness is important. We see that soul or souls can be wounded and when wounded, be in need of healing. We can hypothesize that when one or many have never experienced soul that their behavior would not be soulful. What do you need in order to have soul? Hope? Faith? Something to eat? If you were busy daily with raw daily survival how would you evaluate your own soulfulness? The soulfulness of others? How would you practice it? Do you ever reflect upon your own soulfulness? Your children’s soulfulness and how you are or are not fostering it? How you are, or are not practicing soul and soulfulness?

We have found that a wounding of the soul can cause depression and great wounds of the soul can cause despair. If an individual with soul loss can suffer from despair, can a culture suffer despair, or can a whole country with soul loss have pervasive despair?

It is our woundedness that makes us human, makes us empathic to the plight of others but woundedness begs healing. We can certainly medicate or use a placebo effect to dress a wound, but that doesn’t mean the wound is healed. We can accumulate the ”things” and “status symbols” in life that culture tells us connote success in order to deflect our attention from our own deep wounding, but if our soul is sick they will not satisfy. If we do not practice soul and soulfulness in our dealings with others, their soul or soulfulness will not be awakened, reciprocate or find expression. With matters of soul, “pass it forward” is a good practice to cultivate. For the benefit of all!

There are those who work to bring the soul back into the affairs of humans and the planet. The organization of the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers is one, Vessels of Peace is another. Organizations that promote peace (not necessarily anti-war) are another avenue of soul. Religions that open their arms to all including those considered “other” are practicing soulfulness. Organizations that exist for the humane treatment of humans and non-humans have soul. Without soulfulness or humanness, hope is absent, faith is sterile and God (by whatever name) is made puny.

In what ways do you exercise your soul, your soulfulness? How do you contribute to the rise of soul and soulfulness on the planet? To the creation of peace? It may at times seem overwhelming or as if you, a solitary contributor cannot do much and your contribution counts for little. However, it is true what Margaret Mead said that a handful of thoughtful people can change the world. Today it is more possible than ever. Great teachers have said that the laws of holograms and physics govern the world and universe and that one act completed to lift and uplift the species is multiplied ten thousand fold. Never think that you cannot make a difference. You make all the difference. Your soul is the greatest tool you have for living. For a richer life, get in touch with it, exercise it, share it, act from it and above all-- pass it forward.

Memorial Day Doesn't Tell a War- for Somebody Who Once Wore It.

2007-05-24T10:16:00.000-07:00

This poem was composed in 1992 at Highground*. It first appeared in Highground Newsletter and the Marshfield Herald. It was re-printed in the chapbook "We're ALL In This Together" and now reappears at One Wordsmith.

“Highground" is the name of a war memorial built on a hill outside Neillsville, Wisconsin. It is a typical bronze casting of soldiers in war but at the back of the monument is a rifle turned upside down (a symbol for peace and “war no more”) and a large set of chimes that ring through valley below with a stirring sound when the wind blows.

Highground is said to be a place of great healing for veterans and those who have been touched by war. You can visit * Highground virtually at http://www.thehighground.org/

MEMORIAL DAY DOESN'T TELL A WAR

~for Somebody Who Once Wore It

I cry today the Memorial.
Highground*,
An empty wind
stirs chimes and hills,
echoes the flood plain
to Southeast Asia.

I smell a country,
taste a soldier’s fear
feel burning straw,
hear a twig,
a mother’s heart,
and a story break
on the six o’clock news.

Sculptured bronze
metal bodies
freeze time
and history
for a nation too easily
forgot the words
“never again.”

A national flag
snaps to attention,
salutes a lonely wind,
and unforgotten war,
a hypnotized people,
an uneasy belief
that a Persian Gulf
and fresh new war
can heal another.

It stings like yesterday
twenty-five years later.
A generation of peace
still missing in action,
the human race
still prisoners of war.

Flowers die,
war memories fade
for those who don’t touch it
but the green patch of cloth
placed on the ground
in the center of a Memorial Day wreath
speaks an authentic story,
tells a war.
A somebody once wore it.

Poem.... A Poet Tries to Write 9/11

2007-05-15T09:08:00.000-07:00

A POET TRIES TO WRITE 9/11

I think I know
how the spider feels
when she spins a web
from the juice
of her own body.

Today, Nine Eleven,
there is no juice
only weary hollow bones,
thirsty tissues, a heart
that’s cracked and dry,
the only moisture
a mind that weeps.

When the heart of humanity splinters,
silence screams a land,
and a triage hunts for hope
anywhere alive,
the tightest dressing
is not enough
to stem the bleeding.

When a numbing mind
must caress the carnage
but dares not wander
too far into the gaping despair
for the fear of no return,
it searches for meaning,
gropes to understand
or even just find words...
people looks to poets.

There are some days
the flailing, the wailing
has no voice
nor can the poem.
Some days
the paper stares dumbstruck
and words won’t spill
or peaceably assemble.

In order to write it
the poet must inhale
allow her body
to span the essence
like Egytpian mother Nut,
absorb it to her core
hold it long and deep
like her breath.

Only then exhale the strands
weave them onto paper,
give dimension,
form the matrix,
birth its life and being.
For that she needs moisture.

Go in search of a spider,
watch her spin.
Listen for the wailing in the web,
see her body shudder,
know the sacrifice she makes
to spin such gossamer thread
attach it to the invisible
and hang by it suspended.

Hello and Welcome to...

2007-05-01T20:28:00.000-07:00

One Wordsmith

Where you will find

A writer
A Poet
An Artist

in residence.

Writers write not because they want to but because to not write is, well, it's simply unimaginable.

"Spilling one's soul onto paper is either a very foolish or very courageous act; but then I've always loved the fool!" ~ B. Kaufmann