Sojournalist

I am not defined without you. We are all in this together. Just as there is no night without the day, no light without the darkness… We need one another, for hope, for gratitude…for our own individual identity. We must see that the solutions available to the problems facing us are all bound up in one humankind. This is the message of the beautifully done documentary film, “I Am Because We Are”.

You can learn more at www.iambecauseweare.com. There you will find a link to watch the entire film.

Please watch it today. You will be so glad you did. Tell your friends about it. And leave your comments here for others to see.

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It’s a new year, again. It feels like if you blink then a year goes by. It makes one weary of the REM stage of sleeping. Someone very near to me once said that if it wasn’t like that – if I ever became bored – then I was probably not paying attention. I cannot say I’ve experienced boredom anytime recently. But I wonder if I’m paying attention as much as I should. I’ve noticed that as time goes on, the opportunity to deepen one’s experience grows significantly; you notice things that were always there before but you missed them. (Somewhere hidden, in the dark, are the winning lottery numbers). The trees lining the streets down the block are different every time you see them, if only you take the time to look. Every day is a new canvas.

At no time in my life was this more apparent than my work with spiritual healers. I spent several years traveling with indigenous medicine men and healers. What began as a simple curiosity grew into a fulltime in-depth, independent study into the actual phenomenon of spiritual healing. I found myself playing the often conflicting roles of: skeptic, documentarian, guinea pig, and intentional eternal student, to name a few. There were contradictions everywhere I looked. And just when I thought I would walk away because it wasn’t “real,” something would happen to keep me there: like the blind woman who walked away seeing again. I followed her around several blocks just to make sure she would be ok, but keeping my distance – out of respect. She cried in happiness, but said almost nothing. I loved that moment.

There were others, too. Perhaps the most memorable was an elderly Japanese woman with bouffant hair and a tiny poodle. She survived two husbands and a son, who died at age 9. Her most compelling story was about life in the Japanese internment camps in WWII. Listening to this very sweet woman tell her story made me want to demand an explanation of how anyone could hold her in captivity of any kind. Yet even now the current administration is at war with an invisible enemy and so Cat Stevens, a folk singer famous for songs like Peace Train, couldn’t fly here, presumably because the same administration felt he was a threat. Here is an inspiring 60 minute interview with Cat Stevens / Yusuf Islam, including commentary about the ordeal, if interested. 

To what or whom, may I ask? (Note: He just came out with a new album, after 28 years, recorded under the name Yusuf Islam).

Continuing… To be sure, there was unintentional humor along the way. I once met an older woman taxi driver with a very hoarse voice who drove up in a big yellow taxi covered in religious bumper stickers. They weren’t stickers on a taxi. It was little bits of her taxicab, peering through her own private sticker world. Contrasting her rough-around-the-edges feel was her very polite, quiet, selfless young gardener friend; the tailgate on his Ford truck read, simply, “L O R D”. Just when it couldn’t possibly get any stranger, a young beachcomber drove up in a beat up Toyota with the T-O-T-and-A painted out so it simply read, “YO”.

Perhaps one of the rarest of finds was a tiny fuzzy haired New Yorker woman who was a sanyasin – she even lived at the “ranch” in Oregon where her Indian guru, Osho, led an entire community of her fellow sanyasins. Just like her, all of her friends had Sanskrit names. Looking at the menu at an Indian restaurant, she smiled mischievously and said, “Oh, these are my friends’ names!” She had a habit of wearing giant homemade dinosaur slippers (they looked like dinosaur feet) to business meetings, even showing up at my doorstep wearing them. They may have been longer than she was tall.

There were others, too, who had a way about themselves: a woman who claimed she lived at the center of the earth, under Mt. Shasta (I begged her to let me see her living room…her name was rhythmic, but I forget it for the moment)….a woman with a swollen ankle who came back 6 months later with two slightly swollen ankles.

What did it mean?

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Medical Animator David Bolinsky has created a breathtakingly beautiful depiction of the internalized view of a cell. The result has been set to music.

View the animation

More on David Bolinksy’s work

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It’s been said that we fall from “childhood grace”…that is to say we let life kick us down and then we get too serious, thereby limiting ourselves.  We start out believing anything is possible: the mermaid lives in a castle by the sea, the one we made in the sand on a cheerful sunny summer day. And we can fly, oh yes.   Every little red wagon is an airplane and we are the Red Barron, even if only for a fleeting moment.  After all, it says FLYER on the side.  No one has to doubt the signs.  It works fine just the same, on your way down the sliding board runway to the cheering crowd below. 

We have to keep dreaming, for it is in our thoughts that we begin things, and in our dreams that we plant the seeds.  If we can dream it, then we can live it.  Sometimes it comes down to quieting the “noise” that we have allowed to dilute our otherwise fertile minds, i.e. our “childhood grace”.

Here are some of our automatic friends, proving the point, through music. If your day brings you down, revisit this post and remember who you are!

(1) 9 year old girl sings "God Bless The Child". (2) 10 year old Jordan playing classical piano. (3) 8 year old virtuoso violinist plays Kreisler. (4) 5 year old Takuma’s second piano recital. (5) 7 year old boy plays Chopin - Fantasie impromptu Op.66   (6) 4 year old boy plays Bach - partita in C minor.  (7) 8 year old Rachel plays Ravel: Sonatine, Movement III. (8) Young guitarist plays Duke Ellington. (9) Child jazz trio, Japan. 

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Inner Cafe is an ongoing social commentary on modern life and everything related.

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Biologists find that in the larval stage of organisms that undergo metamorphosis (change into an entirely new form), that there are clusters of what are called “imaginal cells”, (named after the word “imagine”). These clusters of imaginal cells, called “imaginal discs” do not participate actively in the functioning of the larval stage of, for example, the caterpillar. Instead they “network” and move toward alignment among themselves, in preparation for the rapid growth that is to come during metamorphosis. When the natural gestation period comes to an end, (which determines the normal lifespan of being able to be a caterpillar), then it is those groups of imaginal cells that design and grow into the main organs of the butterfly: the wings, antennae, etc. Imaginal cells individually do not attempt to “convince” the caterpillar to become a butterfly, but instead develop among themselves the design of what is to come, in preparation for the time of critical unworkability of the caterpillar.

If we understand and take advantage of this potentially equivalent sequence of growth and model our actions after nature’s method for achieving transformation, this new precedent formulates a rationale and a powerful strategy for our collaborating as a team to design the “organs” of a new civilization: the systems that will give humanity its new “wings” and carry it to its next stage of evolution. At the same time, this activity by-passes the age-old power struggle over which opposing ideological strategy is to be used to get us from here to the preferred state, by enabling us to design and then move directly into the preferred state. This design approach for solving major world problems presents a new social paradigm that transcends the traditional industrial age liberal/conservative, win/lose ideological framework, by offering a unifying context and protocol.

This synthesizing process allows solutions to be implemented as if they were different aspects of a single design problem, not as solutions to seemingly separate world problems. In this way, the resources normally kept apart by different or opposing ideologies and special interests can now be enabled to work together, thereby dramatically increasing everyone’s ability to achieve goals, as well as to shorten significantly previous timetables for projected implementation.

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The following are facts from Algalita Marine Research Foundation and other scientific organizations that study the effects of plastics and plastic bags on the marine environment.

Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade (they’re broken down into smaller and smaller toxic bits, less than the diameter of a human hair) and contaminate ocean, air, soil and food. They contain PCBs and other toxic manmade chemicals now found throughout the food chain - from shellfish to humans. These toxins are now in human breast milk, in children and adults around the world and are one reason cancer rates have risen from 1 in 25 in 1970 to 1 in 2 today. Many marine animals contain so many of these toxins, they can legally be classified as toxic dumps. Thousands of their bodies are washing up on beaches around the world.

There are six times more plankton-size plastic bits than plankton in huge areas of the ocean. Birds, fish and marine animals ingest these thinking they are food - and millions are dying. Their bodies biodegrade, but the plastics remain - to be eaten by other birds and animals.

Plastic bags cover miles and miles of ocean floor - no one knows the extent. In some areas of the deep ocean, scientists have been unable to find the floor because it is so heavily layered with plastic bags. Half of all plastic in the ocean sinks, and under these bags, the shellfish, worms and other tiny animals that help make up the bottom of the food chain are dead.

Every year the United States consumes 100 billion plastic shopping bags and throws away an estimated 8 billion pounds of these bags.

The world uses one million plastic bags per minute.

It is estimated to take up to 1000 years for plastic bags to degrade in a warm landfill - longer in a cold ocean environment.

We don’t need plastic bags. We are killing the ocean, ourselves and our descendants for short term convenience.

Paper bags are not a viable alternative because they use millions of trees and their processing spews more poisons into the environment.. Many people around the world use cloth and string bags instead.

There are biodegradable bags available that are made from potato and corn starch.

Expect bans around the world as facts about the terrible effects of plastic bags on human health and the planet become known. They are now banned in South Africa, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Paris, Mumbai, San Francisco, some Chinese cities; and many Alaska villages. They are taxed in Australia and Ireland. States besides Alaska are debating taxes and bans.

The ocean is 71% of the earth’s surface and supplies up to 85% of the world’s oxygen and nitrogen. No human, animal or plant can live without the ocean. Its health is rapidly deteriorating and we must find a way to reverse this trend. Stopping the use of plastic bags is something everyone can do.

Dixie Belcher is a volunteer with Turning the Tides, a Juneau organization dedicated to raising awareness about the deterioration of the Pacific Ocean.

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Micro-credit is a really innovative way for large population groups to find ways in which to break out of poverty. This in turn advances democracy and human rights. Micro-credit is basically tiny loans, most of them under $1500, that are lent to people in third world counties to start or grow their business, and then repaid.

Muhammad Yunus, of the Grameen Bank, did exactly this. He wrote a book about it called “Banker to the Poor”. His long-term vision is to eliminate poverity in the world. Of course, it cannot be realized with micro-credit alone. But this is a major part of the equation. For his efforts, which single-handedly lifted entire regions out of poverty by empowering them to help themselves, Mr. Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006.

You too can get involved!

Kiva.org is a website that helps you to do just that. Simply create a lender profile and start lending money to those in need all around the world, all from the comfort of your own home! You can read profiles of people who need loans, and also profiles of those who are already lending money. While there is no guarantee of return, the repayment rate is very high (almost 100%), with repayment usually within one year.

January Project will keep adding a percentage of our profits to an ever-growing, revolving fund that keeps re-lending any repaid amounts and new funds. Our goal is to reach $10,000 for the fund! You can do the same for as little as $25. All you need is a giving heart and a paypal account.

Here are some of the borrowers Kiva helps, including their inspiring stories:

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