I heard this morning on NPR about the AIG executive who wrote a letter to his CEO (and posted it on the NY Times) saying that he was quitting, and angry because he deserved the bonus that was suppose to come to him for having worked SO HARD. And this dawns on me as clear as clear can be: He & I are not only in vastly different economic classes, we’re in totally different worlds! Worlds! Planets apart!

So, how in this world — mine? his? your? their? worlds — could we ever come together? How do we - the haves/have nots/in-betweens — begin to envision & create a shared new world that works for all?

And, where to start?! In our own circles, among friends, in our churches, clubs, the organizations & businesses we lead in or are a part of?

Since I turned 50 last year, I have been asking, watching, noting the many ways that our “ways of being” have changed and grown. Someday, I ought to write them down in greater thoroughness, but here are a few that have had their seeds planted in the long ago past, and have either taken more root, been repotted, grown new branches and leaves…

I celebrate these — and you, the culture-makers – by this simple blog list. (Tell me if you’ve noticed these, too…and what else are you noticing?)

1. We live in ever more transparent and current (in the present) ways.
2. Nothing is “sacred” (secret, untouchable) anymore and everything is sacred (of the heart & spirit).
3. Work & leisure are coming together.
4. Giving of one’s core talents and passions is the only way to truly live and be alive.
5. We elected the first black man to the highest office in the land.
6. We elected.
7. We — not others - are the authors of our own story.
8. Forwarding our story out loud with greater consciousness and purpose is our preoccupation.
9. The Unknown (or the Mystery) is the new territory for “scientific” exploration. (good luck! ;-D)
10. We are all One…and finally beginning to act like it.

Got more?

Here is a very creative way to share your priorities for the next four years - share a video letter with the President. This project highlights what innovative ways to communicate are developing to bring the people back into the political process. http://tothepresident.com/
Here is more info on the project itself: The Virtual Open Letter project was conceived and produced as part of the New Media Institute 2008. The project was conceived as community record of voices to the new President Barack Obama and his administration. Here are the voices of all Americans eager to give the president their honest opinions on what he should prioritize as his administration deals with a tall order of crises.

Credits

Produced by Anthony Marshall, Chelo Alvarez-Stehle (CA), Sabrina Gordon (NY), Ian Skorodin (CA).

Partners

Independent Television Service (ITVS) and Generation Engage

Join the Obama family, the American people and the international community in re-engaging in our humanity of hope and change. Jeanie, Bonnie & Teresa, co-hosts of The Conversation Campaign blogtalkradio show posted this invitation out to the community. We hope you will call or write there or write here your response to the question.

Dear Friends,

In the midst of your Inauguration Day celebrations, we would like to invite you to another one on our blogtalkradio show, The Conversation Campaign, Tuesday, January 20, 5-6 pm PST.  On this day we are marking the beginning of a new era in human history with these questions:

What are you inaugurating in your life?  What are you stepping into, and saying yes to that is your personal contribution to the new era?

Join us on the show and, for only 1-2 minutes declare your intentions into a field of collective intentions, to inspire and promote all that you stand for, all that you are, as a global citizen of the 21st century.  If you cannot join us, consider declaring your beginnings wherever you are celebrating… we will meet you in the field…

If you can join us, you have the choice to call or login and share with us your response to these questions.  If you call, we ask that you be brief to allow others to also share their declarations.  You can also sign up and write your declarations in the Chat Room:

To call, use the Call in number: (347) 838-8753 (you may need to wait a few minutes before we can patch you in…stay on!)

To write in your response, use the Login url:  www.blogtalkradio.com/The-Light-Show <http://www.blogtalkradio.com/The-Light-Show>, then click on Chat Room to enter your declaration.  You can turn on the volume on your computer to hear the conversation going on while joining the chat room, writing your response and reading others’ contributions. You can sign your name and town if you are comfortable doing so.

Looking forward to taking this collective step with you toward co-creating a new world,
Jeanie DeRousseau, Teresa Ruelas, Bonnie Kelley
Co-hosts for The Conversation Campaign

In a matter of a few hours after an initial letter (see earlier blog post - Reaching Out to Peace: Joining Our Hearts with Yours)was sent from thirteen American woman and their organizations to the Israeli and Palestinian women, their responses began to come. Here are the first three responses. The letter is continuing to make its way around to many women reaching out and taking action.

Thank you beloved Ann and all the beautiful ladies! Infinite gratitude!

Thank you for the kind words bursting out of pure hearts to vibrant its vivid echo in all hearts.

We should never give up, we must ever remember the peaceful option which as always is right in here, right in the NOW. Even during times like present, we should realize how much suffering and violence are useless. Always understand that we can produce and provide only what we are! Only when we practice peace, we can provide it! The sources are endless!

Never give up! Stay centered and most of all - pray! Pray for the rapid awakening of all involved, pray for the rapid awakening of all witnesses, pray for the people in Gaza, the Israeli people around Gaza, both suffer for too long. Both sides innocent! Both sides are ONE!!! Only ignorance avoid seeing the only option that work - respect each other’s rights to live in peace and harmony!

As for myself, I continue my educational work as much as possible also with children in the Israeli (naturally I cannot enter Gaza Strip…) settlements around Gaza Strip. I also volunteer in the Shibba (Tel Hashomer) children hospital in Israel, where over than 50 Palestinian cancer kids mainly from Gaza, youngest 6 weeks up to 16 years old, are getting the best treatment by Israeli best medical teams also during this time. Those kids stay there for months, often with only one family member to escort. Rest of the families now in Gaza — those kids and the families, as you may guess, are not in their best! Fighting the cancer, staying in foreign (enemy?!) country, different languages, different mentality and on top of it all, especially now, deep concern for the families back home with all the disasters — they need our prayers! They need it so desperately! Can we provide?! Oh yes! We can!

Believe it! BE it! I trust you! I trust us!

This is my call, that is my goal and eternal mission!

Million thanks!

In Oneness and infinite loving gratitude - Hagit

JewChriSlam

Ms. Hagit Ra’anan
Bridges of Peace
Jerusalem Peacemakers

Melisse here.

I am a firm believer that the circle of energy which Marcia birthed is something that is meant to serve not only the present, but also the future. The fact that there are Israeli and Palestinian individuals, professionals and laymen, standing together in a practical initiative - which is already evolving into a program for dealing with the aftermath of trauma in the children - is something which must be KNOWN.

Therefore, if you are asking what you can do to help, in my opinion, what is needed is to find the funds to publish the petition in a full page add in the New York Times for all the world to see.

There are now 700 signatures on the petition. Even if there were only TWO - one Israeli and one Palestinian - this would justify the cost. We are field-workers, always scrounging for the cash. In this case, one form of help could be to secure the resources for healing which I believe that publishing this particular petition will serve.

Sincerely,
Melisse Boskovich
Peace Child Israel

Thank you so much for this heartfelt letter - it comes to me at a moment of such deep pain and sorrow - I would ask you right now to hold me in my pain….and pray for our girls who I pray are still alive……I have not been able to get hold of the girls from Gaza for a few day now….those from Sderot came up to the Galilee to their friends from camp on Kfar Hanassi…but now have gone back home….

This ancient feud that we have inherited is going for one more circle of bloodshed and revenge - when will this ever stop????…..and turn to a spiral of reconciliation….

We work with these teenage girls at Creativity for Peace who come to our camp and experience amazing transformation. Girls come with hatred, anger, pain, fear, trauma and after hearing each other’s stories of living in this conflict, they leave loving each other - having hope for peace….keep in touch, meet here afterwards - making an enormous effort to be together and now what can I say to them???? -

How can I hold them in this craziness - they are hurting double now …for themsleves and for the other side….this is what I am hearing from so many of them..the confusion of feeling with ‘their own’ side and feeling with ‘the other’….

I was so excited when I saw Marcia’s letter last night about the schools - an idea to shelter the women and children is schools - and then wake up this morning to hear that we bombed a school in Jabalya …this is where our girls are -

I feel ashamed ! I feel so angry! I feel so hopeless! I feel helpless! I feel like screaming! I feel pain for the soldiers who are forced to kill people! I know these kids…they are my own son’s friends. .loving wonderful kids .. maybe my son will be called up - I feel pain for the new families of who are joining all the other families of dead ones on both sides! I feel pain for the Palestinians! The pain of the Israeli’s! I feel the pain, terror, fear, trauma of Sabreen, Shadha, Besaan, Diana, Ranaand Dalal who live in Jabalya. I pray they are still allive !!!

I feel Sylvi’s pain, her anger and her love ( she is my Palestinian partner in our work - an amazing woman from Nazareth) - I feel the fear and pain of our girls from Sderot - Tal, Yaara, Tamar, Hagar and Ravid who told us at camp that they don’t run for shelter anymore because this is their life for so long…they are tired of running for shelter - “either it will hit me or miss me”….said Tal.

I feel all the girls pain and anger, confusion and fear…..last night I felt I could not cry - now I can’ t stop…..what would it be like if we had organised for those children to be in that school - what is the solution GOD HELP US GET OUT OF THIS CRAZINESS……..

I want to be able to stay in the energy of love and peace that I expereince with these amazingly courageous young woman - today I find it hard!!!!

Anael Harpaz
Creativity for Peace

Thirteen women, each leaders of women’s organizations and networks came together to ask ourselves what we could do to help, being so far away from the women in these war-torn lands. We decided to turn to the women directly and ask them. Here is the letter we sent them. It went across the oceans to them and has started to circulate across many lands.

Dear Elana, Hagit, Marcia, Anael, Melisse and all the Israeli and Palestinian Women,

We are women from the United States who are reaching out to you in peace.

We are thinking of you all continuously throughout each day. Our dedication to being of help is our daily practice. Much like when individuals meditate and are mindful in their individual spiritual practices, we– in this little group– have learned to trust each other deeply through our meaningful conversations and a lot of silence. Now we are ready to turn our thoughts and prayers toward all of you, as the special focus of our kindred sister spirits! We want you to feel our love as if we were right there with you, though there are great distances between us. We send you our most profound and heart-felt blessings.

How can we help?
What do you need?
How can we be of service in this moment?

We have set up a clearinghouse for information, requests and responses at www.lightpages.net/gaza.cfm . We are listening…and will receive.

You can also sign the letter with your own signature (as below) and send this letter forward with all our thoughts, care and love. Please send a copy to gaza@lightpages.net when you do.

You can also sign the letter with your own signature (as below) and send this letter forward with all our thoughts, care and love.

In peace, love and co-creating with you a world we all desire,

Ann Smith
Circle Connections and Sophia 2010, Women & Wisdom, World Conference, Sofia Bulgaria 2010, International Connections
Rhonda Hull, Donna Roberts
Circle Connections, Co-creating the New Earth, One Circle, One Connection, One Step at a Time.

Bonnie Kelley
Evolutionary Women: Women as Co-Creators, Standing in Unity with all of Humanity.

Jeanie DeRousseau
LightPages and Evolutionary Support Systems, a growing network of women and women’s groups fostering graceful global change

Lynda Terry
Vessels of Peace community, an international spiritual peace and service network for women

Teresa D. Ruelas
The community at Offerings Publications, a co-creative field for evolving women
The women of Women’s Networks 3.0, networks for a more purposeful world

Joy Adams, Barbara Belknap, Beth Blevins, Jeanie DeRousseau, Anne Fitzgerald, Marilyn Nyborg, Clare Peterson
Gather the Women Global Matrix, a global community of women’s circles evoking collective wisdom into the world

…. I don’t get how my own people can be doing this. Or rather, I do
get it. I am a Jew, by birth and upbringing, born six years after the
Holocaust ended, raised on the myth and hope of Israel. The myth goes
like this:

For two thousand years we wandered in exile, homeless and persecuted,
nearly destroyed utterly by the Nazis. But out of that suffering was
born one good thing — the homeland that we have come back to, our
own land at last, where we can be safe, and proud, and strong.

That’s a powerful story, a moving story. There’s only one problem
with it - it leaves the Palestinians out. It has to leave them out,
for if we were to admit that the homeland belonged to another people,
well, that spoils the story.

The result is a kind of psychic blind spot where the Palestinians are
concerned. If you are truly invested in Israel as the Jewish
homeland, the Jewish state, then you can’t let the Palestinians be
real to you. It’s like you can’t really focus on them. Golda Meir
said, The Palestinians, who are they? They don’t exist. We hear,
There is no partner for peace, There is no one to talk to.

And so Israel, a modern state with high standards of hygiene, a state
rooted in a religion that requires washing your hands before you eat
and regular, ritual baths, builds settlements that don’t bother to
construct sewage treatment plants. They just dump raw sewage onto the
Palestinian fields across the fence, somewhat like a spaceship
ejecting its wastes into the void. I am truly not making this up:
I’ve seen it, smelled it, and it’s a known though shameful fact. But
if the Palestinians aren’t really real - who are they? They don’t
exist! then the land they inhabit becomes a kind of void in the
psyche, and it isn’t really real, either. At times, in those border
villages, walking the fencelines of settlements, you feel like you
have slipped into a science fiction movie, where parallel universes
exist in the same space, but in different strands of reality, that
never touch.

When I was on the West Bank, during Israeli incursions the Israeli
military would often take over a Palestinian house to billet their
soldiers. Many times, they would simply lock the family who owned it
into one room, and keep them there, sometimes for hours, sometimes
for days - parents, grandparents, kids and all. I’ve sat with a
family, singing to the children while soldiers trashed their house,
and I’ve been detained by a group of soldiers playing cards in the
kitchen with a family locked in the other room. (I got out of that
one but that’s another story.)

Its a kind of uneasy feeling, having something locked away in a room
in your house that you can’t look at. Ever caught a mouse in a glue
trap? And you can’t bear to watch it suffer, so you leave the room
and close the door and don’t come back until it’s really, really dead.

Like a horrific fractal, the locked room repeats on different scales.
The Israelis have built a wall to lock away the West Bank. And Gaza
itself is one huge, locked room. Close the borders, keep food and
medical supplies and necessities from getting through, and perhaps
they will just quietly fade out of existence and stop spoiling our
story.

All we want is a return to calm, the Israeli ambassador says. All we
want is peace.

One way to get peace is to exterminate what threatens you. In fact,
that may be the prime directive of the last few thousand years.

But attempts to exterminate pests breed resistance, whether you’re
dealing with insects or bacteria or people. The more insecticides you
pour on a field, the more pests you have to deal with because
insecticides are always more potent at killing the beneficial bugs
than the pesky ones.

The harshness, the crackdowns, the border closings, the checkpoints,
the assassinations, the incursions, the building of settlements deep
into Palestinian territory, all the daily frustrations and
humiliations of occupation, have been breeding the conditions for
Hamas, or something like it, to thrive. If Israel truly wants peace,
there’s a more subtle, a more intelligent and more effective strategy
to pursue than simply trying to kill the enemy and anyone else who
happens to be in the vicinity.

It’s this:  Instead of killing what threatens you, feed what you want
to grow. Consider in what conditions peace can thrive, and create
them, just as you would prepare the bed for the crops you want to
plant. Find those among your opponents who also want peace, and
support them. Make alliances. Offer your enemies incentives to
change, and reward your friends.

Of course, to follow such a strategy, you must actually see and know
your enemy. If they are nothing to you but cartoon characters of
terrorists, you will not be able to tell one from another, to discern
the religious fanatic from the guy muttering under his breath, “F-ing
Hammas, they closed the cinema again!”

And you must be willing to give something up. No one gets peace if
your basic bargaining position is, “I get everything I want, and you
eat my shit.” You might get a temporary victory, but it will never be
a peaceful one.

To know and see the enemy, you must let them into the story. They
must become real to you, nuanced, distinctive as individuals.

But when we let the Palestinians into the story, it changes. Oh, how
painfully it changes! For there is no way to tell a new story, one
that includes both peoples of the land, without starting like this:

In our yearning for a homeland, in our attempts as a threatened and
traumatized people to find safety and power, we have done a great
wrong to another people, and now we must atone.

Just try saying it. If you, like me, were raised on that other story,
just try this one out. Say it three times. It hurts, yes, but it
might also bring a great, liberating sense of relief with it.

And if you’re not Jewish, if you’re American, if you’re white, if
you’re German, if you’re a thousand other things, really, if you’re a
human being, there’s probably some version of that story that is true
for you.

Out of our own great need and fear and pain, we have often done great
harm, and we are called to atone. To atone is to be at one - to stop
drawing a circle that includes our tribe and excludes the other, and
start drawing a larger circle that takes everyone in.

How do we atone? Open your eyes. Look into the face of the enemy, and
see a human being, flawed, distinct, unique and precious. Stop
killing. Start talking. Compost the shit and the rot and feed the
olive trees.

Act. Cross the line….

Starhawk

Starhawk is now a panelist for a new website devoted to religion, run by Newsweek and the Washington Post. newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/starhawk/

I came across an interesting blog today - The Alternative Invocation.  It’s not much of a blog, really.  There’s only one post, but, as all good posts do, it made me think.  The post invites all progressive bloggers who are disappointed that Rick Warren will be delivering the invocation on inauguration day to write an alternative invocation:

“As an act of protest against the appearance of Rick Warren at the inauguration, we ask our fellow progressive bloggers that on January 20, 2009, you post your own alternative invocation.

“We ask that you post a message of compassion, empathy, tolerance, diversity, and true Christian (or other) love to America.  Post a message that stands in opposition to the messages that Rick Warren and those of his particular political persuasion use to divide our country.”

On the one hand, I really like this idea.  It is 1) a form of protest that doesn’t throw Obama out with the bath water, and 2) focused on the real issue - that Rick Warren, a symbol of intolerance and exclusion in the GLBT community (among others), has been given a prominent (and symbolically important) role in the inauguration of a president who was supposed to stand for higher ideals.  As a writer, I believe in the power of words, and this protest is all about that power.  It is a protest that encourages its participants to not only focus on the America we want, but to communicate that America in the form of a prayer.  You can’t get more hopeful, more positive than that.

On the other hand…  The Alternative Invocation blog has several links to the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State site.  Which begs the question, why do we say prayers at the presidential inauguration at all?  Why do we have an Office of the Chaplain for the U.S. House of Representatives?  Why, since April 25, 1789, has every session of the Senate opened with a prayer “affirming the Senate’s faith in God as Sovereign Lord of our Nation”?  I don’t have the answers to these questions, though I think they’re worth asking, and I don’t think we have separation of church and state in America, but I think it’s worth striving for.

And I guess that’s why I might just join in the protest.  I am not a religious person.  I am, at best, spiritually confused.  I am completely unqualified to write a prayer.  But I am an American.  I am hopeful.  And I believe in what a groundswell of hopeful Americans can accomplish - the election of our first African American president, for example.  I love the idea of all of us posting messages about an America we’re proud of.  The America we can and should be…

So, yeah.  Maybe I’ll write about that America.  And it’s totally okay with me if you want to call it an invocation.

(Note:  This post was first published on Zebra Sounds, December 30th.)

I am still tingling from having seen this top article post on the AlterNet because I so resonate with Sarah’s list of 10 Reasons to be Hopeful in 2009 — and 3 Reasons to Be Terrified (click http://tinyurl.com/85j826).

Here they are, again, and you’ll just have to read more to get the richness and right-on-ness of these.
10 Reasons to be Hopeful

1. Young people are stepping up.
2. Election protection is working.
3. There is now overwhelming support for universal health care.
4. Corporate power is on the wane.
5. The failing economy is giving us lots of reasons to be terrified (see below) but also reasons to be hopeful.
6. We’re finally getting real about the urgency and scope of the climate challenge.
7. Social movements are building people power.
8. DIY (do it yourself) communities are piloting the shift to a people-centered society.
9. International cooperation is now possible, and it’s none too soon.
10. Obama!

3 Reasons to be Terrified

1. Runaway climate change.
2. Loose nukes.
3. Mad Max world.

Call me the eternal optimist, but I am bullish on the upcoming year because the core essence of our humanity (i.e., who we truly are deep down) is not only at greatest risk, but it is this same core essence of US that is being called out everywhere, and we are responding.

My favorite of Sarah’s list? A combination of #s 7 & 8. Do-it-yourself communities and movements are sprouting everywhere! Everywhere and in every moment, we are seeing  and TAKING  the chance to reinvent ourselves. To recreate the ways we are with each other, our lives and the world we desire. Watch us!

Take a vote on your favorite reason or add your own and show us why! What are the ways we are doing it?!