Tikkun Daily Blog » Blog Archive » A Collective Awakening? Buddhist Reflections on Copenhagen

Tikkun Daily Blog » Blog Archive » A Collective Awakening? Buddhist Reflections on Copenhagen

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Big or Little, Your Giving Gives Back - Health Tip - realage.com

Big or Little, Your Giving Gives Back - Health Tip - realage.com

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People Speak Tells Extraordinary Works of 'Ordinary People' | CommonDreams.org

People Speak Tells Extraordinary Works of 'Ordinary People' | CommonDreams.org

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Soup Stone: bringing our talents to the table - Soup Stone

Soup Stone: bringing our talents to the table - Soup Stone

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t r u t h o u t | A Jane Goodall Thanksgiving

t r u t h o u t | A Jane Goodall Thanksgiving

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The Sacred Balance - Big Bang

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Declan John Galbraith singing {For A Better Tomorrow} With A Poem: Absolutely Lovely

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Marcus Buckingham: What The Happiest And Most Successful Women Do Differently

Marcus Buckingham: What The Happiest And Most Successful Women Do Differently

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20 Ways to Change the World in Only 15 Minutes a Day

20 Ways to Change the World in Only 15 Minutes a Day

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Clayton M. Christensen: The White House Office on Social Innovation: A New Paradigm for Solving Social Problems

Clayton M. Christensen: The White House Office on Social Innovation: A New Paradigm for Solving Social Problems

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5 Unique Social Good "Finds" #FindingTheGood

5 Unique Social Good "Finds" #FindingTheGood

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15 Ways to Use Social Media for #FindingTheGood

15 Ways to Use Social Media for #FindingTheGood

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How LIVESTRONG Uses Social Media for Good #FindingTheGood

How LIVESTRONG Uses Social Media for Good #FindingTheGood

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RABBI LERNER'S COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS TO PACIFIC SCHOOL OF RELIGION

Thursday, May 28 2009 @ 08:47 AM (View web-friendly version here)

One of America's most respected theological training institutions, the Pacific School of Religion (PSR) invited Rabbi Michael Lerner to deliver the Commencement Address on May 24. PSR trains ministers primarily for the United Church of Christ and the Methodists, though other Christian denominations often find themselves influenced by the graduates of PSR. This is the written version of the talk that Rabbi Lerner delivered (he received a standing ovation from the over 800 people in attendance after delivering this talk). RABBI LERNER'S COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS TO PACIFIC SCHOOL OF RELIGION I deeply appreciate the honor of being asked to deliver this Commencement Address for the Pacific School of Religion, one of the great religious institutions in American society, and the major theological school that understands what we in the Jewish world call Tikkun—the Healing and Transformation of our planet. I salute all of you for your accomplishments, and your families and friends who have supported you through your life and made this day possible. I was asked to begin by commenting on the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, in which the early human race sought to build a tower that reached into Heaven itself. The early Jewish commentators, trying to understand why God did not appreciate this enterprise, said that though the Bible doesn’t explain what was wrong with what they were doing, God understood that the goal was for human beings to supplant God, using the most advanced scientific and technological information available at the time. And then, adds one Jewish midrash, they hoped to conquer the rest of the world once they had done battle with God. We in the contemporary world can certainly see how technology and science, which can be used for good, has also been harnessed for the purpose of domination by global corporations and imperial powers. The poisoning of our air and water, the destruction of our food supply by poisons in the water and the ground so that now we have to pay exorbitant fees for organic foods that have supposedly not yet been exposed to these poisons (and hence only the relatively well-off can afford to do so), combinded with global trade arrangements that have destroyed local agriculture in much of the third world and accelerated the damage already being done to those countries by the global climate change, itself a product of irresponsible forms of industrialization and the use of our scientific and technological knowledge in ways that are divorced from ethical concerns, has caused a deepening of the starvation and malnutrition that afflicts our planet—a planet in which over 2.5 billion people live on less than two dollars a day, 1.5 billion on less than one dollar a day, with over 20 million people dying each year of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition or inadequate access to medical care and drugs that would be available if they lived in a world that shared our resources and our food more equitably. So, yes, we can understand the message of theTower of Babel as a warning against the arrogance of a science and technology that is divorced from ethical purpose and instead serving the interests of power and domination. So God creates a plethora of languages and spreads the human race across the planet. And yet, this is also a blessing. The result has been the diversification of the human race and the creation of a wide variety of literatures, cultures, and approaches to the sacred. One of the wonderful aspects of the kind of Christianity that has been developed and taught at Pacific School of Religion is the respect for difference, the honoring of diversity, and the recognition that so much can be learned from the wide variety of experiences of the human race. Instead of an arrogant form of Christianity which still exists in some corners of the Christian world, a Christianity that insists that it has all the answers and that everyone else, in other religions, or in other approaches to the Bible, will be damned, because there is only one way to approach God and they have it—instead of that, PSR has trained you in a form of tolerance, respect, and even joyous celebration of the kind of diversity of approaches to God that actually exist on our planet and in the Christian tradition itself. Here at PSR you have come to see that peoples of color, gays and lesbians, bisxuals and transsexuals, Muslims and Jews and Buddhists and Hindus and indigenous people and forms of spirituality that emerge from the experience of women and earth-based relgions—all have great wisdom and all have much from which we must continue to learn. And we can be truly delighted to be living at a moment when the U.S. has an AfricanAmerican president, symbolizing to much of the world that the best aspects of multicultural consciousness are in fact being assimilated into the consciosness of our larger society. And yet, despite the great advances made on that front, we live in a world of great suffering, a world in which our current economic crisis has revealed the incredibly destructive aspect of an ecnomic, political and social system that rests on the principle of “looking out for number one” and maximizing our own self-interest without regard to the consequence sof others. The materialism and selfishness that led to this crisis is not confined to a handful of Wall Street entrepreneurs, but rather is the common sense and bottom line of our global capitalist order. And you, as spiritual and religious leaders and thinkers, have the task of challenging this triumph of selfishness and materialism both on an individual, family, community and global level. To understand what you are up against, you must realize that what we face today is just the latest instantiation of a struggle that has been going on for the past several thousand years beween two different world views about what it means to be a human being. I. The Domination Worldview: We are thrown into this world by ourselves, find ourselves all alone, having to survive by ourselves, and we find ourselves surrounded by others who are seeking their own advantage, and the will exploit or dominate you in order to maximize their own well-being. The only way you can protect yourself is to dominate them before they dominate you. The economic marketplace built onthis model teaches us every single day that we are alone,that noone is out there in the economy worrying about your interests, so unless you make “looking out for numbr one” your guiding vision, you will be taken advantage of and hurt. On a societal level, we come to believe that our own homeland security can only be chieved by dominating others around the world before they get the power to dominate you. This is the worldview of Fear, of Domination, of POWER OVER others. I call it the Right Hand of God, because in the Exodus narrative when the Jews have crossed the reed sea and the Egyptians have drowned in it, Moses’ sister Miriam sings a song to God and proclaims: Your Right Hand God, your right hand is adonred in POWER. II. But there is another worldview with a different message: that we did not come into this world by ourselves, thrown in alone, but actually most of us came into world through a mother, and in fact, we would not have survived in our first few years without the support and love given to us by our mother or by some mothering other. And your mother did not have a reasonable expectation of a good return on her investment of time and energy and love that she gave to you. It is this experience of love, reinforced in many other experiences in our life, that allows us to form a different view of how we can survive and thrive: namely, through building loving relationships with others based on generosity and caring for each other. Homeland security can come through caring and generosity, not through domination and power over. And this worldview, the worldview I call the worldview of Hope, of Love, of Generosity—this has beenthe worldview that most of the religious and spiritual traditions of the human race have articulated, the view I call the Left Hand of God. Most people on the planet have heard both worldviews. And in fact, both worldviews have at different times in history been relevant to our human needs. When the Jewish people were an oppressed people, we really needed to hear Miriam’s song, we needed to hear the story of God, understood as Yud Hey Vav Hey, which Christians mistranslated as Jehovah, or Yaweh but actually is not a name but a concept, that God is actually The Force of Healing andTransofrmation in the world, the Force that makes possible th Transformation of that which is to that which ought to be, the Force that makes possible the breaking of the reptition compulsion, our tendency to pass on the pain of thepast that ahs been inflicted upon us, and God is What it is About the Universe that makes it possible to overcome that repeition compulsion so that we can overcome the pain and cruelty of the past and pass on love and kindness instead—so at times we Jews,a nd other oppressed groups, have needed to hear about God understood as the Right Hand of God that has the Power to overcome the oppressive tyrannies that have dominated and hurt us (and for Jews, that has meant not only the empire of ancient Egypt, andBabylon, and Person, and Greece and Rome, but for the past 1600 years it also meant overcoming the cruelty of the Christian world toward us, just as for African Americans and Native Americans the Right Hand of God has meant the possibility of overcoming the cruelty of North American domination, slavery, and genocide. But if thorugh history there has been a need for both views, today for those of us who live in the midst of the most powerful empire the world has ever seen, a power that is exercised not only through military might that is now waging war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also through a global economic system that disadvantages others and advantages the elite sof wealth and power in the advanced industrial societies, and through a global media that shapes consciousness, inthis world, it is the Left Hand of God, the worldview of love and kindness and generosity that is so badly needed. To get that message across, You, the graduates of PSR , are called upon to take the Gospel seriously in a way that it has not been taken seriously by many in the Christian tradition. When Jesus says “love your neighbor” in this globalized world, and when the Torah says, “love the stranger—the Other,” these are messages that are meant to be taken quite literally and seriously. What would that mean? It means that you must become the articulators of anew vision of how to build our world: a vision that calls for a New Bottom Line to oppose the materialism and selfishness of the global capitalist order. You must insist that every institution, social policy, governmental policy, corporation, university, school system, heatlh care system, and even personal behavior should be judged rational, efficient, and productive not only to the extent that they maximize money or power, the OLD Bottom Line, but also to the extent that they maximize love and kindness, caring for others and generosity, ethical and ecological sensitivity, enhance our capacity to see others as embodiments of the sacred, and enhance our capacities to respond to the universe with awe, wonder, and radical amazement at the grandeur of the universe and the msyteryof Being itself. This is the New Bottom Line—and your task is to go into the multicultural world and preach that this New BottomLine, which of course is the vision that emerges from Judaism and Chrisitainity and many of the other major spritual traiditons of the human race, is now the absolute survival necessity for our planet and for the human race. We at Tikkun have formed an nternatonal interfaith organization called The Network of Spiritual Progressives and we are inviting you at PSR, you graduates, andyour families and friends, to join this organization whose goal is to promote the New Bottom Line across denominational and religious lines. You will find yourself soon in a world deeply attached to theOld Bottom Line, and you will be surrounded by people who try to convince you that you must be realistic and that there is no alternative but the Old Bottom Line—so that is why you need a Network of Spiritual Progressives to support you and provide a context when it seems as if not only the big corporations, but even the board of the church or religious school that you serve seems addicted to the Old Bottom Line and dismisses as a utopian fantasy the possibility of a world based on love, and caring and generosity. And we at the Network of Spiritual Progressives have developed a Spiritual Covenatn with America that you can read at our website www.spiritualprogressives.org, and I urge you to read it and to join there on line. To make these ideas more immediate, we’ve developed a campaign for a GlobalMarshall Plan that calls for the US and the other advanced industrial societies to donate 1-2% of their Gross Domestic Product each year for the next twenty years to once and for all end global poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, inadequate health care, and to repair the global environment. And I’m proud to announce that this Global Marshall Plan was introduced into the last Congress, and will be re-introduced shortly into this Congress, by the first Muslim elected to Congress—the Hon. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, and has been co-sponsored by a variety of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish Congresspeople, including Congresswoman Barbara Lee of Oakland. And the core idea underlying this campaign is that in the 21st century we need to understand that our well being as Americans depends on the well-being of everyone else on the planet. So we are arguing that the US must move from a foreign policy based on the strategy of domination to a strategy of Generosity, and the Domestic and Global Marshall Plan is an example of what that would look like. So I hope you’ll join the Network of Spiritual Progressives—and yes I even have withme some brochures so you could join today, and your guest could decide that the best way to give you a gift is to buy you a membership in the Network of Spiritual Progressives! So here is the good news that I bring to you and that I ask you to bring to the communities that you will be serving in the future: that almost everyone on the planet actually wants to live ina world based on this New Bottom Line, including those who are most cynical about it. The problem is, they have mostly been convinced that they are the only ones, or its just the people in their friendship circle or their church, or their religion or their country that wants such a world based on love and generosity. They really don’t believe that anyone else wants that, and because hold a deep pessimism about what others want, they themselves have given up on the possibility of this kind of a world, and instead have become practitioners of the Old Bottom Line, and the worldview of domination or power over becomes their guidline for how to live and how to build a society. And then, others, looking out at the world, see only these others acting according to the worldview of fear and domination, and they conclude that they too would be all alone, seen as irrational or crazy were they to take seriously the teachings of Jesus or Moses or Buddha or Mohammed or Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi—and so they retreat into themselves, trying to find a way to sustain their personal hopefulness, but being unwilling to act upon their deepest aspirations. Your task is to help people come out of the closet as spritual beings, to help them affirm that their deep desire for a world of love and caring and generosity is not impossible or utopian. There has never been a better moment to bring this message to the world. The old order is crumbling. Trying to revive that system will prove elusive, even to the brilliant president we have now and to his brillant advisors. It is based on the wrong premises, and it is and will fail. Similarly, the consequences of the existing system are causing a global environmental crisis that cannot be cured on th basis of the old assumptions. The planet needs a New Bottom Line. You are fortunate to have been trained in one of the traiditons that brought that New Bottom Line into the world through the teachings of a great Jewish prophet, Jesus of Nazareth. You have much to teach the world. So, respecting the great diversity, we nevertheless have a message that can reestablish the unity of all p eoples that got undermined when theyused that unity at the Tower of Babel for the wrong goals. Your message, the message of your Christian tradition, is wonderful and amazing, the challenge is overpowering, and as the Talmud rabbi Tarfon said: it is not upon you to finish the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. Many blessings to you and your families and friends in the years ahead.

Transform

Tikkun to heal, repair and transform the world

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22707.html#ixzz0G3jKtzeb&Bnsform the world

"Justice" - Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor

Voters For Peace - NETANYAHU AT THE WHITE HOUSE: Not Yet Change We Can Believe In

Voters For Peace - NETANYAHU AT THE WHITE HOUSE: Not Yet Change We Can Believe In


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Miles for Peace: young Iranian activists bring their messages of peace to the world

2009 MAY 19

by Rebecca Griffin

After a lovely morning of sightseeing in northern Tehran, we met today with members of Miles for Peace, and Iranian organization dedicated to promoting peace. Their mission statement begins:

We Iranians are peace-loving people; we aspire for a genuine and sustainable peace, for our own nation as well as other members of the great family of humankind.

To spread this message, in 2007 fourteen of the members biked across Italy, France, Germany, the UK, and the US to conduct people to people diplomacy and demonstrate that Iranians want a peaceful world.

We started out our meeting hearing from the director of the organization, Dr. Rohani. He shared his three major concerns in moving forward with peace between the US and Iran. He noted that exerting pressure on the Iranian government results in additional power for “fanatic elements,” the hardline factions in Iran that do not want a strong relationship with the US. He also called for international governance that features genuine cooperation and equal say for all countries, as opposed to the current system in which countries are treated differently. Lastly, he highlighted the problem of the American military machine and how it has grown to its current exorbitant size. He expressed concern that President Obama could face dire consequences if he tried to oppose it. Dr. Rohani fears that the military machine in the US needs a war to nourish it, and feels that we must make sure that Iran is not a target for a US military attack.

I talked to the group about the work we are currently doing in our country to pressure our government for better relations with Iran. I highlighted the work we are doing to build public support for President Obama’s plans to negotiate and work to overwhelm the opposition coming from groups like United Against a Nuclear Iran (he had also taken notice of them as a troublesome organization). I told them that through grassroots and lobbying efforts we are working to bring the same message to Congress about how this is the wrong time to put economic pressure on Iran while we are trying to open up negotiations, and opposing the current sanctions bills. He was aware of our victory in stopping H. Con. Res. 362, something Miles for Peace had also helped oppose. I explained the work we are doing around my trip to promote citizen diplomacy—to help educate Americans about Iran and counteract the fear-mongering that politicians and pundits are using to scare Americans into supporting harsh action against Iran.

After our discussion, the group shared some videos about their bicycle journey across Europe and the US. It was incredibly inspiring to see these young activists tirelessly biking, sometimes through hours of cold and rain, to engage with people on an individual level and promote Iran’s image as a peaceful nation. You could see the impact they were having in meeting with people on the street, other organizations and politicians.

Following the videos, we took some time to listen to some of your messages of peace together. I had been very touched in listening to all the kind words you recorded, and it was rewarding to be able to sit in a room with Iranians and share those messages. The messages of hope and solidarity were much appreciated, and one of the woman told me she “really loves the CD.” I also took video of several members of the group sharing their messages of peace, and I look forward to sharing those with you soon.

One thing that has really struck me since I have been here is how the Iran-Iraq war has affected Iranians’ views about peace. This conflict is not something we in the United States hear very much about, but it was a devastating eight year conflict in which one million Iranians died. Many innocent civilians were killed, in some cases with chemical weapons. The United States’ support for Saddam Hussein during this war is another source of anger at the United States government. Even though the war was over more than twenty years ago, the tragic consequences are still very fresh in the minds of Iranians today. Even the young people I videotaped today are motivated to promote peace particularly because they have seen the impacts of the Iran-Iraq war on their friends and family. At no time in history has Iran aggressively attacked another country, but they are bearing the scars from what some call a “defensive Holy War” that lasted eight devastating years.

Change The World by Op-Critical and JTMP

Let's Do It!

THE EARTH IS HIRING! Paul Hawken

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Commencement Address to the Class of 2009
University of Portland, May 3rd, 2009      

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.

But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation – but not onepeer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement.  

Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food – but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen.

Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true.  Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. "One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice," is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown – Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood – and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled inhistory.

The living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe – exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a "little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven."
 
So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

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Be the CHANGE!

Moon Lodge is a place of power, Blue Moon Lodge is a place of powerful transformation. Do you feel Change in the air? PDX is alive with awakened beings creating and manifesting the most beautiful dreams where we are one neighborhood and another and another and another transforming into one global village truly valuing Peace, Wholeness, Diversity, Sustainability, Collaboration and Creativity with the ability to face Challenges knowing that together we are the transformation.