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• Naturally Peaceful   
  
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• your diy guide to the Deep green revolution
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We're overdue for a collective shift toward a more just, cooperative and ecologically sustainable culture. 

  If not now, when?

• See what grabs your attention as you move through this site.
  
• If a particular issue seems compelling to you, maybe you'll be inspired to take action.
• Want to learn more? Look to the writers, sages and activists throughout the ages, who've urged us to live in greater harmony with each other, with all of nature as well ... folks like Thoreau and Wendell Berry, the Buddha and the Christ.
• Link up with others who are creating positive change, here and now.
  
• When we look clear-eyed at the global problems we face, we can willingly choose to make the personal and cultural changes needed to live lightly on our beautiful, bountiful home - planet Earth.    

   Thank you.  

     Together we enhance and magnify the growing wave of peace.

• INTRO: A REALITY CHECK
• (look at our changing world)
  
• Step 1: SLOW DOWN
• (let's get reacquainted with nature's pace)
  
• Step 2: LOOK AROUND
• (assess the situation right    where you live)
  
• Step 3: DIG IN/GET ROOTED
• (actively recreating our local communities)
• Step 4: PERMACULTURE
• (doing more with less)
• Step 5:BE KIND/PLAY FAIR
• (the golden rule and its many variations)

• "The best solution to a problem is the simplest one,  and nothing simpler."

• Albert Einstein

 

 

Check out these
Works in Progress

* Shopping 101
* Naturally Peaceful Families
* ReThinking God
* Good Food Basics
* Moving Beyond War & Empire

"We live in a kind of dark age, craftily lit with synthetic light, so that no one can tell  how dark it has really gotten.  But our exiled spirits can tell. Deep in our bones resides an ancient singing couple who just won't give up making their beautiful, wild noise. The world won't end if we can find them."                                                                                                                  Martin Prechtel ( contemporary Pan American shaman)

I love this quote.
It's tacked up on our fridge door, alongside family photos, library receipts and kids artwork.
It really captures contemporary American life so well.

Here we are - immersed in a dazzling, super-sized world - so very sculpted, fast and furious.
Sometimes, it's sheer complexity overwhelms our sense of what we know to be real, natural and precious.

http://robertcarson.webs.com/

Hello! Life is way out of whack. 

If you don't know it intellectually, you feel it in your gut, or your heart,
or maybe in your liver where all the various toxins of daily life stew.

Just look at the evidence:

* Habitat destruction is rampant.

We've got rapidly growing deserts, melting glaciers, logged off rain forests, and dead zones in our oceans.

* Species of plants and animals are dying off at ever increasing rates.

* Income inequality is growing worldwide. The richest top 10% of adults own 85% of global wealth, while over 50% of the world's population lives in crushing poverty on about $2.50 US per day.

* Teens who should be in the height of their natural vitality suffer with record rates of suicide, anxiety, depression and obesity.

* We're flooded with entertainment and advertising that glorifies violence, decadent materialism and crime, and makes it seem commonplace in society.

* The world is bristling with weapons, from millions of small armaments to vast stores of nuclear bombs.

* My country, the good ole USA, imprisons 1 out of every 100 citizens -
more per capita than any other nation in the world. We have more prisoners than farmers.

I could go on and on.
No doubt there are issues you could add to this list as well.
We sure don't have to look far to see that things are not as they should be.

Rich or poor, believer or skeptic, regardless of your race, creed or political affiliation,
you know this isn't the way things are supposed to be."

We stand at a crossroad. 

We've got ourselves into a convergence of problems
- ecological, political, economic and cultural -
in an increasingly complex, polarized, and energy dependent world.

"The ecological and social crises we face are inflamed by an economic system dependent on accelerating growth. This self-destructing political economy sets its goals and measures its performance in terms of ever-increasing corporate profits -- in other words by how fast materials can be extracted from Earth and turned into consumer products, weapons, and waste."                                 

Continuing on, with business as usual,
won't resolve our dilemma.

"The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world - we've actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia long sleep, to a new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other."    http://www.joannamacy.net/

We are making the shift from a hierarchical, competitive, profit based
industrial society to a cooperative, care-taking culture,
in harmony with nature. 

             Here and now, in our highly connected, post modern world, we have the                capacity to look at out history, learn from our mistakes and set a new course.

* We can choose to work cooperatively & re-embrace nature's way.
... slowing down to nature's pace
... living much more lightly on the Earth
... consuming resources at levels that allow people world-wide a modicum of comfort and dignity.

"Living with less is crucial, not only to ecological survival, but to long-term human fulfillment."

                                       ( "All My Bones Shake" by Robert Jensen)

* We can decolonize our minds ...  and distance ourselves from the false values foisted on us by this greedy, power hungry, and imperialistic form of capitalism that is all around us ... embedded and intertwined in so many aspects of our lives.

* We can rapidly re-localize our lives, our economies, and our food sources, and quit relying on vast amounts of non-renewable energy to move products and people around the globe.

* And, thankfully, we can heal & transform ourselves, our families and communities.                                      The collective wisdom of the ages is available to us in this modern, technological age - out there to be explored, and used to mend our bodies, psyches and spirit.

- Green Up - Power Down - 

When we see the big picture clearly,
we can willingly embrace the cultural and lifestyle changes
that are needed to live in harmony with the planet and each other.

As we heal ourselves, and recreate the natural bonds of family and community, we become one with the welcoming wave of peace and justice that encircles the globe.

We join with the millions who long to move beyond a world of continuous warring, cut-throat corporate profiteering and rapacious resource extraction.

Yes, it's time to wake up and face the facts. 
KARMA IS REAL.
We reap what we sew.

And just look at what we've sewn!

     All our fabulous technology & industry as created quite a toxic stew in our air, soil and water. 

   " More than 30 years of environmental health studies have led to a growing concensus that chemicals are playing a role in the incidence and prevalence of many diseases and disorders in our country, including:                  

* Leukemia, brain cancer, and other childhood cancers, which have increased by more than 20% since 1975.
* Breast cancer, which went up by 40% between 1973 and 1998. While breast cancer rates have declined since     2003, a woman’s lifetime risk of breast cancer is now one in eight, up from one in ten in 1973.
 * Asthma, which approximately doubled in prevalence between 1980 and 1995, has stayed at the elevated rate.     * Difficulty in conceiving and maintaining a pregnancy affected 40% more women in 2002 than in 1982. The incidence of reported difficulty has almost doubled in younger women, ages 18–25.                                                   * The birth defect resulting in undescended testes, which has increased 200% between 1970 and 1993.                  * Autism, the diagnosis of which has increased more than 10 times in the last 15 years."

The EPA has been able to require testing on just 200 of the more than 80,000 chemicals produced and used in   the U.S., and just five chemicals have been regulated under this law.

http://healthreport.saferchemicals.org/

Look at the 72,000 tons of radioactive nuclear waste lying in storage in the U.S.                                               Vast amounts of nuclear waste - much of it in aging, over-crowded facilities - with the potential to poison life for generations to come. ( The waste remains dangerous for tens of thousands of years into the future !) The amount of waste keeps growing at the nation's 104 operating reactors at a rate of 2,200 tons every year.

As of this writing, the nuclear reactors damaged by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan are still leaking radiation, and the regulators don't even know the full extent of the problems.

What about the hundreds of millions of gallons of oil that spilled as a result of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in 2010? How long will the oil, along with the millions of gallons of toxic dispersants that were applied, continue to damage marine and seashore wildlife habitats?

When problems such as these are not fully addressed,
they don't just magically go away.

No, in fact, the problems we ignore just get bigger
and bigger
and demand our attention!

Have you checked the news lately?

Record floods. Earthquakes & tsunamis. 
Genocides. Starvation. Epidemics.
Economic free fall.

--- 2010 flooding in Pakistan --- 

The World Meteorological Organization has stated that the recent heat waves, droughts and flooding events fit with predictions based on global warming
for the 21st century.

                                               It is predicted that future climate changes will include:

* further global warming (an upward trend in global mean temperature)
* an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events.                                                                                     * sea level rise ... perhaps three feet in the coming century. With about half the world's population of                   7 billion people living near coastlines, a three-foot sea level rise would endanger cities around the globe.

The past two years - 2010 and 2011 - seemed to overflow with extreme weather events.

The monsoon rains that flooded Pakistan in 2010 were considered the worst in this area in the last 80 years.           In Peshawar a record breaking 274 mm - 10.7 inches of rain fell during 24 hours.

The United Nations estimates that more than 21 million people were injured or made homeless as a result of the flooding (exceeding the combined total of the people affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake!)  UN Secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon said the flood was the worst disaster he had ever seen.

In addition, 2010 saw record breaking heat worldwide, impacting most of the United States, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Taiwan, China, North Africa, and the European continent as a whole, along with parts of Canada, Russia, Indochina, South Korea and Japan.

Severe high temperatures and drought resulted in hundreds of wildfire across Russian. Officials ascribed11,000 deaths to the heat wave and the peat fires that raged on the capital's outskirts.

In 2011 the U.S. experienced a record of 12 weather disasters,
each costing over $1 billion.

Fires burned through 34,000 acres in Texas, and 538,000 acres in Arizona, as a result of prolonged drought in the region. In May, one of the deadliest tornadoes in US history killed 161 people in Joplin, MO. The Ohio Valley had triple the normal rainfall, causing major flooding along the Mississippi River.

By way of comparison, the Jan 2011 flooding in Australia covered 328,000 sq miles.

* The ongoing drought in East Africa puts 13.3 million lives at risk *

(2011 data from Time magazine Dec 26, 2011)

The U.S. Global Change Research Program reported in June, 2009: 

Observations show that warming of the climate is unequivocal.

The global warming observed over the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. These emissions come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas), with important contributions from the clearing of forests, agricultural practices, and other activities.

Richard Muller, perhaps the leading scientist who had expressed doubts about global warming, has completed a comprehensive study with the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature group that unequivocally demonstrates the fact that the Earth is warming at an alarming rate.

Back in March, Muller told the House Science and Technology Committee that, contrary to what he expected, the existing temperature data was excellent. He went on: We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups.

As the team's two-page summary flatly concludes, "Global warming is real." 

"The threat of global warming has been recognized
at the highest levels of government for more than 25 years." 

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC urged countries to make disaster management plans to adapt to the growing risk of extreme weather linked to human-induced climate change.  (Rueters)

The Pentagon considers
global warming (not terrorism)
to be the greatest threat to our national security.

oh my!

Fortunately we can still mitigate some of the problems we face.

"The choice is ours: form a global partnership to care for Earth
and one another or risk the destruction of ourselves and
the diversity of life. Fundamental changes are needed in
our values, institutions, and ways of living."

( from the EARTH CHARTER )

We can break away from the trance of false values foisted on us by the conglomerate of power-driven institutions (economic ... political ... media ... military & religious.)

Because fortunately, lots of people have been studying & exploring & living alternatives to this slick consumer culture for quite some time now ... decades ... eons even.

We already know how to move beyond this bloated, unsustainable system.

Yes, thank god for the natives, the traditionalists, the hippies and outsiders, the free-thinkers and artists, the indigenous peoples, and all the many others who've refused to become cogs in the wheel.

Say hello to all those around the globe who've stubbornly maintained their nature-honoring cultures.                Thank goddess there are still folks left on the planet who've never stopped living close to nature. People who feed and clothe and shelter themselves, using the resources right around them. Folks who still grow food for themselves and their communities, not for profit-driven, multinational organizations. There are even some remaining hunter/gatherers here and there.

        Hopefully folks will want to share their knowledge and experience with us ....
                  assuming we haven't alienated everyone with our aggressions.

   from the book "Bhutan" by John Berthold

What will you eat when this mega-energy-burning system breaks down?  Your blackberry?

     

Yes, fortunately, back in the 1960's and 70's, lots of good folks said "no thanks" to the status quo, with its war profiteering, corruption and polluting industry.

We said goodbye to rigid, authoritarian standards for race and gender roles. We explored a wide range of spiritual beliefs, and reconsidered our relationship with the natural world, giving birth to the environmental movement.

It was a time of cultural ferment and revolution - an exciting, idealistic time to be a young adult. A whole subculture arose around the principles of peace, love, cooperation and justice for all.

People were experimenting on a grass roots level - rethinking health care ... focusing on workers' rights. Many lived in urban and rural communes. There were a lot of us in those years relearning basic skills, like carpentry and midwifery. All around, folks were building little one or two room cabins & huts with readily available, recycled materials. Some of us played at self-sufficiency, tilling the soil and preserving the bounty. We grew a lot of our own food, or gleaned, or bartered for it. Made home-grown music & home-birthed babies. 

* We lived well on little *

There was a camaraderie that develops when folks live a shared vision of peace.

So much of this experimentation came about because we saw the potential for things to go haywire, with the power structure left unchecked.

                          We saw "peak oil" on the horizon.  
        We saw the dark endgame of the military industrial complex.

  

   Of course, the Establishment did everything possible to discredit the movement.

It's the nature of dominator cultures to crush that which is different.
Plus, let's face it - its easy to squelch movements that threaten the status quo.

Play up the inconsistencies.
Label the "other" as dirty, weak or immoral.
Divide and conquer. 
Those uppity blacks! Those bleepin femi-nazis!
Us vs. them.
That's the way of empire, isn't it?

You're either with us or against us - my way or the highway.

OK, admittedly it was easy to ridicule the hippies and other alternatives types.                                                 In our youthful folly, we created our own problems. So determined to figure things out for ourselves,          we reinvented the wheel again and again. And in the midst of our social experimentation, a lot of hearts were broken and families torn apart. The sexual revolution unleashed plenty of unintended consequences.

                                                            Maybe we went too far at times. 

In the long run though,so much good came out of this wildly experimental time.

Look at the modern organic food movement.

Lots of us in the post war baby boom generation caught the gardening bug, and started growing wholesome, chemical-free fruits and veggies for our families, communes & neighborhood food co-ops. Some folks got really good at it, and one thing led to another. There was an abundance of produce... so why not market it?

• Small scale growers got together & worked cooperatively.
• They shared resources and enjoyed the economies of scale.

Those fledgling farmers set the stage for the vast and successful multimillion dollar networks of organic food distribution that now exist. Here it is, 30 plus years down the road, and we can purchase safe, delicious organics in just about every corner of the country.

What can happen in another 30 years?

   "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can       change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."( Margaret Mead )

Much of the success of the current holistic health movement sprang from folks experimenting around.

Learning ancient and modern medical techniques, and synthesizing new forms of healing.                              Looking for cures that get to the root of the problem, as opposed to "attacking " the symptoms of the disease. Asking us to take responsibility for our well-being through lifestyle and diet changes.

Pioneers like Dr. Andrew Weil - 
who sought out traditional healers, herbalists and distant shamen, to learn their ways.

We can thank the feminists of the 60's and 70's, and groups like the Boston Womens Health Collective for setting the stage for modern practitioners like Dr. Christian Northrup and Dr. Carolyn Myss, who bring compassion and intuition back to medicine.

Deepak Chopra is another example of the success that can come when we blend old and new ways of thinking. Born and educated in India, Dr. Chopra blends awareness of mind, body and spirit to optimize healing and human potential.

These are innovative times we live in -
when ancient systems like ayurvedic healing blend with modern quantum physics.

So now we can pick and choose from a wide array of helpful medical alternatives ...

such as acupuncture and homeopathy, chiropractic and naturopathy ... because sensible people had the guts to say NO to a deeply entrenched, expensive, technologically focused system, with its hands in the pockets of the huge pharmaceutical industry.

( You know, for all its talk about preventative care, the bloated American health care system really doesn't want us to embrace simple straightforward solutions. It's difficult to reap obscene profits from people's healthy lifestyle choices.)

"The health care industry, being an industry, stands to profit more handsomely from new drugs and procedures to treat chronic diseases than it does from wholesale change in the way people eat."      Michael Pollan

Which is one of the many reasons why here, in the richest nation on the planet, we pay so much for a health care system that doesn't even rank in the top 30 world-wide.

In their resulting best selling book,"The Limits to Growth" the team reached three basic conclusions:

1. "If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next 100 years."
2. "It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his or her individual human potential."
3. "If the world's people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success."

"What's amazing, in retrospect, is how close we came to actually listening to their message. Around the world, people got to work figuring out how to slow population growth."

"These were the years when America adopted the 55 mph speed limit - when we actually slowed down our mobility in the name of conservation."

President Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof. He asked us to turn down our thermostats and put on sweaters.

Carter hosted a reception for E.F. Schumacher - the publisher of "Small is Beautiful" - who urged us -

• to build a "lifestyle designed for permanence"
• to embrace "the evolution of small-scale technology, relatively nonviolent technology, technology with a human face."

"In the late 1970s more Americans were opposed to continued economic growth than in favor, something that seems almost impossible to us now ...."we actually had a brief opening to steer a different course, away from the rocks. "

Unfortunately we didn't.

"In the short run, President Ronald Reagan took the solar panels off the White House roof, and he froze the mileage standards that had helped cut oil demand by more than a sixth in a decade."

"In the slightly longer run, his worldview gave us not only the Bush administrations but also the Clinton years, with their single-minded focus on economic expansion."

"The change was not just technological; it wasn't simply that we stopped investing in solar energy and let renewables languish. It's that we repudiated the idea of limits altogether - we laughed at the idea that there might be limits to growth."

And now, "every force in our society is trained to want more growth."                                                         "The way our economy works at present, any cessation of growth equals misery."

"We've spent two hundred years hooked on growth, and it's done us some good, and it's                        done us some bad, but mostly it's gotten deep inside us, kept us perpetually adolescent."

I can't help but wonder where we'd be today if the slow growth movement of the 60s and 70s had flourished and taken root. Where would we be now, if we'd heeded the warnings, and steered our economy toward a relatively graceful descent?

What if instead of super-sizing every aspect of our society, we
had chosen a different, more humane way of living on the planet?

These days I'm so glad I was introduced to ideas of voluntary simplicity during the back-to-the-land movement. It's been decades since I've lived on a commune, but ever since then, wherever we've lived, I've tried to base my lifestyle choices on the principles of Voluntary Simplicity.

And now more than ever, with our current rocky economic outlook,
I'm pleased to know how to Do more with less.

In good times and bad, my husband and I enjoy a pleasant standard of living, simply because we live a pretty basic lifestyle. Even though we teeter on the high end of America's so-called poverty rate, we're incredibly rich in comparison to the vast majority of folks on the planet.

We're blessed with such amazing abundance - foods and consumer goods from around the globe.
                                                                                 - heating and cooling at the flick of a switch.

We've got a nice solid old home we can make our own, and a large circle of loving friends and family.

Because we try to be fairly self-sufficient

- growing fruits and veggies in our yard
- preparing our meals from scratch
- doing some of our own home maintenance 
- fixing our 2nd hand cars when possible ....
                    - my husband and I can get by working part-time jobs.

Working fewer hours gives us plenty of time for creative pursuits.
Time for community projects and volunteer work.
Time for self-care, yoga and meditation.

It's a good life all in all, with dear friends who linger over yummy potluck meals                                                          ... salmon seared over a backyard fire....sides of garden fresh veggies, and lovingly baked desserts.

We've got neighbors who help each other out, the way neighbors do ...                                                                        .... loaning tools, trading labor, offering a shoulder to cry on.

We keep our entertainment on the cheap and easy ....
... picnics at the local swimming hole when it's too hot to work
... regional camping trips with our daughters and their growing families
... visits to the art museum on free days
... seasonal parties with friends

     Know what I mean? 

Keeping it Basic.
Simple.
Conserving Resources.

But sometimes, it feels shameful to enjoy such a wonderful life,
knowing that over half the developing world's population
(about 2.8 billion people) scrape by on less than $2.00 a day!

It's hard to imagine isn't it?
Two dollars buys what? A cup of coffee? Or maybe a pastry?

About 1.1 billion people in the poorest of countries eke out a living
on the equivalent of a dollar or less a day.

                 Life is paradoxical. So much suffering. And so much beauty and love.

I look at my country - the USA:
I'm genuinely thankful to live where I have the freedom to pick and choose my lifestyle.                                         And I despise it's vast and oppressive military-industrial complex.

Sometimes my heart aches, knowing that American corporations are shoving their agendas down the throats of people around the globe.
Pushing folks away from their traditional cultures.
Wooing them into crowded cities, with false promises of consumer paradises.
All in the name of profits and market expansion.

Here in the U.S., in this land of opportunity there's
so much oppression and pollution going on in the name of profits and so-called "Free Trade".

We try to limit that pollution and oppression here, on our own soil. It's convenient to have it out-of-sight, in third world nations - often times in countries that have already been ravaged by the heavy hand of empires, past and present.

"Free Trade" has created factory zones in impoverished lands, where young adults slave long hours for low wages, manufacturing our precious fashions and electronic gadgets. In China, for instance, fenced-in and tightly guarded industrial towns have been built, where hundreds of thousands of young factory workers endure long days in conditions so bleak, that some of them end their lives by jumping from upper story windows. 

(Check out the movie - "The Last Train Home" for an amazing glimpse at factory life in China)

         

Slaving away, so we can have the latest designer look in our homes ....
        So our kids can have their choice of every toy imagined.

Global corporations like ADM (Archer Daniels Midland), Monsanto and DuPont, push indigenous farmers to become dependent on genetically engineered seed stocks, available only from them. (These are some of the same corporations that brought us such modern chemical wonders as "Agent Orange" - the toxic defoliant that ravaged Vietnam - its land and its people, and damaged the health of American G.I.s who were stationed there.)

"The companies that make the GM seeds also make the weed killers that the plants need to be sprayed with. This means the companies benefit twice from GM crops: once from selling the seeds, and once from selling the weedkillers." (Frances Moore Lappe - "Getting a Grip")

Suicide rates soared in India and some other countries, after farmers were persuaded to stop saving their own seeds and using their natural fertilizers ... as they were pressured to go from their traditional subsistence agriculture into crushing debt with multinational corporations.

In a ten year period, 200,000 Indian farmers took their own lives, often by ingesting the pesticides they'd purchased for their fields !!! Fortunately, many women have been responding by returning to pesticide free farming, resulting in healthier people and livestock, and freedom from debt.

    Yes, unfortunately, it's business as usual in much of the Third World.
     So that we can eat tropical fruits every day of the year.
     So that we can have access to a whole smorgasbord of culinary delights.

---

 Free Trade was sold to us as a means to better the lives of people throughout the world. In reality, the gap between the world's rich and poor has continued growing wider.

"In 1950, there were about two poor people for every rich person on Earth; today there are about four; and in 2025, when the world's population will be about 8 billion, there will be nearly six poor people for every rich person."        Thomas Homer-Dixon from "The Upside of Down"

"The people who defend the existing system most aggressively are typically either in the deepest denial, refusing to acknowledge their culture's spiritual emptiness, or else have been the privileged beneficiaries of the system's power and material goods."           Robert Jensen - "All My Bones Shake"

                      And, oh my, how incredibly privileged are those few at the very top of the heap!

"... the 400 richest Americans are all billionaires, with combined wealth of $1.25 trillion, roughly comparable to the total annual income of half the world's people."   Francis Moore Lappe - "Getting a Grip"

 This "Free Trade" juggernaut, which continues to widen the gap between haves and have-nots around the globe, is co-created by a   vast advertising network, unparalleled in the history of humankind.

It's mind boggling really.
There's so much brainwashing going on in the popular media.
Pushing us to BUY, BUY, BUY, BUY.

We Americans are so very well overfed,
dumbed down & entertained right into complacency,
- the soul numbing trance of excessive material abundance.

We're so jammed full of meaningless snippets of information -
(have you heard the latest about Brad & Angelina?)
So cluttered with sordid crap, that we don't even know our own history. 

Studs Terkel, who chronicled modern American life for several decades, said...

"We've got a nationwide case of Alzheimer's, when it comes to knowledge of our recent past."

     

Who knows what the near future will bring?

Each new decade brings more amazing change than the last. 
Maybe its time to assess the consequences of our modern cultural choices.
Are we on the right track?

These days, we rely on a vast and complicated global system of commerce, energy and communication to deliver our day-to-day needs. So far it's worked fairly well.

I can gas up my car and drive to the grocery store whenever I please.

But what if the proverbial shit hits the fan? 

If for instance, there's just not enough cheap oil left to ship goods and food half-way around the world?

I bet we'll be glad to find there are lots of farmers and gardeners still among us, and I suspect we'll be thankful for all the farmland that didn't get paved over, or turned into shopping malls and gated communities.

What if our technologically based health care system is overwhelmed by an outbreak of contagious disease, resistant to antibiotics and spread at the pace of jet travel?

We'll be so much better off, with widespread common knowledge of basic, natural and effective healing techniques.

And if saving our precious, protective atmosphere means saving our rain forests - the lungs of the earth -
  then we'll need to quit clear-cutting vast stretches of tropical hardwoods.
    And we'll be better off with plenty of folks, right here in our own communities, who know how to build
      with the resources that are right at hand,
                whether its stone, native woods or steel, bamboo, adobe or recycled plastics.

Yes, I'm thinking that right here, right now, in our own bioregions, it's a good time for large numbers of us to regain and perfect the skills and knowledge of basic, everyday life.

   You know, food production
                    education and care for our young, our elderly and disabled populations
                    home, building & infrastructure repair and maintenance
                    basic techniques of healing and medicine, and the like.

            Here's a little cautionary tale about widespread crisis, and how it can play out in different locales:

Both of my parents were young during the Great Depression of the 1930s. They resided in opposite corners of the same state, and had quite different memories of a time that left so many people suffering.

My dad recalled hunting for chunks of coal that fell off the trains, to help the family cook and heat the house. He foraged for wild greens and mushrooms to supplement meager fare. It was a difficult, hardscrabble time.

                            

              ( photo by Dorothea Lange)                                                                        (photo by Adam Clark Vroman)

My mother, on the other hand, grew up in a farming community - in Mennonite and Amish country ... among people of faith living in cooperation with each other, practicing good land stewardship, generation after generation after generation. She says the Depression was felt so much less in her region. The tumbling world economy was a mere ripple pressing in from the outside.

The moral here?

Whatever change comes our way, we'll weather it better if we're living in                                             closer harmony with the Earth and each other.

* CHANGE IS HAPPENING * REST ASSURED * CHANGE IS CONSTANT *

* REST ASSURED * CHANGE IS CONSTANT * CHANGE IS HAPPENING *

Like it or not, a major shift is right at hand, right now.

A crisis of karmic debt is playing out around the planet.
It will affect us all in different ways.
This big wave of change might meet you on your flooded Main Street ....
or in heartbreaking loneliness....
or in the loss of loved ones to cancer, drugs or war.

Who knows what sorrows and joys await us?

We'll want to stay level headed, so we can make all the necessary adjustments, big and little.

We can't give in to fear.

Fear causes us to regress.
It tends to create muddled thinking,
and makes us more susceptible to manipulation by the powers that be.

"The danger lies in refusing to face the fear ...
Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier."

(Elanor Roosevelt )

  It allows us to look squarely at our collective reality on this beautiful planet.

  All around the planet, throughout the ages, prophets have predicted that eventually we'd     face a major turning point in the BIG wheel of time.

A transition time, with the potential for destruction and turmoil,
and also the potential for rebirth and renewal.

Different telling of an ancient story .... whether you call it:

global climate change
or peak oil
the end in 2012 of the current 5,125 year cycle of the Mayan calendar
or the transition to the Aquarian age
the second coming
or, dare I say it, an apocalypse? 

 But honestly, could we please quit projecting gloom and doom onto our collective future?

Wasn't World War II, with its Holocaust horrors,
  and the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
    and the 72 million war related deaths around the globe ....

.... wasn't that apocalyptic enough, to push us beyond waging war?

Whatever you call this changing time we're in...

* Here We Are *
* Right Here * Right Now * The Road of Life Takes a Major Turn *

Joanna Macy, a contemporary Buddhist teacher and scholar,
has labeled it,
the Great Turning.

She says ...."this is a most extraordinary and beautiful moment. Because in this moment we can make a choice for loving life and taking care of each other."

Where do we go from here?

If we agree that things truly need fixing, well then, what comes next?

How do we move from a highly competitive and hierarchical culture, to a nurturing and cooperative one?

From a fear based culture (is the threat level orange or yellow today?) to a sustainable, caring and natural one?

We CAN birth a new, better, more adaptive way of being.
We can even do it with some grace, style and humor.

The sooner we can naturalize our lives, the smoother the transition can be.

I'm convinced that the more we embrace the solutions, the more we'll be able to buffer the turmoil of change.      This course correction needn't be a terrible burden, though of course, it may be for many. It's inevitable.

Part of the solution comes from simply reaching across the political and social divides, to cooperate and tackle this big mess together ... might as well, because ...

We're all in this together.

Come on. Jump on in.

It feels good and satisfying, working together with folks who share a vision,            and a sense of commitment to a more sustainable & peaceful future.

* Find your tribe.
* Share your work and resources.
* Create a saner culture, grounded in the love of all life.

Please, let's go beyond thinking outside the box.
In fact, let's step right out of the box.

Do we flow with this great turning?
Or suffer the collapse that comes naturally to a bloated and unsustainable system?

Do we "stay the course"?
Or flow with the reality that's at hand?

We find ourselves in uncharted territory.
What's ahead?

What do you do in unfamiliar, potentially dangerous circumstances?

                                         Well, you slow down.

You cut the motor - press down on the brake pedal.

You slow down and assess the situation -
and then proceed with Alert & Cautious Attention and a Kind Heart.

... this "revolution is in part against the very speedup that has made us all busy, distracted, anxious, and unable even to perceive the tenor of our own times. So it is a revolution in perception and daily practice, as well as against the concrete institutions that spell the misery of everyday life for too many and the destruction of the Earth for us all.

                It may never be finished, but the time to join is now."

- Rebecca Solnit (Orion - May 2008)

Highly recommended reading:

"The Great Turning" & "Agenda for a New Economy" by David Korten

"Eaarth - Making a Life on a Tough New Planet" by Bill McKibben

"The Real Wealth of Nations" & "The Power of Partnership" by Riane Eisler

"Exploring Deep Ecology" - Northwest Earth Institute

"The Sacred Balance" by David Suzuki

"Voluntary Simplicity" by Duane Elgin

"Ancient Futures : Learning from Ladakh" by Helena Norberg-Hodge

"The End of Growth" by Richard Heinberg

"The Sustainability Revolution" by Andres R. Edwards

 "Living Downtream" by Sandra Steingraber

So ... remember that ancient couple from my favorite fridge quote?

"We live in a kind of dark age, craftily lit with synthetic light, so that no one can tell  how dark it has really gotten. But our exiled spirits can tell. Deep in our bones resides an ancient singing couple who just won't give up making their beautiful, wild noise. The world won't end if we can find them."                                                                                                                 

Well, deep in our bones, that ancient couple is still singing their wild and beautiful songs. And if we're going to move from this strange time, toward a saner, kinder, more natural future, we'll need to listen in & find them again.

Gotta find our inner harmony ... our untamed yin, and our undomesticated yang.

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 love & determination will see us through