Chris Corrigan

Consulting in organizational and community development

September 16, 2001

Aine and I were walking in the woods near the salmon ladder in Crippen Regional Park today playing a game. She was pretending that there were monsters in the forest and that they were coming to eat us. We had to be vigilant. We had to defend ourselves.

I asked her "What is the plan? What are we going to do if we see one of the monsters?"

She replied, "Feed them."

"Feed them?" I said.

"Yes," she said. "If we feed them they won't want to eat us."

I think she has the answer there. Imagine if George Bush took that $40 billion that Congress gave him and used it to feed people. Heck, take $20 billion to fix up US security and clean up New York and use the other half to feed people. And not just feed them with food.

What if we decided that people's spirits needing feeding too? What if we chose to take $1 billion and build the biggest, most beautiful mosque in the world, right in the heart of Kabul. And what if we gave it as a gift, no quid pro quo, as a place for people to feed their spirits?

What would the reaction be? What do we want the reaction to be? We have choices.

Seems we could bomb innocent people to death and celebrate, mirroring the images of this week, and thereby satisfy our thirst for vengeance. But what would that get us? A world that so admired the West that it wanted to emulate it in every way and celebrates its way of life? Or would a large part of the 5 billion people that don't live in the west see things differently? Would more people feel as if vengeance was the only possible response, and figure out more simple and effective ways to terrorize? We can have that kind of world if we choose it.

Or we can take Aine's advice and feed people. And what would that get us? There is no better way to rob the world of 
it's anger and bitterness, jealousy and hate, than to feed people unconditionally...feed their bodies, minds and spirits. 
Build places of learning, places of spirit, places for healing and nourishment, places of community. 

Take that $40 billion dollars and spend it in every neighborhood in the world. Put the world to work growing food, healing people, restoring land and water, building communities, creating the thin fibers of connection between 
peoples, families, communities, cities, nations....

"If we feed them they won't want to eat us." Can you think of a better form of security?

* * *

It was so eerie over the last week  having the skies go silent all around us.  Usually we can hear the planes flying north on the Great Circle Route to Asia, or coming in over Bowen to land at the new run way in Vancouver.  But this week, nothing.  Silence.  Not even a seaplane was allowed to fly.

There were no contrails in the sky, no low rumble of jets, no flickering lights in the night.  It was almost inexplicable.  

And now as the world teeters towards who knows what, we sit on our little island, on the one hand away and apart from the activities swirling about the world and on the other hand so intimately a part of it that we cannot see how we are connected,

The great privilege we have of being here we owe to the backs of millions of people around the world who make this life possible for us.  They sew our clothes, build our computers, drill for our oil, make toys for our children.  And the vast majority cannot even dream of a life such as this.  

* * *

After the events of Tuesday, normality made a valiant attempt at returning.  A bunch of parents and kids were offered a free ride on the water taxi on Wednesday, up to the northern tip of the Island, where Finisterre Island lies.  Finisterre (Land's End) is connected to Bowen at low tide.  There is a road that runs along a little causeway and into a tunnel.  Atop the island is a large house positioned in such a way as to take maximum advantage of sun and views and yet remain protected from the vicious Squamish winds that lash the north side in the winter.  We ooed and ahhed at it.

Chris Corrigan

RR #1 E-3, Bowen Island, British Columbia, Canada V0N 1G0

Phone (604) 947-9236   Fax: (604) 947-9238

corcom@interchange.ubc.ca