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Do we choose peace, or does God choose for us?

January 22, 2005 By Uncategorized

A dangerous fundamentalist political leader recently said:

“We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. “

Here he is calling for an alignment of human choice with divine choice. Align your choices with God’s and the inevitable will seem to be chosen, and you along with it. He asks his people to turn over their destiny to God and embrace the notion that perhaps his people are divinely chosen.

He is using this thinking to justify a war. By all accounts, this is the statement of a fundamentalist terrorist. If you are one of his people and you can’t agree with this, what now do you do to advance the cause of peace in the world?

Free online Cooperation Studies Course

January 21, 2005 By Uncategorized

There is a very interesting project underway co-hosted by Interra and Howard Rheingold and a bunch of other people. It’s an online Introduction to Cooperation Studies course.

You can join if you like; it’s free. And there’s a group blog for insights, links and other posts.

Thanks to Michael Herman at PeaSoup.

Joy Harjo lets us know where the truth lies

January 21, 2005 By Uncategorized

Joy Harjo should need no introduction, but if you do need to know more about this amazing award winning Muskogee poet and jazz musician go visit her weblog where today she proclaims that your spirit knows the difference between honesty and lies:

Consider these shining words in light of the inauguration speech of the so-called leader of this country:

�In Navajo, a warrior is the one who can use words so everyone knows they are part of the same family. In Navajo, a warrior says what is in the people�s hearts. Talks about what the land means to them. Brings them together to fight for it.�

Tiana Bighorse

Passion, patience and action as enlightenment

January 20, 2005 By Uncategorized

More on patience and it’s relationship to emergence.

Roshi Bernie Glassman is a Zen teacher and an activist. In this interview with Andrew Cohen he describes the relationship between enlightenment and action: “practices for enlightenment,” he says,”have to lead to action in the world.”

For Glassman coming out of Zen Buddhist practice, enlightenment comes from reducing your attachments and cultivating sunyata, or emptiness. In a brilliant statement, Glassman connects this emptiness to action that is of the most valuable kind: action directed at an unknown outcome:

AC: How can we remain attentive to the severity of the crisis without being so overwhelmed by it that we become completely paralyzed by fear and despair?

BG: I think we become overwhelmed only because of our expectations?our expectations that we are going to be able to resolve the problem.

AC: I see, so that’s the key.

BG: Step by step, see it in its broadest perspective, and then do the things that you can do without any expectations.

AC: Without any expectations that you’re going to solve the problem completely?

BG: Yes, or even help it. You’re going to do what you can do, and something’s going to happen?who the hell knows what.

This is a tricky place to be. It’s what my friend Myriam Laberge calls “chaordic confidence,” a term I have adopted to describe a whole set of practices that allow us to sit in the unknowing and trust that order will emerge from the chaos.

Glassman argues that in terms of “doing” that we do what we can with what we have. To work on a problem you just begin to attack what is immediately in front of you. If you want to reduce greenhouse gases, start by driving less. Then find other things you can do, like inviting others to do the same. By assuming that the problem is too big for one person to solve, you abdicate your responsibility for being a part of the solution. Problems that are too big need multiple actors to contribute to emergent solutions. There is no top down way to solve world hunger or climate change or the perils of colonization. By being patient though, and directed to the work at hand, you add to what becomes the emergent solution.

AC: You’ve been saying, “The right response is going to happen”?and I believe you and I agree with you. But I still want to ask you, in terms of the dharma, what exactly is the relationship between that state of unknowing and the awakening of conscience that transcends ego?

BG: I think they’re the same state. But it’s not a passive state; it’s very active. And that active state is bearing witness. That’s, for me, the way to approach it. Instead of waiting for something else to happen, say, “Right now, I, to the best of my ability, will approach this situation from the state of not knowing.” I think that gives you the best shot at doing something. It gives people permission to do something from their state of enlightenment. And it means bear witness to the suffering; don’t run away from it. Bearing witness is really important. To bear witness is to sit with it?and by “sitting,” I don’t necessarily mean physically sitting?but to sit with it, and try to simultaneously keep coming from that place of not knowing. Stay with it and bear witness to it?then you can do something.

Now, each one of us has got whatever attachments we have, and that’s why I say that the degree of our enlightenment is the degree of passion that we will have for the whole world. That passion will arise. Stay with it. Bear witness to what’s coming up. Out of that, action has to happen.

This is so beautiful: the degree of our enlightenment is the degree of passion that we will have for the whole world.” When we bear witness and do what we can, action has no choice but to show up.

Emerging Aboriginal identity in Saskatoon

January 20, 2005 By Uncategorized

In Saskatoon, Raymon points to a new online atlas of urban Aboriginal peoples published by the University of Saskatchewan. He follows the link with this little note:

. . . high school students constantly involved in the process of identity always refer to the eastside/westside struggle . . . poverty, aboriginal ancestry, housing, municipal planning bias, all contribute to identity . . .

I left him a comment saying that the little bit of work I have done with Aboriginal youth in Saskatoon has been remarkable. You have young kids with multiple ancestries – Cree, Metis, Ukranian, Scottish – trying to get a handle on what it means to be Aboriginal living in Saskatoon. And to make things more urgent, the simple demographics mean that in 15 years, these guys will be in charge of the whole province.

I think this new generation of youth in places like Saskatoon, Prince Albert and Regina are leading the way. In around 2020, Saskatchewan will be a largely Aboriginal province within the Canadian federation, and literacy in multiple identities will be a huge skill to making that work. With the youth coming up now who are sorting out these issues there is an emerging generation of leadership who are going to create some fantastic new ways of reconciling the sometimes competing needs of these different worlds.