Calling the Prime Minister
 
It is the fifth time I have called the Prime Minister on the line open to citizens in a matter of days.  The first message I left was insistent and indignant in urging him to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and flood Gaza with humanitarian aid.  After the news that the United States vetoed the ceasefire, I could feel the world further turn on its axis.  My legs give out under me and I am on the floor, tears steaming down my face.  Pressing the number now etched on my phone’s contact list, I hear a despondence in my voice that I cannot recognize.  Now I am imploring, begging him to recognize how horribly we are failing humanity and future generations.
 
When I was a middle-school teacher, I taught about the Holocaust every year.  It was a curriculum designed to nurture empathy and understanding while recognizing that humanity can lose the best of itself when psychopathy leads. As the daughter of Greek immigrants, I hold the deeper meaning of the word – literally, “soul suffering”.  Only a sickness of soul could have allowed such cruelty to reign unchallenged.
 
The psychopathy we are seeing play out before us – the relentless and escalating cycles of violence – are harming each and every one of us.  And this violence is not limited to what is currently unfolding in Israel and Gaza.

It is the violence that undergirds and permeates our lives.  The violence to the Earth, the violence against women, the violence against Black and Indigenous peoples, the violence against the queer community, and on and on and on.  The list is heart-stoppingly long. 
 
That we so profoundly devalue our innate interconnectedness with planetary life and each other means we are separated from the depths of expression of our beauty, creativity and love as human beings.  Rather than resourcing our imaginations to create just and regenerative worlds, we have somehow determined that a perverted necropolitics is “just the way things are”, damning us and future generations to the cascading apocalypse.  Addictions to fossil fuels and power turn souls into wounded monsters whose rage disrupts the peaceful possibilities of a profoundly wondrous planet rich in exquisite diversity.  Instead, rage and trauma lead narcissistic and short-sighted decision-making, further contributing to rising tides of violence and ecological imbalance.
 
Women I know and love and some courageous men acknowledge to me that they feel changed by the events of the past two months, since the acts of terror of October 7th. While we’ve been critical of our governments before, we find ourselves waking up in a truly Orwellian world where the walls seem to gain depth and structure with each passing minute.  The Western world’s championing of human rights has become empty rhetoric. It has turned to ash.
 
Confused arguments warp the clear violations that we see taking place before us.  Disproportionate responses pass silently as “reasonable”. Clearly supremacist logics are centered as righteous and good, while historical memory is manipulated for the most cynical ends. Silence is demanded through surveillance and tactics rooted in heavily resourced pressure, ridicule and harassment.  
 
We have numbed ourselves to a spirit and politics grounded in the extraordinary altruism, courage and creativity we are capable of enacting. We have so many wise teachers of different traditions across the globe who try to remind us otherwise.  Who implore us to love, forgive, share, honour our connections, remain humble and practice dying so that a truly expansive life of care, honour and unique self-expression comes into focus. That we accept instead such puniness of spiritual imagination, relegating us to repeating what our bodies register as grotesque inversions of our most sublime human capabilities, is our greatest shame. Holding a mirror to this limited worldview can enable us to hospice and integrate our profound failings as instructive and memorable teachings. We do not need to be so destructive.  In fact, our collective lives depend on being otherwise.  That we turn away from the cosmic and sacred gift of life and decide that killing and plundering are so easily justified is humiliating.
 
Perhaps this explains the relentless nausea that takes hold of me every morning.  I open my eyes and the children, men and women of Gaza are shadows in my room.  With every drink of water, I am reminded of their thirst.  With every bite of food, I feel the emptiness of their bellies.  I think of the profound fear being experienced by the hostages. Small joys I experience during the day are fleeting, vanishing quickly when I remember that brutal, raw power is aligned against them, with scores of bystanders enabling, encouraging and witnessing their raw agony.  I spend my days carving out activism amidst the responsibilities I have.  Posting, calling, educating, dialoguing, finding protests, emailing friends and family, witnessing, learning, donating.  It all feels so small and yet requires courage in the face of the wounded rage being unleashed. I resist. I refuse. I sob. I plead. I join the cries of the families of Israeli hostages - "All for all". I join the cries of the Palestinians in their decades-long struggle for justice - "Liberation for all".

But they are unmoved.
 
They have soul sickness. 
 
And it is spreading, more pervasively than the pandemic.
 
From the ashes of Auschwitz to the ashes of Gaza, we also bear witness to the ashes of wildfires increasingly threatening our shared home.
 
Can the human spirit rise from those ashes, healing its soul sickness by remembering the sacred songs of belonging, interconnection and loving compassion it was born to sing?
 
I hear the echoes of this song in my pleas to the Prime Minister.
 
I pray he is moved.
 

Recovering Medicine

While browsing at a bookstore recently, a book with a cream cover and a beautiful shock of golden paper in the shape of a tree caught my attention.  Its title was The Sweetness of a Simple Life: Tips for Healthier, Happier and Kinder Living Gleaned from the Wisdom and Science of Nature, and it was written by Diana Beresford-Kroeger.

I enjoyed the short vignettes of Diana's wisdom, grounded in the ancient Celtic Brohen tradition,  as she masterfully weaves the precision of science with compelling holistic perspectives.  Her little chapters provide fascinating and profound insights into the foods we eat, their role as antidotes to many of the hazards of modern life, ways in which we can live in more balance with natural cycles, as well as awaken the reader to the profound losses we face if we do not recognize the precious heritage and medicines provided by the generosity of the natural world.

One of the most compelling stories for me is from the chapter titled, "Chasing Cures" where she documents her decades-long quest for a rare tree called the wafer ash, Ptelea trifoliate.  This tree has been revered by Indigenous peoples from the eastern regions of Turtle Island for centuries; it is known as the sacred tree.  Diana's quest for this tree is a manifestation of her deep understanding and reverence for the healing potency inherent in plant life.  Apparently, this tree has shown great promise in treating many forms of cancer.

Diana cautions us against looking for cures that don't include the indigenous plant species that offer so much unexplored potential for dynamic and synergistic forms of healing.  She writes:

The flora of North America is being ignored by universities, governments, corporations, and private investors, as a rich source of medicine in favour of the flora of the tropics.  The flash is not here. There is something else in the vegetation.  It is a form of tenacity that defies all understanding.  It presents life in the margins.  It is only from the margins that real invention is squeezed, like water from a stone.  The continent's medicine men knew this, less by instinct and more by knowledge.  The sacred tree, Ptelea trifoliate, and its variants are nature's legacy to future generations.  We should all give thanks for this gift, for this tree.

Diana's writing and advocacy inspire remembrance of how precious what we have already been given truly is.  Rather than only look for solutions outside of ourselves that have not yet been created, she gently yet convincingly persuades the reader to recognize the incredible gift of the billions-old wisdom of the natural world.  I agree with Diana Beresford-Kroeger's core message that sometimes the most innovative thing we can do is honour those ways of knowing and being that have already proven their brilliance if only we could turn our faces to see them anew.

More information on Diana Beresford-Kroeger can be found here.

Awakening the Human Spirit

Today it was the news of the dolphins that weighed on my heart.  Dead bottlenose dolphins are being washed ashore at an alarming rate.  Many marine biologists state that the dolphins are a litmus test for whether or not an ocean system is healthy or unhealthy.  Clearly, our oceans are in deep trouble.

How long can we pretend that our ecosystems are not under serious threat?  Our unconsciousness and denial of what is happening are staggering.

What has the power to turn things around?  Will we descend into the darkness of fundamentalism and militarism?  Will our unconsciousness continue to allow us to scapegoat the "other" and engage in wars over resources and ideology?

As human beings, is it possible that we are capable of more than this?  Can we connect with the larger, cosmic story of creation and find our way home to who we truly are?  What role can our spirit play in healing the traumas and solving the problems of our world?

Black Elk stated that, "The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us."

This September in Toronto, we will be engaged in an ongoing dialogue series entitled, "Unconscious No More" that seeks to respond to these questions from a paradigm that is emerging to create the future, as well as being rooted in ancient wisdom traditions.   This event, held at Beit Zatoun - a Palestinian solidarity space committed to peace and justice - follows a similar gathering held in May of this year.  That event was an innovative dialogue was held featuring Mohawk knowledge holders and Jungian depth psychologists.  The proceeds of that event were directed towards a groundbreaking trip to the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich where Indigenous teachings and ceremony were brought together with Jungian understandings of the psyche and its process of transformation.

This follow-up event is an opportunity for a deeper exploration of the role the human spirit plays in fostering a truly healthy (whole) human psychology.  This is an important discussion, as it is our wholeness which allows us to respond intelligently to the crises facing our world, and helps us in creating a more humane and sustainable way of living on the planet.

Members of the delegation to Zurich will share their experiences from this trip, and we will continue the process of allowing for a deeper integration and convergence of worldviews grounded in a respect for, and understanding of, the human spirit. This event will feature powerful Indigenous ceremonies, reflections on the trip to Zurich from those who attended, and discussion circles led by pioneers in the fields of psychology and spirituality.

Proceeds from this event will be directed towards a trip being undertaken by Soul of the Mother to Serra San Bruno, Italy to join in prayer with the Carthusian Order of Monks in a ceremony of reconciliation and renewal in the deepest spirit of global oneness.  Healing the legacy of colonialism and transforming fascism and fundamentalism are essential tasks of our time.

How Do We Deal With a Bully Without Becoming a Thug in Return?

As so many of us struggle with our grief in the face of the tragedy at Sandy Hook elementary school, the drone attacks in Pakistan, the prevalence of youth suicides as a result of bullying, the increase in violence that stems from psychological imbalances, and the intense militarization of our world, this Ted Talk by Scilla Elworthy is a grounding source of wisdom.

We have an impulse to rise up to protect when there is harm, and that is an honest, necessary response.  Yet our evolution as human beings and the entrenchment of our desire for peace necessitates that we critically examine how we respond.  This is when we enter the courageous, vulnerable and powerful terrain of non-violence.


Scilla Elworthy: How do we deal with a bully without becoming a thug in return?

May we commit ourselves to creating a better, more peaceful world in honour of all those whose lives have been scarred, traumatized or lost to violence.

Yes, We Can Embrace Our True Nature

These are remarkable times. The tension of opposites feels taut as never before – poised on a brink of both intense devastation, and exhilarating possibilities. Shadow and light seem to be revealing themselves to us in new guises. The events and synchronicities are pulling us, guiding us, to unexplored vistas of our consciousness, wisdom and potential. This feels like the opportune moment to embody a new and ancient perspective.

Could it be that this is the time when we might remember the inherent holiness that connects us all in the breathtaking web of life? Is this an opportunity to recognize the need to pull back our own projections and take true responsibility for our destinies on this planet? Will this be the era where we move beyond the either/or dualities that devour harmony and unity, and embrace our role as peacemakers? Are we capable of listening to the guidance that continually reminds us that our true nature is to honour all that is and serve?

Yes, we can make a leap beyond what we have known and find ourselves standing in our indigenous, essential truth – we are one with all of creation. We are embedded in that web of love.

This is the kind of love that can make justice more of a reality, that embraces difference, and can transform the horror. Only this love can hold us together and keep us from tearing ourselves apart. This is the love can help us stand firm for a better world - a more equal, humane, sustainable and peaceful world.

We are being called to plant our own sacred seeds in the seeming impossibility of the mess, and stop waiting to be redeemed.

A deeply primal instinct as old as life reveals itself through a pearl of wisdom – we will reap what we sow. We are being challenged to tend to a radically new harvest – a radically new (yet old) way of being.

The time is now.

Yes, we can step out of the shadows and begin.

Reading My Way To Conscious Citizenship

This summer, I've had the opportunity to dive deeply into the words and ideas of some great social and political thinkers.  What I've appreciated about what I have read is the integrity, care and honesty that has characterized their work.  Each text has prompted serious reflection in me and contributed to a more expansive and conscious world view.  The gift is that my own notions of citizenship continue to be refined, and I become more aware of how I can contribute. 

The guiding questions for me are: What is my relationship to what is happening in my community, my region, and my planet? and What are my responsibilities in light of my understanding of what is happening? By giving me a grounding in the latest research and frameworks that can help my thinking and actions to be more integrated, I have found that my summer reading choices are better equipping me to engage with my community in a proactive way.

I worry about the state of social and political discourse that I experience around me.  I see a lot of reactive news programing, instant access to information that fails to leave room for deeper contemplation and thought, and a highly polarized debate.  Yet the issues facing us today are so complex and serious, that they require so much more from us.  It truly is in the best interests of those in powerful positions to keep the majority of citizens ignorant and disengaged.  The more you know and understand about the state of the world - most notably in relation to the poor and in relation to the environment - the more indignant you feel and the more powerfully and passionately you respond to calls for change.  Change is always threatening for those who benefit from a current social order.  This dialectic has been played out in social movements for centuries.

One act which is empowering and sustaining comes from giving oneself the time to really understand one or more of the key issues facing a community - whether local, global or both.  Knowledge really is power.  Knowledge coupled with conscious action acts as an immune response to a troubled, diseased situation. 

Every little cell counts.


What I've Been Reading...

Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt.

The force of his writing takes you into his well thought-out arguments for how to restore social democracy in the 21st century.  How did we get to this current moment of intense political and social dysfunction?  Judt helps the reader to understand the road we've travelled, and illuminates the one we can yet choose to walk.

Days of Deception, Days of Revolt by Christopher Hedges and Joe Sacco

Hedges has a way of exposing that the Emperor not only has no clothes, but has no conscience.  Documenting the stories from the "war zones" of unfettered capitalism, Hedges and Sacco force the reader to face and truly understand how dismally we fail our own humanity when we enable profit to matter more than people or the environment.

Everything Under the Sun: Towards a Brighter Future on Small Blue Planet by David Suzuki and Ian Hanington

This book acts as a primer on a number of environmental issues facing our world, as well as outlining what the latest research has to say, and what we can do to turn things around.  Real and hopeful at the same time.  You get a clear picture of what is happening to our precious ecosystems without becoming completely disempowered at how dire the situation really is.  No free passes here -there are constant reminders about what each of us can do to shift the balance in a life-affirming direction.

Relational Reality: New Discoveries of Interrelatedness That Are Transforming the Modern World by Charlene Spretnak

As a teacher, I found her chapter on parenting and education alone to be worth the cost of the book.  I've loved Spretnak's work for many years; she is an original thinker who brings the feminine dimensions of life to the forefront without compromising critical thinking and analysis.  In her latest reflections, she points to emerging (and re-emerging) understandings of life's systems that are revolutionizing how we organize our societies.

What Really Matters

What if you had the opportunity to listen to wise individuals share teachings about some of the most fundamental questions facing the world today?  What if you could sit in circles, or groupings of people who were interested in discussing what really matters to them? 

When I think about what is taking shape in Toronto at the end of August at the fourth Spirit Matters Gathering, I feel strengthened, inspired, and engaged.  On August 24-26, Indigenous wisdom keepers from around the world will gather to have their knowledge honoured and shared with the public.  In addition, this gathering will bring together all people who are asking one of the fundamental questions of our time:

How do we make the shift from an industrial culture that has hit a crisis point, to a sustainable, life-affirming reality for all who inhabit the Earth?


Instead of pretending that there is nothing happening, or that there is little we can do about the major events overtaking our communities and our world, we have the opportunity to come together in a safe, sacred space to share and to speak what is on our minds and in our hearts.  This conference is an invitation to gather as whole human beings - as citizens of the planet - connected in our deep care and concern for all life.  We can no longer put our heads in the sand and hope the messes that continue to threaten our eco-systems will be magically solved without our contribution.  We can no longer repress the knowledge of Indigenous peoples that has so much to contribute to healing our relationship with the web of creation.

Now is the time to honour what is life-affirming.

Now is the time to speak on behalf of creation.

Now is the time to act with purpose and integrity.

Now is the time to affirm that our spirit truly matters in this process.

For more details about Spirit Matters: Honouring Indigenous Worlds see:


http://www.spiritmatterscommunity.com/