International Protests, Changing the World, and also, Baby Seals Are Really Cute

This afternoon, stepping into the café, I was greeted by an amazing headline on the New York Times: “As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around the Globe.”

The authors go on to draw a line between the protests in Egypt, Libiya, Tunisia, Israel, London, Greece, Spain and now, the Occupation of Wall Street in New York.

“They believe life can be more participatory, more decentralized, less dependent on the traditional models of organization, either in the state or the big company. Those were the dominant ways of doing things in the industrial economy, and they aren’t anymore.”

“Protesters say they so distrust their country’s political class and its pandering to established interest groups that they feel only an assault on the system itself can bring about real change.”

“Mr. Levi, born on Degania, Israel’s first kibbutz, said the protests were not acts of anger but of reclamation, of a society hijacked by a class known in Hebrew as ‘hon veshilton,’ meaning a nexus of money and politics. The rise of market forces produced a sense of public disengagement, he said, a feeling that the job of a citizen was limited to occasional trips to the polling places to vote.  ‘The political system has abandoned its citizens,’ Mr. Levi said.

THIS WAS ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES, PEOPLE. 

REALLY.

I could hardly contain myself as I read the article aloud to Jason, who in a mostly uncondesending tone told me that he thinks my ability to get overwhelmed by hope and passion is endearing.  Alright, it's true that I do have a picture of a little baby seal with white eyes as my desktop wallpaper.  So it might be true that I naturally gravitate towards all that is wonderful and dewy-eyed.

I see this little fella everyday when I open my laptop.  Awww...

But you've got to admit, this is just beautiful:

“Increasingly, citizens of all ages, but particularly the young, are rejecting conventional structures like parties and trade unions in favor of a less hierarchical, more participatory system modeled in many ways on the culture of the Web…”

After months of seeing headlines about how fourteen tea baggers did such-and-such, or a rally of forty so-called-patriots did this or that, it feels like a huge breath of fresh air to finally see the hard work of hundreds of thousands of progressive activists across the globe recognized.

There are so many people who have devoted their lives towards doing the work of web-weaving activism and earth healing, and although I’ve known in my heart that we are part of something that is a global pheneomenon – what Paul Hawken calls the “Largest Movement in the World that Nobody Saw Coming” – it’s still so incredibly inspiring and encouraging to read the words of other people around the world reaching out and meeting one another in an energy of connection and allyship, especially when you’re reading those words on the front page of one of the largest media outlets in the US. 

Tomorrow, I’m meeting up with friends from all over the country to go to the “Make Banks Pay” Action in San Francisco, and next week I’m traveling to Washington DC to be a part of the “Stop the Machine” Occupation of Freedom Plaza. 

I’ve always wondered if, looking back, I’d be able to see the Great Turning happening in hindsight, because it can be hard to really track these things as they happen in the present.  Well, today I can feel it unfolding beneath my feet, unfurling like the bright green soft stem of new growth.  This is the Great Turning happening now.  Welcome.  I do hope you’ll join in.

The NY Times Article

Make Banks Pay Action, San Francisco

Stop the Machine

Thinking about this thing called Destiny, Fate... & aren't you Special?

Today I listened to a lecture about sourcing our power to realize our own destinies from the greater web of life – for the third time.  For something as weighty as the topic of realizing one’s destiny, you really can’t assume that you’ll get it all just by listening to a teleconference over the internet once. 

I mean, I guess one could say that for a topic as weighty as destiny, trying to figure it out or learn anything of value through a podcast, internet teleconference, twitter post, facebook update is either foolhardy or delusional.  But, I’ve been through all that before.  That’s the voice of my inner naysayer.

I adore the concept of destiny, even those times when I don’t believe in it.  Which is to say that when I’m in ritual space, or after a beautiful experience making love with someone, or under the influence of certain psychoactive plants, or simply on a day when the sun is shining and I feel stress-free and connected to our great mother’s pulse, I know that there is a deeper meaning to my life, your life, and the lives of all of us who were born during this time of great upheaval and great transformation.  When I’m stressed out over paying my car insurance or when my cell phone drops a seemingly important call, it’s sometimes easy to believe that those things are Real Life. 

While listening to Claire talk about destiny and “aligning with the agenda of the intelligence of the universe to activate the deepest parts of our selves,” and “bringing forth our gifts in ways that will be the greatest contribution to all life,” even though it was the third time I’d heard her say the exact same words, I suddenly found myself shaking with soundless tears as a rush of energy moved up and out and through me. It was as if the deep part of myself she was talking about had suddenly broken through a dam made of credit card statements and student loan promissory notes and grocery store receipts and report cards and a thousand other paper tigers, and like a river of living energy was flowing through me. 

“Our universe has an agenda: for us to create a world that truly reflects the beauty of consciousness itself – heaven on earth,” Claire was saying, when I came back to myself and could hear her again.  “We’re waking up with a desire to express our gifts in ways that give our lives meaning because they contribute to an evolutionary process of transformation.  This is us waking up to our destinies.”

There is a beautiful distinction in her definition of destiny as waking up to our highest potential as co-creators of the evolutionary processes of life, as compared to fate: destiny feels light, right, and open in my body and heart, whereas fate feels heavy and stuck, like something with its talons clawing into my back between my shoulders where I can’t reach back and dislodge it.   Fate is the inertia of the social and political systems of the past, the trauma of ancestral stories not yet healed, the limitations of our own minds that come from a culture that doesn’t support dreams and imagination, the way our lives will be if we don’t wake up from the sleep-walking trance of consumerism. 

When I was a little girl, my father used to joke with passersby that I was the messiah – an assertion based mostly on the fact that I’d managed to come into the world despite the good intentions of not just one but two forms of contraception.  He said that they’d look at me, confused, and say, “Isn’t the Messiah supposed to be a man?”  To which he’d reply, “Where in the Torah does it say that?”  No one, apparently, knew.

I knew he was joking, but beneath the joke was something deeper and more resonant – I knew that my father thought that I was very special, and because he felt that way, I did, too.  I’ve never had any illusions about being the Jewish Messiah, but in my heart I’ve always felt like there is something important that I’m supposed to do, something big and beautiful and meaningful that I’m meant to be a part of. 

Many times in my life, I’ve felt ashamed about those feelings, convinced they were a reflection of American egotism and our perpetual myths about the individual hero who rescues the world.  And yet, even when I’ve tried to disown the feeling or downplay it into something I considered to be more politically or spiritually correct, it’s never been truly gone.  And, what’s worse, is that the feeling that I’m somehow not living up to that potential of beauty and power is painful even when I’ve attempted to tell myself that I shouldn’t have those kinds of aspirations.  So I’ve been living with the pain of feeling like I’m too much and not enough at the same time – for a long time. 

The beautiful thing that I’m waking up to, though, first through Joanna Macy’s teachings about the Great Turning and now through the work of Claire Zammit and Katherine Woodward Thomas, is that there are many of us – probably all of us – who feel like we were born to do something wonderful, important, beautiful, and powerful and that whatever that thing is, it is needed right at this precise, perilous moment of the history of our planet.  And the other thing that I’m seeing is that if I believe that about you, and the guy that is driving the Bart, and the people I meet in the grocery store line, and perhaps even my cat, there’s nothing egotistical or self-centered about it.  Believing, as my father did, that there is something uniquely special about me is not the same as saying there is something about me that’s so special that it makes me more valuable or important than anyone else. 

So I’m starting to breathe and release into a sense of wonder and curiosity and amazement, free from my own self-judgement, about this thing I’m calling destiny.  Not just my own destiny, but also Jason’s, destiny and the destinies of the people in my community and the people who live in countries that I will never visit and who’s faces I will never see.  We’re all in this together.  What could we do, if we were all actively pursuing those things that give our lives the most meaning, that will make the grandest, most potent contributions to the lineage of our human ancestors and descendents, to our wider family of earth-beings, to the development of that great intelligence which makes itself known through the dance of the stars and planets and time and space?  

I feel inspired and juiced up just thinking about it.  The next step is figuring out how the heck to do it.

Awakening Authentic Power-From-Within

Right now I’m doing one of the most powerful, innovative things it feels like I’ve done in a long time, and I can sense a power and magic here that is radical, fresh, and invigorating. 

I know on the outside it doesn’t look like I’m doing much.  I’m sitting in a café in Southwest Berkeley on San Pablo Ave., an area patchworked with tire repair shops, dive bars, up-and-coming restaurants, and not a few empty, unmarked buildings.  I’m wearing jeans, skater shoes that hide socks with holes in the toes, a black shirt, and I have earbuds in my ears as I type this.  But what you can’t see from this surface glance is the revolution that is pouring through me, on digitized sound waves that come from far away, and that connect me to the collective wisdom, intelligence, hope, and passion of 1500 women from 53 different countries that share a desire to manifest a different way of being on this earth. 

Even if nothing else came of it, the money that I paid to be a part of Feminine Power: the Essential Course for the Awakening Woman would have been well spent to be part of this bright, wide-cast web of wise women who want more from the world than what we’ve been offered by corporations and institutionalized religions, and who understand that we must come together to break through our inner glass ceilings to contribute to Life in the ways that that we’ve felt Called to do for so long. 

It brings tears to my eyes to hear the voices of the women from Los Angeles, Ontario Canada, Australia, Japan, Haiti, Costa Rica, Bosnia, and Vietnam speak about a shared longing for bringing their dreams into full manifestation, to co-create the world that they know is possible in their hearts, to contribute to their cultures in ways that will create a long-lasting heritage of compassion and peace for their children to inherit, and to be part of the deep healing of the little garden planet we call home. 

I have long been an ardent skeptic – even a downright naysayer – of online education (it makes my cheesedar ding).  I most certainly had my doubts when I first went to the website for Feminine Power and noticed that the color scheme employed could have been taken straight from a Victoria’s Secret catalog.  And the constant email traffic before the course that told me creators Katherine Woodward Thomas and Claire Zammit would help me “activate my magnetic field” and give me the “key to personal and planetary change” really turned me off.

Sometimes.  

Most of the time, even.  With every new email, I’d gleefully hit the tiny gray trashcan button on the corner of my screen without bothering to read most of them, resting back into the satisfaction of the completion (and, often times, simultaneous dismissal) of many other previous forays into spiritual practices and women’s empowerment courses that promised similar things without delivering the transformative experiences they advertised.  

But other times, the times that I was feeling more quiet and gentle inside, I found myself listening to a little voice that kept saying things like, “But – what if they can help me activate my magnetic field?  What if they can teach me how to access the power to transform my life and fulfill my destiny?  What if there is something different here – about this work, and about where I am in my life right now – that makes it possible to open the gate into a whole new way of being?  Isn’t that what I want?  Isn’t it worth trying for?”

That little voice’s hopeful, idealistic whispers would have fallen on deaf ears if it were not for my friend Ursula, who is the person who first mentioned the course to me.  We may not be the closest of intimate friends, but there is something about her kind, frank, authentic approach to life and the things we have in common – being massage therapists, birth workers, and priestesses of women’s mysteries – that always inspires and intrigues me.  Ursula is not hippie-dippy, nor new-age-y, nor does she appear to be someone who purchases countless things from fuchsia and silver websites promising to change your life and find you the perfect mate.  She told me that she had been doing the Feminine Power work for ten months with a study group, was still actively involved, and had gotten a lot out of it. 

“Beyond all else, what I appreciate about it is its intelligence,” she said to me.

That stuck with me, despite my inner naysayer.  In fact, it even helped the Inner Naysayer calm down a bit, because the Inner Naysayer values intelligence above all other things (it prides itself on being my most intelligent self, buying into the myth that being analytic and being intelligent are the same). 

The intelligence that Ursula was talking about was something that I could feel coming through the emails and in the free telecourse that I listened to late one night.  The thing is, the founders of the course don’t come at it “from the beginning” like so many others do, but from a place honors past experience and the work that we’ve already done to self-actualize and awaken into “our real lives” --  those lives that we feel just on the edges of our experience, hovering on the periphery of our vision but not yet fully manifested. 

“We know you’ve done spiritual work and had transformative experiences.  We know you’re the kind of people that are already creating change in the world.  But you’re still not where you want to be – yet,” Katherine and Claire were saying to me in those emails, again and again. “There are hurdles in the way that seem invisible, invincible, artifacts of a reality you didn’t consent to.  We have been there, and we have some tools that we can share to really break it open.  We have developed tools that can help us co-create the life and the world that we all want.” 

My Little Voice likes that kind of talk.  She gets all excited by it.

Eventually, I had to let Inner-Naysayer and Little Voice duke it out.  As usual, on the surface it seemed that they were arguing about the money and time commitment involved.

“What if it doesn’t do anything?” Inner Naysayer asked.  “What if its just like all of the other things, and ends up being a big waste of money and time?”

She was saying this in an effort to sway the Decision Maker onto her side, because she knows that Decision Maker is very touchy about the subject.  Both are resources that are scarce in my world, and Decision Maker rations them out with great care. 

“What if they’re just glossy faces making all kinds of promises without anything to back it up?” Inner Naysayer went on.  “We will feel so dumb.  We will feel ashamed about the money we wasted.  That will suck.  Stop being so naïve, Little Voice.”

Decision Maker nodded.  Those were pretty good points.

But Little Voice was not to be so easily dissuaded.  In fact, Little Voice wasn’t feeling as little anymore.  She rose up to her full size, looked Inner Naysayer right in the face, and said, “Fuck off, Inner Naysayer!  So what?  What if those things are true?  Even if it doesn’t do any good – well what good do you ever do?  Where have you gotten us?  Not far, I can tell you that.  Nowhere, in fact!  All you do is naysay, and that’s not only boring and lame but it’s not anywhere near as productive as you seem to think.  So shut up already!”

You’d think Inner Naysayer would have quickly retorted about how she keeps us safe from the danges of the world and all of that, but, surprisingly, she did not.  She bristled as if slapped in the face, turned around, and silently went off into her corner to sulk. 

And that was that.  The next thing you knew, I’d paid my dues and was very eagerly awaiting my course materials.  It was as if Little Voice had been emboldened by her victory over Naysayer and had brazenly taken over the reigns of the whole operation, infusing all of me with the excitement, freshness, innocence, and bubbling passion that is her hallmark.   

Listening to women all over the world talk about things like activation, catalyzing transformation, global movements, hope, fulfillment, and destiny, I know now not only that I made the right choice listening to that little voice, but also that by doing so I have stepped into a positive feedback loop that strengthens and empowers that part of me. 

What I’m learning is that there are many beliefs inside of us that influence our decision making, some of which we’re aware of and some which we are not.  These beliefs are the lens through which we experience the world, and they self-perpetuate themselves by providing evidence of their own validity.  So, when I’m living within the worldview of naysaying, belittling, and demeaning those things that my heart and spirit crave, I will experience the world in ways that confirm that pouring my heart and soul into what I want is not safe, will not be appreciated or successful, and will bring me pain and disappointment.  Which is to say that when I put on the lens of that belief and that worldview, I am co-creating that reality by doing so – even if its not what I want deep inside of me.  I act in ways that make it difficult for others to support what I am doing.  I pull back from projects that are gaining momentum because I don’t believe they will be successful and I’m afraid of getting swept up into a tidal force that will leave me bedraggled and beaten against a rocky shore.  I disengage from things that I love to do and want to develop proficiency in because I don’t feel like I’ll ever be good enough at those things to make the time and effort that I put into them worth it, and that becomes the self-fulfilling prophesy, because without that time and effort I don’t develop the skill and competency that I desire. 

But there’s a bright light at the end of that tunnel, because by stepping into the belief-lens that my most hopeful, connected, inspired self espouses, I’m stepping into co-creating a different life for myself where those beliefs can be validated every day by success and ever-more connection, hope, and inspiration.  There is a lot of self-responsibility in doing this, and that self-responsibility is more empowering than it is frightening.  So often, when I’ve thought of self-responsibility in the past, I’ve felt it as something that deadens my enthusiasm and represses my spirit.  But this is a different understanding of it.  It’s the understanding that by taking responsibility for co-creating my experience, I am empowered to shift and shape it into that which I most desire.

Simply listening on the phone to the voices of women across the world talking about what they want for themselves and their communities, deep in their hearts and through the wisdom of their bodies and intuition, I feel it happening.  I am connected to a web of bright light that feeds on itself to become brighter, an upwelling of wisdom that is gaining momentum.  I am also writing easily and freely for the first time in months, because life feels like its happening through me and not to me, and that's what I need in order to have my creativity flow through me and onto the page (or screen, as the case may be).  

This feels like the beginning of a wonderful adventure.  I hope that you folks out the blogosphere are excited to experience it with me.  I know that I am very excited to begin.  

Where There is Fear, There is Power

I could barely hear the man at the podium speaking, and the voices in the hall hushed to hear him.  We'd all been sitting there at the public comments hearing at the California Public Utilities Commission meeting for over an hour and a half, and folks were getting restless, their rancor most notably directed at the slightly plump young woman with the bell who's sad duty it was to ding you when you're one minute of airtime was up.

The man's white hair, which stood out starkly against his dark skin, fluffed out to the side, giving him a distinct likeness to Albert Einstein.

"I was a veteran of Nagasaki," he said, or at least I think that's what he said.  He spoke with the very slow, barely audible mumble of someone well over seventy, but the woman with the bell had enough sense not to try and ding him -- whether because she knew it would send the already disquieted crowd into outright chaos or simply because her mother had raised her right, I don't know.  "I've served this country for along time.  But now... (mumble, mumble)... PG&E rate increases (mumble)... I was without heat in my house for five months this winter.  I lived in a cold house for five months.  (mumble, mumble) ...do not allow PG&E to increase our rates any higher."

Watching him, I was struck by his quiet power, the clarity I felt from him in spite of my confusion over his specific words, and the sadness of this small personal truth -- that this old man, and undoubtedly countless others like him, was going without power in the dead of winter and had traveled here to the pomp auditorium at the San Francisco Civic Center from West Oakland early in the afternoon in the pouring rain to challenge the CPUC's approval of smart meters.

At first when Jason suggested that we go to the public comments hearing to talk about Diablo Canyon, I had thought that it didn't make much sense.  We've been positively obsessed with organizing around shutting down Diablo Canyon since the catastrophic events at the Fukushima Daiichi plant earlier this month.  Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant sits on not one but two active fault lines, one less than 1000 feet from the plant.  These faults are in the same system as the one that caused the quake in Japan, and overall, there has been a growing amount of seismic activity in the Pacific Rim in the last ten years.  Excitingly, DCNPP is built only to withstand a 6.7 earthquake, has relatively no preparedness plan for a seismic emergency, is under such intense scrutiny that their backup safety mechanisms were not working for over 18 months, and is located about 250 miles from my house.

But, obsessed or no, I couldn't see what our arguments against Diablo Canyon had to do with a public hearing focused on smart meters, and I didn't want to distract the CPUC to get confused with too many issues at one meeting.  But as I heard the old man speak, and the countless others who had come, I felt a surge of intense emotion and a sense of belonging -- belonging to this group of people passionate, desperately passionate in some cases, about protecting our lives against corporate interests who are willing to take risks with potentially armageddon-inducing technologies just because the risk-to-benefit analysis somehow makes sense to them on their little calculators.

Elaine spoke first, then Marg.  Jason and I had to wait a long time, and by the time it was my turn to go, I felt my whole body shaking with emotion and was sure that I was either going to be moved by spirit to say things I would never remember but other people would think were pretty good, or would collapse into a pile of tears and gibbers like a total fool.

The auditorium is not set up to benefit the nerves of public commentators.  You stand off to the side, below a stage where the commissioners sit behind a tall desk in plush cushy chairs, seemingly completely at ease while you struggle to figure out how to adjust the mic to go near your mouth.  As I got up to speak, I noticed that while most of the commissioners appeared to be rather bored and trying to appear interested, they did at least look at me.  That was a good sign.  I decide to go for it.

Well, I don't remember what I said, but other people seemed to like it.  I know that I said something about the fault lines, and how we need to immediately shut down these reactors until the seismic mapping is completed and can prove that DCNPP is safe -- which simply won't and can't happen.  Jason went next, and as I watched him, I was struck by how incredibly sexy I find it to see him in his power, speaking strongly for the things that we're fighting for -- speaking in defense of the earth.  He told the commissioners that they would be held accountable for not shutting down the reactor if and when something goes wrong there, and I could see how that unnerved them.  Which I think seems like a pretty appropriate response.  After all, it's a pretty unnerving situation.

Now, a couple hours later in a cafe, I'm no longer thinking much about the commissioners, even though I do have a fantasy where they announce tomorrow that they've seen how dire the situation is and will immediately shut it down.  What is striking me is how beautiful the hills are around Diablo Canyon, green and covered in trees, like a small peace of heaven.  We've been given the keys to eden, and the sacred covenant of caring for one another: humans young and old, non-humans of infinite and majestic variety, the land herself which rolls like waves along the coastline where we've built this thing of terrible, awesome power.  Most of all, I'm remembering the thing that Starhawk says that I've heard so many times that it's almost cliche: where there is fear, there is power.

Immense power.  Sometimes, overwhelming fear.  Sometimes, immense power that helps us overcome our overwhelming fear, even in places as unlikely as bureaucratic meetings and from people as unlikely as you, or me, or an old man who's voice can barely reach above a murmur.

Which makes me think of something else that I know about power -- that it's in each of us, and that it grows when we're together.  I can feel that I'm at the beginning of another journey with this Diablo Canyon thing... I hope that you'll come with me.

The Gifts of Deep Winter

I remember as a little girl struggling to create friendships in school, most probably owing to that characteristic disastrous combination of shyness, intelligence, and shabby clothes.  Recess was always painful for me, until the day that I somehow integrated some of the other young girls into a pretend game I’d been playing which involved riding pegasuses into all manner of adventures in a world we created in our imaginations but transposed onto the playground.  I can still remember the amazing feeling in my heart as I saw the game grow and grow all around me, including more girls and then boys and the jungle gym and slides and swings and everything I saw, and there I was, in the throng of it all for once. 

That memory has been coming back a lot to me, these chilly days in Indiana.  It started while watching Jason’s children and nieces and nephews play, who are about that age, and seeing in their games a similar spirit to that bright memory.  Beyond the simple similarity is a sense of yearning that lays beneath many of my thoughts these days – a yearning to create something, and to be a part of something, growing and expanding into deeper and deeper throws of beauty and imagination.

I suppose becoming aware of that yearning is the gift of my isolation from my community here, in this land of snow and ice and unfamiliar faces.  Here, surrounded by snow and strip malls, processed food and abundant time to watch the junkos and cardinals at the bird feeders, I become viscerally aware of both the intense power and transformation of the work that I’ve been doing in the world and also how far we have to go.   Watching the evening news and nighttime drama television shows is an act of despair work: seeing both what is voiced (terrorism, often created by either Muslims, anarchists, or protestors; cops saving the day; diets of powdered chemicals that promise weight loss; endless cute commercials for pharmaceutical drugs) and what is not (like even the suggestion that the terrible flooding in Southern California or the blizzard on the East Coast that has stranded thousands might have a relationship to climate change).  I wonder, what can and must happen to build bridges with those people who seem the furthest from us in their choices and beliefs, and what can and must happen within us to be able to come to the table with openness to their wisdom?

These thoughts bring me back to the yearning, which grows sharper as this year draws closer to its closing.  I feel more ready to let this year pass away than in years previous, more keen in my excitement about what the coming year will bring and the adventure and work on the horizon, less attached to all that didn’t get done and the disappointments.  The faces of those who are on this path with me are clearer, coming up in unbidden memories of the past and wonderful schemes for the future and bringing waves of appreciation and warmth for these kindred spirits – many of whom are not my closest friends or the most likely suspects, but people who sparked something deep and slow-moving in a now forgotten conversations at camps or in the streets that still work me beneath the surface, stirring and shifting my awareness.  I find myself having bouts of sharp and strong commitment to these folks, our shared work and play, our emerging vision.  This sense of commitment feels sharper and stronger than the many pale emotions of the fall, and perhaps even longer – these winter winds have blown away the fine dust of burnout and broken dreams that built up into drifts without my noticing them. 

These are the gifts of deep winter: that our colorful leaves, once so alluring and intoxicating, drop to the ground and get buried in snow, leaving the trunk and branches of our true selves naked, starkly visible against the pale landscape.   That what remains takes on a deeper, stronger, clearer significance in the dreams we dream on long winter nights and the visions that brighten our hearts during the day.  That we reconnect to our passion and commitment, during these cold months that our ancestors struggled to survive. 

A couple of nights ago we witnessed the first full lunar eclipse on the winter solstice in over 400 years.  I felt the Turning that night, felt this turning that has creating a sense of openness and renewal in my heart.  Below is the missive I sent out on Solstice Day:

Dear Witchy Ones (and kindred spirits),

If you have received this email in your inbox, it means that sometime during the turning of this year, you have touched me magically.  This is a "group email" but its not to any particular group -- just people in my heart that I'm thinking about on this Solstice Day.  I wanted to share some of my thoughts right now, about this thing we call the Great Turning and the magic and the power that's flowing.  I wanted to share this love that I'm feeling so strongly tonight with you.

Last night, I went out and spent a beautiful Solstice Eve / Lunar Eclipse Night with my community; it was truly a night of beauty and adventure, which began with a plunge into the freezing cold waters of the Pacific Ocean and ended curled up in the crook of my lover's arm on the floor of the Black Cat House ritual room, with Starhawk chanting and drumming over us, surrounded by many of the teens that I've worked with so intensely this year.  Somehow, in the flow of the night, it came clear to me how much magic has happened over the last year and also how much is unfolding right now in my life.  I don't think I'm alone in that feeling.   Sure, often I allow myself to be jaded and cynical -- I succumb to the trap of being overly analytical, disparaging, uncourageous, too lazy for hope.   But beneath that is an awareness of the shifts in the world that are happening, shifts in power and in consciousness.  Last night, I really allowed myself -- no, dared myself and then committed myself -- to opening to the deep transformation that's happening in this world and in my own heart.  An upwelling of earth wisdom, my friends in Minneapolis call it.  

Joanna Macy, my mentor that I so love to quote (you probably already know that) says that expressing gratitude is a radical act in a world that tells us that we aren't enough and thrives on a philosophy of scarcity.  She also says that being grateful means being present to the beauty of our lives, even during the darkest times.  If that's true, than I must admit that I've been ungrateful at times lately, letting myself get weighed down by thousands of small things that don't really matter that much -- although the overculture likes to tell me that they do.  I probably will go down that road again, sometimes.  But right now, with the final glimmers of this solstice moon in the sky, I'm aware of the bigger picture that my life is a part of and also the web of beautiful work that we're doing together.  I feel very grateful for you in my life, and aware of the beautiful connection that we share.  It's a connection of my heart to your heart, and its also the mystical connection of something that I call the Great Turning because that makes it easier for me to grasp it:  being alive during this precarious age and working for the forces of life of beauty in our own, creative, personal, powerful ways.

I'm also grateful for the ways that you've supported me, both visibly and invisibly.  I'm grateful for the times we've laughed, made music, held each other, dreamed together, kvetched together, smiled at one another in passing.   I'm grateful for knowing you, and for the potential to know you even more deeply during the turning of this next wheel of the year.

The light is returning.  I suspect that at first it may feel hard to believe, that it might seem like all is the same as it was before for awhile, like the nights are just as long.  And then an inkling -- yes, really, it does feel a bit different.  It feels better.  It feels like the days are getting warmer, that the plants are growing bigger around us, the songs of birds are more clear.  

One last thing: during these long winter nights, my dreams have been strong.  In one of those dreams, I was given a new addendum to my magical name.  I feel tremulous about it, uncertain, but I wanted to share it with you all the same.  Let us see if it stays as the wheel turns to spring and summer and fall again.

With love and joy and deep gratefulness,

Riyana Sweetwater Moon 

"Anarcho-herbalism"? It's like a dream come true...

‎"The development of a new medical system, or the recovery of ancient models, will be another link in our safety net when industrialism fails. It will keep us alive and kicking out windows now in the system's last days when so many people have no access to industrial medicine. And it will reestablish our connection to the real medicine that is the Earth." 

THIS IS ANARCHO-HERBALISM:

Thoughts On Health and Healing For the Revolution 

by Laurel Luddite 

My medicine chest is a council of bioregions, with representatives gathered together as I make my way around the world west of the Rocky Mountains. The Coptis root was picked out of the churned-up scar left by an excavator, at the retreating edge of the Idaho wilderness. The tiny amount of Pipsissewa leaves came from an ancient grove above the Klamath River just feet away from where the District Ranger sat on a stump talking about his plans to cut it all down. I am drying Nettles from the California creek where salmon die in the silt left after a century of industrial logging.

Every jar holds a story (often a ghost story of dying ecosystems and places gone forever). I am honored to have known the plants in their home places and to have studied their uses as medicine. But for people not lucky enough to roam throughout the wilds, purchased herbal preparations such as tinctures may be the link back to this sort of healing.

Like so much in this consumerist society, it is easy to ignore the connections between a bottle on a shelf in some store and a living, growing plant out in the world somewhere. It can be hard to know if the plant grows a mile away or on another continent. There is much to be said for reconnecting, for educating ourselves about the herbs we use and gathering our own medicine when we can. That's how we will be able to build a whole new system of healing ñ one that can support our movement away from the corporate power structure that medicine has become.

The development of a new medical system, or the recovery of ancient models, will be another link in our safety net when industrialism fails. It will keep us alive and kicking out windows now in the system's last days when so many people have no access to industrial medicine. And it will reestablish our connection to the real medicine that is the Earth.

An alternative to "alternative medicine" The sort of herbal medicine popular these days (presented to us by the media and so-called green capitalists as yet another exciting fad) has brought with it very little thought of a new way of healing. The plants, reduced to capsule form or, worse, to their "active ingredients", are just new tools to work with in the same body-machine that industrial medicine sees people as being. They become no different than pharmaceutical drugs or a scalpel blade: something to pry into the body-machine with and use to mess around with the parts. Except of course much less effective, because the herbs have been taken out of the system of healing in which they have their strength.

When the marketers of herbal products get their hands on a new "miracle cure", it can mean extinction for the plant. This is especially sad when so many living creatures go into useless products or are wasted on conditions that they don't treat. (Has anyone else seen that Echinacea shampoo?) The classic example of this is Goldenseal, Hydrastis canadensis, a plant close to extinction in the wild. It has a couple of amazing actions in the human body but has mostly been marketed as a cure for the common cold, which it will do almost nothing to help. By the way, the largest brokers of wild-harvested Goldenseal and many other big-name herbs are multinational pharmaceutical corporations. Given american society's obsession with herbal Viagra, weight loss pills, and stimulants, most of the herbs on the mass market are being sacrificed to these ridiculous causes.

There is an alternative to "alternative medicine". Southwestern herbalist, author, and teacher Michael Moore probably said it best in one of his recent digressions from a lecture: "In this country, the herb business mostly revolves around recently marketed substances with new research, and it comes from them to us. Whereas we're trying to establish as much as possible (in this "lower level" if you will) the fact that we need to create a practice and a model that's impervious to faddism. We're trying to practice in a way that derives from practice rather than from marketing. Not from above to below but from below around. Bioregionalism uber alles. Keep it local. No centralization because centralization kills everything."

Herbo-primitivism 
So we need another way of looking at our bodies and the plant medicines. Seeing the two as interconnected and in balance is new to industrial culture, but in reality it is the most ancient healing model on earth. We knew it before we were people. Animals know how to use plants to medicate themselves. Their examples surround us, from dogs eating grass to bears digging Osha roots. Probably every human society has had some way of explaining how the body works and how plant medicines work in us.

One thing all herbalists know - dogs and bears included - is that a health problem is best treated before it begins. In more primitive societies where people have the luxury of listening to their own bodies it is easy to spot an imbalance before it turns into an acute disease state. This is where herbs are most effective. They work at this sub-clinical (and therefore invisible to industrial medicine) level of "imbalances" and "deficiency" and "excess".

This old/new healing system is subtle and requires a lot of self-knowledge, or at least self-awareness. It uses intuition as a diagnostic tool. Emotion, spirituality, and environment become medicines. The spirit and environment of the plants we gather affects their healing properties, and our relationship with those plants becomes very important.


Green Herbology 
When we take herbal medicine we are taking in part of the plant's environment. Everything it ate and drank and experienced has formed the medicine you're depending on, so you better make sure it gets all the best. When we are healed by plants, we owe it to them to look out for their kind and the places where they live. Traditional plant-gatherers often have a prayer they recite before they take anything from the wild. I usually say something along the lines of "OK, plant. You heal me and I'll look out for you. I got your back. No one's gonna build over you, or log you, or pick too much while I'm around." So this true herbal healing system has at its heart a deep environmentalism and a commitment to the Earth.

The bioregional concept is important to this model of healing. Plants' actions in our bodies are really quite limited by the chemicals they can produce from sunlight and soil. For every big-name herb on the market cut from the rainforest or dug from the mountains, there is most likely a plant with a similar action growing in your watershed. Some of the best medicines to maintain good health grow in vacant lots and neglected gardens around the world.


Anarcho-herbalism A society of people who are responsible for their own health and able to gather or grow their own medicines is a hard society to rule. These days we are dependent on the power structure of industrial health care - the secret society of the doctors, the white-male-dominated medical schools, the corporate decision makers with their toxic pharmaceuticals and heartless greed and labs full of tortured beings. That dependence is one more thing keeping us tied down to the State and unable to rebel with all our hearts or even envision a world without such oppression. With a new system of healing, based on self-knowledge and herbal wisdom, we will be that much more free.

Offering a real alternative health care system will help to calm some people's fears about returning to an anarchistic, Earth centered way of life. There is a false security in the men with the big machines, ready to put you back together again (if you have enough money). What is ignored is the fact that industrial society causes most of the dis-eases that people fear. Living free on a healing Earth while surrounded by true community and eating real food will prove to be a better medicine than anything you can buy.

What steps can we make now towards creating this new system of medicine? We all need to learn what we can about our own health. This can be through training in one or more of the surviving models of traditional healing and/or through self-observation. How do you feel when you're just starting to get a cold? What kinds of problems come up repeatedly, especially when you're stressed out? If you're a womyn, how long is your cycle and what does the blood look like? Understanding how our bodies act in times of health can help us recognize the very early stages of dis-ease when herbs are the most useful.

People who have some background in healing (in the traditional or industrial systems) can be a great help to those of us just learning. Healers who are working to form this new model, whether collectively or through their individual practices, should keep in mind that commitment to the Earth and a decentralized form are central to truly revolutionary medicine.

In these times of change, everything is being examined and either destroyed, rebuilt, or created from our hearts. Industrialism has affected every aspect of our lives - we are just starting to realize how much has been lost. Medicine is just one part of the machine that we have to take back and re-create into a form that works for the society we will become. Every herb, pill, and procedure should be judged on its sustainability and accessibility to small groups of people. We can start with ourselves, within our communities and circles, but should never stop expanding outwards until industrial medicine rusts in a forgotten grave, a victim of its own imbalances.

(this article was copied from Michael Moore's website. There's a wealth of herbal information there, for those who are interested.)

Nourishing the Revolution...

Today, I'm sitting in my kitchen, feeling joy and peace.  I've been back from my summer travels for a little over a week now, and although they were exciting and powerful and deep and everything else you could want from an adventure, I feel so happy to be home.  My garden is in shambles, but I'm working on it to turn it around again.  I'm starting to root down again, into my home and my work that's here in the Bay Area.

Right when I got home, there was a wonderful get-the-bay-area-pagan-folks-revitalized-into-activism barbecue.  The next day, Jason and I got arrested at the SF Stop Big Oil Action outside of the BP offices in San Francisco.  Which you undoubtedly want to hear more about, because folks are always so into the activism part of this blog -- especially the gritty things like arrests and tear gas and whatnot.   Well, you're out of luck.  You're going to have to be satisfied with these two pictures, because that's all you're going to get:

My arrest last week at the BP Action -- doesn't this totally look like some sort of drunken celebrity paparazzi shot?

Jason's arrest shot.  He's a whole head taller than the officers -- I wonder if that's why they get so nervous around him, or is it the broody eyes?

What's really exciting me right now is the herbal infusion that I'm drinking, courtesy of herbmentor.com.  I am frigging obsessed with this site right now, I can't even tell you.  The wealth of herbal information that's there -- as well as traditional nutrition and just good ol' community vibes -- is astounding.

One of their biggest pushes is to encourage us all to drink a nourishing herbal infusion everyday, which is essentially an ounce or so of a chosen herb (or herbs) steeped in hot water for 8 hours.  Today, I'm sipping my first of what I hope is many: mint, oatstraw, and licorice root.  Although oatstraw is noted for its calming and heart-focused healing powers, and mint good for the digestion, and licorice a deep immune tonic, I didn't choose the infusion for any of those particular qualities -- I chose them to taste good and nourish my spirit.

It feels like its working.  Being home, sipping my tea, looking at my disheveled garden -- I feel very nourished, very alive.

Drink your herbs!

Love,
Riyana