next stop…stillness.

Last day in Paris!  About to go be brave and explore on my own.  If you have any good travel tips, please share.  I’m realizing that I am both more and less brave than I thought I was…and that next time I travel I will be more prepared in the language and customs of the country.  Apparently people don’t really tip here because the tip is already in the bill. (fyi)

Tomorrow I will go to stay with the Bernardine Cistercian Nuns for a few days.  My uncle is a Trappist Monk ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trappist also of the Cistercian Order) and he hooked me up with these Sisters.

The Order of Cistercians (OCist; Latin: Ordo Cisterciensis) is a Roman Catholic religious order of enclosed monks.  At the time of monastic profession, five or six years after entering the monastery, candidates promise “conversion” – fidelity to monastic life, which includes an atmosphere of silence.^[84] Cistercian monks and nuns, in particular Trappists, have a reputation of being silent, which has led to the public idea that they take a Vow of silence.^[84] This has actually never been the case, although silence is an implicit part of an outlook shared by Cistercian and Benedictine monasteries.^[84] In a Cistercian monastery, there are three reasons for speaking:

functional communication at work or in community dialogues, spiritual exchange with one’s superiors or with a particular member of the community on different aspects of one’s personal life, and spontaneous conversation on special occasions. These forms of communication are integrated into the discipline of maintaining a general atmosphere of silence, which is an important help to continual prayer.^[84] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cistercians

My understanding is that their lives consist of: 8 hours of prayer, 8 hours of sleep, and 8 hours of work (with feedings in between). The place that I will be staying is in the French Alps and on the French site there are bees…so perhaps I will get to hang with bees!  This is the spot:  http://www.bernardine.org/touvete.html.

Will be good to go and walk the mountains and re-center.  Will let you know if there are revelations that need to be shared when I get to Switzerland.

Thanks for journeying with me!

Observations

I am in Paris, France.  Never, ever in my life would I have imagined coming here and I am very glad to be here.  I have amazing friends.  Kurt and I went to college together, he met a French woman named Esther (also at school) and has been living in France for the past three years.  They are taking care of me in ways beyond generous.  Am very blessed indeed.  It is good to take things in small steps.  y French language command is next to zero (on the negative side) and I am just starting to learn to be brave again so being with them is very good.

Observations thus far:

1. People are people.  surprise i know!  But really, everywhere, I think, people just want to love, be loved, belong, and be of use.  It’s been nice to see the effiel tour, notre dame, etc. but the best things have been to just chill.  today we went down to the park and watched kids play and ate cheese and bread.  i’m not a good tourist.  seeing buildings and things are nice, but really i’d much rather be building with someone or walking with someone than with buildings.

2. People are much more fit here.  I have not seen any super obese people here.  I guess in the suburbs there are more because people drive a lot more.  but here, no super obese people.

3. There are not bugs here like in MI/WI.  the windows don’t have screens and i have yet to be bit by anything (knock on wood)

4. They really don’t have peanut butter or peanut butter m & ms.  lots of other amazing amzing foods, but no peanut butter

5. The weather stays pretty even.  No huge changes in temp like in WI.  it’s nice to not have to carry your winter coat for the evening.

6. They have different styled electric plugs.  So if you visit, either bring an adaptor or buy one.  AND the exchange rate is less if you use an ATM than if you exchange cash money.

7. There are a lot of protection measures here.  The price of bread.  No work on Sundays.  No sales except for two months out of the year-so that small businesses can compete.

8. Air condition does not mean frigid refrigerter temp.  In fact, most places do not have AC and neither to the metros and it’s again-really nice not to have to bring a sweater to go in doors.

9. Did I mention that I’m thankful for friends?  Both here and y’all.  Very thankful for friends.

The end. 

Euro-Tripping!

Time to start a new adventure!

Going to Europe from today until August 19th.  France, Switzerland, Spain…here I come

God is always listening.

so.  i’m sitting here.  strugglin w this big writing that i have to do.  strugglin to get started.  i have read enough to write the whole of at least 15 pages, but i haven’t put a word into the computer.  battlin’, self sabotagin, you know how i do.

so just now,  i was finally going to get cracking.  and took another second to send out acts of faith for today and yesterday coz i hadn’t done it.  and the line from yesterday’s act of faith was: i can do it because i believe i can do it.  and so i said it outloud, empathetically, and loudly.

and then this is the message that i get from a friend on gchat: i like your attitude!

keep in mind.  i haven’t talked w this guy in probably… three years.  i met him briefly, once when i was in taiwan.  and he’s left me gchat messages, maybe 4 or 5 times over that time, but we haven’t really talked.  and i’m guessing, he was-in his mind-responding to my gchat message which is: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done. ~Paul Hawken http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=3697 (commencement speech in portland, totally worth reading)

but in fact, i had only a second ago-literally-said to myself: i can do it because i believe i can do it!

and it was affirmed.    never know where blessings come from!

thank God for that.

—-

these are the responses i recieved from the people that nurture and hold me:

“my mom calls these moments godwinks.  god winked atcha
now get crackin’ “

“Firstly I love the idea of you sitting and saying it outloud.  I have done that once or twice and am surprised at how much more willing I am to hold myself accountable to what I say, when I say it outloud.  Good for you!!Secondly, that guy’s response?  There are no coincidences in life.  I think Einstein said that coincidences are just God’s way of remaining anonymous.  Looks like God’s at it again “

“you can do it!  i affirm you! mwah!”

“I find that the more I embrace my fears and prejudices with the intent and desire to let them go and cleave the possible ( and all is possible in the plans of the Divine) than I find myself at peace, empowered to be who I am to be in my planetary role as me. I do try to remember that my role is to seek with the intent to do good and to do no harm in all my actions and thought. The outcome is not for me to decide”

goodness!  good. 

The Making Up of the Mind.

Making up my mind is one of the most challenging aspects of life for me.  Below are a series of different people’s writings that have all come together for me on this day to guide my decision making.  Am interested in your reflections and how you work through making up your mind.

———

“In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do.  The worst thing you can do is nothing.” ~Theodore Roosevelt
 
We always want to do the right thing, but we do the wrong thing when we do not make a decision about what to do.  Decisions have power.  Decisions have force.  They usually take us to the exact place we need to be, exactly the way we need to get there.  It is the wavering back and forth that is dangerous.  It places us at the mercy of events; we fall prey to the choices people make for us.  Since time and opportunity wait for no one, our lives will not stand still until we figure out what to do.  The rightness of a decision is based on our ability to make the decision.  When we weigh what we want against what we will have to do, a decision can be an effortless event.  We must know what we will and will not do, what we can do and choose not to do; and decide in harmony with the things we know.  The freedom from making a decision can only come after we have made the decision.
 
Today I decide to be free from all decisions.

~Acts of Faith, Daily Meditation for People of Color by Iyanla Vanzant

———————

Life is a matter of attitude.  It becomes what we bring to it.  I find myself vacillating between the very poles Paul describes.  At pole one, I take the position that this particular thing is good but this other thing is bad.  So my days are either wonderful or terrible depending on whether they take the shape I will for them.  At pole two, I take the position that everything that happens is life-giving somehow, even when I can’t see how.  Then God is in the crevices where I never thought to look.  “Make up your mind,” Paul seems to say, “and it will change your whole life.”

~Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir by Sr. Joan Chittister

——————-

Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in love, stay in love and it will decide everything.

~Father Pedro Arrupe

——–

What if every decision that I make is based on a foundation of Love given and recieved in Truth and Kindness?  What kind of world will I be?

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you.

Time to do into dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home tonight. The night will give you a horizon Further than you can see.

You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.

–David Whyte, “Sweet Darkness”

Which is worse? Hummers or toilet paper?

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent

The tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more environmental devastation than the country’s love of gas-guzzling cars, fast food or McMansions, according to green campaigners. At fault, they say, is the US public’s insistence on extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply products when they use the bathroom.

“This is a product that we use for less than three seconds and the ecological consequences of manufacturing it from trees is enormous,” said Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defence Council.

“Future generations are going to look at the way we make toilet paper as one of the greatest excesses of our age. Making toilet paper from virgin wood is a lot worse than driving Hummers in terms of global warming pollution.” Making toilet paper has a significant impact because of chemicals used in pulp manufacture and cutting down forests.

A campaign by Greenpeace seeks to raise consciousness among Americans about the environmental costs of their toilet habits and counter an aggressive new push by the paper industry giants to market so-called luxury brands.

More than 98% of the toilet roll sold in America comes from virgin wood, said Hershkowitz. In Europe and Latin America, up to 40% of toilet paper comes from recycled products. Greenpeace this week launched a cut-out-and-keep ecological ranking of toilet paper products.

“We have this myth in the US that recycled is just so low quality, it’s like cardboard and is impossible to use,” said Lindsey Allen, the forestry campaigner of Greenpeace.

The campaigning group says it produced the guide to counter an aggressive marketing push by the big paper product makers in which celebrities talk about the comforts of luxury brands of toilet paper and tissue.

Those brands, which put quilting and pockets of air between several layers of paper, are especially damaging to the environment.

Paper manufacturers such as Kimberly-Clark have identified luxury brands such as three-ply tissues or tissues infused with hand lotion as the fastest-growing market share in a highly competitive industry. Its latest television advertisements show a woman caressing tissue infused with hand lotion.

The New York Times reported a 40% rise in sales of luxury brands of toilet paper in 2008. Paper companies are anxious to keep those percentages up, even as the recession bites. And Reuters reported that Kimberly-Clark spent $25m in its third quarter on advertising to persuade Americans against trusting their bottoms to cheaper brands.

But Kimberly-Clark, which touts its green credentials on its website, rejects the idea that it is pushing destructive products on an unwitting American public.

Dave Dixon, a company spokesman, said toilet paper and tissue from recycled fibre had been on the market for years. If Americans wanted to buy them, they could.

“For bath tissue Americans in particular like the softness and strength that virgin fibres provides,” Dixon said. “It’s the quality and softness the consumers in America have come to expect.”

Longer fibres in virgin wood are easier to lay out and fluff up for a softer tissue. Dixon said the company used products from sustainbly farmed forests in Canada.

Americans already consume vastly more paper than any other country — about three times more per person than the average European, and 100 times more than the average person in China.

Barely a third of the paper products sold in America are from recycled sources — most of it comes from virgin wood.

“I really do think it is overwhelmingly an American phenomenon,” said Hershkowitz. “People just don’t understand that softness equals ecological destruction.”

• This article was amended on Wednesday 4 March 2009. We mistakenly referred to virgin forests when virgin wood, which includes that from planted, managed forests, was meant. This has been corrected.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/26/toilet-roll-america

I Give You Back

I Give You Back

I release you, my beautiful and terrible fear.
I release you.
You were my beloved and hated twin, but now, I don’t know you as myself.
I release you with all the pain I would know at the death of my daughters.

You are not my blood anymore.

I give you back to the white soldiers who burned down my home, beheaded my children, raped and sodomized my brothers and sisters.

I give you back to those who stole the food from our plates when we were starving.

I release you, fear, because you hold these scenes in front of me and I was born with eyes that can never close.

I release you, fear, so you can no longer keep me naked and frozen in the winter, or smothered under blankets in the summer.

I release you I release you I release you I release you

I am not afraid to be angry.
I am not afraid to rejoice.
I am not afraid to be black
I am not afraid to be white.
I am not afraid to be hungry.
I am not afraid to be full.
I am not afraid to be hated.
I am not afraid to be loved,
to be loved, to be loved, fear.

Oh, you have choked me, but I gave you the leash.
You have gutted me but I gave you the knife.
You have devoured me, but I laid myself across the fire.

I take myself back, fear.
You are not my shadow any longer.
I won’t hold you in my hands.
You can’t live in my eyes, my ears, my voice, my belly, or in my heart
my heart my heart my heart.

But come here, fear.
I am alive and you are so afraid of dying.

– Joy Harjo (www.joyharjo. com)

VOTE FOR THE EARTH

This year, Earth Hour has been transformed into the world’s first global election, between Earth and global warming. For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. WWF are urging the world to VOTE EARTH and reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009. This meeting will determine official government policies to take action against global warming, which will replace the Kyoto Protocol. It is the chance for the people of the world to make their voice heard.

Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. In 2008 the message had grown into a global sustainability movement, with 50 million people switching off their lights. Global landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Rome’s Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House and the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square all stood in darkness.

In 2009, Earth Hour is being taken to the next level, with the goal of 1 billion people switching off their lights as part of a global vote. Unlike any election in history, it is not about what country you’re from, but instead, what planet you’re from. VOTE EARTH is a global call to action for every individual, every business, and every community. A call to stand up and take control over the future of our planet. Over 74 countries and territories have pledged their support to VOTE EARTH during Earth Hour 2009, and this number is growing everyday.  The UN Secretary General urges citizens to join in the Earth Hour, even the Great Pyramids of Giza are turning off an hour.

We all have a vote, and every single vote counts. Together we can take control of the future of our planet, for future generations.

http://www.earthhour.org/home/

Rethink your outlook on people with disabilities

Rethink your outlook on the disabled

By Johanna Mattern Allen

Posted: Mar. 23, 2009

Words cannot begin to express how disappointing it was to hear President Barack Obama’s Special Olympics gaffe on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on Thursday.

But it’s not just Obama who needs to take a hard look at this. His remark on one of the most popular television shows in America is indicative of a culture that is all too comfortable disparaging individuals with a disability – I might add, individuals who never would disparage him or anyone.

Since he so decidedly put his foot in his mouth, here’s my four-point plan for the president to make reparations for the cultural damage he caused last week:

• Pony up beaucoup bucks for the Special Olympics cause.

• Create a cabinet position for disability now. There currently isn’t even a policy adviser for disability since Kareem Dale moved to an arts leadership position. With a disability population in the United States of 50 million-plus, and growing especially as our population ages, we need disability experts to work alongside our president.

• Create positions for self-advocates in the White House so the president and the world never forget about people who have to work harder than he ever can dream of working to achieve what they do.

• Urge every college, university and high school in America to teach disability history/cultural competency.

Obama isn’t the only smart (read: well-rounded intellectual) person I know who knows jack about disability. And not all of us are as lucky as me to have my son, Jack (who has Down syndrome), for a teacher.

It’s totally cool to not know, but do something about it instead of getting defensive, making excuses or ignoring it. Here’s my simple, pain-free, four-point plan for the rest of us:

• Read some disability history. Read Paul K. Longmore.

• When interacting with an individual with a disability, presume competence. Always. Just because someone moves, communicates, sits, eats, breathes, walks, hears, sees, thinks or problem-solves differently, or doesn’t do any of these things, he or she still experiences life, contributes to the world, has feelings and thrives and depends on relationships with others.

• Don’t defend offensive language. Just because it comfortably rolls off one’s tongue in mixed company or it’s self-deprecating or we’ve always said it, that doesn’t mean it’s right. The next time you think “we’re being too sensitive,” think about how you sound clinging to an outdated term and defending it after the minority group being maligned has asked you to stop. If you need to be self-deprecating, use a thesaurus. Find the word or phrase you like and practice it before you need it – that’s how habits get broken. Language influences culture, culture influences policy and, in my son’s case, he can hear you (and so can I).

• Give us a break. No really. Take the time to be with a parent of a child with a disability or an individual with a disability. Encourage your children to have a play date with a child with a disability. Challenge the idea of why you might not have a friend with a disability. Reach out in friendship to those of us who are most marginalized. The great secret about disability is that each one of us is only a heartbeat away from it at all times.

The great tragedy of past generations is that there have been unspoken divides between the cultures of the disabled and those who are not. In the culture of disability, we’re accustomed to cheering on individuals with great challenges to help them overcome great obstacles and odds.

We in the disability community know those of you who aren’t disabled are able to learn more and know you are capable of using inclusive language and joining us in a 21st-century way of thinking.

Johanna Mattern Allen lives in Milwaukee. March 31 is the Special Olympics’ “Spread the Word to End the Word Day,” a national day of awareness calling for America to stop and reconsider the use of the “r” word: retard/ed. Go to www.r-word.org