Mid-January and I have emerged from the moment between the years when I rest: two weeks—from Winter Solstice to the first Monday in January. The small educational company of PeerSpirit, Inc. lies dormant for 14 days. The books Ann Linnea and I have written this past year are off to the printers after the final, final edits and proofreading, along with a lot of our hopes and dreams.

I entered these two weeks of annual retreat tired, satisfied, and sorrowful…an interesting combination of emotions. Tired makes the most sense—looking back at our workload and how the teaching, coaching, quest guiding, consulting and writing all require intense presence, creativity, and stamina. Satisfied also makes sense—looking back at the same year through the lens of output, interaction, the legacy of our work being captured on the page, and through opportunities to meet hundreds of incredible, wonderful, extraordinary people doing their best to live good lives in challenging times. And sorrowful when I look into the wider scope of things and ask questions like:

Why are we escalating the war in Afghanistan—when we could practically rebuild the country for what it’s costing us to further destroy it?

And if it costs a million dollars a year to support a US soldier, and much of our military consists of young men and women who can’t find jobs in their local civilian economies, couldn’t we more readily support them through bringing work to them that isn’t likely to maim them in body, mind, or spirit?

And why can’t we have universal health care in the US when every other country we measure ourselves against already has it?

So, what actually happened in Copenhagen—and why are the outcomes so ambiguous when the crises are so concrete?

You get the idea—I finally have time to ruminate on all those things that I have been counting on the international world to resolve while I’ve been so involved in the interpersonal world. Sorrow is ultimately restorative—like filling up the water table, not visible on the surface, yet deeply sustaining. After a week or so, I feel the shift into restfulness and after a week of rest, a shift back into willingness. That’s where I am now—in the willingness.

Part of the willingness is that I have had time to re-evaluate and rearrange my story—the way I carry forward tasks, accomplishments, work and play, relationships, and questions of my life. I step over the threshold of the New Year as though it has been freshly painted.

So here’s my story now: I remain committed to legacy transmission in what I love about story and storycatching, in circle process and transformative presence with each other, and in earth stewardship, especially supporting Ann’s book on trees. I expect this year to change radically as we go along, as the books come out, and people respond. There are indicators of this in the first pieces of work we’ve done on the road: we have integrated something through the act of writing. We stand resiliently in our bodies of work, we talk differently, people respond even more readily—and we sense that the shift happening in the room is happening in the world.

And that is the point where your stories and mine intersect: what is happening in the rooms of our lives is happening in the world. What are you noticing is different as you enter the world of your work this January?

Last December I wrote about my mother’s habit of anonymously giving away $20.00 bills to folks who look in need of a little windfall before the holidays.  (See blog entry December 1, 2008) This year she’s “reading for peace.”

My mother lives in Canada, and on November 11, called Remembrance Day in that country, there are ceremonies of patriotism and prayer honoring those men and women who have fought and died in wars. Early in the month she asked herself, “What contribution could I make toward the idea of enduring peace and no more wars?”

A friend had lent her a book of religious poetry that included sections on courage, war, and peace. My mother reports, “Many of the poems in that book were from the period of World War One, the time when Britain lost a whole generation of poets, artists and musicians. And many of the poems were heartbreaking calls for peace and prayers for help and guidance.  Reading them over and over brought me to feel they needed sharing, so I decided I would find a way to do just that.”

In the little town of Chemainus, British Columbia, up the block from where my mother is a member of a small congregation of the United Church of Canada, her minister, Fran, presided over the local ceremony. After the flags had been paraded by aging veterans and prayers said and taps played, my mother set up a music stand in the city park and proceeded to read poetry to anyone who cared to stop by and listen.

My mother is 89 years old. While this statement may conjure an image of white-haired frailty, my mother is brown-haired, sturdy, dynamic, progressive, and daring. A young friend of hers, a ‘surrogate daughter’ about my own age, helped her make a flyer explaining what she’s doing, and on December 1st she went up the highway to the largest mall in the city of Nanaimo to stand under the clock tower and read poems for peace to the shoppers.  She emailed me her plans, “Kate will be coming with me to help me setup. She made a few suggestions, such as printing a flyer to hand out, doing a choral reading out of it with her and me alternating, etc.  However, I want it to appear unstaged and spontaneous and simple but I will not be alone.” We, her far-flung children, are glad she’s not alone.

Among other selections, she’s reading from the Peace Poem, a project from the United Nations sent out to all primary, secondary, and home schools throughout the world to submit two lines of poetry on peace. The resulting contributions from 38 countries were presented on the web and if printed runs 64-pages of verse. And she’s reading from the book Christmas in the Trenches, the story of the spontaneous Christmas Truce between ordinary foot soldiers in 1914.

She’s also sent out a letter to several of the area churches announcing, “If you care to include announcement of my reading in your bulletin I would be grateful to have people know where I am and stop by. I would also be willing to read to Sunday school classes or other occasions. This is a strictly personal activity of mine and should in no way be construed as an action of the Presbytery.”

And that’s the point: that she has the courage and creativity to come up with a strictly personal activity that challenges the status quo and empowers her voice in the world.

As Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, “Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.”

I believe world peace is achieved and sustained by each one of us taking responsibility for the quality of what happens within a five foot radius of our own bodies, in our own lives. If there is peace in my radius and yours and his and hers and theirs—then there is peace in all of ours.

And that is the greeting that makes the most sense to me every year when this season rolls around: Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.

What shall we each do this holiday season as a strictly personal activity that shakes up our complacency and models our ability to stretch out and mend the world within our reach?

I look forward to collecting ideas that we may share with each other.

We had months of almost no rain until mid-October. Now, the storms of November are upon us–including lots of rain and tree-bending winds. That’s our prayer–trees bending, not breaking. We’ve moved the vehicle out of the path of falling limbs and started the debate over which end of the house to sleep in tonight. Our closest “neighbors” are a row of Douglas firs 100+ feet tall that are, at the moment, whipping against the night sky like manic dancers in the mosh pit–and we hope their roots are holding firmly on the earth as any one of them could crash across the yard and into the south side of the house. (Assume this did NOT happen–unless I write about it in the next blog posting–or unless this is the last blog posting!)

I have just returned from an annual retreat with a circle of women friends and we naturally started by reviewing where we were last year and where we are now–both in our private and more public lives and thoughts. I dug out the volume of the journal where I serve as scribe to our circles, writing down the statements of how we arrive to each other and our intentions as we depart. Last year we were full of the election elation–this year we are full of questions about how to support the need for deep societal shift–whether it comes from the White House or Congress or from diverse populist movements… We are disturbed to witness the unrelenting polarization around political process, certainly here in the US, and also in so many other places in the world. And we found ourselves asking how to practice effectiveness under these circumstances–and how to influence the parameters of our lives for greater common good.

One thing that continues to intrigue and frustrate us is the question of how to bring people with widely divergent points of view into a dialogues where we have the opportunity to influence each other in positive ways. I am ruminating on this when at 10:15 PM the lights go out. Not a flicker of warning, just an instantaneous plunge into darkness without a single friendly LED glowing anywhere in the house. We brush our teeth by candlelight and head for bed—nothing else to do.  Winds howl in gusts up to 70+ MPH until the early morning hours and when I wake at dawn I know that somewhere out there are crews of line workers trying to put the grid back together.

At the entrance to our neighborhood a large alder tree has fallen across the road and is hanging on the low swoop of power lines. The men say it’s going to be several hours—maybe the day, go home, make a fire. We do.

This is our image of ourselves as Americans—and perhaps this is true in other countries as well—that we are the kind of people who will go out in the storm and do what needs to be done to sustain the community. We believe that ordinary men and women will put everything they have into their work, pull alongside each other for common good. This collective self-image reminds me of the lines in one of my favorite Marge Piercy poems, “To Be of Use,”

“I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.”

That is how I think of the men at the end of the road, straining in the mud and muck to move things forward… and I am guessing out there in the wind and rain they are not fighting over health care policy—just counting on the utility company to cover them if they get hurt. They are not debating the efficacy of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, though they may have sons or daughters in the military. They are not debating the agenda of the Global Climate Summit next month, though they may be comparing the strength of storms and wind now versus their early years on the job. And if religion comes into the conversation, it may be a muttered half-prayer, “Sweet Jesus, don’t let that limb buck up in my face!” as they fell the tree the rest of the way to earth and off the lines. And that’s the point—they are working together, whatever their differences. They have a clearly defined task, role, and responsibility. They have the skills needed to be doing what they are doing, and the appreciation of the rest of us who don’t have those skills.

They are not doing silly things–like only restoring electricity to the households that agree with them politically or religiously–and they probably don’t agree with each other about these things: they are getting the work done and moving onto the next piece of work that requires their skill and effort. I have a cousin who sends me far right-wing and fundamentalist statements and this is the point I try to make with him: that on in the dark and stormy night of these times there are things we must pull together and do whether or not we agree on anything else. And his point back seems to be that if we don’t agree on faith and politics there is nothing else we can work together on. I don’t want this to be true!

As I live through a week of unrelenting stormy weather, I am wondering if we will finally pull together as a human tribe only when the earth is blowing back so hard we cannot ignore any longer ignore our collective and immediate peril. And the irony is, I believe this is already happening–and I am eager to live into this urgency for exactly the kind of energy it has the potential to release in us. I want to join the line crew–to be able to contribute my strength while I still have it to offer and before our planetary ship is sunk beyond repair. And it is the time of year I start to think about all this again–because the story is raging outside my door. No–that’s not a typo, it is the story that is raging as strongly as the wind. My story is rooted as firmly as the neighboring trees in the belief that in spite of all the violence we do to each other, there is an ancient and universal sense of ethics that resides in the human mind. It is this taproot I am counting on to hold us in the thrashing storms, and though limbs of confidence may be torn off by the daily news, by the stupidly and slowness of our response to crises, I continue to base my life actions on the presence of this ethic.

I came across this quote via a writing student coming to December’s The Self as the Source of the Story seminar and it expresses what I believe: “There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives at every border we cross.” (Michael Ondaatje, Desidero)

I enter the winter and my island time at home after an incredibly busy year savoring that presence of others inside myself– noticing the ways that I am touched and changed by everyone who has crossed my path or walked even a few steps of life journey alongside me. I am trusting that others find me inside of them–and that eventually we will understand the mystery of our containment of each other.

I would welcome your thoughts and stories about how you are reaching out to people of divergence and how you are noticing the presence of divergent people residing in your own mind and heart and daily life. Let’s light that fire of sharing.

Written by candlelight on a far northern night.

Blessings, Christina

You haven’t heard from me in a while because I am soooo tired of writing! I was thinking about this as walked the dog yesterday morning. Though she’s age 11, she still likes to scoot around the corner onto the macadam road that enters the neighborhood and head into a quick sprint. Fortunately, even though I am age 63, I can follow her lead and trot up the hill on the end of our tethered leash until we both look at each other and agree that’s enough for the moment. We continue along at a bush-sniffing, morning-appreciating pace, then return to the house for kibble or granola. And that’s how I’ve always been–a great sprinter, a kid who loved to go from zero to 60–run flat out and stop with happy panting and a sense of the fun of speed, then saunter a while before the next impulse took me into the face of the wind again.

Writing a book (which we turned in on September 1) while working full-time and running a business and now getting the copy edits back and simultaneously helping Ann do the final edits on her book (due November 1) is not a sprint–it’s a marathon!

We have a few weeks remaining in this writing harness and we do feel like a well-matched set of Percheron horses plowing through fields of chapters. I can tell I’ve over-extended myself in the word department because what feels most relaxing is a stint in the garden putting the beds to bed or a beach ramble with no talking… And yet here I am writing this blog in the midst of all this because several important and timely things are happening that I want to find words to acknowledge!

350-350-350-350-350-350-350 and 3/50-3/50-3/50-3/50-3/50-3/50-3/50–350 is a global movement, and 3/50 is a local one.

Global first: 350. This number stands for the number that leading scientists believe is the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide (in parts per million) in the earth’s atmosphere. We have already exceeded that limit, but scientific researcher and climate activist, Bill McKibben, has founded a global initiative to reverse the trend. His campaign is Internet based through the site: www.350.org.

I have been reading Bill’s books since he wrote The End of Nature in 1989, and most recently, Deep Economy. In 2003, editing an issue of Granta Magazine called, “This Overheating World,” he wrote in the introduction, “For fifteen years now, some small percentage of the world’s scientists and diplomats and activists has inhabited one of those strange dreams where the dreamer desperately needs to warn someone about something bad and imminent; but somehow, no matter how hard he shouts, the other person in the dream–standing smiling, perhaps, with his back to an oncoming train–can’t hear him. This group…knows that the world is about to change more profoundly than at any time in the history of human civilization. And yet, so far, all they have achieved is to add another line to the long list of human problems–people think about ‘global warming’ in the way they think about ‘violence on television’ or ‘growing trade deficits,’ as a marginal concern to them, if a concern at all.” The essays that followed turned me around to notice the train of change bearing down on me/us, and set me off to pursue what I could do to contribute to solutions. And while a lot has happened in the way of information since 2003 the useless debates continue at a national and international level while the carbon numbers rise.

The most hopeful thing Bill says these days is “New ways of behaving can still change the future.” Okay then, let’s sprint into action and change it for the better.

The website is an informative, educational, and inspiring read as the world heads toward Global Action day OCTOBER 24 and events are planned in 159 countries (and counting!) Yet if you start walking around wearing their distinction logo <-350 (a great graphic that goes beyond language and yet clearly communicates intent) you’ll have a lot of explaining to do. And won’t that be a wonderful opportunity for practicing story-telling. I want a tee-shirt that says on the back–“Ask me what this means! Then let’s talk about what we can do.”

October 24 is dedicated to building a movement to unite the world in populist action. October 24 is six weeks before the world’s leaders will meet in Copenhagen to formulate a global treaty on carbon emissions. October 24 is next Saturday: What will you do to change the future?

In the midst of our current book projects it’s hard to get far from the desk, but I love a chance to do a little social action. There are things happening within a ten mile radius of my house… I could take the bus. I could ride my bike. I can write all of you–and invite more people to start talking about all the things we are doing and can change in what we are doing that will help bring the carbon number down to a liveable level. And it’s an amazing experiment to be involved in something that has to reach so many corners of the world. Creative minds are at work. Check out the You Tube video, talk to somebody about this that you would not normally engage… Which brings all this right down to the local level and 3/50.

Local: 3/50 is another Internet based action designed to focus consumers on the need to support the local shops on the main streets of North America, Europe–and anywhere else that people have stopped spending their money locally. The premise is simple: think of three independently owned businesses near you that you’d miss if they went away. Stop in and say hello, spend a little money on something you need–even an espresso sipped from a local shop rather than Starbucks which has become a Fortune 500 global franchise makes a difference. Three local businesses, and then in the course of a month spend $50. If even half the employed population of the US spent $50/month in independently owned businesses, their purchases would generate $42.6 billion dollars a year. That’s a lot of money staying home, employing more people in your neighborhood, and helping local folks live their local dreams.

To get involved visit the site: www.the350project.net. Around Whidbey Island people are putting 3/50 placards in the windows, setting little information cards and flyers around their stores. It’s fun to be a local person–to cheer up shopkeepers even by walking in and thanking them for hanging in there with the community during these times when business is slow. Ask them what they need to community to be doing differently–then talk it up around town when you are visiting with friends and neighbors. Get in a dialogue–tell a few stories, listen to their stories.

We make someone’s day, or break someone’s heart, in minute by minute interactions–especially in our public interactions. What is going to happen in the long-haul of the crises represented by these 350 movements we don’t know. We can take charge, day by day, of how we spend our time, our money, our resources, and what stories we use to spur us to action. Let me know how you are and what you’re doing these days.

More soon–now, back to the harness of chapters.

Christina

Sunday afternoon 13 September 2009

It’s been a while since I wrote, but before I tell you where I’ve been (working/writing/traveling sums it up) I want to tell you where I am right now– sitting at a table in the Omega Café overlooking the late summer landscape of Omega Institute, Rhinebeck NY. It’s turnover time–in the seasons, in the class schedule, in who is wandering around here trying to find the Dining Hall and lost among the flower garden instead. I have fourteen Storycatchers showing up this afternoon and we will head into the kind of sweet, deep listening circle of writers and storytellers that I know so well. And before that happens, I want to capture of the essence of what has been going on here for the past two days since my arrival Friday afternoon.

The weekend included a few minutes to say hello to Gloria Steinem who commented on how much she appreciates Storycatcher, and thanked me for my work on story and circle, a good laugh on the foibles of writing with Isabel Allende, and a lunch conversation with Helen Thomas, who is at a stage of life where everything out of her mouth is sage advice. And those are just the iconic figures I walked in knowing. I was soon introduced to incredible younger leaders and women of color who inspired and educated me, from the Afghani woman rights advocate, Sakena Yakoobi, to California powerhouse activist, Lateefah Simon, and New Yorker cartoonist, Liza Donnelly.  And amidst all these women, the brightest lights in the room were often the women under 35 who comprised a third of the 400 of us gathered here for the eighth session of the Women & Power Conference, this year’s theme: Cross Generational Dialogue.  And for entertainment, there was Sarah Jones, Natalie Merchant, and Katya Grineva. (If you don’t know who these women are—and I didn’t, Whidbey Island isolationist that I am—get out on You Tube and enjoy the discovery!)

In this crowd, I am definitely on the bridge of history, on the way to elderhood, and not yet there. I’m not Helen Thomas (who turned 89 sitting with Obama on the couch, sharing a birthday cake and iced tea) and not quite Gloria Steinem (who at 75 still likes to use the “F” word—both “f*cking” and “Feminist”). If we had lined up by age, at least 85% of the room would be behind me, about 10% alongside me, and 5% older than me.  There is a huge amount of activism and need for activism going on in the world that I have not been tracking, and a whole communications network that I didn’t know existed. Look up, for example: www.pulsewire.net, www.feministing.com to see what the young ones are up to—feministing has live blogging entries from the conference itself and video clips shot mid action. For what’s happening in a mid-life scene, check out www.wowowow.com and for politics: www.thedailybeast.com. My horizons are expanded, and I keep jumping off this letter and on-line so I can see these references myself as I pass along my notes.

And it raises a lot of questions about legacy for me, especially as Ann Linnea and I get ready to launch our new book, The Circle Way (March 2010) and her new book, Keepers of the Trees (July 2010). How do we offer the quiet presence that is our soul contribution into this wild ride of the world expanding into a global media phenomenon? No answers: just questions raised.

As one brilliant moment after another unfolded, I was wishing I had been more insistent that my niece Erin accompany me here and join this cadre of young women. Erin is leaving for Brussels, Belgium, in a few days to study for a master’s degree in International Relations in a cohort group where she will definitely be an American minority among the students. Maybe we will be here together next year when she’s on her way home.  Next year’s conference dates: October 8-10, 2010. I’m going to start talking with the planners about focusing on story as a map to the future.

So, go out and click around to get a sense of the conference and its resources on-line, and I’ll close with a few quotes.

Gloria Steinem: “When addressing domestic violence, we know the maximum moment of danger is when a woman is escaping the control of the abuser. Just because she has a restraining order in her pocket doesn’t keep her safe—all who want to protect her must be diligent.  I think this is where the country is: we’re making it clear that we want healthcare, want a redefined financial system, want peace instead of war, and that we are determined to escape the control of the political abusers… And in response there is an upsurge in hate media, male-led violence and intimidation at town hall meetings and other social settings. We must not be intimidated back into the abuse!”

Edit Schlaffer, founder of Women Without Borders “We thought we’d focus on countries in crisis, and five years later we realize we (Europeans) are in countries in crisis. We are in a culture war raging against the most universally held human values and rights.”

Helen Thomas: “What we should really be against today is the climate of hate. We are on the verge of allowing it to destroy our nation, what we believe we are as a people. In all my years in Washington, I have never seen it like this before—partisanship, yes, but this is sourced from a place beyond debate or civility. And Congress—where are the women in Congress? They became men. And the men all became Republicans, owned by the interests who paid their ways into election. And the first thing we need to change is our passivity toward all this: are we really willing to say this is acceptable to us and let’s just go on about our private busy lives?

Me: Okay we have work to do. Here come the storycatchers for a week of writing. We are spending one day on personal healing, and then heading into story as social activism and social transformer. It’s urgent! I am riding and writing the wave of change. Let me know how you are–as the seasons change.

Hello dear friends,

I started off writing this as a blog entry, then decided to submit it to a wider audience–and it got picked up and published  on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/21-11

Obama, Change and The Missing Conversation
by Christina Baldwin © 2009

I was in a local espresso cafe this afternoon–short single shot latte for myself, an Americano for my dad, and a big cookie to share–when the tee-shirt on the young barista took my breath away, and momentarily, my ability to order some mid-afternoon caffeine.  He was wearing Shepherd Fairey’s iconic design-a poster shirt on which a headshot of President Obama’s face is rendered in red/white/blue. “CHANGE,” it said.

“Great shirt,” I said. We smiled broadly at each other–the local boy and the local 60-year old. I wanted to talk, but my coffee was getting cold, and my dad was waiting for me in his condo two blocks up the hill, and my dog was tied outside looking in need of a bush sometime real soon. I hurried on, but hours later I’m still missing that conversation.

I wanted to ask him, “So how do you think he’s doing?” I look at him: young, maybe his first time voting. Blue eyes, short blond hair, probably working his way through college on free caffeine and minimum wage plus tips.  At least he has a job; at least I still have $5.00 for designer coffee and a cookie-and change for the tip jar.

I know Obama inherited an incredible mess surrounded by labyrinthine complexities designed to make solution nearly impossible.  At first I said, “He’s got to feed the lions, and then he can turn his attention to systemic change in the Empire.” Months go by. I am busy, he is busy. I read Bill Moyers, Chris Hedges, Paul Klugman, Naomi Klein, Amy Goodman. I read Newsweek, and skim the New York Times and Washington Post. Now I say, “Please don’t let him be swallowed into the bowels of this powerful and deceitful dragon.”

How are you Barack Obama? What are you reading? Who are you listening to? Remember all those people who stood in Grant Park on a warm November night, and on the national Mall on a cold January day? Remember how the world stopped to watch you step into this office? These people– and I among them– are willing to help you slay the dragon, and we cannot slay it if you are consumed by it or protecting it!

Just so you know: I’m done shopping. I’m gardening. I’m saving money in my local bank. I’m practicing how little to spend and how small my energy consumption can be. I’m looking to you and Congress to reshape my country for its next phase of world leadership. I imagine a country dedicating itself to sustainable uses of energy and natural resources, retooling its economy for green jobs in a green future, reskilling the American workforce; a country weaning itself from consumerism, a country of diplomacy and foreign aid rather than ill-defined warring in a suffering world, a country with universal health care and decent public education, for Pete’s sake.

I am emailing and writing and signing e-petitions and am frustrated at all the rings of protection that surround him now. Last week I got a letter from my President. He paid for the stamp, I noticed, nice touch. I imagine somewhere a room full of young people like the café latte boy, opening letters, glancing at them and sorting them into stacks for reply: concerned about economy, health care, the war… Then someone inputs my name and address and my acknowledgement is on its way. Minimum wage: no tips.

The President thanked me for my “perspective on the economy,” though he didn’t mention the Bill Moyers article I had stapled to my correspondence. He addressed me by my first name; he signed it “Sincerely,” with his name– a computer generated signature mark, no title-like I’d know who it was, nice touch. Only  he never saw it. So what would happen if we all wrote-all at once? August 4 is Barack Obama’s birthday-exactly 28 weeks into his Presidency. He needs to hear from his people. He needs thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of greetings streaming in all at once. Let’s write– in support, in concern, in celebration, in prayers for peace, in standing with HOPE, willing to believe in significant and radical CHANGE.

Let’s all write. The postal service needs the money. We need to be counted. Buy a card or make a card; send drawings from your kids, a photo. Let’s get personal. Wish him well, wish him wisdom, wish him courage-and tell him we’re willing to come along. “When the people lead, the leaders will follow.” He needs us-he needs feedback that is not filtered through a dozen advisors with a thousand interest groups yelling in their ears. I know no postman drives up to the White House doors. Our cards will be taken to the sorting room and run through security, but the impact of a hundred thousand birthday cards is registered somewhere. And maybe after they’ve been safety checked they’ll actually let him take a stack out to Camp David where he can drink iced tea with Michelle on a hot August afternoon, watch the girls play with the dog, and hold the heart of the people in his hands.

“Dearest Sir, Happy Birthday! Thank you for being President at this time. Remember what Alice Walker wrote you about finding the joy in this and not turning old and grey-skinned with burden? Let us help you. Let us tell each other the truth as it keeps evolving.  I hope your garden is growing well. Aren’t those peas sweet when they come out of the pod? And ripe tomatoes– wow. Did you see the Star Trek movie yet? Wasn’t that a great scene where the young Spock and the old Spock are talking with each other? The moment made me think of you-go to that old man, the former President, and ask him for advice. May you live long and help us all prosper.

Love, Christina

Freeland, WA”

Please forward, share, Facebook, Twitter and tweet this idea on—and send that birthday card!

Sometimes in the synchronicity of the Internet, something comes our way that speaks to what we area already pondering. The bulk of this entry comes from an acquaintance, Elias Amidon, a man I have read and heard about for many years and finally met this past March when he and his wife/life partner, Rabia, came to Whidbey, where I live. They are the authors of Earth Prayers, and Prayers for a Thousand Years, and beyond these wonderful anthologies, they are also profound witnesses for peace and story. A few years ago they guided walking peace pilgrimages in Southeast Asia, and this fall they are planning one through Iran. Of course with current conditions erupting, they are watching closely, and looking for the story under the story.

Meanwhile, as I emerge from the focus of our book writing, I look around in the work we are doing and the news we are reading and am asking the question: “How do I best pay attention to what is happening now?” This question leads me to seek the story in ordinary reality, and in mythic reality. I appreciated how Elias combined the news with the muse and invite you to read his “LETTER FROM THE ROAD, #36.” The boldfacing is my emphasis.

IRAN AND THE FEATHER OF THE SIMORGH

I would like to step back for a moment from the compelling drama occurring now in Iran to look at this drama with a long-view question in mind: What does it tell us about the evolution of human societies? What does the conflict in present-day Iran reveal about what is seeking to be born on a global scale in the way we humans relate to each other?

To aid us in this long-view, let us turn to a story that is told in Iran’s great national epic, the Shahnameh, written 1,000 years ago by Ferdowsi, the most beloved of all Persian poets.

The story goes like this: a baby was abandoned on a mountainside. His cries were heard by the Simorgh, the benevolent winged deity of vast powers, who raised the baby as her own. When the time came for the young man, now called Prince Zal, to rejoin the human world the Simorgh gifted the prince with three feathers which he was to use if he ever needed her help.

And so it happened upon returning to his kingdom that Prince Zal fell in love and married the beautiful Rudaba. When the time arrived for their first child to be born, Rudaba’s labor was prolonged and terrible. She was near death when Prince Zal summoned the Simorgh for help. The Simorgh appeared and instructed Zal to trace one of the feathers across Rudaba’s belly. He did so and thus saved Rudaba and the child, and the child grew up to become the greatest of all Persian heroes, Rostam—“the world brightening one.”

Rudaba’s Labor
I trust Ferdowsi will forgive me for suggesting that the story of the birth of Rostam may serve as a parable for what is occurring in Iran—and indeed throughout the world—in this period of human history.

Rudaba’s—and Iran’s—long labor will not come to an end until the cycle of human violence comes to an end—the cycle that reacts to violence and injustice with more violence and injustice. For thousands of years this cycle has recurred, preventing the birth of that which we long for: the possibility of living together in kindness, tolerance, and peace. This possibility is “the world brightening one.” It is humanity’s Rostam: no longer a singular male hero battling injustice, our Rostam is no less than the birth of the capacity to relate to one another with open minds and open hearts rather than from rigid positions.

The seas of people now marching in Iran are seeking to end the long agony of Rudaba’s labor. They are responding to the regime’s oppression not with violence but with nonviolent civil disobedience, and, in many cases, in silence. This kind of profound nonviolent action is the Simorgh’s feather being traced on Rudaba’s tormented belly. Its inherent gentleness is the only response that can release her from her long labor.

It takes enormous courage to face oppression with kindness, to put a flower in the muzzle of a gun. If Iranians can maintain this courage they will change the course of history, joining the recent nonviolent movements that have toppled dictatorships in places like the Philippines, Serbia, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Nepal, and elsewhere. A recent study has shown that of the 67 transitions from authoritarian regimes to more democratic governments over the past few decades, these changes “were catalyzed not through foreign invasion, and only rarely through armed revolt or voluntary elite-driven reforms, but overwhelmingly by democratic civil society organizations utilizing nonviolent action and other forms of civil resistance, such as strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, and mass protests.”  (Stephen Zunes)

The Simorgh’s feather: resilient and tender, its magical touch is the heart of the Golden Rule, the heart of the activism of Gandhi, King, and Mandela, and the heart of the teachings of all the great prophets of humanity. It is the refusal to react to violence with violence.

What Can We Do?
Two months ago during our journey through Iran we met a man named Ali working in a bazaar in the city of Shiraz. Ali was a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, intensely proud of Iran and its central place in human history.

“We have been an important part of the growth of civilization,” he said, “but now we are stranded. Our minds are stranded. We cannot communicate with or travel freely in the world. People think we are terrorists—look around you, do you see terrorists? We are stranded, and no one knows who we are.”

I think of Ali and wonder if he feels less stranded at the moment, with so much of the world’s attention turned toward the events in Iran. TV, radio, newspapers, the Internet, Twitter, Facebook—in countless thousands of ways people around the world are taking part in the touch of the Simorgh’s feather as we bear witness to the nonviolent actions in Iran.

Just as it is for every nonviolent movement, the role of the witness is crucial. “The whole world is watching!” we cry, calling forth the power of shame that is heaped upon the perpetrator when an injustice is witnessed. This shaming is a curious thing, since it gets its power from an innate ethic within us—the British were shamed by having the world witness them beating Gandhi’s salt marchers, just as America was shamed by the publication of the photos from Abu Ghraib. The ruling clerics in Iran know that when they are seen butchering protesters any claim the Islamic Revolution has of benevolence becomes a lie.

So what can we do, far from Iran? We can pay attention. We can be at the other end of the tweets and the YouTube videos. We can be the watching world as the Iranians marching in the streets silently confront the guns of the military. In this way we can act in solidarity with all Iranians—the protesters and the ruling clerics and the Ahmadinejad supporters and the military—helping all of us come to the aid of “the world brightening one” that is being born.

If you want to read more thoughts like this, you may register at Elias’ website: www.pathofthefriend.org and become more informed about their work.

At the end of the memoir class I was teaching last week, we had a conversation about placing stories into all the cracks in the world.  Certainly storycatching and “world brightening” have much in common. They are ways we pay attention: ways we bear witness. To be willing to know something, to hold the story as it is unfolding, even if it appears we cannot directly interact with the experience or the outcome, does contribute something in the world. I have to believe that my willingness to be somehow is sustaining to the people of Iran, of Iraq, of Zimbabwe, of Ohio and our own neighborhoods–all those places where pain is on the surface and the story is raw.

So, what in the world are you paying attention to? And how do you think that helps? Let’s tell each other those stories.

Dear Storycatchers, I have missed you–missed writing to you and hearing back from you as we make our ways through busy days. The new book, which pulled me off this blogging schedule, co-authored with Ann Linnea, is at Berrett-Koehler Publishers in San Francisco–in fact, on this Saturday morning I am writing from the lobby of Hotel Rex, a few blocks from the B-K offices.

Yesterday Ann and I went through a process they call “Authors’ Day.” We met the folks who will be working with us in final editing, production, marketing, and publicity. At noon, all the staff in the building that day, including Steve Piersanti, President of the company, came to lunch where we talked about The Circle Way, A Leader in Every Chair, and then invited the group of just over 20 staff and guests to push back from the board table and form an oval of chairs. We used the Basic Circle Guidelines from our PeerSpirit website to set up a round of circle process and folks responded to an interesting question passing a beautiful glass disk hand to hand. We talked about the impact of hearing every voice in the room, and then had 20 minutes of dialogue about the book.

The question we used was offered by Fran Korten, editor of Yes! Magazine, when she presented at a conference on women and leadership May 1. As a great fan and avid reader of Yes! I was glad to meet Fran, give her a copy of Storycatcher, and carry on the profound work of her questions–so here they are for you to raise in your lives as well:

• What did you notice on the fringe of society 15 years ago that is now in the center?
• What do you notice on the fringe now that you hope will move to the center in the next 15 years?
• What are you willing to do to contribute to that happening?

I jumped up and said: circle, and the power of circles, especially as an empowerment process for women. And here is a brief rendition of that story.

In 1994 Ann and I had just moved to Whidbey and started PeerSpirit, Inc. I was writing a book called Calling the Circle, the First and Future Culture. It was under contract to Bantam and when I submitted the manuscript there was deafening silence from my editor. Finally I phoned and asked what was going on… She told me they had no idea how to support this title. I bought back the rights and found a tiny press in Oregon, Swan Raven & Company, to bring out the first edition of the book. It sold 15,000 copies and connected us with a circle of colleagues with whom we are still in touch.

In 1997, I got a call from an agent who wanted to represent the book to larger presses. He sold it back to my Bantam editor and I rewrote Calling the Circle in the edition that has been available since 1998. Unfortunately, the circle concept was still so edgy that the book was categorized as “ritual/psychology” and most often shelved in the witchcraft/occult section of the bookstore–not exactly mainstream! Meanwhile, we kept doing our work, expanding our outreach, and through training other facilitators, consultants, and leaders in many fields, kept working to normalize and bring circle to center as a alternative group process. When Amazon and the Internet, and our e-store capacity came along the book could be more easily found.

In 2000, through our association with business visionary, Margaret Wheatley, PeerSpirit Circle started going global in the From the Four Directions and Art of Hosting networks, and now, Berrett-Koehler, a business book company, recognizes circle practice as mainstream enough to bring The Circle Way into the heart of their business group process offerings. So, yesterday was quite a day–as we were carrying this subtext through all the meetings. We were carrying the story under the project; carrying fifteen years of work to help a far-out, woo-woo, women howling at the moon, men drumming in the woods, touchy-feely, get it out of here(!) concept into the board rooms and staff meetings and committee meetings and nursing staff debriefs, and conflict resolution meetings where we and many others have benefited from another way to speak and listen.

In our Berrett-Koehler circle, we addressed the second question: What do you notice on the fringe today that you want to see move to the center in the next 15 years? It’s a very interesting form of strategic planning: for a company involved in both setting and responding to business trends, and also for any person wanting to redesign their lives in the current conditions of the world around us. Try these questions on yourself as a journal writing exercise, with your family and friends after dinner, in the next circle where you need of a conversation starter–and here on this blog.

When I look back, the first question creates a sense of acomplishment and perspective regarding what I’ve been up to all these years in journal writing, circle, and storycatching. When I look around, the second question gives me a way to map current societal trends (what’s moving toward deeper integration, such as sustainability; what’s moving out of the way, such as excessive consumption). When I assess how to focus my own passion, willingness, and skills, the third question helps me set trajectory.

So many of us are in a process of reassessment, may these questions lead us into an ability to tell ourselves the story of how we have navigated the social conditions that surround our lives. As we tell the story of how we got here, we notice the synchronicities and choices that shape our lives. As we create the story of where we’re going, we shine a light on the path forward.

Let’s share responses and stories and see the range of what we notice–and what we are committed to bringing from the edge to the middle!

We were out in the garden prepping the ground for planting the early peas and spinach–something we can do in March in the Northwest (though it did snow a bit Sunday and it’s been blowing ever since sun/rain/sun/rain, etc.). Anyway, I was troweling around and found half a potato from last fall, a small Yukon Gold, shovel cut and undiscovered. I gave it a glance and tossed it over the garden fence and into the field next door. As soon as the little tuber left my hand I had the thought, “That is the gesture of someone who can still go to the grocery store and buy more food.” And I wondered if I would ever be hungry enough that I’d be grateful to find half a potato and maybe even contribute it to the making of Stone Soup.

All my adult life I’ve been a person who recycles and saves and shops at the thrift store and looks for bargains. It’s a game of hide-and-seek I play inside this huge consumer culture. In 1968-69, my first year out of college, I was paid $3600 working in the peace movement, and I saved $1000 and went to Europe. I rode my bicycle and buses and bought my first used car for $200 when I was 30–part of the advance upon selling my first book. The list goes on, and I won’t recite it here. Suffice it to say I have traded a lot of security in order to have a self-designed, self-employed life. I have no regrets about that: it was a choice. It’s still a choice and I have a very comfortable level of frugality. For me, frugality is grounded in belief that consuming less is necessary for right relationship with planetary resources. I choose it: I am not desperate about it. And then, as I tossed half a potato over the fence, I began wondering what conditions I will be asked to face in the coming months and years and how I will respond as frugality becomes a necessity. For surely, in the great rebalancing of humanity’s place in the world, frugality is our path forward.

A few entries ago (2/08/09 “Taking Stock) I wrote about the conversation I had with my Zimbabwean colleague who was heading home to a country in ruins–and yet felt rich in knowing that in his Shona culture there was always a place to run to, someone who would share their last potato. I have just heard more recent news from Kufunda Village, the learning centre and experimental village outside Harare. They haven’t had electricity for two months since their transformer blew up–so they decided to take themselves off the grid intentionally, to study other ways to power themselves. The big concern is getting water from their bore hole and running an electric stove where the community cooks communally–and offers hospitality to the groups that rent seminar space and guest houses from them. The country’s health care system has pretty completely ceased to function, so they are running a clinic of herbal medicines at the edge of the farm. (For a fuller understanding visit their site www.kufunda.org. If you have some money you want to give, you can do so online and support their preschool, the herb farm, their shift to sustainable power sources, and their human spirit.)

These people are my teachers about frugality and resilience! I think of them often these days, and the challenges they face living collaboratively under the social conditions that surround them. Jackie Cahi, the director and interface person between the village and the outside world writes: “…we have opened our space and our hearts and are hosting constantly - mostly the Tree of Life, which conducts healing circles.  This partnership is a perfect synergy for our healing place.  It is challenging without power to draw and heat water and to cook for large numbers each week.  But we are earning enough to keep going - to pay ourselves and to do some work in the communities.  It’s a good feeling. I say tentatively that we are growing….. stronger, wiser, braver, more powerful, and that we know and hold the ground on which we walk.”

I look up and down the street on which I live–thinking of the 25 homes that comprise my little neighborhood, and wonder how we would do if we had to be frugal together. If we had to keep the cook fires going and homes heated and share resources. I want to believe that the great majority of people have an innate spirit of cooperation and altruism in us: my life work is invested in making that story true.

To make that story true in my own life, I offer a tangible gesture–this year, I am committed to eating or feeding others with everything we grow in the garden–no more potato over the fence. I will practice developing a truly appreciative relationship to the food that comes my way and to steward the earth’s abundance within the community. In the midst of a summer teaching and consulting, I’ll be taking a class on safely canning vegetables, and I’m saving Mason jars from the thrift stores. I have marked off dates in my fall calendar that I’ll hold for the work of harvesting.

No way, am I ready to become a subsistence farmer, but my family and neighbors and I are practicing how to live a very local life. Meanwhile, we’re working on a new book, supporting the books and work already out there, and keeping an eye on the world.  Frugality continues to be my choice, my teacher, my connector between myself and conditions in wider world.

How are you changing? What is your tangible gesture?

I’m listening.

It’s been three weeks since we last “spoke” in this conversation. I’ve been traveling in Indianapolis, Indiana and Columbus, Ohio for the past 10 days on a teaching trip with Ann Linnea doing our PeerSpirit circle training. And it was heartrending to observe the level of financial pain. Houses with boarded up windows were evident everywhere we drove around Indianapolis, and the Columbus Dispatch  was running a front page series on getting through these times while the unemployment rate in Ohio rose to 8.8%.

In the midst of this, we’ve met wonderful people.  In an inner city Methodist Church the congregation and neighborhood are engaged in mutually supportive programs that evolve their sense of “beloved community.” Then we worked with a health care association and foundation whose wise leader said, “The more we work internally as an authentic community, the more we can extend authentic community.” Their entire staff had already been using PeerSpirit Circle Process and we were invited in to help deepen their practice. The last two days of the week we spent at The Ohio State University. I gave a speech on Story as Leadership, and then Ann and I did a day of story practice and circle training for over 100 people—making little “campfires” around tables of seven participants. In each of these settings it was wonderful to watch the confidence of their leadership spread around the rim, and to be present as they shared meaningful stories that expanded acquaintanceship.

This is humbling work, or at least work we offer humbly: to be invited into the heart of people’s lives and facilitate qualities of conversation that change how we hold together in these times. The responses to my previous entry, “Taking Stock” moved my heart for I see that many of us are taking the opportunity to reassess what most matters in our lives and to seek a spiritual layer within themselves and the way they carry the story. Do read these entries in their entirety, they are thoughtful and engaging.

One of the writing theories I love to work with is the idea that we make story at several levels simultaneously: the Story of the Day, the Story of the Times, and the Story of Meaning.   When the story line falls apart at one level, we have two other levels that can sustain us. As we collectively grapple with ongoing and increasing change in the Day Story and the Times Story, we will need to reach more and more deeply into the Meaning Story. Certainly by the responses and bloggish dialogue emerging here, we are engaged in puzzling together our personal and collective Meaning Stories.

To make Meaning Story, I will often write in the third person—still about my own life, or experience, but metaphorically, as though writing a fairy tale or fable.  Once there was a (wo)man who… And from there I let imagination and reality mingle until I find myself writing out the patterns that I’m living through and provide myself with a sense of stability and where to step next…

Once there was a woman who walked among the boarded up dreams of ordinary people. Her heart was saddened to see these signs of struggle and loss. “These are not the lives that should be broken,” she thought, for she had walked through other streets as well where the walls were gilded with promises of unending plenty. “And yet,” she strode on, “as the people learn so the leaders will learn. What is the lesson? What is the new story?” She rounded a corner, and there was a fire going in an old metal barrel. Some folks had made a band instruments out of trash–a string base, a garbage pail drum–a woman sang, children clapped and ran around each other making play out of the moment. Someone looked her way and smiled. The woman swallowed her nervousness at meeting strangers and smiled back, joined the song, and emptied her pockets looking for things to share. “Here, it begins again…” she thought. “We will find the way.”

These little tales don’t have to be long–they just need to reinforce the patterns we want to maintain for ourselves and those around us, and set one impression or image of guidance into the field of our imagination. Write a fairy tale… and we’ll go from there.

Blessings on this day, and on the folks who are shifting their dreams, and on the folks whose dreams have been shifted–ready or not.

Christina