EarthWalk Alliance

“How Can I Keep from Singing?”

jp c — Sat, 25 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Watch this 1994 interview* by Bill Moyers with Peter Seeger YouTube (4”) as he tells a couple of stories and sings one of LLC’s favorite songs.

Journer: I really like this song, too, and especially these lines:**

…No storm can shake my inmost calm,

While to that rock I’m clinging.

Since love is lord of heaven and earth

How can I keep from singing.

…When tyrants tremble, sick with fear,

And hear their death-knell ringing,

When friends rejoice both far and near,

How can I keep from singing?

In prison cell and dungeon vile,

Our thoughts to them go winging;

When friends by shame are undefiled,

How can I keep from singing?

Nez: “We Shall Overcome” is another profound song from oppressive times. What others come to mind?

Namaste.

______

* Note: lyrics to song plus more history of the 1886 song wikipedia.org

** Note: LLC’s cousin and Seeger’s friend, Doris Troutman Plenn, composed the added lines during the Joe McCarthy era in response to vendettas against artists, etc., including Seeger.

Image: source (Seeger blowing out 94 candles on May 5, 2013)

Wake Up!

jp c — Fri, 24 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Ken Wilber: …isn’t it time for you to wake up? …You know that in the deepest part of your being, you can wake up, don’t you? You have been searching for how long now? Well, it is time for the Great Search to end. As long as you are searching, you are looking for a future moment that will be better than this moment, but it is this moment that holds the entire key…. So stop searching…. (source)

Journer: That’s pretty direct, don’t you think?

Nez: Yes, so stop looking out there somewhere for the meaning of your life, Journer. Wake up! Look this very moment in the face, bow, and get on with the great work of care for all others.

Namaste.

______

Image: source

Adult Responsibility

jp c — Thu, 23 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Thomas Berry:…the earth is mandating … a responsibility never assigned to any previous generation [of humans]. We are involved in a process somewhat akin to initiation … [whereby humanity is] passing out of its stage of childhood into its adult stage of life. The human community must now assume adult responsibilities.*

Journer: Thomas was way ahead of his time.

Nez: To say the least. And the initiation process has begun … but is hardly what it shall be.

Namaste.

______

* Note: “The Ecological Age,” 1981 talk, via Margaret Berry

Image: “Earth Initiation” by Barabara Getrost source

Ecumenical Mission Mounting?

jp c — Wed, 22 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

We are beginning to see more and more … religious teachers and leaders around the world who are both comfortable and conversant with the multiple, often-contradictory approaches to their faith, who can appreciate these many conflicting perspectives as part of a far bigger, fuller, and richer story of spiritual awakening, and who can therefore offer multiple contexts and interpretations of the spiritual path that are able to meet people at every step of their journey. (intro to Ken Wilber and Tom Thresher dialog source)

Journer: A very encouraging statement about the spiritual mission of religions.

Nez: As long as we don’t turn in any further on our own journeys and forget about the mountain of care waiting for us across the Earth community.

Namaste.

______

Image: “Mission Is How the World Saves [Religions]” source

Doesn’t Get Any Better

jp c — Tue, 21 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Neil DeGrasse Tyson:We think we are alone. It’s us against the universe. Well, wake up my friend, because you ARE the universe, and science has proven that fact. Every element in the periodic table, aside from hydrogen, is essentially star dust. The simple equation looks like this: (human body mass – hydrogen) = 93% star dust. Next time you look up at the night sky, know that you are looking at the power and raw materials that made you. You are a star. We are all stars. (source via Jeanette Stanfield)

Journer: We are not against the universe but we are the universe?

Nez: Yes! Miraculously we are two stars enthused with spirit, part of all that is. Doesn’t get any better than this, Journer.

Namaste.

______

Image: with source above

“Rolling in the Deep”

jp c — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Take in ThePianoGuysYouTube (4”) with guest artist Amanda Scott … together a super troupe for this song.*

Journer: Let’s say it’s a song about your bout with someone/something on the profound journey—full of deep memory, joy, and despair—and you are angry enough to quit it all.

Nez: Sounds familiar because all great relationships are that way. Could have been with spirit—only fulfilled occasionally, it seems, until looking back and realizing it has been a grace-filled adventure of living in the deep … and you re-vow to team up and keep compassion rolling.

Namaste.

______

* Note: tune and lyricsby Adele (don’t think she would agree with Nez’s interpretation—why called “dialog”) and Paul Epworth

Image: source (click to enlarge)

Heaven, Always Here and Now

jp c — Sun, 19 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Nez: My colleague* wrote, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people.”

Journer: Or, “Look, Earth community, God is always here and now.”

Nez: It is baffling to find this verse in the middle of verses read at many Christian funeral services, followed up by ministers reminding us the deceased is now going to be with “God in Heaven”—when all the time “God” has been right here in heaven on Earth.

Journer: It fundamentally changes our understanding of reality to say “God’s dwelling place is now among us all,” in eternity past, present, and future.

______

* The Book of Revelation, 21:3 (last book of the Christian New Testament)

Image: source

Sunday Dialog 362

*****

We celebrate the long and profound journey of Albert Fortune of Asheville, NC.

He rests in peace. All is well.

*****

Jazz Player Turned Monk

jp c — Sat, 18 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Brother John Forbis, of the Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery [South Africa], is proof that stereotypes are often completely false. Once an established jazz musician and music librarian, Brother John has been a Benedictine Monk for sixteen years now. “Back in America, I had a spiritual drive, I was looking for something but I didn’t know what,” he said. He grew up Anglican and … visited a monastery in upstate New York. “I just knew it was for me,” he said.*

Journer: Quite a twist to that vocational journey.

Nez: You better not visit a monastery, Journer, for you too have a strong spiritual drive—down deep, we all do.

Namaste.

______

* Note: article via ICF (Bro John is also a published poet … and the godson of jpc)

Image: with article

Me: Plural Superorganism

jp c — Fri, 17 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

I can tell you the exact date that I began to think of myself in the first-person plural—as a superorganism, that is, rather than a plain old individual human being. It happened on March 7 … [when] a laboratory located at the BioFrontiers Institute … sequenced my microbiome—that is, the genes not of “me,” exactly, but of the several hundred microbial species with whom I share this body. These bacteria, which number around 100 trillion, are living (and dying) right now on the surface of my skin, on my tongue and deep in the coils of my intestines, where the largest contingent of them will be found, a pound or two of microbes together forming a vast, largely uncharted interior wilderness that scientists are just beginning to map.*

Journer: That jams my perspective: like I don’t finally know where I came from or am going, but I thought I was I and now find out I am a plural superorganism.

Nez: Learn to be at home in your microbiome, Journer, and take good care of that which is taking good care of you on your journey—that, plus spirit at the heart of it all.

Namaste.

______

* Note: “Some of My Best Friends Are Germs” by Michael Pollan, nytimes magazine, 5/15/13) read

Image: Hannah Whitaker (with the nytimes.com article)

Y More Spiritual

jp c — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Time magazine recently found that 72% of Generation Y [poll] “more spiritual than religious.” What does that mean? …[T]here is a shift occurring among the spiritual inclinations of young people today. More and more people are seeking for deeper meaning, purpose, and spiritual experiences outside the bounds of traditional religions. (source)

Journer: I am surely of that 72 percent because religions en mass point to a deeper reality than any one alone.

Nez: We all choose the metaphors that resonate with our experiences of reality. No one religion holds total truth for us billions of humans who have been experiencing existence for hundreds of thousands of years all over Earth.

Namaste.

______

Image: source (they say they are following their dreams)