True practice cannot be lost.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Mirror, Mirror: What Kind of World Do You Want? All Lives Matter.
Wednesdays are my favorite day of the week now that we've switched over to the summer schedule. The main reason is, after the first hour of sitting, we work in the fields for an hour. Most everyone joins in regardless of their normal role. Today, within an hour, we had covered a field of spinach, young Boston and red leaf lettuces and I don't know what else in silence so it felt incredibly peaceful and miraculous. Plus, this morning the moon was still up while the sun was rising.
Yesterday I tried to write, but after not writing much last year, my thoughts were like a tangled mess of different colors and textures of yarn. Too frustrating to unravel into something coherent. To give you an idea though, over the last week I learned more about the situation in Nepal: how there's been civic unrest, disagreements between people of different religions, less than perfect NGOs, corruption in politics and the government. About the rising price of food, not only due to the disruption caused by the earthquake, but also the influx of aid workers. About the likely gentrification of neighborhoods as a function of rebuilding. In short, it sounds a lot like the U.S. despite differences in culture. Or, for that matter, the tangled mess of thoughts that gurgles through my brain sometimes.
And then there's Baltimore. I read an exceptional opinion piece concerning Baltimore that seemed to intuit out loud some of what I was pointing to. Omid Safi, a Muslim scholar, said it better.
My view of the affluence of our country is that, in addition to our own efforts and the efforts of our forefathers, the affluence of our country was built off the lives and livelihoods of the Indian people using the labor of African slaves and neither culture has recovered. Given karma in the three times, we shouldn't be killing them. We don't own them, we owe them.
When we look in the mirror, do we want to see water shut-offs, uprisings, killing either directly or through neglect and incarceration? Because that's one face of the overconsumption and greed of our society and un-regulated capitalism. I'm not making that face up.
One thing for sure, if we're going save the world, we can only save it if we're working together.
