Appalachian Zen House News and Events

July AZH Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 03:29:00 +0000

Dear Friends,

It has been a busy summer for Appalachian Zen House. Our newest outreach project is coordinating the garden for the Bald Eagle Area School District’s Summer Lunch program. This program provides free lunches every Monday-Friday to children and youth in the Bald Eagle School District and is a joint effort of the Martha United Methodist Church and local volunteers. AZH built a raised bed garden using donated materials and plants. Every Wednesday morning I lead an activity related to the garden. Activities have included planting the garden, constructing a scarecrow, painting a sign for the garden and for each type of plant, and constructing trellises for pumpkins and watermelons.

We hosted a Fresh Air child from the Bronx, New York, earlier this month. Fresh Air is a non-profit organization that arranges for children from NYC to experience life with a family that lives in the country. Our "daughter" for the week had a blast swimming in the pond, hiking in the woods, chasing fireflies, and immersing herself in the natural world. She definitely plans to come back next year.

The summer camp started on June 22nd . While we've been disappointed by the low turnout—three to four kids each week, the kids who come are having a good time. Activities have included making vegetarian lasagna, picking blueberries, making fruit smoothies, learning about Native American culture, and swimming.

We continue to host weekly meditation and council circle. We recently expanded the time we spend on council circle from 30 minutes to an hour. We feel this change has allowed us to delve deeper into issues that arise. All are welcome to attend meditation, which takes place on Monday evenings from 7 pm-9 pm. Participants are also invited to our potluck dinner at 6 pm. Please email me at appzenhouse@gmail.com if you'd like to attend.

Our friend David reports that he is very happy with the raised bed garden that we set up for him in May. He says his vegetables are doing very well and that the fence has successfully kept out the critters. If you would like to donate money to pay for a raised bed garden for a person in need, please contact us at appzenhouse@gmail.com. We will build the bed, deliver it, and construct it on site. We will deliver the soil and the plants as well and provide gardening advice.

Sunny attended a week long workshop with Joanna Macy in May. Inspired by her work he conducted a Speak Your Peace program at Ahimsa Village that gave us all an introduction to her work. Fifteen people attended this program.

Finally, I have been blessed with the opportunity to assist with teaching a conflict resolution course to inmates at the Centre County Correctional Facility. The course was created by an exceptionally dedicated and courageous woman, Marie Hamilton, from a course designed by the Quakers. Marie’s work in the Pennsylvania prison system over the past 30 years has powerfully demonstrated that when prisoners are treated with respect and when they are taught conflict resolution skills, their lives can be radically transformed. In June I assisted Marie with teaching the course to ten male inmates. The men expressed sincere gratitude to Marie, another volunteer, and me at the conclusion of the course. In August I will be assisting Marie in teaching the course to a group of female inmates.

Warmly, Kelle Kersten, AZH Director

First Gardens to Gro Raised Bed Garden installed in State College

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 02:43:00 +0000

The Gardens-to-Gro program of the Appalachian Zen House delivers information and components for growing raised-bed gardens to impoverished and homebound people as a rural equivalent to community gardens. We installed our first raised bed garden in State College. The garden measures 4' x 8' and is made of locally harvested locust boards. Thanks to Rosalind McIntosh for donating the garden.

Raised Bed Garden

The Green Shop Grand Opening, Saturday June 19, 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Sun, 30 May 2010 01:40:00 +0000

We'll see you there!
Please click on image to enlarge it and on browser image to enlarge again.

Summer Events of the Local Fresh Food Alliance

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Fri, 28 May 2010 21:06:00 +0000

Associated with Transition Town: Bald Eagle Valley, Appalachian Zen House, Ahimsa Village Community, Deb's Flowers, School of Living.

Inquiries: phone Kelle, 814 355 0850 or Deb 814 353 1270.

Youth summer camp. Reconnecting youth with the earth, plants, animals and community.

Tuesdays 9 am to 4 pm, June 22 to August 24, 2010 (10 weeks).

At Ahimsa Village Community, 1½ miles north of Julian on Alt Rte 220.

Phone Kelle, 814 355 0850

Opening of The Green Shop, June 19, 2010.

½ mile south of the glider port on Alt Rte 220.

A community farm stand selling local home grown and made items.

Open Fridays and Saturdays 10 am to 3 pm.

Vendors selling fresh produce, plants, flowers, baked goods, and crafts wanted.

Teen Entrepreneurs welcome.

Monthly yard sales, on 1^st Saturday of the month selling recycled goods, starting July 3.

Phone Deb 814 353 1270

Sign painting party for the Green Shop and Demonstration Raised-Bed Gardens, June 6.

Phone Deb 814 353 1270

Weekly Gardening Demonstrations and Question & Answer Sessions

Saturdays at the Green Shop, TBA.

Phone Deb 814 353 1270

Raised-Bed Gardens are available for sale and for installation from The Green Shop.

Your donation of $250 will buy a garden including plants and ongoing gardening support for a low income or physically less able person.

Wild Food Walk with Deb on June 5 at the Woman’s Healing Workshop.

Phone 814 353 1270

Building a Chicken Tractor (a movable chicken coop using chickens to prepare and fertilize garden areas) —Demonstration Workshop.

In July, date TBA.

Phone Deb 814 353 1270

Wild Flower Arranging, in August, date TBA.

Phone Deb 814 353 1270

Fresh Food Pizzas Cooking Demonstration &
What To Do with Kale, Herbs, and Other Fresh Produce.

In September, date TBA.

Phone Deb 814 353 1270

Canning, Storing and Preserving Garden Produce

Workshop, October 16

Volunteer work or in exchange for produce or pay

is available to run the Shop, tend gardens, build raised-bed gardens, and produce items for sale.

Phone Kelle, 814 355 0850 or Deb 814 353 1270

Community Garden Plots

Available near Julian Woods Lane.

Phone Kelle 814 355 0850

Join Our Youth Summer Camp!

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:55:00 +0000

Please pass this information to anyone who may be interested.
Click the image to enlarge for reading, and again on the browser image!

Making a Lotus Throne

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Wed, 26 May 2010 18:50:00 +0000

At a recent working bee, Floating Lotus Zendo members, along with the universe, made some high-class cushions to offer newcomers and visitors a grand spot to meditate in Ahimsa’s yurt.

Thank you to Priscilla for the beautiful recycled material and to the Methodist Worry Busters who donated us perfectly matching old carpet, originally designated as mulch.

Thank you too to Kersey for the magnificent gong in the photo. Made of a recycled driving wheel and hub cap, with loving stroke of an off-cut it resounds more beautifully than a singing bowl!

Atop such thrones, it is now even more empowering each morning to chant the Zen Peacemakers’ “Gate of Sweet Nectar” liturgy offering a feast of food, of loving action, to satisfy the hungry hearts of ourselves and all beings. (Listen to Krishna Das' opening song!)

Instructions for making our simple meditation cushions.

Cut, with 5/8” seams included in these dimensions –two circles of strong fabric (such as upholstery cloth) 14.5” or so in diameter (we used the lid of a large pot as pattern.)
–a strip of cloth (this can be several pieces joined with triple sewn seams) 44” x 9.5” for knee-challenged sitters, 44” x 8.5”, or for most people 44” x 6.5”.
Hem the short ends of the strip with 1/2 “ turned back and sew twice. Attach 1” Velcro to these hems, one part on the outside fabric and one on the inside so they close into a flat loop. Do not attempt to sew sticky-backed Velcro onto the fabric as the glue used will gum up your sewing machine!
Sew the circles inside the flat loop with right sides of fabric together easing the circle to fit at the seam line.
Turn right side out and almost fill with pillow grade buckwheat hulls using a funnel. We used a 23 lb bag of hulls from Birkett Mills in Penn Yan, NY, $33 delivered, affordable but containing a little dust. The bag filled two normal sized cushions and one each of the larger sizes.
Carpet works fine for protecting ankles and knees.

It’s just that easy!

Being Touched by Our Grieving Family

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Tue, 25 May 2010 15:53:00 +0000

Last fall, two members of Appalachian Zen House trained as volunteer facilitators for fortnightly gatherings of families who have suffered a death. One in 20 children will lose a parent before age 18, we were told.

Families we facilitate have lost a mother, a father, pet, child, sibling, grandparent, uncle or aunt. A grandchildren of a solo-parenting grandmother has died. Deaths are by sudden accident, murder, long or short illness, or suicide.

Last meeting before the summer break, the families tied messages to their loved ones onto balloons that floated together up into the evening sky, and took home mosaic memory tiles they had decorated with shiny colored pieces. "I have spent hour after hour tending our garden this spring. My husband loved plants and I am closest to him there." "Pop just held my little girl for hours after I brought her home as a tiny prem baby."

Our facilitators' training was beautifully prepared and documented. It was powerful in touching painful losses in our own lives, and the sustaining resources that helped us to process and heal. We personally felt deeply the catharsis of sharing together our common feelings, remembering, tears, delights, and gratitude for the lives of those now gone and for the related practical activities in the circle.

Each evening, families arrive and we serve them a meal of pizza, salad and soda. Donated tickets to ball games, the skating rink, cinema, etc are distributed. Children then join their age group and parents go to their own circle. A round of sharing names, the nature of loss, and what is happening in our lives follows. Then the groups of children take up age appropriate activities together that are fun, creative, explore their feelings around their loss, prompt imaginative recreations, memories and questions, or they just play together. We finish with a everyone holding hands and families take home pizza bags and more donated gifts.

The relief for the older children is particularly evident at being in a group their own age where the social difficulty of death is held in common instead of feeling a reason for exclusion. The adults support each other in procedural and practical difficulties, children’s responses, anniversaries, and social reactions.

We are deeply grateful to witness the sharing, healing, and gratitude that these meetings facilitate for us all.

If you know a family near State College that may like to participate, please phone Kelle 814 355 0850.

Floating Lotus Zendo participates at a Rural Pennsylvanian United Methodist Church

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Mon, 24 May 2010 16:03:00 +0000

Some of the questions we were asked at Adult Sunday School were “What do you do to help someone when we would pray to God?” “How do you give suffering people hope in the life hereafter?” “Who gives a Buddhist teacher authority to teach?” “Is teaching meditation the same as teaching Buddhism?” The questions were challenging and significant.

The church atmosphere was lively and joyous with a strong social support network very evident. People smiled straight into our eyes. We were welcomed by people and children from different ethnic groups in an area where very few people of non-European origin reside. Before us a local Republican congressman spoke on the strong presence and practice of Christianity in government in DC.

It was a privilege as Buddhists to be asked to speak with a Christian congregation. The pastor told us that the congregation regularly does 10 minutes contemplation akin to meditation and offers yoga classes. He also expressed awareness of the division from non-Christians that Christian language can sometimes seem to create. He suggested that other Methodist Churches would like to have similar conversations with us.

We offer our appreciation for this very happy meeting.

The Local Fresh Food Alliance Workshop Builds a Demonstration Garden on Alt Rte 220

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Sun, 23 May 2010 19:42:00 +0000

Under an unsettled sky we built our demonstration raised-bed vegetable garden at Julian Woods Lane on May 22. Rain kindly blessed our efforts with deep watering of the newly planted seedlings immediately after we punched the final staple holding the protective netting in place.

The garden is to encourage visitors to the nearby Green Shop† (opening the last weekend of June) to grow their own gardens even when only apparently small or unsuitable ground surface is available.

Currently many of us drive 20 or more miles for the nearest food in this rural area. As energy costs rise, and economic instability and unemployment continues, The Local Fresh Food Alliance of gardeners are offering their skills to support a secure supply of nutritious local food for everyone in our community. We are told that 1 in 8 residents of PA and 1 in 5 children in the US has inadequate nutrition (see Jeff Bridges and Bernie Glassman dialogue.) The Demonstration Garden and The Green Shop are activities of the Alliance. Low-income people will be employed to work in gardening, production, and the Shop.

Our appreciation to Katherine for plants, Chuck, John, and Bob for materials, tools and knowledge, Bob for trucking compost, Robert for preparing the site and printing fliers, Deb for plants and organization, Bill, Will, Mike, Josh, Bill, Ed and Mary for contributing, all the other encouraging friends who stopped by, the life forms our garden replaces, the plants themselves, the tools and materials, those whose knowledge of gardening that we use,…

…and particularly to those who will continue to water and enjoy the garden, green and beautiful! Please pick outside leaves of lettuce etc. to allow the plants to continue growing.

“How to Make and Grow a Raised-Bed Garden” is posted here in printable form. To read this flier, please click on it once, and then again when it opens in your browser. Thank you!

† The Green Shop is a market for the community to buy and sell their produce, plants, flowers, baked goods, crafts, products of Youth Entrepreneurs, and yard sale items. Surplus fresh food will be donated to local food pantries and soup kitchens. Vendors wanted!

One by One - 225 Mattresses

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Sat, 22 May 2010 14:25:00 +0000

We could have worked out at the gym. But no!

Members of Floating Lotus Zendo sweated it out with fellow Christians to load 225 lively and slightly dusty mattresses for transport from a college residential hall to Interfaith Mission's recycled furniture and appliances warehouse.

The mattresses are now available for low income residents of Centre County like the father who recently and suddenly became a solo parent to his two young sons. The boys will no longer have to sleep on the floor in their strange new situation.

Floating Lotus Zendo is the first Buddhist congregation in the 40-year history of the Interfaith Mission, a group of churches, synagogues, and now a zendo, that provides helping hands and essential services (financial assistance for emergency rental, transportation, utility and heating, and money management services) to ourselves and our neighbors in emergencies.

It was a great morning's work and group of helpers. We were happy and grateful to be able contribute in a small way.

"Speak Your Peace!" Event based on the Work of Joanna Macy

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Wed, 19 May 2010 16:09:00 +0000

Taking Heart in Tough Times - An interactive workshop.

Are you feeling a spiritual void and frustrated and sad about social injustice, pollution, and lack of integrity? Sunny Rehler, who has just returned from an intensive training with Joanna Macy, will offer ways to experience moving from despair to empowerment ! There will be opportunities to speak from the heart, meditate, sing, and participate in litugy. Further background information can be found at www.joannamacy.net

Sunday evening, May 23, 7:00 PM to 9:30 PM.

At Ahimsa Village, 4022 S. Eagle Valley Rd., Julian, PA

RSVP to bob@ahimsavillage.org, 814-355-0850 if you plan to join us.

Donations are welcomed.

Opening mid-June our community Green Shop!

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Wed, 19 May 2010 14:39:00 +0000

Our Local Fresh Food Alliance project is opening in mid-June The Green Shop, a farm stand on Rte 220 Alt near the glider port. It serves as a community outlet for local produce, plants, flowers, crafts, baked goods, products of Teen Entrepreneurs, and as a yard sale. Vendors and customers wanted!

Surplus produce is donated to local food banks, shelters, and soup kitchens.

Voluntary work is available, and for unemployed persons, there is work in exchange for produce or pay.

Next to the Green Shop is our 8' x 4' demonstration raised-bed garden, showing how much produce can be grown in a small closely planted area on top of any surface. The free demonstration workshop building this garden happens this Saturday, May 22, 1 to 3 pm. Please phone Deb 814 353 1270.

These projects are part of Appalachian Zen House's Local Fresh Food Alliance activities.

We are looking for a 2010 Teen Summer Camp Assistant!

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Wed, 19 May 2010 14:04:00 +0000

Is this for you? Examples of blogs on our 2009 camp here and more.

To enlarge this image click on it. Thank you!

Being a Worry Buster – Neighbors Helping Neighbors

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Mon, 17 May 2010 16:29:00 +0000

Who said “Hey! Isn’t this just the best thing we’ve done in a while?”

Members of Appalachian Zen House joined a dozen members of Martha and Julian United Methodist Churches for a morning of work for neighbors who had requested assistance - weeding a steep bank and covering it with a mulch with strong whisky aroma, shifting furniture, using donated carpet to mulch a nursery of young trees intended for the ball park, painting shutters, and cleaning up the community garden.

We enjoyed:

meeting new delightful neighbors (in addition our current door knocking activities in the local trailer parks, pubs, and other local venues, about our Local Fresh Food Alliance)
a wonderful church breakfast of eggs, toast, crispy bacon, muffins, fruit and coffee,
learning about local activities and resources eg where cheap clean compost is available,
receiving a luminous spring green Worry Busters T-shirt each,
being donated a strip of carpet to make floor mats for our camp and for meditation,
promoting face-to-face our teen summer camp, and Local Fresh Food Alliance,
being able to volunteer to give government-supported free summer lunches to children and teens at a nearby trailer park,
learning that the only fresh vegetables the kids eat are carrots, cucumbers, and celery,
meeting the minister who runs four of the local rural churches in series each Sunday.

We didn’t enjoy initially:

an encounter with poison ivy – but the outcome was less itchy than expected.

Certainly! We will be returning to bust worries with our Methodist neighbors again in the fall.

Launching "The Local Fresh Food Alliance" - Bald Eagle Valley

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:38:00 +0000

It is about looking at who we are, our talents, delights, and experience, and matching it with the need at this time and place.

Or as Roshi Bernie Glassman says, "Look in the refrigerator to find how to cook the meal!" (Or perhaps look out the back door if you have come to our "How to Make and Grow Your Own Raised-Bed Vegetable Garden" free demonstration workshop on Saturday May 22, 2010!)

So we take great pleasure in launching for the enjoyment of many --

To view larger image, click on it once here, and again in the browser view.

Appalachian Zen House donates our first garden

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:02:00 +0000

An enjoyable morning was spent by members of Floating Lotus Zendo and The Local Fresh Food Alliance as they constructed a raised bed garden at a trailer park in State College and filled it with a truck load of rich black gold (compost) ready for planting.

We are hoping this garden will serve to inspire neighbors and visitors to grow their own fresh delicious free vegetables stored at peak condition and nutrition not in a refrigerator but right outside the back door.

Make and Grow Your Own Raised-Bed Vegetable Garden

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Thu, 13 May 2010 01:00:00 +0000

To view complete image, click on it once here, and again in the browser view.

Restoring Depleted Lands

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 19:17:00 +0000

Unexpected earth lessons from a New Zealand trip through suburbia.

Suburban scapes. Once again I am taking a long bus ride through a strange landscape and wondering why. Opposite, a serene giant of a Samoan man with traditionally tattooed arms, an airport worker’s shirt, and the deeply compassionate, inward-focused expression of a beautiful ancient god, sits motionless throughout. It is the South Pacific.

I am traveling up the Hutt Valley in Wellington New Zealand to a camp on climate change. From across the harbor before I started out I could see that the long broad valley was shrouded in cloud and a blustery cold wind blows. The light is bright, colors harsh. People are a mix of Maori, Pakeha (European origin), Asians and Pacific Islanders.

I alight and from memory of the google directions start walking through low, small wooden houses. They are shabby, seemingly temporary. Each perches on a small plot of gardenless lawn dotted with cars, fences graphited. Twenty minutes later it is clear that the directions were wrong. Nobody is around to ask.

Climate change camp. Suddenly I am enveloped in the darkness of a patch of dense native forest. There are some sizeable trees. Damp earth smell of New Zealand “bush” permeates. Emerging I walk along a high river-flood embankment, and sight an encampment of about 50 small and a few larger tents including a North American teepee.

I sit outside a tent containing 20 or so people dressed in woolen hats, parkas, tattooed, ring-nosed, listening intently to a slowly developing discussion in the local nasal twang on restoring New Zealand’s severely depleted landscape. It is fascinating.

* * * * *

I learned early about depletion. As a child I spent my weekends with the other children climbing the steep hillsides above our village, grassy slopes ridged and cropped close by sheep. Having avoided annoyed farmers, their dogs, and dangerous bulls, we got lost, fell in bogs, and mist descended down the few wire fences. There were thunder storms, rain squalls in gale-force winds, rainbows, and fantastic views of farmed, often sun-bleached, hills and valleys arrayed in serried ranks to ocean on both sides.

Once we rested in a high area dotted with strange mounds covered with wiry dry growth. I parted the covering on one mound and to my astonishment discovered a huge, slowly decaying stump of tree underneath. For a second the whole landscape was covered in towering forest filled with melodious native birds—then back to mountains scrubbed clean and bare by the settlers in this once densely forested land of new opportunity. Wow! What have we done?

* * * * *

This talk described it. We have removed the trees, channeled the rivers, washed away the soil, drained the swamps, poisoned the aquifers, destroyed the fertility. And, in a hundred years or so, just all over the globe.

A way to restoration? Two rangy, bare-foot young speakers were describing an agriculture different from sheep, dairy, and cattle farming. It yields, they said, 7 times the tons of food per hectare of land, protects soil, retains water even with low rainfall, and builds fertility. It is all about allowing water to work for us.

We start by growing 3 foot high weeds on the tops of hills to add nutrients to the descending water, and by not draining the cleansing, nutrient-rich swamps. When rivers are not channeled by concrete and boulders and the banks are shaded by plant growth, 90% of the water permeates the mossy soil on either side keeping the landscape moist for food plants. Loss of soil and water out to sea in huge damaging floods is greatly reduced.

Soil, nutrients and moisture are retained by growing fruit-bearing trees. These are under-layered with berry bushes and interspersed with open patches of vegetables. Placing barriers of organic debris like logs of punga (tree ferns) on hill slopes rapidly builds soil and retains water to create paddy fields growing water vegetables, rice and fish. Chickens and ducks live naturally in such terrain without damaging it.

The mosaic of varying water paths, soil, sun, wind, steepness, etc within a landscape is carefully studied to choose appropriately different plants and management. The method has various names—terraquaculture, natural farming, and others — and its modern emergence involves a New Zealand developer of permaculture, Haikai Tane. He has studied examples of traditional terraquaculture in China, India, and South East Asia.

This new way is old. Yes, it is an ancient Asian-Pacific farming method used over several millennia. It is intensive in labor and highly productive. In some places in Asia, individuals do not own continuous land but pieces located in different kinds of terrains, each producing different foods. The mayor gets the land at the bottom of the mountain so he feels the effect of his regulation of everyone else’s use above. So Dion told us.

Vigilance needed. After a young woman kindly suggests that I not use my camera, I briefly join a meeting in another tent on my rights should I be stopped or arrested by police for taking action on climate change.

Local evidence of depletion and restoration. In heavy rain and with poncho flying, I am shown the role of planted willow trees on the riverbank. Soil re-establishes by itself, then nitrogen-fixing weeds, and eventually native plants as birds bring seeds. The difference in retention of water and fertility was marked between the bulldozed, boulder-lined and lawn-topped embankments and the tree-clad, mossy outcrops starting to project naturally into the riverbed.

"Purist" versus "realist" conflict. A passionate verbal fight breaks out. The purists (romantics says Dion) want to preserve our ~2,500 very slowly regenerating native plants (almost none of which produce human food) along with their associated culture and sacredness. The realists see that selection from the non-native 40,000 to 50,000 plants already introduced to New Zealand, could be helpful in establishing food-bearing fertility to feed our human population on land destroyed by deforestation and chemical farming. These viewpoints do not seem mutually exclusive to me.

Action! Now, we need real working demonstration farms and statistics so that the many can experience and learn the practicalities of growing food this way, and take it up.

Could terraquaculture be a possibility for reviving productivity of depleted land near you?

2010 Garden Project for Green Appalachia

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:12:00 +0000

Click on flier to make larger.

If you would like to help organize this project by being on the committee, mentoring, or running workshops, please email appzenhouse@gmail.com.

At the End of the Earth

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:09:00 +0000

The climate. I am walking on earth, this island, this green and blue land of white, bright clouds in the Pacific Ocean. It is called New Zealand. The strong gusts of wind meet nothing between us and the Antarctic continent except a few thousand icebergs breaking off and melting into the too warm sea.

It is a raw place, bracing, and for the most part has its unique, ancient biological complexity devastated and a history of human exploitation. It breeds sturdy, perhaps dissatisfied, people.

Gentleness, intelligence, reverence, curiosity, stillness and openness, are they here? Are they here in me in these buffeting streams of air rendered visible by straining plants, and tui birds tossed wildly across the hill slopes? (Perhaps it is as exhilarating for them as for me?) This old house still slams and creaks in every blast.

Beneath the elemental boisterousness, settling deeper, loving what is, what do we need? How do I receive and offer life here in this turmoil?

Food and climate change. Yesterday I went to a talk on food and climate change. It turned out to be from a vegetarian society. The news delivered was very bad. The tipping point into destruction of the planetary biosphere is only two or three years away. Our only chance is to eliminate eating meat along with the associated industries. These industries produce methane, a worse offender than carbon dioxide and greater than 50% of the cause of climate change—more than transport, industry, and energy production combined. But unlike CO₂, methane can be removed quickly from the atmosphere (if we stop producing it before the ice caps melt.) Our health would improve along with the planetary biosphere. So were we told.

The "violent weapon of the table fork" that Ghandi talks about, we have turned on our own body, our earth.

Eating is an elemental activity. It is deeply linked to survival, and emotionally and carnally conditioned far beyond the logic of staying alive and well. As any of us can attest who have tried to change: our tastes; what we believe nourishes us and our families; our use of food as comfort; what we know how to cook; religious views on eating; expression of wealth, culture, or education through food; and our response to eye and nose stimulation of salivation, these are matters not lightly susceptible. And that is before the interconnection of agro-business and government can be teased apart.

Civilizations appear to have gone extinct in the past from cutting down the last tree, or refusing to eat available foods associated with an “inferior culture.”^*

If the facts presented are true, the task to save ourselves, let alone the planet, seems hopeless.

Prophets proclaim the justice of our demise arising from our sinful, wanton greed. (Does it help that some of us gain superiority by denying food as we all go down together?) Or is our greed innocent and ingenuous? Yet even without invoking the prophets of doom, indeed we are slow to see the inexorable relation of cause and effect, one bite after another. Wake up!

Despair sets in. How do we live our lives knowing that every mouthful brings exponential death and suffering in the short term? What is worth doing, when we are ending every thing we value so very soon?

Death. Now I am on familiar ground. “Death is certain” is the most basic of meditations. A given in my life now is that we can be free within our experiences of the circumstances of our lives, and free in our response to them. My vow is to manifest the oneness, wholeness, the interconnection of us all moment by moment in all that vividly arises now. This means in personal, political, planetary, and social realms whether we are living or dying.

Whether I personally die tonight or in five years from a bee sting allergy, global warming, a heart attack, a bus, being shot, nuclear war, infection from a tick bite, or a meteor from outer space, what is most valuable is being present with an open heart and mind to all I encounter and to express healing action (towards that which never was broken) as best I can.

Gratitude. I am grateful for this bite of food, for my life, for the innumerable gifts and sacrifices of many. I chew and swallow with attention, reverence, and knowledge, to the best of my ability. And with each breath, and with all my energy, I vow to give back the love and life I have received from you, by acting on behalf of all beings without discrimination. And by eating oryoki (just enough.)

Please, not separate from these turbulent winds of change, will you rest and drink this cup of tea with me?

^*Easter Island and Greenland, as described by Jared Diamond in Collapse.

Green Buddhism Talk, December 11

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:54:00 +0000

This is an opportunity not to be missed!

Our Appalachian Zen House Founder, Steve Kanji Ruhl will be sharing his years of study and experience of Green Buddhism in the Appalachian Zen House's Green Appalachia Program and Ahimsa Village's Sustainability Series.

Click on flier to make larger. And again to read easily.

If you cannot view this flier please go to: http://appalachianzenhouse.org/images/green-buddhism-talk.jpg

On zazen being not optional...

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:11:00 +0000

I gasp at the chill air hitting my lungs, my cheeks, as I emerge through the low door of the yurt. At my feet black walnut casings have been mounded by a frantic squirrel on grass now crisply whitened. Early morning sun softens a pale valley sky, the rooster crows. I stop under the maple tree to marvel at fallen leaves, edges and veins of brilliant red fingers most delicately frosted with sparkling white.

Inside the farmhouse cast-in-iron moose, lumberjacks, hemlock tree, fox and flying geese radiate soft warmth. Through the crack in the wood stove red flames glimmer on the moose’s shoulder. The sounding of the singing bowl fades through my body in long resonating curves. Crows caw alternating with a distant rooster. Cat licks my fingers. Lightness in, releasing outwards of nothing. The morning being breathed…

Navigating Abundance, November 15

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:06:00 +0000

This contemplative journey is part of our developing Green Appalachia Eco-Tours project, promoting mindful awareness of the natural world in this time of environmental crisis.

Click on flier to make larger.

Here is an opportunity to take another brief journey of awakening. (A description of our earlier one at Black Moshannon State Park is in the previous blog.)

We will gather in a box store's eatery taking with us no money, cell phones, or ipods. After an introduction and guidance on "Not Knowing and Bearing Witness" we will spend time in the store opening our awareness and experiencing directly our own responses to what attracts us. We let go of all thoughts of purchasing anything for ourselves as this would interfere with our direct seeing.

We will then reassemble to share our experiences with each other and start to shape any personal action that may arise from this time. I did this journey last night and was very surprised by what I encountered!

After Sunday I recommend viewing the video http://www.storyofstuff.com/ to see another view on the issue of consumption, and to add to processing of your experience. If you have already seen this video, please put memory of its presentation aside during your journey of discovery at the box store.

If you cannot view this flier go to: http://appalachianzenhouse.org/images/mallmindfulness.jpg

Black Moshannon Whole Earth Body/Mind Encounter, October 25, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:13:00 +0000

This contemplative hike is part of our developing Green Appalachia Eco-Tours project, promoting mindful awareness of the natural world in this time of environmental crisis.

We start around a campfire at Ahimsa Village on a cool morning. Sitting feeling earth holding us, sky opening above, forest around, and, with alert, soft, wide-open senses, the sounds, smells, and air on our skin. A few more sense- and awareness-opening activities and we were away to Black Moshannon State Park. “Moose Creek” it means, and black from the tannin colored waters, or perhaps the darkness underneath the dense foliage of original hemlocks and white pines lumbered long ago, then devastated by fire.

The trail. Using a soft-focused seeing that brings the world dynamically alive and fresh, we walk on a narrow trail in a small pretty valley. It lies between ancient mountains reputed to be higher than the Himalayas once, but now worn way down. The route is undoubtedly an old Native American trail.

A full stream flows with assurance, black with tannins, slightly flooded, and with shining fast moving bubbles. It is edged with rhododendrons whose trunks bow, then reach, in vivid rhythmic curves seeking light beneath second growth of hemlocks, oak and birch. Fallen leaves and toadstools dot luminous green moss. Original growth has left an occasional large, colorful, and slow-rotting stump.

Being still. We come upon a pool in which bubbles break forth from a white sand bottom, a natural spring that rushes through mossy rocks to the creek. There are strangely no mayfly or even caddisfly larvae under the rocks, but the water temperature does feel warmer than the main creek. Here we go to separate places that call us, and sit waiting for the landscape, the families of trees, the fold of the mountains, the sky, to accept us, before investigated our space with each of our senses. Returning we share our perceptions, many in common. The moving threads of shining fine cobwebs in the breeze; the complex and beautiful spreading of plant life arrayed in deference to the sun, each in its own delicate form accommodating each other; bird song…

A steady hike getting to know each other, looking for animal, insect and bird life, noting the scents, and sounds, brings us to a large rock gently sloping to the stream. It is a perfect spot for sharing a lunch of eggs, homemade bread and apples in the sun. We share information too on how ecosystems, trees, and birds, support, protect and feed each other in the natural cycles.

Then onward, quietly, using the Native American silent fox walk, now through more recent forest as indicated by many young pine trees. It is Sunday when hunting is banded. But still the shots ring out. We blow a shrill whistle and they cease, at least for a while.

Expressing stillness. Again we find separated spaces. This time, on the theme “all is one,” we draw, photograph and write our connection. (How could we do otherwise?) The sun is low and reflecting very brightly. A shape depicted by several of us is a horizontal circle with a growing form emerging from the center.

weeds sparkle,

river sparkles,

leaves sparkle,

the bare twigs shine,

giving back

the one light enfolding.

On our way back we stop to investigate a recent beaver dam. The leaves are still green on the woven branches and teeth marks are evident on nearby, nipped-off shrubs. A beaver slide traverses the slope to the still, reflecting water, but no animals appear as we wait silently. A beautiful walking stick, stripped of bark and marked all over with beaver teeth presents itself lying across the dam however.

We end around a small fire with a sage smudging to enhance and transform our energies, and a circle of appreciation for the rich and beautiful day together. We honor the elements of earth, air, fire, and water; those who had gone before (including the Civilian Conservation Corps that, during the Depression, replanted the forest we now see); and those who come after us to take up the consequences of how we live our lives. We vow that such wilderness experience will be available to our great-grandchildren.

Dedication. Later, sadly, we learned that the day before our hike, a young woman out hunting had been killed by being shot in the chest in Black Moshannon Forest Park. She was apparently the primary witness in a pending rape trial. We offer our deepest sympathies to her family and community and to all those whose lives have been thus broken.

May all beings in distress experience the healing power of our interconnection (as we did in wilderness that day) to bring peace and gratitude into all the activities of our lives!

Please join us on our next mindful awareness Green Appalachia hike! It may well be to the shopping mall. Phone 610 833 8027 if you are interested.

AZH leaders "fascinate" at an ecumenical conference on climate change

noreply@blogger.com (Appalachian Zen House) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:28:00 +0000

In Pennsylvania's Centre Daily Times October, 31, 2009 Rev. Thomazine Shanahan writes in the

Clergy Column

““Protecting the planet and all of life is a transcendent responsibility—for both the scientists who study it and those of religious faith who are able to express its spiritual importance.”— E.O. Wilson, Harvard biologist and naturalist.

Earlier this month, at the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center on Penn State’s campus, the university’s Rock Ethics Institute acted as a bridge between the communities of science and faith as it sponsored a two-day free-to-the-public conference on “Stewardship or Sacrifice?: Religion and the Ethics of Climate Change.”

...The two days overflowed with fascinating participants. Zen Buddhists talked about the interconnectedness of all things. So did the climate scientist who described global impacts of climate change. One panel session featured Pennsylvania churches and synagogues responding to climate change: local initiatives, international ethical dimensions. Workshops concentrated on practical responses...."