The Green Pen

Recycled Music: Food for the Soul

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Sun, 26 May 2013 18:38:00 +0000

Music is everywhere – from landfills, to the hearts of children, to concert halls. It’s in the soul of humanity, the soul of nature. Everywhere in all things. See this video from Paraguay, and please share with children and others who appreciate the pervasiveness and power of music.

Thanks to my friend Mike M. for sending it.

And then there is the Academy Award-nominated documentary Waste Land.

I am reminded of William McDonough and Michael Braungart's book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, and their equation, Waste=Food. Based on the landfill films, I would say that this includes food for the soul.

Rays of the Dawn

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Fri, 17 May 2013 23:06:00 +0000

I have written before about this time of great, evolutionary transformation that we are in as a species, as a planet. As I wrote last July:

“It is truly an epochal time in human history …. Some people despair that the world is just as violent and venal as in the ‘60s when the dawn of the new age was heralded, and, for sure, the dark will not yield (is not yielding) willingly to the light. But the sun is coming; it is inexorable. … [I]f we climb up to the top of the hill and look real carefully out across the plain, we can just barely see the first rays peeping out ….”

Meaning of Peace Corps

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:34:00 +0000

Meleia Egger (Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi, 2007-2009) wrote this poem two years ago on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps. It brought tears to my eyes and made me almost want to sign up again – almost. Here’s what she says about it:

I wrote this poem in summer of 2011 in honor of the 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps when I was still a Peace Corps Recruiter. Although I wrote it for recruitment, I have found that it tends to resonate strongly with Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) and the whole Peace Corps family. I hope it speaks to YOU!

It definitely resonates with this RPCV (Nigeria, 1966-68). And it's true. Peace Corps is a two-year tour that blesses and lasts a lifetime.

NATO: Is It Obsolete?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Fri, 03 May 2013 19:27:00 +0000

Old ways, institutions, and relationships are crumbling to make way for the new. I have many personal acquaintances, colleagues, friends, and family who are experiencing, right now, major transitional events – marital crises, budding romances, health crises, new births, job losses, career launches, even death.

Similarly, businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations – even whole governmental and economic institutions – are in crisis, sensing the attendant dangers and seeking the attendant opportunities. Witness, for example, the Republican Party in the United States, which, in its existential angst since the last election, has been taking a serious look at itself and what (and whom) it stands for. And, if the Democratic Party, in smugness about what its arch rival is going through, fails to undertake its own self-reflection, it does so at its own peril.

And so we come to NATO.
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Baseball and the National Anthem

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:54:00 +0000

Last night I attended a baseball game at AT&T Park, where the San Francisco Giants hosted the Arizona Diamondbacks. A local band (I don’t remember who it was) had the honor of lining up behind second base before the start of the game and playing the national anthem.

Standing with the crowd, I felt moved. I even felt moved that I felt moved – to stand in reverence, to take off my hat, and, as the music progressed, even to sing along. First mouthing the words silently, then voicing them quietly, then closing my eyes and belting them out. (Not too badly, either, I must admit.) I noticed that, as the music played on, more and more people around me and around the stadium were joining in.
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A Chance Encounter and Very Special Gift

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 03:48:00 +0000

I don’t know what to say; feel like crying; tears welling as I write.

It’s October 29. The year is 2012. It is said that there are no coincidences, and I believe it. It is said that we can never know the chain of cause-and-effect consequences of any action we take or don’t take, big or small, and I believe it. It is even said that there is no such thing as cause and effect, anyway, since that implies time and time is but an illusion; that there is only relationship; and I can believe that, too. It is said that we encounter angels in our lives every day if we would but be present and notice them. And I definitely believe that, as well, for today I met one.

I’m sitting at a table on the patio outside the Starbuck’s in Big Bear Lake, California, nursing a large medium roast coffee as I read friend Sharon’s just published book. A couple of young men sit nearby, chatting. A homeless man walks up and stands to the side, muttering like he wants to start a conversation. And most likely panhandle, I figure. The other two young men get up and sort of drift away. My first reaction is to focus on my book, pretend I don’t hear or see, and hope he gives up and wanders away to seek his fortune elsewhere.
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The Veil of Time: A Remebrance of Today

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 01:12:00 +0000

It's a funny thing about time and remembrances. Some say that the arrow of time is an illusion, that all is happening simultaneously in some multidimensional universe and that remembrances are leaks across the veil between them. For Marcel Proust, the taste of a small teacake, une petite madeleine, opened in the veil a floodgate of memories that then filled his seven-volume opus, A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. For me, today, it was an obituary that transported me suddenly through such a hole to six years ago to the day.
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"Innocents" Abroad?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 23:21:00 +0000

As usual, Robert Koehler perceives and tells the truth that lies (Or is it “lays”? I can’t really ever remember how it goes. Actually, though, “lies” works for its ironic double entendre.) behind our so-called “news” media, our foreign policy, and, basically, our culture, which, for all its positive values and strengths, nevertheless so persistently and eagerly, like those three monkeys, covers its eyes, ears, and mouth; closes its heart and mind; and opens its wallet to the mongering of hate and fear.

A Choice to Be Peace Every Day

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 17:53:00 +0000

Furthering the conversation in the comments on my previous post about Desert Silence on the International Day of Peace, I want to suggest that it's not a case of peace one day vs. peace every day. Rather, as usual, it's a both-and situation.
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Desert Silence on the International Day of Peace 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 23:51:00 +0000

Friday, September 21, is the International Day of Peace. On that day each year, people all over the world observe a moment of silence at noon (local time wherever they are). See the Facebook Events invitation if you'd like to register your intention to join in, or just do it.

It's very meaningful for me this year in particular in that, at that very moment, noon Pacific Daylight Time, I'll be crossing the Tehachapis (mountain range east of Bakersfield) and entering the Mojave Desert on the way to Joshua Tree for Part 2 of the Nine Gates Mystery School course I'm enrolled in.
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Dawning of the Age of Aquarius

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 19:00:00 +0000

A friend mentioned in a recent email that this is a time of “transmutation” and the move to a “5th dimension” of being.

Well, that got me into a chain of free association …. And, revealing my age, I thought of the pop group The Fifth Dimension of the 1960s and their hit “The Age of Aquarius”, from the show “Hair” -- and of the age that we are in today.
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Green Phoenix - Models for a Culture of Peace

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 19:46:00 +0000

Although I am not likely to be able to go to the Green Phoenix Congress in Switzerland this October 24-28, just knowing that this type of thing is going on gives me so much hope and excitement about the emergence of a culture of peace. Like the Occupy Movement (however that may continue to organically evolve), the Green Phoenix Congress provides amazing evidence of that self-organizing, co-creative process.

The imaginal cells of a culture of peace are effervescing all over the world, and the human social organization is metamorphosing -- as it must.

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Balance in Bali

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Bali is all about balance – of good and bad, male and female, pure and impure, sacred and profane, light and dark, life and death, sekala and niskala. Eagle and Condor. This I learned on a recent three-week journey to that small Indonesian island in the Indian Ocean.

The Balinese belief system, a mixture of Hindu and indigenous traditions that go back thousands of years, recognizes that the world we experience is a product of the interaction of sekala and niskala. Sekala is the surface, external, material aspects of the world. Niskala is the meaning, spirit, or essential life force underlying what we can see and touch.
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Wisdomkeepers of Native America

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 19:00:00 +0000

I recently read a book first published in 1990 called Wisdomkeepers: Meetings with Native American Spiritual Elders. The authors, journalists Harvey Arden and Steve Wall, chronicle in text and beautiful photographs their journey to “the land of the Wisdomkeepers, which lies “[j]ust off the map, beyond the Interstates, out past the power lines and the shopping malls, up that little side road without a sign on it … .”
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An Epochal Moment: Eagle and Condor Fly Together

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 21:05:00 +0000

People in the United States and around the world are experiencing a period of change of historic magnitude. It is an epochal moment, as worldviews shift from separateness, fear, and security through competitive dominance and win-lose violence to oneness, hope, and security through cooperative interdependence and win-win peace.

It is a time of breakdown and breakthrough. It is a time in which economic, social, political and other human systems created out of a culture of violence are, at last, increasingly being recognized as just not working any more. It is a time in which those systems are necessarily giving way to new systems based on a very different view of reality, a culture of peace. It is a time in which the eagle and the condor are learning to fly together once again.
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Hanging On and Hanging In There

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:38:00 +0000

There is much news almost every day about the old order hanging on for dear life by going to greater and greater extremes in mongering fear and, hence, the critical need for even more military interventions, securing of the borders, secret drone assassinations, internet censorship, military arrest and trial for U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, increased authority for domestic surveillance, and so on. A friend of mine, upon reading yet another such news item, asked in desperation, "How can we look at this constructively?"
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Presidential Politics 2012 #2 - Values, Principles, and Occupy

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 20:29:00 +0000

My initial post on this topic called for the emergence in this presidential election cycle of an alliance of inclusivity as an alternative to the existing or potentially expanded array of divisive political parties. I concluded by noting that "the platform of such an alliance would value and give top priority to the common good."

But what does that mean? What would the platform of such an alliance look like?
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Presidential Politics 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:37:00 +0000

This could be an interesting year, to say the least. I would be very surprised if it remains a two-party race. It seems there is enough discontent all across the political spectrum to warrant 3rd-party, 4th-party, and independent ventures. I myself am at the point of fantasizing about the emergence not of yet another nth party but of an alliance.
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Thoughts on the Keystone Tar Sands Pipeline

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:30:00 +0000

The president is faced with making a decision on the Keystone Tar Sands Pipeline. Whether that is to be in two months by the current president or in 2013 by whatever president, let’s work to have that decision be one of denying the permit. Our strategy can't be one of just saying no, however. That strategy didn’t work for Nancy Reagan, and it wouldn’t work here, either. More effective will be building alliances in the private sector to develop 21st Century alternative opportunities for both industry and the unions that have longer term prospects than hanging on desperately to short-term, 20th Century jobs.
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Art and Peace

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:06:00 +0000

Art has everything to do about peacebuilding as we shift to a culture of peace. We are on the threshold (actually already in the midst) of a major transformation in human consciousness and, consequently, our concepts and systems of how we organize ourselves as a society, everywhere on the planet, is in transition to keep up with that change in consciousness.
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Occupy the 100%

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:47:00 +0000

Posing enemies does not work. Nor is it consistent with the new way of thinking and acting that I've understood to be the intent of Occupy. At least, that is what has excited me about Occupy -- it's an experiment in putting into practice some of the concepts of a culture of peace, a culture of caring, compassion, mutual respect and support, and, yes, love. That means all those things for 100%, not just the 99% against the 1%. We are all in this together, and we need everyone to be included.
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Rebuild the Dream -- Of Symptoms and Disease

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 18:55:00 +0000

Rebuild the Dream is a movement to recapture the essence of America's progressive values. They offer a program of "10 critical steps to get our economy back on track." On the one hand, the 10 steps are very sensible proposals to bandage many of our social, economic, and poliltical ills. And I support them.

On the other hand, the 10 steps are just that, 10 unrelated policy prescriptions, each targeting a distinct ill. While we must apply such bandages to stop the patient's hemorrhaging, unless we also invest time, energy, and resources in curing the disease at the root of all of them, new symptoms will continue to pop up hemorrhaging, and we will be forever seeking new bandages to apply.
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"World peace could be closer than we think." Could it really??

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:29:00 +0000

Last week, some friends participated in an email exchange prompted by an article in the current issue of Foreign Policy in which American University Professor Joshua Goldstein provides data to support his title,“World peace could be closer than you think.” But is it really?
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Heads in the Sand Get Drowned

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:20:00 +0000

Two items in the New York Times yesterday and today are further examples of the increasingly egregious greed-based mindset that is stretching the income-distribution gap in this country to the breaking point.
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Peace Policy: A Matter of the Heart

noreply@blogger.com (Mike (The Green Pen)) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:34:00 +0000

Last week, on August 7, on the occasion of the 66th birthday of the age of nuclear warfare, Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio spoke in Bangor, Washington, at the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action. His speech, as always, was a mixture of inspiration and policy prescription. And it reminded me of why I have been enthralled with the man and what he stands and fights for ever since I first heard him speak, in November 2002 in Palo Alto, California.

Kucinich’s citing of the human heart as the place where war and death occur and where peace and life begin is beautifully poetic – and absolutely true. After that beginning and before returning briefly to the heart at the end, he recites with passion a laundry list of policy actions governments (mostly the U.S.) can and should take to eliminate the nuclear threat and generally move us forward toward a world of justice and human rights, a world of peace. Also absolutely true. BUT...
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