These days I’m living with my head in the clouds–almost literally. I am spending the month of February in Lago de Atitlán, Guatemala, a huge volcano-ringed lake so situation in the Mayan highlands that sometimes the airborne moisture gently clusters together and forms clouds around the mountain peaks just up the path from my casita. This, I learned when I first lived here in 2007, is what is known as a cloud forest–a phenomenon every bit as enchanting as the name implies.

And so I was fascinated when I heard about cummulus, a recent exhibition in Paris of gigantic crocheted clouds by the Argentine artist and architect Ciro Najle. Organized by Le Laboratoire (an experimental science/art center) and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, cummulus was the visual, three-dimensional outgrowth of Najle’s three years of work with scientists, engineers and water experts to design fog-collecting nets for the capture of fresh water in the Atacama desert region of Chile.

Kat Austen, the editor of New Scientist’s CultureLab blog, described the exhibition this way:

Lit from within and above, the swaths of crocheted white wool hang from the ceiling to just half a metre above the ground, casting familiar shadows on the gallery floor. The fluffy cashmilon wool chosen by the artist…works well for cumulus clouds–the puffy ones that can precede thunderstorms, and are precursors to the godfather of clouds, the cumulonimbus.

Though there are many types of cumulus cloud, they are all united by their fractal nature, which prompted Najle to turn to crochet to capture their complex, cauliflower-like topology. Najle says crochet is the perfect medium for representing fractal structures because its surfaces can be subdivided again and again by varying the length of neighbouring crochet lines.

A team of 30 crochet craftswomen in Buenos Aires created the individual squares that were sewn together to make the large sections of the installation. The squares were based on 1664 diagrams mathematically generated by Najle to describe the knotted intersections that gave shape to the overall structures. As someone who once went through a crocheting craze lasting several years, I can well imagine the feel of the soft cashmilon yarn being looped through 30 women’s crochet needles, the precise pattern of each square that was destined to be joined to thousands of others to form great, billowing forms.

Le Laboratoire’s interest in exploring innovative design solutions to global water issues goes beyond the Najle exhibition. Alongside Najle’s clouds Le Laboratoire showed

works under development by teams of designers and students from the 2010 ArtScience Labs international creative program. These include a novel, easy to operate, and portable water filter; materials that mimic African fog-collecting insects; and an initiative to support the sustained development of fog collection through the distribution and sale of “fog water.”

Fog water! As delicious as the idea of a cloud forest! Najle’s cummulus installation was up through January 2012 at Le Laboratoire and had previously been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, Colorado. But I need only look up to the sky on particularly moist days to be reminded of the innovative work he and other designers are doing to engage creatively with problems of water availability around the world.

Marine experts continue to be baffled by a rash of dolphin strandings on the beaches of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where 179 short-beaked common dolphins have been beached since January 12—almost five times the average number of dolphins that have been stranded annually over the past 12 years. One hundred twenty-four of them have died. Workers from the International Fund for Animal Welfare, an organization that rescues animals, protects animal populations and preserves habitats, have led the rescue efforts. According to an Associated Press story on February 16,

…necropsies have been done on dead dolphins, and a Congressional briefing was held early this month in the push for answers. But researchers can offer only theories about things such as changes in weather, water temperature or behavior of the dolphins’ prey.

Dolphins and other marine mammals have been found stranded on Cape Cod beaches for centuries; an average of 228 dolphins, whales, porpoises, seals and other sea mammals are beached here during a normal year. But experts are mystified by the sheer numbers in a single month, and also by the unusual fact that they are of one species. As Jenny Marder reported on the PBS NewsHour blog The Rundown:

“All [179] are common dolphins,” said Katie Moore, manager of the marine mammal rescue effort for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the group leading the effort. “Which is what’s scary. If I look over the last 13 years, the average number of common dolphins we see [stranded] in a year is 38. This is an enormous event.”

Dolphins are social, tending to travel in large groups, which helps them forage and fend off predators—but which also can leave them stranded in large numbers. Moreover, the Cape is shaped like a craggy hook, which tends to channel the animals inland, where they can remain trapped and beached during low tide.

Still, experts have no explanation for the unusually high numbers of stranded animals. “There are no indications that tidal patterns have changed and no signs of disease in the 10 dolphins that have undergone detailed necropsies,” according to the PBS blog.

Reporter Jay Lindsay of the Associated Press hung out with the dedicated dolphin rescuers as they attempted to herd the wild mammals back into deep waters:

One drifts off to the left, where he could beach again. The manager of the stranding team, Katie Moore, slides over, grabs its dorsal fin, and gives it a push in the right direction.

“You’re going the wrong way, buddy,” she says.

The inlet continues to fill and the dolphins break into waters that are deeper than the rescuers can follow, but they’re in two groups. The IFAW’s boat eventually follows one pod and the Wellfleet harbormaster takes another. The noise from the motors pushes the dolphins ahead. So do acoustic pingers, devices that make a sound that annoys the dolphins.

Moore, visibly exhausted from the ongoing rescue efforts, later told Lindsay, “We just don’t know when it’s going to end anymore. That wears on people.” But she has been inspired by IFAW’s success in returning the dolphins to the sea. “I think that as humans we have such a huge impact on the ocean environment, and on these animals in other ways, that this is our opportunity to do the right thing.”

Here in Lago de Atitlán, Guatemala, where I lived for most of 2007 and where am staying for the month of February 2012, Valentine’s Day is called El Dia de los Cariños–The Day of the Tendernesses, or Caresses, or Love. And it is not reserved exclusively for grownup couples (or those who wish they were, or feel bad that they’re not), but is a holiday for one and all, especially children, who make tarjetitas out of colored paper and magazine cutouts and paint and glitter and glue and give them to the people they care about.

And so, as this Dia de los Cariños was approaching, I was thinking a lot about children who are important to me. Some are my blood, most are not, but each has her or his own special nook or cranny, decorated in just the way that child might most like, inside the chambers of my heart.

As a way of honoring and feeding the lifeblood of my connections with these children, I decided to do a simple, strong prayer ceremony for all of them. You can do this, too, if you feel so called.

PRAYER CEREMONY FOR THE CHILDREN OF YOUR HEART

1. Make a list of the children who hold a special place in your heart. Keep it private; prayers are more potent when you hold the energy close, rather than dissipating it (by, for example, blabbing about what you’re doing, which after all only serves your ego).

2. Set aside time when you can do your ceremony unrushed and undisturbed. If you have any special objects you might like to use to create your sacred space–incense or a sage bundle, a special rattle or drum, a crystal, a significant toy, anything at all–pack it in a pouch and bring it with you.

3. Go to a place in nature where there is some water, a lake or a stream or a sea. Water is regarded as our Holy Mother, our primordial Source, in so many cultures–from Ganga Ma in India to Mami Wata in parts of Africa to Yemonja in Brazil, and so many, many more. Take a walk in this place. Breathe deeply. Feel your feet on the ground, the moist air on your skin. As you walk, look for stones or shells, flowers or leaves to pick up and take with you–one for each child you are honoring.

4. After a while, you’ll come to a quiet spot that calls for you to stop. You will know. (If there is another human around, make yourself invisible and wait with patience. He or she will eventually leave. When I found my special spot alongside el lago, a local boatman who arrived there at the same moment rustled around for a while as I kept a respectful distance, then took up his cayuko and paddled away.)

5. Make an altarcito, a little altar, out of the objects you’ve gathered and any you brought with you. Make this with tenderness and beauty. The spirits will love you all the more.

6. If you have a way you like to use for calling in the spirits, do so. I like to make an offering of sacred tobacco or sage smoke as I call in the guardians of the East, West, North, and South, the As Above and the So Below, and the sacred Void, the center from which all comes and to which all returns. But do anything that feels like a good way to open your sacred space for prayer. (And don’t be afraid to be silly. The spirits love to laugh.)

7. Look at the sacred objects you’ve gathered. Hold one up to your heart as you make a sincere prayer for the first child’s specific needs. You know what these are. Imagine your heart imbuing this object with energy. Then toss the object into the water. Give away your prayer. 

8. Repeat until you have made an individual prayer for each child.

9. Close the ceremony by making an offering to the spirits: your words, a chant, a great rattling or drumming, tobacco, flowers, sacred smoke, your silence–whatever feels right and true. Ask them to carry your prayers to Source.

9. Walk back the way you came, holding good intent in your heart for these special children. Take your sweet, loving time.

"Ponte Marcello" by Charles Christopher

A year ago I learned that my Los Angeles colleague, the photographer Charles Christopher, was making a wintertime pilgrimage to Venice, Italy, to fulfill a longtime dream of living in a stone house that he’d first seen and been captivated by as a fourteen-year-old boy. Charles’s subsequent journey of the soul resulted in an essay and a large portfolio of photographs, some of which were featured on HOLY WATERS (HW Guest Artist 3/11/11).

Recently I was excited to discover that Charles is now compiling a book of his Venetian images. And he shared on his own blog, The Eyes of Charles Christopher, that Nicolas Roeg, the renowned director of the 1973 Julie Christie-Donald Sutherland thriller Don’t Look Now–which takes place in a spooky, confusing Venice–had seen and commented on Charles’s work.  Roeg wrote:

The images of Venice capture the heart and sad reality of an extraordinary and unique city. Venice is so well-known and so many of the views of it have been reproduced, but usually just emphasizing the grandeur of some of the glorious buildings, bridges and piazzas. The result is a city frozen in time, with its living identity kept secret and unseen by the casual visitor or tourist. Your very moving and original images remind me of the time I spent there. Far more movingly and personally than any perfect composition featuring a famous landmark, shot to death by guided tour groups.

On his blog Charles wrote: “I was very moved to receive these encouraging words from the visionary filmmaker whose dark and stirring 1973 thriller, Don’t Look Now, made an indelible impact on me when I first saw it as a boy. The film and the city have stayed with me ever since.” Kudos to Charles–I can’t wait for your book. And to see a bit of Roeg’s vision of Venice, here is the English trailer for Don’t Look Now:

"Mars and Venus" by crackoala

If Only Men Truly Listened

If only men truly listened
To everything their women say.

I said, if only men truly listened
To everything their women say,

Maybe they’d be liberated
From the heartbreaking way

Their fathers distanced
Themselves from a woman’s eye

That watched and waited
Patiently with hardly a sigh

For any sign that he’d awakened
To her power and majesty,

Like falling to his knees, humbled,
Then looking up at her to pray.

Kai Lan's Chinese Dragon Parade

January 23, 2012, marked the beginning of the Chinese Year of the Water Dragon. Dragons are auspicious creatures in Chinese culture, symbolizing nobility, royalty and good fortune. They are also associated with water: “In Chinese belief, dragons rule over moving bodies of water and are considered to be the givers of rain,” writes Amy Huang on the blog Shape of Good Fortune (a visually rich Chinese New Year’s exhibition curated by Brown University art history students). As Huang explains:

This connection between dragons and water is especially important for this 2012—the Year of the Water Dragon. This year’s energy is said to favor expansion and growth, in a calmer way than that of the dragons associated with other of the Five Elements, or Wuxing 五行 (metal, wood, water, fire, and earth). The water dragon represents the flow and the overcoming of obstacles, as the water element is said to nourish new beginnings, innovation and successful growth. While all five dragons are known for their ability to magnify both the successes and failures of the year, the water dragon is known above all for its constancy—a celebration of balance between logic and creativity.

Since actual dragons are rare these days, you might want to build your own. Remember how fun it was to make arts ‘n’ crafts out of toilet paper rolls? You have lots of time to experiment–the Year of the Dragon runs till February 9, 2013, after which we’ll be thinking about snakes.  Here are my favorite dragon-making tutorials, ranging from papier-mâché to origami to nail art. I’m especially inspired by the “Dragon Chino,” who takes kind of crazy flight on a Canary Island beach about one minute into the video. 

Annette Kellerman as a mermaid (ca. 1915-25)

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

We have just swum back to our wintry high desert home after a holiday visit to the glorious Pacific Ocean. Our eyes have remembered the golden sunlight glinting off the waters; our lungs have been filled with hearty salt air. Thus fortified, we will excitedly resume blogging very, very soon. Happy 2012!

Water Canyon

Launch the canoe at Mineral Bottom, northwest of Moab, Utah, in Canyonlands National Park. The Green River runs through Stillwater Canyon on this remarkable flat-water journey. It takes at least six days to paddle to Water Canyon, which is on river right. This trip was a silent retreat. Not one word was spoken for days. I brought a small guitar and stashed it in the bottom of my canoe. For the six days of silence, all I heard was the paddle gliding through the water and my mind’s chatter starting to clear another relationship that ended in sadness. I eddied out on river right and hiked up Water Canyon over huge boulders, through the prickly pear cacti and yucca plants to a turquoise waterfall. An oasis in the desert and a paradise for a broken heart and healing…a love song to Water Canyon.  ~ Melissa Crabtree

Click to listen: 

Lyrics:

I’m so glad to see you again
I forgot about you or that I was ever here
I was so hot I swam in your water
Cooled me off for about one year
And now you surprised me again in this desert
This time it’s nearing autumn cold
The water’s shallow but the creek’s still running
Someone tried to buy my heart but I never sold

CHORUS:
So cool me off in that clean water
Let me rest in what I know is true
Never did I want to harm anybody
Just feel the joy in finding you

Swirling, ancient marks of time
Again the veins of solid rock
Can you contain me one more time?
I became so mad that I forgot

CHORUS

I won’t ever forget you again
I can find you down by the cottonwood trees
Flowing through the ledges of stone
Cool me off and set me free

CHORUS TWICE

"Winter Funeral" (1932) by Victor Higgins

“Did I ever tell you about the feeling I had a little while ago? We were driving with Dixie and John; suddenly passing Sandia Mountain [near Albuquerque] I felt that I was part of the Earth, so that I felt the sun on my surface and the rain. I felt the stars and the growth of the moon; under me, rivers ran. And against me were the tides. The waters of rain sank into me. And I thought if I stretched out my hand[s] they would be earth and green would grow from me. And I knew that there was no reason to be lonely, that one was everything, and Death was so easy as the rising sun and as calm and natural–that to be infolded in Earth was not the end but part of oneself, part of every day and night that we lived, so that Being part of the Earth one was never alone. And all fear went out of me–with a great good stillness and strength.

“If anything should happen to me now, ever, just remember all this. I want to be buried in Taos with the wide sky…. One has so little time to be still, to lie still and look at the Earth and the changing colours and the tones–and [listen to] the voices of people. And cloud and light on water, smells and sounds and music and the taste of woodsmoke in the air. Life is absolutely beautiful if one will disassociate oneself from noise and talk and live it according to one’s inner light.”

~ Millicent Rogers

These days I am swooning over “The Book of Embraces” by the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano (whose “Memory of Fire,” a trilogy poetically chronicling the history of Latin America, I earlier swallowed in great, swift gulps). Here is a video by Caleb González of a poem from “The Book of Embraces,” with music by the great Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucia. Below is the English translation by Galeano’s longtime translator, Cedric Belfrage, followed by the original Spanish. ~ Diana Rico

The Nobodies

Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on them–will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain down yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn’t even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.

The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way.

Who are not, but could be.
Who don’t speak languages, but dialects.
Who don’t have religions, but superstitions.
Who don’t create art, but handicrafts.
Who don’t have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.

Los Nadies

Sueñan las pulgas con comprarse un perro y sueñan los nadies con salir de pobres, que algún mágico día llueva de pronto la buena suerte, que llueva a cántaros la buena suerte; pero la buena suerte no llueve ayer, ni hoy, ni mañana, ni nunca, ni en llovizna cae del cielo la buena suerte, por mucho que los nadies la llamen y aunque les pique la mano izquierda, o se levanten con el pie derecho, o empiecen el año cambiando de escoba.

Los nadies: los hijos de nadie, los dueños de nada. Los nadies: los ningunos, los niguneados, corriendo la liebre, muriendo la vida, jodidos, rejodidos.

Que no son, aunque sean.
Que no hablan idiomas, sino dialectos.
Que no profesan religiones, sino supersticiones.
Que no hacen arte, sino artesanías.
Que no practican cultura, sino folklore.
Que no son seres humanos, sino recursos humanos.
Que no tienen cara, sino brazos.
Que no tienen nombre, sino número.
Que no figuran en la historia universal, sino en la crónica roja de la prensa local.
Los nadies, que cuestan menos que la bala que los mata.

Does water have memory? Can it retain an “imprint” of energies to which it has been exposed? This theory was first proposed by the late French immunologist Dr. Jacques Benveniste, in a controversial article published in 1988 in Nature, as a way of explaining how homeopathy works. Benveniste’s theory has continued to be championed by some and disputed by others. The video clip above, from the Oasis HD Channel, shows some fascinating recent experiments with water “memory” from the Aerospace Institute of the University of Stuttgart in Germany. The results with the different types of flowers immersed in water are particularly evocative.

If Benveniste is right, just think what that might mean. More than 70 percent of our planet is covered in water. The human body is made of 60 percent water; the brain, 70 percent; the lungs, nearly 90 percent.  Our energies might be traveling out of our brains and bodies and into those of other living beings of all kinds through imprints on this magical substance. The oceans and rivers and rains might be transporting all manner of information throughout the world.

I like to believe that the good doctor was correct–if for no other reason, because the phrase “the memory of water” makes my heart leap up and spin.

"Iona Cross" by rompus

May it be so for you,

Deep peace of the running wave to you.

Deep peace of the flowing air to you.

Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.

Deep peace of the gentle night to you.

Moon and stars pour their healing light on you.

Deep peace of the Light of the World to you.

]]> http://holywaters.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/an-ancient-gaelic-prayer/feed/ 1 the wordARTist Iona_Cross_by_rompus http://holywaters.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/overcome-obstacles-with-the-gentleness-of-water-2/ http://holywaters.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/overcome-obstacles-with-the-gentleness-of-water-2/#comments Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:30:45 +0000 Diana Rico http://holywaters.wordpress.com/?p=2419 Continue reading →]]> A reprint of a popular post. 

Water's edge, Whidbey Island, Washington, August 2005.

I’m lying down in my Ashtanga yoga class, knees up, feet firmly planted on the purple sticky mat. My yoga teacher, Jennifer Ammann, kneels down next to me and asks how I’m doing. She’s been nurturing me through healing an injury, and for weeks she’s had me do very little more than lay on my back like this or stand in mountain pose and do intense Ujjayi Pranayama breathing, inhaling all the way up through the top of my heart, exhaling all the way down to my perineum, over and over and over again. Being still for an hour and a half, I’m discovering, is much harder than moving.

I tell her the pain is worse today, point out where, and add, “Of course there’s emotional pain coming up too.” The more acutely I’ve been tuning into my body and soul, the more the divide between the two keeps melting away. She nods knowingly.

Jennifer says, “The purpose of all the movement is to stir things up. Once they’re stirred up, you get to be still.” So she instructs me to continue breathing on my back, and to do some bridge poses ”only when you’re ready to,” and then to rest and breathe some more. “Don’t even stand unless you feel an overwhelming urge to. Today, it’s all about restorative.”

So I do. It’s a challenge, because buff, athletic Richard next to me is engaging in some kind of super-Ashtanga routine that just keeps getting more energetic by the minute. I concentrate on entering into the pain in my hip and notice, as I breathe into it, that it has the quality of water. With each breath, the slightest shift happens–internal movements so subtle, I would not normally perceive them. “This is going to change your relationship to suffering,” Jennifer had told me when I’d first come back to yoga class after hurting myself. Indeed, it is. I am learning that the only way out is through. I expand my ribcage and melt into the pain, diving deeply into it with my breath.  I remember the words of a guided pain meditation by Buddhist teacher Shinzen Young that I’ve been using at home: “Left to its own resources, with time, the body knows what to do with discomfort. It will spontaneously enter into a state of equanimity, of openness.”

Shinzen Young is right: Finally, after an hour of focused attention, the constricted muscles in the hip suddenly open. I breathe some more and allow, more and more. The relief is incredible. Then, four blankets piled under my knees, I go into a long Savasana, corpse pose.

As I’m breathing in corpse pose, I sense a tender pain in my heart. “Go into it,” I think. To my surprise, it blossoms into a glowing jewel-light, radiant and free. It is still the pain–it hasn’t transmuted into something else–but I am bathing in the holy, astonishing beauty of it.

I abide in this glory as long as I can. I can still feel the radiance in the center of my chest when Jennifer has us stretch our arms over our heads, sit up, and come into a seated posture to close the class. When I fold myself forward and say, “Namaste,” to salute my teacher, my eyes fill with tears.

“To have abundance in Soul does not mean having lots of things; it means having access to, and communication with, the essence of all things.

“Once you are in touch with that, you have all things inside you. You don’t feel any lack. You have fullness and gratitude, and you walk free, knowing that whatever you need will come to you.”

~ John-Roger

All photographs © Diana Rico and may be reproduced, with attribution, under a Creative Commons license.

For the past 24 hours, I have been making a fierce prayer. This is what I’ve been saying over and over again in my heart:

May the nonviolent, peaceful components of the worldwide social-change movements continue to strengthen and grow. May this commitment to creating peace be the deep grounding of all our actions. May the Shadow of the societies we have created continue to be revealed and healed by the light of Love.

My prayer is inspired by two actions taken by students from the Occupy movement who responded to blatant police brutality with remarkably gentle, imaginative actions of peace.

By now the infamous video of the UC Davis cop pepper-spraying a row of passively kneeling students has gone viral. What some people may not have seen is what happens six minutes into the clip. Suddenly the students (several of whom we’ve seen dragged away) say to the police, en masse,

We are willing to give you a brief moment of peace. You may take your weapons and our friends and go. Please do not return. We are giving you a moment of peace. We give you a moment of peace. We give you a moment of peace.

The police, decked out in Darth Vader riot gear, look around in confusion; there is no resistance, nothing for them to fight.  Slowly, as the students all around them chant, “You can go! We will not follow you! You can go! You can go!” they back away in a cluster, their faces looking a little lost, their batons loosening in their hands. It is as if the very force field of the students’ firm goodwill is pushing them off the quad. The shift in the energy is astonishing and palpable.

The other student action I’m moved by is described by UC Berkeley poetry professor Robert Hass in a recent New York Times article. Hass, the former poet laureate of the United States, decided to go check out reports of police brutality at Occupy Berkeley. He and his wife got caught up in an unprovoked melee:

The billy clubs were about the size of a boy’s Little League baseball bat. My wife was speaking to the young deputies about the importance of nonviolence and explaining why they should be at home reading to their children, when one of the deputies reached out, shoved my wife in the chest and knocked her down….

I tripped and almost fell over her trying to help her up, and at that moment the deputies in the cordon surged forward and, using their clubs as battering rams, began to hammer at the bodies of the line of students. It was stunning to see. They swung hard into their chests and bellies. Particularly shocking to me—it must be a generational reaction—was that they assaulted both the young men and the young women with the same indiscriminate force. If the students turned away, they pounded their ribs. If they turned further away to escape, they hit them on their spines. None of the police officers invited us to disperse or gave any warning.

After the attack and numerous arrests, the cops took down the Occupiers’ tents. Hass returned a few days later to see how the students had responded and found that “the air was full of…helium balloons to which tents had been attached, and attached to the tents was kite string. And they hovered over the plaza, large and awkward, almost lyrical, occupying the air.”

I am in enchanted by this image of tents floating over Sproul Hall, the place where the Free Speech Movement was born in 1964 and an area that the university has designated a permanent free speech zone for students. You can see news footage of the floating tents here.

‎These two actions brought home to me the absolute necessity for those of us who are passionate about creating social change to walk our walk and talk our talk. I believe we need widespread nonviolent-action training of the sort that was given in the Civil Rights era, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s great Indian liberation movement. (Paul K. Chapell of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation writes thoughtfully about this issue in his recent article “How to Destroy the Occupy Movement and How to Prevent it from Failing.”) And, closer to home, I must scrupulously and continuously examine my own actions. If I am promoting peace and love in my words, how do I bring that into my daily life–especially when it’s challenging to do so?  If I say I believe in unity consciousness–that we are all one–how does that translate when I am talking to someone virulently opposed to my views? Can I maintain kindness in my speech and softness in my heart? Can I open my ears truly, can I stretch far enough to see things from their perspective, can I actively seek common ground?

The answer is, I must. If I want to see a world grounded in unconditional humanitarianism, I must practice this myself in all circumstances. I believe the choice comes down to something as simple as this observation from Pema Chodron, the Tibetan Buddhist nun, in her book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times:

All over the world, everybody always strikes out at the enemy, and the pain escalates forever. Every day we could reflect on this and ask ourselves, “Am I going to add to the aggression in the world?” Every day, at the moment when things get edgy, we can just ask ourselves, “Am I going to practice peace, or am I going to war?”

"We Are Making a New World" (1918) by Paul Nash

Tears

As if from a bubbling spring,
my tears are murmuring
the language of all
the rivers and streams
that join together
as they flow home.

Occupy Wall Street photo by david_shankbone.

It seems like media has been making me cry a lot lately. And this, my friends, is good news.

This morning I posted on Facebook several news stories about the middle-of-the-night, media-blacked-out bulldozer-and-police raid on the Occupy Wall Street protest “city” at Zuccotti Park. Included in Sarah Seltzer’s story on AlterNet was this TwitVid video, from #OWS watcher John Knefel. I looked and listened as cops used pepper spray and batons to take down occupiers while other protesters chanted all around, “Peace! Peace! Peace! Peace!” Amidst the screams one hears protesters saying, “Hey, no violence!” and “Take it easy!” to the cops. Then the chanting changes to, “Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!”

Knefel’s video left me in tears–of outrage, pain, horror and compassion. At the same time, paradoxically, it gave me a new surge of hope. I am, literally, on my knees praying that the news of the Zuccotti Park raid will inspire many millions more to wake up and take action–whatever action is right and meaningful and productive for them at this time in their lives–to help us to forge a more just and humane world, one grounded in compassion, love, peace and unity.

This crying jag started, I think, on October 7, when I awakened to a New York Times headline announcing: “Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Three Activist Women.” It had simply never occurred to me that such a thing would happen in my lifetime. I had tears in my eyes as I posted the article on my Facebook page, sharing what to me was the incredible news that Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee and Yemenite pro-democracy campaigner Tawakkol Karman were to receive the Nobel prize. I was even more moved by these statements from the (male) head of the prize committee:

“We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society,” said the citation read by Thorbjorn Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister who heads the Oslo-based Nobel committee that chooses the winner of the $1.5 million prize.

In a subsequent interview, he described the prize as “a very important signal to women all over the world.”

After that, the tear ducts kept flowing. At the 2011 Bioneers Conference in the Bay Area in mid-October, the final keynote speaker, the distinguished academic-turned-activist Dr. Pam Rajput, presented a fresh political paradigm so radically humane it actually made me sob for joy. Dr. Rajput talked about the First Women’s Parliament of India, an experimental, alternative legislative space she helped organize for the National Alliance of Women in 2009. In a short film Dr. Rajput screened, I saw images I’d never imagined: 543 women leaders from all over India, who had been democratically elected and trained for a year, discussing matters of law for the good of their whole nation. They drew up a budget guided by the principle of Gross National Happiness, an index “based on sustainable development, social justice, conservation of nature and good governance.” In just four days they passed a slew of laws about such issues as child sex trafficking, food security and domestic workers’ rights. Is this really possible in politics? These women had just proved so.

In the days to come my heart just kept cracking open. I cried in anger and disgust when I learned that the U.S. will likely spend another $600 billion or more on nuclear labs and related programs while a school district in Colorado is selling advertising space on kids’ report cards, so desperate are they for funds. I cried in horror when the war criminal General Otto Pérez Molina, who was in charge of a major military base during the 1980s genocidal war against the Mayans in Guatemala, won the presidential election in that country, a place I was privileged to live in 2007 and which still holds a tremendous space in my heart. (Among other charges, Pérez Molina is believed to have run a secret torture center and to have been on the payroll of the CIA.) And I cried in a surge of hopefulness when I read that Ireland had elected, as its new president, the 70-year-old poet and sociology professor Michael D. Higgins, a member of the Labour Party who has campaigned against the war in Iraq and human rights abuses.

In these times of great chaos and an expanding potential for change, it is more important than ever to allow ourselves to feel fully whatever emotions arise. We shouldn’t hold back our tears of sorrow or hopelessness or confusion or inspiration or joy. Tears are particularly potent because I know that when I’m crying, I’m coming from the deepest center of my heart. And from that holy place, I can really create change.

What breaks your heart open? What happens then, and then, and then, when you let yourself rest for a while in that split-open heartspace without distraction, without running away? Leonard Cohen sang, “There is a crack, a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.” What does your light reveal when you allow yourself to shed your most holy tears?

Untitled by Käthe Kollwitz

The Mother

My mother has gone quiet—a silence not of lack,
“““““or fear
or anger, but of a great attention—a leaning into.

She has left the language of populations,
consequence, variety—even the clamor

of need, she forgets. She smiles at the back and forth
of talk; the art of give and take.

She hears what’s underneath.
Child, she whispers, the sun splashes into the sea;
when the clouds shift, their touch
against the sky rustles
like silk touching thigh.

She is leaving this world.
Her listening is a kind of touch,

the way you’d feel along a wall–intent,
imagining.

She fills and is filled–is glass, pitcher,
water flowing. She stands at the center

of endless concentric circles, at the navel
of the world, from which infinite lines emerge–

a hand through water,
making ripples…

"LISTEN" by Bryan Rosengrant

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it. ~ J. Krishnamurti

I listen for a living. As a longtime journalist and documentary producer, I have interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people and paid very deep attention to their stories—their specific words, of course, but also to the feelings underlying the words, the energy beneath and behind the sentences.

The words are transmitters, like radio signals—and what they carry is sometimes so luminescent, so filled with humanity, that this material passes right into my heart-cells and jumps me wide open.

Lately I have been thinking about this business of listening. In mid-October I attended the 22nd Annual Bioneers Conference—a Bay Area gathering of 3,500 social, scientific and artistic innovators who shared practical and visionary solutions to the world’s environmental and social challenges. There, at a panel called “No Women, No Democracy: From the Streets of Cairo to Your Family,” I listened to the personal stories of three citizen-journalists from the global communications network World Pulse, which connects women via an interactive platform so that they can share their stories–a first critical step towards change.

I listened to Martha Elena Llano Serna, a Colombian who is fighting to preserve her people’s rainforest environment and traditional ways through a nonprofit she founded called SENTIR (“To Feel”). I listened to Sarvina Kang, a Cambodian who was the first in her community to earn a university degree and now campaigns for girls’ and women’s education so that they can lift themselves out of despair, poverty and sexual exploitation. I listened to Achieng Beatrice Nas, a Ugandan who told of how her mother was going to be evicted from her land when her seven brothers died of AIDS, because in her community only men are allowed to own land. Nas sent an email alert to her World Pulse network and received countless responses of support. “When the community leaders came to take us from the land,” she said, “my mother stood up and said, ‘This is my land and I’m not going anywhere. Should anyone tamper with my land, women around the world are going to come here.’ The men disappeared. So I want to let you know that there’s power in Internet, there is power in communications, there’s power in realizing our voices.”

The feminist leader Gloria Steinem—whose actual profession, I was reminded as I watched her, is journalism, is listening—sat on the panel paying rapt attention to these women. “The most revolutionary thing we can do is listen to each other,” she announced to all of us in the audience when Nas finished her story. Then she turned to Jensine Larsen, the panel moderator, who had founded World Pulse when she was 28. “Do you need listeners?” she asked Larsen. Yes! More than 600 women from the globe’s farthest reaches had applied to be trained as citizen-journalists, “and we need [volunteer] listeners to hear their stories. We had 200 listeners this year because World Pulse can’t listen to them all. It seems like a small thing, but leaving a comment can change a woman’s life.”

Listening can change people’s lives. Over at Occupy Wall Street, the playwright-activist Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) has been gathering the stories of the occupiers and publishing them, in their own words, in her column on Huffington Post. On her first foray to Zuccotti Park, she wrote recently,

I had the fortune to spend the night with a group of about 30 occupiers–the talk could have gone on through the early morning. The depth of the conversation, the intensity of the seeking, the complexity of ideas were startling. But what moved me even more was the respect, the way people listened to each other and honored and appreciated each other.

We say all the time how we believe in democracy, that we want the people to speak and be heard. Well, the people are speaking. The people are experimenting. The people are crying out with the deepest hunger to build a better world. Maybe instead of labeling it, we could join it. There is so much to be done.

Ensler writes about a particular form of listening that the occupiers have created out of necessity. I find this so beautiful it makes me want to leap up and testify:

Because the city has forbidden the use of microphones and sound systems, the group is using a human microphone. This system of communication is compelling and metaphoric. The group is forced to repeat the words of the speaker so the speaker is forced to talk slowly, with less words at once. The audience is asked to listen in a whole new way and to actually help transmit the message to others. Accuracy and transparency are the crucial elements. To make sure the human microphone is working properly the speaker calls out Mike Check and the crowd repeats Mike Check and by doing this it becomes clear if the voice of the speaker is being carried through the entire crowd.

To convey their responses to what is said, the group has devised a series of hand signals:

My favorite is the signal for agreement, or something you like a lot. People lift their hands and wiggle their fingers. This has come to be called Upsparkles.

Upsparkles! This is what I feel in my heart when I deeply listen, when I do this revolutionary thing of taking someone else’s story into my being. Do you know what this feels like, to have Upsparkles shimmering in your heart? Of course you do. I encourage you to make this kind of listening part of your daily practice. Listening this way will change your heart. Listening this way will change our world.