Ripples of Hope

Chicken Farming in Georgia

2012-02-11T09:39:00.000Z

Please follow the link and watch this video and see how chickens are reared and slaughtered in the State of Georgia and prepare to be distressed and then reflect that this is not just about Georgia - it's about us all thinking more about where our meat and eggs comes from - and then please support Compassion in World Farming.

Stonehenge in the Snow

2012-02-10T18:53:00.000Z

The ancient collection of stones known as Stonehenge - dated as 3100 BC, estimated 30 million hours of labor to construct, reason for construction a mystery - from human sacrifice to astronomical purpose. Lots more information here.

Scenes of Totnes Transition Town

2012-02-09T17:51:00.000Z

Saving the habitat of the Polar Bear

2012-02-07T07:00:00.001Z

Whilst many bury their heads in the sand and ignore the effects of global warming, refuse to accept that urgent actions are required, how heartening it is to know that others are actually cracking on and taking positive measures to try to lessen the effects and at the same time preserve some of its most iconic victims.
The World Wildlife Fund and Coca-Cola are in partnership to rescue the Arctic habitat of the Polar Bear. The role of Coca-Cola is to raise awareness and funds for this initiative, in a project called Arctic Home.

This is just one of many conservation projects run by the WWF in partnership with many different corporate organisations, as well as "U.S. government agencies ...such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, National Oceanic & Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and others."
They need our support. Please follow the links and read more about the work they do on a global basis.

Local currency about to be launched - the Bristol Pound

2012-02-06T17:18:00.000Z

What splendid news - I read that something I recommended in my book Healing This Wounded Earth, that is, the spread of local currency schemes like LETS, is happening. UK city Bristol is due to launch its own Bristol Pound in May.
Community Currencies flourished in the United States in the Great Depression but did not survive World War II and the post war economic boom. They have been successfully resurrected and now there are thousands of schemes in the United States alone and many more worldwide.
LETS (The Local Exchange Trading System) is probably the most widely available and best-known system and is well established globally. This system trades in Green Dollars, a unit invented and designed by Michael Linton and David Weston in British Colombia Canada in the 1980s.
In the UK this Bristol scheme is thought to be unique as it will also be the first which can be used to pay local business taxes.
A BBC West article by Dave Harvey, their Business Correspondent, 'Bristol Pound' currency to boost independent traders,explains the scheme in detail.
How many more similar schemes are in the pipeline or will start up given the turmoil in the world's economies at the moment.

Well done Bristol! I hope this succeeds.

No Need to Panic about Global Warming

2012-02-06T07:00:00.003Z

I'm really getting pretty fed up with the people who insist on burying their heads in the sand over the whole issue of global warming and climate change. Now a paper as influential as the Wall Street Journal, that frankly should be more responsible, has published an opinion piece "No Need to Panic About Global Warming There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy."

Now check out the other view, Dismal Science at the Wall Street Journal, from the website of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

How do we convince people that this threat is for real and make them look beyond their own cosy lifestyle to the bigger global picture? I think the Wall Street Journal should now balance that article with the majority view from the science community.

China, Giant Pandas and Living with the Planet

2012-02-06T07:00:00.001Z

Did you know that you can identify a particular giant panda by the length of the pieces of bamboo shards in its droppings? No, neither did I. It's all to do with the fact that each animal has its own 'bite', peculiar to itself.
I learnt this little known fact reading a gem of a book I found in the shop at St Paul's Cathedral London, down in the crypt. I was really just biding time waiting for someone, but I'm glad I strolled in to browse, because this book is superb.
Catherine von Ruhland is a journalist and writer, with a particular interest in green issues. As she says herself in her Introduction, in this book she wanted to go beyond the "put your bottles in the bottlebank" type of book, with lists of things we should all be doing at local level. Actually quite a few of us are getting quite good at that anyway (although we cannot be complacent- many have a long way to go!).
Von Ruhland wants to help us see our individual actions in a global context, to understand and recognise the way we coexist alongside the people, plants and animals across continents with whom we share this wonderful but groaning planet.
And she does this admirably, in a beautifully illustrated book, Living with the Planet: Making a Difference in a Time of Climate Change. Starting with chapters on the earth's atmosphere, the earth itself, and its oceans, von Ruhland then goes on to look at each of the continents in turn. This is such a refreshingly new and informative way of considering our global environmental issues.
And she starts with Asia, our largest continent, including of course China.
There is a massive misperception in the West that China cares not a jot about environmental issues.
Add to this the oft- quoted statistic about the proliferation of their fossil fuel guzzling power stations and this is all the excuse that many need to sit back and do nothing in the West. Why should we do anything, we say, when we can't possibly make a difference on our own?
I wrote only the other day about China taking advice from the Daoists on environmental issues - the first time ever, or for 900 years, depending on which source of information you use.
And they also care about their giant pandas. This book tells us that the Chinese government has been concerned about the population of this wonderful iconic creature for over forty years, initiating its First National Panda Survey as long ago as 1974, later involving the World Wildlife Fund in 1980. Essential conservation work, including reforestation, poaching control, establishment of further reserves and taking action to prevent inbreeding, for example, has been successful. Part of the work has involved equipping nature reserve staff with the technology to help them in their conservation work, and this is where the droppings come in! The work of the nature reserves in re-establishing breeding populations of giant pandas has been so successful that after three National Panda Surveys a fourth one may not be even necessary.
So let's think again before we instinctively knock China. And let's revise the way many of us think about environmental issues. Actually in years to come China's problem is going to be our problem as well. Let's go global, one continent at a time. At the end of each chapter, the author includes a list of practical suggestions for how we can take action. There are some simple things we can all do if we really have the heart and mind attuned to helping our global brethren. I shall come back to some of these in later posts.
For a start how about checking out Friends of the Earth and seeing how we can all support their projects.

China's Power Stations

2012-02-05T07:00:00.002Z

Over the last few weeks and indeed months it seems that climate change and sustainability issues have been lost under the welter of stories about banks and Occupy demonstrations and tax scandals. So it was refreshing to hear a radio programme the other day about responsible shopping and "green" issues regarding what we eat and wear. But sadly the same old chestnut came out about why should we bother where our tomatoes come from when China commissions a new filthy fossil fuel burning power station every week.
Quite apart from the fact that this does not excuse us from living sustainably and responsibly, (two wrongs after all never made a right), the Chinese Government is listening to the concerns of the world and turning to religion, to its own Daoist followers, for their wisdom and advice. 'No one disputes the astonishing growth of consumerism and wealth in China today and increasingly China is trying to address whether this is sustainable,' said Martin Palmer, Secretary General of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation. 'But maybe deeper than this,' he continues, 'is the question of whether China can also be compassionate, wise and community-focused once again. This is why the Chinese Communist government for the first time ever is meeting with the Daoists of China (China's oldest religion) to see how this ancient wisdom and spirituality might put a heart back into the ever-expanding body of modern China.'

Mr Xu Jia Lu, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, former vice president of the Beijing Normal University, and president of the China Association for Promoting Democracy, is quoted as saying:
“Humankind needs to urgently return to the wisdom of ancient sages. Their words and philosophical thinking are more closely related to the real truth and rules of our world. What kind of inspiration or wisdom can we learn from the Daoist idea that “Dao follows nature”?”

So let's not despair, as the lady phoning into our radio programme seems to be doing. Surely this action on China's part represents a small glimmer of hope?

Ed Lester and The Student Loans Company

2012-02-02T14:11:00.000Z

We seem to be on a permanent witch-hunt these days for anyone who we can use as a scapegoat for the ills that may be besetting us, or our country. We seem to pick on anyone who might, in our own view, be doing rather better than we are as we struggle with reduced pensions, threatened jobs, unemployment, illness, whatever. Quite often, and more so as time goes by, I feel that these responses by the public have more to do with envy or greed or malice or revenge or a sense of a general lack of fairness; often whipped up, it has to be said, by the media.

When I was young I well remember a girl in my class saying "but please Miss X, that's not fair".
The response we received gave us an idea of how Oliver and the boys must have felt after he had the temerity to ask for "more."
Miss X, (identity disguised to protect the living!) thumped her fist down hard on her desk on the raised dias at the front of the class (the raised platform gave the teachers a superiority and disciplinary advantage over the class.) "Life," she said, "is never fair. And the sooner you girls all understand this, the happier your lives will be."
I forgot much of the Latin she taught us, but I never forgot that one lesson for life.
I wonder now with hindsight whether life had already dealt her an 'unfair' blow. In an 'all girls' school in the late 1950s only three of our teachers were married, and they were, shall we say, of mature age by then, with families of their own. All the rest were young and single, often sharing accommodation with another members of our staff. We never thought about it at the time, but how many of those young ladies, I wonder now, had lost their "sweethearts" in the war? And we certainly never ever thought that there might be anything else behind these relationships! Gay meant happy in those innocent days!
But let's get to the point:
None of us like paying tax, of course we don't. Although many of us accept, albeit sometimes grudgingly, that we see the returns by way of the public services that we use. We certainly like to feel that we are not the only one paying our fair share of tax - whatever that means.
But we are all entitled to claim every allowance available to us to reduce our tax bill, to arrange our tax affairs in such a way as to legally reduce to a minimum the amount we pay. This is tax avoidance and is perfectly legal. Tax evasion is something else. It is dishonest, against the tax laws, and defrauds the Revenue of its rightful tax income.
But where is the line drawn? Because somewhere between the two is a murky area where the scheme a tax payer may use, usually with the help of expensive accountancy advice, is so complex and artificial that it falls outside the spirit even if it is within the strict letter of the law. Private service companies are a very simple, well- established, and legal tax saving device, but they come with their own anti-avoidance rules attached, drawn up to prevent any perceived abuse of the law.

Granted that the media almost certainly don't know the full facts of the case as yet, where is the use of Mr Ed Lester's service company likely to fall along this scale between avoidance and evasion? Does it make any difference that the user of his services is the Student Loan Company and that if they employed him rather than him being employed by his own service company then he would be a civil servant?
The issues here seem to be partly that he is a top public servant, that he is apparently working full time for the Student Loans Company, that not long ago the Government said they were going to cut down on "Tax Avoidance" and that in the present economic mess, the Government proclaim that "we are all in this together."
And so it's not fair, is it?

Photos are at Studland Bay and environs, Isle of Purbeck, Dorset

Bournemouth Sea and Sky in January

2012-01-28T12:08:00.000Z

yellow polka-dot bikini

2012-01-27T19:28:00.000Z

"It was an itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka-dot bikini,
That she wore for the first time today.
An itsy bitsy teeny weenie yellow polka-dot bikini,
So in the locker she wanted to stay!

Brian Hyland 1960
Lyrics and music by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss

What will happen to our High Streets and Shopping Malls?

2012-01-21T17:50:00.000Z

High street stores have had a disastrous Christmas, and it seems they are now having a disastrous time in the January sales. The fact is many of us have little if any money to spend, are unemployed or are fearful of losing our jobs. Or if we are pensioners our pension simply does not go so far these days, with interest rates on savings at an all time low. Several household names have gone bust in the last few months and weeks. Camping equipment shops, clothes shops, shoe shops, card shops. No business seems immune from failure in these difficult times, except perhaps undertakers and accountants, death and taxes being as ever the only certainties in life! Even here, tax accountants could be in for a lean time if much needed simplifications to the tax system ever happen.
One household name that is disappearing is Kodak, the company who brought cameras to the masses with the old Box Brownie. What a fiddle it was to change the film in those old cameras. If you were not very careful, light got in and ruined the film before it had a chance to be processed. Then Kodak developed the Instamatic. The film was in a cartridge that we just dropped into the camera. That was so much easier.
But then along came digital cameras and Kodak just didn’t seem to know how to respond to such fundamental change in photography techniques.
But there is even more monumental change on the way. Internet sales over Christmas and New Year were up 10% over the same period last year. It is so easy to buy on line. And it is green. We save petrol as well as time. And now we buy our groceries, our clothes and our Christmas presents on- line. We buy car tax and pay all our bills on-line. We even send greetings cards by email. We buy our holidays and order our holiday money on the Internet. Where is this going to end? Even if we do go to the supermarket, we can now pay at self-service checkouts, being spoken to by a machine not a real person.
What this means, of course, is that fewer and fewer of us will use shops or banks or post offices any more. We can even print off our postage stamps at home now! Think what this will mean. There will simply be no need any more for many of the shops in the High Street. Or for the big out of town shopping malls. Things are changing in a huge way! Will the High Street shops and shopping malls become a thing of the past? What will happen to those areas? Will we spend all our spare time in our own bubbles, staring at our own screens and losing our human communication skills in the process?
Any ideas?

Salvation of the World?

2012-01-13T08:40:00.000Z

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart

Vaclav Havel, the former Czech President, in an address to the United States Congress in 1990.

The Big Issue - again.

2012-01-11T07:00:00.001Z

I really would like to know from my American readers and friends whether they have anything at all like The Big Issue?
Forgive me for mentioning it yet again but The Big Issue in the UK really is a jolly good read - not to mention the fact that every time you buy one you really do help someone to get back on their feet again after falling on hard times. So please don't look the other way as you walk past the vendors on our city streets. Please buy one. The magazine comes out every week - and costs no more than the calorie stuffed coffee latte or hot chocolate you'll otherwise buy on the way back to the train. So give your stomach and waistline a treat, and help someone build their life again.
The New Year Edition no. 981 has a really interesting review of 2011 and much, much more besides. And from January 16th there will be new look, bigger, better magazine, still for the same £2.50.
Go on, give it a try. Please!

Mea Culpa

2012-01-09T15:45:00.000Z

An apology to my readers - I seem to have been away from here for too long - well, a week anyway. Fact is I have had my head down finishing my next book and everything else just had to go on hold. I hope to be back in full flow again soon.

I did though take a break from my scribblings to go to Southwark Cathedral for a wonderful service - the annual Diocesan Servers' Festival Eucharist, where we get a chance to be thanked for all our efforts (!) and to go through an Act of Redication. Wonderful organ music, beautiful Cantor's voice, fantastic incense, amazing spiritual experience.

Happy Day for Hens!

2012-01-01T13:16:00.001Z

As Aldous Huxley once said,
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

“1 in every 30 Americans, that is 10 million people, back the Humane Society of the United States, an organization that seeks a humane and sustainable world for all animals and is America’s ‘mainstream force against cruelty, exploitation and neglect.’ This means that 29 out of every 30 or 290 million Americans may not care very much about animal cruelty. That is a huge number of people.
I wrote that a couple of years ago and the really good news is that another million now back the society, that is now 1 in 28 Americans!
But the fact remains that many farm animals are still subjected to the most appallingly cruel conditions in factory farms. Would those who love their own family pets be happy for them to be treated to the same kind of cruelty? By our inactions we appear to condone miserable birthing cages or farrowing crates for female pigs, where they are held for months and can hardly move let alone turn around or socialize with other pigs; we eat and apparently enjoy the French delicacy pate de foie gras which requires that ducks and geese are force-fed unnaturally large quantities of food through a metal tube that is shoved down their throats and into their stomachs two or three times each day. This barbaric treatment produces a liver that is fatty, diseased and ten times the normal size. It sounds disgusting and it is; goodness knows how those birds must suffer. We prefer not to know about the calves separated from their mothers within the first few days of birth and crammed into individual crates or stalls, tethered by their necks, so they can hardly move, for the duration of their dreadful short lives; and we ignore the plight of the 280 million laying hens in the United States which spend their lives cooped up in tiny cages with no more than the space of an A4 piece of paper that they can (hardly) call their own.”

However not all is gloom and doom. Compassion in World Farming is celebrating a landmark piece of EU animal welfare legislation that came into force today, making the use of barren battery cages for egg-laying hens illegal throughout the European Union (EU).
There's a short and pretty silly film of hens celebrating as well!
But, and this is why we cannot be complacent, 13 EU states are likely to be non-compliant, with 84 million hens still stuck in those dreadful cages. And these eggs may still be imported and sold in the UK, or used in the manufacture of other foods offered for sale. So those of us who care about animals and their welfare must remain vigilant. Our work is not over yet.

You can go to the CWF “The Big Move” website to ask the European Commission not to let non-compliant nations get away with flouting the ban. And we can all be more thoughtful about what we are buying and eating. Please think about this, for the sake of sentient animals everywhere.

And a Very Happy New Year to all my readers.

The Incredible Edibles Campaign

2011-12-29T07:00:00.002Z

I hope all my readers have had a good Christmas and I wish them all a Happy New Year.

Here is another of those posts that overlaps my blogs, so I make no apology for posting it here as well as on my allotment blog.

I've just come across a fantastic idea - one that started in the UK but is gathering interest from other parts of the world. I was listening to BBC Radio 4's You and Yours programme today and pricked up my ears when I heard mention of food sustainability. Vegetables are being grown in a graveyard, I heard, and then came another snippet; that our food production accounts for 23% of our carbon footprint. So I stopped my noisy food processor and started to listen properly.
Todmorden is a an old Victorian mill town on the Lancashire/West Yorkshire border. 3 years ago it set out to be the first town to become self sufficient in food, with a target set for 2018. They call it the Incredible Edible campaign. And whilst the founders do not feel that the target date is totally achievable, nevertheless they are doing well - and they have a wonderful website to prove it, full of amazing resources to support those already in the loop, and to encourage others to start in their own localities.

The idea is that veggies and edibles are grown in public and unused spaces for the common plate, and it is now being put into practice in Wilmslow for example, and in Totnes, the original Transition Town.
And it's not just about growing fruit and vegetables - at least in Todmorden. It's also about educating residents on what to look for in sustainable meat supplies, and in how to pickle and bottle summer surpluses for winter consumption.
Now here's something I could start rolling in our own town! Just give me a little time! We've already started encouraging our local school to grow vegetables, for example, and we have a community orchard, but this is one huge step further. If there are any hints and tips out there as to how to start (in addition to the online resources mentioned), I'd love to hear.

London at Night - Hay's Wharf and London Bridge

2011-12-28T19:04:00.000Z

What would you do?

2011-12-23T07:00:00.005Z

Imagine the scene. All the family is at home with you for Christmas. You are having a lovely party time – all is merriment and joy. Suddenly your child lunges out at his cousin with the toy sword you gave him from Santa. Blood is drawn and your son shows no sign of stopping. What do you do? You stop him, take away the sword, tend the wounds of the cousin, apologize profusely to the mother and impose punishment or sanctions or both on your son. Of course you do. You do most or all of these things, and peace is restored, a lesson has been learned. You may even think twice about the choice of present another year. You can take some responsibility.You can make a difference.

Now imagine the party scene again, only this time there is a fracas outside your house, in the street. A youth is beating up another and it looks violent. Do you just ignore it? Of course you don’t. If there are enough big strong men in your party they may go out and separate the lads, restore peace: although the police frown upon this vigilante approach, and sadly the good guys may suffer at the hands of the lads. So at the very least you call the police. Don’t you? Of course you do. And if you have any sense of social responsibility at all you would not, should not, resent paying appropriate taxes or rates to fund agents of law and order to keep your home, street, town, county, state or country safe.

Now imagine the party scene one more time – only you have turned on the TV news, just in time to see scenes of appalling rioting, violence and arson on the streets of the town a few miles away.

Or you see scenes of appalling rioting, violence and arson, or murder, or torture, or any dreadful abuse of human rights a little further afield - just across the border, in the next State, County, Country, even in another Continent…global news reaches our front room so quickly and graphically in this digital age.

What do you do?

You may be getting the idea.

Where do we draw the line, the boundaries.

What can we do to relieve suffering elsewhere. Does suffering matter less to us the further away it is, the more remote it is from our own circle of family and friends?

What is our government doing about global suffering? Is it enough? Do we campaign enough? Can we help financially? Can we influence with our vote?

We all tend to live in our own bubble. But not caring about our fellow human beings wherever they live, whoever they are, diminishes us as humans.

Surfing the internet, I came upon the following story told by Amital Etzioni in his blog (July 27, 2007) in connection with his book Spirit of Community.

Five shoppers at a Witchita, Kansas convenience store simply stepped over the body of 27 year-old LaShanda Calloway who lay on the floor bleeding severely. None stopped to ask if she was in need of assistance. None even bothered to call 911. Ms. Calloway died later that day at a Witchita hospital of injuries the result of a stabbing; she had been an innocent bystander, wounded in someone else’s fight.

What can you do to help heal this world?

Let’s bring compassion and empathy back into our lives.

Let’s bring Christ back into Christmas.

I'm taking a few days out from blogging - and I wish all my readers a very happy Christmas. May we all work in 2012 towards a more compassionate World.

More about the Occupy protests

2011-12-21T15:12:00.000Z

I am leaving the photos of Occupy…up on my blog for the time being because I support much of what their protest is all about. So much so in fact that I visited the tent city in London outside St Paul’s Cathedral to chat to some of the occupiers and to see for myself what they are doing and the way they are thinking. I even left a copy of my book at their library, because it addresses the issues with which they have so much concern. This is not just about "fat cats" and bankers bonuses, although these do signal a malaise in our society. This protest is about sustainable living, looking after the environment, and justice for all.
Perhaps we really are now in a slow paradigm shift, when realization is at last dawning that we simply cannot carry on the way we have done to date.
Three quotes I have come across in my reading over the last few days sum it up neatly I think:

“People have had enough of the current economic model. The current political system has failed to deliver on its promise of prosperity for all.”
Richard Murphy founder of The Tax Justice Network

“…people are being persuaded to spend money we don’t have, on things we don’t need, to create impressions that won’t last, on people we don’t care about.”
Tim Jackson Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prosperity-without-Growth-Economics-Finite/dp/1849713235/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324478109&sr=1-1

“Money is not wealth; real wealth is land, forest, rivers, animals and people…Let us respect the generous Earth and wild Nature, the eternal source of wellbeing and prosperity. If we take care of people and Nature, then the economy will take care of itself…Some people might say that this is too idealistic; but what have the realists done? They have made a complete mess of the world economy…”
Satish Kumar Resurgence

Richard Murphy in The Courageous State calls for governments and courageous politicians to deliver real transformation in people’s lives. I agree to an extent, but they cannot do it alone. They can only change things so far. Real change for a better world needs us to change our own hearts and minds as well, something I explore in some detail in Healing…, not only in connection with our failed economy, but in many other facets of life as well where we have current concerns.

It’s only because Gandhi was so right that he is quoted so often:

We must be the change we want to see in the world.

angels from the realms of glory!

2011-12-18T17:00:00.000Z

Aren't they lovely!!

The Big Society part 2

2011-12-15T07:00:00.001Z

Synchronicity is an amazing thing! It never fails to amaze me. Just as I had posted yesterday's blog on the Big Society a blog I follow Apprentice2Jesus came up with this link to a brilliant piece by Michael Hyatt on Five Ways you can become an Absolute Hero.

It really has to be read - we all need this kind of reminder more often.

The photo is in La Gomera

“No one knows what the “big society” is, say MPs

2011-12-14T15:33:00.000Z

I just cannot help feeling people are being naïve about UK Prime Minister Cameron’s “The Big Society.” I think I call it Real Community, and that is a term more readily understood across the world.
“No one knows what the “big society” is, say MPs.” That is the headline in today’s newspaper.

In the same paper I read that “Paris bans beggars from top tourist and shopping spots,” as these vagrants upset and offend the shoppers. The poor and homeless begging in shop doorways and at entrances to the metro or underground whether in Paris or London are not part of a “big society.”And the only offence we should feel is that in 21st Century Europe there is any need at all for begging.
Kids roaming the streets out of boredom, getting involved in gangs and drugs; that’s not part of a “big society.” Over 1 million unemployed youngsters in the UK; that’s not “big society.” The filth and litter all over our streets; that’s not part of a “big society.” The elderly who are lonely and isolated at home, or abused and bullied in care homes; that’s not “big society.” The young family struggling to bring up their disabled children on insufficient income who don’t even know their neighbors, who wouldn’t know where they could knock on a door to get help or support in an emergency. The rogues stealing metal plaques from gravestones and war memorials because scrap metal dealers will pay good prices now for them; that most certainly is not “big society.”
Perhaps it is easier to say what a “big society” is NOT than what it is.

The people selling the Big Issue on the streets – now that IS part of a bigger society! At least they are aspiring for a better life and doing something about it. But they receive support, both from the Big Issue operation itself, and from those of us who stop and talk to them, get to know them, buy their magazine (fantastic value and cheaper than that hyper- caloried drink you have just bought), even on occasions buy them a hot drink (OK call me a softie). But little things like that, being nice to other people, helping them on their way, all help to make the world a little bit better and ARE one step towards a “big society”.

Real community starts in the streets where we live. It starts with our own families, with our neighbors and friends, and extends to friends at work, in our church, in our club or society. But it should never ever exclude others around us who share our “space.” We are all human beings, with the same needs and vulnerabilities, and even finding just a little time to help others is time very well spent in the huge scheme of things.
Of course we cannot personally solve all the seamier problems of our broken society. We will sometimes need help and support from local and national government, and from other agencies, whether this comes through regulation or from practical resources. Of course we cannot solve housing problems on our own, for example, or the gangs on “sink” estates. But Gandhi did say: “YOU must be the change you want to see in the world.” And for that change to come about we all have to start small. Start in our own back yard. And that way we WILL start to build a “Big Society.”

Jonathan Sacks wrote somewhere that

‘A community is where they know your name and where they miss you if you are not there [Sacks’ italics] Community is society with a human face.’

In other words, Big Society.

HOW GREEN ARE YOU? 50 WAYS TO SAVE THE PLANET

2011-12-10T20:16:00.000Z

It is in our gift to stop harming our planet.

There is now widespread scientific agreement on the parlous state of the environment, in spite of the cynics and skeptics who would love to believe that the earth will always be able to sustain the profligate Western lifestyle as it spreads across the whole world. Earth has finite resources and is groaning under the strain.
In any event, many of us are beginning to feel unease with the current materialist and consumerist culture of the West; we hold visions of a simpler, more satisfying and “better” way of life, more connected at a spiritual level with our fellow beings, with nature and the cosmos.

An Environment Agency survey in 2007 of 25 leading scientists and environmentalists asked them for their ideas on the 50 most important things that will save the planet. Some of the suggestions require input at organizational, national, governmental or global level. Some require clever science. But there are many ideas we can take on board individually or locally as a community, by changing the way we behave; and many of these will actually save us money. So here are the behavioural items, in order of priority:

· Power down, use less energy and say goodbye to standby. There are some very good inexpensive gadgets on the market to help here.
· Consider generating your own renewable energy using currently available schemes see http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Generate-your-own-energy
· Fly less.
· Buy less, buy better. Buy secondhand not new, on need not greed. Support the charity shops.
· Use the local Freecycle scheme where possible to dispose of your unwanted stuff. http://uk.freecycle.org/
· Make your home as eco-friendly as possible with water and energy saving devices and adequate insulation.
· Stop seeing money as the one big indicator of success!
· Stop buying wood products from unsustainable sources.
· Support Fairtrade and fair-trade – think about where goods come from.
· Is your car journey really necessary?
· Grow your own.
· Ditch the decking and the patio heater.
· Think community – think local.
· Wake up to wildlife and biodiversity.
· Use pedal power or even “shanks’s pony” wherever possible.
· Know your own carbon footprint and reduce it! See tools at http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/ and http://www.decc.gov.uk
· Support stuff that lasts and can be repaired.
· Use the internet creatively – e.g. the U.S. led site http://www.treehugger.com/
· Shun unnecessary packaging whenever you shop.
· Wear more layers and cut down on heating bills.

The full list and the detail can all be found at www.environment-agency.gov.uk/ (and search for “The 50 Things”).
High up on the full list at number 2, after “standby,” was the vital role that religious and faith leaders can collectively play. “Religious leaders need to make the planet their priority,” the report concludes: “The world’s faith groups have been silent for too long on the environment…” I agree wholeheartedly and I discuss at some length in my own book some of the faith initiatives that are already in hand. They need our support and prayer.

So let’s all work to reduce our carbon footprint. We need to tread more gently on our earth.

Sand sculpture at Valle Gran Rey, La Gomera

2011-12-09T07:00:00.001Z

A Common Word between Us and You - a dialogue between Islam and Christianity

2011-12-08T07:00:00.001Z

Occasionally I repeat an article across my blogs. I make no apology for this if I believe it to be so important that I want it to reach as wide an audience as possible. So here is one such repeat.

"Arguably one of the most important books of our time. All Christians and Muslims should know about this initiative."

That was how I ended the blog the other day over on my other site Wisdom of Tolerance about A Common Word, the Muslim initiative addressed to Christians, prompted by the Islamic furore provoked in many Muslim countries by part of the Pope’s 2005 Regensburg address.
And the response is said to have been phenomenal. Quoting from the Cambridge Interfaith Programme site, “A Common Word has been the subject of major international conferences at Yale University, the University of Cambridge - facilitated by CIP, Lambeth Palace and Georgetown University, over 600 Articles—carried by thousands of press outlets—have been written about A Common Word in English alone, over 200,000 people have visited the Official Website of A Common Word (and) over 6000 people have ‘fully endorsed’ A Common Word online alone.”

But in the grand scale of things, although these together make for a very promising start, they are but “a drop in the ocean.” As the book so rightly reminds us, there needs to be a trickle down effect to reach the masses, and the learned conferences and articles are but a stage towards that goal. There is a significant proportion of the population that can only be reached by people of influence: by Imams, priests, teachers, lecturers, youth leaders etc. They’re not going to read conference reports and educated commentary. We need that trickle down effect to start working in a big way to reach beyond the intellectual and the well educated, to reach out to the masses, many of whom do not read very widely if at all and may harbour plenty of prejudice born of ignorance and fear. And we need plenty of responsible media reporting and press officers in organizations who can push for that responsible reporting to reach out as far and wide as possible. Because not only can the media be hugely influential in that trickle down effect; They also have the networks to become tentacles reaching out laterally as far and wide into crevices of public ignorance and prejudice as possible. And if we continue the water metaphors, we need Ripples of Hope, because as Robert Kennedy said all those many years ago, in Cape Town in 1966:

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

When I think of what needs to be done to promote tolerance and peace, I am reminded of Tariq Jahan, the hero in the Birmingham riots earlier this year after his son Haroon had been killed in the violence. ‘I lost my son.” He said to the angry crowd, “Blacks, Asians, whites, we all live in the same community. Why do we have to kill one another? Why are we doing this? Step forward if you want to lose your sons. Otherwise, calm down and go home – please.”
Now if every person of influence at grass roots level where there is a choice between violence and anger or dialogue and calm could step forward and speak up for peace between us all in the same dignified way that Tariq did back in August, couldn’t we begin to build a better world for us all?

Parque Maritime Playa Vallehermosa, La Gomera

2011-12-07T18:04:00.000Z

Parque Maritime at Playa de Vallehermosa La Gomera.

Last time I went I had a lovely meal there and it was a cultural centre, museum, gift shop and a pleasant place to be. Now it is all shut up, the road half washed away and looking very sad and sorry for itself. Anyone know what has happened?

La Gomera up in the clouds

2011-12-05T10:53:00.000Z

Woodvale Challenge - start postponed

2011-12-04T20:36:00.000Z

Sadly the wind increased yesterday and by this morning the organisers decided to postpone the start for 24 hours - sad for those all psyched up to start today - and for families whose nerves are already fairly frayed and especially for those who have flights booked to go home tomorrow and may not be able to see the start after all. It is hard for everyone.
So we went up to the north of La Gomera to look at the seas - and the swell was certainly quite awesome - but nothing I guess to what the lads and lasses will have to contend with in mid Atlantic in due course!!

Again Good Luck to you all!!

The Woodvale Challenge - Good luck to you all

2011-12-01T10:55:00.000Z

Rations!!

The Woodvale Challenge

2550 nautical miles

Sets off this Sunday 4th December

Good luck to you all!!

The Woodvale Challenge - Good luck Andrew Brown

2011-11-28T19:42:00.000Z

"The Woodvale challenge is a biannual race and sees 40-50 boats row across the Atlantic. Solo, Pairs and Fours all take part in the race with crews arriving between 50-90 days after they leave from La Gomera.

Andrew is entered in the solo class.

• Departing from San Sebastian, La Gomera - 4 December 2011
• Arriving in Barbados - from February 2012
• Total distance - 2,935 miles

Successful completion of the row will make Andrew the 26th British person to row the Atlantic East to West. Andrew is aiming to complete the row in 70 – 80 days however weather conditions can result in solo boats taking up to 120 days for the crossing."

So good luck Andrew - you are in the thoughts and prayers of so many people.

And if you are reading this, do follow the link for lots more about the race and to support Andrew. What an amazing way to raise money for charity. It makes my charity bike rides look like a walk in the park!!

Ethical Investment

2011-11-28T07:00:00.001Z

Many of us own company stock, some of us perhaps without even knowing it, or at least thinking about it, because it is out of sight in our pension funds (although the deep recession at the end of the first decade of the new millennium, and the turmoil on world financial markets, brought such funds sharply into focus for many). Businesses must now be more accountable for their green credentials. But what about those companies that still operate unethical work practices. Those holding pension funds delegate full powers of investment to the fund managers who will be motivated and driven by the need to maximize profits and growth for the funds in their charge. As major shareholders these funds have enormous powers and are not likely to consider the ethical views of the individual pensioners against the overall drive for growth. It may seem that the individual does not have a voice. But we can have our say; we can influence others. All it needs is knowledge and courage and the support of other like - minded people. It can be done. Have you ever questioned your pension fund managers on this?
Does the small shareholder really know or even care how the company operates as long as he receives his regular dividend income? Can he possibly understand the full implications of the company’s business, how it treats its employees, how it deals with its waste, how it invests its own money. So many shareholders make their investments motivated solely by profit, without any regard for the ethical considerations. This is no less true of buying shares than buying consumer goods.
The implications of all this are enormous. As individuals we may unwittingly be helping to fuel warfare, for example, by carelessly investing or allowing our pension funds or banks or investment funds or unit trusts to invest in any company involved along the way with the production of weapons.
I pray for there to be a shift in attitude. When I was in practice as a Chartered Accountant and Independent Financial Adviser I had a particular interest in ethical investment funds for my clients. One bank without my knowledge or consultation transferred the ethical funds of one of my most principled clients into its own funds, declaring in the process that they would never take ethical considerations into account in their investment choices, only investment performance. This was some time ago. I hope the bank has reviewed its policies. Individuals who would think of themselves as ethical and feel aghast at the mess we are in have had their conscience swayed by the profit promise in this way. Have you checked the ethics of your own bank? There is plenty of information now available to check this out. Do you care?
Even the employees of a company who individually may think of themselves as honest and decent can be remote from the realities of the company’s business and the adverse environmental or social effects it may be initiating in its drive to make profits.
Do you know what your employer really does? Not just at the superficial level of your daily employment, but at grass roots? Are you absolutely comfortable with the company’s trading practices, its markets and its environmental footprint? And if not, what are you doing about it?
Most important of all we need to bring the healing power of spiritual values back into the company and its boardrooms. In our businesses and economies we can choose between technologies that are ‘developed for…commercial profit...that disregard natural rhythms and human aspirations’ or we can adopt a technology that is ‘appropriate, benign and renewable and makes a small footprint on the Earth. Such technologies work in harmony with nature, rather than attempting to dominate or conquer her.’(1)

‘Whereas we,’ said Dr. Robert in Huxley’s Island, ‘have always chosen to adapt our economy and technology to human beings - not our human beings to somebody else’s economy and technology. We import what we can't make; but we make and import only what we can afford. And what we can afford is limited not merely by our supply of pounds and marks and dollars, but also primarily - primarily,’ he insisted, ‘by our wish to be happy, our ambition to become fully human.’ (2)

A healed economy will support a global justice for all: it will give us all equal opportunities that we may flourish and become fully human. Are we all doing what we can as individuals to contribute towards that healing?

Adapted from Healing this Wounded Earth © Eleanor Stoneham 2011

1. Canon Revd. Peter Challen, SLIM annual lecture 2005. A Ministry of Service in Economic Life – Servants, Pastors, Prophets and Fools - 60 years of servants seeking the economy that befits the Kin-dom of God, South London Industrial Mission annual lecture 2005 sourced 4 December 2005, but no longer available at site, http://www.industrialmission.org.uk/cms/
2. Aldous Huxley, Island, London: Grafton Books, 1976, p.164.

Paradise here on earth - La Gomera

2011-11-27T15:45:00.000Z

Spending Power

2011-11-26T07:00:00.001Z

My last post was about individual responsibilities and I have more to say about that now.
Governing bodies are cumbersome. They move ponderously and not always in the right direction. Time delays between ideas and action can be far too long. And then policies stall as the political power base changes. Action is much more effective at local level with individual commitment. So what inhibits us?
Our money gives us ‘spending power’. By choosing how we spend it, we can influence how shops stock their shelves, what goods are manufactured, the conditions in which they are manufactured. Our money can be a very powerful influence in all manner of ways that can affect our environment either directly or indirectly, for good or evil, when we have money available to spend. Supermarkets will justify their actions in stocking inappropriate products that we know to be environmentally unfriendly, or harmful in some other way, with the excuse that they are simply giving us what as consumers we demand. If we buy them they will continue to stock them. It really is that simple!
Are our spending patterns encouraging animal cruelty or slave labor in garment ‘sweat shops’? Appalling working conditions, child labor and poor pay still exist and we could be encouraging these without even realizing it.
The most effective and immediate impact we can all make is through changing our spending patterns. We are all in control of how we save, invest and spend, whether we choose ethical products, buy fair-trade and Traidcraft products, or perhaps give generously to aid agencies where we can be sure our money provides rapid relief.
We can and must fight to bring ethical trading in from the bottom up. We can enquire where our goods are produced and in what conditions and avoid all unreasonably cheap goods where we suspect that unethical working practices are present. If the information is not available, demand it.
Perhaps we could do more to support local enterprise. The local farmers’ markets promote respect for land and food. We could pay more for quality and eat less. Why not get back in touch with the seasons and eat foods at the right time of year when they are available locally. I am aware of the controversies over air miles versus the need to support foreign enterprise to help other communities; many of these stories must be considered on their own merits. Some of these choices may seem more expensive. But are they when balanced against the alternative predictions for our world? Does the suffering of fellow beings and the future of our planet matter so little to us that we are not prepared to change our habits today?

To be continued…

Adapted from Healing this Wounded Earth © Eleanor Stoneham 2011

Money Breaks the Chain of Desire and Effect

2011-11-24T07:00:00.001Z

It is too easy, I wrote the other day, for our materialistic emotions to override any fleeting feelings of spiritual conscience! But we need that conscience. In the day to day rush of our lives we quickly forget those many parts of the world where finding the basic necessities of life, warmth, clean air, medicine, clean water, food and housing is a daily and often dangerous struggle. Are we sure that how we earn, spend, save and invest our money is not in some way adversely affecting our fellow human beings in less fortunate parts of the world? And do we care?
It has been said that one of the underlying problems with money is that ‘…it breaks the chain of desire and effect. [It] provokes people to act, for the sake of payment, in a fashion that, if they knew how the action would turn out, they would not contemplate.’(1)
It is all too easy to ‘tell the world to get lost’ and at least in our dreams ride off into the distance like the beautiful lady in the advertisement. (previous blog post) That is no solution. Escapism is no way to a clear conscience. We really do need to fight our complacency and apathy. People are suffering as we all read this and actions need to be taken. Of course we have to alleviate as much suffering as possible immediately, but without at any time losing sight of the longer term plan of rescue. For those victims of war, poverty, disease and drought, life is a daily struggle for survival. Getting those people back on their feet is a much more effective long-term strategy than any amount of aid that we can give now. A good example was the story of Grameen Bank and the poor Bangladeshi women (15th November blog post).

1. James Buchan, Frozen Desire – the Meaning of Money, New York: Welcome Rain Publishers, 2001, p. 48, where he describes the painting by Rembrandt entitled Judas, Repentant, Returning the Pieces of Silver and how it captures the ‘strangeness of money’ and the devastating realization by Judas that for…pieces of silver he has brought about the assassination of Jesus Christ. Painted 1629 – one of Rembrandt’s early paintings.

To be continued…

Adapted from Healing this Wounded Earth © Eleanor Stoneham 2011

What is wealth to you?

2011-11-22T07:00:00.001Z

Some while ago a series of bank advertisements on the management of wealth appeared in the glossy weekend media. One of these featured a lone and pretty girl cantering away on a lovely white stallion into the beautiful and totally unblemished distance. ‘What...[is wealth]…to you?’ the headline asked. ‘It’s being able to tell the world to get lost.’
How can any single one of us afford to turn our back on the world in this way in any sense. How can any of us ride away to an unblemished horizon while so many basic human rights are not available to so many? That surely diminishes us as human beings. But someone, indeed a team of people, wrote that advertisement.

I have written quite a bit over the last year on this blog about the flaws in our economy and indeed the flaws in human nature! An enormous intellectual effort has been and continues to be directed towards the perceived flaws in the economies of the world and how we may be able to overcome them – and I have written much about that as well. We now have to make our own contributions. With the worldwide web there is no shortage of informed opinion and support; some would say there is too much. The internet is an extremely powerful tool in this regard, enabling rapid dissemination of information and coordination of activities worldwide.
Before we take an intuitive leap into action, before we can make positive changes in our lives, in our work and in our leisure, we need strength, hope, determination, optimism and prayer. But we also need courage, and trust and most of all love and compassion. As long as we feel driven by greed or insecurity or envy to make as much money as possible for our own material well being and to covet unnecessary possessions, we fuel consumerism and ultimately self destruction. It is too easy for our materialistic emotions to override any fleeting feelings of spiritual conscience!

To be continued…

Adapted from Healing this Wounded Earth © Eleanor Stoneham 2011

Fly Agaric

2011-11-21T07:00:00.001Z

What is money? Why do we need it?

2011-11-20T07:00:00.000Z

It is difficult to define money. We have ingrained within our deepest psyche a sense that our monetary wealth reflects our success and affects our happiness.
But we know from studies that once a certain and fairly modest standard of living has been achieved any further increase in wealth does not improve our happiness. It is then influenced more by our status in society, the quality of our personal relationships and our physical health.(1)And status emphatically does not mean celebrity status. It means being valued for our own unique gifts and qualities, whatever those may be.
And if we still think that an accumulation of wealth can give us longer-term security we are deluded. Monetary wealth is a very poor long-term investment. It cannot guarantee long-term security and no investment is totally risk free. We saw this only too clearly during the global banking crisis that began in 2007 with problems in the United States over ‘sub-prime’ loans. The effect was soon felt in the UK as they reeled from the Northern Rock building society debacle, the first ‘run’ on a bank in that country for 141 years. Now we have the Eurozone crisis and the global stock markets move dizzily up and down fuelled mostly, it would seem, by alternating cycles of fear and greed, and the longer-term effects of this financial tsunami remain uncertain.

Why do we need money?
The Greek Philosopher and scientist Aristotle explained in his Politics in c 330BC why money had been invented. The art of acquisition, he said, for which a currency was required, arose out of the simpler barter of goods, and he saw this as quite natural and healthy. But when ‘The supply of men’s needs came to depend on more foreign sources, as men began to import for themselves what they lacked, and to export what they had in superabundance: …in this way the use of a money currency was inevitably instituted.’(2)
But Aristotle made the distinction, between essential and therefore laudable expenditure for the daily needs of food, shelter and clothing, and the acquisition of money for acquisition’s sake by profit associated with retail trade. The latter he censured,

because the gain in which it results is not naturally made, but is made at the expense of other men. The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. Currency came into existence merely as a means of exchange; usury tries to make it increase.(3)

Aristotle did not trust money because he could see that it could feed an insatiable desire way beyond what was necessary for our needs and he saw this as unethical.
In addition to life’s basic survival necessities of warmth, clean air, medicine, clean water, food and housing, all human beings worldwide have a need and a human right to be free, to be respected as equals, able to choose their own destiny and to fulfill their full emotional, intellectual and spiritual potential. We are all entitled to the five basic human justices, of monetary and social justice, economic and environmental justice and of the right to peace.(4)
I believe that to really achieve such justice in our world we need to allow the healing qualities of compassion and vulnerability and spirituality to infuse our lives and our actions in our financial housekeeping.
Our present economy is flawed - in many ways. That is why I have a sympathy and empathy with the real underlying gripes of the Occupy movement.

Probably the most important flaw is that Humans are not valued
A very large number of people in our society are presently undervalued or not valued at all in monetary terms. These include the old and young, the infirm and disabled, the housewives and the many community and charity volunteers without whom many organizations would simply not survive. All of these people outside the conventional workforce often work very much harder and longer hours than many in full time employment. But they gain no financial independence or recognition within the economic framework from their toil. I know of a wife who for two decades has selflessly cared full time for an increasingly and profoundly disabled husband. Or I think of the mother who takes a career break to raise her own children. These women both lead enormously valuable lives, but feel undervalued.
We measure a ‘healthy’ economy in terms of the material wealth or prosperity that is created by and for its working citizens, expressed in terms such as the gross domestic product (GDP), gross domestic income (GDI) or gross national product (GNP). Whichever measure is used, they all put a zero valuation on the environment, on healthy citizens, social cohesion and cultural values!(5)As Robert Kennedy said:

…the (Gross National Product) does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages… It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans. (6)

1. Schluter, Michael and John Ashcroft, Editors, Jubilee Manifesto: a Framework, Agenda and Strategy for Christian Social Reform, Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 2005, p. 217.
2. Aristotle Politics, translated by Ernest Barker Revised R F Stalley 1998, 1.9 1257a 5 p.26.
3. Ibid., 1258a 35 p.30.
4. Based on the principle of global justice taken from the five principles of the Global Justice Movement
5. Hazel Henderson, 2001, Mapping the Transition from GDP Growth to Rising Quality of Life, in Nikkei Ecology, 2001, cited in The Path to Living Economies – a collaborative Working Document of the Social Ventures Network
6. Robert F. Kennedy, 18 March 1968.

© Eleanor Stoneham 2011 Adapted from Healing this Wounded Earth

The Millennium Bridge

2011-11-19T07:00:00.001Z

I just loved the fluorescent orange in the otherwise totally murky and grey scene across the Millennium Bridge looking towards St Paul's Cathedral.

Occupy London at St Pauls and Economic Justice part 2

2011-11-18T07:00:00.001Z

"The human soul can be very powerful when it is sufficiently aroused; even in the context of changing our flawed economy! Alastair McIntosh tells the tale (1) of how in the last decade of the twentieth century the might of a great corporation was broken by spirituality and theology. Scientific and economic values clashed head on with spirituality. Against what seemed like overwhelming opposition the soul in the end prevailed.
The Community of the Isle of Harris, in the Western Isles of Scotland, was threatened by the development in their midst of a devastating super quarry, a wound and scar of massive proportions. With the assistance of a Native American Warrior Chief Sulian Stone Eagle Herney and what was said to be the first ever theological submission put before a public enquiry the islanders were able to prevent a large corporation (Redland Aggregates Plc) from going ahead with their plans. Overnight the share price of the company on the London Stock exchange fell a massive 8% or £160million pounds! If the project had gone ahead who would have gained from the cruel ravages inflicted on a finely balanced community such as Harris?

The flaws of human nature

Some while ago a series of bank advertisements on the management of wealth appeared in the glossy weekend media. One of these featured a lone and pretty girl cantering away on a lovely white stallion into the beautiful and totally unblemished distance. ‘What...[is wealth]…to you?’ the headline asked. ‘It’s being able to tell the world to get lost.’ Whoaaa!
How can any single one of us afford to turn our back on the world in this way in any sense. How can any of us ride away to an unblemished horizon while so many basic human rights are not available to so many? That surely diminishes us as human beings. But someone, indeed a team of people, wrote that advertisement.
In our materially rich Western society it is too easy to be wooed by the power of marketing and advertising. Psychological insights developed to help us understand the healing needs of our souls are instead cynically used for marketing purposes. The advertisers play on our feelings of guilt or fear and our need for love and comfort, which often reflect in some of the worst aspects of human behavior, our insecurity, envy and discontent. These traits fuel our over-consumption and greed for material possessions.
If we would only understand our behavioral faults and allow them to be healed rather than exploited, there may yet be hope for the plight of our global brothers and sisters who through accident of birth are far less privileged than ourselves. Then we can hope to build an economy that is globally just and contributes to a healing world.
Before looking at ways we can all act to help our world towards some monetary justice, let’s look at our current situation.
The current world situation
The divide between the materially wealthy and the hungry poor is massive and the gap is apparently widening. Statistics from the World Bank tell us that in 2005 26% of the developing world was living below US$1.25 a day, representing 1.4 billion people. If we look at the number living on less than $2 a day, that represented 48% of the world population, or around 2.5 billion men, women and children, a massive testament to human suffering. (2) At the same time we have the ‘super rich’, to be found among the celebrities of sport, television and movie, the top bankers, investment fund managers, lawyers and doctors. It is true that many on the ‘rich-list’ are extremely generous in giving their time, talent and wealth for the global good. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is particularly keen to stamp out the world’s worst diseases that afflict and kill millions each year, most often the young and the poor. He has pledged $25 million to buy 100 million oral polio vaccines for Nigeria, and announced in 2009 that he was giving £115 million towards developing a vaccine for Malaria, which kills up to 2.7 million people a year, 75% of them African children. Bono, the Irish lead singer of U2, best known perhaps for his key involvement with the Make Poverty History campaign, uses his celebrity status to fight for social justice worldwide.
There are others whose lavish life-styles breed an envy and greed, particularly it would seem among the young who are being taught by example that material wealth and celebrity status are the measure of ‘success’. And in the developing world others are attracted to our consumer life style and aspire to similar ‘wealth’. Meanwhile the poor of the world continue to struggle for survival.
The truth is that we have forgotten how to live simply and sustainably with totally unselfish regard for those around us. We have lost the ability to generously share, to ensure that everyone in the same household has had their fill before going ourselves for second helpings.
Consider also that we have an obesity epidemic in the developed western world. Indeed obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in the USA. An estimated 65% of U.S. adults, aged 20 years and older, and 15% of children and adolescents are overweight or obese. Around 34% of adults are obese. That amounts to c. 59 million people! The figures elsewhere are not much better. In 2006 24% of the adult English population were obese, and in children up to 15 years of age the figure was 16%. And both figures are increasing. (3)
We need to find ways to adapt to sustainable living in a world where we can be sure that our good fortune is shared, where everyone has their basic human needs met, where both extremes of wealth and poverty do indeed become history.
We need to build our economy on principles of sustainability and justice for all. Only then can we hope to heal the world.
We must never lose sight of our part as individual players in the world economy. Whether we like it or not, we are all involved as consumers and as investors. Even if we believe we are doing all we can to help, by maximizing our recycling, curbing our expenditure, avoiding waste, and investing ethically, we are still unknowingly or blindly fuelling a wounded economy that is perpetuating the world’s injustices. The responsibility is ours…

And that is why I support the essence of the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London Stock Exchange protests.

to be continued

1. Alastair McIntosh Soil and Soul Chapter 14 et. seq.
2. World Bank poverty statistics available for 2005 as at March 2009.
3. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, statistics at http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/index.html and Statistics on obesity, physical activity and diet: England, January 2008

© Eleanor Stoneham 2011 Excerpts from Healing this Wounded Earth

Amma'a Hugs

2011-11-17T18:40:00.001Z

Back in August 2008 I posted a blog on hugs!!
Now 5 years later Amma is in London giving a big hug to anyone who wants one.
Here is the 2008 post:

We all need hugs!
Andrex -of toilet roll fame - have done a survey. We each need according to experts around 8 hugs a day to have a feeling of well-being - 'cos that releases the feel good hormone oxytocin.
But apparently lots of us are missing out! Andrex found that we are missing out on no less than 2808 hugs each, every year, or in total 368 million hugs a day, and this could be damaging our health! (Why Andrex have an interest in this who knows).

10% of us never hug anyone, 55% make do with 2 a week and only 17% are total softies!! Dont know about the rest - this doesnt add up!!

So hugs all around to you all!

The Apocalypse 2012 Part 3

2011-11-17T07:00:00.000Z

So the earth is going to be no more on 21 December 2012. What will happen to wipe it out?
I have covered the reversal of the sun's and the earth's magnetic fields. What else could happen?

One theory is that there is going to be an alignment of planets such that the combined gravitational force could pull the earth away from the sun or tear the earth apart. In fact there was a small conjunction/alignment in December 2008 with no discernible effect and anyway if all the planets were in the same alignment the combined gravitational pull would be miniscule compared with the normal gravitational pull of the sun and the moon. We have also had alignments in the past with no effect, for example in 1962, and 2000, and more are expected in 2040 and 2675.There will be no alignment in 2012.

This was the cheering news from Dame Burnell speaking at a conference organised by the Scientific and Medical Network, on Patterns of Apocalyptic Thought. I shall be writing up the conference in full by the end of November at Conscious Connection.

To be continued this week - impact from matter in space and what else?

The Apocalypse 2012 Part 2

2011-11-16T07:00:00.000Z

Every 300,000 years or thereabouts, the earth's magnetic field reverses - it stops spinning and starts spinning the other way. The last time this happened was 750,000 years ago so this one is overdue. But man has seen 11 such reversals since he first made his own tools, and none of these have been linked with any mass extinctions, let alone the end of the earth. And the whole process takes about 500 years each time!
We may be at the beginning of a reversal process now - but no significant associated problem of any kind is foreseen.
But note - the spin of the earth does not change - it doesn't suddenly stop spinning one way and start spinning the other! Now there's an interesting thought!

This was the heartening news of Dame Burnell who was speaking at a conference organised by the Scientific and Medical Network, on Patterns of Apocalyptic Thought. I shall be writing up the conference in full by the end of November at Conscious Connection.

To be continued this week - planet alignments and impact from matter in space.

Occupy London at St Pauls and Economic Justice

2011-11-15T07:00:00.004Z

So the Occupy Wall Street protestors have been evicted from their tent city in Manhattan. I went to London the other day and walked around the Occupy London Stock Exchange tent city outside St Paul's Cathedral. And I met and talked with many very pleasant, very thoughtful and intelligent people who understand very clearly what they are doing and are peacefully calling for economic change. They are fed up with the "fatcats" getting richer, the poor getting poorer, the huge inequalities and injustices in the world, etc etc etc. The site is very well organised, very peaceful, attracting much public support, and the police looked bored stiff! These people are echoing so much that I have written in Healing.... and so I donated a copy of my book to their library as it will be of interest to many of the protestors there. And I thought it appropriate to post some excerpts here over the next week or so, in between postings on Apocalyptic thoughts! (Perhaps there is a link!):

"When the last tree is cut, the last river poisoned, and the last fish dead, we will discover that we can't eat money..."
Greenpeace message on one of their longest banners. (1)

"This notion of spiritless existence can be described as materialism. All is matter; land, forests, food, water, labour, literature and art are commodities to be bought and sold in the marketplace - the world market, the stockmarket, the so-called free market… Business without spirit, trade without compassion, industry without ecology, finance without fairness, economics without equity can only bring the breakdown of society and destruction of the natural world. Only when spirit and business work together can humanity find coherent purpose."
Satish Kumar, “Spiritual Imperative,” Resurgence (2)

In 1976 an economics professor Dr Muhammad Yunus conducted an experiment. He gave the equivalent of $26 to each of 42 workers. From this they all bought materials, spent a day weaving chairs or making pots and were able to sell their wares and repay the loans. Thus was born the concept of microcredit.
Microcredit refers to small loans of less than a few hundred dollars, with no collateral, at nil or no more than commercial interest rates, made to help the poorest of the poor in the third world to start up small enterprises. This enables them to spread their productive capacity and gain some measure of independence and a better standard of living. For Yunus’ subsequent work with Grameen Bank, which was founded to foster this use of microcredit, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to them both in equal shares, for ‘their efforts to create economic and social development from below’, while improving the lives of millions of people in Yunus’ native Bangladesh.
As a young child I won a ten-bob note. That was a considerable prize in those days. I was so excited. I could buy another nature book to add to my collection! How did I win this? For spotting the deliberate error in an article in our village church magazine, which misquoted the Bible as saying money is the root of all evil. Much to my dismay my mother suggested I should immediately volunteer to return this prize to the church. I still vividly remember having the collecting box held under my nose in the vestry by the priest and putting the note very reluctantly back through the slot under my mother’s watchful gaze.
The lesson I had to learn was a hard one and it obviously made a deep impression! As a Christian I should be generous to those more in need than myself. But the ethics of the situation were lost on an eight year old. I had always been told we could not afford those things that my best schoolmates enjoyed, such as a pony or dancing lessons, perhaps a new bike. I was quite discouraged from entering similar competitions again. And I certainly learnt the meaning of voluntary compulsion!
In fact as with so many Biblical references the saying is taken out of context and is not complete. The full quotation reads: ‘For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs.’ (3)
So I believe the lesson of the ten bob note was more profound than my mother may have realized. I was learning the hard way that I had to avoid any love of money for its own sake: that there is so much more to being human in this world than striving for the accumulation of monetary wealth and possessions.
Real wealth is not about money: it is about spiritual wellbeing. It seems that we have largely lost sight of the spirit that is in all matter. As the human ecologist Alastair McIntosh observes in his inspirational book Soil and Soul, ‘We are materially richer than ever before and yet suffer a spiritual poverty…we live, but suffer spiritual death. Our very accomplishments cut us off further from the soul.’ (4) Real security and happiness that we all seek, consciously or unconsciously, will be found in spiritual wealth, for which we have a great hunger.

1. Greenpeace website.
2. Kumar, Satish, in ‘Spiritual Imperative: Elegant Simplicity is the way to Discover Spirituality,’ Resurgence (March/April 2005) issue 229 at http://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article653-SPIRITUAL-IMPERATIVE.html
3. Holy Bible, RSV, 1 Timothy 6.10
4. McIntosh, Alastair, Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power, London: Aurum Press, 2004p. 4.

© Eleanor Stoneham 2011 Excerpts from Healing This Wounded Earth

The Apocalypse 2012 Part 1

2011-11-13T21:25:00.003Z

The world is going to come to an end according to The Mayan Calendar on December 21 next year. Really?
I've just heard Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell FRS DBE - and she is quite an expert on matters astronomical - explain why the various cosmic theories are just a load of star dust!

Theory One - The sun's magnetic field will reverse and/or solar storms will take out the earth.
Actually the magnetic field reversal happens every 11 years - man has lived through something like a quarter of a million such reversals since he first invented tools - and the next one is due in 2021 anyway, not 2012. As for solar storms, they tend to be related to sunspots, also on 11 year cycles, the next one expecting to peak in 2013 and it looks as if it is going to be the lowest peak for 100 years. So actually fewer solar storms are expected, and they certainly don't look as if they'll take out the earth.

BUT - she did warn that it's not a good idea to be an astronaut in space near such solar storms as increased radiation from the storms makes navigation vulnerable, and that goes for GPS, mobiles etc that depend on satellites.

Dame Burnell was speaking at a conference organised by the Scientific and Medical Network, on Patterns of Apocalyptic Thought. I shall be writing up the conference in full by the end of November at Conscious Connection.

To be continued this week - the earth's magnetic field, planet alignments and impact from matter in space.

Lest We Forget

2011-11-12T22:22:00.000Z

When Will We Learn?

Occupy Wall Street and St Paul's - Again

2011-11-10T07:00:00.005Z

The Occupy Wall Street and St Paul's Demonstrations both have a very good point. We do have a fundamentally flawed current economic system. I've written much on this both on this blog and elsewhere.
Yes we may feel impotent in the face of bureaucracy and the power of the banks and the seeming lack of any progress in addressing the flaws.But there are things we can all do, that will not necessarily change the world's economy in any immediate significant way, but will certainly help at a local level and nibble away at creating more sustainable and responsible living.
There are millions of citizens worldwide who are already making their own practical contributions using local money systems, barter schemes for goods and services, for example. Perhaps you are already involved in some way. Well Done! But none of us can be complacent in the amount we do. Suppose that we all start just one more ripple? The global effect could be profound.
Just as one example, I have in mind the Complementary and Community Currencies.
These flourished in the United States in the Great Depression but did not survive World War II and the post war economic boom. They have been successfully resurrected and now there are thousands of schemes in the United States alone and many more worldwide.
LETS (The Local Exchange Trading System) is probably the most widely available and best-known system and is well established globally. This system trades in Green Dollars, a unit invented and designed by Michael Linton and David Weston in British Colombia Canada in the 1980s.
The principle of these schemes is simple. Units issued by individuals as part of a transaction between provider and recipient of services create an instant and simultaneous debit and credit. No debt is built up with an outside agency, but there is a commitment on the part of the recipient to give service to someone else in the community. Likewise those who have accumulated credits have a commitment to give the opportunity to others in the community to balance their accounts by requesting services from them.
Some of these systems allow for both national and community money to be used, so while they do not have value outside of the particular community where they operate, they allow members to conserve national currency. In this sense they complement national currency.
At community level these schemes are proving to be extremely successful in their various forms and act as cohesive forces to bring communities together in a true spirit of trust and cooperation. They can give a sense of self worth to the poor and marginalized, the unemployed or unemployable. They recognize that everyone has an intrinsic value, has unique and individual gifts. We can all offer something of ourselves to others in such a barter arrangement.
Time Dollars represent another simple system for the provision of labor. With this, one hour is represented by one credit. Everyone is valued for their own contribution regardless of skills. This appropriates equal value to the previously unvalued non-monetary economy, including traditionally unpaid caring skills for example. As a result such systems have a profound and positive effect on a person’s self value.
There are many other variations on the basic idea of the complementary currency, such as Ithaca Hours, Philadelphia- Eastern Neighborhood Exchange (The PEN Exchange) and the WIR in Switzerland that celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2009.(1)

No one solution is ever going to be the right one or the best one to the exclusion of all others. We must see any of these initiatives within the overall big picture and we should celebrate and build upon common features rather than dwell on differences that can stifle progress. Whatever we do should be within the spirit of community and cooperation.

I'd love to hear readers' own experiences of any of these schemes.

(1)See for example: Bernard Lietaer, The Future of Money – Creating New Wealth, Work and a Wiser World, and Thomas H. Greco, Money: 2001.

Swan and colours at Sheffield Park

2011-11-09T08:15:00.000Z

It was a very grey and drizzly day yesterday but the colours were still great - and being so still the reflections were great too. It would all have been stunning if the sun had been out!!

Streetbank and Make Wealth History

2011-11-04T13:49:00.000Z

Here's a couple of good websites I've just found - one a brilliantly simple idea to help neighbours and neighbourhoods, to help real community building in a friendly and useful way- successfully trialled in West London and went nationwide in April 2010. Is there anything like this in the USA I wonder?:
Streetbank

The second is a Christian site, an exploration of sustainable living in the real world.
Make Wealth History Because the earth can't afford our lifestyle.

Any others on the same lines I should know of? I'd like to hear.

Reflection in Funchal

2011-11-01T13:26:00.000Z

Sunrise over Funchal - photograph

2011-10-31T20:22:00.000Z

Formula One Racing - India

2011-10-29T20:33:00.000+01:00

Formula One racing – the most expensive sport in the world. So India has spent vast sums of money on building a Formula 1 racetrack.
The land -owners who sold their land for the track have become very wealthy overnight. Those who worked on that land suddenly became very poor indeed as they lost their jobs. 37% of Indians live in poverty.
Augustine saw that the State that looked after only its own interests rather than looking to a justice for all was no more than an organised band of robbers. We are in danger of copying that band of robbers unless we work not only for universal justice now, but also towards a justice for all in the future. And our present land-ownership laws seem far from just.

Let's get off the consumer-driven carousel!

2011-10-25T07:00:00.005+01:00

Childcare Costs are Forcing Parents to Give Up Work, shouts the headline.
But is that always such a bad thing? Is it so very bad for one parent to stay at home with the children? Is it a good thing that we have built a culture where both parents are expected to work? What happened to the good old-fashioned division of duties between the parents, one to earn the living, the other to look after the home and the children?
Have we been building a society where the parents are so busy with their own work that they don’t bother where their children are or what they are doing when they get home from school?

Now I know that modern parents can have a tough time bringing up their children, and I know that there are special problems for single-parent families. Of course we should have good social and economic policies that support single mums or dads in their task. And I understand that there are some very real hardships with parents struggling to make ends meet. But what about the two parent family, surely an ideal we should strive towards. Childcare costs in the UK are supposedly some of the most expensive in the world. When combined with cuts this year to certain State Benefits that were designed to help parents get back to work, many are now finding that they simply cannot afford to work anymore – hence the headline. And America is way behind most other wealthy countries in the provision of paid maternity and paternity leave for parents. In addition parents often find that they have to both work to afford health insurance for the children. The absence of readily affordable healthcare is a real problem for many families. The CHIP, or Child Health Insurance Program, gives free health insurance for children up to a certain level of income, but that level is woefully low. This link between healthcare and wages needs to be broken.
But I would submit that one important reason why many families have both parents out at work is that they find themselves on the consumer driven carousel that is twenty-first century life, and they cannot find a way to step off. Children are bombarded with images of the material world. The marketing media cynically exploits them, practically as soon as they are aware of their surroundings. As a result we have more and more material possessions, we buy bigger houses to accommodate it all, we saddle ourselves with mortgages that stretch us to the limits and we then shop at cheap hypermarkets for the lower prices. ‘…American parents buy into a false definition of need that leaves them addicted to a two-income lifestyle and robs children of family life. These parents are not bad, selfish, or greedy. They are simply doing what most people are doing, going along with the prevailing tide of cultural expectations.’ (Duncan Collum, Danny and Polly, Taking Back Our Kids, Sojourners Magazine, January 2006, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 12-19).
And because we are out at work to fund all these things we are not on hand at home to protect our children from these influences.
The normal working week in most of Europe is less than 40 hours. In Sweden and the Netherlands, dual-earner couples with children average two fewer workdays per week than do U.S. couples.
Isn’t it time we valued our families and our children more?

I believe that in many instances mothers would far rather be at home with their children in those early formative years. I really didn’t want to return to work and leave my babies at home with childcare, but like so many others I was driven by education and a career to think I could ‘have it all’. I believe that in our hearts we all want more quality time to spend with our children, to be involved in more local activities as a family, rather than ferrying our kids off to expensive entertainments all the time while we get on with our work! It has even been reported that many parents no longer have the time or energy to pursue that most wonderfully rewarding of pursuits, reading the bedtime story.
Early in 2009 and again in 2010 we had rather more snow in the UK than we are used to. It pretty much ground the country to a standstill for several days. But among the moans and wails about no gritting lorries on the streets, roads impassable and schools closed, one city man honestly admitted that for the first time in his life he was forced to stay at home with the family, spent two days making snowmen and tobogganing with them and loved every minute of it. There is certainly nothing wrong with that.
We need policies that support the parent and the child together, not policies that encourage us to go back to work as soon as possible after having our children. We want time to play with our families.
And that will be good for our communities, ourselves and the world!

Occupy London Stock Exchange - and Ancient Futures

2011-10-22T07:00:00.003+01:00

So the Wall Street demonstration has gone global. In London we have the Anti-capitalist demonstrators from Occupy London Stock Exchange camping in the churchyard surrounding St Paul's Cathedral. Today the huge main doors have been closed to the public because of health and safety issues surrounding the demonstration. I have to say I am in some sympathy with the demonstrators. I have joined other commentators for years in lamenting the unsustainable economic system that we have across the world, based as it is on growth, debt and spending. I’ve blogged about this quite a few times, even have a chapter about it in Healing….with suggestions for change. But even now, when we seem to be a crisis point, what do the governments continue to urge? Spending!! And I have seen very little to indicate that the powers that be may be considering any of the other ideas that have been floated for a sustainable economy. It seems that the answer may have to come from ourselves at local level – with our own currencies for example - small, after all, is beautiful.
But all this reminded me of a wonderful book that I reviewed for Amazon quite a while back. It’s called Ancient Futures: Lessons from Ladakh for a Globalizing World, and it is by Helena Norberg-Hodge , an analyst, it says on her Amazon bio, “of the impact of the global economy on cultures and agriculture worldwide and a pioneer of the “localization movement”. So she is clearly on my side in the debate. Her book is an urgent call to foster ancient values of compassion and wisdom before Western values of consumerism and growth.

This is what I said in my review:
“Ladakh (part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir), is a beautiful part of the Western Himalayas. It used to be a synergistic society. That is, the economy was shaped by mutual aid or co-operation, not competition. This concept of sharing everything was seen in the conduct of all aspects of the people’s lives, from farm work to funerals, animal herding to partying. There was no waste; everything had a further use, all was recycled. Even human waste, mixed with ashes and earth, was spread annually on the fields. Money was scarcely needed, only being used for a few luxuries such as jewellery, salt, tea and a few metals for cooking pots. Otherwise the people were self sufficient, living a life of frugality in the true sense of the word, not being mean or stingy, but rather using scarce resources in a careful way, getting more out of little, being “fruitful.”
And most important of all, the people were really and truly happy. They shared a deep contentment, a strong self- respect and sense of their own individual values. Women had equal status and respect with the men, the old people had active and respected roles in their extended families, even the boys were brought up to help with the nurturing and compassionate care of the young and old alike, and this was in no way deemed to be “sissy” or unmanly.
Then in the mid 1970’s the Indian government opened the region up to Western tourism.
Over the preceding centuries changes had occurred, but at a pace whereby they could be absorbed into a gently adapting culture. Now the changes were rapid. The people were exposed to money and a seeming Western wealth that they could not comprehend; but of course they were tempted by what they saw. The youngsters saw the fun their Western counterparts were apparently having, with cars and consumerism. The adults saw technology they could not have dreamed of. And a “need” developed that they never knew they had before! And with that need came greed, and all the inevitable trappings of a global economy that relies on continuing growth and consumerism for its furtherance.
The problem was that neither side really understood the other side. The Western tourists only saw what they perceived as poverty, deprivation, lack of education, lack of “basic” conveniences. The Ladakh did not see the darker side of Western society, the aggression and stress, the cancers and heart disease, the pollution, the lack of respect for many of our old folk, left to stare at walls in nursing homes, unloved and lonely.
The author is well qualified to write of this. She has spent much time with the people of Ladakh, since the mid 70’s just as these changes were beginning to happen, to the present day. She speaks their language and has many friends amongst them. She can therefore readily observe and understand both sides of the equation.
In Part One she writes with sensitivity and with first hand knowledge of the traditions and ancient wisdom of the people, witnessed in time before they became tarnished by Western values. In Part Two she charts the changes she saw over the ensuing years not only on their material culture, but more worryingly on their minds, as their lives were significantly and substantially changed, their culture severely damaged. And of course many of those Western societal afflictions came to Ladakh.
In Part Three the author then writes of the lessons to be learnt, and how we should react and behave to limit the evident damage brought by Westernization.
How long is it going to be, she asks us, before we sit up and take notice of the damage inflicted on our world by our global economy, based as it is on unsustainable consumerism and material growth.

We can learn so much from the Ladakh story. When will we listen to our hearts not our minds?”
Norberg – Hodge makes an urgent and vital call to us all to challenge our assumptions that economic growth is good. Influenced by Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, her work continues within the International Society for Ecology and Culture, promoting locally based alternatives to the global consumer culture, and “a non-profit organization dedicated to the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide.”

I am with Norberg-Hodge all the way on this one. This has to be the way forward. We cannot go on in the same unsustainable ways. And that is pretty much what the demonstrations are about I guess.

The Big Society and the Cultural Creatives

2011-10-20T09:29:00.000+01:00

Here is a post I published in September 2010, and since someone recently told me they had not heard very much about the Cultural Creatives movement, I make no apology for re-posting it, perhaps to a new audience:

" I know that I am not alone. From reading the websites, articles, and books around us, many of us clearly feel the need for a return to spiritual values in our lives, coupled with the need to heal our desperately fractured world and halt what may otherwise be our march towards spiritual bankruptcy and physical destruction. But how will this happen?

My own conviction is that no amount of law and regulation alone can be the full answer. We need to take personal responsibility for the way we live our lives.
This is behind Prime Minister David Cameron’s ideas for a Big Society for Britain, a society in which we rebuild family, rebuild community, but above all rebuild responsibility.

But I don’t think it is quite as simple as that.
We are after all human, with all our frailties, and our vulnerabilities.
Our behaviour is often flawed, we do not behave like saints all the time, even the very best of us. And sometimes, perhaps often, this may be traced back to our own wounds:
wounds we have inherited and those from our own suffering; wounds from the personal experiences that life has thrown at us;

for example, our insecurities and fears, our feelings of hopelessness and despair.

Surely such wounds are reflected in our greed and envy, in our over consumption, in violence and in our addictions to work or harmful substances.

And these wounds, left unhealed, not only affect our own mental and physical well-being.

I believe that they must also be seen within the context of the wider world fellowship of which we are such an integral part. We must understand the significance of our own healing in addressing the wider social issues and the often seemingly intractable problems of our fractured world. I would go so far as to suggest that this healing is a fundamental directional force in our own evolutionary progress as we become catalysts for our own social change.
And to find real, meaningful healing of these wounds then I believe we now have an urgent need to rediscover our spirituality and the spiritual element in all our material experiences, to reconnect with our roots and our souls.

In the latter half of the 21st century we seem to have lost sight of this essential truth.

Materialism, observes Satish Kumar, now rules economy, politics and business. There is nothing wrong with having material or bodily needs of food, water, shelter, for example, but we need to have the wisdom to know when we have enough and to be satisfied with that. Instead, we are pressured into striving to have more and more beyond our needs. Spirituality rather than materialism is something that should infuse our lives at all times.

This is where the Cultural Creatives come into the picture. It is estimated that there are 50 million adults in the United States and about 80-90 million in Europe who have the worldview, values and lifestyle of the Cultural Creatives. Are you one of them? And what are they?
If you are a Cultural Creative you “hunger for a deep change in your life that moves you in the direction of less stress and more health, lower consumption, more spirituality, more respect for the earth and the diversity within and among the species that inhabit her…"
You are one of a growing number of people who want to see deep, integral change in the cultures that have evolved in industrialized nations.” (Paul Ray)
The term was coined by Paul Ray who with Sherry Anderson wrote a book; The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World

“to help make cultural creatives visible to each other… to find new ways to work and learn together…in service to the world, in service to this emergence of a new, integral culture.”

Are you a cultural creative? Are we doing all we can? How much time do we have?
We all need to start our own Ripples of Hope for a better world."

The photo is of my allotment.

Warrior 3

2011-10-17T07:53:00.000+01:00

Everyone else was rushing by, head down, and quite clearly intent on getting to where they were going as fast as possible. And no one noticed him. But I did. He was on his usual patch on the pavement. Holding his Warrior 3 pose, on one leg, the other outstretched behind him, arms stretched out in a straight line to front and back at shoulder level (Virabhadrasana 3). He was so still one could be forgiven for thinking he was a statue – or mime artist. But his purpose was altogether more serious. In his hand outstretched before him he held the Big Issue. How could anyone pass him by?

Because the fact is, this little weekly magazine not only helps homeless people get back on their feet (metaphorically this time!!), it is also a jolly good read and excellent value at £2. I always buy one when I can.

Just for example, in this last issue, there is an excellent review of the evangelical atheist Richard Dawkin’s new book, In the Beginning was the Word…(Now why should I want to give that any more publicity – !?), an interesting interview with the philosopher John Gray (author of Gray’s Anatomy: Selected Writings out now – who says that evangelical atheists are copying religion at its worst…!), an exclusive interview with Ewan McGregor, “How Fate Changed My Life,” an article on the shocking reality of middle-class homelessness” and much, much more.

So go on – next time you have the opportunity to spend no more than the cost of a latte or other caffeine shot on something that has the power to change a fellow human’s life for the better, then use it. It will be so much better for you both.
(See my previous blog back in January for much more on the ethos behind the Big Issue.)

7 billion and rising

2011-10-12T14:25:00.000+01:00

So any day now the population of the world will top 7 billion, if indeed it hasn’t happened already. And it is widely predicted that by 2050 there will be 9 billion humans on the earth. This raises so many issues. How will we be able to feed all these people, provide them with decent housing, satisfy their energy and water requirements, ensure that they all have adequate health care and education?
Mark Stevenson in The Times last Saturday took the optimistic view. More and more people, he wrote, will live in cities as the population grows, and they then apparently have fewer children, going some way towards solving the problem. Also, as he points out, there are economies of scale in providing the various services, utilities, education, healthcare etc., in a denser population. In addition we fight less apparently as we grow in number; we collaborate more, and become more innovative. “Imagine the creative geniuses lurking in the next 3 billion,” he writes.
But doesn’t he ever read the “world news” pages? We are incapable of properly feeding and housing a huge proportion of the existing 7 billion of us already walking this earth, let alone another 2 or 3 billion. As Chris Rapley, professor of climate science at University College London, reminds us in the same paper, 2 billion already have no access to clean water, and 2.5 billion don’t have proper sanitation.
And what about migration issues, lack of jobs, city slums?

And according to a Christian Aid Report in May 2006, The Climate of Poverty: Facts, Fears and Hope, “a staggering 182 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone could die of disease directly attributable to climate change by the end of the century. Many millions more throughout the world face death and devastation, due to climate-induced floods, famine, drought and conflict.”

Not very much cause for optimism there then. And social injustices fuel anger and unrest and potentially explosive and violent situations, as we have seen on the streets of English cities so recently, and in the Arab Spring.

And one vital aspect of population growth was not mentioned by either of these gentlemen: ecology. We are already encroaching more than we should into the natural world, with often devastating consequences. But we also have a role within the complex eco-systems of the world, within the complex interrelationships of nature in all its facets. As the naturalist Francis Rose once observed, ‘nature is very complex. When you start to interfere by thoughtless introduction of alien species, you do so at your own peril.” But this principle can be just as well applied to our interference with nature at many other different levels- our destruction of natural habitats is one glaringly obvious example.
It is imperative that we curb our own excesses, that we stop violating the natural world around us, that we acknowledge the integrity of our finely balanced ecosystems. Never mind the introduction of alien species. Every time we drive one more animal or plant to extinction, not only are we poorer for that, but also the effect on the fragile balance of planetary life may be profound. That is why it is so important, and ever more urgent, that we do not compromise our future by today’s actions, or indeed through our in-actions.

But there is another reason, and I think a very important one, why the idea of ever more people crowding into ever bigger and busier and more crowded cities fills me with horror. When we lose contact with the natural world around us I believe that a part of our soul dies. We become wounded, incomplete in some way. Contact with the soil is part of our ancestry; it is a very natural part of us to want to till the earth, and commune with nature. It is definitely not a natural thing to do to hare down motorways and freeways at alarming speeds, in vehicles often four abreast. It is not natural, and surely not what God ordained, to live significant proportions of each working day stuck in traffic jams, barely moving, belching out ever more greenhouse gases. It is not natural to live many storeys up in high -rise condominiums and flats. It is not natural to join the awful rush hours of any large city on this earth.

It is not natural to have little or no compassion and empathy for the living world that we are now destroying.

All is safely gathered in - Harvest Festival

2011-10-10T07:00:00.000+01:00

Harvest Festival at our local church

Organic farming CAN feed the world

2011-10-09T07:00:00.000+01:00

Good news from Planet Green for all those struggling to convince the skeptics that factory farms are the only was forward – and good news for the animals! I quote: “The hold out for many of those that cling to conventional farming has often been that it will be impossible for organic farming to feed the world. It's more expensive and the crops aren't as strong, right? Wrong. This is far from the truth according to a new UN study reported on Civil Eats.”

I quote again from the planetgreen.com site: “According to the report, Agro-ecology and the Right to Food, organic and sustainable small scale farming could double food production in the parts of the world where hunger is the biggest issue. Within five to 10 years we could see a big jump in crop cultivation.
“We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations,” Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and author of the report, said in a press release. “The solution lies in supporting small-scale farmers’ knowledge and experimentation, and in raising incomes of smallholders so as to contribute to rural development.”

Such good news!!

Mount Teide from La Gomera

2011-10-07T07:00:00.001+01:00

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth..."

Psalm 121 vv. 1 and 2 Holy Bible King James Version

Ecology? Isn't that a bit complicated?’

2011-10-06T09:31:00.000+01:00

"‘For example, how early do you start your science teaching?’
‘We start it at the same time we start multiplication and division. First lessons in ecology.’

‘Ecology? Isn't that a bit complicated?’
‘That's precisely the reason why we begin with it. Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very first that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and the country around it. Rub it in.’
‘And let me add,’ said the Principal, ‘that we always teach the science of relationship in conjunction with the ethics of relationship. Balance, give and take, no excesses - it's the rule of nature and, translated out of fact into morality, it ought to be the rule among people.’"

Aldous Huxley, Island London: Grafton Books, 1976, pp.247, 248.

Occupy Wall Street - Corporate greed protest on NY's Brooklyn Bridge

2011-10-03T08:38:00.000+01:00

Island, the last novel that Aldous Huxley wrote in 1962, is set on Pala, an imaginary island community in the Indian Ocean. The peaceful and truly content inhabitants have developed an idyllic society by committing themselves to personal spiritual growth based broadly on Shivaite Buddhism, along with some Hindu, Tao and Confucius influence. In addition they steer clear of the three pillars of Western prosperity: armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence, the depreciation that is purposefully built into so many of our manufactured goods to encourage continual and wasteful replacement. The Palanese have equality without loss of individual initiative, empathy for all living beings and respect for the environment. And they hold an overriding belief that God is all pervading or immanent, and man is potentially transcendent, constantly seeking to find the Nirvana or Enlightenment of the ancient Eastern wisdoms.
Sadly the earthly paradise of the island is doomed. It is overtaken by the greed and militarism of an adjoining country, triggered when an English sailor shipwrecked on Pala becomes caught up in a world take-over bid for the island’s oil.

Fast forward to the plight we see today - the ever widening gap between the few rich and the very many poor. And much of the reasoning for this is tied up with the many flaws in our global economy, some at corporate level. I know that I am not alone in thinking that the loss of corporate heart and soul is not good for our planet.
As the late Anita Roddick explained, ‘The huge relentless wheel that is global capitalism is driven by faceless, unaccountable bureaucrats and businessmen who seem deaf to the needs of individuals, communities, indeed whole nations. Yet it takes little imagination to see that this situation is unsustainable if we wish to have a planet that is worth living in, and not one where the developed world becomes a fortress to repel the needs of poorer nations’ (or, indeed where, much closer to home, the 1% wealthy are cocooned and oblivious to the needs of the 99% who struggle for a better living). That is what Occupy Wall Street is all about.

Alastair McIntosh observes that a large company is:

"…a mindless monster, unless people all the way through the system devote themselves to making it otherwise. Then, and only then, can it start to become more like a community with values, and maybe even something of a soul…this means …having an ethic that serves profit but transcends mere money making. It is only human goodness that can bring this about and so humanize the otherwise inhumane world created by emergent properties of greed.

The wealthy corporate bosses need to listen to the people. Meanwhile the protest on New York's Brooklyn Bridge continues, and the world is watching.

Anita Roddick, 2001, Take it Personally: How Globalization Effects (sic) You, London: Thornson, 2001, From Introduction, quoted in http://www.pcdf.org/SVN_Living_Economies.htm#N_2_

Alastair McIntosh, Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power, London: Aurum Press, 2004.

Our "moral and spiritual lag"

2011-10-02T21:12:00.000+01:00

‘As at the beginning of the Christian era, so again today,’ wrote Carl Jung in 1957, ‘we are faced with the problem of the general moral backwardness which has failed to keep pace with our scientific, technical and social progress.’(1)

Martin Luther King called this our moral and spiritual ‘lag’. He observed that ‘the richer we have become materially the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.’ We live, he said, in two realms:

The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live.(2)

(1)From The Collected Works of C G Jung, 1970 pp304-305

(2)Nobel Peace Prize Lecture December 11 1964

Bees on Flowers

2011-10-01T19:04:00.001+01:00

Ministers consulting on 80mph speed limit

2011-09-30T10:54:00.002+01:00

In the USA it's 80mph. In Germany it's unlimited. In the UK it's currently 70mph. That's the legal speed limit for our autos on highways, expressways, motorways, autobahns, whatever we choose to call them. What's all the fuss about?
The UK Transport Minister Philip Hammond has said that he wants a review of the UK motorway limit of 70mph and suggests raising it to 80 mph by 2013 on the basis that modern cars are better, faster, safer than when the 70 mph limit was first set.Also he says that since nearly half of all motorists ignore the law anyway and routinely speed at up to 80mph, then the law needs to be changed. OK cars may be safer, but the number of idiots behind the wheel seem to be on the up and up, if my own experiences of driving are anything to go by. And crashes at 80 mph or more are that much more serious than at 70mph or less. And on his same logic we should abandon the law against using handheld cell phones whilst driving, since it is widely flouted. What utter lunacy!
Anyway we should be doing all we can to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and the amount we use, not legislating to increase their consumption. Hammond claims that he will compensate for higher speeds on motorways by increasing the stretches of residential roads subject to a 20mph speed limit. And I suppose when more and more drivers widely ignore and flout this law, he will increase it to a 30mph limit?! It was even suggested that a small increase in human casualties would be more than offset by increased business efficiency!! WHAT??
Get real, Mr Hammond!
Faster speeds on our highways will also mean ever more and longer tailbacks - it is already well nigh impossible to take a motorway journey anywhere in the UK without building an hour at least of delay into the equation.
There is some hope in all this. With the price of gas in the UK at an all time high there is evidence that people are cutting their speeds and their car journeys anyway. And perhaps more business meetings will be held on video conference facilities such as Skype from the comfort of our own homes?

Cathedrals of the Mind, Hospitals of the Soul.

2011-09-29T07:00:00.001+01:00

I'm talking about libraries.

I simply love quotations. I use them liberally in everything I write. I carry my favorites around with me. Those words that were spoken or written centuries, or perhaps even millennia ago, and that still resonate deeply with us today demonstrate that some things never change, including human nature! And they show us how important and relevant many of our ancient wisdom still is - why we should listen to the sages and prophets of long ago.

But here is a lovely modern quote brought to my attention by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in a piece he wrote recently for the superb Credo column in The Times. It is from Caitlin Moran:

Libraries, she wrote, are "cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold, rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen instead. A human with a brain and a heart and a desire to be uplifted, rather than a customer with a credit card."

Wonderful! But actually our brilliant art galleries and museums serve a very similar healing function, as long as we resist the shop on the way out!

This is Funchal cathedral in Madeira