Martin Luther King, Jr, giving his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Image via Wikipedia

The summer that I was 20, Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in my hometown of Washington, D.C. The day of the speech, I was flying back home from Africa, from Sierra Leone where I had been sharing in a dream of equality with other young Americans, Canadians, and Africans. We had been doing construction on a school, living together in dorms. We were on a workcamp with a group called Crossroads Africa, which placed groups like ours all over that vast continent.

It was the sixties, though we didn’t yet know in 1963 how many new beginnings would come out of that era. Equality among races was only one of the many dreams that began to sow seeds and even see some fruition in those fateful years.

This morning I woke remembering fragments of a dream. I had been back in Sierra Leone. I hadn’t found Isa, Michael, Malcolm, Georgina, or any of the other young Africans who had worked with us that summer. I wondered if they had survived the years of civil war in Sierra Leone. Read the rest >>>

Mahatma Gandhi, Image via Wikipedia

Live simply that others may simply live. This statement, attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, provides the reason for simplifying our lives. Everything we buy has an environmental and human price tag. If I buy a pair of shoes, for example, they are made from a variety of materials that came from somewhere. People manufactured the shoes, perhaps in substandard working conditions. There may have been toxic waste from the factory. The shoes were transported, quite possibly from overseas, to a store or website where I found them.

If I need those shoes, that’s just how it works, but if I don’t really need them, then I am placing an undue burden on others.

The argument is often made that it is our duty as consumers to go out and buy things whether or not we really need them. This is supposed to help get the economy back on track. We hear variations of this concept everywhere; the idea that economic growth is essential turns up in the news constantly. But the assumption behind this way of thinking is that we live in a world of unlimited natural resources. Read the rest >>>

Things are changing. You’ve noticed, right? Simple living is becoming ever more important. Here’s a way to think of what you can do: I HELP. Developed by Canadian writer Paul Chefurka, his website is well worth your time, and here’s the link directly to I HELP on his site, which I’m using with permission. — Zana

I HELP

When people ask me what they should do personally to prepare for the coming changes, I offer a simple (and I think, catchy) acronym: I HELP. Here’s what it stands for:

I: Involvement
H: Humanize
E: Economize
L: Localize
P: Produce

Here is how it works: Read the rest >>>

As we get closer to 2012, I’ve been considering what it means. I’ve picked up ideas from many places. As I’ve been living and traveling in Mexico a lot these past five years, I’ve had several conversations with Mexicans. Two friends we made of the Chichimeca people said that in their tradition, changes were due to run from roughly 2017 to 2034 and that they would involve inner realities a lot. Another Mexican friend of mine thinks that the transformational energy may be stronger in Mexico, an idea that surprised me.

I think that we are already in 2012, that it is an era of drastic change. Climate change, economic chaos — we don’t need to wait for those. They are very much here. Spiritual awakenings of all sorts too.

Here’s an interesting article I came across, with permission to reprint it. You can read The 2012 Meme at the original site if you prefer.

A lot of people are starting to feel portents of doom centering around the mysterious goings-on in the Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012. Both positive and negative beliefs about the significance of the date are spreading very rapidly through our globalized culture.  Positive beliefs include the New Age interpretation that our planet and its people may experience a physical or spiritual transformation, and that 2012 may mark the beginning of a new era. On the negative side, some believe that the 2012 date marks the beginning of an apocalypse. Both camps are spreading their ideas through numerous books, TV documentaries, websites and discussion groups. Read the rest >>>

A TV show on drought, fires, dust storms, and the future got me thinking. We stopped watching it part of the way through, as it was too sensational and just seemed meant to scare people.

It painted a very bleak picture of the future of the planet worldwide, and no doubt much of what was covered is possible. I hadn’t heard about the potential for plagues of locusts from Africa to cross the Mediterranean and strip bare southern Europe around 2025, but that’s the sort of thing that was presented.

My husband and I talked about the future after we gave up on the show. We thought of our god-daughter, now 4, and the other kids we know in that age group. She’s the little girl in the logo for this site. Read the rest >>>

We just watched a one-hour documentary on TV called the Garbage Revolution and that link takes you to their site. A couple in Canada agreed to keep their garbage in their garage for 90 days, except for the “wet garbage” or organics, which fortunately did include the diapers produced by their third child, still a baby. Still, the smell in their garage got pretty bad, and there was one vivid shot of maggots. Read the rest >>>