kady's blog

No Time to Lose: A Dharma Response to Climate Change Part 2: Jack Kornfeld
This is the second post of notes from the Livestream event held on September 15th, a fundraiser for OneEarthSangha.org and in anticipation of the Climate Strike, led by students, to be held September 20, 2019.

Sunday, September 15, I attended No Time to Lose: A Dharma Response to Climate Change held at Spirit Rock, and to my gratitude, Livestreamed. As it was an all day event, I took notes from numerous speakers. I will post them over the next few days so that each person's words will have space to be digested.

The following are my notes of Jack Kornfeld's talk. The words and ideas are from him, which, once again, makes for an odd blog post.

No Time to Lose: A Dharma Response to Climate Change Part One: Joanna Macy
This is the first post of notes from the Livestream event held on September 15th, a fundraiser for OneEarthSangha.org and in anticipation of the Climate Strike, led by students, to be held September 20, 2019.

Yesterday, I attended No Time to Lose: A Dharma Response to Climate Change held at Spirit Rock, and to my gratitude, Livestreamed. As it was an all day event, I took notes from numerous speakers. I will post them over the next few days so that each person's words will have space to be digested.

The following are my notes of Joanna Macy's first talk. The words and ideas are from her, which makes for an odd blog post.

Today is Pentacost Sunday. I celebrated twice, first with the Earth Holder Sangha, online, from home. The topic was "Being a Lotus in Today's Sea of Fire." Our facilitator, George, referenced an early book by Thich Nhat Hanh called _Lotus in a Sea of Fire_, and asked, "Can we be that lotus - one that is fresh, beautiful and strong, amidst today's raging seas of hatred, tribalism, greed and indifference?"

A Metta Prayer for Activists

May I recognize happiness.
May I abet human rights for every single human being.
May I nurture sustainability for Mother Earth.
May I cultivate compassion for the suffering.
May I know enough.

May you recognize happiness.
May you abet human rights for every single human being.
May you nurture sustainability for Mother Earth.
May you cultivate compassion for the suffering.
May you know enough.

May they recognize happiness.
May they abet human rights for every single human being.
May they nurture sustainability for Mother Earth.
May they cultivate compassion for the suffering.
May they know enough.

What if we are simply acting as parasites fighting with each other to devour the earth? What if our galaxies are like mitochondria, the power houses of cells? Thus, in the metaphor, we, are solar system, is contained within a cell. We are intimately connected with each other, so much so that our actions and decisions reverberate out affecting every one else, as everyone else's affects us. Still, we continue to duke it out as if subjugating or rejecting or killing those of another group is not killing us, and the organism that serves as host. What does it take to see the larger picture that we are so infinitesimally small in the larger universe, that the divisions we perpetuate are ludicrously petty. Would we treat one another better then? Would tribalism, nativism, nationalism, racism, sexism, fill-in-the-blank-ism ad infinitum, cease?

"What do you like about being white?"

The anti-racism training facilitator chose me to go first. My view of myself as multicultural Latinx, with indigenous heritage and light skinned privilege, was discounted a room full of other participants. Every struggle of not being white enough, or Latina enough flew up to my throat into a knot. I could not get past the word "multicultural," because the facilitator, an African American man, kept interrupting, insisting I was white. I thought my story about my grandparents and great grandparents had explained who I was the day before. The Latina facilitator said in a stage whisper, "She's Latina." The white facilitator said in a stage whisper to the Latina, She's white!" Whispering ensued between them. The facilitator who asked the question more than once said, "Fine, let's move on. We'll get back to you." I sat in shock. The next white individual, somewhat understandably, did not want to claim he was white either.

When I arrived at seminary, I brought two documents with me, the anonymous, Norman, Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, and Thich Nhat Hanh's Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings. Those two were what I modeled my life by, imperfectly, reflecting the kind of Christianity I wanted to keep, and the Buddhist precepts that best reflected my aspirations as to how I wanted to relate to the world.

In early November, I flew to Minnesota to join a delegation of clergy vanpooling from Minneapolist to the Standing Rock Reservation, in North Dakota. The Minnesota Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Action Alliance, or MUUSJA, or Moose Jaw, for those of you who are familiar with the UU's tendency to reduce everything to initials. MUUSJA is the equivalent of the Unitarian Universalist Justice Ministry of California, organized and funded a good part of the trip. The local Episcopal priest, Father John Floberg called for clergy to help the Sioux tribe, with members from more than 300 tribes across the Western Hemisphere in solidarity, protest the building of an oil pipeline near the Standing Rock reservation. What is at stake is their only source of water at risk of being poisoned by the Black Snake, the Missouri River, which is a tributary of the Mississippi River. *And* this company building the pipeline is notorious for leaks.

There is something about Episcopalian services, or black church, or good music. Once a decade or two I experience that je ne sais quoi that puts me over the edge. Perhaps it is just my own intensely spiritual experiences have been in the Catholic and Episcopal churches.