All posts in category Social change

After a Bloody Valentine’s Day, A Meditation on the Human Heart

Many times before in human history violence and mayhem have prevailed, people have wailed and groaned with fear and pain as anger and hatred have roiled society. We’re in such a time now, of personal and political suffering, compounded by the planetary environmental imbalance that threatens, tsunami-like, to blow us all away.

Literally and figuratively, this is a bleak, frightening time to be alive, and everyone I know is feeling the weight of everything that is going wrong. The daily news of mass shootings, civil wars, refugee crises, xenophobia and hatred writ large and small—not to mention the extinctions, polluted landscapes and waterways, and continued unbridled greed of the captains of the industries that are destroying our individual and ecological health—well, it’s overwhelming.

It’s been a while since I posted on Transition Times, and overwhelm is part of the reason I’ve been quiet lately. Another reason is because I try to resist being purely reactionary in my TT writing. Lately the outrages and calamities have come so fast and furious that if I tried to keep up, I’d spend all my time denouncing the bad guys and bewailing the latest tragedy. That’s not how I want to spend my precious time, or yours.

Sages like Margaret Wheatley are counseling now that we try to move beyond hope and despair, to the realm of what she calls “faith.” I think she means that when we take the longer view, and give up our fear of change, we can rest assured that no matter how things unfold in the short term, in the long run everything will be OK.

Well, in the long run you and I will be dead, and there is a release in that, no matter what you believe about the afterlife or rebirth. In the long run, our Mother Earth will regenerate and new, marvelous life will flourish here on the planet, the DNA spiraling on as it did when some of the dinosaurs became our present-day birds.

So in that sense, yes, eventually all will be well. But that still doesn’t absolve us of responsibility now, in our own time, to do what we can to alleviate suffering and cultivate individual and ecological health, harmony and balance.

One thing I can do is try not to be a mirror for the violence I abhor. It doesn’t mean I’m putting my head in the sand, it just means that, as with the ancient Buddhist practice of tong-len­, I can try to breathe it in and transmute it, in my own being, to compassion that I breathe out.

For example, with the most recent horrific school shooting, in Parkland, Florida, I feel the suffering like a rain of fire. The suffering of the victims, and also the suffering of the shooter, alone in the world, evidently left to his own violent, mentally disturbed devices. Now he will spend the rest of his life in prison, and that will be no real atonement for the innocent lives he snuffed out.

I breathe in the horror of that scenario, and although my first thought is of gun control, and rage that the politicians who could make things better continue to sit on their hands and mouth sanctimonious prayers—I try to breathe through that too, and think about how all of us are caught in webs of fear, greed and power-lust not of our own making, unhealthy systems that hold most of us fast, no matter how we try to struggle free.

It’s the systems that need changing, but change always starts with the personal and radiates outward. The question is always, how can I touch the heart of another human being and melt its hardness with compassion and love?

We live in a time of hard-heartedness. Callousness and indifference reign, nowhere more evident than in the U.S. government.

listening for Gaia copyBut I won’t let them harden me. I will continue to cup my hands around the fragile flame of loving-kindness that burns indomitably at my core.

We human beings are born loving. Every infant turns its head blindly towards its mother, searching for love and comfort. Our entire ecosystem runs on the pure positive energy of the Sun, which shines its love down on all equally, warming the seeds and nourishing the plants without which we humans could not live a moment.

Yes, the circle of life includes pain and suffering. Predators have to eat, but when the system is in harmony, death feeds life.

tree heart copyRight now Western civilization is in a death-frenzy that is not life-giving. Let us admit that to ourselves, and imagine the many ways that we could seize the opportunity now in front of us to transition to a healthier system.

It all starts with the human heart. In the wake of this bloody Valentine’s Day, I want to use my heart to send love out into the world, and meditate deeply on what I have to give that is positive and life-affirming.

That is the only way we can be the change we want to see in the world.

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on February 16, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Leadership, love, Resilience, Social change, Spiritual Ecology, Spiritual growth, Uncategorized
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on February 16, 2018

https://bethechange2012.com/2018/02/16/after-a-bloody-valentines-day-a-meditation-on-the-human-heart/

Imagine 2018: Dreaming a Better Future

Although there have been countless other dark periods in human history, the particular darkness of our moment is unique in its alignment of the political and planetary.

Politically, human societies around the world are under pressure—religious, economic, social—and are more easily manipulated by dark forces than ever before, thanks to our networked global Hive Mind.

On a planetary level, all life forms, including humans, are under unprecedented pressure due to the human destruction of healthy ecosystems by over-population, climate change, chemical assault and the deadly practices of mining, fracking, logging, agriculture, fishing, etc.

Even while on a personal level many of us here in the heart of Empire are still relatively comfortable, we feel these political and planetary pressures deeply. Each day’s bad news can feel like an assault, and after a year like 2017, I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty bruised and aching.

These dark solstice days, as the earth begins to swing back towards the sun, are a good time to go deep and try to fortify ourselves, intellectually and spiritually, for the new year ahead. Given a personal awareness of the frighteningly out-of-control political and planetary dimensions of our time, how can we keep ourselves centered and steady, awake and aware yet not depressed, despairing or panicked?

In terms of negotiating the Hive Mind, I try to share as much good news as I can find, and bad news only sparingly. I’ve noticed that whatever we share on social media comes back to us amplified, so if I share bad news—the Arctic is melting! the polar bears are going extinct!—the negative emotions of fear, anger and grief that come back to me simply get me more upset, without offering any constructive approach to solving the original problem.

If I share good news, even if it only offers a ray of hope, that ray is brightened by all the “likes” that others add, and our collective mood may be lightened just a little bit.

And brightness this is what the world needs from us now. Those of us who are aware and awake to the slow-motion disaster we’re living through are being called to be the beacons and the anchors for others—and not just for humans, but for all the beautiful life on earth that is under constant assault these days.

It won’t help the polar bears on their melting ice floes or the hordes of animals fleeing the wildfires to have us humans staring at screens expressing our outrage with finger taps. It may make us feel a little better in the moment to virtually scream our anguish, but it’s a howl in the wind that will do no one any good.

Instead of getting lost in the dystopian present, with which the media keeps battering our psyches day after day, the trick to staying centered and spirited in these dark times is to keep burnishing our dreams of a better future.

This requires resisting the prevailing tendency today for dreaming to be dismissed as an unproductive waste of time; for visionaries to be mocked as escapist fantasizers.

I fear that what may doom us in the end is the loss of our capacity for creative daydreaming.

We are all so accustomed to constant media stimulation that it takes real effort to simply quiet our minds and become open to whatever creative thoughts may come. I’m not talking about meditation, which aims to “think nothing.” I’m talking about creative imagination, flashes of insight, lucid dreaming, the kind of thinking that has propelled human ingenuity all through the ages.

We can’t allow our imaginations to be dominated by the “masters of the universe” who control our media. This is a particular challenge with children and young people, the smartphone generations who have grown up as consumers of other people’s fantasies and representations, rather than practicing our human birthright of creative imagination.

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one,” sang John Lennon.

We who are aware of what’s happening around us have to allow ourselves the creative pleasure of dreaming our own utopian dreams, and sharing these visions of a better future with others, so that together we add detail and strength to the positive dream of what could be.

Instead of reacting negatively to the day’s news, amplifying the outrage and discord, we can share our proactive dreams of what could and should be.

My mantra word for 2018 is: Imagine.

Imagine what could be if your dream of how you want to live, personally, were extended into a collective dream of well-being for all life on Earth, and for the planet herself?

Imagine if the “world could be as one”—and imagine yourself doing one small thing each day to extend your dream of personal well-being out further to touch others in the world. Even small acts like filling a bird feeder, donating to a food pantry or smiling at a neighbor will ripple goodness out into a world starving for kindness.

The media hurls countless “micro-aggressions” at us every day. In your own personal sphere, imagine 2018 as a year of micro-kindnesses, and try to consciously make kindness, warmth and goodness a habit.

The more of us practice this kind of radical kindness, the more it will come back to warm and encourage us, in a positive feedback loop that really can change the world.

Imagine.

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 30, 2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Alternative Futures, Gaia, Health, love, Occupy, Resilience, Social change, Spiritual Ecology, Spiritual growth, Uncategorized
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 30, 2017

https://bethechange2012.com/2017/12/30/imagine-2018-dreaming-a-better-future/

Stop the world, I want to get off! Reflections from the runaway train of 2017

The train wreck in Washington state this week gave visual reality to the feeling I’ve had lately of being a passenger on a runaway train, bound for disaster. I’m in that eerie slo-mo stage where everyone is screaming, we know we’re screwed, but there is nothing anyone can do to change the inevitable horrific outcome.

I’m talking about the Great Tax Scam of 2017, in which ultra-wealthy individuals and mega-corporations played a nasty shell game with everyone else–now you see it, now you don’t!—throwing some crumbs to the masses, while slashing funding for public education, health care, infrastructure and the social safety net for the most vulnerable, including the elderly and children.

I’m also talking about the environment: even as the pace of mining, logging, fracking and drilling continues to increase, the Arctic is melting, the forests and coral reefs are dying, and every day brings new tidings of floods, fires, droughts, famines.

To use another disaster metaphor, the US government and the corporations continue to party while the great Titantic of human civilization maintains a collision course for those now-melting ice bergs.

I can foresee the wreck, but I seem to be frozen and helpless to act to avert it.

Part of my inertia comes from the fact that I, like all of us living in the heart of the Empire, benefit from what the corporations offer. I’m complicit: I drive with gas, I heat with oil, I use banks and computers, I eat industrially produced food and expect drugs to be there when I need them. I pay my taxes.

While I don’t want to make excuses or let myself off the hook for my complicity, I also recognize the way my choices have been warped and limited by the same forces that are now ramming “tax reform” through Congress.

Because my funds are limited, it is difficult for me to buck the pressures of industrial capitalism—the policies that make gas cars cheaper than hybrids, oil burners cheaper than solar panels, and industrial food cheaper than organic.

For the most part, I have allowed myself to be shaped (maybe contorted would be a better word) into another of the obedient, ever-desiring consumers required by the corporate finance titans—a capitalist automaton who will shop till they drop on plastic fumes and go into debt bondage to keep up with the American dream.

But even as I reach for my plastic and do my holiday shopping, I am aware that I am not as helpless as the corporations and government want me to believe. I do have choices, even on this crazy runaway train that’s taking us all for a terrifying ride in these early years of the 21st century.

In a long-ago dispute over taxes, Henry Thoreau went to debtors’ jail to protest how taxpayer money was being spent on war. He wrote his famous letter on civil disobedience from prison, with the line that always echoes in my ears: “If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth–certainly the machine will wear out… but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”

If I were to stop “lending myself to the wrong which I condemn,” I would have to stop contributing my tax dollars to the maw of U.S. corporate capitalism. I would have to get rid of my credit card and start working individually and in my community to become more independent and resilient: investing in local agriculture, decentralized energy, local credit unions and currencies, building up community networks to ensure a social safety net on the local level.

One way federal/corporate interests keep us in line is by mesmerizing us with global news. We know more about the latest disaster on the other side of the country or the world than we know about how our neighbors are living down the street.

We can’t stop climate change, but we can begin to work in our own communities to prepare for it. We may not be able to overcome the stranglehold of corporate capitalism on our economy and our government, but we can do things differently on the local level.

It’s time to walk the talk of living as awake, aware, socially and environmentally responsible human beings. I can’t do it alone, but I can reach out to you, and together we can begin to bring our personal, political and planetary values into alignment. It’s never too late to start, and it’s certainly not too soon.

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 20, 2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Community, Economy, Environment, Leadership, New stories, Politics, Social change, Uncategorized
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 20, 2017

https://bethechange2012.com/2017/12/20/stop-the-world-i-want-to-get-off-reflections-from-the-runaway-train-of-2017/

Leadership in the End Times: Feminine Rising

“Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt/Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew/Or that the Everlasting had not fixed/His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God, God!/How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable/Seem to me all the uses of this world!/Fie on ’t, ah fie! ‘Tis an unweeded garden/That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature/Possess it merely. That it should come to this./But two months dead—nay, not so much, not two./So excellent a king, that was to this/Hyperion to a satyr.”

—Hamlet, Act I, Scene 2”

You may remember Hamlet’s anguished soliloquy as he contemplates the death of his noble father, the rapid remarriage of his mother to his lecherous uncle, and the fact that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

In this male-dominated kingdom, an “unweeded garden,” young Ophelia goes mad and drowns (a possible suicide), the Queen shares a bed with her husband’s brother-turned-killer, murder plots abound and no one is safe, not even the idealistic, intelligent young Hamlet, who cannot unravel the mess of his kingdom without becoming unraveled himself.

Does this sound familiar?

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Margaret J. Wheatley

It would not be too much of a stretch to compare our own sorry political landscape in the U.S. to the “rank and gross” garden of ancient Denmark. And thus it did not surprise me to find Meg Wheatley, in her latest book on leadership, turning to history to explain our current moment: what she calls, following British historian Sir John Glubb, “The Age of Decadence.”

Here is Wheatley summarizing Glubb:

“Glubb studied thirteen empires in the Middle East, Asia and Europe…from Assyria in 859 BCE to modern Britain in 1950. The pattern of the decline and fall of these superpowers was startlingly clear. It didn’t matter where they were or what technology they had or how they exercised power. They all declined in the same stages and it always took ten generations, about 250 years.

“The logic of this is very clear: each generation matures in better socioeconomic circumstances created by the preceding generation; thus, there is always a march to increasing materialism. In every generation, youth will have higher expectations for comfort than their parents. Improved material conditions create attitudinal changes that insist on still more material changes; and predictably, because of its wealth and erosion of morality, the civilization declines into decadence.” (Who Do We Choose to Be? 34).

The United States is nine years shy of its 250th anniversary. We are deep into our Age of Decadence, which Wheatley (following Glubb) describes as a time when “wealth and power have led to petty and negative behaviors, including narcissism, consumerism, materialism, nihilism, fanaticism and high levels of frivolity” (35).

The pattern is clear; the writing is on the wall–even without the added wrench of climate change and environmental destruction, which Glubb, writing in the 1970s, could not foresee.

Wheatley’s questions for our time are essential. Given the stark reality of our epoch, what should we do as leaders? How can we stay centered and grounded in the midst of social turmoil and environmental catastrophe, and work in our own spheres to create “islands of sanity” in our communities?

As I’ve become more acutely aware of the transition times (end times?) we are living through in the 21st century, it’s become important to me to reach out and try to find others who are also aware of what’s happening—those who are not giving in to despair, but who are continuing to work for positive change.

All kinds of resistance and action are needed, from protesting the unholy trinity of Fossil Fuels, Big Pharma and Big Ag; to holding elected officials accountable; to protecting our dwindling wild places and wild creatures; and working to improve quality of life for people with few resources.

It’s all urgent and important, and taken together, it’s overwhelming, which is why, as co-founder Kenny Ausubel said at the Bioneers conference last month, it’s important for activists to come together to imbibe the “good medicine” of sharing our stories and knitting together our hopes and dreams for a better future. It was great to get a strong dose of that good medicine myself at this year’s Bioneers.

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Nina Simons addresses the Bioneers 2017.

At the Bioneers, it was the women leaders who especially inspired me. It was heartbreaking but galvanizing to listen to Kandi Mosset, of the Indigenous Environmental Network, talk about the horrendous impact of the fossil fuel industry in her home state of North Dakota.

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Clare Dubois at the Bioneers 2017.

Kandi’s litany of destruction was balanced by the visionary, participatory ritual created by Treesisters founder Clare Dubois, invoking a rise of feminine consciousness to balance each of us as individuals (men as well as women) and enable us to bring our planet back into balance.

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Nina Simons awakening women leaders. 

Starhawk’s regeneration workshop echoed a theme raised by Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons in her women’s leadership session: the idea of composting what we don’t want, and focusing on generating more of what we do want and need.

But what if it’s not clear what we should compost in our lives, and what we should be growing? The way forward is murky in our times. I was reassured in my uncertainty by Joanna Macy, who ended her Bioneers session with simple but potent advice: “Cherish the questions.”

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Joanna Macy, wise elder at the Bioneers 2017.

I was also invigorated in my own work of purposeful memoir to find Meg Wheatley ending her new leadership book with a turn to the personal. From the wide historical sweep of her opening sections, she eventually narrows down to the particular center from which each of us operate: the self.

“We see the world through the powerful filters of self. The more we know our filters, the more we can see beyond them….The distinction between self-help and self-knowledge is important. There are thousands of self-help methods available to design a better you. But here, we aspire to high levels of self-awareness, not to help ourselves but to learn to trust ourselves in difficult situations….Our motivation is to be more in control of ourselves so that we don’t get in the way, and don’t give ourselves away, as we work in service to others” (275).

This is precisely the goal of my work of “aligning the personal, political and planetary through purposeful memoir.” In my workshops and online course, following the path I took myself in my memoir and laid out in my writer’s guide to purposeful memoir, we explore how our individual life stories have been shaped by political and environmental forces beyond our control.

As we learn about who we are in our particular time and place, as well as the ancestral baggage we carry, we can begin to “compost” what we don’t want to bring forward into the future, and envision “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible,” to quote Charles Eisenstein.

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Barbara Marx Hubbard, born the same year as Joanna Macy, 1929.

Yesterday I listened to Clare Dubois’ interview with the visionary thinker Barbara Marx Hubbard, who declared that we are living in the end times of a great evolutionary cycle. But in Nature, all death is also the opportunity for rebirth: compost leads to regeneration.

Ours is a moment of chaos and decay, but also a moment of great potential, when thanks to our enhanced powers of communication (the Internet) those whom Wheatley calls “Warriors for the Human Spirit” can find each other and work together to amplify our signal, increasing our collective ability to be a force for good on the planet.

In my lexicon, our task is to shift the destructive, aggressive Anthropocene to the balanced, harmonious Androgynocene. To do this, feminine leadership must come to the fore—in both men and women.

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Warrior for the Human Spirit AMY GOODMAN inspires young folks at the Bioneers 2017.

What would feminine leadership look like? Simply put, it is collaborative rather than competitive; nurturing rather than domineering; empathetic rather than arrogant; generous rather than stingy; putting the well-being of the entire system and all its components ahead of the individual striving of a few.

Can we achieve this before human civilization crashes and the entire planetary environment hits the reset button?

We have a ringside seat on the action, my friends. And we don’t have to stay on the sidelines! Each of us has a role to play in nudging our world towards a tipping point, for good or for ill.

If you can get clear on what you want to cultivate—in yourself, your communities, and the planet—you can then act in your own sphere to create an “island of sanity” around you. Once you feel clear, grounded and strong enough, you can reach out to likeminded others and welcome them in to your circle.

And then, let the world know what you’re doing by sending out encouraging messages in bottles (blog posts, tweets, photos) through the Internet. You never know where the ripples will spread and who your message will reach in a time of need.

It’s important that we counter the constant mainstream litany of bad news with positive stories of the better world that is regenerating through the compost of our civilization right now. It’s happening! And the more we share the news of the new shoots and beneficial micorrhizal networks we see, the more vigorously they’ll grow.

 

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on November 4, 2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Alternative Futures, Leadership, New stories, Resilience, Social change, Uncategorized, women's leadership
Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on November 4, 2017

https://bethechange2012.com/2017/11/04/leadership-in-the-end-times-feminine-rising/

Celebrating Balance on Indigenous People’s Day: Ancient Wisdom the World Needs Now!

Fact: men commit most of the violence in the world, whether domestic violence, military violence, murders or mass shootings. By far, these acts of violence—along with the violence of logging, mining, drilling, hunting animals, industrial fishing, developing and spreading chemicals in the environment—all committed at a higher rate and under the leadership of men.

This is not a diatribe against men, but against violence. Patriarchal human cultures, which are ascendant in the world today, glorify violence and teach boys that to become men, they have to at the very least acquiesce to it, if not to practice it themselves.

“Real men” join the military, keep their families in line with the threat of violence, harden their hearts against the suffering of animals and nature. Emotions are for sissies.

Violent hyper-masculinity is leading us straight over the cliff, and yet like lemmings we seem to be compelled to follow, to stick with the herd.

The unprecedented wildfires, floods, storms and temperatures of 2017 have everyone’s attention. Yes, Virginia, climate change is real and it is here now. Every day that we continue with business as usual is a day that brings us closer to that abyss: the day the sea comes crashing in to our city, the floods or droughts wipe out our crops, the temperature rises and the power grid fails.

We have known for a long time that the poorer, weaker parts of the world would suffer first and hardest. Ask any Puerto Rican about that.

Would Donald Trump, the sissy man who tries so hard to act tough, have dared to hurl his puerile insults a male Puerto Rican mayor?

Trump epitomizes violent masculinity gone amok: the bully who sprays tweets like machine gun fire. That the overwhelmingly male Republican Congress does not throw him and his henchmen out is testament to the fact that our country is dominated by toxic masculinity.

Just look at the legislation the Republicans have been trying to pass lately. Overwhelmingly, it benefits the few rich white males already at the pinnacle of power in our society, at the great expense of everyone else.

Thank heaven for a handful of strong women Republican leaders like Susan Collins of Maine, holding a finger in the dyke and standing up for their constituents—the ordinary ones, the ones who would be the victims if the Repugs had their way—even at the risk of incurring the bullying wrath of the Tweeter in Chief.

I am spelling this out not to wring my hands and beat my chest in grief, but to lead the way to a pivot point.

It does not have to be this way.

It should not be this way.

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Now, of all times, with the abyss of the end of human civilization in sight—no exaggeration—all men and women of good conscience and clear thought must stop and acknowledge that it is time to resist toxic masculinity and the violence it spreads. It is time to strengthen and bring forward the creative feminine principle, cultivating harmony as we work rapidly to restore the ecological balance of the planet and to create peaceful, productive cultures that work for the well-being of all.

It can be done, and women can and should take a leadership role in this crucial work of the 21st century.

I have been saying for a while now that the 21st century must become not the bleak, dead-zone Anthropocene envisioned by the techno-futurists, but a verdant, harmoniously balanced Androgynocene, where the masculine qualities of the warrior are combined with the feminine qualities of the nurturer in every human being; where each of us steps up in our own sphere to become fierce, tender stewards of the planet and of each other, learning to work together for the good of all.

“I know you’ll say I’m a dreamer…but I’m not the only one” (Lennon). Many good people are coming forward now to reject toxic masculinity in all its forms; to insist that another way is possible; and to lead the way out of the current violent, apocalyptic landscape into a promised land in which we and all life on Earth can thrive.

It is no accident that many of the leaders who have already been doing this balancing work for many years were born female, or are men who honor the feminine in themselves, or are queer—that is, open to the fluidity of their gender identity.

Over the years, Transition Times has celebrated many of these leaders, including Mary Daly, Gloria Anzaldua, Bill McKibben, Barack Obama, Llewelyn Vaughan-Lee, Starhawk, Terry Tempest Williams, Thich Nhat Hanh, and so many more.

22171565_1136051956528488_82733588_oThis year I am focusing on the work of Ojibwe Great-Grandmother Mary Lyons, a leader who has dedicated her life to nourishing and strengthening her family, her community, and the Earth community as a whole.

Today is Indigenous People’s Day 2017 and in partnership with Grace Rossman I am launching an Indiegogo campaign to fund the publication of The Wisdom Lessons of Mary Lyons, a rich compilation of spiritual insights and offerings that Mary has been writing down throughout her long, sometimes difficult, and always inspiring life.

Mary is one of those leaders who works to balance the hearts and minds of all individuals she comes into contact with, as well as to offer an example of what it’s like to live in integrity, dedicated to the well-being of the entire community.

It is a profoundly feminine vision, and yet the masculine warrior’s protective spirit is also undeniably present in Mary.

Mary Lyons coverI hope you’ll pitch in to support the work of bringing Mary’s thoughtful, fierce and yet also gentle and playful spirit out into the world in the beautiful volume of her Wisdom Lessons that Green Fire Press aims to produce. Although an amazingly spry and energetic elder, she is slowing down a bit and hopes the book can circulate further out in the world than she is able to go in person.

In these transition times, as the old familiar environment and civilization shakes and crumbles, and we look ahead desperately seeking solid ground, Mary’s wisdom provides a bridge to the stable, harmonious future we must co-create together.

In Mary’s words:

The only war that goes on is the one inside you, when you are off-balance;

Your body will argue with your spirit about what is right or wrong.

The greatest war of all will be when your body overcomes your spirit and you join in

on the dark path here on Mother Earth.

In these man-made wars, your spirit will be put to sleep and the balance of life will

falter as you fall prey to the trickster that lurks in dark places with enticing

temptations..

When you realize the loneliness within you,

You will remember that the gateway to balance is through awakening your spirit.

Then the light of goodness will come on.

Beauty will appear everywhere when balance is restored.

–from The Wisdom Lessons of Mary Lyons

Please help us bring these wisdom lessons to the world in book form! Contribute here.

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 9, 2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Alternative Futures, Environment, Leadership, New stories, Politics of Gender, Social change, Uncategorized, women's leadership
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 9, 2017

https://bethechange2012.com/2017/10/09/celebrating-balance-on-indigenous-peoples-day-ancient-wisdom-the-world-needs-now/

Stop the World, I Want to Get Off!

We live in a time when depression and anxiety are at epidemic levels—the so-called “opioid crisis” is really just a symptom of a deeper sickness eating away at the heart of our society. It’s especially disturbing—but understandable—to find high levels of anxiety and despair among the young.

This has been going on for a long time in certain communities—among the urban poor or on Native reservations, using drugs and alcohol to fight the despair is nothing new.

Now it’s spilling into the mainstream—white suburban kids are dying from overdoses, along with their fathers and mothers. This recent report from my home state of Massachusetts presents a chilling portrait of the scale of the problem.

AverageAnnualOpioidRelatedDeathRateper100,000People

While better treatment for addicts is certainly necessary, it’s crucial to address the the deeper roots of the problem: the physical and emotional pain that drives kids, men and women to seek out opioids, legal or illegal.

This is a much more complicated knot to try to untangle, but the basic outlines of the problem are clear.

  • We need a more vibrant, creative, exciting educational system, where kids look forward to going to school each day because it’s a chance to interact collaboratively with interesting people—teachers, other students, and community members of all ages—and learn life skills that can be immediately put into practice. Humans learn best by doing, not by rote memorization and regurgitation of abstract knowledge.
  • We need better nutrition: getting chemicals and excessive sugar out of our diet and returning to the whole, unprocessed foods that contribute naturally to our physical and mental health. We need to get connected with how our food is produced, and return to gardening and animal husbandry ourselves when possible. We need more time for eating and socializing around the table.
  • We need a basic social safety net for all, so that no one has to worry about becoming homeless if they get sick, or when they get old. Everyone has something to contribute to society, and people should always be able to find rewarding work in their communities that will allow them to live decently and with respect.
  • We need to create more time and space for fun, especially in outdoor activities, or in creative, collaborative culture-making. Despite all the social media, people are feeling isolated and alienated and even the comfort of talk therapy has been taken away by the insurance companies, which would much rather push those pills on us.

To those who would tell me we can’t afford it, I reply: what would happen if we stopped spending more than $600 billion a year (15% of 2016 GDP) on the military, while giving only 3% of GDP to education? What if those proportions were reversed, as they are in many other Western countries?

And yet even as I type these words, I know the politicians won’t be listening. They are too focused on treating the symptoms to pay attention to the causes.

This is as true for dealing with climate change as it is for dealing with the opioid crisis. Everyone is looking for quick fixes that will allow us to continue with business as usual, no matter how many casualties that business generates.

When confronted with an intractable problem, my mom used to say, “Stop the world, I want to get off!”

Lately the feeling of just being along for the ride—and a hurtling, scary, out-of-control ride at that—grows stronger day by day.

And of course, we can’t get off, not alive, anyway.

So how do we deal with having to sit in the back seat while the drivers take us down bumpy roads in the wrong direction at dangerous speeds?

My own response is to focus on what I do have control over.

  • I can weed my garden, spend more time outside.
  • I can eat healthy foods and cultivate mental clarity by cutting back on the distractions of social media and television.
  • I can try to contribute positively to my community—family, friends, the larger circles of positive creative people I care about.
  • I can review my life goals, and set some intentions for the coming years that, with focus and effort, I may be able to achieve.

Most of all, I can set my internal compass to LOVE and try to hold it steady there, no matter the jerks and lurches along the road.

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My new online course, The Elemental Journey of Purposeful Memoir, will be launching this fall. Through catalyzing writing prompts, I invite you to consider how you got where you are today, and to envision the future you want to create and live into. Join me!

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on August 3, 2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Alternative Futures, Community, Health, love, Politics, Social change, Uncategorized
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on August 3, 2017

https://bethechange2012.com/2017/08/03/stop-the-world-i-want-to-get-off/

Resist. Persist. Risk. Repeat. A mantra for our time.

February again. The sap is starting to rise here in New England. The blue ribbons of tubing snake through the maple groves, bearing the sweet elixir of life down to the saphouses, where the boiling pans await. The first snowdrops and pussy willows gleam, foreshadowing the great greening to come.

It’s been unnaturally warm this past week—almost 70 degrees here in western Massachusetts. We look at each other, enjoying the unexpected warmth, but with dismay and fear lurking behind our smiles. This is not right.

So much is not right in these first days and weeks of 2017 DTE (Donald Trump Era). You know the problems, I don’t have to list them. Each week brings a new outrage, a new shock, a new nadir. Just when you thought America couldn’t sink any lower in the eyes of the rest of the world, there they go again: insulting our allies, assaulting our citizens, making plans to frack and drill the whole globe to kingdom come.

I’m not the only one who foresees a repeat of the 9/11 playbook hurtling our way. It worked before, and although our eyes are opened this time, it will probably work again.

Manufacture an external threat—that’s not hard to do, any number of terrorist organizations would be happy to oblige—throwing the homeland into chaos and requiring a “state of emergency” that suspends all the usual processes of law. With everyone hunkered down in fear, the police state can be implemented and the cowardly Congress will do the bidding of the executive branch. The Supreme Court will stay quiet.

Order will be restored, but it will be the New World Order of the DTE: imperialist white industrial capitalism on steroids, the taxpayers obediently bending over to have their asses kicked as they foot the bill for the military and police to subdue any resistance to the corporate takeover of the entire planet by billionaire business and finance executives slavering over ever-ascending short-term profit.

Don’t like it? They’ll pull out the rubber bullets and throw you in prison—and oh yeah, the taxpayers will pay for that too. Or maybe you’d rather have a taste of what they do to people labeled “terrorist” in their secret rendition sites. Or let’s just get it over with, here’s a real bullet for your trouble. Sweet dreams.

So much is not right here.

The American liberal elite needs to be reminded, perhaps, that the rude shocks of the DTE era are nothing new. Americans of color, undocumented immigrants, people of color all over the globe have been living this nightmare for hundreds of years, ever since the European colonial onslaught began.

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In my memoir, What I Forgot…And Why I Remembered, I faced my own privilege as someone born into the New York City white liberal elite. I opened my eyes to the fact that my generation of urban “yuppies” lived comfortably on the backs of exploited workers, enjoying cheap oil and gas while ignoring the giant devastation of the Alberta tar sands, the Amazon forest, the Nigerian delta or the Arctic. I recognized my own complicity in ignoring the despair of millions of impoverished Americans and my complacency in foolishly imagining that the drones and riot cops would never be turned against me and my children.

I came to understand that I had to use whatever privilege I had, as a well-educated white American woman, to fight the dark, oppressive forces that are seeking to sink our entire planet into a violence, fear and deprivation.

But I didn’t realize, as I was writing that book, that I was standing on the brink of the DTE, a time when the boomerang of climate change would be exacerbated by the takeover of American government, business and military by vile haters and savage oppressors, eager to take sadistic pleasure in the subduing of all dissent and disobedience.

When I finished What I Forgot in 2015, I imagined that the worst problem facing us would be the runaway juggernaut of climate change. That still may be the case: we are seeing the disruption of the climate already, in tornadoes, floods, droughts, disease, loss of glaciers and other sources of drinking water for millions…with vast migrations of climate refugees underway.

Residences near the Novato RV Park wades through standing water along Armstrong Ave. on Sunday, Jan. 8, 2017, in Novato, Calif. Residences were advised to shelter in place.(Robert Tong/Marin Independent Journal)

But now the DT gang in control of the American government seems maniacally intent on intensifying all of it. Naomi Klein’s “disaster capitalism” is blowing like a violent hurricane across our entire networked planet, and although the generals and ideologues in control of our government may think they can control it, as they did in the past (think Katrina or Baghdad) and make more billions (using taxpayer money) in the clean-up and reconstruction, I don’t believe they will be able to get the climate change genie back into the bottle now.

They may be able to subdue ordinary Americans with their violence and repression, but Mother Earth, once aroused, will sweep their guns and tanks before her like so many toys. She has her own agenda, our Mother, and she’ll do no one’s bidding.

So what is the task for those of us who are awake to the accelerating transition of our planet and the very real potential that we will be living through the decline and fall of Western Civilization?

Recognizing how terribly destructive and horrible Western Civilization has been for the natural world, indigenous peoples, and people of color all over the planet is a necessary first step. We have to recognize and come to terms with the key role America has played in the violence and havoc that has laid waste to so many communities across the globe, destroyed forests, grasslands and ocean reefs and pushed untold millions of beautiful flora and fauna into the dark night of extinction.

We did this. Or we stood silently by as it was done.

And we are living through the consequences now. They’ve taken everyone else, now they’re coming for us: starting with the most vulnerable here in America, and steadily racheting up the violence aimed at anyone who resists or dissents.

So much is not right here.

It’s our job to make things right. We were born in this time for a reason. It is a time of almost unbearable polarity and ever-accelerating change. We have to step boldly up to the challenges, look them in the eye, and link arms with others to take a stand for what’s right.

We might all rather go back to sleep—wake me when it’s over, honey!

But in the DTE, we don’t have that luxury.

Now is our time, and no one will save us if we don’t stand up for ourselves and what we love.

Resist. Persist. Risk. Repeat. A mantra for our time.

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on February 26, 2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Environment, Leadership, Social change, Uncategorized
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on February 26, 2017

https://bethechange2012.com/2017/02/26/resist-persist-risk-repeat-a-mantra-for-our-time/

Marching with Words into the Light of a New Era: Time to Rise!

My friend Barbara Newman described the staged reading she and I will be participating in on January 21 as a “march with words,” and this resonates with what I see so many of us doing these days as we rally together in our homes and community centers, our town halls and places of worship, and of course in the great 21st century town square, social media.

MEXICO - ZAPATISTAS ANNIVERSARYI am reminded of Subcomandante Marcos, who said “words are our weapons,” while fighting what appeared to be a hopelessly lopsided fight in the southern jungles of Mexico–Indians with rusty rifles and bandanas standing up to soldiers with helicopters and bombs. Marcos was one of the very first resistance fighters to use the power of the Internet as a way to sway the hearts and minds of ordinary onlookers, the world over, against local oppressors.

On the other side of the political spectrum, we see the man about to become the 45th president of the United States deploying the same tactics, his every tweet as powerful as any bombshell.

This is a dark time, and yet it’s also a time shot through with the light of the new age that is cracking open before us. Let us be candid and admit that while it would have been a symbolic victory for women to have Hillary Clinton sworn in as President today, her political bent was conservative, in the sense of maintaining the status quo.

What is familiar is comforting, we’re all children that way. Some of us are more adventurous than others. Some of us have nothing left to lose, and so we’re willing to place our bets on a total dark horse like Mr. Drumpf. If Bernie Sanders had been the Democratic candidate, he would probably have won for the same reason (barring major interference from Moscow).

But no use looking backward now. Let’s squint and look directly into the light of the future. Has there ever been a human revolution that has happened without struggle? Have people ever been willing to embrace radical change without having their backs pushed to whatever the wall of the moment might be?

Today in Washington DC a charlatan will take the oath of office as President of the United States. No, it’s not a reality TV show, it’s reality.

But it’s also reality that millions of Americans are energized and activated as never before, as a direct result of the crazy events of 2016. We are “tuned in, turned on, tapped in,” to use the favorite saying of a certain psychic I know.

That same psychic often reminds us that sometimes it takes a strong dose of WHAT WE DON’T WANT to jar us into an appreciation and understanding of WHAT WE DO WANT.

You can see that happening in the outpouring of love for the departing Obamas, in our entreaties to them to stay engaged in public life.

DEM 2016 ConventionBoth Barack and Michelle Obama are powerful orators. So is Bernie Sanders. We will need the power of their words more than ever in the bleak months ahead. We will need words to keep our spirits high, to remind us of the stakes and why we must fight for what we value, even putting our bodies on the line if need be.

It is surely no accident that in the very week that saw a parade of military-industrial complex billionaires coming to Washington hoping to ride Trump’s wave into political power, we got word from the scientists that 2016 was officially the hottest year on Earth since record-keeping began in the 19th century. It topped 2014 and 2015, which were also the hottest years ever in their time.

When I align the personal, political, and planetary in this moment, I see an amazing crystallization taking place. The Earth herself rumbles and roars her discontent and imbalance; political systems that have held for centuries crack and fall apart; and in so many human psyches a deep sense of uneasiness registers, an intuitive sense that something is not right.

Change is not just coming…it’s here. We are living, day by day, through extraordinary times.

I call on all of us to rise and meet the light of change with a strong spine and a resolute spirit.

We cannot go back, we can only go forward. There is a huge opportunity now to go forward into a more perfect union—not just among Americans, but among all peoples on Earth, and to reimagine our role as humans to become the caretakers of our planet, rather than its pirate plunderer-destroyers.

As we cry out against what we don’t want, let’s also use our words to envision and describe the contours of what we stand for.

Peace. Harmony. Generosity. Love.

How would each of these ideals look to you, brought down to the level of your community, your family, your life?

Look boldly into the light of this new era we’re entering, and use your words and your actions to make it so.

amazing-sunset

Nova Scotia sunset, 2016

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on January 20, 2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Environmental Activism, Leadership, love, New stories, Social change, Spiritual Ecology, Uncategorized, writing
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on January 20, 2017

https://bethechange2012.com/2017/01/20/marching-with-words-into-the-light-of-a-new-era-time-to-rise/

What Victory Will Be Ours? Parsing the Personal, Political and Planetary in a Dark American Election Season

With two days to go before the election, the menace represented by Donald Trump and his fanatical followers is hanging over me like a dense cold fog, almost a shroud. Hillary may not be a knight in shining armor, but she’s all that is standing between us and the screaming hordes of misogynist, racist, violent bigots, who have been turning out by the tens of thousands for their orange-skinned leader.

This is a moment when I can palpably feel the personal, political and planetary spheres aligning, not in joy but in fear and awareness of what a Trump win would mean for me personally, for the tattered political system of America, and for our beleaguered planet.

Personally, as a woman of Jewish descent, as a feminist and an eco-feminist at that, I am squarely in the crosshairs of the Trumpist band of haters. Not only that but I married a Mexican, making my sons fair game as well! Yes, I would feel unsafe and threatened in a country that legitimized Trump’s bigotry by making him the leader of the land and commander-in-chief of our oh-so-powerful and oh-so-obedient police and military forces.

Politically, we see Hillary holding the status quo center, standing defiantly with the big banks and the corporations that have been fattening on our sick economy for a long, long time. Trump and Bernie Sanders take their stands in the right and left wings, Trump advocating for deregulation and a survival-of-the-mightiest economy, while Bernie is our modern-day Robin Hood, standing up for the poor and oppressed.

If Bernie had been allowed to finish his race without having his hamstrings cut by the media and the Democratic National Committee, we would have had a much more animated and perhaps even more polarized race. As it is, between the status quo or descending into fascist chaos, well, even many Republicans are going with Hillary, though vowing to tie her up in knots once she wins the White House.

On the planetary level, just check “none of above,” as far as either Trump or Clinton being advocates for the Earth. One will dig, drill and burn—the other will do it even faster and harder. The best we can say for Clinton is that she is a reasonable, rational person; she reads the fine print in policy reports; she is a mediating type who is likely to try to find solutions that please as many people as possible. I can see her pushing the fossil fuel industry to reinvent itself as a clean energy machine, even if I can’t see her standing with water protectors for a photo op.

This election won’t be over when it’s over. If Trump should win, it would send an immediate chill over the land, the gloom of winter shading into the dismal gray of the unhinged fascist capitalism represented by the self-aggrandizing faux-gold chrome of Trump. Remember the palette of the film 1984? That’s what I see coming our way with a Trump win.

If Hillary wins, the Republicans will be united once again through their common hatred of the Clintons, and will stop at nothing to obstruct her presidency.

I am already wondering how it could be legal for the U.S. Senate to refuse to do its job in holding hearings for Supreme Court nominees. Shouldn’t there be a way for the American people to insist that our representatives, whose salaries we pay, do the job we elected them to do?

Whatever happens on Tuesday, life will go on. Next weekend I’ll once again be retreating to the cozy Rookwood Inn to lead a group of women in aligning the personal, political and planetary in their own life stories, through my technique of purposeful memoir. We may linger a bit on the political this time, reflecting on how the political backdrop against which our lives have played out has influenced who we have become.

In fact, politics is more than a backdrop; it’s interwoven into the warp and woof of every minute of our lives. Liberal Americans, the coastal and urban blue types, have long had the privilege of believing that America really stood for “liberty and justice for all.” Our eyes have been steadily opened these past few years, as smartphones and social media have shown us scene after scene of the targeting of the less powerful by the security forces of the elites. Less visible perhaps, but no less damaging is the predatory stranglehold of the finance, chemical, pharmaceutical and military-industrial/fossil fuel complexes on our entire society.

Our immediate task, this week, is to take a strong stand against Trump’s would-be fascist dictatorship by electing Hillary Clinton—the first woman president of the United States!

And then—we need to look hard at the conditions that led to Trump’s insurgency, and start working on the deeper ailments of our society. Why are people so angry and afraid? Why are people so stressed, anxious, unhealthy and unhappy? What can be done to level the playing fields for our young people, eliminating the specter of debt bondage and supporting them as they get a fresh start on the journey of life?

How can we stop trashing our planet and start investing in economies based on renewable energy, permaculture and an awareness of the sacredness of all life? How can we shift our ways of living so that we are united by the solidarity of common purpose, buoyed by energetic hope and optimism in our future?

This past week, I have been reading The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible by Charles Eisenstein with my current leadership students. I’ll close with a passage (p. 201) to ponder:

“The best victory, says Sun Tzu, is the one in which the losers don’t realize they have lost. In the old story, we overcome evil and leave our enemies in the dust, wailing and gnashing their teeth. No more. Everyone is coming along for this ride. In the new story, we understand that everyone left behind impoverishes the destination. We see each human being as the possessor of a unique lens upon the world. We wonder, ‘What truth has this man been able to see from his perspective, that is invisible from mine?’”

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on November 6, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Environment, Politics, Social change, Uncategorized
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on November 6, 2016

https://bethechange2012.com/2016/11/06/what-victory-will-be-ours-parsing-the-personal-political-and-planetary-in-a-dark-american-election-season/

Standing Rock: Frontline of the New Occupy Fossil Fuels Resistance Movement

The standoff at Standing Rock—where thousands of Native American men, women and children, along with many non-Native allies, are camping out to block the laying of a 1,170-mile pipeline to carry fossil fuels from North Dakota to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico—is more than just an isolated battle, the Sioux deciding they won’t allow their lands to be taken by force by the oil lords, and putting their bodies on the line to protect their land and water.

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Standing Rock is one of those moments, like the Occupy Wall Street protests, that we will look back on as a tipping point in consciousness; a moment when the lines of battle in the war to keep our planet habitable for our children became visceral and unmistakable.

Just as in Occupy Wall Street, we are seeing militarized police and guards attacking ordinary people who have taken to the public sphere to protect their right to a livable future. The same tactics are being used: escalating the pressure with an overwhelming force of armored vehicles, sound grenades, tear gas, pepper spray, police batons, tasers and rubber bullets until the violence starts and the rounding up of peacefully protesting civilians can appear “justified.”

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Law enforcement claims to be protecting public safety, but in fact they are acting as hired goons for the fossil fuel companies.

In a New Republic article this fall, Bill McKibben used the metaphor of World War III to describe the kind of all-out industrial effort that is needed now to shift our economy from running on fossil fuels to running on renewable energy sources like wind, solar, tidal, geothermal.

We need a Marshall Plan to ramp up and get the job done, McKibben declared.

2564906-H.jpgInstead of hiring a few guys to lay pipelines and fight off anyone who dares to protest, we need to mobilize an army of people who are dedicated to developing, producing and distributing alternative energy systems, along with converting buildings, transportation networks, farms and factories to run clean.

Tar sands, fracked gas and deep-sea oil rigs, along with the pipelines, tankers and refineries that service them, are part of the dead-end 20th century vision that we must abandon if we are to find our way out of the frightening labyrinth of the present moment.

It’s no accident that the nascent Occupy Fossil Fuel movement is being led by Native people, not only because their land rights are once again being flagrantly violated, but also because they have never fully bought into the fossil-fuel-based plunder economy, the economy of short-term gain, maximizing profits, and to hell with the consequences.

The leaders at Standing Rock have created a movement based on prayer and reverence for the sacredness of Earth, and people of all backgrounds from all across the country have responded with a resounding YES!

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While the mainstream media is showing once again its collusion with the Wall Street/fossil fuel barons that also control our government, by simply ignoring Standing Rock, social media has leapt into the breach, with citizen livestreams taking us right into the heart of the struggle.

14572425_10154635715284600_8219779230791003850_nYou can’t support a movement you aren’t aware of, which must be what the mainstream media is up to in willfully blinding themselves and their readers to the significance of Standing Rock.

Like Occupy Wall Street, like Ferguson, Standing Rock is not going to go away. The more the police try to repress the protests, the more they will spread.

Because the simple truth is this: a majority of us want to leave a habitable planet for our children and grandchildren.

We want future-oriented solutions—re-localizing energy sources via solar and wind, not thousand-mile pipelines strangling our country and putting our waterways at risk.

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We don’t want our hard-earned tax dollars to go for paying police to brutalize peaceful protestors at home, nor to support an endless military buildup to safeguard a corporate globalization that follows the same playbook worldwide of trashing local economies and environments.

Americans are not afraid of hard work. We relish challenge and delight in innovation. We have what it takes to head off climate change disaster.

In addition to supporting the Standing Rock protestors who are right now bravely occupying the front lines of the struggle for our shared future, we need to create our own Standing Rocks, our own front lines of resistance where we are.

The Marshall Plan of the climate change wars won’t be led by the Federal government. It will happen on the local level in towns and cities, as well as in global networks of like-minded people, like 350.org and the new Treesisters movement.

It will happen when enough of us have the courage to come together, as the Standing Rock Sioux and their allies have done, to say YES! to a livable future.

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 28, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Environmental Activism, Fossil Fuels, media, New stories, Occupy, Renewable energy, Social change, Spiritual Ecology, Uncategorized, War
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 28, 2016

https://bethechange2012.com/2016/10/28/standing-rock-frontline-of-the-new-occupy-fossil-fuels-resistance-movement/

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