"Dervish Hasan understood things differently. He believed that members of this world were responsible for specific duties, but among them there was a group, whether man or woman, who lived under constant trial and tribulation and were wanderers. If this group did not have any means of expression, it would fall to denigration and meanness, or to madness and debility...[others become] the particular group who have no choice but to follow the path of Sufi tradition, for in no other way could they find happiness.
But if women [in a restrictive society] wished to know more, they of course could. The only problem was that from then on they would become wanderers..."
-- Shahrnush Parsipur, Touba and the Meaning of Night
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
a little good news (from Oregon)
Tuesday, February 16, 2010, 9:56am PST
Employees now own Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods
Portland Business Journal
Bob Moore turned 81 on Monday. To celebrate, he gave his company to his employees.
The long-time CEO of Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods launched an employee stock-ownership program, effectively making Bob’s Red Mill a company owned by its 200-plus employees.
“It’s been my dream all along to turn this company over to the employees, and to make that dream a reality on my birthday is just the icing on the cake,” Moore said in a news release.
The announcement was made Monday during an all-company meeting at the Bob’s Red Mill headquarters in Milwaukie.
Moore said the shift to an ESOP won’t change the make-up of the company.
He and his wife, Charlee, founded the company in 1978, growing it into a successful provider of whole-grain food products. In the past decade, the company has averaged annual growth between 20 percent and 30 percent.
Chief Financial Officer John Wagner said that the ESOP will help recruit new talent while also setting up a succession plan once Moore — who remains active in daily operations — steps down.
Employees now own Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods
Portland Business Journal
Bob Moore turned 81 on Monday. To celebrate, he gave his company to his employees.
The long-time CEO of Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods launched an employee stock-ownership program, effectively making Bob’s Red Mill a company owned by its 200-plus employees.
“It’s been my dream all along to turn this company over to the employees, and to make that dream a reality on my birthday is just the icing on the cake,” Moore said in a news release.
The announcement was made Monday during an all-company meeting at the Bob’s Red Mill headquarters in Milwaukie.
Moore said the shift to an ESOP won’t change the make-up of the company.
He and his wife, Charlee, founded the company in 1978, growing it into a successful provider of whole-grain food products. In the past decade, the company has averaged annual growth between 20 percent and 30 percent.
Chief Financial Officer John Wagner said that the ESOP will help recruit new talent while also setting up a succession plan once Moore — who remains active in daily operations — steps down.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
dream/space/time
So much given in the hours of darkness. Silence: surely earth needs the respite of quiet as much as we do. Sleep itself, such a miracle of regeneration. And then, of course, dreams.
Dream/time: maybe not so much another timeline as the same one, the "known" one, magnified. A ruler measuring micromillimeters instead of just feet. A chance to get inside the current instead of riding only its surface. Stepping, for a moment, both inside and outside this consensus called regular time. The gift of looking back and, sometimes, forward. And now and then -- acutely awake -- into the embering heart of the present.
Dream/space: a mirror appears on the narrow room's confining wall, doubles habitation. Where one moves suddenly is known for its true expansiveness. Reality is finally fully engaged, an experience perhaps similar to what a friend named as "felt sense". Room to move, breathing room, available space for supposed impossibilities. Capacity to use essential senses that wait constricted, if not suffocated, during waking hours. Remembrance: so much more around us, and so much more going on in it, than we acknowledge. Our own given and natural altered state. The space we need access to, to truly inhabit our lives.
The week's gift to me of these things: in some dreamspace, I sit in complete tranquility and observe the composition of a love poem. Not so much that I watch a person write - more that I watch words materialize on a page. The page is like smooth parchment and the words move, mutable and momentary, like peaceful smoke or calm breeze through tree branches. The entire poem is made of anagrams. Each line praises the attributes of its beloved one in a new sequence of namings that turns inside out, somersaults over itself and becomes new celebration, reusing all the same letters, before starting over again in the next exuberant line. There is no where or when. There are no people or objects, other than the words and the page and the life that suffuses them. There's no me, to speak of, and no need to move or act. I am only observation. And in holding attendance to this lovely happening, I'm given a dose of timeliness and spaciousness that, quiet but potent in its joy, travels with me still into the waking journey.
Dream/time: maybe not so much another timeline as the same one, the "known" one, magnified. A ruler measuring micromillimeters instead of just feet. A chance to get inside the current instead of riding only its surface. Stepping, for a moment, both inside and outside this consensus called regular time. The gift of looking back and, sometimes, forward. And now and then -- acutely awake -- into the embering heart of the present.
Dream/space: a mirror appears on the narrow room's confining wall, doubles habitation. Where one moves suddenly is known for its true expansiveness. Reality is finally fully engaged, an experience perhaps similar to what a friend named as "felt sense". Room to move, breathing room, available space for supposed impossibilities. Capacity to use essential senses that wait constricted, if not suffocated, during waking hours. Remembrance: so much more around us, and so much more going on in it, than we acknowledge. Our own given and natural altered state. The space we need access to, to truly inhabit our lives.
The week's gift to me of these things: in some dreamspace, I sit in complete tranquility and observe the composition of a love poem. Not so much that I watch a person write - more that I watch words materialize on a page. The page is like smooth parchment and the words move, mutable and momentary, like peaceful smoke or calm breeze through tree branches. The entire poem is made of anagrams. Each line praises the attributes of its beloved one in a new sequence of namings that turns inside out, somersaults over itself and becomes new celebration, reusing all the same letters, before starting over again in the next exuberant line. There is no where or when. There are no people or objects, other than the words and the page and the life that suffuses them. There's no me, to speak of, and no need to move or act. I am only observation. And in holding attendance to this lovely happening, I'm given a dose of timeliness and spaciousness that, quiet but potent in its joy, travels with me still into the waking journey.
Monday, February 15, 2010
no holidays
Yesterday finally finished a major rush of seasonal work: six weeks, seven days a week, at three jobs. Gotta follow the work when it comes around! And I'm sure enough grateful for it, too. Even more so after about eleven hours of sleep.
My last day of Valentine flower deliveries was, surprisingly, the most satisfying. All week it was roses by the dozen, plush animals and chocolate to offices and homes. Yesterday, I got the deliveries for the workers. The ones who live in a world where holidays don't have quite the same meaning. Making your living in a service industry means that all these days which society at large calls "special" are days that you will spend in attendance on that society, enabling it to be "special" for them. Yesterday I went to Target, Applebees, and Taco Bell. I took roses to women on the staff of a hospital and a nursing home. It was a great reminder: it's not only our expectations about holidays that are being preserved by the hard work of many, mostly invisible, members of a community. It's also the much more basic and essential needs of safety, health, emergency service. Supports that probably even those of us who work holidays take for granted, as somewhat-members of a somewhat-functional society. I'll remember it a little more, after yesterday. Maybe send more thoughts out to those laborers of all kinds. Even on days when I'm at work along with them.
My last day of Valentine flower deliveries was, surprisingly, the most satisfying. All week it was roses by the dozen, plush animals and chocolate to offices and homes. Yesterday, I got the deliveries for the workers. The ones who live in a world where holidays don't have quite the same meaning. Making your living in a service industry means that all these days which society at large calls "special" are days that you will spend in attendance on that society, enabling it to be "special" for them. Yesterday I went to Target, Applebees, and Taco Bell. I took roses to women on the staff of a hospital and a nursing home. It was a great reminder: it's not only our expectations about holidays that are being preserved by the hard work of many, mostly invisible, members of a community. It's also the much more basic and essential needs of safety, health, emergency service. Supports that probably even those of us who work holidays take for granted, as somewhat-members of a somewhat-functional society. I'll remember it a little more, after yesterday. Maybe send more thoughts out to those laborers of all kinds. Even on days when I'm at work along with them.
Friday, February 12, 2010
quote
"In the rest of the world everything is burdened with the unreality of matter; here, we levitate. Our days recover the freedom to invent themselves, and thanks to the strange arithmetic that results from adding nothing to nothing, our days can follow one another in a significant way -- I mean, they are able to keep their meaning."
-- Laura Restrepo, A Tale of the Dispossessed
-- Laura Restrepo, A Tale of the Dispossessed
Thursday, February 11, 2010
across
I'm looking right now at a scrap of paper covered on both sides with writing. Most of the words are not in English. In some places the writing overlaps. Words and dates are circled, underlined, crossed out. They're written at right angles, or opposite each other, as would happen when two people, sitting at a table, each picked up the pen by turns from their side. Maybe you have a scrap of paper like this one. They're beautiful artifacts of communication. They're a record of a moment when bridges were built and gaps of understanding were bravely crossed. I am fortunate to have several such pieces of paper among my treasures.
This particular scrap, two nights ago, was a meeting with my friend from Turkey. I still wonder how we're friends, every time we talk. He's at least 15-20 years older than me. He has a Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering. He is Muslim. But we met as fellow pizza drivers - both getting by in our own meantimes, while hunting down what we really want to do. We talked first about travel, culture, food, books. We found some simple common ground. He expresses that wonder and reverence for Life that's bridged more than one gap in past friendships. Tonight I want to see how strong that bridge is. I'm here to see if we can talk about religion.
I'm telling him about the Sufi circle I've just met. I want to put them in a larger context of understanding. He's astonished that there are Sufis in Albuquerque at all, much less multiple groups. He begins - with understandable pride - to outline their history, much of which originated in Turkey. First I get a list of the various branches and their founders. Then, when I ask about Sufism's relation to the larger world of Islam, I am offered a helpful 10-minute lecture on the succession of the Prophet Mohammed and the subsequent branching into Shia and Sunni. Who, he says, can be distinguished by the fact that each follows a different founder, while embracing the practice which the _other_ group says that it in fact embraces. He draws an 'X' at this point, showing the paradoxical overlap. I can't tell if he's being ironic, or simply observant of humanity's contradictions. He does seem to have a quietly dry sense of humor, even though his speech is always dignified, intelligent, precise. But there's not quite enough common linguistic ground here for some of those subtleties.
I've been working for a long time to gain a second language. Spanish, that is: not Turkish. And it's happening, surely though slowly. It's been a real gift to find, when a bilingual conversation occasionally finds a gap it can't cross in English, that I can sometimes jump in and complete the thought from the Spanish side. Just a few sentences, just a couple words can complete the needed bridge and keep us moving forward. Thought I'd never make it even to this level of fluency, really. But tonight's conversation reminds me what a miracle it is that communication happens at all. His English is fairly strong, but it has its gaps now and then. And I don't speak any Turkish. There are moments when he struggles, reaching for an abstraction or a philosophical footing. And when you don't have any knowledge of the other's other language, all you can do is listen. With presence, openness, and at times maybe a little imagination. It's a great practice to be reminded of. And it isn't only needed across different languages. How I could wish, so many times, that others had found such presence with me. To reach with heart, patience, and wonder toward an idea, or an experience of mine, that didn't translate into their personal lexicon. Rather than rushing to fit it into some syntax that left me misunderstood, if not judged for something I wasn't saying at all. In a very real sense, we do each speak our own language. At any rate, it's a valuable reminder for me. A practice I can try to maintain with others. Including, even, on the treacherous ground of speaking in English.
Thankfully, we don't spend all our time on history or ideology. He moves to the question I had hoped for: what's it about for you? After a little very basic sharing about the practice that I've experienced, he says, putting a hand over his heart, "But how does it feel?" And I know we're not talking about emotionalism here. This is about getting to the center. I tell him, simply, that it's about as real as it gets. He seems happy at this. "It makes no difference what one experiences mentally", he affirms, tapping his forehead, "if one is not also (pointing at his chest) experiencing heartily." It's a bit of a reach for vocabulary, but really I think his slip of words says it just about right.
There's also another, ulterior motive for this conversation. One that has nothing to do with mind or spirit. Well, maybe not as directly. I want him to show me some of his culinary expertise. He brought samples of his cooking to work a couple of times in the past. They were incredible, and I've been hinting at a wish for recipes for a couple years now. Tonight as we part ways on the sidewalk he says, "Call me in a couple weeks and we make the baklava." Now those are some words I've been waiting for.
This particular scrap, two nights ago, was a meeting with my friend from Turkey. I still wonder how we're friends, every time we talk. He's at least 15-20 years older than me. He has a Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering. He is Muslim. But we met as fellow pizza drivers - both getting by in our own meantimes, while hunting down what we really want to do. We talked first about travel, culture, food, books. We found some simple common ground. He expresses that wonder and reverence for Life that's bridged more than one gap in past friendships. Tonight I want to see how strong that bridge is. I'm here to see if we can talk about religion.
I'm telling him about the Sufi circle I've just met. I want to put them in a larger context of understanding. He's astonished that there are Sufis in Albuquerque at all, much less multiple groups. He begins - with understandable pride - to outline their history, much of which originated in Turkey. First I get a list of the various branches and their founders. Then, when I ask about Sufism's relation to the larger world of Islam, I am offered a helpful 10-minute lecture on the succession of the Prophet Mohammed and the subsequent branching into Shia and Sunni. Who, he says, can be distinguished by the fact that each follows a different founder, while embracing the practice which the _other_ group says that it in fact embraces. He draws an 'X' at this point, showing the paradoxical overlap. I can't tell if he's being ironic, or simply observant of humanity's contradictions. He does seem to have a quietly dry sense of humor, even though his speech is always dignified, intelligent, precise. But there's not quite enough common linguistic ground here for some of those subtleties.
I've been working for a long time to gain a second language. Spanish, that is: not Turkish. And it's happening, surely though slowly. It's been a real gift to find, when a bilingual conversation occasionally finds a gap it can't cross in English, that I can sometimes jump in and complete the thought from the Spanish side. Just a few sentences, just a couple words can complete the needed bridge and keep us moving forward. Thought I'd never make it even to this level of fluency, really. But tonight's conversation reminds me what a miracle it is that communication happens at all. His English is fairly strong, but it has its gaps now and then. And I don't speak any Turkish. There are moments when he struggles, reaching for an abstraction or a philosophical footing. And when you don't have any knowledge of the other's other language, all you can do is listen. With presence, openness, and at times maybe a little imagination. It's a great practice to be reminded of. And it isn't only needed across different languages. How I could wish, so many times, that others had found such presence with me. To reach with heart, patience, and wonder toward an idea, or an experience of mine, that didn't translate into their personal lexicon. Rather than rushing to fit it into some syntax that left me misunderstood, if not judged for something I wasn't saying at all. In a very real sense, we do each speak our own language. At any rate, it's a valuable reminder for me. A practice I can try to maintain with others. Including, even, on the treacherous ground of speaking in English.
Thankfully, we don't spend all our time on history or ideology. He moves to the question I had hoped for: what's it about for you? After a little very basic sharing about the practice that I've experienced, he says, putting a hand over his heart, "But how does it feel?" And I know we're not talking about emotionalism here. This is about getting to the center. I tell him, simply, that it's about as real as it gets. He seems happy at this. "It makes no difference what one experiences mentally", he affirms, tapping his forehead, "if one is not also (pointing at his chest) experiencing heartily." It's a bit of a reach for vocabulary, but really I think his slip of words says it just about right.
There's also another, ulterior motive for this conversation. One that has nothing to do with mind or spirit. Well, maybe not as directly. I want him to show me some of his culinary expertise. He brought samples of his cooking to work a couple of times in the past. They were incredible, and I've been hinting at a wish for recipes for a couple years now. Tonight as we part ways on the sidewalk he says, "Call me in a couple weeks and we make the baklava." Now those are some words I've been waiting for.
Monday, February 8, 2010
delivery/conductivity
Flowers, phonebooks, and pizzas to the people. Bilingual goodwill efforts to the business owners on Bridge from the River to Atrisco. Clothing and a new community-making option, right there in the neighborhood, for the women of Casa. Supplies, common acquaintances, and offer of support to the new women's artisan cooperative. And also the card of a friend seeking multilingual people for a entrepreneurial/service effort (could be further employment for the women at the co-op, whose origins literally span the globe). The Google map site, for views of the old hometown, to the friend who hasn't been back to Mexico in 11 years. Contact info for free English classes, to all the guys at work (they're all getting into the idea, it seems). Except for the one who's already enrolled in two classes at once, making up for all the years he lost, in the factory in L.A...
And what comes back to me? A new back-of-the-hand knowledge of the north and south Valleys of my town. Miles of walking uncountable and uncounted. Clearing the blood under sun and cloud and snowfall, heading (sometimes) away from the grief and impotent, unfixable anger and toward whatever comes after. Two soul-restoring nights of live music, good company, barely-room-to-shimmy dance floors full of happy fellow human beings. Dreams that attempt to right a wrong or two, if only by putting the heavy shoes for a moment on the other's feet. Birthday wishes from friends I didn't think even knew the day. Generous invitations to share food, drink, conversation, from more than one who did. And all the kindness that, however unanticipated, always seems to come with bringing random stuff to total strangers with no expectations. Stay open to the current. Keep the current open. The energy of these connections is always alive, hidden and waiting in the circuitry...
And what comes back to me? A new back-of-the-hand knowledge of the north and south Valleys of my town. Miles of walking uncountable and uncounted. Clearing the blood under sun and cloud and snowfall, heading (sometimes) away from the grief and impotent, unfixable anger and toward whatever comes after. Two soul-restoring nights of live music, good company, barely-room-to-shimmy dance floors full of happy fellow human beings. Dreams that attempt to right a wrong or two, if only by putting the heavy shoes for a moment on the other's feet. Birthday wishes from friends I didn't think even knew the day. Generous invitations to share food, drink, conversation, from more than one who did. And all the kindness that, however unanticipated, always seems to come with bringing random stuff to total strangers with no expectations. Stay open to the current. Keep the current open. The energy of these connections is always alive, hidden and waiting in the circuitry...
Monday, February 1, 2010
*******
Love is here
and now and here and now
refugees with unreasonable courage say it
a few unbound from pain's consensus speak it
brave fugitives of convention call it clear
and all with nothing left to lose cry it
with their dissolution's liberating tears
there is as much Love as there is hate
fear greed apathy hypocrisy cynicism doubt
yes there are surely those
but there is as much Love as there is
everything else there is
and more
the door opens inward
the door opens outward too
why are we my inner selves
still stifling each other
in this collapsing anteroom
redressing wounds
retelling disaster's epic
repeating news of chaos looting scarcity
when just beyond are all the healers
all the medicine
and all the us
that we could need for regeneration?
we acquiesced for far too long
all my survivors to all of theirs
let confidence in distrust take the day
grafted their unmended pain to mine
and helped to hold the door against the Light
but even through the closure it illumines
reaching radiating irresistible
and even barely moving I can
feel a way forward by the incandescence igniting
all around the edges
and now and here and now
refugees with unreasonable courage say it
a few unbound from pain's consensus speak it
brave fugitives of convention call it clear
and all with nothing left to lose cry it
with their dissolution's liberating tears
there is as much Love as there is hate
fear greed apathy hypocrisy cynicism doubt
yes there are surely those
but there is as much Love as there is
everything else there is
and more
the door opens inward
the door opens outward too
why are we my inner selves
still stifling each other
in this collapsing anteroom
redressing wounds
retelling disaster's epic
repeating news of chaos looting scarcity
when just beyond are all the healers
all the medicine
and all the us
that we could need for regeneration?
we acquiesced for far too long
all my survivors to all of theirs
let confidence in distrust take the day
grafted their unmended pain to mine
and helped to hold the door against the Light
but even through the closure it illumines
reaching radiating irresistible
and even barely moving I can
feel a way forward by the incandescence igniting
all around the edges
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
