Oh, those other lives out there. Those beautifully luminous, exasperatingly numinous, other possible existences. The ones we paused at the portal of, standing at that dividing of ways, and didn't take. The ones would've made of us other people altogether, with fantastically other things to give the world, or maybe to take from it, or maybe of course both. I have at least a couple of them, those lives, still glowing and embering in Portland, Oregon. The state even whose abbreviation hints at ambiguity and potential. Ursula LeGuin has a wonderful short story about a small Oregon town that unexpectedly, and inexplicably, moves itself to new locations around the state from time to time. Carrying with it its collection of inhabitants, who seem unusually capable of adapting to their strangely mutable lives and geographies. The name of the story is the name of the town: Ether, OR.
But anyway: one of those lives of mine resurfaced today with the email announcement below. The Center for Intercultural Organizing is one of my most-admired Portland nonprofit acquaintances, and one of the first that I met and volunteered with there. They were founded in 2001, as a response to the growing prejudice and all-around ignorance being fostered toward the "other": those from less-understood cultures, spiritual paths, or regions of the world (of which Portland has an amazingly diverse population). Their many excellent efforts, including town hall meetings, public dialogues and educational events, and the annual Global Portland Festival, have brought much light to the city at large, and created sharing and community among people of incredibly varied backgrounds and experiences. Recently, with the '01 ridiculousness a bit more in the past, they have turned their focus more specifically to immigrant issues.
The connection here, for me, is not just a few vibrant experiences with this group. This post is about a work I could probably be a part of now, if I had stayed there. A friend in the Portland Catholic Worker community, with whom I shared an interest in photography and communications, offered more than once to get me into an internship program, doing video production with the local indy media center where he worked. It was a hard offer to decline, and I did so only because I was thinking of returning to New Mexico. And the direct link with the immigrant community, and its advocates, was one I was also forging in the context of 4 or 5 other volunteer and learning efforts. Well, here we are in the now. There must be things to do in this life as well. I can only wish these good people all the best, in their most inspiring efforts. And send them a little contribution toward their work, as they've requested in this post. Their link is at the end, if you'd like to see more of what they're about. But here's the email:
*************
Now, the exciting news! We have two big announcements that we will be making during presentations at our party, and I wanted to make sure you also heard about them.
WE’RE OPENING A MEDIA PRODUCTION STUDIO
This summer, the Center for Intercultural Organizing will be opening a member-run media production studio. A recent $68,000 capital grant from the Mount Hood Cable Regulatory Commission (MHCRC) is enabling CIO to build an on-site media studio and post-production lab located within our 3,400 square foot cross-cultural community center. The on-site media studio will provide a mechanism for immigrants and refugees to tell their own stories and directly frame their issues. We hope you will want to get involved.
CIO WILL BE PROVIDING IMMIGRATION LEGAL SERVICES
This year, CIO was officially recognized by Board of Immigration Appeals to provide low cost immigration legal services to community members. We recognize that our decision to provide legal services represents a new, yet strategic, direction for CIO. Providing direct assistance with citizenship applications is not simply a service. We see it as an important step to building relationships that can lead to further organizing and mobilization. AND when comprehensive immigration reform happens at the federal level … CIO will be poised to help!
Again, thank you for your continuing support of CIO. We look forward to seeing you sometime in the near future.
In Solidarity,
Kayse Jama, Excecutive Director
--
Executive Director | Center for Intercultural Organizing
700 N. Killingsworth | Portland, OR 97217
(503) 287-4117 | (503) 449-3523 (cell) | www.interculturalorganizing.org
*************
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
overheard
This afternoon, on the Rapid Ride up Central. A man talking to a woman, somewhere in the back of the bus: "You're not as old as you think!"
(What a wonderful counter to that cliche, "you're as young as you feel", and also to the tyranny of Mind, which is not, after all, absolute...)
(What a wonderful counter to that cliche, "you're as young as you feel", and also to the tyranny of Mind, which is not, after all, absolute...)
Friday, June 12, 2009
quote
"In the beginning of a world all the matter which will eventually form a complete whole is already in existence, but in a state of chaos. It is not that any new thing or world or being is to be created, but that there shall be a rearrangement of all the parts until the whole is complete...The difficulty is that all, from atom to human being, are continually trying to fit into a place to which they belong. The upheaval of nature, the great unrest, the world revolutions, the shedding of bodies, and the separations and divisions among men -- all these things are caused by the parts of the whole trying to stay in a place to which they do not belong. As soon as man is in his own place he has peace; until then he cannot have it."
-- Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Music of Life
-- Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Music of Life
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
good news in NM
(from the newslist of the Partnership for Earth Spirituality)
Mt. Taylor declared Traditional Cultural Property!!
Last Friday, June 5 the Traditional Cultural Property site designation for Mt. Taylor passed unanimously. The year long challenging process culminates with Mt. Taylor being listed on the State Register of Cultural Properties. The protected area is more than half the size of Rhode Island. It includes 439,000 acres, or 686 square miles, around the 11,301-foot summit of the western New Mexico mountain and five mesas surrounding it.
The designation requires consultation with those indigenous tribes who filed the TCP necessary before moving forward with projects that might impair or harm sacred sites. This is a wonderful outcome for earth, all people of New Mexico and sacred sites; one which the Partnership celebrates and congratulates all who worked toward this effort. May we continue to work addressing the care of water and concerns of uranium mining in this area.
Mt. Taylor declared Traditional Cultural Property!!
Last Friday, June 5 the Traditional Cultural Property site designation for Mt. Taylor passed unanimously. The year long challenging process culminates with Mt. Taylor being listed on the State Register of Cultural Properties. The protected area is more than half the size of Rhode Island. It includes 439,000 acres, or 686 square miles, around the 11,301-foot summit of the western New Mexico mountain and five mesas surrounding it.
The designation requires consultation with those indigenous tribes who filed the TCP necessary before moving forward with projects that might impair or harm sacred sites. This is a wonderful outcome for earth, all people of New Mexico and sacred sites; one which the Partnership celebrates and congratulates all who worked toward this effort. May we continue to work addressing the care of water and concerns of uranium mining in this area.
Monday, June 8, 2009
invisible mountains
Almost didn't go (how many great stories start -- and almost end -- with that line!). Even after a week of anticipation. And after a month outside of the circle, apart from the dance. Almost lapsed into friendly talk, inertia, intellect, and late breakfast. But the bright stroke of noon said O YOU MUST DO IT and I could see that it was true. A most brilliant blue is playing outside. Enough to go around. Enough for everybody to have some. It's held up by a breeze full of bright selfconfidence, also with abundance for all. La danza will welcome me back, just as unconditionally as does this day. Sun in the eyes and green underfoot, I finally shed shoes - remembering (re-membering, let us not neglect our debt to etymology)...this is the whole hope here, of wholeness, connecting, and making some little offering to Life (all this time of no offers and no making)...and hope - dare I say it - of sort of belonging somewhere. I'm as ready to dance as I'm able to be, which is not really enough of either. But I'm here, and I'm willing, and that right there - as at any moment - is my offer.
Tying on a borrowed headband again - it's red, like all the others. Red's not a color I wear (not often strong enough to contend with its energy) but this red shows the lineage honored here. And so I am honored to wear it. It has of course a lovely name in Nahuatl -- ix- ix- ix- already I have let the word fly, with its whirring insect sound, up into the spiralling breezes. Gratitude for this graceful encircling spirit-breath-air is all I can carry for the moment.
But just as the circle forms: another surrounds me. From the outside, without premonition or thought. Invisible mountains gather, immense, silent, benevolent. On every side, all around, at my back. They are massive, oversize, not to the scale of this dimension. Except they are also remote, except so very close, and it all evens out. They are so like the mountains of North (and maybe they are!): the vast, wasted country I often visit in Dreamtime journeys. Which appears to be the home or the exile (or both?) of all those who wander, and yearn, and get lost and seek more. But these mountains are also not as grand or somber as North mountains. They raise the same gravity-defying quicksilver crags, snagging sunlight on their edges. But also they hold soft greenblue indentations where nurturing forests might live...deep comforting spots like the hollow between shoulder and collarbone...can somebody remind me of that lovely word for a natural in-curve, a glacier-made sheltering bowl on the side of an alpine slope?
This invisible ring carries all of the strength and the mystery of half of the mountains I've met in my journeys: Idaho's ramparts, unmet-as-yet challenge to three-quarters of that impassable state...always calling out, WHO GOES THERE? as I drive on past...The serene, inexorable northern Cascades, rearing their blue heads out of sea-plains, impossible, hovering horizon just before the Canadian border...And jagged southwest Colorado, neglected run wild and untouristed, whose ranges a woman one time told me stood apart from New Mexico's because "these are young mountains". Her words pulling me at once into the unearthly no most earthly sound of a hundred joyful peaks, maybe centuries into their youth and still full of their future, lofting their children-voice songs to the clouds. These mountains today are all of these mountains, and also mirage-like: they waver, then strengthen, and I can see them better with my eyes closed.
They're here to watch, to listen, and offer their presence. To stand strong at my back like they've always been there. They help me to hear in their luminous collected silence that the steps of my feet, in the dance, at their feet, are a language. Not words, but the very communication I'm seeking, trying to re/re/remember all of this long long time. This is the voice I can speak to the Earth, of love gratitude praise question deep need and ever-dependence. Voice spoken with feet, like the ground is my own drum and I am the rhythm and who knows who is playing us. Like morse code tapped out with my toes on the surface of the mystery for whatever ears are listening. Like a secret code known only to the two of us. Learning the dance so much like learning a language. Humble and stumbling in honest bare feet. It will take tries on more tries to be clear in my message. Who knows what I am saying even now, besides I am, and YOU are...But the Mother will listen, patient good-humored forgiving, and teach me to listen while I'm still learning to speak. While these invisible mountains encircle, teach patience and place, and speak silent welcome themselves: remember yourself. Remember us. Re-member.
Tying on a borrowed headband again - it's red, like all the others. Red's not a color I wear (not often strong enough to contend with its energy) but this red shows the lineage honored here. And so I am honored to wear it. It has of course a lovely name in Nahuatl -- ix- ix- ix- already I have let the word fly, with its whirring insect sound, up into the spiralling breezes. Gratitude for this graceful encircling spirit-breath-air is all I can carry for the moment.
But just as the circle forms: another surrounds me. From the outside, without premonition or thought. Invisible mountains gather, immense, silent, benevolent. On every side, all around, at my back. They are massive, oversize, not to the scale of this dimension. Except they are also remote, except so very close, and it all evens out. They are so like the mountains of North (and maybe they are!): the vast, wasted country I often visit in Dreamtime journeys. Which appears to be the home or the exile (or both?) of all those who wander, and yearn, and get lost and seek more. But these mountains are also not as grand or somber as North mountains. They raise the same gravity-defying quicksilver crags, snagging sunlight on their edges. But also they hold soft greenblue indentations where nurturing forests might live...deep comforting spots like the hollow between shoulder and collarbone...can somebody remind me of that lovely word for a natural in-curve, a glacier-made sheltering bowl on the side of an alpine slope?
This invisible ring carries all of the strength and the mystery of half of the mountains I've met in my journeys: Idaho's ramparts, unmet-as-yet challenge to three-quarters of that impassable state...always calling out, WHO GOES THERE? as I drive on past...The serene, inexorable northern Cascades, rearing their blue heads out of sea-plains, impossible, hovering horizon just before the Canadian border...And jagged southwest Colorado, neglected run wild and untouristed, whose ranges a woman one time told me stood apart from New Mexico's because "these are young mountains". Her words pulling me at once into the unearthly no most earthly sound of a hundred joyful peaks, maybe centuries into their youth and still full of their future, lofting their children-voice songs to the clouds. These mountains today are all of these mountains, and also mirage-like: they waver, then strengthen, and I can see them better with my eyes closed.
They're here to watch, to listen, and offer their presence. To stand strong at my back like they've always been there. They help me to hear in their luminous collected silence that the steps of my feet, in the dance, at their feet, are a language. Not words, but the very communication I'm seeking, trying to re/re/remember all of this long long time. This is the voice I can speak to the Earth, of love gratitude praise question deep need and ever-dependence. Voice spoken with feet, like the ground is my own drum and I am the rhythm and who knows who is playing us. Like morse code tapped out with my toes on the surface of the mystery for whatever ears are listening. Like a secret code known only to the two of us. Learning the dance so much like learning a language. Humble and stumbling in honest bare feet. It will take tries on more tries to be clear in my message. Who knows what I am saying even now, besides I am, and YOU are...But the Mother will listen, patient good-humored forgiving, and teach me to listen while I'm still learning to speak. While these invisible mountains encircle, teach patience and place, and speak silent welcome themselves: remember yourself. Remember us. Re-member.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
quote
(The writer is describing her daily visualization/meditation practice, of meeting with her shadow self -- all her disowned or repressed aspects -- to talk and to listen).
"Since then my shadow has come closer. I'm listening and we're usually friends...Recently my shadow has been asking me to follow her through a rocky valley without looking back. Last week she showed me how to dance a little jig along the way. She's dressed in white in what appears to be a bridal gown. I think she wants me to wed her, the disowned half of myself, and begin to experience the unknown: the feeling of being whole."
- Susan G. Wooldridge, poemcrazy: freeing your life with words
"Since then my shadow has come closer. I'm listening and we're usually friends...Recently my shadow has been asking me to follow her through a rocky valley without looking back. Last week she showed me how to dance a little jig along the way. She's dressed in white in what appears to be a bridal gown. I think she wants me to wed her, the disowned half of myself, and begin to experience the unknown: the feeling of being whole."
- Susan G. Wooldridge, poemcrazy: freeing your life with words
Monday, June 1, 2009
blessingseedsong
rise up from your resting
safe underground and unknown
unfold out of nurturing confining shell
and cozy cocoon of cool earth
you were comfortable in darkness
til now but there's day that awaits you
turn and return to the surface
let us see those gifts brought to the light
infect this ground with the germ of your life
against which – yes - it does have its defenses
neglect and drought memory
abuse toxic strata and time-hardened surfaces
and all of those hungry little mouths
waiting above and below
raise up your heads between first infant leaf-wings
that one opening question essential:
is it alright to be here, and now?
some of you came to ground late
you joined this green gathering still stunted
barely able to hold your own but you'll find
the same offers of sunlight and sustenance
drink it in – it's all yours! - made for you
some were called forth and then were denied
the water and nurture that every new life has a right to
still you persist in your synthesis
Life in you speaks its own tough validation
and draws you – come out come out! –
to all beauty and growth you deserve
some of you were kept too long out of the light
you grew up thin, stretched-out pale, and reaching
bent over backwards not for others but only
trying to become your true selves
we welcome you now - come as you are! -
and plant you a little bit deeper
so you too can stand up on your own
sing your joy up to Sun who so loves you
even though he might gaze so intensely and may
strike you as somewhat over-brilliant
offer to Rain a new surface to pattern
she's coming! and she wants to dance with you
join the abundance of new old ongoing
in this unique generation of the world
unheard of, and quietly unfolding
exactly the same as the last one did
be at peace with your time and your timing
bear fruit in your season out of love
to those who will consume you
glad growing grateful
beginning the living again
safe underground and unknown
unfold out of nurturing confining shell
and cozy cocoon of cool earth
you were comfortable in darkness
til now but there's day that awaits you
turn and return to the surface
let us see those gifts brought to the light
infect this ground with the germ of your life
against which – yes - it does have its defenses
neglect and drought memory
abuse toxic strata and time-hardened surfaces
and all of those hungry little mouths
waiting above and below
raise up your heads between first infant leaf-wings
that one opening question essential:
is it alright to be here, and now?
some of you came to ground late
you joined this green gathering still stunted
barely able to hold your own but you'll find
the same offers of sunlight and sustenance
drink it in – it's all yours! - made for you
some were called forth and then were denied
the water and nurture that every new life has a right to
still you persist in your synthesis
Life in you speaks its own tough validation
and draws you – come out come out! –
to all beauty and growth you deserve
some of you were kept too long out of the light
you grew up thin, stretched-out pale, and reaching
bent over backwards not for others but only
trying to become your true selves
we welcome you now - come as you are! -
and plant you a little bit deeper
so you too can stand up on your own
sing your joy up to Sun who so loves you
even though he might gaze so intensely and may
strike you as somewhat over-brilliant
offer to Rain a new surface to pattern
she's coming! and she wants to dance with you
join the abundance of new old ongoing
in this unique generation of the world
unheard of, and quietly unfolding
exactly the same as the last one did
be at peace with your time and your timing
bear fruit in your season out of love
to those who will consume you
glad growing grateful
beginning the living again
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
