This is the sixeenth issue of my free newsletter. Your feedback is most welcome!
Having recently attended “Rolling Thunder: Reclaiming Democracy,” I’d love to share some highlights with you. The two most outrageous and exciting speakers there were Patch Adams, the “funny doctor,” and the sprightly Granny D. (Doris Haddock), who at age 90 walked across the country with her message about campaign finance reform, and now at 93 is still out there exhorting people to get involved in grassroots democracy and make a difference.
Patch Adams, with half of his long gray hair dyed bright blue, a handlebar mustache, and wildly colored, baggy clothing, challenged the crowd to “dare to be publicly happy.” He asked, “What is your love strategy?” and suggested that we have intentions each day to present ourselves in a way that is an invitation to others. In his own case, since he is a tall man, he disarms people with his clown garb. “I never have to start conversations,” he said. To create oneself, set the intentions to be a celebrant of life, serve humanity, and feel gratitude. Perform so that your intentions are put forward. Then notice the consequences of your performance. Was it effective? Did you make connections with other people? Without intentions, Patch said, people tend to get depressed, even mentally ill. “Be peace, be justice, be care,” he encouraged.
Patch has been training medical students to love people. He turns them loose in a busy park with the instructions: “You have half an hour to get a dinner invitation.” He sets himself the task of riding a busy elevator and seeing how many floors before he gets everyone on the elevator singing. Having visited refugee camps and other areas such as Afghanistan where people are literally without food or medicine, he has come to realize the amazing power of love and laughter to heal. He also brings other Americans to these situations so that they might realize how privileged we are. “After you’ve seen starving children, can you ever complain about your food again?” he asked, and added, “Mental illness is the natural consequence of the choice not to feel grateful.” In his opinion, too many activists complain, bitch and moan. “If you are working for the environment, be glad! It’s a privilege to work for clean water and clean air.”
In his 4-hour initial interviews with all his patients, he asks, “What is your philosophy of loving, and how do you carry it out?” With practice, we get better at it! He believes that friendship is the best medicine, and humor is a just a tool to create friendship. To be “universally friendly” and improve your life and the lives of others:
1) Twinkle and sparkle and smile.
2) Be willing to greet others.
3) Talk with a stranger for 15 minutes a day, for 1000 days.
4) Give attention, affection, and anticipation (know what another wants, anticipate their needs).
And now, back to Earthaven Ecovillage...
Spring is really here!
The trees are fully leafed out, irises are blooming by the ponds, and the gardens are flourishing. Treefrogs peep loudly from their perches. Two adorable baby goats frolic about their pasture. The first fireflies twinkle at dusk. And yet, the mountain weather is unpredictable and wild. Two weeks ago, a thunderstorm with 70 mile-per-hour winds brought down numerous large trees, one of which just clipped the corner of a newly-built house and fell squarely onto a car, totaling it. As for me, I was walking the steep uphill road to my home, realizing my umbrella was useless, and reveling in the powerful winds and rain. Drenched but euphoric, I had no idea what danger I was in until I had to climb over a huge tree that had fallen across the road.
Teamwork builds community
With more visitors and classes coming, we have had some wonderful community work-days. On the first one, a Saturday in late April, we had several teams. One group installed gutters on the Council Hall roof; another team filled sandbags at the creek for the bridge-building project; a large group cleared a whole hillside of brush, sawed and stacked firewood, created a trail and a drainage system; another group cleaned up the campground. Two runs to the dump were made. At the end of the day, everyone felt tired, but pleased with the progress made.
Last Saturday there was a “bucket brigade” of sixteen members and visitors to scoop sand out of the swimming hole area of the creek and load it into a truck for use in our natural building projects (which combine clay, sand, and straw). Some folks stood knee-deep in the water and filled buckets, then passed them down the line to the truck. Songs and jokes spontaneously flowed. It is not only inspiring to see the results of our labor, but also (and perhaps more important) it builds such a sense of teamwork and comradeship to do this physical work alongside others. As buckets passed hand to hand, I could sense the energy exchange that was also occurring. How missing that is from most urban Americans’ experience, since so many people work in a solitary way, only emerging from their office cubicles at lunchtime to have a few words with a co-worker; some folks prefer to eat alone, reading a magazine, so their contact is even less.
Martin Prechtel, raised on an Indian reservation and trained as a Mayan shaman, writes eloquently, in Secrets of the Talking Jaguar: “If a house is built too well, so efficiently that it is permanent and refuses to fall apart, then people have no reason to come together. Though the house stays together, the people fall apart, and nothing gets renewed. Smart people might be able to invent excuses to get together, but this is too abstract and hollow, and such contrivance insults the soul. People have a genuine need to make things with their ingenuity and with their hands. This coming together to gather water by hand, to do communal tasks gracefully—tasks that a machine could do in an instant anonymously—or to repair rickety houses, insures the very smiley togetherness so missing in the pre-planned, alienated lives of modern civilization… Now what is indigenous, natural, subtle, hard to explain, generous, gradual, and village-oriented in each of us is being banished into the ghettos of our hearts… Our minds are being taught to believe that whatever we can think is actually the center of a person’s life, just like a conquering culture, or a modern culture which thinks with the mind, not with the ancestral soul. Meanwhile, our natural souls, which are like Bushmen or rare water-birds, know that our minds and our souls should be working together to maintain or replaster the crumbling hut of life.”
Listen to Your Body
On May 31, I’ll be offering a workshop at Earthaven called “Listen to Your Body: Self-Healing with Biofeedback, Imagery, and Breath.” Participants will:
- Hear the body’s voice with biofeedback
- Learn breathing for deep relaxation
- Meet an inner advisor
- Explore the body’s messages through guided imagery and drawing with the non-dominant hand
- Discover how our words affect our bodies.
Cost: $75, includes hearty vegetarian lunch. For information/to register: 828-669-3937, or culturesedge@earthaven.org.
