I smelled the odor of permanent marker. 

"Call this number if you get arrested." Blank ink stood out boldly on my forearm baring a ten digit phone number which she double checked with the number matching on her arm. Her words sounded strangely like music, and I felt almost amused. "This is a lawyer, in Seattle. If you do get arrested, you only have to give them your name, your birthdate, and, uhm, your address." 

"Okay, thanks." The numbers are easy to read. I smiled. Kayaktivists and people on shore alike were gathered in protest of the Shell oil drilling rig headed for the arctic. The rig left Seattle before dawn trying to avoid what has been a revelatory turnout of small boats in the water blocking its passage during its unwelcome visit to our water. So the event in Port Townsend came together only over the course of the day as groups organized up and down the Salish Sea / Puget Sound to meet the pillared behemoth in the water. 

I only arrived about an hour before the lawyer's phone number is on my arm, parking my bike and walking over to the marina where my boat is stored and paddling over to a small group of others in the bay. We formed a large raft of multiple kayaks, and steered our funny group around, singing and chanting as we held each other's boats to keep us all together. Rocking on the water like loud, colourful driftwood. 

"We are rising up like the phoenix from the fire
Brothers and sisters, spread your wings and fly higher,
We are rising up like the phoenix from the fire
Brothers and sisters, spread your wings and fly higher,
We are rising up, we are rising up
We are rising up, we are rising up."

Some had been here for hours already. Others had been on the move since 4 AM when word got out the ship was leaving Seattle. 

"What do we want?!"
"Climate justice!"
"When do we want it?!"
"Now!"

We gather on shore to regroup. I gather it's been slow-going deciding if we will go all the way out into the rough waters or not, if it's safe to hold signs or carry flags since the wind seems to be getting worse, and there's miles of white cap choppy waves between us and Shell. Motor boats decide to tow kayaks across the open sea with the intention of getting into the kayaks nearer to the rig, across Admiralty Inlet. 

In the time between breaking the kayak-raft to come to shore and leaving for the open water, the group's energy elevated. Where before I was feeling surprisingly calm, tranquil but engaged, I was starting to feel sad from the level of stress and urgency I was watching multiply itself around me. 

What is the point of doing any of this if what we build is negativity? - the same poison that has closed our hearts enough to think we need things like oil to meet our needs, to continue to perpetuate violence (as a feeling)? My anger for what we were doing wasn't helping me, I knew, because I didn't feel as good as I had when I arrived. Of my entire experience this evening, this was the low point. The hum of unanchored adrenaline on the beach felt heavy inside me, and I longed for a place to express the collective grief I could feel, right on the surface, and our anger, for something much more than our own sense of being behind schedule or worry about waves. For our broken culture. For war and desolation. For our feeling of hopelessness. 

So I sat down on an old bleached log and prayed, my arms hanging from my paddle, forehead pressed on the oiled wood, the strings from my hat taught at my neck as it hung against my back, feet tucked into the many colours of pebble-y sand, my eyes closed and caressing the inside my chest, searching my heart for the place to rest from again. 

I wished our signs read "TOGETHER ON THE WATER" instead of "SHELL NO". I longed for us to know the stories of everyone who drives their ships. To see where in their family line their hearts were closed. To understand why. Because if one ship went down, another would come, but people are more unique than that, and there's a reason culture pushed them that way. I imagine the stories of everyone on the beach with us, and everyone who has protested this machine's intended work, and the war against the war this rig represents to us. I listened for earlier memories of myself in the same withdraw. I listened to my breath, and I listened to the waves, and the seagulls, and I let the sound of everything else take a higher volume than my thoughts, and wash my heart until I felt calm again. I could hear the Love that was behind the wind in the Sails of Stress in people's voices. I felt gratitude for the simple action of standing in the way. For my own sense of resolve. For all the hard work and organizing. We live in crazy times. We are only bridgers. Working together, doing the best we can. 

Another woman comes to us. "You know I prayed this morning that the Earth would come up and swallow that thing, and guess what? That's exactly what it did, it got grounded in the mud at Brainbridge Island earlier today. Stuck in the low tides." For some reason, her comment irritated me at first, because I wasn't praying for anything bad to happen to the thing, only for my own resolve, so that I could feel connected again. The moment passed when I realized she didn't have to "get it". We may express our Need to be here this evening in different ways. We may pray differently. And that's okay. Our ability is only to say what is true for us, (and seeking that Truth is enough to keep us entertained for a Lifetime). Not one over the other. Together.

By the time I was in a motorboat, pulling away from shore with our kayaks in tow, I felt expansive peace again. Three of us in the boat, and one in their solo kayak holding on, riding along side us sometimes, and paddling others. 

An hour or so on the water, the waves are high, and we're moving slowly keeping track of the towed boats and each other. A bottle-nosed dolphin is cresting near us. Ducks, coots, seagulls, a seal, and piles of bull kelp also make appearances. Bald eagles chased by crows at the windswept firs lining the northern bluffs. An expansive view of the Olympic Mountains I've never seen before, from this far spot across the water. Awe. And less than 8% our usual snow pack this year, which you can see, because you can't see much white. We do see the rig around the tip of Marrowstone Island. The ship is an astonishing shape to me. I built my baidarka (kayak), and every step of the way (in its thousands of years of wise iteration) was the consideration of how it would move thru the rough ocean waters, how it would be carefully designed to paddle the sea, to be itself a skeleton that knew how to drink turbulence and keep its own course in wild conditions. Its materials, too, an expression of the landscape, a continuum of forest to ocean. A tradition of unity, sustenance, and communion. The giant rig in front of us was so odd! I could hardly believe it wanted to move in any direction, let alone in a straight kind of line. It lumbered through the waves. Coast guard boats motored at its either side, like loyal dogs in uniform, their noses stuck up to sniff the wind for those (like us) who would cast themselves in the way. The rig's overall ugliness seemed to me as much a testament to its misplacement in the ecology of this planet as its purpose. And our motorboat needed what it could provide.

We're in constant white-caps now, getting newly wet by the Pacific Ocean which was being anything but Passive. If I thought the oil rig was ugly, soon a cruise ship passes between us and the rig, and I can't help but think how iconic this picture is. We saw our other boat towing kayaks turning away from the scene, and for the shore. A large freighter is making its way to pass between the cruise ship and us (which is between us and the rig) and it's nearly right in line with us. "Wow, it's bookin' it." None of us speak anything else about it. While before, at least our boat could amount in size to the size of the waves we were facing, looming below the freighter we're nothing but a speck. I want nothing more than to be headed perpendicular to this enormous ship tearing through the water, but our solo person paddling in their kayak is struggling to turn his boat that direction - with the way the tides are pushing us, to be in line with the freighter is what a boat wants to do, but it's the last place I want to be. How is it such a massive ship moves so quickly? It blasts forward, ripping a white seam in the salt water and the edges with it into the sky, just so it can smash itself into its own spray like someone slapping their own face. 

It passes maybe 100 yards from us. I feel amazed. Sensing we were safe, a mixture of scared and calm, nothing comforting about being in such proximity to something so deadly. As we struggled to keep our small boat oriented in the direction of the beach, the freighter peeled in front of the cruise ship and the oil rig, like turning a page in a book. Carrying important cargo from one far place to the next.

These are bizarre visual metaphors to witness when one is gratefully wrapped in the borrowed coat of the very capable driver of a small motor boat, as the water splashes us again, and I see my kayak turn over and begin to fill with water. 

We weren't reaching anyone on the radios. 

The only way to tip the kayak in a way that it wouldn't fill with water more was to bring it into the motor boat and dump the water in with us, so it's what we did. Putting my weight on the far side of the boat so they could pull it up on the other. We released it back to the ocean. The other kayak flipped minutes later, followed again by mine, so we held them on board with us until we reached the northernmost tip of Marrowstone Island, leaning forward so the motor boat's bow wouldn't dive. The coast guard followed us by circling orange helicopter, their noses stuck down to make sure they could rescue those who would cast themselves into the cold ocean. 

We couldn't be near our solo kayaker anymore, and we saw a speed boat catch up to check on him, so we knew the three of us could split and motor for the beach. When we landed, we met with half the others, the rest already on their way back to town. We hug and pull the boats ashore, splitting the water and food we have with us - a banana, an apple, a granola bar, chocolate - equally. Like the story of Jesus sharing fish and bread, it's all enough, and we feel satiated by our survival. A yellow "shell no" flag staked in the sand, we sing to the ocean as the sun sets the clouds beautifully and Shell slowly continues on course for the arctic until it passes behind the lighthouse out of our sight. 

"earth and ocean, 
sand and rolling sea
wind in motion, fire be lit in me. 
Sail away,
let me fall down to 
earth and ocean..."

It's summer, and the air and sand is warm, I've dried nearly completely by the time we're driving back in the dark. Gathering things left at the beach in town, loading and unloading kayaks, checking in and splitting off. Because I'm house-sitting, Bellingham people can come over for midnight dinner and a place to sleep, and we eat salmon and garden vegetable soup, integrating. The permanent marker comes off my arm easily in the shower.

The reason I consider this event a "success" is the number of people I knew whose connection we built upon, and the number of people I met for the first time with whom I now have a new connection. Not a large quantity - but a genuine quality of seeing new facets of the human experience thru relationship with others. This revolution is about connection. 

It is the absence of relationships with others that lead us to believe we need to meet our needs so far outside our immediate lives that we must harm the world we live within to satiate our emptiness. Yesterday morning, the summer solstice, a group of us met for a ceremony on the beach, and swam into the cold ocean, and as I rolled out, a song rolled out of me which we were soon singing around the fire we made to return to.

"Many a cold mornin I swam in the ocean
return to the fire and the warmth of our friends
we sing to the dawn and we sing to each other
and we feel the ocean, it never will end." 

Isn’t that what this new culture is about remembering? We celebrate together in simple ways that awaken our bodies that we put to good use, hard work, and honest hearts that endure storms and streams, darkness and snow, and sunlight and summers. From being a lover of this world, skills continue to grow. 

This revolution isn't happening fast, and it shouldn't. 

While it is satisfying to put ourselves in front of a ship as a testament to our love, grief, anger, solidarity, and integrity -- the act itself isn't what's sparking the change. It is also the shifts in our every-day lives. In our awareness of our piece in the whole - the whole of our towns, our neighborhoods, and our families - and the wounds and roles we carry from those places that become our gifts as healers. Because we care, we are able to feel what it is like to be entranced by the Life that makes us feel a part of this planet. That we carry precious cargo. And that takes time. Sensation and memory accumulating in the cells of our bodies like slow-release fertilizer. We must choose to do what is nourishing to our spirits so we can carry our strength with us in this way. 

My first teacher in shamanic healing imparted to me early on, that shamanism is not a tool, it is a life path. It is about being in it every moment, listening, and moving. Shamanic healing is simply - at its core - choosing Love, and acting from that place. A place you can act from all the time, 'cause Spirit's definitely going to call on you if you're ready to pick up.

To do this, there is much that must be done in the way of celebration, and also in the way of grief. For the spectrum of these things, we need each other to hold what is impossible to see pass thru only one person at a time. We need other people, yes, and also other plants, landscapes, elementals, animals, minerals, and guides of all kinds. We need our dreams, and we need our attention. 

Find ways to talk with each other. Send that oil rig into the ground by becoming grounded yourself, and in your own soil, find the ways that truly nourish your Soul. We live in crazy times. Our generation won't see a healed world. And a forest will never proclaim it is done with its work. 

We are only bridgers. Whatever we do, we do together.

#shellno

This is a modified version of what I shared at the Cob Oven Pizza Party & Chalk Giveaway which was our 'next steps' update for the Port Townsend Village Building Convergence.

Last night, I dreamt I was in a kind of convention center at a big family reunion and I realized around 5 o clock that it was today, the day of the pizza party. I was supposed to start the fire in the oven hours ago and I hadn’t even picked up the pizza dough yet. I was planning on biking to the pizza shop, but in the dream, I was in a large unfamiliar city, and already being late, so I asked one of my cousins to borrow a car. When they gave me the keys which I could visualize the car out in the parking garage even though I’d never seen it before. The pizza party itself was happening on the level right below us, so I walked downstairs and saw that everyone was already making a fire in the big pit we were going to use to cook. I saw someone throwing a big chunk of wood in the pit, and the fire grow, and people were a bit agitated the facilitator wasn’t there. I said I would be back quickly with the dough and left, feeling like I had disappointed everyone by not fulfilling the responsibility I took on, everyone begrudgingly was carrying on even though I wasn’t there.

In the dream I never did use the car, or return to the party.

But I woke up feeling glad that at least the fire was going, and I got to thinking about it more and realized that… everyone else making the fire is the point of all of this.

There will be magic that happens here tonight that will go on uncoordinated. Connections will be made by casual conversation, whether we realize the significane in 6 minutes or 6 years it doesn’t matter. Right now, because I have your attention, I have a certain amount of borrowed power from the group, and it’s my responsibility to use that power to amplify it and give it back to you. 

I want to present a scenario to you: If I had not shown up tonight, would you have stayed? I think you would. Even if you still wanted to know about VBC, other site hosts are here. I saw three people yesterday and told them about my 1.5 meeting with the city. We are embedded enough in each other’s lives that we know how to work together, here, in Port Townsend. 

A wonderful woman with a heavy British accent arrived around 3 PM as I was watching the fire, saying she was just dropping by because she thought there may be a lot of people tonight, she herself was bringing 5 others, and something told her she should come and "have a look" at the place. She helped me think about flow, where tables would go, where knives should and shouldn't be... and after a few minutes she introduced herself, "Oh, and Hi, my name is Janice." 

I was grinning, "Hi, I'm Hannah." 

What is most polite is our genuine love, care, and attention. And the only thing that had to happen for us to come together, is someone had to say it was happening. In this case, Mike and Karolina picked a date, and I made a poster, and many of you shared the event on Facebook.  But it was just an idea, and it didn’t really exist until we were here, eating pizza, doing it.  

Our landscape is just the same. A long time ago, but not so long compared to the history of Earth, people decided to make rules about how we would develop land, and the ways that we would travel based on that land’s development. We all know it had little to do with native patterns here. In most cases the results were tragic. 

In the case of Port Townsend, like much of the western united states, the lines were drawn far away on the east coast, with no consideration to the topography or culture of this place, and in reality straight-lined streets had to dead end when they met steep hillsides. Even our meandering Cappy’s Trails are a perfect grid of easement right-of-ways on paper. And it’s just paper that has delineated all of it, and our willingness as people to agree that the paper meant any good for us. We weren't really given an opportunity to agree or disagree, frankly, but we also never took on the responsibility to think about it for ourselves once we were meeting our basic needs. 

As a consequence, we often live in what the lines have called the “residential zone” and are not able to enjoy the short walk thru our “agriculture zone” pathways, communing with the food that has seen us walk by every day and knows how to nourish us, to our “business zone” where we may sit with friends or alone to do our work for the day… because all of these things have been designed to be miles and miles apart from each other.

But all those lines are changeable.

Imagine for a moment if in every new development, the houses are arranged close together in the center, with one primary access road, and property lines – if we really needed them – radiating outward from the center to wilder areas.

Imagine for a moment in a standard grid neighborhood that even just one of the streets was ripped up, and in its place was a garden, and a protected seating area for a picnic or party. This sort of thing has been done by many now in cities like Detroit without permitting, and in Portland using a process called “Street Vacation”.  Without involvment from the city at all, neighbors take down fences and agree to consider the landscape in a way that makes sense to them. After all, they live there. And the property lines were drawn by people who haven’t spent a minute in the place your life ensues every day. 

In hundreds of cities all over the world, people have installed intersection paintings as a symbol of reclaiming the crossroads, or they have built benches in places that are needed because they realized they wanted them. They have made the benches beautiful because they realized the physical world should be beautiful, and because we are physical, and we are beautiful, and we have the capacity to making every thing we ever think of, beautifully. Slowly. As if we cared. 

Not only the physical projects themselves, but the relationships of people who made them possible, they too are beautiful and strong. There’s an undercurrent of some kind of old truth when people find the right people to work with on these things. 

I want to set these imagines in your mind because I know you have thought of them before. Because in your own body you know what it is like to see alters dotting the landscape every few hundred feet, as they do in India even today, honoring all the unkown forces in our lives. Because you long for a safe place to grieve, where you can cry for all that has been lost, from pets to culture. Because you know kids should be free to play here, and learn from the simple interactions of daily life among people.

Because you come from a village. 

And even now it has been simple for us to announce we were “having” a pizza party – and for you to come.

Imagine that 5 years from now, your neighbors had even one small amenity that was representation of what you know the landscape longs for, what you long for. Imagine yourself 5 years ago, how much you have changed. A lot has happened. 5 years is a relatively short amount of time, and yet, it is enough time  to do something.

Last month, I was asking for help from my descendants. I asked, “What is the best way to redesign our neighborhoods?” I was seeing the quimper peninsula in the far distant future,  with thick healthy forests and a sense of vibrancy in the landscape. It was quieter in the sense of no machinery or cars, but louder in the sense of birdsong and the movement of other animals, and people going about their pathways singing or silently. The children answered me. Kids. Kids bring a natural vibrancy to the landscape. Let them play in it, change it. Bring out its magic. Make decisions. I had a simple vision of chalk stations as mini-focal points. I ordered - in the biggest bulk package I could find - 252 sticks of chalk. Take some home and use it or put it out!!! It can be very simple - it's only chalk. But what it is is magic.

My teacher Terry O’Day wrote to me the same week, “Organizing seems to be easy when you are part of a dream team that shares values and vision but, as my experience at Pacific shows, it doesn’t matter how well you can organize if people don’t want to play with you.  It really does seem to come down to luck sometimes – if you are lucky enough to join up with the right people at the right time, there is no stopping things.  But if you don’t have that, you end up going nowhere fast.  I haven’t figured out how to engineer a working group when it doesn’t want to exist.  I just remain ready to spring into action whenever conditions seem right.”

The way our neighborhoods are oriented touches every aspect of our lives. It concerns me because it’s like a “tipping point”. It’s an issue of leverage. It’s a place where we can put small amounts of effort and see enormous cultural consequences. Staying interested in the most immediate place where we live cultivates a society whose actions are continuously healing. The impact is direct, and you get to watch your work over time, because there it is in the place where you are, every day. It is the most local thing in the world, and yet you have to work with other people in order to accomplish it – and therefore it is global because you have just entered into the story of another person, whose story is also entwined with many. A memory of what had to be done working together to make something that belongs to everyone, and belongs to no one. As if the landscape itself brought it forth, just as it brought you forth to live in it, conscious of its evolution. As the intelligence of mycelial and root networks in forests intelligently move nutrients to correct places throughout the forest, so too does the Earth move us to places it knows our presence is needed. You're in your neighborhood for a reason.

And maybe the reason is small, or unknown. But I will straightforward: it is the goal of Village Building Convergence, ultimately, to disappear. Maybe it will be 100 years from now, but we hope to dissolve and not be needed anymore. For now, we provide a bridge with the city. A place to focus our collective energies. An instigator of pizza parties. But if I didn’t come today, you still would have been here, and it is the fact that everyone comes that makes this work. So thank you very much for being here.

Cob oven pizza parties are different than a standard sit-down experience of a meal because some people are rolling dough, and everyone has brought an outpouring of delicious toppings. Nettle pesto, home canned peppers and tomato sauces, cheeses, fresh vegetables, chive flowers ("Oh that has a kick!")... each pizza arranged is a different kind of mandala, or sprinkled array of the standards of sauce and cheese, infused with the memory of making them together. 

When Francesco arrived, he asked if there was anything he could do to help, and I said, "Well, we could start making pizzas, everything's ready." 

He paused and said, "How did you know I love to make pizzas?" and lead the way in rolling out pizza crusts.

At first, the youngest pizza making enthusiast present thought it was more important that she make her own pizza rather than share the creation with anyone else, but after making one, she stuck around the full hour and a half wanting to help with nearly all of them, she was having so much fun. 

My favourite memory was - as I was tending the oven - looking over at the prep table to see if the next pizza was ready and having two women smile widely. "You have soot all over your face!"

"Yes, one mark makes it look like you have very thick eyebrows, like Charlie Chaplin. Now all you need is the little goatee." I took a small piece of charcoal from the oven and rubbed it on my chin. "Thicker. You know, not like Hitler, but still more." I finished my adornment with the fire stick, leaving my accoutrements proudly on my face for the duration of the evening. 

After we'd collectively made and ate 18 pizzas, we circled gave updates about Village Building Convergence. Because it's not 18 pizzas all at once, and people are eating one slice at a time of a variety... everyone has a lot of time to mill around, meet people, greet people they know already, and informally keep tying the knots of community while we eat together, slowly. So in this case, we don't do extensive checkins for the meeting. PTVBC shares its news, and gathers ideas and feedback from folks who aren't directly involved in the organization. Gretchen Sleicher lead us in a closing song and we said goodnight. 125 sticks of chalk left the room. 

Kristin, Dylan, and Aric even came after everyone else was gone to help clean up, even though they hadn't been there to enjoy the party. 

Approximately 50 people came and went, 25 for the update circle.

The point of doing any of these Placemaking Projects is to increase interaction among people, among near neighbors specifically... and out of that increased interaction, find ways to change the landscape that make sense for them. All opportunities for sharing and participating in each others' stories is the purpose of community projects. To build culture. To re-knit the fabric of relationships. To support and encourage ourselves and others to be powerful. And that power is changing the landscape, and it's changing the world. 

You can see pictures of the Pizza Event, the notes from the meeting, and more on the event page.

What is the purpose of being on this planet, anyway? Well, we spend a lot of time sharing videos of cats doing funny things via the Internet. 

This is proof that we actually do understand that the whole purpose of being here is to generate good feelings. 

It seems, increasingly, we live in a hurried place of destruction and negativity, and yet all of us know in our hearts that something different is possible, in some way or another. The trouble I often see is we ball up all the anger and heaviness and we get together in groups that say things like, "We must save the environment!!!" Or, "We must fight for social equality!!!" And we wonder with irritation why some video of a cute animal will go millions-of-views viral but our very important environmental awareness event was scantly attended. 

Imagine right now you are speaking to a dog. Say to the dog in the angriest tone possible: "I love you! You're the best!" Be really mean, in your imagination. Completely horrible. If you can't imagine for yourself, I'll tell ya, the dog's response is not affectionate. Now open your heart to the dog. Smile, all the way through your chest. Empty yourself of the day's woes for a moment, fill yourself up with Love and tell the dog, "Oh, you're so dumb. I don't get you at all, you weird creature." Well, the dog is into it!! It wags its tail and gladly accepts your loving attention. 

What I see is too many people are taking their anger and only giving it different words. They turn "I hate my job!" into "save the trees!" but the energy is the same. They're still angry. They're bitter and they turn their bitterness on the "other side".
They say "Those [Republicans/Democrats/Whatever] - they're so terrible! We will not tolerate their intolerance!"
"Those loggers they don't know anything!"
"Those police they're so power hungry and violent!"
"Those corporations, they're so evil!"

So people, who are otherwise going about their lives as normal, look at your activist group from the outside and they sense the anger, and they don't come. They don't "join the cause". They know somewhere deep inside of them, even if they can't describe it, that your cause is really no different than the life they know they are really tired of living. They want the world to be a better place, but they "won't participate" in bettering it in the way you think is right because they feel the anger. So instead they spend their time sending on funny videos of cats to their friends because they know it is a good thing to laugh and bring joy. It brings them closer to the goodness of Life they sense is not only possible, but indeed already there. 

Well, of course, we need to take the idea of changing the world and sharing funny things over the Internet and bring them a bit closer together. 

This morning on the way to the jobsite, we stopped somewhere for an errand and I noticed this mural adorning a nearby building. It was so beautiful I felt inspired and touched. 

I appreciated the details with a huge smile on my face, knowing orcas do live in these waters, admiring the accuracy of the way light underwater lands on things, and remembering all the hundreds of mornings I have looked on the mountains pictured. And I thought -- because I had been thinking about cute cat videos -- okay, so here is a beautiful mural put on the side of this otherwise very ordinary building. It enhanced my experience of this place probably a thousand-fold. Why aren't murals everywhere to produce good feelings all over the place? 

The Internet's solution would be to take a picture of it, as I did, perhaps attach some inspirational words, and share it as a meme. Facebook pages like The City Repair Project might share it and hundreds of people would see it and some would share it, and some would even share it saying the same words I felt in my heart, "Why aren't beautiful murals everywhere?" 

But in an instant the photo is shared and it disappears down the news feed, and the moment of inspiration passes. A dim hit in a world of over-stimulus.

Sharing the photo doesn't make more murals happen. 

Sharing cat videos doesn't permanently help us generate better feelings on the largest scale. 

Similarly, I find the world stock-full of well-meaning advice that is way off target. At some point in a person's life, a realization hits, and in the presence of a friend, they were able to articulate it. The person and their friend both feel incredible Truth and Love from the wisdom. Then, they might try to repeat the advice to someone else later. Maybe over and over again for decades. When people repeat advice, they are investing in a kind of grasping onto words as a way to try to keep that moment with Grace, instead of investing in good feeling the kinship with their friend. Re-writing a metaphor from David Deida: "That advice is like a cloud passing in the sky: well-formed, coherent, and not necessarily relevant later. The cloud is an expression of the precise physics of water, wind, and air. The words are expressions of the physics of your feelings, the relationship, and the nuances of the present situation, seen and unseen. A moment later, these factors will change, and so will the relevance of the words." 

In that wave of advice, one can let it open the gateway to Love between people and let that be the thing that fills them up, instead of the words. In all actuality, just like with the dog, it matters most the feeling that exists under the words. If you invest in the feeling of kinship with your friend, then a sense of intimacy increases. You can build your sense of intimacy with your own Soul if you're alone. You can build your sense of intimacy with a plant while you're in a garden or on a walk. So when you're speaking: are you using words as a way of distancing yourself from true intimacy? Is it, in honesty, a distraction from the present moment with an ornate mask of wisdom or spirituality? 

I cannot help but laugh, thinking of the YouTube video by JP Sears, "How To Be Ultra Spiritual." 

Yes, words can help to accentuate expression. We can share Love thru words, actions, touch, energy... there is no one right way to do it. I know I often advocate for a strong "feeling" sensation, but that is just one way, that works for me. 

The reason I am bringing this up is not because I've been hit with a bunch of impersonal advice lately, but to bring us back to the cats. While it's nice to pass along videos of cats, because it generates good feelings, or share pictures of murals because they are beautiful, it is still a way of bringing us out of the present moment of potential intimacy with our life. Even the wisest advice, attached to the prettiest picture, shared in the most timely meme will come and go. In moving toward "real" change not just "change" with the same undercurrents of anger and corruption, I am interested in the question: "What is persistent?"

A friend, Janet Carter, was pondering a larger scale still: what are we as a planet are being exposed to now, given our current position in the Milky Way galaxy? It takes approximately 250 million years for our solar system to make a full rotation around the galaxy, so the last time we are at this point of the galaxy, humans were not yet on the planet. 

This is a wonderful thought for consideration because it's one way to invite some relaxation to some otherwise angry dispositions. When I was beginning to learn in specific terms about what's up on the planet right now, I was always confused why it mattered to much to people one way or another if "global warming" was real. I was looking around at what was happening right now, the physical reality of the effects we're already experiencing from social inequality to devastating our living planet saying, "Um. This is already bad." And working on our farm saying, "Wow, this is too good."

The fight about whether or not global warming is real or not is a distraction, another reason to fight, to take sides. Of course what we are doing is not only heartbreaking, it is cruel. But to continue to perpetuate the cruelty with anger and righteousness is pointless. My friend Jeff Peters adds, "The people with all the money and apparent power are the ones causing the most problems, and they are not paying attention to any of the outcry anyway."

250 million years ago, no one was hanging around on Earth wondering about whether or not global warming was real. And since that time, Earth has tried out all kinds of forms, from ice ages, to enormous dinosaurs,  and maybe overly emotional humans is just another phase and it too will come and go. The planet Earth is going to be fine. What matters is, how good is Life?

So what will you do with your Life? Please, whatever you do, do it with Love. And do it with all the messiness you know, in your honest dips of doubt and depression and suffering. Get mud all over your hands and your heart and stay. Stay with the feeling. The raw feeling of what's true with you and your loved ones right now. Stay on the edge of intimacy and generate good feelings. 

When we have strong relationships, we feel more at ease with taking risks, and when we take risks we're more likely to learn how to give our full gifts to the world. The world does not need us staying idle in a disheartening life, nor to be building fortresses around the "right" ideas. The world needs a wild party of people who are Loved, and therefore able to be truly Alive, giving their gifts and shining their light like no tomorrow. 

And, hey, if showing your Love means sharing that crazy cat video, as long as it is not subverting the current edge of your own creative life force, then do so by all memes. Oh, means, by all means!

Writing this was prompted by an e-mail exchange about "Sustainability" that left me with a nag, like a sticker stuck in my sock. I want to outline a few reasons why I see that sometimes focusing on what we can do as individuals to be "sustainable" is over-emphasized to a point that we forget what it will look like on a larger scale to live in a culture that is truly thriving. 

For example, on the level of individual choice concerning water usage, hot topics of division tend to be (1) bottled water / access to potable water (2) domestic water use and (3) outdoor. Where do you focus your attention? Outside the issues surrounding whether "outdoor" means you're tending a garden or lawn, let's consider the other two. If you commit to reducing your shower time, saving an average of 2.5 gallons per minute (with a low-flow shower head), in 10 minutes, that's about 30 gallons of water. Water-bottling facilities waste thousands of gallons of water per day in the manufacturing process, not to mention nearly 20 million barrels of oil per year, claim horrible working conditions, a trail of pollution behind them, and a trash and transportation nightmare in front of them. So the choice of reducing your shower time and not buying bottled water are not choices that have equal impact. 

The point of this example is some choices have greater significance because they have more inherent leverage. 

There are many hidden aspects of "sustainability" that often do not get talked about... for example, with water bottling facilities, what else are we missing out on, culturally, by the factory's existence? Are there even bigger leverage points that we are missing because we are focused on a view that is too narrow in time? 

We have a cultural habit on wanting to consider the most "efficient" way for things to be. Especially in the "sustainability" movement, we see an obsession with efficiency. How do we consume less energy? Of course it's an important question, yet it is not usually coupled with actually changing our lifestyle. It thinks about systems strictly from an economic kind of lens of energy inputs and outputs without remembering the importance of our Spiritual Renewal. Okay, now we're using less energy, we're using less water, etc, but are we really living our life purpose? Conversely, there are those who have tuned into the value of healing and self-care, and may spend a bunch of money on personal growth retreats, work with alternative medicine practitioners, or take extended trips in the wilderness, but there is little regard for integrating these reconnecting practices into the landscape of every-day life and sharing their gift with the immediate community. To begin the conversation about "sustainability", at the very least we need these two things - efficient energy systems and spiritual renewal - to merge.

Yet we have a cultural habit of separation. We say "wilderness and spirituality" is over here, and "water bottle factories" are over here. We might say we need to make water bottle factories less toxic, more efficient, and still distribute clean water, and contribute to the economy. We might say we need to preserve the natural environment and let the wildness be completely untouched. In fact, neither of these scenarios are an effective answer on their own. 

For a week in 2013, I stayed at a Sufi Community several miles out of town from Silver City, New Mexico called "The Voice of the Turtle". It was not until three days into my visit that I met the creek for the first time because there had not yet been a reason I needed to go to the water. I loved the creek, when I went. It was beautiful, and being with it filled me with peace and joy. The diversity of experience, from being up on the hill, or down in the garden, viewing the trees, or then visiting the creek - was enriching. Why had I not been there yet? On one hand, it was convenient to have a pump that brought the water up to the kitchen, and on the other hand, I experienced directly how convenience was replacing communion. If there was no pump, we would need to visit the creek every day in order to bring the water we needed to the kitchen. The kitchen would probably be oriented in a location that was more receptive to a natural flow of water thru the landscape. Technology had replaced the wisdom of nestling into a relationship with Place. 

My mentor Mia Van Meter adds, from Ram Dass, [Sustainability is...] "not simply to rebuild the land, but to be rebuilt by the land, by the work itself."

Wendall Berry says, “We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.” 

These are lovely sentiments, and yet, they are still only ideas. They're only ideas when it exists as a thought in our mind, 1-dimensionally.
 
In this culture, we've become hyper-focused in the realm of 1-dimensional ideas. 
"We can't change the world"
"Water bottles are harmful"
"We can heal ourselves"
"I can make a clay pot"
"We can build a bench in our neighborhood"  

At best, we share our ideas with other people, and they become 2-dimensional. In conversation, suddenly there's another perspective. In words or pictures, it can be communicated and shared. 

It is when things take 3-dimension form that we are starting to fulfill our capacity as adults living on this marvelous planet. When we actually build a bench in our neighborhood, we have a physical, cellular feeling of what it is like to change the world. When we create rain gardens or water catchment systems, we learn more from our new relationship with water. When we make a clay pot, we know our actions have form. 

When objects exist and start to take on memory, we begin to see how 4+more dimensions unfold. This is where Placemaking begins to shine. A bench exists, and hundreds of people may use it, but not all at the same time. The bench experiences rain and sun and develops its own character. And if - during the "2-dimensional" stage of the process - many people have input as to what it should look like, where it should go, and so on, then even before a bench exists 3-dimensionally, it has Love imbedded into it that comes at it from many directions. Placemaking is, at its highest expression, a multi-dimensional process that encourages multi-dimensional interaction in this way. Not just a 1-dimensional way of having personal ideas, or even only a 3-dimensional way of building something, but many many dimensions, when invested with memory and meaning. 

The same is true for people. We are not just 1-dimensional brains moving our ideas from one meeting to the next. We are even more than our 3-dimension physical bodies. We are the action of energy, emotion, memory, and Love. When we interact with the physical world, EVERY SINGLE TIME, we interact with it as multi-dimensional beings. No matter how great our 1-dimensional ideas are, maturity of our own unique relationship with spirit develops when we move beyond the vision. 

I believe there's a country western song by Toby Keith that may put it more simply: "A little less talk, and a lot more action." You may or may not want that one stuck in your head. 

Move beyond "sustainability". When we imagine a new civilization, we must be conscious of how our every action is contributing to the collective potential for a multi-dimensional experience. This has very practical implications for simple things like whether or not to buy bottled water. Consciously and honestly looking at everything that goes into bottled water - before and after you use it - from a multi-dimensional perspective would make the decisions obvious. But it should always be a decision you make for yourself from your own consciousness, not just because someone told you should do it because it's the "green" thing to do. Your development of consciousness is the greatest gift to the "sustainability" movement, because it was the movement away from consciousness and love that got us into this mess. The physics of consciousness is something that exists without us, but all have access to it, and not just human beings. And I'll betcha with certainty, at the top of this economic chain of madness, is a bunch of hurting hearts - not measurable by their contributions to the national GDP - and every one of those hearts feels the effects of this culture of closure. 

Choices that influence our experience of a world in a multi-dimensional way - in a way that is meaningful to us in our every-day landscape - have incredible power. I think it is more important to work with your neighbors to build something together in the place where you live than it is to keep track of your individual water usage - or even to stop buying bottled water - because of this necessity to open hearts again. Because Placemaking projects are public projects that touch the essences of who we are as we live, rich or poor alike, within the physical world we are a part of.  

It's more important to keep change close to home because all conversation of "sustainability" is within the context of that physical world!  And the reason we have to even consider the implications of our individual impact is because we have individuated ourselves. Yet we are not so individual, physically or spiritually. We are of the landscape, and we are of each other. Not just "each other" the people in our comfortable friend group. Not just the "landscape" of pristine wilderness. Not just the "spirit" in sacred space. Every person we interact with. Every square inch of our neighborhood. Every moment of God.

It was weaving baskets that taught me I couldn't control. It was growing food that taught me abundance. It was building that taught me manifestation. I currently live in a cabin that isn't plumbed, and a 5 gallon tank of water above my sink teaches me limits, about every day and a half, when I have to fill it again. 

The beautiful thing about it is this: if you try to build a bench with wood, it lets you do it even if you are not completely aware of every molecule that makes up that wood and its history. You are allowed to use the wood without complete consciousness toward it. The physical world is absolutely surrounding us with grace and truth in this way. It is more perfect than we can fathom, although modern science is starting to catch up on what we have always known about nature's complexities. This grace that surrounds us in the physical world is consciousness. It teaches us. And we will only learn more by interacting with it directly. Why else would we bother to incarnate? We see what we do to the physical world as a mirror image of how we treat ourselves. We pollute, subvert, and dam water. Water is our emotions, -- on a cultural level -- we know we bottle them up, try to change them, and pollute their integrity. Air is our thinking mind and it's full of noise, full of the clatter of machinery, and full of the business of distracted thought. 

We know when we do healing work, it ripples out to the rest of the cosmos. We know that when we do simple physical tasks, it keeps energy flowing. Let's put these ideas together more often by aligning our conscious desire for healing with practical actions that may otherwise seem impossible because of our social fears. If all of this is way too esoteric for you, start with the dishes. Something about dishes is deeply sacred, (I have a lot of ideas about this task)... but what's it about for you? A pile of neglect? A sparkling phobia of germs?

It is this very physical world that we ignore when we think only in 1-dimensional ideas about what is right and what is wrong for "the environment" - forgetting that it is "the environment" that surrounds every square inch of the inside of our lungs and relentlessly demonstrates the miracle of life thru every "weed" in the cracks of concrete. We need to move beyond 1-dimesional ideas and into multi-dimensional experiences. We need to enhance the meaning and memory we give to our every-day landscape. The metaphor is completely unique to our personal perspective. 

So, what can YOU do differently? BE COURAGEOUS. "Courageous" comes from the root "cour" meaning, "heart" - to live from the Heart. No matter where people fall on the political spectrum, or whatever, everyone senses the world could be better right now. How can it be better? There is no right answer. None. The right answer should be startling different to every location on a hyper-local level. How does the landscape of your neighborhood capture light and water? Where are the wildlife corridors? Who has space for tool storage? What are the practical boundaries for personal space and collective space? Where are the places for public interaction? How much land would it take to feed everyone on your block? And on what kind of diet? Is there road space that could better be used for something else? Are there bigger social blockages that prevent safe places to sit and observe nature? What does your neighborhood need? 

We have replaced culture for consumerism, and become individual instead of collective. The collective includes the physical world of your immediate environment. Not the disaster in a place you never visit. Not the turmoil in a country you've never been to. YOUR physical world. To send prayers is helpful. To want to effect change elsewhere is violent. It is only another branch of consumerism. Consuming the drama, perpetuating distance. There is inherent violence associated with trying to solve other people's problems and putting the solutions away from the place where you live, outside yourself, and the people directly involved in your immediate life. A new civilization means restoring the fabric of healthy relationships. In order to do so, we need to remember that we do not need corporations to "solve" our problems thru false convenience - for we know there is not really convenience when we consider all the harm that is done behind the scenes. 

We instead must face a world of relating with real people that have skills and resources, as well as personalities that will challenge us - and the fact that our personalities might challenge other people!! 

In any case, we need to let our direct actions (not just our ideas) reflect our understanding of how to change the world.

Then, change the world. The physical world. Where you live. To reflect your values, your freedom. The world is changeable. Look at a clay pot and tell me it's not changeable.

For those interested in geeking out about the difference between two types of leadership: the "charismatic leader" and "community as leader". 

Most projects that come to be in our culture tend to be driven by "charismatic leaders" through whom all decisions ultimately get funneled through. They provide inspiration for devotion to the project, much support, and extra energy. Egalitarian community leadership implies that the community as a whole makes decisions among each other -- NOT necessarily by consensus -- but by constant informal communication among the most relevant people regarding that specific question and considerations, that lead to decisions and actions. Communities with charismatic leaders can still be healthy communities, and sometimes they even survive the death of that leader - they change a lot in the process, but they persist. Strong community projects can happen in either scenario; it's simply good to be aware of the nuances.

An example for egalitarian community leadership: Means of Production garden in BC. 

Means of Production is a continuously changing creative space. Depending on who is putting energy into the garden for a season, the garden reflects the changes. Sometimes it is weavers. Sometimes instrument makers. Sometimes herbalists. The nature of it is truly wild to the community and its ever-evolving self-organization. Certain people or groups may invest in it for awhile and therefore care about how their part of the project is effected by others, and many people co-habitate and use various parts of the garden. Some people put energy into planting perennials and these plants grow and benefit everyone that uses the space in the future. "Grow Art" organization is the most persistent organizer around the space, offering workshops and tending perennial tasks. 

Because of the freedom of this site, its gift has been available to many people that would not perhaps have had access to a garden, or a reason to interact with other strangers, or a place that felt welcome for them to invest creative energy. 

'The public' can use and care for this space any time, any day, and becomes a focal point for the entire community to care for and interact with.

There is no boss. There is no set person that makes final decisions about what can and can't happen. The land and the people work together with no additional oversight. The garden simply absorbs and holds the energy of the current group involved. The long-term vision? A place for people to regard as a resource for materials and relationships. Wow. As simple as that is, it is accomplishing it with more integrity than any other project I have seen implemented in a city setting. 

An example for charismatic leadership: Planet Repair Institute in Portland. 

Planet Repair is exemplary in the world of community projects. The group at this urban homestead mostly makes decisions by consensus, but major changes to the land ultimately come down to the opinion of the owner, who has lived there the longest and will probably stay there forever. 

Planet Repair a great example of how this kind of "charismatic leadership" system works very well. It makes good sense that someone invested in this specific place has slightly more say. In this case, the entire community benefits deeply from their dedication as they involve other people in the decision making process, are considerate of new ideas, and provide educational opportunities far beyond even their immediate community when it comes to major improvements to the place. This house was the reason straw-clay insulation was legalized in Oregon and in the process of various building projects on the land, hundreds of people were able to learn hands-on natural building and permaculture techniques. An annual Urban Permaculture Design Class is taught here, with an added emphasis on neighborhood transformation and community organizing. Plus the neighbors can take any classes offered at Planet Repair for free. 

'The public' is generally most welcome only during specific events or workshops. 

It is surly worth noting, too, that resiliency in the community would be tested if the leadership at Planet Repair were to suddenly die or if his focus attention were called to another project. It is already true that if the group living there is not prepared to host guests that they are not openly welcome. Although many people love this place, there is a sense of its ownership -- and it's not "community ownership".

The first paragraph of the forward to "The Facilitator's Guide To Participatory Decision Making" is written by Michael Doyle saying, "I see group facilitation as a whole constellation of ingredients: a deep belief in the wisdom and creativity of people; a search for synergy and overlapping goals; the ability to listen openly and actively  a working knowledge of group dynamics; a deep belief in the inherent power of the group and teams; a respect for individuals and their points of view; patience and a high tolerance for ambiguity to let a decision evil and gel; strong interpersonal and collaborative problem-solving skills; an understanding of thinking processes; and a flexible versus a lock-step approach to resolving issues and making decisions." 

When it comes down to it, the primary concern in community projects is true inclusion. And what does that look like? The world of facilitation and leadership is literally filled with hundreds of books, everything from dealing with complexities in race, class, and empowerment to simple ice breakers. 

Personal Note: 

While it is good to be aware of resources for organizing community projects, the best resource of all is experience. The first time I was reading "Building Power Community Organizations" by Michael Jacoby Brown, it was the winter after I left Portland and organizing the Village Building Convergence, and I had retracted from that world completely for a time. I had an impending sense of impossibility sinking in me as I read the chapter on organizing in your neighborhood for local action. I thought without words, "how could anyone ever be brave enough to do this?" The more that thought became clear, I realized how funny this scene was. Less than eight months previous I had been Placemaking Coordinator, supporting more than 40 sites to do this very thing! 

Why did I feel it was so impossible?

I have a theory: because it was written in a book by someone else. 

While books can be inspiring, empowering, helpful in guiding us in many ways... there is a sense of detachment from reality with a book, as well. So much of the process for community organizing projects comes more naturally to us than we realize. When we see the steps laid out on paper, they seem intimidating. When I ask my students what it feels like to imagine knocking on their neighbor's door, every time it is a conversation about fear. Once neighbors begin working together, it feels startlingly more natural that expected, even if it is awkward at first. 


And every project will run into difficulties, uncomfortable places, and hard decisions. Sometimes that's met with the reaction: