Re-creation: expression and hope: New Life Journal asks writers, spiritual teachers, a farmer, and a storyteller how to approach the new year with a new perspective.

Q: In the wake of the wars and earth changes of the new millenium's beginning, what advice or perspective do you have for us as this new year dawns?

THE RUBBLE

Glenis Redmond

   Enter through the door of war
   and witness our smallness among the ruins
   see our slight shoulders pinched between the heaps
   and tender hands grasping shovels
   feeding the earth our dead.
   we return trembling
   to our windowless homes
   to make sense of the doors
   without frames
   we sit in grief
   where tables once stood
   where chairs once held our weight
   now we kneel on open ground
   in the middle of our hearths
   gone are the sparrow,
   the cypress and the indigo.
   gone is the sweetgrass
   for it dues not grow here
   anymore, our mouths
   unable to speak but our
   hearts
   overflow in a language
   we do not understand
   grief is an uttering tongue
   finding no comfort
   in the uttering
   we seek the young to pull
   us through, but babies have
   silenced their healing songs
   of laughter, need and grinning
   at the auras of angels
   while great grandmothers
   who have carried sacred bundles
   for us on our journeys
   now walk the land
   with empty arms calling
   for their mothers calling
   for their nimble caring
   to come
   braid our streets
   back into being

Whenever I would come to see him, Ted Williams would always ask me, "If there's no such thing as time or space, then why are you always late?"

Paul Gallimore, Director of Long Branch Environmental Education Center in Leicester, NC.

Stay close to the earth. Stay connected to the sources of your food. Become more and more self-sufficient, while developing something that can be traded with others for the essentials they are producing. It sounds like going back in time, but actually it is looking towards the future. As I watch the land around our farm springing up houses and perennial landscaping, my brother asks me to think about our family's land in seven generations. With the coming of the sewer into Fairview NC. and the inevitable development that will follow, what will our land be like in the future? My vision is a working farm producing food for our neighbors with the addition of an educational aspect to keep our community connected to their food. Luckily, my family has a similar vision. It is our role to make every inch of our agricultural land productive so that we can produce as much food as possible from the rich bottomland we have the honor to steward for this time on earth.

Annie Louise Perkinson, Flying Cloud Farm and Trout Lily Market in western NC.

Almost twelve years ago, I moved to Asheville from Columbia, South Carolina. Many others were moving into this area at that time, and it was common to hear people say they felt compelled to come here. I understood what they were saying because these mountains drew me here from a place where I had lived for twenty-five years.

In the coming months, I feel we will begin to know why we felt called here. It is my belief that one of the most compelling issues to focus on in the wake of wars and earth changes is protecting yourself from fears. Participating in ceremonies of the earth and calling on healers and spiritual mentors are the ways I am choosing to protect and support myself, spiritually and emotionally.

Sharon Oxendine, western NC writer and traditional ceremony leader.

Someone said of Einstein, "He was a man who could ask immensely simple questions." At this crucial time, isn't this exactly what we need to do: to slow down the frenzied pace of our compulsive thought and busyness in order to grapple with the most 'immensely simple' questions of all? Don't we, each of us, need to be willing to challenge our deepest and most cherished assumptions about the world and ourselves?

What does it mean to be a human being? What is our purpose in this world, and what is our relationship to the beings that share this planet with us? Who is this anyway: this one that breathes and blinks and talks and thinks? Unless we address these fundamental questions of our own existence, how can we hope to find true and lasting solutions to the enormous problems we face?

Now, at the brink of a new year, let us dedicate ourselves to doing everything we can to bring the world back into balance. Writing letters, making phone calls and streaming into the streets together, we need to protest the destruction and call for healing on every front. True transformation, however, demands more from us: It calls on us to also look deeply into ourselves and personally wake up from the strange dream of ego-isolation that haunts virtually everyone, making lives miserable and giving birth to war. How, after all, can we hope to disarm the world without working to disarm our own minds and hearts?

Sunya Kjolhede, with Windhorse Zen Community in western NC.

THE DIVINE ONE

Glenis Redmond

   You don't need nine--nine
   lives lined up
   like neatly ordered rooms
   antiseptic, dust-free and
   carefully arranged.

   You don't need nine.
   One divine disarray will do.
   One door broken open to the world
   leaving you steeped simmering in a wildly
   stirred pot
   Your one true chamber turning
   by an unknown hand.

   You don't need nine relatives to the domestic
   sharing only a slight resemblance to nature.
   Your stance preying, stalking or still
   Shaking in fear and growling,
   live, live, live.

The present devastations are a reflection of how deeply we have severed our inner relationship to our forebears and the unsettled angst their spirit experiences as a result. We are to love one another, so too are we to nourish the Ancestors. Even when dear ones have departed from this life, they may be honored in a way that nourishes their spirit and awakens our awareness of their continual presence in our lives. May their spirits be continually nourished and so too may their blessings continually pour out to us. May we all realize our unbroken connection to the forebears and that when we serve them we are serving the Self.

Her Holiness, Swamini Mayatitananda (Maya Tiwari).

We are all part of the web of life. Belief in separation is the cause of all suffering. Do these five things whenever possible over the next month to expand happiness:

Be in Nature. Go in the woods, alone. Get quiet. Listen. Feel. As John Muir said, "Go out to go in." Repeat often.

Be Present. Scan your body. Where are you open? Where are you contracted? That unconscious clench cuts you off from a part of yourself, and from the world. Practice living more open.

Use Alternative Fuel. Practice yoga or something that awakens your body's life force. Become a conduit of positive energy. You will then make better choices in the food you eat, the thoughts you entertain, and the company you keep.

Connect the Dots. At the check-out, don't just talk to your bags. Make eye contact with the cashier. Smile. Tell your children you love them, every day. Give your growing radiance as a gift to others. Let your open heart help them re-member their own light. Forgive someone else (or yourself) from the past. Write the letter or make the call. Be amazed at how good the release in your body feels.

Hug a Republican. Labeling creates separation, ism's, judgement, conflict, war. Speak your truth--and listen--with an open heart and mind. Build bridges.

Graham Fowler, owner of Peachtree Yoga Center in Atlanta GA.

In my estimation, there has never been a time where war or earth change has not taken place. If there are no dilemmas then some are made up. What we are seeing is the ebb and flow of a wonderful earth taking her course--and the ultimate creed of the human--do what I can get away with. Are these acceptable? They have always been acceptable. Complain? That changes a percentage of difficulty. Get out and help? That does nothing to change the ebb and flow but does make a human feel better. My advice? Love your mother, give her your soul and let her give hers back. Trust humans to be humans and make them stay the course of time-honored humanness. What does this give you? The most beautiful center that can then share the ultimate beauty. A beauty that beams. This beauty arrives before you get there and lingers well after you leave. It surrounds everything you touch. It is not you. It was given you. At times it hurts so much to have that much love and beauty that a disgruntled and angry disposition seem a gift.

Douglas Haynes, Asheville, NC area storyteller.

We are living in a time of global impact that demands we develop global awareness. It is time to face the fact that as a citizen of planet Earth we have a responsibility: a responsibility for our individual part, our neighborhood's part our city's part and our nation's part.

When earth changes happen to people on one side Of the globe, those on the other side are impacted. When leaders in one country are willing to go to war in order to dominance over the world's supply of oil. then respect for life is given smaller space in mass consciousness. When the economy collapses in one sector of the world, it affects everyone, everywhere.

Recently I heard of an experiment done with monkeys that clearly shows how actions and thoughts can be passed on. Five monkeys were put in a cage with a ladder in the center that led to bananas. Each time a monkey attempted to climb up the ladder for the bananas, all five of the monkeys were sprayed with cold water. The monkeys soon learned that if they didn't want to be sprayed, they must keep away from the ladder. One by one the original monkeys were replaced with new ones who had never experienced the spraying. It didn't take long for the new monkeys to learn that the ladder was a no-no, even though they didn't know why. I thought, as I listened to this story, how vulnerable we all are to others' thoughts, fears, and actions.

As part of a global community, we must be watchful of our thoughts and actions, as well as alert to what we ate being exposed to from the mass consciousness. To do this we must stay in alignment with Director of our heart. That is the part of us that is pure intent behind every heart offering. Any thought, feeling, or considered action must be checked out to see if it is in harmony with the heart energy wanting to be expressed in that moment. All thoughts, feelings, or actions that create separation are negative influences in the world. Our responsibility goes beyond just supervising the negatives in ourselves and our surroundings. We must also oversee the seemingly positive expressions because these too can be in separation from our hearts pure intent, and thus become negative influences in the mass consciousness.

As the monkey example points out, we influence each other more than we usually acknowledge. If we are in alignment with the pure intent of our heart, then that influence can be a strengthening one. However, the reverse is true when we allow ourselves to become unconscious about who we really are as a heart person. The minute we unconsciously fall into whatever "energy waves" are around us, we lose our power of choice. The loss of ability to choose one's heart is a travesty to that person, but also to those around them and eventually it is a loss to the mass consciousness.

All hearts have always been united. It is just that through the ages, humankind's thoughts, feelings, and actions have gotten separated from that unity. It is now time to acknowledge globally that unity must happen physically, emotionally, mentally, as well as spiritually. To do that, each conscious person must stay alert to their choices and make sure that every expression is in alignment with their heart--that then will resonate across the planet with all hearts.

Jackie Woods, community and spiritual leader in Columbus, NC,

1994 Inaugural Speech

Nelson Mandela 

Our deepest Fear Is not that we are inadequate

Our deepest Fear Is that we are Powerful beyond measure.

It is our Light, not our Darkness, That most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be Brilliant, Gorgeous, Talented and Fabulous? Actually who are you not to be? You are a child of God.

Your playing Small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking So that other people

Won't feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest The glory of God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And when we let our own Light shine, We unconsciously give other people Permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own Fear, Our presence automatically Liberates others.