Here we are, in the beginning of yet another beautiful spring. Something is rumbling beneath the soil, a thing of beauty waiting to burst from its cocoon, a promise made long ago that is about to be kept. This is a ripe time of year to reshuffle the deck, shed skins of the past, and give yourself a fresh start.
“We Are One with humanity and all of life. Business and all institutions of the human community are integral parts of a single reality — interrelated, interconnected and interdependent.”
from the Conscious Business Declaration
I got the email below this morning from Avaaz.org and I was reminded that I became a member of the Avaaz movement and started receiving these emails when I signed "Join Avaaz!" on 2011-07-13. Avaaz—meaning "voice" in several European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages - was launched in 2007 with a simple democratic mission: organize citizens of all nations to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want.
I've just spent 16 days in Costa Rica absorbing the sun, the rain; coast, volcanoes, rain forest, birds, animals, reptiles, insects, friendly Ticos and embracing an atmosphere of hope. I was so aware that there was a radiating proud passion exuding from all who wished to share the magic of their homeland with me.
Research shows that if the ocean dies, we all die. Sea Sick by Alanna Mitchell presents the facts as they are know today
The sunlight lands softly on moss covered rail fences early and late in the day. There is no harsh imprint. It is the beginning of May and Ontario’s winter has surely left. There is an air of expectancy, and expanding to new beginnings; budding unfurling, hope.
Like for the peasants in feudal and colonial times, today
the inequity between the classes causes anger, hopelessness, loss of self
esteem or a sense of belonging which ultimately leads to anarchy which leads to
revolution. To function at our best we need to have the opportunity to achieve
our greatest aspiration, be rewarded for the effort and loyalty we demonstrate
and have a sense of autonomy in our lives.
Another year is into its last month. It revs up, explodes
and disappears. We begin a new one. I don't know when it is that we realize
that there are fewer ahead than have gone. For each of us it is a different
moment. Just as it is when we realize we are not as young as we used to be, or
we are not as able as we once were, or we find it more difficult, or it takes
longer to do things we found easy in the past. When ever it seeped into my
reality - I've got it!!
A trip to the McMichael gallery in Kleinberg always has a
special place in my heart. It marked the start of my Canadian experience. I
came to Canada
in 1969 and I was taken to the McMichael gallery. The Group of Seven was a new
phenomenon. I heard they were iconic Canadiana. I had come from the land
of Constable and Turner. I could
not relate. The colours, the shapes, the interpretation of nature and of houses
were alien to me.
I’m suspended in space speedily, yet in slow motion, orbiting the earth. Six times in 24 hours I will complete the circumnavigation. Sometimes the passage is in darkness, sometimes a red and yellow disc highlights Gaia’s curved surface. But on other occasions all her beauty is displayed for me; all her tragedies; all her pain and all her joy. I see her snow capped peaks; her multicoloured deserts in pristine clarity. Her natural, not man made, hues are brush strokes on a massive canvas; her work sometimes applied with a pallet knife. Water is sometimes black and sometimes yellow depending on available light. Clouds sometimes hover sometimes rise as mountains and sometimes pattern the oceans with dapples light or dark shadows.
