I just finished reading Cherry Blossoms in Twilight – Memories of a Japanese Girl
by Yaeko Sugama Weldon and Linda E. Austin and published by Moonbridge Publications. (ISBN-13: 978-0-9772323-1-4, Price: $12.95) In it, Yaeko relates her experiences growing up in Japan during the Depression and WWII and explains why many Japanese women married American men during the U.S. occupation as many of the Japanese men had died in the war. After suffering through rationing and air raids, Yaeko says, "Who wanted war anyway?"
As civilian ("collateral damage") continues in the present, not much has changed since Yaeko observed and related the effects of war on her life. A book designed for children, it has much to offer adults who must appreciate the effects of war on civilians in order to take positive action.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Can you hear me now?
When we talk to others, sometimes they aren’t really listening. They have their own agenda and while appearing to pay attention to us, their minds aren’t really focused on our words. We struggle to communicate our point of view, while feeling frustrated when they don’t get it. Something interferes. We blame the TV, the cell phone, the job, the kids, or the chocolate fudge brownies.
What if the interference is somewhere else? Suppose the problem lies in our own behavior? If we want to influence the way another person listens, we need to look beyond our words and responses, beyond the other person’s distractions, and focus on the patterns we have developed in our lives from the remote past. Our inability to communicate with others in this lifetime relates directly to a conflict in the past that sticks to us like bubble gum to the soles of our shoes. We didn’t see it when it happened, but it makes it difficult to move forward.
We don’t know how this conflict appeared, but we can change the way it manifests in the present and the future. By seeking wisdom in this lifetime, we can elevate our life condition and recognize the obstacles to our success. When we discover our responsibility for the relationship, we can walk right through the obstruction in our path and create a dynamic relationship where the other person will sit up and take notice.
We only need one many-faceted tool to create this dynamism – dialogue. When we listen and respond appropriately to the other person, they hear what we said and respond appropriately to us. Learning to use dialogue takes practice, just like giving up complaining takes 21 days according to Rev. Will Bowen. “It’s the length of time, he said, that it takes to break a habit” (Conrads, David. “Stop Complaining.” Christian Science Monitor. 19 Feb. 2008, p. 20). But when we accomplish the task of changing our communication patterns, the reward shows up as happiness in our relationships.
What if the interference is somewhere else? Suppose the problem lies in our own behavior? If we want to influence the way another person listens, we need to look beyond our words and responses, beyond the other person’s distractions, and focus on the patterns we have developed in our lives from the remote past. Our inability to communicate with others in this lifetime relates directly to a conflict in the past that sticks to us like bubble gum to the soles of our shoes. We didn’t see it when it happened, but it makes it difficult to move forward.
We don’t know how this conflict appeared, but we can change the way it manifests in the present and the future. By seeking wisdom in this lifetime, we can elevate our life condition and recognize the obstacles to our success. When we discover our responsibility for the relationship, we can walk right through the obstruction in our path and create a dynamic relationship where the other person will sit up and take notice.
We only need one many-faceted tool to create this dynamism – dialogue. When we listen and respond appropriately to the other person, they hear what we said and respond appropriately to us. Learning to use dialogue takes practice, just like giving up complaining takes 21 days according to Rev. Will Bowen. “It’s the length of time, he said, that it takes to break a habit” (Conrads, David. “Stop Complaining.” Christian Science Monitor. 19 Feb. 2008, p. 20). But when we accomplish the task of changing our communication patterns, the reward shows up as happiness in our relationships.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Nurturing and defending freedom
Margarita Drago, a seventh-grade teacher in Argentina, became a political prisoner when she was arrested in 1975. Memory Tracks, Fragments from Prison (1975-1980) recounts her recollections of that time of horror. She offers a moving chronicle of resistance to oppression in Argentina during the US-backed Perón administration.
Without detailing the specifics of abuse, rape, or torture, Drago nevertheless provides the reader with enough information to understand the horror of being a political prisoner. On the other hand, she keeps the reader focused on the encouragement, compassion, hope, and love the prisoners show to each other. She chronicles the way they hoard their bread crusts and sugar to make special desserts for each other, wake up early to prepare maté and toast for breakfast, encourage each other by reciting poetry, recounting movies, and telling stories, write an underground newspaper on tiny scraps of paper, enclosing them in plastic and hiding the documents in vagina or rectum to carry them to their visiting relatives to be published.
Drago relates her first-hand experience of the invincibility of the human spirit in the most degrading situations. Her memoir reminds us of the survivors of the Holocaust and a hint of the conditions currently experienced by prisoners of the Iraq war. Her memories personify the qualities of hope in spite of virtually insurmountable obstacles, courage and strength in unity, and victory over repression, terrorism, and abuse.
This deeply moving account shows how the privileged, controlling factions may assert their strength in an attempt to repress those who disagree with their views, but they fail to subdue their prisoners’ spirits or take away their freedom. All the oppressors do is make themselves look more ridiculous and impotent. The more the oppressors try to control, the more the oppressed gain freedom.
Throughout the book, Drago inserts quotations drawn from diverse sources such as her husband, José de la Rosa and Walt Whitman. One can guess that these were some of what inspired and encouraged Drago and her fellow political prisoners throughout their ordeal and beyond.
Although she still carries the scars of her incarceration, Drago has shown how she has risen above the abuse, deprivation, and insanity of prison and unfurls the banner of liberation for herself and her fellow political prisoners. Drago says, “Sunlight delights me. This sun was my witness, my accomplice, and my companion during the time of my confinement….It invited me to dream. I would close my eyes, throwing my head back, and surrendering to my imagination’s conceits and flights of fancy….How would it feel to live again in a house, entering and leaving without schedule, opening and closing doors and windows, turning on lights, half-drawing curtains closed, and listening to Vivaldi, Bach, The Beatles or Vox Dei?...Always the same questions hovered in my mind: what would it be like to recuperate so many freedoms?”
“Today as sunlight invites me to reflect on what I learned when I hit bottom, I do not want to forget that during war I was able to nurture my freedom and defend it.” Memory Tracks: Fragments from Prison (1975-1980) accomplished this amazing goal.
Margaret A. Ballentine beautifully translated Drago’s memoir and accomplished her own goal “to reproduce in English the crystalline quality of the Spanish prose, to evoke the emotional and physical spaces of this story and to transmit the spirit of the people whose stories this book brings us.”
Title: Memory Tracks: Fragments from Prison (1975-1980)
Author: Margarita Drago
Translator: Margaret A. Ballentine
Publisher: Editorial Campagna
19 West 85th Street
New York, NY 10024
ISBN-13: 978-0-9725611-5-0
List Price: $1495
Without detailing the specifics of abuse, rape, or torture, Drago nevertheless provides the reader with enough information to understand the horror of being a political prisoner. On the other hand, she keeps the reader focused on the encouragement, compassion, hope, and love the prisoners show to each other. She chronicles the way they hoard their bread crusts and sugar to make special desserts for each other, wake up early to prepare maté and toast for breakfast, encourage each other by reciting poetry, recounting movies, and telling stories, write an underground newspaper on tiny scraps of paper, enclosing them in plastic and hiding the documents in vagina or rectum to carry them to their visiting relatives to be published.
Drago relates her first-hand experience of the invincibility of the human spirit in the most degrading situations. Her memoir reminds us of the survivors of the Holocaust and a hint of the conditions currently experienced by prisoners of the Iraq war. Her memories personify the qualities of hope in spite of virtually insurmountable obstacles, courage and strength in unity, and victory over repression, terrorism, and abuse.
This deeply moving account shows how the privileged, controlling factions may assert their strength in an attempt to repress those who disagree with their views, but they fail to subdue their prisoners’ spirits or take away their freedom. All the oppressors do is make themselves look more ridiculous and impotent. The more the oppressors try to control, the more the oppressed gain freedom.
Throughout the book, Drago inserts quotations drawn from diverse sources such as her husband, José de la Rosa and Walt Whitman. One can guess that these were some of what inspired and encouraged Drago and her fellow political prisoners throughout their ordeal and beyond.
Although she still carries the scars of her incarceration, Drago has shown how she has risen above the abuse, deprivation, and insanity of prison and unfurls the banner of liberation for herself and her fellow political prisoners. Drago says, “Sunlight delights me. This sun was my witness, my accomplice, and my companion during the time of my confinement….It invited me to dream. I would close my eyes, throwing my head back, and surrendering to my imagination’s conceits and flights of fancy….How would it feel to live again in a house, entering and leaving without schedule, opening and closing doors and windows, turning on lights, half-drawing curtains closed, and listening to Vivaldi, Bach, The Beatles or Vox Dei?...Always the same questions hovered in my mind: what would it be like to recuperate so many freedoms?”
“Today as sunlight invites me to reflect on what I learned when I hit bottom, I do not want to forget that during war I was able to nurture my freedom and defend it.” Memory Tracks: Fragments from Prison (1975-1980) accomplished this amazing goal.
Margaret A. Ballentine beautifully translated Drago’s memoir and accomplished her own goal “to reproduce in English the crystalline quality of the Spanish prose, to evoke the emotional and physical spaces of this story and to transmit the spirit of the people whose stories this book brings us.”
Title: Memory Tracks: Fragments from Prison (1975-1980)
Author: Margarita Drago
Translator: Margaret A. Ballentine
Publisher: Editorial Campagna
19 West 85th Street
New York, NY 10024
ISBN-13: 978-0-9725611-5-0
List Price: $1495
Friday, February 15, 2008
No guns!
Another campus killing of innocent youth. How do we “challenge and transform the culture of violence” as the announcement below addresses? Why do we think our freedom to bear arms supersedes our freedom to live a long and happy life?
I grew up with guns in my home and they were kept locked up and we used them only when supervised by our parents. We learned gun safety, but none of the five children in my family owns a gun today. I guess we learned that we did not want something that dangerous in our own homes. And we have no need to go “hunting” for wild game.
I realize that many people disagree with my view on gun ownership. I don’t watch TV so I’m not a victim of the sensationalism that makes people feel threatened. I’m not afraid to live in my multi-ethnic neighborhood. I know my neighbors by name. I don’t need a gun to protect myself and perhaps hurt others. I know how to control my emotions, and even though I express my feelings, I use reason to understand my relationships with others.
The announcement below is for a good cause. I think, however, that we need to do much more than this before gun violence moves up from the second-leading to the leading cause of death among young people.
Drum-A-Thon to Benefit Richmond Youth Peace Project (RYPP)
Saturday, March 15, 2008, sunrise to sunset
The Camel
1621 West Broad St.
Richmond, Virginia.
The drum-a-thon will bring together drummers from various traditions to participate in a continuous drum circle. Interested drummers and drumming groups are invited to participate in half-hour time blocks. Anyone wishing to sponsor a half-hour of drumming can download sponsorship information at http://www.rpec.org/.
Gun violence is the second-leading cause of death in the United States for young people ages fifteen through twenty-four. Thousands of Richmond teenagers are affected by violence in their schools and communities. The purpose of RYPP is to challenge and transform the culture of violence in the greater Richmond area through Conflict Resolution Training, Artistic Expression, and Leadership Development.
CONTACT: Ram Bhagat
Email: afrohindu@yahoo.com
Phone: 804-257-9527
Website: http://www.rpec.org/
I grew up with guns in my home and they were kept locked up and we used them only when supervised by our parents. We learned gun safety, but none of the five children in my family owns a gun today. I guess we learned that we did not want something that dangerous in our own homes. And we have no need to go “hunting” for wild game.
I realize that many people disagree with my view on gun ownership. I don’t watch TV so I’m not a victim of the sensationalism that makes people feel threatened. I’m not afraid to live in my multi-ethnic neighborhood. I know my neighbors by name. I don’t need a gun to protect myself and perhaps hurt others. I know how to control my emotions, and even though I express my feelings, I use reason to understand my relationships with others.
The announcement below is for a good cause. I think, however, that we need to do much more than this before gun violence moves up from the second-leading to the leading cause of death among young people.
Drum-A-Thon to Benefit Richmond Youth Peace Project (RYPP)
Saturday, March 15, 2008, sunrise to sunset
The Camel
1621 West Broad St.
Richmond, Virginia.
The drum-a-thon will bring together drummers from various traditions to participate in a continuous drum circle. Interested drummers and drumming groups are invited to participate in half-hour time blocks. Anyone wishing to sponsor a half-hour of drumming can download sponsorship information at http://www.rpec.org/.
Gun violence is the second-leading cause of death in the United States for young people ages fifteen through twenty-four. Thousands of Richmond teenagers are affected by violence in their schools and communities. The purpose of RYPP is to challenge and transform the culture of violence in the greater Richmond area through Conflict Resolution Training, Artistic Expression, and Leadership Development.
CONTACT: Ram Bhagat
Email: afrohindu@yahoo.com
Phone: 804-257-9527
Website: http://www.rpec.org/
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Managing My Inner Critic
I’m learning more about my inner critic. I have known for years that everyone in my family has a tendency to say something like, “That was stupid of me!” or “I’m stupid!” and I thought that I had conquered that tendency in myself until recently when my daughter, Mary Andrus, told me about a workshop she conducted at an art therapy conference at which she led the participants in listening to their inner critic while doing art.
After hearing about her workshop, I began paying attention once again to the voice in my head that tries to keep me from achieving my goals, whether it is in the area of marketing my books, writing my blog, or painting watercolors. Lo and behold, my critic is alive and well. I’ve been keeping a list of its comments and as you can see below, after my critic speaks, I have a little dialogue with it.
STUPID!
I can’t do it.
Get me outta here!
I’m scared.
I don’t want to do it.
What the !#%! is wrong with me?
Why don’t I just try and see what happens?
I know that I will get a varied reception depending on whom I talk to.
Am I scared that they will bite me?
Am I scared of rejection?
How many rejections must I endure before I give up?
How about 10?
Make 10 calls and then stop.
I’ve done this before. It’s not my first time.
So just do it.
You wimp! You wimplet!
I don’t know how to do this!!
Okay. So do something, maybe make a mistake, and learn how to do it better next time.
So there you have it. A dialogue between my inner critic and me. It's almost like a poem. I am happy to report that once the dialogue reveals itself, I have been able to proceed within a few minutes to up to twenty-four hours for the scarier tasks.
So what does this have to do with peace and justice? Our inner critic sometimes blocks the efforts we would like to make to achieve peace and justice. But by having a dialogue with it, we can get around the blockage and move forward toward achieving our goals.
After hearing about her workshop, I began paying attention once again to the voice in my head that tries to keep me from achieving my goals, whether it is in the area of marketing my books, writing my blog, or painting watercolors. Lo and behold, my critic is alive and well. I’ve been keeping a list of its comments and as you can see below, after my critic speaks, I have a little dialogue with it.
STUPID!
I can’t do it.
Get me outta here!
I’m scared.
I don’t want to do it.
What the !#%! is wrong with me?
Why don’t I just try and see what happens?
I know that I will get a varied reception depending on whom I talk to.
Am I scared that they will bite me?
Am I scared of rejection?
How many rejections must I endure before I give up?
How about 10?
Make 10 calls and then stop.
I’ve done this before. It’s not my first time.
So just do it.
You wimp! You wimplet!
I don’t know how to do this!!
Okay. So do something, maybe make a mistake, and learn how to do it better next time.
So there you have it. A dialogue between my inner critic and me. It's almost like a poem. I am happy to report that once the dialogue reveals itself, I have been able to proceed within a few minutes to up to twenty-four hours for the scarier tasks.
So what does this have to do with peace and justice? Our inner critic sometimes blocks the efforts we would like to make to achieve peace and justice. But by having a dialogue with it, we can get around the blockage and move forward toward achieving our goals.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
What inspired me this morning?
I read an article by SGI-USA president, Daisaku Ikeda in which he quotes The Lotus Sutra, the highest teaching of the Buddha. He said, “In the ‘Simile and Parable’ chapter of the Lotus Sutra, it is taught: ‘In that land bodhisattvas will be looked on as a great treasure.’ (The Lotus Sutra, p. 52). The most precious treasure of any land is not its vain celebrities or its arrogant rulers. The supreme treasure is bodhisattvas who work steadfastly for the happiness of others and for peace and justice in the midst of the turbulent and troubled real world. This is all of you. You are these bodhisattvas, the equals of Buddhas, the ‘treasure of treasures,’ protected and praised in lifetime after lifetime…”
What inspired me was the idea that each of us, going about doing whatever we do, when we strive for peace and justice, our efforts are not wasted, ignored, or maligned. No matter what, we are great treasures, making a difference in our families, our communities, our world, and our universe. We can go forth courageously, spreading the message of peace, justice, health, and prosperity for all humanity.
What inspired me was the idea that each of us, going about doing whatever we do, when we strive for peace and justice, our efforts are not wasted, ignored, or maligned. No matter what, we are great treasures, making a difference in our families, our communities, our world, and our universe. We can go forth courageously, spreading the message of peace, justice, health, and prosperity for all humanity.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Support the Troops
Support the troops. How many times have you read that on someone’s car and wondered what that means? How does one support the troops? Books for Boots supports the troops by using donations from authors’ royalties to help fund a relative’s trip to visit the hospital where wounded vets are being treated. In addition, publishers donate books to the troops in the hospital to give them something to do while they are healing. By supporting Books for Boots, you can support the troops and at the same time read good books. Go to www.booksforboots.org for more information.
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