Love And Light

When humans are born, they are full of both love and light. Having seen all three of my children come into the world, I can say without question that here on Earth there is no greater journey than those last six inches between the inside of our mothers out into the world. The gratefulness that we feel as parents during the first moments after birth are palpable for me when I try to explain the moment to others, the relief and thrill are as real to me as if I were having the experience all over again. The initial moment after each of us, born naturally, come through the birth canal is both amazing and wondrous. Imagine or recollect the freedom of your first unimpeded stretch, the wide open space and the light!

Love cannot be bottled, but if it were, it might look something like this. The feeling is universal. The light of creation started from a place of love, compassion has it's root in love and commitment to our ideals takes strength from our love for all humanity. Making a better life requires considering what is best, not just for us, but for the future of humanity.

The light that I am choosing to refract in this post has all the colors of the rainbow wrapped up within it. Just like the bottle of love pictured here, there are star systems, galaxies and billions of suns worth of energy behind it. The light to which I refer has been called a dozen or more names. It is not my intention to color your perception with any specific color so I will be avoiding names, but we all know, or have a pet name for the creative force behind the Universe/Multi-verse and from that name, the rest of our expectations flow. Within our bodies we hold energy, our nerves run on the stuff, our metabolism and our ideation are all brought to life by this light (energy). All of our food comes either directly or indirectly from the light of our closest star. When we use foods to build or heal our bodies, the loving energy/light of Creator is the main ingredient that powers the process. When we heat our homes, make electricity or power our vehicles, the vast majority of the energy we use has come to us as a result of the infinite love and the light of billions of years that has been caught in the fossilized deposits we call fossil fuel.

The warm glow, emitted by our Sun over millions of centuries can comfort us in the here and now and yet, we often forget that the giving nature of life itself is our birthright and responsibility. To play our part in nature, regaining the wonder and awestruck gratitude of the child who has just passed the birth canal is a prerequisite. Rather than make this another post on the problems and difficulties we face, I choose to focus on the limitless possibilities that we have all inherited. A brief mention of how we frequently get side tracked is in order. We are living through a time that has been influenced by generations of wrong-headed thinking which justified all manner of heinous activities. We did terrible things in the name of nations (which are fictional spaces designated by imaginary lines cutting across the planet). We have committed atrocities in the name of religion, morality, education, justice. These things all stem from a deep hurt that we continue to carry, even though we are realizing the futility of bearing these loads.

Research shows that only abuse and neglect of our children can cause them to lose their compassion. Only through constant circumscription can we imprison a child's mind. Now, we can clearly see, by studying recent research on human development that the true cost of treating our children badly is to saddle generation after generation with the effects of self-loathing and servitude. The ideas that we find ourselves serving are over five hundred years old. They used to call it "The Divine Right Of Kings". Justification of a system that abuses us is nearly as sickening as perpetrating it ourselves. I do not want to belabor the point, but I'm sure that in your own conceptualization of the world around us, there are a few negative statements that you have taken for granted, but that had to be drummed into you through neglecting your true self o abusing the identity that aligns your spirit with Source.

Reflecting as we do, the sum total of all of our experiences, our language, our culture (or lack of it) our economic status and relative "health" whether mental, physical, emotional or spiritual all play a part in how true the reflected image can be. One of my "stories" made-up and foisted upon me was "You are poor." Relative to others in the U.S., perhaps, but among the population of the planet, I have been blessed with one of the highest standards of living available, making me wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of the majority of civilization. these things come at a definite, yet immeasurable cost. My most true identity continues to be attacked summarily and without end. Virtually until I got out of college, I did not understand the concept. Social, political and financial imperatives of an extremely small percentage of others are designed to keep power and control as the dominant principle. speak up or step out of line and you will be berated, humiliated, told that you will "never amount to anything" or worse, physically assaulted, morally debased and told that "it is all your fault". imagine the broken mirror that many of us have available to reflect. I'm struggling, perhaps no better or worse at it than anyone else, but it is a discipline that I take very seriously. how do you heal the scars of the ages? Liberal doses of LOVE!

I write, not just for release, not for fame and certainly not for money, but out of a driven and desperate love for all of you! Not just my readers either, but love for everyone, agape love, the pure stuff. I honor each and every one of us as I would Creator. This is a love that cannot be assailed. Bless even, (let's see who might be topical) Joan Rivers, who I never heard release a compassionate word from her mouth, my love extends to her, I will her great healing, of a spiritual quality, one that releases her spirit from the great hurt and shame she has carried. We do not need that any more. Like holding our breath during an injury, we lock into the flesh of humanity cellular memory of that horrible event, which renders us placid when action is called for or fuels action when stillness is required. Fight and flight messages are so disrupted by the time we are socialized that even as some folks pick our pockets, we remain still and even as they cut our throats, we desire to have their standards of living. We are all cells in a giant organism, love and light create healing and when we allow the light to flow through us, new growth is possible. Walking away from all that was becomes much easier when you know that you are loved, honored and whatever choices you make from now on will be accepted with grace and compassion.

Figuring Out Our Future

 When we first look around at the world, we see a wondrous assemblage of past decisions, both those that turned out well, as well as both ones that were expedient and those that were flat out mistakes.
 Bill Moyers has an interesting article about one region that has been pretty much played out by corporados. What has gone before has no bearing on the direction we need to go, but heeding the warning signs that we learned about the hard way will help narrow the scope of our choices in the coming years. We may not find what works immediately, but we know what doesn't work. I just came across the meme this week that says, the first time we make an error of judgement it is a mistake, subsequent times it is called a choice.

Medicinal Or Medicine?

I have nearly been one of the iatroegnic (doctor caused) deaths back in 1987. I had ridden around the Great Lakes by bicycle and had been overdosed with toxic metals, car piddle (they really call it that, cute huh?) and whatever substances had built up through the Winter. Leaving April first, it took a week to get to Superior/Duluth, my furthest point West in the trip. Spring seemed to come in two bursts of just a few days each, along the east shore, headed South along lakes Superior and Huron. In-between Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury, there was about a week of riding around so much water and it was so close to the same temperature as the air, spring went on hold, if it came at all that week, I rose in elevation late in the week to get the chill of altitude moving away from the lake. Eighty days, spent riding, sucking car fumes and diesel, the great smogs of Gary and Chicago. Doctors diagnosed strep and gave me several rounds of antibiotics that did nothing for me. Luckily, a shaman, healer and witch friend brought me back from the edge of death. She used a pendulum to determine that the medicine I needed was cream of tartar, massive doses, way more than any sane person would ever consume. I think it was two tablespoons twice, then, halving the dose for a couple more times. I looked up what cream of tartar is, and the chemistry seemed perfect, choked down some of the most hideous material I have ever consumed and within about eight hours I could eat, the fever had passed and I was well on the way to recovery.

As far as I know, they do not teach how to use pendulums in medical school. Many people I know are so used to chemical medication that they do not think twice about taking it, sometimes in large amounts, but almost always "regularly". In my experience, healing can be accomplished for most illnesses with a short term use of vitamins and herbs. Often, if you do not take your herbs as regularly as you should, it may not affect the process very much. Many pharmaceuticals, lose effectiveness if they are not taken regularly. Another benefit of using herbs is that their effectiveness is lost slowly and is both natural and food. I believe that white willow bark has over four hundred ancillary compounds in combination, the one science selects for is acetylsalicylic acid, the rest is stripped away, yielding the proverbial "active ingredient", after a little organic chemistry experiment. My contention will always be that the herbal cures and elixirs will always be healthier, for the planet, her people and the creatures of the Earth. Many chemicals given in therapeutic doses are showing up in aquifers and surface waters because they do not break down. Unlike most complex organic molecules, (as opposed to these silver bullets) are able to swap or be food...proteins, carbohydrates and sugars transformable into other organisms. The poisons we create, remain after the "medicine" is manufactured to taint the living planet. To become a doctor, you must almost forsake any kind of knowledge that has not been handed down through hundreds of years of myopia.

I am alive, because I hit the limit of what modern medicine was willing to do for me and was given a second chance at life, during which I have given to learning about herbs and how to use them for health, recovery from illness and the important part that all foods (and sadly, many non-food items) have on either creating health (or not.). I did not start learning about vitamins, herbs and the non-medical approaches to health when I had my great recovery, I had always been interested in such things. I read everything I could get my hands on about all of the vitamins, what deficiencies looked like, what chronic conditions could be brought on by lacking important nutrients. Amazingly, my interest continues and science is finally staring to "discover" that the bacterial cultures within our gut can have profound impact on mental state and genetic changes. Cutting edge research continues and we now know that we actually inherit genes from our diet. This has always been the case, we have just never modified the diet as much as we are doing today. In human history we have never consumed as much or as many non-food items, poisons, and genetic misfits. My fear is what we are breeding out of the human race.

Our species can be looked upon like the geologic history of the planet. If you made a model of the time, but divided it like a day, we would be living in the last second of the day. The vast majority of that time we have used selective breeding techniques, selected the best seeds to plant the next year and co-created our entire diet through having affinity with every species that we exploited for both food and medicine... The earliest humans were able to breed with several species that were similar enough to them to pick up genes from several contemporaries of humans in our earliest beginnings. Some of those ancestors go back six million years. Two million years ago, humans hunted meat. 1.8 million years ago, homo erectus popped up. Neanderthals, with whom some of us actually share genetic material, didn't go extinct until about 30K years ago, taking us up to about 11:45 pm on our day long model of human existence. Ten thousand years ago, about 11:58pm, the ice age was retreating and humans only numbered about several millions worldwide. Populations were relatively stagnant until village life began. We began husbandry of seed and adopted village settlement where we stayed all year long. Thousands of years passed with only herbs for healing and our ancestors learned much from nature.  Five thousand years ago the Vedic culture in India began Ayurvedic medicine, codifying herbal treatments. By 11:59, humans began to smelt bronze. One thousand years ago, at about ten seconds to midnight, a great Arabic medical text, al-Tasrif, was translated to Latin and used for five hundred years, then the Dark Ages came. The Renaissance was at about three seconds to midnight, the midwives were burned to make room for medical doctors. At about one and a half seconds to midnight, Lewis Pasteur discovered germs and about a half second later on our imaginary clock Gregor Mendel formalized genetics as we knew them until the chemical companies, technocrats and scientists got rolling. All the scientific advances since that have occurred in just the last second of our scaled down day in the life of humans that covers our existence on this planet. We are now, at this very moment creating genetic variants never before seen on the planet and our organism as well as all those we have cultivated, held dear and cared for for all those hundreds of thousands of years has not evolved to deal with that sort of change.

We are only beginning to understand the risks and benefits of most "modern" approaches to medicine. We only look at the outcomes of treatment, not the long-term consequences of toxins in the environment that come from our current methods. We do not care that hazardous compounds are released to the environment, lowering the health of everyone to achieve our successes. We allow our selves to be manipulated by "health care" systems that emit toxic compounds intot he neighborhoods surrounding their facilities and send people home with bottles of material that could be long-lived in the environment wreaking havoc for decades or millennea.

I will continue to use herbs for health, minding what I allow into my body and trying to avoid the wastes of modern life. If anyone requires information about how to use herbs for health, please feel free to call or contact me by e-mail (tnsaladion42@hotmail.com) or snail-mail (1445 Porlier street Green Bay, WI USA 54301). Please include a recent photo and contact info. I have been and continue studying health and nutrition, as well as ecology and sustainability. In nature we can find all that we need to sustain us, to heal and to thrive. My work as a guide is primarily to help others to find their uniquer path to health. Food is medicine and medicine is food. Non-food is poison, or at the very least useless to our bodies.

Waiting

Tom Petty says that the waiting is the hardest part and I do believe that he may be right. since childhood I have been waiting for the people in charge to respond to the terrible state that their decisions have made for us. I have waited for a chance to speak my mind and be heard as if I were valid. I have waited to see qualitative change in the way we do business, teach our children and create the energy to which we have become so accustomed. Rather than seeing any meaningful change in any of these areas, I have seen progressively more vehement actions causing more and more heinous results, heard increasingly vitriolic rhetoric and heard increasingly stupid claims that lead to disharmony, misunderstanding and more and more poorly crafted lies from those who are supposedly our leaders as to why we must do the wrong thing, or why the future should be saddled with unimaginable debt. The true costs of a dead ocean or two, a climate crisis, or empty water supplies is something we are just going to have to wait to calculate.

Otis Redding has popularized a tune called, Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay, which points to the fact that we often do quite a lot whilst waiting. In fact, rather than just sitting on our behinds reading popular magazines, as often occurs in waiting rooms, there is plenty of more important stuff to pay attention to. Regular readers understand that I am a nearly constant voice for the environment, a thorn in the sides of those who would exploit either man or nature to extract wealth by foisting suffering on others, but for anyone who has just begun to read my posts, let me lay it straight. Ninety-nine out of a hundred times that we find ourselves waiting, there are still important tasks that can be done. Sometimes just watching the clouds roll away is enough.

Some things to do when you are waiting may include, but are not limited to, taking "selfies", striking up conversation with strangers (realizing that all of our friends started out as strangers), thinking, letting our minds wander, clarifying our thoughts or just focusing on our breathing. One could jot down memos or poetry (but that would require keeping a notebook and writing device at the ready or our phones for the technologically literate), thoughtfully reflect on a recent event or appreciate the abundance of NOW.
When we have moments to reflect, or plan, sometimes the best thing we can choose to do is dive deeply into our own stillness. Finding a place within our selves, where no moorings are needed, getting in touch with that true self, the one that endures through, perhaps, lifetimes that can be the best use of our suspended times, those normally filled with waiting.

Imagine having the good fortune to meet everyone, who normally "is" or would be perturbed, angered  or tired of their waiting instead in the liberated state of self-awareness brought about by becoming better friends with their own true self or nature. Say that the waiting room had a door or window to the outdoors and they could just bear witness to a moment of natural beauty, with no desire for past or future. Say that within the person's mind's eye, they could create a vision of nature in their minds and reflect on the beauty and harmony that lives there every moment of every day. Just feel the groundswell of good works and positive vibrations that would create upon the face of Mother Earth. She would rejoice in the lightened loads that we would each carry. Remember, if you are in the waiting room of life, do not pick up the magazines. They are only distraction techniques and we need you to be present to create the coming revolution. Stand, or sit, still and tall. Make even the moments of suspension "count".

We have all witnesses the flighty or the overbooked, seen folks who think that they can multi-task, or been rebuked by someone who thought that we were stifling their schedule. In my understanding, being on-task is something quite different than doing several things poorly. If you cannot stifle your urge to get everything "done", immediately, how can you ever hope to do any of it well? The time it takes for the iron to heat is as important as striking it at the right time and angle. They say, "Strike while the iron is hot." but somehow the waiting is often overlooked. Imagine for a moment that the times we wait are often not the result of anything we have control over, they are not the result of someone's fiendish plan to usurp our progress, they just come with the territory. If we delve into who we really are during those times, when time allows us to come out the other side we will be infinitely better able to cope than if we had spent that time shirking someone that will be with us forever.

Fabricating a New Social Structure

When I was a child, I believed, as I do now, that humanity has taken several wrong turns somewhere back in our dark and distant past. Anthropologists are finding more and more compelling evidence that the 1% have been waging an all out assault on the rest of us since at least as far back as when humans first developed grain storage. Turning one person against another has been the modus operandi of those who build up brutal forces that wield power and control over us, at least for the past dozen centuries or so.
It is rather funny that the grains, which first allowed us to get through the starving times are now considered staples. The most savagely abused among peoples of the Earth seem to cling most desperately to their grains of oppression. When those who wrote the Bible wanted to exact social control over masses, they called wheat the staff of life. The three sisters of Native American life included the corn and we all know how rice has shaped the Far East. These foods were the domain of those who had a relationship with the plants until the most "refined" classes found that through them, they could control the population. now that social control has become a science, there are those who feel that nothing more is needed besides the staving off of starvation.

I continue to live as a testament to the fact that there is absolutely no truth to these and other lies that we are told. They used to say that "You are what you eat." and this is true. When you consume the fodder of the corporate food machine, you are just that, fodder for their planetary rape machine. The vast amounts of fossil fuel used to create a toaster waffle, or rice cake dwarf the calories available in the "food". In days of old, a man and an ox could clear about one acre per year of the tree stumps left after the native vegetation was removed. With the advent of dynamite, this process was increased exponentially. Now, we have fossil fuel burning machines that both remove forests, grind them to chips and they can be carted away by another vehicle burning fossil energy the very same day. Our society is currently built on the ability of the top classes to wreak more and more havoc in less and less time.

The slow food movement continues to grow, people are homeschooling and giving home birth at ever-greater rates, but doubling the popularity of things from 1/2% of the population to one percent can feel like a hollow victory for the forces of change. My ex and I had our first child at home and home schooled her for most of her education and we remember the doubling of home birth in our state from 1/2 to one percent. That was over twenty-five years ago. We worked in the field of childbirth education and saved many couples thousands of dollars by teaching them what to expect and how to handle the attempts that the hospitals would make to get them to agree to a medicated and assisted birth process. doctors and scientists cannot help but fall into the trap of thinking that they know better than the rest of us, what we need and would want, if only we were as smart and educated as they think themselves to be. The public is realizing that it is their dependence that has allowed them to become victims of usury, of illogical and short sighted corporate raiders. As more people have taken greater and greater responsibility for their own lives, their own educations and their own food and housing choices, fewer and fewer dollars are flowing to those who claim to be "experts".

For many, the time tested "truth" that lies behind the slogan "Fuck the other guy before he fucks you." is coming into question. At an outdoor event the other day, my wife and I wanted to sit and enjoy a few bites of food at a picnic table. Before we could, I had to remove the trash left behind by the group of people who had left it behind. These sorts of decisions of expediency, the ones that let a fairly large group by the looks of the amount of trash they left behind, neglect their part is the social order are exactly what has been going wrong on a macro-cosmic level for many hundreds of years. The industrial revolution only allowed the rate at which the planet got trashed to increase. Now that we are in the information/techno-logic/industrial age, it seems that the trashing of the environment has just become a foregone conclusion.  Even the act of giving birth has become an excuse for women to desire the strongest drugs available, letting the doctors do the work, for whatever they want to charge...insurance will cover it anyway. Once you understand that we all pay under this scenario, making that decision is much harder to do.

What is coming to be has never been before. The knowledge about important technologies, especially those that have been with us for centuries, but were lost because someone found it financially expedient to hide, or because the populations utilizing them were labeled "backward" or "primitive". Our recent history is replete with stories of folks coming from the old world and adopting new world perspectives, techniques and methods. A Hmong friend told me that the use of biochar is common in Southeast Asia. Tribal people all know that the marginal soils would be washed of their nutrients quickly if they did not mix char into their soils. Now, we have relatively rich white people trying to rediscover this ancient agricultural practice. We have Madison avenue types and suits of both colors and stripes lining up to howl at the moon, do sweat lodges or participate in all manner of rites of passage, but this alone is not how we are going to reformulate our civilization. What it will take is understanding who has what to gain if we relinquish or abdicate our responsibility. Once we understand why the lies that our current culture is based on, we can begin to reconsider what, if anything we want to leave for future generations.

Mu

We have no word like this in English. Not "yes", not "no", but somewhere in-between. Even the word "maybe" resolves to get to the bottom of things before we are finished, often leading to pros and cons on either side. Mu is a state of being that is just as valid as either of the other two, but it exists in a blind spot within our culture. Our sense of duality is often too strong to admit a third possibility. Quixotically, our professed religion dictates a trinity, however, "we" seem to be unable to fathom this in our most primal, mental constructs which then get used to lead us through our lives. Like imperfect maps, we place items of experience in relation to other elements. From this relationship of arbitrary perspective, we build the landscape of our problem solving terrain.

I told a friend, There is a young woman who wants to learn about herbal healing...and I'm thinking of taking her on as an apprentice/student. His response was vile and crass. "Have you ____ed her yet?" The domain of his mental maps, the virtual topography of relationships between the sexes, told him that all women are quarry, to be bedded. The excuse for any behavior runs deep in the human mind runs deep.

In this case, my love for you, my compassion and humanity toward the suffering that you have experienced is the driving force behind each word, each concept and every intention that is put forward through ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. When I plant a tree, or make it possible for a dozen folks to plant one-hundred trees, it is for you, your air, the water supply of the planet. I put my breath into the cells of that tiny spirit of hope. When it becomes grand, towers over homes, or gives shelter to other critters, you get a sense of how deeply I love you. When the tree finally falls, it will still nourish a collection of microbes and bugs that defy our imaginings. This third state is necessary, the mu, lets me say that the world is already different because of the love that I have for you. There is no "yes" or "no" about it.

An African word, Ubuntu says it best and I have had it translated to English, somewhat clumsily as "I am because you are." What it means to me is that the whole of my existence is bound up, reflected, perhaps even refracted through you and that is what gives meaning to my life. You are essential to me. Our essences reverberate with one another into something greater. Mu requires not, agreement with anything but timeless truth. Neither at odds, or in accord, we are part of a vast organism, the ecosphere.

I have always understood this third state, for instance, when Rush sang: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." I got the message that doing the best, in all situations requires a suspension of decision, but not action. Too often we forget that the right thing to do is frequently never considered. It never even makes it on to the table. We are too often hurried into making bad decisions. When we honor the third choice, much of the wasteful, harmful, neglectful, abusive and erroneous activities can be avoided. Not yes, not no.

I am because you are. There is no yes or no about that. We all breathe the same noble gasses as the dinosaurs did, we are one, through time and space, the very molecules we share are but stardust. Not no, not yes, just be with that. We are one...often this answer is even more important than the question. I want to use this forum to call for a worldwide boycott, overt #occupation of the decision-making process. If you are about to say yes, to something you fell you should say no to, at least allow mu a chance to fill you. Is someone makes a baseless claim, do not let your blood pressure rise, become inflamed or moved to anger, turn the question around, find the flaw and state unequivocally mu. Then walk away. It is time for humanity to speak truth to power or perish. Participation under duress is a requirement  for a certain crime. We are all being victimized by "yes"/ "no" answers to questions that defy this narrow solution.

Crimes are being committed, heinous ones, involving the rape of the planet, poisoning of our shared resources, this is true. The distorted meteorologic maps, show how desperately out of balance our climate has become. "New Normal" has been the catch word of the new millennium. Often we exempt ourselves from our part in it, like when we pump fuel into our cars, or trucks, when we fly off to faraway lands to see beautiful nature, or when we import materials from halfway around the globe, but we are playing a part. We say, by our participation, "my life and limb depend on my complicity in the whole mess." I continue to stand as a living testament to the fact that we have other choices. Move closer to where you work, or work closer to home, make everywhere more habitable and you will never have to leave. Take back the means of production and create only things of true value and as a friend once told me, never discount the maxim, "Do the dishes, make bread, play with/teach the children, and you will never need to pay rent." Not yes, not no, only love.

August First

This day will always be important to me. My son was born on this date and it has been a constant source of enjoyment watching him grow up. Now that he has reached the age of majority, we see each other far less than when he was a child, but fortunately, he makes the time we do get to see one another worth the waits in between. I know that the rest of the world may not care or understand, but in his case, those who get to know him are rewarded for their efforts by finding out that he has a quick wit that is enhanced by excellent timing. Jade is not a pun factory, nor will he pounce on every opportunity for making a joke, but when he does, it is made that much funnier because he's usually the quiet guy.

I try not to be the gushy parent, detailing the life events of my children. This post, however, has some elements that could be at home in the average blog written by a mother or stay at home dad. On the one hand, I want to base this entry on what my son has meant to me, but it is not to brag or share my feelings of pride and respect, rather, I mention my son because our children are a physical representation of hope. The only actions that ever really pay off are those that involve significant risk. Planting a seed for instance, or a tree. Chances are good that some of our plantings will grow, but a friend sent pictures of hail damage that nearly decimated her garden yesterday. Some years I have had entire crops wiped out before I got a single morsel and likewise, after spending a weekend (my first ever) planting hundreds of trees, we did get one of the worst droughts their firs summer and they shriveled and turned to matchwood under the baking sun.

When we invest, there is always an element of risk. Hope alone cannot change the world, but it allows a chance to try. I want to sprinkle an appropriate story or two from my first twenty or so years with Jade, so that you might have a bit of the insight and joy that I have felt along his path to adulthood, but this post is not just about him. I find what he has taught me to be far beyond his years. In his youth, there was a time that he wanted to have candles in his room. First off, let me say that his "room" stretches the meaning of that word significantly. He had a place just wide enough for his single mattress and tucked way back in the corner, there was a desk that hugged the chimney. The whole space was wedged in between the sloping ceiling of our story-and-a-half in the space between a central stairway and the knee wall. Instead of a wall, separating him from the living space, he had a very long, floor to ceiling curtain.  Anyway, because of his youth and with all the fabric and limited space, there are few parents that would allow a candle to be part of the decor.

When I told him, I fully expected some protestation, but instead he went directly to his desk, which doubled as workstation and began feverishly constructing something. I did not know what, but it kept him quiet for hours. By the time he emerged, all he wanted was some tape and colored markers. I had no idea that he was constructing a battery operated fire. it was complete with a battery, a computer fan, colored lights and tissue paper which danced like the real thing. In fact, it was better than a candle in several ways and served for many years without being dangerous or worrisome to his parental unit. This illustrates the need for each of us to determine what the differences are between what we want and what we really need. In Jade's case, having a warm dancing flame in his room was important enough that he was not going to live without it. We could all take a lesson from his choices and decisions.

As you know, I have remained silent for ten days because of the slaughter of innocents in both Ukraine and Palestine. I had to make a choice between what I really wanted and what I needed. On the one hand, I wanted to scream out in protest, to shout down all those who believe that the death of others will make their lives better. I wanted to lash out at the small-minded, the short sighted and the bigots who believe that some innocent children are better than others and that the deaths of people they have labeled as sub-human are warranted to get their way. I mention this last bit because oftentimes children who grow up having been allowed to be tyrants often grow up to become tyrants as well. What I really needed was peace and my life has improved so much during these ten days of not reacting that I want to share that with my readers. Sometimes what we gain from pondering, musing over or sifting through things is far more valuable than just being reactive. Perhaps as we slide through the end of summer into fall, we can all take some time to understand and suss out the differences between wants and needs. The payoff for investing in our own peace of mind cannot be put into words exactly, but the feelings of peace and security that come from knowing that our feet are firmly planted in the earth and that our direction upon the surface of that Earth is appropriate can have benefits not only for us, but for those around us as well.

I remember a canoe trip that Jade and I took years back that wandered down the Wisconsin River, from the bottom of the dam that creates Castle Rock Lake, down through the Wisconsin Dells, past Portage and on down to the Mississippi River and Wyalusing State Park. For two weeks we were nearly always within a few feet of one another and we shared thoughts and ideas that many fathers never share with their children. I remember day three or four, when everything we had was contaminated with sand, how we looked at one another as the soft food we ate crunched under our teeth and the grace and insight which Jade used to deal with it. He seemed to be almost as amused as I was that we still had ten days of crunching sand in our food before we would leave the river's serpentine embrace. I remember when we got to the "popular" part of the river on a Friday night and how he let me in on his decision making skills about what island to camp on.

You see, the weekend warriors were out in force and it seemed that every island was already being camped upon. He was listing pros and cons about each island as it came into view. Music too loud. Way too much firewood. Motorboat. No children. Dogs. It seemed that he was running scenarios in his head that I was just too tired to deem plausible. I must admit that at eleven, far too few children would be able to spin out the eventualities that could befall us based on a single decision. Do we make landfall here, or push on into the unknown and ever deeper darkness? As it turned out, he found us an island that had both adults and children and as soon as we landed upon their shore I knew that Jade had made the best decision possible. The people were all great and the children were very well-behaved. How he could pick up on their vibe from hundreds of yards away, I will never know, but I can tell you that from what I saw going on on other islands and sand bars that night, I'm glad we were not on those!

I have always enjoyed camping with my children. My only regret is that we did it so rarely. Paring down our lives to what fits in a backpack or a canoe teaches us more about who we are than about what we must do. Of course, there are always things that must be done, but in the woods, or on the water, it is hard to forget that the most important thing we can do is accept our serenity and grace at all costs, lest we lose track of the sublime beauty that surrounds us. Knowing that there are millions who want an experience like the one you are having, but who cannot fight their way free of the shackles of wage slavery to do it seems sad on one level, but on another it enlivens every moment with feelings of appreciation and joy. This day will be spent on water with my daughter and son in law, with a bit of luck and a fair amount of serious intention a great time will be had by all. Whatever we can do to get our peace of mind back needs to be done, not just for us, but for the future of our planet as well as her people. Waste not, want not and do not be quick to anger, for in anger there is only darkness, dissolution, fear and hate. Take time to look around, especially at nature and appreciate that in nature there are no wars, no waste and no wishes, only making a living and casting off resources for our neighbors. If we want to grab the ring of sustainability, we need to understand what is wonderful, miraculous and poignant in nature so that we might model our own lives after it.