We’re taking tomorrow off to spend time with our loved ones, but in the meantime, please enjoy some classic Bing Crosby philosophizing on gratitude.
And thank you for being part of The Sunny Way!
Nearly every Sunday, I play the piano for services at a small, rural church in the hill town of Worthington, MA. The minister, Reverend Doug Small, is a great advocate for God and for the beauty of music, two reasons why I love to accompany his services. Prior to the service this past Sunday, Rev. Small described to me what he was going to say so I could choose an appropriate piece for the piano solo. Sunday’s theme would be Thanksgiving, for which he’d offer this counsel: “As we approach the holiday, if you cannot find something to be grateful for, just look more deeply.”
I thought, we need a song that celebrates our re-awakened appreciation for life. So that’s what I played—my piano rendition of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.”
Happy Thanksgiving!
image by WordRidden
I love DIY. As I mentioned in another article, I have been hand making a lot of presents for my kids. Last year I had been eyeing the beautiful wood play food at one of our local toyshops, but at $2-$10 apiece I could really have only afforded a couple of items.
I did some searching online and discovered loads of knitted and crocheted play food on Etsy. Of course, that was out of my price range too, but I do know how to knit and crochet, so making some was in the realm of possibility.
I started with something simple, a pancake. I took some light brown yarn from my stash and crocheted a simple flat circle. I was initially intending to make two circles, stuff them a little bit and sew them together, but Cheyenne discovered me while I was crocheting and when I told her the circle was a pancake she ran off with it and started playing. I decided that if a simple circle worked for her as a pancake, it was good enough for me.
image by ercwttmn
I love good toys, the kinds of toys that inspire kids’ imaginations and foster a love of learning. Childhood creativity inspires me. There is something so free and natural about it. I love the way children imagine and combine ideas without all of the limits of reality and fear of failure that adults impose on themselves.
I get a lot of ideas from reading through the natural toy catalogs I get every fall and wandering the aisles of the natural toy stores we have here in Minneapolis. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of money to spend on toys. In spite of financial challenges I think we have managed to pull together a really nice learning environment for our kids. Since many of us are tightening our belts a bit more this Christmas I thought it would be fun for us to talk about fun, inexpensive and environmentally friendly gifts.
This video comes to us from EatTheView.org, a site dedicated to encouraging the Obama family to grow some food on the White House lawn. Director Roger Doiron documents the process of growing a garden in front of his own white house, interspersed with a bit of history of gardening in America. Eleanor Roosevelt encouraged the growing of victory gardens, and at their peak, home gardens provided 40% of the fruits and vegetables eaten by American households.
Growing food at the White House forms the last, symbolic point in Michael Pollan’s plan for rethinking our food system. And there’s no doubt that this system needs some serious rethinking—currently, food production and transportation contribute 1/3 of our country’s greenhouse emissions.
Check out the video below, and go to EatTheView.org to sign the petition urging the Obamas to use some of the White House’s extensive gardens for food production.
This Lawn is Your Lawn from roger doiron on Vimeo.
image by pingu1963
As I have rolled the concept of Enough around in my head I have come to realize that it isn’t just material things my family has enough of. My family has a pretty solid base of love and stability and for that reason alone we are lucky. We have strong family ties, a roof over our heads, a nurturing environment for learning and growing and all of our physical needs met. That is an abundance that so many people in so many places simply do not have. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. I think a lot of the over-consumption that has gone on in recent years is a result of human’s need to create beauty. From the smallest children to the elderly there is a strong desire to create beauty and function for us and for others. What if we channeled that need for beauty, functionality and creation into making this world a better place to be?
image by pingu1963
I love how, in this article, Stella progresses from recognizing that her family has enough to sharing the overflowing abundance of love and energy with those outside her family. Instead of working to make our own individual dreams of come true, what if we decided to come together and dream bigger dreams? I see so much possibility there ... -ed.
Every November, before the post-Thanksgiving rush I take a day and wander my favorite toy stores trying to get ideas for my kids for Christmas. I love toys, especially the kind that foster creativity. Children’s creativity inspires me with its limitlessness and freedom. There’s something so pure in the way they imagine and combine ideas largely unchecked by self-consciousness and reality.
Still, as I strolled the aisles of the natural toy store fingering beautifully hand crafted wood animals and looking at all kinds of interesting games and playthings I began to realize that, really, my children have enough.
I can safely say that I’m a pianist by birth. My mother played beautifully and during her pregnancy with me, as she practiced Brahms and Schumann, their melodies no doubt penetrated the walls of her womb and entered my developing consciousness. I have no idea when it was that I first tried to plunk out notes on the piano. I was that young.
In 2006, after working for a few years as a senior editor for What is Enlightenment? Magazine (now EnlightenNext), I returned to teaching and performing music. In so doing, it became apparent that music is still with me. It’s in my blood. When I’m at the piano, I give every ounce of my attention to each note, each span of silence, the arc of each musical phrase. I shape sound and silence like a potter shapes clay. In return, music gives me doubtless confidence—in beauty.
Can we hang on to that new world smell?
(Image by pauladamsmith)
Has this ever happened to you?
Something exciting is calling you to action, and you hear the call. But in the gap between hearing it and doing something about it, you lose the thread. You might be unsure where to start, you might be unable to choose between several interests, or you maybe you just fall victim to inertia, and your enthusiasm wanes with each passing day.
Sooner or later, you’re back to where you started, far less excited and a little more cynical in what you think of the whole idea of “being called” anyway.
I know this has happened to me. I’ve had great experiences with gifted teachers and leaders, but what do those experiences mean if they don’t end up changing my life? If I don’t change in response to them?
The answer is: they become like pictures taken from a vacation, lovely memories wrapped in plastic in the archives.
In this clip, Buckminster Fuller talks about his experiment in living: when he decided to put his faith in the “integrity of the regenerative universe itself” and commit himself to doing what nature seems to want to do—which is make human beings a success—without looking for personal gain, does he “seem to get on”?
His experience said yes. His commitment to doing what he saw that needed to be done helped him to “unwittingly come into knowledge that is incredibly important to the universe’s own problem-solving.” Amazing food for thought as we begin our Activism challenge. Commitment plus faith minus ego equals progress.
image by Ctd 2005
“Change has come to America,” says our new President Elect, and I have to agree. Since his big win last week, things have just felt different. The Sunny Way idea of taking responsibility to positively create the future we want no longer seems like something on the fringe—we’re all mainstream now and it feels good!
Now is what writer and scientist Jean Houston calls “Jump Time.” The old paradigm is stretched to the limit—as evidenced by our economic and ecological crisis—and the new is just beginning to take form. Many of us can feel this momentum, and we want to do something with it. In fact, we MUST do something with this impulse for change and evolution and the amazing feelings that come along with the sense of possibility before it all dissipates into memory.
Great experiences are important only in how we allow them to transform our lives. Having seen what is possible, a little bit of heaven on earth, it’s now up to us to act on that vision and bring more and more of it into reality. In service to the idea of working tangibly to create the future we want, we are starting a challenge based on activism. Stella and I are both working on projects to increase community and encourage growth in our little corners of the world, and we hope you will do the same.
image by maluni
Stella’s pieces on how to live the good life outside the current spend/consume paradigm constitute an amazing resource. When creativity takes the place of credit, I find myself enjoying myself more, building deeper connections, and really thinking about what I’m doing. This is how a new world is made—by consciously deciding how we want to live and relate with each other. -ed.
I know a lot of articles about frugality suggest curbing socializing and entertainment and paint them as frivolous activities, but I see them as essentials. Just like a marriage, you can’t have a strong and lasting community if you don’t take care of it. In good times, a strong community is a joy, and in times of crisis, those relationships become critical. It’s worth it to devote time and effort to creating and nurturing community connections.
At the same time, we need to remember that entertaining doesn’t have to be nerve-wracking. Something that has struck me in the last few years is how much more formal entertaining seems to have gotten—it’s become synonymous with having a party or an event. We don’t just have a friend over for a cup of coffee at the kitchen table anymore. Even our kids have “play dates.”
Victoria’s homegrown garlic
Most of us have noticed that the arena of locally grown food has been developing rapidly and attracting more and more people. These days, a straightforward vegetable garden is the tip of the iceberg. There are all different types of gardens; backyard, raised bed, rooftop, window boxes, community garden plots, urban farms, and school gardens.
There are the how local can you go types of challenges, like the ultra serious Dervaes 100 foot food challenge. Even president-elect Barack Obama will have the opportunity to build an organic farm on the White House lawn through the WHO Farm project. I can’t wait for that day to happen!
For the next several weeks, we will be discussing Aldous Huxley’s Island. Click here for all the book club posts.
Like many people, lately I’ve been a little obsessed with the results of the presidential election. Every time I hear the words “President Elect Obama,” I get a thrill up my spine. Possibility is in the air; I can feel it and it seems like lots of other people can, too. It is with this electric sense that now is the time when we can make things happen that I turn my attention back to Pala, the practical, functional society of Aldous Huxley’s Island.
When we last discussed the book, we talked about the Palanese conception of family, and how a diversified family structure allows children to grow up in a world of options. In the next chapter (chapter 8), Will asks to spend a little more time in Pala, to learn about all the options which are part of the Palanese way of life, and Dr. MacPhail decides to allow him to stay for a month, even though he works for an oil man’s newspaper and oil companies have been trying to make destructive inroads into Pala.
“When in doubt,” said Dr. Robert, “always act on the assumption that people are more honorable than you have any solid reason for supposing they are.” Reading this phrase, I couldn’t help but think of the way President Elect Obama ran his campaign, appealing to the better angels of our nature and a desire to create a better world. Who would have thought that so many Americans would respond to this hopeful message?
image by Roberto Garcia-S
Good news stories on the environmental front were a little harder to come by this month but all that changed now, with the best news we could have been hoping for—Barack Obama winning the presidential election in a landslide. YES!!!! Like he said, this is our chance, and it really is OURS, to not just set things right, but begin building a new vision. He promised, in an e-mail to all those who gave time, money, talent etc. that he would soon be in touch about the next steps. I can’t think of anything more exciting!
