Occupy Cafe
Confronting Climate Change: theme for the week of 12/9/12
What is the climate conversation we most need to have now?
Our podcast is now up for the Monday Cafe Call
A lot has been happening recently on the climate front. Hurricane Sandy put the issue front and center after it was virtually ignored during the elections. Echoing the anti-apartheid efforts of the 1980's, 350.org has started the new Go Fossil Free campaign, which calls on students to demand that university endowment funds divest from the coal, oil and gas industries. And the COP18 talks just finished up with another round of failed negotiations, highlighted by a tearful delegate from the storm-ravaged Philippines pleading for action on behalf of the seven billion people on this planet.
Join us this week in the Cafe for a conversation on the varied dimensions of this crisis. What is moving in the world? How might this online community participate? What are the personal challenges this subject brings up for you? Explore these questions together here on our forum, and on each of the three Cafe Calls we will be hosting. Monday's Vital Conversation will start us off with an overview, Connect2012 on Tuesday will focus on what this community might do and Thursday's Occupy Heart will address the inner struggles a crisis like this evokes. See the schedule on the right side of this page for times and registration links.
We will be testing out MaestroConference's new "social webinar" feature this week, which allows you to see who else is in your breakouts with you. Click here to access this feature once you are on a Cafe Call (note: you will need your call-in and PIN handy to sign up).
Dyck Dewid
Wow, what a great Occupy Heart call. So, affirming for me to come back to my base... now with so much more clarity.
I am working hard, soooo hard, in Occupy, and in my personal life dimensions, WITHOUT ANY OUTCOME in mind! It's what I'm supposed to be doing!
I'm not smart enough and neither is anyone else, to get us out of Climate Change or the massive change that's in store for us. And that massive change will likely, thru its destruction and suffering, be the great equalizer... showing us that nothing we know or have is important... showing the only thing real- is love.
So, what a worthy occupation, to start now building a love-boat that can hold all.
Dec 13, 2012
Jim Barton
I think one of the reasons for thegreater financial irresponsibility of the 90s and 2000s is the belief, not consciously acknowledged by the general public and savvy investors, many of whom are better educated (and are more likely to have had higher math and science courses) that climate change is real, and that we are all disinvesting in the future, in contrast to the fifties, where we were collectively investing in our selves by building highways (for all) and an education system (for all).
I haven't heard anyone else say this, but it is hard to imagine otherwise. Just because people don't acknowledge they are afraid of something doesn't mean they aren't-- it just might mean that their fear is overwhelming.
Dec 14, 2012
Dyck Dewid
A Sufi Story (~told~ in the OccupyHeart call) excerpt from The Gift, w permission of author, Michael Kovitz
You must trust me now.
Nothing real can ever be lost. When you awaken from sleep, only the dreams are gone. Listen to my story.
You are like a stream that flows through all of time seeking union with the sea. Nearing journey's end, it flows into a vast desert and becomes trapped in the sands. Feeling itself weakening more and more it tries to struggle on, but finds its way to the sea blocked by a great mountain.
Hopeless and helpless, the stream feels its life ebbing away into the sands.
"Help me Lord!" it cries out, and is answered by the voice of the wind.
"You must give yourself to me. I will carry you over the mountain as a cloud and as rain you will merge with the sea."
"But I will cease to be a stream. I will die!"
"You will not die. Whispered the wind. Only the dream of yourself as stream will end. And besides, where is your choice? A stream you can no longer be. Give yourself to me, or be lost forever in the sands."
And so, feeling totally helpless and without hope, exhausted beyond belief the stream gave itself up into the arms of the wind and was carried as a cloud beyond the mountain's peaks. The cloud drifted over the sea and seeing itself reflected in the water below, began to weep.
"I await you. Come."
And the cloud released itself as tears of joy and fell as rain into the sea. We are not we, but one, spoke the golden seaand the stream being no more, heard the voice and recognized it as its own.
Dec 14, 2012