 Subversive Ideas to
create a world of kindness and justice This column focuses on living
each day with kindness consciousness. It
highlights ordinary folks who do extraordinary actions to promote
strong and
vibrant communities. Here we will expose ideas and actions that
respond to
life with openness and generosity. Many wonderful, creative, loving,
conscious folks make a difference by forgoing those insidious rules
underlying the injunction to work harder and make more money.
These are rules that fill our consciousness with consumerism,
exclusion, violence, spiritual emptiness, and addictions along with
numbing news and sound bites. As we settle into our security-system
homes, homogeneous communities and our comfortable routines, we may
feel ineffective and disempowered in the larger community through
collective isolation, misinformation, distraction and numbing. I have
become impassioned over stories about people and projects that revive
our communities. When I read about an inspirational idea, I often
become determined to make a contact to learn how I can get involved.
Most often with shyness and doubt, I put this desire aside. More
recently with trepidation I have begun to make contacts.
I believe there is untapped power in the ordinary person who responds
with creativity, hope, generosity of spirit, and human kindness. I
want to offer a space that is vigilant in exposing the power of
life-affirming
responses and solutions and; thus, offer a cure to our cultural demise
and despair. Through this exposure we can find new possibilities and
offer each other encouragement to involve ourselves in our communities
in ways that weave threads of love and kindness back into our
tapestry.
My yoga instructor, Gabrielle, speaks of "effortless effort" using
breath and postures to gradually bring oneself into unity and
alignment. I believe we can notice in our external environment where
our human community is out of alignment. Once noticed, we can make a
small shift by breathing new life responses into our neighborhoods and
larger community, local or global. Each small shift-done together-with
"effortless effort" may surprise us and unify us into an alignment
that builds a safe, inclusive, strong community.
Conscious Singles offers this venue, as a collaborative effort,
inviting readers to write about successful efforts, thwarted attempts
and "want-to-do-but-don't-know-how's". This column is for ideas and
discussions on how ordinary people can and do participate in creating
safe, just, and lively communities.
The following are examples of the type of submissions folks can
contribute to this column:
1. Community Cousins is an organization that brings diverse ethnic
families together for the purpose of learning from and giving support
to each other.
Write to Community Cousins, 449 Encinitas Blv. Ste. 220, Encinitas CA
92024
2. Susan is an energetic woman who organized into positive action
mothers who have lost their children to violence. She called her group
Mothers Against Weapons.
3. I have a friend who walks everywhere and takes the time to see and
rescue a wounded bird, a roaming dog, or a wild cat.
4. My local Catholic worker group provides shelter and food to the
homeless.
5. Playback theatre is often used as a form to safely and creatively
address issues of diversity and conflict.
6. My secretary, Laura, rescues wild cats and gets them neutered and
finds
good homes for them.
7. Traveling to Chiapas, I met people who organize indigenous into
cooperative coffee farms so they can sell their coffee at a more
sustainable
rate. I now buy only fair trade coffee.
8. There are many travels that are socially/ecologically sound and
promote
life-affirming causes.
i.e. Witness for Peace, www.witnessforpeace.org
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Alexandra
Kedrock loves to tap dance while preparing Sunday meals
for family and friends. She is a mother, friend, psychotherapist,
neophyte
writer and performing artist, lover of outdoors, and single
explorer.
Please send
her what kind acts you know about!
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