one more

ooh ooh I have another one. Buddy in home town who is now Treasurer for the Greens there and volunteering one day a week in their office too. That on top of leturing / tutoring in maths and writing up his own stuff. How come none of my maths lecturers in uni were ever that cool? (Oh that's right I never did maths at uni, maybe they were all really cool and I just never knew)
Yes, you are the winner of today's 'people inspire me' award.

Runner up would have to be guy in my offce who goes home every single day (when humanly posible) to spend lunch with partner and few month old bub.

People do cool stuff and inspire me...

Very pleased for a London friend who recently got through the challenging and surprisingly explicit interview process to get on the list of new volunteer recruits for a GLT phone help line. Works full time in a brainiac job and now will spend some of his free time helping other people get information and support for life issues. Nice work buddy.

A woman at work puts $3 a week in a jar and then donates it to a local group to help pay a teacher's salary in East Timor. I have copied the idea and set up my own piggy bank in the kitchen to put change in from when I get back from doing my shopping, for the same purpose (actually mine is my biodiversity fund hopefully for tiger and orang utan habitat projects).

A friend up here has made friends with her neighbor across the road who is in her 80's, and goes over regularly to watch Bold and the Beautiful and have cups of tea - to check in on her but also to eat the occasional chocolate ecclair and tell stories and have a laugh.

Stan who lives upstairs from me vacuums alll the hallways of our apartment building and even swings the washing line around so that my clothes would be in sun rather than shade! How's that for service?? :)

Exciting Bathurst bus trips a go go

Went to Bathurst by train then bus on Friday night - very exciting impromptu adventure, packed my pj's, took a thermos of milky chai, grabbed some books and off I went. I was staying at a nun's house (she was away and they'd run out of accomodation so were housing us with the Sisters). Nun's house very tidy - very very tidy. Apparently cleanliness is next to Godliness afterall. Could not help strange vouyeristic fascination with what kind of homewares / cutlery / paintings a nun would choose for her home. Had a bath and read my book will way later than I should have, slept like a log, woke up early to yapping dog in adjacent yard. Would not stop barking, I felt less than charitable towards it at times, despite many calm home furnishings.

Participated in a workshop on Saturday on deep ecology using Joanna Macy's techniques, being held at the Bathurst Mercy and Justice Centre. The Centre is run by the Sisters of Mercy, noteably Pat Linneane, the workshop was being delivered by Ruth Rosenheck from the Rainforest Info Centre in Lismore.

Deep Ecology, for those not familiar with the term, is a school of environmental philosophy. The term 'deep ecology' was coined by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess and essentially says (according to me) that all of the thinking of modern western humans that says that humanity is seperate from the rest of the world - from other species, from the planet's function as a whole - is fundamentally flawed. In many ways deep ecology is more like a spiritual understanding than an intellectual one, and in that sense has to be felt, not just understood, although the disciplines of quantum physics, ecology and systems thinking have contributed to the arguments of deep ecology. Buddhism and other nature based religions also overlap with many of the tenets of deep ecology. It is really just a modern phrasing of a set of ideas that have been around since the dawn of humanity - and are represented in all in tact indigenous communities - but have been uniquely and devestatingly lost from parlance of modern western people (living in 'Industrial Growth Economies').

Ideas that stem from this understanding may include the need for cooperation rather than competition (we are all in it together!), a rejection of material acquisition as a benchmark of human development (on both the individual and societal scale), of respecting our place in a complex system that has value in and of itself, realising that the system is far more complex than we can get our heads around, that we should try to live within it not dominate and control it, and far more than I can jot down here! The implications are that any action we take to repair damage to the world that comes from within this mindset of seperateness, is doomed to fail.

A good day but a motley crew, at very different places in our thinking on the themes we were exploring. That said there was also a lot of commonality and in many ways I am especially in awe of people who are willing to discard convention and do some risky (as in personally exposing, not as in unsafe) exercises in a group setting, especially if they are coming fresh to this kind of group interraction/discussion themes. It was actually good doing the exercises after having read them explained for facilitators recently in Joanna Macy & Molly Brown's book 'Coming back to Life - Practices to reconnect our lives, our world' (1988), meant I knew what to expect, meant I didn't feel silly doing the despair and empowerment work and expressing feelings. I did find it strange that as per the last workshop I did on change and connection (with a different group, slightly different topic) I made everyone laugh when I was describing my experience in one of the solo exercises. Hmmm. Am I the class clown? I wasn't playing for laughs; it was nice though, nice to unite people in well intentioned humour in the midst of serious pondering. Perhaps my analytical approach to my own inner work sounds suitably neurotic to help break the tension. Or maybe it's funny to be so honest.

Quite a few nuns attended, I got a lift back with a Sister from another order from Southern Sydney. We have rip roaring conversation about globalisation, aid, corruption, values and spiritual life in the west. I have so much respect for these self contained women who have devoted their lives to faith in the good in us all and learning and service.

Today was... open brown-eyed eager face of a weathered, worldly facilitator with a beanie, an Indian shawl and one lopped finger. Her brown skin spoke of an outdoor life that I too could love. It was my fascination with and gentle interregation of these plain clothed nuns who seem like a particular breed of self-possessed woman soft, round and becardiganed, peering through spectacles, or tall and well spoken, politically savvy no-nonsense, archly genderless, like a stern nobleman/woman scholar.

Rilke wouldn't write a crap speech like that

Thankyou to miss mango and Lord Fontelroy for a lovely surprise package - Rilke! how perfect! And in german too - many thanks. I am enjoying the company of an old friend who has paid a surprise visit on her way back from a uni out in the sticks to stay a few nights. Curry and life chats on the cards tonight. Loving my brama pyjama virtue cards by the way. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Pack of cards, each one with a virtue on them - shuffle at random, pick a card, remember to act out that virtue for the day. yes, kindness, that's right. oops, responsible, that's what I was forgetting... "I am...' etc. Started doing virtue spreads ala tarot, suspect I may need to get out more. Speaking of which, have a band (not)date for a few weeks - friend of a friend in a local band. Had a funny staff meeting today - in a cinema! All staff invited, it was like a strange school assembly. In fact one of the managers who presented was very second speaker year 9 debating if you know what I mean. The rising intonation at the end of sentences that as far as I could figure were not questions, the bad bad really bad quotes delivered like a cat drops a dead mouse at your foot - proud, but for no good reason you can share. He was abysmal, I wanted to take him under my wing and give him public speaking coaching. Poor goofy middle aged middle manager trying to be interesting and asking skin crawlingly low pitched rhetorical questions as if they would pepper his talk with interest. But no, very little interest, very many badly delivered lines. Am I going on? Trust me, it was a killer. Highlight of staff meeting was giggling with classmate sitting next to me as we commentated the action. Loved the guy who would not stop talking but couldn't quite grasp the idea of questions. Very hard to give answers to rambling stream of con.

Weeell, it's another exquisite blue sky day up here. Found it hard to get to work on time as there was coffee and good conversation to be had at home. Oh well, cheered myself up by wearing my red hat for the first time since making it (only took me 3 weeks!!) and had a few smiles and a woman at work tell me "Only someone like you could get away with wearing that.." Which I laughed at and teased her to explain just exactly what 'someone like me' was. Some very good news is that I've had a resurgence in interest in my project (my own interest that is) and could quite easily play with it for the next few months. It could become a thesis really,or a text book. PIty that's not what I'm, meant to be writing and I'm meant to be finished this week!!
Clearlt that isn't going to happen as I'm taking tomorrow off to go play in caves and hopefully do a walk or two. Keen to drink coffee and gallery hop this arvo, may take an early minute. Looking forward to some birthday cake cooking tonight and possibly some felt making.

Oh it has been such a long time since I blogged. Mea culpa. I enjoy reading all of yours so I suppose I should be fair and provide some snippets of thoughts out into cyber space as well? A lot has been going on in my little corner of the world - a burst of creative output (yes including *that* essay that skidded right of the rails and went for its own peaceful wander through the country side!), social activity and domestic chores (which really are no chore at all).

A quick note on mass exodus.... Is it something in the stars? People have been up and leaving, wandering the far reaches of the earth. A friend flew to Hawaii, his housemate got flown to ‘honkers’, another friend of his is going to Paris to live, a friend of a friend has left for life of rugged outdoorsy adventure in a small coastal town in the UK, two urbanites are off to Japan and China for hols, another mate is in Mongolia braving the wild wind swept steppes, two friends have up and left for undisclosed multiple warm locations for a wonderfuly leisurely undisclosed period of time, two other friends are in similar warm places for a briefer spell debating the joys of eating small furry pets, my nearest and dearest kin just came south to leave the warmth and share some winter in my town, two friends and their canary are traveling oz in their kombie but currently taking a pitt stop in my spare room. Wanderlust and all that.

The kombi kids have great tales of adventure in the land of Oz, with farms and open roads and mining towns, seeing wildlife and having a wild life. I am living vicaroiusly, natch. Lovely to have house guests, even if I am admittedly somewhat introverted / territorial / unused to company. I love the chaos and clutter and life and love of people being around, the little acts of generosity, the stories shared, the accidental confessionals, the hellos and goodbyes and see you soons. And it's even getting me out at night! Last night I was treated to a home cooked meal in my own kitchen, beautiful home baked bread and vegies slow raosted, we did a pub crawl of two and ended up watching accoustic locals sing their earnest hearts out and shared gory stories of hospital / paramedic work lives, today the gals chatted with Buddhist nuns and hung out doing holidayish things while I typed for my dinner in the world of laminex and wished I was free to go bushwalking and read in the sun. Maybe Friday...