The Perfect World, Astronomy, and The Great Turning August 2, 2009
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The Great Turning — written on August 2nd (but we went there much earlier!), by Nina Koevoets, 2009 mentee with Bay NVC.
It is an impossible task to write you about all the things I experience here, because I am simply too busy experiencing!
Now, the Fridays at Metta are always really interesting, but how to capture the last 4 weeks?! Last week we went to a ‘soup kitchen’ where poor people can get a meal for free. The people using this facility are immigrants, seniors, addicts, mentally sick people and veterans. Yes, veterans. We sat with one of them, who served in the Vietnam war. The other person next to us won the lottery and got addicted to drugs. We worked real hard and although most people appreciated that, but with some people you could see there difficult lives shining through. I really wanted to remember the talk we had in the morning, it was about affordable housing (1 bed with table for 600 dollar p/m!) and the stigmatization of poor people. How they are not treated with respect and this was therefore the key in interacting with the people. “You can make their day by just looking in their eyes and smiling!” said Fitz, who gave the introduction. “Something that seems trivial to us can mean a lot to another person.” I like to believe that! How will we not lose faith if we don’t believe that? We can’t assume that we are able as one single person to change the whole world big time. Maybe gradually and with help of lots of like minded people we can, but we should keep our goals attainable.
Anyway…. last Friday was a powerful day. We started off by imagining our perfect world. I was totally absorbed by my dream, no worries that this will never happen. I loovvee to dream! :-) Some people were worried by thoughts as ‘who am I to say what is a perfect world?’ or ‘this will never happen’, or ‘if the world would be perfect what would be my purpose in life?’ Well…. To answer I have: 1. My perfect world differs probably from yours, so in a perfect world everyone has their own surrounding that makes up their perfect world :-), 2. dream big and know what is within your possibilities, it is possible to change the world but not rapidly and not without the help of others, 3. My purpose would be to live in peace with others! As Pancho quoted “if we think the world is weak we want to help it, if we think the world is broken we want to fix it, if we see the world as whole we want to serve it.” So, let’s all serve! [my addition.] (more…)
A personal story from SMILE Friday! August 2, 2009
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Smiles -written on August 2nd (but we went there much earlier!), by Nina Koevoets, 2009 mentee with Bay NVC.
We had another fabulous Friday! We, the Metta mentees, went to the BART (metro) station in Oakland, equipped with candy, lemonade, quotes, a question spinning wheel, a huge smile poster, smile cards and table. It took a few minutes to get the good energy flowing, but when it did it gave us such a high! In just two hours I had some interesting chats and made people smile, by giving them short quotes. There were more thoughtful ones as ‘to open your mind is to open your heart’ and ‘be the change you want to see in the world,’ as well as more light ones such as ‘smile because you are amazing.’ Random people in the station were telling me that ‘nonviolence is compassion, while violence is fear.’ And we had thought that nonviolence was a bad word, because too many people would interpret it simply as ‘the absence of violence’! This answer made me thus very hopeful :-)!
Another men told me there was a paradigm shift. This is a growing awareness! We could already hear it in the wind for some time, wispering that we were slowly destroying our planet. Now the sea, rising with the melting ice, crashed down on us in a huge wave: the economy made such a downfall that we start wondering if our happines is in material things. Some of us can’t see this wave was not a normal one, not just an up and down in the economy. But it is. This man said nature always finds its balance. Now it tells us there is no balance, so we have to restore it. I see it the same way with violence. We are not even aware of how much violence we see around us! It is so normal for us, that we are lost in our own imbalance. And it is to the ones who did wake up to tell others. Right Audrey, Brandi, Candy Marie, Chris, Ketan, Leah, Matt, Michelle, Nick, Perla, Phoebe, Sachi, and Sadan? (more…)
