Laughter and (acidic!) humor can be healing...so here's something for fun as 2013 winds down, a hilarious review of the latest Hobbit flick:
http://writingexpedition.com/2013/12/26/backwoods-hobbit-love-and-you/
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Monday, December 16, 2013
We Are the Dog with Two Lost Eyes
We are the Dog with Two Lost Eyes
Where necklaces are burning tires
Strung to a Village End.
We are the Dog with Two Lost Eyes
A Crumpled Bicycle, shoeless feet,
The old man's head split like a coconut,
Offering to the street gods,
Clumped and bloodied.
Pan the temple elephant
From a Three-wheeler speeding by
Morning light shines through the animal's bath
Blessing the temple,
Say a prayer for us all.
An explosion of pain
births spirit wrapped
in blood and feces
fluids the smell
of the swamps of first life
Primordial.
Full of hope and trouble.
-
Where necklaces are burning tires
Strung to a Village End.
We are the Dog with Two Lost Eyes
A Crumpled Bicycle, shoeless feet,
The old man's head split like a coconut,
Offering to the street gods,
Clumped and bloodied.
Pan the temple elephant
From a Three-wheeler speeding by
Morning light shines through the animal's bath
Blessing the temple,
Say a prayer for us all.
An explosion of pain
births spirit wrapped
in blood and feces
fluids the smell
of the swamps of first life
Primordial.
Full of hope and trouble.
-
By Emilie Parry, 2003
*necklacing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necklacing
**When my nephew Aaron was 4 years old, he described an old blind dog he saw as "the dog with two lost eyes."
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Press Briefing of CIDSE/WCC/LWF and INEB/ICE Network (International Network of Engaged Buddhists/Inter-Religious Climate and Ecology Network)
VIDEO LINK to PRESS CONFERENCE ** VIDEO LINK TO PRESS CONFERENCE
Warsaw Climate Change Conference - November 2013
Press Briefing
Warsaw, Poland
22 November 2013
CIDSE and Lutheran World Federation:
Global Call for Fasting for Climate
Global Call for Fasting for Climate
In the press conference, I was honored to be asked to speak on behalf of INEB (the International Network of Engaged Buddhists) and ICE Network (Inter-Religious Network for Climate and Ecology) at the UNFCCC. COP 19 Warsaw.
Spirit and Climate: Change asks us to define ourselves through action, through intentions
Between Spirituality and Climate Change
By Emilie C. Parry
I believe that Climate Change is pressing upon us some great
existential questions. We are in the
midst of great upheaval, multiple and mass species extinctions, rising sea
levels swallowing countries whole, large swaths of formerly inhabitable land
left abandoned to the sun, tumultuous and unpredictable weather patterns
tossing us in its throws with intensity and frequency beyond previously known
scopes. People are dying, displaced and shattered, because climate change is
impacting us now.
I don’t believe this is a doomsday scenario, I don’t believe
the Gods and Goddesses must be angry and are reigning down their punishment
upon us. I do know that we humans have had a hand in making our planet sick,
tossing it out of balance. We have not lived in balance with the Earth and now
the Earth is rapidly changing because of us.
Already this change is affecting us, and the science of probabilities
and cause and effect tell us it is going to get worse before it gets better. We
will be changed with the earth. So the
existential questions asks us, “Who are we as humans on this planet? Who do we
wish to be? What values do we wish to
carry with us to shape and form our experiences as we walk through this change
together?” Loss, death, sweeping change is inevitable. How we guide this process and who we become
through it, that is up to us.
Without spirit, without meaning, why would it matter if
humanity and many species who share this planet us die out? To most of the world’s people, it does matter. We do matter. This life matters, as do all beings within
it. This is the realm of
spirituality, of religion, of faith and meaning. Across the world’s religions
large and small, from Buddhism to Christianity, Judaism to Hinduism, Islam and
the many Shamanic and animist peoples around the globe, we share scriptures, we
share teachings and we share a search for meaning. We collectively share faith-based and
spiritual values that honor our living planet and all beings upon. Commitment is renewed to protect and care for
our planet, and nature is symbolized across faith scripture, the Buddhavacana,
the Torah, the Koran, Shamanic oral storytelling, the Vedas and Upanishads:
from the Tree of Life to the Bodhi tree, cleansing waters, Jubilee, the dove
with the olive branch, the rhythms of the sun rising and setting, the first
rains and the bounties of harvest. We
as humanity honor our natural world, and we are committed to care and protect
it as we are a part of it and it is a part of us. Similarly, the basis of compassion, a sense
of social justice (liberation theology), and a span of faith practices, ask us
to care for and protect each other. As
many populations grow increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of changing and
extreme climates, the onus is upon us to act to protect others from harm, and
to walk together through suffering with our fellow living beings. As faith leaders and spiritual practitioners,
we must engage in education and outreach to our communities around climate
change, we must commit to activities to mitigation, biodiversity conservation,
and climate change adaptation. This responsibility is rooted in who we are and
who we claim we wish to be in the world. We cannot do other than engage.
“Asssuredly the creation of the heavens and the earth is
greater than the creation of humankind: Yet most people understand not.” –Holy
Qur’an 40:57
“As we live in the forest, we are respectful of the
environment. When we farm, we don’t disturb the trees. We maintain the watersheds around springs.
When we hunt, we never kill females.
When we need timber, we cut the branch, not the tree. We are rooted in these values, and we instill
them in our children. We live with the environment, not in
competition with it.” -- Veddha chief
Uruwarige Wannila Aththo (Sri Lanka)
Buddhism: In the Agamas Sutras, the Buddha said that the
planting of trees create shade for others and merit for oneself. In Section Five of the Vinyay-matkra-satra,
it reads, “A bhiksu who plants three kinds of trees in honor of the Triple Gem
– a fruit, a flowering tree, and a leafy tree—cultivates blessings and is not
committing wrong.” Planting trees not
only beautifies the environment, it is also a form of practice. Throughout
history, Buddhist temples and monasteries have followed the Buddha’s teachings
by planting trees, growing flowers and caring for the great earth.
Participants work on a Buddhist Mandala during the INEB, or International Network of Engaged Buddhists, 2012 conference: Inter-Religious Dialogue to Address the Human Drivers of Climate Change, and Biodiversity Conservation
Climate Change: Forcing a Re-frame on "Development" and "Emergencies"
These notes below come from a conversation with a new friend I met at the COP 19 in Warsaw. I thought it might be interesting to share more widely:
Re-thinking Development and Emergencies in the Context of Climate Change:
A New Era for Community-Centered Resilience
By Emilie Parry
The challenges we are facing with climate change are forcing
us, as a global humanitarian community, to shift away from externally applied
“silo” thinking which segregates approaches of development from disaster
response, a disaster recovery “phase,” and a rehabilitation “phase,” rolling in
again to another cycle of development until the next emergency arises. This current strategy does not view the
experiences through the lens of most climate-vulnerable communities with
whom/for whom these separated “specialists” purport to work, a lens that
necessitates a long view, with tools and capacities people must possess to not
only survive, but continue to work towards their own dreams, hopes, and needs
in the present and for their futures.
Climate resilience must rest within the resources, knowledge
and toolkits at the (most vulnerable) community and local civil society
level. People at the “front line” of
climate change impacts, and their living environments, must take center stage.
It is our job as international humanitarians to identify
spaces for exchanged learning, support and co-facilitated planning and
trainings of local civil society and climate-vulnerable communities. We are tasked to support and facilitate local
“know-how” and access to the panoply of resources which climate-vulnerable
folks must be able to navigate and utilize in order to cope with all that has
and will come their way.
If people are to be agents of their own destinies, and if as
a planet we truly hold up and wish to perpetuate our values of human and
environment rights, equity, dignity and respect, then we must evolve in our
attitudes, our systems and our collective approach to our broadening
experiences with climate change.
In my experiences working in development and humanitarian
response and recovery NGOs, it became clear to me that we were moving into a
perpetual crisis mode, forced to react constantly, without much time allowed
for thinking, processing, planning or collaborating with those people who knew
the most about their own environment and the capabilities, socio-political and
economic dynamics, and opportunities. It felt deeply wrong to me, and I have
been striving for truly sustainable strategies and relationships within these
reactionary times. We in the
humanitarian response community know that that there is much that is not
working in the way we operate. We also know that as climate change impact
increases, so will be amplified these gaps and failings in our systems and
strategies. It is time to step out of
the structures we inherited from the original extractive and hierarchical
masters. We must step away and walk towards new relationships and new ways of
listening and problem-solving together with each other. To form new systems and ways of working, we must genuinely approach this challenge and
opportunity with true respect, sitting down together with those people we call
our partners, and become true collaborators for resilience and the creation of
many and varied new paths.
Ban Ki Moon at the Warsaw 2013 COP 19 which I attended this November.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Of Suffering, Childbirth and NGOs: Death of No-longer-Useful Mentalities and Structures allows Birth of New Approaches and Attitudes (Doulas of the Humanitarian Field!)
This is an old blog I wrote in 2009, and just realized I never published:
To Alleviate Suffering
For all of us in this life, there will be moments of intense
suffering. We know this is inevitable.
We know we will all experience loss, heartbreak and decay, we will all
have to know change and we will all be asked to transform ourselves, again and
again. The question then is not whether or not people will suffer, it is how
they will experience their suffering, how they will walk through it and what
transformations will follow.
I’ve recently been asking friends, “What does your suffering
teach you about joy, compassion, love?" Their responses have moved me, and have also shown me an aspect of who
they are at this moment, what lessons they are learning for this phase of their
lives. (I admit I've found myself
learning many lessons over and over again, approaching the lesson from a
different angle or perspective each time until I finally get it.) For some in answering this question, there is a beautiful
lightness and joy in their words, reliving the memory of a personal revelation: “Personally, a lot! In my worst experiences of suffering, I found reserves of
love and especially compassion that I never would have imagined otherwise. The
trick is putting those lessons to work." For others suffering is still associated deeply with anger, rage, loss, pain, a sense of injustice and strife. "How could you link 'joy, compassion, love' with suffering?" they want to know.
I've been asking this question about suffering because I am interested in people's
perspectives on the role suffering plays in our lives, people from all cultures
and countries and experiences. How people respond to this question may bely where each person is in her or
his own cycle of suffering/loss/grief/recovery and healing, and how each person takes the lessons life has given us. Raising the question of suffering can draw out a person's current relationship with suffering itself. One friend has a lot of anger, and interprets "right and wrong," "good and
bad" rather rigidly, viewing the world in absolutes. Life has offered him struggles existing very much now in the muddled grey areas, he finds himself in a fog, confused and still angry. Perhaps he needs to sit in the fog for while, perhaps the lesson he is trying to work through is offering an opportunity to accept and be comfortable with the blurred complexities, with the unclear and unknown. Another friend, brilliant, intensely pensive and
introspective, has been coming to terms in recent years with addiction and how he
has coped with his own losses and blocked new joy and happiness from entering
his life. His current relationship to suffering has been about letting old suffering die, letting it go so that new life and new
I'm thinking a
lot about the idea of suffering and my work, and the approach of people in the NGO/humanitarian field at large, as well as the individual experiences of suffering or
encountering suffering [...or attempting to address/struggle against/fight
suffering with the flat, structured "hardware" of material life]. Our
most transformative moments may come when we stop struggling against suffering
and embrace it, experience the pain fully and release it. Our most
transformative moments in community may be when we walk through suffering
together and come out the other side.
I've been writing this book, my working title "The Reluctant Aid Worker: Striving
for Sustainability in Reactionary Times." For a while I've been focusing
on what sustainability is, how listening is essential for sustainability and
transformation, and how this could (but does not currently) translate into the current
systems we have for working towards sustainable development and disaster risk
management and sustainable recoveries. If I am not careful, I can catch myself deeply mired in the layers of structure and mis-functions , the rhetoric and games of my field. To invite clarity, I'm stepping back and looking inward, returning to some key human
experiences: struggle, suffering, joy, compassion, learning, love. I want to deconstruct my work in the NGO realm: I want to
break it all down to build it back up again in a way that makes sense as much
to my heart, my spirit, as it does to my mind.
--------
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
In childbirth,
hospital interventions often result in complications and increase child and
mother mortality. Can we trust the ability of the human body to do what it has
been meant to do for the ages? Can we trust that the processes of nature may
know more than we?
How are NGO and
IGO interventions like these westernized hospital interventions? Should we approach our work as institutions
more like a doula, or midwife approaches her work? The first premise of a doula
is that the mother and the mother’s body knows best, and knows more than the
doula. She serves as a guide, shares her knowledge and experiences of the
birthing process, connects the mother to resources and ensures her safety and
well-being. She walks through the birthing process with the mother, but does
not do it for her, and does not tell her that she knows better than the
mother’s body does. She is a partner, a guide, a transporter of the knowledge
of generations, a resource and support.
Much like the
western medical interventions and institutions (which treat pregnancy as a
disease), our non-governmental, development
and disaster funding institutions were modeled and solidified during an
era which rejected the knowledge of the ages, which sought to overtake and
control the natural systems rather than to work through them, and were
established for profit-based and structure/materially-based motives and values.
I’ve worked for a many NGOs (non-governmental organizations)
around the world whose “motto” or “mission” includes the phrase, “our goal is
to alleviate suffering.” These missions/mottos sound credible, altruistic, just and righteous…but
what does this mean in "real terms?" And should that be
our end goal? Can that be our end
goal? Suffering is inevitable for all of
us, to greater and lesser extents, and within suffering rests perhaps the
greatest gift for humanity.
A woman giving birth naturally with a midwife reaches a
height of pain that transforms into ecstasy, an interlocking of pleasure and
pain simultaneously, followed by, with the birth, enormous joy, and a
realization of one’s own potential, strength and capacity.
To walk into pain and experience it fully, rather than
fighting it, what gift exists there? What strength, power, and self-agency can be discovered when we together walk through suffering and pain, and come out on the other side with dignity and respect?
Why is it that when I am amidst great suffering, I often am
filled with the greatest sense of hope?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles
This city. Leaving this city. I feel everything and nothing at all. I am sad, I am not sad. I am not grieving a home. I walk the cracked and urine-splatted
concrete of Sunset, an orange globe sinking fat and swollen over the warm
greens and yellows of stucco box buildings.
I think, "This is California."
This is California wherever there is California, it is just louder here,
the colors warmer from the sun, the browns of the earth and dust thickening the
air. A jumble of houses crowding the
hills, fighting space and light with the fierce, determined trees and shrubs,
the true green of a neon city. Smells
reminiscent of Port-au-Prince slums, sights calling up corners of Mexico,
hillsides of Brazil, ghosts of Central America.
This is California. I am sad, I
am not sad. I am grieving a love. I am grieving the ache in my womb, the
yearning of my throat, the loss the speed the loss the struggle to gain to hold
to grab all as you feel it slipping away, gone.
I never held it. Never knew this
life.
This city.
Dec. 2004, Emilie Parry
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