Sangha of Auspicious Companions

June 24, 2021

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Lament for Syria: A Young Poet Looks Back

“I wrote about all my memories: how I woke up in the morning to my grandmother drinking coffee next to the jasmine tree listening to the music of the Lebanese singer Fairuz. I wrote about how my siblings and I walked to school with our neighbors and how we saw a boy smoking and then hiding the cigarette from his older brother.
I didn’t want Syria to be known just for its war. I wanted to communicate the colors, smells and complexion of my country and our customs. All of this stuck in my memory, and I realized how suddenly my life had been turned upside down and inside out since I left Syria. My message is simple; I want love and peace to prevail in my country and it to be free of war.” Amineh Abou Kerech’s poem ‘Lament for Syria’ was awarded United Kingdoms Betjeman Poetry Prize in 2017 when she was just thirteen. In February this year she shared the poem at a United Nations event focused on the trauma inflicted on children in times of conflict. Read her poignant poem, and learn more about her journey here. { read more }

Be The Change

What childhood memories do you carry of your own homeland? Take a moment to capture them on paper in stream of consciousness mode. Try not to overthink it and see what emerges.

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June 23, 2021

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The Frightfully Wondrous Experience of Being Here

Ra Avis didn’t call herself a writer till she was accused of the crime that would eventually result in 437 days of incarceration. In the four years between the accusation and the handcuffs, after a friendly push from her husband–a writer himself–she started a blog and named it Rarasaur (frightfully wondrous things happen here). It became a space for writing about love and grace and grief, and won many awards for being gentle-spoken and insistently hopeful. In May of 2015, she wrote a goodbye post on the blog, for the first time alluding to the case that had followed her around for years. She was in jail just a few days later… In May of 2016, with just a few months of a sentence left to serve, Ra’s beloved husband, Dave, passed away. Today, Ra works with Initiate Justice, a non-profit organization in California that fights to end mass incarceration by activating the power of the people directly impacted by it. People like her…She continues to write about love and grace and grief, and to touch the lives of friends and strangers alike with her realness– and radical capacity to care. { read more }

Be The Change

Join an Awakin Call this Saturday with Ra Avis. More details and RSVP info here. { more }

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June 22, 2021

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Donella Meadows: Dancing with Systems

“We can never fully understand our world, not in the way our reductionistic science has led us to expect. Our science itself, from quantum theory to the mathematics of chaos, leads us into irreducible uncertainty. For any objective other than the most trivial, we can’t optimize; we do’nt even know what to optimize. We cant keep track of everything. We can’t find a proper, sustainable relationship to nature, each other, or the institutions we create, if we try to do it from the role of omniscient conqueror. For those who stake their identity on the role of omniscient conqueror, the uncertainty exposed by systems thinking is hard to take. If you can’t understand, predict, and control, what is there to do?” Influential environmentalist, farmer and writer Donella Meadows explores this question in one of her many, thought-provoking pieces here. { read more }

Be The Change

Check out these Systems Thinking resources complied by the Donella Meadows Project. { more }

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June 21, 2021

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Listening to the Language of the Birds

“When bird language entered my life, I felt that a new sense had been grafted into me. Bird voices opened a fresh dimension of sensory experience. This expansion drew me into stories of my home in unexpected ways, revealing ecological rhythms and connections, stimulating my curiosity, and suffusing me with a sense of belonging. The practice of listening to other species is the original ‘augmented reality.’ In opening our minds to the language of species, we experience connection and meaning that far transcend anything offered by electronic simulacra.” David George Haskell shares five potent doorways into the language of the birds. { read more }

Be The Change

For more inspiration, read Haskell’s essay, “The Voices of Birds and the Language of Belonging.”

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June 20, 2021

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The Nightingale’s Song

“Living in England with a very strange secularity within our folk repertoire has allowed me to explore what a sacred spiritual form of practice might be with these birds and how they might enable a re-enchantment. I feel like nature is my spiritual leader in this respect and the nightingale is my imam at the top of that tower calling the prayer out.” In this interview, which weaves conversation, song, and the music of nightingales, folk singer Sam Lee shares more about his collaboration with nightingales. { read more }

Be The Change

Hear part of an extraordinary duet between a cellist and the nightingales that was broadcast in 1924 by BBC radio. { more }

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June 19, 2021

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The Wanting Memories Project

We have all lost someone we love and wondered how our lives could go on without them–without their touch, their encouragement and their wisdom. In this song, composer Ysaye Barnwell gives voice to our deepest longings to remember our departed loved ones and to find the strength to carry their deepest lessons into our lives now. “Songs have intention in themselves but when we sing together, we define who we are,” says Ysaye Barnwell, who is also a professor, an activist and a 30 year member of Sweet Honey in the Rock vocal ensemble. Her love of music has brought a diversity of people together to sing with the voice of community and helped them find the power to work for healing and social change in the world. { read more }

Be The Change

Recall your loved one’s favorite song and sing a line or two to remember them, then light a candle here to honor the memory. { more }

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June 18, 2021

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What Critically Ill Kids Can Teach Us

“In 2013, Shay Beider accompanied an anxious little boy into the office of Dr. Fayez Ghishan, the Physician in Chief and a pediatric gastroenterologist at Diamond Childrens Hospital in Tucson, Arizona. The boy was soon to undergo an endoscopy, an invasive scope to examine the digestive tract. Such procedures could be traumatic for children because they required an IV placement; nurses often had to chase children down the hall and administer a shot to sedate them. So Beider asked Dr. Ghishan if she might try Integrative Touch Therapy on the boy, one of the many services she was pioneering through the nonprofit organization she founded, Integrative Touch for Kids (ITK). Within minutes, the boy was calm. Nearly asleep, in fact. “Oh my God,” Dr. Ghishan remarked, “you need to do whatever you do for all of my patients!” { read more }

Be The Change

Join this Saturday’s Awakin Call with Shay Beider. RSVP info and more details here. { more }

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The Wanting Memories Project: A Celebration of Ysaye Barnwell

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