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"Honoring the Talents, Abilities and Uniqueness in Each of Us,
as Strengths
that can Benefit
All of Us"
"... because we have more in common as a world, than we have differences between nations."
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Sites:
-One World Flag
-Hyphenate Productions
-DoingIt!-- a journal of positive living
-Joan Clark's Palais Aromaetica
-Powerful Passionate Women for Peace
-New Civilizations Network
-PenMark Potions
-Rock and Roll Stories
Blogroll:
-Joan Clark's Palais Aromaetica
-Joan Clark on BoomerGirl.com
-Powerful Passionate Women for Peace
-Flemming Funch: Ming the Mechanic
-Rock and Roll Grandma on Boomergirl.com
Syndication:
 ![[Valid RSS]](http://www.newciv.org/pic/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
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 10 Apr 2008 @ 16:59
[excerpted from DoingIt!, August, 2006]
I told a friend a while back that I thought she was a living saint. And caught her before she told me I was crazy or tried to prove me wrong, and described the definition as I see it.
I have been seeing a lot of living saints these days. Joan is one on most days. I guess I am seeing them because I am looking for them. On any given day, for any given spell… you might be one. And I am doing my best to be one too. To me it boils down to a function of batting average. And it is for us only to try to extend our hitting streaks.
In my world I see us all as works in progress, and can basically assign a mental batting average to how well any of us might be hitting, as a percentage of how we are playing with others on this playing field in comparison to our potential at a given moment.
In professional baseball guys get paid millions for batting not much over .300—getting on base only 3 out of 10 times. And we, then, must be doing pretty good if we are getting things right 3 out of every 10 attempts, right? Would it be that we could be so lenient on ourselves.
More >
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 10 Apr 2008 @ 16:48
[excerpted from DoingIt!, July, 2006]
Right now
rampant and increasing anger, fear and uneasiness
is causing the "beast"
to stir.
In a secluded glen of old forest, where the hoot owl’s cry and the concept of time is muffled by a blanket of moss and diffused through an aura of magic, Merlin councils young Arthur on the spectre of… the dragon.
I must have seen and read as many versions of the tales of King Arthur in my life as anyone not currently role-playing or serving up oversized turkey legs to tourists at some Medieval Knights buffet attraction. And the mysterious concept of the dragon—everpresent, ethereal force—has always intrigued me as one of the legend’s most potent archetypes.
People within the lore are always working to understand or tame the dragon, or at least to work out a chivalrous gentleman’s agreement whereby the tiny hamlet is not in so much peril of being razed by the dragon’s breath. Yet while understanding it as a force to be reckoned with few within or outside of the yellowed pages of these stories have ever really gotten a handle on articulating what it is exactly.
Well I got a glimpse of the workings of the dragon this weekend, and feel it has immense relevance for us all at this time, for it is raising its ugly head—fueled off of the fearful energies of a good number of us—and only we have the power to calm it.
The dragon is a living, metamorphosing, waxing, waning force, alive by definition as is fire by most scientists’ pre-requisites of life. It is the collective consciousness on one level, and on another we are also able to disengage and observe and work from within it.
We are each part of it. Our emotions fuel it. More >
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 10 Apr 2008 @ 16:36
[excerpted from DoingIt!, July, 2006]
I have this image that pops in my mind of some of the people who just might have things— whatever things these might be— figured out.
I see a bunch of expansive European men.
By expansive I mean— in their generous bellies that they are extremely unconcerned about displaying… protruding as they do under, and sometimes out from under, white ribbed t-shirts and/or an over-layer of an unbuttoned silk floral print that frames said belly below, and perhaps some gold around the curly-haired chest hairthat waterfalls over said ribbed t-shirt above.
By expansive I mean in their laissez faire (“let do, let go, let pass”) attitude (regardless of actual nationality I believe they are all laissez faire, but you can correct me on this) as they sit spread-legged in wrought iron chairs, in front of cafes (and there are always sidewalk cafes where these men gather— which leads to a chicken-and-the-egg line of questioning that I sometimes allow my mind to entertain with respect to these said men and cafes).
Spread-legged and with feet firmly planted. Large feet. In dusty leather shoes long worn into comfort, and in no danger of being replaced… as these fellows always have among their kin… amazing European, laissez faire cobbler friends, able to re-sole without removing said shoe’s sense of everlasting familiarity (unlike those other kinds of shoe repair folks who give you back unrecognizable, new-feeling representations of cobblery). More >
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10 Apr 2008 @ 16:24
[excerpted from DoingIt!, June, 2006]
And it was as if I had crawled out of the desert, stumbled upon a pump from which to drink and had not the energy left to pump it.
But someone was there to pump for me.
And so I drank.
I drank.
I drank my fill. I rested. And was replenished.
With the energy to carry on again, I first happened to look over my shoulder.
Others were coming out of the desert, heading toward me… and the pump… and the life-giving water.
And so now it was I who pumped.
I stayed, in service, while they took their fill.
And all not only survived, but thrived.
***
Often we wish to help… to do… to be in service… before we have ourselves been replenished. This is not the way it was intended. More >
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   10 Apr 2008 @ 15:53
[excerpted from DoingIt!, June, 2006]
“I Can’t Stand It!”
Joan uses this saying sometimes when she is so excited about something that she is about to burst.
In receiving a great present or treat. Being in France. Being amidst flowers and beautiful smells and beauty in general. I see her rock and shake until she can’t contain the joy of a kid at Christmas… bottled and aged to perfection… and then, pop!, a giggling, “I can’t stannnd it!!”
This buzz is like medicine to me. The non-bitter kind which we have dedicated ourselves to releasing into the world in any and all ways that might reduce or counter the amount of spirit and soul-killing toxins ready to latch onto any one of us in a given moment. The spoonful of sugar that hopes to help the reality go down.
I get excited about things as well, but it is only when wound and keyed-up to that next level of exhilaration… that I realize how much broader my joy quotient could be stretched; how much stronger my own medicine could be.
Thankfully, the stars have aligned, and one of these special, thrill-inducing occasions (a month-long injection of rocket fuel for my soul) is before me now, as I am once again being enlivened by the World Cup! More >
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 10 Apr 2008 @ 15:34
[excerpted from DoingIt!, June, 2006]
I just watched the movie “The Family Stone” with Joan the other night. It contained an occurence that I find common in family relationship movies-- the Oddball Cathartic Episode (O.C.E. according to Bartholomew’s Dictionary of Made-up Medical Terms).
It seems, in film, conflict must rise and rise until only the O.C.E. must, indeed, ensue to relieve the pressure, and allow all to come to love and understand one another. In this case a much-anticipated frittata is dropped, and people slip and slide and basically come out on the receiving end of a good food fight, without having had to suffer the tendenitis that the cast’s out-of-shape throwing arms might have incurred.
Everyone laughs (all the harder on their empty stomachs), and floods, famine, pestilence and hurt feelings all evaporate. The Stone’s hearts now beat as one. The end.
My family being no less odd than the Stone’s... and life imitating art imitating life as it does... I have my own version of a warm fuzzy of an O.C.E. that my own family-- me as the brother, two sisters, brother-in-law, and our dad playing themselves-- experienced, and it went down like this. More >
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 10 Apr 2008 @ 01:20
[excerpted from DoingIt!, May, 2006]
We need to be for... more
than we are against.
May 1st. May Day. Traditionally a day of workers and the downtrodden of many cultures standing in unison against oppression and inequities of all kinds. A good day to be playing with the following concepts.
Earth Day. Martin Luther King Day. Bastille Day. Demonstrations, rallies, boycotts. Many days, many festivals, many protests… many occasions for the socially-conscious to show their support of the world and each other… by exposing that which they are against.
I have really been looking harder at current practices and ways of being in the world of causes and activism, how their effectiveness in many ways seems to be lagging, and how the well-intended and action-oriented seem to be chasing off a significant number of the like-minded. Of late, I have really felt myself leaving events organized by these well-intentioned ones with much heaviness, and fighting a sense of having less hope than that which I came in with. I support the ends of these, my people, but see that there is a disconnect between these and their means, that needs to be remedied here.
In seeking to create our shambhala, our place in the sun, our heaven on Earth, our peace… we need to remember to begin first with finding that peace within ourselves and bring that forward. More >
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 10 Apr 2008 @ 01:03
The Battle of the Lightworker: A Challenge to Continue Dodging Fear in a Fear-Filled World
[excerpted from DoingIt!, April, 2006]
Joan and I were talking one night recently—having one of those long, rambling talks that don’t necessarily end up where you think they would have based on where they started. Where neither is trying to be right and both come out with a new understanding and an entirely new perspective. Almost like an archaeological dig where the team knows there are some bones and fossils and shards present—without knowing what those might be or having any at-stakeness in what they might reveal-- and new knowledge of the past is achieved based on unearthing and piecing it all together.
We came up with what feels—deep within me—like an awareness of what goes on with us “lightworkers”—any who fall under a heading of maintaining a focus on possibility and betterment for the human race, the planet and beyond-- and why we, as a group, tend to feel the urgency to change for the better as swiftly as possible.
You can try this on by first remembering where you and/or others ever voiced something to the effect of—“I am doing everything I can to get it right this time… because I am not coming back into a body for another reincarnation.” Or something like that.
I have said this. I have felt it. I have had conversations with numerous others and overheard even more spiritual folk, workshop junkies, healers, etc., voice this motivation, this drive, to shed every degree of attachment and resistance, small living and karmic debt… from deep places of seeming exhaustion, having gone through countless lifetimes of what is absolutely no longer desired. Been there, done that. Bought the t-shirt.
Joan and I wound our way through a lot of backstreets and alleys of dialogue before she stumbled back on what I consider a main thoroughfare toward some degree of enlightenment on this subject when she began recounting her sense that…
…perhaps our urgency to get “there”, is based first on remembrances of where “there”—home—is; then on numerous recollections of times we were “almost there” and didn’t quite make it; on the disappointment inherent in each round of having to begin again at square one, like a kid on a limited allowance having to drop another quarter in a pinball game upon the flashing red of another “game over”. All of those accumulated points and tokens… gone. Back to level one. Dejection. More >
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 10 Apr 2008 @ 00:40
[excerpted from DoingIt!, March, 2006]
“We teach… what we most need to learn.” This concept was brought up again in my life a few months ago by a dear friend and brother, and it has really been working on me. As such, a lot of corollaries of this tenet have been presenting themselves as layers and layers of its wisdom unfold.
Where I believe I am in possession of enough life wisdom and experience, and am of a mind to drop breadcrumbs along the paths of others as they have been left for me… I often seek moments and openings where something I believe I know might help another.
I feel I do a decent job at crafting these toasted gluten cubes positively, and work to deliver them without causing the other to feel accused, judged or nauseous [I season lightly and bake at 425 degrees for 15-20 minutes]. “Speak to the highest in another and that is what will respond” was the lesson of another teacher I long ago took to heart.
But of late I have gotten a glimpse of another style of my intentionality where others are concerned: What if I take all those things I want to say… and don’t say them? More >
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 8 Apr 2008 @ 17:54
[excerpted from DoingIt!, November, 2005]
More and more I am looking into eyes that I recognize—familiar, diverse, joyous faces, notes from a distant (but yet not so) past, singing along with the words of tunes I’ve never heard before, stepping and swaying together through time that expands and contracts like the bellows of an accordion, always on the syncopated beat, playing my part, in cadence, on the instrument that is me.
More and more I sense the unseen Conductor carrying us like marionettes suspended from the tip of the baton, and leaving clues to follow, hiding there in the silent rests between phrases.
I see the Trickster behind the tune’s temptation, Pan behind the pain of the prelude, and feel refreshing cool counterpoint seeping through stanzas previously perceived as simmering over intense heat. More >
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An International Symbol of Diversity.
A "Bigger" Flag to Fly.
Since 1996.
Here you will find
postings from
the One World Flag
website and
articles excerpted from
DoingIt!--
a journal of positive living...
... each aimed at raising
the World Joy Quotient
one way or another.
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