Many years ago I was embroiled in a very complex legal battle with a landlord. A big part of the challenge for me was that both the landlord and the partner I was living with at the time had been trained as lawyers, and I was quite alienated from the language and mindset of the interactions. I was female, inexperienced in landlord disputes, and with zero knowledge of the law. My partner, in addition to being a lawyer, was also male and had won a lawsuit against a previous landlord. In strategizing how to respond, we both loved the idea of challenging the power structure inherent in these differences. In our conversation, we came to a creative conclusion that we would both gain a lot of learning and stretching if we entrusted the process to me.

And then I called a meeting to discuss our options and next steps. Right away, my partner corrected my strategy and ideas several times within the first few minutes, and I became so overwhelmed and frustrated that I gave up. To his huge credit, he didn’t accept my resignation, and pushed me to engage further, so we could learn and understand what was going on. As my sense of defeat started to melt, I learned a profound lesson about power: if I was going to be empowered and entrusted, my partner would have to be willing for things to not happen the way he thought was the only right way to do it. He could not both hold the power and give it to me at the same time. He stepped back, followed me, and soon started enjoying the process. Eventually, I led us to a successful mediated outcome.

When I first heard that Gandhi was viewed as “the enemy” by many Dalits in India (formerly called “untouchables”), I was dumbfounded. How and why could Gandhi be seen as having betrayed the Dalits when he opposed untouchability even in the face of active discomfort on the part of close associates?

Last month, while I was in India teaching Nonviolent Communication to 120 people, including a significant number of Dalits, I had the opportunity to explore this question further. During a session called “Gandhian Principles for Everyday Living,” a topic about which I have written at length, one of the 60 people present expressed anguish, pain and anger towards Gandhi. He was a Buddhist, like many other Dalits who had chosen to follow the Dalit leader Dr. B. R. Ambedkar in leaving behind centuries of mistreatment under Hinduism.

“I will do everything in my power to resolve every conflict, however small.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

I think I am not alone in nursing the fantasy that if I only got the “right” people in some “right” configuration, we would essentially have no significant conflict. Of course I know better. From personal relationships to organizations, conflict is an integral part of life. Still, when conflict arises, especially for the first time in any particular grouping, I recognize in myself and know in others a kind of disappointment, a loss of some hope that maybe this time we can have it be different, perfect.

I think about these things a lot. I am blessed to have some very few relationships which are, essentially, conflict-free. What makes it possible, I keep wondering, and why is it not replicable in other instances? Is there something present in these relationships that’s missing in other places? So far, I’ve identified two main ingredients for this magic. One I call the assumption of innocence, which is about a fundamental, implicit trust of each other. In these unique relationships, when one of us does something the other doesn’t like, we nonetheless trust each other’s basic care; we assume the best about each other’s intentions. The second ingredient is that when conflicts do arise, we attend to them. The two aspects reinforce each other. As we get to understand fully what the situation meant to each of us, we get to know ourselves and each other better, and the level of trust between us increases. At the same time, the assumption of innocence makes it easier to engage with each other when in conflict.

I landed in Delhi on Friday morning, Jan 13th. By noon I was already in love with India. By the time I left 3 weeks later, I was committed to going back to learn more about life, to offer, humbly, what I have learned about human relationships and systems, and to nurture relationships that have become significant in a matter of days.

Except for a small minority of affluent city dwellers, people in India don’t have access to the amenities we have come to take for granted in North America. I was only in one place that had a shower with running hot water. The streets, even in large cities I was at, were only partially paved, and partially covered sewer trenches were a common sight. The hotel I stayed in for the first few days did all its business on big handwritten ledgers. Tap water is unsafe to drink. A bank advertising itself as “international” in a major metropolitan area carries out most of its business manually. Many live in what here would be considered sub-standard housing. Shopping often takes place outdoors, without anything resembling sanitation. The kitchen that supplied food for five days to 135 people who attended the NVC convention for which I traveled to India didn’t have a refrigerator. Our breakout “rooms” were outdoors, on sandy ground. Traffic is unmanageable, and the sound of honking never stops. The trains are crowded and often filthy. One of the main halls in the university that Gandhi founded contains construction debris and is used by female students to change diapers. The absence of resources and infrastructure is painfully obvious.

A woman probably has about 450 egg cells available in her lifetime; in the U.S., perhaps one or two of those become children.

Human Egg Cell Gray's Anatomy

A man, of course, has millions and millions of sperm, but again, only a handful become children; even for overachievers, a couple hundred is high – and still a tiny percentage. Most of those potential lives go nowhere or at least nowhere we know of besides the clothes washer. So all of us here have won the big lottery. We held the winning ticket for a life on earth. Here we are. What should we do? A great question, and often surprisingly hard to answer.

Human spermatazoa

When my daughter was four, we watched a not-very-good video of Charlotte’s Web: mediocre graphics, unmemorable music. But one part stuck with me and gave me new thoughts.

© 2011 Eiren Caffall all rights reserved

A few days ago the image of a green ribbon came across my facebook news feed.

The text went like this:

The pink ribbons have always bugged me…the idea of putting the energy and effort of well-meaning citizens behind “the search for a cure for cancer” just irritates me, because let’s face it, we know what causes cancer, and therefore we can do better than cure it, we can prevent it! Maybe not 100%, but we can take it back to the modest rates that previous generations of human beings enjoyed…If you really want to make a difference in the war against cancer, forget about those ridiculous pink ribbons. Use the power of your wallet and your ballot to insist that the government step up and do its job in regulating the industrial agriculture sector.

It makes sense that people are focusing on ribbons in the wake of all the controversy about the Komen Foundation and Planned Parenthood. The quote was linked back to the original post on Common Dreams, and reading it through I find a lot to agree with here.

I’m like any good environmentalist, and I will go to the barricades to support folks who want to fight the causes of pollution and find the crazy subtle links between the toxic chemicals we’re hourly pouring into our ecosystem and the unintended consequences of disease, species collapse, mutation and global climate change that result from our little uncontrolled environmental experiments.

I want people to have their awareness of environmental collapse raised, I surely do. No denying the importance of that green ribbon.

But then, that ribbon could mean a whole lot of things. According to Wikipedia, a green ribbon can signify traumatic brain injury awareness, organ transplantation awareness, kidney cancer awareness.

Like the author of that Common Dreams post, ribbons bug me sometimes, too. I wonder, like Susan Niebur, a blogger who we lost last week to breast cancer, about the impact of “awareness” when we need cash for more research and more activism.

And I wonder about all the things that effect my life. How can I pick just one cause, and find the ribbon I’m supposed to wear to support it?

Illustration by Arthur Rackham, 1909

Children have been told horror stories for as long as storytelling has existed. Should a child become traumatized hearing a story like Hansel and Gretel, where the witch plans to throw the children into the oven to make a nice meal, parents can tell the child not to worry, “That’s just a fairy tale. Things like that don’t really happen.” But they do.

Self Portrait

Sometimes in the midst of the mundane or the profane of the day, I find myself musing about the meaning of it all. My friend Rev. Jim Burklo just sent along his latest musing, and while it doesn’t answer all the questions about life, the universe, and everything, it did bring a smile to my face and some peace to my morning. May it do some of the same for you too. Read on!

At first, the numbers were clear to me. There was the 1% of the population, and there were the 99%. The division was based on income and on assets. The 1% made 20.3% of the income in 2006, averaging $1,243,516. They owned 34.6% of total assets in 2007 and 42.7% of total financial assets. The 99% was everyone else. This picture, upsetting as it is, made some sense to me.

Then it got muddied.

Because the bottom salary of the 1% starts at $382,593. So, doesn’t that mean that some of the 99% actually make extremely comfortable income. Then are they still part of the 99%? Hmmm… Something in that picture doesn’t quite capture the depth of an experience of injustice and powerlessness that I read into the expression “We are the 99%.” So what to do? Is it really 99%, or is it only 90%?

A mosque in Dearborn, MI attended by members of the reality TV show, "All American Muslim." / Photo Courtesy of TLC

We are community leaders from the three Abrahamic faiths who don’t normally look to reality TV to teach lessons of faith and religious freedom. But TLC’s new show, All American Muslim, is doing just that. It’s also come under recent attack from Islamophobic extremists who seem to have forgotten the values on which this country was founded. Rather than tune out in protest, as Americans, it’s time to tune in.

Photo Courtesy of Len Radin

When our children were little and pressed their outsider noses against the lighted shop windows of Christmas, I decided we’d celebrate Hanukah. I wasn’t delighted that it commemorated a military event instead of “peace on earth,” but the children could join the season’s merry-making.

Also, the tale of Maccabean rebellion is embedded with legendry appealing to children. The rag-tag Maccabees’ incredible victory over a mighty state, the cleansing and rededication of the great Jerusalem temple, the radiant image of a one day oil-lamp, miraculously glowing for eight days. So, I plunged into candle-lit monorahs, dreidles, fried potato pancakes (latkes), small gifts, and a child’s Hanukah story.

Lowe’s recently pulled its advertising from the popular television show “All-American Muslim,” bowing to the pressure of Isalmophobes. It is unworthy of our business as Americans who care about the stories of all American religious communities.

We now need a new place to shop, as we approach the new year. Help us draft Home Depot to be the tolerant alternative!

We are asking Home Depot to buy the spots on “All-American Muslim” that Lowe’s used to purchase. If they do so, those who sign this petition commit to turning first to Home Depot as our home, appliance, and hardware store in 2012. We shop tolerantly — and want Home Depot to be our go-to store for religious freedom.

By signing this petition, you are showing that you want all religious communities in
American to have a free voice. You are exercising your freedom to shop at stores that further religious tolerance.

SIGN ON NOW! DRAFT HOME DEPOT AS THE STORE OF TOLERANCE IN 2012!

(I am back from a three-week hiatus. For the time being, I am not writing about the Occupy Movement, though I imagine I will return to this theme.)

In April, 2004, in the last week of her life, my former colleague Julie Greene participated, with my sister Inbal and with me, at one of our intensive residential retreats. We all listened for those few moments when she would wake up and speak to us from wherever she was. More than once, she repeated this one sentence which I still carry: “There is no reason to wait even one minute longer.”

I know very well about waiting, because it’s one of my coping mechanisms I acquired as a child. I learned to endure hardships by knowing they will end, and counting the minutes, or days, or even years at times. I learned to survive having no capacity to change circumstances, and in the process lost some of my sense of power to create change. I still, to this day, continue to wait, though less and less, in all aspects of my life. For a less stressful time in which I can finally shift an inner pattern, or the compatible people with whom I can connect, or the circumstances that will bring more ease into my life, or the perfect opportunity for making a difference. What would it mean to shift that habit completely and bring the future into the present?

When I remember Julie’s words and leave behind my habit of waiting, I sometimes experience a kind of glee, like a child that just discovered a new way to climb on the counter and get the goodies that were previously out of reach. This is a subversive act, because it means embracing my power, releasing the shackles of helplessness, becoming an agent in my life and beyond. It’s a way to move to another story, of living as if the future, previously a dream, is truly here, now.

Figure 1

HOBOS TO STREET PEOPLE: ARTIST’S RESPONSES TO HOMELESSNESS FROM THE NEW DEAL TO THE PRESENT
by Art Hazelwood
Freedom Voices, 2011

In 1939, the iconic American photographer Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) took and disseminated a photograph of a mother and her two children on the road in Siskiyou County, California (Figure 1). Like all of Lange’s Depression era images, this work reveals the powerful human pathos of poverty and homelessness. Viewers cannot fail to feel the agony and despair of a mother trying desperately to maintain her family in the midst of overwhelming economic catastrophe. Like hundreds of her photographs, this effort represents the essence of socially committed art, the result of a visual artist who used her creativity to call attention to the human face of social disruption and human suffering.

Art historians universally accept Lange as one of the masters of American photography, both for her outstanding artistic skills and for her profound empathy for the most marginalized members of society during the Great Depression. Her image is the first illustration in a new book entitled Hobos to Street People: Artists’ Responses to Homelessness from the Great Depression to the Present, written by socially conscious artist Art Hazelwood in conjunction with a traveling exhibition on homelessness art in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Occupy Oakland protesters at the Port of Oakland CC/Steve Rhodes

Tax policy may seem far from the passion of Occupy, but it is essential to this moral movement. We need to leverage this energy and engagement to start a national dialogue about the kind of society we want to live in, and how to get there. By reforming the capital gains tax, we will call upon the wealthiest Americans to pay more for essential economic stimulus and social programs.

At the same time that income equality is growing, states are slashing education and safety nets at unprecedented rates. This leaves the most vulnerable Americans without basic opportunities and protections. We need to channel more money to states to protect social services and reverse layoffs of public employees. We must invest in job training programs, particularly for high-growth sectors like health care workers and home weatherizers.

All of this requires money, and we need to ask the wealthiest Americans – who have benefited the most from the jobless recovery – to contribute more. Reforming taxes on capital gains, the profits from sales of stocks and other financial assets, will target the wealthiest without hurting the economy.

Creative Commons / JMozzolaa

On Monday night, November 14, 2011 the mayor of New York City ordered the police to evict the 500 or so overnight occupiers in Zuccotti Park. The eviction happened around 2 a.m. He did not tell them to leave within 72 hours. Or 48 hours. Or even by morning. He moved them out by force at 2 a.m. using surprise. In addition the police put the tents and tarps, many of the backpacks, computers, notebooks, sweatshirts and granola bars into a trash compactor and let the grind be heard throughout the park. As Rev. Robert Coleman of Riverside Church said, “I have the receipts for the 100 tents we bought. I’d like the city to repay my congregation for the destruction of our tents.” Sacred space may start with tents and have a middle stage in church buildings, even sanctuaries. Sacred space has no need of one place. It can occupy many, at the same time.

Consider the way in which too many Christians, Jews, and Muslims have imagined the city of Jerusalem as their privately or parochially owned sacred space. We speak often of a two state solution to the “problem” of Jerusalem. That political solution need not stop the sacralizing of space, the universality of the human urge to call one place “Ur” or original home.

The “Other Israel Film Festival” in Manhattan chose films that related the stories of minorities in Israel. These perspectives and backgrounds rarely receive attention in the popular media. “The Promise,” or at least the first part of a four-part series, is a dramatic historical-fiction that introduces Israel/Palestine and the conflict to foreigners of the land.

When the characters speak in Hebrew or Arabic there are no subtitles; just as there are no shortcuts to understanding the complex dynamics of Israel/Palestine. The audience is limited by their individual understandings of the local cultures, the histories, and yes, even the languages.

Many of us will be visiting with family over the coming holidays, starting this Thanksgiving. How can someone who supports the Occupy movement have a civil conversation with family members who may have a different view of things? How can you be prepared if someone else brings up the topic? I’d like to start the ideas flowing on this with a few thoughts here.

For such a discussion it’s vitally important to set realistic goals about what you want to accomplish. It’s probably impossible to change someone’s mind with a short conversation about facts if they have strong emotions about their beliefs. Don’t even try, this is not about winning debate points awarded by some imaginary judge. What is it about then? I’ll address that later.

Here’s some specific suggestions on what to do and what to avoid doing.

Amidst the contrasting tones and strikingly honest symbols in Bonner’s sculpture series called Exploring the Perpetrator, Bonner confronts the powerful forces that have threatened her spirit and health.

By exploring domination, as she calls it, Bonner has been able to find ways to survive her abusive past. She has found profound intersections between her own exploitation and that of our society. Like many before her, she has connected the personal with the political. Bonner invites us to not only recognize the perpetrator that controls our own well being, but also those forces that control our system.

Grass by Lorraine Bonner. Click on the image above to see more of her art.

To see more of Bonner’s work, visit the Tikkun Daily Art Gallery and visit the artist’s website.