TIME FOR OUR POWER!

The Time For Our Power: Women Bringing Change to the World conference I attended in Asheville last weekend was spectacular! Speakers like Starhawk (a feminist and environmental activist who has been on the front lines of advocacy since the 60s) reminded us to keep plugging away. When consciousness about destroying the planet FINALLY shifts, it will be profound. When we direct our energy, investment and brilliance toward health and wellbeing for all living beings, no one will ever believe we could have ever been so blind!

For example, when apartheid fell in S. Africa, within a matter of weeks a cultural amnesia occurred, and people couldn't fathom that they had once felt it was THE ABSOLUTE RIGHT WAY TO LIVE. Suddenly the veil was ripped from their eyes.



Here are Julia Butterfly Hill (left, wearing black) and Starhawk singing & dancing at the close of the event. Julia is the activist who lived on a tiny platform 200 feet above the ground in the giant redwood tree, Luna, for 2 years & 8 days to protest the decimation of these ancient forests (now more than 97% plundered). She described her great pain at hearing the trees around her being destroyed by the logging companies-- but ultimately she prevailed and logging ceased in that part of the forest.

Her advice to us: "Know that it is painful to care, but we MUST care." Every intention and action for the wellbeing of the planet counts.

She also laughed that it's important not to be "Granol-ier than Thou." Ri-i-i-ght. What a great way to turn people off!


Photographer Phil Borges, commissioned by CARE to document third world people who have made a difference (bridgesweb.org) described his changing opinion of missionaries when he learned they'd taught headhunters in New Guinea that they no longer needed to kill a warrior from another tribe whenever one of their own warriors was killed. (They believed the other guy's head would help their deceased get into heaven). Nor did the women have to chop off a finger any longer when a male relative died. Think of all the fingers and heads spared by this slight shift in thinking!



Yes, it's possible. We can have peace in the valley, one day. Here's proof: my cousins' place in Burnsville,NC-- Sweet Hollow, home of Selena Glass & Metal.