branches up, roots down

“There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible" Atticus Finch It lives close by. For the few, it’s kept at bay for a lifetime. For most of us, there is at least one close encounter and many near misses. For all of us, from birth to death, it lurks within our peripheral vision, with its ubiquitous threat. Violence. I grew up in household where it seemed to explode out of nowhere, rocking the house and shaking me to the core. This was during the decade where it also came through the television in relentless waves. At seven I witnessed my President’s killer shot dead in real time in black and white. My generation grew up with that hopeless little screen pulsing it to us directly, uncensored and unfiltered. As an adult, my body has felt its impact only when I’ve faced it down. Taking action against it often has meant putting myself in its way and wake. I’ve been shoved, hit, choked, and gassed as a result ...

Last night, just after sunset, as the newly full moon began to glow, my friend Jeremy Paster crossed over. Crows surrounded the house a half hour or so before, cawing and calling out. I have no doubt they assisted in his spirit finding wings to leave. Jeremy had been battling cancer for the last year and a half with all the loving energy any person could summon. I continue to have trouble with the whole "warrior" term, feeling uncomfortable with the war part that it invokes and I find myself struggling to find the right term to describe my friend. Jeremy was fiercely gentle, sturdily peaceful, and stalwart in summoning compassion in the hardest of circumstances. I met Jeremy in the course of organizing for the action in Seattle around the WTO. In the maelstorm that Seattle became, Jeremy was a touchstone of calmness. Before being diagnosed with cancer, he had worked on many, many, many fronts imagining and taking action to create a world where love is the law. He ran me...

In many ways, I’m still recovering from the party that was held here last Saturday night. It turned out, as the best parties usually are, to be a bigger piece of magic than expected. It was a party for prana , a party for the life force, and had a silent auction as a component, raising money for my friend Jeremy, who wants to try some experimental treatments for his cancer. I live in a huge Victorian with two large flats, the other being owned and occupied by my friend Ilyse. Like Jeremy, she’s worked for an assortment of organizations geared around envisioning and transforming bad things into good things..or at least sustainable things. At the moment, she works for MoveOn . We filled our flats with flowers and greenery, and we both put huge cauldrons on our house altars, which called to be filled with green. Money, that is. Our goal was to raise $3000. At the end of the party the cauldrons held $10,000, with another $3000 said to be still coming. Thirteen thousand dollars!...