Lynn Wilson Astrology

“Our search for a future that works keeps spiraling back to an ancient connection between ourselves and the earth, an interconnectedness that ancient cultures have never abandoned.” Helena Norberg Hodge

Ancient cultures, including the Hopi and Mayan cultures have predicted what many have seen as the “end of the world.” New Age types have seen this time as the Aquarian Age, and fundamentalist Christians have referred to the “end times.” In previous newsletters I have addressed the alternative perspective that we are in a time of change in frequencies, when the world as we know it is becoming more malleable, more open to change; a time when we need to be very conscious of the thought and speech patterns we are creating. In current discussions taking place in the public arena I see these changes being dealt with in a somewhat superficial way: our first mixed-race president, attempts to prop up institutions that are failing, awakening to the obvious evidence of global warming. However, there is something potentially far more powerful simmering below the surface that provides an opportunity for more fundamental, and necessary change.

Western society has a tendency to deal with symptoms, rather than causes. The medical approach to cancer is a classic example. We have a cancer epidemic, caused by pollutants in our water, our food, our air. Yet the western approach is to add more drugs to the body to arrest the symptoms rather than to deal with the causative issues. Pharmaceutical companies are making huge profits, and the drugs they are peddling are being excreted right back into our water, air and food supplies, creating more mutations/cancers. Global warming is another example. Now that we have had almost ten years of record setting heat, disappearing glaciers, and extreme weather patterns even the naysayers are acknowledging we may need to reduce global warming levels. As a result we will start supporting green energy initiatives, which is a wonderful thing. However, these symptomatic approaches do not address the underlying issue.

We need to address the insanity of assuming that the profit motive is a natural way of life. In indigenous cultures, as referred to in Norberg-Hodge’s quote, there is no concept of profit motive, no measurement of GNP, no desire for fueling the engines of consumption. Indigenous and Native cultures focus on the good of the whole. They rely on the process of consensus and balance. Western culture has been wonderful when it comes to technological advances but it’s time to bring the sense of expansion and development back into balance. With the unbridled greed and the willingness to “pave paradise” (Joni Mitchell) we have thrown our entire planet out of balance.

I remain a pragmatic optimist. I think the election of this current administration is evidence that people in this country are waking up to the fact that we need to focus on the good of the whole planet, rather than forcing our consumption-oriented lifestyle on other cultures. I am thrilled by the popularity of some of the current books that are bestsellers, in particular Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson. Mortenson points out that it costs $12/year to educate a child in Afghanistan or Pakistan. The cost of a single F-22 jet fighter is over $140 million. These jets are being used in air raids in Afghanistan that are killing civilians. If that $140 million/plane were invested in education in Afghanistan, Pakistan and all over the world we would not need jet fighters. We need to start asking who benefits from this expenditure of our tax dollars.

I have always said that when I “rule” the world, every child will spend one of their teen-age years in another culture. We would be done with war in one generation. It’s impossible to bomb, or try to convert, a people when you learn to respect their culture. The next article speaks to this in quoting Julia Ward Howe, a pacifist who created Mother’s Day with the hope of bringing peace to the world.

In honoring Mother’s Day this year let us consider how we might dedicate ourselves to the good of the whole, to our mother earth and her creatures, in the pursuit of peace for future generations.

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ORIGINS OF MOTHERS DAY Reprint The following article was sent by Network for Spiritual Progressives

Reaffirming Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Vision

Julia Ward Howe offered her Mother’s Day Proclamation to the world in 1870. Her dream was the establishment of an international Mothers’ Day Festival dedicated to the cause of nonviolent resolution of conflict and international solidarity among all women. Her pacifist consciousness had been provoked by the bloodshed of the Franco-Prussian War. Her activism was cultivated in the struggles for abolition of slavery and the quest for women’s suffrage. She had the proclamation translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Swedish, working for the establishment of Mother’s Day in concert with women internationally celebrating peace and women’s empowerment.

Howe died in 1910, four years before President Woodrow Wilson officially declared the day in 1914 in response to the burgeoning success of the movement she inspired. But Wilson avoided any mention of the thrust of Howe’s cause in his declaration, instead emphasizing only the nurturing “home and hearth” dimension of motherhood. He also spurned the internationalist concern that was central to Howe’s consciousness, distorting this into American nationalism. Howe’s central concerns, the universality of motherhood and its natural expression in anti-war sentiment, was excised from the official meaning of the day.

President Wilson proclaimed: “Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the said Joint Resolution, do hereby direct the government officials to display the United States flag on all government buildings and do invite the people of the United States to display the flag at their homes or other suitable places on the second Sunday in May as a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country.”

Compare this to Howe’s far more high minded vision, still so desperately needed in this suffering divided world. Here is the text of her 1870 Mother’s Day Proclamation, so prescient in its understanding, so courageous in its call, so plaintiff in its currency nearly a century and a half later.

Arise then…women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, For caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, Will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe our dishonor, Nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil At the summons of war, Let women now leave all that may be left of home For a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace… Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, But of God - In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask That a general congress of women without limit of nationality, May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient And the earliest period consistent with its objects, To promote the alliance of the different nationalities, The amicable settlement of international questions, The great and general interests of peace.

This is by Jonathan Klate who resides in Amherst, Massachusetts where he writes frequently about spirituality, compassionate politics, and the relationship between these two. Please feel welcome to forward.

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