Don’t know about you, but possibly the biggest thing that gets in the way of me accepting the ways of spirit is thinking too much. That is why I suggested in another place that maybe we make too much of what we think. Of what we understand. Of whether we would pass the test & get ’em all right.
In that sense, I think I’m a little like the Lone Ranger in this story. Well, maybe a lot like him:
The Lone Ranger and Tonto went camping in the desert. After they got their tent all set up, both men fell sound asleep.
Some hours later, Tonto wakes the Lone Ranger and says, “Kemo Sabe, look towards sky, what you see?”
The Lone Ranger replies, “I see millions of stars.”
“What that tell you?” asked Tonto.
The Lone Ranger ponders for a minute then says,
“Astronomically speaking, it tells me there are millions of galaxies.
“Time wise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three in the morning.
“Theologically, the Lord is all powerful and we are small and insignificant.
“Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What’s it tell YOU, Tonto?”
If there’s a thread that runs through The World According to Brother Ian, and you may have noticed this, it’s that almost everything I post here connects in one way or another to the Ten Things to Teach & Know.
Several folks have asked where this comes from, so if you like, I’ll tell you:
From Spirit.
It was about two years ago that I went to bed and asked my angels, guides, and ascended Masters and Mothers to let me know the Ten Most Important Things. Just ten, so I could remember them; important, so it wasn’t Hallmark-card trivial stuff; “to teach & know,” because it’s important for us to model & pass on to the next lot.
So, around two o’clock, it all just flooded in.
Now, this has happened before. Fairly regularly, I get my Next Big Song at 2am, and I’m certain I’ll remember it because it’s so awesome & catchy & brilliant. I may even write it down. When I check it in the morning it usually says something like, “Oh baby, we’re walkin’ the dog down by the firehouse and everything’s purple.” Or something. Not quite there, if you know what I mean.
Didn’t happen this time. I woke up around 2am, and there were the Ten Things. Interestingly, I thought, “Hey, I better write this down,” and reviewed the Ten bits in my head. I was amazed they were all there, so I reviewed them again. Then I decided to just go to sleep.
Amazingly, at 5:30am, when I woke up, it was all still there. So, I got up & typed it into the computer, and spent the day thinking, “Sure like this,” and using my overactive non-creative side of my brain, kept trying to edit or improve the list, but couldn’t, really.
Need a hand?
So, a couple of days later, I took the leap and added them to the masthead of this blog as one of the featured items, in a can’t-miss-it spot. You can see it up there.
And I noticed that sure enough, they were the theme that kept re-occurring in conversations, in things that happened around me, in the things that mattered that people seemed to care about. They were the glue.
Almost every problem someone had, one of the Ten Things (or several of them) served as a light to help shape a solution, an answer, or sometimes just an assurance that life would be easier if someone DID it.
The whole thing boils down to the first bit: Share & Heal. Think & feel about that for just a moment. If there’s anything or anyone around you that needs attention, needs fixing, needs love, think about whatever you do that makes the world better. It’s either some kind of sharing, some kind of healing, or some mix of both.
And it’s never one-way: If you share, things come back to you; if you heal folks, that’s part of your healing, too.
This, then, is my gift to you.
Let me know if it fits what’s going on with you & where you would like to go.
Loving the way you shine, dear heart –
Brother Ian
+++++++++++++
The Ten Things to Teach & Know
• Share & heal. It all boils down to that.
• The more things you own in the world, the poorer you are. Count your days & hours by the number of hugs, smiles & laughs.
• The world is limited in how many humans it can feed & support. We have too many, already.
• Looking for a good wrestling match? Tackle the places in your life where fear lives, and shine a light on it so it shrinks & disappears.
• Truth is self-evident.
• Those who have ears to hear, let them hear. You can take Speech 101 in college & Communications 101 at university….can you take Quiet Listening 101?
• We often hear, “Save the Planet.” Remember from whom.
• It’s not how much you know. It’s how much you live & love.
• Each day we’re here to learn & have fun. Carry on.
• It is good to say, “Thank you” as a habit & as a rule; even more, take the time to make each “thank you” a heart hug that can be shared with the eyes, the voice, and the heart.
It was in somebody’s purse in the living room, and I didn’t want to wake somebody to get up & get it & turn it off, because somebody was sleeping & apparently didn’t hear it. It had gone off at 6am (still night, here) the rest of the week. Today was Saturday & still night, a time for sleeping.
So here’s what I did: I listened to the sound of the over & over again chime of the ringtone. There were the notes, and the spaces between each note, and the highs and lows of its little melody.
I took a breath in, and released it when the little song ended, then took a new one in when it started again. Soon, I was breathing at the same speed & time as the little song, in rhythm with it.
As I lay there, I relaxed each time I released a breath, and with eyes closed, painted pictures of quiet and slow dancing in a field, set to the beat of a phone in a purse in a living room somewhere in Canada.
As the moments passed, the song pulled into the rear of the dream (or whatever it was), and the field’s smells and warmth crept to the front, along with the sweet feeling of movement in the open air. It was restful, and felt wonderful.
Beats me when the ringtone ended. I was back resting and asleep.
Where did I learn this yogic & transcendent exercise?
Knew you’d ask. So I’ll tell ya.
When I was twelve years old, my parents went to the hospital and came back with twins, who they installed in my room with two cribs and, well, me. Night after night, my job was to get up and make something for them to drink (I usually prepped the bottles beforehand to warm on the stove) & to change them. My traveling salesman father was away and my mom was still recovering from a difficult birth, so it fell to me to attend to them.
It never occurred to me to complain.
It was just my job and I didn’t know there was any other way. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you about.
The boys never woke up at the same time. One could yell his head off, with the other one angelically snoozing; when the first was fed & cleaned up, he’d sleep & sometimes cry himself to sleep, sometimes just go to sleep. Then the other would wake up a while later & we’d repeat the drill.
During this time, when the kids were still crying after I had done my job, I learned to sleep to the rhythm of their yelling. I’d match my breathing to their cries, and match my intake and release of breath with the start and end of each cry. After just a few days, I found that they would quiet down (that helped) as they learned I wasn’t coming to get them; this was my first exposure to operant conditioning. And I found I could find a place of rest & peace, even surrounded by the insistent and sometimes piercing squalls of two fairly determined babies.
I just had to give myself over to the rhythm & tide of the evening.
While this has served me well in other sleeping situations – bus stations, airports, parks during Canada Day, and more, even last night – I like to think it’s a good way to approach the ups & downs of other things around us, as well. Embracing the things around us as just a force of nature, as a repeating sound or to align to the feeling…it’s easier that way.
Got a moment for a song? This is “You Ask Me” which, while I wrote it years ago, seems new to me every time I get to sing it at a gig or event – I put it together with some pictures I took around the islands – let me know what you think! (And please share it! That would be great!)
I remember reading years ago that William Blake wrote, “Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.”
At first I had a gut feeling that he was wrong – people disagreeing with each other, fighting with each other – that’s the problem in the world. No progress there.
Then I started noticing that Blake was right – people (even me!) made things better when they would speak honestly & openly with each other, especially when they tell their friend what they most don’t want to hear…and give them (well, me) a chance to do things better. When I think about the people I consider the best friends in my life, they are the ones who tell me…what I don’t want to hear.
Here’s a dharma talk about this, with the three truths that shape this:
When the Buddha told Ananda that the entirety of the practice lies in having an admirable friend, he wasn’t saying something warm and reassuring about the compassion of others. He was pointing out three uncomfortable truths — about delusion and trust — that call for clear powers of judgment.
The first truth is that you can’t really trust yourself to see through your delusion on your own. When you’re deluded, you don’t know you’re deluded. You need some trustworthy outside help to point it out to you.
This is why, when the Buddha advised the Kalamas to know for themselves, one of the things he told them to know for themselves was how wise people would judge their behavior. When he advised his son, Rahula, to examine his own actions as he would his face in a mirror, he said that if Rahula saw that his actions had caused any harm, he should talk it over with a knowledgeable friend on the path. That way he could learn how to be open with others — and himself — about his mistakes, and at the same time tap into the knowledge that his friend had gained.
He wouldn’t have to keep reinventing the dharma wheel on his own.
So if you really want to become skillful in your thoughts, words, and deeds, you need a trustworthy friend or teacher to point out your blind spots. And because those spots are blindest around your unskillful habits, the primary duty of a trustworthy friend is to point out your faults — for only when you see your faults can you correct them; only when you correct them are you benefiting from your friend’s compassion in pointing them out.
Regard him as one who points out treasure, the wise one who seeing your faults rebukes you.
Stay with this sort of sage.
For the one who stays with a sage of this sort,
things get better, not worse.
In passing judgment on your faults, an admirable friend is like a trainer. Once, when a horse trainer came to see the Buddha, the Buddha asked him how he trained his horses. The trainer said that some horses responded to gentle training, others to harsh training, others required both harsh and gentle training, but if a horse didn’t respond to either type of training, he’d kill the horse to maintain the reputation of his teachers’ lineage. Then the trainer asked the Buddha how he trained his students, and the Buddha replied, “In the same way.”
Some students responded to gentle criticism, others to harsh criticism, others to a mixture of the two, but if a student didn’t respond to either type of criticism, he’d kill the student. This shocked the horse trainer, but then the Buddha explained what he meant by “killing”: He wouldn’t train the student any further, which essentially killed the student’s opportunity to grow in the practice.
Read the rest of the essay here (you’ll be glad you did):
I remember it well – my girlfriend & I were interviewing someone so we could live in his apartment complex. “Interviewing” means, of course, that he had all the questions.
What we noticed, though, was that we liked his questions.
Do you have parties very often? (Well, just potlucks. Is that what you mean?)
How loud do you play your music? (She said, “Ian’s a folk singer,” like that settled that.)
Do you have a job? (Well, between the two of us, five jobs. And she’s in school.)
Do you like Jackson Browne? (Yep, love him.)
What do you do if you have a problem with the people next door? (Go over & visit, preferably with chocolate chip cookies, and see what we can do to take the steam out of the deal.)
We were looking for a nice, quiet, studious, non-rowdy place, and it all sounded good.
He said, “I like your answers.” We said, “We like your questions.” And we all laughed & it all worked out just fine.
Sometimes you can tell by the questions, more than the answers, you’re in the place you belong. Let me know how that goes with you & for you & around you.
On the side of the pool in St Elmo, in Chattanooga, Tennessee where my mom does her swim. Photo by Ian Byington.
“Look out! It’s a deer!”
As I pulled around the corner in the wooded part, just outside of Nanaimo, BC, my friend’s words drew my eye to the crouching, then bounding doe who suddenly jumped from the side of the road in the dusk. I slowed, and just missed her flank as she bounced by.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure if you saw her,” she placed her hand on my arm as I downshifted.
“No, I’m glad you told me. I saw her, but what if I hadn’t? It’s good to have a warning, and an extra set of eyes. Keeps me from hitting things. No, I was gonna tell you thanks.”
Don’t you think that’s the way it works? Most of us don’t really like being told what to do. It makes us jump if someone just yells a warning, and sometimes it’s kinda annoying, because you can see it & don’t need the warning…but isn’t it nice, sometimes, when it keeps you out of a jam?
And there’s all kinds of things people warn us about.
“Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” It’s the intention & good will, isn’t it. I’ve never seen anyone call the exterminator when told this.
“Be careful.” Usually doesn’t mean I think you’re dangerous with a death wish. Usually means I hope you come back in one piece.
“Watch out…she’s in a bad mood.” Depends on who it is. It may mean: “You need to be funnier than usual,” but usually it means, “Let me do the talking. You be quiet.” And the tiptoeing on eggshells begins.
“Do you like dogs?” Usually they ask as the dog plants her front two on your chest & licks your face. Or something. More of a post-warning, really, in that case.
What’s really useful, I think, is when the “warning” becomes inbred, built-in good sense, so that the next time you drive a road with lots of deer, or hang around a perpetually grumpy grandma, or you see someone with a jumpy dog, you have hardwired a useful, ready-to-use response.
But be sure & say so. If you see something, say so. It doesn’t help to be thinking it, and have it happen without your help. Say so. It’s a way to share & to heal. Often as not, being quiet, especially as the tune of “I really don’t want to bother them” plays in our head, really does bother folks.
In the 1880s, the Canadian government was committed to crossing the country with the transcontinental railroad (CPR, or Canadian Pacific Railroad), which was finished in 1885. This connected the east with the west, at a price of many immigrant workers’ lives, much money in rushing the project, and occasional questionable assaults on First Nations’ rights and claims. Still, it was completed.
In the 1950s, US President Eisenhower proposed that country’s interstate highway system, linking the widespread land of seas & mountains & prairies with easy movement, similar to what the CPR had opened up 70 years earlier. Anyone who has travelled by car in the States knows how easy it is to get around, state-to-state, because of this.
In the spirit of that easy flow, Al Gore coined the expression “information superhighway” in the early 1990s for what has become the modern Internet. One more highway, one more way to connect people. You know how that one turned out.
So…the question I have:
If you had the resources & the political will (as these three projects did) to build the connections in you, what would you do? So often, we can conceptualize railroads & highways & connected computers, but can we begin scheming to connect the parts of our hearts, of our spirit, of the way we love, so that we are a whole, working together?
This is more of a challenge, partly because it takes a lot of work sometimes, and we are often motivated by the payoff. What’s the payoff here?
An open heart, an inspired soul, and the capacity to love, all of which make that other stuff look pretty trivial.
Way cooler than anything on the tube – did you see the sunset? Photo by Ian Byington….
I read the news today, oh boy….
Over the past week, I have continued my long-time thing of not having a television. Now, the interesting thing about not having a television is the great number of well-meaning friends who ask me, “Wow! How would you know if something important happens? What if they shot the president? Or war broke out? Or there was a cure for cancer? Or something?”
While I appreciate their concern, I can assure you I was filled in about all the details of what happened when President Reagan was shot in 1981, when the invasion of Iraq began in 1991 ( and the other time), and that when I visit my pals who have cancer, they keep me posted about whether there’s a cure for what they have. They would be the first to let me know.
A cure for what they have…maybe that’s what I hope for, for my brothers & sisters all over the US & Canada who watch lots of tv. What do they have?
Lots of fear about the way the world works.
Lots of opinions about problems, while missing many of the details related to the problems.
A sense that “entertainment” includes an awful lot of people pushing for happiness, usually from “looking good,” buying stuff, and getting into the perfect relationship.
Traffic reports.
A sense that the government has control of things.
A certain certitude that you need power (and guns) and strength to solve problems and protect yourself from all this stuff.
Wow. Well, I don’t believe I’m missing out on much, really.
Start now. 🙂
It feels like it makes tonnes more sense to discuss how to get a few more years out of our car with my son than to buy a new one (I’ve never seen a tv commercial with tips for making your car last longer). Or to sew up the gently used or maybe well-worn clothes you have, instead of buying new clothes; or worse, buying new stuff because it’s the latest “fashion.” And the worst: To watch so-called nature shows, instead of getting outside to walk in the park, hike on the trail, or go along the beach.
And…as for the things I don’t know because I don’t lock in on the CNN/Fox/ABC/CBS/NBC version of the world…what about the things they don’t have a clue of? The things about which they say, “That’s not news!”
About a quarter of the food in the USA is wasted each day, much of it simply thrown away. That, of course, is not news. It’s just leftover pizza & food that’s past its expiration date.
Some 25,000 to 27,000 people die every day from starvation, according to the UN. That’s not news.
That for every car wreck reported by the reporters, there are 150 million car drivers who didn’t hit anybody, and actually made sure they were careful. Not news, hey…
That millions of people are doing millions of little things to make the lives of people in their tribe a little better. There’s more power for change there, than in all the tanks & guns & missiles in the world.
That way more people are getting well, than are getting sick. And helping each other get well.
And…that the air outside needs to be breathed.
So, thanks for your concern about the television thing, but I think I’m doing all right.
And…if you were my kid, I’d give you a hug & see if you would come outside & play with me. Hope so.
Many of us don’t remember this, but a long time ago, we lived inside our mother’s wombs. We were tiny, living human beings. There were two hearts inside your mother’s body: her own heart and your heart. During this time your mother did everything for you; she breathed for you, ate for you, drink for you. You were linked to her through your umbilical cord.
Oxygen and food came to you through the umbilical cord, and you were safe and content inside of your mother. You were never too hot or too cold.
You were very comfortable. You rested on a soft cushion made of water. In China and Vietnam we call the womb the PALACE OF THE CHILD. You spent about nine months in the palace.
The nine months you spent in the womb were some of the most pleasant times of your life.
Then the day of your birth arrived. Everything felt different around you, and you were thrust into a new environment. You felt cold and hunger for the first time. Sounds were too loud; lights were too bright. For the first time, you felt afraid. This is original fear.
I have long thought that one of the great days of a kind of spiritual liberation for me was when, as a young teacher, I told a classroom of kids, “I don’t know.” It was great to discover I didn’t have to know, and didn’t have to try & find out everything…and in this, I became more of a student, and in the way it works, more of a teacher.
Here’s a holiday essay by Megan Edge about this – let me know what you think!
Megan Edge
Recently I have been in the energy of “I Don’t Know.” It’s a very interesting energy – at the same time both scary and liberating. Not Knowing has me feeling a bit like a boat without a rudder, as though I’m floating along without a firm plan.
The good thing about being in the Energy of Not Knowing is the ability to go with the flow. When there is no firm plan, I find it much easier to adjust to whatever comes my way, with no hooks into how something should be, in my own expectation of it.
Many of the people who come to see me are in this energy; they don’t Know something and so they come to me for clarity, solutions and answers. It might be “I don’t know what to do with my life.” Or “I don’t know how she feels about me.” Or “I don’t know if I should make that move or take that job offer.”
More often then not I will suggest they reframe their question into “I’d like to know what to do with my life.” Or “I’d like to know if she likes me or I should move or take that job.” By changing the way in which they ask the question they instantly change the way the information can come to them. By saying “I’d like to Know” they are letting the Universe know they are ready to hear the answers and to take guided action on those answers.
However, we aren’t always ready to hear the answers or do what is required of us to make those solutions become reality. So we sit in the energy of “I don’t know.”
What I am realizing, beyond the need to not judge ourselves harshly for Not Knowing something, is that “I don’t know” can be a very powerful place to be. There can be liberation in truthfully stating that we do not have all the answers and solutions just yet.
Sometimes being in the Not Knowing opens up space around us for many more possibilities to show up in our life then we would have seen in our conviction of Knowing.
What if you could get excited about Not Knowing – instead of feeling anxious or dumb or uncertain? What if there could be space in the Not Knowing to simply allow yourself to shrug your shoulders and say, “In this moment, I don’t know what is going to happen next! I don’t know if she likes me, I don’t know what I should do with my life and I don’t know if I should move or take that job.”
This acknowledgement could open up a world of possibilities and ways of thinking that have never occurred to you before this moment.
The need to Know reflects a need to be in control, which in and of itself is an Illusion – being in Control is not possible; being Responsible and Accountable is possible, but not being in Control. You release the Illusion of being in Control when you say “I don’t know” and allow this to be a good thing.
The need to Know also reflects a desire to orchestrate the Future. The Future is a nebulous place, hard to pin down in any moment and always in motion and flux.
We can certainly be Responsible and Accountable for the plans we make for the Future and we can affect our experience of the Future through our intention but we cannot control the Future. There are far to many variables. The point is to flow into and out of and around our experiences – not to control them.
This Holiday Season I encourage you to Not Know a few things, such as how someone else is going to behave or how Christmas dinner is going to turn out, or what gift you might receive. Allow your life to reveal itself to you as the best gift you can give to yourself and enjoy the possibilities that are presented.
I don’t Know what will happen when you do this but I think it could be good!
Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for 2015!
Love, Megan
On her website, Megan says: “I have always had an interest in the Metaphysical. As a child I constantly questioned the world around me, seeking answers that made sense to me. I considered my ‘Big Book of Fairy Tales’ to be my first textbook on the subject of the Metaphysical and Supernatural.
“As a child I would pore over the detailed and intricate pictures, always delighting in finding the hidden fairies and other woodland folks within its pages. This early fascination provided me with a sense of there being something more in the world around me.”
The autumn leaves, the autumn branches, the autumn mist all cover the floor of the woods at Neck Point outside of Nanaimo, BC…photo by Ian Byington
All year long.
That’s real Thanksgiving, hey – surrounding each kindness shared, each hug, each smile with a stranger with a quiet “thank you” each day, even each hour, each minute.
Let there be no doubt that Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday, if only because it’s one we all agree on. We can come together to share thanks, and to share the stories of all the things & events & people & animals & nature that we give thanks for each day, all year.
Whether you celebrated Thanksgiving last month in Canada, tomorrow in the States, or a moment ago because you are where you are, I hope, with you, that the celebration never ends.
Snuggling in, the way we do, flowering again, from within…(thanks to Tony at choosetherightwords)
One of my favourite poets (and yours), Galway Kinnell, passed away last week. It was great to hear what Liz Rosenberg, writing in the Boston Globe, said: “Kinnell is a poet of the rarest ability, the kind who comes once or twice in a generation, who can flesh out music, raise the spirits and break the heart.”
Here’s a little tip of the hat to him, with this posting of his poem, St. Francis & the Sow:
St. Francis & the Sow
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
Cameron, walking the trail on Mount Young, San Juan Island, WA, USA. Photo by Ian Byington.
Most of you know that the World According to Brother Ian features visionaries, prophets, wise women & some smart guys, and truth-tellers, with the hope that their words uplift (at least) and guide us in our efforts (even better) to create a better world.
(THAT’S what you do? Oh. – Reader response.)
In the spirit of this, it’s cool to come closer to home. My brother Pat‘s latest essay moved me enough to add it to your daily reading, here. He has a gift for sharing how nature matters, as you can see here.
He’s a lifelong environmental activist who gets things done, from Birmingham, Alabama. This has been re-printed in newspapers and magazines from Chicago to Albany to Seattle to Victoria, BC…bet you like this one:
Autumn comes to San Juan Island. Photo by Ian Byington.
“When are you going to take your family to Disney World?” Every fall, my cousin and I watch football games in his “man cave” that’s equipped with sports memorabilia, Xbox, a fully stocked bar and the crown jewel, an HD 70-inch television. As a lifelong southerner who loves college football, this is nirvana.
And for about five or six years, my cousin pops the Disney question.
You see, I have a 10-year-old daughter who’s never been to Disney World.
The window is closing fast.
A year or two ago, American Girl dolls traveled with us everywhere. Planning for a trip to the grandparents in Chattanooga was like organizing a busload of tourists. In our case, dolls and stuffed animals.
These days, fewer and fewer American Girls dolls are joining us, and my cousin, who has an older daughter, has warned me that the Disney-princesses are not going to be as appealing come this fall and spring.
Raser State Park, Washington, USA. Photo by Ian Byington.
I have nothing against Disney World or princesses, but this past summer my family decided to do something different. We celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act by visiting the Citico Creek Wilderness area in the Cherokee National Forest, near Tellico Plains, Tennessee.
We traded castles and mouse ears for waterfalls, salamanders and darters.
We hiked into the Citico Wilderness, ending up at Falls Branch Falls, a spectacular roaring 70-foot waterfall. Nurse logs, moss, mushrooms and wildflowers abound. We also snorkeled in the wilderness-fed Citico Creek, donning wetsuits, floating and exploring for hours in a rushing 3-foot clean and clear stream. I will never forget the moment my daughter grabbed my hand when she saw her first colorful darter – a moment of joy and discovery we would experience a hundred times that morning and afternoon.
For my entire family, the wilderness became our Magic Kingdom.
Disney World in Florida and the Wilderness Act are about the same age. The Wilderness Act passed in 1964; after several years of development. Disney World opened in 1971.
Both are uniquely American.
We all know the story of Disney, but many of us do not know America’s wilderness story.
Fifty years ago this year, Congress passed and President Lyndon Johnson signed into law The Wilderness Act of 1964. The act established the National Wilderness Preservation System and allowed Congress to permanently protect some of America’s most special and beautiful places as wilderness.
Today, there are 757 distinct wilderness areas located in 44 states and Puerto Rico, designated to preserve and protect wildlife and natural systems for hiking, camping, backpacking, picnicking, rock-climbing, hunting, fishing, kayaking and nature photography. These special places provide us clean air to breathe and clean water to drink.
Big Frog and Little Frog, Linville Gorge, Shining Rock, Cohutta, Sipsey and Shenandoah — these are the special names of just a few of our southern wildernesses.
And there is one key difference between Disney World and these wilderness areas. Disney is owned by shareholders and is a multinational corporation. We—all Americans—own the wilderness areas.
It’s all public land. It’s our treasure, our inheritance. We all have a stake in it. We are responsible for it, and future generations are counting on us to pass it down protected and preserved.
In the age of Facebook and social media, my cousin has seen pictures posted of my daughter standing beside waterfalls and big trees, in a wetsuit.
Pat and his daughter Whitney, in the magic of the wild.
He hasn’t mentioned Disney this fall in the “man cave.” But we’ve talked about our Magic Kingdom — America’s wilderness.
In fact, I’ve been saying, “When are you going to take your family to the wilderness?”
—————————————— Pat Byington is executive director of Wild South. He can be reached at pat@wildsouth.org. Learn more about Wild South at http://www.wildsouth.org.
When I was a young monk at a university in Tennessee in the States, I was required to take a class called Religion 101, perhaps because the school trained Anglican/Episcopal priests, perhaps because they saw I’d been to Roman Catholic schools & wanted to straighten me out, or perhaps for the best of reasons: it would be fun.
In class early on, we read things by a Protestant theologian named Paul Tillich, who knocked my cocksure sense of things around by insisting that a key component in the growth of faith was doubt.
Although the stories always include doubt – Peter denying he even knew Jesus, Francis coming back pretty confused from the Crusades, Gandhi’s uncertainties in South Africa, Luther & Calvin & others – it’s always seemed to me that there are many faces of doubt, and many aspects.
She’s clear, and she says things you & I were thinking already (remember that the Ten Things includes the notion: Truth is self-evident.) I look forward to hearing what you think & feel!
Julia Baird is an author, a journalist and a television presenter with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She is working on a biography of Queen Victoria. Here’s more about Julia.
People always say that, but there’s a little physics equation mixed in there.
I’m pretty sure you can’t take care of other folks any better than you take care of yourself. And you know it’s true – you see amazing people who take care of amazing numbers of people with amazing numbers of problems, in amazing ways, because they look after themselves well.
The little lesson of this is echoed every time a plane is about to take off, as the flight attendant reviews those air thingies that’ll come down if there’s an emergency. If you’re like me, if you were with your kid, the FIRST thing you would do is strap the oxygen thing on to the kid. Then you slump over for lack of oxygen, and the four year old laughs because they think you’re playing. “Wake up, Papa!”
It’s a key part of the equation, so you’ll have more to give.
– Brother Ian
Thought for the day…
"The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. " -- William Blake
About Brother Ian
Over the centuries, Brother Ian has been collecting stories & information & discourses for the purpose of elevating the human condition as needed, dissecting it when necessary, and building the case for hope.
In the spirit of noting that organized crime, organized baseball, organized labour, and organized religion tend to engender controversy & occasional discord, I promise to be neither organized or critical of those who are.
Don’t know about you, but possibly the biggest thing that gets in the way of me accepting the ways of spirit is thinking too much. That is why I suggested in another place that maybe we make too much of what we think. Of what we understand. Of whether we would pass the test & get ’em all right.
Over the centuries, Brother Ian has been collecting stories & information & discourses for the purpose of elevating the human condition as needed, dissecting it when necessary, and building the case for hope.