We arrived just as the sun was setting over the rolling, snow-covered hills of southwestern Wisconsin, an auburn glow fading as the sun became masked by clouds rolling in from the west. My family, including my mom, passed through the doors of the red, 5,500 square foot, barn-like Farwell Hall of the Folklore Village, located just outside Dodgeville. We were here to usher in the holidays by celebrating Saint Lucia’s Day one day early (in Sweden, it’s held on December 13).

Greeted by Melissa Leef, our convivial host and guide for the afternoon’s Swedish Sankta Lucia program, my family planned on staying for their community potluck, a St. Lucia candlelight ceremony with a singing performance by costumed children, and an evening of dance (with the guidance of a dance instructor-caller) later that evening. The evening program turned out to be a blend of the traditional rural Wisconsin “house party” – for which we host at least once a year at our Inn Serendipity – and small town community gatherings common among church or other social groups.

With all the talk of sales, black Friday, Cyber Monday, and such, the program offered by the Folklore Village harkened to a time where the holidays we’re less about stuff and more about love, sharing, and community.

GASP!     WOOT! YES!

President Barack Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize today for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples“; as well as for his ongoing work to free the world of all nuclear weapons.

Water scarcity resulting from climate change is the number one issue the world will have to grapple with in the future, according to chief climate scientist and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri.

On the one hand, we will have more water around us with sea level rising. On the other hand, though, drought caused by climate change will leave possibly billions of people without clean water.

This will cause great health and global security issues. Most of these problems will be caused by water imbalances.

We live in a “global” world now. Corporate globalization is prevalent nearly everywhere. Travel is more common than ever before. We get news in our homes about anyplace in the world seconds after it happens. The internet allows us to connect with people all over the world. It allows us to stay in touch with people as we move all over the world as well — (a friend of mine is in Antarctica and he keeps in touch with people through Facebook everyday). We even have an international language! English is spoken (by at least some portions of the population) nearly everywhere you go.

BUT, what does it mean to be a “global citizen”?

This August PBS is airing “Playing for Change“, a multimedia effort which seeks to unite musicians from all over the globe to promote positive change and worldwide peace. Musicians and artists are also being brought together to perform and raise money to build art and music schools for communities in need. Here is a diverse group of international musicians performing a beautiful collaborative version of Bob Marley’s song “One

[...]

Out of the mouths of babes… Leave it to a group of children (Kids for Peace) to come up with this incredible, life-affirming, peace-spreading, goodness-sharing idea.

For one day — August 8, 2009 — children around the world are invited to perform simple, yet important, little acts of kindness.  Their goal this year is to have one million children participate in the Great Kindness Challenge.

I’m a bad daughter, as I haven’t gotten anything for my mother this year for Mother’s Day. The truth is I hate buying gifts, and I don’t have time to make anything. Of course, I have turned the responsibility over to my children to honor grandmother, but I did send her this video, which of course I had to watch first making myself Mother of the Year (on the same evening my daughter told me I was “extremely mean” for asking her to do her homework).

Mother’s Day originally began as a day of peace; it is not a Hallmark holiday.  MomsRising, an organization devoted “working to bring together millions of people who share a common concern about the need to build a more family-friendly America”, has created personal videos for Mother’s Day.  According to MomsRising, Americans will spend $16 billion this year on Mother’s Day celebrations!  That’s a lot of money to show Mom we care, and even though I have sent my mom her special video, I will probably still buy her some Dr. Hauschka.

On Saturday, I was fortunate to be in the presence of His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the Greek Theatre, on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley.  The event was sponsored by the American Himalayan Foundation, and we were told our attendance made it possible for this amazing organization to build another school in the region. I had suffered through a high fever all week and was not sure I could make the trip to see His Holiness, but through the hospitality and kindness of good friends, I made the trip.

My reaction to seeing the Dalai Lama reminded me of my first experience at the circus as a young child. I know this may seem like a strange analogy, but when faced with beauty, I cry.  When the elephants entered the circus tent, I cried as a child. I cried when they left.  My mother asked me why, and I said, “Elephants are beautiful.”  When the Dalai Lama came on stage at the Greek Theatre, I cried. When he left I cried.  His Holiness emodies everything that is beautiful in humans.

What is the source of equity?

The source of equity, I would argue, is believing that all people deserve the same. In actual fact, though, who believes that others deserve what they deserve? More often than not, people don’t believe that others deserve what they deserve. But, this comes from people who are not happy with what they have. People who want more believe they deserve more, even if they are already making 99 times more than the average man.

Who is happy for others to receive happiness, and to receive, in general? And who is happy to give? Those are happy to see others happy who are happy themselves. Those want others to receive who receive themselves, and want others to deserve who deserve themselves.

This is the important point — this is all referring to a deep receiving and happiness, not to a superficial happiness and receiving. If one is deeply happy, one wants everyone to receive that happiness. One who is rich (with money) may want others to share in that or may not. One who is poor may want to share her or his only provisions with a stranger in need, or may wish everyone in the world had the peace and provisions of their own shelter and daily food. It is not a matter of having, physically, or not. The matter for those who are happy (which makes them want to share with others) is the happiness they find in their own soul or inner self.

In my previous post, I brought up the sustainability prism and the link between personal happiness or peace and the other three, traditional components of sustainability theory — economy, equity, and ecology. In this article, I explore the link between personal happiness and the economy in greater depth. Of course, this is just a taste of the full connection between the two since there are enough layers here to write a book on it all, but here is a start and there is plenty of comment space below!

Economy is at the forefront of society’s consciousness these days. It is always a, if not the, major societal issue for most people. With the current economic crisis, it has stepped up even another level of importance. We all have to wonder, these days, if we will be able to return to the affluence of just one or two decades ago, or, if, on the other hand, the whole economic system of America, and the world that depends on it, will collapse as a house of sand built on a thin board of wood on the ocean’s waves.

We can look to the specific failures of banks and immoral business practices to explain all of this. But these failures, and much more, were built on much more widespread and much less questioned norms than these.

I finally finished reading Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time.  If you are not familiar with this book, it is about Greg Mortenson’s mission to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time, Greg Mortenson, and acclaimed journalist David Oliver Relin, recount the unlikely journey that led Mortenson from a failed attempt to climb Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain, to successfully building schools in some of the most remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. By replacing guns with pencils, rhetoric with reading, Mortenson combines his unique background with his intimate knowledge of the third-world to fight terrorism with books, not bombs, and successfully bring education and hope to remote villages in central Asia. Three Cups of Tea is at once an unforgettable adventure and the inspiring true story of how one man really is changing the world—one school at a time.