“Do you feel like you woke up this morning as one man and that by lunch time you were another.” - yes exactly like that. I mean, every moment since has been like a series of new men, growing, changing, awaking into someone else – like someone I was meant to become.

More and more I am convinced that all of life is about learning how to live with this amazingly heavy and inspiring responsibility.

I got into a discussion recently about Reagan and heard it said that Reagan did more to bring down USSR than anyone else. It got me thinking - here are some of those meandering thoughts in the form of an email response. There are some interesting links included that I thought would be of interest even more than my half baked analysis of a situation that is well beyond my knowledge of history - more armchair historian than anything.

These are some initial exploratory steps and research inspired by readings about wastes and toxins like bleach - included is a great list of alternative non toxic ways of doing things. Try a few and let me know what you find - I will do the same.

But something has furthered this feeling of global citizenry during my last trip and reinforced today. I know that part of it is because of the technologies involved in both travel and communication and how easy it is to move both your body and your communications around the globe.

Andrisky Church

It takes becoming regular in certain places and along certain routes to recognize the patterns that teach about a place. There is no doubt that even a short visit like this can teach one about one’s self but to really learn a plus you must find a rhythm or a path and stay in it for a time.

The last time I was in Kyiv, I was treated to winter. This time I am here as winter turns to spring, and more than any other part of the year in seasonal places I love this moment. The moment when out from under the cold and often dark tones of winter peeks the most tender moments in nature.

I think that so much of the wonder of being in other cultures is recognizing that underneath the language, traditions and cultures we have tribes that stretch across the earth.

Today I met my god daughter Sofia Zinchenko! She is soooooo precious – a little smiling cupid that shot a cute little arrow right into my heart.

One thing you get clear about in traveling to new epicenters of human activity like Kiev, is that when opportunity is born people come flooding in.

So I have started over the last few months to ask myself these questions more and more. Asking myself where I am placing value, and looking for ways to do well buy doing good, rather than doing well to then do good.

I recently came across some of the new photos of Abu Ghraib prisoners. I found myself thinking - I know that there are good people out there who are supportive of our current leadership, but I cant help but feeling that these people are truly not paying attention at a common sense level.

The passing of an amazing soul back to her community. Flags at SF City Hall flown at half-mast.

and here are those using their powers for good

On PETA I found a list of companies that test animals and companies the do not - this is the list of companies that do. Warning - ignorance is bliss peeps.

green link

exerpt from Ray Anderson’s speach to the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility - http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/article94.html

Captain of Industry or Plunderer of Nautre?

The last few months have seemed to be heavy to me. The other day while driving to work I heard the discussions about Iran and felt some despair about the situation. The thoughts actually popped into my head, “Just think about something else”. I immediately recoiled at this. If I do what does that say about me? Does it say that I am powerless, and that I have nothing to offer? That even my thoughts and passions have no power – even over myself?

let’s get busy people

my holiday letter that i couldn’t get in the mail on time Mucho love to all.

Please listen to the show from Democracy Now covering Bush’s authorization for NSA to Eavesdrop on Americans without court approval http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/19/1515212

Think this says it?

I just got back from the Green Festival, and boy am I ready to take this fight to the next level.

“If I had let myself think too deeply about what might happen to me, I might have gotten off the bus,” wrote Parks. “I was tired of giving in.”

When I went in today, there was a barista I do not know too well but seems like a nice person. The owner of Muddy’s was there too (I will not divulge his name as he may wish to remain anonymous) and we exchanged our hellos. I noticed a plate of candy and asked if they were already getting into the spirit of Halloween. I was told that it was a Mongolian tradition to put out candy when someone has passed on, and that Paulabarak had died in a car accident.

more bushspeaken

I am doing the recap of our adventures in installments. I will republish it all as one peice when finished, but for those of you on the edge of your seats, I figured I would give it to you as I finish it in amidst the business of being back.

Is there no stopping Bush from trashing this country?

The beauty of reclamation

God I want to “go native” - as in swinging like a monkey right back into that rainforest

andrei and sherry in costa rica stumble upon an internet cafe.

I am going back to my natural state – where my brain ends inside of me. I won’t be able to reach out into cyberspace and grab factoids and figures and I won’t be able to check statistics or online news. I will only be able to reach the natural world around me and then of course inward – into the abyss that grows less lit yet more sacred the deeper one reaches.

People, good decent people, will be forced to cross some lines. Some to protect themselves will use weapons against the aggressors that are on the edge of that bell curve, some out of need for food or water will loot places, some out of misery will push and shove. We must respect their struggle to maintain the connection to the law in their heart in some of the worst times of their lives.

I want to reach into myself and into the stranger on the street and I want to lift out all that is holy and all that is the same. I want to take the mother of all road trips and discover every difference that can be pointed to between one person and another and I want to hold it up to what is sacred – beautiful, good and true about us all.

For anyone who considers the complexity of controlling progress and the use of tools and technology in such a way as to be their master rather than their servant.

Gandhi, “If it is man’s privilege to be independent, it is equally his duty to be inter-dependent.”

I am on a little bit of a journey this weekend, here in exotic Arizona. This weekend I am going to visit my sick and dieing father who I have been moderately to completely estranged to for the past 10 years…

Can’t say I completely agree with you on this one DB. Faith has always been a powerful force – both constructive and destructive. Faith is also at the heart of things like relationships, recovery from addiction as well as connection with the Other.

Humans tend to move rocks around.

meeting minutes transcribed during the British Prime Minister’s meeting on July 23, 2002—a full eight months PRIOR to the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003

So here is a new and shining soul and what world shall I give her? What, when I turn towards this precious being will I be saying with my life? I am reminded of a mountain top experience when sitting alone at night in a redwood forest I heard my name spoken.

On the heels of the British Prime Ministers visit and call for the US to play more of an active role in reducing greenhouse gasses, a senior associate in the office that coordinates government climate research resigned and leaked that top White House aids were editing scientific reports to downplay the significance of the impacts of greenhouse gasses on climate change.

It has become a path for me, and at times the path has had a sound. Tonight its sounds come from Matt Bauer

Forest

So there is one person I don’t usually write about. Surprising because she is at the center of my universe, a soft orange glow, she is the weather that governs the garden I keep. My journals are filled with her name and my days are made in concert with the sound that comes through her soul.

Now I say that with some sadness. I have done my packing, its 3am in Kyiv. In two hours we will climb in a cab for the airport.

Wow being sick while traveling on business is my least favorite thing in the world � well maybe not my least favorite thing. There was that time in the Saudi Arabian dessert where I was stuck in a broken down vehicle, cold and running out of food and I� well that�s a different story.

Can not come out to blog or play. Kyiv is still enchanting us. Some highlights: met many new people. I am getting a sense for the frankness of the people here.

After a great night�s sleep in our awesome apartment. A word about our abode. One of our contacts here had helped us find an apartment to rent in the older part of the city. Complete with 20� ceilings, windows almost as tall, a balcony overlooking one of the central streets and comfortable beds.

So where has life decided to take me but to the Ukraine. And though by the last leg of our flight from Amsterdam to Kiev I felt like a wadded damp towel in a mildewy New Orleans bathroom, I was still feeling excited when we landed.

“Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.” Leo Tolstoy “In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.” Leo Tolstoy

YUSHCHENKO!

As many of you know, I have been moved by the struggle of friends in the Ukraine to keep hold of their country. The wild winds of the former soviet union states have been blowing in the direction not unlike what we saw during the Cold War. With corruption running rampant, the presidential election was rigged and stolen by corrupt politicians tied to allogations of bribes, backroom deals and even murder.

Below is a letter that was composed by technology workers in the Ukraine. What an exciting time for us as a world to have such energy being put into the struggle for moving the world in the right direction.

Friends, I have some news to report. Below is a piece of an instant messenger conversation I am having with my friend Roman in Kiev where election scandals are coming to a head with a right wing (aligned with a group of former soviet states including Russia that are moving that region back toward the cold war) and a progressive candidate who clearly has the support of the people as you can see http://www.1plus1.tv/video/camera.php

http://www.zmag.org/introtopol.htm

I was online this am with a friend in Kiev who shared with me the anger he and his friends are feeling as they see their country pulled away from a leader they know can make a difference in their country. Sounds like some very dubious election behavior. It is in the air…
http://www.kirotv.com/news/3940711/detail.html

Stay agitated!

Until we have built a society that would willingly dismantle the institutions, technologies and processes it has lovingly created � not because they are not in working order or profitable but because they do not contribute to the long term vision and harmony of the planet � we will continue to work blindly toward our destruction.