Other Cool Stuff
This is one of the luxurious myths of life itself: a belief that beauty matters, that music matters, clean air and water matter, wild strawberries matter, elk matter, communities matter, mountains matter, wilderness matters; and that while we cannot control the comings and goings of life and death, we can choose to participate in – and defend, or not defend – beauty, and the innocence of a nature that tries, even still, not just to accommodate, but even to celebrate, our presence in the world. – Rick Bass
Wage Peace
By Mary Oliver
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in the firemen and rubble, breathe out the whole buildings and flocks of
red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown
fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact..
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens , pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins and clean rivers.
Make soup. Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries, imagine grief as the outbreath of
beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice. Act as if armistice has arrived.
Don’t wait another minute.
One never knows what good one does in the world. The older I get, the more I think that having positive, loving power yourself, using it in a positive way – to educate, to nurture, to create beautiful things, to do small things that make the world bit by bit better, and to evolve to higher beings ourselves – these are the things that ultimately make a difference.
–Words of Wisdom from Delight Stone’s mother
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
– Buckminster Fuller
Organizing for Power, Organizing for Change 