Janet McNeill

<June 18/10>

On my very lovely walk this morning (beautiful day!) along the boardwalk (in the Beaches area of Toronto, Ontario, Canada), I articulated the key tenets of what I guess you might call my “religion.”

They are:

• Gratitude
• Walking
• Community
• Service
• Solitude / silence
• Music [added later; see P.S.]

I could elaborate on each of these, of course. Walking also takes in Nature, love of the Earth, & maybe canoeing, kayaking, swimming & snowshoeing… Community takes in love, family, conversation, smiling, friendliness & friendship. Gratitude takes in joy & leads to a happy spirit. Service takes in activism & caring & doing (which also lead to a happy spirit!). Solitude & silence are things I cannot exist without & sometimes wonder whether others might benefit from a wee bit more of…

& music!! Well – music sometimes catapults me right from practically comatose, down at the bottom of a Very Deep Pit (or even a Not-all-that-deep-but-still-definitely-in-a-pit-Pit) into outright exhilaration!!

Janet

P.S. on July 1^st: I’ve been doing this odd nomadic gig lately. Some of the time I’m living out in the boonies, sometimes I’m in the small city of Pembroke, Ontario (up river from Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, & down river from leaking “legacy” pollution at the Chalk River nuclear facility; Gee – sure makes me feel better to know the pollution there is “legacy” as opposed to new…or, hmm…..does it??, & home to (notice I am not saying proud home: many of us here are not merely not proud but frankly appalled about) SRB Technologies, a tritium-emitting local business that has just outrageously been issued a 5-year license by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (boy are they un-aptly named!?!?!? Ought to be more like the Canadian Nuclear Danger Commission); check out the Tritium Awareness Project Web site to learn “the truth about tritium”…)

And some of the time I hang out in Toronto, Canada’s largest city & kind of an all-around pretty fun place…

Well.

On my long walk in Pembroke this morning, I observed, as I have on other occasions, how church-y this town is. It has a quite extraordinary number of churches. Off the charts, really!

Not sure what that’s all about, but the limitations of “organized” religion seem more & more apparent to me as the years go by.

I’ve written elsewhere about what I see as the problem with religion.

What sprang to mind this morning as I noticed Pembroke’s considerable churchy-ness is the sort of somewhere-else-ness of most religious teachings. “Heaven” is somewhere else. “Divinity” is somewhere/someone else. “Salvation” is some other time. “Holy” is other places or people.

Me, I’m convinced all these things are right here, right now, always.

Hmmm. In ‘Pulling Down the Pedestals’ & ‘I’m not OK – YOU’re OK’ I’ve written about our tendency as individuals to see others as…better – more whole…than one is oneself. I don’t think this attitude & the dominance of religion & its “God/holiness/sacredness is somewhere else” message is a coincidence, exactly…

Certainly Eckhart Tolle’s thoughts about presence, & about the pain body (& everything else he talks about!) resonate hugely for me. (I’ve written about ET in a few blog postings – ‘Ducks Unlimited’, ‘Pain Bodies on Parade or Oh, To be a duck’ & ‘Flap your wings’, among others…)

Dear friend Lynn has just given me a copy of the book This is It – The Nature of Oneness – Interviews with Teachers of Non-Duality, including Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now, by Jan Kersschot.

That phrase “This is it!” resonated for me right away.

All is here – right here, right now, in this moment – & it is plenty!

The heck, I say, with the fear & poverty mentality we’ve been so immersed & drenched in for so long.

This is it!

P.P.S. on July 24^th: It became necessary to add that 6^th item – music – to the list the other evening when, under the great spirits & energy-enhancing influence of some lovely, sing-y, dance-y, cheerful tunes, I got hours & hours of useful work done, instead of succumbing to the temptation to veg out in front of a movie. Music sure can be magical!! (Pat Conroy said, “Without music, life is a journey through a desert,” and isn’t it true??)

& the list goes on!

& I celebrate the possibility & promise of democracy & cooperation among those of us who work to build a better world – & even those of us who don’t, either because they are too lazy, apathetic, cynical, miserable, oblivious or fearful – or because they are really all caught up in the “S/he who dies with the most toys/power wins” game…

Because you know what?

We’re all in this together, whether we like it (& each other) or not.

As someone pointed out at the Citizens’ Inquiry on the Impacts of the Uranium Cycle held in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada) on Earth Day (April 22^nd), 2008, we need a “big tent” story that is big enough for ALL of us – & you know what? He’s right.

So I’ll keep right on with the work I’ve been doing for 20 years now – working to build a “better” world. Sometimes that may take the form of opposing something nasty – & sometimes I’ll mostly use my words – & I’ll keep right on going to “protests,” because protests are joyful gatherings of like-minded, energetic citizens who care – & who, like me, celebrate what is best in all of us – as individuals, & as a society. & who like to get together once in a while in a big, noisy way – cos’ hey! That’s what democracy looks like!

& if that somehow makes me less “spiritual” than some of the folks I know, well…so be it!

I guess we all gotta do what we gotta do!

Janet

P.S. I don’t know whether folks consider the Dalai Lama “spiritual” (heh heh), but I heard him quoted in an Elisabet Sahtouris DVD as having said, “The best meditation is critical thinking – followed by action.”

P.P.S. I am often reminded of Paster Martin Niemöller (1892-1964), a Nazi victim who was imprisoned at the Sachsenhausen & Dachau prison/death camps in Germany, who said so memorably, “First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”

More recently, in the March 2010 issue of the CCPA Monitor, monthly newsletter of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – a most excellent group & publication – I saw an updated version of this:

The Price of Silence

When they came for the poverty-stricken,

I was silent because I was well-off.

When they came for the unemployed,

I was silent because I had a job.

When they came for the homeless,

I was silent because I had a home.

When they came for the pensioners,

I was silent because I had a good RRSP.

When they came for the Aboriginal peoples,

I was silent because I was Anglo-Saxon.

When they came for the immigrants,

I was silent because I was born here.

When they came for the sick and disabled,

I was silent because I was healthy.

When they came for the students,

I was silent because I had my degree.

When they came for the youth,

I was silent because I was middle-aged.

When at last they came for me,

No one was left to hear my cries.

(with credit given to the afore-mentioned Paster Niemöller for his inspiration.)

‘Quote of the day’ w. this post: “Energy always flows either toward hope, community, love, generosity, mutual recognition, and spiritual aliveness or it flows toward despair, cynicism, fear that there is not enough, paranoia about the intentions of others, and a desire to control.” ~ Michael Lerner, quoted in “The Great Turning – From Empire to Earth Community,” by David Korten

The David & Goliath analogy keeps coming up.

Along with other activists, I’m currently involved in a D & G-type tussle with a very polluting company in Pembroke, Ontario (Canada), & its regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). Have a look at the Tritium Awareness Project Web site if you’d like to know more about this.

Now, I was raised in a (nominally if not really) Christian family, & as a child did faithfully attend Sunday school. But my familiarity with the Bible is very out of date.

The very bare bones of the story are that David was kind of a puny little guy who took on big, monstrous Goliath & defeated him in battle.

Along with tons of others, I’ve been engaged in David & Goliath battles for 20 years now. Victories seem few & far between, but there have been some. The enactment of a provincial pesticide by-law in Ontario (Quebec did it first & set the example) has been one memorable & happy achievement, for sure! Hundreds of activists devoted thousands of hours over many, many years, & eventually the work all came together (with outstanding contributions along the way by not just the many individuals who worked so tirelessly for so many years, but also the Toronto Board of Health & the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment) & voilà – no more lawn spraying. Yay!!

I was recently in Washington, D.C. to attend the conference of the Network of Spiritual Progressives (the past few blog posts have also been about this conference) & the David & Goliath analogy was brought up by 2 internationally known & widely (& wildly) outstanding & well-respected women: Sister Joan Chittister & Marianne Williamson.

Both are involved in the NSP. Sister Joan is a co-founder & co-chair (& also co-chairs the Global Peace Initiative of Women), while Marianne Williamson is a personal friend of co-chair Rabbi Michael Lerner as well as being an internationally known spiritual teacher (& co-founder of the Peace Alliance & founder of the American Renaissance Alliance).

(Btw, along with all the other fantastic speakers, all of whom are widely known & hugely respected, neither of these women received speaking fees for their part in this conference. The speakers all paid their own expenses, & were not paid for their participation.)

Sister Joan commented that “Goliath” is “out in the street,” meaning, I think, that it is our fellow human beings – the many millions who are not yet “activists” & perhaps as yet unaware of the depth of the crisis/crises facing our species – or perhaps she was referring to apathy itself as Goliath.

Marianne Williamson also spoke of the David & Goliath story, pointing out that David used his simple slingshot to slay Goliath by hitting him in the forehead – the “third eye,” or seat of the soul.

She also advised that, while the problems we face are huge & hugely daunting, we should “look at the problem, but not stare at it.”

I liked that.

It speaks to me about my own local issue, & it says, “Yes. This is a problem. It is a BIG problem. Work on it, yes, by all means work on it! But don’t be consumed by it.”

Life is about love, & joy & community. We work at slaying Goliath (this is life-long work, after all) – but not at the expense of love & joy.

(Tom Robbins articulated this about “crazy wisdom”: “Crazy wisdom is the wisdom that evolves when one, while refusing to avert one’s gaze from the sorrows and injustices of the world, insists on joy in spite of everything. Ancient Egyptians believed that when a person died, the gods immediately placed his or her heart in one pan of a set of scales. In the other pan was a feather. If there was imbalance, if the heart of the deceased weighed more than the feather, he or she was denied admittance to the afterworld. Only the lighthearted were deemed advanced enough to merit immortality.”)

So. We do what we are called/called on to do.

And we detach from the outcome. The outcome is never guaranteed – nor can it be.

But, since, as I’ve said elsewhere, activism is its own reward, an activist I will continue to be.

As Sister Joan Chittister puts it, “If you are expecting to see the results of your work, you simply haven’t asked a big enough question.”

Janet

P.S. And as I’ve also said elsewhere, there is so much joy in this work because of the company we keep. Fine, fine, fine people. How does life get any better than doing challenging & rewarding work in the company of utterly awesome friends & colleagues??

P.P.S. I suppose my own personal slingshot is my voice??

I went off to a Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission hearing in Ottawa the other day to “speak truth to power” about a very polluting little nuclear company in Pembroke, Ontario.

As I’d said to a number of friends in an e-mail before the hearing, we would be “speaking truth to power,” as the saying goes – knowing all the while that “power” wouldn’t really be listening.

And so it was. “Power” wasn’t really listening to the members of the public who were there to express their legitimate & long-time concerns. Well, that isn’t strictly true. At times they did actually appear to be listening, but you could sort of see their ears closing up again lickety-split.

I still feel grrrrreat about having said my little piece, though. I was in the awesome company of other activists, all of whom have more integrity in their little fingers than a lot of the folks who were in that room have in their whole bodies.

Of course, as Upton Sinclair said who knows how many decades ago, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

(Is it not so?)

For me, hanging around fellow activists of such intelligence, courage & integrity is very, very energizing. It renders all the work & energy & time one has put into this massive exercise (way over the top, trust me!!) utterly worthwhile.

Some of us had dinner together afterward, and I’ll bet we took our fellow diners in the otherwise quiet restaurant by surprise. We were crazily animated, discovered connections among ourselves we hadn’t realized existed, had lots & lots of laughs – &, quite clearly, were having a ball!

All you folks who “run” the world – the ones with power who are fuelled by greed (& personal insecurity)? I have a message for you:

Being an activist – doing worthwhile work that really matters – with passion & energy & conviction & commitment – is wildly, wildly, wildly enjoyable & rewarding.

Of course, it would be really cool if more often we achieved the kinds of results we were after.

But even when we don’t, hooey! Are we ever in fine company!!

Janet

P.S. Visit the TAP (Tritium Awareness Project) Web site if you’d like to learn the truth about tritium. http://www.tapcanada.org/en/

‘Quote of the day’ w. this post: “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” – Thomas Sowell

(Yesterday’s was “A voice is a human gift. It should be cherished & used. Powerlessness & silence go together.” – Margaret Atwood)

<Oct. 5/09>

This is a rant about being TOO polite. For sure, just to be clear, I was raised by my parents to be a very polite person. I always (almost always) remember to say my “pleases & thank-you’s,” and dutifully taught my children to do the same.

It’s a form of obedience, really. We are taught from Day 1 (by our parents & if not by them, by our culture) to be very obedient to the rules of our society. Not to “colour outside the lines,” as it were – and to be sure that we “play by the rules” and all that jazz. Yes??(1)

Sure we are. We live in an insanely (obscenely?) voracious culture that is destroying the Earth (a remarkably abundant and beautiful place, by the way, not to mention being our only home), yet we are all so damn polite that not only do most of us not speak up about what is taking place all around us, those of us who do are looked upon as “weirdos.” I know this because I’ve been perceived as a weirdo (by a lot of the folks who know me) for the past 20 years.

There are 3 things I’d like to cite about this being too polite business:

1. What got me started musing on this (again) recently was my attendance at an anti-uranium rally held at Queen’s Park in Toronto (Ontario, Canada) on Sunday, September 27^th (2009). Increasing numbers of Ontario citizens have begun to oppose the mining of uranium – and with good reason. The rally was held at our provincial legislature to let our MPP’s (Members of Provincial Parliament) know that we want uranium mining stopped. There were several dynamic speakers to inform those in attendance about the issue & what needs to be done about it (namely, demand a legislated ban on uranium mining for all of Ontario – similar to the bans already in effect in three of our other provinces – British Columbia, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick – & the territory of Labrador).

Native elder Bob Lovelace told the crowd at the rally that in his view, we Canadians are too polite. He knows a lot about this, having been sent to jail for his part in trying to protect his native band’s territory near Sharbot Lake, Ontario, against uranium exploration. What he said really resonated for me. We are, indeed, much too polite.

If you want to learn more about the Ontario uranium mining scene, go to the Web site of Cottagers Against Uranium Mining & Exploration (CUME) at www.stopuranium.ca There is also a ton of useful information at the site of CCAMU – the Community Coalition Against Mining Uranium – http://www.ccamu.ca/

2. Something that had got me thinking about this politeness business some time ago were the insights I had as a result of attending several Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) hearings in Ottawa. These were about tritium light facilities in Pembroke & Peterborough, Ontario (the companies are called SRB Technologies and SSI, for Shield Source International, respectively). Oh yes, there was also one on Ziractec Precision Industries Inc. – a nuclear facility in Port Hope, Ontario – that I sat in on.

At each of these hearings, I’ve been absolutely blown away by the intelligence and information possessed by the citizen interveners who object to these 3 privately-run, profit-making nuclear facilities. Intervener presentations (firmly limited to 10 minutes per person, although the proponent – that is, the nuclear facility representative – has almost unlimited time and endless opportunities to state his case) are fact-filled, well-researched, and passionate, often, given the fact that their citizens, their neighbourhoods & their communities are bearing the brunt of the emissions and releases from these facilities.

The government-appointed CNSC commissioners seem to have very limited understanding indeed of the complexities (and risks) involved in nuclear technologies. Their knowledge very clearly represents a tiny fraction of that possessed by the citizen interveners (toward whom, btw, their demeanour is extremely patronizing).

My take, overall? These are “kangaroo” courts. They’re a joke. The CNSC does not exist to promote nuclear “safety” for Canadians; it exists to promote the nuclear industry.

I could go on here at length, because I have other insights & strong opinions about the CNSC hearing process – but I won’t.

It does frustrate the heck out of me that a) the “average” Canadian citizen has probably never even heard of the CNSC, has certainly never attended one of their kangaroo courts (oops, I mean hearings), & has no idea what this taxpayer-funded outfit gets up to & b) those of us who oppose these various nuclear operations can talk ‘till we’re blue in the face, present impressive evidence and studies from all over the world, cite human health impacts until the cows come home – but nothing ever changes. We put on our very best clothes, talk very, very politely in the hearings (which I suppose, come to think of it, are a little reminiscent of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party), and the commissioners (and the CNSC’s very considerable-sized & no doubt well-educated & well-paid staff) go right on ahead & do what they’re going to do – with no apparent real concern for the safety of the Canadian public they are all supposedly being paid their generous salaries to protect.

It was this that got me thinking some time ago now that we are too damn polite…

It was either Benjamin Franklin or Albert Einstein (I’ve heard both being credited) who said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

So who is it who’s insane here, anyway??

3. All of this motivated me to take part recently in a Greenpeace “Climate Action Camp” to learn about civil disobedience. So glad I went!!

I learned lots, and had a lot of fun, too! It was interesting to be reminded of some of the very early & well-known practitioners of civil disobedience. Jesus Christ was one of its early agents when he kicked the money-lenders out of the temple. There was Gandhi in India, & Martin Luther King & Rosa Parks in the U.S.

Civil disobedience has a very proud history. Henry David Thoreau. Harriet Tubman. Nelson Mandela. Vaclav Havel. And so on & so on. People most of us now recognize as heroes for having put their necks on the line – for going to great lengths, and at considerable personal cost – to speak up very loudly & initiate change on critically important social issues.

Now Greenpeace is making itself heard loudly & clearly on the climate issue, with recent actions in the Alberta tar sands – home of the world’s dirtiest oil.

You can love Greenpeace or not love them, but one thing you have to admit: their stunts get our attention – and they force us to think & become better informed.

If you want to learn more about Greenpeace &/or the Alberta tar sands project, go to http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/ Scroll down on the left under ‘What we do’ for tar sands information. GP has also recently commissioned a film about the tar sands. Watch for it! (I believe it’s now making the rounds of film festivals & will be released to the public soon.)

Meanwhile, why not muse on this being too polite business?

Is it really necessary – or wise – or even excusable – that we remain silent – and “polite” – in the face of crimes against the planet – and humanity?

We all have to decide this for ourselves, of course – but surely it’s worth a little thought.

Janet

P.S. There are other films/YouTubes on the tar sands. I’ve heard of these so far:

1. “The Dark Side of the Boom: Canada’s Mordor” - here

2. From National Geographic: here

3. “Dirty Oil: Alberta’s Tar Sands Explained”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjjnEzoxEI8