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Change is up to us

Redwood Mary Berkeley
Thursday September 13, 2001

Editor: 

We all have the power and responsibility in our hands to stop the perpetuation of the cycles of violence and the economics of exploitation that create unspeakable suffering or we can continue on with the politics and economics that lessen and cheapen our human condition. Our political agenda from local to global, must move from provocation and the hubris that our fast track corporate globalization is the way to go with its extracting the energy and even blood of many to keep an economic machine going that few are actually benefiting from. Too many are being pushed to the edge along with the very ecosystems of life that support us. Financially and emotionally there is suffering as people have to keep cutting back – financially and in time we spend in building a supportive community while corporate profits obscenely rise.  

We here in the industrialized north live a lifestyle that has become the anomaly in a world where three quarters of the world’s population do not get enough to eat. We live in a world where corporate dream schemes are forcing people off their land and have the gall to patent the genes of plants, seeds and life itself. 

I still hold the vision that we can turn this around peacefully and not fall into the divisions caused by blaming and hate that comes after tragedy. I deeply hold the hope that we do not go along with the fear that is being generated to continue down the same path of bullying be it with words, economic or with nuclear threats. I hold a prayer that we can each look deeply into our own hearts, whether we are a governmental employee or work in the trades, whether we are a bus driver, a deli clerk, student or in scientific research – no matter what we do for a living – and ask what are we willing to do to take the higher ground, and to use our precious words to speak and teach a new vision that holds the value of the humans spirit and the earth as a sacred trust and not a commodity of economic profit schemes. How can we bring honor back to our daily relationships with each other? 

Instead of taking part in speculations about today's horrible tragedy (where terrorism is daily life for many around the world) I found a quiet space and turned to some readings that I found solace from including: 

“The only way to have peace is to teach peace. By teaching peace you must learn it yourself, because you cannot teach what you still dissociate from. You can’t teach peace with a barrel of a gun.” As Gandhi said an eye for an eye and we all become blind. Gandhi also said “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” 

 

Redwood Mary 

Berkeley