Today, I want to lift up this important and timely organization that is applying sacred activism principles to our work for the earth mother.

The Order of the Sacred Earth

From author and peace and justice activist Deborah Santana: In our church, we joined with others who wanted to eradicate racism peacefully.  It was our mission, as people of color who follow Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to stop racist oppression through peaceful protest and working together to change politics of persecution.  The idea and vision to have a spiritual order to celebrate, heal, and protect Mother Earth is a gallant one.  To dedicate ourselves to this community will require deep prayer and the practice of nonviolence as we witness the destruction of our planet.

I hear the Earth crying for people to rise up and act as if every decision we make will either destroy or protect the planet….In order to stand in unity with the Order, I must sit in silence, and in prayer.

When I am quiet, the wind whispers loving songs through tree leaves, birds whistle sweet melodies that soothe my soul.  The ocean waves remind me of nature’s power, and each sunrise is a promise that I have been given another chance to make choices that preserve and replenish the gifts for Mother Earth. The Order of the Sacred Earth is asking us to serve, give back, to become part of a spiritual order.  They ask us to hope.

This will be a special pre-valentine love fest!

From sister N’Shama:

Dear Dancing Friends,

Please join us this Wednesday on the cusp of Valentines’s Day as we clear space in our hearts and prepare to meet the Beloved.

Alia Calendar and N’Shama Sterling will be co-leading the evening, inviting the qualities of love and compassion into our circle, opening to deep caring for all sentient beings.

We look forward to dancing with you.

N’Shama

Dear friends,

My last class for my Master’s program was a preaching class of all things! I have no intention of becoming a preacher, but I truly enjoyed the class and the skills gained will definitely help in my work as a social and earth justice activist.

I wanted to share this last sermon with you because it is meant as a message for my community, as you’ll hear in the introduction.

In this talk, I begin with the Sufi invocation and then speak to how we might truly aspire to recognize our place of Oneness, as the Only Being. I reference some of the new earth sciences that tell us there is only one forest, as an example of how this reality is manifest in the only true scripture, the scripture of nature.

When you have 20 minutes to spare, I invite you to enjoy it, and I welcome any feedback or thoughts in case I ever have the opportunity to deliver this to an actual audience!

We are so honored to have this dear friend in Portland, Arifa Byron. The work she is doing and has done is phenomenal and important. These powerful words reflect the person she is and the passion and beauty she brings to our Sufi Ruhaniat community and our world.

Fashion, turn to the left,

Fashion, turn to the right.

Oooooh Fashion.

We are the goon squad

and we’re coming to town.

–David Bowie

And so it goes.

What can we do when dignity falls out of fashion?

Merely turn to face what’s next, passively entertained?

Revel in the artistry without questioning the art?

How do we turn to notice the steady barrage of atrocities,

spreading like an oil spill, sullying our sacred waters,

gluing our feathers down, tacky, hampering flight,

silencing our songs of connection.

Whose responsibility is it to wave the flag of memory,

and demand a re-awakening to humanity?

Whose flag do we wave, as we steep

in this bath of humiliation?

Self-satisfaction is in fashion now, the bigger the better.

All of the safeguards, the scaffolding of democracy,

have turned out to be made of cheese,

folding and melting into a sour soup.

Peace has become a foreign object,

unseen, ignored, easily trampled

into broken pieces, fragmented pottery shards,

awaiting future archeologists to piece it back together.

I wonder what tomorrow’s fashions will bring,

what seedlings can be planted for future harvest, in such uncertain soil?

Will there be farmers to pull nourishment out of nothingness?

How might dignity bloom? Sprouting amidst the dirty tangle of brambles?

Scanning the horizon for signs of promise.

Seeking dignity’s return on the fluttering wings of peace,

sung in a cacophony of birdsong,

bringing balance.

BIO

Amanda Smith Byron is a social justice educator with over 30 years of experience working with diverse communities to heal trauma and transform conflict. Dr. Byron is an Assistant Professor in Conflict Resolution at Portland State University, where she directs the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Project, and focuses teaching and research on unsettling the role of identity in conflict, understanding enmification and hatred as root causes of violence, and developing peacebuilding strategies to effectively address ethnoreligious conflict. Her current research interests are focused on the restoration of dignity in the aftermath of atrocity.

Sharing this wonderful and important quote that seems especially poignant in these times of such despair and delight :

At our Sufi Saturday meeting this week, our honored elder Mansur blessed us with this lovely poem. With his permission, I share it with all of you.

Hu dat?

This is not my body.
Have I misplaced it?
These shoes do not fit!

This body no more belongs to me
than I belong to it.

I am as much influenced by
this body and
this mind and
these feelings and
this god-ideal
as they are influenced by me.

All are linked and serve together, with
support and suppleness in the mutual interactions.
We all dance.
In the dance I lose myself
And gain my Self.

Breath is the highway.

~ Mansur Rodney Kreps ~ 2020

In my research for a new talk about our connectedness to every natural being, I came across this wonderful poem in the book, “The Secret Teachings of Plants: The Intelligence of the Heart in the Direct Perception of Nature” by Stephen Harrod Buhner. I believe he is the author of the poem.

Semen is Latin
for a dormant, fertilized,
plant ovum—
a seed.
Men’s ejaculate
is chemically more akin
to plant pollen.
See,
it is really
more accurate
to call it
mammal pollen.

To call it
semen
is to thrust
an insanity
deep inside our culture:
that men plow women
and plant their seed
when, in fact,
what they are doing
is pollinating
flowers.

Now.
Doesn’t that change everything between us?

Beloved friends,

I have made it through the last classes in my Master’s program and now I’m on the final track to complete my thesis, internship, etc. to graduate (Inshallah) in May!

It is my hope that this blog can be a channel for all of us to continue to remember our connection to the One, to our earth, and to each other. We have much work to do and I truly believe we have the capacity, motivation, resilience, and power to create a new reality.

I love this quote from Terence McKenna – “What is out of control, what is in fact dying is a world that had become too top-heavy with its hubris, too bent by its own false value systems and too dehumanized to care about what happens to its own children. So I say, good riddance to it. … Let’s create a new world.”

In community with all of you, and with the many prophets, thinkers, sages (especially the youth!), we can and will create beauty, harmony, and love in a culture that respects the earth, our siblings, and ourselves as equally deserving of sustainable sustenance, abundance, and joy.

May it be so – may we make it so.

Dear friends,

My work toward a Master’s degree in Social Change and a certificate in Spiritual Direction is moving toward its final phases (thus the dearth of recent postings here!)

As part of my practicum for Spiritual Direction, I am required (blessed!) to offer, free of charge, Spiritual Direction sessions for one person for the next 3-4 months. If you would be interested in trying this out, please contact me directly at drmatthewsusa@gmail.com.

Spiritual Direction is perhaps better described as Spiritual Companionship. It is an opportunity for you to spend time being deeply heard and encouraged along your spiritual path no matter what that might look like.

As Interfaith Spiritual Directors, we are extensively trained in deep and active listening, connecting with the Divine, and a wide and expansive understanding and appreciation for all of the world’s faith traditions as well as the science and belief systems of those who would choose, “none of the above” as their spiritual path.

If this feels like something that would benefit you, please consider helping me toward my final goals and graduation in the Spring.

And be aware that once I have completed these goals, I will be offering Spiritual Direction on a sliding scale basis, so this may be a path we can share in the future as well.

With deep appreciation and love,
Wakil

Gitanjali 35

Rabindranath Tagore – 1861-1941

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
     Where knowledge is free;
     Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
     Where words come out from the depth of truth;
     Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
     Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
     Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action— 
     Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.