The mission of H.O.P.E. is to turn the prow of our entropyship, the Earth, back upstream so that Earth's evolving consciousness may explore the headwaters of the Universe for billions of years to come. The work of H.O.P.E. is to make visible the larger relationships we live within - relationships that inspire visions of wonder and works of hope.

Greetings from an El Nino soggy Northern California. This week I achieved a life ambition. I took two of my Chrysalis students out in the midst of the storms and taught them how to diverge runoff. They loved changing the world with the same enthusiasm I do. I watched as one boy brought a rock to place in a line of rocks that diverted some of the runoff toward our diversion channel. He was about to put the rock down in the line when he paused for about 5 seconds. His eyes moved back and forth along the line of rocks. Then he placed his rock specifically. I knew exactly what had been going through his mind because I have done the same thing a hundred times and in that moment I realized there was an important meta-lesson about mindfulness I could verbalize for both of us.

I said, "Triston, I was watching you and I could tell that you were thinking about which of several places you should place that rock." He agreed that that had been what he was doing. "What you were doing was practicing the most important skill you will use in your life. You were aware that the rock would have different influences depending on where it was placed and you were deciding which placement would have the best effect. In life, you will be presented with choices as to where to place your life energy. You will need to decide which places will create the best effect on the world around you. So you were practicing with that rock the same kind of thinking that will help you be effective with your life."

A couple of days later, I went back to this area to continue the work on other streams coming off of the same slopes. I worked my way from stream to stream towards the area I had been working with my students. I finished diverging one stream and contoured around the slope to the next. Whenever I approach a new stream, I look ahead, trying to spot where the most effective divergences lie. But something about this stream resisted my attempt. I was struggling with this confusion as I drew nearer until I saw the reason for my confusion. Somebody else had already diverged the water in precisely the right places. No doubt about it; I could see where they had made their moves. For a few seconds, the emotional response of "I am not alone" leapt from my spirit like Robinson Crusoe finding another human footprint on his island. And then I realized that I had unexpectedly reached one of the streams my students and I had worked on earlier. I had not recognized it because I had approached it from the east side this time instead of from the west like I had with my students.

But in those few seconds of exultation, a dream I had kept submerged rose to full consciousness. In my work, I have probably covered (and then maintained) 50-100 acres with my divergences. Water flows differently. Less runs off. Plants flourish. If the skill of diverging runoff was known and practiced locally by all, the entire habitable land surface could be covered by divergences. The flows upon the earth would be so different. If everybody did this work, everybody would only have to tend to 5 or 10 acres each. It could be joyful community service that would accumulate power. In Shifting, I concentrated on presenting this work as an allegory. But the actual work/ecstasy of going out in the pouring rain and spreading the runoff is also important. I need to consciously put more energy into helping people actually get onto the soggy land.with a shovel.

Four days after writing the above, I led Chrysalis's junior high school class back to this area. I did not intend to have the students do this diverging work. Instead I wanted them to see different ways in which water can flow across the land--since we are studying "flow". But several of the kids moved almost instinctively into the work. (I'm sure this is due partly to a potent combination of the love most kids have for playing with water and the hunger they have for opportunities to do real work that will visibly help the world. This activity combines both.) The kids' response gave me a different view on my dream of adults taking care of 5-10 acres each.

In lots of subsistence cultures, one of the first hunting skills that the children learn is the setting of snares for rabbits and such. The young kids set and maintain an array of snares all around the settlement. There is little danger; the children learn about hunting and working carefully; the addition of an occasional rabbit meaningfully contributes to the survival of the community. I can imagine something similar with the diverging work. This could be one of the first "earth-healing" techniques that kids of our culture learn. They maintain a vast array of divergences in whatever open areas they can find around their homes. In this time they learn about how water, soil and life interact. They learn what participating in such healing interactions feel like. They develop respect for work and maintenance. And they make a real difference in how water flows over the land.

I used to think such work requires shovels but having worked with kids now, I find that trowels are sufficient for most interventions. Besides, trowels are cheaper than shovels and easier to carry.

So an image of teaching children this skill is now growing in my mind. The perfect place is environmental education camps with 5th and 6th graders. (The younger children can do the work but more of their energy is on digging for the sake of digging than digging to slow the water down.) The one problem with this work is that it is difficult to demonstrate or learn unless one is out in the rain. This makes it a perfect activity for environmental education camps that can get their students soaking wet. Many teachers view rainy days as an imprisoning limitation rather than a unique opportunity to teach something special. (Dependence on rain, however, does make it difficult to schedule a training session for the staff.) Anyway, a new possible work has opened in my vision of H.O.P.E. I would enjoy corresponding in greater detail with those of you who are connected with environmental education to make this work part of a rainy day curriculum (and also help the environmental education camp be a place of slower water and greater life).

Such work would give children the all-senses experience with water that would help them understand something like the following quote of David Orr's. "Three things that should move slowly are water, money, and knowledge." I heard this quote at a conference on local currencies I attended this month. While there, I also heard a sad story from a man from India. When he was young, families would get together for dinner parties. They would sing songs and tell stories and have a good time. But now when he goes back to India and goes to the parties, the people no longer sing songs and tell stories. Instead, the conversation is dominated by what kind of car one owns, what kind of clothes one has bought, etc. He said that there is a lot, lot more money in India (at least among his class) than there used to be. But he feels less happiness among those people.

His descriptions reminded me of a grassy slope that has been paved. On the grassy slope, most of the rain sinks in. Only a small percentage exists as flowing water one could scoop up and hold in one's hand. What little flows on the surface could be seen as "wealth" for it is the holdable form of what makes moist soil and juicy leaves possible. But if the land is paved over, all the rain runs off. Suddenly, if one is in the right location, one is awash in water. One can scoop up thousands of gallons of water. One can put one's hands on incredible "wealth". But the wealth is sterile. One comes to discover that water itself was not wealth. Wealth lies in the interaction between water, soil, sun and life. Water must be dispersed and soak into the soil slowly in order to produce the true wealth of abundant life.

Also at the conference I was talking to a socially responsible investment advisor. He asked what I thought about the conference and I replied that it was going in a direction different than my life path. He asked if my path could make any contribution to the conference. I thought about this question and then replied, "That life has existed for billions of years before the creation of money and that the purpose of life has also existed long before the creation of money. That, therefore, the ability to live a meaningful live preceded money and is not dependent on money."

Which leads me into how easily money can actually lead one away from fulfilling one's life purpose. One of the most wonderfully crafted, enticing, seductive creations of humanity is something I sometimes call the gradient of wealth. Wherever one is situated on the socioeconomic gradient, one faces a choice of "brands" one can purchase. Many of these choices (what house you live in, what car you drive, what clothes you wear, what stores you shop at) have been crafted to communicate that the purchaser occupies a certain position within the gradient of wealth. The seductive, dangerous part of this communication is an implication (sometimes covert, sometimes overt) that being higher on the gradient bestows "betterness". I'll never forget a comment one catty eighth grader made to another concerning a third: "She wears clothes from K-Mart" said with such icy condemnation of the person. I also remember when one of my co-workers was dating a wealthy man and I overheard her on the phone to one of her friends telling how he lived in (dramatic pause and then said with dramatic flourish) such and such subdivision and that then we went out on his (dramatic pause and then said with dramatic flourish) 28 foot boat.

A 28 foot boat beats a 24 foot boat. A motorboat beats a rowboat. J.C. Penny's beats K-Mart. Sak's Fifth Avenue beats them both but flying to Paris beats Sak's. And in all the flurry, one loses track of "why am I acquiring this object? To what use, towards what life goal am I intending it to advance me?" If one isn't careful, one can subordinate's one's life purpose to the gradient message contained in the object rather than subordinating the object to one's life purpose. Sometimes the appropriate object is more expensive, sometimes less. After tiring of stripping a succession of Phillip screwdrivers, I went into a tool store and asked if it was possible to buy a Phillips screwdriver that would last. He sold me an SK and it is still unscathed 5 years later. I bought a lightweight inflatable boat for my family. I admit to feeling somewhat "rinkydink" when I carry it down the boat ramp past motor boats to float the Sacramento River . But I also carry it in to lakes and marshes. It serves us well. What is the purpose we want this possession to serve? The clearer we can be on that, the more easily we can tune out the blaring sideshow of the gradient of wealth.

One of the fascinating things I've noticed about the gradient of wealth is that each step higher gets logarithmically more expensive. A difference in the cost between watches at the low-end of the scale, for example, is $3-4 while the difference at the high end is hundreds of dollars. The same is true of cars or houses. The difference at the low end is thousands of dollars. The difference at the high end is tens of thousands for cars and hundreds of thousands for houses. One must ask (when one looks at the difference between what one gets for the two different prices) is "is the difference in what I'm getting worth the difference of the prices." Usually the answer is no because the difference has little to do with intrinsic value and has far more to do with the status message that is part of the package. The main reason to pay a thousand dollars for a watch is because only a few people can afford to pay a thousand dollars for a watch. Possession of such a watch proclaims that one is very high within the gradient of wealth.

But there are two important psychological points that must be made about this gradient. The first is that it truly is a gradient which extends forever in either direction. One can strive to move up the gradient. If one is successful, one will move into a different "world". One will have less dealings with people one used to be with. One will come into contact with people higher up that one wouldn't meet before. (The way that the gradient of wealth shapes who one comes into contact with is just one of the many examples of why I described this gradient as "wonderfully crafted".) And one can derive a certain psychological satisfaction from this if one wishes. However, precisely because of this change in one's peer group, one will still find oneself in the same position as before: somewhere in the middle with some people above one and more people below one. Again, one can exert one's effort to move higher still. But because moving higher in the gradient changes who one comes into contact with, the same thing will happen again. One will experience oneself as somewhere in the middle. One will never reach the top because there is no top. The gradient of wealth is self-similar in the same way a drainage is. One sees the same patterns whether one stands by a first order or eighth order stream, whether one is living in a $40,000 per house neighborhood or a $400,000 per house neighborhood. (Self-similarity would also explain why the costs grow logarithmically larger as one buys "brands" higher up the gradient.)

In truth, one can feel like one is slipping backwards as one moves higher in the gradient. This is because the people who expend the most effort to move up the gradient (and are therefore most attuned to the many ways one's position is declared) will tend to accumulate in the upper reaches. (Which does not mean that if someone lives in the upper reaches that that person is mostly concerned about moving upward.) One moves into a world in which more more and more life energy can go into how a tie is tied, the kind of suit one wears, the kind of wine one serves at dinner parties, the kind of wedding one has for one's daughter. Both the awareness and declaration of status become more pervasive. Simply holding one's position requires increasingly more money. But strangest of all, one becomes surrounded more and more by people who see you not as a fellow person but as someone that will hopefully eventually be looking up to them. Relationships can get pretty weird up there unless one can stay clear on what purpose one has been put on life for. The purpose of life was in existence long before the gradient of wealth was crafted. One needs to stay clear-headed when one is near its siren attraction.

And the heart of that siren attraction is the assumption that being higher in the gradient makes you somehow better than those lower on the gradient. When I think about my disagreements with Republicans and Democrats, this equivalency of moral worth with financial worth lies central to it. Republicans tend to view wealth as indicative of moral character. Democrats tend to portray those without great wealth as possessing the true moral character.

For me, the great point is that there is absolutely no connection an external observor can reliably make between financial worth and moral character. There are hardworking doctors and inventors and executives and artists who uplift the human spirit and the world with their disciplined noble efforts and reap a wonderfully appropriate financial reward. Then there are are slimy criminals, hucksters, promoters who ravage a great financial haul from the human community. Both groups have great financial worth but no generalization can be made about their moral character. There are solid citizens who tithe, help their neighbors, volunteer, who uplift the world around them but accumulate little financial surplus (and would probably, if they had it, share it where it would do the most good). And then there are short-term pleasure-centered, undisciplined drunkards, addicts, and deadbeats who have no financial reserves for reasons that are obviously connected to their lack of moral resources. Both groups have little financial worth but no generalization can be made about their moral character.

The point is that it is fallacious to judge any person's "worth" (morally, intellectually, spiritually) by their financial worth. When we therefore move to a center of seeing each person as an individual, mysterious and unknown and revealed only through the ongoing interactions of words and deeds, then the whole gradient of wealth loses much of its allure. One is free from a large psychological (and often financial) energy drain. One has a better position to reflect upon "what is the true purpose of my life."
 

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© 1998, Paul Krafel, 18080 Brincat Manor, Cottonwood, CA 96022-0609
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