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.
 
 

Every 10-15 minutes, another flock of geese flew overhead as I built new steps for our front door. A storm was coming and the geese were flying further south. (The next day we had 30 mph winds from the south. Would have been exhausting flying then.) Though the flocks were probably a thousand feet above, I could hear the sound of 200 great wings pulling through the air. A grin spread slowly through my soul; "I am really glad to be a living part of this incredible place." A few seconds later, my internal editor said, "what you really mean is that you are grateful, thankful to be a living part of .." "Yes, I guess so," I replied for I am grateful. But as I went back to work and thought about it, I decided, "No, the emotion was simply what I said it was. I am simply feeling this great gladness. It is really fun to be working down here while geese swoosh by up there."

  - - - - - -

Exciting news. Shifting is going to be published "officially". A year ago I mentioned how one of you (thank you, Barbara Damrosch) had sent copies of Shifting to the publishers she and her husband work with. After a year of debate, Chelsea Green contacted me, asking if they could publish the book.

They wrote the nicest letter. They explained why they waited a year. They loved the book and wanted to help it reach a larger audience. But they couldn't figure out how to market it. The book is too quiet and too hard to categorize into a niche market. But they believed the book needed to be out there so they have taken on the challenge. I have heard a lot of author vs. publisher horror stories over the years so Chelsea Green had to massage away some mental tension. But they have done so sensitively and I am very excited. Let me share examples of why.

The editor was asking me about illustrations. I'm not much of an artist; the illustrations in Shifting demonstrate that. And I've never considered myself having much design taste. So my initial reaction was "I don't know. You guys know more than I so I will simply defer to you." But Jim kept asking different questions, like "Are there books whose illustrations and design you admire?" When he asked that, I was aware that yes, there was. Sand County Almanac. And then there were all the wonderful books of Holling Clancy Holling: Pagoo, Tree in the Trail, Paddle to the Sea... Yes, I did have some ideas about the illustrations after all. In fact, I've felt myself drawn towards video because the ideas that fill my spirit are "changes through time" that are so hard to convey in words. And so it would be good if there was an illustrator who could show changes through time. And a test case would be the neat way in which Gaia dams form so wonderfully level. How any low spot in these pine needle dams has more
water flowing over it so more floating needles get carried to this area where they adhere to the dam. I would like an illustrator who could communicate that. And detail. Everybody remembers the story of my peeing on the desert rock and discovering micro-drainages. Much of Shifting is noticing details which express short stories of Nature. By the end of the conversation, I was excited by the possibilities but also touched by their concern and care at working through my initial wall of no opinion.

Chelsea Green focuses on sustainability. And part of that is creating an example of a publisher who forges sustainable relationships with their authors, with their readers, with their marketers. What I do in an eroding field, they are doing in a publishing world being clear-cut by Barnes and Noble. In fact, at one point I found myself really hoping that Shifting will be a big financial success simply for their sake; so that their healing approach could have greater power to help revegetate the eroding publishing world. It wasn't until several hours of carrying this thought that I realized that their success would also be my success. I wasn't wishing for my success. I was just so enthusiastic about them that I was wishing them the best. That is a very nice win-win attitude to have.

A couple of specifics. I will be revising and adding and whatever through April. The book will be published in time for the fall book season. The title will not be Shifting. As many of you have pointed out, the book is truly about Shifting so the title speaks for those who have read it but it doesn't communicate anything to those who have not yet read it. Don't know what the title will be. Also, very important, I will be able to continue selling the book on my own so if a friend of yours sends in one of those yellow order forms five years from now, they will still receive the book. And I am gradually sinking deeper into a contemplation of what I would like to add, ten years later.

  - - - - - - - -

I was also delighted to receive from Gregory Smith a copy of the book he co-edited, Ecological Education in Action by SUNY Press. One of its chapters, "Deepening Children's Participation through Local Ecological Investigations", is one he asked me to write for the book. I reread it first (and liked it) but now am enjoying reading the chapters of other people doing exciting work.
  - - - - - - - -

A parent volunteered to publish a journal of Chrysalis students' writing. I contributed the following essay, the result of meditating about Clinton.

A Reflection upon Leadership

A good leader always tells the truth.

In striving towards goodness, the leader has learned that our thoughts, words, and actions are interconnected. Deceitful or self-serving actions will tend to pull one's words away from the truth. But on the other hand, always speaking the truth will help lead one to act in a way that can be talked about openly. By always telling the truth, the good leader practices a discipline that protects the leader from the many temptations to abuse power.

 From contemplating leadership, the leader understands that a leader, alone, has no more power than anyone else. The power of leadership builds upon the willingness of others to apply some of their life energy towards bringing the leader's vision into reality. This is best achieved by leading--meaning leading upon the path one wants others to follow. Demonstrating the power of one's vision by acting in accordance with it inspires others to follow--far more effectively than telling others to do things that the leader is neither willing nor capable of doing.

If one demonstrates lying, one inspires those around one to also lie. These followers multiply the lie outward until it encounters those who expect the truth and will not accept a lie. At that encounter, a wall forms, cutting the leader off from the greater power beyond the wall.

In observing the consequences of less than truthful speech, the good leader learns that when one doesn't speak the truth, words lose some of their power. One comes to depend on double meanings, veiled words, secret codes. Communication consumes more energy. Does this word mean what it should mean or does it mean something else? People grow guarded. Communication grows garbled, clogging the flow of power.

Trying to learn from this waste of energy, the good leader comes to understand one of the main jobs of a leader. A leader helps maximize the flow of energy towards worthy goals. Energy consumed by divisiveness or distrust is energy wasted and unavailable for this greater work. The leader seeks to reduce the waste of energy. Telling the truth, therefore, becomes one of the requirements for achieving the mission of the good leader.

If we have visions of wonderful goals but we can not yet always tell the truth, we can set a personal goal of learning to always tell the truth. Working towards this goal will uplift our awareness of the interconnection between thoughts, words, and actions. As we strive to align our words with truth, our thoughts and actions will align more with our higher calling.

Those who have gone before us in this endeavor report that one powerful practice for those of us who still don't always tell the truth is, upon realizing one has not spoken the truth, to apologize immediately and then tell the truth. As one practices this, the temptation to bend one's words diminishes.
  - - - - - -

Let me share two of the activities I've been doing this month with my Chrysalis students. We had a bubble festival which led into why bubbles are round. Bubbles are round for the same reason rocks and planets and skulls are round--minimal surface area. This got me to thinking of the Earth as a bubble. A friend once told me that if you shrunk the Earth to the size of a billiard ball, the Earth would be smoother than a billiard ball.

So I had the kids draw cross sections of the earth's surface without any vertical exaggeration. The scale we used was 1 millimeter equals 2 kilometers. So we used a pencil at the end of a cord 3.25 meters long as a compass to inscribe the Earth's curve and then upon that curve we imposed mountains and sea trenches. On this scale, Everest is a little more than 4 millimeters high. Outer space was about 60 - 70 millimeters above the space. It's an interesting perspective. The smoothness becomes even more dramatic if you change the scale to 1 millimeter equals 4 kilometers but then any deviations from the curve are so slight that the exercise can become boring to any student not captivated by the minuteness of mountains.

This leads to an interesting contemplation for me. When looking at the inorganic world, we see the process of erosion and deposition smoothing the Earth and thereby reducing the amount of surface area. On the other hand, the organic world is busy increasing the amount of surface area by covering bedrock with forests and prairies. The result of this tension is that over billions of years, the surface of the Earth has become less "bumpy" but more "fuzzy". The exposure of rock at the surface has diminished but the exposure of plant surface has increased. It would be revealing to be able to somehow make a graph of the change in the ratio of biological surface area to geological surface area and how that ratio has changed over time.
 

Second activity was robin droppings. Every winter, robins drop down from the mountains into the Central Valley. Each evening, small flocks fly to a common roosting areas. One of these roosting areas is right next to Chrysalis. Each evening, around 5 - 10,000 robins congregate in the cottonwoods, converse in great exultation for 20-30 minutes, and then, as it grows dark, drop into the blackberry brambles.

One result is lots of robin droppings on the ground. The Rule of Flow makes me think about what is going on. The robins fly out each morning and forage for miles around throughout the day. When they come together in the evening, they don't feed. But they do defecate. There might be a potentially massive inflow of robin-transported nutrients being concentrated on this woods. How significant is the flow?

The kids and I figured the way to find out was to take some sort of "tray", weigh it, place it under the trees, and then weigh it again a day later. We cut out 1 square foot pieces of cardboard. The weight increase ranged from 0 to 2.4 grams with an average of 1.035 grams (dry weight) of droppings per square foot per day. (The squares were not distributed randomly. Most students sought to put them in areas that looked well-pooped.) Given that the robins are here for about 100 nights, that comes out to about 100 grams per square foot per year. That's a lot of fertility flowing into some areas.
  - - - - -

Last week I helped a teacher do a class walk through a scale solar system. An 8 inch playground ball modeled the Sun. On that scale, the average distance of Pluto was a 1/2 mile away (which we walked). On that scale, the nearest star from our ball in Northern California would be in New York City. I have done these kinds of walks before and they are a good way to help the mind start grappling with the relative size of things. While we were standing at Pluto, I started calculating what our 100,000 light year diameter galaxy would be at this scale. The results shocked me. On the scale of our sun scrunched down to an 8" ball and Pluto being 1/2 mile away, our galaxy would be about 80 million miles wide, almost as wide as the distance from the Sun to the Earth. Totally different order of scale than solar systems.

There are gradients of space and time. We are sensitive to those areas closest to our scale of existence. Part of science's progress has been discovering the events and objects happening further away from us on these gradients. Part of our work is expanding our awareness of the miracle we live within by locating the visual clues that help us see the more remote realms of these gradients of space, time...
 

If you are reading Cairns for the first time and wish to continue receiving it by e-mail, just e-mail me at  paul@krafel.net

© 1999, Paul Krafel, P.O. Box 609, Cottonwood, CA 96022-0609
Permission is granted to copy and distribute (for free) this material as long as you attach this copyright notice and my addresses so that a future reader can track down the source.

Back to Cairns of H.O.P.E. page