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.

Trimming branches, falling trees
One morning I was trimming back the branches that were gradually filling in the open space of a favorite trail. Then I sat to rest beside a streambed. Thanks to my morning's work, I suddenly saw the explanation for something I've always admired: the ways dead streamside trees tend to fall across the stream, creating dams and slowing erosion.  Since trees do not grow in the stream, the space above the stream is open and full of sunlight. For trees growing near the stream, the branches that face the stream receive more light than the branches growing the other direction. Therefore those branches grow more, out into the open space. Over the years, this disproportionate growth "bends" trees out over the stream. The tree's center of weight is cantilevered out over the stream. Therefore when the tree dies, it naturally falls towards the stream.

Cantaloupe and Seeing Through the Eyes of Animals
For several years, Alysia has wondered "when is the right time to pick a cantaloupe off the vine?" She sniffed. She thunked the melon but lots of time, the cantaloupe was not fully ripe. This year someone told her that the perfect time was when the melon's connection to the vine broke on its own. So we tried that. However, we discovered, much to our horror, that ants started tunneling into our cantaloupe before then. With great sorrow we plucked the ant-infested cantaloupe off the vine, washed it off and cut it open to discover how much damage had been done. We found a tiny excavation right below where the vine attaches. The rest of the melon was intact. When we tasted it, it was fully ripe. It was heavenly! So now we wait for the ants to tell us when the melon is ripe. They hover around it, sniffing it much more diligently and sensitively than we ever could. A tiny bit of melon is a good trade for such precise information. (It's interesting to speculate whether the cantaloupe is too tough for the ants to chew into before then - or does it just not taste or smell right?)

Remembering Badbea
When we were in Scotland two summers ago, we drove north along the east coast. We came to the great estate of the Earl of Sutherland, a classic stone British aristocratic manor house on a bluff. Large formal stairways swept down the slope to many acres of formal gardens extending to the edge of the North Sea. The guide book mentioned that the Earl of Sutherland was a particularly notorious figure in the Clearances - something we hadn't really learned about yet. We continued north. A half hour later, we drove by an empty small parking area on the right with what looked like a marker. We circled back and read that at the end of about a half mile walk were the ruins of Badbea. It was a beautiful, high latitude summer late afternoon. We walked out over a rise to a beautiful view, looking down towards high cliffs rising straight out of the waves of the North Sea. The trail dropped down to where the rocky terrain steepened into the tops of the cliffs. On the occasional level spot stood the stone wall remnants of the few small cottages that had been Badbea.

If I understand the history right, the clan system was the Scottish version of feudalism. The land belonged to the laird but the laird's power derived from how many warriors he could muster. Therefore the laird governed in a way that kept the population on the land as large and healthy as possible. For centuries England tried to conquer Scotland with various successes and setbacks. Scottish history got tangled up with the religious wars of England (and the Continent). Bonnie Prince Charlie (who sounds like a schmuck) came to Scotland to raise an army and march upon the Protestant English Monarchy. But he dithered his advantage and in 1748, he led the Scottish clans to a disastrous defeat at Culloden. The British followed the victory with brutal oppression, hunting down the survivors and family of those who fought, outlawing bagpipes and tartans and weapons. The laird's power no longer came from his warriors because warriors were forbidden. There no longer was an advantage in nourishing people with the land. Money could be made by raising sheep. And so, by their own lairds, the people were driven off the lands they had lived upon for centuries. Many were cleared off any decent land. They huddled on the rocky edge of the sea. There many starved. Many died as they tried to learn how to make a living from the sea. Many emigrated to colonies.

Badbea was one of the many such sad places. Back where our car was parked - that was good land so sheep lived there. The people were forced onto the cliff tops. The marker said that toddlers had to be on leashes so they would not be blown over the cliffs during storms. The soil is minimal; the people tried growing potatoes. Badbea touched me deeply. The wildness that strikes the passerby as beautiful was daily proof of profound betrayal and death-defying toil for those who had to live there. To starve on cliff tops a few miles away from where one's laird entertained sumptuously in a great house. How many times has desire for money sucked the privileged into such a yawning disconnect from the heart?

Which brings me to corporate globalization. Nature study and working on Chrysalis tend to preoccupy me but every now and then I come up for a breath of air and take a look around. The WTO demonstrations in Seattle made an impression; I made a note to learn more. This summer I read When Corporations Rule the World by David Korten (published by Berrett-Koehler and Kumarian Press). The man spent his professional life working in development agencies overseas so he has up close understanding of things we would rather not know. He does an excellent job bringing many disparate phenomena into a big picture. The main theme is that we have a fundamental systems problem. The current organizational form of corporations (and global finances) have allowed the positive feedback loop of "the rich tend to get richer" to spiral free of the many constraining feedback loops once imposed by religion, community, nation, morality, environment. It's a systems problem in that the forces created push out of corporations leaders who would temper profits with community responsibility and promotes those who will externalize any corporate costs that is possible to pin on someone else. The positive feedback loop has grown so powerful that it already is consuming our economy, our democracy, our sense of community, and our ecosystems. (If this seems too strong a statement, please read the book.)

I know that probably half of you are much further along than I on this issue. To you I thank. I thank those of you who were in Seattle and caught my attention. I thank those of you who have communicated about their concerns. You are heroes in my eyes. May my growing awareness nourish your persistence and resolve.

To those of you, like I, who are still wondering just what you actually think about this issue, I encourage you to read the book. I believe it will help you make sense of lots of different items in the news. (Second edition just came out and is much more current than the first edition.)

Alysia and I spent a week camping on the beach. As the waves washed my mind, I contemplated my response to my growing awareness that the issue of corporate globalization, along with human population growth, are the two biggest challenges we face. There are two things I feel like saying at this early stage of my growth in this area.

A major spiritual challenge of this issue is that it is really easy to be against corporations, CEO salaries, speculative finance, externalization of costs, the WTO, etc. Our minister cautions us to always take our stand for something, not against something. Korten's book does a good job of that. As I walked the beach, I sensed how grappling with this issue with the intent of finding upon what ground one will take one's stand is a spiritual wrestling that will make us strong.

Second thing is from my work with erosion. It is easy, when one looks at erosion, to see only the erosive forces. To conclude, for example, that there are 20 units of erosion out there. That view is disheartening. But a deeper understanding reveals that in this hypothetical example, there are actually 100 units of erosive force but also 80 units of erosion-resisting forces. Things are closer to balance than we usually realize. Gaia's power is invisible and easily overlooked. I shall be a grass blade growing where I hadn't grown before, slowing the force with which corporate globalization previously flowed by me. I will absorb some of that power and grow stronger. I will remember Badbea. I will share my spirit with others as others have shared their spirit with me. We will establish the proper feedback loops so that the tool of money becomes subordinate to and serves the human spirit.

Do you notice how the media more and more refer to us as "the American consumer", not as "American citizens". An idea for a bumper sticker is Call me a citizen, not a consumer!

Biomimicry
For those of you who have read my book, you know that I love gradients and that the world is full of them. I was reading Biomimicry, Innovation Inspired by Nature by Benyus when I came upon this comment by a materials scientist. Though he is speaking of specific materials, I find it interesting thinking about this in terms of the gentle gradients I see everywhere in the world.
"Even within a layer, a mixture of two or more materials could be used, allowing you to blend from one material to another in a gradient. A gradient of one material to another makes for a stronger joint and eliminates the need for glues or snaps. Nature uses blurred boundaries all the time, avoiding abrupt interfaces, which are crack prone and require some kind of fastening together," says Calvert....[N]ature loathes fasteners-instead it blends gradients so that the fiber has no single vulnerable point."

Ecosystems and Student Bodies
I've been on a bit of a reading binge this last month (summer vacation). Would like to highlight a thesis from Barriers and Bridges to the Renewal of Ecosystems and Institutions and then apply it to the novel setting of public education. The head author (Holling) hypothesizes that human agencies tend to manage ecosystems with a goal of reducing the variability of some economically important factor. Reduce forest fire or increase salmon populations or decrease insect infestations. Such a narrow approach tends to be successful. However, the author goes on to say that the usual long-term consequence is that the ecosystem loses its resiliency and grows unstable. Unfortunately, at the same time, the resource agency's success has led it to keeping track of only the one target factor. Therefore, it is unaware of the systemic changes happening in the ecosystem. Similarly, by stabilizing that key factor at a predictable level, the agency creates an economic environment of greater investment leading to increasing local reliance on the ecosystem. Therefore, when the ecosystem suddenly perturbs in an unanticipated way, the society has large economic constraints that reduce the flexibility and maneuverability to respond to the crisis.

Not only do I find this thesis intriguing in its own right, I also find it possibly applicable to what is happening in public education. In California, at least, the flow of money and the opportunity for promotion has so focused schools on raising their standardized test scores that I shake my head in disbelief. I can't help but see this as an "agency" focusing its resource management efforts on one narrow measure and that as the "ecosystem" moves in the desired direction, all sorts of unmonitored consequences begin accumulating which will eventually crash the "ecosystem". Already we are getting parents applying to Chrysalis because their children are so bored in classrooms that are teaching more and more test-preparation content. We hear of teachers losing the joy of teaching because there is no longer time allotted for teaching the "fun" things or teaching for deep understanding. Teachers are dismayed to have to teach to tests and not to human children.

One of the conclusions the author made about ecosystem management is that the system as a whole needs to be more open to feedback from "maverick scientists" who are studying aspects of the ecosystem out of pure curiosity and so will pick up warning indicators that are off the agency's radar. In that spirit, consider this a warning from a "maverick educator" that the country's emphasis on test scores and standards-based education is creating a "depleted and brittle" student body that will blow up in our faces in another five years if we keep pushing so relentlessly on this narrowly-defined factor.

From the flanks of Mt. Shasta
Every sound is a message. Steep water - falling more often - sends out a more tinkling sound than flowing water. So the steep upper basins of Mt. Shasta fill with tinkling as the summer sun moves above the snow fields.

On the slopes of a mountain, on the wave sounding beaches, I find it easier to listen to my soul. In such places, when I really seriously tap into what I want to be, free of all personal or cultural constraints of limitations, what I want to be is a saint. I know that such a statement is looked at either askance by our culture or as arrogant. Admitting a desire to be a saint sort of feels like admitting one is an alcoholic. And yet, why else are we here than to dance with this universe, to walk the garden of this miraculous creation and love all of creation with all our heart and all our mind and all our spirit. What else comes close?

Maybe one reason I am reluctant to say I want to be a saint is because people might think I am saying I am a saint or close to it. Or that saying I want to be a saint means I want to be recognized as a saint. No, it's just that the closest word we have in our culture for my aspiration is saint. Or boddhisatva.

One of my biggest challenges I encounter over and over again is a sense of intrinsic superiority to others. A sense of I am somehow better than others in whatever area is crucial to virtue. I've encountered it so many times that I am getting tired of it; it has cluttered and restricted my life in so many ways. It would be a relief to transcend it. When I stalk this attitude, I see part of it coming from a schooling full of grading with a connotation that those at the top of the rankings are somehow better than those lower down. Only later do I realize that choosing the belief that good grades "sets me above", cuts me off from others.

This brings up a humbling story. In college, I worked summers operating wheat elevators for the Walla Walla Grain Growers. There were 7-10 old-timers who worked with the Grain Growers year-round and then a bunch of college guys hired for the summer harvest. We tended to hang out with our peers. Seemed natural, what with us going to college and destined for something other than grain elevators.

Ten years later, a friend gave me a collection of poetry titled News from the Universe, edited by Robert Bly. It contained Bunch Grass #37, a prose poem by Robert Sund. Later I learned the poem is the 37th poem in Bunch Grass, a book of poems he wrote about wheat harvests with the Walla Walla Grain Growers. In the poem, he works with one of the old-timers coopering boxcars. During lunch, Sund notices a book of heavy-duty religious philosophy in the back of the old-timer's car. Sund asks him a philosophical question and a discussion ensues.
"In the next hour we talk a lot and I learn that he has been reading Rufus Jones, Meister Eckhart and The Cloud of Unknowing. He nearly trembles with a new joy he kept hidden. His wife writes poetry, he tells me, and adds - thrusting years recklessly aside - 'I've worked here sixteen years, one harvest to another. I've seen a lot of young men come and go, and never had a decent conversation. It's worse with the college kids. they don't think, most of them.'
 ...Back inside the elevator, I'd like to lie down somewhere in a cool, dark corner, and weep. What are people doing with their lives? what are they doing?

One of the many virtues I find in going to church (or having a sangha, a spiritual community) is that each time I encounter a great diversity of people doing the same spiritual practice I am doing. I am attending because of a long, personally meaningful but externally invisible history that has shaped me to this choice. Sometimes, like with grades, I take pride in personal experiences, feeling like they give me "credits in the spiritual wallet". But each week. I meet hundreds of others who also possess an invisible history that has made them spiritual seekers. What arrogance for me to feel spiritually superior to others drawn to the same path. I feel petty judgments rising and with gratitude I toss them away hundreds of time. What a gap judgementalness makes between me and the universe.
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