Notes from and Elder

One thing about getting old, your perspective broadens. You don’t get so waylaid by all the small daily intrusions as you used to be. You are offered a larger view.

It’s an interesting mix. A lot of the time you are confused, don’t remember what you did or intended a moment ago. Then memories from the distant past burst into your consciousness, which is mostly pleasant but disorienting.

That’s why the conversation of us old geezers can be so exasperating to everyone else. We complain about our aches and new pains, we are always asking, “Where is my…?” “Has anybody seen my…?” or we are nattering on about old times pointlessly.

I see all that in myself, but also I experience periods of great clarity and deeper, broader understanding of the human predicament that includes us all at this moment of history.

I am writing to you and the world from that clarity and understanding as much as I can these days for as long as my energy lasts. It seems a shame how that energy wanes more and more, but I must accept that.


The wisdom mined by others can make great contributions to our understanding and our actions. We would do well to refresh the wisdom handed down from Lao Tse, from the Buddha, or from Jesus to inform our steps at all times. But not all of what is retain from former times is germane and helpful to our present conditions. New thinking is always necessary.

Recent and contemporary figures have given us great examples to guide us – Gandhi’s non-violent resistance to oppression, Tutu’s truth and reconciliation events, the ongoing movements for peace, environmental healing, restorative justice, to eradicate poverty and provide basic needs of health and freedom to all human beings – all these are alive and growing, and we all benefit from our attendance on them.


Compassion, a basic human attribute, languishes in us because of our isolation and anxiety. Children raised with closeness and affection are naturally caring. We need a society where the highest goals offered are not material wealth, notoriety, or power over others, but the rich pleasures of the human heart and mind. An economy based not on getting but on giving, the gifts of Earth’s resources not appropriated for possession but for the pleasures of mutual benefit, of sharing, of helping, of healing.

Emphasizing the traditional wisdom of the Buddha, the Dalai Lama advises our intentions always towards compassion and tells us, “Never give up!” Also from the Buddhist tradition of mindfulness, the teacher Thich Nhat Hanh tell us to listen, listen deeply, listen to each other, listen to ourselves, listen to life.

And in developing the techniques for non -violent communication Marshal Rosenberg offers a marvelous question I urge myself and everyone to ask each other: How can I help you make your life more wonderful?”


Now if everyone who reads these words would only say “Yes!” and put them all to work every moment, the human situation would get better the more people are able to read them, and our job is only to spread the words further.

But reading is not enough. The activities around us that produce anxiety and fear, increase isolation and loneliness, and reduce compassion and closeness must be prevented. These activities, you have perhaps noticed, are enforced by our economic and political systems and the anxiety and fear generated by them.

We have enough history now to affirm clearly that the overthrow of these systems does not create the human society we seek. The fears and greed and lust for power over others continue and corrupt whatever we may try to replace that system with. We need protected breeding grounds for a truly human society. That can happen without threatening or confronting others with hostility.

It is in fact happening, peaceably, more and more. People are gathering to live together in a better relationship to the Earth, to all life, to each other and to themselves. I have been working with such communities, now generally calling themselves ecovillages, for over 40 years. Are they perfect? Of course not. But life there is certainly far better, far happier, freer, more creative and satisfying than any place, any place outside them. More satisfying also than that of the poor, the struggling, the isolated, and also than that of the rich, the one percent in their gated communities.

These ecoovillages are laboratories, experiments in creating a new world, where they are trying to work out all the kinks and make life more wonderful for everyone. I invite you all to look into them more – check out Tamera, ZEGG, Damanhur, Findhorn, The Farm, to name only a few – there are thousands of others.

We have been experimenting on our own, working out techniques for getting the kinks out, the stuff we keep dragging with us from the old systems, stuff that is getting in our way, in the way of our compassion and our joy.

The original basis for our social thinking is that of the successful communities of all our past human history. We have named it The Circle Way and have been exploring it in workshops and camps for 30 years, learning more every time we come together. The major tool we are honing we call Supportive Listening, adapted from co-counseling for use in our circles and in the wider world.

The Circle Way is centered on all of us, not on any teacher or writing, or even on any policy. Centered on us, it can change as we change – and no one knows for sure how we will change and what the effects of that change will be. Writing like this will go into the archives and be noted as part of our history an growth, as we check out the thoughts and times of the Buddha and Jesus, of Gandhi and thousands of others like me experiencing and writing about these changes today, people like Joanna Macy and Starhawk and Jean Houston, like Steven Gaskin and Thich Nhat Hanh and…really thousands, it’s true. But all that writing is just smoke unless people are actively living it, as they are trying to do in the ecovillages.

The Circle Way understands that – as my late friend Pete Seeger put it, “None of us will get there unless we all get there.” And that means we have to be listening to each one. We can’t listen to each one in groups of thousands or even hundreds. We have to be in circles where EACH ONE can be heard by all.

If a circle is too big for everyone to listen to each other in a reasonable period that they can all sit still for, the circle must be broken down into smaller circles. Those are our basic communities, but those circles can connect to cooperate with larger circles to work on mutual interests together. Always we must keep in mind human scale. We can make our circles more efficient by continually taking time out for smaller circles of two people or three, where we can get clear our best communications to the larger circle.


Two signs we can print or just remember:

NONE OF US IS AS SMART AS ALL OF US.
And
IN US WE TRUST.


That last one comes from our certainty we were, like every baby, born good and innocent, eager, curious - loving closeness, play, laughter, creativity, and liking to help, enjoying cooperation and to be welcome, to be accepted, understood and appreciated. Together we can help each other to be who we were born to be.


So you see, I really do know how to change the world. I know how to help you, everyone, make life more wonderful for yourself and for all life. But it’s not something I can do by myself. Not even by writing it all down. Because it can only happen when we actually do it.  That means do it together. None of us can do it alone. We need each other.

That is why I am urging you to get together, make circles, listen to each other. And then bring it to the Earth. Settle, as people always have, together on a piece of land, listen to one another and support one another, trust in your goodness and intelligence and thoughtfulness and use Supportive Listening to help each other clear out all that gets in the way of your love and compassion, your clarity and creativity and joy.

I am urging this for NOW. Because really, you may think you can wait, but I don’t have as much time as you. I want to live with you now and be close and play with our children and grandchildren, and work and sing and dance together, and show the world how it is done.

My late friend Mort Goulder liked the model in my book Changing the World, but asked, “How do we get there from here?”  Fate has placed an immediate possibility in our hands, to buy our neighbor’s property and right away start a seminar/healing/retreat center where a supporting ecovillage can grow.  But we have to act quickly.  We could do it if we got some large loans that would earn a good income for the donors, and/or it could work if we got tens of thousands, maybe a hundred thousand small donations.  I assume you, like me, do not have a large amount to invest, but you do have friends who, like you, could pass on this information to others and ask them to pass it on through the Internet and all the social networks. 

We need a mass movement – It can start here.  Never give up.

TOGETHER THERE IS NOTHING WE CANNOT DO. To all who make a donation we can send a certificate that they are founding members of our Circle Way Retreat Center and will be welcome to visit any time.

Spreading the Word, Preserving the Land

Okay folks - I am going to assume that you are reading this blog because you have intersected with us and The Circle Way at some time and you liked our way of wanting to change the world into something more human, something that helps everyone by us getting closer and all helping one another. If that's not why you are here - well, enjoy and stay close anyway.

If you want to help change the world with us there are a few simple things you can do.

The first is share and/or donate to our crowdfunding campaign to support the Circle Way Ecovillage USA.

The crowdfunding campaign is part of our effort to raise money to purchase the land north and west of us. On this land there is a lovely house and garage, a beautiful pond, a permaculture orchard, organic garden, and landscaped meditation garden. I dread to see it bulldozed for a crowded development of houses and the forest clear-cut and harvested. If we can purchase the land we will be able to immediately begin to hold Circle Way seminars, healing workshops, and to build a community to sustain the land as a teaching-healing retreat and center for all people.

The land and everything on it is worth much more than what is being asked but still Ellika and I do not have the money ourselves to buy it, although we have given all we have as a non-refundable deposit to hold it for now.

Many people have already responded to our call promising help, and many more are beginning to hear about it through Facebook but we have still not reached our goal. Every one of you who can donate and share the page on your Facebook can make a big difference. Every donation helps, no matter how small, and if you can't donate, spread the word.

The second also very simple thing I encourage anyone to do is write a positive review of any of my books on Amazon.com. I can attest that those reviews really work - I never buy anything from Amazon without reading them and they definitely influence my decision.

If you want to contribute more in depth there are some some tools for you on the website. Some promotional letters which you can use to contact people, feel free to change any of them as you feel or redo completely in your own words and think of other possibilities.

With deepest affection, Manitonquat

Farewell to Pete Seeger

Dear Friends,

If you have not yet heard, my friend Pete Seeger passed on to his last journey from this world yesterday.  He was a good friend to all native people (Floyd Westerman also appeared with me telling stories at Pete's Clearwater Revivals) and for nine decades a singer, storyteller, fighter for working people, for equality, justice, peace and a healthy planet. In his song “To my Old Brown Earth”, Pete asked us not to cry, but you and I know that crying is a good and healing thing that allows our feeling our strong and deep emotions. The words of Ecclesiastes that he set to music say that there is a time to mourn, and we may take time for that now.  Sadness is important also to share.

It was not unexpected, of course.  When I visited them last spring Toshi was much reduced and Pete was taking pains to include her in our conversation but it was clear that dear sharp energetic Toshi would not be long with us.  And that would mean, of course, that after 70 years together, their lives being so entwined, neither would care to hang out very much longer without the other half.

The occasion of my visit was to give them my latest book Have You Lost Your Tribe? because of the brief memory of Pete I included at the end of the chapter on “The Rainbow Tribe.”  I left soon, not wishing to take up their time together, and I doubt now if Pete even had the time to check out that part because I failed to mark it.

Now I am realizing that I spend quite a bit of my free musing time in writing letters to them in my head, explaining what I am doing and telling them how their example has helped to fuel the work with people that Ellika and I do.  Not wanting to add to the great volume of correspondence that they would be receiving, I actually sent those thoughts very seldom and visited even less.  And of course after the fine memorial for Toshi at Ethical Culture I have been thinking to check in once more with Pete but this time put it off too long.

My friendship with Pete Seeger began 38 years ago at a one of his concerts (I know the time because my oldest son was in his mother’s womb at that concert and when Pete played the banjo she said Tokeem was dancing!) my old friend David Amram introduced us, and the first thing Pete said to me was how much he loved Indians when he was a boy.  I stayed in touch during my tenure as an editor of Akwesasne Notes and when we formed a community in New Hampshire later our whole community would go to the Clearwater Revivals to do the recycling while I was telling stories at Story Point.

Following my elders advice to go wherever I was invited, my path led me to Europe, where I met Ellika and most of you who are reading this have kept our connection through community building camps and family camps that we have led for 30 years, now in 12 countries.  Most of you have watched as I showed Pete’s story, The Power of Song, and you know what an inspiration he has been to me for maybe 60 years.  You have heard me say that his integrity and unflagging zeal for peace and justice and compassion, for the Earth and all our animal and plant relatives was unequaled by any public person in America.  He did not care to sing solo but always enjoined all present to song together, and his attitude was encapsulated in his remarks that we must change the end of “Over the Rainbow” to remind us that none of us will get to our vision of a world fit for humankind until all of us can go together –“If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the Rainbow, why can’t you and I.”

As you all know, I am just 10 years younger than Pete, and I really hope I have another 10 years in me because our community building is only just really getting started and I have at least another 10 books to write and add to the 10 I have perpetrated already.  I am slower, but I will keep traveling until I have to stop and let you come to me.  Lucky I am to have Ellika to hold me up and keep me in line – as I say in a poem to her, ,”insisting on vegetables and seat-belts.”

So wherever you are now, join in a chorus of Pete’s that we often sing together:

One blue sky above us, one ocean lapping all our shores,

One Earth, so green and round, who could ask for more?

And because we love you, let’s give it one more try

To show our Rainbow Race, it’s too soon to die.

And as we remember Pete, recall his belief that the human race has a 50/50 chance of having a human race here in a hundred years, that the scales are evenly balanced and one grain might tip them in either direction, and that we are, all of us but one grain - we must all be involved and get active in some way.

And listen once more to the farewell of his last song:

Guard well our human chain,

Watch well you keep it strong,

As long as sun shall shine.

And this our home,

Be pure and sweet and green,

For now I’m yours,

And you are also mine.

Be Well – I love you all,

TOGETHER THERE IS NOTHING WE CANNOT DO

Medicine Story

ps I attach a photo from the last time we visited - a model for us of a couple who showed us all not by teaching but by doing -and that courage is not something we are born with but something we choose, a decision we can continually make.

Learning from indigenous wisdom and knowledge

A summary of this year's Irish camp by R. Teichmann: Learning from indigenous wisdom and knowledge – To change society a cultural revolution in activism is needed.

I recently attended a workshop with an Elder of the Wampanoag Nation, Manitonquat (Medicine Story). This article is my personal “digestion” of that weekend. I dedicate this to all fellow men and women who hold a vision for a better future and are working towards reaching that goal and especially to Manitonquat and his partner Ellika.

Love Is Who We Are

-Manitonquat, 2007

The theme I am presenting for consideration at our workshops and camps this summer is: "Don't waste one precious moment of your life doing anything that is not loving!"  We had a discussion about that this morning.  Ellika says she tends to feel bad about herself if she can't live up to such a command, and you can't command yourself to love, and so on.  That was good, because it sent me back to another teaching that I have been neglecting.  About altering our perspective and the direction of our consciousness.

The fact is that love is our essence, and whenever we are not engaged in loving: loving what we are doing or what is presented before us, loving the moment, loving any person, or just loving life, we are contracting, moving backwards in our evolution, sliding toward the end of the spectrum of consciousness where paranoia lies - everything is "out there," and they are all out to get me, "in here" - pure fear in some form.  We are always moving on that spectrum in one direction or the other.  At the other end, of course, there is no "in here" or "out there" - we are one with it all - cosmic consciousness, pure love.

We are not often at the extreme end either way, but generally always moving towards the love end or towards the fear end.  And how the universe appears to us depends on which way we happen to be moving.  Contracting is painful, expanding is blissful. To turn our direction around and start moving toward love and away from fear what we must do is recognize that we are not loving just now and decide to love ourselves - love our selves right where we are.  Love ourselves for not loving.  Love ourselves for not loving ourselves.  And that, I am convinced, is always a choice we can make.

We can make it because love is truly our essence.  We came into the world that way, knowing that.  I have seen that in the eyes of newborns, and I just saw it at the Waldorf kindergarten where I told stories the day before yesterday.  Watching those little ones, all the different little personalities, safe and free and cared for - so not having to close up and defend themselves but only to be themselves- running free and wildly joyous, or sometimes sitting quietly watching, absorbing the moment around them.  I saw the curiosity, the play and learning and creating that is who we are purely, and I saw the love.  I saw it when they played with Armin and Claudia, the teachers, how they completely trusted and loved their teachers.  And every now and then one or another would come to me or turn to me and level a concentrated look, a look of pure love for me so strong I could hardly stand it.  It almost knocked me over, every time, and it happened often.

Inside me was turmoil - I wanted to weep for such a wonder of who they are every one, and who we are, every one, and how we don't understand that and mess it up for them as it was messed up for us.  And I wanted to shout my joy that we are beginning to get it, that there have been people like Rudolf Steiner and Maria Montessori and Alice Miller and Harvey Jackins, and Joseph Chilton Pearce*, and so many like the co-counselors and our Circle Way folks spreading the knowledge of who we are, insisting on our goodness, our love and connectedness.

So when Jesus wanted us to love God and our neighbor, it really isn't as hard as we have made it.  Perhaps it helps to know we are God (He also said, in the Gospel of John, "Ye are Gods." Also to understand why the Buddha understood compassion to be central to enlightenment) and where it can and must begin is in loving ourselves, being compassionate to ourselves.  Loving ourselves is loving the Creation, loving the Creator.  We all did that naturally until we were three or four or whenever other people's distress began to confuse us.

I envy Armin and Claudia, being able to be in the middle of all that excitement and play and growth and freedom and learning and love every day.  (It's exhausting too, of course, but bless them for that important work of love they do, they deserve all the rewards of it.)

So perhaps when I tell folks not to waste a precious moment of their precious lives doing anything that is not loving, I should also add that if you find yourself in a moment when you are not loving, just remember to love yourself where you are, love yourself for not loving.  That's where the universe put you just now - it's not your choice, but you can choose to love yourself instead, and that will change your direction.

Of course, as Ellika points out, it's not always that easy for everyone.  A lot of junk gets in our way.  That's why we use and teach the Art of Supportive Listening, a simple, easy-to-teach easy-to-learn way of prying out the junk in the way of our living the essence of who we are in joy and in love.

And it works.  I tell everyone how it keeps working for me, I see my own growth in love and compassion, my distresses fewer and fading, and I see the growth in all my friends who counsel, and I see that all the people I know who are teachers and leaders of Re-evaluation Counseling, who have been at this process for years, are altogether the most relaxed, friendly, clear-thinking, interested, easy and fun to be with, compassionate people I have ever met. Which is why I love co-counseling workshops and reading PRESENT TIME, where I can be fed and nourished with that consciousness and can feel supported that many are going at this stuff full tilt in their lives and giving it to others.

Still, I’m not rigid. What we are teaching is the best thing I have seen so far, and it’s working so I will keep on with it – but I keep looking, listening, learning, and the moment I find anything better than what we are doing now I will go for that.

It's a great time to be alive.  There's a lot to do, but thank goodness for that - and what else could possibly be as much fun!


(* See all his books, especially MAGICAL CHILD)

The Land I Dream Of

The land that I dream of “over the Rainbow” is one that takes us all back to our true nature, that preserves our goodness and innocence.  We get to the kingdom of heaven by becoming again  “like unto one of these” - our little children.  Because it is in our nature to want to be helpful, we come to the circle to help each other, and also to help and preserve the harmony of life and honor the profound depth of our need for the beauty of this Earth,  our beloved mother.  We keep our circles small enough to be able to speak to one another from our hearts and listen to one another from our souls.  We want to live in love without fear and so trust one another and cast out all fear with that perfect love which is our birthright.

We do not have institutions and systems to care for us, we care for us.  Our circles joined in community provide the closeness we as human beings need: we teach each other and heal each other.  Together we teach how to help make life more wonderful for every one in our circles.  How to go deeper in relationships and solve together the issues of our bodies, minds, hearts and souls; how to prepare for the role of parenting; how to care for our children in ways that enhance our love and their freedom to explore the world and become the most and best of who they can be; how to work together with joy and fun; to study and learn more and more of our world and the universe; to play and create beautiful things and enrich our lives together with song and story and dance.

We want to learn from our children as they learn from us.  We want to learn how to be better teachers of each other and our children.  We want to reach out to others beyond our circles, to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, care for orphans and those with reduced capacities to care for themselves, to provide comfort and assistance and an honoring to those nearing the end of their journeys and enjoy the links with our history that our elders carry.  We want to celebrate together the passages of life and the seasons of our lives.

I've been home a couple of weeks but so stressed I am refusing to think. I still am endeavoring to get my tennis game together - after only playing 5 times in 5 months my game has gone south - need extensive reconstruction of my backhand, wondering how much is my eyesight - my right eye is no use. I should be glad I am still playing at 84.

I had an amazing summer and fall - making camps and workshops to overwhelming acclaim and building new circles in 10 countries - 4 new ones - UK, Ireland, Czech Rep. & Greece - and I finished my new book on THE JOY OF CARING FOR CHILDREN IN THE CIRCLE WAY which will be published first in Italy. It is an exciting time.

The cause of my stress is not bad, just stressful - we have been offered the opportunity to buy back the land our predecessors here had to sell on account of debt. It has been beautifully improved with a 3 story house, pond, landscaped garden, 2 car garage, gym, sauna, pottery studio, and a huge vegetable garden that could feed the ecovillage I always wanted here but had not the place for.  If we had it we could immediately begin to build that community and start up a healing, seminar, retreat center - all things I am longing to do. But neither I nor my partners here in The Nature School that owns this property know the kind of people who have money to loan or invest (we need to raise $350,000 in 2 months), so although I a sending the word out to my constituents I am not terribly hopeful that we will succeed and the land will pass over to developers who will make a lot of new upscale housing in our peaceful woods. If I knew how to use the social networks and reach out to thousands there might be a chance, because the property is worth half a million and we would be giving attractive loan rates or shares that would be secured. Of course I am telling my contacts to tell all their contacts too bad my old tennis partner Mort is not with us any more - he is one who had money and knew folks who had money, and he believed in my dream.

Well - so you see the nature of my stress. I feel obliged to work at something and am totally incompetent to do so - keeps me up nights - and to top that, Ellika is still in Copenhagen because I only came home for this and go back next month for my granddaughter's first birthday - and we will also be with our new grandson - Lucca Story Talbot - 5 month old, the  whole family together in Berlin. It does help that I talk to her every day on the phone. By the new year, when we both return until May, this will all be over and I can go back to my writing and teaching, the things I know how to do and am decent at.

- Manitonquat