Mockery as Art & Rebellion

Nicholas Kristof, whose work is always brave and inspiring, wrote in his column in The New York Times on Sunday, April 17 about the creative use of mockery as a tool for rebellion. He described the Serbian youth movement, Otpor (resistance), which started with just a few members and eventually mobilized enough support to spearhead the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic.

Besides practicing non-violence, the young rebels rallied people to their cause by making fun of the despot who was universally feared and hated. One stunt was to put Milosevic's picture on a barrel and roll it down the street, inviting people to hit it with sticks.

After Otpor helped bring about the overthrow of Milosevic, they began holding seminars for other oppressed peoples, including several Egyptians, who went to Serbia to get ideas for their own recent revolution.

The use of humor as an antidote to fear, of wild creativity to fight rigid oppression, of singing and talking in public places to fight the rule of silence—these are important tactics, not just for overthrowing tyrants but for dealing with other regimes (corporate, industrial, political) in which we feel powerless, humiliated, and helpless.

Radical Joy for Hard Times confronts environmental assaults with beauty. This is not elite beauty, beauty made only by the recognizably talented, but beauty re-imagined by ordinary people. Expressing sorrow and compassion for a place in the moment, we use materials found at the wounded place to transform our relationship with the place. It's democratic, empowering, and creative.

I'm very interested in exploring how other Otpor tactics might work for the environment.

Highs and Lows with Dolphins

Last Sunday, the celebration of Earth Day at the Unitarian-Universalist Congregation of Binghamton, I gave a sermon called "Rebalancing Act," in which I reflected on different ways of thinking about the "balance of nature" under current global conditions. What prompted this subject was a memorable experience of witnessing dolphins swimming in the Gulf of Mexico last fall, just three months after BP capped its leaking well, and how we, the witnesses to their lovely, fluid play, responded.

I had flown to Louisiana for Gulf Coast Rising, a day of making beauty and generosity for the land and people affected by the BP oil spill. The event was sponsored by Radical Joy for Hard Times. A few of us met on the southern shore of Grand Isle, a long, narrow island south of the Louisiana mainland that, because of its vulnerable geography, stretched out from east to west in the Gulf, was particularly hard hit by the flowing oil.

There on the beach we could see rescue teams and vehicles cleaning up other beaches. But it was a beautiful fall day. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, gulls and pelicans flew overhead, and the water looked clean and clear. We made a labyrinth in the sand and filled it with birdseed. We were holding a ceremony just prior to walking the labyrinth for the first time when we noticed that a pod of bottlenose dolphins were swimming very close to the sea wall just a few feet away.

Immediately we left off the ceremony... or rather we went over to be with the dolphins, who seemed to have arrived just in time to participate in the ceremony. There were about ten to twelve of them not more than 15-20 feet out in the water. They were diving, arcing in the sunlit air, leaping and flashing. They were beautiful, and they exemplified playfulness, freedom, and fluid movement.

As we watched them, we were full of joy. And at the same time, we were full of sorrow, for we knew that these animals were living in a dangerous environment. Even though the water looked clean, we knew that the entire food chain, from microorganisms that ingested the oil and the dispersants that BP sprayed to break up the oil, all the way up to the fish and the dolphins themselves were toxic. We knew that the dolphins were at the top of that food chain. Our rapture in the moment was mixed with dread for the dolphins' future.

Joy and sorrow, rapture and dread: we stood in the balance, holding both. Perhaps receiving those two apparently contrary burdens and holding them both gently and mindfully, honoring the utter validity of both, will be our primary responsibility as we encounter ecological crises in the years to come.

(The photo above was taken that day. I didn't try to photograph the dolphins, because their presence at that moment seemed sacred and not to be "captured." However, that's the patch of water they visited. You can see the clean-up equipment in the distance.)

How to Ride the Wave

How do you ride into the wave in hard times? Reflections on the story of Susumu Sugawara, which I posted yesterday, about the Japanese fisherman who piloted his boat, Sunflower, right into the oncoming tsunami, survived, and ever since has been using the boat to ferry people, medicine, and supplies:

1. Don't attempt to flee. Head right into the thick of it.

2. Even though you're overwhelmed by your opponent, neither fight it nor capitulate to it. Find a rhythm with it and hang on.

3. When the onslaught ends, take a while to get your bearings.

4. Make your way back to familiar shores.

5. Reach out and help others using what you've brought back.

(Image above is "The Great Wave of Kanagawa" by the 18th century Japanese artist, Hokusai)

Heading Into the Tsunami

Susumu Suguwara was in his fishing boat, Sunflower, when he saw the tsunami racing toward him. Instead of turning back to shore, however, Suguwara did just the opposite. Saying a silent goodbye to fishermen in the other boats he passed and offering his apologies for not being able to save them, Sugawara headed for the wave.

"I talked to my boat and said you've been with me 42 years. If we live or die, then we'll be together, then I pushed on full throttle."

The fisherman was inundated by the thirty-foot wave, but when the water had slipped by him and he saw the shore, he knew he had survived. Four or five more waves followed, but in the end, Suguwara and his Sunflower were intact.

In the weeks since the earthquake and tsunami set off physical, emotional, social, and economic aftershocks in Japan, Susumu Sugawara has been working to transport people, supplies, and medicine to people. He charges no money for his services.

Beauty in London for the People of Japan

Eugene Hughes, director of People Brands in London, breached the wall of immobility that so many of us feel as we confront both our sorrow and our compassion for the people and the Earth in Japan. He wrote out the following poem by the great 17th century Japanese poet, Basho, and tied it to all the flowering cherry trees in his neighborhood.

Here's the poem:

If you will let me,

I will willingly wipe

Salt tears from your eyes

With these fresh leaves.

Where's the Temple?

A week ago, a gray, rainy afternoon the day before I left Bali, I impulsively asked my driver. Eka Merta Sedana, to take me to Tanah Lot. I had never been to this temple on the sea, only accessible at low tide, for it is known to be inundated with tourists who come to take photos of the sun setting dramatically behind the open-sided building. But I was curious and needed a lift. I was feeling sad because a Balinese friend is very ill, because the weather in Bali has been so unusually rainy (people blame global warming) that all flowers of the fruits and crops are being knocked off the plants, and because the situation in Japan is so sad and frightening.

What I found at Tanah Lot was not what I expected. The tide was coming in, and people from many places—Java, Japan, Australia, France, Bali, America—were wading out on the rocks to get a photo of the temple, still dramatic under gray skies. But the real drama was elsewhere. As the waves came in and people got splashed, they were shrieking with laughter and delight. It was a scene of joy, childlike play, and a momentary release of all the national differences and personal cares that usually bind us.

When I got back to the car, I was feeling so exhilarated that I babbled to Eka about what I had seen. I showed him the photos I had taken. "Where's the temple?" he asked in surprise.

But I had seen something more wonderful even than the temple: radical joy in hard times.

A Spontaneous Earth Exchange

Sometimes people tell me apologetically that they would love to do a Radical Joy for Hard Times Earth Exchange for a wounded place, but they just don't have the time.

The following story, which comes from Laura Staman, Director of Outdoor Programs at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, proves that anyone can do an Earth Exchange anytime at anyplace. All you need is a place, your own personal emotional attachment to it, and the willingness to bring those two elements together for a few moments.

I’d like to tell you about something that happened recently. It is related to the ongoing gift of hope and listening to the land that Radical Joy for Hard Times represents. In my neighborhood there is a wonderful section of woods I enjoy hiking through. It is a spot of wild in the city of Lynchburg. Well, when I was walking the other day I discovered that a patch of that woods had been cleared to build a home. Though it is not a terrible thing to build a home, I was shaken by the clearing of the woods and destruction of forest growth. At first I dropped my head, said a prayer and walked by sadly. The hardest feeling sometimes is helplessness.

But then I decided to walk back into the space and sit and listen. It was as if the land just needed to be acknowledged... like it was dissociated or something from the trauma. So I sat and listened. Moved into the space and then just prayed to bless this place and help the earth recover from the hurt and the dramatic change. I blessed the home that would stand there and hoped the Beings there could live in harmony. Then I created the Radical Joy for Hard Times bird out of roots that had been ripped from the earth.... and I felt like I had made a difference somehow to the place, and at least to my consciousness.

Change is inevitable, and sometimes destructive, and this time I felt empowered to acknowledge it and to offer peace. The bird, and the memory of the Global Earth Exchanges, gave me a vehicle for doing something. I felt I had a voice and was connected to something larger than myself, therefore not helpless.

As I think back over this simple act I gave to the land and the future home, I reflect on how it is much like the healing I am doing now from a childhood trauma. Facing it, bringing peace into my life, blessing myself, building art out of its roots, and creating a new home inside myself.