Dudeman on the Compassionate Earth Walk

http://www.compassionateearthwalk.org/2013/05/29/dudemansearth/

Hey everyone! My name is Justin and I am walking with Compassionate Earth! I’m really excited about it for a bunch of reasons. I guess a lot of the time, I just kind of flow from one place to another taking in life as I go with very little direction. When walking you always have a direction– I believe I need this direction, and right now so do we all! A compassionate and sustainable direction. I have always hoped that in my life the direction I would end up walking in would be one that brought peace and compassion to those around me and to myself… and so here I am.

Now I just want to talk a bit about why I am walking, and also a little about some things that I believe and some things I want to learn.

I am walking to see the earth, to hear it. To feel what is happening, and to understand. This way I can know what I believe, and believe what I know. I am walking to share my love with the earth!! I am walking so that I will grow, because If I grow the earth grows.

I believe that the walk will generate compassionate energy for the entire earth, and that we earthlings (plants, animals, people and everything in between) are as much a part of the earth as the rocks and the oceans. I am happy to have the opportunity to participate in something like this and just want all of you to know that you can too!

I believe that the money system is intrinsically flawed and is depriving us of direct interaction with our survival needs, even making it unclear to some as to what our “needs” really are. (Food, love, peace, shelter, water, for a start. Not oil, not green paper, not decimal points.)

I believe the the corporate system is blinded by numbers, greed and profit. I think it has grown out of control concentrating the world’s resources in the hands of a few. This is increasing the suffering felt by many people, and by the Earth. This is being done with little regard for anything other than Old Might Dollar and The decimal point. Thus we end up with things like the KXL and the Tarsands.

I believe the path that our world’s majority culture is traveling down will end in disaster for us if it doesn’t change, but more importantly I believe that there is Hope!!

I don’t really KNOW any of these things, but I do believe them. As a friend recently reminded me, there is a difference between knowing in your heart and having information at your fingers, and I’d add even in your head. So I am walking compassionately, because I need to know, I want to know the earth, and the people and the problems we’re all facing.

I’ve had it drilled into my mind for most of my life, by our world culture, that the world is in fact Ours. That our industrial culture is the world. That this culture is humanity. And this is the way it was meant to be. The way it has to be. I do not believe that. I do know there have been other ways. There ARE other ways. Other peoples. Other cultures. Some of them right here in the U.S.

Many of our brothers and sisters in our earth family don’t know this– they know that this isn’t the way but think there are no other options– so am I’m walking for the people who don’t know, Myself included. I am walking hoping that after the walk there will be a little more light and that one of Us (earthlings) can illuminate another way and find another direction. (one day <3)

I Know that when this walk is over I won’t be the same as when it started and when I change the world changes just a little bit. So I’m going to put one foot in front of the other and I’m not going to stop! I am really blessed to be in a place in my life where I can do this, and I realize that not everyone can but there are lots of other things you can. You can come and walk for a little while– a day or a week even! We would love to have you along. We’re also asking for donations, which will primarily go toward feeding us walkers, so anything helps!
To contribute to our Start Some Good campaign, visit: startsomegood.com/compassionateearthwalk
To mail a check or food/supplies, address to:
The Compassionate Earth Walk
c/o The Harvest Collective
1518 Menlee Rd.
Silver Spring, MD 20904
To gift via Pay Pal, address to: davidrogner@gmail.com

Home Sweet Home

Everyone knows why Bitsy and I are leaving home, at least for the summertimes. It’s because I (and many other people, but most of them don’t know it) am “sensitive to” (that means it makes me run into the bathroom and upchuck, which is not a good way of life, or in lesser doses, it’s just feeling yucky) to combustion products. Combustion means burning. The yuckiness
depends on what is burning.

ALL burning consumes oxygen to release energy by breaking down various substances that burn. They all give off carbon dioxide and water. That’s a climate change story – about the health of the biosystem more than the health of me. And burning also gives off various kinds of tars, right? We know that. And nicotine, if it’s tobacco burning. And all sorts of other toxic substances, like candles, diesel fuel, have their own tars and other byproducts. That’s about the health of me. Combustion products make me (and actually most people, just wait, think Alzheimers, asthma, allergies, pneumonia, obesity, depression) sick. You’ll find out soon enough, just wait.

I don’t want to wait. The Brazos Valley is now full of combustion products and other toxic compounds such as pesticides, herbicides, perfume, cleaning substances, diesel, oil wells, fracking, coal fired power plants, and much more. It’s in the air, in the summertime especially. The only way to avoid them would be to stop breathing. I don’t want to do that, or to be sick, so
last week we left the Brazos Valley, heading for the pristine Rocky Mountains.

Getting dark, we stopped at the Pipeliner Hotel in some little town in Texas where the room had so much perfume we could not sleep. Tried the face mask, doesn’t work with perfume, and so we ended up, the two of us twisted up in the front seat of the pickup across the
alley from the motel where the air was not so bad.

Did I say this was supposed to be a shortcut to Chama? And then we drove and drove and drove and after a while we came to Amarillo and got lost. And then we drove and drove, Texas is pretty big, until we got to Dumas. And from Dumas to Dalhart we drove through a dust storm worthy of the 30’s. And there was a very strange person out plowing his dusty field as the wind was blowing his soil away into the air and into my pickup. Out with the face mask again, until we got to Dalhart, where we spent the night in a much cleaner motel, but we still had the fan in the bathroom running full blast and the door cracked open just a little bit to clear the cleaning products from the air.

The next day was bright and wonderfully clear. We stepped outside and breathed. And breathed. And got in the car and drove up and up and up until, at about 8000 feet, the bends struck, also known as altitude sickness from changing too fast, and so we stopped first at the roadside rest that is complete with a corral to rest the horses, and then a fine breakfast just up the hill in Perico, where the real cowboys eat, and featuring some very nice pictures by a local artist. This part of the “shortcut” was quite worth all the driving.

Across the high plains, finally we left Texas behind, in to New Mexico, and moving up into the National Forest, winding around on route 63, and down again into Taos and about 80 miles of desert shrub with more and better dirt devils. Slap on that old mask again. And, here we are in our new back yard. Look at that enormous rock that probably fell all the way down from the cliff.

Home sweet home. Hear the wind in the pines.

But no, the house is full of the smell of mothballs, that’s not only toxic but also carcinogenic. The rattlesnake on the porch slithered under the house, and Bitsy rolled in something seriously dead. And somehow we simply could not feel at home.

So we drove on down to Santa Fe. Just in time for the forest fires.

http://23thorns.com/2013/03/28/a-bird-in-the-bush/

http://23thorns.com/2013/03/23/watching-the-grass-grow/comment-page-1/#comment-2304

My readers will like thie above post much more than they like most of mine.

Abilene, for the most part you can have it

Sayonara Texas

“So, if on one hand, you had an unpredictable path, that leads into a new dream, a new way of life for all of mankind. and on the other hand, you had a predictable path that leads to the slow, inevitable decline of a civilization. Which path would you choose? Thank you.”

This News from Friends of Peace in Waco

You might be interested in participating in their agenda — or watch their upcoming monthly movie.

Friends of Peace – http://friendsofpeacewaco.blogspot.com/

“THE PEOPLE’S RESPONSE to THE GEORGE W. BUSH LIBRARY AND POLICY INSTITUTE opening will happen April 11-14, 2013. The FOP plan to take a van to Dallas for this massive protest action. Please mark your calendars and join us for this commission on peace, justice, and reconciliation.

“PERSONAL NOTE.
“Shortly before Christmas an Op-Ed I had written on global warming was published in the Waco Tribune-Herald. I was of course very pleased it was printed. But the newspaper actually added words to the editorial that I did not write. I mentioned that global climate change is one of those issues which will have massive impact on our “children and grandchildren.” The paper added that this impact was like “runaway spending.” I NEVER wrote those words. “Runaway spending” is right wing code for any money spent to help the poor and disadvantaged. Of course I believe we do too little to help the needy of our society, certainly not too much. I wanted all FOP members to understand that words were added to the column which were the Trib’s words, not mine.” (I’ve had editors take OUT some of my words, but I never had anyone ADD their own words to my editorial. Amazing things happen when you live in Texas.)

“We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”–Howard Zinn