photo: Kang Kim for TIME

This week’s time magazine has a very good article about a woman who has taken on an experiment, much like ours, to eradicate plastic from her life. Not an easy task.

This article an interesting and scarey look into how much plastics has become an unavoidable part of our lives. READ THE ARTICLE

I was making coffee this weekend as a guest at a lake cabin. As I pulled out the Folgers from the cabinet, I was sad to see it was now packaged in a large plastic tub. Coffee? The last holdout for tin? The coffee can for gawd’s sake. Now I knew we had no choice. The tital wave of plastic was unstoppable.

I have felt intuitively for many years all these wonderful conveniences of modern chemistry and science would be just the thing to do us in. Any step away from natural is a step towards unknown dangers. Nothing is free. Our wealth giving us access to convenience of modern day products could actually be the war we don’t even know we are losing…or know we are IN for that matter. Plastic leeching into our air and water is something we won’t escape. It touches us all.

It’s hard to keep up all the factors effecting us today—cancer, infertility, obesity, diabetes, depression, attention deficit, autism. The cumulative effect of our products, food processing, chemicals, toxins released everyday into our environment, financial and economic stresses. I feel more and more out of control as I look at the long list of ingredients on the back of labels on overpackaged goods.

One good thing about our BUY NOTHING NEW experiment is that the items we do purchase used or make do not come packaged. Food, cleaning and personal hygine products are another thing entirely. Belonging to a community farm, shopping at farmers markets and making your own cleaning products certainly help.

I think that we are but a drop in the whole of the problem and what comes of the energy we put forth to take this on? We are up against the world. It’s my conscious the drives me. My heart and spirit that has me understanding the whole of it. It is the default of life to sustain itself in harmony with all others—trees, animals, fish, water, each other. IF we actually listened to our soul and not our egos….we would all feel it. We would feel the Truth and we could not harm. We would take only what we need and give back three-fold…..protecting the life that is part of us while we are here.

Silence is confrontational to the unbalanced mind. It won’t allow you to escape from all the noise…all the voices in your head…all the to do’s, the regrets, the desires, the needs and wants. It won’t let you escape from the “I should of said this” or “I should of done that. It causes me to wince and say things outloud as if I am replaying a line from a bad movie. It’s also the silence that awakens the poet inside of me. Free from the chaos of a man-made life, created dependencies on technologies and economies. Spinning plates in the air, running back and forth to keep them from falling to the ground, shattering in tiny pieces. We fill our time–any moment or sliver of a gap with thing we think are real—facebook, im, texting, twitter. Cell phone conversations on bikes, walking dogs, waiting for the bus, etc.

iPod headphones jammed in our ears, cutting off the sounds of the world around us, we create our own soundtracks to our own movies.

Twitter—-a site you can sign up for where your posts are limited to 140 characters. People–anyone–can be following you. By simply hitting a button and they get your posts and you can get theirs…..a total stranger telling you they are now cutting the lawn, or having a glass of wine, or not doing work. Or said something to so and so last night. We have become the 21st century voyouers and both parties know it. We’ve left our window open for a looksy. Go ahead–have a look. It’s ok. You’re invited and I’m flattered.

I too am a voyouer–but my window is the snippets of conversations I pick up in passing someone on the street or sitting at another table in a resteraunt. I love the chatter of birds as I sit under a tree or walk by. I stop to observe as it becomes a frantic play for territory. Not much different than corporate office environments and cultures. One is left as the other moves on. I love watching and hearing the interactions of nature…and the world I walk through. I love watching interactions between human beings in structures….their perceptions, body language, interactions. I love watching what they see—what lights them up…what they miss. I love the faces of kids-the wonderment and processing that reflects the world in teir little faces. THIS IS MY TWITTER. 140 characters of unspoken language spoken in the subtleties of living.

…and silence……

It’s this same silence I rely on to return myself to me. To listen to my soul and celebrate the wonderment of the uni-verse. The one verse of life that all things are equal and of one another. A dance of interdependencies…life manifest in a spiritual dance of Being. Make the time to quiet yourself. Allow yourself to do nothing but Be. Be in the silence–allow the conversations in your head to arise and move. The only way out is through.

” The gap between the committed and the indifferent is a Sahara whose faint trails, followed by the mind’s eye only, fade out in sand. “

Nadine Gardimer South African Novelist and Nobel Laureate for Literature

Check out this blog—-

http://buynothingnew.wordpress.com/

It’s an experiment I am doing with a friend for a year.

I gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which I must stop and look fear in the face…I say to myself, I’ve lived through this and can take the next thing that comes along.

-Eleanor Roosevelt

The only way out is through I often say to myself. It’s my mantra. There seems to be a never-ending list of experiences to face and I spend a great deal of self-critical face time. I have two very good friends moving this month out-of-state and out of the country. I can’t help by feel sorry for my loss–the ability to call then up for a spontaneous outing to hear music, nosh great food at a hole-in-the- wall eatery, or just walk around the lake to talk about life’s challenges. It’s so nice to have those persons here by your side. Warriors beside you…celebrating triumphs and processing defeats. It happens to me all to often these kindred spirits, these friends of mine, walk beside me for much too short of of time before one of us had taken flight again. Off to write new chapters. I think of the new warriors who will soon cross my path and bring me new ways to looks at the world and wonder who they will be, what they will teach me and how long they will stay. I’ve asked the universe to bring me wisdom in a mentor.

excerpt from “The Dog Says How” by Kevin Kling

Ever notice, that in the long run, those who don’t eventually go “within,” often go “without.”

A new restaurant called Agri…an opening worth mentioning in the Minneapolis metro area. Opening Saturday May 31st, Agri is an organic restaurant with a focus on food that is locally grown using sustainable methods. Agri is open everyday 5-11pm and will soon be serving brunch on Saturday and Sundays.

I dined there Friday night and it was deeeeee-lish–the dishes were beautifully colored and creative. The deserts were amazing. No liquor license or carry in but the blood orange soda is amazing

We need to support these types of restaurants so more of them open and stay open. Don’t you Agri? (Couldn’t resist)

Agri is located at 4300 Bryant Avenue South
Minneapolis, Minnesota
612 822 3101

Waking up to singing birds, ducks flying over honking the happy sounds of spring. This is my church. Sipping coffee overlooking the stillness of the lake. Conversation with good old friends and I’m home.

Before the big bang, before the beginning, there was a void. It couldn’t have been more still or peaceful, simply because absolutely nothing had yet occurred. Then suddenly an impulse emerged and exploded-an impulse to become-that gave birth to a powerful creative process. But who or what initiated that process? What energy or intelligence made the choice to take that miraculous leap from formlessness to form? Somewhere, somehow, a choice must have been made. Such an audacious move, that instantaneous leap from nothing to everything, could only have been made by a force that was nothing less than God-like. So I interpret the word God as meaning not only the empty Ground of all Being but also that creative principle-the evolutionary impulse, the urge to become, the First Cause, the elemental driving force behind the evolving universe. And that creative principle does not exist “out there” or somewhere up in the sky, but emerges from the deepest dimension of Being itself, which is not separate from your very own consciousness.
-Andrew Cohen