Time is Nuetral

Impermanence. If there is another single word which conveys more profundity or captures more feelings or carries with it more insight, I can't think of it at the moment (which, granted, might not be saying much). What's more is that it is a profoundly spiritual word. We all pay tribute to the far off idea that change is the only constant in our lives, yet how often do we truly stop and ponder it? Everything changes. Everything. Even history changes depending on which historian you ask or which volume of the past you read. Our climate changes, our seasons change, our weather changes, our relationships are constantly in flux, our appearance, values, beliefs, priorities, emotions, they all change. Yet somehow, it seems it is human nature to fight that change at every turn.


We somehow kid ourselves everyday by buying into a myth that we can slow or stop change. Whether its the advertisements convincing us we can look young for longer, or simply our mis-directed attempts at control which lead us down the slippery slope of believing we can count on things staying as they are a bit longer. Even in daily life, if something 'unexpected' happens, we seem blindsided and often (at least I do), take it as a personal affront - how dare this happen! I wasn't ready for that. Why wasn't I told about this? Yet impermanence persists. In his book "Turning the Mind into an Ally", Sakyong Mipham puts it this way: "When a cup breaks or we forget something or somebody dies or the seasons change, we're surprised. We can't quite believe its over."


So why keep kidding ourselves? I think perhaps the strongest indicator of how much we grasp at the things which continue to slip through our fingers is worry. Worry is the litmus test which glaringly tells us we are trying to control the ever-changing circumstances of life. When we think about an upcoming event, or tomorrow, or a relationship or our appearance, the amount that we worry betrays how much we're really trying to control what happens. But if we become more aware of our worry, perhaps we could start to understand when we're trying to control the uncontrollable, make permanent the impermanent. Worry, identified through awareness, can become a valuable tool which helps us to let go of our constant pursuit of control and permanence. Again, Mipham: "As we relinquish our attachment to permanence, pain begins to diminish because we're no longer fooled. Accepting impermanence means that we spend less energy resisting reality."


Jesus uses the reality of impermanence to ask this question: "...I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?... Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?... Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things." (Mat. 6:25-34, NKJ)


So we need to let go of control. Of permanence. Yet there is danger in letting the pendulum swing too far the other way. Many people might reason that if everything changes and we can't control much at all, then why try? Why care? Why work for the betterment of society or others, or ourselves if it all will change anyway? We seem to be attached as a culture to the idea of either/or thinking. Indeed it is far easier to grasp something if it is either right or wrong, this way or that, black or white. 


Yet life was never meant to be easy, nor was it meant to be the comprised of simple extremes or opposites. Mipham speaks of a right understanding of impermanence in the context of a journey to become a warrior in the world who's sole purpose is to radiate love and compassion towards, and on behalf of others. Jesus says not to worry, but in the context of trusting that God will be with you through the inevitable times of struggle and hardship and give you the strength to minister (literally: to serve) to others in their hardships. The Prophet Muhammad spoke of the 'great jihad' being the struggle within oneself toward moral purity, the betterment of society and the plight of others. 


In my Christian spiritual journey for the last ten years, I have come to understand this struggle in my own words. It is one in which we are to never let go of nor let lie slack the cable of hope as we labor day in and day out towards justice in everything we do. We are to constantly extend ourselves out over the ledge of self and trust that God will catch us as we fall in selflessness for others. It is our work to continually examine how we affect others and the Earth which sustains them and to adjust our actions to lower our negative impact on both. Yet in all this, we cannot worry. We cannot attach ourselves to the results of our efforts, for those results are impermanent and out of our control. Instead of using the fact of impermanence as an excuse for inaction, we use it to better understand ourselves and our position in the world.


I will always be amazed by Martin Luther King Jr's gift of words and at how they often express my deepest feelings better than I can. He wrote in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail:

"[There is a]... strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills... [but] We will have to repent ... not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right." (emphasis mine)

What to write?

It is interesting that I have a yearning to write, yet I have no firm idea about which to write. It is interesting on two levels. First, the fact that I want to write is still novel to me as well as still conjures feelings of insecurity which I must constantly push back. I see so much hurt produced in the world by people using their talents for writing and speaking thoughtlessly, or to espouse views of hate and single-mindedness which do nothing to help heal all the wounds which lay gaping open in our world today. I don't want to be yet another one of these voices. Yet I also read challenging books, witness heartening acts of kindness and love from other people, have friends who are using their voices and lives for openness and justice, and therefore feel I have the highest obligation to lend every part of me, including my voice and writing, to the cause. At worst, I'll be lost or drowned out in the madness. At best, perhaps one mind will take heart in my words and shift themselves towards love and away from the status quo of indifference.


The second level on which this yearning to write is perplexing is that I can't put my finger on what to write about (don't let all these words fool you, I'm not really writing). It seems as though I'm treading water in the sea of my passions, knowing and feeling there are concrete ideas and words beneath me, yet unable to grab hold of them (apparently I chose the scariest possible analogy I could for some reason). 


I recently finished reading Turning the Mind Into an Ally, by Sakyong Mipham, the head of the Shambhala Buddhist lineage. The foundation of Shambhala teaching is meditation, or peaceful abiding, in which the aim is to "tame" and "train" our minds away from their constant state of discursiveness. This idea of discursiveness, that our minds are constantly in flux, fixating on one thought or sound or image and immediately and seemingly without warning jumping to another, perhaps entirely unrelated thought, couldn't be more accurate. Especially in this age of technology, we have constant stimulation for our minds, whether its through music, computers, TV, news, radio, driving, meetings, cell phones, traffic, restaurants, the internet, or all of them at the same time. Our minds never stop. At least not until we train them to. 


The teaching is that, through practicing meditation, we can train our minds to not only notice when we are thinking and feeling, but to understand why we think and feel, and therefore not let those thoughts and feelings take control of how we act or where we focus our efforts. By training our minds, we then have more space and ability to contemplate and act on love for others, on why we are here and on what will allow us to effect the most positive change. Mipham says the work of a true warrior, what takes the most courage and perseverance in life, is to radiate love and compassion in all we say and do.  


So the sea in which I'm treading water is discursiveness. Its the same sea in which we all tread water, searching for the next thing to make us happy, or the next quick fix to poverty or climate change, or the one product which will keep us younger for another year as we grow older. Its time we slow down and swim to shore. There we can get out, realize that we were in fact simply treading water, breathe, then decide to move ourselves toward love for others instead of just for ourselves. Toward healing our Earth and the nations which depend on it for life. Toward a slower, more purposeful way of life which might actually accomplish a lot more than treading water.

The Cave

I started writing blogs out of a genuine yearning to challenge both my paradigm and the mainstream paradigms of our day. Well today is no different. I'm reading Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, by E. F. Schumacher (thanks Eric!), a true visionary of his time whose message is even more pertinent today than when he wrote it almost 40 years ago,  and it has sparked countless fires in my mind. 


The light from the flames bounces off my preconceptions, the ways I've learned to view the world, and the shadows betray the alternatives which simmer beneath the surface. Catching the glint of other possibilities I realize we're all lost. We're all gobbling up what we're told without stopping to analyze why we're told it or what will happen if we continue to follow the leader unquestioningly.


Perhaps the most burning question in my mind presently is this: Is our economy serving us (humanity), or are we serving our economy? Which leads to another question: What is the purpose of the economy? 


We hear every day about the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or the S&P 500, or the quarterly statements of massive corporations and the GDPs of nations as if we're all on the same page with what these numbers mean, how they were computed, or why they're even important in the first place. I would argue, along with Schumacher, that we need to collectively stop and size up our situation; namely that we're living in a society shaped by an economic platform which was developed with the best of intentions, but for a far different world than the one in which we currently live. 


This platform admires largess, uniformity, quantitative analysis, and simplicity as it stretches skyward, having convinced all of us that it can reach the goal of unlimited and exponential growth (how to you reach that goal by the way?). Oh, and the wealth created as a by-product will eventually trickle down to those who can't fit onto the platform.


Although this platform made sense as it was sculpted; in an uncrowded world filled with seemingly unlimited and nearly free resources with which to power growth, we can no longer say that any of it actually works. Despite growing GDPs, a new 'study' showing 1/3 of Africa is now in the 'middle class', and trillions of dollars floating around the world, are we (humanity) really better off for it? Has the wealth really trickled down and helped us lead healthier, fuller lives?


Or are we simply serving our economy and forgetting that it is actually supposed to be serving us? With more hungry people today than every before, more pollution in the air, ground and water than our planet can cope with, less topsoil with which to produce our food, and less of every other fuel to which we're addicted, I would say its time to rethink the platform we're standing on. 


As Schumacher puts it: "If [our current] economic thinking cannot grasp this it is useless. If it cannot get beyond its vast abstractions, the national income, the rate of growth, capital/output ratio, input-output analysis, labour mobility, capital accumulation; if it cannot get beyond all this and make contact with the human realities of poverty, frustration, congestion, ugliness, and spiritual death, then let us scrap economics and start afresh. Are there not indeed enough 'signs of the times' to indicate that a new start is needed?"

Generosity: The New American Dream

Life is a crazy thing. Every day we (global citizens) wake up and are forced to confront, and yet expected to ignore, the paradoxes around us. Some of us ('Westerners', but especially those of us who call the US home) are told to pursue the dream of others. A dream whose exact definition is elusive, but which conjures images of a house/mortgage with an over-sized lawn, 2-3 cars, 2.5 children, and a 'career' which will lead us securely towards the "Golden Years". 

Yet most of us learn from an early age that pursuing what is right, what is good, what is just, are worthy pursuits. Yet, as a rule, the elusive American dream demands selfish pursuits - often times even to the detriment of others - and offers the idea of volunteering or service or generosity as an exception; only to be done in 'spare time,' if we have any. Without more role models portraying lives of service toward a greater good, what chance do we have of living up to the things we were taught as children? 

The citizens of the United States individually give a lot monetarily toward 'charity'. Somewhere in the vicinity of 3% of our incomes we give away. That is a great start. But it is just a start. When the working and middle class families give more of their income than the upper socio-economic classes, and when we have so many societal ills (outrageously expensive healthcare, vast homeless populations, a decrepit public education system, failing ecosystems, etc, etc) with global ills to match, my hope is that we will not give up on giving. 

In an age when the government is slashing budgets to truly amazing programs such as Peace Corps, Americorps, Community Block Grants, community health organizations, and the like, it is our money that is needed the most. Yet it truly isn't our money. Whether you believe that everything you have is a gift or not, it is vital we see the connection between how we try to control our money and the failing systems we live in. 

I was inspired yesterday by a friend who, though he and his wife are struggling to make ends meet, gave Ash and I an unsolicited financial contribution to 'help where you think its needed in Moldova'. This spirit, one of complete generosity and trust that money can go farther when let go instead of clutched tightly, is something I rarely see, even in myself.

I truly believe that this kind of generosity, even if at first it is done more out of discipline than out of desire, is an important stepping stone toward reclaiming the values of our childhood. Values that lay claim to justice and other worthy pursuits. 

Imagination Takes Courage

I recently witnessed one of the most inspiring speeches I've ever heard. I consider the speaker a true visionary, a prophet, one who when he opens his mouth to speak, there is no doubt in the audience's mind that he needs to be heard.


The central theme I took away was how we have lost our imagination as a culture. We have become so entrenched in this either/or mentality that we have forgotten we were created to think of other possibilities. Capitalism or socialism. Democracy or dictatorship. Black or white. Heaven or hell. Pro-life or pro-choice. Liberal or conservative. For profit or not-for-profit. Rich or poor. Violence or pacifism.


What if these are all false choices? What if we have been conditioned to feel fear when we try to think outside the systems we see all around us? And why shouldn't we feel fear? When we look back through history, the people who have truly envisioned and fought for an alternative way of thinking have all been ridiculed or killed (think Jesus, Gandhi, William Wilberforce, Nelson Mandela, Dr. King, just to name a few). 


Speaking of economics, author Raj Patel, in his book 0: The Value of Nothing, applies this concept to our love affair with capitalism: "What needs to be plucked out of markets is the perpetual and overriding hunger for expansion and profit... what needs to be plucked out of us is the belief that markets are the only way to value our world." He is daring to say that instead of this false choice between capitalism and socialism, profit or no profit, there is actually another way, if we only have the courage to put aside our fear, and use our imaginations. 


Countless pockets of this courage can be seen all over the world, many of which Patel writes about along with author Paul Hawken in Blessed Unrest. It is so vital that we understand things can in fact be different. And not just different within our current system, but different altogether. The speaker I heard spoke about how artists are so vital because they envision how things should be, not how they are now. 


It is time for 'the mainstream' to start painting. To start re-imagining the Earth and our society the way it could be, not the way it is. To start connecting the pockets that are already here. 


Patel, in speaking about one of these pockets in Brazil, where people have taken democracy to a whole new level economically and are seeing amazing results, says it is amazing "...what happens when people stop being consumers in the market and become the authors of their lives, political subjects who both preside over resources and develop democratic ways of sharing them... In order to reclaim politics, we too will need more imagination, creativity and courage. We will need to remember that democracy's triumphs  come not from the ballot box but from the circumstances that make democracy possible; equality, accountability, and the possibility of politics." (emphasis mine)


The speaker I mentioned is Michael Hidalgo, whose blog, A View From A Point, is linked here, and whose teachings can be found here.

A Niger-shaped hole

Distance and time are strange things. Seeming to exist more in one's mind than in stark reality. We have been receiving periodic emails from Peace Corps Niger staff, updating all the volunteers about what is happening in country, and allowing us to send in our updates to be sent out to others. Yet the news is strangely absent of stories about even the 'higher up' Nigerien staff, such as Tondi, our training manager, or Souleyman, Ash's supervisor. Even more absent are the updates from our host families in Hamdallaye, or of our villagers in the rural reaches of the Sahel. I suppose its too much to hope for to hear of them again, to hear tidbits of their lives which are so meaningful. Even if we did get some morsel of news, its superficiality would never slake our hunger to hear Tondi's laugh again, or to sip the over-sweetened tea that our host dad, Isoufou would give us, or to hear Maimousa say "dommi!!??". 


Instead we're left chewing on the memories we have of them, the prayers we can offer up toward them, and the distant hope of one-day returning to see them. I'm realizing now how much Niger has left its mark on me. A mark so deep and so pervasive that I can't place my finger on it, let alone articulate it. Somehow our short experience of that vast country has altered the course of our lives. At some point between leaving Philadelphia and now, sitting at my computer back in Denver, there was a slight curve in the road of our lives; the new course imperceptible at first is now obvious as we wind our way towards the horizon of clarity. But that horizon itself, clarity itself, is perhaps a misnomer. In order for clarity to come, there has to be understanding of what would have been. And yet in life there is never a clear picture of what would have been, only an admittedly fuzzy image of what is. And so clarity will remain forever a horizon. Forever around the next curve in life. 


So here is to the people of Niger. To Zali with her beautiful laugh and the way she would say Ash's name; Mariama. I hope you are enjoying your very own chair. To Isoufou and his toothless smile and rough, calloused hands so strong and true. To Tondi, with the most life-giving laugh and the kindest heart, may you reach your goals and attain your dreams. To Isa in Fadama with his no-nonsense helping hand, hopefully Charlie isn't bothering you too much and I'm sorry we didn't come back. To Garba, thank you for always greeting us with a smile, for the ride on your ox-cart, and we're sorry we didn't recognize you after you shaved your head, hopefully we'll have a chance to recognize you again. To the women street vendors with their full-face smiles and light-hearted but helping conversations. 


Allah kiyaye. Allah shi bada lahiya. 

A different perspective on the Peace Corps

As Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, my wife and I's ears perked up when we heard that ABC's 20/20 was running a story entitled "Scandal Inside the Peace Corps". Actually, the first we heard of it was in Morocco, after just having been evacuated from Niger (see below), from family members who had watched it and were now concerned for our safety. So, now that we are home safe and sound, I wanted to look into the story a little more, the ensuing sensationalism, and perhaps offer our perspective on the issue.


For those of you who haven't seen the 20/20 episode, it is indeed dramatic and tells some very sad stories while painting a very one-sided picture of Peace Corps (PC) and its commitment to volunteer safety around the world. As PC's Director Aaron Williams conveys in his response (linked here), my issue is absolutely not with the validity of the stories told by the rape and sexual assault victims on 20/20. My issue - and the issue I hope strikes some chords of truth with you as well - is how the 'journalism' of 20/20 is indicative and in no way abnormal from, the tendency of mainstream media to tell one side of any given story while doing so with sensationalist, extreme, and polarizing rhetoric. This tendency is real, and many times results in equally sensationalist, extreme, polarizing, and often unneeded public responses based not on rational or evidence-based thinking, but instead on fear. 


Using the 20/20 episode as a mini case-study, I hope this blog will help put not only the PC's safety record in perspective, but also lend another voice to the many calling for a return to meaningful, reasoned, journalism.


The episode opens with a preview of the stories to come, including the tragic murder of a PC Volunteer (PCV) in Benin in 2008, and the stories of six female PCVs who had been raped or sexually assaulted during their service. As if these events in themselves aren't alarming enough, the episode opens with the question of "was the PC involved in covering up" these incidents? Whether or not this question is warranted, it sets the tone for the entire episode as one of distrust in the PC. On and on the statistics roll, all centered on the PC with no context given to help the viewer come to his/her own conclusions about the severity or not of the PC's approach to safety and security. Statistics such as the Benin murder was the "23rd since PC's founding", and, "over 1,000 female PCVs have been raped or sexually assaulted in the last decade". The way in which these and other stats on the PC were presented made it sound as if 20/20 should receive an award for investigative journalism, when in all reality, the PC publishes an annual report on Volunteer Safety and Security (2008 and 2009 linked here) for anyone who wishes to read it. Yet 20/20 doesn't mention this fact, nor do they provide answers to any other questions which might help the viewer make a reasoned, educated, assessment of PC's record and current efforts towards volunteer safety and security. 


These questions hit me immediately, as I hope they would to any person who thinks critically about what is presented in the media: How many volunteers have served in the last decade? What therefore is the rate of rape or sexual assault victims? Is that rate higher or lower than the rate for the US? Or the rate for major US cities? The PC Deputy Director mentioned there are plenty of women who speak highly of how PC supported them as victims, why weren't any of them interviewed? Nowhere in the episode was there context given for what PC's mission is (linked here), and how the fulfillment of that mission necessarily sends volunteers to unstable and developing countries.


Instead of a truly two-sided news story (one which, I do think would be worth telling) which does its best to present an un-biased set of facts to let the viewer draw his/her own conclusions, the episode was chalk full of cinematic effects and rhetoric designed to tell the viewer that 20/20's views are fact and truth and that the PC is out to intentionally hurt its volunteers. And sadly, it seems this approach worked, and not only with the average citizen, but also in our highest levels of elected officials. Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) decided, evidently solely based on the 20/20 episode, to call for a congressional investigation into the PC. In this daily address on the floor of the House, Poe, without apparently fact-checking or investigating on his own any further, cited the 20/20 episode as reason enough to mobilize a congressional investigation. 


While I don't disagree that PC needs to be held accountable to volunteer safety and security, why can't we have a reasoned, fact-based, conversation or discussion about it, instead of using such polarizing and extreme rhetoric which only furthers distrust and strengthens the divides between people? Perhaps such a conversation on the House floor would have acknowledged that the Office of the Inspector General has as its full-time job keeping the PC accountable to claims of fraud, mismanagement, and internal negligence (their recent assessment of PCV's Safety and Security is linked here). Or perhaps Congress would invite PC Director in to show concretely, what PC has been doing over the past few years to improve its Safety and Security training and to explain why, in fact, the numbers of rape and sexual assault have actually be declining drastically in recent years.


Let me be clear, I absolutely believe our media should highlight stories of those who feel they have not been heard or who are being oppressed. I absolutely believe that PC should be held accountable for its past and present actions or inactions. However, I also absolutely believe that the divisive and one-sided rhetoric used in the majority of media today is leading us further from peace, further from unity, further from the truth, and further from true freedom of speech. As PCVs, my wife and I also absolutely believe in the approach PC is using to the safety and security of its volunteers and the steps it takes to minimize the risks volunteers face everyday (as do all of us living anywhere in the world).


In the spirit of getting the full story and helping each of us draw our own, educated, conclusions, here are some more resources which help frame this important issue.



"Reconsidering the Peace Corps" - A Brookings Institute Brief which is a perfect example of quality journalism which provides a solid foundation of information. Its slightly old (2003), but every single point it brings up is just as relevant today as it was then.

US Uniform Crime Report - a national compilation of crime statistics in the US.
Inspector General report of PC - a recent overall assessment of the PC by the Office of the Inspector General
News story about Obama seeking budget increase for PC