Sustainability

I delight in discovering new manifestations that Heaven Is Here in the mainstream news. Yesterday I saw a story about the kids at the oldest public school in the USA, Boston Latin School, working diligently to create sustainable roof scapes on their school buildings in Boston. I was so inspired. For many, many years now I have imagined green roofs on city buildings but had no sense or aptitude to pursue the vision. How exciting that these kids are making it happen. You can learn all about it at http://studio-g-architects.blogspot.com/2009/10/movie.html.

These kids are proof of heaven, they see a need, they manifest focused direction and draw those who can help to them. The envision huge without worrying about the scale of the problem and they offer back to the greater community the fruits of their discoveries. They also invite participation. It is a real community effort to change old buildings with heavy carbon footprints into sustainable spaces with ongoing learning opportunities for future generations of students.

These students could have stopped with their effort to reduce their carbon foot print at changing the light bulbs and lowering the thermostat but instead they leapt way beyond that and developed a truly inspiring program. Let’s hope that this kind of inspiration spreads across schools, universities, business and city apartment buildings. The prospect of locally grown foods, cooler roofs, cooler cities, reduced rain washes overflowing drainage systems is very promising and to me evidence of increasing awareness of our integral reliance on our landscape and responsible management of our resources. I applaud the students of Boston Latin School.

The Song in the Heart

Well, I am back. Just when I resolved to write everyday and amassed a nice list of subjects to inspire me my back went out of alignment and I couldn’t sit for a week. When it’s hard to sit, it’s hard to think and my goal here is to inspire not grumble. This was the old practice from my mother of, “If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all.” Maybe not exactly that but similar.

So today, I abandon my inspiring list and just free-associate. What is it like to live with pain and still know this is heaven? I don’t really know because I am very lucky and only get these occasional back spasms and cramps unlike many who suffer more kinds of pain than I can imagine. But I want to share my experience. Even though I was a bit miserable and whining a lot about the pain there was a song in my heart. This is the key to heaven. This song is always there, it makes me smile, it makes me see the world as it is and not as it is manufactured to be.

If we listen to the news and our panicking neighbors we can get very stressed out and miss the moments right in front of us. The song in the heart is always there, sometimes it is known as a whisper, sometimes the “still, small voice” and often the silence. AHHH! It is always available in spite of all outer events and activities and all personal conditions. All we need to do is listen. So my back was cramped and twisted and very noisy with aggravation and yet that unmistakable call to pay attention to the inner vibration of my own essential core called to me and sweetened my experience taking me beyond the limits of my own form.

I am now in physical therapy again and making very fast progress to general comfort, thank goodness for brilliant therapists who understand the workings of the human body with amazing clarity and specificity. So I can sit here and write again without distraction. I want to point out another thought about the song in the heart – it manifests outside ourselves too in the birds and in music, in the rustle of wind in the trees, the roar of the waves, AUM and other sounds.

Right now I am watching a small family of purple or house finches flutter on my deck. There’s a nest of almost ready to fly chicks under the deck right there. The ones flying were in a nest on the other deck just a few weeks ago. The noise of their voices is delightful, the mist wraps all the way up to the corner of the deck rail making it seem outside like we are at the corner of the world and high in the mountain peaks. The air is perfectly still. This is heaven.