"Learned and leisurely hospitality is the only antitode to the stance of deadly cleverness that is acquired in the professional pursuit of objectively secured knowledge. I remain certain that quest for truth cannot thrive outside the nourishment of mutual trust, flowering into the commitment of friendship."
-Ivan Illich (educationalist)

"It is commonly thought that conservative-minded people are as a rule old, whereas innovators are young. This is not quite true. Conservative-minded people are most commonly young men -young men who want to live, but who neither think nor have time to think, and who therefore choose the old way of life as a model."
-Leo Tolstoy

On leadership in our continent. (I live in Europe)

There are various types of protest all over Europe about the 'current economic crisis'.
The mood seems to be that people are feeling angry and increasingly more desperate, but are unsure where to channel either of these.
(not sure much of the UK has quite woken up to it yet, we're still in bit of a stupor)

I read an article by a journalist speaking with a senior diplomat in Brussels:

"[the diplomat] says the leaders have been pulling all the right levers, and the crisis would be much worse without their prompt action.
But the levers… here he gives a broad-shouldered shrug which suggests to me that he feels the levers may be pulled with the correct vigour, but they are just not attached to anything!
His gloom deepens. "I can't believe," he goes on, "that people are still walking around just doing their jobs, going about their lives."
So here was a very senior diplomat in effect wondering why more people were not taking to the streets in greater numbers.
Maybe it is because they don't know what to demand."

"In the recent past politicians were seen as irrelevant, now they are perceived as crucial.
These protests aren't promoting a programme. They are more like a prayer, for benign intervention...
..The shadow of the 30s, bullies in big boots with simplistic solutions, hangs heavily over Europe's economic woes. History surely isn't about to repeat itself?
Yet in nearly all our countries there is a vacancy for someone who understands people's pain even if he or she cannot make it go away, and for someone who appears to have a clear plan that has a chance of working."
-bbc website

Only a few economists and politicians with too much to lose to allow them room for maneuver are still convincing themselves: 'we are still in control and we know what to do'.

This 'economic crisis' will have far further reaching consequences than I have heard any politician remotely acknowledge. The media is splurging doom and gloom about it, so many of the things our societies have placed their hope in and trusted their wellbeing to, are being shown up as hollow facades, and shifting sands. I doubt that many people had a passionate enlivening faith, in plastic consumerism and the wealth made out of thin air on computer screens in stock exchanges, but we accepted what we were advertised.
We were due a faith crisis.
We really needed it.
And we need it more.

This is a time for soul searching, on a collective scale. How do we want to live our lives together?
What do we value?
How can we make sure all of us have enough to eat each day?
How shall we shelter from the weather?
What shall we teach our children?
How can we help eachother be healthy, in mind and body and in spirit and in community?
How shall we care for our elderly people?
How shall we resolve our conflicts?
And how shall we make collective decisions?

All of these questions are worth our thoughts, dreaming, prayers, conversations, research experiments, contemplation, and courage.

Our continent may go through some drastic reactionary shifts as powerful forces make lots of noise and shake things.
But each of us can make a bit of the future.

What shall we make?

February is a good month.
Every February there are two warm sunny days, that arrive just when you are not sure if there has ever been warm sun apart from in distant childhood memories.

It's been a long time since I wrote on here anything about what I've actually been up to.

Well..
I have been walking up snowy hills; getting more lifts from strangers and teaching them to play metaphysical hide-and-seek; dancing in a woodland clearing with giant origami flying birds; and sitting eating quality thai food in small improvised houses: a whole mini village of them ingeniously constructed inside a furniture warehouse; borrowing smart clothes from strangers, and eating dinner with them; driving a food delivery van in rush-hour London; designing giant fridge poetry; talking with 89yr olds and 1yr olds; helping make carrot cake for 250ppl; and falling asleep on trains.

And soon it will be Spring!

Some strong words about the love of money i am writing now to remind myself:

"there was no escaping the feeling that all these titans of global capitalism were in the same boat, and that boat was going down."
. -The BBC reporting on the World Economic Forum in Davos

Everything gets shaken eventually.. It's just amazing the amount of trust and assumption of permanence that gets invested in such flimsy structures (with such shiny signs).

Financial security and material wealth are not worthy of your trust! They are not kind compassionate or merciful in any way! They speak in flattery and bullying tones, and talk of superiority and inferiority. they keep trying to bribe our greed and threaten our fears. Don't listen to them!

They will all become rubble. Don't shelter underneath them in a storm.

"Every patio, flat roof and window sill, can be looked upon as an opportunity for food production."

-'The Self Sufficient Gardener' by John Seymour

"a home is not a home if there aren't any mattresses on the livingroom floor"
-krister

I like their home.

"Had to disconnect cooker as unsafe."
-Southern heating and plumbing.

left by workmen on a scrap of paper in our kitchen.
och well..

"Western cultural views of how best to organize and lead (now the methods most used in the world) are contrary to what life teaches. Leaders use control and imposition rather than participative, self-organizing processes. They react to uncertainty and chaos by tightening already feeble controls, rather than engaging people's best capacities to learn and adapt. In doing so, they only create more chaos. Leaders incite primitive emotions of fear, scarcity, and self-interest to get people to do their work, rather than the more noble human traits of cooperation, caring, and generosity. This has led to this difficult time, when nothing seems to work as we want it to, when too many of us feel frustrated, disengaged, and anxious."
-Margaret Wheatley

So the government is asking banks to be less harsh on people whose houses they are trying to repossess.
I'm sure there's a parable Jesus told, recorded about this?!

The one where a king lets off a man who owes him a huge amount of money. And then the man goes to a really poor man and threatens him for the small amount of money he is owed by him.
Don't think it has a happy ending..