Keeping the Dream

I just discovered this website a few days ago. It’s a website after my own heart! www.idealist.org.

From their vision and mission:

We would like to live in a world where:
All people can lead free and dignified lives.
Every person who wants to help another has the ability to do so.
No opportunities for action or collaboration are missed or wasted.

Our Mission

Action Without Borders connects people, organizations, and resources to help build a world where all people can live free and dignified lives.

AWB is independent of any government, political ideology, or religious creed. Our work is guided by the common desire of our members and supporters to find practical solutions to social and environmental problems, in a spirit of generosity and mutual respect.

I just joined and am finding my way through their site, but I wanted to post about it now. The reason I’m so excited about this is because this is idealism in action. The suggestions they provide, the practical steps to make things happen is really inspirational.

It makes the ideal possible.

I have just found the most amazing website: Global Voices Online It is one of the most exciting endeavors I have come across in a long time. Global Voices Online is a media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

How Global Voices Works:

Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online - shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard.

Finding one’s voice is the heart of the healing journey. It’s part of my passion as an individual and a singer/songwriter. It’s the topic of so many of the songs I write. But being heard is the realization of that healing, or at least, the real catalyst for it.

What good is a song that is never heard, a story that is never listened to, a life that is never acknowledged? These things are meant to be shared. And what’s true for the individual is true for a community, a people.

When you are heard, not only is it now possible for others to respond, but you, knowing that you, your situation, your feelings have been acknowledged almost become a new creature.

You are invigorated with new strength. A sense of esteem for yourself is born or strengthened and suddenly, you feel you have value…and most important, hope.

Invisibility is the devil. No matter what someone has done to you or what you’ve gone through, if there is no acknowledgment of the experience, that blindness and deafness to you becomes equal to or worse than the crime, itself.

Even if someone is contemptuous or apathetic of your experience, while hurtful, that’s at least admitting it happened. Invisibility, also, permits the atrocity and abuse to continue with you and/or to find other victims, unabated.

Global Voices Online is a gift of empowerment, where people ignored by the general media, can speak and be heard. Where situations can be highlighted and made known.

I’m embarrassed and ashamed of what passes for news in America. We know more about our spoiled rich kids and what they wear and how many times they’ve been arrested for DUI or other stupid stuff, than what’s going on with our global neighbors.

I’m woefully ignorant of what the world outside of my own is really like. I’m changing that. I’m going to start by listening to bloggers around the world, just like me. Individual voices of regular people, comparing and integrating them into larger synopsis written by reporters.

Because I’m a part of it. And whether I’m silent or vocal, whether I speak words of ignorance or awareness, I’m contributing something to the world - whether I like it or not, whether I would be proud of it or not. It’s that way for me and it’s that way for you.

“All voices, everywhere, to be heard”. What a beautiful affirmation and a wonderful effort to make that a reality. This is idealism at its best - setting the goal, the ideal and then making it happen.

I contemplate on this. I know the stories of many of my brothers and sisters around the world will be sad. But for this moment, I will allow myself to be grateful. Grateful they have a channel to voice their pain, their fears

And maybe, together, all of us, we can find a way to kindle that hope, and through individual and communal effort, give them reason to hope, so that one day they may have reason to celebrate.

I just found the most wonderful article about Halloween from a refreshingly insightful Christian perspective; Halloween: the Christians second most important holiday. Not only did I enjoy reading the article but the comments were wonderful…especially, this one, by the author commenting on the comments, regarding what would Jesus do on Halloween.

I think Jesus would start with five Mars bars and two gummy worms and end up filling the bags of 5,000 children.

His delightful writing style and attitude makes me want to read more and look into what he believes and why. Oh, if more people could share their faith in the same way, what a different world we’d live in.

I was looking at my webstats and discovered that someone did a search on “Should a child keep in touch with an abusive parent”. I hope they found their answer but I know it’s a complex question that does not have a simple answer.

My first response is, “Well, it depends.” And so with that in mind, I’d like to explore this topic over the next few days.

Here’s an interesting article that I think touches upon this subject and provides food for thought to start with. There are some points I agree with clarification. Have you been in this situation? I’d love to hear how you handled it.

Most victims attempt to present to their children a “balanced” picture of the relationship and of the abusive spouse. In a vain attempt to avoid the notorious (and controversial) Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), they do not besmirch the abusive parent and, on the contrary, encourage the semblance of a normal, functional, liaison. This is the wrong approach. Not only is it counterproductive – it sometimes proves outright dangerous.

Children have a right to know the overall state of affairs between their parents. They have a right not to be cheated and deluded into thinking that “everything is basically OK” – or that the separation is reversible. Both parents are under a moral obligation to tell their offspring the truth: the relationship is over for good.

Younger kids tend to believe that they are somehow responsible or guilty for the breakdown of the marriage. They must be disabused of this notion. Both parents would do best to explain to them, in straightforward terms, what led to the dissolution of the bond. If spousal abuse is wholly or partly to blame – it should be brought out to the open and discussed honestly.

In such conversations it is best not to allocate blame. But this does not mean that wrong behaviors should be condoned or whitewashed. The victimized parent should tell the child that abusive conduct is wrong and must be avoided. The child should be taught how to identify the warning signs of impending abuse – sexual, verbal, psychological, and physical.

Moreover, a responsible parent should teach the child how to resist inappropriate and hurtful actions. The child should be brought up to insist on being respected by the other parent, on having him or her observe the child’s boundaries and accept the child’s needs and emotions, choices, and preferences.

The child should learn to say “no” and to walk away from potentially compromising situations with the abusive parent. The child should be brought up not to feel guilty for protecting himself or herself and for demanding his or her rights.

Remember this: An abusive parent IS DANGEROUS TO THE CHILD…

To read more: http://samvak.tripod.com/abuse13.html

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Enter the peaceful and sacred space of Our Garden of Angels, a “homicide memorial park dedicated to the memories of loved ones who had been murdered”. Rick Waldroup shares the healing peace of the garden through his photos, revealing the beauty and resiliency of the human spirit.

There are words to describe the background for this memorial, but the true story is told in the photos that reveal the fruits of loving hands who respond to tragedy with the power of love, both stubborn and noble.

The photo of a plaque reads: “The Garden of Angels is not a place of death but a place representing life”.

This is why I love people. It’s not that the world is filled with so much hate. It’s that there are so many hearts who meet that hate with love, love that doesn’t roll over, but that in holding another accountable does not forget itself.

If those who have suffered loss can keep their hearts open in this way, then we who witness what goes on in this world can do no less. Each one of us has the capacity to build such a garden within our lives. Some of us will bring those metaphorical gardens into manifestation in whatever way is right for us. Others will reveal their gardens’ presence through a subtle smile or a tender touch.

Our Garden of Angels arose at the site of a murder. Right there, in the center of your wound, what will you plant?

I just watched the video “Animal School” at www.raisingsmallsouls.com Click on the purple rectangle graphic.

This deeply moved me…made me cry, because I thought of all the children who suffer because they don’t fit into a prescribed learning style. I thought of my daughter who, I have come to realize is very much a visual spatial learner.

She deserves the best. She deserves the opportunity to learn in the way that is right for her, to have the time and space to strengthen her weaknesses, not to be punished or stigmatized for them. She has the right to develop her strengths and to use them. She deserves the consistency and support she needs to reach her goals and to experience those wonderful feelings that come with success and a job well done.

And she deserves to be accepted and cherished for who she is.

This is such a wonderful video. I would recommend not only every parent, every teacher, every person who cares about children to watch it, but every person who has been made to feel stupid or inadequate because of not doing well in school. And I would hope that we, as a society, would stop this insidious form of child abuse under the guise of education.

Without a doubt, standards need to be set and goals reached, but how we get there and when we get there varies from person to person. We are not cookie cutter people. We should not think cookie cutter education would work. It does not. It’s illogical to keep insisting it should.

This book, “the power of kindness”, by Piero Ferrucci showed up in my post office box today. My dear friend, Sue, sent this to me as a surprise, and I was delighted. It seemed to be fitting for what is on my plate right now. In reading the first chapter, a sentence jumped out at me right away.

Pg 4

If we are healthier when we are caring, empathic, and open to others, it means we were born to be kind.”

Born to be kind. That’s delicious, isn’t it? Just let that roll around on your tongue a while.

And that makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, if we were really basically aggressive and greedy, wouldn’t those states of being be good for us? Wouldn’t they make our blood pressure go down and give us a sense of well-being, because we were being true to our nature?

But curiously, they don’t. They raise our pressure, increase our anxiety and sense of isolation. We feel fed, like on sugar - adrenalin instead of strength, junk food instead of nourishment.

If kindness has been shown to be good for our health, then that has to be some kind of statement as to who…and what we are.

I’ve always felt humanity was basically good, and that the evil that arises is an abberation. We still have free will, and there may be circumstances and motives that sway us from our center…or toward it, but nonetheless, the basic ground of our being is good.

It gives another meaning to “finding our way home”.

Demian,
~DreamSinger
Keeping the Dream

Voicelessness.com has a lot of valuable information about reclaiming your voice and the many ways you can lose it. I have found the information here to be very helpful, but more than that the message board associated with this site , dealing with narcissism and related issues of abuse, is probably one of the highest calibar message boards that I have found.

As with any message board or blog, you should always protect your privacy and be mindful of the fact that there are many people from various levels of their own healing who are a part of the community.

Having said that, I have to say that communities such as this one have provided me with much support and information for my own healing, and are worth checking out.