Please Pause for a Prayer on Independence Day....

It's Great Soap and.................Can I Still Get Dr. Bronner's Chips??

I used to meet Dr. Bonner when I stopped by his place to pickup soap, seasoning and chips to deliver to San Diego area health food stores and herb shops. I was a part of Medicine Wheel Herb and Healing Collective at the time. I loved the chips and I still use the liquid soap at times. His products were very special and so was he.
-Alan



Dr. Bronner’s Magic Media Soap Opera

The counterculture’s exceptionally eccentric soap family hits the big screen

By Charles Shaw ( from Common Ground )

There’s a classic montage in the stupendously silly cult hit, Half Baked, in which Dave Chappelle describes all the different kinds of pot smokers. The most memorable, played by Jon Stewart, is the “Enhancement Smoker” — the guy who enjoys everything more intensely when he’s “on weed.” As Stewart hands over money for his bag he enthuses, “Have you ever looked at the back of a twenty dollar bill, man? There’s all kids of weird shit going on!”

Had the scene lasted just a bit longer, Stewart might have produced a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap, which bears (stoned or stone-cold-sober) perhaps the mother lode of weird label verbiage — with a back-story almost as convoluted as the one behind the Masonic symbols gracing our national currency.

It’s the story of one Dr. Emanuel H. Bronner, chemist, master soap maker, Holocaust survivor and lead prophet for the One God of Spaceship Earth. In 1947, Bronner escaped from a mental institution and began selling soap made from his family’s 150-year-old recipe out of the back of a Los Angeles tenement hotel. Today the company, run by his grandsons, David and Mike, sells more than 6 million bottles of soap a year.

This tragicomic drama propels the narrative of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox, a new documentary by Sara Lamm that attempts to capture the essence of this thoroughly mad (and at times, thoroughly maddening) genius who was, in the purest sense, far ahead of his time. Using a mix of archival footage from the ’70s and ’80s and original material shot in the early part of this decade, Lamm offers up a tale of perseverance and near-staggering acts of acceptance, faith and tolerance on the part of the Bronner family.

As Soapbox illustrates, Dr. Bronner — who passed away in March of 1997, just shy of 90 years old — was definitely out there. He saw himself as part of the long lineage of prophets that includes Jesus, Mohammed, Hillel, Moses and Buddha. Bronner believed these prophets appeared on earth regularly — every 76 years to be exact, inspired by the arrival of Haley’s Comet — to lead their people to god. He was also convinced the most recent of these prophets was Mark Spitz, the American swimmer who won seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Because of his profound spiritual beliefs, the label that bears his name became both his manifesto and his legacy to humanity. It is a 30,000-word treatise on “All-One,” an ever-evolving set of teachings he called “The Moral ABC,” designed, in his words, “to unite all mankind free!”

Unfortunately, the course of human history is littered with the literal and symbolic corpses of prophets — real or self-imagined — who bore new truths as harbingers of a new way. And Dr. Bronner’s fate was no different than those who came before him. He was locked away, called insane, discredited and dismissed. The FBI even had him listed in their “nut file.”

However odd or unorthodox his behavior or his theories, though, Emanuel H. Bronner’s product was a hit with the west coast counterculture, who became his best customers and sustained the business for decades. Blind for the last 20 years of his life, he remained first and always a subversive, a true believer in absolute freedom who embraced the work of Thomas Paine, made friends with Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, advocated for hemp and organic farming, and was so rabidly anti-communist he put Nixon to shame. His “all-one” philosophy was a Universalist doctrine of mutual peace, respect and ecological harmony, based on the central tenet that we are all children of the same divine source.

The Bronner paterfamilias was also inherently a just and fair man, an ethos that runs deep and strong in his descendents. Believing in the idea of “Constructive Capitalism,” where one shares profit with the “workers and the Earth,” Bronner and Sons (and now Grandsons) built an ecologically balanced business that uses all organic vegetable oils, 100 percent post-consumer recycled plastic, fair employee wages and salary caps for David and Mike that are no more than 5 times that of the lowest paid employee (the current national average is that CEOs earn 430 percent more than their workers). To this day, the company gives away over 70 percent of its net profit to various causes all over Spaceship Earth — some of the more recent being fresh water wells in Ghana, orphanages in Haiti and China, and local organic farm projects.

What you can’t help but take away from Soapbox is the exceeding compassion and care of the extended Bronner family, who seem to posses an inherent, almost compulsive sense of acceptance and social justice. You feel their nobility not through any sense of grandiosity, but in their patient acceptance of the odd, the unfamiliar or the uncomfortable.

Nowhere is this shown more clearly than in the parallel narrative about Bronner’s oldest son Ralph who goes to Manhattan to perform in an off-off-Broadway show about the family. This leads to some of the film’s most touching scenes, involving a young musician Ralph Bronner befriends in his hotel, whose girlfriend lay dying in hospice a few feet away. As the young man breaks down before him, Bronner simply offers comfort and holds space for the man’s grief. It is a selfless act of unconditional love, in the spirit of his father, the good doctor, who had love for all of the world around him, if not sadly for his own children, who spent most of their lives in foster care. Still, Ralph Bronner is able, at the film’s conclusion, to place his father’s shortcomings into a perspective that resonates:

“Eccentric people do not make the best parents. I can’t imagine Beethoven stopping the composition of a symphony in order to feed the kids. For my father, it was always more important to save Spaceship Earth than it was to have dinner with the family.”

Headlines Read: “Germ Wrongly Jailed by Soap!”

Another film — this one hitting the small screen (See it on YouTube, to be exact) — continues the epic tale of the noble Bronner clan. The wry, upbeat and at times hilarious web short — which has received tens of thousands of downloads since it was released in early May — centers around David Bronner, grandson of Emanuel, hemp activist and current President of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, and the recent allegations by police in Newport Beach, California that Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps contain traces of GHB (Gamma Hydroxy Butyrate), a notorious “date rape” drug.

Entitled Soap, Drugs, & Rock and Roll, the seven-minute short is an original and effective use of the media as a PR tool — with our heroes the unassuming soap makers who, in one fell swoop, cast serious doubt on the practice of field drug testing, expose the lies of commercial soap producers, advocate for organic products and educate the viewer on yet another layer of our culture’s dependency on oil.

The circumstances laying the grounds for the story have already become the stuff of legend:

On the night of April 4th, 2007, Don Bolles, eccentric 51-year-old drummer for punk outfit The Germs, was driving through über-conservative Newport Beach, California on his way to an AA meeting when his tricked-out van was pulled over, allegedly for a broken taillight. Bolles gave consent to search the van, and the presiding officer found a bag of legal medical marijuana sitting next to a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s soap. For some reason (perhaps because the bottle was clearly labeled as hemp soap) the officer decided to apply a NarcoPouch® 928 field test to the soap to assess it for drug content. The test came back positive for GHB, and Bolles was arrested and taken into custody.

Upon hearing this, the Dr. Bronner’s company immediately paid Bolles’ bail and legal fees, and stepped up to defend their brand publicly. David Bronner appeared before California media denouncing the charges as “totally absurd,” and suggesting that Bolles was pulled over for the offense of “driving while weird.” They then ordered the same NarcoPouch® 928 test and began testing their soap products. What they found was astounding

“It was a gift that fell out of the sky,” Bronner says with a measure of incredulity. “We saw a golden opportunity to address greenwashing in our industry head on.”

The “gift” to which Bronner is referring was the discovery that his — and in fact any natural organic soap — will always test positive for GHB using the NarcoPouch® 928 or other similar field drug tests, which makes the false-positive a good indicator of real organic vegetable oil-based “castile” soap. What the Bronners then learned, in another seemingly pre-ordained twist, was that commercial “liquid soap” products made by companies like Dial, Softsoap, Kiss My Face, EO and Nature’s Gate, all tested negative for GHB, indicating that they contained no real soap in the recipe. In voiceover, David Bronner then explains that the “soap” in these products is really a collection of petrochemical detergents.

Thus, the NarcoPouch® 928 is outted as a lousy drug test, but a really great soap test.

“It’s not the most glamorous battle we’re fighting, but it’s our backyard,” adds the tall, quiet and unassuming David Bronner. “Our grandfather was a radical, and we’re just trying to keep pace with the standards he set. He used to quote Hillel: If not now, when? Well, we have enough strength and visibility to speak to these issues and change them in the long run. We just call things as we see it, and in this case, we saw injustice, and we came in to clean it up (no pun intended).”

“Yeah, you can use our soaps for pretty much everything,” Mike Bronner adds, “except getting high.”

I'm Going Home to Ohio Next Week, But West Virginia is My Second Home.....

Go Tell It on the Mountain
By Anand Gopal, WireTap
Posted on June 25, 2007, Printed on June 27, 2007
http://www.wiretapmag.org/stories/43134/

Issue: Environmental destruction in West Virginia
Why? Severe health consequences for school kids and families.
Action: Marches, web campaigns and student activism raises awareness and confronts legislators.

Photos: Vivian Stockman. Flyover courtesy of SouthWings.

Larry Gibson has gotten used to the threats. Gibson, a Lilliputian mountaineer with an impressive belly and an equally impressive baritone drawl, reels off the list of attacks and calamities he has faced almost with a touch of boredom. "We've had up here at my place about 122 acts of violence, from shootings and the burning of my cabin, to shooting my dog to trying to hang the other dog I had," he deadpans.

Sure enough, just yards from Gibson's modest Appalachian home sits a dull gray camper, its facade pockmarked with tiny bullet holes. In the 22 years that he has lived atop Kayford mountain, part of the picturesque massifs that form the coalfields of West Virginia, Gibson has also faced beatings, sabotage, and death threats.

What Gibson has not gotten used to, however, is the view. The rolling, verdant countryside below Gibson's home has been home to hundreds of isolated and close-knit Appalachian mining communities for generations. Much taller peaks that rose high above Gibson's home and filled the surrounding scenery, however, once surrounded Kayford mountain.

Pop The Top

Since the 1980s, coal companies have engaged in a systematic destruction of the mountains, dubbed "mountaintop removal," (MTR) in an effort to reach the abundant coal seams that lie beneath West Virginian soil. The peaks surrounding Kayford have all vanished, and with them have gone most of the area's inhabitants. Kayford was once home to a thriving mining community; Gibson estimates that over 4,000 lived and worked here just decades ago.

Today there is just one inhabitant left -- Larry Gibson. Gibson lives alone, weathering the attacks and intimidations of the nearby coal companies -- led by coal giant Massey Energy -- who have turned their attentions towards Kayford, one of the few mountaintops in the area that is still standing.

MTR mining, referred to by some as "strip mining on steroids," is rapidly supplanting underground mining as the coal extraction method du jour. Where underground mining requires hundreds of miners, only handfuls of workers and massive quantities of explosives are needed to blast the tops off mountains.



The results are devastating. Just down the road from Gibson's cabin, past a feeble, rusted gate which Gibson has christened the "Gate of Hell," you can witness West Virginia's future as it sits uncomfortably with its past. Where a mountain peak once rose 700 feet above Kayford, instead a spawning, empty chasm sits like an open wound in the countryside. Thousands of feet below, antlike cars and gargantuan machines navigate a barren terrain that looks more like a transmission from the Mars Rover than anything of this world. From this open pit, the coal travels along a labyrinth of shoots and conveyor belts into the basin below, termed the Coal River Valley, a narrow hollow where most Appalachianers make their home.

Killer King

In West Virginia, coal is king, and nowhere are the indelible footprints of King Coal more visible than Coal River Valley. Take the narrow, winding Route 3 south from nearby Racine and you will drive through tiny, unincorporated hamlets with names like Eden, Montcoal and Rock Creek. Pass through Sylvester and you will see massive covered silos -- covered because residents sued coal companies after years of breathing in coal dust. Just down the road, you will pass homes covered in sludge, uninhabitable and without resale value.

Further south, take a stop at Whitesville and you will be in a modern-day ghost town. The decline in organized labor and the shift from underground to mountaintop-removal mining has thoroughly depressed living conditions and driven away businesses. Residents recall when Whitesville was the cultural and economic heart of the Coal River Valley -- decades ago there were no less that 27 inns and bars in the mining town. Today there are two.

Follow Route 3's twists and turns farther south and you will come across tiny Sundial, W.Va.; looming just yards behind Sundial's Marsh Fork Elementary is a giant coal silo. The school, with over 200 students, also sits less than 500 yards from 2.8 billion gallon sludge impoundment dam owned and operated by Goals Coal Co., a Massey subsidiary. The whole complex forms a processing center for Massey coal, mined through MTR.

Ed Wiley, a Rock Creek resident and former coal miner knew something was amiss when his granddaughter kept coming home sick. The Appalachian native recalls one afternoon as he drove his sick granddaughter home from school. "I checked to see if she had her seatbelt on," Wiley says. "She was all discolored really bad. She turned and looked at me -- she had tears pouring down her face -- and she said, 'Gramps, these coal mines are making us kids sick.'"



Wiley started digging deeper into Massey Energy and its record at the school site, and the more he found, the more disturbing the picture became. The sludge impoundment carries to date 249 violations, and a dam rupture would instantly flood the nearby hollow and kill all local residents within minutes. One study determined that 88 percent of households surveyed had children who suffered health problems, including asthma and chronic bronchitis. Four teachers and three children at the school have died of cancer, and another child has spent time on a respirator. Wiley has made it his personal campaign to "stand up" for the children of Marsh Fork. In the summer of 2005 he did a sit-in outside of Gov. Joe Manchin's office, and later that year Wiley trekked almost 500 miles from Charleston W.Va. to Washington, D.C., speaking along the way to all who would listen about MTR and Marsh Fork

Massey representatives and school officials declined to comment for this story. However, Massey has claimed that the coal silos actually prevent sickness since they house coal that would otherwise sit in open fields. And in preliminary studies, the EPA has not found excessive amounts of coal dust inside or outside the school. But in a state where the coal industry underwrites politics, and elected figures like Joe Manchin have extensive ties to the industry, Wiley, Gibson and other community activists are skeptical of the government's promises to help. Massey has more violations than most of the other area coal companies combined, and in a field where the stakes are so large -- 39 seams of coal, worth close to $450 million, sit under Gibson's land -- Gibson, Wiley and other area activists have turned to a local environmental group, the Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW).

Breaking The Cycle

Judy Bonds, a CRMW co-director, recounts the organization's founding with a barely disguised indignation. "Local environmental groups started looking into tree death from acid rain," she says. "And when they went to look up in the mountains, there were no mountains -- the mountains were gone!" CRMW was soon born, and the group threw itself into raising awareness of and organizing community resistance to MTR. Integrating youth and students into the movement was an early challenge. "If daddy doesn't work for the coal industry, then your uncle does," Bonds admits. Students at Marsh Fork and youth in the area had families that depended on Massey for their livelihood, so CRMW turned to colleges.




The group recently organized an "alternative spring break," where youth and students from around the country converged in West Virginia to learn about the effects of MTR. On March 16 of this year, students attending the alternative spring break, together with members of CRMW and other community activists, occupied the state capitol building in Charleston in protest of Massey's attempts to erect a second silo near Marsh Fork school grounds. Of the 50 protestors in attendance, 13 were arrested, including Gibson and Wiley.

CRMW has also organized a campaign, Mountain Justice Summer, that has brought youth and students together for concerted grassroots activism in Appalachian areas affected by MTR. Youths involved in Mountain Justice Summer have monitored coal permits and mining practices, engaged in listening projects and organized demonstrations like the March 17 action.

Their efforts are beginning to pay dividends. In the last three years, over 2,000 college students have come to see Ed Wiley and learn about MTR, news organizations from around the globe have hiked up Kayford to hear Larry Gibson's story, and legislation is beginning to trickle in that curtails some of the worst of MTR. Just two months ago, a federal court ruled that MTR debris failed to comply with the Clean Water Act, and Massey has had its permit for the second coal silo revoked three times.

Activists attest, however, that much remains to be done. Bonds sees youth and students as playing a central role in the struggles ahead. "The youth have to be a part of this," she insists, "because they need to understand it is their future -- I'm not going to be here, but they will be." And so as Larry Gibson spends solitary nights atop Kayford safeguarding Appalachia's past, hundreds of students and community members are perched in the basin below, studying, debating and organizing, in an attempt to reclaim its future.

Learn more about this issue at I Love Mountains and Mountain Justice Summer.

Anand Gopal is a freelance journalist and writer. He is a founding editor of the Finland Station, a political magazine, and writes widely about current events. He lives in Philadelphia, Pa.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.wiretapmag.org/stories/43134/

Jesus has been getting a bad rap these days....

A Revolution of Authority
From a dialogue with Brother David Steindl-Rast


interview

Born in Vienna, where he studied art and psychology, Brother David Steindl-Rast is a Benedictine monk who has been regarded as Thomas Merton's successor in the Christian contemplative tradition. He has spent the last thirty-five years in both Eastern and Western monasteries pursuing his interest in the roots of mysticism. In the following excerpt from a dialogue which took place in Big Sur, California, he explains Jesus Christ's revolutionary teaching on the true nature of spiritual authority.


What Is Enlightenment Magazine: These days there is a wary climate regarding people who hold themselves out as spiritual authorities. There is a tendency to be very skeptical about the possibility that someone could be a genuine authority. Yet traditionally it's been fairly common for people to seek out a spiritual teacher for guidance, and to commit themselves to that teacher. What are your thoughts on this?

Brother David: Some twenty years ago, there was a much greater openness to making anybody who came along and seemed to have some great credentials for teaching your guru. Nowadays many people have been burnt and they will look twice. That is skepticism, and it can easily become cynicism, which isn't very healthy. But it also has its healthy aspect because people are less gullible and teachers have to prove themselves. On the other hand, our time is so frightening, there are so many things going on that frighten us, that many people want security at any price. They will let themselves be put down, be abused and become dependent on a teacher just in order to have a sense of security, to feel that they know everything. No questions asked, you just do what you're told, this sort of thing. That is always a great danger in times of fear. And our time is a fear-inspiring time. I understand when you say that many people are more skeptical, but there are also many people who want just this kind of security at any price, and are willing to be put down and pay that price.

There is just one great spiritual teacher, and that is the Divine Spirit in your heart. What any spiritual teacher on the outside can do, at best, is to always lead you back to that teacher in your heart. But the key word here is "authority." We have a very impoverished and actually strongly warped notion of authority nowadays, and we think that authority is the power to command. Well, that's wrong. That's a derived meaning of authority. Originally authority means: a firm basis for knowing and acting. If you want to know what to do in a given case you will go to a book that is an authoritative book, or you will go to a person who is an authority in his or her field, and so forth. So that's the original meaning of authority. However, because people who provide a firm basis for knowing and acting for others are few and far between, you put them in a position of authority, which means you give them power to command. But the more power somebody has, the greater the danger of corruption. This is where some spiritual teachers then go off the deep end. This is where the question of the proper use of authority comes in.

Jesus Christ brought a complete revolution of the understanding of authority. This is, I think, the Christian tradition's most central insight and potentially its greatest contribution to spirituality in the world. It occurred in two ways. First, Jesus placed the authority of God, which was always seen as external, in the very hearts of his hearers. The core teaching of Jesus is not, "I am going to tell you all," or anything like that. No, he presupposes you know it all. "Don't you know it? I'll remind you of it. You know it all." This is his typical voice. This question opens many of the parables, "Who of you doesn't know this already?" It's not sufficiently emphasized nowadays in Christian teaching, but the moment you are alerted to it you see it.

So, one of the really dramatic events that happened in history—and that's why the world is still reeling with what happened in the life of Jesus—is that with Jesus, the Divine authority was squarely placed in the hearts of every human being. That was a tremendous revolution. The immanence of God and the Divine in the human heart was stressed. And it was probably necessary that this should happen in a setting in which duality was stronger than anywhere else: "Holy" in the Hebrew Bible means "the altogether other." So God was the absolutely other. Then Jesus comes and maintains that, doesn't deny it in any way, but also says that the absolutely other is closer to you than you are to yourself. So that was the first part of the revolution of authority, that the Divine authority is placed in the heart of the earth.

The second aspect is best expressed in the image of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and saying, essentially, "You call me Lord and Master. In other words, you call me an authority. You are right, that's what I am. But in the world, those who have power lord it over others. With you it should be different. The greatest among you, the one who has the most power, should be the servant of all. And that is what I show you because I am washing your feet." So that is the answer to the question, What is authority good for? Authority must be used, but there is only one legitimate use for it, and that is to empower those who are under authority. One of the most important things about Jesus is that he apparently had great authority but did not fall prey to its power. He even emphatically told his followers that that's not what you do—you turn this upside down and become the servant of all. First divine authority was placed in the hearts of everyone. Then human authority was given a task, namely, not to put those down that are under authority, but to build them up and empower them.

This also gives us a pretty good test for looking at spiritual teachers, and seeing which ones are authentic and which ones are not. Do they use their power to empower others? There may be a phase where a person has to be carried like a child. There may be a phase of dependency that one may have to go through. But you have to look at the whole picture. With any teacher you will see, by looking at that teacher's accomplished students, what it is leading to. When you see that this teacher makes them stand on their own feet, then that's authentic. When you see that this teacher makes them more and more dependent, then that's hands off, that's dangerous.

Treat Our Children Well

Dalai Lama reads Raffi's A Covenant for Honouring Children



Vision of a "Child Honouring" World
by Ron Miller

Mayne Island, BC - Raffi Cavoukian is known to millions of children and their parents as the singer and performer Raffi. His engaging and positive songs (such as "Baby Beluga," "One Light, One Sun," "All I Really Need") not only delight children, but invite them into a caring relationship with the natural world and the global human family. Since his first album, Singable Songs for the Very Young, appeared in 1976, he has sold over fourteen million recordings and video/dvd's. His books, including his autobiography Raffi: The Life of a Children's Troubadour [1], have sold over three million copies.

Ten years ago, Raffi began turning his enormous success into a popular campaign to draw attention to children's developmental, emotional, social and health needs and the ways the modern world is failing to address them. He called this movement Child Honouring, "a children-first paradigm for global restoration that calls for a profound redesign of every sphere of society."

"I realized in the early '90s that escalating societal issues and global ecological crises couldn't be solved in isolation, that they had be viewed in a holistic, connected way," Raffi says. "Early one Sunday morning I was awakened by the phrase—Child Honouring—and I knew in that moment intuitively what it meant, what it implied, and that it was the work of the rest of my life, which my years up to that moment had prepared me for."

His extensive experience with young children, deeply attuned to their needs for three decades, inspired Raffi to launch Child Honouring. Study, observation, and experience of their playful intelligence and pure love motivated him. He was further galvanized by reading authors such as Alice Miller, Joseph Chilton Pearce and Jean Liedloff, who described the vulnerability as well as resilience of young children, and by learning about other cultures that truly respect and accommodate the natural patterns of children's development.

"Child Honouring is a comprehensive meta-framework for global change," says Raffi. "It seems that no other philosophy connects the personal, cultural and planetary domains via the lens of the young child, through the vulnerability and priority needs of the infant ecology. As social change movements go, this is unique."

His website, www.raffinews.com, explains in detail what a child-honouring society would look like: 1) It would show love for its children in every facet of its design and organization; 2) It would uphold the basic human rights of every child; 3) Corporal punishment would be a thing of the past; 4) No child would live in neglect or lack access to health care; 5) Kids wouldn't be alone after school with violent computer games, eating junk food, waiting for a parent to get home; 6) Family support centres would be developed in every neighbourhood; 7) Working with the young would be valued and well rewarded; 8) Universally available child care centres would be staffed by trained professionals.

Inevitably, the Child Honouring vision holds specific implications for our educational system, such as the development of more schools and more teachers, smaller class sizes, and a range of learning options for families to choose from. Child development would be considered a primary subject as fundamental as reading, writing, and arithmetic; children would learn about the importance of empathy and the basics of nurturant parenting.

His A Covenant for Honoring Children, written in 1999, further spells out the conditions of a child honoring society: "We find these joys to be self evident. That all children are created whole, endowed with innate intelligence, with dignity and wonder, worthy of respect. The embodiment of life, liberty and happiness, children are original blessings, here to learn their own song. Every girl and boy is entitled to love, to dream and belong to a loving 'village' and to pursue a life of purpose." The Covenant also describes key principles that would guide a society truly concerned about children's welfare and their thriving. These include respectful love, caring community, conscious parenting, non-violence, sustainability and ethical commerce. The Covenant is currently circulating among policymakers, religious leaders, scholars and educators, inspiring them to rethink their understanding of children in society.

To promote the Covenant's principles, Raffi and co-editor Sharna Olfman have produced an anthology of writings by eminent scholars and activists called Child Honoring: How to Turn This World Around (Praeger Publishers, 2006/Homeland Press, 2007). So far the book has been well received. The Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia, for example, held a special luncheon at which she referred to it as "required reading."

Currently Raffi travels around North America discussing ideas from the book and the Covenant. "Educators have been among the most receptive audiences for my presentations, and the reading of the Covenant often draws tears," he says. "At a number of universities—including those in Vancouver, Victoria, Pittsburgh, Halifax, Charlottesville and Toronto—Child Honoring has received a rousing welcome. In the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria, the teacher training program uses the Covenant as part of its curriculum."

In addition to his educational work, Raffi is currently working in his native Canada with a group developing an "index of wellbeing." He is collaborating with the growing "conscious pregnancy and birthing movement," and with what he calls the "responsible commerce community." He is also re-directing his music towards adults, particularly those who grew up on "Baby Beluga" and his other ecology-oriented songs. His latest CD called "Resisto Dancing: Songs of Compassionate Revolution," includes inspiration from the Earth Charter, Nelson Mandela, Jane Goodall, Riane Eisler, and his Holiness the Dalai Lama. His newest production, a 55-minute DVD called Raffi Renaissance: Child Honoring and the Compassion Revolution, is scheduled to be released next month by his company, Troubadour Music. "Beluga Grads are saying they feel inspired by my new work," he says. "That's good news. I consider them a vital part of the Compassion Revolution."

Without a doubt, this Renaissance man is making a contribution to the world's children that goes far beyond the delightful music he has been performing for them for thirty years.

What is Child Honouring: Organizing principle, catalytic power
by Raffi Cavoukian

Across all cultures, we find an essential humanity that is most visible in early childhood—a playful, intelligent and creative way of being. Early experience lasts a lifetime. It shapes our sense of self and how we see others; it also shapes our sense of what's possible, our view of the world. The impressionable early years are the most vulnerable to family dynamics, cultural values, and planetary conditions. At this critical point in the history of humankind, the irreducible needs of all children (no matter where they live) can offer a unifying ethic by which the cultures of our interdependent world might reorder their priorities.

Child Honouring is a vision, an organizing principle, and a way of life—a revolution in values that calls for a profound redesign of every sphere of society.

It starts with three givens. First, the primacy of the early years—early childhood is the gateway to humane being. Second, we face planetary degradation unprecedented in scope and scale, a state of emergency that most endangers the very young, and that requires a remedy of equal scale. And third, the crisis calls for a systemic response in detoxifying the environments that make up the ecology of the child.

In this way, Child Honouring is a "children first" approach to healing communities and restoring ecosystems; it views how we regard and treat our young as the key to building humane and sustainable world. (It's not about a child-centered society where children rule, nor a facile notion of children being all things nice; and it has nothing to do with permissive parenting.) It is a global credo for maximizing joy and reducing suffering by respecting the goodness of every human being at the beginning of life, with benefits rippling in all directions.

What does it mean to honor children? It means seeing them for the creatively intelligent people they are, respecting their personhood as their own, recognizing them as essential members of the community and providing the fundamental nurturance they need in order to flourish. Child Honouring connects the dots between the personal, cultural and planetary factors that affect formative growth, and asserts that sustainability strategies must take into account all three domains.

Children are not a partisan concern, and Child Honouring is not pitted against person or ideology. Its allegiance is to children, and to their families. It speaks emphatically for the birthright of children of every culture to love, dignity and security. At the same time, it encompasses the whole of life. The focus on early life simply underscores a key tenet—the primacy of the early years.


Reprinted with permission from www.raffinews.com [2]


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Source URL:
http://www.theglobalintelligencer.com/jun2007/education
Links:
[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1896943500?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwtheglobali-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1896943500
[2] http://www.raffinews.com/child_honouring/what_is_child_honouring