living the dream--to love this teeming world

living the dream

i do not want for much 
amidst the harshness of my plenty
and yet my wants have grown as such
into a seething scream that hoarsely
wakes me up at night 

with nothing ever as it seems
our living has become
a Malthusian dream-
perhaps greater than their sum  
as addends our sleeping lives

make bids for our attention
the silence of inaction in stereo
blasts mindless indecisions-
the best case scenarios
in idealism trump reality

the dream goes like this: 

i  am swimming in a pool  
of my own tears 
the salt of which 
is drying out my tongue
i try to scream 
"i know, i can"
but my voice is weak
my pulse is faint--
lucidly i tell myself 
it's going to be okay
i will
live my way 
into a different life
in which i'm wise and brave enough
to know, to speak, to act, 
to love this teeming world, right now--
but then i fully wake in my warm bed, 
my sweet smelling sheets betraying much.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-04/new-research-tracks-40-year-old-prediction-world-economy-will-collapse-2030

UN Messenger for Peace Addresses UN Climate Summit

I am not often given to watching Hollywood actors make pleas for our attention, but this, I believe, is a worthy watch. Leonardo DiCaprio, newly appointed UN Messenger of Peace, marched with 400,000 concerned citizens in New York city on Sunday then addressed world leaders at the UN Climate Summit. His speech was concise and pointed. It is time to move climate change out of the realm of fiction in our collective psyche's and treat it as the urgent scientific reality that it is.

Please watch and share. It will only take 4 mins of your time.

Leonardo DiCaprio Addresses UN Climate Summit

Sincerely,
Jill

Happy International Day of Peace and Global Day of Action on Climate Change 2014

Each year on the International Day of Peace I post my Wish for Peace. This year I am meditating with a special emphasis on Peaceful global demonstrations for Climate Change Awareness. As well, I am asking for our governments to open their hearts and understand the urgent need for action on climate change and carbon emissions. Too many are suffering the consequences of our inaction.  I am heartened by the knowledge that we can change our world by changing how we live our lives. Transformation is possible in each new moment!
May love, peace and climate justice prevail!


Wish for Peace
On this most glorious late summer day, which is also the International Day of Peace, I am writing to you with a wish for peace.
I wish for peace for all of you, for all of us, and for our world with all its brilliant beings.
I wish for peace for the air we breathe, for a reprieve from pollutants that dog it every day.
I wish for peace for the soil we tread, for wise and gentle hearts and hands to preserve the land which lends us food and beauty.
I wish for peace for the waters of our Earth, that they may be free from man-made contaminants, and revered for the life they offer us.
I wish for peace for our creatures, that they may be treated with loving respect, and granted the dignity they deserve.
I wish for courage for all to take a stand that speaks for life in all its varied and unspoken forms.
My wish for peace includes a great desire for respect: for all that we have to offer each other in our hearts, and for the courage to willingly share that openness.
I wish for the ability to be present to the silence within and open to that presence within others.
I wish for recognition for all. For everyone to be lovingly revered for the simple fact they exist.
I wish for all to have a sense of spaciousness in their lives surrounding issues or challenges they may face.
I wish for an elevation of awareness about the ways in which we are unsuspecting oppressors towards ourselves and others in our daily lives.
I wish for freedom from the ideas which control us and constrict our souls from a true experience of wonder and love.
I wish for voice for all who have had their voice taken away.
I wish for joy for those whose hearts are filled with hatred.
I wish for peace for those whose hearts are filled with fear.
I wish that we would look at ourselves and others with eyes of love.
I wish for all the experience of a heart soaring with delight at the hopeful possibility each moment offers us.
I wish for bravery for all to break the barriers that separate us from each other.
I wish for courage for all to remove those walls that tell us peace is not possible.
I wish to meet you all on the road that leads to peace between my heart and yours:

freed from judgments
freed from competition
freed from comparisons
freed from the burdens of regret
freed from the need to be right
freed from a sense of lack…Freed.

As we are emptied, so too shall we be filled;
Filled with a grateful heart, I will know you when we meet upon our journey.
I will feel the abundance that you carry within you.
Our footsteps will echo with receptivity despite the many miles that may lie between us.
Peace sweet world…begins within.
Much peace to you as you journey…The Creativity Project

Old Habits Die Hard

It's far too easy in this at times wretched world 
to forget how truly wondrous the world can be.
Too easy to be hard on ourselves, comparing ourselves
with others, judging harshly, criticizing.

Looking on the world with eyes of love requires of us
to firstly look upon ourselves with eyes of love,
and all of this demands the vulnerability of an open heart.

I realize that I often demand too much of myself and others as well. Being a forty one year old idealist is far from ideal at times.
It makes me harken back to the first poem I ever wrote when I was eight years old. My teacher at the time read it to the class. It was called Some People and it went like this:

Some people are old,
some people are young,
some people are mean
and stick out their tongue.

Some people are nice
like you and me,
but if you aren't 
please try to be.

I  desperately still want the world to be a more loving and compassionate place although I know that it is difficult  at times to harden not your heart. (Hebrews) I honestly believe  that remembering to LOVE one another even when it is difficult, is the only true way to keep our hearts soft. Besides, who couldn't use a caring gesture and a little extra love? I guess old habits die hard.



Jill MacCormack

Your Silence Gives Consent--Plato

 As Plato so famously said: "I shall assume that your silence gives consent." Our silence and inaction in the face of environmental and societal degradation is our de facto consent. It is time to stand and be heard above the silence.

Cacophony of Silence

There is a silence present now
so like death it takes my breath away.
A force so large, so deafening it quells
the brightness of the world.
It has no face or name or voice for none
it needs; it thrives on the life force of
the faceless, the nameless, the voiceless,
and the vice of those with plenty.
It will try to sell you beauty, joy, freedom
and security. Its sales pitch is image, youthfulness
and vitality without end.
With policies of mass production, a frantic pace,
confusion and alienation, its insidious ways are
coordinated, tabulated, regulated, highly orchestrated.
Its only end is money, power and control, and its only means destruction:
destruction of land, sea, air, body, soul and culture. Death- deafening death.
What are you being sold…and at what cost?

Antidote to commodification and destruction of land, sea, air and community:
Be heard above the loudness of the silence:
 

• Get to know your natural environment
• Dream, imagine, hope, and believe in new ways of being
• Seek alternatives to fossil fuel consumption
• Support causes that foster change
• Be open to beauty
• Be open to wonder
• Turn away from fear and hatred move in the direction of LOVE and PEACE
• Practice mindfulness
• Be gentle with yourself and kind to others
• Take time to be quiet
• Respect different ways of being
• Learn to value concepts of simplicity: lagom, wabi sabi
• Cultivate an attitude of gratefulness
• Learn to sit with uncomfortable emotions
• Buy locally more often
• Buy plastic less often
• Consider your water usage and consumption
• Don’t buy into images
• Appreciate local arts and culture
• Express your creativity
• Talk to your neighbours
• Practice community mindedness
• Acknowledge the impermanence of all things
• Grow a garden
• Hug someone special to you
• Be patient and tolerant in the process of change

—–
As artists we are called to use our creativity as a means of holding up to the light the hurt and fear of the world, so that we can penetrate those walls that silence has created: apathy, disillusionment, disempowerment, destruction, dis-ease. In doing so, we are redefining our confusion and pain, our fear and separation into something hopeful. We become the portal through which newness can emerge. Softened and pliable once again, our society and culture can be re-created, sustainably for the future, for the betterment of all.
Sincerely, 
Jill MacCormack
Creativity Project 
Originally published on thistownissmall--creativity project

I am a Butterfly

 

 Origami Butterflies in Cocoon Tent Creativity Project 2014
 Photo by Janice McGuigan

I am a butterfly, I believe. My wings I know are an iridescent blue. I know this because I've caught them sparkling in your blue eyes. Or wait...maybe it was the water I saw them reflected upon or the sky...yes that was it. I was flying on a cloudless sky and looked back...my wings glowed bluer than the truest blue...you couldn't tell where my wings and the sky (your eyes, the water) began, or ended. Yes, that was it.

I was, I've been told, once another, and while in that earlier self I identified as caterpillar. Like your body, and the notion of self you've developed which is intensely identifiable with your body, all the joys and sorrows of that bodily self, I had developed a sense of self informed by all my experiences as caterpillar.  In my present case my experiences  are ones that only butterflies are privy to. Or are they?

If I am the sum of all my experiences and yet  have moments when I seem to be so much more than the sum total of my identifiable, limited self who, or what am I in those moments?

I am flight; the wind that carries me on currents of delight.
I am resting; the soft petals, rough and beaten bark I light upon.
I am the sweet nectar I taste; life's energies unfolding.
I am the snag that caught my wing, and tore the ragged edge.
I am the ragged edge, the ghost I'm making of myself.


As soon as thought enters, I am lost to the fullness of the experience of what is... the blissful, wonder of cutting away thought, of letting it fall like hair that's been trimmed or nails that have been bitten and spat, or a cocoon that's been left behind. Yet the only way I can transcend the limited self is by acknowledging that that self exists, as an illusion with which I make my way.

Jill MacCormack

Love is When

With acknowledgements to Craig Raine's poem entitled A Martian Sends a Postcard Home


  Love is When
 
Blackout Poetry Tent-- Creativity Project Art in the Open 2014 
Photo by Alana Sprague
Salt is the old memory of licking your friend's arm after ocean swimming.

Tears are when sadness comes to roost upon the rafters of your heart.

Wind is the sweet thinness that breathes us and whistles through small openings.

Sand castles are the worlds you construct without a permit.

Hungry is when the cupboard's bare, the earth is parched and forks and plates are meaningless.

Twilight is the soft look your eyes give off at the end of day when the silence is okay.

Fiddleheads are when the earth unfurls in tender green spirals and you want to make pie of it.

Insomnia is when the world's shout is too near and you plug  your ears but the sounds won't stop.

Rivers are when the land has veins that carry our shared histories and hold our futures in their palms.

Fear is when the poison spider's bit your soul and you are paralyzed but still alive.

Joy is a cloudless sky looking down upon a frozen pond and you are there tying skates with cold fingers.

Love is when the whole world freezes crystalline as salt then melts your heart into a rainbow, one sweet dripping breath at a time.
Jill MacCormack

 Creativity Project 2014 Rainbow and Pennants Photo by Janice McGuigan