Beginning the Conversation

This week we start our very first virtual community conversation with Fran from Quebec, Canada. Fran is an artist and a poet. She writes, "I am sending you a poem and painting I did long ago. Although they weren't created at the same time when the poem came, many years after the painting, it told me that this painting was to go with it. [ ] I have many other poems related to my on-going dialogue with Nature which I've been having since I was a child."

SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW ME

So, you think you know me?

You say you see me,

But do you?

Have you travelled all my regions

visited all the sites -

of war and miracles,

of pain and joy,

of death and birth,

of wounding and healing,

of squalor and beauty,

of poverty and wealth?

The cold hard, winter places,

the warm, lush, loving, spaces,

the rotting in the sun,

the melting in the ice and snow?

The moist,

the arid,
the wealth of pattern
for good and ill,

the ancient and the new?

And when you've seen all this

can you let it go and see the whole?

These patches of my life

are stitched together with such love.

I am warmed

by the quiltwork

of my Being

lovingly made
just for me! Fran Olsen, 1995

This Week's Suggestion

Let's spend this week considering our lives and how easily things come to most of us. We turn a tap and instantly have running water, hot and cold, inside a solid home. We flick a switch and we have heat, or in the summer, relief from the heat. Another switch, and just like that, we have lights. We walk a short distance, or drive, to a store and the food is bountiful, the choices unlimited, the sweets and treats affordable. We have comfortable public transit, schools nearby, and clean hospitals filled with supplies, medications, with only one person per bed. Then, let's consider the lives of most of the people in the world.


Get To Know Our Neighbours

By now, the hives of the honeybees have been readied for winter in the northern hemisphere. Winter doors have been fitted at the hive entrances and enough honey has been left in each hive to support the bee colony through the cold months. Bees do not hibernate, rather they are busy eating, rearing brood, housekeeping and maintaining a hive temperature around 16 - 28 degrees Celsius. Did you know that in winter, there are only female bees in the hive and that they are all sisters and each one of them could have been queen if they had been fed royal jelly, that honeybees are the only insect that make food that humans eat, that bees do not have ears but they have five eyes:three small ones on the top of their heads and two large ones in front, that the female bees do all the work while drones, or male bees, spend their summer days hanging out in drone zones about 100 feet above the ground, waiting for a virgin queen to fly by?

A Fact Or Two

Last Friday, November 21st, CBC News reported that "760,000 children live in poverty in Canada." That is one in nine Canadian children. In Ontario, the ratio is higher; one in six children. CBC News went on to say, "the Campaign 2000 annual Report Card on Child and Family Poverty" stated that "the nation's child poverty rate remains unchanged from 1989", when the House of Commons unanimously resolved to end child poverty in Canada by 2000. The report continued to say that child poverty is "expected to increase with the economic downturn". Other statistics sited by the Report were, "40% of low-income children live in families where at least one of their parents work full-time year round" and "nearly one in four First Nations children continue to live in poverty". The United Nations estimates that 25,000 people die of hunger and hunger-related illnesses a day, most of whom are children. Hunger is is directly caused by poverty.

What Can We Do?

Last Year, according to an Ipsos-Reid Survey, 84% of Canadians said they would prefer to have a donation made in their name rather than receive a traditional gift.

Contact local charities, church organizations and food banks, like The Salvation Army, the Toy and Food Drives at food stores, the police and fire stations.

There are plenty of well-established and highly applauded NGOs throughout the world that need our support. To the left of the page, at the top, is a list of only a few of the many possible NGOs to consider for alternate gift giving. It will be money well spent.

Check out 4 Tips for Giving Alternative Gifts by scrooling down at: http://www.worldvision.ca/

Consider buying Fair Trade Products at such stores as 10,000 Villages:

http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/

Media

Books: Fran wrote, " In keeping with the idea of being in relationship with Nature, I would recommend the book (for children of all ages), The Other Way To Listen by Byrd Baylor and Peter Parnall. It is simply marvelous.

Newspapers: Cam wrote, "If you haven't already read this article you should..... It's exactly what you're referring to on your blog about linking the economy and the environment." http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081119.wgreen19/BNStory/National/home

The Conversation in our virtual Whole Earth Care Community has begun. We can make a difference and we are making a difference with every mindful compassionate step we take. Become a Whole Earth Care Follower by clicking on "Follow this blog" just below FOLLOWERS (14) at the left hand side of the page. Keep The Conversation alive with websites, ideas, comments, art, poetry and/or prose - you know what to do. We are on a roll - let's keep rolling.

Take care and wishing you a good week.

maureen

OH! And, don't forget Friday, November 28th. It's Buy Nothing Day.