In case you wonder what the world thinks of Mugabe and our beloved president Mbeki, check this out......
Just a few notes from my weekend of Celebrating the Summer Solstice in and through the Arts. What follows are tid bits from three days of inspired cross-cultural experiences, relationships, and things coming forward with such life-potential!
1. Friday. After work at Ecolab, I had the great privilege of
attending "Hayayo Bibimma" - the Drumming and Dancing ensemble lead by Ghanaian Artist, Francis Kofi. It was amazing to witness the diversity of people and rhythms present. This was also where I encountered a small child I have come to think of as the "Dalai Lama of Dance" - Francis Kofi's son. This 4 or 5 year old was the exclamation point on each performance, moving in the most uninhibited and spirited manner conceivable. Lovely! Thanks to Pam Plagge for the invite and for her commitment to the group!
2. Prior to my Friday evening excursion, I took note of a robin's
nest being constructed atop the electric meter on the back wall of my
house. Right underneath the clamatis vine running up the wall, this
little nest was tucked. When I returned Friday night from the dance
and good post-show conversation, I noticed that one blue egg had been
laid. And one energetic and protective momma bird was busy flapping
and singing about my arrival home and her baby.
3. Saturday. Matt Peiken hooked me up with a free pass to the Walker Art Center's "Rock the Garden" music festival. Whoohoo! I scored a free parking spot 1/2 block from the entrance, and joined my friend, along with 7,500 other folks there for the collaborative production with Public Radio's 89.9 "The Currrent." The bands rocked. Running into a former pretty fellow that I dated was sweet. Better yet, was encountering the Martin Sisters of North Minneapolis Community Organizing days. (Peace Foundation and Folwell Center for Urban Initiative Work props go to both Michelle and Lauren.) It's good times to connect with such ensembles of heart-and-work-and-vision-anchored peeps! Amen! This was part one of my Saturday Solstice
Celebration.
4. Part Two: Later Saturday. At the King and I, I met up with my friends Reggie Prim and Usry Alleyne. I'm telling you, a woman doesn't get much luckier than to hold space with her guy friends as they crack open their dreams, their work-wishes, and talk about next steps. We are all so connected in our journeys, you know?
5. I return late in the eve/ early morning to find Momma Robin has laid egg numero dos!
6. Sunday. The Morning includes church - AMEN! (St. Phillip's gospel / homiletic theme: "BE NOT AFRAID!") My girl Antoinette Bennaars and I share a pew, while girlfriend Ann Shallbetter leads us in song, after her two -week absence and back surgery recovery. GOOD
STUFF!
7. I return home to egg numero TRES being laid in the nest!
8. Sunday Evening is the April Seller's Dance Collective Event, "Cherries." And here, atop latin-music-industry-host Jessica's condo roof top in Uptown Minneapolis, (where there is a flowing water fountain anchoring the space), are DJ Kool Hanz spinning songs, and a
mic system set up for more vocal performances. I take note of several things at this event, as a way to honor the power of the energy, the women, the art, the voices, the cultures, converging and inspiring all cells in my body:
-April Seller's gives voice to her Vision, shares her vulnerability
on the heels of being injured, and what life and making art has
entailed since last piece "V" was performed. Whew. I note the
choreography to the reggae music. I note Pam Plagge's beauty as
dancer, her beating heart, her exposed breast, and the Frida-Kahlo-esque-inspired inking on her body. It's all SO BREATHTAKING! I hear the Tanya Stephens soundtrack about war and no more war...and I cry. And we move into the Spanish/ English song and hip hop reggaetone performance of Maria Isa, and my heart feels like it might burst.
That such a revolution of love, of converging cultures, of art, of communities, of experiences, could be experienced in such a space? In one weekend?! It's amazing. Awesome. Abundance!
9. I return home, and discover Momma Robin has laid a fourth egg.
Abundance. Birth. Life potential, creation is everywhere.
I am thankful for it all.
LOVE!
Melissa
everyday classrooms a kind of First Front where Militaristic dollars might easily and just as effectively be spent? 
I am in awe as I watch these former students move and grow and make change.I am humbled and find resonance in their struggle -- and am inspired by their work and words. I am reminded time and time again of the necessity of relationship-building that is occurring in North Minneapolis and beyond, that draws seeming opposites together. I reflect on how such encounters are gift and invite mutuality.
I recognize how my liberation is deeply aligned with and dependent on the liberation of all others.
Small Steps of Love 
by Edwin Denby
I don't know any more what it used to be
Before I saw you at table sitting across from me
All I can remember is I saw you look at me
And I couldn't breathe and I hurt so bad I couldn't see.
I couldn't see but just your looking eyes
And my ears was buzzing with a thumping noise
And I was scared the way everything went rushing around
Like I was all alone, like I was going to drown.
There wasn't nothing left except the light of your face,
There might have been no people, there might have been no place,
Like as if a dream were to be stronger than thought
And could walk into the sun and be stronger than aught.
Then someone says something and then you spoke
And I couldn't hardly answer up, but it sounded like a croak
So I just sat still and nobody knew
That since that happened all of everything is you.
"Song" by Edwin Denby from The Complete Poems. © Random House, New York, 1986. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
First MarriageI made it cross country
In a little under three days.
The engine blew out
About a hundred miles north
Of San Francisco, where I'd
Hoped to start living again
With a woman I'd abandoned
Only a few months before.
The reasons I'd left her were
Wincingly obvious
Soon as I got back
To her, and it didn't take long
Before I again left her.
In a few weeks I'd meet
The woman who became
My first wife, the one
With whom I spent
Almost the entirety
Of my twenties. It took
About twenty years
Getting over her, after
We divorced at thirty.
Broke then, I took
A bus cross-country
And was back in the East
By Christmas, thinking it
Would take three years maybe
To put this one behind me.
But getting over her
Happened as we were
Both in our third marriages,
Both then with children,
Heading for our fifties.
She came cross-country
To tend to me when I had
Cancer, with a 20% chance
Of recovery. The recovery
From all she had been to me,
Me abiding with her as long
As I did, took place finally
When we, her sitting on my bed
And me lying in it, held hands
And watched ourselves watching
TV, something we'd never quite
Been able to do comfortably
All those years ago. So many
Things turn this way over time,
So much tenderness and memory,
Problems not to be solved
But lived, and I resolved
Right then to start living
Only in this kind of time.
Cancer gave this to me: being
Able to sit, comfortably, to get
Over her finally, and to
Get on with the fight to live while
Staying ready to die daily.
"First Marriage" by Liam Rector, from The Executive Director of The Fallen World. © The University of Chicago Press, 2006. (buy now.)
I notice...
Traveling across country. An engine blowing out. Things wincingly obvious. Cancer. Divorcing and remarrying. Taking years to "get over." Occurrences in the speaker's twenties. Cancer in their fifties. 20% chance of recovering.
The lines, "Problems not to be solved/But lived" and " Cancer gave this to me: being/Able to sit, comfortably, to get/
Over her finally, and to/Get on with the fight to live while/Staying ready to die daily."
I wonder...
How those cross-country trips inspired or informed partnership?
How many times do we need to travel across continents to learn about ourselves and our hearts?
When engines blow, who repairs them?
Where does cancer come from?
Can a car have cancer? How about a heart?
What happens if we can't fix things?
What does dying teach us?
Can we learn these lessons in any simpler way?
Happy contemplating! Happy road trips!
Melissa
"I don't see it as a black or white thing. I just see it as what's good for the country."Next to the X, in the humid corridors of the Roy Wilkins Auditorium, 400 St. Paul Central seniors in caps and gowns waited, with their families, for their lives to start.
This information compiled by the staff at The Writer's Almanac strikes me in rich and glorious contrast to last night's event at the Xcel Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. The first black man in this country's to secure the Democratic presidential nomination.
It all informs my prayer and contemplation.
***
It was one this day in 1919 that the 19th Amendment to the constitution, giving women the right to vote, was passed by the United States Congress. The movement for the women's vote had gained momentum under Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, two women who had been born at a time in the 19th century when had been barred from college and all professions, including the clergy. They couldn't serve on juries or testify in court, sign contracts, keep or invest money, own or inherit property. Above all, they could not vote representatives into office who might have changed these laws.
The national women's movement came out of the movement to abolish slavery.
After the Congress passed the amendment on this day in 1919, it had to be ratified by a majority of state legislatures. The state that tipped the balance was Tennessee and the man who cast the deciding vote was the twenty-four year old representative Harry Burn, the youngest man in the state legislature that year. Before the vote, he happened to read his mail, and one of the letters he received was from his mother. It said, "I have been watching to see how you stood but have noticed nothing yet…Don't forget to be a good boy and…vote for suffrage." He did.
***
It was on this day in 1989 that the Chinese troops stormed Beijing's Tiananmen Square to crack down on
students conducting pro-democracy demonstrations. The demonstrations had begun months earlier, after the government accused them of planning a coup d'etat. They drew thousands of supporters from three dozen universities and staged hunger strikes and sit-ins. The Chinese government declared martial law, and troops approached the square with tanks in the late evening of June 3.
Ordinary workers had gathered along the nearby roads. They had been demonstrating in support of the students for weeks, and they crowded into the streets to block the advance of the tanks toward the square. Though the event would come to be called the Tianamen Square massacre, almost all the people killed were the ordinary people in the streets outside the square. Violence broke out around midnight on this day in 1989, with some people throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at the troops, and the troops responding with gunfire.
The violence continued in and around the square for the rest of the day. The famous photograph of a student staring down a tank was taken by an American Associated Press photographer named Jeff Widener. He went to the top of a hotel near the square and began to take pictures of the tanks clearing the last remnants of people from the streets. Then he saw one man walk up to a tank and stand in its path, refusing to move. He took several photographs and then the man was grabbed by bystanders and pulled out of the tank's path. Widener asked another journalist to hide the film in his underwear to smuggle it out of the country.
The identity of the protester in the photograph is not known with any certainty, but he's been called one of the most influential revolutionaries of the twentieth century.
May God bless you with ANGER...
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with TEARS...
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, starvation and war
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them
And to turn their pain into JOY.
And may God bless you with enough FOOLISHNESS...
To believe that you can make a difference in this world,
So that you can DO what others claim cannot be done.
Amen.
As I begin June, I think this litany of "Thank you's" from Friday's blog bears repeating, even adding to.....
I need to re-read Dante's Divine Comedy. It's about a dude who, in his mid-life, is dragging, wants out, and descends into the pits of hell, right? He's accompanied by a poet. He goes down, in order to go up. Journey takes place over Good Friday to Easter Sunday. It all seems really appropriate right now. What are my options? What are any of our options in facing disappointments? In receiving news that so radically departs from our present hopes and dreams?
After sort of stepping over the miserable perceptions of failure I have of myself, I ask for new eyes. Well, honestly, I ask to lay down and be in the sorrow for a while. I ask to be okay in the sorrow, really. Because if there is anything I'm learning, it's that climbing into the pain, heading deep into it, is the most courageous way I know to transform it! Heading down into the suffering, the struggle, I am softened by it; I experience the most potent form of grace and reconciliation. I learn about true compassion for myself, and for all other suffering humanity; I learn about the capacity of my own heart to love.
Parker Palmer and Pema Chodron and Thich Naht Hahn and Sr. Rafael and James Finley and Richard Rohr and Candlin Dobbs and Eckhardt Tolle are teaching me this. And their teachers are Buddha and Jesus and Thomas Merton. So I feel pretty good about getting these lessons.
But back to the comedy. The stepping into and through the depressing information and awaiting the grace that is the other side; that is the present moment. Yes. That is joy. That is now; not avoiding or invading it: just being in it. (Parker Palmer talks about this a lot.) Embracing the "it" in its fullness. That's where I'm at this week. Especially as I'm encountering my fellow-journeyers in their own challenging times....But what's a person to do? Scream? Kick? Curse out the ignorance and unfairness of circumstances? Wallow and steep in rage? And what's that going to do? Whew. Perpetuate the woe? Please. Why be part of perpetuating the woe?
How to be in the emotion, and then step into the grace of transforming the circumstances......
And while I've not earned a lot of money, I have something much more precious than anyone could really put a dollar amount on: my health, my happiness, my life!I have the knowledge, too, that I can travel through some rocky emotional terrain and be just fine. I say, "Thank you."
