Rewiring for change: a #UU reflection, #EnvironmentalJustice #amchanging

As part of a Unitarian Universalist service focusing on Environmental Justice, I revisited the concept of gratitude in the midst of chaos. The talk is on YouTube and below the video is the text.

Most mornings, for the past year, I wake up, play gratitude affirmations on my phone and go back to sleep. I continue doing it because I can feel the positive results.  My vibrational frequency is becoming higher. Just this morning the person saying the affirmations emphasized that expressing gratitude is essential for change. She also said that expressing gratitude is one of the quickest ways to experience happiness and that true expressions of appreciation are one of the most direct ways to experience the divine.

I have found that being consciously grateful has changed my life. I am grateful for it all. I am grateful for the air in my lungs. But this morning as I write, the air in Pennsylvania is dangerous to breathe. I am doing the things that I need to protect myself—such as staying indoors and foregoing my daily walk. My partner, Barbara, and I are wearing masks when we have to go out and are also checking on friends and family who have breathing conditions.

It shouldn’t be this way and it could have been different, but this is the reality of the situation that we live in.

I am still grateful for the air in my lungs. I am still grateful to be alive. I am still grateful to be living on this beautiful planet we call Earth.

As we can see from the realities of climate change, or climate devastation as some call it, we are living in a time that requires change. It is sad—for many reasons. But it is also the reality we live in.

When I was going to a plant-based diet, for health reasons—now almost four years ago—I heard the motivational speaker and author Dr. Will Tuttle say that animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gasses than the entire transportation sector combined.

I’ve also heard and experienced that people following plant-based diets feel better because they know they are helping the planet and the animals as well as themselves.

Going to a plant-based diet has changed my life. I am here, for starters.

I feel like the gratitude affirmations work better for me because I now am more open to messages from the universe because I no longer have the suffering of animals in my body. We are living in a time of change–and to be around to be part of that change and to witness the change requires us to take care of ourselves—now, perhaps more than ever—and that includes our mental health.

Taking care of my mental health has led me to listen to the gratitude affirmations. I have the same impulses as any other human animal.  Because of our ancient fight-flight response, it is more natural for human beings to be negative than positive. But we can train our brains to respond more to positive stimuli. The complexities of neuroscience are simplified in the statement that neurons that fire together wire together.

Since I am rewiring my brain to be positive, I see the signs of positive change rather than simply observing all the negative things and becoming depressed. I am delighted when I see the electrical outlets resembling gas pumps that are popping up here and there to fuel electrical cars. When my partner, Barbara, and I run errands in our hybrid and I see food trucks that offer fresh fruit and fruit smoothies without scary dairy, I am equally excited.

The earth is changing. In many ways, it is protecting itself from further harm. When we change with the earth instead of clinging to the old ways that harm ourselves as well as the earth, we are part of the change. I am deeply grateful for being part of the change just as I truly appreciate being here with all of you.

I am going to end with a mantra or a prayer:

May the earth and all her inhabitants be healthy. May we all be free.

–Namaste–

For more information on my most recent published novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

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Reviewing Audre Lorde: what she said then about now — #AudreLorde #Resistance #amreading

As part of a Unitarian Universalist service focusing on women’s history month, I revisited the work of Audre Lorde in her book Sister Outsider, Essays and Speeches, first published by The Crossing Press in 1984.

It is also Nation Poetry Month and I wanted to bring you review of a book written by the important poet Audre Lorde that was so important to me when I was a young poet.

The review is on Book Tube and below the video is the text.

Recently, I reread Sister Outsider, essays and speeches by the important and often quoted poet, Audre Lorde. Sister Outsider was first published in 1984 by The Crossing Press.

Lorde was born in 1934 and died in 1992, having been cut down by breast cancer in the prime of her life.

I was fortunate to hear the poet Audre Lorde speak and read several times when I was in my twenties. Lorde was an important figure to me when I was a budding writer and a young adult looking inward and outward and making sense of life.

It was interesting to re-read this book which I had last read close to the date of publication and to see the places where I had highlighted Lorde’s words.

In this collection of writing, Lorde writes about the importance of speaking your truth, of being all parts of yourself, accepting difference, knowing yourself, and being unafraid to feel. Since so much has changed since she died, I found myself wondering what she would say about the mess we are in now.

And there in her essay, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex” is a clue to what she would say and did say as she foresaw the future. In prose, she writes: “Change means growth, and growth can be painful.”

Then she includes “Outlines,” an unpublished poem:

We have chosen each other

and the edge of each other’s battles

the war is the same

if we lose

someday women’s blood will congeal

upon a dead planet

if we win

there is no telling

we seek beyond history

for a new and more possible meeting.

Rereading Sister Outsider, essays and speeches by the important poet Audre Lorde first published in 1984 by The Crossing Press reminded me of who we can be.

This is Janet Mason with reviews for Spotify and Book Tube.

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

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Born in Flames — the origins of #pride #UU #intersectionality

This morning, I helped with a Unitarian Universalist service based on the lifting up of Pride. The service was about magic and being the hero of your own story.

The YouTube video of my talk  is below. The complete text of my talk is below that.  The service took place at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration on Stenton Ave. in Philadelphia.

https://youtu.be/VYjwki4PWnw

Happy Pride — a reflection by Janet Mason Author Janet Mason, also a lay minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration (UUCR) in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia, reflects on P… youtu.be

Happy Pride

This is what I used to say every June to our legion of friends, old and new, when we were in every New York Pride Parade for years.

The New York Pride events were, of course, cancelled this year. Pride usually draws a large amount of people from all over the country.  It’s estimated that two million people have attended New York Pride each year in recent years.

My partner, Barbara, and I weren’t planning on going this year and we haven’t been to Pride for years. Although we would like to go again and see our friends in Brooklyn who we stay with. Even so, even with all the tragedy going on around us, I was momentarily taken aback a few months ago when I heard Pride was cancelled.

Pride is that much a part of me.

The LGBTQ community has earned Pride.  But I do not think that having pride should be limited to one group of people.  Everybody should be proud of themselves.  As the late, great, writer Toni Morrison said, “You are your own best thing.”

She was speaking, of course, about true pride, or self-love or empowerment – whatever you want to call it. This kind of feeling good about yourself, does not rest upon feeling negatively about another group.  That’s not pride. Unfortunately, we’ve been seeing far too much of it and it’s heartbreaking – to say the least.  One could argue that hatred of others begins with self-hate.

Pride was born in the protests of the Stonewall Inn, which became a week-long riot in 1969. The people with the least to lose – those who couldn’t pass in straight society, the butch lesbians and the drag queens – exploded one night during yet another police raid on a gay bar. Raids were customary then. Gay people were routinely carted off to jail, their names were published in the newspapers. They lost their jobs – and often their families.

Ten years later, there was another riot, after the assassination of Harvey Milk, a small business owner and politician in San Francisco. The man who assassinated him, a former firefighter, got off lightly on a charge of manslaughter and used what has since come to be called “the twinkie defense” – meaning that his legal team used the excuse that he ate too much junk food which led to his criminal behavior. After this sentencing, a peaceful candlelight vigil turned into a riot outside San Francisco’s city hall which involved setting buildings and police cars on fire.

 

A few years after Harvey Milk was assassinated, I attended the premier screening of the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (the first movie) at the Roxy on Sansom Street. I was young then, in my early twenties, and recently out as a lesbian. I still remember sitting in the dark theater and listening to the crying of those around me – mostly gay men.

Both riots – and there were others too – were before my time, but they are part of my history.

My partner and myself have lived in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia for a long time. We’ve had our problems with homophobia – even here in liberal Mt. Airy – but for the most part we have been met with acceptance. And that’s the way it should be. Of course, we should have equality. All people should have equality. This acceptance, no doubt, is why I sometimes take LGBTQ rights for granted.

These days, I’m probably more excited about going to a plant-based diet (which I did last fall for health reasons).  When I found out that this diet has a favorable effect on the planet, I was even more jazzed.

I’ve long been in favor of cultivating the earth — not just because it is the right thing, but because it is interesting. I’m a second-generation organic gardener, and I like bees. And I like planting bee balm and lavender and other plants that bees like.

But what I’m really excited about in going to a plant-based diet is feeling like I have a new lease on life. And I’m excited to be part of a global community.

There was a time when I felt the same way about coming out as a lesbian. Coming out in the early 1980s, meant that I didn’t have to erase myself and it meant that I had a tribe.

Recently, when reading a quote by the important gay writer Steve Abbott, I became very excited. The quote is about intersectionality and was made far before that term was commonly used. Steve died in 1992 of complications due to AIDS when he was forty-eight.

In his ahead of his time essay “Will We Survive the Eighties,” Abbott writes:

“It is clear that what we are doing now … is killing us all. And as we project these attitudes onto other species and towards the Earth’s ecological system, we are jeopardizing our very planet. I would argue that we can no longer afford to see anything – not even ‘gay liberation’ or our survival — as a separate issue needing a separate cultural or a political or a spiritual agenda. This does not mean I intend to renounce my sexual orientation, far from it. Even in times of sadness or loneliness, it remains my greatest source of strength and joy.”

As I read Beautiful Aliens, A Steve Abbott Reader edited by Jamie Townsend and published recently, I was reminded that we all have our stories and that we were all forged in fire.

In 1992, I was at a writing program in Boulder Colorado, when I was scheduled to have a one on one critique session with Steve Abbott.  He was at the program but had to leave early because he was sick with full blown AIDS. Nearly thirty years later, a review copy of his book showed up in my mailbox. I did not know it was being published and I had not requested it.

To me, this was one more experience that proves that the universe works in mysterious ways.

I became Unitarian Universalist later in life – after fifty – when I found a religion that agreed with me. In particular, the Seventh Principle rings true:  Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

We are all connected.

 

 

–Namaste–

 

To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.

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Reconsidering the East Coast in Images: The photographs of David Freese #ClimateChange #ParisAccord #fineartphotography

The following is a recent review that I wrote for the Alexander Artway Archive, a very interesting photo collection that I have been working with. Alexander Artway was an architect and photographer who photographed New York City in the 1930s. You can view the photos by clicking here.

We have decided to review photography books for the Alexander Artway blog — and this first book by David Freese documents that climate change is real.

Working with the Alexander Artway Archive inspired me to write the novel Looking At Pictures. You can click here to read excerpts (or watch me on YouTube).

The blog post/review is reprinted below:

Last year or so when taking photography classes at Temple University (so that we could apply the learning to our photo archive ) we had the good fortune of taking David Freese’s course on World Photography.

When we heard that David was introducing his new book at the Print Center in Philadelphia (formerly the Print Club), we were delighted and went to the lecture and to buy David’s book, East Coast: Arctic to Tropic, Photographs by David Freese with text by Simon Winchester and Jenna Butler.

After Hurricane Sandy — when Freese saw the devastation first hand — he was, as he writes in the book on a mission to “show the connection between a warming climate and these fragile and vulnerable low-lying areas.” The result was this coffee-table sized photography book with stunning black and white images.  The images (most of them aerial) are so visually appealing that many to us were reminiscent of trips we had taken or evocative of places we had read about.

That these images are important is underscored by the fact that this coast line with be vastly different in a generation or two. In other words, people living in the future will not see what we see if global warming is to continue its cataclysmic course.

 Freese  — who writes that he “did a lot of research on the topic” of climate change – shows us the pristine beauty of ice and cloud in Greenland at the start of his journey.

As he writes, “water, water is everywhere” and we see that this is true – not only of glacially pure remote areas but major cities as he descends down the Eastern Seaboard in his book coming to the conclusion that “the albatross of global warming and a rising sea is around our collective necks.”

Among other places, the images take us to Quebec, Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia where the heavens seem to shine down in sun rays from above. Freese also shows us remote views such as “Bubble Rock and Eagle Lake,” Acadia National Park, Maine.  The image, dominated by a boulder atop a mountaintop under a sky that is palpable startles with its bold simplicity.

 The book ends in Florida with images that are as equally beautiful and stunning.  The photography is done with such skill in the tradition of landscape photographers (think Edward Weston and Ansel Adams) that at times it’s easy to forget that everything might be underwater soon.

East Coast: Arctic to Tropic is published by George F. Thompson Publishing – www.gftbooks.com

 

 

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