IN THE LIGHT OF THIS MOON (ER... SUN?):
1. DOIN' IT THE EAST BAY WAY:
The Earthville Network grows new roots in Oakland
2. MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH:
Tibetan staff holds the fork in Dharamshala
3. PEACE GLOBALLY, PEACE LOCALLY:
Where don't we need to make peace anymore?
Sublime salutations from anything but erstwhile Earthville!!!
Where's Earthville, you say? A timely question indeed! Those of you who had begun to wonder if Earthville had shared the fate of Atlantis and graduated from the surface of the world, descending into the shadowy depths of utopian myth, rejoice, for Earthville is alive and soaking up the sun on solid ground - and a little closer to home for some of you!
Yes, fellow citizens, in the año that has passed since the last Luna, we've been hard at work navigating a time of transition that has kept us guessing and become a blessing. Since 9-11 and subsequent tension around Kashmir, our international travel plans and other logistics have been so much in flux that our monthly rhythm of reflecting and reporting gave way to an ever-shifting topography of questions about where we would be when, and the elusive news of the day refused to settle down long enough for us to tell you about it. Radio silence notwithstanding, our work has continued and, by force of necessity and grace of opportunity, has expanded to include promising new projects in old familiar territory...
DOIN' IT THE EAST BAY WAY!
The big news on the western front is that we have finally landed in new digs in one of the shining (if still sprouting) spiritual capitals of urban America - the home of the "there" there, West Coast funk, the Black Panther party, the world-renown Raiders, maverick Mayor Jerry Brown (and his unassailable dog, Dharma) and perhaps the largest concentration of vegan restaurants per capita anywhere in the industrialized world: where else but Oakland, California?
We're deeply inspired by the fertile soil here, and we're diving in deep from our new Earthville community home-cum-US headquarters in a 1920s Victorian just a block from Lake Merritt, the oldest wildlife refuge and largest natural estuary in the continental US. There are several new projects underway here, the most monumental of which is the Vertical Village, a four-to-eight-story eco-friendly building that will serve as an holistic model for urban community living, conscious commerce, urban renewal, experiential learning and community organizing. We'll keep you posted as the future unfolds; meanwhile, inquiring minds can learn more about the Vertical Village here.
Our expansion back into the US would not have been possible without our stateside Earthville family, and we are profoundly fortunate to have Patricia Gaglia and Zak Zaidman join the Earthville leadership team to help guide our projects here in the Bay Area and further afield, along with Earthville director (and longtime Oakland resident) Benjamin Schick, who has been our archangel of accommodation as we've worked to midwife this East Bay baby. Gargantuan gratitude to you, Ben! Zak's work with Earthville is being supported by a generous grant from the Tzaddik Fund (a project of the Tides Foundation), enabling us to expand our support of peacemaking projects at home and abroad, including work with Challenge Day in the US and the Sulha Peace Project in Israel (more on that below). The newest arrival in the stateside Earthville family is Eric Oberthaler, whom Dara and Mark met at KhanaNirvana a few years back; Eric is diving in with both feet tied behind his back, and it's a joy to feel the splash! We're also very blessed to have our dear old friend Azriel Cohen here with us (long-time lunoids might remember him as the leader of the Ohr Olam Project and most of our interfaith stuff); his help has been invaluable in pulling the new Earthville House together.
MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH
The blessing back in Dharamshala, on the other hand, has been a mixed one. The good news is that our Tibetan managers have been doing very well throughout their first year flying solo. Their training continues from around the world, as Dara stays in touch with them over email almost daily, and we continue to learn from them as they contribute more and more of their own vision to the pot. In other good news, our first Tibetan manager, Tashi Wangdue, recently finished his first year of study in Scotland, and is now hoping to do a second year, either in the UK or in the US.
On the darker side, an unfortunate consequence of the war in Afghanistan and the threat of wars in Iraq and Kashmir is the near death of tourism in northern India. Since the DEVI (the Dharamshala Earthville Institute) has in the past been supported almost exclusively by revenue from KhanaNirvana (our vegetarian community café in Dharamshala), the precipitous drop in travelers to Dharamshala (our main customers) has created a financial crisis and we have had to borrow big money just to keep the doors open without laying off any of our Tibetan refugee staff (for whom new jobs would be difficult to find).
So, we're beginning the process of writing grant proposals to find about US$30,000 to allow us to keep DEVI running for the next three years. We're also looking for possible sponsors for our Tibetan staff and interns, so if you have any leads about any of these, please let us know. We hope the next year will restore peace to the region, and to the world, so everyone can get on with their lives, which are challenging enough without war.
PEACE GLOBALLY, PEACE LOCALLY
Speaking of peace (as we often do around here), that has been the other side of our focus for most of the last year. Most notably, we have been working to support two different important grassroots peace initiatives that continue to grow. Our friend Gabriel Meyer's work with the Sulha Peace Project is gaining momentum. The August Sulha gathering brought hundreds of Arabs and Jews together for dialogue and celebration of peace in the Holy Land, even while a climate of war was building outside around them. Gabriel and his community are among the brightest sparks of hope for peace in the Middle East, and we are honored to support him (and to have him share Shabbat dinner with us at the Earthville house tonight, which is almost ready... mmmmmm....), and we are looking forward to deeper collaborations over the coming year. For the skinny on Sulha, visit the Sulha site.
Azriel has also been working to bring Israelis and Palestinians together for meditation and reconciliation in Vietnamese Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh's community of Plum Village in the south of France. The programs begin with several days of mindfulness practice, and eventually (once the participants land in a place of deeper calm) facilitate deep compassionate listening, where each participant shares their suffering while the others listen from a place of trying to understand the experience of the other. The results are miracles that are small in the face of all that is needed, but big in the hearts of the participants, and they represent a model that can inspire deeper successes in peace movements in the Middle East and throughout the world. There have been three successful programs in Plum Village to date, and there are more in the works.
Back home in Oakland, we're percolating plans for peacemaking in our own backyard. The Global Alliance for Interfaith Action (GAIA) is an Earthville project that, so far, has focused exclusively on issues in other countries, but now that many of us are back on US soil for most of the year, we're reaching down to our roots to find the places we can make our contributions to harmony here, in what is statistically the most violent country in the world, by most any measure. Our first contribution is the PeaceConnection site - check it out.
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There's lots more to tell about that in the next Luna, but meanwhile, there's a pot of yummy vegan organic soup on the table, so it's time to refill the belly to support another month of sweet service. :-)
With ladles of love,
Dara, Mark, Patricia and Zak, your newly transplanted neighbors in Earthville
*PS for the benefit of our non-Spanish speaking friends: "El año de extraño" means, with our poetic license, "the missing year," with a double entendre connoting "the year of missing."
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