Greetings from Love-In-Action Taos! photo by Patricia Morningstar
Dear Love-In-Action Network,
The Love-In-Action Network is a very humble and simple thing. We come together, we talk, we deepen through our gathering, and then we act together to help our world. There has been interest in this network from around the globe (Morocco, British Columbia, Mexico) and also many communities here in the United States. I want to encourage everyone to just do it! Start a local group. Invite your friends. Bake cookies. Talk.
Every Love-In-Action group develops from simple beginnings. Over time, they will have amazingly unique flavors. I want to share some reflections on our Taos, NM (USA) group. Hopefully, they will inspire you.
For our second Love-In-Action gathering, a young(er) woman and I asked to learn the old protest songs and spirituals. Little did we know the magic contained in these songs! At the risk of waxing poetic or sounding sentimental, I watched the room come alive through the songs. Pete Seeger believed that when we sing together, we have joined in spirit to sing. I felt that. I watched the “older” members of our group shine with the joy of sharing these songs. For me, asking to learn these songs was a way of honoring the generation of the 1960’s, and of tapping into what George Lakey calls “the accumulated revolutionary wisdom of the people”.
At this gathering, we also had a Christian and Muslim sitting next to each other, along with some Buddhist-Taoists (like myself) and other faiths, too. In these times of hate and war, I feel small moments of peace like this are worth mentioning and celebrating.
We spoke about our interests in Love-In-Action, our feelings of needing to find action in this time of great change, and our yearning for positive, constructive, and tangible efforts. One idea that caught the group’s interest was to pick up the litter that plagues our community, holding signs that say, “Please don’t litter” and “Love-In-Action Taos”. Many felt that a visible, humble, and practical contribution to our community was the perfect way to begin our efforts. We briefly explored the idea of how to use the litter picking up day as a meditation or an intentional focus of being Love in Action – which reminded me of Thich Nhat Hanh’s writings. Can we practice compassion while engaging in practical action? I think we can.
At the next gathering in two weeks, we will use the World Cafe discussion model to dive deeper into our ideas for group efforts on the local and larger problems we want work together to address.
Please do not be shy. Leave a reply and I will email you back. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for … and the time is now. Join us.
With love,
Rivera Sun
P.S. Find us all on Facebook, too! https://www.facebook.com/groups/685127711519818/
This gathering was seriously productive. Hope EVERYONE that attended last night agrees. Rarely read fiction, but the Dandelion Insurrection is one of those stories that are best (can only be?) told that way. I found this post:
<a href="http://bit.ly/1i9SZnG" "Man From The North: The Sabotage Of Division" by Dariel Garner
so on target, and encourage others to read it. I found it especially pertaining to Mondays meeting. Coincidence?
Correct link to “Man From The North: The Sabotage Of Division” by Dariel http://bit.ly/1i9SZnG
LOL, that is definitely my writing, but Dariel circulated it, edited the essay, and is part of the creation team. Wonderful comment about the Love-In-Action Taos gathering. I was laying awake last night, picturing us picking up trash with bilingual signs En Agua es la Vida! and La Tierra es sus Madre! and so on.