Haiti Relief-Giving-It takes nothing from you.

I know. I know. Life in these United States is not so united and some of us are barely making a living. More than 3 million people in our own country experienced homelessness last year. And depending on whether you were a Republican or Democrat, the blame was put on the last white President or the current African American President, Obama.

We're still trying to get the word out to Americans to boycott puppy mills and to save shelter dogs. New Orleans morale may have been recently uplifted by Saints, but the city still needs a few more patron-saints to repair the damage that Katrina had wrought.

And then along comes an earthquake in Haiti. It's a situation. The kind of situation that we cannot ignore. It would be nice if I could stay focused on "my things" and just keep plugging for the dogs or raise money for breast cancer research and then relax in the evenings and watch The Situation on MTV's Jersey Shores. But that's not going to happen. Haiti's plight is everywhere. The devastation and human interest stories and relief efforts are big news. So that means that the problems and charities that we have been trying to address and raise money for, and even the mindless TV that we like to chillax to, is being invaded or taken over by news of Haiti.

As I was cutting and coloring one of my Gold Coast clients the other day, she mentioned how she was just sick of hearing about Haiti.

"Everything is for Haiti,” she said, as I began weaving pieces of her gray hair to lay on foil packets and then brush with honey color. “I’m just sick about hearing about Haiti. We have our own people we have to take care of. The silly Americans who’ve borrowed more than they could pay back and used their credit cards to live on have bankrupted our country. We have to concentrate on that. Not Haiti. And what about our own homeless children?”

Normally, I could have kept my mouth shut. I would have nodded silently and folded up all the little foil packets and then got her some regular coffee, instead of her requested decaf, and then let her read her People magazine in heart palpating silence for the next thirty minutes while her color developed.

But this particular day I wanted to say something. Maybe a direct rebuttal or at least, throw out a few non-neutral thoughts which is what a good hairdresser should do so as not to piss of your clients too much. I could have chosen to tell her that I was a Silly American and that I still had way too much credit card debt. But I decided to take umbrage to the whole theme of her dislike of the Haiti media circus. Of course I said it with a smile and layered with a veiled directness.

“The whole Haiti thing reminds me of the 80’s,” I said. “I was trying to put together a cut-thon-for AIDS when we in the U.S. were just learning that you couldn’t get it from a kiss and that it wasn’t just a Gay disease. There was sentiment out there that was like, ‘why should I give my money to people who probably did something to get the disease?’
Well, eventually, there was an AIDS Walk and an AIDS ride. And Liz Taylor had worked magic and put a popular giving spin on the situation. And people began to give to the AIDS cause and continue giving to this day. What I’m saying is that I think the ingenuity and the giving spirit took over and Americans eventually came together to give and to help their fellow man.
I’d very much like to think that, like Christmas season, this giving spirit is ignited and then trickled into the rest of the year. Not just for Christmas beneficiaries, such as Homeless shelters but for the World Wildlife Federation and the Red Cross Haiti Relief fund.”

“But we have to take care of our own,” my client said.

Obviously my client and I were speaking from deep seated passions from opposite spectrum's of political hues of red and blue. If I was a still a Republican, I would have still disagreed with her and said, “Look bitch, Haiti is our own. We are totally going to be buying up that real estate with what they are going to owe us. And then we’re going to build big fucking hotels and golf courses and make the damn villagers work for us so they can afford to live in the shacks that we’re building for them now.”

Or I could have gone with the: what about We are the World – one-world theory. Spiritually speaking, aren’t we all just one people? One person on the other side of the Earth is just as important as the one standing right next to me. Human life = precious. Maybe I could have expanded on that very thought and added an Americany imperialistic twist on the world thing so that she could digest it better. “Look bitch, we use up ¼ of the worlds’ resources and energy, and spew out ¾ of the worlds trash and pollution. It’s like we have been shitting on these people for years and they haven’t asked for much.”

I think I had too many cups of coffee that morning myself and I just wanted to pick a fight and call my client a bitch. But my natural tendency to keep my client comfortable as well as keep her coming back to me won out.

“What I’m saying is,” I said, “maybe Haiti is igniting that giving spirit. Maybe the gift, if any, is that the situation in Haiti has to offer us is to see our true human character emerge. I mean, how cool that even Americans out of work, and poverty-level Americans are giving and average of ten dollars apiece to Haiti. And George Clooney and his friends helped raise more money in a telethon than any other in history.”

My client started to talk, but by now, the other stylists and their clients were listening to me so I wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to let my fine caffeine fueled opinion get its due.

“Listen,” I said, “beyoches, [I got it in] when this whole Haiti thing is better, we’re going to be taking long look at ourselves and we are gonna say to ourselves: job well done. We are gonna feel good about the giving and we are gonna start to think, hey, if we can do that, just think of what we can do for our own homeless. Our animal shelters. Pollution!
I don’t think Haiti is taking away from us. No. The devastation in Haiti has awakened our passion to help and to see that we are one people and one world. And we Americans have opened our eyes to our own humanity and we have opened our hearts and we will never again close our eyes and hearts again!”

Okay, so maybe I had three cups of coffee and my memory of the conversation may have sieved through my “blue passion.”
My point was and is, is that giving to Haiti doesn’t take away anything from us Americans. This is an opportunity to be thankful for what we have and to give what we can. And bitches, you can certainly continue to give and love and take care of your fellow people, and animals, long after we help to take care of our neighbors in Haiti.

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The Pope and I agree on being green.

http://tinyurl.com/yb4vrqq

http://tinyurl.com/ye7m9ar

The Pope and I finally have something that we agree on. Being Green is our spiritual duty. I have always thought that much of the Catholic rhetoric has been divisive. But because of the Pope's urging of Green consciousness and recent green dialogue, I feel that I can sit at the same table with him and get something positive done. If all faiths came together and agreed to honor this creation, Earth, I believe we'd reverse global warming and, in the process, find the commonality in our societies different faiths. We'd also be putting our faiths into action (do not judge...?) and we'd be doing a little god-like creating ourselves. How about a Utopian co-existence, and clean air and water for our children. Count me in. Let's get started.

I belong to a Science of Mind church. Our belief is that there is one God. And we don't moralize what we call God; Him... Her... Universe... Martini... And we don't care if you don't want to call "it" anything or believe that there is a God at all. We believe that everyone is part of this God, so every individual is perfect in our God's eyes. That means that we are all the same, whether it looks like it or not, or whether you believe that or not--so we appreciate and try to remember that daily. Pretty neat, huh?

But, just like many churches, the people of my congregation have been attending services and classes where we learn how to be better individual spiritual persons and then we take the teachings and try and work them into our daily lives.

There are a few Ministries in our church, like the Animal Ministry, that actively puts to use what they've learned within the community and out. The Animal Ministry serves the "outside" community at-large by collecting funds and donated items and disperses them to needy animal shelters in our area. And they do their own brand of spiritual prayer treatments for pets and their owners and have parishioners sign petitions for better laws for treatment of animals. (I just set up a FaceBook group page, ANIMAL MINISTRY, for them.) I like this ministry because it practices "faith into action," and it allows members and non-members alike to practice our spiritual principals.

But, like many churches, temples, and synagogues etc, I believe my church has been coming up short on the spiritual message to actual action where it concerns being green. Up to now we have not been walking the talk, or actually doing what we preach. Our new-thought and ancient-wisdom has taught me that we humans are stewards of this Mother Earth and we here to take care of this planet, ourselves, and all of Earth's inhabitant, human and non-human alike. But we have not fully made the connection that to change laws which protect our children from drinking tainted water or making sure that we all have clean air in the future is actually spiritual practice and not necessarily politics. We say we should love our fellow man and take car of our bodies but we have continued to buy energy wasting light bulbs in our church and we still use Styrofoam cups and we still buy bleached white paper towels, all of which adds Co2 into the air.

My spirituality says this human existence is the manifestation of our collective spirituality. This is our world. We made it this way. So when are we going to collectively going to make this world of form the beautiful place we desire it to be? It will take everyone to do it. Christians, Jews, Muslims.... The Pope is just one more dude realizing that we got to come together.

Look, I know all churches are worried about the dollars to keep our doors open. How do we get more people to attend church? How can we empower our congregation to be better people? But I don't think that we should have to worry about the bottom line. We should let God do that. I also believe we can attract people and empower ourselves by putting our faith into action. Here's an example:

There is a Rabbi Rosen of the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation. He and his core council had a choice when their old building was no longer big enough to hold the growing congregation. Either they had to tear down and build a bigger building on the igniting site, or move and buy or build another larger Temple elsewhere. Sometime and somewhere along the way of deciding, Rabbi Rosen had a spiritual epiphany. He had caught the "Green bug." Rabbi Rosen realized that being green and being a steward of this earth was a spiritual edict of his own religion.
By studying the Jewish principle of Bal Tashchit, which appears in biblical text as well as in later rabbinic interpretation, he gleaned that a Jewish environmental ethic teaches "do not destroy or waste."
"God led Adam around the Garden of Eden and said, ‘Look at My works. See how beautiful they are, how excellent. See to it that you do not spoil or destroy My world — for if you do, there will be no one to repair it after you.’" (Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:13)

Rabbi Rosen and his core council decided to stay on the same site, tear down the existing building, recycle the demolition, and then make the new building the very first LEEDS Synagogue. http://tinyurl.com/2xqdgy Of course, this was going to take millions more to do this than had they only decided to tear down and build traditionally in this bad economy.
Well, today he preaches that the money for the tear down and build-out for their new building came easier and faster because they chose to go green. The money poured in because they chose spiritual over practical or traditional. Faith and spirit won. Fear lost.
The Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation is a beacon of faith into action and attracts followers, admirers and has shown the religious communities that being green is the way to go. I'm definitely an admirer.
If you'd like a tour of the now famous LEEDS certified Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation:
303 Dodge Avenue Evanston, Illinois 60202-3252
Phone 847-328-7678 info@jrc-evanston.org


Every congregation has to have a pastor or priest or rabbi that gets nipped by the Green Bug. Then the blessings can start happening in our temples, synagogues, churches and mosques. And may that good fortune happen for all of us who run green groups in our churches. Maybe now with the Pope on board it's going to get a little easier to make the connection that this earth and we humans are spiritually connected. (Did you see Avatar?) I never thought I'd say this, but thanks, Pope. I look forward to working with you on this one. Maybe we'll find some other things to work on together. Solar Energy? Feeding the worlds poor? And maybe by working together I'll find out that you aren't so divisive and maybe you won't think I'm so bad and that I'm one of God's treasures just the way I am.

I am the leader of The Green Ministry at Bodhi Spiritual Center in Chicago. WE are GREEN and we are Getting better at it, every day. And we belong to Faith in Place, an interfaith group of like-minded green organizations in different churches, synagogues and temples etc in the greater Chicago Area. http://www.faithinplace.org/