Journal of an ordinary life in a peaceful land
What if ... every child grew up feeling wanted, loved and completely supported by family and community?
What if ... we could all do work that gave us joy?
What if ... we were so full of love ourselves that we viewed all other beings with compassion?
What if ... we consciously lived in harmony with Nature and other animals?
If you need a respite from an all-too violent and turbulent world, read The Village of Ordinary blog and participate in the vision of what life could be like if peaceful coexistence were, well, ordinary.
Digital Stock Photography No Negatives.
Used with permission.
Contents at a Glance
- Why "Ordinary"? Because peace is
- Village of Ordinary
- Meet the Ladakhi - People who have lived in peace for thousands of years
Why "Ordinary"? Because peace is
November 25, 2006
The village name is Ordinary because cooperation, peaceful cohabitation, sustainable living, and right livelihood in the Village of Ordinary are exactly that.Think it's not possible in our world? I'm here to show you it is. Examples abound. Learn about them in this lens. Learn about ways you can make a more peaceful world starting right now, at home. Become conscious that you vote for a better world--or a greedy, impoverished, violent one--every time you open your wallet.
Then I humbly pray that you will share your thoughts. I welcome dialogue. Please add your comments to What you Think Matters below. If necessary, we will reclaim peace and green our world one word, one breath at a time.
Image credit: NASA
Village of Ordinary
Read the latest posts and updates from the Village
The Village of Ordinary is a vision and a dream because we do not live there--yet. Often, when discussing Ordinary, people wistfully use the word utopia, as though it is impossible to attain such a lifestyle.
Ordinary is not utopia. All over the world, people are working to make such dreams come true. It can happen here. I'm going to continue blogging and making lenses to show us all how until it happens.
I'll scour libraries and the Internet and talk with the folks who are living some part of the dream already.
On the way there, each one of us can choose harmony in a moment of conflict. We can choose to live a little more sustainably each day. We can choose compassion--One minute, one day, one post, one lens at a time.
Here or there, you and I can choose.
Join me in making the vision reality. Use Rose's story in the still-fictional Village of Ordinary to inspire you. Use the guestbooks in this lens and on the blogs to talk back to me.
Get started right now. Read more right here.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byMeet the Ladakhi - People who have lived in peace for thousands of years
Today, the Ladakhi are reclaiming their time-tested culture and adapting twenty-first century technology to suit. Learn more ...
Discover Gaviotas - a village like Ordinary in the most unlikely of places
In the barren Colombian desert, smack in the middle of gun-toting drug lords, revolutionaries, and a militaristic government, Paolo Lughari, founded Gaviotas and proved that peace can be had anywhere.Weapons are not permitted in Gaviotas, and the people work together in harmony, building schools, homes, sustainable power plants, and regenerating a forest that once covered the desert.
That's right. Gaviotas turned an arid, inhospitable desert into a jungle.
That's not the only miracle.
Image copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
Get the whole story on the Ladakhi and on Gaviotas
If a group of dedicated scientists, engineers, homeless children, and ordinary people could wrest a jungle from the desert while building self-sufficient Gaviotas and inventing amazing technologies that bring hope to starving, water-deprived people the world over, then Ordinary is possible anywhere.
You must read these books. They show the way.
Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh
This book inspired Ordinary and is my all time favority book. I always have spare copies to give to friends and family. The story will make your heart flutter with hope.
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Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World
Journalist Alan Weisman's tale of the founding and maturing of war-torn Colombia's eco-village reads like a novel. I couldn't put it down. Like Ancient Futures, this is a life-changing true story.
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People are building sustainable communities all over the world
BUILDING ORDINARY ISN'T JUST A DREAM
Neighborliness is in. Tracts of strangers are out. Inner cities, suburbs, rural areas round the globe--people are building villages where neighbor helps neighbor, children play safely, and land and wildlife are treated with respect and care.-
Building Ordinary--Sustainable Community
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They're known as eco-villages, cohousing or intentional communities. This lens explores several of them and answers these questions: What is cohousing? What do we mean by sust...
Pale blue dot - Gaining perspective
For those times your problems, the world's problems seem earth-shattering
Think peace so illusory, so against human nature that it's folly to expect? Think you can't achieve peace at work, within your family or neighborhood, much less expect world peace? Step back a moment. See that barely perceptible pale blue dot in the image? It's there. Look closely. That's earth from Saturn's vantage point.
View of Earth from Voyager 1,
at a distance of more than 4 billion miles.
Earth is the dot in the middle of the bright streak.
Image credit: NASA/JPL
Sagan fan? Read Pale Blue Dot
The novel that followed Contact
Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Carl Sagan in Pale Blue Dot
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Release Date: 11/08/1994
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Finding hope
We are the ones
Chief among those: Alice Walker, who deliberately begins her latest book, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, with these words:
It is the worst of times. It is the best of times.
"It is the worst of times," she says, "because it feels as though the very Earth is being stolen from us, by us."
In the face of this theft, in which we all participate, she finds the greatest hope. For the first time, we have the knowledge, worldwide, of who is doing what to whom, and why.
And because "we live in a time of global enlightenment," we have the ability to change it all. "This alone should make us shout for joy."
Walker will rattle you along the way, and she'll leave you with hope and inspire you to action.
We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Light in a Time of Darkness
Amazon Price: $17.96 (as of 07/13/2009)
Peace begins at home
It's an inside job
Peace begins at home, in your heart. If you want to build a peaceful world, start with yourself. Make peace in your heart with the folks who have wronged you. Yes, it's a lot of work. This has taken me years in some cases, and I'm still working on others, but you'll be surprised how it saves you when at last you embrace the one who "done you wrong" with genuine forgiveness and love. Your heart will be freed from a burden the weight of which you fully know only when it's gone.While you're working on that, when the personal and global violence our culture so glorifies overwhelms you, look for inspiration in true stories like those in this lens and in Nancy Jo Graham's The Power of Kindness.
Most of all, look for it in the faces of the people around you, and again--I can't say this enough-- in your own heart. It's there. If you doubt it, keep coming back to this lens, visit Ordinary, and together we'll find ways to uncover what's been there all along.
Image copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering
A story for anyone who thinks she can't save the world
Sharon Mehdi wrote a book for her granddaughter about two grannys who change the world standing still. Before she knew it, she was living the fantasy. Now women and men all over the world are standing up, silently, for peace. Read The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering and tell me what you think. If you're like me, you'll buy a dozen copies and start giving it to everyone you know.
If you are standing for peace, or you'd like to start, or you know of other grandmothers doing it, tell us about it in What You Think Matters below.
Here's what Mehdi is writing about on her blog right now.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byThink peace. Be peace. Give peace.
The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering
The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering: A Story for Anyone Who Thinks She Can't Save the World
Amazon Price: $10.95 (as of 07/13/2009)
Stand for peace five minutes on May 11
Standing Women 2008
For more info:www.standingwomen.org. Please stand with us on May 11, 2008 at 1 p.m. your local time, or whatever time is convenient for you, in support of the world's children, grandchildren and the seven generations beyond.
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The Peace President
Imagine a world of peace, a world without greed, a world in which our leaders all over the world say, "I have had enough of war. I have made a decision today to be the Peace President. I will turn our vast resources from killing to saving lives, ending poverty and hunger, and restoring the earth. From this day forward, and for the remainder of my administration, I will wage peace. I will wage reclamation of all that is beautiful on our earth. I will wage harmony for humanity."Imagine a world in which, when our leaders speak, we know they speak the truth, and that they mean what they say, and that they mean peace. Imagine it. Make it so.
One mother's grief, two mother's prayers
It's easy to intellectualize these concepts, but when you see a mother talking about her son and weeping, you begin to understand why she was willing to sacrifice her health, sacrifice her financial resources, sacrifice her reputation, sacrifice her marriage to lend her voice to the cry for peace.
Cindy Sheehan, and every every mother, father, brother, sister, aunt and uncle, grandpa and grandma who have lost a child to bullets and bombs and hatred, I pray that angels surround you with love and healing and that peace permeates your soul.
For us all, I pray we find a way to end the violence and suffering and accept the peace that awaits us.
Cindy Sheehan in "A Mother's Tears"; Her Son's Death in Iraq
Cindy Sheehan in "A Mother's Tears" (2004) Real Voices : Cindy Shehan A Mother's Tears; Sponsored by RealVoices.org; Contact Information: http://realvoices.org/; Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
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Peace is ...
WORLD PEACE EMERGING
Quote from World Peace Emerging, where you can read dozens of stories of people making peace in the world, one human being, one day at a time.
Three more books that inspire, inform and nourish Ordinary
Inspiration, guides, sources
Sent by Earth: A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
This tiny book can go with you everywhere--truly a pocket book. Alice Walker shares her journey from despair at yet another war to hope and action we can all take. The message from Grandmother Spirit is a simple one, and requires only that we be willing to look at one another in trust.
Amazon Price: (as of 07/13/2009)
Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble
Known as the guru of the global environmental movement, Lester Brown defines the problem and offers a workable plan that can be embraced by world leaders and individuals today. I'm still reading this one, and the first few chapters knocked my organic cotton socks right off my feet.
Amazon Price: (as of 07/13/2009)
Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living (Shambhala Classics)
It doesn't matter what you've done, where you've been, you still have time to make a difference. Start now. The present is all any of us have.
Amazon Price: $10.15 (as of 07/13/2009)
Vote for a better world - with your greenbacks
You have more power than you think
Remember the days following 9-11? The president went on television telling Americans that the most important thing they could do right then was--go shopping! He told us to get in our cars, buy gasoline, buy groceries. He told us to go to the mall!I did my patriotic duty that weekend. With a heavy heart, I drove my car to the mall and spent money, and I learned an invaluable lesson:
What we, the very ordinary, not so wealthy, blue, pink and white collar workers buy affects the marketplace. Take a look at Walmart. They put organic food on their shelves--and spend millions of dollars advertising it--because so many of us were shopping at our local co-ops for tastier, more wholesome, more locally-grown foods. We voted with our greenbacks.
(Next time you buy organic at Walmart, you might want to find out first where they buy it and how far they ship it.)
What you think matters
People working together--that's what Ordinary is about. Individuals finding the creative genius within--that's Ordinary too. People treading lightly on the earth that all who come after may share in its bounty and bask in its beauty--that's Ordinary. Help build the dream. Share your thoughts, dreams, visions, and above all, advice on making Ordinary work. Today. Right now.
Amy Lundberg wrote
Love is the answer to all "IFs".
If there is Love, there is no poverty as we would be very generous with those in need.
If there is Love, there is no hatred and there is peace.
If there is Love, there is content and there is no greed.
Amy Lundberg
www.aimforfitness.com
www.aimforfitness.com/blog
Posted February 18, 2009
Mortira wrote...
Everything humanity has done since the industrial revolution has been pushing us away from "Ordinary". And now it's as if most of use have been taught, engineered or brainwashed into thinking that having the biggest car and the shiniest jewelry is what will make us happy. I think that the best thing we can do to work towards Ordinary is to teach our kids to think for themselves, ask questions and be aware. It's a good mission! * * * * *
Posted February 01, 2009
dc64 wrote...
What an idea! If only things were like this for real. At least they are in our dreams...(Ironically, the security word for this comment was "hopeful".)
Posted December 26, 2008
poutine wrote...
As President Eisenhower said :"I think that people want peace so much
that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it."
Poutine
Posted November 22, 2008
jasmineann wrote...
A truly inspiring, lovely and beautiful lens. I agree "Peace begins at home, in your heart. If you want to build a peaceful world, start with yourself." Thank you.
Posted September 22, 2008
annetteghallowell wrote...
I experienced the other side of peace, war- in Liberia. We lived there before the war started in 1990 and then during the war. Thank you for your understanding of and promotion of the only way we should move forward in this world. 5* favorite from a new fan!
Posted August 17, 2008
More on creating a sustainable world and building Ordinary
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Plan B 3.0: What's it all about?
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That's what it's all about. Saving our planet and ourselves. Here's what author Lester Brown says about why he wrote the book. Plan A, business-as-usual, has the world on an environmental path that is leading toward economic decline and eventual colla...
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Why buy organic cotton
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The scent of it, fresh from the dryer, the rich plush of thick Turkish towels in the bath. And who doesn't feel comforted the moment they crawl between freshly laundered cotton sheets? So what's all the buzz about organic cotton, and why should you c...
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That's Bamboo? Wow!
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Bamboo is the eco-wonder of the world. It pumps oxygen into the air faster than trees, feeds the hungry, clothes the body, soothes the ear, carries water, digs potatoes, shelters the homeless as well as the privileged, and in case all that is not eno...
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Crystal Waters Permaculture Village
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Welcome to Crystal Waters Permaculture Village. Located an hour and a half north of Brisbane, Australia, Crystal Waters is a fun place to live where everyone, from kids to grannies and grandpas, pitch in and get their hands dirty. A diverse community...
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Building Ordinary Headquarters
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Welcome to the Building Ordinary Group Come on in. Explore our community. This group is about ways all of us can make the Village of Ordinary--a fictional place where people live together in harmony with each other and the earth--real today, right now...
What are you doing to make the world a better place?
WHO DO YOU KNOW WHO IS MAKING THE WORLD BETTER?
Tell your story. Tell theirs. Build a lens about it right here. It only takes a couple of minutes to start a lens. Squidoo is free--all the time, all ways. Plus, you or your charity will earn $5 on your first lens payout if you sign up using this referral. So will I. It's one of the ways Squidoo rewards us all for helping each other find our way to the land of Squid.Image: Squidoo button
Member
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Imagine Peace Headquarters
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Imagine Peace Group Imagine all the people, living life in peace. These words of peace and hope were penned by John Lennon more than 30 years ago. The Imagine Peace group assembles the peace keepers, peace makers and people for peace...your fri...
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Building Ordinary Headquarters
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Welcome to the Building Ordinary Group Come on in. Explore our community. This group is about ways all of us can make the Village of Ordinary--a fictional place where people live together in harmony with each other and the earth--real today, right now...
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