Stargazing

Wellness. At times, that word conjures up an idea of carefully parsed advice - eating less junk and more organic unprocessed foods, the benefits of fresh fruits and veggies, how to steam kale and collards so that nutrition is maximized, mental techniques aimed at coaxing oneself to exercise more or quit the tobacco habit, etc. Useful…but not first-response interventions.

For a health professional, the temptation is large to set up an advice factory in which one tries to sound like a knowledgeable expert. At CommuniChi, we consciously avoid that sort of dump truck approach to patient education. Instead, we use acupuncture to help people access the natural healing power within themselves. That’s more effective in overcoming pain and achieving balance than another lecture from a self-important advice merchant.

Silence – facilitating an inner and outer quietude through subtle energy manipulation in a cozy living room –we’ve seen it help hundreds of people, so that’s where we focus our energies. Okay, end of soap box, and conclusion of my apology for not being your typical acupuncture columnist waxing at length about the mysteries of Chi and so forth.

Now, I’d like talk about big picture wellness. Americans needs to reverse the ME centered virus afflicting our culture, and practice engaging more in altruistic action, taking into consideration the health and happiness of all living beings – in our communities as well as our world. Why? Because lives are at stake.

We are all connected. Whatever sufferings befall the Chinese coal miner trapped in a cave-in, the children of the 9th Ward in New Orleans without schools or hospitals, the polar bear in the Arctic, looking for an ice floe to pull himself out of the water onto, the orangutan in Malaysia whose rainforest home is decimated in order to create more palm oil plantations – this bitter legacy will ever circle back to US.

In order to more deeply explore this situation, let us ponder the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr:

"The problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated." I would add environmental destruction as a fourth evil that goes hand in hand with the previous three.

“The world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around….but I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”

“It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.”

Can we spend some time today thinking about how we personally can help heal the injustice and excess that divides and destroys our world? If not us, then who? The politicians? I wouldn’t bet on it.

Being an ambassador of peace and global healing doesn’t require much. A few weeks before September 11, 2001, I was on a journey through Pakistan and Central Asia. I was the only white skinned person on a bus full of ethnic Uighurs – Chinese Muslims, traveling through a particularly desolate stretch of the Himalayas in Xinjiang Province. T

he bus stopped in the middle of a desert between towering snow giants and out of nowhere, an elder peasant woman appeared and boarded the bus. There wasn’t an empty seat so I beckoned to her to take mine. She smiled faintly in reply out of the corner of her shawl and I perched myself precariously on top of the engine box beside the wild eyed driver for the next several hours.

A small random act of kindness. It didn’t stop 9-11 from happening, but I like to think that the circle of kindness set in motion six plus years ago on that dusty smoke filled bus, is still radiating outwards into the infinite universe, unimpeded by any language or cultural barrier, geo-political boundary, or other physical obstacle.

Nothing stops the power of love and truth – not fire hoses in 1960 in Birmingham, Alabama - not the antiquated energies of prejudice, fear or war mongering aggression in 2008.

Okay, maybe you’d be more comfortable if I get back to organic vegetables and Chi, but refill your mug of tea if you need to and walk with me for a little bit more if you would please. We all have our comfort zone and if we’re not ready to stand on the front lines in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau, Florence Nightingale, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Rev. King, Greenpeace and Code Pink, find something a little less threatening for now.

The small quiet actions in your neighborhood are every bit as important – smiling at a stranger of a different skin color, attending trainings in ending racism, growing a vegetable garden, running for the board of your local food co-op, adopting a street, volunteering at your local community acupuncture clinic. Positive actions are limited only by our imagination.

But let’s be willing to face some difficult truths here in 2008. Things are heating up on this little blue marble – in more ways than one - and our comfort zone is going to get tweaked with increasing frequency and force in the months and years ahead. And here, we need to check our steps and walk the narrow mountain path between the twin chasms of gloom and doom on one side, and complacency and denial on the other.

The point is, we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. So let’s create peace, justice, ecological balance and wellness today – in our individual lives, our communities, and our world - and let those waves of kindness come back to us, even as they carry us towards an unfamiliar shore.

Reflection…silence….action. Did you see the stars framing the full moon of compassion last night?