Lives in the Balance

I have enormous respect for artists who have continued to speak truth to power throughout their careers. Jackson Browne, Bruce Cockburn, Billy Bragg, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Steve Earle, Joan Baez... These people often rally us, wake us from our day-to-day dream, help shake us into action. We wake to see what is happening in our own backyard. We open our eyes to what we can do.

Jackson Browne's new album Solo Acoustic, Volume 1 contains one of his most powerful songs ~ "Lives in the Balance." Click here to see an incredibly moving video of the song.

Joan Baez Sings Her Song

On Saturday, November 5th, Joan Baez played at the Carolina Theater in Durham, North Carolina. I've loved Joan's music since the early 70's, but this was only the second time I've seen her. The first was in September in Washington, DC at the "Operation Ceasefire" concert after the peace march.

After a wonderful opening set with two of her guitar players, Erik Della Penna and Graham Mabe, she sang this song acapella. It brought me to tears.

This is My Song

This is my song, Oh God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred shrine.
But other hearts in other lands are beating,
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
Oh hear my song, oh God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

May truth and freedom come to every nation
May peace abound where strife has raged so long;
That each may seek to love and build together,
A world united, righting every wrong.
A world united in its love for freedom,
Proclaiming peace together in one song

Lloyd Stone, 1934

Here is an interview she did with David Menconi of the Raleigh, NC News and Observer.

Montessori and Steiner

Peace

As a Montessori teacher, I've often been asked questions about Rudolph Steiner and Waldorf schools. Though Montessori and Waldorf are both methods of education that are somewhat out of the mainstream, and very different from each other, this article illlustrates how they both grew out of the same deep human need for peace and security.

Montessori and Steiner: A Pattern of Reverse Symmetries
By Dee Joy Coulter

What a pleasure it was to read the open and tender dialogue between four wonderful Montessori and Waldorf educators (Holistic Education Review, Winter 1990). I have cherished both movements for years. I helped found the Shining Mountain Waldorf School in Boulder, Colorado, and have worked with the Montessori movement during the past five years as well. It has been a delicate business, straddling the fence with these two dear friends. Each kindly granted me an exemption, agreeing to overlook that I was also befriending the other in my spare time. Nonetheless, I rarely saw openings for sharing the wonders of one movement with the other.

For a long time I held each movement in separate compartments in my heart and my head, considering the paradox of how they could both be so sound, so "right" - and so different. Then, one day I was attending a lecture at the Naropa Institute, a Buddhist-inspired college in Boulder that is my third dear friend, and where I love most to teach. Dr. Jeremy Hayward commented that the Buddhists regard wisdom (basic goodness) and skillful means (right action) as the two wings of the dove. All of the Eastern parallels tumbled through my mind then - the feminine and masculine principles, the yin and the yang, and the way each contains the other in seed form.

Click here to read the rest of the article.