This I Believe


. .//OUR .SPINNING GLOBE:
A LIVING AND LEARNING HOME PAGE
One day, Jesus sat amidst people who listened to his words with amazement. He said: "Seek not the Law in your scriptures, for the Law is life, whereas the scripture is dead. The Law is the living word of the living God to living prophets for living men. In everything that is life, is the Law written. You find it in the grass, in the trees, in the river, in the mountain, in the birds of heaven, in the fishes of the sea, but seek it chiefly in yourselves. God did not write the Law in books, but in your heart and in your spirit. "
-- From the Gospel of the Essenes

I believe that mankind is facing a devastating catastrophe in the all-too near future that threatens our very existence as inhabitants of this earthly paradise, our own planet. It is very much up in the air which way we will go from now on - gradual escalation into a widening areana of killing and destruction ending in nuclear holocaust - or only an slightly less precipitous plunge into ecological disaster through drastic disruptions of our global weather patterns. The immediacy of these dangers call for immediate interventions - but in the long run, if we survive, issues concerning the welfare and sanity of the survivors will determine whether or not our earth will continue to provide habitat for life.

I believe that the central task facing us today is educational preparation for the spiritual healing of the planet, a healing which will require a fundamental transformation of our personal, economic and political lives - in the family and in society. It calls for the development of strong inner lives, starting in early childhood - and a lot of that can be accomplished through spiritual education - by which I mean, education for LIFE. Such education can take many forms - home schooling, democratic education - Waldorf or Montessori education - but the most important ingredient for learning that will enable us to make the cultural and political changes we need to survive is awareness on the part of parents and teachers alike of how precious are the lives of our children! John Dewey said it years ago - education is NOT preparation for life, it IS LIFE ITSELF!.
I believe that educating our children to value life by having BEEN valued throughout their lives is the key to any change for the better in society, including planetary healing - and that we need reliable information about what their education should be like. You'll find a lot of alternatives among these pages offering information about good, truly life-enhancing schools that already exist.
We all need to take responsibility for what goes on in schools. So much more can be accomplished with prevention than with cure! Click here to look at a page about issues and alternatives in education, which is such an important place to focus.
I believe that real changes will take at least a generation, so we need to begin with the children. That is still true - but we don't have that much time to wait to begin making those changes. The end of PEAK OIL has probably already begun, and will become ever more evident. The implications for a whole spectrum of amenities and necessities we have come to take for granted are almost certainly up for grabs. Take a look here at a new website, which addresses some of these important issues.
The Free School in Albany, NY has demonstrated that a surprising degree of healing can be accomplished in the first nine grades of school for children from a wide variety of backgrounds, including children from the black and hispanic ghetto. Chris Mercogliano has written of the origin of the thinking on which this school was based:: What if we could raise a generation of children free of race and class prejudice, free of an overdependence on material things as the basis for the good life, and free of the belief in the necessity of war? And what if society were to begin embracing education as a process that encourages learning for learning's sake and enables children to develop fully and authentically?