No Safe Place in Kobe

I'm working on a song created from a journal entry that a friend of mine, Chizue Rudd wrote - a beautiful and terrifying account of being in an erthquake in Kobe Japan.  18 years ago when her daughter was 22 months old.

No safe place in Kobe

Waking up in the dark,  not knowing where we are, what is happening here.

A violent tremor rocks my world.  

 I feel the earth heaving upward and downward and upward,.

My daughter is crying, I am screaming  and running,   

My daughter is crying, I am screaming  and running downstairs, 

he grabs me, to stop me, 

from cutting my feet on the glass on the floor.

 I cannot see, but I feel many things on the floor.

 I stop walking around, before my bare feet found broken plates, and shattered glasses, flying cups all over the kitchen, dining room, living room. Oh there’s no safe place in Kobe.

For the next few days, it was freezing cold, so we put on all our clothes in Kobe.

Chizue/s creation

There is no power, no gas, no water,   

no diaper for my baby daughter, 

 no thing on the store shelves. There’s no safe place in Kobe.  We line up to get water.  We get water from river. No safe place in Kobe

Finally we move temporarily to a safe place in downtown Osaka.

Because the building has collapsed, His co-worker died,

 My ex lost his job,  No safe place to hide ...     in Kobe.

1 month later, he still has no job, we decided to move to US that was 17 years ago when there was no safe place in Kobe.

I am so thankful for everything I have right now.

My family in good health, safe place to live in America, plenty food to eat, a glass of water in my hand.

I will never forget this, I should not forget.

Waking up in the dark, not knowing where we are, what is happening here. 
I will not forget when there was no safe place in Kobe.

Kindly I Nurture You in Living

                                     Video: Narayan Krishnan: Companion to the Forgotten

 As you know if you've read other posts in my blog, I have been searching for a definition of care that was universal enough to encompass all forms of care, and specific enough to describe what is actually done. About a year ago my friend Jeff Vanderclute posted a challenge. Tell a story in six words. My 'story' was a gift to myself. It was my six word definition of care: Kindly I nurture you in living. This man embodies human care for another.

When I think of care, I think of this man.He demonstrates all of the elements of human caring. Indeed he shows all of the elements of the kind of care essential to nursing as a spiritual practice. Nursing, as a profession, is offered to strangers outside ones family or friends. Nursing is caring for the basic needs of human beings, with kindness. Nursing is caring for whatever essentials for human living are missing. Nursing is driven by the needs of the Other. Ideally, nursing is given freely and willingly. Men and women have traditionally practiced loving kindness as part of some religious traditions.

In my own experience religious communities of men and women provide nursing care to the sick and impoverished. So I am honored to be able to share this video with you. Thank you Jana Szabo for bringing it to my attention.

Women of Great Heart I Greet You

“Responsible caretaking is a central value of life.” Margaret Mead

Well, here we are, women of great heart, taking up her  challenge. Here we are making friends, sharing stories; cooperating is our natural way.  We work close to home and to our children. We create alliances with those we see every day. We heal wounds. We make common cause in our daily lives and learn from each other. We are all sisters in an immense learning community of women.

Women of Great Heart I Greet You

Each morning, we meet. We greet, face to face, on the street as we walk our infants in strollers, at the market, or the well.  And now through the miracle of webs and clouds, we cross the miles, the oceans; the vast spaces evaporate like the dew in the morning sun. We are heart to heart, playing and working side by side, I in my village in the north; you in your village in the south, or west, or east. We carry in our hands our magic boxes linking our knowing in ways we might only have imagined.

I have always known you were there but you seemed so far away. I imagined that you knew not that I cared whether you had clean water, or a chicken to lay an egg, or gruel for your children. But I did care, only I never imagined that I could let you know.

We are 3.5 billion strong and we are mending our nets, we are mending the fabric of soil beneath our feet. Can we share as women have always shared, a cup of sugar, an extra blanket; through the web. Can we, like the pulses of energy coursing through our bodies heal our world as we heal our families?

We can join together with other women of great heart and join the love in every woman’s heart; this love is an ocean bathing our world.

Are you breathing? Thank a tree



MK Sandford Photographer, Kucera tree, alive and well.

 

 

 

 Advances  in cell biology, genomics, psychology have given us the gift of being able to experience the Natural world in such a way that it doesn’t take away the joy and the mystery of it. Science that brings us closer to understanding the inner life of all beings.

Consider this video animation of our cellproteins undertaking the task of identifying an unwelcome guest in our cells and escorting him out. The immune system is responsible for keeping our body clean and orderly. It works day and night to keep things in order. Take a breath and listen to the music and watch your body at work.

The Living Cell

In her biography, A Feeling for the Organism, Evelyn Fox Keller quotes Barbara McClintock explaining her loving attachment to plants.

“Animals can walk around, but plants have to stay still to do the same things, with ingenious mechanisms. For instance, … if you pinch a leaf of a plant you set off electrical impulses. You can’t touch a plant without sending out an electrical pulse. There is no question that plants have all kinds of sensitivities. They do a lot of responding to their environment. They can do almost anything you can think of. … In the summertime, when you walk down the road, you’ll see that the tulip leaves, when it’s a little warm, turn themselves around so that there backs are toward the sun. You can just see where the sun hits them and where it doesn’t hit. Actually within the restrictive areas in which they live, they move around a great deal. “

Indeed when we can know that within a stately grove of alders, pines, firs, and cedars billions of cells are alive and thriving we can more simply enter into a dialogue with a tree understanding that it knows we are there. Trees tell us things. They tell us about the drought, and when rain is coming. Droopy leaves are so common that we take them for granted.  Yet those leaves Cry out "I Thirst".. Where have we heard those words before?

Does a tree have a brain, central organizing principle that guides it’s inner workings?  Plant's guidance systems are decentralized. Each cell has its own ‘brain’ called a network of cell nuclei. These nuclei are in constant communication with each other via their cell's membranes. Possibly because they are stationary trees have no need for quick responses, or to think their way out of a situation, their responses are slow and steady.  Plants respond to different levels of excitation.  I wonder if plants respond to anger or sadness or to wonder and awe. Do they know how we feel? I believe they do. Trees give us so much, they are the lungs of the planet and we depend upon them for our lives. I am so immensely grateful for the oxygen they expire, to our planet, to the shade they give us to protect us from the sun’s harmful rays. So as one local bumpersticker put it,  Are you breathing? Thank a tree.

Culture Shock and My Research Question

Every study begins with a question, often called the research question. My research question was born out of the clash between my Irish Catholic Mary worshipping culture and the dominant U.S. culture.

In my Irish Catholic World all were welcome in our home. Hobos,as they were called during the depression, who came for a handout, were brought into the kitchen for a meal.  Hospitality was the predominant value of the Immaculate Heart Community of nuns who enveloped our family in angel wings. The dominant value was " Treat all with kindness whether stranger or family."

Mary the Mother of God was the Mother of us all and I was her handmaiden, deeply concerned with the suffering of all God's people yet separated from the ways of the world.

All men and women are children of God and should not be hurt. Sex is never to be talked about. It doesn’t exist in the world of an Irish Catholic child who never questions or challenges this worldview.

I experienced traumatic culture shock when I first discovered the dominant worldview prevailing in America in the 1960s. I became part of the counterculture; I saw in it some of the qualities of my own culture. It is safe to say that I was in no way prepared to be a woman negotiating within the American Cultural Domain. As the journey continues, the clash of cultures will be made clear.

Children by Cassandra Clifford
World Water Day March 22 2009
http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2009/03/22/march-22-world-water-day/

Without water a child can live for two weeks or less. In olden days our predecessors were blessed with pristine natural sources of water and the water spirits were their constant companions.  As our species became more resilient and resource rich we built our homes farther and farther from sources of fresh water. Fresh water becomes scarce and distant as we increase and multiply. Children around the world drink polluted water. Some say the wars over water will be as violent and deadly as the wars over oil have been .

From the Foreign Policy Blog

"More than 1 billion people live without access to safe water and 2.6 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation. Today is World Water Day, and as was stated in post earlier this month, Life or Death in Each Drop, that while we in developing nations take each sip of life saving water for granted, each sip to a child in the developing world could be the drop that kills. Water for as simple as it seems is a complex and global fight, that has yet to see the finish line in sight. While many wonderful and sustainable water initiatives and programs are out there, the increasing population continues to strain the already burdened effort, and water and sanitation issue."

In my study, I was told that "seeing that they get enough to drink" was one way people care for each other. Whether it is a patient in a nursing home who depends upon a nursing assistant to bring her water each day, or a child waiting for his mother to arrive with the days supply of water, making sure that they have enough to drink is an act of care.

One of the most important conclusions I drew from my research is that it was never enough to only look at the caring dyad (patient and caregiver) to predict morbidity and mortality from dehydration. Context, and systematic factors had to be taken into account. In the nursing home participants told me that seeing that they get enough to drink was NOT something they did when staffing was short. It was not considered essential by the staff. So, to predict dehydration, it was important to know the number of staff who were working as well as knowing the vulnerability of the patient to dehydration. When staff were rushed and not atune to look for differences among patients they would simply place a full pitcher of water in the patients room. Without knowing if the patient would drink on their own, or could reach the pitcher, having water was not enough. Patients needed encouragement and sometimes assistance to reach the water or they might as well not have it at all.

In the global disaster that leaves a billion people without fresh water, or a way to clean the water, they have, having water is not enough. As climate change creates both droughts and floods, getting water to those who need it may be as simple as providing containers to collect rain water,  or a means for purifying it. This may not be a major technical feat but choosing to address it effectively may be one of the greatest ethical challenges of our time.

Could a low tech low cost solar water purlfication system bring clean drinking water?
http://www.simpleearthstructures.com/resources/Water%20Bucket%20UV%20Water%20Treatment.pdf

Our First Home

Our first home was under the sea. Our living cells were first formed in the warm bath of the ocean. Humans and other primates, in fact all mammals come from life that first began, in the amniotic sea, reminiscent of their first union in the ocean when two cells became one creature, a sponge, scientists believe. As if our cells could remember those days of old, taking their substance from the mother who bears this sea within her womb, those cells increase and multiply and in one lifetime, pass through the stages of our evolution to slowly manifest an embryo indistinguishable from lower order mammals. Only near the end of its stage of life within the amniotic sea does it become distinguishable as a human being.

Sea water flows in us and through us, in and around each and every cell. However as though we had angered the gods we could no longer survive on the salt water of the earth and were forever destined to search for the pristine waters that fell from the sky as though the gods wanted us to know that all good comes from above.  Falling from the heavens and collecting in glaciers, ice flows, underground aquifers, fresh water pours over the face of the earth and is needed to replenish our interior salten seas. In the rivers and rivulets within us, oxygen and nutrients are transported to the billions of cells that live inside our skins. Scientists now know that these cells not only carry our dna passed down to us through generations of couples, cells contain their own dna.

Man has disturbed the waters, disrupted the balance between water and ice, and as the waters rise, we find we are drowning.  It may be too late to reverse the tide coming towards us but perhaps we will be more compassionate, more aware, more respectful as the tides recede. May it be so.