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Right Use of Power
power with heart news
Dear <<First Name>>!
February and March has brought weather extremes in Colorado, blizzard one day and two days later, crocuses and daffodils. February has brought political extremes as well with acts of courageous right use of power and misuses and abuses of power as well. Read a poem by a Hispanic immigrant, a poem about staying centered, a call for joining sight with insight, and responses to questions about who you admire and what service groups you are supporting this year. This issue also includes links to several articles about immigration issues that are well worth the read. I hope your read time brings insight and inspiration.
Note: If you want a different viewing experience of this newsletter, try clicking "View it in your browser" link at the top of this email (above the header image). You will be able to translate the newsletter into various languages, share through Facebook, etc.
In this issue you will find:
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E-Courses
There are six 3 CE hour courses in the new series:
Overview Course (1 CE hour)--Power with Heart;
Dimension 1--Be Informed and Present, the Guided use of power;
Dimension 2--Be compassionate and Aware, the Conscious use of power;
Dimension 3--Be Connected and Accountable, the Responsible use of power;
Dimension 4--Be Skillful and Proactive, the wise use of power;
*This course deals with Leadership and Power Dynamics, Challenges, and Soul Work and World Service
The More Dimension-- Refining your Personal Impact and Becoming Ethically Proactive.
There is enough new material that you can take the courses again! Try it out!.
Find out more about the E-courses here. |
Workshops & Trainings
Boulder, Colorado
Right Use of Power Advanced Teacher Training
Now scheduled for Fall 2017
- Dates TBA
Presented by Cedar Barstow & Magi Cooper
Click here for more information
Boulder, Colorado
Right Use of Power Workshop & Teacher Training
July 29 - August 2, 2017
Presented by Cedar Barstow & Magi Cooper
Click here for more information
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Featured RUP Teachers
My deep thanks to these awesome Right Use of Power Teachers and Guild Members who forward me articles and other stuff that they think might be of interest to readers of this newsletter:
- Ren Feldman
- Vinay Gunther
- Rohini Kanniganti
- Judith Blackburn
- Maya Shaw Gale
- Jeff Couillard
- Cliff Penwell
- and my brother, David Barstow, a strong supporter.
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Being a Person
By William Stafford
Be a person here. Stand by the river, invoke
the owls. Invoke winter, then spring.
Let any season that wants to come here make its own call. After that sound goes away, wait.
A slow bubble rises through the earth
and begins to include sky, stars, all space, even the outracing, expanding thought. Come back and hear the little sound again.
Suddenly this dream you are having matches everyone’s dream, and the result is the world. If a different call came there wouldn’t be any world, or you, or the river, or the owls calling.
How you stand here is important. How you
listen for the next things to happen. How you breathe.
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 The Immigration Debate We Need
by George Borjas in The New York Times
The first month of the Trump administration has already changed the direction of the immigration debate, with many more changes coming soon. So far, executive orders and deportations dominate the discussion. But the fight over how many refugees to admit or how best to vet those refugees obscures what the debate is really about.
Changes in social policy do not make everyone better off, and immigration policy is no exception. I am a refugee, having fled Cuba as a child in 1962. Not only do I have great sympathy for the immigrant’s desire to build a better life, I am also living proof that immigration policy can benefit some people enormously.
But I am also an economist, and am very much aware of the many trade-offs involved. Inevitably, immigration does not improve everyone’s well-being. There are winners and losers, and we will need to choose among difficult options. The improved lives of the immigrants come at a price. How much of a price are the American people willing to pay, and exactly who will pay it?
Read the rest of the article here. |
An Apology to Muslims for President Trump
by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times
Whenever an extremist in the Muslim world does something crazy, people demand that moderate Muslims step forward to condemn the extremism. So let’s take our own advice: We Americans should now condemn our own extremist.
In that spirit, I hereby apologize to Muslims. The mindlessness and heartlessness of the travel ban should humiliate us, not you. Understand this: President Trump is not America!
I apologize to Nadia Murad, the brave young Yazidi woman from Iraq who was made a sex slave — but since escaping, has campaigned around the world against ISIS and sexual slavery. She has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, yet is now barred from the United States.
Read the rest of the article here.
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Husbands Are Deadlier Than Terrorists
by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times
With the President Trump Reality Show, it’s easy to be distracted by ANGRY ALL-CAPITAL TWEETS or Oval Office tantrums. But resist, and stay focused on matters of life and death.
Consider two critical issues: refugees and guns. Trump is going berserk over the former, but wants to ease rules on the latter. So let’s look at the relative risks.
In the four decades between 1975 and 2015, terrorists born in the seven nations in Trump’s travel ban killed zero people in America, according to the Cato Institute. Zero.
In that same period, guns claimed 1.34 million lives in America, including murders, suicides and accidents. That’s about as many people as live in Boston and Seattle combined.
It’s also roughly as many Americans as died in all the wars in American history since the American Revolution, depending on the estimate used for Civil War dead.
It’s true that Muslim Americans — both born in the United States and immigrants from countries other than those subject to Trump’s restrictions — have carried out deadly terrorism in America. There have been 123 such murders since the 9/11 attacks — and 230,000 other murders.
Read the rest of the article here.
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 Seven Gates of Light - Responses
by Cedar Barstow, M.Ed., C.H.T.
We had a Seven Gates of Light party at our house. At one of the "gates, " the guests were asked to write on post-it notes, their answers to two questions. Perhaps you'll want to do this too.
1. Name a person who inspires you. Think of this person for a moment and thank them.
These are the responses: Michelle Obama, John Glenn, JFK, Pope Francis, Allegra Ahlquist, Charles Eisenstein, Ursula LeGuin, Bernie Sanders, Janis Kelly, Barack Obama, Dalai Lama, Madeleine Albright, Mooji, Jimmy Carter, Bob Dylan, MLK, Cesar Vallejo, Pete Seeger, my mom, my boyfriend, my friend, Eva Stattine, Hillary Clinton, Sai Maa, Thomas Hubl, Cedar Barstow, my kids, Pastor Susan, Elizabeth Warren, Reynold Feldman, Thich Naht Hahn, Erin Carson, Ghandi, God.
2. Name a group or organization you plant to support financially or volunteer with. Take a moment to thank them for the good work they do.
Here are the responses: Earth Justice, St. John's Episcopal Church, Move-on.org, Friends Committee on National Legislation, civil disobedience, working with refugees, Agape International, Earth Guardians, Democracy Now, animals, small local businesses, EMF Awareness Group, LGBT, Embodiment for NGO Workers, Cetacean Society International, PBS, Right Use of Power Institute, ACLU, Environment Colorado, Planned Parenthood, DNC, Doctors without Borders, Let Girls Learn, WWF, Stop Trafficking of People, Humane Society, Water Protectors, Boulder City Aids Project, service with and for my kids, Special Operations Warrior Foundation.
I am inspired by the depth and breadth of the people and organizations on this list and by the brave, dedicated, meaningful and healing work that is being done through them. We need to keep these often-unnoticed efforts in mind and heart to help us keep our balance.
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 Gratitude
Juan (an immigrant who has a sacred relationship with the trees that he respectfully trims from his high rope harness) gave this to me after his work in my trees. (I've changed his name.)
Gratitude
Gratitude to the land who embraced me with its mountains.
To the people who resided on the plains.
To all our fellow human beings who extended me their hand.
Gratitude to your green grass lands.
To the white blanket that blesses your meadows.
To the red and yellow of your leafy trees that even when they are naked, they are still shining their fields of gold.
Gratitude to the blessed land which God has brought me to.
To the beautiful Colorado; where a blanket of stars has sheltered my nights.
From this land my ancestors have been fed.
Gratitude to you where I have poured my sweat, and only God knows how many moons have passed without counting the pain and the tears that have spilled.
Gratitude to this land of which I am not her son, but. . . .I feel as if I am one; the most fortunate of your children. |
Tainted-Glory Wisdom
by Reynold Feldman, excerpted from a forthcoming book entitled: Finding Your Wisdom--Tapping Your Inner GPS
"It takes great courage to see the world in its tainted glory and still love it."
- Oscar Wilde
There is sight, and there is insight. Wisdom relates more to the second than the first.
Here’s an example. Victor Frankl (b. 1905), the Viennese Jewish neurologist and psychotherapist, was sent to a Nazi death camp. He observed that the hopelessness of the camp caused those younger and in better health than he to loss heart and die. Their lives had lost meaning. Frankl instead summoned the courage to turn the camp into a learning lab to test his theory that meaning is what makes life worth living.
Again, it’s a matter of having the eyes to see, a kind of spiritual x-ray vision that pierces the outer appearance to the inner reality. It takes courage to see the life possibilities in a ghetto homey, but some people can. It takes a special capacity to see positive future possibilities when the world seems determined to commit ecological or nuclear suicide.
Unfortunately, self-fulfilling-prophecy theory indicates that our attitudes toward things influences how they turn out. Not that we should be Pollyannas and believe that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. They’re not and it isn’t. But if we can summon the capacity, as Viktor Frankl did, to see good in the midst of evil and love the world in spite of everything, we will be very wise indeed and may help create a better future. |
BE POWERFUL
Own Your Power, Spread the Love
With the intensity of politics in our world today it can be easy to fall into a feeling of powerlessness. Even in our day-to-day lives we can become overwhelmed by misuses of power, unethical decisions, and broken relationships.
The good news: We aren't powerless and there are MANY things we can do to shift power dynamics everywhere we go.
Now is the time.
​Give to help increase right use of power in the world.
Click here to give and get involved.
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The Refugee Crisis is Humanity's Crisis
by Brad Evans and Zygmunt Bauman in The New York Times
This is the third in a series of dialogues with philosophers and critical theorists on the question of violence. This conversation is with Zygmunt Bauman, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Leeds, Britain. His latest book, “Strangers at Our Door” is published with Polity Press.
Brad Evans: For over a decade you have focused on the desperate plight of refugees. Attention has been particularly drawn in your work to the many indignities and insecurities the refugee continuously faces on a daily basis. You have also stressed how the problem is not entirely new, and must be understood in a broader historical context. With this in mind, do you think the current refugee crises engulfing Europe represent yet another chapter in the history of flight from persecution, or is there something different taking place here?
Zygmunt Bauman: It does seem like “yet another chapter,” though as with all political problems, which all have histories, something is added to the contents of its predecessors. In the modern era, massive migration itself is not a novelty, nor is it a sporadic event. It is in fact a constant, steady effect of the modern mode of life, with its perpetual preoccupation with order-building and economic progress. Those two qualities in particular act as factories endlessly capable of producing “redundant people,” those who are either locally unemployable or politically intolerable, and are therefore forced to seek shelter or more promising life opportunities away from their homes.
Read the rest of the article here.
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