
At the 2009 COP-15 we roomed at Hildur Jackson's farm, just outside Copenhagen, with an Estonian Kriya yogi, a Buddhist priest, an African aid worker, an Irish diplomat and Maurice Strong, who only recently passed now, before the start of this Paris summit. Maurice was one of our guides — “satgurus” — in this life's strange odyssey. Maurice was Founding Executive Director of the UN Environment Program and not a believer in summits as an end in themselves. Rather than setting up his UNEP shop in Paris or New York, he established a global headquarters on what was then a coffee farm at the outskirts of Nairobi. Maurice was Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Human Environment in Stockholm (1972) and the Rio Sustainable Development Summit (1992) and he launched both the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity.
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Copenhagen, 2009 |
His partner Hanna invited two Ashaninca shamans to Hildur's farm and one night convened an impromptu ceremony which was, for us, overpowering and awe-inspiring. While we have yet to experience a vision of universal peace and harmony through international law, as we have often asked the Abuelita to provide, we persist in this long winding path that Maurice laid out for us. We continuously marvel at the places it takes us.



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The author, Helen Samuels, Rex Weyler, Ellen, Jan Lundberg |


As we passed beneath the Eiffel Tower, the amazing bridges of Paris, Grand Palais, Petit Palais, Louvre, Les Invalides, Cathedral Notre Dame, Consiergerie, Place de La Concorde, Palais de Chaillot, L'Assemblee National, Musee d'Orsay, and Institut de France, there was a steady drumbeat, the scent of burning sage, and prayers.
We had the sense, however, that we were not at a healing ceremony, rather a funeral. The drums beat a dirge (click here to listen).


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Chief Phil Lane |
In journeys like this, the original instructions reappear. We can choose to take them home with us, or we can forget them again. It is always a free willed choice.
1 comment:
I speak hopefully for others as well as myself, there are many of us who have tuned into this wonderful, terrible, challenging epoch we are in and, yes, we are in deep.We know, as the drum beats, its the last beat of courage as well as fear....and I choose courage as did many before who are gone now but link arms with us as we face this time of peril. Dylan Thomas said,"Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light." Rage on friends!
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