Tagore Festival is Over

And what a week it has been.  Every day packed with interesting , informative and inspiring presentations, all with that wonderful Brit humor they all have.  Easy and fun to listen to without exception.  We ask each other what was our favorite part of the week and everyone has a different answer.  I have several contenders but have to go with Chloe Goodchild  who was part of Rumi/Tagore poetry-musical story telling presentation one evening.

and followed the next morning with a workshop "the Universe Singing inside You; Your Singing Soul".  The technique includes hand movements with different sounds for each chakra as you go up and down the chakras and end in silence.  Imagine a room with 50+ people singing loudly as the go up and down the chakras and ending in an deep/complete/gathered silence. A strongly felt presence of being. Chloe says the silence is the most important part.  She has a program called The Naked Voice which trains people in this practice and maybe we can get someone to come to Lopez to teach us.  I'll try.

Other contenders were;

     Rob Hopkins - The inspiration for a movement called Transition Towns which now has over 350 towns in 30 countries.  Rob's talk was titled Recipes for Resilience.  I bought the handbook.  Lopez is well along this path but maybe being part of a world movement would be good for them and for us.

    Big names like Deepak Chopra, Physical Healing and Emotional Wellbeing; Vandana Shiva, Nature as Teacher; Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope; etc were all exceptional as you would expect.

    Lot's of British Names I wasn't familiar with but all very smart  and very impressive.  The English seem to be a lot further along the path of cultural/spiritual change in their thinking on the environment, finance and politics:  Tim Smit, Ilan Pappe, Clare Short, John Moat, Jonathon Porrit, Mark Tully and others.

  All this good thinking but lots of dancing (mostly Indian), poetry and singing.  All relevant  and consistent with Tagore's philosophy to include art and poetry and music with the intellect.  

The festival was closed with a group named Seize the Day. One of their songs simply titled "America" ended with the words "take back your power or take the blame." I felt like they were talking directly to me.   

The over all attitude towards America was not positive at all.  No one made it personal but lots of comments both in the presentations as well as in conversation.

A nice touch to try an make the experience real was what they called The Prayer Tree.

The idea was to write on a ribbon a pledge of action you would do for One Year and a day and offering a day a month to a worthy cause.

I choose to pledge to continue for a full year with what I have been doing with hitch-hiking/walking and driving as little as possible (definitely increases my miles per gallon and decreases carbon emissions) and to structure my life to be more simple so I can help when I can.  I believe I already do more than a day a month for a worthy cause.

So that's it.  I recommend reading some Tagore.  He's definitely an inspiration for the times. Always has been.

I have become my own version of an optimist.

If I can't make it through one door, Ill go through another door -

or I'll make a door.

Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.

Rabindranath Tagore