Sharing...


         Place

Sharing...

       the same base...
LIFE Bringing Forth.... 



                                                            Life 
                                                                Giving place, space
                                                                     Beauty becoming
                                                                         artful healing 
                                                                             Beauty-FULL
                                                                                Birth place.

                                              

A simple thought today of healing through sharing. The photos above are from the Red Wood Forests in California.  Beauty of the earth, of natural world for me is always experienced in the sharing.  The natural world thrives with sharing as its habit, essential truth and value.  The earth teaches us always in a new way, from its very old way of being.

The earth lives habitually in opposite ways of repression, oppression, extraction, exploitation, or paying the price of loss of humanity due to our behaviors of destruction.

To share is to have in common.  In my walking the forest everything seemed to have in common, life and its many seasons, aspects and forms from birthing to decaying. Everything in its time and place was uniquely living in the sharing of the common life that is the beautiful forest.

I believe all of life began this way, in sharing of an outpouring of love which brought forth all life in this cosmos.  And the bringing forth of life became very good when everything for the beginning had been made.  Creator God called everything "very good" when creation in its original form was finished and whole, night day, earth sky, plants animals fish and  the full of human kind, both male and female together on the final day of original creating.

Nepal is a geographical location.  Human trafficking and the need for transformation of the ways of repression, exploitation and collateral loss of human beauty from this atrocity is Global.  Healing humanity requires pulling together to bring beauty from the ashes of human atrocities as we examine the past, imagine a future and move differently in the present for the sake of our future.  We are Beauty becoming free to bring forth more beauty! It requires sharing resources of knowledge to change laws, to change beliefs and philosophies and theologies and psychologies and anything created by human beings that breaks the wholeness of knowing we have life in common and it is very good!

The women in Nepal and the Harambee Arts team which is gathering from across the globe, will work together through expressive arts to bring forth a time of sharing in the strength and courage it takes to look at our brokenness for the purpose of regaining wholeness.  And as I return to the US and Oregon, I will bring back with me a greater sense of what it means to walk in the sharing of Healing and Hope and Life to share with all of you.

As a Pastor in the Christian faith, I believe Jesus is always calling us to share, bread, fish, wine, water, finances and mostly LOVE which brings forth LIFE!  So I go to Nepal to share my life as part of a gathering community who is determined to bring forth beauty from the ashes of human trafficking experienced, and community restored where some were cut off because of repression, exploitation and the habit ignoring or allowing of the pain of some, and the perpetrating of harm by others.

Will you join me in this effort of Raising Change?

• Will you read about Human Trafficking in your own geographical location?
• Will you work to gain a comprehensive understanding of this Global heinous economic enterprise?
• Will you find ways to be involved in the transforming work that creates a world where human trafficking no longer exists in any form? 

Will you join with me through sharing your economic resources, that I may share with the women in Nepal, your loving kindness and care?

Donate Electronically: http://www.gofundme.com/Hope-Rising-Amidst

Or by Check, as a tax deductible donation sent to: Nepal c/o Sunset Covenant Church

                                                                                   18555 NW Rock Creek Blvd.

                                                                                    Portland OR. 97229

We Are! Beauty Becoming!

We are! Beauty Becoming!
We Retrieve our Breath from under the BOOT of our enslavement!
The Orange of the Marrow
Feeds the FIRE in our Bones!
Feeds the Bronze, Brown, Black, Pink, Peach, EARTH RED SKIN
That WE may BREATH!!!!
Freely.

The Boot! What is the BOOT?  
Identifying
Gender
hiSTORY?
Its weight
The Boot?
YES the BOOT has WEIGHT
of force
of course
to TRY and pin down HOPE!
under the ever moving tide of greed desire
 of the foot
...........................that wields the BOOT.


As I continue to read about human trafficking of all forms, I came across a lecture by Donna M. Hughes form the University of Rhode Island.  The title is Men Create the Demand: Women are the supply, a Lecture on Sexual Exploitation.  I would like to recommend this article!

In this lecture, Hughes defines trafficking as the practice that delivers women and children into exploitation, using techniques of often violent repression.  To repress is to keep under control, to keep down, to put down to suppress.  Traffickers use all manner of threat, of isolation, of violent acts to keep those they've taken until they have handed them over daily for work, or permanently to a new owner.  Does the boot that holds flesh and blood people in circumstances of exploitation belong to the trafficker?

Exploitation is defined as use or utilization of especially for profit, or, to use selfishly for ones own gain.  Is the Boot the weight of coin gathered in the boot.  The higher the street value on the commodity of particular human beings, the heavier the boot?  Statistics show traffickers receive greater reward for certain human groups, depending on the manner of human service needed.  Is this how we now allow the measure of a life to continue to be made?  The Global network of human trafficking is growing exponentially.  How many women and children and men are going to be sacrificed as commodity, rather than cherished as Beauty becoming?

The Western world still has deeply entrenched cultural mores of patriarchy and hierarchy based on male dominance and the writings of the Enlightenment. The repression of women and children is culturally acceptable, in fact even desired in order to protect the power and privilege of some men.  The repression of women and children of color and indigenous heritage is even more severe.  Transgendered people are often just extinguished.  Is the ideal of Patriarchy the boot? Heavy with the weight of power, prestige and rightness?

Are our political and legal systems filled with laws that for centuries were created only through the voices and understandings of male experience the heavy BOOT born of blindness?  Its weight on the women and children being the prisons made for those whom are caught in their suffering and ushered away that the authors of their suffering may remain boldly in public view without being seen?

Does the Boot remain in place, over all of us! Exacting high taxes as the price we pay for carrying in painful silence the burden of what is lost to us, the HUMAN TOLL TAX?

By gathering in Nepal, we participate in art making for the sake of lifting the boot of repression, the boot of exploitation and of taxation from all of us!  We gather to empower and strengthen the LIFE GIVING resources amongst us all of resiliency, courage, wisdom, knowledge, beauty and lovingkindness.  And all who gather in Nepal, no matter the journey into the story of human trafficking that brings us there, contribute healing to the human community.

In my life with Creator God, this is the greatest path to walk, a path towards restoration of wholeness within the human community and between the earth and humanity and God.  It is a path that brings awareness too, shines light upon the truth of Human trafficking as a horribly destructive, crushing blow to the dignity and beauty of all mankind.

I have $2,000 dollars more to raise!
Will you join me in this endeavor to engage opportunities of healing with women and children 
in Nepal, and therefor with humanity Globally?

Donate Electronically:http://www.gofundme.com/Hope-Rising-Amidst
Donate by Tax deductible contribution by sending a check to:
                                Nepal  C/O Sunset Covenant Church
                                18555 NW Rock Creek Blvd. Portland OR 97229
                    
Will you join me in raising awareness about Human trafficking and the toll it is exacting on humanity, by means of exploitation of many for the satisfaction of the poisonous greed of a few?

 Your help is greatly appreciated!

Tapping the Beauty within...

Orange is the Marrow...
Feeding the Fire in the BONES...
Feeding the Beautiful Bronze Skin...

That BREATHES... if you will

BREATHES! If you will

Breathes if you will ...
                            ... but release the collar around my neck..




Someone recently asked a beautiful question...
Why work with art?

Engaging with the act of making, being in the process of bringing forth through color, voice, movement or embodied play... Ohhh, just the INVITATION to BE in creativity somehow taps the living stream of Beauty within!

All humanity is formed by Beauty, from the beauty of the dust of the Earth, yes the beautiful dust, and we are created, able to Form BEAUTY as well.  We are Living Artistry!

Engaging women and children in Nepal in their Identity as Beauty Makers engages everyone in the room in healing space and we all become better.  We all live more fully into the experience of our beautiful selves. The space becomes safe for the ugly, the painful, the suffering to appear, the weeping to take place, the pain and the sorrow to be expressed.  Somehow the truth of knowing, proclaiming and believing the experiences of victimization, embodied torture, physical usury, and enslavement and lamenting them is beautiful release because it is HONEST!  Telling the TRUTH is ugly beauty.  It is ugly because of the horrible blood stains humanity gives to one another, beautiful because we are naming  human trafficking for what it is, and reclaiming the truth that all women, children and men are valuable, beautiful beings of dignity!

We all become more free to have our identities restored.  We are beautiful women and children meant for good, formed to be beautiful Living Artistry and we can fight together against that which would try and destroy us!

We are! Beauty Becoming!
We Retrieve our Breath from under the BOOT of our enslavement!
The Orange of the Marrow
Feeds the FIRE in our Bones!
Feeds the Bronze, Brown, Black, Pink, Peach, EARTH RED SKIN
That WE may BREATH!!!!
Freely.

amen amen


It is MY HOPE to raise the final $2,200 needed in the next three weeks!
Please Help me RAISE CHANGE for CHANGE!

Fundraising is OPPORTUNITY to EDUCATE!  Will you consider holding a gathering in your home and sharing my Blogg www.hoperisingamidst.blogspot.com with others in conversation over Tea? Coffee? Dessert? Dinner?
(I am happy to come and share, even via SKYPE)

Donate Electronically at: http://www.gofundme.com/Hope-Rising-Amidst
Send Tax Deductible Donations to: Nepal C/O Sunset Covenant Church
                                                            1855 NW Creek Blvd.
                                                            Portland, OR 97229
Thank you so very much!
Lovingly,
Mary

Creating Global Community: Established in Beauty!

"Souls thirst for beauty and thrive on it and but it, Hope is nourished."(J. Chittister)

"A sense of Beauty evokes in us consciousness of the eternal temporal. it calls us beyond both the present and the past to that everlasting NOW where Beauty dwells in perpetuity". (J. Chittister)

For many, many years now, my desire in being with others, is to seek their beauty.  I believe deeply that the Giver of Life, creates us all with inherent Beauty.  We are Imago DEI, the image of the Holy One who forms us, and the Giver of Life is Beauty.  This is humanity's truest identity.  We are beauty becoming!  Our lives are lived amidst great treachery of this truth.  Our identity as beauty becoming gets overshadowed by pain and suffering, but never never removed, never crushed out of us.  Going to Nepal for me is about being with beautiful women and children through artistic endeavors, so  that what is beautiful in each one of us may come fourth more fully than ever.  It has been my experience that when the beauty of the other is my focus, we all become more beautiful together.

Although women and children  and some men, suffer being trafficked.  Women, children and men to me are never victims, or simply survivors or perpetrators of harm.  Human beings are human beings. Expressive Arts Therapy and Community Art practice is all about doing the work that is necessary to burn away that which overshadows, fractures, bloodies and muddies our unique and collective Human beauty. It is a practice of burning away the chaff and dross that impedes us from standing well in our identity as beautiful becoming!

Joan Chittister (Benedictine Sister) writes: "We must seek beauty, study beauty, surround ourselves with beauty.  To revivify the soul of the world, we ourselves must become beauty.  Where we are must be more beautiful because we have been there."

Harambee Arts as an organization holds at the core of all its efforts, fostering Beautiful Human Community. 

In the Nepal effort description, Gloria Simoneaux the founder of Harambee Arts writes of the women who will train us:  "This project is based upon intuition, strength and solidarity among women. We are all learning, growing and finding our voice. We hope that you will see this as an honor to share space with such marvelous women – who are the definition of compassion and courage itself."

This work is a call to step out of hierarchically determined, prescriptive relationships, and into the work of healing human suffering, that human Beauty may flourish.

So, I unabashedly ask you to join this effort with me through providing funding support.  Through the generosity of many, over $2,300 has been raised.  
And there is still almost $3,000 needed.

I thankfully receive your donations
Electronically at: http://www.gofundme.com/Hope-Rising-Amidst

And through tax deductible donations sent to: 
Sunset Covenant Church, 18555 NW Rock Creek Blvd. Portland, Oregon 97229
Please write Nepal in the memo of your check.
                                                                       

Our Brothers are RISING in our AMIDST!

Our Brothers ARE RISING in our AMIDST: My SISTERS Take Heart.

Today is International Women's day.  This morning, two men within fifteen minutes of my posting from  responded, giving finances I need that I might go to Nepal.  Today I am uploading a couple of youtube videos of our Brothers who are taking a stand against the exploitation of women and children by speaking TRUTHFULLY to men in front of us.  Today is a good DAY of HOPE Rising in the midst of Humanly created, perpetrated and perpetuated pain and human loss of life, love and dignity.

Today is a good day because men are speaking to men on behalf of women, children and men.  Today It is my brothers who restored HOPE in my heart after reading research done in the United States.
Did you know:
Of Women trafficked in the US:

41% experience Hopelessness?
64% experience suicidal thoughts?
63% experience hurting themselves?

Did you know according to research women in the US compared to women trafficked internationally sustain:
28% more broken bones
30% higher rate of bruises
40% higher rate of head injuries
17% higher rate of mouth and teeth injuries
53% higher rate of stab wounds and sprains
(Sex Trafficking of Women in the United States: International and Domestic Trends
            By Janice G. Raymond, University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

QUITE POUNDING STATISTICS
These are women whom are trafficked from as early an age as 6.
These are women whom men and some women believe actually enter the trade willingly as if it were their choice of livelihood.

All the time as I read about the horrendous circumstances of human trafficking, I also read and think about how the conditions of the US in general create an environment where this Gross Human activity is occurring.  Somehow the posture of VIOLENCE in the US is pervasive and promotive of the slave trade and the violence perpetuated and perpetrated there.  Somehow the fact that Global studies report the US as one of the worst countries to live in for Women and Women's rights seems connected to the information above.  And as a Christian Pastor I do believe firmly that Christian Churches teaching women must be subservient and servants to and of men, and or that women are less than equal in anyway before God, somehow, these Christian churches contribute to the overall and precise predicaments of the marginalization, disenfranchisement, poverty and pain of women.

I am traveling to Nepal, which has begun already my longer journey here at home, in the midst of a place where women and girls and boys and young men and transgendered people: suffer.

As a Woman made fearfully, wonderfully, beautifully in the same manner and from the same outpouring of LOVE that everyone is born of, I am determined to bring more LOVE, where brutality has reigned.  Thank you for your support, for your willingness to RAISE CHANGE.

Good NEWS! Total Raised as of this morning = $1680.00 with $3,120.00 to go
My first deadline is approaching! By March 15 I need to send in $2,800.00

Ideas: 
Share my Blog with everyone you know! 
As you begin lent, consider setting aside funds as a way of fasting...
As a lenten practice consider in prayer what ways you may have been acculturated to perpetuate the circumstances of human trafficking, even by being silent, and prayerfully consider contributing to change!
Donate electronically:http://www.gofundme.com/Hope-Rising-Amidst
Donate by Check(Tax Deductable): To: Nepal
                                                          c/o Sunset Covenant Church
                                                           18555 NW Rock Creek Blvd, Portland, OR. 97229
                                                           "Nepal" in memo!

I'm Sorry Anna Nicole

Men's Responsibility: Ending Demand for Sex Trafficking