Campity Camp Camp CAMP!

Campity Camp Camp Camp! That's the title of a short story by a happy camper at The Painted Turtle Camp, which exists to service medically challenged children. Her enthusiasm is genuine and undeniable. Kids are kids first, not their diagnosis. Camp boosts them, their volunteer counselors, and paid staff with every session. Buoyancy is in the air when we're at camp.

The rules are based on the STAR model: 
Stay safe, Try new things, Always build up, up up, never down, down, down, and Respect yourself, others, and the environment. How might the world be different if we all followed the STAR model? 

With terrible news from all quadrants of the globe, it's hard to stay up-beat and find the joy that's still here. Superimposed over the stories of tender deeds, dear humans doing good things for other dear humans, and courageous acts of those who must leave their homelands in order to find refuge are stories of the atrocities of humans turning away other humans into deserts, putting them in cages, separating children from the bosom of their families. Yet, the goodness persists, just barely visible under the chaos we're creating. 

One of my teachers, Dr. Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute (SETI) says, "We're creating trauma in the world faster than we can heal it." 

While I see evidence for the balance tipping toward total chaos, my rose colored glasses offer the view that we can and must turn things around.

Saturday, I was at a rally to protest our current administration's practice of separating and detaining families at the border, I was outside the Contra Costa County West Detention Center along with thousands of others who came out in support of family reunification. Signs ranged from the familiar "Resist," to "Vigil Aunties Say, 'Not on OUR watch!'" "Somos UNA Familia," (We're All ONE Family), and "How Can You Support Family Values If You Don't Value Families?" 

Pete Seeger sang a song in the 1960s about the Whole World Gonna Be Gettin' Mixed Up.  (It's a good one to listen to on YouTube.) I think this is what the refugees are telling us: Whether our skins are different colors, or our head coverings differ, or our languages, food preferences, beliefs, and cultural sensitivities, we're all one human family - more alike than any of our differences try to bely.  The quicker we wake up to the fact that all humans (and all sentient beings) are kin, the sooner the chaos will abate and the solutions to global warming and sea-levels rising will be found.

What if there were only this one life-boat Earth? What if there were no "God" or "Goddess" to save our sorry souls? What if we truly are our brother's and sister's keepers? What then? How would we behave.

Thomas Robert Malthus led us into a blind alley in his assertion that there is finite resource on the planet and that once it's gone, all is lost. Buckminster Fuller proffered a different idea: repurposing what we have yields more and better products to use on the planet. I even believe that we can turn around the plastic crisis by employing mycelium to "eat" and degrade the chemicals that keep the dang items we make out of it from bio- degrading. Some microorganisms and fungi* seem capable of taking plastics down to their elemental constituents to be repurposed and reimagined into less toxic and more useful substances. Strange appetizers, that plastic, but each to his own taste! (*Thanks to the fun-guy!)

Let's look for the helpers the way Mr. Fred Rogers invited us to do. When there is a crisis, he said, look for the helpers. They're always there.

Crises of faith, politics, war, and the environmental nightmares we've created, the horrors we're perpetrating on whole swathes and castes of people - all have helpers to support us moving toward more humanitarian ways of dealing with the crises. Some of the helpers are now dead, including Mr. Rogers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahattmah Gandhi, and Buckminster Fuller, but their words and spirits point the way toward a brighter future, if we'll only follow their lead. 

New helpers arise. Paul Stamets, mycologist believes in bioremediation and knows so much about the usefulness of mycelium to get us out of the plastic mess. Jon Kabbat Zin, Jack Kornfield and other meditation teachers (Jesus, Mohammed, gurus, and Gautama Buddha) know how to teach us to be calm in the face of adversity. Children all over the world know how to celebrate the joy of nature. Just watch them as they see for the first time the rain, the sun, trees, flowers, grass, other humans, and critters! The magic of the natural world keeps us adoring Mother Earth. Those who aim to destroy her for their own personal gain need her softening influence the most.

I propose that we take all leaders who do not have their people's best interests in their hearts go to camp. Campty Camp Camp CAMP! where they can be introduced to the STAR Model and once again sign up for membership in the human family.

Lyrics to "All Mixed Up":

All Mixed Up You know this language that we speak,  Is part German, Latin and part Greek  Celtic and Arabic all in a heap,  Well amended by the people in the street  Choctaw gave us the word "okay";  "Vamose" is a word from Mexico way.  And all of this is a hint I suspect of what comes next. [Chorus:] I think that this whole world  Soon mama my whole wide world  Soon mama my whole world  Soon gonna be gettin' mixed up.. I like Polish sausage, I like Spanish rice,  And pizza pie is also nice  Corn and beans from the Indians here Washed down by German beer  Marco Polo traveled by camel and pony,  He brought to Italy, the first macaroni  And you and I as well as we're able,  We put it all on the table [Chorus] There were no red-headed Irishmen  Before the Vikings landed in Ireland  How many Romans had dark curly hair  Before they brought slaves from Africa?  No race of man is completely pure,  Nor is anyone's mind, that's for sure  The winds mix the dust of every land,  And so will woman and man. [Chorus] This doesn't mean we will all be the same,  We'll have different faces and different names  Long live many different kinds of races  It's difference of opinion that makes horse races  Just remember the rule about rules, brother  What could be right for one could be wrong for the other And take a tip from La Belle France: "Viva la difference!"