More rock climbing, this time with Dylan



























And a visit to the wind farm...imagine a world powered by these babies instead of stupid fossil fuels!









And jamming with the Bunk Police!

Here's another first for me thanks to Andrew: rock climbing and cave exploring!!!















































I made it all the way to the top with just a few scratches and bruises!

A bit of a random post after a long silence. I'm in Northern Ontario, in what is commonly referred to as the Soo, or more formaly referred to as Sault Ste. Marie. Not only am I having a blast of a time with a great friend, but he's pushing me to do things that many of those reading this blog know I seldom do...the main two being: going out in the cold and hiking. Today we took a wonderful trip up a mountain along the Goulais river valley, one of Andrew's favourite places, to have some time with nature and play in the snow.































































































































































Sadly we discovered today that the area is now being logged. I don't know if you have ever seen an area of forest that is being logged but it is one of the most depressing "non-human" sights in the world. I guess it can be easy to forget (if you have no knowledge of science whatsoever) but trees are living things too, and to see trunks lying everyone and dead stumps evokes creepy feelings of death and destruction.






The hike ended with some prayers by the river and then one final hike up a pretty steep hill.

As a university student, I am asked every day: "what's your major?"....Basically, what are you going to do with your life?
Had you asked me this is grade 12, I would have given you a 10 year plan. I knew exactly what I was going to do! Now...I'm just not so sure anymore. After discussing this lack of certitude and fear with a friend, I was given the following poem:

To laugh often and much;

To win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;

To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;

To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;

To leave the world a bit better; whether by
a healthy child, a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition;

To know even one life has breathed
easier because you have lived;

This is to have succeeded.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

So no matter what you do in life, aim for success.

Some people in this world say they have those moments when their life just turns around...for some it's a specific event, for others a whole day, and sometimes even the entrance of a new person into their life. Well, I like to think of my life as being made up of a series of events and people who have helped me awaken...awaken to the potential within me, the potential of others, and the potential for beauty in the world. The past week has been the most significant one so far in that process of awakening.

I was asked by a new and wonderful friend of mine to attend a women-only talk by a Rebecca Martell, a member of Waterhen First Nation. She is known across the country for her work with victims of Fetal Alcohol syndrome, but she was at Trent speaking to students about Native spirituality and was giving a talk on women's teachings. I was honored to have this opportunity to learn of a new culture. I wish I could share everything that she shared with us but 1) I wouldn't have space and 2) the nature of the wisdom shared is such that it only becomes applicable when one is in need of it, and I have yet to internalize it all.

However, I did want to first share how struck I was with the similarities between Native teachings about nature and African spirituality. Ms. Martell focused especially on the vast amount of knowledge that the elders had about the world surrounding them and how it enabled them to live in unity with nature. This knowledge is traditionally passed down orally through the generations, but because of various factors, external and internal (that I won't get into here since I am still trying to understand them), that passing down of knowledge has been interrupted, and we are no longer living in unity with nature.
A very similar problem is occurring in many African societies, where knowledge is traditionally passed through the generations and life is built around extended family in the village, but with urbanization and the creation of the "nuclear family", that knowledge is not being received by the younger generations...and this extends beyond interaction with nature, and goes so far as to affect moral behaviour.
The most striking example she gave us of this (and I will try not to go into too much detail for the men who are reading this) involved young girls and their menstruation. She recounted how girls had to throw the water in which they washed their menstruation cloth in a very specific place that was away from the river, and only in this place. Though she herself did not understand it at the time, nor understand why the place where the girls threw the water was full of flowers, she later learned how powerful the estrogen hormone is. It is now quite common knowledge that the increased presence of estrogen (because of increased use of birth control and added hormones in our food) in our water supplies, being dumped back into rivers is causing deformities in fish and causing girls to develop at a much earlier age. Had her ancestors done scientific research to learn this? No, she stated clearly, it was simply part of the unity and understanding they had for nature.

Of course, because this was a women's circle, we had to discuss relationships and parenting. Here is what we learned:
- If you want to know whether or not you have found a good man, get invited back to his home and see how he treats his mother. Does he walk through the door and give her a big hug? Or does he plop himself down on the couch and ask what's for dinner? Because that will be your greeting for the next 40 years (I'm happy to say I already knew that one!)
- Strive to make your mother-in-law your best friend. Respect her and she will respect you.
- A daughter is born in the image of her mother (boy, is that one ever true for me!), and she will always look to her mother for an example; but a daughter turns to her father for affirmation of self. If the father is unaware of this, he can inadvertently cause his daughter to forever seek the approval of other men. In the same way that if a mother does not properly love her son, he will forever search out women who will mother him.
- When a boy reaches a certain age, and starts to push his mother's affection away, it is not because he does not love his mother, it is because he is establishing himself as an individual. If mothers let this happen, the son will come back to the mother feeling secure; but if the mother, out of her own need to be loved, pulls her son back in, she risks alienating him.

Ms. Martell concluded with a reminder of the power that we, as women, carry. We carry the blessing and duty of carrying on civilization, and to raise a child is the greatest accomplishment a woman can have in her name. It was beautiful to hear her expressing this with so much passion, in part because it is one of the fundamental teachings of the Baha'i Faith, but at the same time because the role of the mother is being increasingly forgotten in Western society - a tragedy that is already having tremendous social repercussions.

"Mothers are the first educators of children, who establish virtues in the child's inner nature. They encourage the child to acquire perfections and goodly manners, warn him against unbecoming qualities, and encourage him to show forth resolve, firmness, and endurance under hardship and to advance on the highroad to progress." -Abdu'l-Baha

Following this wonderful women's circle I spent the weekend at a conference focusing on rights of Indigenous people, during which I learned a great deal about a subject I am sad to say I was quite oblivious to.
The reason I started this post with the idea that I had experienced a life changing past few days is because of the amount I learned over the past few days. For the first time, I felt truly open-minded, in part because I was being exposed to subjects I know nothing about, but also because of this new and wonderful friend of mine, who has set a beautiful example for me in his open-mindedness and his desire to learn new things. This frame of mind enables a much greater enjoyment of life! It refreshes and inspires...and reminds us every day to be grateful for the chance to be alive, to serve, to love, to worship, and to grow.
Oh yes, I watched the sun set yesterday. If you haven't done that in a while...do it tonight. Bring a pen and piece of paper, and write down whatever you think of. You might be surprised.

Respectfully and lovingly,
Miquela

PROVOCATIVE THOUGHT OF THE DAY:

Picture this: fifty years from now, our planet experiences an oil crisis, a depletion of natural resources (and no, I did not just watch "An Inconvenient Truth"), causing all the industrialized nations of the world to crash into economic crisis, and all the infrastructure of the modern world to fall to pieces...no more cars, no more electricity, no more air conditioning, no more elevators, no more computers...
If this were ever to happen, who would be better off in the world? What group of people would have the tools for survival? And who do you think would be leading the world in terms of development, making proper use resources, respecting the environment?
It's well and good for the West to feel superior because of all it's accomplishments in modernization, but it forgets that it's supposed greatness is built upon the exploitation of others, and a finite supply of resources.
Just some food for thought....

Have you ever taken 10 minutes to venture into the woods? Have you ever taken time to stand alone in a forest and look up at the trees? Have you ever closed your eyes and listened to the sound of birds chirping and wind rustling through the leaves? Have you ever taken time to clear your mind of all the hustle and bustle of modern life? To think about why we are here? To remember what is important in life? To thank God for all the blessings He has given us? To thank Him for the tests He gives us?


Today, for the first time ever, I did that. Though it is ironic that immediately after this liberating and spiritual experience I rushed back to my computer, the product and facilitator of modernity and the busy life I was escaping, but I felt like sharing this experience, in the hopes that people who read this would go out and try to have the same experience.

In addition to this experience being very liberating, it allowed me to reflect on my frustrations with my development class, and understand how to deal with them.
The most recent subject we have been covering is the models of development that have been used in the past 50 years (all of which have failed I might add, and in some cases, made poverty worse). The element that stands out the most in this study is the constant push towards modernization and industrialization. Western countries felt that the best way for underdeveloped countries to escape poverty was to push towards industry in order to produce more commodities that could be exported, rather than simply relying on raw materials for export.
In East Asia alone did this theory work, and even East Asia experience a huge economic crisis in 1998. For most African and Latin American countries, the push towards industrialization created huge amounts of unemployment as rural citizens moved to the cities in search of work, governments decreased social welfare spending, and agriculture was forgotten, resulting in lack of food and need for more foreign aid in order to feed populations.







It was only towards the late 1990s that development agencies started to think that maybe technology and money was not the most important aspect of development. There was a shift in focus towards people, education, and especially looking at women. Although the economic side of development remains extremely important, it is encouraging to see that an emphasis is being placed on the "human" side of development.

















Now comes the issue of perspective. The language used in my development seminars is "us" and "them"..."us" the people with money, the modern and developed part of the world, and "them" the helpless underdeveloped poor people. I am in no way saying that all the people in my seminar are intentionally expressing this mentality, or that they feel any kind of superiority to people outside North America, but the truth is that the language used was learned somewhere, therefore it is existent in society. This mentality of "us" and "them" creates an automatic divide, that makes working together impossible! Not until we recognize the absolute equality and oneness of all the peoples of the world will we be able to get anywhere.

It is absolutely true that most of Africa, Latin America, and Asia remains underdeveloped in terms of modern infrastructure. And it is true that these countries have little hope of escaping the extreme poverty that has engulfed them without foreign aid. But let us not forget a small history lesson:
In the 1800s, the GDP per capita of all the regions of the world was about the same...all regions of the world had about the same amount of money! Through a combination of political, geographical, and natural resources though, Europe began to amass huge amounts of wealth, which it then chose to spread over to North America and Oceania because they had many of the same geographical conditions, and take control of colonies in the rest of the world. Europe chose to industrialize, and with that industrialization came power, the power to control a global economy which it created in the first place through imperialism. (Jeffrey Sachs)

Today, countries that weren't able to industrialize, because of lack of resources or because they were being prevented from doing so, are forced to function in a world controlled by industrialization. These countries did not consciously choose to be underdeveloped and require outside help. The children born into conditions that can best be described a "fight for survival" did not ask for that. The children growing up in war zones did not choose to be born there. The children who face hunger for days on end because they're parents can't feed them, or worse, because they have no parents, had no choice in the matter...








































The time has come to see development not see as "the white man's burden", but as a struggle that the entire human race must face because of the mistakes of our ancestors and for the sake of our children. It begins with an appreciation for all the peoples of the world, knowledge, and life...and sometimes, a short walk in the woods.