Reiki class offered in detroit

by: namastebrown

Fri Feb 17, 2012 at 15:15:29 PM PST

Whole Note Healing Collective hosts a special February weekend offer:

Whole Note Healing Collective is proud to announce an upcoming class in the Detroit area. I'll write more about the vision, mission, and creation of Whole Note in a future diary... See our blog below:

http://wholenotehealing.wordpress.com/

Someone in your community may be interested in our upcoming Reiki class/training/attunement.... only one week left, please inform your networks.  peace!

REIKI I CLASS (Usui System of Natural Healing)

Taught by Paula Terrero of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Saturday, February 25 and Sunday, 26, 2012

10:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Sliding Scale Fee:  $50.00 - $150.00 (Plus $20 room fee, to be paid in cash the first day of class)

Class is limited to 12 people. Register to reserve your spot.

Please contact Paula Terrero (nmterrero@juno.com) for registration. More details available.

Number 8

by: poppyseed

Tue Jan 03, 2012 at 00:00:00 AM PST

I came all this way to find a place whee I could deliver babies and take care of homeless people and there kinda f aren't a whole lot of places where you can do that, which makes me wonder not so much why that's the case-- malpractice insurance premiums being so high and all for deliveries kinda drives down the number of deliverers you want to hire, and homeless people are not a lucrative market share: my preferences are expensive, fine-- but what exactly ties these two things together for me when they seem like such an odd pair to everyone else. I think it's the way a whole life comes out at you and lands in your hands-- the amount of trust you have to have to let that happen. In the delivery room, it's pretty literal. But it was literal, too, on the picnic table behind the Salvation Army last night.

I had put together a social history questionnaire for the undergraduates to use. (I have yet to recruit them, but there are so many things we don't have that we really need-- I just sort of assumed they would show up, being all Pre-med and gung ho). I had spent kind of a lot of time putting in questions about strengths and background and home and family, education and skills to balance out the drugs and arrests and incarcerations that it was also designed to dredge up. It is an attempt to write a biography, right there on the spot, and in so doing to connect the imaginary undergraduate and the person sitting next to them on a stoop somewhere in my mind. They would bond and hug and be changed forever. Okay, I admit, this is a lot of ask of a questionnaire.

Number 7

by: poppyseed

Fri Dec 30, 2011 at 00:00:00 AM PST

Number 6

by: poppyseed

Tue Dec 27, 2011 at 00:00:00 AM PST

I always think I've passed the place already, that I've missed my turn and am barreling on into the darkness in the wrong direction with nothing and no one to stop me. Then I see the sign -- wooden, lit -- Cornerstone Church of the Nazarene. We had a meeting that evening with pastor Robyn, a tall, kind-faced man with a pastorly grey beard. He answered the door with a smile that felt more like a hug and led me to a big den where Rikki, her husband, and her son were waiting. It was the first time I'd met her family. It felt intimate, homey. Good -- I was here to ask for money.

Not from them, of course. I wanted their magic number-- the 501(c)(3) number-- so I could ask other people for money. I wanted their reputation, their history. I wanted them to trust me.

We arranged ourselves on the sofas.

Pastor Robyn's story spilled out of him. It began with a church that was moving on to better things. It was a little church on the edge of a very poor part of town with a little congregation that mostly commuted in and wanted to move to a nicer neighborhood.

So they starttour roving around in a van, looking for a better place to be.

Which was what you'd expect. The activist streak at the root of the church was maybe fifty or sixty years in the past. What had started out as a bunch of poor people turning their lives around, turning back to God ended up how these things do: you turn your life around and start living better and after a while you're living better-- you leave your past behind, get a job, pay your bills, and buy a little house. In a better neighborhood. And so do all your friends. And then you start wondering why your church is in the poor part of town.

So they started with the tours.

The Quran says But they plan, and God plans -- and God is the best of planners.

And He began to whisper in pastor Robyn's ear. And what He whispered was who will take care of my kids? And no one who prays for real is going to get away from a whisper like that.

Months and months of prayer, study, scripture... Justifying it was easy, but it is frightening to stand in front of a group of people and change your mind. It took six months to convince them to move, could he ever convince his people to stay? But they were convinced. They wanted to stay. If you put it like that, if you ask them to serve... This was a return to their roots after all. The Nazarene Church had a long history of service. They would stay. They would serve.

Number 4

by: poppyseed

Sat Dec 17, 2011 at 00:00:00 AM PST

So the memorial outside the library was nearly empty, which was a bit of a rude shock, considering I had two follow-ups scheduled and a couple other people I wanted to see. Rather more worrisome was how sick the follow-ups were: both with hypertensive urgencies. And there was the man I sat and spoke with for half the outreach last week; I was hoping to catch up with him, to begin building the kind of relationship that could lead to trust and hope and housing, the human connection that leads to dignity. But he wasn't there, and neither were my hypertensives. But we had blankets and jackets and we are unstoppable.

One man sat at the foot of the monument. He was silent. He smiled gently and gestured at us-- a blanket, a coat, a toothbrush, toothpaste... No medicines. We prowled the grounds. People are creatures of habit: the follow-ups must be around here somewhere.

It is hunting, in its way, street outreach.

My spider sense was tingling. We followed it to follow-up #1, who had been taking his medicine as directed. #2 wasn't around but had by all accounts been on his medicines and taking his blood pressure. Two more men rolled up their sleeves. High normal, but normal. We found good homes for the rest of the jackets and handed out some more toothpaste, the caravanned to a nearby park.

It is a crapshoot. I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach. A little voice in my head says mean things to me: nobody will be there, it will be a failure, a disaster-- you don't know where you're going, you are leading people nowhere. To my profound relief, two people pushing baby carriages packed with supplies were just visible in the dark as we pulled up. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, allergic rhinitis, and a couple of good leads. Someone deeper back in the gloom was coughing, badly-- everyone it the area was worried about her-- and there was a collection of people holed up back behind a mini mall.

We hiked back into the gloom, stopping to hand out toothpaste and toothbrushes to a couple of men charging a cell phone. They told us about being chased from one park to another, from one side of the city to another, about people referring them to places that won't accept them, about needing birth certificates that cost money to get not enough money to make rent, about going to school and trying rather gamely to put their lives back together. And they pointed us to the woman, coughing in a tent further back in the dark.

The directions were ambiguous: fences, barriers, curving trails that lead nowhere. Eventually, we saw a bit of tarp and heard the cough, wet, deep, and awful. It was a terrible, desperate sound. We worked our way gently toward her; she was hiding, mistrustful. There was a little bowl of dog food outside the dwelling, on a neat rectangle of tarp that served as a porch.  We called out to her, plying her with toothpaste. She ended up accepting medicine, too. I gave her three months' supply and put her on my mental follow-up list.

We moved on to the last encampment, directed by the two men with the baby carriages. Again, the pit of the stomach, again the haunting fear: no one will be there, no one. We followed the directions and wandered with our flashlights, calling out hello? hello? Then a figure appeared pushing a cart full of belongings. We stalked him relentlessly, following him off the street and into the dimness.  I shone my light on him, calling out hello? He turned, accepted a toothbrush, toothpaste, and while we were talking his girlfriend appeared, cheerful, gregarious, warm and friendly. Alcohol wafted from her breath. Her eyes were bright. She had grown up in a military family, had a brother who worked nearby. She showed me her teeth-- deep caries in the upper molars, deeply plunging gums in the lower incisors. She knew all the local churches, prayed in them. She let us see her faith: deep, pervasive, calm and bright. She told us about fishing with her family, about her uncle, a captain in the army. At one point in the story she was 14 years old, dancing on the deck of the queen mary. In my mind, she shifts back and forth-- a young girl, dancing, a woman, hiding at the edge of a parking lot.

Number 5

by: poppyseed

Wed Nov 30, 2011 at 13:07:59 PM PST

It was the birthplace of the outreach, lo these many weeks ago, which gives it an odd glamour in my mind.

I had called and called to confirm that yes, they would be running tonight. Last week of the month sounds so unambiguous until you look at a calendar and realize that months aren't really set up that way. Weeks fall off the edges into other months until you have all these jagged little clumps of ambiguous days that may or may not constitute the last week of the month. But last month's visit was so clear: come back, it will be a couple days before thanksgiving. 

It was marked so clearly in my mind because I had asked for a leap of faith. The man I saw with the worst asthma ever, the one who had been in the ICU three times last year, the one who didn't remember what it felt like to really breathe. That one, I had asked to spend his last dime on inhalers. Him I promised I would come back with medicine. I had nothing that night, but this night I had a bag of donated inhalers just for him, and more.

My cell started ringing. No one could find the soup kitchen. Ha, neither could I that first night, back in the beginning, when I knew nothing and no one. But that was weeks ago. It looks like a primary school. It sits in the lee of the hospital. I'll park there and flash my hazard lights; you'll find it.

But when I pulled up it was dark. The kids that were playing in flocks last time were gone. The lot lights were off and we were the only cars in the lot.

Dread. Dread and failure. It was the feeling you get when you're hiking back home and you see the trail you've been following leading blankly into weeds and nothing. 
Nothing happens without daring, but sometimes nothing happens with it either. And this is the thing I am afraid of.

Standing in the silence and the darkness and the no one.

Faint glow in the window. No movement, but a light is on in there, in the building. We knock and a few people are inside. They let us in.

The soup kitchen is shut down for the winter, they say. It will start up again in January. I ask about my follow-ups, I ask about the man who needs my inhalers. His sister texts that she will be there in a minute or two and shows up poof at the door. My patient had arrived at the pharmacy last week and was unable to buy anything but the prednisone. He didn't call me, he didn't ask for anything. He just sat there trying not to need to breathe until I could come to him with inhalers. I loaded him up--steroid inhalers, long acting beta agonists, nasal steroids, all donated from the drug reps. His sister was young enough to get care from the breathmobile, but needed a peak flow meter, which we gave, courtesy of the American Lung Association. Another man at the church with horribly out of control asthma got a bunch of inhalers, too. The sister needed medicine, too, but had been too wrapped up in her brother not being able to breathe and all that she had kind of forgotten to mention it to me while I was standing right in front of her last week. Is that a follow-up visit? I'm trying to tally it in my mind. I think it is a thing that doesn't have a name, a problem that waits until all is clear before revealing itself, a trust visit.

Then the trail runs cold.

We re-group.

Back to the park, now devoid of soccer players, of baseball games. It is pitch black and silent

And cold.

We stalk.

My headlamp gives a little circle of light that we follow, calling out ahead of us-- hello, hello... Feeling like we have to explain ourselves, feeling ridiculous-- it's Loma Linda...

As if the hospital could chase after you in the darkness-- anybody need a doctor?...

Rustling. Distinct rustling. I don't know why but it sounded human. Hello?

A pinpoint of light in the distance resolves itself into a small pile of dominoes on a concrete table at the edge of the park. Three men are playing. They are friendly and helpful. And defensive. Yes, we are in the park at night playing dominoes with a flashlight, but this is our choice. We have jobs, we have homes. Yes, we counter, but even people with jobs don't always get benefits, even people who have benefits can't necessarily afford the medicines or the co-pay. They soften and ask for a dental referral. They point to the heart of the park, they think we may find more people there. But the trail runs cold. There is an emptiness here. We find no one. We sense no one. We call out over and over and no one answers. We check on a few follow-ups but they are not in their dwellings. A city truck rolls past us, through an abandoned lot; were they kicked out?

No rustling.

No sound.

We re-group again. We go over the leads. We decide on a parking lot not too far away. Maybe we can find families.

In the lot, a private security truck prowls endlessly. It is ridiculous, like a fish that has outgrown its tank, circling and doubling back across the neatly parked rows of shiny, well-kempt cars. It has a little yellow light that flashes on its roof, flashing private, private, private property. Move along. Keep out. You are not welcome.

There is nowhere to hide in the lot. There are no edges. There is no place to rest in its brightly lit vigilance. 

Across the street an abandoned lot is similarly empty.

It is not a vacant empty. It is an abandoned empty. It is a hastily fled-from empty. I can't explain it. It feels like a place that was once a toehold on the edge of the earth and the toehold gave way and now there is nothing but falling.

The leads have run dry.

For tonight we rest. Tomorrow there is the soup kitchen vaccination drive and hundreds of people expected. For tonight we rest, lost and abandoned, unwelcome and alone.
-----------------------------

Number 3

by: poppyseed

Fri Dec 09, 2011 at 00:00:00 AM PST

Three arms.

So they know. They all know. I think it is part of the human condition to know things you wish you didn't. So it was no surprise to find wildly out of control blood pressure in everyone we checked last night. The people who bared their arms in that brisk night air all knew and wished they didn't. 

We could have seen more. I watched them walking past us, talking to one another, gregarious, outgoing, they would have talked to us. But I got caught up. It was a beautiful, clear night and I got caught up in a life story, pulling at me, hooking me as skillfully as an angler, twitching the line, keeping me there, listening.

We sat together at the side of a stone planter in the perfect, clear night and crossed the border to Venezuela. We bought a house together in Colton and tried to keep the marriage together, working all day fabricating enormous parts that fit together to form freeway overpasses. But it all came apart somehow. There was an accident, fighting, a storm in the family. She threw us out of the little house. We can't face our only son.

We huddle in a parking lot in the car that still runs, when we can afford the gas to keep it going. We scrape together whatever we can from recycling cans. Life is over. We wait to die. Why haven't we died? Why do we keep going when there is nothing left?

I surface. The crowd has moved away, imperceptibly while we were talking. They are gone now, and we are alone with our shared disaster, now laid out between us. In my head are echoes of failure, inadequacy. I can't fix him. My brain scampers around in my head, trying to figure out how to put him back together, how to reunite him with his son, how to house him, how to house him. He is old, six years on the street out here.

He is vulnerable. He will die soon, alone, on the street, and his son will be lucky to ever know what happened to him. And I can't fix him. Because I just got here, because I don't have a social worker with me or on speed dial, because I don't know my resources out here like I should, because I have no medicine for high blood pressure in my bag, because I haven't written the grant yet, because I can't think of how to get him to talk to his son, because I can't get him to tell me what the central failure of his life has been, what the core is, to name the addiction that took everything from him but his life, yet. Because I have no food to feed him, no apartment to put him in, no job to give him, no way to take the shame from him, no hope to even give him. 

He sits next to me in the cold, quiet. His face is kind, gentle.

We sit together and fail; tonight we sit together and fail.

Number 2

by: poppyseed

Wed Dec 07, 2011 at 00:00:00 AM PST

Number 1

by: poppyseed

Wed Nov 30, 2011 at 13:00:07 PM PST

Reflection upon the action of police against students at UC Davis on November 18th, 2011

by: lindarella

Sat Nov 19, 2011 at 10:29:59 AM PST

UC Davis is my ‘alma mater’ or my intellectual mother, and so what happened yesterday felt deeply personal as I witnessed the violence by police against UC Davis students (see video here, and please watch the entire thing- the end is incredible: 

The video of students getting pepper sprayed by police while engaging in non-violent action was reprehensible, and in the words of the students:  “shame on you” to the persons who took part in this.  This goes for all the brutality and violence that people who peacefully participate in the Occupy movements around the country have endured. 

Why this violence against people?  Probably because this movement speaks to a truth that is inconvenient for those wealthy and in power, and demanding of further action and reflection.  The Occupy movement is about human dignity- people are taking action to reclaim our humanity in a historical time where non-human things like giant corporations dominate our collective consciousness.  This dominant paradigm oppresses and dehumanizes, and people are sick and tired of it.  “Dignity is resistance” as the healer from Chiapas told us (and thus the title of this blog), and we are witnessing that resistance.

I am reminded of the words of Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed:  “With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun… Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons- not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized… it is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity.”  Make no mistake who the perpetrators of the violence are.   

There is hope in what happened yesterday on the campus at UC Davis, just watch the end of the video where the students drive the police from the quad peacefully and humanely, and say in unison “Please do not return”.  This speaks volumes to the beauty of this movement.  Again in the words of Paulo Freire: “Yet it is… in the response of the oppressed to the violence of their oppressors that a gesture of love may be found… Whereas the violence of the oppressors prevents the oppressed from being fully human, the response of the latter to this violence is grounded in the desire to pursue the right to be human.  As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressors’ power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression.”  This last act by the students was a demonstration of the humanity of this movement; a truly peaceful act where the police got called out and shamed for their barbaric acts, and then were allowed to retreat.  I was so amazed by this group of students, so impressed, and so proud of them. 

This is true for what is happening around the country where people have been arrested, detained, beaten, dragged, sprayed with chemicals and otherwise endured violence by the powers that be.  People have come together to denounce this violence, and the struggle continues.  Thank you students and everyone participating in this movement for your courage, your resistance, and your humanity. This movement is democracy in action, and thus should be celebrated and protected.  In solidarity…