Category Archives: blogs

July happenings with Green Sangha

Come to our Gratitude Gathering this Sunday, and more!

Can we come together on climate change?  Bob Doppelt, writing for the Resource Innovations Group, says yes, and has a few suggestions on how.  In  a brief and readable article, he outlines five commitments that he believes “can establish the shift in consciousness required to diminish climate change.”  The first commitment?  See the systems you are part of.  Read more here.

We are coming together this Sunday, July 20, for the 6th annual Gratitude Gathering, 1 pm to 3:30 pm at the Eco-House in Berkeley.  Reservations are required, with three spaces left.  Click here for more information and registration.  I hope to see you there!

Feeling eager for going solar but can’t afford solar panels?  Check our web page here for a leasing option that should cost less than your current electric bill and sends a $750 donation to support mindful activism with Green Sangha:  go solar with Sungevity.

Solar Cookers Int'In the meantime, you can check out solar cooking options at the Solar Cookers International gathering in Sacramento, Sat July 19.  Marianna Tubman, who organized two solar cooking demos in Redwood City, says:  “If anyone wants to carpool from Berkeley, I will be leaving bright and early on Saturday and returning late that afternoon.”  Contact linda@greensangha.org if you want to attend and carpool.

Speaking of saving energy, don’t miss this chance to join the conversation on ways to become more energy efficient.  Here is an invitation from MCE, Marin’s public, not‐for‐profit electricity provider, to join a community workshop on Thursday, July 24:

Marin Clean EnergyMCE is seeking local feedback on Energy Efficiency programs at the Marin Center.  The workshop will include a brief presentation of what Energy Efficiency programs MCE plans to offer in 2016 & beyond, followed by substantial time for public discussion and input.  This is a unique opportunity to share interests in Energy Efficiency projects and what incentives would make them possible for you.

When: Thursday, July 24, 2014, 6:00 to 7:30 pm

Where: Friends of Marin Center Room, 10 Avenue Of The Flags, San Rafael, 94903

RSVP:    http://tinyurl.com/MarinWorkshop

MCE sliderMarin Clean Energy was born of local initiative, so community leadership is central to MCE’s mission. “It is important to us that these be ground-up programs, designed by the community, for the community” says Beckie Menten, MCE Director of Energy Efficiency.

MCE’s Energy Efficiency programs are available to all Marin residents and businesses. They enable residents, businesses, and multifamily property owners to save money through energy savings, increase property value and comfort, and put into their green values into action.

For more information on MCE’s Energy Efficiency Programs, visit www.mcecleanenergy.org/energy-savings.

Environmental Forum of Marin, for 40 years offering educational experiences to be treasured, announces their Master Class Program 41: Education for Action — Field Trips, Lectures, and Advocacy Training.  Environmental Forum of Marin’s highly acclaimed Master Class has been educating the general public, environmental advocates, and civic officials for forty years.

Participants in the Forum’s Master Class can expect to develop an understanding of the natural world and adaptation to environmental change, learn what’s at stake for our ecosystems and what needs protection. Emphasis is placed on how citizens can participate in planning processes and develop tools to advocate for preserving a healthy environment for future generations.

Master Class 41 will be presented in two Modules:

Module 1, beginning August 26, 2014 will consist of 9 full days of classes, field trips and advocacy training.

Module 2, beginning January 2015, consists of 8 intensive lectures highlighting pressing environmental issues such as Sea Level Rise, Water Demands in a time of Drought, Land Use and Transportation.

To learn more and attend an orientation event this month, contact  Andrea Taylor at MasterClass@MarinEFM.org.

Plastic-Free July

Plastic lid - Ecology Ctr '14The Ecology Center in Berkeley invites you to take part in “Plastic-Free July,” a challenge to reduce plastic use. Partners include Green Sangha, City of Berkeley Parks & Recreation, and Beth Terry of My Plastic-Free Life.

Special guests at the events below include: Sheila Hollander, a Piedmont mom who knows how to reduce waste with grace; Daniel Maher, recycling guru of the Ecology Center; and Samantha Meyer, who was so successful at reducing waste in her college dining hall, they hired her as Sustainability and Purchasing Coordinator for Dining Services.

Join us for the following events:
Film & Discussion:  Plastic Paradise, Thursday, 7-9 pm, 6/26/14
A screening of this short (one hour) and pithy ocumentary “Plastic Paradise” gives a clear view of the problem of plastic pollution in the Pacific Ocean.  Beth Terry, Green Sangha member and author of My Plastic-Free Life, will lead the panel discussion afterwards. More details:  Click here

Workshop #1: Introduction to Plastic-Free Living, Sunday, 1-3 pm, 6/29/14.  Author and activist Beth Terry will discuss strategies for reducing our use of disposable plastic consumer goods. Discover the whys and hows of reducing your use of plastic.  More details: Click here

Workshop #2: Plastic-Free Show and Tell, Sunday, 1-3 pm, 7/13/14.  Collect plastic items from your day to day, and bring them to this workshop. Beth Terry and participants will share tips and strategies for eliminating or replacing these hard-to-avoid items going forward. More details:  Click here

Berkeley Marina Shoreline Clean-Up, Saturday, 9:00-11:30 am, 7/19/14.  Meet at the Shorebird Nature Park Center to view a brief indoor presentation on the problems of plastics in the marine environment. Then, the group will set out to clear trash from a particular area of the marina shoreline. More details: Click here

I will refuse - Van Jones

Plastic-Free Potluck Celebration, Sunday, 1-3 pm, 7/27/14.  Beth Terry will host a plastic-free potluck. Bring your favorite potluck dish to share. Show off your plastic-free lunch strategies and share tips you have picked up during Plastic-Free July. More details: Click here

Celebrate the fullness

Hibiscus - TBG 11-136th Annual Gratitude Gathering

Sunday, July 20, at the Berkeley Ecology Center’s Eco-House.

10:00 am – 1:00 pm.  Eco-House tour.

1:00-3:30 pm.  Gathering, potluck picnic, meditation, speeches, conversation, and song.  Hear former Green Sangha director Lauren Van Ham, founding member Devi Peri, and board president Stuart Moody reflect on the power and the practice of Green Sangha activism.  Celebrate our accomplishments, imagine the future.  Meet our TELA leadership team, who will be starting the summer camp in Marin on Monday morning.

The Eco-House is 11 minutes’ walk from N Berkeley BART.  This is a perfect day to leave your car at home and walk, bike, BART to a celebration of sustainability!  Space is limited for both parts of the day.  Reservations required.  Sign-up and carpool coordination:  linda@greensangha.org.

On the way home:  TELA (Teen Environmental Leadership Academy) summer 2013

On the way: TELA (Teen Environmental Leadership Academy) summer 2013

Finding your purpose

Gustin 12Green Sangha founder, Jonathan Gustin, invites you to his seminar on Sunday, June 22, at 7 pm in Berkeley:  Life Purpose For Meditators.  In this evening presentation,  Jonathan will speak to the unique challenges—and opportunities—of meditators seeking a clearer sense of purpose in this life.

In Jonathan’s view, meditation practice is about primordial freedom of spirit, but it is not a complete spiritual path.  For a comprehensive awakening to occur, we need not only to deepen our sense of inner freedom but also to discover our mytho-poetic story, our life purpose.

Once we discover the miracle of freedom in meditation there is an opportunity to discover a second miracle:  knowing your soul’s purpose.  Many meditation systems stop at the point where the meditator is released, if only momentarily, from the self-contraction of egoic identity.  The second, equally important, step is about embodiment: engaging the unique strengths of your body-mind to serve in a particular way.

  • First, we find freedom, through meditation, from the sense of separation.
  • Second, we find meaning by embodying our purpose and acting on our sense of oneness.

Eel River - sunlightMeditation is the practice for connecting with pure consciousness.  Soul Encounter is the practice for connecting with the life purpose for which you were born.  In both cases, we experience a liberation from our usual sense of self.

During this evening together we’ll explore:

  • The miracle of meditation
  • The meaning of purpose, place and soul
  • The steps to embodying your soul’s purpose

What is Soul?
Soul is the essence of your specific life purpose. Soul is the reason the Mystery has taken your unique shape. Soul is the creative intelligence of the universe expressing itself through you. Soul is the body of your gift that fills up the garment of your life.

The key to becoming clear about your life-purpose is engagement with soul work. Soul work is a descent into your deep mysterious interior. Soul work is a dive into your incarnate uniqueness. Soul work is initiated by your longing to live a larger life and by the desire to make the world a better place.

Soul work gathers momentum through your willingness to receive the soul’s guidance, rather than letting your thinking dictate all your decisions. Soul work is the profound act of letting your life speak. Soul work is the proven path for disclosing your life purpose.

This seminar offers you a framework to support your spiritual journey towards a soul-centered life. This journey culminates in your ability to take your rightful place in the world, and occupy the niche you were born to inhabit.

Jonathan is wonderfully skilled in the art of guiding people to discover and embody their unique life purpose. There are few things I appreciate more than good teaching, and so I enthusiastically recommend Jonathan’s work with people. Jonathan is a person of great integrity, from whom I am ever learning.    

– Joanna Macy, co-author, Coming Back to Life and Active Hope

Life Purpose For Meditators
Cost: Free (though donations are welcome)
Location: Berkeley
Register here

Take the Resilience Challenge!

Away we goThis is the season for planting and growing.  What seeds will you plant in your community for sustainability, connectedness, resiliency?  This May, join Transition US in actions to:

 

  1. Save Water
  2. Grow Food
  3. Conserve Energy
  4. Build Community

It’s the Community Resilience Challenge (CRC), in which individuals invite their friends and neighbors in actions, large or small, to accomplish one or more of the objectives above.

During the Community Resilience Challenge, participants commit to specific actions under one or more of these 4 themes (e.g., installing a graywater system, planting a garden, weatherizing the home, or coordinating a community project).  Digging out favas

The CRC is a great spur to take care of those home and garden improvements you’ve been thinking about, to organize a neighborhood work party, or to plan a community visioning event.

JOINING THE CHALLENGE IS EASY: 

1. Plan your action for the month of May. 

2. Register your action to be counted.

3. Send your stories & photos to marissa@transitionus.org so we can share them and inspire others!

If you live in the East Bay: contact lcurriedesign@aol.com.  We have special discounts, offers, and prizes from businesses to help you with your actions. 

For more information from Transition US, go to:  Community Resilience Challenge.

Buffelgrass day - digging, gathering

Bag ordinance hearing – Tue Feb 18

 

Iris Salin, dragging the equivalent of 6 months' plastic used by the average American.  Photo:  Sierra Salin

Iris Salin, dragging the equivalent of 6 months’ plastic used by the average American. Photo: Sierra Salin

Good news!  The City of San Rafael will hold its first hearing on a proposed single-use bag ordinance on Tuesday, February 18.

Here is the official agenda item:  “Consideration of Final Environmental Impact Report, EIR Addendum and Ordinance Regulating Retail Establishment Provisions of Single-Use Carry Out Bags (CM).”

Note the RECOMMENDED ACTION:  “Adopt Resolutions (2). Pass Ordinance to print.”  To see the staff report:  Single-Use Carry-Out Bags EIR

We first discussed this ordinance with Charles McGlashan and his aides eight years ago.  Fairfax passed, by popular vote (79% in favor), a plastic bag ban in 2009.  The County of Marin passed an ordinance in 2011.  Now at last the City of San Rafael is in line to pass a similar law.  We expect other municipalities to follow soon after.

Please come show your support!  Your warm presence speaks volumes to the Council, and adds one more stitch to the fabric of coherence which holds our community together.

The meeting begins at 7 pm, but the item is likely not to be heard before 7:15 pm, as a number of resolutions precede it on the agenda.  Bring your notepad, a good book, or simply your pure somatic awareness to drink in all that is happening while you wait.

Sita Khufu, Green Sangha activist, to speak at San Rafael City Council meeting

Sita Khufu, Green Sangha activist, to speak at San Rafael City Council meeting

 

Imagining the future we want

“Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.”  – Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella (1726)

Sat Jan 18, 10 am – 1 pm.  Join us for our monthly mini-retreat in the lovely Sienna Room of the Edgehill Mansion at Dominican University.

Program
10 am.  Gentle Yoga and meditation
11:00. Conversations about the future. Maeve Murphy will lead us in exploratory exercises from Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects, reflecting on our wishes and hopes for the future, imagining the resources we need to realize our dreams for the planet.
12:00. Announcements & actions
12:30. Potluck refreshments (avoiding plastic as possible!)
12:50. Clean-up
1:00. Closing circle

AAT conversationLocation & directions.  Edgehill Mansion is on Magnolia Avenue at Dominican University.  We meet upstairs, entering from the south or east side of the mansion.  On this map of Dominican, the Mansion is under the upper right corner.  From 101:  exit Central San Rafael. If coming from the N, turn L on Mission; if from the S, turn R on 2nd.  In either case, proceed one block & turn L onto Grand Ave.  Proceed to Acacia, which T’s onto Grand.  R on Acacia.  Acacia merges into Magnolia; veer slightly R onto Magnolia.  At T go straight ahead through driveway with large stone pillars on either side.  You have arrived; parking lot to L.  Join us in the Sienna Room upstairs on second floor to the R.

Donation.  Free-will donations support our programs of mindful action and cover the cost of rental.

For more information:  write info@greensangha.org or call (510) 532-6574.

Nimai & Danny at MSSThe deteriorating conditions of our world and the plight of other beings impinge on us all.  We are in this together.  Never before have our destinies been so intertwined.  The fact that our fate is a common fate has tremendous implications.  It means that in facing it together openly and humbly, we rediscover our interconnectedness in the web of life.  From that rediscovery spring courage, a deeper sense of community, and insights into our power and creativity.

– Joanna Macy & Molly Brown, Coming Back to Life (1998, p. 63)

Arbor Day – Sun Feb 15, 2015

Giver of shadeTrees give shade, give fruit, give beauty, give life.  National Arbor Day is a traditional way to celebrate the many gifts of trees – shelter, beauty, clean air, soil conservation, habitat for wild animals, and the great cooling effects of shade and consumption of CO2.

Signs of climate change – melting ice caps, rising sea levels, the increasing number of severe weather events – only make our love of trees more intense.  Across the country, tree-lovers celebrate Arbor Day according to the local climate.  Nebraska, home of the National Arbor Day Foundation, celebrates on the last Friday of April.  On the Pacific Coast, though, we are preparing beds for summer vegetables as early as February.

Join us at Green Gulch Zen Center and Organic Farm for a gathering of earth stewards to plant native woody shrubs and grasses on Sunday, February 15, 2015.

SCHEDULE
12:00  Lunch (organic, largely farm-grown, vegetarian, and delicious)
1:00   Green Sangha conversation
2:00   Ceremony and Tree planting
4:30   Refreshments
5:00   Meditation in the Zendo
6:00   Homeward

Bring layers for changeable weather, hat and other sun protection, long pants and boots or other strong shoes, gardening gloves if you have (extras on hand), water bottle if you wish (no throw-away plastic bottles!). To reserve your spot, call (510) 532-6574 or write info@greensangha.org

Mindfulness retreat Dec 21

Sustainability means living in such a way that future generations may enjoy the same abundance, beauty, and opportunities that we enjoy today.  To be a sustainable activist means to take care of yourself as lovingly as you care for the earth.

Sat Dec 21, 10 am – 1 pm.  Join us for an experiential workshop — Sustainability from Within — exploring principles and practices of tension release, renewal, and revitalization of mind and body

Upward reach & smileProgram
10 am.  Opening circle & Yoga stretches (led by Libby Sherwood)
10:15. Meditation (led by Grace Severtson)
10:40. Introductions
10:45. Self-renewal through movement, energy massage, and pure awareness (with Stuart Moody, MA)
12:10. Announcements
12:20. Potluck refreshments (avoiding plastic as possible!)
12:45. Clean-up & closing circle
1:00. Adjourn

We will have a simple exchange:  bring a greeting card or something from the natural world (e.g., a pine cone, special stone, flower, whatever might please you to share). 

Location & directions.  Edgehill Mansion, on Magnolia Avenue in Dominican University.  We meet upstairs, entering from the east side of the mansion.  On this map of Dominican, the Mansion is under the upper right corner.  From 101:  exit Central San Rafael. If coming from the N, turn L on Mission; if from the S, turn R on 2nd.  In either case, proceed one block & turn L onto Grand Ave.  Proceed to Acacia, which T’s onto Grand.  R on Acacia.  Acacia merges into Magnolia; veer slightly R onto Magnolia.  At T go straight ahead through driveway with large stone pillars on either side.  You have arrived; parking lot to L.  Join us in the Sienna Room upstairs on second floor to the R.

Donation.  Free-will donations support our programs of mindful action and cover the cost of rental.

For more information:  write info@greensangha.org or call (510) 532-6574.

Past participants comment:
“What you taught us sunk in, in ways I’m still discovering.” – IM, certified public accountant

“Each tool/meditation in the workshop helped to calm my thoughts. I especially enjoyed the silent walk and the space it helped to open inside of me. Tools which empty my mind and allow respite from troubles and nagging to-do lists are so precious. I will use these meditations and practices as I journey and build sustainability within.” – RG, city councilmember

“This workshop helped me to let go of all the things that interfere and to soften the boundaries between myself & the rest of the world . . . Marin County will be a better place for everyone if we can follow your guidance and let the benefits flow through in our leadership.” – ME, conservation director

Allison & RebeccaTaking good care of ourselves is part of taking good care of the earth.  Refreshed and revived, we are ready for the work that lies ahead as we restore balance in the world.

Damon Marsh clean-up

CCCD 09 - Katie Noonan, Oakland HS sciCalifornia Coastal Cleanup Day may be the world’s largest marine-related volunteer event, but every day we need to keep our coastline clean.  This year’s Cleanup Day slogan was “Help make trash extinct”!  It’s a long-term project, and every communal effort takes us a step closer to safer, more beautiful beaches and waterways.

Join us at Damon Slough in Oakland on Sat, Dec 7, 10 am – noon.  The Marsh is at MLK Jr. Regional Shoreline, a 741-acre park protecting the remainder of a once-extensive wetland on San Leandro Bay.  The park includes the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Grove, completed with community support and dedicated in 1993.  The 50-acre Arrowhead Marsh is a stop-over on the Pacific Flyway and is part of the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network.

Bring:

  • Sturdy, closed-toe shoes
  • Hat and other sunblock
  • Layers for changeable weather
  • Sunglasses
  • Water bottle (no single-use plastic, please!)

Also bring your own reusable supplies if you have any of the following:  bucket, trash bags, and gloves.

RSVP to confirm your participation:  (510) 532-6574 or info@greensangha.org.

Directions: 
Damon Slough is located at the very end of Edgewater Drive.  From Hwy 880, take the Hegenberger Rd. exit, go over the overpass (toward airport) and turn right on Edgewater Dr.  Proceed 1.1 miles; Edgewater will reduce from 4 lanes with a median to a narrow 2-lane road.  Proceed to the end of this 2-lane, continue through the gate, and on the left you will see the Garretson Point parking lot.  We will park and gather there at 10 am.

This event takes the place of the East Bay chapter’s monthly retreat.  Restore yourself from within while restoring the world without!