by Roxanne -

Buy Local – Support Your Community

People often ask me, “What can I do?” when thinking about the global depression, foreclosuregate, political gridlock, corporate greed or the environment. One answer is easy and simple: buy local.

This is a very strategic choice. Buying local keeps jobs in your community, it keeps your hard-earned money in your community and it supports small business owners in your community. It also eliminates shipping charges when you buy food or products from the immediate surrounding area where you live. Be strategic with your money. Use your purchasing power in a way that supports your own best interests.

We try to buy local whenever we can and we encourage every organization that we are involved with to do the same, whether it is a political group, church group or book club.

We use “Community Sponsored Agriculture” (CSA) for our vegetables, fruit and cheese. The portions are large so we split with another family. Usually a weekly delivery is to a location in your neighborhood. Farmers’ Markets can work just as well. No shipping cost or time since everything is grown nearby. This means everything lasts TWICE AS LONG in the refrigerator. It allows us to eat seasonally from April to January. You can check out CSA’s and Farmers’ Markets in Minnesota at Minnesota Grown. It’s also a good site to check for apple & berry picking along with local honey, wines and artisan cheeses.

Grocery stores we use are Cub, Byerly’s or Kowalski’s – again local businesses. Cub, especially notes “local” on product signs in their produce departments. Unfortunately only Kowalski’s carries FAIR TRADE coffee, so we go there when we need to buy coffee – an expensive item. Happily, FAIR TRADE coffee is often the less expensive choice.

MidTown Global Market on Lake Street in Minneapolis allows us to purchase gifts, cards, cheeses, olives, soaps and other items from baby start-up businesses. Most products you find there will be FAIR TRADE – so especially important to us. Global Market is a wonderful incubator for neighboring entrepreneurs and ethnic businesses owned by new immigrants. Walking through Global Market is a “United Nations” experience in itself and well worth the trip.

United Noodles on 24th Street just off Minnehaha Ave. in Mpls. is by far the largest Japanese grocery store I have ever been in. If you have never seen 40+ lineal feet of every kind of rice and noodles imaginable – plan a visit. Their produce department rivals any I’ve seen in Europe for display, color and quality. But do watch labels – there are often locally made options so you can avoid buying items shipped all the way from Japan (ouch!).

Over the years we’ve found many locally owned, ethnic restaurants. Owners are quick to help guests choose menu items they may like, with little or a lot of spice. They are delighted to serve large parties and remember you – you are important to their business.

We don’t eat out very often, but when we do here are local (Eagan) restaurants we give our business to – Hoban Korean Restaurant, Classic Saigon and Magic Thai Cafe for Vietnamese, Sambol for Indian cuisine (great chai tea), Pardon My French, Ansari’s Mediterranean Grill and El Loro Mexican Restaurant. Lunch, dinners, take-out and large group visits are consistently good. Prices are reasonable for all and we are supporting locally owned, small businesses. Most of these restaurants use local produce for freshness too, an added bonus. Perfect!

Dunn Brothers Coffee, is a local coffee roaster and coffee chain with a location on Diffley east of Lexington that uses FAIR TRADE coffee – so we like them too. Ring Mountain Creamery makes their own authentic Italian gelato on the premises and you will taste the difference, even while you watch them make it. Both Dunn Bros. and Ring Mountain are excellent places to meet for book clubs, and group meetings of 10-20. Ring Mountain even has a meeting area separate from the main seating area that can be reserved in advance – no charge.

We try to use SuperAmerica and Holiday for gasoline since they are local distributors – which eases the pain very slightly.

Check Buy Local MN.com. when you are ready to make a purchase. Chances are there is a local provider.

What about you? How do you vote with your dollars? What local businesses do you like to support? Leave a comment and let us know.

You may also like Healthy Food is a Luxury for the Rich, What Can You and I Do? and Truth or Consquences.

 

 

by Roxanne -

Yoga Wisdom – Is It Stealing?

Photo Yoga Journal.com

This post is about what it means to live ethically. For example, what constitutes stealing? In the Ten Commandments, as in one of the yamas of yoga –asteya, there is the admonition “You shall not steal.” Is this only referring to taking something outright? That is a literal and shallow interpretation. As North Americans we may prefer the shallow interpretation because it suits our lifestyle. But we can go deeper. Stealing means having more than one’s fair share, when others have nothing.

Who decides what is my “fair share” or what is too much for me to have? Those living on less than $2 a day – two thirds of the human family – get to decide.

The gifts of our planet are for the use of the entire human family (and other species too). Morally and ethically, having more than we need when others have nothing is stealing. If society values human life, then based on that value, we provide social safety nets that meet basic human needs when necessary. We should speak about our refusal to meet other human beings’ basic needs truthfully.

The truth is that much of what I have has been stolen, then, from others who need it. This bothers me very much. I hope it bothers you too.

Again, language shapes how we understand. For example, we say “under privileged” but then we refuse (or are loath) to say “over privileged” because that would imply having what we did not earn or receive fairly.

And of course we like to refer to our stolen goods as “blessings” although they aren’t. Some of us are simple benefiting from an economy (set up by human beings – not by God) that privileges us over others.

We need to speak about reality as it really is so we can understand and think clearly. Then we can make choices that will bring true integrity and inner peace.

You may also like Truth or Consequences, Power of Reframing and Are We So Different?

by Roxanne -

Is There Reincarnation?

Photo A. Meshar

My students were discussing reincarnation. This topic came up in yoga study as well.

Much has been written on reincarnation. I put together some considerations below. You may find them useful. Caveat: What I write is from a theological stance (as I am a theologian) so the starting point is different for me (as a believer) than for non-believers.

Also, as an educator I believe that religious traditions have much to teach us. We can appropriate many things, even though we may not choose to use everything. However, the things we choose to appropriate or believe must further justice in the world, not diminish it. Otherwise that belief is, by definition, immoral.

So with these parameters in mind, here we go.

On Reincarnation: From time to time I am asked about my belief in reincarnation or whether or not we experience more than one life. Some religious and philosophical traditions believe in reincarnation – Hindu, Yoga and some Buddhist traditions for example. We can’t completely eliminate reincarnation as a possibility since we can’t really know for sure.

In the Judeo-Christian scriptures God is relational with the world and with God’s people. As theologian John Haught might say, it is a story that is unfinished. It isn’t perfect but with promise in order to draw us into a future. God is the lure. God promises creation a banquet of relationality moving from chaos to complexity & coherence. In this story time is linear – meaning it doesn’t repeat. Our experience of time is the basis for God’s story, this drama. Time has a beginning and a goal, purpose or end.

Logic & Reason. In the Catholic tradition science and religion are not opposed to one another. They ask different questions. Science asks, “How did the world and what we observe in it come to be?” Theology asks, “Why is anything here at all?” Because they ask different questions science and theology can actually support each other. This is why so many Catholics are also scientists, researchers, doctors, astronomers etc. This is why Catholics build universities and hospitals. We believe that because God created the world and called it “good” we are free to respectfully investigate and explore the world. So what does this mean for belief in reincarnation?

Science tells us that space and time are actually one continuum. We experience them separately – but they are one, nevertheless. Knowing this, it would be difficult to accommodate for a belief in reincarnation. Reincarnation says that I, as a person, could exist in multiple lifetimes. Stated another way, I could exist simultaneously in more than one place/time on the space/time continuum. In order for that to happen I would have to be not one consciousness, but many. I’m not sure that could logically happen and still claim that I am a unique person, a unique entity or consciousness with free will.

If we choose to believe that we are not unique persons with our own consciousness and free will, then religious traditions that believe in reincarnation would have to radically overhaul their understanding of personhood, self-understanding and choice in order to be consistent and not contradict their own teachings on the development of the personhood of each individual. If my consciousness isn’t unique to this time/space continuum and simultaneously exists elsewhere, then I’m not solely responsible for my decisions and choices in this local/time.

With this understanding of consciousness or personhood it would be impossible to uphold the rule of law, for example, as it exists around the world today.

Certainly, life experience has something to bring to this issue. The actual experience of reincarnation says that a child suffering horribly from disease or hunger today is simply experiencing the consequences from bad choices in another lifetime. Really? That a young child suffers without having any knowledge of these other decisions, means that the suffering happens without understanding, without hope for growth, without purpose. This won’t move us toward universal compassion but rather to abandonning it. To believe this is to believe that ultimate reality or God is cruel and capricious. This would be a horrible God or reality not worthy of union. This is untenable as an understanding of God or reality.

Conversely, I believe that reality (God) is good and loving at its core. My experience is that reality is intelligent, relational, generative and therefore it must be fundamentally loving – to us and to the entire universe. To believe otherwise one must ask, why continue living?

Further, my own life experience tells me that even I, as a human parent, would not punish my child for something they did long ago and had no memory of. But reincarnation says that God would do exactly this. Am I, a mere human, more compassionate or loving than God?

To attribute suffering to actions from previous lifetimes prevents us from going deeper to learn the true causes of suffering. This is the immoral or unethical result of believing in reincarnation. Suffering from disease, poverty and hunger are not the result of karma. We find new cures for diseases all the time – think of the March of Dimes and their progress curing birth defects.

Poverty and hunger are the result of our inability to distribute food properly to the human family. There is enough for all. Unfortunately we have created an economic system that favors some over others. But if we go deeper, educate ourselves and make changes we can make sure that basic needs (water, clean air, food, education, basic health care) are available to all. This is our task. This is what it means to become truly human. Belief in reincarnation too easily takes us away from this task.

So, to conclude, I can’t totally eliminate reincarnation as a possibility since we can’t really know for sure. But using heart (compassion) and head (reason), I draw different conclusions about the degree of its possibility and probability. Belief in reincarnation requires overcoming the objections described above in order to be an ethical or moral possibility that I could truly embrace.

As always, questions and comments welcome.

You may also like Lunar Eclipse, Only 3.9 Billion Years Left and The Fourth Dimension.

by Roxanne -

“Age-Friendly” Means Friendly For ALL

Photo R. Meshar

There’s so much we can do – even in our own local communities. Check out all of the innovative ideas in this article with excellent resource links at the end.

Here are just a few good ideas from the article –

It will take some creative steps to make New York and other cities age-friendly enough to help the coming crush of older adults stay active and independent in their own homes.

“It’s about changing the way we think about the way we’re growing old in our community,” said New York Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs. “The phrase ‘end of life’ does not apply anymore.”

With initiatives such as using otherwise idle school buses to take seniors grocery shopping, the World Health Organization recognizes New York as a leader in this movement.

But it’s not alone.

Atlanta is creating what it calls “lifelong communities.” Philadelphia is testing whether living in a truly walkable community really makes older adults healthier. In Portland, Ore., there’s a push to fit senior concerns such as accessible housing into the city’s new planning and zoning policies.

The key is understanding this (bold emphasis mine):

. . . if you make something age-friendly, that means it is going to be friendly for people of all ages, not just older adults,” said Margaret Neal of Portland State University’s Institute on Aging.

DH and I are actively looking for places to live in retirement that would allow us to use no car, public transportation or only one car. Walking is paramount – to the library, volunteering, faith community, grocery store, restaurants, coffee shops, museums, health care appointments and more. It is healthier, active, you meet more people and it’s easier to stay involved in the community. Check here for a list of most walkable cities in the U.S.

Because we have simplified our lifestyle we don’t need much space for stuff/things (a large kitchen or dining room isn’t necessary, for example). But we do know from our own experience that diversity in people and activities greatly enhances our quality of life.

What do you think? Would you consider adding diversity in people and activities to your life? Would you move to a place where you could easily use public transportation and then actually use it?

You may also like Live a Little, Prairie Walk and Simplify, Simplify, Simplify.

by Roxanne -

Human Poverty Index – U.S. Rank

How do you think the United States ranks in the Human Poverty Index compared to the other top industrialized nations?

If you said “badly” – then yes, you are correct.

The United States ranks NEAR THE BOTTOM (17 of 19) in the Human Poverty Index (2008) based on the key indicators of life expectancy, literacy, unemployment and population below 50% of median income (%).

Bet you didn’t know that did you?

But these numbers are from 2008. Since then we’ve had the depression/housing crash and many more have joined the ranks of the poor.

The poor are mostly women and children. So poor women and children in the U.S. would be better off living in almost any other industrialized nation OTHER THAN the United States.

Think about that for awhile.