Cook It Forward....One Year Later

 We have started going to the closed Stewart School Tent City now first on Wednesdays. Every Wednesday a few of us meet and prepare meals or bagged lunches. This week we made egg salad sandwiches, cookies, yogurt and fruit lunch bags with Mint-infused Arnold Palmers. Yep, we have a big cooler with beverages. Below is Sandra, Stagg, Daryl and Mary.

 On the way home driving on Western Ave. no one honked when I missed a green light to take this picture of a double rainbow!

LOOKING FOR LANDLORDS

An interview with Arturo V. Bendixen from The Center For Housing And Health in Chicago requesting landlords to rent housing to homeless people.

Why consider being a landlord who offers to rent an apartment to the homeless?

-guaranteed rent 

-case manager always available to help the client

-a way to give serve the community the community

-house people who are now living in tents

If you are a landlord and want to see our community and help people living outside, please call 
Arturo Bendixen

Center for Housing & Health

312-922-2322

Plea To Chicago Landlords on Eve of Mayor's Pilot Housing Program Deadline

Gay Pride At Temple

I love this picture. Three friends of mine at The Buddhist Temple of Chicago on Gay Pride Day. We had a big lunch of light refreshments after service and then I went to the board meeting. I have been on the board at temple for about three years. We have all kinds of things we talk about, how to get more engagement among the participants, ideas for parties and events, making sure we have a safe open and diverse sangha for everyone. Some times we talk about prosaic things like the budget or the cleaning schedule....but often these board meetings can be very interesting.

The reason I am on the board is because I head a group called Upaya. Upaya is sanskrit for "skillful means".

From Wiki...."Upaya-kaushalya is a concept emphasizing that practitioners may use their own specific methods or techniques that fit the situation in order to gain enlightenment. The implication is that even if a technique, view, etc., is not ultimately "true" in the highest sense, it may still be an expedient practice to perform or view to hold; i.e., it may bring the practitioner closer to the true realization in a similar way. The exercise of skill to which it refers, the ability to adapt one's message to the audience, is of enormous importance in the Pali Canon.

The Digital Dictionary of Buddhism notes that rendering the Chinese term fangbian into English as 'skillful' or as 'expedient' is often difficult, because the connotations shift according to the context as (1) the teaching being something to marvel at — the fact that the Buddha can present these difficult truths in everyday language (thus, skillful), yet that  they are teachings of a lower order as compared to the ultimate truth, and are far removed from reflecting reality, and are a kind of 'stopgap' measure (thus, expedient)."

This word is interesting to me because it has a similar meaning and history as the concept of "virtue" originally had for ancient peoples. 

Alistair MacIntyre wrote a book that is still haunting me many years later called AFTER VIRTUE. He defines virtue as something attained through practice....and here is his definition of practice...

"Any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realised in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions to the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended" (MacIntyre 1985, 187)

In psychology some of this stuff falls into "deliberate practice hypothesis" here:

http://calnewport.com/blog/2012/03/28/the-satisfying-strain-of-learning-hard-material-a-deliberate-practice-case-study/

Peace

7 people killed in a  gay bar "La Madame" in Xalpa, Veracruz...and then 50 killed at "Pulse" in Orlando. So sad. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWgNS8IzZ8I

A Music Room (And A Kitchen Table)

 We have moved the whole apartment around. We needed to make room for huge paintings. Stagg has a show coming up....so he needs room. Somehow I switched around all the tech, putting record player in kitchen tv in middle room, computer in study.....so I put Stagg's bass amp in the room here. With my guitar and Ukulele we have a sort of music room.

 We ook apart a kitchen table and moved this big table in here....we had in studio....so now more room over all. We have a little too much furniture, which i guess was a pretty nice problem to have. So some stuff has been given away.

Food Justice

 Being a Food Justice advocate I was pretty excited to see some other Food Justice activists in their work environment and urban gardens today. I met some of the creators of Cooperation Operation last month at the Burner Grant Event and they were the first place recipients. I met with Liz since the event and just asked her so many questions about how her organization created their urban garden, how their mutual group all are from the southside of Chicago and have families that extend back generations in the south side as a common factor in wanting to grow food in a food desert.

The Cooperation Operation (Coop Op) is a non-profit community organization that transforms vacant urban land into spaces for educational and economic empowerment. They envision a world where all people have access to affordable healthy food, education, housing, employment, and critical social services.

The land I visited today is in Pullman and originally the organizers approached their Alderman for support in reclaiming industrial land for food. The Alderman pledged them a five year lease and since then, the Pullman district has been named a National Monument and 

is a component in the National Park System.

 Liz Nerat, a writer and board of directors for the Coop Op led a writing workshop today. she really has a gift for teaching and facilitating. I was impressed with her focus during the heat, puppies, my crazy questions and some of the participants have self-doubts (me included!) she kept us all going. We also laughed so much!