"....There's a promise in the journeys of the mind,
You begin to believe that there are miracles you will find,
And that someday you'll remember who you are.
The seed within a bright and shining star,
It's like a flame that lives within a hungering heart,
That only awaits the gift of love for it to spark,
Into a fire that burns forever, endlessly...."
-John Denver
Some of you may be aware of the fact that John Denver seriously worked with NASA to expand their programs and was in fact the catalyst for their Citizen In Space Program being started. John also received the NASA Public Service Medal in 1985. John did the required testing for space flight acceptance, and passed. He hoped to be able to go into space and experience first hand what Astronaut Chris Hadfield so eloquently expresses here in this video.
John knew it could profoundly affect change in people. Create unity and understanding that we are all one, as John was, indeed, a Global Citizen.
We are all One. This is a wonderfully affirming six minute video worth the time to view:
What is it like to see humanity from space? Imagine being able to tour our 4 billion-year-old planet 16 times a day, and see a sunset every 45 minutes. Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian astronaut to walk in space, has done just that—and it has opened his eyes and his mind to the idea that, from above, we're not so different at all.
There's a name for war and killing
There's a name for giving in when you know another answer
For me the name is sin
But there's still time to turn around and make all hatred cease
And give another name to living, and we could call it peace
And peace would be the road we walk
Each step along the way
And peace would be the way we work
And peace the way we play
And in all we see that's different
And in all the things we know
Peace would be the way we look
And peace the way we grow
There's a name for separation, there's a name for first and last
When it's all for us or nothing
For me the name is past
But there's still time to turn around, and make all hatred cease
And give a name to all the future, and we could call it peace
And if peace is what we pray for
And peace is what we give
Then peace will be the way we are
And peace the way we live
While there still is the time to turn around
And make all hatred cease
And give another name to living
And we can call it peace
The shadow from the starlight is softer than a lullaby ..."
Rare, but ordinary things, amplify the Spirit of Life that moves us to carry on and represent the best of humanity. The Universe is alive with possibility.
August 30, 1991 performance of 'I Want To Live' - an anthem for the children.
.
What can we do to end world hunger?
"Our commission said the most important thing to be done is to educate the public about the facts of world hunger… about what can be done and most specifically that it can be eliminated if we choose to do so. I think the first and best thing I can do is sing the song “I Want To Live”, to talk about world hunger every chance I get and really try to get across to people that this is within our grasp.
This is something we can do, and to get people interested enough in it, keyed up enough in it that they talk to their representatives and that it becomes a political issue. It’s not now. The first thing to do is to get people interested in it and let them know something can be done. It’s like I said earlier, here’s one of the ways we can truly start working together. Why don’t we put more focus on this? Why don’t we spend more time and energy on this? I know people will do it. And I think it’s my job to get the people 'to-doing-it'. " – John Denver, 1981 .A decade later, and beyond, John was still singing this song to make a difference. How will YOU make a difference? What programs can you align yourself with to support so that your one small drop becomes a ripple that changes the world? These questions are still worth asking.
"I Want To Live"
There are children raised in sorrow on a scorched and barren plain, There are children raised beneath a golden sun. There are children of the water, children of the sand, And they cry out through the universe, their voices raised as one:
I want to live, I want to grow, I want to see, I want to know, I want to share what I can give, I want to be, I want to live.
Have you gazed out on the ocean, seen the breaching of a whale? Have you watched the dolphins frolic in the foam? Have you heard the song the humpback hears five hundred miles away? Telling tales of ancient history of passages and home?
I want to live, I want to grow, I want to see, I want to know, I want to share what I can give, I want to be, I want to live.
For the worker and the warrior, the lover and the liar, for the native and the wanderer in kind. For the maker and the user, and the mother and her son. I am looking for my family and all of you are mine.
We are standing all together, face to face and arm in arm. We are standing on the threshold of a dream. No more hunger, no more killing, no more wasting life away. It is simply an idea and I know its time has come.
I want to live, I want to grow, I want to see, I want to know, I want to share what I can give, I want to be,
I want to live, I want to grow, I want to see, I want to know, I want to share what I can give, I want to be, I want to live. I want to live, I want to grow, I want to see, I want to know, I want to share what I can give, I want to be, I want to live, I want to live, I want to live.
[Shared for inspirational and educational
purposes only. Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act
1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as
criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research.]
As we approach Clean Water Day, learn about this charity which is focused on water. Learn about what you can do to make a huge difference. It is compelling. Charity : Water
P.S. if you can see this on FB, please like or comment, as this is apparently April Fool's Day or Trick or Treat or something else entirely out of order. Thank you.
March 22 is World Water Day. This inspirational video will remind you that Water is the source of all life, and remind you of how you can take action to protect and preserve the waters. Bless the Water.
A Rare and Moving Speech by John [Audio updated 26March18]
PLEASE READ- ADMIN NOTE:This is archival audio from an audience recorded cassette tape, so the quality leaves something to be desired even though it has been restored to some degree; HOWEVER, please listen if you can tolerate it, and follow along with the transcript to help with clarity. It's important to hear John's voice inflections as he spoke, as it adds dimension and emphasis to his speech. The transcript may be translated using the Google Translate tool here on the blog, for those who are not fluent in English. Time allotment: 26 minutes.
Please take this into your heart and use it as inspiration for reaffirming your commitment to the matters addressed here in this speech. We must rise up!
[Speech is prefaced by the beginning of the service, which
includes the children’s choir singing “I Want to Live”, as is referenced in the
speech. Introduction followed by applause, then John’s speech begins:]
“I would like to thank Dr. Fred,
Marjory, Zak, ladies and gentlemen.I
can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to be with you.I knew that it was going to be a pleasure before I
got here.I knew that it was going to be
a wonderful experience when I started driving over here this morning and it has
risen well beyond that already.What
occurred to me is that when I participated in the beginning of service this
morning, in the moment of silence, and that first song, and in singing The
Lord’s Prayer together, is something that I wrote a song once about talking
about ‘coming home to a place I’d never been before’.This feels very, very much like home to me;
so much, in fact, that I feel quite comfortable in welcoming all of you.I do welcome you here this morning, this time
together, this fellowship, this gathering with all my heart and with great love
and respect.Before I begin, I also want to
apologize to the gentlemen who I cut off this morning in my haste to get here
in turning on to Garrison [street]. I thought I was turning onto a four-lane
road and there’s only one lane there.So, I know he’s out there and I apologize to him.
So much of what I’ve discovered
here this morning has thrown me for quite a loop and almost everything that I
wanted to say to you seems unnecessary. So, I’ve changed a lot of it and hopefully it
will all tie together.One of the things
that moved me very much when we were gathering before the service is I read the
Mile Hi church purpose, which I’d like to share with you, and I’m sure you all
know it to some degree.It’s in the back
of your newspaper.
Mile
Hi Church of Religious Science is a spiritual center dedicated to awakening and
supporting the conscious
experience and expression of every person’s inherent divine nature; in teaching
and practicing
the principles of Science of Mind. (I’ve got to learn more about this!) To be a channel for dissolving and
healing the illusion of separation from God, the Infinite Freedom Source, in, around and for all.To
create and sustain an atmosphere of Light and Truth, whereby people are
provided maximum opportunities
to discover, experience and actualize love, integrity, power and perfection of
life. To provide a community of
spiritual fellowship and support which nurtures the individual and collective
experience of inherent wholeness, peace, joy and success in life’s
endeavors.To empower people to
contribute to their spiritual self-realization of personal involvement to the
transformation of the world, thus ultimately ushering in the Kingdom of Heaven
on Earth.
That’s Beautiful! That’s Beautiful!and the part of you which wrote
that! There’s a poem that
I’ve been in love with lately. I don’t know who wrote it, but I’d like to share
it with you:
.
For
winter’s rains and ruin are over
And
all the Seasons of snows and sin
The
day is dividing lover and lover
The
life that loses, the night that wins
And
time remembered is grief forgotten
And
frosts are slaying and flowers begotten
And
in every green under wood and cover
Blossom
by blossom the Spring begins. [F. Scott
Fitzgerald-This Side of Paradise]
So, I think
that Spring is happening on planet Earth.Spring in a way that is, perhaps, has never happened before.Perhaps, to be compared to anything, it’s
like the Renaissance, only a hundred years ago.Perhaps it’s that age of Aquarius that we talked about in the 60’s and
early 70’s.Perhaps it really is the
Kingdom of Heaven on Earth; coming into a kind of manifestation and reality
that has never been here before.A New
Age.
There’s a
lot of stuff going on in the world today and I started getting asked all the
time about New Age thinking.I would
like to tell you a little bit about what I think New Age thinking is and to
give you, perhaps, some examples. There’s all this stuff with crystals; I love
crystals, actually!I had a wonderful
experience with crystals. I was with a friend day before yesterday, in South
Paulsboro, New York, a beautiful, wonderful woman called Gurumayi, who’s a dear
friend to me and a spiritual leader of millions of people around the
world.In their small temple there, they
have all these crystals in a big room and you can hardly walk by them- if you
hold your hand out they start vibrating.All of this stuff going on, including crystals.
Not to be
side-tracked, there’s all this stuff with crystals, there’s stuff going on with
pyramids.There’s all these, New Age
cults, they call them.There’s things
called channeling, and like that.That
perhaps is part of New Age, certainly it is a part of how people express
themselves now in their search for the thing that we celebrate here this
morning together.It’s certainly one of
the manifestations of that.
Another part
of New Age can be expressed differently.I think it’s also expressed here with what you say in your purpose and
what we’re trying to do in the world of Windstar.An example of what I’m talking about, two
examples, that say the exact same thing:
·One is Secretary General Gorbachev, who I had the pleasure of
meeting last December when he was in Washington [D.C.]. In this meeting he talked to us, the people
who were present, about there being a new reality in the world.He said before this time, we’ve always paid
attention only to our own interests. He said in this new reality, however; we
cannot really serve our own interests without having some considerations for
the interests of others.That’s New Age
thinking, in my opinion.
·Within weeks of that we were visiting the Hunger Project in Burkina
Faso, one of the poorest countries in the world.Burkina Faso has an infant mortality rate of
212, which means that out of every 1,000 births, 212 infants will die in the
first year of life, as an average.That
song means something to me, like the children of Jackson Hole. Anyway, in
Burkina Faso, there’s another terrible drought going on.The chief of the village of some 300 people,
village called Jonda, who I met about 3 ½ years ago; we asked him how the
drought was affecting the people of his village.He said the drought has become a great tool
for us.How’s that?He said, Yes, before the drought we always
only took care of ourselves.But the
drought has taught us that we must work together and conserve water.New Age thinking.
·I propose to you that when Columbus set off to find a westerly
route to the spices in the Far East, that this was New Age thinking, at the
time.I propose to you that Thomas
Jefferson, when he began to really trying to articulate his feelings about the
future of this nation with the Declaration of Independence, that was New Age thinking.
I don’t want
you to be afraid of New Age thinking. I
really want to acknowledge what is going on in the world today, and I want you
to know that it’s coming out of each of us.
Iloved this acknowledgment
this morning with Dr. Fred. The
difference that one man can make in thousands and thousands of lives all over
the world. And obviously while your
expression of this he has made in your life. I think that each one of us wants
to make that kind of difference; wants to live a life that matters and we look
for the ways that we can do that. I know
that each of us, somewhere in our lives, in our work, our families, our
children, that we are making a difference.
I really want to acknowledge that in all of you. The same thing that you
celebrate with Dr. Fred, lives in you, for each one of you and ought to be
acknowledged; ought to be brought forth. Not to be spit upon, like the foundation, the
difference that you can make, that you are making.
I say to you that there is a New World
happening. You know, this Kingdom of Heaven is right there. You can
really touch and taste a world without nuclear weapons. It’s gonna happen.I’m not afraid we’re going to blow ourselves
up anymore.You can feel a world without
hunger. It’s going to happen.It’s going
to happen before the end of this century if I have anything to do with it.That is my commitment.I’m one of the founders of The Hunger
Project, which has close to 6 million people now around the world, committed to
the end of hunger by the end of this century.That is my commitment, and I invite you to join me in that.Because you see the thing is, this Kingdom of
Heaven, this Age of Aquarius, this New World of Peace is not going to happen
until it comes from each and every one of us.
At Windstar
we say that each one of us is responsible for and part of the quality of life
on this planet; and that which affects any one of us, affects us all. That is the world we’re coming into. Now, I’d like to tell you a little bit about
how that shows up for me in my life. One
of the ways it does is especially close to me and many of you may remember the
movie that I did some time ago called “Oh, God!“. That
was a wonderful movie. I loved it!At
the time that this movie came to me, I’d received an awful lot of scripts, but
I didn’t want to make a movie just to make a movie. So I waited for something
in a script that came to me that put a little ‘hook’ in me for some reason, and
it was that script of Oh God!, evidently had been floating around Hollywood for
about five years…(glitch in recording)….. [God says]… the rivers are filth,
you’re killing all my fishes, the sky, the air you can’t breathe, the water you
can’t drink. I made the world to work.
Jerry Landers says, well, have you read the papers? It ain’t workin’, you know? That’s what it felt like to me; and still,
quite often, today it feels like that.
Jerry asks God, he says why don’t you do something about it? God says to Jerry,
·Why don’t
YOU do something about it?It’s your
world.Well, boy,that exploded in my heart. Because I
believe if we’re going to save ourselves on this planet, if we’re going sustain
civilization, and humanity, that it’s not going to be from Divine Intervention. It’s going to come out of our own conscious actions to create that world, the
world that we’ve always dreamed of.
But Jerry
says to God, he says, but we need help.And God says, That’s why I gave you each other.Oh, I love that.I have always felt that we are here for each other, not against
each other.And that’s what we’re in the process of learning. Some of the things going on in
the world are what it takes for us to learn.
The first
time that I remember thinking that, that we are here for each other not against
each other, is about when I was twelve years old. I lived in Tucson,
Arizona.I think I was very shy, and I
think it was difficult for me to communicate with my friends because I think
that I felt differently than they seemed to feel.I don’t think that they actually felt differently,
but what they said and how they acted, a lot of the things that children do,
were just not comfortable for me.So, I
spent a lot of time out in the desert, and I spent a lot of time – there was
neighbor caddy-corner across the street over this way who had three beautiful
trees in their yard. I used to go climb
up to the top of those trees and sit there, swaying with the wind, and watching
the world go by and think wonderful, lofty visions and fantasize that someday
that I’m going to sing for people all over the world and that I’m going to have
friends all over the world. I’m going to have a place in the mountains that
these people can come to, and whether I’m there or not, people will be able to
gather there and they will feel at home with one another and comfortable with one
another.They’ll find that they have an
awful lot in common and out of being in this place and being with one another,
they’ll be able to go back to wherever they come from, wherever they live in
the world, whatever work they do, and they’ll be recharged and they’ll be
strengthened by what has happened there.That’s pretty far out for a twelve-year-old
kid!You know? But honest to
goodness, that’s what it was for me.
I
started singing, things started to happen all over the world, started to be
very successful and a kind of celebrity. I had the opportunity to meet a lot of
people who felt like I did. I also found myself called upon many, many times to
do a benefit over here, or a tribute over here.
Everyone that approached me really came with a worthwhile endeavor,
something that was good, something that was valuable to people; but not always
something that was particularly unique or something that really brought out a
response in me or my inclinations, my own personal interests.
So, I was
talking with my friend, Tom Crum, who I met in Aspen, who does my Aikido
training with and I feel is the most recent evolution of martial arts. He was my security man on the road, and we
talked and we seemed to have the same kind of vision about a place like I
described a few moments ago. At one
point it got to be very clear, I’d been talking about this little vision I had
in that tree had never left me. A lot of
things in my life had changed, but that had never left. It had gotten, perhaps, more finely tuned,
refocused on different occasions, but it was still there. I realized that it was time to keep talking
about it forever, or I could do it. It
seemed to be the opportunity to do it.
Tom and I founded the Windstar Foundation, the Windstar project. We bought a piece of land, about a thousand
acres nearby Aspen, and we started to gather people together to work on
creating a sustainable future, to work on sustainable energy forms, to work on
food production, to work on the resolution of conflict. To work
really toward creating that kind of network, that bridge which at some point
was going to encompass our earth and bring about this Kingdom of Heaven and this
world of peace that we dream about, forever.
1980 - Alaska Lands Act signing- Mardie Murie
We’ve done a
lot of things at Windstar. We’ve made some mistakes, we had some problems, had
some real wonderful successes. I think we had a lot to do with getting the
wonderful Alaska Land and Wilderness Act created back in about 1976.
[correction: 1980] Great thing, and
Windstar was a major catalyst for getting all the environmental groups to finally
work together. And in one strong leap we got that bill turned around and got it
passed; something that I’ll always be very, very proud of because my children and
I love Alaska. I want all children in the world to be able to see wilderness
and wildness of Alaska. Much of that
is preserved now and hopefully it always will be so.
We had a lot
to do with getting people straight about oil shale in Colorado.They had these grand designs, people were
coming in, all kinds of investments were going on. Oil Shale, the future! They’ve been talking about doing something
with oil shale for hundreds of years, and they had yet to make it work.The one little detail that nobody brought
into consideration here in Colorado about oil shale, was water.It was going to require more water to do the
process that they had envisioned there, than there is on the Western
Slope.Nobody talked about water!!There’s some ranchers and farmers over there
who have [water] rights, some of it goes all the way to California.Little details that somebody missed and we
helped point that out.Unfortunately,
though, the bad part of that is that people lost their jobs, a lot of
investments were washed away, not unlike last October it was a very, very
difficult time.Some people are still recovering
from that.That’s the way it goes.
Windstar:
I’d like to read you the purpose of Windstar; that’s what I’m really here to
share with you today. See how it
compares with what you said in your purpose, where the alignment might be and
where it might be another kind of expression in another area of what you were
talking about.
·The essential purpose of Windstar is to inspire and bring forth
ideas and models that contribute to a world that works for research,
demonstration and education. An
essential purpose of Windstar is to contribute to the synthesis of significant
information and relevant topics and issues for a sustainable future. To conduct research and educational programs
that provide a forum, offering tangible tools, projects, approaches and results
in the art of living. To nurture
partnership while building relationships, within the Windstar family and with
all of the public. We identify trends
that lead to crisis, provide inspiration and information to leadership to take
corrective action. To be a catalyst for
bringing forth the educational and leadership abilities in us all. To identify and enroll and support key people
as levers of change. To nurture, protect
and be stewards of the Windstar land as a living example of human relationship
on earth.
What I feel
here and what you’ve said, and what I feel in my own spirituality, which I’ve
not had the opportunity to experience in so concrete a form before, is that we
all have within us the vision of a world the way that we would like it to
be.
Africa 1984
You see, I’ve traveled all over the
world and, it’s a wonderful thing to me that I have friends everywhere that
I’ve been. I’ve yet to walk on a street
in the Soviet Union, a village in Africa, a commune in China, a slum in India
and not be recognized. People know me
through my songs, my music, and they relate to those things all over the
world. This feeling that I had from long
ago that not only that we are here for each other, not against each other, but
that we really are truly the same. People
say that children are the same all over the world. You don’t hear them say that parents are the
same. They are. Lovers are the same. Grandparents, families are the same. That’s who I sing to and what I sing
about. This garners a response
everywhere in the world. I believe that
people everywhere feel the same kinds of things that I feel and that you
feel. Maybe they don’t know how to
articulate it. Maybe they don’t have the opportunity to express it the way that we
have. Perhaps a part of what’s going on
right now is to create that kind of articulation and expression so that all
people can feel the unity that you and I celebrate here at this service this
morning.
What I
propose to you is that Windstar is a tool for that kind of expression; that
Windstar can be a catalyst for bringing that forth. We’re at a point now where we are really about
ready to be a worldwide organization.
There’s an enormous step that’s just right there for us and we want to
take it. And I want to invite you to
take that with us, to be a part of our taking that step; to be a supporter, a
contributor, a member of Windstar and to be a part of what we’re doing. The last weekend of August is our Choices for
the Future Symposium, the third one. We
have some wonderful speakers coming: Barbara
Marx Hubbard, Ken Blanchard, Dennis Weaver, some incredible people; some
Soviets are coming. The winner, the
recipient of this year’s Windstar award, Asktavich [Yevgeny] Velikhov, the Vice President
of the Academy of Sciences in the Soviet Union and one of the three top advisers for Secretary General Gorbachev; the man primarily responsible for
directing the cleanup of Chernobyl. He’s
done some incredible things on this planet, and nobody in America knows about
it. And you know that those Soviets have never
been acknowledged or ever won an award from the United States; so Windstar is
very, very proud to make that first acknowledgement and he’s going to be at our
symposium this summer.
.
I would like
to invite you to come to our symposium. It’s in Aspen, Colorado, it lasts four
days, I’m supposed to be attending, and I promise you an incredible and
unforgettable experience and an opportunity to really join and participate in
creating the kind of world that we’re talking about here. And to do so, not only in this way, which is so
beautifully expressed, but some of the more tangible, hard, knuckles to the
grindstone ways that will really live up to the request of those children who
sang so beautifully a few moments ago. Please, if you can, if you have that weekend
free, come and join us. And there’s some
people here to help you sign up for that if you’d like to do that.
I personally
would be more grateful than I can say to be able to get up closer to you and
see who you are and how you live, how you express your faith, and what you’re
doing here.It would be a great privilege for me.
And if
I’m not taking too much time, I 'd like close with a song. This song was born in what is considered to
be the largest slum in the world, on the outskirts of Bombay, India.
India 1985
I was there, this was about 2 ½- 3 years ago, walking amidst people in the most desperate conditions I’ve ever experienced. It turned out to be an incredibly joyful
thing. There was such a sense of family
with these people, and hospitality and spirituality, a real celebration of the
day. You can really sense that every new
day was a gift to them, and they treated it as such. I wrote this song and there are three verses
to it. It’s for the homeless and the
hungry, the refugees all over the world; for the hunger and homelessness
that sometimes lives in our hearts. The song is really a prayer, which is why I
wanted to do it for you this morning. What
I’d like to do, is there are three verses and I’ll sing them. When I do the
last verse, I’d ask all of you to stand, join me, holding hands all around the room. I’ll do it one line at a time and you sing it
with me. It’s called Falling
Leaves.
Thank you for this precious day These gifts you
give to me My heart so full of
love for you Sings praise for
all I see Oh sing for every
mother's love For every childhood
tear Oh sing for all the
stars above The peace beyond
all fear
This is for the
refugees The ones without a
home A boat out on the
ocean A city street alone Are they not some
dear mother's child? Are they not you
and I? Are we the ones to
bear this shame And they the
sacrifice?
Or are they just
like falling leaves Who give themselves
away From dust to dust
from seed to shear And to another day? If I could have one
wish on earth Of all I can
conceive T'would be to see
another spring And bless the
falling leaves
Thank you for this
precious day These gifts you
give to me My heart so full of
love for you Sings praise for
all I see Oh sing for every
mother's love For every childhood
tear .....(tape cuts off) Oh sing for all the
stars above The peace beyond
all fear " [Shared for inspirational and educational
purposes only. Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act
1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as
criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research.]
