Saturday, March 7, 2009

Nothing happens and we report it
















Well now. It might seem like a long time since we updated this blog, but really, time is a construct of our minds. On thing is certain: all phenomen are impermanent; hence the title. Christmas in San Bernardo was interesting. Living in a evangelical community we thought no one danced. But we were wrong. As you can see in one of these photos they take their dancing seriously. It had a good beat and was very energetic as I can testify to.

At new years they have a tradition of burning dummies representing people they might want to speed up their impermanence. So in the spirit of things we made a dummy of George W Bush who only had a few weeks left in office. We entered the dummy in a competion and won! Before burning the dummy at midnight, we had George read a letter that bequeathed a number of his legacies including the war in Iraq to the Peace Corps and his ranch in Texas to the people of San Bernardo. Needless to say this was a popular move. In the photo George Bush is the dummy on the far left.

In the next photo is a ¨dinamico¨ or skit that Lucy and our counterpart put on with some kids from the foundation we work with. It demonstrated how to use the new recycling and garbage containers the foundation is installing at different locations including this school. This was a direct result of groundwork we laid for a community clean up committee that took off after our initiative. Now we can just hang back a bit and help when needed. We are anxious to get started on the dairy goat project but are still waiting for Peace Corps approval.
The next two pics were taken at the amazing Warrior's Assembly we attended in Chile. Lucy was an attendee and I was on staff (having taken this program back in 1997 in Colorado). This is a program intended to stimulate personal and societal transformation, started by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Trungpa wrote ¨Shambhala:Sacred Path of the Warrior¨ and brought Tibetan Buddhism to the West in a fresh and accesible way. For more info on these programs and practice centers, you can go to http://www.shambhala.org/ Next post I shall share more of our experience in retreat and travelling a short time in Chile. Besides the picture of Lucy and I as the program was coming to a close, there's one of me with Richard (Director of Practice), and Ivan (program coordinator). Chao.





Craig