Barbara Smith Stoff

POETRY IS THE RICH CONSERVE

2011-06-05T10:20:00.000-07:00

POETRY IS THE RICH CONSERVE

Ultimately the voice in the whirlwind says
I am this love
which drips like honey through earthly caverns
…to the high altar…
poetry is the rich conserve--
the talisman for transit
through all comings and goings
moment to moment
aeon to aeon
music from the great organ
always othering to itself
but yet comes home.
--Barbara Smith Stoff

ON THE DEATH OF OSAMA BIN LADEN

2011-05-05T10:44:00.000-07:00

ON THE DEATH OF OSAMA BIN LADEN

PAUL SONIN’S PHOTO OF PENTAGON 911 MEMORIAL BENCHES – I CALL THEM ICARUS WINGS

May 2, 2011

Watching the news this morning about the death of Osama Bin Laden, I remember these memorial benches and the very first blog piece I was moved to write as I watched the memorial services on September 11, 2008 (see below). Bruegel and his Icarus, and the poems that painting has inspired in ensuing years, have been coming to mind a lot lately as I become more aware of the turbulence of our times. Osama Bin Laden was most certainly not Icarus…and the world is watching closely…as James Joyce said “…in the smithy of the soul.”

As millions offer prayers from the heart, the world awkwardly strives toward a live birth for a new age of peace and the most benevolent outcome for all. Let it be so. –bss

Thursday, September 11, 2008
ICARUS REMEMBERED
By Barbara Smith Stoff

Today, as I watched the news with the extended coverage of the 9-11 memorial services, I saw many views of the memorial park with the benches, each one cantilevered over water. To me, those benches look like the wings of Icarus downed—ever so many wings reminding us of earthly flights suddenly cut short in the splintered morning of what started out as just another ordinary day.

I am reminded of Brueghel’s painting, “Landscape with the fall of Icarus” where only the white clad legs of Icarus can be seen sticking up from the water, if one looks closely. Those wings, crafted from imagination, inspiration and courage, have not served.

Auden’s poem “Musee Des Beaux Arts,” describes that painting…pointing out how the world turns away from disaster and private suffering and moves on. In another poem about that same painting, this one by Charles F. Madden, “The Fall of Icarus,” we read “none has seen the silent fall of Icarus/ through the riotous wind and the shadows of the coming evening light/nor do they hear his sigh, both of pity and delight/of his remembered waxed and winged flight.”

As I gaze now across the landscape of benches, it is comforting to see those ethereal feathers of hope made concrete, anchored in earth, yet hovering as if in flight over the waters…the soul flies on, but leaves a reminder for us.

And we have not turned away. We remember in public the private sufferings. With these wings we remember and we may pray, as individuals, for our collective humanity to continue. We may pray as with James Joyce, as he stands on the shore contemplating his own flight over the waters toward maturity:

“Amen. So be it. Welcome, O Life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race…..Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.”

Each of us privately forges some contribution to all life. Perhaps in those concrete wings, something of the essence of each departed soul has been distilled and offers back, for all to see, a symbol of hope for humankind–a more benevolent evolution.
–bss (And please click below on “The Sunday Times Museum of Fine Art” for poems and image of Brueghel’s painting)

THE SUNDAY TIMES MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS
Posted in Uncategorized by barbarasmithstoff on April 21, 2011 Edit This

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, now seen as a good early copy of Bruegel’s original

THE SUNDAY TIMES MUSEUM OF FINE ART

I see too,

remembering Auden’s Icarus,

that when it comes to suffering

they are seldom wrong

these reporters and their cameras,

the way they catch tragedy on the human face,

and yet sometimes they fix for us

in their instants and afterimages

…something achingly beautiful, incandescent…

so human, so human rising up.

Take this picture of Redgrave for example.

I have kept it here on my desk,

for weeks now, have studied her expression…

hand gesturing for some ideal, tender,

perhaps clear only to her.

I have met those eyes, the lips

pursed to appeal from her side.

I know little of sides and battles,

but I know that face.

–Barbara Smith Stoff

Here is the poem which inspired me and my students:

MUSEE DES BEAUX ARTS

By W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters; how well, they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Copyright © 1976 by Edward Mendelson, William Meredith and Monroe K. Spears,

Executors of the Estate of W. H. Auden.

Pasted from

Here is another poem…this one from DOORS INTO POETRY, by Chad Walsh (Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1962)…

THE FALL OF ICARUS (From Brueghel’s painting)

by Charles F. Madden

The bulging sails by a riotous wind caught

pull the ships and their rigging nets toward shore

to be emptied. The sailors quickly will calm their floors

and their houses in the evening light will melt into the mountains.

And on the hill with one foot planted in the earth

his plowing almost done; his eyes cast down and fully shielded

from the sun which now is growing shadow, the farmer

turns in soil and toil the final circles of the day.

Below him a quiet pastoral: on lichen bearing rocks

the feeding sheep, the quiet watching dog, the silent shepherd

so stalking with his eyes the homing flights of birds

that neither he nor the intent fisherman closer to the shore,

none has seen the silent fall of Icarus

through the riotous wind and the shadows of the coming evening light,

nor do they hear his sigh, both of pity and delight

of his remembrd waxed and winged flight.

–Charles F. Madden

ABOUT BULLYING

2011-03-10T09:29:00.000-08:00

ABOUT BULLYING

Watching the news today with morning coffee, I listen to President Obama and our First Lady Obama speaking about bullying. I am reminded of my own preoccupation with that phenomenon, and of my efforts to heal those wounds by reflecting and writing about it. Is bullying becoming more prevalent now? I do not know. But since my writing efforts drew favorable comment all those years ago, and this subject is now being written and talked about more noticeably, perhaps it's time to put it up here--it's March once again:

Note: I wrote this in 2001. Now, because of recent news, I put it up here again. Bullying is not natural. We need to help our children grow up well and happy.
--Barbara Smith Stoff - March 30, 2010

Rescuing the ciphers.(Opinion) | Article from The Christian Science Monitor | HighBeam Research

RESCUING THE CIPHERS
BY BARBARA SMITH

Article from:The Christian Science Monitor Article date:March 9, 2001

Loneliness and alienation in our schools are not new. It's just that the symptoms are becoming more pronounced. President Bush called the shooting at Santana High School in California "a disgraceful act of cowardice." So much for compassion. I call the shooting a cry for help, a desperate
attempt not to be a cipher - a faceless zero.

As I watched the morning news, I studied the face of Charles Andrew Williams as he was being led away into custody. His mouth was tightly pursed and turning down at the corners, his jaw was clenched. He looked so determined even in his hopelessness. It appears that young Williams was indeed isolated, targeted, "picked on because he is scrawny," called "freak," "dork," "nerd," bullied, humiliated. As of Wednesday, it had been reported that no family members have visited him in his cell. This child
was lost long ago.

The ongoing discussion of the profile of a "school shooter" certainly accentuates the image of hopelessness. I remember studying the faces of thousands of students during my years of teaching high school English. Some of those faces, not all, reflected helplessness. I came to know in my bones their pain of blighted ideals, their passion to grow toward the
light and out from under whatever heavy thing kept them down. And sometimes I was the one who felt helpless in the face of their need.

So after the news, I just sat there, remembering. And I remembered a short and true story written sometime in the early '60s by a teacher, Jean Mizer, about a boy who was so lonely he simply fell dead in the snow on the way to school one morning. The story, "Cipher in the Snow," describes
the school personnel in their search to find out his identity, and the never-to-be-forgotten lesson his teacher learned during the course of the search - that to be a teacher means to really look at your students. Jean Mizer was given the Teacher of the Year Award for Idaho in 1964.

Surely by now we know that social alienation can at times produce violence toward oneself or toward others. I remembered another short story, this one by Joanne Greenberg about a young boy who wants so much to belong that he murders a man, just to present himself to his sinister coach as worthy of belonging. The story is called "Rite of Passage."

Joanne Greenberg knows whereof she writes. She endured teen years in a psychiatric facility. She recovered, and has now published 12 novels and four collections of short stories that show clearly her depth of understanding and compassion.

I feel helpless now in the face of all these school shootings, and I want to cry out, too. And say what? Maybe that when keepers want to train bald eagles born in captivity to fly so they can be released into the wild, they put television sets in their cages. The baby eagles love to watch TV, and they see themselves flying and soaring just as the images on the
screen are flying and soaring. And they learn to fly.

If we can use TV so creatively in the endangered-species programs, why can't we use television to encourage our children toward life? Children are endangered, too. What kind of images do we put up for our young ones
to emulate?

In 1914, George Bernard Shaw said: "The cinema tells its story to the illiterate as well as the literate; and it keeps its victim (if you like to call him so) not only awake, but fascinated as if by a serpent's eye. And that is why the cinema is going to produce effects that all the books
in the world could never produce."

Harvard professor Robert Coles has studied children closely and has written with understanding and vision about his findings. We may be surprised at his words: "Children, if we can listen to them, will tell us of a life richer in moral values than most grown-ups can comprehend.... If faced by the prospect of total annihilation, young people will try in some
way to make sense of the mystery and madness of their lives."

So then what are we doing with our powerful imagemakers in the media? How do we reconcile Robert Coles's conclusions with the messages we are getting from some (not all) of our young people today? Where, and how, and
why are we failing them? Failing them so much that they take such desperate means in their hands in order not to be just a cipher? I think one thing is certain. We do not listen to them enough - or soon enough.

Barbara Smith is a retired public school teacher, and at one time worked at Santana High School in Santee, Calif.

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor

HighBeam™ Research, Inc. © Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.

A ROSE IS A ROSE

2010-05-06T16:31:00.000-07:00

As I read about the standoff in Arizona and, in general, the wild discussions regarding immigration, I have been thinking a lot about this memory:

A CHRISTMAS ROSE (from my journal, December 1980)

Tonight after dinner we walked, and what I saw seems etched into my bones. The “Zona Rosa” is the fashionable place for night revels. With the holiday season and all, the streets are crowded with tourists, obviously, but also many young Mexicans, looking handsome and well-heeled, out for a night on the town. There is a definite air of high celebration. It’s a “nice place.” The people seem happy, kind, polite, and beautiful. There are the old women begging too—a tug at the heart—but at least, I remind myself, they are wrapped up warmly.

Mexico City...It was there amid the sidewalk cafes, the shops, the fashionable restaurants and discoteques that we saw something which I shall never forget. I think I saw the exposed heart of a city of over 14 million people, and it was a touching reminder that there is spontaneous love and caring in the human heart.

A young man, well-dressed and perhaps either going to or coming from a party, apparently drunk, suddenly fell backwards on the red brick sidewalk and gave himself what looked like a severe head laceration. I felt frightened and anxious as I took in the unexpected sight of the blood along with the pots of flowers and bright yellow café chairs. I had a feeling of helplessness in the face of tragedy. And then I became absorbed in observing a behavior which the jaundiced eyes of American city dwellers might do well to remark upon.

A small crowd gathered around him and I listened to the concern, expressed in Spanish, among people who seemed neither to know one another nor the man on the sidewalk. It was suggested and concluded among them that he was most likely “borracho.” One young man kept trying to convince the others that someone should bring some sugar and rub it on the man’s wrists and throat—that it would bring him around if he were in fact just drunk. Some of the people stayed with him, kneeling beside him, bending over him with expressions of concern until the police ambulance came, promptly and without sirens. He was lifted quietly and gently, still unconscious into the vehicle which drove away again in silence—no sirens to deepen the trauma—leaving what seemed to me to be a sobered, saddened crowd on the corner.

As I stood there, I realized that I felt a feeling of warmth, almost of joy, welling up and displacing the shock and horror, because I knew that I had also seen something beautiful, a showing forth of human caring. A Christmas Rose? Years and years hence, my vision will come back to this tableau, when I am in need of it.
--Barbara Smith Stoff

ISRAEL WOULD DO WELL TO TAKE A LESSON FROM THE REDWOODS

2010-03-22T16:16:00.000-07:00

ISRAEL WOULD DO WELL TO TAKE A LESSON FROM THE REDWOODS

By Barbara Smith Stoff and Sheldon Stoff

Here in the deep shade of the California Redwoods, I think about them. These Redwoods last for centuries and they grow incredibly tall and strong. Interestingly, I am told that they do not put down a taproot, but rather they develop a root system which connects and interlaces each tree with its neighbor. The Jews are like that, and because of their ever ongoing transnational history, they are, or should be, more capable than most of seeing the whole forest.

We humans are all trees in the One forest. Like it or not…our roots are forever entangled. As in the film “Avatar” those who learn to cooperate are the ones who survive.

Israeli religious right cites historical biblical bequests from God in order to establish a claim to Jerusalem as temporal and exclusive capital. Is that not a facet of ever-threatening modern fundamentalism? Religious fundamentalism, whatever the brand, offers up distortion, racism and bigotry. So! Jerusalem is no longer the mystical soul of Israel…but merely real estate?

Ariel Sharon was once quoted by William Safire in the New York Times as saying, “Through 4000 years of continuity in our ancestral homeland, Israel’s people have undergone hardship, persecution, Holocaust, terrible adversity. But the nation is stronger than others have estimated. We have overcome all our challenges. The Jewish people are indestructible.”

Historically, one can easily see such a pattern in the interconnectedness of the Jewish people. Even when they are widely dispersed throughout time and geography, they hang together. They support each other. They play the game of life with real passion. And when the game of life itself is threatened, they begin to play the game to preserve the game.

It’s easy to see that they carry social codes which can move the whole human race forward toward harmonious evolution. Possessing superb transnational skills, the Jews have seeded human society with tools of survival and growth. They have made outstanding and benevolent contributions to humanitarian advancement—across the entire disciplinary spread. At the same time, they have done proportionately less harm to humankind.

So what is it with the Israeli government? It seems obvious to me that, even in 1948, the newly formed state of Israel did not reach out with their root system to help the Palestinian people prosper. That fact also seems understandable to me if I look at their circumstances of immediate escape from annihilation, and given the circumstances of the Palestinian protest and war against their rebirth as a state presence.

The new Israel did rise to a noble response though, in the face of Palestinian opposition, in affording them legal rights, universities, and re-integration from refugee camps. No such integration was offered by surrounding states. Even now, Jordan is beginning to deny them refuge. Even now, a Marshall Plan, led by Israel and other interested states, would do a great deal to bring a spirit of peace into the region.

But recent history shows us that the Palestinians were proud, and they allowed their wounds to grow and fester in poverty, and without adequate leadership. While Israel moved forward in social accomplishment and wealth, the Palestinians began to feel more and more like second-class citizens, until their level of suffering simmered to just the right temperature for use as the petri dish for regrowing cast off spores of old hatreds within the ancient cultures of the Middle East. Some say that we create ourselves according to the ideas we hold about ourselves. Consider those old spores…Isaac was the chosen one…Ishmael was sent out. And on and on it goes.

And now the whole world is threatened. If Israel’s democracy is extinguished, that light goes out from the rest of the world too. Civilization cannot afford that loss. It’s time for Jewish Israel to recognize and honor its responsibility to the rest of the world…to recognize the importance of its democracy in the overall configuration of that area of the world. And it’s time for the other nations to reach out their roots to join with the roots of the Jews. The world is in an extremely complicated situation right now—politically, economically, morally. We know. We know. But, it’s time we all learn to sing a new tune.

And, it’s time for the Jews to sing a new tune, to let go of their internalized feeling of victimhood and own their true genius, their strength, their vision. It’s time for the Jews of the world to recognize the Palestinians. It’s time for the non-Jews in the world to let go of Anti-Semitic fears and hatreds and join them in that recognition. It’s time to recognize that we are all trees in the one forest. It’s a good time to begin. It’s a good time to create a new song, to tell a new story.

Note: Barbara Smith Stoff, poet and artist, is an Emmy Award Winner in Educational Television. Sheldon Stoff, now Professor Emeritus at Adelphi University, received his doctorate at Cornell University, is author of Universal Kabbalah: Dawn of a New Consciousness, and the recently released The Western Book of Crossing Over: Conversations with the Other Side. They are co-authors of the forthcoming Partnership Society: The Marriage of Intuition and Intellect. They live in California, specialize in Transpersonal Studies, and are currently writing a comprehensive study of the concept of the Akashic Field.

IT'S IMPORTANT TO HAVE A LIBRARY

2009-11-20T11:05:00.000-08:00

IT’S IMPORTANT TO HAVE A LIBRARY

I am a techie. Being retired from teaching, my morning schedule almost always involves joyfully checking my email, logging on to Facebook, reading various online newspapers from around the world, as well as the all-important reading of poetry and book reviews. I deeply value our digitized world wide web…as it continues weaving the evermore interlocking strands of our consciousness.

However, I do not want to lose our libraries—those evermore important houses for our cultural memorabilia.

Before his death in 2004, Wink Franklin, as president of The Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, had asked my opinion on the development of a library there at the institute—whether he should go digital or paper...I answered, "OH BOTH!!!!" (I had been participating for several weeks in a New York Times forum discussion of Chris Hedges' book about war. (War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, which had won an award from Amnesty International.) ..and because of Wink's question to me, I asked Mr. Hedges a specific question about the value of the library experience in regard to what I like to call benevolent evolution.

Hedges' response is below. He writes eloquently of the healing effect upon him of his time at the Smyth library...after the horrors of his experience as war correspondent.

Wink said back to me that he wanted to talk to me more about it...then things changed rapidly. Wink said the matter would have to wait. He did not tell me at that moment (the board gathering with consideration of James O'Dea as the new president) that he was in fact very ill. So I never really had the opportunity again to bring up the subject.

I am still thinking about libraries as I begin the task, once again, of unpacking and arranging books here in Loomis. War correspondent Chris Hedges wrote eloquently about the value of being surrounded by books and their particular 'aromas'.

From a New York Times forum, here are his words in response to a question from me about his experience within the actual walls of the Smyth Classical Library. I am struck by the role the sensual experience with actual books, and their environment, plays in his healing reintegration of self.

My question within the forum: “I wonder if Mr. Hedges could/would elaborate on his feelings for Smyth Classical Library, and its contribution to his ongoing development.”

Chris Hedges: I loved Smyth. It was my refuge from a world of violence and madness and grief. I was surrounded by volumes, many left to the university by professors long departed, which were by great thinkers and poets and historians who in another time, in another age, struggled with the issues I battled with intellectually and morally.

I loved the worn leather chairs and noisy radiators and the creaking floor boards and the smell of the books. I loved the oak tables, where I could spread out my books and think and read and write. I loved the windows where in the winter I could watch the snow fall gently on Harvard Yard. In Smyth I was freed from the cant of modernity.

In Smyth I reflected not so much on other times, but my own time. The study and understanding of classics, the long continuum of human civilization, is essential if we are going to grasp where we came from, who we are and where we are going. Without an understanding of the interconnectedness of our culture, our art, our history and our philosophy with the past we are doomed to a dangerous and frightening provincialism.
--Chris Hedges. New York Times Forum, May, 2003.

I am excited about the role our electronic media can play in preventing that “dangerous and frightening provincialism”…and for the in-depth communication opportunities afforded through such media, yet I plead that we take good care of our books too. A cherished memory is that of my grandchild, curled on the couch, under the lamp, book on pillow across the lap…reading. What can compare with the feel and aroma of an old book? Techie or not, I am a book lover too.
--Barbara Smith Stoff

LOOKING UP 'ROGUE' IN THE DICTIONARY

2009-11-18T19:57:00.000-08:00

LOOKING UP 'ROGUE' IN THE DICTIONARY

Looking up “rogue” in The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, I find: ROGUE: a dishonest, knavish person; scoundrel; a playfully mischievous person; scamp; a tramp or vagabond; a rogue elephant or other animal of similar disposition; a usually inferior organism; a plant varying markedly from the normal; to cheat; to uproot or destroy; begging vagabond; villain; trickster; swindler; cheat; quack.

It might be interesting to google fairly recent political commentary on “rogue nations” …even John Bolton at the U.N….and it might be interesting to ask why is “rogue” suddenly so much in favor as a description (even a self-description) of Sarah Palin.

RESCUING THE CIPHERS

2009-11-12T07:32:00.000-08:00

RESCUING THE CIPHERS

NOTE: Below is my emotional response in writing as I watched the news of the shooting, in 2001, at Santana High School in Santee, California...a school where I had taught Mandala Art classes. The article was published in The Christian Science Monitor. Now, in 2009, I continue to ponder the role the broadcast media plays in the proliferation of violence in human society. I know we very much need the broadcast media, and we very much need the internet. I am hoping that the ultimate balance in our collective consciousness tips in favor of benevolent evolution. I believe, even through all the current turmoil, that we are all slowly moving in that direction which I like to call benevolent evolution.
--Barbara Smith Stoff - November 12, 2009

Rescuing the ciphers.(Opinion) | Article from The Christian Science Monitor | HighBeam Research

RESCUING THE CIPHERS
BY BARBARA SMITH

Article from:The Christian Science Monitor Article date:March 9,
2001 More results for: "rescuing the ciphers"

Loneliness and alienation in our schools are not new. It's just that the symptoms are becoming more pronounced. President Bush called the shooting at Santana High School in California "a disgraceful act of cowardice." So much for compassion. I call the shooting a cry for help, a desperate attempt not to be a cipher--a faceless zero.

As I watched the morning news, I studied the face of Charles Andrew Williams as he was being led away into custody. His mouth was tightly pursed and turning down at the corners, his jaw was clenched. He looked so determined even in his hopelessness. It appears that young Williams was indeed isolated, targeted, "picked on because he is scrawny," called "freak," "dork," "nerd," bullied, humiliated. As of Wednesday, it had been reported that no family members have visited him in his cell. This child was lost long ago.

The ongoing discussion of the profile of a "school shooter" certainly accentuates the image of hopelessness. I remember studying the faces of thousands of students during my years of teaching high school English. Some of those faces, not all, reflected helplessness. I came to know in my bones their pain of blighted ideals, their passion to grow toward the light and out from under whatever heavy thing kept them down. And sometimes I was the one who felt helpless in the face of their need.

So after the news, I just sat there, remembering. And I remembered a short and true story written sometime in the early '60s by a teacher, Jean Mizer, about a boy who was so lonely he simply fell dead in the snow on the way to school one morning. The story, "Cipher in the Snow," describes the school personnel in their search to find out his identity, and the never-to-be-forgotten lesson his teacher learned during the course of the search--that to be a teacher means to really look at your students. Jean Mizer was given the Teacher of the Year Award for Idaho in 1964.

Surely by now we know that social alienation can at times produce violence toward oneself or toward others. I remembered another short story, this one by Joanne Greenberg about a young boy who wants so much to belong that he murders a man, just to present himself to his sinister coach as worthy of belonging. The story is called "Rite of Passage."

Joanne Greenberg knows whereof she writes. She endured teen years in a psychiatric facility. She recovered, and has now published 12 novels and four collections of short stories that show clearly her depth of understanding and compassion.

I feel helpless now in the face of all these school shootings, and I want to cry out too. And say what? Maybe that when keepers want to train bald eagles born in captivity to fly so they can be released into the wild, they put television sets in their cages. The baby eagles love to watch TV, and they see themselves flying and soaring just as the images on the screen are flying and soaring. And they learn to fly.

If we can use TV so creatively in the endangered-species programs, why can't we use television to encourage our children toward life Children are endangered, too. What kind of images do we put up for our young ones to emulate?

In 1914, George Bernard Shaw said: "The cinema tells its story to the illiterate as well as the literate; and it keeps its victim (if you like to call him so) not only awake, but fascinated as if by a serpent's eye. And that is why the cinema is going to produce effects that all the books in the world could never produce."

Harvard professor Robert Coles has studied children closely and has written with understanding and vision about his findings. We may be surprised at his words: "Children, if we can listen to them, will tell us of a life richer in moral values than most grown-ups can comprehend...If faced by the prospect of total annihilation, young people will try in some way to make sense of the mystery and madness of their lives."

So then what are we doing with our powerful imagemakers in the media? How do we reconcile Robert Coles' conclusions with the messages we are getting from some (not all) of our young people today? Where, and how, and why are we failing them? Failing them so much that they take such desperate means in their hands in order not to be just a cipher? I think one thing is certain. We do not listen to them enough--or soon enough.

Barbara Smith is a retired public school teacher, and at one time worked at Santana High School in Santee, Calif.

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor

HighBeam™ Research, Inc. © Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.

Words Of Wisdom From Strong Women

2009-10-19T15:14:00.001-07:00

"Take 'no' as the start of the negotiation, not the end." I am surprised by a sudden laugh at myself and a bit of happy self-recognition too...realizing that I learned this by the time I was six, on a farm in the Ozarks. Every time I ask my father if I could do something...anything...he always said "No" at first. Somehow I knew even then that if I kept explaining what any why, he would change his mind and give me permission. I am seventy-seven now. Sometimes it takes many years to truly knw who our best teachers are, or have been!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER

2009-10-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

October 17, 2009

I am re-reading a very interesting book recommended by my friend Jeff Kane. (Life as a Novice… http://www.amazon.com/Life-As-Novice-Jeffrey-Kane/dp/0913057428/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255794342&sr=1-1one)

I had to search rather deeply on the net for this book, and it is well worth the trouble it took to find it. Today, as I write, I notice that one can now find it on Amazon, so I have put the link in below. It’s The Bridge Over the River: Communications from the Life After Death of a Young Artist Who Died in World War I. Translated from the German by Joseph Wetzl. Anthroposophic Press, N.Y. ….”Published with the kind permission of the Heirs and Verlag die Kommenden”… http://www.amazon.com/Bridge-Over-River-Joseph-Wetzl/dp/0910142599/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1255795947&sr=1-2-fkmr0

Although the communications relayed took place in 1915, this book was published by The Anthroposophic Press in 1974. So much for time…or time warp…I find the time is always now…so immediate and engrossing are these conversations between the spirit of a young soldier/musician , Sigwart, and his sister, who misses him very much.

From the book:

Sigwart was intimately connected with one of his sisters during his lifetime, and it was with her that he tried to communicate immediately after his death. Finally, after almost two months striving, he was able to convince her of his identity. The sister experienced her brother’s initial attempts to reach her in the form of an inner unrest, which eventually culminated in the strong feeling that her brother Sigwart expected something of her, but she could not bear the thought of associating his memory with mediumistic or spiritistic practices. After some time, however, an inner awakening enabled her to establish contact with her brother in full consciousness.
She described the experience thus to another sister: “In the seclusion and quietness of these past days I have come to recognize what Sigwart expects of me, which is not to guide my hand and influence it externally; rather, I myself must open a door in my mind; then I shall hear the words I have to write down.” (Joseph Wetzel, p.vi)

Wetzel goes on to discuss for a bit the concept of the work of the medium and how it might differ from the kind of transmissions contained in this experience with Sigwart:
The difference between this kind of communication and those of mediums cannot be emphasized forcefully enough. This was confirmed by a message from Sigwart himself on July 28, 1916, almost a year later, which read in part: “You know well that my kind of communication can never be as perfect as a message written verbatim on paper via a medium. My kind of transmission, however, is far more sublime than that of automatic writing. For the latter any average medium has the ability, whereas here a certain degree of spiritual development is necessary, or else it would be impossible.” (ibid)

I conclude here no measurement or judgment of the level of spiritual development of the medium. It may be inferred that the medium is communicating with souls who are still earth-bound, separated by a thin veil from those still living on earth, whereas there is the implication that Sigwart is communicating from a higher spiritual dimension, so to speak.

For me the reflection is that, as our human evolution progresses, we become more porous, as it were, to the spiritual dimensions. The ‘veils’ thin as we, more and more begin to live “in the presence of the whole”—as Teilhard de Chardin was so fond of saying. The whole of consciousness is more than pragmatism might suggest.

From cosmic distances, across time and space, his words sounded timidly at first, then more distinctly, first in the heart of the sister who had been closest to him in life. He called on the souls who could receive his words in lucidity of spirit and in wakeful consciousness. (M. and L. in the Preface, ix)

So then, in Jeff Kane’s words:

There is nothing but love that binds us to those who have passed. Thoughts that come from that source only strengthen the bridge. As I read the new book, I never once felt it was about death, but about life that transcends death.

Much food for thought here…these books are not about dying, but rather they offer hints from the beyond for understanding at a deeper and broader level…this life on earth.

--Barbara Smith Stoff
www.thesoulwillout.blogspot.com

RESPONDING TO HUFFINGTON POST'S "GOOGLE IS GREAT FOR CLASSIC BOOKS"

2009-10-06T14:48:00.000-07:00

Responding to Huffington Post- GOOGLE IS GREAT FOR CLASSIC BOOKS

Today at 10:00am |
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/google-is-great-for-class_n_308777.html#comments

This is a topic front and center with me right now...more so everyday as I begin to read the discussions of the changing nature of online and print journalism...nytimes last sunday for instance... (Digital Domain - Will Piracy Become a Problem for E-Books? - NYTimes.com)...which is one of many deeply reflective articles I have seen lately...all this while I am on a personal learning curve with 'how to' on the web. (Also see "Why I Blog" in The Atlantic Monthly.)

Below (from my blog) is a story about a google search I did because our editor wanted a reference for a poem fragment...below is an excerpt from a book we recently published (The Western Book of Crossing Over: Conversations with the Other Side)..as I described this experience within the body of the book. Actually, the wonderful search experience I had through Google has been rather a 'life-changing event for me!

I am continuing to study this present phenomenon in publishing...it's as if I am seeing a mobius strip shimmering in the mind-currents..

http://drawingfromwithin.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html

GOOGLE AND THE AKASHIC

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUS422108559020090706

"Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture, and knowledge that's often difficult to discover." I think we should be thankful to Google and Eric Schmidt, and not pile up the whole legal system on his Monday morning breakfast plate.

Upon reading the above article "Google's Dark Day"...I just want to say that I appreciate what Google is doing with rare books. I actually see this effort as a way of making accessible the "akashic" if you will. Here is a story which illustrates what I mean, and how Google can work for us.

This story is from our recent work with "The Western Book of Crossing Over...." ...I will quote from pages 82-83 …Lorraine has transmitted from the other side the following fragment of a poem. Sheldon has written it down exactly as it was given to him and included it in his writing of the book. The fragment:

For see, there nothing is in all the world

But only love worth any strife or song or tear.

Ask me not then to sing or fashion songs

Other than this, my song of love to thee.

--From the Arabic, "The Camel Rider"

"As a brief aside, we share the following: When the copy editor set us searching for a source for this poem fragment, we were at first dismayed and then amazed at what we [Sheldon and Barbara] uncovered. Sheldon said, "Where to look? I have never heard of this poem, nor of any reference to it. This just came from Lorraine, and I wrote it down."

After I [Barbara] spent a couple of hours looking for the proverbial needle in that haystack we call the World Wide Web of information now stored in cyberspace, I did find the poem from which the lines are taken. I found By Thy Light I Live: The Poetry of Wilfrid Blunt, selected and arranged by W.E. Henley and George Wyndham. It was published in London by William Heinemann in 1898, and printed by Ballantyne, Hanson& Co. of London and Edinburgh. The lines are found on page 273, taken from the last stanza of "The Camel Rider." Looking further, I discovered that Wilfrid S. Blunt was born in 1840 and died in 1922. All this certainly leaves me with some deep thoughts about the memory bank in the Akashic Field.

It is not only remarkable that Sheldon was able to record this from Lorraine's transmission, but also that I was able to locate the source. This book is digitized by Google from its resting place in the Library of the University of Michigan. I found the Google commentary rather lovely and poetic in itself, and worthy of reproduction here:

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary from country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture, and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations, and other marginal"ia present in the original volume will appear in this file—a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you. Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. –Google

"Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture, and knowledge that's often difficult to discover." I think we should be thankful to Google, and not pile up the whole legal system on his Monday morning breakfast plate.
--BSS

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/google-is-great-for-class_n_308777.html

See Global Groups discussion on Facebook...THE WESTERN BOOK OF CROSSING OVER:CONVERSATIONS WITH THE OTHER SIDE

THE JUDGMENT OF THE BIRDS

2009-09-13T13:40:00.000-07:00

Monday, June 22, 2009

The Judgment of the Birds

As I watch the news from Iran and reflect upon the role Twitter is playing in the shaping of world events, I remember the news images of the hotel bombing in India last fall...the images of flocks of birds flying back and forth in front of the cameras...the bombed hotel in the background. It was reported that Twitter posts played the first alert role regarding that tragedy too. And I am remembering another story about birds which comes to us from the journals of that keen observer and faithful chronicler of our long evolutionary journey, Loren Eiseley, as he wrote in his most poignant The Immense Journey about the songbirds' protest in the face of imminent danger. He called it "the judgment of the birds"...

I have said that I saw a judgment upon life, and that it was not passed by men. Those who stare at birds in cages or who test minds by their closeness to our own may not care for it. It comes from far away out of my past, in a place of pouring waters and green leaves. I shall never see an episode like it again if I live to be a hundred, nor do I think that one man in a million has ever seen it, because man is an intruder into such silences. The light must be right, and the observer must remain unseen. No Man sets up such an experiment. What he sees, he sees by chance.

You may put it that I had come over a mountain, that I had slogged through fern and pine needles for half a long day, and that on the edge of a little glade with one long, crooked branch extending across it, I had sat down to rest with my back against a stump. Through accident I was concealed from the glade, although I could see into it perfectly.

The sun was warm there, and the murmurs of forest life blurred softly away into my sleep. When I awoke, dimly aware of some commotion and outcry in the clearing, the light was slanting down through the pines in such a way that the glade was lit like some vast cathedral. I could see the dust motes of wood pollen in the long shaft of light, and there on the extended branch sat an enormous raven with a red and squirming nestling in his beak.

The sound that awoke me was the outraged cries of the nestling's parents, who flew helplessly in circles about the clearing. The sleek black monster was indifferent to them. He gulped, whetted his beak on the dead branch a moment and sat still. Up to that point the little tragedy had followed the usual pattern. But suddenly, out of all that area of woodland, a soft sound of complaint began to rise. Into the glade fluttered small birds of half a dozen varieties, drawn by the anguished outcries of the tiny parents.

No one dared to attack the raven. But they cried there in some instinctive common misery, the bereaved and the unbereaved. The glade filled with their soft rustling and their cries. They fluttered as though to point their wings at the murderer. There was a dim intangible ethic he had violated, that they knew. He was a bird of death.

And he, the murderer, the black bird at the heart of life, sat on there, glistening in the common light, formidable, unmoving, unperturbed, untouchable.

The sighing died. It was then that I saw the judgment. It was the judgment of life against death. I will never see it again so forcefully presented. I will never hear it again in notes so tragically prolonged. For in the midst of protest, they forgot the violence. There, in that clearing, the crystal note of a song sparrow lifted hesitantly in the hush. And finally, after painfully fluttering, another took the song, and then another the song passing from one bird to another, doubtfully at first, as though some evil thing were being slowly forgotten. Til suddenly they took heart and sang from many throats joyously together as birds are known to sing. They sang because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful. They sang under the brooding shadow of the raven. In simple truth they had forgotten the raven, for they were the singers of life, and not of death. (Loren Eiseley in The Immense Journey, 1946)

Today, under brooding shadow and countering any prediction of doom, one voice after another lifts to remind us that a new world is being built within the hearts of people all over the world. These singers of life, while listening to the lovely promptings from the deep within, and laboring to prove the validity of their cries through the study of sciences, systems theories, and a profound spiritual awakening, are swelling in number as the chorus begins to resound throughout. With such a gathering of voices, if, as many physicists say, the world is truly built on sound, then a new and better world is about to be born. It is our hope that our efforts here will blend into the swelling chorus of those "singers of life."

Barbara Smith Stoff

GOOGLE AND THE AKASHIC

2009-09-13T12:23:00.000-07:00

GOOGLE AND THE AKASHIC

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUS422108559020090706

“Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture, and knowledge that’s often difficult to discover.” I think we should be thankful to Google and Eric Schmidt, and not pile up the whole legal system on his Monday morning breakfast plate.

Upon reading the above article "Google's Dark Day"...I just want to say that I appreciate what Google is doing with rare books. I actually see this effort as a way of making accessible the "akashic" if you will. Here is a story which illustrates what I mean, and how Google can work for us.

This story is from our recent work with "The Western Book of Crossing Over...." ...I will quote from pages 82-83 …Lorraine has transmitted from the other side the following fragment of a poem. Sheldon has written it down exactly as it was given to him and included it in his writing of the book. The fragment:

For see, there nothing is in all the world
But only love worth any strife or song or tear.
Ask me not then to sing or fashion songs
Other than this, my song of love to thee.
--From the Arabic, “The Camel Rider”

"As a brief aside, we share the following: When the copy editor set us searching for a source for this poem fragment, we were at first dismayed and then amazed at what we [Sheldon and Barbara] uncovered. Sheldon said, “Where to look? I have never heard of this poem, nor of any reference to it. This just came from Lorraine, and I wrote it down.”

After I [Barbara] spent a couple of hours looking for the proverbial needle in that haystack we call the World Wide Web of information now stored in cyberspace, I did find the poem from which the lines are taken. I found By Thy Light I Live: The Poetry of Wilfrid Blunt, selected and arranged by W.E. Henley and George Wyndham. It was published in London by William Heinemann in 1898, and printed by Ballantyne, Hanson& Co. of London and Edinburgh. The lines are found on page 273, taken from the last stanza of “The Camel Rider.” Looking further, I discovered that Wilfrid S. Blunt was born in 1840 and died in 1922. All this certainly leaves me with some deep thoughts about the memory bank in the Akashic Field.

It is not only remarkable that Sheldon was able to record this from Lorraine’s transmission, but also that I was able to locate the source. This book is digitized by Google from its resting place in the Library of the University of Michigan. I found the Google commentary rather lovely and poetic in itself, and worthy of reproduction here:

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world’s books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary from country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture, and knowledge that’s often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations, and other marginal”ia present in the original volume will appear in this file—a reminder of this book’s long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and to make it universally accessible and useful. –Google

“Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture, and knowledge that’s often difficult to discover.” I think we should be thankful to Google, and not pile up the whole legal system on his Monday morning breakfast plate.
--Barbara Smith Stoff

Posted by Boie at 10:04 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: GOOGLE AND THE AKASHIC
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Reflections in the Pond

ICARUS REMEMBERED

2009-09-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

ICARUS REMEMBERED
By Barbara Smith Stoff

It’s September 11th again, and I look at images of the memorial park with the benches, each one cantilevered over water. To me, those benches look like the wings of Icarus downed—ever so many wings reminding us of earthly flights suddenly cut short in the splintered morning of what started out as just another ordinary day.

I am reminded of Brueghel’s painting, "Landscape with the fall of Icarus" where only the white clad legs of Icarus can be seen sticking up from the water, if one looks closely. Those wings, crafted from imagination, inspiration and courage, have not served.

Auden's poem "Musee Des Beaux Arts," describes that painting...pointing out how the world turns away from disaster and private suffering and moves on. In another poem about that same painting, this one by Charles F. Madden, "The Fall of Icarus," we read “none has seen the silent fall of Icarus/ through the riotous wind and the shadows of the coming evening light/nor do they hear his sigh, both of pity and delight/of his remembered waxed and winged flight.”

Musee des Beaux Arts
W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
1940

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landscape_with_the_Fall_of_Icarus

[Landscape with the Fall of Icarus Pieter Breughel c. 1558; Oil on canvas, mounted on wood, 73.5 x 112 cm; Musees royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels]

As I gaze now across the landscape of benches, it is comforting to see those ethereal feathers of hope made concrete, anchored in earth, yet hovering as if in flight over the waters…the soul flies on, but leaves a reminder for us.

And we have not turned away. We remember in public the private sufferings. With these wings we remember and we may pray, as individuals, for our collective humanity to continue. We may pray as with James Joyce, as he stands on the shore contemplating his own flight over the waters toward maturity:

"Amen. So be it. Welcome, O Life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race…..Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead."

Each of us privately forges some contribution to all life. Perhaps in those concrete wings, something of the essence of each departed soul has been distilled and offers back, for all to see, a symbol of hope for humankind--a more benevolent evolution.
--Barbara Smith Stoff

COMMUNITY AT THE TOWN HALL MEETING

2009-09-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

By Sheldon Stoff and Barbara Smith Stoff

We have attended a “town hall” meeting. It was a long evening. There was much noise and emotion, seemingly no understanding, and little reasoning. Positions seemed to have been firmly taken even before anyone had spoken. We had innocently thought that there would be an honorable presentation of thoughts and facts and that this meeting would offer an opportunity for deeper understanding of the healthcare reform issues. This was not to be. If only for our own self-therapy, we are writing about our thoughts about this experience, while still recovering from a kind of sick feeling.

There were three wonderful speakers...don't know who they were. One was a man who stood up to share with us the reading he had been doing of the actual bill. The crowd laughed at him, and the congressman interrupted him to call for a sudden expression of yays and nays from the entire assembly. Exactly what they were yaying and naying about, I was not sure. Once the shouting subsided, the man was allowed to continue. At this point I began to feel some anger that this man, who had attempted to do his homework and become informed, was laughed at and basically prevented from speaking. Another was a man who brought a five year old girl with him "to see how democracy works"...He spoke of our need to learn to care for each other. And then there was a woman who spoke movingly of her feelings in response to the irrational fear and selfishness stirring in the crowd. Other than that...the atmosphere was just plain toxic and irrational. We have tried to write something of value to counterbalance...a feather in the wind.

The Republican congressman who had called for this town hall meeting presented his position, but did not present “the other side of the argument” for rebuttal or even discussion. There were posters, signs and slogans, and even loud cat-calls by some attendees. Those supporting President Obama were in the minority, and seemed more reasonable in their behavior. Those siding with the congressman seemed absolutely sure of themselves, and their opinions and were very passionate in their spontaneous vocalizing. Very few seemed to take notice of the realities, or points of view, of the others. There was no meeting of minds, no reconciliation, no understanding—just a hardening of positions. It was an experience in futility.

That night both of us had a very restless sleep. Even our dreams seemed to be invaded by all those wildly gyrating placards… “What would Jesus do?” … “No socialized medicine.” …”Healthcare is a right.”… “Don’t take away my freedom!” Often, in our meditations, as we ask for clarity, our inner guidance somehow offers an answer. This morning, after some time, it came:
“You are responsible to your brothers and sisters. Let that responsibility guide you on this path.”
So, for us, this is the answer. This is a moral responsibility, a mutual and communal responsibility. We need to join quietly together, as a nation, to forge a new path toward Healthcare Reform. It must meet the test of responsibility to our brothers and sisters. We emphasize responsibility to…Responsibility includes responsiveness to our brothers and sisters. There is a difference between responsibility for and responsibility to. There is a difference between giving the man the proverbial fish and the proverbial teaching him how to fish.

It seems that the direction of the looked-for solution to the problem is guided by the basic assumption about the nature of our human society. One thought, or assumption, is that it’s everyone for himself or herself. Another thought, or assumption, is that it’s “we’re all in this together.” Both assessments say something about the basic belief about what is possible for humankind, and whether we as individual participants have some say in the direction humankind takes for the future. Together, let us create a more benevolent path.

SUGGESTED READING:

Robert Reich's blog on the subject of these 'discussions'....
www.robertreich.blogspot.com

Wendell Potter | Against Wall Street's Health Care Takeover
http://www.truthout.org/090109T?n
Wendell Potter, Common Dreams: "I would like to begin by apologizing to all of you for the role I played 15 years ago in cheating you out of a reformed health care system. Had it not been for greedy insurance companies and other special interests, and their army of lobbyists and spin-doctors like I used to be, we wouldn't be here today."

Editor’s Note: Now he established the International Center for Studies in Dialogue. He also received the Outstanding Educator of America Award in 1974. He is author of The Two Way Street, The Human Encounter, The Pumpkin Quest, Universal Kabbalah: Dawn of a New Consciousness, and the newly released The Western Book of Crossing Over: Conversations with the Other Side. As well, he is co-author, with Barbara Smith Stoff, of the forthcoming Partnership Community: Listen to the Gathering Voices. Barbara Smith Stoff, teacher, painter and poet, Professor Emeritus at Adelphi University, Sheldon Stoff taught a course on the philosophy of Martin Buber while he was studying for his doctorate at Cornell University. During in his long career as an educator and spokesperson for Humanistic Education, with inspiration from Dr. Buber, is producer of Emmy Award winning “Poems of Wonder and Magic.”