A Tale of Grace

posted by Kamala on Oct 25

Dearest Friends and Family,
Things are snowballing so fast that until Link is back from the UNFCC COP-15, we are going to use this site, and another site: Earth Ethics.org to assist in keeping those who care for us, our beloveds, or are interested in our thoughts, informed. We hold these ideas to be extremely relevant and important, and pray that they will assist in the many efforts leading to the birthing of a new world consciousness. Less than a drop in the bucket, we are nonetheless very happy to be able to do the little that we can, even if its mostly pounding type keys and dealing with the trash we generate responsibly. It is Amma’s great Grace to us, we have no doubt, and, Anni’s, it is clear..the grace of the Immaculate Heart.

This site will remain more personal. Earthethics.org site is a heart child that has been forming for a few years. When Anni was here, it was an idea. After she left, we started the site in cyberspace, with a boughten server. Nothing really happened on it, as other things were overwhelming us. Now, it is essential to the service of the youth delegation, in that Link is seeking to serve the team as a whole by offering an ethical perspective as well as several other efforts, as the human consciousness slowly turns to consensus on some very basic issues.
Some of you may have heard of ClimateJusticeFast.com In response to this, on Earth Ethics.org, we have put up a chapter from our as yet unprinted book: Earth Ethics of M.K. Gandhi with Teachings of Holy Mother Amma: an introduction. This chapter is called The Fast, and is about why Gandhi used the Fast and how he did it. He stressed that a certain atmosphere is necessary for the use of the Fast. He called it a ‘terrible weapon’ in the Satygraha aresenal, and that it was ‘a whip administered to lethargic Love.’ For those who are interested in his thinking on this subject, it is there to see and study. I also welcome your comments on it. I am not sure where I stand on the Climate Justice Fast, we have to learn more about it. Definitely, the Fast is a weapon of the Great Mother or awakened Universal Motherhood. Recently, Amma even told us that she would take the Fast until we told her somethings….the Fast is self-sacrifice before the altar of Truth. The Fast demands Truth to manifest itself.
Yesterday, Saturday, Oct. 24, was World Climate Day, and 350.org called all to make it a day of World Climate Action. For those who don’t know, 350 refers to the 1990 level of 350 parts of carbon per million in the atmosphere. Now we are close to 390, if not more. The Earth is massively hot, etc., north pole cap is gone, glaciers gone and going, etc., etc….350.org wants to raise planetary awareness to bring the carbon levels down to the 1990 levels. Venuju, one of the IYCN team members, undertook a bicycle yatra to spread awareness of IYCN and 350.org and his first stop was here, in Amritapuri, yesterday, the World Climate Action Day. Earlier in the Day, Aparna, Anni’s childhood friend here in the ashram, now back from 3 years in the US, and Yaikhomba, a very rare and special person from Manipur, helped to create and paint the 350 cloth banner. Due to unavoidable delays and events, what was initially a 10 member cycle team, became 6. President Nasheed of the 1600 island nation of the Maldives had his consulate in India send two female participants. After much efforts at finding suitable cycle, etc, these two dropped out of their own accord, and the four remaining participants ( one in an ambulance behind ) set off. They then canceled the ambulance, reducing themselves to three. The traffic from Thriruvanathapuram to Amritapuri was hot and hellish as you can imagine.
When they hadn’t yet neared the ashram by dark, I insisted that they stop biking, and rent a rickshaw-pick up. They didn’t have lights on their bikes, and I was very worried they would get hit by cars and trucks that couldn’t see them. I had to be adamant. Thankfully, it worked, children still respect elders in India, and they finally got here safe and sound by 9 PM. We took photos, announced what they were doing, what 350.org was to the dwindled and tired resident population in the Western Canteen area, had people sign the ’seal the deal’ cloth banner, (which will be taken to Copenhagen to present to world leaders along with others from every country- see photos). After a remanental dinner, we gathered in a circle and talked. Arun and Varun, the twins, have started an organization called Green Dreams, and they had many ideas for education, media, plastics, India’s role, etc. It was fascinating and exciting to all who could participate. We were so enthused, we kept on going till past 12 AM. Then, they got a car to Oachira, where Arun and Varun live, and headed on their way to finish the Yatra.
In a multitudinous blessing, a rare flowering plant, the Nishagandi, that Yaikhomba had prayed to bloom before he leaves the ashram in a few days, had 10 awesome blossoms. This plant has a most beautiful fragrance, and only comes into full bloom at midnight sharp. See photos of both Yaikhomba, a veritible little Luther Burbank, and the nishagandi.
This morning, we got this email from the organizers at 350.org:

The email:

Friends,
I can hardly believe my eyes.
16 hours ago, citizens in New Zealand gathered before dawn next to a wind turbine on a mountaintop. As local elders said prayers to bless the global event, banners and signs were held high to to greet the planet’s first rays of sunlight on this most incredible of days.

As the sun continues across the planet we’ve been receiving photos and video of rallies in Ethiopia, bike rides in Wellington, SCUBA divers in Australia, organizers planting 350 trees in Thailand, hundreds of students marching in India and Nepal and Mongolia. And we’re getting reports from 350.org offices around the world that the phones are ringing off the hook with calls from the media who want to cover the story.
The day is just beginning and already it’s larger, more powerful, and so much more beautiful than I ever could have imagined. I’ve been a writer my entire life and yet words truly cannot describe what you have accomplished already. To truly grasp today, please stay tuned to our website as more and more photos come in from across the planet, and especially our evolving photo slideshow.
And the best news of all? The day has just begun!
Later in the day we got this:
…. spend a few minutes watching the pictures. We need you to feel the strength of this movement, and to see how creative and committed this movement is, all across the planet. 
It was so sweet to watch the day move around the globe, with thousands upon thousands of pictures appearing, sometimes a dozen a minute! There were photos of climbers high on the glaciers of Switzerland holding 350 banners, of bicycle parades from Copenhagen to San Francisco, of organizers in Papua New Guinea beating their church gong 350 times while churches in Barcelona rang their bells 350 times. Photos of activists protesting coal plants and celebrating wind farms, of students in 350 shirts repairing their flooded homes in Manila, and of thousands of people marching in the streets of Bogota and Kathmandu. Photos of people from different races and classes, religions and nationalities, coming together around a simple and powerful number to save our planet. Thousands took to the streets in Addis Ababa and Mexico City; we had huge parades in places like Togo and Seattle.
You were by far the biggest news story on Google, on CNN, on the front pages of newspapers around the planet.  And these pictures were seen around the world, in newspapers from Beijing to Boston, on TV stations from New Delhi to New York, and on blogs, social networks, and websites across the internet.

Together, we’ve shown the world that a global climate movement is possible and set a bold new agenda for the upcoming United Nations Climate Meetings in Copenhagen this December. The 350 target is the new bottom line for climate action and world leaders must now meet that target.

We thought we would be tired after many sleepless nights planning this day, but in fact we’re more energized than ever. We’re preparing to deliver the photos and messages from your events to every national delegation to the United Nations on Monday, and planning to hand the photos to high-level ministers at upcoming climate negotiations in Barcelona and Copenhagen. So if you haven’t uploaded your best pictures from the event yet, please do so right away by sending us an e-mail to photos@350.org with your photos attached, with your City, Country as the subject and the body as the action description.

Thank you more than we can possibly say. We’ll (of course) be asking you to do lots more in the weeks ahead — but today, lean back, relax, look through pictures at 350.org, and savor your accomplishment. You were part of what many journalists called “the most widespread day of political action the world has ever seen.”
Together with millions around the world, you made a real difference already — get ready to make much more in the days, weeks and months to come.
 
With hope,

Bill McKibben and the whole 350.org Team

350 and More

We were utterly thrilled that Amritapuri got to be a part of this incredible international event, even though we had very little time or assistance in getting the word out. Imagine! The biggest event in human history! Millions from all over the planet! This just shows us, how ready we all are to take the next steps! Let us pray that we all turn to ethics, and awaken to our own ethical instincts to guide those steps,

Loving you,
Aunty Kamala, Anni and Link

posted by Kamala on Oct 22

Dearest Friends and Family,
Link and I are working against the clock before he has to go to Copenhagen in December for the United Nations FCCC COP-15. What follows is a letter we have worked on to send out to all leaders, not only Indian, and to all newspapers and other forms of media. We need your help to get this letter into the Press in your area, in your country….Please copy it in its entirety, and let us know what comes of your efforts! We will post all successes, as well as send them on to the media team for the IYCN ( see letter below).

Dear Editor,
The following is an open letter to our leaders on behalf of the Youth of India. I am a member of the Indian Youth Delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is meeting in December in Copenhagen, Denmark.

I request you to kindly put this in the Editorial page, or in the Op-Ed section.
Thank you, Linkesh Diwan.
Address: D-607, M.A. Math
Amritapuri P.O.
Kollam D.T., 690 525, Kerala INDIA

The Letter:

Dear Leader,

Namaste. We are the Indian Youth Delegation representing the concerns of Indian Youth and many more to the United Nations COP-15 in December. Our group, selected from all over India by the Indian Youth Climate Network consists of a 20 member team. We come to you representing the youth and concerns of over 1.3 billion people in our country, 35% of whom are under age 15, and well over 500,000,000 are under 30.

We feel that India can lead the planet, setting an international example, as She simultaneously pursues meaningful development.

To this end, as the youth and for the unborn who are forced to live with the economic and environmental decisions that are made at Copenhagen in December, and by individuals every day, we would like to present our urgent concerns to you for presentation to the world community at the COP-15.

1. Leader-ji, our Mother India is literally covered in plastic wastes from Himachal, Arunachal and Kashmir to Kanya Kumari; from head to toe. Even in places where the use of disposable plastic bags at the check-out counter is banned, as in Himachal, the use of disposable plastic in nearly every facet of consumer products means an astronomical amount of waste. Plastic breaks down into toxic molecules whose chemical effects are devastating the human body and have been found everywhere, even in mother’s breast milk throughout the planet. 40% of all imported oil is used to make toxic plastic.

We want to see India leading the world in a strict policy preventing the use and production of disposable plastics.

We encourage you to demand this simple right for future generations, the right not to live in and with the plastic waste created by the last 6 generations; we encourage you to make a call for a national and planetary moratorium on disposable plastic usage.

2. Leader-ji, the lungs of the Earth are found in Her Trees and Forests. We want to see India leading the planet in halting deforestation and creating jobs in reforestation. Without healthy lungs, clean water, soils and clean air cannot take place or be found on the planet.

We encourage you to demand this right of all future generations to have the clean air and water that Nature intended for us, by calling for a national and planetary moratorium of any and all deforestation of existent forests and promoting reforestation and jobs in forest care and management.

3. Leader-ji, we need education that will enable us to meaningfully live in an over-populated world with tremendous human suffering at our doorsteps. We need education that will teach us how to clean up the planet, how to create and use technology that is applicable to our inheritance: the travesty of the natural creation and natural systems. We want to see India leading the world in using Her skilled scientists, Her engineers applying their education to find means to solve the toxic mess our planet is in. At the same time, out of the whole planet, our India has a unique culture, born of ethical thought and living. We do not see any other country having the high level of ethical human philosophy that India espouses.

We encourage you to call for education that takes these two facets, of living in our environmentally stressed world, and of making the right decisions for the good of all, no matter how difficult, into one curriculum.

4. Leader-ji, India has demonstrated that She has the capacity to engage in massive cooperation with righteous action. We want to see India leading the world in a one day a week moratorium on all polluting vehicles and industries, until industry and political agreements are able to bring down carbon emissions to pre-1960 levels or less.

We encourage you to call for our country and all countries to agree to participate in this world-wide moratorium on air pollution one blessed day a week.

5.Leader-ji, we want to see India’s development guided by ethics, Earth ethics. We want industry that takes into account environmental and ecological sustainability, human necessity and justification. The earth is running out of ‘raw resources’ to produce items to feed a consumer based mentality and media. Please demand the use of the Precautionary Principle of Development to guide India.

We encourage you to call for industrial development and production that is based upon ecological realities and actual need, not individual greed.

6. Leader-ji, we want adults to take control of media to ensure that it promotes ethical values, not immoral ones. Values that will promote and encourage ecologically ethical and sustainable life and human relations. Adults feel it is their right to enjoy immoral values, and currently thrust them into our faces against our will, by newspapers, billboards, movies, television and advertisements. Our childhoods are short, we want to make the best use of them to gain noble character qualities to help us cope and lead us through life. We demand our right not to be exposed to their thinking unless and until we seek it of our own.

7. Leader-ji, India does not need to be in the tragic mess She is in, with 50% of the world’s malnourished, the hungry and the poor. India has the resources herself to change things, the greatest resource is each and every Indian.

Leader-ji, without the participation of each individual, the destruction going on in the planet cannot be stopped. We urge you to demand democratic decision making power for all citizens beginning at the community level. We want to see our families and communities having power and control over the environments we are in and resources to create, and make political and economic decisions that effect us. We can do this through an ever widening circle of participatory democracy beginning at the level of neighbourhood parliaments.

Leader-ji, these are the calls for action by India’s Youth today for ourselves and the unborn for generations to come. We ask you to carry our concerns into every activity that your position causes you to undertake. Please, help us to help the Earth, and restore the balance of Nature through intelligent and sane decisions, respect for one another and humane ethics.

Linkesh Diwan,
Indian Youth Delegate to the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
in Copenhagen, Denmark, 7-18 December 2009.

www.iycn.in/aoc

Tomorrow Link gives a talk at a local university. As a team member he has tremendous responsibilities, not the least is raising funds for the whole team to get to Copenhagen. Another IYCN member has begun a well-publicized ‘green ride’ for one month, from Trivandrum throughout India. Link’s university, Amrita Vishwa Vidya Peetham is hosting the cyclists on Saturday night.
President Nasheed, of the Maldives, a 1600 island country that is 1 meter above sea level, is a remarkable man, who used Gandhi’s ideals to change the government of country into a democratic one. In full support of IYCN, he is sending his personal secretary and attache to be part of the month long cycle run.
I am trying to be a useful secretary, as the work is really full-on, plus his college, exams coming, etc.
To this end, we want to open Anni’s Care Fund for your donations to help the Indian Youth Climate Network team of 20 souls get to Copenhagen. The estimated budget for each team member, including air-fare and ground expenses for 3 weeks of hectic activities is approximately $2200 per person.
As you all may recall, we had donated all the funds in Anni’s Care Fund to Amma in 2008 for scholarships for children in need. Since then, the account has had no activity.
We feel that this effort to influence the directions that the planet is going, is also part of Anni’s Care, particularly now, as she told me she is ‘that which communicates in the cell and between the cells’.
Hence we ask for your generous support and assistance in getting the team off the ground here. All money gathered in this effort before December 1, will be given to the IYCN coordinator for the team as a whole.
Thanking You,
Onward! Through the Fog! Let us all join hands and make it happen! For these Youth, for positive ethical ideals, for India, for the Planet! For us all!
Loving you,
Aunty Kamala

posted by Kamala on Oct 12

Dearest Friends and Family,
This is the Obituary that we have made for Presh. This is an extremely hard task, don’t wish it on anyone. How can any of us describe the fullness of a life? I have not yet got Anni’s done:

Obituary for G. Indira Willey

It is with great sorrow that we announce the passing of our remarkable mother, G. Indira C. Willey on September 26, 2009, at home in Columbia, MD where she had resided for the last 12 years.
Indira, a naturalized US citizen, was born in 1921 in a rural village, Tabaquite, in Trinidad, WI. The example of her life, showed a fearless person, unafraid to take chances and break limitations and barriers in her own mind and conditioning and human society. Her parents were initially indentured labourers, who had left India in the early 20th century to work for British colonial expansionism on plantations and road making.

Possessing a brilliant and exceedingly broad mind, Indira received scholarships to the prestigious Naparima Girls High School, and then to universities in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada, pursuing a medical doctor degree, which was aborted. She later attended Columbia University, NY where she earned a Master’s degree in Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat medicine, becoming a Registered Nurse.
She met her husband, the late Dr. C. Francis Willey on a tour of the Hampton Institute, at that time one of the first institutions of higher learning for African Americans in pre-civil-rights USA. Dr. Willey was then part of a professional exchange program of Professors from northern white colleges and universities to ‘coloured’ institutions.

Never forgetting her humble roots, she returned to Trinidad after her studies and built a house for her widowed mother, and started a school for economically disadvantaged children, imparting practical skills and training, home science, and tailoring, among other subjects.

She leaves her son, Jefferson Mohandas Willey, daughter, P. Kamala Willey, and grandson, Linkesh A. Diwan. The Willey’s resided in Chaplin CT for nearly 30 years. At the time of their cross-cultural marriage, Indira was the only Indian woman in the state of Connecticut. Their marriage broke new barriers in human consciousness in the society around them.

Indira served for several years as the Director of Nursing at the Windham Community Memorial Hospital, teaching nursing, and later continued her post-graduate studies, branching into education and psychology. She worked for several years as a guidance counselor in Connecticut schools, and the last 15 years of her working career, at the Alexander Henderson School, in the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Croix.

At the age of 72, she earned a doctorate from the University of Miami, at age 72, possibly the oldest female person on the planet to do so.

These external laurels, were in addition to the responsibilities and duties of being a wife, mother, grandmother, householder, along with numerous civic engagements and activities. She was artistic, skilled in pottery, ceramics, and loved the world of classical music as well,

Acutely aware of her responsibility as a representative of India, Indian culture, as well as Indians from Trinidad and Indians in diaspora to the minds of white society in the US, at a time when people were far less globalized, she advocated internationalism, gender equality, civil rights, environmental protection, and was active in community cultural events for and about India.

A poet as well, she leaves us this beautiful poem, that speaks to rural scenes in India as well as the Caribbean, written a few days before the birth of her late grand-daughter, Anupama M. Diwan (1988-2007).

O Wind

Let the winds blow
so soft all around us
While the bougainvillea blooms and sways
And the Egret sits high on the cow’s spine!

I think of Thee, everywhere:
Among the Trees
Over and under the Sun
Among the Grass
Glittering in the tropic Moonlight

So wondrous and bounteous
Is our world of Thee and me!

G. Indira Willey
on Friday, 8 April, 1988
at the Buccaneer Hotel,
ST. CROIX

Loving You,
Kamala, Anni and Link