I was raised in an Anglican family. My parents loved the rituals, ceremonies and prayers of that expression of Christianity. So, in my home we had a small altar, said formal prayers throughout the day, and went to church regularly. My parents always stressed that God came first and everything else fell into place from that center point of divinity. Even though I have since stepped out of the outer structure of that faith, I find profound meaning in the hidden and universal symbolism of my religious upbringing.   Read more...

An inscribed stone above the grave where R. Buckmister (Bucky) Fuller and his wife are buried reads "Call Me Trim Tab, Bucky." Fuller, the inventor and visionary, noticed as a small child that a big ship has a small rudder within its larger rudder. It's called a trim tab, and its job is to turn the large rudder so that the large one can turn the huge ship. Bucky dedicated his life to being a trim tab - someone who would do small things that in turn could help improve society.   Read more...

“Peace—the word evokes the simplest and most cherished dream of humanity. Peace is, and has always been, the ultimate human aspiration. And yet our history overwhelmingly shows that while we speak incessantly of peace, our actions tell a very different story.”

Javier Pérez de Cuéllar is a Peruvian diplomat who served as the fifth Secretary-General of the United Nations. The words above are his. I agree with him. I truly believe that peace is the most cherished dream of humanity. I also believe that we are tired of dreaming of peace. Given the state of our world today, we’re not sure peace is reachable let alone actionable.   Read more...

I think highly of Ode, and have subscribed to it for several of my friends and family as well as myself. There are many brilliant ideas in Ode stories, often coupled with a feeling of optimism, which I share. While I appreciate these individual successes, alone they are not enough to prevent calamities such as international pandemics and global warming. When 1.4 million people are born into, or migrate into, urban slums each week, two thirds of humanity, 4 billion people, live off of less than four dollars a day, and the polar ice caps are rapidly melting, buying a Prius or, meditating, or supporting a new candidate is not enough. We need a global plan, a plan for humanity, to address the global problems that confront us.   Read more...

Rural Japan is always looking for ways to survive. The young are flocking to cities, leaving people in their 70’s or older to manage the fields. Plus government subsidies are down and prices are going up, so making ends meet is tough. Many areas, though, are coming up with some ingenious ways to keep afloat. In one place near where I live, for example, the farmers have given themselves an economic injection via mild tourism. They have opened their fields of sunflowers for city-ites to enjoy.   Read more...

I had a rough night last night. It happens sometimes. What it meant was that I slept in this lovely summer Sunday morning. Part of the previous evening I’d spent reading the new Ode. The words of my title are the title of a lovely article about Sesame Street and teaching peace to Middle Eastern children (see Exchange article).

Then I thought, as I lay half in and half out of sleep, what if we all could live on Peace Street? What would Peace Street look like to you? Better, what would it sound like?   Read more...

A conversation hosted by Social Edge in July (www.socialedge.org/discussions/philanthropy/bringing-the-world-home) asked the questions:

• How has walking across differences made you more open to addressing the world's problems?
• Why is international experience such a motivating factor in working towards global change?

My first longer stay abroad was directly after high school graduation at the age of 19. I left high school with report comments such as “Frauke will never take over the lead in English conversations” and grades that could have been one grade better, if I had participated in class discussions. Staying in the US for a year taught me to be independent and self-confident.

I knew it would be a good day when I woke up and noticed the morning glories had taken over my bicycle wheel. They had managed to do that in just one night. Those teeny greedy hands grasping and twisting their way forever upward to greater light.

I love morning glories: their eager exploration and abundant generosity. No day ever the same. Each morning’s blessing so ephemeral: blossoms lasting only a few hours and then shriveling into maimed fists of rapid decay.   Read more...

Heretic is one of my top ten favorite words. When I was in seminary, several of my professors called me a heretic to my face. In the 1990’s! I was asking questions outside the quite tiny box of their dogma and it enraged them, but that’s another story.

Heretic is a variation on a Greek word which means able to choose. Able to choose. A heretic is someone who knows that choosing is the principle activity required of a human being. A heretic doesn’t take the conventional wisdom as truth. A heretic knows she has a choice. A heretic looks at theory, dogma, concept, idea, everything and asks about it. A heretic is more often than not thought of as an eccentric.   Read more...

From what I have heard, Syb Roell, Vice President of Business Development for Ode, is hoping to create an ODE for kids. That’s a terrific idea, and I’m sure Syb would welcome suggestions. So here’s one: It’s a book entitled Teen Voices from the Holy Land, a collection of 34 interviews with Palestinian and Israeli teenagers, that gives readers a chance to hear about what it’s like as teenagers living in the troubled Holy Land. Readers will hear from 17-year old Ahmad who doesn’t like school, loves his family, and is ready to share the Holy land with people he doesn’t like. Ella Shik, a 12-year old girl lives in Tel Aviv, has a 17-year old brother, plays guitar, wants to live on a kibbutz and help make the world a safe place to live in. Reem, a Muslim teenager from Yama, feels that friendship “is like living in a steady stream of sincerity, honesty, love and cooperation flowing from one person to another.”   Read more...

When I was a child, every summer in my hometown there was a county fair. Since it was a farming community, there were exhibits by the 4-H, pens with prize-winning calves, mountains of Blue Ribbon produce, and a parade through town with fire engines and tractors. It was an event that brought out the entire populace and was talked about for months afterwards.

With those memories as part of my roots, I appreciate local festivals very much. Happily where I live now in Japan, there are many such summer events because this area is surrounded by paddies on one side and the ocean on the other. Last year I went to a festival featuring farmers, so this year I elected to head towards the sea.   Read more...

I have a question for every one who reads this blog. Does living in a community have a huge future?

When most people think of living in a community they usually think of people with a specific belief (fanatics), living more or less detached from the world, sharing everything, no privacy, living a life of low economic standard, sharing everything but their underwear. More or less traditional communities still exist and will keep existing more or less in the same way. The benefits that I see for living in such a community are:

Another inspiring woman that I met through my community tourism work in Uganda, was a successful zero grazing farmer named Perusi Karamuzi. Perusi is helping to pave the road for positive change in her community.

Perusi Karamuzi – Model Homestead Farming   Read more...

Fellow Reader Blogger, Laura Portalupi, writes that she was introduced to Appreciative Inquiry in her U.S. Peace Corps training prior to going to South Africa to work primarily in education. It’s good to know that the Peace Crops is open to using Appreciative Inquiry to do what Laura says: “to learn to value” what the culture they are working with values. Another such practice, one that is complementary to Appreciative Inquiry and in some ways more intriguing because it is counter intuitive, is that of Positive Deviance (PD). Briefly, here’s PD’s story:

In the late 1980s, Marian Zeitlin at Tufts University was researching hospitals in developing countries, trying to understand why in the groups of malnourished children being rehabilitated there were always a few children who seemed to recover faster and better than the majority. She labeled them “positive deviants.”   Read more...

Creating peace on this planet requires risk. Did you already know that? It surprises me that so many of us think we know what peace is. I’m not sure we do. I’ve been working with peace as a spiritual priority in my life for more than fifteen years, and I’m not sure I know what peace is.

On the other hand, I definitely know what a chocolate chip cookie is, and I also know how to create one. Peace isn’t the same thing as that. There is no recipe, and its form morphs as soon as we think we have it pinned down. Peace is the biggest umbrella idea I know other than God. God, bless Her, as a word, puts off enough people that I’m sticking with Peace in this entry.   Read more...

One of the first events that I attended back in Berlin was the foundation of a German e.V. (association). When I arrived at the Café “Sala del Popolo” that day, I did not even know that the intention of the evening was to establish the “Foreign Entrepreneur Support Network”. I had been invited by Allison, founder and owner of Sala del Popolo and also initiator of this network.

The movement that I currently work for (www.wearewhatwedo.org) is about to take the next entrepreneurial step in Germany and I have been trying a bit to find my own way in the German bureaucratic jungle and did not get very far, so far. Thus, I have huge respect for Allison, as a Canadian in Berlin to start this network. Here are three questions to get to know her a bit more:   Read more...

Last week I shared with you my story of Jane Kahima, a rural woman in Mbarara district in western Uganda, who found that she could use her midwifery skills to build her own home based domiciliary. Now I’d like to share the story of another woman who is setting an example of positive change in her community

Monica Muhozi, a home-base flower gardener, is also an example of how a rural housewife turned into a successful business owner.   Read more...

Bruce Lansky has written a marvelous version of Cinderella. (Lansky, Bruce, ed. 1995. Girls to the Rescue, Book I. New York; Meadowbrook Press) Instead of the insipid version that Disney has cursed us with, he introduces the concept that Cinderella should be an active participant in shaping the events of her life.

This take starts off with the fairy godmother suffering from overwork. She is about to take a long vacation. Before leaving, she passes on her responsibilities to her assistant. So, in other words, the work is shared.   Read more...