This groundbreaking workshop arose in direct response to the ecological, social, and economic crises of our time. Ecospiritual leader Joanna Macy created it to help people understand and meet these challenges with clear eyes and open heart, without letting emotional overwhelm induce psychic numbing, panic, or scapegoating. Cheryl Leutjen and David Cutter will be facilitating a local opportunity to participate in this healing workshop.

Several of us Transitioners drove to Oakland in 2013 to participate in a similar workshop led by Joanna Macy. She was 83 at the time and vibrant. I would describe her workshop as a chance to reconnect to spirit. Reconnecting to Gaia, to Mother Earth. Becoming a Gaian. 

We are all connected through spirit. It is only the industrial growth society and deeper issues that we grew up with that cement the illusion of separation. When people get this connection they can understand that Gaia speaks through all of us. With that shift in consciousness, transitioning to a new way of being on Earth is possible. 

Getting this concept was hard though. I got it from being in a heart space(feeling) rather than being in my head(thinking). This workshop is about creating opportunities for people to move into their heart space. Once there, it is much easier to grasp the connectedness of all beings. 

Cheryl Leutjen and David Cutter will be facilitating this workshop at Throop on April 11, 2020 from 8:30 to 4pm. This will be our third Joanna Macy workshop that Transition Pasadena has produced. If you missed the first two you owe it to yourself to experience this one. There is no cost to attend the workshop but when you register at eventbrite there will be a $20 option to pay for a catered vegan lunch. Alternatively, you can choose to bring your own lunch at no cost. 

While Joanna Macy won't be at this workshop in April, we will try to evoke her spirit by doing a series of experiential activites with a pinch of explanation, All serving to create that heart space and help people rediscover their innate connections to each other and the self healing powers of the web of life. We hope participants come away feeling enlivened and motivated to play their part in creating a sustainable civilization. 

Please register at Eventbrite by March 25th. Cheryl and I will also provide a sample experience at Throop after service on March 29th, 12pm. Throop's address is 300 S. Los Robles Ave. Pasadena 91101. We hope you can join us for this uplifting experience.

When snowpack melts off the San Gabriel Mountains, and whenever it rains in Altadena and Pasadena, the water seeps down into the ground to refill the Raymond Basin, the giant underground aquifer that provides 40% of Pasadena’s water. The water that falls on impermeable street surfaces is swept to the ocean, lost to us forever; but the water that falls on soil remains in our ecosystem and eventually percolates down into our reservoir. It’s a gift that nourishes life, if we’re prepared to receive it.
 
Our walk started with a simple idea: we wanted to highlight the Pasadena Public Health Department and Pasadena Water and Power’s new hydration station at La Pintoresca Park, and connect that with the water-wise plantings at nearby Washington Elementary and Washington Park. Both locations showcase the use of bioswales to receive, collect, and filter water into Pasadena’s aquifer, and the use of California native plants to support the birds, insects, and butterflies that quietly enrich our ecosystem and sustain our human lives. Bioswales and native plants are an important part of the Complete Streets toolkit for greener, healthier, water-wise streets.
 
As we organized this walk, I began to understand more deeply that Pasadena CSC is part of a similar ecosystem of people in Altadena and Pasadena who are working, step by step and drop by drop, to repair our ecosystem and society. They’re challenging the way we handle water, health, and transportation with hands-on, reliable, nature-based, and human-scale solutions. And they met us enthusiastically, with an openness and understanding that we’re all connected, and all in this together.

We’re grateful to Sherreeta and Mary from Pasadena Public Health for sponsoring and partnering with us to build this walk, and to Jonathan from Pasadena Water and Power, who met us bright and early at the La Pintoresca Library to hand out water-related goodies. Wendy from Planning and Community Development taught us about the pocket park to the east of Marengo and Washington, where a community sculpture by an artist named Lt. Mustardseed welcomes neighbors to relax and rest. We’re grateful to Lois from the Pasadena Audubon Society and Tahereh from Beautiful Bioswales, who tag-teamed to lead us through a tour and explanation of bioswales at Washington Elementary’s future outdoor classroom.
We’re proud that our CSC member Topher, who volunteers with Friends of Washington Park, was on hand to share his botanical knowledge about the butterfly garden he helped to plant at the park. We can’t leave out April from Water LA and Paloma from Arlington Garden. Although we weren’t able to feature their work in our walk, we deeply appreciated how they greeted us in a spirit of connection to our shared goals.

Finally - and perhaps most of all - we are extremely proud of, and totally awed by the group of 15 Jackson Elementary School students from a local Girl Scout Troop who joined us for the walk as part of their work to get a “Water Wise Badge”. They worked and walked hard to receive their badges, and we are grateful to their parents, who accompanied them in love and support. They, along with our other adult participants, made everything worthwhile.
When we shared that all of the groups featured on our walk offer volunteer opportunities, our walk participants nodded in recognition and appreciation. They, too, are a part of our ecosystem of future builders and leaders. We hope to leave a better world with reliable, clean water and safe, walkable streets to all of our children – and to ourselves as well.
by Candace Seu, a member of Beautiful Bioswales (originally posted at Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition blog https://www.pasadenacsc.org/blog/2019-10-28-walktober-water/) Photo credit: photo by SPL

The Gold line train pulled into Fillmore Station just a couple minutes after I swiped my card at the stand and noted the few people sitting and meandering on the platform. Normal. Uncrowded for a Saturday morning save for five or six young ladies, each with handprinted signs that  proclaimed the rights of women in different ways and toughness. I was to see many more such signs as the morning progressed.
 
Union Station was quite crowded. Lots of folks were heading down to the lower platform for the Red and Purple Lines, many more of whom were also carrying gender rights signs than not. The crowds detraining at Civic Center and Pershing Square Station were predominantly women. Many men were accompanying them, too. Others, were many singles like me and also twos and threes, like the women. I was wearing a bandana which I often wear these days to keep my increasingly broad bald forehead from dissipating heat. On Saturday, I was wearing red. It was a proclamation in itself, since over the years I have come to recognize my own feminine half as not only vital, but critical that it be recognized and strengthened. So, I am a feminist and as such felt I had to add my grit to the movement of honing the rights of women. Because of the bandana I suppose, some women acknowledged me with a smile and sometimes a greeting. A few were young and most were older, which is normal in my experience. That I am an elder weighs more it seems that gender. I must say it felt good to be recognized by those who greeted me. I felt belonged. That showing up there added up in the grand scheme of things.
 
Up on the street, police worked in pairs – many, with both genders – no cars consumed the marching route, so I simply fell in with the direction others were taking along Hill Street, past Grand Central Market where the revamped Angels Flight Railway across the street will save you walking down and up for a couple tacos and a beer at a stand in the market. Many were walking the space between curbs as I walked for several blocks, but it was not as jam packed as I had imagined it would be. Then, as I approached the prominent edifice of city hall, I could hear a loud loudspeaker, and when turning a corner, there they were, thousands of people jammed in front of a makeshift speaker platform at the city hall’s front door where dignitaries were adding their energies to our own presence.
 
Not long after the Mayor spoke some were wandering away, and I could wend my way through bodies of arms and legs and head over to high ground for a better view. The last shot is a panorama of the space under construction that is converting the area into a new city park.
 
This was the fourth Women’s March; the first with the President’s first year of office, and the numbers grow larger with each year. This is also the 100th year anniversary of women’s right to vote and with that a focus on the power collective action is producing. Last week, I wrote a note in my diary about an old friend who I call in my thoughts, 21st Century Woman. She listens. Then, as necessary, responds. She laughs easily because she is easily amused. That is, the weight of an idea need never be taken to calamity. She is generous in obliging others, not for friendship but from kindness. I sense whenever I am speaking with her that I am for her, on her side when fairness and truth are required. It is out of wanting the joining of hands that I say I am a feminist. Alongside my maleness is the feminine; a wish to take your hand as you reach out for another’s.
 
And now I am here. I know that coming together is the road to take. I want to reach out to my compatriot brothers to join in with us, and to other brothers who are learning to discover their own feminine parts to join too. But that is hard. Many of my brothers are stuck in time. Maturity for many is still at adolescence.The Gold line train pulled into Fillmore Station just a couple minutes after I swiped my card at the stand and noted the few people sitting and meandering on the platform. Normal. Uncrowded for a Saturday morning save for five or six young ladies, each with handprinted signs that  proclaimed the rights of women in different ways and toughness. I was to see many more such signs as the morning progressed.
 
I must be like my 21st Century Woman friend, kind. Understanding. Not take a thoughtless remark personally, but see it as a habit ingrained by paternal friends over the course of many many years, if not generations. I ask my sisters to join me, for theirs is the harder chore. As I listen to my brothers and sisters, I must respond, thoughtfully, take into consideration what I wish to accomplish. Bring everyone into the fold. No one can be excluded. Everyone counts.