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<div class="MsoNormal"><b>The Earth<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">In a
burst of heavenly awe, Astronaut Edgar Mitchell exuded in lunarscape:<i> "Suddenly, from behind the rim of the
moon, in long slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling
blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky blue sphere laced with slowly
swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of
black mystery. It takes more than a
moment to fully realize this is Earth ... home."<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i> </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The
Earth is this season's center of attention, though not as viewed from its
splendor at the surface of the moon as it is with what we do in heating up its
temperature and the consequent drastic climate warming in its biosphere.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The
climate took center stage in the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference
for almost two weeks ending December 12.
One hundred ninety-six nations were in attendance. They adopted an Agreement that is only
legally binding if a number of nations producing a percentage of global
greenhouse emission actually do something through their legal systems, which is
to say, a lot of barks without much bite.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The
United States through its executive office is often a leading party to an
international agreement only to be denied muscle by the US Congress, e.g., it
refused to ratify a treaty on biodiversity. The numbers in international Agreements guide
national targets adhered to by nations that are already poor because of their
compliance but ignored by the big guys that emits them. A good example is COPS 21 (on biodiversity).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i>Mei mei </i>is a cute little girl's nickname
used in China. <i>Mei </i>is also the black mineral that is dug in Dong Bei, and the coal
in Shanxi west of Beijing where 90 percent of the land allegedly is black gold. The increase on investment in China on
manufacturing was due to the low cost of coal energy that devastated China's
countryside and biosphere.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Attempts
to stifle the economic progress of China focused on its use of coal as its
energy source. China does not have
extensive fossil fuel source to rely on though its assertive occupation of the
Spratly moves in that direction and is severely criticized by the US and its
business interests in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan. The United States can fly all kinds of B-52
over island structures that China built but the new economic superpower is not
going to budge, as the immediate issue of South China Sea is energy source
rather than sovereignty, which China considers historically to be a closed
issue. Besides, the place is not called
China Sea for nothing!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The United States'
current use of coal at its most efficient level emits carbon 130 times what the
Paris Conference aims for it to do if the nations across the planet attains
economic parity to the US in a hundred years.
This is illusion of the worst kind.
The Summit's intentions were worst than a mirage in the desert. It lacks operational basis.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Meanwhile, the
planet reels as water from melting ice in the Arctic and Antarctic regions
continue to add more fluid into the ocean, making it heavier to effect the
tremors that dislodges plates, which then causes half of the land areas of the
Pacific islands disappear at the same time it induces stronger quakes and a
change in weather patterns in many parts of the globe. Not a lively prospect especially since we do
not operate as a globe yet but do so as the archaic leftover nation-states from
the divisions imposed by colonizing powers of the previous century. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Mitchell
was perhaps prescient in his pronouncement.
A less polite quote: <i>"From
out there on the Moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff
of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, 'Look at
that, you sonnavabitch.'" </i> Apologies to the sons amongst us who heard
their teacher do math and said: "2 plus 2, <i><u>the sum of which</u></i> is 4."
As my Sino <i>tindera </i>would say, <i>the sum of which</i> and <i>sonnavabitch</i>, same same.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">If our
Apollo 14 astronaut is distraught over our treatment of the planet, his use of
the SOB word is on the charitable side. The
Obama administration refuses to extract coal on Federal land and met opposition. The corporate sector is aghast at this executive
act. The Supreme Court intervened on
their behalf.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">I made
a supplementary workbook for my class using the Mitchell picture on the
cover. Students just added the word
"earthrise" into their vocabulary.
A paradigm shift is corroding the defining fealty once held on political
structures the Europeans named, like Spain on <i>Señor Felipe's </i>behalf (thus, the Philippines) during the medieval
and colonial eras, and unwittingly inherited by the US military in its
post-WWII presence in the rest of the world, but now simply a fragile blue orb
in the sky.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">"We
live in the Universe. On the Planet
Earth", they sing. "We look
for life in the sky so blue, down on Marianas for something new, we look at the
world we have on our hands. Oh, what
shall we do?" Then they whisper to each other at the end:
"We're gonna build it."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><b>Monastic</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">For
fourteen years, I was a member of a family Religious Order that collaborated
with Jews and Moslems, seculars and non-theists, truly ecumenical beyond
ecclesiastical structures. Arising from Christendom that fevered like a <i>pentecostal</i>
congregation (our Dean was previously an Ohio revival preacher whose diction is
not foreign at Victory Chapel in Saipan) on one end, and a socially-branded
liberal <i>unitarian</i> (we lived in the communities we served) on the other,
and comprehensive diversity in between. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The
body's work was communal and cooperative, a global network of 2500 folks <i>(mas
o menos), </i>organized as determined service centers termed
"centrum" and "nexus", with metro, regional, and area
corporate abodes called Religious Houses. Were one to compare it to
another body, one would be at a loss to find one. It was a unique
experiment, unrepeatable; there has never been one like it before, and there
will never be another one like it ever again.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">We
had one task: to create a broad-based human (planetary and global) community
wherever we were located, symbolically in every time zone across the
globe. Process and procedure followed were highly participatory. We
enabled the local house and the community we served to missionalize vision;
communal resource was utilitarian rather than privately owned (personal
property in two suitcases), decision-making practiced broadly until a consensus
was pronounced, and self-hood was absolutely self-sustained, self-reliant, and
self-confident.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">My
characterization of the body is somewhat like what my class hears and repeats
mid-course of daily class session: "I am one, unique, unrepeatable gift of
life into human history; there has never been one like me before and there will
never be another one like me ever again. I live my life." They
decide. They choose. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">This
is no rah-rah slogan so individuals can believe in an idealized self. It
is a statement of fact, the uniqueness and unrepeatability resulting from the
union of one sperm (out of a minimum of 200 million) with an egg that then
journeys into finitude uniquely on its own until its completion. My
reckoning on my journey's length, given what I know of my genetics and
statistical probability, is 86 years! I invite my first graders to think
of their education and life as a journey!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Being
a monastic is, thereby, a given reality before it is a choice. One is
uniquely on an unrepeatable journey from start to completion. It is not
that we choose, in the first instance, to be solitaries. We are born that
way. It echoes Akon and Joan Armatrading's song of "I, me and
myself". Our choice is to declare "what is", rather than
ran away from it, to yen for and achieve an imagined objective or goal.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">As a
teacher in a classroom, I have a board with the four core curriculum titles
where we post our objective. (I personally go by what students will
retain in their minds, and what they will experience in the process). The
four components of the Core curriculum has underneath Language Arts, the word
"words", for Math, "numbers", for Science, "How",
and for Social Studies, the "5Ws".<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">"Words"
are nouns defined by adjectives and verbs with adverbs; "Numbers" are
signs (equals =, plus +, minus -, multiply x and divide ÷), "How" is
process standardized, and the 5Ws are "what, when, where, who, and
why".<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Across
the room, I posted a picture of the brain of a child that has three parts: the <i>medulla
oblongata</i>, the <i>cerebellum,</i> and the <i>cerebrum;</i> the first, processes
sensual experiences of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, the second, finds
the balance on feelings, and the third, a sophisticated management of words and
numbers formally taught in academe, all three becoming the basis for the whole
body to respond in deeds.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">While
the eight (5 senses, feelings, thoughts, and deed) seem a lot especially since
the students are just beginning the first year of a 16-year learning journey, I
teach them to "play attention" so learning shan't deteriorate into
the memory work of formulas and forms but of challenging usage.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The
Monastic understanding clothed on the three classical vows, is that of the vow
of poverty as detachment from matters unessential, the vow of chastity as being
about one thing, and the vow of obedience as willing the Way Life Is (YHWH in
Jewish terms <i>sans </i>Zeus of Olympus) abides.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">So,
what do I teach? There are only eight items, two less than the decimal
system. Being about one thing is taking the laser beam of the times
(symbolized by the smartphone that is now in the hands of more 90 percent of
the population) to have input equals output. Then I transform my
lifestyle so the time is managed, space is organized, roles are defined, and a
story is told.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">I am
not about the pedagogy of content; I am a monastic who demonstrate methods,
secularly and scientifically. I aim for a first grader the habit of
nursing their own brain to intentionally guide their own learning.
Monastic, I am. Functional monastics, my students will be!<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br>
<div style="clear:both"><i>wangzhimu2031</i>
<div>earthrise consciousness, a gift; earthbound commitment, my choice</div>
<div><i>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate! in all, celebrate!<br>
</i>
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