CapitaliShare

For the planet to survive we need a new mindset of cooperation and sharing, rather than compete and beat. Life is sacred and property but a loaned privilege, not the other way around as current societies are now run. The main objectives of our productive industries must be directed toward providing the necessary goods and services needed by humanity, not the bottom lines as encouraged by Wall Street speculators. Our human energies must be redirected to useful productive pursuits and away from the various parasitical industries of which we have an over abundance and can do without. Liberal arts and sciences should be supported because they help us to be human as developers of the future. Nation states are political units of humanity that exist for the fair administration and regulation of societies within their borders to assure peace and justice for all, not international warring bands.

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The Magnetism of Myra House

Nestled up at the outer edge of the suburban tracts of Claremont, CA, right at the base of Mt. Baldy, a 10,000 foot hill that’s part of the San Gabriel Mountains in the back yard of Myra House, there is a place that quite excellently models what JEM is about. Yet funnily enough, Lee had never heard of it. It took maybe a couple years before he and I finally made the trek up to Claremont. Now that we do the podcasts and are looking for things to cover, we finally took the plunge (helped along by a lecture we thought would be interesting). Owned and created and re-created incrementally by a Korean couple, Sung and Myra Sohn, the property is a living laboratory for alternative living with a distinct spiritual awareness that has a magnetic charm, mainly because as you get to know the folks behind the house and grounds, you can’t help but see that they have both tenacity and grace to thank for all this.

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Is There a One-Earth Story to Live By?

More and more of us are finding that parts of the story we’ve been living aren’t working. When we talk about what we are doing, some words that flowed and described our activity before now stick in our throat, or somewhere. In our gut or heart or head, other voices are saying, “But it’s not working. You need to change.”

This story which is now failing, I call the multi-Earths story because it takes multiple Earths to sustain it. The endless wars and ruthless competition for the resources of our one planet expose this story as utterly inadequate to fit within the carrying capacity of our planet. That the multi-Earths story is a weakling story is further revealed by its reliance on and animation of lower human capacities such as greed and fear. Its frailty to address such realities as radical inequalities of resources and power, species dieoff, and a rapidly expanding population all convince us that we humans are capable of a far better story.

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Ched Myers at JEM

Ched, in the red vest hand made in PalestineIt came on short notice, but for those 16 or so who heeded the email that Ched Myers of Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries was in town and had time to swing by the JEM office for an evening’s bible study with an eye to the situation in Palestine-Israel, it was quite a treat.

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Wild and Wooly Lenten Journey

Of late I have burnt the midnight oil for JEM’s digital life. It has kept me busy for hours and hours. It keeps me off the streets, and off the boob tube. But as great as it is helping out this extensively (otherwise unemployed these last couple months), being holed up in the digital den is not like being in the real world. So there is a plan for that.

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Metanoia Newsletter, November 2010

Download the November 2010 newsletter here. PDF format.

Features:

• How we can live on this one bountiful, stressed planet
• Recent jubilee conversations
• A map for our journey toward "Earth Community"
• A recent jubilee podcast
• Discount books available