War (what is it good for?)

photo of Melbourne graffiti from  made into Peace Poster with I-Phone app.

War, by Edwin Starr, was released in 1969, as a protest song against the Vietnam War. Two of my good friends were talking on Saturday night about both being present at the anti-war demonstration in London in 1969, when the gates of the US embassy were broken down and the police used tear gas to control the crowds. I was still at primary school.

Last week I spent two days in a pre-conference workshop (before the ACT conference) which were facilitated by trauma workshop by Robyn Walser, who works on the Coming Home project, at the National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) research in San Francisco. Robyn works with war veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Vietnam. I believe the US does trauma therapy well, but then, they have a lot of veterans who need trauma therapy.

In another workshop, John Forsyth, from the University of Albany, SUNY, spoke about kindness and compassion, and he showed this very hard-hitting Miniature Earth slide show - and this is another version with music by John Lennon. He also talked about sowing seeds of kindness and compassion, which is a cool idea. I think this could involve real seeds...perhaps a new version of Horticultural Therapy?

Both John and Robyn facilitated exercises which involved looking into the eyes of another human being, without talking, for some minutes. In John's case this was an exercise to practice the Buddhist concept of tonglen, which is to 'breathe in another's suffering'. I am slightly ashamed to admit I bailed on this one.

More later.