I am currently engaged daily with writing and editing the sequel to In Search of Simplicity. This is perhaps the main reason I haven't been very active on Gaia the the last while. I present below a little piece about the birth of our first child, Amira in September, 1990:

The pregnancy progressed smoothly. Roughly five weeks before the expected due date, Lucia and I joined several other couples for our first of five weekly birthing classes at Ginny's house. We had the earliest expectancy date of any of the couples so Lenya and Ginny had delayed the classes a little so as to best suit the majority of the couples.

"You should be able to attend most, if not all of the classes, prior to delivery," said Lenya at the clinic not long before the first class.

We enjoyed that class, as much for the camaraderie of the other young couples as for the value of the information imparted. Half way through the class we took a break and Lucia hustled, to the extent that her condition allowed, to the toilet. If I recall correctly, the break lasted just long enough for each of the pregnant ladies to relieve their pressured bladders.

Lucia sat in front of me on the floor as Ginny resumed her talk. She was talking about some of the signs that indicate when a birth is imminent. "Not long before the birth, the mucous plug is released."

Lucia turned to look at me and whispered, "I just passed a plug of mucous in the toilet."

I thought, Here we go.

After the class, as the couples were making their way out we stopped to talk with Ginny.

"I just passed some mucous, Ginny," said Lucia, "How long would it be until the birth?"

"That's hard to say," replied Ginny, looking a little concerned. "You had better come in for an appointment tomorrow."

At the clinic in Santa Fe the next day Lenya checked Lucia.

"The baby has dropped," she said, "You'll have to get off your feet for the next week. This is too early for us to help with a home birth. By law, if the baby is born outside the window that extends from three weeks before the due date to two weeks after, the delivery has to take place in a hospital. There is a greater chance of complications if the baby is born too early or too late. We will be in attendance even if the baby is born in hospital, but then we would have to work with a doctor."

The following week Lucia followed instructions and stayed off her feet as much as possible. There was no more garden work for her now. There was much discussion and deliberation between us that week. We were in complete agreement about the idea of a hospital birth. We didn't want one. We had embarked on this journey in order to give our expectant child the most natural start possible. In our eyes that didn't include the antiseptic atmosphere of a hospital, where statistics showed that something like one third of all births employed caesareans and even more births used drugs of some kind. Billions of pregnancies had come to successful, natural completion in the millennia of human existence. It was only over a few decades that doctors had insisted on hospital deliveries.

Lenya and Ginny were part of a growing group of excellently trained midwives who were returning to the time-honoured methods of the past, infused with the skills and technology of the present. Between them these ladies had delivered over five hundred babies. They had never lost a baby or a mother. We wanted them on our side.

Lucia and I felt a growing sense that this baby was coming soon. I called up the midwives.

"We are really clear that we don't want this birth to occur in a hospital. We experienced the water birth of friends of ours a few weeks back. I feel confident that we can do this on our own if need be," I said with what must have sounded like false bravado.

"Birthing is an entirely natural process," said Ginny. "But complications can arise, and that's why there are trained professionals."

"I understand that, but we just don't want to have a hospital birth," I continued. "At the birth we attended recently I watched the midwife pin off the cord, and later cut it. Can you tell me at what distance from the baby's belly would I have to pinch the umbilicus and could I use a clothes pin? And how do I know when it is safe and timely to cut the chord?"

Ginny reluctantly answered my questions and made an appointment for another check-up the following week.

We drove into Santa Fe for our appointment and we were met by Lenya. She gave Lucia a comprehensive check-up in her usual gentle manner.

"Do you mind if I have a word with Ginny for a moment?" she asked.

"No. Go ahead."

Lenya left to locate Ginny who was engaged in another examination elsewhere in the building. They returned together a few minutes later.

Ginny spoke, "Lenya outlined for me how your examination went. You are healthy and strong, Lucia. So is the baby. It is still three and a half weeks until the due date. We have agreed that we are here to assist with a home birth from now on. We know we are slightly outside the prescribed window, but due dates are almost always difficult to pin down perfectly accurately." She winked, "This one may have to be adjusted to a few days earlier."

Lucia and I each gave the ladies big hugs of gratitude and relief. Deep down I don't think either one of us relished the prospect of delivering a baby without any help. Amira must have been listening. She was born the next day.

If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then many that I see have the curtains drawn. In a few sad cases the windows are boarded up.

The soul's innate joy shines through the eyes of every child. Often, a newborn's eyes are closed. Not so with Amira. The instant she was born she spoke volumes with her eyes. I was totally unprepared for the magnificence, for the depth of Being radiating out from those eyes. I felt as if I was staring into the soul of God.

That baby's eyes communicated with each of us in the room, individually. To me those heavenly beacons said, "I KNOW YOU. I AM YOUR TEACHER. LOOK AFTER ME."

I was thrilled. I was devastated. I felt as though I was the recipient of an immense gift and a daunting responsibility. In that briefest of instants my life was turned upside down. No longer was I able to remain a self-centred young man. I was a father now, and I suddenly needed to contend with the needs and wishes of another. And that Other had spoken with immense power and with the eloquence of silence. Never, before or since, have I looked into eyes like that.

I was shattered for weeks.

My journey with alcohol was short but tumultuous. My parents drank socially but not to excess. It was their daily ritual to enjoy a drink together when my father returned home from work. It was their way of quietly sharing the trials and tribulations of their respective days, each lubricated by a single drink of rye and water, on the rocks. I vaguely recall my father drinking beer previously but that had to stop after having surgery twice (in his late 30s and early 40s) to ease his hiatus hernia. From that time on he was unable to properly digest steak, most fruit and beer. These items tended to return forcefully to their point of entry.

I began drinking at sixteen or seventeen. My parents were aware of my explorations with alcohol and openly condoned them. They never instituted a list of dos and don'ts. I suppose they adhered to the parenting adage that counts on the behavior of adolescents being established in early childhood through the examples of the parents. Now that I was a young adult they allowed me to explore the world in ways of my choosing, not theirs. I respected this approach of my parents greatly, and still do. It must have taken a dollop of faith and a bucketful of patience for my father and mother to sit back and silently observe my faltering steps into adulthood.

If a drink served as a relaxing balm for my parents, several drinks served as a courage booster for my early forays into the world of dancing with girls. Until I took my first drink I was far too shy to attend a school dance, as much as part of me wanted to. But now I would join a few friends nestled behind a remote hummock of our local airport to sample from a range of alcoholic beverages before walking as a group to a school dance. Pleasantly fortified with the drink of choice and breath disguised with cough drops (I'm not convinced now that the teachers at the entrance were totally naïve as to what we were up to) we would descend en masse into the darkened school gymnasium for a night of dancing. Magically, I had the confidence to ask girls to dance, and they usually accepted. Unfortunately the beer or wine or liquor did little for my coordination or dancing skills.

Within two years I found that I not only had the confidence to attend a dance without the aid of alcohol, but enjoyed the dancing much more when I was sober and in complete control of my dancing appendages. Drinking had served as a crutch to bolster my broken confidence; once that confidence was restored I was ready to throw away the crutch.

At one high school party I blacked out after consuming what must have been an excessive quantity of alcohol. It was embarrassing to have friends describe my adventures of that night to me the following day, adventures that I had absolutely no memory of.

This experience of blacking out was to be twice repeated. In the winter break of my first year at university I was one of four young men and four young women who, under the auspices of the university ‘Explorer Club', rented a van and drove virtually non-stop for forty hours to New Mexico and Arizona. In Albuquerque, three of us purchased a bottle of tequila, a powerful liquor that had originated in the desert country. That night we set up tents in a roadside high desert area. After dinner, while the others slept, the three of us passed around the tequila bottle, customarily preceding each drink with a lick of salt and following up with a squeeze of lemon. I remember drinking twice from that bottle. That is all I recall until being vigorously woken by my friend Duncan early the next morning. On the way back to his tent after a pee he decided to look in on the three drinkers that shared a tent near his. He found me dead-to-the-world on top of my sleeping bag while my tent mates slumbered cozily inside their bags. I was lying in my underwear with frost coating my bare legs. The outside temperature was 13 degrees Fahrenheit (-8 degrees Celsius). I thought I was going to become a human popsicle.

That morning we walked around the Painted Desert, a stunning crimson landscape sprinkled with an icing of snow. We then drove to our ultimate destination, the Grand Canyon. The others exclaimed in ever more glowing terms over the awesome landscape, while I lay in agony with a horrendous hangover on the floor of the van.

Back at the university in Ontario I saw photos of an actively engaged and drinking John taken on that less than memorable excursion into tequila heaven. There must be something terribly wrong when one continues to function and converse but has no later recollection of the events transpiring.

My third time unlucky occurred in Spain, during a bus camping trip around Europe I was taking with my friend Chris and thirty‑three other young people from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and South Africa. In addition to being a cultural eye opener this trip proved to be an almost non-stop five week party. One night in Barcelona, I recall sharing a bottle of Sangria with Chris and some other friends. That is all that I remember until waking the next morning sharing a single sleeping bag with a girl from my tour group, a girl I considered to be like a sister to me. I was profoundly embarrassed. This instance proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

When I returned to Canada I began working for the telephone company. I would occasionally enjoy a meal after work with colleagues. On one such occasion, a few months after my return from Europe, I enjoyed a single beer with my meal. The next morning I woke with a whopping hangover. I quit drinking immediately. I was twenty two years of age.

People sometimes ask me why I don't drink alcohol. I have no regrets that I did drink for a few years. I enjoyed that time and, as I explained, the alcohol temporarily helped me to overcome shyness. But I have so much fun now, and feel uninhibited without so much as a sniff of alcohol. And I never have a hangover. People speak of using a substance such as alcohol in moderation. This may be fine for some, but I proved through direct experience that alcohol was a poison in my body. A little bit of a poison is still a poison. So why have it?

Have you ever seen a young child reach for a drink in order to relax or to be happy and playful? What unseen boundary do we pass when we begin to justify the use of toxic substances?

It was a great pleasure growing up in Niagara Falls, Ontario and stopping at roadside stalls in the country to purchase delicious local fruits such as cherries, plums and peaches in season. In the last couple of decades much of the highly fertile land of the Niagara Peninsula has been converted to the growing of grapes for wine production. A way of life I remember so fondly is in danger of disappearing. Canada's other great fruit growing locale, the picturesque Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, has undergone a similar transformation. Many of its productive orchards have been converted to wine or expensive residential development, a playground for the nouveau riche of the West.

Here is New Zealand there has been a huge conversion of productive orchard land to wine grapes. In Marlborough, at the top of the South Island, there is evidence that this recent change to huge plantings of grapes is causing the water table to drop, putting pressure on stretched water resources.

Once again our consumption habits impact the world in which we live. The lowly grape. Is it the elixir of the gods or an environmental nemesis? My decision not to drink is one more way I can be the change I want to see in the world.

Much of the above has been excerpted from In Search of Simplicity. I trust you have found something in this open sharing of mine. It took me years to get the courage to share in this way, warts and all. But don't we gain so much through each others' stories?

I recently spent a couple of days picking organic olives on the organic orchard of a New Zealand man who was involved in Rainbow Gatherings in Wales for many years. He was one of the co-founders of the New zealand Rainbow Gathering. The following words are from You Tube for this video on the ideals of the Rainbow Gathering

The Rainbow Family is an international network of people who gather in nature both annually and throughout the year to pray for peace and protection of the environment. The Rainbow community values healing and agape or brotherly-sisterly love. At Rainbow Gatherings, people of all faiths are invited to celebrate diversity and take part in a range of activities offered by "Rainbows" to facilitate growth, insight, generosity, kindness, meditation and prayer. These include yoga/martial arts, drum circles, reiki, tarot and medicine card readings, free dream interpretation, music, dance and theater. At many Gatherings, Native American sweat lodge ceremonies are also performed.

For many "Rainbows" the Gathering experience is deeply spiritual. Every year, between 15-25,000 "Rainbows" create the world's largest silent circle for peace. This circle traditionally takes place on the 4th of July-a day sacred to Native Americans-when tribes across North America historically give thanks to the "Great Spirit Wakan Tanka" or "Great Mystery." The Hopi, a well-known Native American tribe, are regarded for their ancient prophecies. In 1977, a Hopi elder delivered a prophecy to the Rainbow Family in New Mexico. He explained how the Hopi Prophecy Rock had long-anticipated a "tribe" called the "Children of the Rainbow." The "Rainbow People" would reportedly appear during the "eleventh hour" or time of koyaanisqatsi, a Hopi concept that means "life out of balance." Native American elders' interpretations of the Hopi Prophecy Rock, which consists of lines carved in stone, suggest the "Rainbow Children" will help create the "Rainbow Bridge" that connects the "one hearted" with the "two hearted"-people who value materialism and technology with people who "live life in accordance with the secrets of nature." According to Native American elders, this "bridge" will be vital to our successful evolution to the "fifth world" where humanity returns to balance with nature and the "unseen forces" of the spiritual world. Likewise, there are other Native American prophecies, similar to the Hopi prophecy, that foresee the "Children of the Rainbow." For example, Native American Cree prophecy states: When the Earth is sick and the animals have disappeared, there will come a tribe of peoples from all creeds, colors, and cultures who will restore Earth to it's former beauty. This tribe will be called The Warriors of the Rainbow.

The "Warriors of the Rainbow" typically are individuals who feel "called" to take part in Gatherings. Many "Rainbows" describe being "led" to Gatherings by the "Great Spirit." Participation in Gatherings is considered part of a spiritual path where respect for ecological balance and integrity is a priority. In a time when destruction of the environment and over-consumption of fossil fuels is an inconvenient truth, so to speak, thousands of "Rainbow Warriors" worldwide are coming together in nature to work cooperatively towards bringing into consciousness and practice indigenous wisdom and respect for the Earth.

To learn more about the Rainbow Family of Living Light go to http://www.welcomehome.org/

To learn more about artist collective Woodstock Earth, go to http://www.woodstockearth.net/

Music Credits:
© 2006 Michael Franti and Spearhead Yell Fire!
http://www.spearheadvibrations.com/
http://www.myspace.com/spearheadvibrations

The time when Columbus arrived in North America has been acknowledged as the First World War from a Native American perspective. This video gives a perspective of importance for us all at this time. As Floyd Red Crow Westerman says, we need to plant something and recognize all things as spirit. Simple, isn't it?

May we find peace.

John

The above words are one verse in a song I wrote about 8 years ago, a song called Smile if You Want To. I was reminded of them when bringing in wood to start the fire on a cold morning two days ago. The kindling was comprised of branches I'd pruned by hand from bushes on the edge of the property a couple of years earlier; bone dry wood that was stacked neatly under the deck. The lowest branches lay directly on the ground.

As I crouched down feeding wood into the fireplace I noticed a number of creatures making their way independently across the floor away from the fire. They had obviously been hitchhikers on the wood I'd brought in. They were smart to get away before getting tossed inadvertently into the fire.

What were they? A red worm, a cockroach and a spider. The worm was easy to catch by hand, as was the spider. I took them outside and bade them farewell. The cockroach was a little more difficult to catch. They're fast. But persistence paid off and he was soon with his cousins on the lawn.

In this country people intentionally try to run over possums with their cars at night because these imported mammals from Australia have decimated some New Zealand forests. The possums were originally brought here in the 1800s for the fur trade. They have thrived and proliferated with no known predators (save man). But I believe what we resist persists. Kill one possum and another will breed to more than make up for it. All life is precious and is part of a complex balance and evolution that will work if we work with it. The possum, the worm, the cockroach and the spider have roles to play and I want no part in the destruction of any of them. When you love Nature she loves you and you are rewarded abundantly. When you fight her she fights back.

Here's the chorus from Smile if You Want To:

Keep smiling,

John