Here's a letter that I wrote today to 2 yahoo groups of the Internet lab called Minciu Sodas. The letter is pasted from:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/holistichelping/message/3456
Janet, Andrius and all,
As I read about aiming the empowerment of the proposal toward the women in Africa, I am wondering if we could take on the approach of Health-Education-Correction at the heart of the application.
The 3 can be joined as one social policy designed to link the individual and the community in the training of decision-making.
Democracy is the wisdom of agreeing as equals, for the utmost benefit to all.
Leadership of this kind needs to get consolidated by cultivating decision making from home to school, to work, at play and back home by a participation in the Spirit Who teaches that the greatest in our midst are the servants of the others.
Conflict resolution and peaceful political renewal is then possible, because the changes are decided by the people, in accordance to their needs locally.
Such empowerment could be the means by which to convey the message that democracy is a way of life, applicable and needed in every decsion that affect more than one person.
Democratic maturity is found in the simplicity of deciding with care and of doing with complete dilligence, what is best for the majority so that the majority gets to extend its benefits in all simplicity to all minorities
Inspiration is at the heart of democratic participation.
How do we tap into inspiration and do we get on to channel inspiration?
By embodying the simplicity of love comminted in action and in truth in our daily lives. Healthy inspiration reaches out to all ages. With it, we get to be invigorated in the present with hope.
Again, this is where communities need to realise that school is the middle ground of personal and communal cultivation and that it is crucial to develop the framework of functional democracy, grown around the heart of Health-Education- Correction.
Here is a piece I wrote in 2002, in an attempt to describe how we could approach and deploy such a school policy at the personal and communal level:
MUTUAL PENETRATION WITH HISTORY/
A NATIONAL RETREAT TO ENTER THE LIFE OF OUR COLLECTIVE DESTINY
History is generally understood by young people, as this boring academic chore required of them by the education system.
The intent and purpose of the curriculum in teaching history, is to cultivate the relevancy of the past to the present, thereby preparing students in what provides them with the awareness of continuity.
Because of such a low level of interest for history among students, a new approach could be tried. Instead of academically bringing the past to the present, why not equip each student with what is needed to explore the past, starting from their own personal present.
By bringing the students to explore what brought about their own life, it will generate the ability for the in-depth look needed to understand their present.
Such transparent movement of clarity will gradually connect our lives with the past and thereby, eliminate the irrelevancy of a constant promise of a better future that never comes from generation to generation.
This method of personal and communal apprenticeship to journey together as one,would motivate by inspiring as opposed to go on force-feeding the memory for the sake of the curriculum's aproval.
Because of the state of stress and terror in which we live locally and globally, anyone with noble concerns for education is aware of the massive need to heal the individual identity’s growth process, by tuning in the dynamics of inter-personal activity with reconciliation and co-operation. History of the whole human race is screaming to remind us of that.
It doesn’t make much sense to teenagers to learn that their parents, teachers, governments and authorities at large, are going on repeating history without any alternative being offered other than: “That's the way things are”, type of responses.
If the history courses were to bring together the sciences relevant to the healing of personal and ancestral history, such as sociology, psychology and all the way to psycho-neuro immunology, there could be a path getting paved to develop the learning method from play school on, with the parents and child, serving the need to assemble the relevancy of each along with all, so as to bridge school solidly with home life, work life and re-creational's regenarating energies with purity of soul and body.
History classes would then become a time in school when one is given a chance to assemble the components of his or her existence, where one learns to assimilate each life experience in a maturing perspective of his or her life.
It would develop the sense of rationality from understanding the path of their own life and identity.
By entering history in such a personal manner, school would evolve to provide a forum for the apprenticeship of communicating in the comfort of intimacy and in the confidence of trust.
It would gradually lead the “I am” of each student into the relevancy between their life and the flow of history in the riverbed of time.
Once well rooted, such a method could even become key to open the doors of the community, reaching out through the cultural and social walls of divisions, by entering the dimension where academic theory and practice find trust and harmony with each other.
In practical terms, it would be the neutral ground to bridge and to complete the distance and the incompatibilities between home and community life.
This approach also provides the opportunity to embark on a massive research and development movement into the human faculty of living.
The faculty of living is an expression I use to describe the holy grail aimed at by all people of good will through out humanity’s history.
It is the initial and final frontier to experience the solemn beauty of being human to emerge.
The faculty of living is what brings each individual to be penetrated and to penetrate the meaning of existence, while providing guidance and nourishment to live in the state of justice, peace and joy.
Historically, this faculty has been painfully growing through millenniums of dark, fearful and evil resistance on the part of those who hold on to knowledge, intellectually acquired, as opposed to spiritually acquired knowledge, so that theory and experience do not get seperated from their togetherness.
Such resistance is present in all human beings and is responsible for the perpetuation of the never-ending power struggle and misery among humanity.
The faculty of living is the healthy state of spiritual human living in all that it means and separated apart from all the lies that it never meant and yet, that are still upheld today in various forms.
Destiny is calling each and all to the citizenship that expresses the solemn beauty of being human. This is, after all, what the ancient voice of humanity’s youth has been longing for throughout the ages, feeding and reverberating the growth of common sense.
Yes, the history curriculum can indeed become a safe and yet potent tool for the authorities of care to cultivate our individual and collective growth into the stability of well-being.
In time, as the cultivation takes root, we could attain the point at which we begin the process of harnessing the lessons of the past and learn to live, with great contagion across all of the Earth, in the solemn beauty of being human, cheered on by the ancient voice of humanity’s youth and enjoyed in the health of common sense.
Offered to all the moms, dads and children who seek inner justice, peace and joy within and amongst us all...
...may all blessings be with us all...
Benoit Couture
