Frida's Notebook

Here it is...

Zen and the Art of Peacekeeping

My new blog. It's a work in progress but today I decided that I would rather launch it out into the world a little undercooked (header still to come, for example) than postpone it another week. Hope to see you over there!

Changes afoot

When world collide - a BBQ in California of friends and colleagues from Afghanistan

This morning I woke up to the news that three women aid workers have been killed by the Taleban in Afghanistan. They all worked for the International Rescue Committee, an entirely humanitarian organisation with no links to the military. My friend and ex-boyfriend (aka the Commander) used to work with IRC and they were very careful about keeping their distance from the military, and about not having any armed guards at their offices or guesthouses to ensure that they could not be seen to be militarised in any way. This killing is against all rules of armed conflict, will make it increasingly hard for the humanitarian and aid community in Afghanistan to do their work and most of all it is a terribly sad loss of three great women.

I'm angry and sad and reminded for the fourth time this month how fragile and fleeting life is and why we have to live the very best lives we can - avoiding complacency and apathy and cultivating gratitude and joy. It's not hard for me to do that since these past months have not only brought news of the deaths of several good friends (all too young and too wonderful to die, but that doesn't seem to ever stop death does it?) but also wonderful times with friends in far-flung places and more good food and great laughs than any girl could ask for.

I'm back in New Zealand after several months away, including a month in LA with my dear friend Christine (she was finishing her fabulous new book while I was studying and then sitting my exams), a precious time with the Boho's in San Diego and then a whirlwind tour of California, Portland OR and NYC to visit some very special friends and family. Some of the highlights included: the BBQ (photographed above) in Atherton with good friends and colleagues from Herat, Afghanistan; a visit to Coney Island with some other friends from Kabul; an incredible weekend in Inverness with new friends; and some wonderful Blogher get-togethers.

Now I have a new job with an international not-for-profit organisation that works on peace-building, social justice and development in the greater Pacific region. I'll be based here in NZ working on their policy and advocacy but hopefully will have some chances to travel in the Pacific region to see some of our programmes on the ground. I'm also still studying part-time for my graduate diploma in psychology and trying to write about my time in Afghanistan.

It's going to be a tricky balance to keep those three (work-study-writing) balls in the air and also keep time make the most of the chance to be at home and see lots of my friends and family. So I realised that I will never find time for this blog unless I make it part of one of these three key areas of work focus. So I have decided to change things around considerably.

I'm going to retire this blog and start a new one. It's time to come out from the world of anonymity now that I'm not longer in Afghanistan and this blog is unlikely to pose any security risk to myself or my colleagues. So my new blog will be in my name. It will be a place for me to post extracts from my book - the story of my experiences in Afghanistan. I may also post about the process of writing my book - which has already floundered for more than 6 months since I got home. I need a space in which to be accountable for actually writing, and I need a place to put up my writing for critical comments. 

There may also be another blog in the future - a collaboration with a friend - but more on that once it has been given a chance to gestate.

I'll put up a link to the new blog when it is up and running. Until then thanks for checking in - between now and when I get the new blog up I may just post some photos here from my travels. Some are too good not to share.

Wise women

You better believe it, originally uploaded by frida world.

This wise woman is in the exhibition of my photos that is up in Deluxe Cafe this week. I'm so grateful to my friends who installed it for me, and to another friend who emailed me to tell me that she had been in there yesterday and overheard at least two separate conversations about Afghanistan, inspired by the photos.

Another wise woman came to visit me over the weekend. I went on a two day meditation and dream-tending retreat. I wasn't especially interested in the dream-tending, but I wanted to find a meditation retreat somewhere within easy traveling distance of LA and I found this one at La Casa de Maria spiritual centre in Montecito village, near Santa Barbara.

I couldn't have chosen a better retreat for me at this point of my life had I spent months researching. I've needed to refresh my seated meditation practice and renew my commitment to regularly sitting. The meditation teacher, Radhule Weininger, studied in Sri Lanka 30 years ago and has maintained a regular practice since then. Most recently she has been studying with Jack Kornfield, of the Spirit Rock centre.

I was hoping to make it there while I am in San Francisco, because Jack is a psychologist as well as a committed Buddhist and I see these two aspects of the current studies converging. Well, maybe I will make it to Spirit Rock to hear some of Jack's teachings. But if I don't I will be satisfied with my weekend of teaching from Radhule. She is also a practicing psycho-therapist and what she offered me was a non-dogmatic approach to Buddhist teachings combined with a respect for, or at least an open-minded curiosity about the teachings of Western psychology.

I've been fairly cynical about much of what we are taught in the traditional clinical psychology papers. The obsession with the individual seems to me to be both Euro- and androcentric. Freud and Jung developed these theories about the human development process which assume that individuation and independence are the goals and that development of ego and self is essential for 'healthy' adulthood.

Radhule showed me a different way of approaching those teachings. She starts by saying, lets not get into dogma. Then she suggests that there may be somethings to learn from many different wisdom traditions, including even those of Western 'science'.

I have a tendency towards dogma. I like to be right about things, so I work and study hard and when I think that I'm wrong then I work and study harder in the hope of finding the right answer. In Buddhist teachings I have found much that seems experientially true to me. This has been great for me, and without a doubt the combination of my yoga practice (especially 'pranayama' or breath practices) and my efforts at seated meditation practice held me through the most difficult, chaotic and frightening times in Afghansitan.

As powerful as they have been in my life, I don't want to become dogmatic about these teachings. So it was timely for me to meet Radhule, a wise woman who reminded me of the gentleness, openness and curiosity that can guide our journey.

But even Radhule was not the wise woman of the title of this post. Nor were the amazing group of wise women, most aged over 50 and filled with the wisdom of a life lived mindfully. I met another wise woman this weekend. Someone I haven't been getting in touch with very often lately.

The dream-tending part of the retreat was not of great interest to me initially. I just wanted to have company and guidance for seated meditation to 're-start' my practice.

But Radhule and her husband Michael have a hypothesis, based in their combined experience as psychologists, that the combination of mindfulness meditation and dream-work can produce powerful results.

I haven't been remembering my dreams much lately, so when they gave us each a dream journal at the beginning of the weekend and asked us to write down our dreams each morning I didn't think I would have much to write. On the first morning I didn't. My journal entry for that day reads like a really bad idea for a story:

"Something about a dog, a part where J wants to keep the puppies and I think we should let them go to the man who really wants them. A part where my family comes over with dessert and champagne to celebrate something. At the very end I walk up to meet L and he's standing there with K. They say 'lets go for lunch and listen to the Dixie Chicks'. So we turn to go".

But after a day which included several sessions of seated mediation, some mindfulness meditation and some guided practices of loving-kindness meditation, I went to sleep and dreamed. The next morning as I wrote out my dream I recognised her. She came in my dream in an unusual form (in the form of an ex-boyfriend) but I recognised the wild, wild woman.

As soon as I recognised her I felt regret and some guilt that I had been neglecting her. She wouldn't look at me, wouldn't talk to me or even notice me. I approached a friend in the dream and was about to ask what I could do. He said "He (she) is taking back the months that you have stolen from him". I understood.

She is the wildest, wisest, bravest of me. She is also the writer in me. She comes closer to me when I sit quietly, as in meditative practice. Or perhaps she is always close but when I sit quietly long enough is when I can see her more clearly.

UN Security Council adopts resolution on sexual violence

It has been a long time coming, and some people (quite justifiably) are feeling a little under-whelmed. But for those of us who gave working within the system a shot for a while this is a big day. Here is the official press release from the United Nations Security Council:

The Security Council today demanded the 'immediate and complete cessation by all parties   to armed conflict of all acts of sexual violence against civilians,' expressing its deep concern that, despite repeated condemnation, violence and sexual abuse of women and children   trapped in war zones was not only continuing, but, in some cases, had become so widespread and systematic as to 'reach appalling levels of brutality'.

Capping a day-long ministerial-level meeting on 'women, peace and security', the 15-member Council unanimously adopted resolution 1820 (2008), which noted that 'rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or a constitutive act with respect to genocide'. 

As Human Rights Watch has pointed out, 

'This resolution sends a clear message throughout the UN system: rape is a crime that should be prevented and when it's not, it should be systematically reported and effectively prosecuted,' said [HRW's spokesperson on violence against women, Mollmann]. 'The resolution contains the building blocks for what could finally bridge the gap between good intentions and bad facts. But to have a genuine impact, the Security Council and the United Nations as a whole need to take concrete action.'

The gap between rhetoric and reality, or even between international law and practice, has been gaping wide on issues related to violence against women. Even in my own mission in Afghanistan (where the Taleban's brutal policies repressing women were used shamelessly by the USA as justification for military intervention) I had to fight relentlessly to get resources and energy committed to projects working towards elimination of violence against women.

In the UN system a resolution does matter. These resolutions provide the leverage needed for people within the UN system to continue their tireless work to ensure that the elimination of violence against women is a fundamental precept of all UN peace-keeping efforts. In this case, the resolution provided the platform for the Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, to announce he will "soon appoint a UN envoy tasked entirely with advocating for an end to violence against women". 

Does this duplicate existing mechanisms, like the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women? Maybe. Does the resolution add anything substantive to existing international human rights and humanitarian law? Probably not, since those laws already clearly prohibit all forms of violence against women, including a specific prohibition on the use of sexual violence as a tactic of war.

But the nature of the UN system is that each mechanism has it's own form of administrative power and the Security Council is a particularly powerful body. This resolution, although meaningless in practice without committed follow-up, is important because of the forum in which it has been passed.

It is worth noting, as Tara has, that simply getting the 15 members of the UN Security Council to agree on anything is hard work. Getting unanimous agreement that rape is a tactic of war, and not simply an unfortunate byproduct of war (yes, that was the objection raised to previous attempts to get this resolution passed) is therefore all the more significant.

Billy T James: the power of comedy

A conversation with Christine last night wound it's way from my friends Bret and Jemaine (and how happy I am for their success here in the USA as the comedy duo The Flight of the Conchords), via Rhys Darby (who plays Murray on the Conchords HBO show), to Billy T James. The link between Rhys Darby and Billy T was the Billy T James comedy award, for which Rhys was nominated a few times. It was at the Billy T James Awards ceremony in 2001 that many of us first saw Rhys perform. But when I finished talked to Christine, it was Billy T who stayed with me and kept me awake til well after my bedtime. Billy T James was one of New Zealand's most well-loved comedians. I grew up on the Billy T James show. Born William Taitoko, Billy T James famously claimed he had changed his name to something "that Australians could pronounce". His work tackled racism and New Zealand's colonial history with such irreverance and humour that he was equally enjoyed by Maori, Pakeha (loosely translated, descendants of the white settlers) and other immigrant groups. Billy T had a whole series of jokes about key events in New Zealand's colonial history. This one about the signing of the Treat of Waitangi gives you a taste:

  

 

This next piece is about the arrival of James Cook, the man often credited with discovering Aotearoa/New Zealand. Obviously he was not the first to get there, by a long shot, and Billy T James always had a lot of fun with the Cook character. In this skit he makes fun of Captain Cook and at the same time lampoons the US government's response to New Zealand's anti-nuclear policy (as a result of which nuclear-powered US naval ships were not allowed to enter New Zealand waters):

 

 

Often controversial, he was always topical and although he avoided elitism and was incredibly popular, Billy T James' humour was highly political. This dialogue between a Maori taxi driver and his South African fare is a good example:

   

Billy T James died in 1991 at the age of 43. It was far too soon and as far as I am concerned it was a great loss for New Zealand. He helped us to laugh at ourselves and at the same time challenged New Zealanders to reflect on race relations in our country and throughout our history. Recently I talked with a friend about comedy entertainment. She was saying that she thinks sometimes we forget that it really is just entertainment, it's not actually changing the world. In lots of cases, she's right. But it made me think about Billy T James, and to remember that in some cases a little perfectly pitched, well-delivered comedy may be the most powerful catalyst for a little political revolution.

A thousand words

IDP camp Ghor, Afghanistan, originally uploaded by frida world.

This weekend in Wellington, New Zealand, an exhibition of my photos from Ghor, Afghanistan will be going up in Deluxe Cafe.

I bought a new camera while I was living in Afghanistan and there were days, maybe even weeks, when I thought maybe the most useful thing I had done in that week was to take photos of people which I could then print out and give back to them.

Then I started sharing some of my photos here, on Flickr and on my photoblog and I noticed something interesting. A lot of people responded with more passion to a single photo of an Afghan father cuddling his daughters than they did to one of my lengthy diatribes on the importance of moving past stereotypes in our global relations.

So I decided maybe it is true, what the old folks say about a picture telling a thousand words. This weekend when the photos go up it will be thanks to a couple of really good friends in Wellington, since I am currently in the USA.

I'm sorry I won't be there to see them up or to hear whether they illicit any kind of response in people. But I feel fairly confident that whatever my photos say, they say it more eloquently than I ever could, so I'm happy to leave them to it.

Politics

Te Kura Kaupapa o Mangatuna Tristan, originally uploaded by frida world.

I've been thinking about politics a lot lately. So I decided it was time to blog about it.

This year is election year in New Zealand. I haven't been very actively involved in any political parties in New Zealand. I am more of an "outsider" when it comes to my approach to politics. I've worked with human rights groups in New Zealand to try to put issues on the political and public agenda but I've never joined a party.

At the last elections I came close. I was very excited (and I still am) about the Maori Party, and I got a little bit involved (distributing flyers and attending meetings was about as far as it went). But I didn't join.

Earlier this year I wondered whether this was the year when I should throw my hat into the ring as an active party member and get on the campaign trail. But I would have had some problem deciding which party to join and campaign for, which was the first obstacle.

The second obstacle is that I have in the past worked as an advocate in Wellington, and it seems likely that I will be working there again soon in a similar role. My job has been to help human rights and social justice organisations effectively lobby government and business to make changes on key human rights and social justice issues. In the past these have been as far ranging as disability rights in New Zealand to fair trade in the Pacific.

Lobbying works in different ways. There are lobbyists who are within one party and who rely on lobbying the politicians of that party. But in New Zealand that approach is increasingly ineffective. In a proportional representative parliamentary system there are always a number of influential parties within parliament, including smaller parties with particular interests (like the Maori Party or the Green Party). These days a government is likely to have been formed by one of the larger parties either through coalition some of these smaller parties or through agreements about support.

So effective advocacy in Wellington today, especially on social justice issues, requires new approaches. One of those approaches is mine, which includes not being clearly politically alligned with any single party. I think it helps me to be able to approach any party that may be able to exert some influence on a policy issue.

Some days I wonder whether I'm making a mistake, especially with an election coming up that seem likely to be a tough fight.

Politics matter deeply to me because in the end it will be our elected representatives who make the laws and policies that will decide whether children like Tristan (above) can continue to access kura kaupapa Maori (full immersion Maori language and culture-based schools) and whether those schools will have the resources they need to provide Tristan with the best possible education.

I've been reading, as part of my studies, about the research into indigenous youth suicide. One of the common findings around the world is that positive cultural identity and competence and confidence in both the indigenous and 'dominant' culture are strong protective factors. So schools like Te Kura Kaupapa o Mangatuna, where I met Tristan, are helping to build a new generation of young Maori men and women who will be healthier, happier and safer because of their solid grounding in their own culture.

The party that wins enough seats to form a government after the next elections in New Zealand will get to decide whether to make it easier or much, much harder for these schools to continue their work. So remaining politically uninvolved gets harder for me every week.

On empathy and imagination (with thanks to J K Rowling)

A little over a year ago I tried to put into words here some thoughts I had on empathy and imagination and what they had to do with activism for human rights and social justice. What I managed to say was:

"Ultimately, though, I believe that the strongest motivator for the defense of human rights is ... empathy. It is because I can imagine how it might feel to be a Palestinian mother who watched her child die because the ambulance carrying him to the specialised hospital in the West Bank was not allowed to pass an Israeli checkpoint that I feel compelled to work towards securing the right to freedom of movement for her and for everyone else. It is because I can imagine how it might feel to be an Algerian asylum seeker in New Zealand, labeled a security risk by the central intelligence agency but unable, even through my defense lawyer to see the basis on which I am accused of being such a risk, that I feel bound to do what I can to defend the right to a fair trial and a defense for him and for everyone else."

Today I watched the commencement speech that the amazing J K Rowling gave at Harvard University. I know it has been emailed and posted in various places, for good reason. It came to me from Blue Poppy, via Swirly. So I took a break from studying about how community psychologists should be committed to working with oppressed people to help achieve their goals for liberation and watched this video.

She puts it so well and I was not expecting it. Although I probably should have been expecting it, her Harry Potter books explore complex themes of marginalisation and social justice, including a fairly intense exploration of racism and xenophobia through the device of the "mud-bloods". But I wasn't. I under-estimated her and expected a speech about how important imagination is to the creative act. Which it is, of course. But she goes on to talk about how that creative act, the ability to imagine, lies at the heart of what makes us human. We, apparently unlike all other species, can imagine what it might be like in someone else's shoes and based on that creative act of imagining we can feel empathy. 

What I said in May last year was that I didn't believe that empathy was a "static quality that we are either born with or without. I think we can generate empathy, I believe we can cultivate the quality of empathy within ourselves."

I also had some ideas about how to generate empathy - they included a certain kind of travel and releasing ourselves to the transformative power of literature, art and film. I think those are still great tools for generating empathy. In fact my very next post was an exercise in using the creative power of poetry to cultivate the moments of powerful empathy that I experienced in day-to-day life in Afghanistan. But what I have been also learning, over and over again. Is the power of the simple practice of letting go, through seated meditation or whichever practice works for you, and revealing our natural warmth, compassion, imagination and empathy. 

Practicing compassion

Before I left Afghanistan I decided that the one of the key challenges of learning to live back in New Zealand would be learning how to make a positive difference to the balance of peace and compassion when it was no longer my paid job to do so.

Obviously, the first thing I have learned about this is something I learned 10 years ago - when I first started working full-time as a human rights advocate (in the Gaza Strip). What I learned there is that you can't rely on the "big" choices of your life, or on the "big" gestures, to be your compassionate practice in the world. You can't sit back and say "well, I decided to come and work as a human rights advocate in the Gaza Strip so I've made the right choice and I can relax and expect my impact to the positive".

What I learned was that it is the small choices, the daily moments in which we chose to feed the peaceful wolf, that really add up to our practice of peace in the world. I learned that if I did my humanitarian work with a heart filled with anger and fear it didn't add up to more peace and compassion in the world. Not exactly rocket-science, but I've never been too hot on maths and it took me a while to work out this simple equation!

So it was a great discovery for me when I learned, much more recently, that there are practices that can help to cultivate our natural compassion. In Afghanistan I learned that taking even ten minutes every morning to practice meditating on my true nature, my compassionate nature, which is free of ego and self-grasping and which is open and effortless, could actually begin to cultivate more presence of that nature in my day to day life.

Then I got home to New Zealand and I got to go out for walks in the sun, I was able to go for bike rides and to yoga classes and to spend delicious evenings in the company of good friends. I could go shopping at the market for fresh vegetables and cook them into gourmet meals. Life was good and filled with love and incredible yet simple pleasures.

So I stopped sitting to meditate every morning.

I went on a two day seated meditation retreat and found a wee practicing Shambhala community with whom I could sit in meditation on Thursday evenings. But I dropped my regular morning practice.

I've just recently really begun to notice the difference. But now that I see it, it feels glaring. So I'm getting back onto my morning cushion. It fascinates me how much I resist this simple practice. I avoid these ten minutes even while I happily spend 50 minutes readings blogs. I don't beat myself up about the resistance. I know it is really common. But it is kind of perplexing, to resist something so simple which has offered me so much in the past.

So for now, with gentleness and compassion, I'm nudging myself back onto the morning cushion. Just for a few minutes every day. To practice cultivating compassion so that I can access my compassionate nature more freely when I need it out here in the world.

Is your dosha out of whack?

 
Swirly and I, taken by either Denise or Susannah - eek - I can't remember

I'm in Los Angeles at the moment. I left New Zealand Friday 30 May and flew across the international date line to arrive here on the morning of Friday 30 May.

In the weeks leading up to my departure I was studying, writing essays, completing contract research on the NZ Parliament and preparing for a photographic exhibition.

I was also recovering from a serious hip injury I developed during the 100km walk, which meant I was forbidden by my doctor from walking, running, doing yoga or even sitting in the cross-legged position I usually use for seated meditation. Of course it is possible to meditate while sitting on a chair, or even while lying down (although for me that tends to lead to dozing) but somehow I let my injury and my busy schedule become an excuse for no meditation at all.

The busy schedule was not just any old busy-ness either, I was busy from morning to night working as hard as I could to do "the best I could". My inner critic was in top gear. Each of the jobs on my plate would be judged, whether by the university marker, or by the research company and their client or by the people who visit the exhibit. So I wanted to put forward my best work. I have very high standards for myself and so I tend to put in a lot of work to produce the best I can.

Through my life I have learned that this high standard, although it is a wonderful motivator and has encouraged me to do my best work on important projects, has a downside if it gets out of control. I have learned to keep it in balance with my gentler nature, with the part of me that understands the importance of letting go and with my compassionate heart. 

In recent years I have learned that seated meditation and the simple daily practice of finding the space around the moments, being still and present and taking time each day to reflect and generate genuine gratitude together help cultivate that compassion and gratitude. This helps keep my drive, will and judgement in balance.

So what happens when I go for weeks and weeks rushing from one job to the next, worrying about whether I am doing each of them as well as I feel I should be able? What happens when I speed up my life and stop taking time to sit in the stillness between the "things"? What happens when I can't go for long walks or take yoga classes and I give up even my seated meditation?

Here is what happens.

I get as lucky as a girl can get and end up in a summer city surrounded by dear friends. We have the perfect weekend - with every good thing ranging from a walk on the beach and divine facials to a live (and side-splittingly funny) performance by my friends Bret and Jemaine of The Flight of the Conchords. We top it all off with a showing of the Sex in the City film (great!) and cocktails at a beautiful bar looking out over the stunning coastline. Yet through all this there is a voice in my head that I'm trying to ignore.

Little Miss Judgmental is having her say up there, and I don't want to hear from her. She is easily irritated by people and their choices and I really don't like her very much. She's not someone I'd like to be friends with so I freeze her out. If I pretend I can't hear her and pay not attention to her, surely she'll get the message and leave me alone.

But she doesn't. Instead she squeezes her way out when I least want her around. She injects her tone into even my carefully chosen ('non-judgmental') words so that one very precious friend tells me gently and honestly that she feels judged by me, even when my words are not superficially judging. Thanks to the honesty of that friend I realised, finally that I was all out of whack.

For weeks I had been feeding my inner critic - I needed the inner critic to make sure I was writing the best essay I could write, submitting the best report I could produce and selecting the very best of my photos for my exhibit. But in the midst of feeding my inner critic I also simultaneously stopped feeding my compassionate heart. I stopped taking the time to do all the things that increase my compassion. I also stopped doing the things (like vigorous exercise) that help me release the tension that builds up in my body from all the rushing abou.

My dosha was all out of whack!

Two days of quiet, gentle space with my darling Boho home-girl and the balance began to return. Now I'm settled back into my California home base, with my spirit sister Swirly, and I have been going for gentle walks, taking time to write morning pages and yesterday I went along to my first yoga class in a month. The balance is being restored and I hope I remember this for next time.

For now - I better get back to studying for my upcoming exams (I'm doing a graduate diploma in Psychology and sitting my exams at the University of Southern California) and enjoying the LA Fantastic life.