My dear friend and colleague, Ayelet Berman Cohen, is a Dreamer. That means that prophetic dreams have been coming to her almost every night for over twenty years. A recurrent image is Golden Fish and gold fish. She dreams War and she dreams the antidote to War, the two dreams often in tandem. Occasionally, she dreams the medicine for the restoration of the natural world. When the Golden Fish appear, sometimes raining down, sometimes circling in the air, sometimes manifesting as a gift, they are the medicine.
On Saturday, September 23, 2023, during the 19 Ways Circle on the land, when Jeannette Staine sat down next to Ayelet, she was wearing earrings of golden fish. What does it mean when our dreams come to life? Jeanette was wearing the sign that there is a medicine for war, a medicine for the destruction of the environment, that magic exists.
It was our first meeting of the 19 Ways of the 2023-2024 session and the first session in person on the land in Topanga, California since March 2020.
This is the way the introduction to the 19 Ways opens.
This is one guide to how we change our minds sufficiently to live differently and act in ways that will preserve the future and protect the earth and all beings. When we incorporate these ways of thinking, we will no longer be people who do harm.
There was an energy among us which we had not felt before. Somehow we felt possibility even as we spoke of the extent of the gathering darkness of these days, not the Autumn equinox leaning toward the solstice, though we had begun with a ceremony to honor it, but the failure to receive the messages of Covid and the great need to diminish and soon cease using fossil fuels altogether and to avoid using anything that poisons or pollutes the environment. Was it an illusion or a perception?
One of the essential texts on the reading list this year is Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2020 book, written before the pandemic but foreseeing such and more, The Ministry For the Future, which another participant, climate educator, Krista Hiser, had recommended. The book begins with a heat wave such as we have not known yet, but the events of the last year indicate we will know such very soon unless we take drastic actions immediately, which seems unlikely; yet the book also describes a confluence of global actions, grassroots, Indigenous, and governmental that could, realistically, turn the grim prognosis around.
The book is pragmatic and it is also visionary. These are two ways of being we are called to integrate at this time.
These are the first two of the 19 Ways:
1. THE NATURAL WORLD, EARTH, is the primary source of life and intelligence. We are called to re-integrate human life into the net of all beings. Disconnection from the natural world and human centric and egocentric thinking have brought us to ecological disaster and looming extinction. To save our lives, to save all life, to save Life, is to find all the ways to restore the original relationships with the natural world, the beings of the natural world and the elementals as kin.
2. SPIRIT EXISTS. Spirit speaks to each of us in a particular and shared language. Entering into a dialogue with the divine. Developing and living according to a spiritual practice that emerges from a real relationship with Spirit.
In the real world, which is interpenetrated by Spirit, restoration of the natural world is possible. Better than that, restoration can be seen as probable if we commit ourselves to bringing the visions that come to us to life.
Ayelet, the dreamer, brought several of her dreams to life, following their instructions carefully. She had had so many dreams of the gift of bread. And so, finally, she had to realize them, https://www.adama-foundation.org/
The ADAMÂ Foundation is dedicated to baking bread and building community in refugee camps and other places of need around the world. We believe that the act of baking bread creates a new narrative of community, healing, and connection to the land.
Mukarukundo Janet, baker at Adama baker. Photograph by Sophie Nakayiza.
Earth and the other beings depend on us to act in these ways, that is, pragmatically, to manifest the visions given to us on behalf of the future. After Ayelet told her story of the bakery in the Oruchinga settlement camp in Southern Uganda, Jeanette revealed a dream/vision she has had and committed to bringing it to life on behalf of her community in South Central, Los Angeles. When we are willing to commit to such wild actions as were described in the circle, then it seems magical visions are manifested for us as well – as in the Golden Fish.
Today is Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement for my people. This is the last of the Holy days marking the new year. The Day we complete making amends for our misdeeds. It is the day when we pray that we and Earth will be written into the Book of Life. It is the day we begin to live on behalf of the future for all beings. May we find all the ways to Life that will invite the rain of Golden Fish and sacred bread among us.
Adama Bakery bread basket for the children. Photograph by Sophie Nakayiza.
RUIN AND BEAUTY 