introductions

My purpose in applying: To give up my sense of what’s possible for myself and play all out in this incredible game.

Dear fellow Heart-warriors,
My name is Miriam Joy Dowd, born on July 17, 1990 in Granville, Massachusetts, and USA. I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and went to college for a year and a half in Richmond, Indiana. This pivotal summer I’ve been living in a conscious, co-creative, eco-community in Mora, New Mexico called Hummingbird Ranch. I’ve been in the South West United States for about 8 months and will be moving to Oakland, California in the end of this month to settle into a house with 5 other young people to create community and to continue to co-create a service-learning Bus tour I’ve been involved with since January this year.
SO, wonderful superhero living courageously in these times, you now know the sketch of my geographical self-history…I want you to be able to see a sketch of the lesser known territories of me. I’ll share with you with the greatest degree of transparency and honesty, a personal presentation of myself.
I am the youngest child of three, my sister is 27 and in the military, and my brother is 25 and in athletics as a strength and conditioning coach. Four loving parents support me: my mom and step dad, and my dad and step mom. I take away a tremendous about of love and nourishment from their guidance and encouragement, I see them as my main mentors.
I was named after a woman named Miriam McGillis, a catholic sister and new cosmologist. Her gifts to life were highly informed by a man named Thomas Berry. His work with cosmology and ecology has also really influenced my worldview; most directly through my dad and stepmother and their life’s work. The inspired influence of the New Cosmology has lead me into volunteering with the organization "The Pachamama Alliance" and their initiative, the "Awakening the Dreamer symposium". Their sister organization, "Generation Waking Up" (GenUp) has created a version of the symposium for young people that is the best tool I know for awakening a sence of “blessed unrest” (knowing what’s going on in the world, and taking positive action steps in the face of it all). The Purpose of GenUp is to "Ignite a generation of young people to bring forth a thriving, just, and sustainable world."
As my friend and co-organizer of Generation Waking up says in a song: “Why did you wake up, with the time still left to turn the mighty tide?”
What I love and what I’m passionate about is “Using the positive aspects of what is, to change to dysfunctional aspects of what is” (Tom Atlee) I was studying in undergrad until I more fully got that ~1% of the world’s population has a college degree, and I wasn’t learning the skills, capacities, and experiences to make a real change in my nation and culture through university education. So I left school in the fall of 2009 and began to volunteer and learn experientially in the South West United States.
In the realm of social change, my more specific passion lies at the community/local/collaborative level. My preferred arena of activism includes: radically simple environmental sustainability practices (permaculture, and living intentionally in community), social justice starting at the personal, relational level, and an evolutionary spirituality/ evolutionary activism (informed by an understanding of our greater, unified creation story)
Within the context of those passions is my deep interest in movement and embodiment arts such as: 5-rhythms dance, yoga, contact improvisation, participatory theater and clowning. Music, especially participatory music making is also a parallel interest. The evolutionary reasons for participatory movement, music and art, are of central importance to what I see as the Movement of Movements. There are evolutionary reasons for art forms being the reason for shifts worldview. So if you are an artist of ANY KIND, remember the Truth at the center of you work. Remember the reason for your attraction and use of this kind of communication! The point is using participatory music and song and movement to reach into the deeper emotional and life-force parts of the brain. Cerebral talk is just is not lasting and there’s so much power, in my experience, in experiential regenerative arts for not only social entrepreneurs, but for anyone alive today.
To describe my character I would mention words like “passionate, creative, empathetic, visionary, sensitive, and driven.” I’d say that I’m positive, goofy, and caring and most value compassion, truth, and integrity in my relationships. I also value bringing consciousness and non-violence to all my relationships, and have been very interested in non-violent communication (NVC) for the past 8 months. I’ve have also recently been introduced to a way of describing all the different ways in which one can work for peace, and find it informing my life in a surprisingly significant way. There is NOT one path or method to non-violence! This model adapted by Ethan Hues of the Possibility Alliance. In his model Ethan includes: peace “keepers, makers, creators, breathers, builders, and givers” (I’ll explore detailed differentiations in a later blog) What I want to mention now, is that I think it’s key that I’ve identified myself as a dynamic blend of 4 of these (rather than trying to be all of them, and try to o ). A peace-maker: connecting through non-violent communication, peace and reconciliation work, and so on (the emotional realm). A peace-creator: the creative arts, and that which inspires through metaphor (the expressive realm). A peace-breather: being an embodiment of peace, and finding non-violence within so as to be present with others (the spirit realm). The final category is at once a passion, gift, and edge for me: a peace giver: Being in self-less service to others in a way that does not negate or make wrong their experience of life and their world-view. In essence: “love never insists on it’s own way”.
The project and movement that I am giving my time to at this time is called Bus the Change (BTC) and was born directly out of the organizations that I mentioned above. What Bus the Change aims to do is not only bring the symposium to diverse communities, but to use methods of deep listening, and possibility oriented whole-systems social change to truly catalyze a movement of change agents. In addition to the vision of Generation waking up, Bus the Change aims to connect across lines of difference non-violently, and synergistically, and to serve the emergence of awake, healthy, resilient communities. I see the crew of BTC as an embodiment of an integral non-violence: to bring all of the modes of peace making to communities by having a diverse crew able to bring all realms together as one cohesive initiative. I hope to apprentice in a way, the methodology of WWW, if not eventually find a way to eventually be a US partnership.