Riffing on Francis Moore Lappe for 2010: Let's Go

"My path has not been smooth. But the great thing about getting to be an elder—Sarah, I just had my 60th birthday—is that you can look back and see the intense times of confusion and challenge, and see that if you keep walking through them, they can lead to times of great satisfaction and reward. The good life is not about avoiding fear. Just the opposite." — Francis Moor Lappe, in Yes! Magazine, 7/16/04

The new year, and the the turn of another decade, has me doing a heap of life review. The last 10 years saw much change, many adventures, much loss, a lot of gain—a lotta learning about being a human. I'm at once excited and daunted about entering a new decade: Excited to some of what I've learned in the past 10 years to bigger tests, and daunted at the self-tailored tripwires and foibles I routinely encounter (regardless of having demystified many of the whys and hows of them and lost interest in the drama of it all). Yes, despite still feeling like a 14-year-old most of the time, I can't ignore that I've firmly entered adulthood. So amid the holiday daze of parties, an abundance of food I don't normally eat, and fast-tracking a recording project, I've been holing up at home, reading lots of books on mind, action and change. 'Human revolution,' my fellow Buddhists call it. On the secular reading list, I happened upon this aptly named tome at a friend's house: You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear, by Frances Moore Lappe. Lappe's "Diet for a Small Planet" was, and is, a staple to read for anyone interested in sustainable living. So I was happy to see her continuing to tackle the big questions at age 60. Fear, in Lappe's book, means "go" a direction I LOVE. I only hope when I'm her age I can look back and say I walked through the confusion & challenge a fraction as gracefully....viva le revolution.