Check this out SuperForest. This is awesome.
Love.
Author Archive for mathew
Heyo SuperForest!
So today I was inspired. Today I decided that the old news needs to go. Today I decided to start SuperForest News Network! For now it will simply be distributed on our Facebook page daily (or at least as often as I/we can). The idea behind it for now is to share potential news stories (the headlines at the very least) that should be making the news. For now it will just be generic awesomnesses, but in the future I would love to get actual specific stories of awesomeness from around the world. I want to share stories of kindness, love, compassion, thoughtfulness, sincerity, surprise, kittens, and puppies. Like I said the things that should be making the headlines. So, PLEASE go head over to our Facebook page and like it, so we can spread happy stories around the net and globe! Here is our first story (note: most stories will only feature on the Facebook page as a headline, and not on SuperForest.org main page):
SuperForest News: This just in – mother read bedtime story to child last night. As a result the Child slept happily. Today at school she brought kindness to peers and teachers, smiles were had by all.
For more SuperForest News be sure to check into our Facebook page!
Love,
Mathew
SFNN Correspondent
SuperForest!
I have found an amazing site that is right up SuperForest lane! It is called HelloGiggles.com. It was founded by three amazing women, actress/musician ZOOEY DESCHANEL, producer SOPHIA ROSSI and writer/Internet Sensation MOLLY MCALEER. They themselves describe it as:
the ultimate entertainment destination for smart, independent and creative females. Everything hosted on the site will be lady-friendly, so visitors need not worry about finding the standard Boys Club content that makes many entertainment sites unappealing to so many of us.
And let me tell you it is full of gems and giggles and love and thoughtfulness. The team over at HelloGiggles is large and in charge, and I want you all to go check it out.
Here is an example of the greatness found on their site. Just one small kid, bringing his school into the raptures. Enjoy!
I wrote this poem while in Mexico over the last summer. The people I met and the places I visited inspired me, and now I would love to share it with you. I also attached an audio of my reading of it.
Love!
A Hymn to the Loved – Spoken (Click to listen)“A Hymn to the Loved”Oh Childe of the lord!Oh Childe of the earth!Oh Childe of the universe!This I write for you.
I call out to the motherWho birthed at 16.I call out to the fatherWho left home in pain.I call out to the childWho cries secret tears.I call out to the brothers and sistersWho stand at our side.I call out to the young and oldWho can’t see eye to eye.I call out to those lost loversWho created our world.I call out to the fedAnd I call out to the starved.I call out to you, Childe.
Hear my voice.And let it sing.
You are loved.You are loved.
Your dreams are cherished in the womb creation.Let them churn in your soul until they bear fruit.And let you bring them into this worldTo be shared amongst your friends.
Your heart will be kept safe in mine,If you desire it to be so.Your soul will be kept sacred in my mind,If you share it with me now.My trust will be laid at your doorstep,If you open up your home.
Let your heart singAnd your mind hum the tune.Let your body danceAnd your soul jam along.Let your hopes flySo you can watch them soar.Let you share this all with meSo I can give you more.
Give each of us the gift of youSo we can all say, “I love you.”
This is a hymn to the loved.This is a hymn to you.May it remind you that the rest of usAre just like you.May it awaken your soulSo you can awaken mine.
This is a hymn to the loved.This is a hymn to you.
Listen and LoVE. Then check out Mr. AZ’s new songs here. They are full of love and full of abundance.
Love.
P.S. SuperForeset, it is not hard for me to love you because you are the world to me. Listen below ;)
As some of you might know I spent the summer working for an organisation called Simply Smiles. I have yet to write my own overview of my summer there, but I thought I would extend this piece, written by my coworker and boss, to all of you. So here it is, please enjoy!
Not long ago, the Founder and President of Simply Smiles, Bryan Nurnberger, posted a moving account of his summer on the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Reservation. In it, he discussed the challenges of developing trusting relationships and effective programs in the absence of cohesive community. The heart of his conclusion was vintage Bryan: We will continue to work with our new friends on the Reservation despite the persistence of suspicion and a sometimes terrifying lack of hope. “The need trumps the obstacles,” as he says. My experiences as the Simply Smiles team leader in Mexico this summer were in many ways opposite from Bryan’s, but as with the Reservation, the importance of communityemerged as the dominant theme of our eight weeks in Oaxaca.
Our work with marginalized communities in southern Mexico certainly involves improving the lives of our friends there physically. We bring food to those suffering from malnutrition and to those at risk of starvation. We rebuild and repair schools. In the past, we’ve built houses and transformed a children’s home.
However, beneath and within all this practical help is an essential reality: trusting relationships and compassionate connections. This summer, in addition to refining and improving upon last year’s program, we did our best to deepen and strengthen the friendships that Bryan and many others developed in 2009 and 2010. This meant not just buying groceries but working side by side with the women of Santa Maria Tepexipana (including Lula, Christobalina, Matea, Angelina and others) as they prepared the weekly community meals. It meant holding Movie Night every Thursday and inviting not just children but people of all ages. It meant stopping into people’s homes to chat as we walked by on our way to the storage shed. It meant welcoming children into our campsite and playing cards and laughing for hours.
Those who expressed gratitude to us consistently emphasized their appreciation of ourfriendship over our material help. Personally, I believe this is because friendship is something that they can and do give to us as much as we give it to them. In any situation where the “haves” are giving to the “have nots,” there is a fundamental and uncomfortable lack of parity. But friendship levels the field. For this reason, we went deeper into this jungle this summer, holding a community meal in the mountaintop village of La Cienega, walking an hour-plus uphill in order to send a signal to them and to others: We will make the effort to come to you. We want to know where you live and to share life with you.
Each of our staff members and interns also recognizes that we could have done nothing of substance in Oaxaca City and in the jungle without the help of the local residents. Carol and Francisco welcomed us to Casa Hogar each Sunday afternoon. At the dump, Edith, Luciano, and Soledad allowed us into their homes, took us on tours, and embraced us with brilliant smiles. Each community meal in Santa Maria required at least 10 hours of preparation and hundreds of fresh tortillas. We needed a local mason (Javier) to help us make improvements to village schools. Even the people at the places we stopped on our long drive to the jungle each week became our good friends. They opened their hearts and homes to us and we know that we can rely on them in an emergency.
Yes, the food is making a difference in the jungle. The people who attend our community meals and come to our food distributions are unmistakably healthier. That is something to celebrate! And the unexpected feedback we received from some of the adults and older children – that the people of Santa Maria are closer to one another and treat their children better since we’ve come into their lives — is extremely gratifying.
However, all is not wonderful. Social injustices abound. Crimes go unpunished. Our friends at the dump still live and work in an alarmingly unsafe environment. The people in the Santa Maria region still lack anything close to decent health care (Can you imagine being a parent and not having a place to bring your sick child?). The political and economic decks remain stacked against the coffee farmers and their families and workers.
Simply Smiles has plans to help our friends address these issues, but we need your active support. Will you help us by coming to Oaxaca in 2012 and, if you feel moved to do so, by making a donation or becoming an I’m Dedicated donor? Please contact Bryan or me or visit our website if you want to be a part of this amazing life we are living – a life of deepening connections and emerging hope.
Thank you so much to our staff, interns, volunteers, and donors for creating thousands of smiles and for making Summer 2011 a success!
Ok Go and the Muppets have teamed up to make a video. This new Ok Go video is another gem to their now amazing collection. Get ready to laugh and smile! Enjoy SuperForest!
(via.)
I sit here in Oaxaca, Mexico reading this beloved site, and I reflect. I reflect on how my body feels right now (like crap), how my mind feels (exhausted), how my spirit feels (drained), and I reflect on how I just generally feel. I have done some really powerful work with some really amazing people here in Oaxaca, but I feel consumed by other thoughts. Through out each day I feel moments of bliss and contentment, but other moments of other yucky stuff. I feel I am failing to be who I want to be. I know I am in the right place for me, but I don’t feel I am taking advantage of that universal gift fully. There are times where what I am up to simply doesn’t offer me the relief and excitement I know it should. And while I think about this my mind seems to roll to the same conclusion: it is down to my choices. I feel I am restricting myself, I am forcing myself to exhaustion, and I am not taking advantage of the universe’s gift. Wow. It has been so hard to even think that. I have been so caught up in blaming those around me, and pushing the responsibility of my own feelings onto others. I want to do so no more. And SuperForest, you have helped me get there. You have re-inspired me and reignited me. I have not been writing as much as I wish I have been. Part of it is I am up to other and bigger work, and another part of it is that I am afraid of what I might write. But now I am here, writing. I must confess a few things:
I have not been living up to who I know I am. I have been diminishing myself. I have been afraid to voice my dreams and opinions. I have been afraid to appear “different” than those around me. I have been playing a game with myself and those around me. In a large way I have been lying to both myself and you. I have struggled to emulate the thoughts I have shared here over the year or so, into concrete action and behaviour. I don’t like that. I fear that I have been reenacting the actions and thoughts of others, as well as the ideas of others, rather than my own. I fear I have misunderstood the line between having similar ideas, and taking on other’s ideas. I want to live life through my own window, and then share that with others. If it is the same, awesome! If not, awesome! I want to feel that what I am up to is perfect and my own. That choosing the things I choose is right for me, and thus for the world.
Like most of us, I am facing many unknowns. I had a rough first year of college, but met wonderful people in the process. I now feel committed to working hard at school for many reasons. One of which is to fulfil the advice of my parents. Another is to stay with friends. Another is to respect the advice and wisdom of my closest friend and lover. And perhaps the most important is so I don’t insult all those in the world that can only dream of having the opportunity that has been handed to me. To simply be in a place of learning is a great opportunity, that too many can’t or won’t ever receive. And knowing some of those people personally only makes this idea even stronger.
Beyond school, I am in love with many communities (I include family in this) in this world, and want to explore them all without upsetting any of them. Know that if I choose to explore other communities it is so I can grow and develop as a human being, and then come back and share. My outside experiences from each community will only enhance my experience within my other communities.
I think one of the largest unknowns is what the hell I will do in my life. I find comfort in not knowing, however. There is a strange kind of comfort saying I have to clue. I have no plans, and thus no expectations. I love many things, and hope to pursue them all.
But again I somewhat lie here. I do have some plans. That closest friend I mentioned and I plan on spending the rest of this life time together. Part of making that commitment is knowing that we will follow each other no matter where each our lives takes us. This means we are ready to compromise, and accept that we have different life pursuits. This means we are ready to be flexible. This means we have to be strong because many will think we are crazy to be thinking this at such a young age, and then just be strong anyway. You know when you know, I suppose. And to say that I must be wary that it might fall apart is to cheat myself, her, and us. We can only make it “work” by fully accepting each other and the journey we envision spending together, the rest will happen as it will. This too is a big unknown, but perhaps the one I am most excited for. I am excited to create a world with someone else, to mould and sculpt each other naturally, while always keeping central the love we have for who each of us are in each moment.
So, it is here that I call out. I am letting you know who I really am from now on, the best that I can. I want to be a loving and caring human being, who thinks on his own. On the outside I know I may appear as much of this already, but I know I have a lot of inner work to do. So please hang in there. I call out to the universe:
May my journey be beautiful and unexpected
May my loved ones be cherished and cared for
May I inspire those who are closest and those who I have yet to meet
May I help this world simply by being in love with it and those in it
May I be myself, unafraid to share my thoughts and ideas to those around me
May I create a space of love, care, and comfort around me
May I challenge myself, and those around me
May those around me know I am just trying my best…just like you.
With love from Mexico,
Mathew
Happiest of birthdays Jackie! You are well loved, and an inspiration to us all. Thank you for constantly being you, and highlighting the struggle that can exist in pursuing life as a SuperForester. You are an exceptional human being! We all applaud your creativity and genius! Have a fantastic day!
Love,
Team SuperForest
Dearest SuperForest!
Some of you who may have explored the site might have discovered that our many translations of the SuperForest Humanifesto are not working! This is about to change! I am going to get to work in the next few days to get them back up for your viewing pleasure. We will also be adding up a new translation: Swahili! Big thank you to SuperForester Rahim for his contribution! So soon we will have the Humanifesto able to be read in:
Italian, Spanish, Bahasa Indonesia, Hungarian, Japanese, Dutch, French, Polish, Korean, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, Arabic, Mandarin, Romanian, Greek, Afrikaans, German, Russian, and Swahili!
BUT We still are looking for:
Latin, Gaelic, Farsi, Esperanto, Vietnamese, and any others we’ve forgotten.
So if you or anyone you know could help translate the Humanifesto please send us an email!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY AARON & JORDAN!!!
I need not say how much these two are loved around here, but I will anyway! YOU TWO ARE LOVED! Have the happiest birthday!
Love,
Team SuperForest
SuperForester Jenni sent this my way awhile ago, but I haven’t gotten to posting it until now! This video is super powerful! Thank you Jenni for passing it on!
Changing the world through me, and through we.
SuperForest,
A few weeks ago I came upon this video that told me I had been doing something I considered simple and easy the wrong way my entire life! I did not know how to tie my shoes, and this man has taught me the right way:
Wow! Right? And trust me this really works, my shoes DO NOT come untied. Ever.
This video has been one of many a thing recently that has blown my mind. The past year has been a strange one, and I feel I have gotten more lost than usual. It was almost like my life was a drawing by a one year old:
Something Like This...
Totally INSANE! Every direction at random, never having a true heading or understanding of where it was going. Which I suppose is just how life is, but it felt more random than it has in the past. At times I have found myself really detached from the world around me, and really stuck in my head. Other times I felt detached from my head, simply floating along. But along this journey, like I said, my mind has been blown. I have seen and experienced amazing things, and I am constantly trying to retune myself into being in gratitude. The strange thing, at least to me, is that my head says this past years experience should be scary or something of that nature, but in fact I feel it was actually serene. Many emotions have flown through my system in the past months, many that have seemingly bogged me down, confused me, and trampled me. But I also have had just as many that have lifted me up, made me soar, and that have given me a smile.
One of the patterns I have seen in the past year is that I have pulled myself away from this little blog. Stopped writing to myself, to you, to it. I got more involved in the physical world, and less involved here. I reallocated my energy to different people, and now I am here writing my mind to all of you. I devoted my love and time to those things and people new in my life, and now it is time to bring it all back in. Perhaps their is a trick to balancing it all while continuously adding more, but I haven’t found it yet. And perhaps part of me never wants to find that trick, love exists because we have loss and pain. It is a beautiful system of constant giving, where we must constantly divert our attention to that which is freshly given, or choose to remain focused on what we already have. Hmm..many a interesting thought here.
As always thank you for giving me your time, it constantly astonishes me that I am given it. It is a true gift, thank you. And I have sincerely missed you, SuperForest. I haven’t even been good about reading everyday, which I something I used to pride myself with. I would open my computer, and if there was a new post I would read it, no matter what else I had going on. Now I find myself saying, I can read that later. Well a old saying reawakened me to that note, “Treat others as you wish to be treated.” If I expect people to read and enjoy my writing, I must also enjoy theirs! The result? I enjoy my writing more! So, I make my mark once again on these pages, which journal the growing community of love minded individuals.
Sadly I only have a few more weeks of guaranteed internet, as I soon leave to work in Mexico for Simply Smiles, our dear SuperForest friends. So, I hope to make more of a mark in those coming weeks, and then tell you all about the experiences I have! Until next time, Constant Reader. Keep giving all that you give SuperForest & SuperForesters, it keeps inspiring me beyond belief.
Until next time,
M
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