This is for all our ancestors who were removed, displaced and evicted.. Indigenous peoples from San Jose to New Orleans who have survived and resisted eviction, gentrification and displacement joined POOR Magazine's First Annual TAKING BACK THE LAND CEREMONY Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia, poverty scholar, welfareQUEEN and Daughter of Dee and co-editor of POOR Magazine/PoorNEwsNetwork Thursday, August 14, 2008; Be bop bebop..bop..bop A slow mist rose from the ground co-mingling with candlewax, sage, and car exhaust. Bop..bop..be-bop..bop.. Warm breath weaving through the rhythm of a congo drum entwining with words of resistance from African Peoples, Raza Peoples, Celtic peoples, Pilipino peoples, Native peoples, indigenous peoples all.."One.... we are the people..Two....indigenous people...Three .. and we are taking back the land and ONE....We are the Scholars...Two... indigenous scholars and Three... we are taking back OUR land!..." Citing the articles from the United Nations(UN)Declaration on Indigenous Peoples adopted one year ago by the UN General Assembly, displaced, evicted and removed children, mamaz, daddys, tias and tios, aunties and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, elders, ancestors, and spirits from all across Turtle Island; Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, New Orleans and DQ University gathered to pray, testify and resist on Market street at sunrise in a spiritual, political and revolutionary ceremony of resistance to out of control development, eviction, displacement and criminalization locally and globally. To read more visit http//www.poormagazine.org

This week saw the start of two new groups - on Monday afternoons at the Speed Project - part of the Aids Foundation and on Wednesdays a group for newly trained folks at Community Housing Partnership. So now, every month, there is a wide variety of groups happening (if anyone came to the blog through my website-the groups and calendar pages are both awaiting the healing touch of my wonderful site builder and are a tad out of date!) There are groups for sitting zazen, for reducing the harm of speed use, Harm Reduction support for homeless folks, for women who are HIV pos., peer support for case managers, life-skills training, grief support and more.
A friend said "my goodness, you are such a renaissance person to be teaching groups on all these different subjects" - I laughed and replied -" actually the secret is it's not what I'm teaching but how. You can teach zen with a bunch of bananas!!"

I was just getting back on my feet after a couple of weeks of terrible pain in my ribs (non-specific diagnosis) and was getting around with a walking stick - when suddenly - my back went into spasm due to leaning on the cane...it was so awful I burst out laughing - here we see the benefits of meditation!!! It has made this week a little challenging as there is a film maker here filming me for a documentary on solutions to homelessness and today he wanted to film me walking around the Tenderloin - anyone have a skateboard I can borrow? He is filming the mayor and the governor in the next couple of days.The film maker's heart is in his work as his sister died homeless and addicted on the streets of San Francisco. His clips on You Tube are below.

The first You Tube link was done by one of my students-it's the 0pening blessing from the Trans Stage. My student apologizes for the image and sound being a wee bit out of sync.



YouTube - Zen Buddhist Priest Opens Trans-Stage at Gay PrideJana Drakka, Zen Buddhist priest and Wiccan priestess, officially opened the San Francisco Gay Pride 2008 festivities by giving a Buddhist blessing at the ...


youtube.com/watch?v=wJoh5H8G9m0&feature=related - 93k

News flash....Jana is incapacitated....read on....

I've had a very strange time the last few days - during a beautiful ceremony of Installation for a Dharma sister of mine Mary Mocine at the Clear Water Zendo - (check it out if you're near Vallejo) - I experienced a severe pain under the ribs on my left side. Being, basically working class and Scottish, I gave it a few days to go away.....but no. Trouble being, partly, my lack of health insurance since leaving San Francisco Zen Center to become a monk-at-large in March this year. Anyhow....the wonderful people at Glide Clinic - BIG thank you to them - kind and gracious service checked me out...then on to St Francis emergency room(in an ambulance - scary to the uninsured) where they eventually opined that I have torn intercostal muscles - painful but non-life threatening!! Elevate and rest. My heart, lungs and so forth are all good. Guess you could call it The Poor Person's Yearly Physical. Being aware of ones mortality and a wee bit fearful during a whole day of clinical checks just reminds me to enjoy every moment - because, after all, everything will change form at some point.