Opening night

The Parliament began tonight with a series of blessings and speeches from a variety of spiritual traditions, from Shinto to Baha'i. It was quite impressive, albeit overlong. The music ranged from didjeridu to Sikh. The theme of this Parliament is "Hearing Each Other - Healing The Earth". There is a special emphasis on the issues of the Aboriginal culture as well as other indigenous peoples. I felt that the Australian Speakers made an obviously forced effort to honor the "original peoples" of the land - The Aboriginals have lived on this island for over 40,000 years, and havene of the oldest spiritual traditions on the planet. And yet, they are marginalized and, until recently, considered sub-human and either persecuted or ignored.

On the other hand, Victoria, and especially Melbourne is wonderfully diverse culturally. Walking down the streets is an education in the variety of humanity.

The actual discussions and forums begin tomorrow. Every I spoke with is complaining about too many choices. And each of us has to make a number of decisions each day, partly on the basis of interest and partly on the basis of our "sub-plot" of seeking to webcast as much as we can, which requires several of us to pick a forum more on the basis of timing than interesy. But I hope to meet people and schedule separate times to interview them. We'll see how that works.