 | A Great DayThe jubilant birth of the Obama Era caps a decade of extraordinary events.
by Rebecca Solnit
Citizenship, belonging, are passionate joys at times, and this is one of those times. You can feel it. Today the world changes. It's a great day. Yesterday it rained hard for the first time this season and today everything in San Francisco was washed clean. I went on a long run past several polling places up in the heights and saw lines of working people waiting to vote and contented-looking citizens walking around with their "I Voted" stickers in the sun and mud. People have found again one of their-our-most buried and most powerful desires, to make a better world together. I found an online collection of photographs of people crying in public, so moved by what is happening in this country, and I cried a little myself this weekend and expect to cry a lot more tonight.
You can argue against Barack Obama, and I would myself on the grounds that electoral politics are themselves inherently flawed, corrosive, disempowering. My leftist friends who are already cranky about him warn me that I will be disappointed, but I'm not sure I will, because my expectations are realistic-I love his style, but he's not my messiah. Who he is is better than we had any right to expect in a country left to the jackals for so long, even if he's just a pretty gifted liberal Democrat with an uncanny ability to see and describe beyond the binaries. What he is in all his hyphenated hybridity is a sign of the new world being born-not the "another world is possible" of the antiglobalization movement, perhaps, but the other world of mingling and crossing borders and making new ethnicities out of love across old divides. He is an invitation in to a lot of those who have been left out for decades and centuries. He's my age exactly, born that same summer the Berlin Wall went up, and I recognize him, a man from the inbetween. And I recognize my country's ability to surprise itself and the world by being great just when our awfulness seemed unshakeable.
This day picks up from many that have come before. It is the first great lurch forward for racial justice since the era of the Civil Rights Movement. But it does not just pick up from the 1960s, but from the 1860s, the unfinished promises of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War to undo what that great president called the "original sin" of our country, slavery, a sin that goes back three centuries and more. Obama does not cancel out or heal the legacies of racism, but in becoming the most powerful man in the world he signifies that the game has changed, not ground to a halt. What he means to the inner-city kids I see in my neighborhood and to the murderous racists I've encountered in New Orleans. Both of them are going to think about their place in the world and their rights differently from this day forward. And this matters immensely, whatever the man being voted into power today does or does not achieve.
I am against heroes generally, and I grieved to see in 2004 how deferentially people invested their hopes in Howard Dean nationally and Matt Gonzalez in my local mayor's race. The movements were in both cases so much better than the men. The people who made up these great populist groundswells mistook these men who were little more than hood ornaments, not the engines powering this movement. And the movements died out when the men went nowhere; had they won the crowds would have given them our power and hoped for the best, rather than keeping it and moving past them. I thought we were entering an era where we would do without heroes, but we have been given a hero, which is a bit like being given a chainsaw or a credit card: you have to be careful how you use it. This moment of joy will subside, and those who expected Obama to be flawless or to keep inspiring may be disappointed, but his signal strength here is that he speaks the language of community organizers, of "si, se puede," and that he may give that power back or remind people that it was always theirs, not his. Though that is our responsibility, not his. His is to preside over a nation that must shrink from empire on economic as well as moral grounds, from the mad consumptive prosperity of the postwar era, and of its profligate environmental destruction; he is to be our Gorbachev, a man with the boldness to yield, surrender, and reduce. He knows it, which is why I think he'll be okay.
This is a great day that picks up from so many moments that came before, a new star that lets us pick out all sorts of constellations of history. It has been a wild nine years. We're just short of the ninth an_ni_ver_sary of the first of what now seem like five extraordinary moments in a decade that historians a century hence may consider far more turbulent and transformative than the 1960s (but as a post-boomer, I have a grudge against the 1960s). I was there on November 30, 1999, when a network of grassroots activists from around the world shut down the World Trade Organization ministerial and said that the future was not going to be shaped solely by corporations, capital and governments; it belonged to us. And so it did: the WTO and many of the other plans to strengthen corporate control and power have crashed and burned since then, as Latin America swing far to the left and as finally in the past few months neoliberalism and free-market religious fervor bankrupted themselves-and nearly everyone else. It was an extraordinary moment for popular power. It changed the world in ways no one expected. 2008 looks nothing like anything any of us imagined, both better and worse. And we got here on a sprint across strange milestones.
Few would include September 11, 2001 in those moments, but as most of you know I've been writing about disasters for the past four years and part of what prompted me to do so was the extraordinary emotion of that week. We were citizens. We felt connected, urgent, purposeful, immersed in public life, eager to do something, fully alive in the face of tragedy, as we often feel as such times. That moment came up when a bunch of the Bay Area volunteers who came to Reno with me to get out the vote this last weekend were having Sunday dinner, and we spoke of that moment when a kind of citizenship awoke in this country (along with some fear, blind patriotism and malevolent anti-Arab/Islam sentiment). That was the real threat to the Bush Administration, not Al Quada, and they did a fairly masterful job of squelching it overall, though outliers and pockets of insurrection survived. Including Tomdispatch.com, the wonderful site I've been writing for for the last five years, founded by Tom's outrage over the 9/11 news and need to tell a more thoughtful version of that moment in history. Yesterday, he wrote, "When historians look back, it will be far clearer that the "commander-in-chief" of a "wartime" country and his top officials were focused, first and foremost, not on the shifting "central theaters" of the Global War on Terror, but on the theater that mattered most to them - the "home front" where they spent inordinate amounts of time selling the American people a bill of goods." Not everyone bought it, but they did smother a moment when a better nation might have been born.
That surge of idealistic passion and solidarity in 9/11 mostly failed-though the book I've just finished writing tries to describe how remarkable was that day in Manhattan, when tens of thousands of office workers evacuated themselves and each other-including a heavyset quadruplegic accountant carried down 69 floors by his coworkers- with almost no help from institutional authorities (the Port Authority and 911 operators advised people to stay put), and an armada of boats-pirated yachts, ferries turned around in mid-journey, tugboats, small craft-evacuated 300,000 to half a million people from lower Manhattan, a spontaneously assembled fleet that in a few hours moved far more people than the Dunkirk evacuation did in days. Hasids gave away water to those who fled across the Brooklyn Bridge. I saw in those days that people wanted to be something better, something more committed, something more altruistic, but the avenues through which to realize such possibilities were mostly blocked or invisible to most of us.
That passion arose globally against the war that 9/11 was supposed to justify, and millions marched on every continent against the invasion of Iraq on February 15, 2003. The war went forward, though with the constraints an angry citizenry was able to place on it. The Bush Administra_tion had carte blanche from their marketing of 9/11 to do pretty much what they wanted, at least as far as a docile congress and intimidated senate were concerned.
Hurricane Katrina on August 30, 2005, broke their mandate and revealed their callousness, indifference and incompetence to all those who had not yet recognized them in the conduct of a war that had already bogged down. But Hurricane Katrina revealed something else more important. Though the people of New Orleans, the mostly poor, mostly dark ones left behind in a "mandatory" evacuation that was run as laissez-faire-style as any neoliberalist's dream, were demonized by the media and those in charge, from Mayor Ray Nagin to the Bush Administration, a lot of people responded with wounded outrage and yearning solidarity. I was so moved by hurricane.housing. org, the website on which 200,000 people offered beds, mostly in their own homes, to these people who had been portrayed as savages and criminals. The outrage over the racism and the brutality of poverty and deprivation again awoke that painful idealism, that yearning to be a better nation. Some say that Obama's rise comes in part out of that realization by so many that the wounds of racism were still bleeding, that our country needed to change more (this, was of course, a white realization; I don't think most people of color were soothed by what progress has been made in the past half century). Katrina was terrible, but the desires it awoke are the same ones blooming today, the desires to do the most meaningful work possible, the work of making a better world, to find common ground, to breathe in air that makes it possible to be an idealist.
I began writing about hope in the grimmest days of the millenium, after the war had broken out and all the antiwar activists around me felt utterly defeated, not just in this one endeavor, but in their sense of our power and our history. I began writing about hope to convince them that people have had the power again and again, that we have made history and will make it again. My hope came not only out of specific stories I had lived through and dug up as a historian but out of a deeper sense of the sheer unpredictability of history, the darkness out of which hope emerges. No one foresaw that five years after Bush seemed infinitely triumphant, he would be slinking off history's stage in ignomy and an antiwar candidate would be taking his place.
I wrote to Obama last night when I decided to send him a copy of Hope in the Dark, my book that came out of the war, the despair around me, and my adventures in seeing historical patterns: "My hope resided in the countless stories I had witnessed or researched of popular power-but also resided in the unpredictable and ever-changing nature of history, politics and popular imagination, the darkness I wanted to redeem from negativity and cast as something numinous instead. Heaven knows you are as unlikely a thing as ever happened in this country, though like any great change we will come to see it or you as inevitable and reread the muddled history of the United States as leading to this moment. But right now it's still breathtaking."
Today is a great day. Remember it. And remember whatever joy, tears, or amazement it brings you and don't let go of them. They are the candles you get to bring with you in the darkness in which we will need to look for hope again. And to keep moving onward. There is no stopping now. History has us on her back.
Rebecca Solnit is the author of numerous books, including "Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities" (2006). Her next book, coming out next summer, concerns the extraordinary communities that arise in disaster. We at CATALYST are secretly plotting to get her to move from San Francisco to Salt Lake City.
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 | Learning in the Labyrinth
For students in the community: a labyrinth at the University of Utah. Here is the story of how it got there. Also: Sacred Geometry in Action, by Heather Williams, and "Find Your Labyrinth."
by Katherine Pioli
The nature of a labyrinth is to create a centering, meditative experience," explains Dean Robert Newman, contemplating the significance of the ancient design one recent afternoon in his well-organized administrative office. "It also embodies that renascence notion of the active and contemplative lives," he continues. "So, theoretically if you are in a dead end or off in your life somewhere or uncentered, the experience of walking can get you back in synch."
Such an experience occurred for Newman, Dean of the College of Humanities, five summers earlier. At the time he was considering the imminent construction of a new building for his college, but had yet to decide on what or how to make it unique. On an unrelated trip, Newman and his wife traveled that summer to the south of France, in the rural region of Provence. In this serene location he was soon to have an experience which he calls "one of those nice synergies that just sometimes happens in life."
On that very same week in early summer, Terri Holbrooke, a businesswoman from San Francisco and Utah native, also journeyed to France. She was to visit Chartres, a tiny medieval town only a few miles from where Newman and his wife had chosen to stay.
While Newman was deeply engaged in research, Holbrooke spent almost her entire vacation exploring the Chartres Cathedral. Most importantly, she sought through her journey an intimate familiarity with the circular, winding pattern on the floor of the sacred building, the famous labyrinth of Chartres. For Newman, a visit to the Cathedral and its famous stone floor were not on the agenda.
The history of the Chartres Cathedral, arguably one of the most famous in Europe, begins with the inception of its construction some time around the early 11th century. During the time of the Crusades the people of Chartres who did not go off to Jerusalem, and did not go to war in the name of religion, took on a project of pacifism and peace. This began the construction of the nave, and the dwelling room for the labyrinth. As Terry learned, this labyrinth, more than any other found in the world, has an extraordinary history. The people of Chartres, she explains, "built that portion of the Cathedral in complete silence. It was something like 14 years of work executed as a complete pacifist gesture. They did it with reverence; when you walk into the Cathedral, you immediately sense it."
The pure design of a labyrinth, not exclusively that which is found in Chartres, is an ageless design of beauty, meditation and transformation. Art from ancient, pluri-theistic Greek cultures exhibits its pattern. Mandalas from Asia, giant earthen formations from ancient America, hieroglyphs from Egypt, all of these are or contain examples of labyrinths. The designs vary but all hold one common element: a single circular path to a center.
It is also important to know what a labyrinth is not. Robert Newman point out that it is not, for example, a maze. "A maze is meant to be confusing. Often when I say that I have done a labyrinth people think of 'The Shining.'"
In contrast, a labyrinth has no dead ends or wrong turns. It has one entrance which also becomes the one exit. Stepping onto the labyrinth begins a journey to the center, but one which is not straightforward. The path winds back on itself in folds and curves like the folds and curves of the brain. Once center has been achieved the walker turns and follows the exact same path out.
The pattern of the famous Chartres labyrinth, consisting of 11 elongated concentric loops, is imitated by other labyrinths all over the world. Holbrooke traveled with a group of enthusiasts expressly to spend seven days walking this stone design. The group was led by labyrinth authority Reverend Dr. Lauren Artress, who had been instrumental in installing two walking labyrinths in the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Holbrooke and her group explored the Cathedral from top to bottom and walked the labyrinth twice daily. They had access to the labyrinth at night and to the lower areas used by the priests, and also walked the half-mile to the rarely visited, now-overgrown stone quarry from which the floor's stones where hewn. "The place," recalls Holbrooke, "had the exact same feeling as the church."
All during this week, Newman was only a few miles down the road.
Holbrooke, aware that some old friends had a country cottage nearby, decided one day to pay a visit. When she arrived at their guesthouse, the paths and stories of these two strangers came together.
To anyone else, the fateful encounter may be inexplicable, but for Terri it was only another powerful working of the labyrinth. "Like everything with the labyrinth, it was effortless. Robert and I met the evening that I arrived, around 4 o'clock, and by about 5:15 we had decided there would be a labyrinth at the new Humanities building at the University of Utah. It was conceived in moments. Literally before we even had dinner, it was decided."
That labyrinth now lies outside the northeast corner of the Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities building, named in honor of Reverend Irish of the Salt Lake Episcopal Church. The design, a smaller version of the Chartres labyrinth, is colored onto large, even slabs of cement. Simple yet elegant, it is the culmination of two different visions.
The path that led Dean Newman to construct the labyrinth in place today began with his desire to set the new Humanities building apart from all others on campus. "I wanted a beautiful, aesthetic, ecologically sound, light-filled building. It is spatially located in what will be the center of the campus once the five-year master plan is enacted. So it will eventually anchor the academic quad."
Newman sought the synergistic combination of the active and contemplative central to the humanities.The labyrinth sounded like an ideal extension and physical manifestation of this purpose.
The potential significance of the building as the new core of campus put added pressure to create something unique and meaningful. "I had to consider the fact that people would be passing through a lot, so it was extremely important that it say something special."
During this early phase, before meeting Terri Holbrooke, labyrinths were somewhat on Neman's mind, but no one idea stood above the rest. Even though he had not yet walked the one at Chartres, he had walked numerous others in the world.
For Terri, on the other hand, the labyrinth had been a central guiding force in her life for some time, ever since her first walk through the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral. The first time was with her daughter. "I had never heard anything about it but she had come to visit me in San Francisco and had recently had an amazing experience walking one during a very difficult time in her life. The first time I walked, with her, I had an extremely powerful sense that our relationship was shifting. I was now going to be honored with the experience of watching my daughter walk her path instead of leading her."
From that moment of revelation Holbrooke found peace in walking the labyrinth and she sought its meditative energies often. Her location in relation to the labyrinths of Grace Cathedral was ideal. "I lived right across the street." So Holbrooke became well practiced in walking its path. She recalls quite seriously, "I walked it every morning for four years."
As Holbrooke continued her practice of walking, her emotional and spiritual connection with the labyrinth grew. When she finally felt the need to move back to Utah where her daughter lived, she felt only one obstacle holding her back. What would she do without a labyrinth to walk? "I had had the feeling for a couple of years that I couldn't move back to Salt Lake until there was a labyrinth. I just couldn't." The day that Terri and Robert met, that bubble of resistance was broken.
After their meeting, things started falling into place both for Robert Newman and for Terri Holbrooke. Terri's first action was to introduce Robert to her group leader. Rev. Artress was deeply committed to promoting labyrinths in the United States.
Robert remembers first meeting Rev. Artress in San Francisco. They began to discuss designing a labyrinth for the building. The conversation continued and plans for the labyrinth developed, not only for the one at the University but also for one being built at Salt Lake's IHC hospital, according to the last wishes of the brother of Terry Tempest Williams. To assist the process, Rev. Artress traveled occasionally to Utah. On one of her earlier visits Terri Holbrooke hosted Lauren, Robert and Terry Williams at her house. "I felt like a fly on the wall observing these three people who were coming at the world from three very different points of view but who really had so much common ground. I feel that the role Lauren played, especially that night, was to ground both Robert and Terry and to infuse them with a sense of what the labyrinth needed to be about. She built on the sense that it was not belonging to any single person or group, it was for everyone."
Two years after the fateful summer in Provence, construction began at the University for the Humanities building. Along with that construction began the formation of the labyrinth. This past fall the building was finally completed and dedicated. The labyrinth rests on the back patio just beyond the rear doors, a perfect place for someone seeking solitude and meditation.
Now, with the project behind them, Terri and Robert hope its presence reaches the community. After all, even for Terri who now can't imagine living without a labyrinth, walking one for the first time took a little bit of encouragement and guidance from someone close to her. After that first step, however, the possibilities unfurled.
Many of Robert's dreams for the labyrinth lie in its scholarly possibilities. He hopes to organize seminars and lectures revolving around various facets of the labyrinth. On a more personal level, Dean Newman also hopes that the metaphorical guidance offered by the design will reach the community. "[It is] the idea of focusing on process rather than destination which is extremely important _- not only in labyrinths but in life. The whole idea is that the labyrinth mirrors life's pathways, life's experience, and if you only focus on the goal and not the process of attaining that goal often there is something lost. That is when you get into the linear mindset more than the complexity, the possibility of finding an alternative path that is much more fruitful."
Terri, too, hopes the labyrinth can unlock desires, dreams and the confidence to pursue them for those who walk its path. "Go walk it," she encourages people, "there are no rules." With the wisdom of experience she adds, "don't walk it because you should and don't set a timetable. Just be open to the thought that maybe this would be a day it would give you some clarity. One thing _Lauren Artress always says is to be gentle with yourself in the labyrinth. Don't have big expectations. Just be open and curious."
The labyrinth is heated and therefore available all year round. For a map to its exact location, google Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building on the University of Utah campus.
Katherine_Pioli is CATALYST Magazine's staff writer when she isn't off fighting fires in national forests.
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 | Green Beat: The One Million Trees ProjectSalt Lake County's ambitious project: One million trees for one million people by 2017.
by Celeste Chaney
Imagine a world without trees. There's the obvious aesthetic loss. Without shade, cooling costs would soar. The value of property would diminish and more non-renewable resources would have to be used to build and furnish homes. Thousands of species of birds and other animals would vanish after losing their source of shelter and food. Air pollution would fog neighborhoods and playgrounds, and soil erosion and rain run-off would become nearly unmanageable. Local climates would no longer be naturally moderated and temperatures would quickly rise.
To ensure Salt Lake never falls victim to this scenario, last fall Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon unveiled a promising and yet challenging initiative: the One Million Trees program, a collaboration among cities, businesses, residents and community organizations. The goal, to plant one million trees for one million people by the year 2017, would sustain the necessary boost in Salt Lake's diminishing tree canopy and provide many benefits to the county.
American Forests, the nation's oldest non-profit citizens' conservation organization and a pioneer in the science and practice of urban forestry, be_gan measuring urban tree canopies in 1992 as a way to motivate cities to keep their ecosystems in check. Since then, American Forests has developed specific tree canopy percentage recommendations for various cities and climates throughout the United States. Currently, Salt Lake's tree canopy rests at 10%, while the canopy cover recommended for metropolitan areas in our region is more than double that-25%. And Gary Moll, senior vice president of the Urban Ecosystem Center at American Forests, however, claims that recommendation is conservative. "We typically like to see the canopy percentage of an area in the 40% range; 25% is usually the number given as a general estimate for an urban residential area, not for a downtown area," says Moll. It is possible that an area like Salt Lake, which includes suburban areas, urban residential areas and an urban downtown center, may have an average recommended tree canopy of 25%. Regardless, he said, 10% is just too low.
Worse, no one knows exactly how long Salt Lake has rested at this low percentile. "There have not been consistent or long-range systems in place to monitor our tree canopy," says Lorna Vogt, the open space coordinator for Salt Lake County. Salt Lake's decline in the tree canopy, which is estimated from observation, is most likely due to the removal of street and urban trees for the purposes of new city or residential development, and through attrition. "The result of the loss of agricultural land to new development has a similar effect, in that we lose the natural cooling and create new heat islands," she says.
The Urban Heat Islands Effect (UHIE) is a phenomenon that has been studied and documented in many temperate region cities for years. One of the most significant causes of UHIE is the replacement of green spaces with impervious materials, such as concrete and asphalt, as cities expand and fill in. Moll says city planning must involve a balance between natural and unnatural materials to sustain the environmental health of the valley. "You have to balance the system," he says. "In Denver they didn't have a high percentage of tree canopy area. When they furthered development in the city and surrounding areas they had to increase the number of trees, and they did."
The program's goal includes more than just planting trees, though. More goes into reforesting a city than just finding the spaces and sticking trees there. Education is required, since trees, like other living things, grow better in some places than others. "We need to match species to spaces," says Salt Lake City's urban forester, Bill Rutherford. Rutherford helped One Million Trees determine which trees would be most suitable to plant here. "Historically, we just see a space and put a tree there. Those not well suited to the space are removed or pruned, altering their structure, beauty and performance," he says.
Rutherford strongly encourages people to plant trees as long as they understand the purpose and the responsibility. "Longterm maintenance is crucial. A tree is a living, breathing dynamic organism that changes weekly, monthly and every year," he said, "People must be willing to provide what the tree needs." Private tree maintenance will be crucial to the One Million Trees program because 90% of the trees will have to be planted on private property. The benefits to homeowners will be innumerable. According to the USDA Forest Service, Center for Urban Forestry Research, for each one dollar invested in urban forest management, $1.89 in benefits is returned to residents. Shade trees planted on the east and west side of a typical home can reduce heating and cooling costs by 25% and make building up to 20 degrees cooler in the summer. Trees also improve air and water quality by filtering pollutants. Planting a tree now will add 10% to the value of a property when sold at maturity.
In case that isn't enough incentive to plant a few trees, Smith's and Rocky Mountain Power have donated $35,000 to help One Million Trees provide seedlings to homeowners and other members of the private sector. Additionally, the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands offered a $10,000 matching grant. But don't think that is taking the responsibility away from you, me and the guy next door. The
program's success will mean our success, but it will be entirely dependent of our efforts at home. To record a tree planting or to find out what trees are best to plant for different locations, visit
www.milliontrees.slco.org
Celeste Chaney is a junior in communication at the University of Utah. In 2006 she was recognized as a Freedom Forum Free Spirit Scholar for her efforts as a student journalist, and has been addicted to journalism and travel ever since.
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 | Gospel Truth in Salt Lake CityOne white woman's experience with gospel music. Come for the concert, but be forewarned: You may come back for rehersals.
by Beth Wolfer
Man, if I could do something like this, I'd start singing again," I shouted over the crowd toward my friend Becky, tears streaming down my face. My hands stung from clapping, the hair at the back of my neck stood up. The crowd roared, stomped, clapped, laughed, heaved a heavy collective, happy sigh as the choir made its way from the theater's aisles back up onto the stage.
In a year of extreme loss, a year of when-it-rains-it-pours, I'd felt little joy, let alone two continuous hours of sheer, unabashed elation. I'd lost my mother to Alzheimer's, my house to fire, my temporary mobility to back injury, and my sense of professional worth to an untenable work situation, and my friend had taken me out two weeks before Christmas to "cheer me up." The music had replenished me, in spite of a lackadaisical, flabby spiritual life I'd fallen into. Apathy ruled, more than deep conviction or pious disregard, but I hadn't realized just how empty I had become.
Nine months later, taking me at my word, Becky called to tell me we'd be joining the Community Gospel Choir for rehearsals to prepare Messiah: A Community Celebration.
This is not a piece of music, not merely a nice holiday pastime. Messiah: A Community Celebration is a phenomenon, a force of nature, an amalgamation of song, spirit, out-of-the-box, refreshing unconventionalism mixed with traditional, classical Handel.
Who are they?
It starts with rehearsals. Most Monday nights, from October through early December, 75 very unique people gather in the choir room at Salt Lake Community College to begin the process of building this experience. Under the direction of eminent local, regional and nationally-renowned choir master (and former Platters member) B. Murphy, we sing, we sway, we smile, we connect. There is no written music; B. doesn't believe in it, partly because, despite having directed choirs for over 40 years, held a professional singing career and traveled the world, musically, he can't read a note. People learn by listening, by being there, by participating, he says; and it works.
Usually, when we think of gospel music, we think of African American religious congregations, like the venerable local Calvary Baptist Choir or the internationally-renowned Blind Boys of Alabama. The overriding impression is that this is Black Music.
Whether as a choir member or someone sitting in the audience of this particular production, I am struck by the unspoken meaning, the depth - regardless of one's religious affiliation or motivation for being there.
There is a sense of awe, of inexplicable possibility.
The Community Gospel Choir incorporates people from African American, Caucasian, Asian and Native American races; Baptist, LDS, Catholic, Unitarian, Presbyter_ian, agnostic, Episcopalian, Russian Orthodox, Jewish and other religions; millionaires to nearly homeless individuals and everything in between; bankers, stay-at-home moms, software engineers, yoga instructors, soldiers, Oscar-winning film makers, students, property managers, retirees, clothing designers, fund raisers, caregivers, firefighters, nurses, and even a professional concert pianist.
Who would have guessed that in mostly homogenous, Caucasian, middle class, LDS Utah there would be a gospel choir so diverse, so heterogeneous?
Our singing skills vary, too, including some professionals. B. says that as long as people are able to sing, committed to the process and moved by the message, they are welcome to sign on.
Under B.'s influence, what we have in common is the immense exuberance we feel both during and after each rehearsal and performance. At the end of every rehearsal, we find ourselves standing, clasping hands, singing the theme song of the entire three-month process: "Reach out and touch...somebody's hand... make this world a better place...if you can." Words my singing companions have used to describe this experience: "magical," "connected," "grateful," "blessed." The director's favorite part is the process and the joy of creating beautiful music full of the Spirit together - and the hope that audience members leave uplifted.
Salt Lake Community College's group, which sings the traditional choral pieces, is made up of the school's combined choruses. Dressed in classic choral garb, tuxedos and gowns, they present a sharp, unified, professional appearance and a crisp, uplifting sound.
Weaving the gospel and classical threads together are narrations by leaders from various faith traditions, the college, local dignitaries and politicians. Producers and artistic directors make a few changes each year, to keep the production fresh, alive and compelling to those who return year after year.
Messiah origins
Handel's Messiah has been sung at both Christmas and Easter for centuries. Written, it is said, in a 24-day period in 1741, the story describes the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Neither sleeping nor eating, George Frederic Handel is said to have seen "the face of God" while composing his masterpiece. He was supposedly depressed, in debt, and recovering from a stroke, making his efforts all the more miraculous.
Divided into three parts which address specific events in the life of Christ, the work was subjected to centuries of classical adaptation, church involvement and productions ranging from the blustery to the quaint.
Enter, in 1992, Messiah: A Soulful Celebration, a production by the legendary Quincy Jones. Al Jarreau, Patty Austin, Stevie Wonder and others put a fresh and exciting twist on Messiah. The story was the same, the presentation was decidedly not, and a new generation of listeners began to appreciate the ancient story in a new way. The gospel selections from Messiah: A Community Celebration are derived from this production.
Sticklers for historical accuracy might not enjoy the liberties taken by this interpretation, not the least of which is that the show ends with Hallelujah (often mistakenly called the "Hallelujah Chorus"). Those who know Handel's work well realize that the Messiah's most famous chorus actually takes place about two-thirds of the way through. But for Messiah: A Community Celebration to end with anything but Hallelujah would be a gigantic letdown to those who walk out of the theater humming those famous strains.
What color are
gospel's roots?
Some say gospel music began as a form of communication between slaves in Africa. That theorgy gained strength and popularity in early 20th century America. But others say gospel's roots hail from Europe in pre-American days and morphed into the music sung by predominantly white Southern Gospel artists, including a young Elvis Presley. Who knows? Perhaps gospel was more instrumental than we know in the early roots of segregation. But as far as this country has come in the civil rights movement, "the most segregated time period of the week in this country remains 11 a.m. to 1 p.m on Sundays," someone said to me recently. In large part, whites and blacks continue to celebrate their faith traditions "amongst their own."
In Utah, gospel music is most prevalent in African American congregations such as Calvary Baptist and First Baptist. In the mid-1990s, however, a gospel choir formed in Park City. This tight-knit group broke the choral-singing mold, excelled vocally and created moving spiritual music together for several years, even taking their message on the road. "They were a breath of fresh air," said B., who helped organize the group. "People need to be given permission to participate and to express themselves, and this group led the way in broadening gospel music both to singers and to audiences in this state."
In 2002, Grand Theatre executive and artistic director Richard Scott sought something different for the holiday season at the Grand. He approached B. Murphy and Deron Hutchinson, who gathered many of their Park City gospel faithful, members of the Golden Voices Gospel Ensemble, as well as several local church choir members to form the Community Gospel Choir.
Messiah: A Community Celebration is a far cry from the Utah Symphony's Sing-It-Yourself Messiah at Abravenal Hall, which I participated in for several years. The Community Celebration comes with permission (if you choose) to move, clap, sway, stomp and yes, toward the end, to sing along. Whatever your religious affiliation or motivation - or lack thereof - whatever you're going through in your life, good, bad or indifferent - this production will move you.
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 | Cure for the Holiday DreadUse visualization and "personal frequency management" for a truly happy holiday.
by Jackie Lapin
If you're anticipating a rerun of previous years where your relatives made you crazy and your holidays were filled with headaches, then you are sure to experience that again this year. Because the energy you put into dreading and anticipating will pave the way for more of the same. The energy-also known as the vibration-that you project in the world will manifest the reality you imagined.
However, you can begin to change all that just with your thoughts. You can use "personal frequency management" and visualization to manifest a truly happy holiday and keep the joy in the holiday season. By consciously creating your day-juggling work, shopping, cooking, tree trimming, kids, management of pesky relatives-you can have the kind of holiday season you desire effortlessly and without hiccup.
Here are six tips for creating "relative harmony" for the holidays:
Throw out the love net
Well before they show up at your door, when you begin planning your holiday, send your "love net"-your high-vibration loving energy-out to your relatives and keep doing it throughout the holiday season. Feel love toward them even in the most trying times. Know that love is patience and understanding. Plenty of loving energy can head off, diffuse and transmute negative energy emanating from your relations. Ask for an unending supply of loving energy to pass into you from the Universe and through you to your family members.
Visualize
Take some quiet time each day and visualize just how wonderful your time with your relatives will be. In your mind, see them helping you instead of criticizing, offering support, staying out of the way, picking up after themselves, volunteering instead of demanding, loving the gifts you have picked for them, finding ways to make your time together joyful and loving.
Relish the emotions of these wonderful reunions. Thank the Universe in advance for granting this incredible camaraderie, goodwill, grace and warmth. Then go ahead and visualize the rest of your day going smoothly, too.
Stay in your high frequency range
Whatever happens, do not allow your relations to pull you into the low frequency range of anger, frustration, bitterness or regret. Stay in your high frequency states of love, contentment, joy, compassion and generosity -play music and tune out negativity, focus on those who appreciate what you are offering, do something creative that serves your soul. If you are being bombarded by negative energy, excuse yourself and go do something yummy just for you-take in a movie, go for a walk, play with your puppy, give yourself a bubble bath, shoot some hoops.
Redirect them into helping you in a good way
If you know that they are likely to be underfoot, in your way or just helpful in the wrong ways, have a list in advance of things you would like them to do to help you in a "good way." They'll feel good about being able to help and making you pleased, and you will manifest goodwill on all planes.
Monitor your own verbal expressions with your love bubble
Before you say anything that you would regret or that will escalate into warfare, encase yourself in positive, loving energy. Allow your "love bubble" to be a place where you can breathe deeply and transform your negative energy to positive. See cool, calming blue light starting at the top and washing over you down to your toes at the bottom of the bubble. Now step out, and say what you need to say in a calm, loving, respectful, constructive, gracious, but firm way. Call upon the "right" words and tone of voice.
Give Santa those "hot buttons" and let him take them back to the North Pole
You can do all of the above five things, but if you allow your relatives to push your "hot buttons," you'll be back where you started. Make a conscious decision that you are giving those hot buttons to Santa as your gift to yourself. Release previous memories of pain and angst with your relations and start fresh. If they start down the old path, surprise them and don't engage! Let go of the mind-chatter in your head that gets you crazy and allows them to get your goat. Just decide not to go there. Instead just keep telling yourself you deserve joy, peace, goodwill and good, kindly relatives at the holidays. And they just might turn out to be what you imagined!
Now go and have a truly happy holiday!
Jackie Lapin is the author of "The Art of Conscious Creation; How You Can Transform the World." Her ebook, "Beyond The Law Of Attrac_tion: How Conscious Creation Can Help You Create The Blueprint For Your Future" is available at no charge: www.theartofconsciouscreation.com/blueprint-ebook.html
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 | From Burning Man to the Salvation ArmyThis holiday season, the bell-ringers might just spin fire.
by Amie Tullius
Beyond the glass brick wall outside Adriane Colvin's office at the Salvation Army, you can see a line of hungry people wrapping around the block. A lovely blonde with striking green eyes, Adriane sits calmly sipping her own blend of yerba maté while a flock of intercoms and phones vibrate and chirp for her attention. Her office is painted a shade of green that might look industrial or institutional in someone else's care, but with Adriane Colvin inhabiting it, the green seems a stylish décor choice, being almost exactly the color of her own eyes. This is a woman who slips between worlds and roles and brings style and passion to them all. Entrepreneur, choreographer, and recently a grandma, Colvin has worked in a wide range of fields throughout her career: events management, film, nutrition, childbirth, consumer advocacy and real estate. Beyond that, Adriane is well known as a leader in the Utah alternative arts community, recently as a Utah regional Burning Man contact, and currently as head of the Utah Fire Conclave: a group of elite local fire dancers who perform at the Burning Man festival each year.
She recently joined the staff of the Salvation Army as volunteer coordinator, soliciting and managing those who give thousands of hours annually and are crucial to the organization's accomplishments.
Your work at the Salvation Army seems quite different from your volunteer work that's oriented around radical self-expression. Do you ever find the two at odds?
The first time I heard about altruism I was probably 13, and I remember thinking, "It would be great to live like that." But I didn't. It took having a family, having a community that needed nurturing. I've worked in arts, but when you see little kids go out of here happy because they're going to have food in their cupboards-that's a whole different feeling. I've been able to take my practice further by having a job like this. .
Do you feel your work with the Burning Man community has segued into this job?
Everything I've done up to this point allows me to express myself without fear of judgment or that it's going to be wrong. I trust, I trust implicitly, and I have faith that what I'm doing makes a difference. The family expression is happening here at work as well. I think it's a calling... though I've never been a particularly religious person, at least from a religion that comes from any dogma.
What would you say to give people courage to take risks, to branch out beyond their known groups and organizations and explore getting involved and being of service?
The Salvation Army and the people who work here are concerned only that you have personal integrity. I have my own beliefs and principles that can fit into the Salvation Army, but what I see them doing is actually making a difference. We're giving food to people-today-who are hungry. This morning we gave people coats.
There's a saying here that I absolutely love: The Salvation Army is a "ministry of presence." They hold that space and that presence because they know that's the most powerful way to help people. Not to tell people to think their way, or this is what people should do... none of that! It's just, "this is the space that we hold. If you're hungry, we'll feed you; if you need assistance, we'll help you."
There is another saying around here that I really like: "Love people until they ask you why."
Amie Tullius is becoming a regular CATALYST contributor, specializing in the arts.
How you can lend a hand this holiday season:
1. Angel tree: Come help sort toys and clothes that have been donated for families in need.
2. Bell ringing: Be one of the people who rings the bell for the red kettle program. "You can make it your own," Adriane says. She says the people who get creative with their groups tend to not only have more fun but also raise more money. "I just got a call from a guy who dresses like Star Wars characters," she says. "You can get a group of people from your church or your school, or just friends who like to wear costumes or dress up crazy. You could play saxophone, you could play the flute, you could tell jokes- it's a good way to have fun while raising money for a great cause."
3. Make sandwiches: Get your crew together and make sandwiches for the homeless at the Salvation Army's community dining room.
4. Volunteer at the thrift store: Sort clothes and help merchandise the store.
5. Donate! When you pass a bell-ringing Obi-Wan Kenobi or Jabba the Hut in front of Smith's,
drop a donation in the red kettle.
Contact: Adriane Colvin, Volunteer Coordinator/Development Coordinator
(801) 746-7963 adriane.colvin@usw.salvationarmy.org.
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 | What the Modesty Covers RevealIt does us good to try to understand the extent of some people's fear.
by Lisa Sorensen
While those of us who worked to support and elect this nation's first black president are thrilled by the Obama victory, it's worthwhile to remember that not everyone is so ecstatic.
The week after the election I shopped at Smith's on 33rd South. While waiting in the check-out line I noticed a plastic modesty cover obscuring the front of People magazine. I peeked, and saw a very modestly dressed Obama family.
I scanned the racks and saw magazine after magazine covered by white plastic. Skimpily-clad supermodels
on the front cover of Cosmopolitan? Compromising pictures of Paris Hilton? Nope. Mostly magazines featuring the Obama family. I felt like my parade had been rained on. I took a picture with my cameraphone.
When I snapped it, I thought, "Jeez, some jackass day manager is having a hard time with his bitterness level," but in fact, the modesty covers are always present in the racking system and could have been deployed by even a customer. In any case, they stayed that way for a week and were removed when the cover photos changed for the new issues.
I think the incident is a useful illustration of how some people really feel about this election. I'm disturbed by the Armageddon-style propaganda coming from some conservative quarters-and this is a handy example of exactly how that train of thought is playing out in some people's minds. I'll allow that whoever put up the modesty covers may simply have been an arch-Republican, but for me this action can't entirely be separated from the context of race.
If you're racist, you're likely so conditioned by that lens that you won't even see the flaws in your logic. People who hate Obama because of his race often don't think of it as "hating Obama because of his race." They think in terms of secondary characteristics, like "he's inexper_ienced (hyperbolize to he's a charismatic con artist), therefore we're doomed" or "he's liberal (hyperbolize to he's a communist), therefore we're doomed." The people who are hyperventilating are extremely genuine in their belief and invested in their fear, and some of these people are my family.
As someone who's not a US citizen, I have no formal political influence in this country. I am, however, pretty familiar with the politics of race. My country (the Bahamas) got majority rule (read: their first black government) in 1967, and on the eve of that election my grandfather was to be found out in the garden shed making molotov cocktails to fend off the rioting masses he was sure would come to kill his family. No riots occurred, though my country took another 30 years to mature past the practice of habitual race-baiting (from both black and white) during every election.
A picture of Obama published in The Economist fist-bumping a small blond boy split my emotions as I realized that, while it evoked a surge of hope within me for the healing of the racial breach in this country, my own mother would react quite differently. Since the election she is anxious and depressed.
My generation of Bahamians aren't as invested in that particular kind of fear, and I see parallels to that evolution in this generation of Americans. It does us good to try to understand the extent of the fear, though. My mother is not a bad woman, and my grandfather was not an evil man. On election eve 1967 he was trying to protect his family the best way he knew how. It was lucky for everyone involved that the Bahamas avoided mass violence long enough for my generation to grow up and discard the old bullshit ways of thinking (and to have the privilege of ruining Christmas dinner for the old guard because of it).
Peace grows from peace, not from war. That goes for pretty much every flavor of conflict.
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 | Meeting Obama in the Grocery Aisle"Change is not only coming; change is here. Here in me. It has to do with my President, Barack Obama. This is how I know."
by Matt Stella
On Thursday, November 6th, I was shopping in the grocery store. I was pushing my cart past the white bread, looked up, and saw two tall, well-dressed black men walking toward me, shopping.
Let me give some necessary background on this kind of commonplace moment in my life, and the synaptic and limbic revolution about to occur in my Caucasian cranium. I am white, and I grew up in America. Every day of the 1970s, the play years of my youth, was spent battling and befriending on the stickball macadam, or the touch-football asphalt, or the dodgeball cement with all my best black friends and white friends in the predominantly African-American New Jersey town where I grew up.
Despite my positive racial integration experiences, there was also an ambient racial tension at the time like little embers we would find burning in the soles of our sneakers, left over from the incendiary marches of the late '60s. The best intentions of my progressive parents could not prevent their kids, or most any kids in this country, from absorbing and storing like a lung, the ash dust and smoke of racist fear and stereotyping that blows secondhand through our streets, schools, TV shows and society.
After leaving my hometown, my 20s were spent in and out of the meeting rooms of various non-profit activist offices, working against racism and for social justice. I could not have explained it at the time, but much of what I was striving to change and "integrate" was the racist still living in my body, segregated from the slick and well spoken, politically correct, progressive 'me' in my head.
And now we're back to the bread aisle. Before November 4th, 2008, when I would pass an African-American person in the store or on the street, if I were to examine the first millisecond, the time it takes to make a fist, I would notice a tight contraction of fear and mistrust occur in my belly. In the moment it takes to register the event consciously, my P.C., Obama-voting brain has already taken over, suppressed the betrayal of the racist gut, and redefined the moment as a non-threat. I cringe to imagine all the energetic insult this has caused, time after time. But on this day, my first time grocery shopping after voting day, I had an entirely different experience. When I passed those two black guys, in that first unconscious millisecond, my body's reaction was to feel excited! Happy! A surprise treat! "My leader! My savior!" my body said.
How could this quantum leap in racial healing have happened? I have worked in different ways against racism in the world and in myself for at least 21 of my 41 years. And basically overnight, one ecstatic Obama-victory night, these brand new, positive racial associations have penetrated deeper into by bones and lungs than anything before. And if this is happening to me, then what is this doing for all the young children of color who now have a role model in the highest position of social rank? Could this serve as a magic inoculation to internalized racism? I know this shift is not the end of unconscious racism in me-but it's a huge and promising step forward.
I bumped into my friend Maria in the same grocery store the next day. Unsolicited, the first thing she said was "How about Obama winning! I'm still high from it! This is going to change the way we see the 'other' in this country."
Later I asked her what she meant. Maria is an incredibly bright, highly educated woman who spent her adult identity-formation years in the United States, but was born and raised in Colombia. "I am someone who has traditionally been 'othered' here," she said. She articulated how people other than the white mainstream are fit into limited and stereotyped roles. Black men are seen or expected to be sports figures, rap artists and musicians, or criminals, for example. Despite the incredible successes of many African-Americans, to now actually have a black man with great personal integrity and aplomb, visible in the highest elected position in the land sends a powerful message demonstrating a new model and possibilities. "This is a call and response phenomenon," Maria said. "I hear a call, and I hear responses. I am responding. I'm not only looking upward, but also looking inward for change. I am already putting higher goals for myself, how I behave, what I can do."
Amen, Maria. Me too, amen.
Matt Stella is a psychotherapist with Redrock Counseling in Salt Lake City.
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