I was so saddened by one more school in Omaha, NE in January.  I can’t help but think that if that young man could have found the creative center of his spirit, where thing are allowed to flower and grow, he would not have needed a gun.  Although on the visible level, our little Bead People Peace Project is mostly a “cute” little project, I actually believe that there are many levels beneath the obvious.  The Bead People do the following:

• They carry a message of sweet acceptance of others—the energy of support and celebration
  
• While building a Bead Person, the builder is automatically led by his or her creative spirit into an experience of peace.
• When we do a Bead People project, we naturally foster and nourish a moment of coming together, creating something fun and cool, generating conversation, and admiring one another’s efforts.  This IS community and collaboration.
  

You see, The Bead People are not preachy or just symbolic—they are active and creative.

At an educational event we went to a couple of years ago in Rapid City, this woman, a well-respected Lakota Elder, wandered by our table where we had at least 200 Bead People laid out in little rows.  She walked by, and then actually backed up and returned to our table.  A beautiful smile lit up her face.  She put out a hand, palm down, and kind of scanned the rows of Bead People.  Then she looked up at me, still smiling, and said, “They are wakan—each one has its own little spirit.”  In Lakota, wakan means “sacred.”

Call me crazy, but I believe they are alive with spirit just as she said.  There is no other way to explain why people seem to light up when they find their own special Bead Person.  They light up—with recognition of creative spirit, recognition of peace.

I have put off writing or sending this newsletter for a long time because I thought I had to learn the language of “marketing.”  The truth is, I’ just not built that way.  I will never master the “M” word and am forced to do what I do—share who I am at the level of heart and spirit.  It will have to be enough.

Having admitted that, I could use your help to spread The Bead People Peace Project across the world.  Already 6500 Bead People have traveled to 18 different countries, but I am greedy for more peace, more creativity, and more connection in this world.  I believe the wakan energy of The Bead People can help us move toward a that if we take the project one-by-on, community-by-community and start a movement of celebration and acceptance.  I have had it up to my eyeballs with being fed on a diet of fear and separation. 

There are no ugly Bead People.  They are all perfect, beautiful, unique, and enlivened with creative spirit—just like us.

Here are just a few ideas that my wild mind has come up with, but I will definitely need your help bringing them into action.

1. Create a Bead People exchange program for students, churches, women’s groups—whoever.  People of one country getting to know people of another country through the most ancient means of exchange—beads.
   
2. Set up bead People Peace Festivals in schools, youth groups or church groups—kind of a school carnival with a purpose.   For this idea I have found other similar project such as The Pulsera Project and Pennies for Peace that, when put together with The Bead People and other teacher driven ideas such as Poster Projects, Poetry Slams etc, would make for a fun, educational and culturally relevant event.  Not to mention GREAT FUN.
   
3. Bead People in a Box.  I send out a box of already made Bead People with books to seel within schools or groups.  The proceeds go to support our monthly Bead People Peace Prize.  We already have kits available if you would rather build your own—or build Bead People to contribute to this effort.  My fingers are getting calluses.
   
4. The Bead People Peace Prize.  Every month I want to pick out a worthy project and award them a Bead People Peace Prize that comes with a donation to their project.  There are so many people working at the grass roots level to support creating a more peaceful world—we want to recognize and collaborate with them.
   
5. Creating curriculum to go along with Bead People projects.  This I have already started, but I am open to good ideas.  
   
6. The Translation Project:  Again, we have already started this.  The Wind story is already available in Spanish, Lakota, Danish, and other languages.  What we want to do is use Google translate but then have native speakers polish our translation for us.  We probably can’t physically print each translation, but we can make them available online.
   
7. This one is a recent idea that I did not come up with but love.  A senior community center in Stillwater, MN is hosting two intergenerational Bead People events this May.  Seniors with work with grade school classes to build Bead People.  What a great idea, Karla!
   

See what happens when a wild mind gets infused with creative spirit?  As you can probably figure out, this is bigger than what Milt and I can do.  But we are patient and willing to ask for help. 

Did any of those ideas spark your interest?  Would you like to join our community and see what develops over the next many years?  Your time means as much as your money.  We want you to become a part of The Bead People community.  To open this up, we have built a project on Indie Go Go as a way to build our community.  We also, of course, have a FB fan page and our own blog and website.  All of these resources are listed below.  Check them out and check in with us.  Become a fan, join our list, purchase your own Bead Person or kit , or offer a translation on Indie Go Go.  

The Bead People just attended a Presbyterian Women's Retreat.  It didn't work out for me to go, so we decided to let them go solo.  I sent books, beads, and wires and happy thoughts that all would work out.  I just had a nice email from the organizer, Pat D.  Here is what she wrote.  
Jamie--

I have to tell you how successful the Bead People were at our camp this past weekend!! Just phenomenal! There were women making them all weekend long, and many kept appearing on the zipper pulls of the jackets and vests we were wearing. I would believe there were probably 100 bead people made—maybe more.

The women loved the story in the book. They found it quite addictive making the people. There were requests for us to do it again.  I will be back in touch with you—but wanted to give you this quick update.

Thanks again.

Pat

Did you ever do something “just for fun” and then have it bloom around you like a pretty garden?  A couple of years ago I was making earrings and got bored with it, so “just for fun” I used the wire to create little people out of beads.  Then a year ago I was scribbling away and wrote a little story about this big wind that comes and blows all the people of earth into one another until even their body parts get mixed up.  I liked the story and the message it carries—how about we should just get along and accept each others’ differences.  It is the same basic story First Man tells Albert in Albert’s Manuscript—minus the beads. 

Then, (oh, my relentless mind) I wanted pictures to go with the story but couldn’t find an illustrator (I can’t draw), so one night I was puttering around on Publisher and created a “mock up” of the story using geometric shapes and curves.  It was kind of cute so I printed a bunch and put them with The Bead People.  I ran out right away and so I then took the little book to the print shop and printed 1500 of them.

Now, one year later, the Bead People are on a walk-about around the world.  They’ve traveled to Finland, France, Germany and who knows where else.  Schools and organizations are calling me—we started taking trays of beads to festivals and school classrooms and letting children build their own Bead Person---just for fun.  The books are almost gone and I need to go back to the print shop because we have too many events scheduled for the next two months and not enough books.  So then we decided to build a website (www.thebeadpeople.org) and start an international peace movement (getting a Bead Person automatically makes you a member J).  Milt even created a film of one of the festivals with a remake of the Beatles song, “All You Need are Beads” as the sound track.  

I think of all the many paths I’ve worked so hard at trying to make my way in the world and, suddenly, The Bead People come along to teach me that all I really need to do is something that expresses who I am and what I believe, and the path will unfold naturally.  They are such clever little beings, those Bead People.   Milt and I have been making up fun sayings like “Don’t Worry—Bead Happy” or “To Thine Ownself Bead True”.  We may put them on T-Shirts—just for fun.

I will never get wealthy from my little “just for fun” project, but acquiring wealth or stuff has never rung the bell for me.  I am, however, discovering a small side benefit.  Having schools call me is opening doors and allowing me to talk about the Natural Human Learning Process with teachers and administrators.  This process has transformed my own classroom and, I hope, will soon be transforming other classrooms.  (To see free videos of the process, visit the front page of www.manykites.org or to download free guidelines on how to use NHLP in your classroom visit Dr. Rita Smilkstein’s website at www.borntolearn.net ).

My bottom line.  Today I had the fine opportunity to watch two classrooms full of developmental English students wrap their minds around the structure of a sentence and really GET it for the first time.  I get to watch them as they realize their own potential to learn anything—given the right chance.  This is wealth beyond measure . . .

Good night and sleep well.

Jamie

 

This is an historical post.  Note the date.  

5/24/08








God Night

I feel like I am coming home to myself at last.  I needed a bit of summer to restore my spirit.  Today I went to the park and built Bead People underneath a tree.  It is so strange how those little characters can restore my equilibrium.  The project itself is beginning to grow outside of my own creations.  My daughter, Nichol, has started the first outside Chapter of Friends of The Bead People in Lincoln, NE.  And, in typical Nichol style, she has created a beautiful, enchanted booth that makes me want to go to Lincoln and build a few just to sit inside of it.  She called the other night and told me that she had three blind people building bead people in her tent.  It was such a lovely image I nearly got teary-eyed. 

It is strange how engaging such a simple project can be.  It reminds me that beads have been a part of every single human culture since the beginning of time.  They have been created from mud and glass and seeds and shells.  They have been used to adorn, as money, and of course, as gifts.  It must be embedded into our collective souls—this love of beads.  

Sadly, her partner Lynette, who is 7 months pregnant, has been told she needs to be on bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy.  Although I’ve never met her, her energy and enthusiasm for the Bead People has reached me from 11 hours away.  We will hold her in our thoughts and prayers.  Nichol also told me that she sent her husband home with a list of necessary items she would need for her hospital stay—and top of the list were her Bead People supplies.  

We are now inviting others to get involved.  You can see details and meet Nicci and Lynette at www.thebeadpeople.org.  In recent weeks we have had money donations for printing, bead donations from as far away as Australia, and several requests to get involved.  Two women at our own Journey Museum fell madly in love with The Bead People and I spent over an hour with them as they handled each little person in order to pick the ones they wanted for the gift shop.  I loved watching them play.

That is what the project is about.  It is play—with a mission.  It gives us a way to sit around and get to know each other and to talk about life and how to create the world we all want, where “family” takes on a much bigger meaning.  I love the Lakota saying, Mitakeya Oyasin—We are all related.  I believe that in my heart.  Our humanness so outweighs the differences.

I am back at work on another novel.  While we were in D.C. recently, I had a note from my agent with her list of first submissions for my novel, One Drum.  Suddenly it struck me that my life-long goal of “being a writer” was at hand and I want to be ready if a publisher wants to see what else I have up my sleeve.  The novel I went back to work on is about a small and very wise lizard (yes, I said lizard), named Sulee who is sent to help a girl named Lela.  This little lizard is so engaging.  He is smart, funny, and very sincere.  It sounds like a children’s book but it is not.  It is in the same theme of what I’ve begun to think of as my “Earth Series”.  Sulee lives in a world where the animals, the stones, the trees are all awake and aware, tuned into the earth in a way that humans have forgotten.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll post the opening pages just to give you an idea of this wise—but young—little lizard.  Oh, the working title is “Sulee—A Lizard’s Tale”.

God night.  That was a typo but I rather like it.

Jamie 

This is an historical post.  Note the date.  

5/24/08








God Night

I feel like I am coming home to myself at last.  I needed a bit of summer to restore my spirit.  Today I went to the park and built Bead People underneath a tree.  It is so strange how those little characters can restore my equilibrium.  The project itself is beginning to grow outside of my own creations.  My daughter, Nichol, has started the first outside Chapter of Friends of The Bead People in Lincoln, NE.  And, in typical Nichol style, she has created a beautiful, enchanted booth that makes me want to go to Lincoln and build a few just to sit inside of it.  She called the other night and told me that she had three blind people building bead people in her tent.  It was such a lovely image I nearly got teary-eyed. 

It is strange how engaging such a simple project can be.  It reminds me that beads have been a part of every single human culture since the beginning of time.  They have been created from mud and glass and seeds and shells.  They have been used to adorn, as money, and of course, as gifts.  It must be embedded into our collective souls—this love of beads.  

Sadly, her partner Lynette, who is 7 months pregnant, has been told she needs to be on bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy.  Although I’ve never met her, her energy and enthusiasm for the Bead People has reached me from 11 hours away.  We will hold her in our thoughts and prayers.  Nichol also told me that she sent her husband home with a list of necessary items she would need for her hospital stay—and top of the list were her Bead People supplies.  

We are now inviting others to get involved.  You can see details and meet Nicci and Lynette at www.thebeadpeople.org.  In recent weeks we have had money donations for printing, bead donations from as far away as Australia, and several requests to get involved.  Two women at our own Journey Museum fell madly in love with The Bead People and I spent over an hour with them as they handled each little person in order to pick the ones they wanted for the gift shop.  I loved watching them play.

That is what the project is about.  It is play—with a mission.  It gives us a way to sit around and get to know each other and to talk about life and how to create the world we all want, where “family” takes on a much bigger meaning.  I love the Lakota saying, Mitakeya Oyasin—We are all related.  I believe that in my heart.  Our humanness so outweighs the differences.

I am back at work on another novel.  While we were in D.C. recently, I had a note from my agent with her list of first submissions for my novel, One Drum.  Suddenly it struck me that my life-long goal of “being a writer” was at hand and I want to be ready if a publisher wants to see what else I have up my sleeve.  The novel I went back to work on is about a small and very wise lizard (yes, I said lizard), named Sulee who is sent to help a girl named Lela.  This little lizard is so engaging.  He is smart, funny, and very sincere.  It sounds like a children’s book but it is not.  It is in the same theme of what I’ve begun to think of as my “Earth Series”.  Sulee lives in a world where the animals, the stones, the trees are all awake and aware, tuned into the earth in a way that humans have forgotten.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll post the opening pages just to give you an idea of this wise—but young—little lizard.  Oh, the working title is “Sulee—A Lizard’s Tale”.

God night.  That was a typo but I rather like it.

Jamie 

The family can be such a mysterious forest.  We navigate its many trails often unable to see the “trees” for the forest that is all around us.  We do not see when we take on and carry a burden of guilt or sadness from a parent or grandparent—or even a sibling.  We do not see the invisible links of love and loyalty that exist—and that can keep us from moving forward in life.

For the past twelve years I’ve been working in this forest, helping others to see their way out.  The work is called Family Constellation Work.  It is a group process that uses representatives to stand in for past or existing family members.  By moving representatives physically into the circle, we are able to make visible what has been invisible.  The constellation is profound, often moving, and sometimes uncanny in its ability to show us how to release old, non-useful patterns.

The first constellation I stood in as a representative was for a woman who said that she and her two sons could not hold on to their money.  They made money—they just didn’t seem to keep it.  This was my first time viewing a constellation being set up and worked on.  The facilitator was a German who later became my teacher.

But let me tell you what the woman learned from setting up her own constellation.  It turned out that her grandfather was a rancher during the depression era.  He was a smart guy who managed to keep his ranch when all around him others were failing.  He began to buy up his neighbors ranches for a dirt cheap price.  His ranch grew and prospered.  The more his neighbors failed, the more he succeeded.  He built his enormous ranch based on the losses of others.  Now, two generations later, his grandsons cannot hang onto their money.  As we watched the constellation unfold, we learned that the grandsons do not have the right to “atone” for the actions of their grandfather.  A series of movements were made within the constellation that released the grandsons from this past action.

In a more recent workshop that I was facilitating, I worked with this beautiful 17-year-old girl who had been given almost more than she could handle from life. The first young love of her life was murdered.  After he died, she discovered that she was pregnant, but the baby was a tubular pregnancy–she lost the child. In 12 years of doing this work, I have never seen such a young soul quite that frozen in grief. It raises goosebumps on my arms just to recall it. In my early interview with her—every constellation begins with a fact finding mission—she said that she was cold throughout her body, that  she could never seem to get warm.  She also said that she has absolutely no sympathy or compassion for anybody.

This constellation was very difficult—and she was so brave to decide to do it. She (her representative) faced her lost love and the lost child within the safe field of the constellation.  An enormous amount of rage rushed out, and then tears, and then love, and then release.  It was amazing to watch.  I think that the coldness of her body was coming from her trying to follow her love and lost child into death.

How many of our young suicides are actually the person following a loved one into death?  I can’t answer that question, but my experience with constellation work tells me it is probably more than we can imagine.

Those of you who have not yet seen the depth and authenticity of this way of working with the generational wounds of a family may want to look for an opportunity to attend a demonstration.  We know from experience that any explanation of how this work unfolds and its potential to heal ancient (and current) wounds is just too difficult to explain.  The work itself best demonstrates the work.  There is also no way to explain the “high” that comes when the release happens and love again is flowing in the core of the family.  We all gain something from the work of others.

Essentially, Family Constellation Work is the best of family systems science coming together with the deeper soul of the family itself.  Our goal is to introduce myself and this work into your area in preparation of future workshops.  You have probably been sent this invitation by a friend, family member, or colleague.  This is a no risk event.  We will take donations (no set charge) and thank you when you bring friends along to experience this powerful way of working

Please feel free to share this message with others who you feel may be ready to find the sturdy trees standing in their family forest.   We hope that you can join us.

One of my favorite current projects is my little “bead people” peace project.  I create little thumb-sized people out o fbeads and put them together with a story I created that promotes peace and tolerance.  Although outwardly I am pushing “tolerance and acceptance” for others, the real secret behind this “peace project” is what happens when we create something.  Whenever I sit down to help a child or adult create a bead person, we enter that wonderful space of creating.  Our worries scatter to the four winds, our score keeping ceases, our problem-solving obsessions take a hike.  There is no agenda, no big whoop, just the fun of taking raw materials and shaping them into something nice.

The real “peace” in my peace project is that inner feeling that we get when we create.  If we all had a lot more of that, our world would indeed be a peaceful place.

Try something simple.  Choose a tiny little project that you want to do.  It might be cooking a nice dinner, chopping a carrot, selecting a corner of your house to beautify or organize. Create a nice image of that thing having been accomplished.  Then take stock of current reality and either make a list or set of steps to get from one (current reality) to the other (the thing you want).  Then do it.

The most important part of this exercise is not in deciding the “what you want” or even the steps between that and the current reality, but what happens to you as you create this thing you want.  The process of creating doesn’t really have much to do with what or how we create.  It is the feeling you get as you are fully engaged in the creative process.  This is worth so much more than even the end result of our project.  It seems so sad to me that many of us are so focused on the end result (the creation) that we miss the process of creating that can bring such peace, even bliss, when we let it.

What did you feel as you were creating?  Did you give yourself the time to enjoy it?  Did your mind stay quiet for a while and let you simply enjoy being and creating?  What if you were to spend hours every day in this state?  Wow.

The other day I was coaching a beautiful woman who has overcome many hardships to take her place in the world as a peacemaker.  Mary wants to make a contribution to her community.  She is a black woman who was raped by her stepbrothers and pretty much left to fend for herself in the world.  She is quite remarkable in her recovery from these events.  Now she works with others who have been in jail, have used their bodies to make a living, and who have been in the dark corners of life.

In talking with Mary, I could hear her ongoing resentment of those she has worked with who seem to float to the next level while she is infused with passion but unable to support herself financially.   Mary has been given many opportunities to train in various models to rehabilitate and restore justice where justice has gone wrong.  I asked her if she could consider for a moment that all of those people who trained her and helped her were her PhD. program in life.  The great thing is that she has no school loans--just the degree.  She thought a moment and suddenly found a way to be grateful to all of those who had helped her go forward from the darkness she had been in.

The next time I went to Mary's she had created an appreciation collage filled with specific thank-yous to specific people. She had filled her board with hearts and puffy pink letters spelling out her gratitude.  All of her jealousy and resentment had been transformed into something fresh with possibility.  Both the act of creating the board and the act of rethinking her debt to these people had brought her peace.

One of the things I want to do with this weekly post (my goal for 2011) is to not just throw around pretty words suggesting we get along, but to show specific ways that we can achieve the state of peace within our own hearts and in the world.  Peace is a state of being--not an action, not a thing, not even a process.  It begins inside.  If we were to break down major wars and violent events, we would find the seeds for that violence in single thoughts and patterns of behavior driven by thoughts.  We need to learn to manage our own thoughts first.  Who do we resent?  Who do we direct anger or jealousy at?  How kind are we to our own selves?

Just in the past week we had a shooting in a school in Nebraska and a shooting of a public servant in Arizona.  People died.  Violence is followed by more fear--and less peace.  In both cases, we can find the roots of the violence in the thoughts of a single person.  Sad.  Who will help us manage our thoughts?  How can we help each other manage thoughts that morph into action?

Be kind to yourself first.

A couple of years ago two classes at a South Dakota Alternative High School got involved with The Bead People.  Over several weeks the students, ninth graders, built 160 Bead People to use as a give away for the students, teachers, and staff at their final picnic for the school year.  The project was initiated by a Restorative Justice person who fell in love with The Bead People project.

What was so interesting to me was what actually happened with these students who have had so much difficulty fitting in and making it in a mainstream classroom.  They are a spirited, rebellious, creative . . . and often wounded bunch.  There is a lot of anger, but when we would show up and lay out trays of beautiful beads, all of that spread-out wily energy would find its focal point in the creative act of building a new Bead Person.

Creating—the process of—is an act of peace.  I think there is something so vitally important in this single statement.  It is so obvious we often miss it.  Even the toughest of young men in our group were drawn into creating.  One young man’s Bead Person was such a work of art that I asked if I could have it.  (See image.)

The dynamic human urge is a creative, vibrant energy WILL OUT.  The energy itself does not care what it creates as long as it is creating.  It will be a constructive force or, lacking guidance and direction, a destructive force.  The energy of creating and the energy that directs learning are the same.  Humans just plain like to figure things out.  Our brain-based friends would explain to us in great detail that challenging creative or learning tasks that are just hard enough to make us stretch and reach actually expand the neural networks of the brain.  The tree-like structures, dendrites, are forced to stretche their finger-like structures out to connect with others of their kind.  New learning connects with previous learning in an exciting and expansive way.  And not only that, when the brain is engaged in this way, it is flooded with feel good endorphins.  Can you imagine?  We actually get “high” from creating and learning new things.

This brings me to a big question (and I like big questions).  My goal this year is to create several lesson plans that could be used in the classroom by teachers or group leaders of different levels.  My dilemma is this.  How can I create activities that do not “teach” peace and tolerance for others but have students engage in and experience the act of peace.  I want students to learn more about their own endless reserve of creative energy and the dynamic urge to learn that IS an act of peace when we engage it.

I think children must feel beat over the head with what we think they should learn and know.  These 2X4 clunks have become a barrier to the natural human love of creating and learning.

• Outdoor play is now EXERCISE
• Eating good food is now NUTRITIONAL TRAINING
• Family fun is now QUALITY TIME and DIALOGUE
• Natural Curious Inquiry is now STUDY TO THE STANDARDS
• Learning is now PERFORMANCE

I want the Bead People to be a strong example of and activator for creating, learning, peacemaking, and not just another club that “teaches tolerance, anti-bullying, or global politics. I have a few ideas and could use your help to discover others.  Here are my main lesson planning guides.

• Use Storytelling to engage, share, expand
  
• Get Hands On with The Bead People projects
• Find some music and dance to add to The Bead People projects
• Use The Bead People as a stepping off place for new learning
• Create lessons that build bridges of connection to self, family, earth, community and the global family.

Those are my ideas.  I’m already putting some of them into action.  I would love your ideas and thoughts and activities to add to The Bead People peace project.  And naturally, if you don’t have yours yet, you need to hustle into the store and get one.

I’ll be waiting to hear from you.

Jamie Lee

1. Read The Wind of a Thousand Years 

2. Take the Bead People Pledge 

3. Buy or Build a Bead Person

4. Share our Film

5. Share our Story with Others 

6. Tell us who and where you are 

7. Build Three, give two away.

8. Host a Bead People Gathering at your church, conference, classroom, etc. 

9. Run a Bead People Foreign Exchange Program (This is for both children OR adult groups)

10. Oh Yes--sign onto the Peace Blog or Join Our Facebook Fan Page
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