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January 30, 2017 By Roots & Fruits

RADICAL LOVE Methodology

“What is the RADICAL LOVE Methodology?” is a question I’ve been hearing a lot lately. As I move forward to share these tools with the world beyond those directly served at One Tree Center, I’m aware that the term RADICAL LOVE needs some explanation.

These two powerful words embody 11 values that spell out RADICAL LOVE and were gifted to me one Easter Morning 15 years ago. The 11 values came from the heart of a 5-year-old child who listened through silence and made a conscious choice to share with me a crayon and blank piece of paper while sitting in Easter Mass. She was my niece, sitting at the other end of the pew in the Catholic Service that I attended with my family of 11 to celebrate Easter—the holiday of rebirth and transformation.

As an adult who had grown more skeptical of the Catholic Church as an institution, its mission, and its values, I still chose to honor my family’s traditions of coming together on holidays, attending the mystical mass, and celebrating with food, games, and dialogue. This became a rarer event as my siblings and I became adults with our own families and values, but we continued to come together each year to connect in celebration and love.

My 5-year-old niece saw me at the opposite of the end of the pew sitting in meditation and passed a crayon and paper all the way down through each family member’s hands into mine. My sister Margaret, who was sitting next to me, handed the crayon and paper to me and said, “These are from Abby.” I asked, “Why?”  She said she did not know. I looked down the pew and asked Abby with my eyes, “Why do I have these two items?” She looked at me and imitated the act of writing. She told me in silence to get writing.

I didn’t question her, since I knew from my work with children that they are wise beyond their years and tend to have a deeper message speaking through them that I need to honor. In that moment, I entered back into a meditation, asking Spirit to guide me in what I was meant to write. It was then that these 11 words came to me–Revolution, Altruism, Dialogue, Intention, Commitment, Accountability, Liberty; Learning, Openness, Visioning, Empowerment. I wrote frantically, not knowing what these words meant or why I was writing them, but simply listened and let the crayon do its job. After writing them down, I noticed the first letter of each word spelled out two larger words: RADICAL LOVE. I knew that these needed to be researched, practiced, and eventually shared with the world. RADICAL LOVE was always something I was fascinated with understanding, as it was this teaching that I believe Jesus embodied and practiced.

Being raised Catholic, I was taught about the Christian Peace Leaders. Jesus, Blessed Mother, Mary Magdalene, and the Saints. Jesus and Mary were two individuals who really stood out to me and guided me in my own journey. While in undergrad I opened up my heart to other traditions as I began to challenge the institution, always wanting to be a woman priest and being told no. In my journey of Protestantism, Buddhism, Paganism, and other world religions, I was inspired by the thread of the law of love that embodied all faiths. I knew that these two words, RADICAL LOVE, and the 11 values embodied within them were values that crossed world religions, political agendas, and cultural groups. Their goal is a universal language that enables all people to explore and sit at the table in compassion, openness, and grace.

I have held these words close to my heart for a very long time and chose in the past 12 years to design and manifest a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving children and families in learning how to apply RADICAL LOVE in their lives, both at home and school. As the world enters this time of rebirth and transformation, experiencing much darkness and glimpses of light, I am being asked to share this methodology beyond the walls of One Tree and the families I serve each year. This is my small contribution to the larger world. It is a message that came from a child, who listened to what I believe was a greater higher power, to share with me a simple crayon and blank piece of paper. In practicing these values to the best of my ability over the past 15 years, I learned the power they hold in transforming the dark into light, and understanding how dualistic thinking of us-versus-them limits all of us on this planet. Even if it feels dark now, we can bring back the light with the power of RADICAL LOVE.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: RADICAL LOVE

December 14, 2014 By Roots & Fruits

Compassion Reflections on Ferguson: Race, Peace, and Children 12.16.14

“If we are to have real peace in the world, we will have to begin with the children” ~Gandhi

One Tree would like to host their first of many reflections on the topic of race relations and children in response to both the recent events in Ferguson, MO and the current racial climate in the US. This event is an opportunity for families to come together, meditate for peace, and engage in reflection, dialogue, and art to explore the topic of racism in light of Ferguson today. As rallies, speakers, and actions take place across the country, One Tree, in partnership with Justice in the Body and other Community Leaders, would like to bring our focus to empowering children and youth to take time to reflect and share their voices on race relations in their own lives. Adults will learn tools and dialogue on ways to speak with our children about the current events unfolding.

As a community we will gather as one in meditation focusing on peace and justice in our world. We then will split into two groups of Adults and Children/youth to dialogue and share our reflections. The children and youth will be empowered to create art as they learn about Activist Artists who used their creations to share their visions of peace for our world. The Adult Caregivers of our children will sit together in dialogue to share our challenges and needs in partnering with children in creating a just and peace world.

Filed Under: General

October 21, 2014 By Roots & Fruits

Season of Light Cross Cultural Winter Festival 11.22.14

One Tree Center’s Third Annual Season of Light Winter Festival is right around the corner on Saturday, Nov. 22 from 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM! We are very excited to host this festival in downtown Portland this year to be more accessible to families within Portland and surrounding towns!

This Season of Light Festival came as a vision to me a few years ago when I reflected on the heart of One Tree and an event we wanted to host each year to build community and raise money for our programming for children. One Tree’s mission is to empower children, and families, to truly honor the diversity that exists within the world!! We serve so many families from many diverse ancient traditions and have the opportunity each year to bear witness to these holiday rituals through the children we serve. Through the years we have learned how similar these traditions around the world are as well as appreciate their uniqueness.

The Season of Light was an opportunity for One Tree to share our knowledge of six central holidays that most people celebrate at this time of year!! Eid al Adha (Muslim tradition), Diwali (Hindu Tradition), Winter Solstice (Pagan Tradition), Hanukkah (Jewish Tradition), Christmas (Christian Tradition), and Kwanzaa (African American Tradition) all exist within weeks from each other. All hold an essence of learning about the balance between the light and the dark, seeing the light amidst the dark, and celebrating a season of hope and joy for the light!! As I learned about these similarities, while honoring the unique traditions, I felt compelled to create an event that brought this knowledge to the larger community.

This time of year can sometimes bring many emotions of stress, anxiety, loneliness, fear, and consumerism that suffocates the true emotions of joy, wonder, celebration, and gratitude that all of these holidays embrace. I wanted to create an event that emanated the heart of these holidays, bringing families and communities together at a time when we can tend to be fearful of the best language in wishing one another a “Happy Holiday!” How can we go a bit deeper in wishing folks a Happy Eid, or Happy Hanukkah? How do we open ourselves up to learn more about what we each celebrate? How do we listen and bear witness to our various rituals and see how our roads join?

This is an event to Celebrate the Light by shedding light on these ancient traditions through music, art, and storytelling. It is an opportunity for the general public as well as families One Tree serves and has served, to come together to bear witness, dialogue, enjoy good food, music, dance, and have an afternoon of celebration. This is also a time for One Tree to share a bit more about the work we do in the community and to have folks do some holiday shopping in our basket raffles and silent auction. The event is free and open to all and we hope you can attend, to learn a bit more about the joy of this season, as well as to offer support to One Tree Center’s work with children on Social Justice and Peace.

Filed Under: General

July 28, 2014 By Roots & Fruits

Peace and Social Justice Camps

BlogPhotoSummer is here and our Peace and Social Justice Camps are under way!!
The Roots & Fruits kiddos are in their third week of “Peace Camp” and have been having a fabulous time engaging in self reflection, journaling, friendship games, art projects, and peace stories.  We have welcomed new friends who are starting early for the 2014-2015 school year, as well as slowly saying goodbye to longtime buddies as kiddos transition into kindergarten!!

Our elementary kids just started this week in their Social Justice Theater and Film Camp, preparing for their theatrical debut of “I Am Not Isabella.” This is an empowering children’s story that describes a little girl’s dreams of being a magnificent, powerful woman when she grows up promoting peace in the world around her!!!  The children are exploring topics on self identity, self affirmation, and women’s history as they learn script writing, set and costume design, and performance.

We are also very excited to host our friends, the Seeds of Peace International Youth Educators, again this summer to engage in song, dance, games, and dialogues on creating peaceful, trusting communities.  The youth have traveled from various States in the U.S., as well from overseas in Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, and many other countries.  We look forward to sharing stories of our gathering later this month!!

One Tree is smiling with the beautiful warm summer weather and are excited to continue to welcome new families and friends to our programs.  Please visit our Community Branches pages for registration forms for the Social Justice Camp in August and our Roots & Fruits page for registration materials for the upcoming 2014-2015 preschool year!!

We hope everyone is having a wonderful summer!!! Peace and Smiles – Virginia Dearani, Director

Filed Under: Roots & Fruits

Filed Under: General

May 20, 2014 By Roots & Fruits

2014-2015 School Openings

Roots & Fruits has a couple more slots for the 2014 – 2015 school year. For a Tour and Interview, email the Director at: vdearani@onetreecenter.org

home_kids

Enjoy the Summer!!!

Check out our photo gallery!

Filed Under: General

What’s Happening

  • RADICAL LOVE Methodology
  • Compassion Reflections on Ferguson: Race, Peace, and Children 12.16.14
  • Season of Light Cross Cultural Winter Festival 11.22.14
  • Peace and Social Justice Camps
  • 2014-2015 School Openings

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