Monday, July 19, 2010

Ni Una Mas Exhibit

Last week, OCGTSPS visited the Ni Una Mas exhibit at Drexel's new Leonard Pearlstein Gallery on 34th and Filbert Streets. With a guided tour by the museum's head curator, we received an in depth look into the powerful and moving exhibit. Here is the curator's statement on Ni Una Mas:


"Since 1993, more than 600 young women and girls have been the victims of an ongoing terror inthe city and surrounding area of Juarez, Mexico, an area just across the river/border from El Paso,Texas The majority are Mexican, but a number are American citizens. Nearly all are young studentsand factory girls--maquiladoras between the ages of 14 and 22. Some are missing without a trace,but hundreds have been discovered dead in multiple sites in the nearby desert. From theirremains it is certain they have been battered, sexually abused, and often grotesquely mutilated;some have had their organs removed. Various theories abound, but the greatest mystery beyondwho is responsible, is how the Mexican government and our own have allowed the femicide tocontinue. Very little has been done by the local Juarez police, the State of Chihuahua or theNational Government to find the killers or to prevent new murders. The FBI, the UN and AmnestyInternational have attempted to investigate, but their offers are rebuffed and the crimes remainunsolved. In the years since the abductions began, the families, in particular, the mothers ofthese girls, a few dedicated journalists, musicians, filmmakers and artists have kept the chroniclealive as the horrific deaths continue.


How artists respond in the face of these atrocities is the core of this exhibit Ni Una Mas: TheJuarez Murders. Twenty notable artists—men, women, Latino and American bear witness to themany faces and facets of this tragedy. Their responses are personal and varied as they confrontedthe implicit sexism, drug politics, corruption and indifference behind the story as well as thesadness and outrage at the continued demeaning and devaluation of women. They remind us thatthis crisis demands action since every day another girl is at risk of suffering vicious abuse andcertain death. We owe a debt to Frontera 450 + presented by the Station Museum in Houston in2006. Four years later and 150 more girls missing, we are impelled to try anew." (Source: http://www.drexel.edu/juarez/exhibition/)


Unfortunately the exhibit closed on July 16th but the message of Ni Una Mas continues to live on. If you want to learn more about the injustices happening at Juarez, please visit www.drexel.edu/juarez. You can read about Congress Resolution 90, see videos and interviews, and find out what you can do to make a stand on social justice.


Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Why are we really afraid to LOVE?

I came across this online. It is written by Osho, an Indian spiritual teacher. I liked what he wrote. And, being a college student, I could actually relate to it.

"Love always creates fear because love is death, a greater death than the ordinary death you know of.

In an ordinary death the body dies, but that is not death at all. Body is just like a dress; when it is tatty and old you change it for a new one. It is not death, it is just a change: a change of a dress, or a change of a house or abode. But you continue, the mind continues – just the same old mind in new bodies, just the same old wine in new bottles. The form changes but not the mind, the shape changes but not the mind. So the ordinary death is not a real death. Love is a real death: the body does not die but the mind dies, the body continues to be the same but the ego disappears.

If you love, you will have to drop all the conceptions that you have about yourself. If you love, you cannot be the ego because the ego will not allow love. They are antagonistic. If you choose the ego you will not be able to choose love. If you choose love you will have to drop the ego. Hence, the fear.

A greater fear than death grips you whenever you are in love. That’s why love has disappeared from the world. Rarely, very rarely does the phenomenon happen that love descends. What you call love is just a false coin: you have invented it because it is so difficult to live without love. It is difficult because without love, life carries no meaning; it is meaningless. Without love, life has no poetry in it. Without love, the tree exists but never flowers. Without love, you cannot dance, you cannot celebrate, you cannot feel grateful, you cannot pray.

Without love, temples are just ordinary houses; with love an ordinary house is transformed, transfigured into a temple. Without love you remain just possibilities – empty gestures; with love, for the first time you become substantial. With love, for the first time, the soul arises in you; the ego drops but the soul arises.

It is impossible to live without love, so humanity has created a trick. Humanity has invented a trick, a device. The device is: to live in a false love so that the ego continues on its own. Nothing is changed, and you can play the game of being in love: you can go on thinking that you love, you can go on believing that you love. But look at your love – what happens out of it? – nothing except misery, nothing except hell, nothing except conflict, quarrel, violence. Look deeply into your love relationships. They are more akin to hate relationships than to love. It is better to call them hate relationships than to call them love relationships.

But because everybody is living in the same way, you never become aware. Everybody is carrying the false coin; you never become aware. The real coin of love is very costly: you can purchase it only at the cost of losing yourself. There is no other way.

Be courageous, don’t be cowards. The real mettle of your being is tested only when love arises. Never before it do you know of what mettle you are made. In ordinary life, in the marketplace, doing this and that, in the world of ambition and power politics, your real mettle is never really tested. You never pass through the fire.

Love is the fire. If you are really gold you will survive it. If you are not real gold, you will be gone. But I tell you that you are real gold.

Trust me – pass through the fire. Hesitation is natural, but don’t make hesitation a barrier. Even with the hesitation, pass through it. In spite of the fear pass through the fire. And only through the fire will the rose of your consciousness flower. There is no other way."

Hope you enjoyed reading it and it helped you in some way! :)