Spirit in Action
Hip Hop Council of All Beings - Pacha's Pajamas
Aaron Ableman & Dave Room have founded Balance Edutainment to use a wide range of media in order to light young people's dreams with a vision of making a better world. They've just released Pacha's Pajamas and are rolling it out in many different forms - video, audio, app and book - with prominent names like Talib Kweli & Mos Def taking part.
- Broadcast on:
- 30 Dec 2012
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along As I seek about for what I can most valueably share for a spirit in action, I look for those doing the work of healing the planet from a number of different perspectives. Sometimes, like today, I find someone who's helping bring our kids conscious of the good work and lives that they can lead. Aaron Abelman and Dave Room are doing that kind of work through balance, edutainment, and their recent production, Pachos Pajamas. There's room for all kinds of amusement and heroes in a kid's life, but I reserve special esteem for altruistic heroes and heroines doing their work non-violently. You understand I'm not knocking completely at least Popeye Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the like, but I'm particularly pleased to be able to share with you a world saver like Pacha. The creator of Pachos Pajamas, Aaron Abelman joins us today by phone from Oakland, California. Aaron, welcome to Spirit in Action. Thank you so much for having me. What you're doing with balance, edutainment, and Pachos Pajamas is really exciting. What led up to doing this work with balance, edutainment? What's your background with environmentalism? Well, it's rooted in a very deep personal story which stems all the way back to my childhood, having been raised on an urban farm in Central Coast of California. I was really fascinated by the collision of worlds from a very young age, the world of traditional relationships with the earth and where our food comes from and what's going on with our water and the climate, and also seeing this kind of invasion that was happening all around us. In fact, on all four sides, we were surrounded by urban suburban sprawl. There was 22 fast food restaurants and a two-mile radius within two years. I think I turned 10 years old and two years later, after it was mostly farmland around us, the entire Galita Valley went into development mode and it was a development boom. In fact, at the time in the early '90s, there was 30,000 acres of small farms and farmland across the country being lost daily, and it was a silent massacre. But we were just a microcosm of that story, and I really saw the community that emerged out of all these new neighbors that moved in all around us as an opportunity. I mean, I think my father was an author and farmer, and my mother, who's a public health care nurse and works with the homeless and hospice, they'd always seen everything in life as an opportunity, and I think they were very entrepreneurial in their intention to bring the community into the land and really use it as an opportunity to educate and empower the community around what a farm could be, which is what Wendell Berry calls the connection of the word "agriculture," that there's a culture of agriculture that we've kind of forgotten about, given the modern world is so disconnected from where our food comes from and the processes that go on to creating meals. But the food system is so pervasive and connects so many of the environmental issues in the world from the fields of the plate. That really provided, I think, an interesting perspective about how to engage an urban population and regular mainstream people with environmental issues from a very young age, and so I witnessed that work through my father's book, but I think I'd like to take it one step further in the work that I do in my life, which is to be able to scale the environmental movement and create just a mainstream popular culture that actually respects our relationship with the earth, and our relationship with one another and ourselves, and ultimately that learning process, especially at this critical time with climate change being so pervasive and the pollution of our world causing so much strife, I think we have an interesting opportunity to make that learning and that change into a way of life and to make it fun and inspiring and especially focused on children. So that's what, you know, balance edutainment is looking to become a thought leader around how best to use popular culture as a vehicle for addressing critical environmental issues and social issues as well. But this pajamas is our flagship initiative, which I'd love to speak about. How about as an introduction to it, could we share a little bit of the music from it? Oh yeah, the music is definitely a calling card for us, so we'd love to bump that music on your speakers, share it with your kids and grandkids, with your parents, grandparents. It's a great content for kids of all ages. Let's kick it off with a new track featuring Taleb Quali, the amazing rap star who has been such an inspiration to my generation, a song called "Butterfly Life". You know, butterflies love pianos, yeah. We go together like, yeah, hey, hey, hey, yo. Let me break it down, make a plane, tell you cut and dry How I get by living the life of a butterfly, nature so cheap I'm a poly transporter, they call me OT, original transformer 'cause I used to be a caterpillar, till I met them walkin' sides, used to have 16 legs or six pair eyes, I spent my free time dreaming about the sky, I was throwin' the ground wishin' that I could fly, my only job was to grow up, I wiped my plate clean, lift the lifestyle of a vegan, eatin' them leafy greens, flowers bloom, I'm breakin' out, I could cool, heart is on spot by me, I'm makin' 'em smooth. But now I put my laundry days behind me, flyin' through the ends where you find me, when there was a caterpillar, yeah, I got a crimey, now take a flight and it's way more exciting. Word. ♪ Fly, fly away, yeah, sing out for your life. ♪ ♪ Fly, fly, fly away, yeah, sing out for your life. ♪ ♪ Butterfly life, y'all. ♪ ♪ Fly, fly away, yeah, sing out for your life. ♪ ♪ Fly, fly, fly away, yeah, sing out for your life. ♪ ♪ Fly, fly away, yeah, sing out for your life. ♪ ♪ Butterfly life, y'all. ♪ ♪ Just that butterfly life. ♪ ♪ The more this my cousin and sometimes you fly like, ♪ ♪ 'Cause I flutter by like the thought, running through the mind. ♪ ♪ I'm proud of my species, we got many different kinds. ♪ ♪ You got more butterflies, true butterflies to skippers. ♪ ♪ Watch your plant flowers in your garden and I'll kiss 'em. ♪ ♪ If nature is a painter and a canvas is blank, ♪ ♪ then we growin' at the forest and my colors is the paint. ♪ ♪ A caterpillar dates still a part of me. ♪ ♪ Whole kingdoms are named after me. ♪ ♪ The cooling and the monarchy. ♪ ♪ I'm a great subject for photography. ♪ ♪ In the park, little kids follow me like the pie piper. ♪ ♪ Accepting ain't the music is the colors. ♪ ♪ Butterfly life, you gotta love it. ♪ ♪ Yeah, accept it ain't the music is the colors. ♪ ♪ Butterfly life, you gotta love it. ♪ ♪ Word. ♪ ♪ Fly, fly away, yeah, sing out for your life. ♪ ♪ Fly, fly away, yeah, sing out for your life. ♪ ♪ Butterfly life, yeah, fly away, yeah, sing out for your life. ♪ ♪ Fly, fly away, yeah, sing out for your life. ♪ ♪ Butterfly life, yeah, fly away, yeah, sing out for your life. ♪ ♪ Fly, fly away, yeah, sing out for your life. ♪ ♪ Butterfly life, y'all. ♪ ♪♪ Butterfly life, it's from Pachis Pajamas, which is a wonderful new creation of balance, edutainment, joint effort of my guest for today's Spirit and Action, Aaron Abelman, and Dave Rome. And we also heard in there, Talib Quali. And I guess your voice is in there too. Is that just you? Who else is in that one? Yes, I sing and wrote, did write the chorus, Talib Quali wrote the rap section from the perspective of a butterfly, which is interesting, and it's actually a pretty telling piece that represents the whole project of Pachis Pajamas, in that it's part folklore, part storytelling, part science, and also multimedia. The song is really an edutainment piece in and of itself, and we hope that this music can inspire youth and families around appreciating nature's magic and biodiversity and the range of species that exist all over the world. So the butterfly, obviously, is so special and so important for many reasons. But yeah, it was pretty incredible to bring a rap star from Brooklyn, New York to an environmental children's project like Pachis Pajamas, and being able to combine those two very disparate worlds for educational purposes. So Pachis Pajamas is what we're calling a transmedia platform to really highlight a lot of the critical environmental issues of our day. And it's a story at its center, it's a fictional story about a little girl who becomes a superhero pop star for nature. Well, with that in mind, let's let most deaf introduce us a bit to Pachia. This is from Pachis Pajamas called Little Girl Big Dreams. Pachia was a little girl with big dreams. Her dreams were bigger than the gigantic skyscraper that blocked the sunlight to her classroom. Her dreams were bigger than the biggest elephant at the zoo where her dad works. She dreamed of dancing and her poppin' from the huge crowds. She imagined cities where kids made the rules. She dreamed of a school where man was music and the beats were the numbers. Pachis liked to go to the zoo or the local parks but lately, she liked to stay inside. These days, she was much better at climbing the walls in her pants, tiny apartment and climbing trees. Nature was great, no. But most of the time, she just choose to watch TV over going outside. Little Girl Big Dreams, part of the story of Pachis Pajamas. Read here by most deaf, written and produced by Aaron Ableman and Dave Rome. So, we let most deaf have his minute of glory here on Spirit and Action. Now, back to you, Aaron. You're the one who created the story after all. What more can you tell us about Pacha? Little Pacha is a little girl with big dreams. She's from the city, multi-racial girl with asthma who, kind of your typical city girl. In fact, one night, she has an asthma attack. Her mother comforts her with a new pair of pajamas that she's made and says that life isn't always easy, but your dreams can carry you through anything. And that night, when she falls asleep, the plants and animals on Pachis's new pajamas come alive. And the whale, the hummingbird, the tree, the mushroom, pebble. They all basically unite where the forest reaches the ocean with Pacha there as well. This guy is a little gorilla talking about the state of the world. They decide they're going to do something about it. The mushroom pops up out of nowhere and says, "Let's throw a big nature festival." And they all say, "Well, the world is a nature festival," says the tree. It's like a party for the entire planet. And it might be the only thing that could unite the world in these crazy times. So the mushroom wins over the group and they decide they're going to produce this huge event that we are the world for nature. And they build a stadium half land, half water powered by electric eels. And the black eyed peas come to perform at their real peas. And the beetles are an insect band. And Fox News is broadcasting, but it's real foxes. The sun and moon are the spotlights. And it's Pacha's journey disguises a gorilla into this amazing unification of the planet. She's the only human that's invited, in fact. And, well, the plant animals don't even know she's a human until the end. And I won't give it away, but basically it's an incredible platform for us to be able to highlight species loss, climate change, biodiversity, environmental justice, all sorts of issues and embed those into a great and fun educational story for kids and their families. And for schools, of course, you know, so out of that emerges a range of different products. The audiobook, obviously, which is a forthcoming album coming out on Earth Day. The EP is available now with the Illustrated Children's Book. There's also mobile and online apps that are going to be developed. There's a range of different other products, like most excitingly looking to do a TV series. Really leveraging the power of great storytelling as an educational tool and seeing, you know, all the different places that can go, the curriculum that can develop out of that. We also have a live show that travels to schools and conferences and events that have been getting some rave reviews we've presented to almost 10,000 people over the last six months. Wow, you're putting together so many different pieces to make this happen. The website is pachospajamas.com. You can find it via northernspiritradio.org. Or maybe you want to spell that for us, Aaron. Yeah, you can check out pachospajamas.com, P-A-C-H-A-S pajamas.com. You can also check out balance@utainment.v-a-l-a-n-c-e-e-v-u-t-a-n-m-e-n-t.com. Both are great and exciting interactive websites to engage the parent and child around critical issues as well as getting our amazing products out into the world. As a child, were you inspired by Captain Planet? Did you see that when you were a youngster? Oh, Captain Planet was great inspiration in many ways. The funny thing is I actually didn't watch that much television as a kid. I had to sneak away to my friend's house to go watch TV because we didn't even have a television that lived out of the closet. It lived in a closet and was taken out mainly for Saturday morning cartoons. So my pop culture was definitely worth the risk of getting in trouble to go over to my friend's house. That's how powerful our TV shows are for young people. I remember sneaking out of the house once to go watch a Simpsons episode. And Captain Planet. And Captain Planet was really quite an amazing whole philosophically everything that puts together. Maybe it'll help jog some memories of Captain Planet. Or maybe introduce some listeners to the Captain Planet saga. Kind of last generation forerunner to what you're doing with Pasha's pajamas. If I played the intro for the TV cartoon which ran from 1990 to 1996 or so, get ready Planeteers, here he comes. Our world is in peril. Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, can no longer stand the terrible destruction plaguing our planet. She sends five magic rings to five special young people. Who can go from Africa to the power of Earth? From North America, we live with the power of fire. From the Soviet Union, Lincoln with the power of wings. From Asia, Haiti with the power of one. And from South America, my team with the power of heart. When the five powers combine, the Summit Birth's greatest champion, Captain Planet. The power is yours. Yep, the power is yours, Planeteer. That was part of your childhood, Aaron. And I imagine that it, as well as your parents' example and a lot of other influences. They all work together to get you on the track you're traveling. Really concerned for the environment. I think that maybe that's what you're doing for this next generation. Absolutely, I mean, this is very much taking inspiration from a lot of the great TV shows. And even films and books that have come before us. Everything from the lower acts to Stephanie Street. We forget how pervasive and important these platforms, as I call them, really are for families to be able to communicate about the world of their children. And I know that growing up, I didn't want to listen to a lecture, but I would very much be happy to check out some cultural piece about the very same things that might have otherwise slipped over my head. I think it's important that we consider how we're communicating to our next generation as being almost as important as what we're communicating. And so what you've chosen is, you know, it's essentially, it's a musical. It's an animated story of sorts. There's singing and there's dialogue and you got people like most deaf included in there. And so you've got real star power. Are you at all afraid that with all this wonderful entertainment you have, which is talking about natures, wants to connect people with nature, that instead what kids are going to do is stay inside and watch the screen? That's a great question. It's something that we've really struggled with. And I think that there is a challenge around creating more technology based content that can really support getting kids outside and back into nature. In some ways that's an irony. At the same time we have to meet kids where they're at and lead them back out into the woods and reconnect them. Even with each other, a lot of kids are not getting the kind of social interaction that they used to. But things like music and live events, the school programs, the curricula, the offline content, like the illustrated book and prints. All that material has great potential to serve the real world, so to speak, or that which is beyond just the screen based reality that a lot of our nation's children are so focused on the statistics that we often cite as that. Kids are on screen seven and a half hours a day, and for Latinos and African American populations, that's almost double. It's 13 hours a day right now. And the truth is that is where the population is. Most of them are on YouTube. Pretty much everybody is on YouTube. There's 900 million people on Facebook. So we can't any longer ignore the importance, obviously, that social media and online content is happening. So I think it's sort of both. It's not one or the other. We need offline and online. We need schools to reconnect with the home. The connection between our communities and our schools needs to be bridged once again. We can't have kids going to school and studying something that is very important and high integrity and learning about how to respect one another. And then on the ride home from school on the radio is songs talking about disrespecting women and promoting violence. There needs to be more real content on our pop stations and where people are plugging into. And it's my convention that we can create the same kind of party atmosphere that's super fun and exciting for kids. As popular as JZ even, but still doesn't, we don't have to degrade women. We don't have to disrespect one another and also that we can talk about real issues. You know, that that is still available as a market for that. I wonder from your personal experience, Aaron, if you grew up feeling like you were out of the loop because you didn't have television set up there at home, because your parents were a little bit on that environmental edge, did you feel like, oh, I just wish I could eat a big mac every day and, you know, whatever. Oh, I mean, I have to say I got cut down to Taco Bell a few times and McDonald's to just by virtue of the social experience and what everybody else was doing, you know. Yeah, there was a lot of alienation and I went through some really crazy bullying and even like being ostracized at points having to eat my healthy sandwich in the bathroom. For fear of being beaten up and I remember the first or second day of junior high school, seventh grade and getting my organic sandwich stomped on, you know, by some folks that couldn't understand why I wasn't eating the, you know, at the Taco Bell line. You know, so it's definitely something I've dealt with. I think I've been lucky to have overcome some of those feelings of, you know, just self-worth around, you know, I mean, especially when you're a teenager, your social life is everything and it takes a lot to stay in your own power and, you know, just be who you are, you know, and that's been a long journey for me. So, you know, I'm excited about, you know, just finding ways of empowering the next generations to stand up for what's right for themselves, you know, and not just being another pawn, you know, just because everybody else is doing something doesn't mean that you have to be, you know, just jumping on that bandwagon, you know what I mean? So, it's something that I think I'm excited to be promoting and standing up for as an artist, you know, there's not a lot of hip-hop artists out there that are doing education in this way. And it's been difficult at times, you know, to get the kind of radio play, to get the kind of attention from record labels or whatnot, because I don't necessarily fit into that box that's being created. And I think, you know, those boxes are dangerous. They've created an industry that only accepts a certain way. But I think, you know, I think the ice is melting, things are shifting, you know, where, you know, even songs like "Where's the Love?" that the Black Eyed Peas did in 2003, which was a major, major international hit. That song is talking about some real-world stuff, you know, and yet it's still super danceable and it's played all over commercial radio. And, you know, so we're hoping that we can create those kind of hits that can translate into the Disney radio world, but also have an appeal to the kind of world that we're living in, which is significantly different than it was even ten years ago. You know, some of the major issues around population and global pollution and climate change, and obviously things like Occupy and the political corporate landscape as well. You know, the world is shifting so much that if we want our music and our media to stay relevant, you know, we have to, that's why we're on social media so much is to, you know, make sure that we have our ears to the streets and our ears to what the movement is talking about, and that we can translate that and, you know, put that into. In the pop culture, you know, we'd love to, you know, I personally think pop culture is just culture that's popular, it's what people are listening to, and so if we can get out there in that way and still retain a message, you know, so that's my long-winded answer, excuse me. Well, speaking of popular and trying to be and encourage popular, how about the coolest dream? Can we share that from Pachos Pajamas? Yeah, this is a great song that is a spin-off of Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus. It's featuring Tiana and Lil Lissy, two incredible young artists that we are super excited about. They emerged out of the national auditions that we did for the Pachos Pajamas album, and we're really excited to be able to promote this next generation of amazing young artists, so big up to all the child superstars out there. The coolest dream from Pachos Pajamas. They're really rocking and dancing, like the biggest pop star since popcorn. Give it up for Pachos! What's up when I'm time in a nursery rhyme with a smile without teeth or teeth? I told my daughter, "Geez," someone thought I'd be cuttin' to find my way back home. Ticking those good tattoos in my breath, guessing what's next, picking up a better wish dreamin' of the day when I'll be full-grown. That's when I got my new pajamas, now I'm jammin' like Pachos Pajamas, nobody's drippin' it. I'm tryin' to cry like a lion troubles my whole way, and I ain't my head like hair, a woman in the crowd like hair, and I'm tryin' to cry like hair, and I'm tryin' to cry like a lion troubles my whole way. Yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, and I'm tryin' to cry like a lion troubles my whole way. I'm tryin' to cry like a lion troubles my whole way, and I ain't my head like hair, a woman in the crowd like hair, and I'm tryin' to cry like a lion troubles my whole way. I ain't my head like hair, a woman in the crowd like hair, and I'm tryin' to cry like a lion troubles my whole way. (Yay, yay, yay, yay, yay) I'm tryin' to cry like a lion troubles my whole way, and I ain't my head like hair, a woman in the crowd like hair, and I'm tryin' to cry like hair, and I'm tryin' to cry like hair, and I'm tryin' to cry like a lion troubles my whole way. I'm tryin' to cry like a lion troubles my whole way, and I ain't my head like hair, a woman in the crowd like hair, and a woman in the crowd like hair, and I'm tryin' to cry like a lion troubles my whole way. (Yay, yay, yay, yay, yay) Isn't it a cool dream, that dream of changing the world, making it better, having the connection there? You mentioned by the way that Pacha in your story, when she appears amongst the animals, they don't know that she's a human. And this is a dream, but it sounds to me kind of like a musical based council of all beings like Joanna Macy was teaching. Was that part of the inspiration for your idea? Well, Joanna Macy has been a major inspiration for me. In fact, I didn't ever know about the work of council of all beings until I met with her, and she said, "Oh my God!" I want to say it's like the kids version of council of all beings, you know, that we had this kind of revelation around how much this work is. You know, and this story is at its best, it's an archetype. You know, it's an archetypal story, a myth that represents kind of reweaving the web of life to use the metaphors around her pajamas, so to speak. So, you know, we've been impressed by how much this story is connecting with people and actually kind of reawakening them and helping folks remember our connections to life, and doing that in a fun way. You're listening to Spirit in Action. This is a Northern Spirit Radio production. Our website is northernspiritradio.org and come to the site and hear our programs of the last six and a half years. You can also find links to our guests, like to balance edutainment and pajamas. You can find out about them on our site, northernspiritradio.org, and there's a lot more information out there, but especially we'd like you to drop as a comment when you come by. Leave us a comment and let us know what you like, what you don't like, and where we can go. One of the places that we're all going together is a future of this Earth, and for better or worse, we've got that ahead of us. Fortunately, we've got people like Aaron Ableman and Dave Ruhm, who are working on promoting a better future, and there's through creativity, through music, through videos, and you spoke at one point, Aaron, of the possibility of a TV program, TV show. What's that about, or is that just a dream that's far off there in the future? Well, it's closer than we might think. In fact, we're looking to shoot a pilot for the, well, it would be a TV and web series, and that has yet to be publicly announced. But we're looking at a TV series which would basically tell the story of this little girl superhero for nature and her journeys and her dreams to basically unite the planets and do that in all these fun adventures. It would be part live action and part animation. Her real life would be shot in film, and then her dream life would be animated. We're looking at getting that out to a major network to Nickelodeon or Disney, mainly because of the kind of, once again, that pervasive reach that those networks still have, despite the power of the Internet and the fact that so much is happening online, we'd like to build a strong audience from the ground up online, but that also would be able to come from a major network. And I think that, you know, Disney or Nickelodeon really would be our ideal target. Do you have background that makes you especially able for this? You spoke already of your environmental lifestyle growing up, all the stuff that your father and mother values, they inculcated in you. What enabled you to be a rapper, musician, and maybe a movie maker, a show maker? It's interesting. I don't know if I would have ever necessarily predicted this as a career for myself in some ways. You know, I came into music. Well, you know, I studied violin as a kid and guitar, but you know, I got very into sports when I was a teen, and discovered some creative side of me that was deeply missing when I was about 15, I guess 16. I got into a lot of world literature and poetry, Pablo Neruda, William Blake, a range of different literary influences, and I had some incredible schooling at that time, some teachers that really lit a fire under me in some incredible way. And, yeah, I discovered a deep passion for literature and really just, you know, narrative and storytelling and the expressive art as I sometimes call them. Subsequently, was a playwright by the time I was actually a produced playwright by the time I was 17, as well as started and finished my first book when I was 18, and then went into university studying world literature and spent time back east at university. At university in Massachusetts, and then in Montreal, and then spent time at my girlfriend at the time was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, and I was hired to do some work there before traveling to India, and, you know, kind of this incredible unveiling and a blessing to be able to travel the world as well through, I think, a very deep, I guess, storytelling lens and capacity to take in my world and ideally just to translate that into the written word and also starting to perform when I was 17 with music and with story, as well as being inspired by hip-hop as well, you know, actually most deaf and tall and quality. As black star, their first album was a huge inspiration for me, so, you know, the kind of multitude of elements that came together to bring me into an artistic career, I guess you could say. And, you know, I've struggled to make that work financially at points, but I think that as an artist, you have to be creative about everything, and therefore you can do anything. And I think I've had that perspective that if I work hard and I really stay diligent on a task, you know, whether or not it's being a dishwasher, I was a dishwasher for a year, I was a buster and a cook, and, you know, I've done every kind of side job just to stay afloat and keep my heart alive. And that's been a blessing, you know, in the last almost 10 years, I've been lucky to have been very well networked with youth programming, particularly focused on education for at-risk youth. And there's been, I think, a renaissance of appreciation for artists getting into the classrooms and, you know, artists as educators, and that's brought me into some amazing, amazing parts of the world. One of the things, Aaron, that I'd like to find out from, I guess, is any of the spiritual or religious background that they've had, or where they're going. So, most deaf, for instance, I happen to know that he's a Muslim, bringing in wonderful spirituality from that background is motivation for making the world better. What works for you, and where did you grow up, and what are you doing now in your life, spiritually, religiously? Well, I think that's a great question. I think religion and spirituality are very personal for everybody, and they can be obviously cultural, and, well, I think religion is much more a cultural connection. And spirituality, I think, is very personal, and for me, you know, I was raised, in some ways, very pagan, you could say, but I come from a Jewish family that exposed me to a wide range of the world for religious and spiritual traditions. And also, I had to discover, for myself, a connection to a higher purpose, you could say, through some of my travels to India and my practice as an avid meditator and yoga practitioner. You know, I've also been very excited by the science of mind movement and tradition that is emerged over the last, I guess, 75 years, most recently kind of popularized by movies like The Secret and Michael Beckwith. It's been a big supporter for Patu Pajamas, and that also the, you know, the indigenous inspiration that I've had, particularly native people's connection to the land and to the earth, and to the cosmos, the cosmology of indigenous peoples has been just a huge, huge influence on me. I spent time with the Hopi when I was very young, and, you know, have been deeply inspired by just the cosmology and the understanding that all life is alive, and all beings are interconnected, we're all related, you know, all my relations. You know, I've been lucky to have been exposed to a wide range of the world's traditions spiritually, and I think that's been a big aspect of my service in the world and my intentions to really use my work for future generations. One of my favorite quotes recently is, I'm paraphrasing, which is basically that often we plant trees that will never sit under, but still we must plant those trees. And I think that Dr. King and Gandhi and leaders of that nature and, you know, the Dalai Lama have all modeled ways of serving the world in a deeply spiritual way that doesn't feel awkward or inauthentic, and can also be, you know, can be applied for anyone, you know, and that's one thing I love about, you know, a lot of these traditions is, you know, when you get to the root of them, it's about finding your own magic inside. You could say, you know, your own spirit, your own God within whatever that means for you, you know, doesn't have to be called God. So I think, you know, I think that's been a part of my practice, you know, that we are all living, walking, Buddha's and Jesus's, and the more that we can step into our power in that way and move beyond the judgments of society, the disempowering aspects of some religions, I think that, yeah, that's going to be a huge force of liberation. And I think we're seeing that awakening happening, you know, just in very simple ways, you know, and I think some of it is just connected to the changes that are happening on the planet right now. You see a lot of people that are going through deep transformation, you know, even if it's just within their own family and life trajectory. So I'm very excited about how we can collectively begin to support one another in integrating more of our spiritual lives and our, you know, our heart, I guess, into the world in a way that feels balanced and authentic. That's a great noble sentiment, and it's one that you're backing up with action through your work as balance edutainment, your work partnering with Dave room. Again, you can go to the website balance edutainment.com, you can go to pachispajamas.com. You can follow the link from northernspiritradio.org and you're going to find out a lot of the work and a lot of the passions that are guiding Aaron and Dave and people like most deaf and others who are working with them. To support this vision is a changing one for the world, and I'm so pleased, Aaron, that you could join me for spirit and action. Thank you so much and many blessings on this incredible journey. Thanks again, and we're going to go out today for spirit and action with one more recording from pachispajamas. It features must death, and it's called call heard round the world. Please go to pachispajamas.com, find out about the whole thing, the videos and everything that's coming up. Call heard round the world by Aaron Abelman and Dave room. Pebble rock enrolled out the nose to the mountaintops down to the valleys. Mushroom had fun telling the fungi. Tree branched out and gave invitations far and wide. The hummingbirds spread the word to all the flowers, where I made a million calls with her beautiful ocean songs and the Macintosh apples sent to the farmers. The tickets were made from maple leaves and squid provided the ink to print them. Pasha was so excited to work on a dance routine and help the others that she began to forget. She was human. The natural world united to build a nature stadium out of all the shells and gold. The stage was half land, half water, and was powered by electric eels. The sun let the stage by day and the moon by day. But could they get all the species together together? Slithery whistling, whooping, crinkling, could they get everything done? Rolling, roaring, shaking, and beating, with the guests naked on time. They came wing by wing, hoof by hoof, leaf by leaf, misting, squawking, cooing, and loofing. The turtles, the snails, and slugs eventually arrived late as usual. And yes, the entire planet. Except for the humans. Like the others, Pasha was so thrilled. She felt like she had butterflies in her stomach. And real butterflies flew up the stage, painting the sky with a coat of wings. But that, the show was ready to begin. That was the last clip from Pasha's pajamas produced by Aaron Ableman in Dave Room performed by Mo's Deaf. Aaron had to move on, but this leaves me with a few minutes extra to share some of the music on related themes that I've shared on earlier shows with other guests. We've got time for two, I think. So first you'll hear a piece by John Watts. I first had him as a guest over four years ago, and he was my guest again for a song of the soul a couple months back with his latest release. The first time he joined me, he shared this piece with the refrain, "Inhale Exhaust, Exhale Love." He calls it, "We are lovers of our lost earth." I'm like friendship, because I'll never go away. I'm like a drop of rain on a cloudy day, and I'm awake. As if I never went to sleep, and now I'm dancing in the street, as if there was no street. Now I'm alone, and I'm surrounded. I could try to find myself a home, but houses are too crowded. My living situation here, foundations just been founded. Spend my time considering considerations, boundaries don't love you me, because I'm old. Those things you've heard of me, because my story's not been told, I'm living underground, this year the surface is too cold, it's a landslide, landslide regret, and these old roads is inhaled. [Music] [Music] This is about roads and Portugal, and things I've left behind me, struggles I've climbed a fine piece of mine inside me when blind luck leads us there it's fine, but just look between the lines at all the lives denied, we deny love, so it's about hope, and it's about how everyone has courage in their throat. It's about the lies that I've had for our attention, leading us to places too tangential to mention, I could give you names, and I could name dates, and I could focus on the means to end all the debates, but this is music, it's elusive, I produce it exclusively, and at least to lose conclusions which destroy illusion usefully. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] John Watts sharing his song "We Are Lovers of Our Lost Earth" where he invites us to inhale exhaust, exhale love, about transforming our relationship to the earth around us, be part of the change that we want to see in the world. The second and last piece of music I want to share on the themes developed by Aaron Abelman and Dave Rheum with their production of Pasha's Pajamas. This one is from Gina Satoli. Gina is a very talented musician with a deep connection to and passion for the earth. She's put together something she calls the cabaret of consciousness, a kind of play, musical, fostering a healing vision for the earth. Like this final song for today's Spirit in Action, "The Eco Boogie" by Gina Satoli. See you next week for Spirit in Action. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World" performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing. You