Book Review- "The Cellist of Sarajevo" -Steven Galloway

How do you stay human in the midst of the violence and depravity of war? Galloway sketches four characters, each making a choice to face death rather than yield completely to the forces besieging Sarajevo from without, and within.

Arrow, a young sharpshooter trained at the university club, risks her life to protect the cellist, who for 22 days plays an adagio at the site of a bombing that took 22 lives. Kenan, an accountant, risks his life crossing a bridge to bring water to his family and an elderly neighbor. Dragan enters the zone of attack to find bread for his sister’s family. And the cellist plays on, knowing he is an easy target to the enemy who launched the bomb, knowing too that his music can heal not only his soul, but those of the people who listen. Not all life in Sarajevo yields to the force of gunfire/

Each character faces the human fate: will you simply flow with the forces that seem to control life about you? Or will you act out of a vision of what it means to be deeply human, to affirm life, beauty and community?

And each reader, living in far less threatening circumstances than the characters of this book, faces the same questions: What is it to be human? And how will you act out of that vision? War intensifies the choice. But each of us is asked for our vision and our action.

The Grandmothers are Coming!

On October 11, 2004, thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers from the Arctic Circle, North, South and Central America, Africa, and Asia, arrived at Tibet House's Menla Mountain Retreat amidst 340 acres of forests, fields and streams in upstate New York in a historic gathering. They were fulfilling an ancient prophecy, known by many of the world's indigenous tribes: "When the Grandmothers from the four directions speak, a new time is coming". Within a few days of convening, the grandmothers agreed to form a global alliance; to work together to serve both their common goals and their specific local concerns. The grandmothers are both women of prayer and women of action with a solidarity which creates a network to rebalance and educate the world concerning the fundamental laws of nature and original teachings based on a respect for all life. Their traditional ways link them with the forces of the earth. The Grandmothers are Aama Bombo (Tamang/Nepal), Margaret Behan (Cheyenne-Arapaho), Rita Pitka Blumenstein (Yupik), Julieta Casimiro (Mazatec), Marie Alice Campos Freire (Brazil), Flordemayo (Mayan), Tsering Dolma Gyaltong (Tibetan), Beatrice Long Visitor Holy Dance (Oglala Lakota), Rita Long Visitor Holy Dance (Oglala Lakota), Agnes Baker Pilgrim (Takelma Siletz), Mona Polacca (Hopi/Havasupai/Tewa), Bernadette Rebienot (Omyene), and Clara Shinobu Iura (Brazil) .

“We are deeply concerned with the unprecedented destruction of our Mother Earth, the atrocities of war, the global scourge of poverty, the prevailing culture of materialism, the epidemics that threaten the health of the Earth’s peoples, and with the destruction of indigenous ways of life.We, the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, believe that our ancestral ways of prayer, peacemaking, and healing are vitally needed today. . . We believe that the teachings of our ancestors will light our way through an uncertain future. "
Please visit these websites for more information:

http://www.grandmotherscouncil.com/
http://www.forthenext7generations.com/ (a full length documentary film in production)