We Need Beauty

Business, Ethics.

Ask not what the jewelry industry can do for you - i just returned from the jewelers' circular keystone( jck) show, most important jewelry, the largest trade event in the us. Typical, was my conversation, I think with a buyer who was a" major player. " Her company is a house hold name.

Apart from those who sought me out because of my press release, not one jeweler who walked by my booth even raised the issue of my banner which screamed out: FAIR TRADE, ECO FRIENDLY JEWELRY NOW. - i asked one if she was interested fair trade and eco friendly jewelry. She gave me a wooden smile and proceeded on. Her look said, "Have you just arrived from the moon? " She had not even heard of the concept. I tried to imagine not understanding the deep relationship between my life and the natural environment, or the impact of my purchasing decisions upon people around the world. How far, in the canyon of life, is my perspective from this woman' s, and what would it take to create a bridge we could cross together? Without these things to push up against, my work would be just about making money: a truly soulless endeavor.

Here' s my confession. - then i realized that something brought back a feeling i had when i was in haiti, twenty years ago, a volunteer, running an orphanage and working in mother theresa' s homes for the dying. For weeks, I dreaded coming to this show, without being quite sure why. Richard Hartnett, an American professor of Dentistry, trained me to help him run his mobile clinics. We went right into the slums surrounding Port au Prince. We carried two back packs: one filled with tools and another with the antiseptic fluids and water so that we could keep our tools clean between extractions.

Cavities in Haiti by and large were left to rot in people' s mouths. - after pulling thousands of teeth, i met someone who changed my life forever. Richard generally did the injections and I did the extractions: sixty people in two hours. It happened while I was gathering people for our clinic in the marketplace. Always objectified. All around, the brazen rats, the composting food and the open sewers were an assault on the senses. "Blanc. blanc. vini ici, foreign man, Come here. " The stress of being a white guy amidst a sea of black skin, put me on edge. Always categorized.

A foreigner. - never alone. Blanc, Blanc. She was dressed in a light cotton dress that was torn on the sleeve - "Kennedy' s" is what they called all those used clothes that arrived from the US in volleys of shipping containers. A hunched old woman with a walking stick approached. They were given away as aid that started with JFK' s administration.

Her eyes, glittering like black diamonds, looked up at, intense me. "Sac passe, cherie, " I asked. - her mulatto skin sagged on her face, making deep lines like mysterious canyons. What' s going on? She pointed to her mouth and began to part her thin pale lips. Her neck craned up. I bent down and looked. Instead of teeth, just exposed skull, there was bone, black, like a corpse, wet and decayed.

The right side of the inside of her mouth was gray. - i have bandaged cancers with worms in them, legs swollen up like tree trunks and seen the ravages of aids and tb. There was a large tree that allowed some privacy and ducking behind it, I began to shake. Yet on this day, I had to step away, feeling queasy and disoriented. Then I broke open. In the end, we could do little for this woman other than give her some antibiotics and pain killers. I died in that moment.

I knew she was so poor because I was so rich. - over the next several weeks, i could not understand how all the extremely rich haitians and blancs seemed oblivious to the poverty that surrounded them. What was my debt to my existence? I had the same internal feelings coming into the JCK show. Not the extreme poverty at so many levels of mining and fabrication. Behind the booth and walking around you are seeing just jewelry, not the slag piles. Not the child labor, nor the factory conditions of those people in China.

I remembered Mother Theresa talking about how the poorest of the poor, in countries such as Haiti, were rich in spirit. - the same people who have profited by blood diamonds were at the show, rebranding themselves as ethical jewelers. In the developed world, people were rich but lived in spiritual poverty. She is the jewelers' dream. A woman walks by, the wife of a celebrity, with a 50 ct diamond ring. All the high end stores have double digit growth from customers such as her.

About ninety percent of Haitians living in Haiti are malnourished, while we here in America are taking cholesterol pills. - yet i cannot help but feel she looks absolutely miserable. I also am part of this tragedy, paying my$ 5000 just to sit here and absorb this spectacle. What story are we in? Tragic stories follow certain patterns. Do we need to tear our eyes out in order to see? Then let me be the Shakespearian fool, Sirrah!

Perhaps, we are in the third act of King Lear, in the storm of the internet, the threat of, the falling dollar China and India, terrorism. - that is a role i am most comfortable with. Listening, I remembered a dinner with a Native American Sundance Chief. Most of my life, I have been stepping off one cliff or another, the wanderings a pathos filled Puer Aeternus, with an ear to the Earth. I fed him elk I had stalked and hunted, carried on my back down an 11, 000 foot mountain. We ate the sky and the rain and the grasses.

Together, we ate the, eating the elk mountain. - the beauty of seasonal flow was in the energy of the meat. It was medicine. We gave thanks to our sister, the elk. Elk is always my first meal when I come back from shows. When she was down, it was late fall and the temperature hovered near zero. We felt humble that our sister had offered her life up for us.

I remember watching the starlight fade from her eyes and feeling my hands, in her blood, warmed as I pulled her heart out. - how can i be worthy of honoring the elk in the life i live now? "there are two types of people in the world, " the chief said to me. "those whose hearts are open, and those who' s hearts are closed. I asked myself, what is my debt to all existence? The job of those whose hearts are open is simple: Help those whose hearts are closed to open their hearts. " For the elk, for my teachers in Haiti, and my Native mentors, I am committed to being a positive agent for change. My heart wonders if there has been such a gap in our industry for so long between appearance and reality that we can only see jewelry as commodity. I must remember his words and stay connected to the Whole in my heart so I can see from my heart.

Jewelry was once sacred in the ancient world. - even now, my native mentors teach how to work with the energies of gems to create healing and transformation. It was viewed as a talisman, even a signet to the divine, connecting one to the whole. Yet the circles have been broken for so long that we do not remember what it was like to live with deep love and reverence for the soul of our world. We have to remember who we are and what our place is. Plato said that the source of all knowledge was remembrance. We have to remember that jewelry carries energy.

Adornment is an essential part of human existence. - it can connect us to the power and beauty of the natural world. We need beauty. The Navajo have a prayer: In beauty may I walk. Beauty around us, to survive. With beauty before me, may I walk. With beauty below me, may I walk.

With beauty above me, may I walk. - with beauty all around me, may i walk. In beauty, may my walk be finished. In beauty, may my walk be finished. Right now, those of us who are involved in Fair Trade and Socially Responsible business practice are trying to reconnect the circles that have been broken. But for our passion to find its way into places like corporations where money is the bottom line, we must show that there is a market for our ideas. We are concerned about green issues, and fair labor practices because our awakeness to the earth, and our connection to humanity demands greater integration into our life.

Right now, the" spiritual sparkle" of jewelry is mostly irrelevant to the trade. - the trajectory of whole foods, patagonia or the body shop is a significant market. Let the course be like pure water flowing down a mountain creek, finding its way through the rocks. For those who wish to take this initiative, the huge gap between the symbolism of jewelry and the production of jewelry provides an opening. This customer base will grow as global warming and a host of other problems become flash points that drive consumers to shop their values. I know people who refuse to buy jewelry right now for ethical reasons and I am planning on making them my customers. What was most wonderful for me at the show were not the prospects I got to help increase my business, though that was great.

I spoke with many leaders, Allen Bell, from Martin Rapaport, Abe Sherman, Eric Braunwart, Torry Hoover, Toby Pomeroy, Vicky Cunningham, Eric Grossberg, Amanda Stark, Wade O. - under the surface, the infrastructure to support this movement is growing. Watson, Earl Allen, Sharee Coffee, Demos Takoulas, Lourens Mare, Tom Cushman, - all of whom want to move these issues forward. We want the lives lost through bloodshed and war, the ecosystems ravaged by runoff and poisoned water supplies, the workers unable to subsist, to have meaning and a voice. We' re working to take responsibility. We want to help others in the industry, who are yet to view these issues as important, see the market and spiritual opportunity in this movement.

We all need each other. - let us all celebrate each others' work through support. We are all one circle. Let the tide raise all boats.