Help us retire the debts from our massive global Birth 2012 effort. This will especially support the creation of media products based on the global broadcast that could inspire many more millions of people. Please contribute here.

Just prior to the Gala event in Los Angeles, news anchor Tamara Henry interviewed many of the Birth 2012 luminaries who walked our “Gold Carpet,” and Tamara has edited this unique footage down to 22 minutes. We present it above for the Birth 2012 community. (The link goes to FunnyOrDie.com, a popular entertainment website).

Filmmaker extraordinaire Karen Everett, who was ubiquitous at the Los Angeles Birth events, and has supplied us with these inspiring excerpts from one-on-one interviews. To assist Karen in funding completion for “Bold Mother Hubbard,” please go here.

This footage documents the celebration, held on December 22 at Wainwright House in Rye, New York, to commemorate the signing of the "Declaration of Interdependence," which was authored by philosopher Ashok Gangadean. Delegates to the event include: Kurt Johnson, author of The Coming Interspiritual Age; Victoria and Ron Friedman, cofounders of Vistar Foundation; and Dena Merriam, Founder The Global Peace Initiative of Women. The event was sponsored by Vistar Foundation and Global Dialogue Institute in conjunction with Birth 2012.

Looking Back on the Birth with Fondness

from Byron Belitsos

Our symbolic Birth has occurred – and now is our time for integration. Barbara is in a profound contemplative moment now, and will provide a statement for the next Catalyst. Stephen provides us with an important update below, plus a Powerpoint of “Vision 2020.” The extraordinary efforts by all of us culminated in a massive broadcast seen by millions, providing a window on who and where we are. We’ve formed hundreds of hubs and thousands of new relationships; and we’ve contributed mightily to building an invisible planetary Field of Love with our twelve “Waves of Unity.” So let us bask in this accomplishment for the ages, and ready ourselves to cocreate our future within this Field in 2013...One final note: Here’s a lovely music video entitled “Coming to Love” that expresses how many of us feel about our sacred work. In case you missed it, it’s by singer-songwriter Angie Zawada, and was included in the broadcast on Barbara’s recommendation.  

Click here to see the video

Documenters of the Birth

Among the media coverage of the Birth was this feature piece by independent journalist Marjorie Rothstein that appeared in Boomer-LivingPlus.com:
“This event definitely fulfilled its promise with an array of performances and luminaries that all at once were uplifting, inspiring, and beyond words. With the doomsday rumors shot-gunning around the mass media and internet, the daily onslaught of negative, sinister, evil and darkness flooding the airwaves, one could have concluded that the end was nigh. However, this event demonstrated that the ‘evil empire’ is on its deathbed, and the awakening of a new life is happening. The entertainment was electrifying, especially the music, and the dance. One of the most outstanding performances, Phaedroid, with Phaedra and Android Jones, combined computer art images cast on a screen [see image to the left], where a female dancer wrapped in white cloth was moving in front of the screen, and music from an otherworldly source created a new art form...”

Thanks to Noel Marshall, we have this Facebook list of “happy birthday to the planet” wishes in native languages, with 136 responses so far: https://www.facebook.com...
She also asked for event reports https://www.facebook.com... and over one hundred have responded so far!

And don’t miss these shots of the LA events by master photographer Michael Bezjian and these shots by Peter Rosen depicting ReBirth 2012 Maui.

As we begin the New Year, one of the topics that may be on your mind is health and wellness. Consistently ranking among the top ten New Year’s resolutions are getting fit, eating healthy, losing weight, and reducing stress. That’s one of the reasons we chose this time for our popular Wellness Telesummit. All of those subjects, and more, are addressed by the expert speakers featured during this season of wellness. We just completed the first week of the summit featuring Marianne Williamson, holistic healing pioneer, Dr. Bernie Siegel and longevity (and chocolate!) expert, David Wolfe. If you missed the live sessions this week we have extended the replays through the weekend to give you another opportunity to listen to these informative and inspiring sessions. When you join us now you’ll have access to the extended replays this weekend as well as nine more weeks of free inspirational, informative and energizing content. Check out our total of 27 wellness experts and also register here: http://winterofwellness.com.

After the Birth, Nurturing the Baby

By Stephen Dinan

Let’s celebrate our achievement! We’ve marked an important transitional moment for our world-the Birth of a new era-and have done so with a spirit of love, prayer, and unity.

With hundreds of events unifying millions of like-hearted souls in positive intentions from Dec. 20-22, there was something profoundly beautiful seeded into the collective mind of humanity: a possibility for a new kind of world that truly works for all.

But now, as Marianne Williamson reminded us during the Gala, the real work begins. Birth is profoundly challenging, as is parenting. Nurturing the “new child” is going to take some committed effort. Growth and development take time. A baby emerges from its dramatic birth transition needing help, nurturance, and love as it builds new capacities.

Part of the real work involves raising more money to defray the lingering expenses of the Birth. If you haven’t yet, please tune into your heart and see if you are called to help: click here to contribute.

In particular, raising additional resources will help us get the huge amount of recorded media from the Birth processed and available for everyone to enjoy. We now possess a wealth of information about building the new world, piece by piece, and we want to make that content widely available, from the remote location videos to the Vision Stage dialogues to the recording Gala itself. Your generous outpouring of financial assistance so far gets us closer than ever to that goal.
[read more]

Our hub map now have over 550 hubs and groups, almost doubling in December. They now include such far-flung places as Shift Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; Youth Shift Africa in Mombasa, Kenya, and Athenais Hub in Kypseli, Greece.
Julie Krull, our Birth 2012 Facebook maven, also requested hub reports on events which appear at this link, and received among many others this moving post from Diane DiMauro from the site of the Sandy Hook massacre:

“Beautiful celebration in Newtown CT where an interfaith service was included as part of Birth 2012 to honor the victims of Sandy Hook Elementary School. The last of the 26 victim’s funerals was letting out just across the street from our event and some of the mourners came over to see what we were up to. They were particularly interested in a Peace Tree which was erected just outside of our venue. . .”
 
One more item: For those local to us at Shift headquarters, our monthly community gatherings at Open Secret Bookstore in San Rafael will resume on February 28th. Check back for more details soon or follow this link to go purchase your advance tickets.

2012 Pronounced “Best Year Ever”

Thanks to Fred Burks of wanttoknow.info for this inspiring item. Burks produces one of the world’s leading sites covering official corruption, but he also does a stellar job at providing the bright side as  well, including posting this piece from the distinguished British magazine, The Spectator:

“It may not feel like it, but 2012 has been the greatest year in the history of the world. That sounds like an extravagant claim, but it is borne out by evidence. Never has there been less hunger, less disease or more prosperity. The West remains in the economic doldrums, but most developing countries are charging ahead, and people are being lifted out of poverty at the fastest rate ever recorded. The death toll inflicted by war and natural disasters is also mercifully low. We are living in a golden age. . . “ [read more]

2012: The International Year of the Cooperative

Thanks to Project Censored, which publishes the year’s top 25 censored stories each year, we have this inspiring item:

Barely noticed last year was that the United Nations declared 2012 to be the “International Year of the Cooperative,” based on the coop business model’s stunning growth. The UN found that, in 2012, one billion people worldwide are coop member-owners, or one in five adults over the age of 15. The largest is Spain’s Mondragon Corporation, with over 80,000 member-owners. The UN predicts that by 2025, worker-owned coops will be the world’s fastest growing business model. Worker-owned cooperatives provide for equitable distribution of wealth and, just maybe, a brighter future for our planet. Source: Jessica Reeder, “The Year of the Cooperative,” Yes! Magazine, Feb. 1, 2012