random acts of kindness

222 Forever: Celebrating Taz with 3 New Projects

February 22, 2020 26 Comments

“Let us not look for you only in memory. You would want us to find you in presence, beside us when beauty brightens, when kindness glows and music echoes eternal tones.”– John O’Donohue

Yes, my friends, it’s here. The auspicious date for announcing the 2020 recipients of Taz Grout’s 222 Foundation. Every year, to honor my radiant, brilliant daughter, Tasman McKay Grout, the 222 Foundation gives a grant to an imaginative project with the chutzpah to radically change the consciousness of the planet.

I’m a sharp P on the Myers-Briggs scale which indicates I tend toward being flexible, spontaneous and open-minded. Good qualities, right?

Except when you need to narrow down options, to make decisions. So receiving 100 applications for this year’s grant was well, way outside my comfort zone. I wanted to fund them all.

Thanks to some assistance from my “board” (that is to say a coffee consultation with my friend, Never-Say-No-to-Fun Rhonda), I finally picked these three:

1. A Taz Grout forest of 2222 trees in southern India. The tree planting idea started when someone nominated climate activist Greta Thunberg. I love that she’s young, brutally honest and 100 percent committed.

Plus what could be more imperative right now than changing our climate story? Particularly, the story that humankind is separate from the natural world, that material possessions are more important than our planet’s air, water, soil and trees. This home of ours is alive, sentient and we must do everything we can to exit the feedback loops that tell us we are lord and master.

Greta made this wonderful video detailing a natural climate solution. This magical tool sucks carbon out of the air, costs very little and has the ability to repair our natural environment.

The Taz Grout 222 Foundation will plant 2222 trees this year through Project GreenHands, a grassroots ecological initiative established by the Isha Foundation. I chose GreenHands because it was started by the illustrious Sadhguru (check him out if you haven’t already) and because Taz’s forest will be in India near some of her ashes and last year’s 222 project.

2. A Taz Grout school library in the Annapurna region of Nepal. Taz was an avid reader, maybe because I started reading to her when she was still in the womb. She kept lists of all the books she read each year. In college, she worked at the library. So supporting literacy for girls in rural and impoverished Nepal is the perfect fit for the 222 Foundation.

I fell in love with Hands in Nepal from the moment I opened the email from director, Jan Sprague. HANDS (it stands for Humanitarian Acts in Nepal Developing Schools) does amazing, heartfelt work. Everyone in the organization is a volunteer.

Jan, like me, lost a child and doesn’t belief in death. She knows our children will always be with us, here and now. It was her other son, Danny, who actually started this wonderful nonprofit that builds schools and libraries. My plans are to go to Nepal later this year for the installation of the plaque honoring Taz. I look forward to extending Taz’s family into the rural Himalayas. This video is the perfect primer of this outstanding organization.

3. Last project honors Taz’s commitment to relentless creativity. If you read my books, you know Taz and I had a thing about anonymously gifting small bills and leaving encouraging notes about the wildly abundant universe. Kimmy Rhoades, a kindergarten teacher in Snohomish, Washington, applied for the 222 grant with her visionary Random Acts of Money project.

This generous soul loves giving money away to strangers, proving that old school financial assumptions, traditions and habits block the more accurate truth that freedom is available for everyone. She drops bills of all denominations–on hiking trails, biking paths, in parking lots and stores. Often in the form of origami fish or paper airplanes, her money bombs blast, as she says, the ridiculous notion of scarcity right out of the water.

With the help of a 222 grant, her kindergartners’ natural creativity and the love notes she plans to attach, her secret mission will seed 222 messages of hope for all.

This video isn’t Kimmy’s project, but you get the idea:

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest book, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World).

How to start a chain of blessings with one easy step

December 2, 2014 26 Comments

“When you believe something, you have made it true for you.”—A Course in Miracles

If you’ve read my books or talked to me for more than say, 15 minutes, you already know I’m a HUGE fangirl of A Course in Miracles. It probably sounds more dignified to say “I’m a student of the Course,” but who wants to be dignified. Certainly not this dancing fool.

Besides the quote at the top of this post, I also read this passage (I’m paraphrasing) from the Course this morning: “Your safety, peace and joy are totally beyond question except by you. In fact, any perceived problems are not problems of fact. They are problems of understanding.”

So one of my goals is to change our understanding of the world. I’ve also called it changing the dominant paradigm. So here’s a little story I heard when I was in the Okanagan Valley the weekend before last:

Winfield, British Columbia is part of a little town with no more than 12,000 people. It’s wedged between a couple ski resorts and a beautiful lake. To give you some idea of its stellar beauty, let’s just leave it with this: the entire Okanagan Valley is popular with Canadian hockey players in the off-season.

One day, at the Winfield Tim Horton’s (Tim Horton was a well-known hockey player whose name now graces some 4600 coffee shops across Canada), a guy in the Sparkling Hill workshop I gave with Olympic coach Dirk Stroda told us he drove up to the window only to be informed that his coffee had been taken care of by the person in front of him. Inspired, he decided to “pay it forward” to the next car in line. Later, he was talking to his neighbor who works at that Tim Horton’s and was told the giving to the car behind went on for a full four and a half hours. FOUR AND A HALF HOURS of unbridled generosity. And you thought the world was a scary place?

What might you do today to start a chain of blessings?

Pam Grout is the author of 17 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the just-released sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Mirth, Magic and Merriment is your Full-time Gig.

Why the parlor game “Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon” gives us hope

October 18, 2013 71 Comments

“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” –Aibilene Clark, from the book and movie, The Help

This is a shout-out to the anonymous person who taped uplifting affirmations to the bathroom stall at the Sandbar’s new sub shop in Lawrence, Kansas.

Your words reminding me that “I am beautiful. I am powerful. I am capable of great things” made me so happy and reminded me that the simplest of things, the tiniest of actions can impact the world.

Your affirming words not only added joy to my day, but they elevated the energy of every person I encountered from that moment forward.

I once saw a comic strip where the boss scolded his employee who went home and took it out on his wife who then screamed at the kids. In the last frame, the toddler is sitting outside on the front porch shaking her finger at the puzzled dog.
That boss had no idea the chain of events he started when he chose to criticize rather than encourage.

You’re probably heard of the parlor game, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, which suggests that any two people on earth are, on average, a mere six acquaintance links apart.

I like to think of those beautiful human bonds when I get discouraged, overwhelmed by the issues in the news. It’s tempting to wonder what I, one solitary person from Kansas, can do to solve the political chasm, what I, a single mom with a couple twitter followers, can do to stop gun violence.

And then I remember. I can invite my neighbor over for ham and eggs. I can bake a casserole for the new mom that just came home from the hospital.

Yes, we’re all different, have varying political beliefs and religious affiliations. But every last one of us eventually shows up in the same bathroom stall.

One tiny sheet of paper. Five simple lines. Tiny actions sending beautiful ripples out into the universe.

Leave a comment below with the words you’d like to leave on the door of your bathroom stall.

Pam Grout is the author of 16 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality.