To be a tikkun-builder you have to be open and willing to search for, analyze, and “go with” those hidden and unintended meanings — grappling with their possible connotations and yet realizing you’re never going to fully comprehend them.
2011
When Love Trumps Right Belief
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Each of us has directives we live by. The directive to love is at the very heart of most faith traditions, along with being the first and foremost standard to live by for many who do not profess a specific religious belief.
2011
Cultivating the Sacred Spark
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Lifting up the thriving of all and offering the hopeless new hope is both a political agenda and a spiritual agenda. For me, in fact, the two types of agendas cannot be separated; they affirm both the sacred spark within each of us and the need to cultivate that spark in the context of a world that sometimes seems determined to put it out.
2011
Connect Inner and Outer Transformation!
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From the best of the world’s spiritual and social traditions and from contemporary creativity, we need to develop our tool kits and to organize curricula and training programs to support our ongoing learning and evolution, doing so even in the very midst of action.
2011
Pure Consciousness and the Work of Tikkun
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The loftiest ideals, the most far-reaching agenda, the best rhetoric — all are for naught if pursued in a spirit of ego enhancement, judgment, and ideological zeal. Exhibit A: Communism. Exhibit B: the Catholic Church throughout its history, as well as current forms of fundamentalist Christianity and Islam.
Articles
Authentic Vulnerability and Deep-Rooted Healing
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The need to evolve human consciousness enough to inspire a fundamental shift in global priorities at this historic juncture is urgent. Thus, it is no longer adequate for spiritual progressives to simply write and talk about elevating consciousness or promoting healing and transformation; we must engage in such healing ourselves.
26.1 Winter 2011
Tikkun at 25
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Those of us who founded and shaped Tikkun for the past twenty-five years have been solidly committed to supporting the manifestation of the Spirit of God in this world. In our view that means advancing the possibilities of a world based on love; kindness; generosity; individual and collective freedom; mutual recognition; thanksgiving; pleasure; joy; the evolution of scientific knowledge, spiritual wisdom, understanding of self and others, and deep levels of individual and global consciousness; the triumph of social justice; peace; equality; material well-being; environmental sanity; mutual forgiveness and caring for each other; and awe, wonder, and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of the universe. Our goal of tikkun-ing the world (healing, evolving and transforming it), has a long tradition in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and in other spiritual and religious communities as well. We are merely one contemporary embodiment of that tradition. The Promise, Successes, and Problems of the NSP
Knowing that people often find that their highest progressive ideals cannot be expressed freely in their various religious communities, or at least not acted upon in those institutions, we decided seven years ago to create the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) to be the educational and activist arm of Tikkun.
2011
How to Face the Future
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War and Peace. Tolstoy got the order right. We must know in deep and dark detail how horrible war is before we will have the courage or wisdom to do much to stop it long enough to resolve and transform a conflict. The Hebrew word for this is “tikkun” — healing and transformation.
2010
Suicidal vs. Life-Giving Religious Narratives
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I was invited to reflect here on the topic of “spiritual visions for social healing,” under the general heading of “creating a caring society,” but first, I’d like to turn the topic upside-down to look at religious visions for social suicide.
2010
Immigration: Don’t Let “Reform” Be an Excuse for Increased Repression
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. . . it relies on the idea of providing temporary worker visas to lower-skilled immigrants who are apparently expected to send their money home, providing American farmers, agribusiness, and other employers with a source of cheap labor that can depress the wages of other laborers.
2006
Spirituality and Culture
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Two pieces of religious literature indicate with special clarity the essential connectedness of spiritual maturity and cultural consciousness. The first call comes from Exodus 3:18. God teaches Moses that his holiness depends on finding holiness where he stands and then by taking that energy to other people for their liberation. The second story of culture and spirituality comes from the tales of the Hasidim: Holiness depends on our choosing the pieties proper to the times. Culture and spirituality, in other words, are of a piece.
2001
A Spiritual Third Way
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In this time of ideological upheaval, when the old ideologies of left and right, of socialism, liberalism, and conservatism, no longer capture the political imagination the way they once did, new political visions are required. Some have tried to formulate a “Third Way” between social democracy and conservatism. Others, such as Michael Lerner, have proposed a more spiritually-oriented approach to transcend left and right. I would like to present another vision, that of Integral Politics.
1994
Who ‘owns’ the Life of the Spirit?
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Save America! Bring back God and religion! The message that launched the religious Right into its current high-flying orbit fifteen years ago is now “going wide,” as they say in the movie business.