Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/rethinking_religion/page/5/)
Where Karen Bender’s A Town of Empty Rooms truly succeeds is not in the petty arguments that move the plot along, but in how we, as readers, can observe how invested these characters are in those arguments. What emerges, then, is a novel about the unsaid, the unspeakable, and the ways we talk past the dividing lines between us.
To form a powerful anti-war movement, we need to bridge the gap between U.S. veterans and pacifists. Collaborating on a veteran liberation theology is one place to start.
It’s time to usher in a new paradigm–one of the turning and returning to the earth, to each other, and to integrity.
We are facing a global crisis created by capitalism. The world’s religions–having emerged in response to the growing power of money in the Axial Age–can help us face it.
Like everyone else on earth, I wish the new pope well and I hope he truly emulates some of Francis of Assisi’s priorities of defending Mother Earth who is in so much peril, living simply (how one does that in a palace like the Vatican surrounded by an obsequious court is another question), speaking out on behalf of the poor, impoverished, sick, and neglected, and speaking out on those social and economic structures that institutionalize injustice. I also hope he cleans up the rat’s nest of corruption, pedophile cover-up, ego mania, and power-addicted prelates who run the curia that in turn runs the Vatican. Good luck and God’s Blessing!
Because the Vatican is so sick and infested with evil spirits, it is time to admit that in its present configuration history has passed it by, the Holy Spirit has exited, and its usefulness has run out. But electing a person of genuine spiritual and ethical stature such as the Dalai Lama who also stands for global intelligence and peace and who calls compassion “my religion” would be a genuine act of humility and vision by the voting cardinals. It would also draw us nearer to the real teaching of Jesus and the person who Jesus was. Electing a non-westerner and a non-Christian who recognizes the spiritual genius of Jesus and the truth of the “Buddha Nature” or “Cosmic Christ” in all beings would refresh the move for interspirituality and interfaith that our planet needs so badly. (A bishop of Rome could be elected, hopefully by the people, who would live in that bishop’s place—the Lateran—and preside over the Roman flock meanwhile.) This creative and visionary act by the conclave would help turn the tide of history at this time when our species is in mortal danger of destroying itself by weaponry and wars and/or by continued ecological imperialism, destroying the very nest that feeds and nourishes us.
Place matters. Even in this globalized, Internet era, I believe in making long-term commitments to specific places, and especially to the places where we live. Our communal social justice efforts should begin by choosing the places where we will make an impact.
Doubt and uncertainty for Levertov often took the form of questioning a God who could allow so much suffering and injustice in the world. There was a light in her eyes and a sense of ease in her body. It seemed to me that she had found a deep peace and an abiding sense of the presence of the divine.
Children are naturally mindful. They always live fully in the present, and the world is a fantastically real and interesting place to them.
Every city has its neglected corners, filled with people who need much more than a spontaneous moment of generosity and the handing out of some spare quarters. Like Cohen, I believe that we must witness the experience of the Other and “assimilate Other into same”—to actually identify aspects of ourselves in those we might normally ignore or disdain.
The Hebrew term for gratitude, hakarat hatov, literally means recognition of the good. Recognizing the good one has received from others is indeed the force that inspires gratitude and the desire to give back.
The signature orientation of liberal religion has rather been one toward increasing personal freedom from religious strictures. The joke is that the Ten Commandments have been demoted to “ten suggestions.”
Understanding our common connections doesn’t in itself solve the problem. When we are feeling the pinch of scarcity, human beings become territorial.
The face of the Other should strike doubt and obligation into any person of conscience, forcing us to continue asking, “Am I doing enough?” This, of course, threatens an infinite obligation: other people’s traumas, precarity-inducing misfortunes, addictions, and struggles will never cease, especially in the city.
The obligation to accompany another is an obligation to cross boundaries. In accompanying the dead, the boundaries that are crossed are those between life and death.