General News

Talk Deeply, Be Happy

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People who spend more of their day having substantive discussions and less time engaging in small talk seem to be happier, a new study found. The New York Times reports:
“We found this so interesting, because it could have gone the other way — it could have been, ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ — as long as you surf on the shallow level of life you’re happy, and if you go into the existential depths you’ll be unhappy,” Dr. Mehl said. But, he proposed, substantive conversation seemed to hold the key to happiness for two main reasons: both because human beings are driven to find and create meaning in their lives, and because we are social animals who want and need to connect with other people. So as I write the House just approved the health care bill, and we could have a deep discussion about whether this was a good or bad thing — and we have gone into this from both sides on Tikkun Daily: e.g. Eli Zaretsky here:
Of course the bill will accomplish good, and this needs to be recognized. It will extend coverage and it will prevent some insurance company abuses.

Politics & Society

Audio with Tikkun authors: Chris Hedges, Lauren Reichelt, Harriet Fraad, Josh Healey and more

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Meet your favorite author! Every Monday night I interview a Tikkun author on a conference call that you can join, and you can ask questions and make your own comments: half radio show, half virtual town meeting. It’s free to you, but we ask on the honor system that if you join the call more than once that you do something to keep us going financially: subscribe to the magazine, join the Network of Spiritual Progressives (which includes a subscription) or donate. These three are the ONLY ways we have of surviving. But of course when you listen to this audio on the web it’s free to you and at no cost to us, so you can squeak by without feeling guilty that you haven’t contributed…

Culture

Empathy – the Most Revolutionary Emotion

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I want us to organize, to tell the personal stories that create empathy, which is the most revolutionary emotion. – Gloria Steinem
It’s a good quote and you can find much more in Edwin Rutsch’s third Empathy Cafe newsletter just out. It’s worth scrolling through the whole newsletter–there’s a lot of depth there, from Obama to Tikkun author Kirk Schneider, Colbert to George Lakoff to HuffPost’s series on Empathic Civilization, in which various writers take off from Jeremey Rifkin’s new book of that name. Edwin is a videographer who went to the California Republican Party 2010 Spring Convention this weekend to ask people about empathy. He has more often asked people on the political left but he tells me he had a good time.

Christianity

Why Is Liberal Religion So Race And Class Bound? Can Love Break Through?

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The Census Bureau projects that by 2042, whites will no longer constitute a majority of the U.S. population… the fastest growing group will be those who identify as multiracial…. If we fail to respond to this new multicultural reality – if we choose to stand rather than to move – we will not only fail to honor this core principle of liberal theology, we will simply become irrelevant. This is from the lead article in the current Unitarian Universalist magazine, UU World. Being good liberals, Unitarian Universalists have been engaged in wrenching self-examination for several years now, at least since the 1992 General Assembly Resolution on Racial and Cultural Diversity.

Culture

Signs of Progress: Nothing But A Dog

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Is this a less racist, sexist, homophobic country than it used to be? Some activists I know seem reluctant to agree that it is, because there is so far still to go that they feel it will sap our determination to go there. The problem I have with this is not just that it’s wrong to say nothing has really changed but that it is so disrespectful to the activists of yesterday who did, actually, make a difference. It is also, for me anyway, much more dispiriting and likely to sap my activist energy if I think past activists had no real effect than if I feel they are heroes whose shoulders we can stand on. So when I see significant generational differences between my generation of baby boomers and people in their twenties and thirties, I stand up and cheer.

Rethinking Religion

Hallowed Secularism: Calling all secularists Monday night

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“The future of God depends on the future of secularism,” writes Bruce Ledewitz in the March/April 2010 issue of Tikkun. Ledewitz is a secularist but not of the Hitchens/Dawkins variety. On his blog Ledewitz says of this Tikkun issue:
Almost all of the contributors to the magazine commenting on the theme of God seem to share [Rabbi Arthur] Green’s framework: science first and religion adapts. Hans Kung, Aryeh Cohen and Zaid Shakir are exceptions… First, I’m in the same boat as most of the others, but I don’t call it religion.

Politics & Society

The Hedges-Lerner debate on AlterNet and Common Dreams

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I was happy to see AlterNet post this significant debate as one of their lead articles today, under the title “Should Progressives Give Up on Obama? Chris Hedges vs. Rabbi Lerner.” Common Dreams posts Michael’s piece here. As I write this there are 68 comments on the AlterNet site, and 318 on Common Dreams!

Culture

Nourishment in Hard Times

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Where we get our fuel from for being our truest selves and for remaking the world — which are two sides of one coin in my worldview — is always a question for me. I meet someone who is creative, or who struggles on over decades to care for some part of the world, and I want to know: what has kept you going, what feeds your spirit? They may be successful at their struggle and they may be well loved, or they may be a burr in others’ flesh and feel that their success is way too little and unappreciated: or both of these! But how have they not burned out? How do they keep giving?

Judaism

Dare I Daven at the Kotel?

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On the eve of her departure for an official visit to Israel, Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, the first female leader (executive vice president) of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis, reflects on the perils facing her — and other women — whose custom is to pray wrapped in a tallit — the traditional Jewish prayer shawl. What will happen when my sons are old enough to accompany me to Israel, where I will attend the Conference of Presidents’ annual Mission next week? A highlight of every trip to Israel is a visit to the Kotel, the symbolic site of Jewish yearning for centuries. My boys are young enough to stand with me in the women’s section, where they would expect me to don the tallis and tefillin they are accustomed to seeing on their mom. How long until the heckling and threats of the ultra orthodox begin?

Culture

Looking for Inspiration? Try This.

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I asked Eli Zaretsky the other day if he could post something about where he finds his inspiration, how he keeps up the struggle. I don’t always agree with Eli about his opinions, and I am concerned that he mirrors the all too usual approach on the Left of saying what we are against, without attending enough to how we keep going. But at the same time I see a man who has kept going, and I want to know the sources of his inspiration. This week Alana Price and I visited a strongly left organization, AlterNet, and I asked the same kinds of questions of Don Hazen, the executive editor. I reported our conversation yesterday and said I took Don’s jaded or cynical style with a pinch of salt. We talked about nourishment, what keeps us going in the struggle, where we find hope.