Environment
Texas?
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I had no idea any part of Texas was like this. Photos from Kay Shearer in our office.
Politics & Society
Krugman talks about Soul
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A rare moment. And entirely welcome. Krugman talks about our spiritual need. Arlen Specter, in the SF Chronicle yesterday, said there was no evidence of criminal acts by the Bush government. Over a hundred dead in our torture mills isn’t evidence?
Politics & Society
Plans for Tikkun Daily
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We are constructing a new Tikkun Daily website. It will have various bells and whistles but the main feature will be a joint blog. What I am doing here now in a low profile way is to get myself familiar with the technology, and with what it takes to blog every day. Our goal is a site that “will address politics, culture, religion, and private life through an interfaith worldview that is based on the knowledge that most of us share but rarely have the gall to express overtly: that in this appalling and beautiful world, love can be embodied and become the basis for social relations.” Not so ambitious, eh?
Culture
Colbert Confusion
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When my son told me that a high school senior he met on a college visit a couple of years back thought that Colbert was a conservative, my mind boggled. Could someone be so out of it not to realize that Colbert’s uber-conservative persona was a way of satirizing conservatism in a conservative-ascendant era? I put the boy down as an aberration. Now it turns out lots of conservatives think Colbert’s jokes are really on liberals. Apparently watching Colbert just confirms you in your prejudices, or so says a new study.
Health
Love of Friends
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Friends help you live longer. And the reason is mysterious to researchers who have barely looked at this before! Only smoking was as important a risk factor as lack of social support for the health of 736 middle aged Swedish men. I love this article. “In general, the role of friendship in our lives isn’t terribly well appreciated,” said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
Culture
Pain and Beauty
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It’s so hard to explain what we are looking for in terms of art for the magazine. In general, I feel “realism” in any of the arts has come to mean painful realities, the things we would rather cover over, the rapes and violence and harshness, the dirt and poverty. I’d love to see uses of the term that referred to love, empathy, beauty, recovery. Those are real too. They happen.
Culture
Art you can believe in
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I just learned about a magazine that could really help us at Tikkun. We are always in need of good art that in some way embodies a spiritual critique of society or vision of what could be, and it’s surprisingly difficult to find it. I tried expressing that need here (a pdf download under “Art Submissions”). Now I find that Image magazine has been doing something like this for twenty years. The editor, Gregory Wolfe, explains how they started it:
As we surveyed the cultural landscape, we noted the irony that large numbers of both secularists and religious believers shared an identical notion: great art and literature inspired by faith could no longer be created.
Politics & Society
The Seminary of the Street
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Nichola Torbett is one of my favorite people. She is innovating in what I feel is the most critical area of social change: how to bring the great social and spiritual visions of a Michael Lerner or Peter Gabel together with the practices of personal change and community formation that have been pioneered over recent decades by all kinds of congregations, therapists, and teachers. On the Tikkun Phone Forum last night Nichola described her current ambitious venture, which is just in its early days: the Seminary of the Street, in Oakland, CA. Our discussion can be heard here. Nichola was the national organizer of the Network of Spiritual Progressives from 2006-8 and has written a number of pieces in Tikkun, such as this review of Van Jones’s new book.
Politics & Society
The Naked Blogger
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We are starting this blog and I am terrified. What if I inadvertently reveal my innermost thoughts? But isn’t that what a blog is for? What is a blog for? A blog is a different view into the authors’ responses to the world, in real time.