General News

Starhawk (3) — Voices for Peace in Palestine

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Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused Israel of increasing its arbitrary repression of Palestinian non-violent activism lately. Abdullah Abu Rahma’s arrest — which I reported on in the second segment of my interview with Starhawk — is part of this crack-down in Bil’in, Nil’in, and Ramallah, where grassroots demonstrations have begun to mobilize Palestinians, Israelis, and international solidarity against the wall being built between the occupied territories and Israel. According to HRW,
Israel is building most of the barrier inside the West Bank rather than along the Green Line, in violation of international humanitarian law. In recent months, Israeli military authorities have arbitrarily arrested and denied due process rights to several dozen Palestinian anti-wall protesters. Starhawk believes that the Israeli government fears this non-violent resistance more than the violent action they’ve contended with for years.

Earth-based Religions

Love the Earth, Respect the Earth

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Growing up I believed that you could get either love OR respect in life, but not both. This was my mother’s understanding of the way the world worked — one she taught me from day one — and maybe it was true for her or even for women of her generation. But over the years, I’ve discovered that without respect, love is a hollow sweetness, and that without love, respect can result in a distance that undoes its best intentions. These insights came back to me Sunday at First Unitarian Society in Madison as I listened to our associate minister Karen Gustavson offer one of her best sermons ever. It was well-crafted, contained great stories and great intelligence, but I disagreed completely with what she had to say.

Environment

Wild Turkeys I Have Known*

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As many of my readers know, I feel incredibly lucky to live in Madison, where wild birds and animals are plentiful. In fact, my first post on this blogsite last summer concerned a mink I saw in my backyard. Lately I’ve been enjoying a gaggle of turkeys in our neighborhood (or a covey or flock — whatever it’s called).They sleep in the trees close to our house and feed on the nearby golf course during the day. I’ve never had any trouble with them, but some folks have recently found them aggressive. Four people out walking were chased by several, and a child walking to and from school was harassed as well.

Earth-based Religions

Lady Liberty Shines — Despite Ongoing Bigotry

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I’ve been organizing two Starhawk workshops here in Madison, so that’s why I haven’t been blogging recently. That’s the bad news. But the good news is that I hope to include an interview with her on this site in about two weeks. Who knows whether she’ll talk about Israel and Palestine, permaculture, the WTO, Wicca, or all of the above. She’s a multifaceted person, and the interveiw may be wide-ranging.

General News

Civility, a Lost Art?

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We just had a State of the State address here in Wisconsin as well as a State of the Union address in Washington the day before. And then on Friday President Obama met with the Republican Caucus of the House of Representatives. I have to say, I wasn’t surprised, but I was saddened by the lack of civility that ensued after each of these encounters. Here in Wisconsin, Assembly Minority Leader Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon) retorted that Governor Doyle’s State of the State address “was a work of fiction…and Jim Doyle was trying to reinvent himself.” Is this a substantive response, one that can be used for a constructive dialogue about differences?

Culture

Avatar — an Ecofeminist Response

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I’ve really been enjoying the Avatar discussion, both here on Tikkun Daily and on the Goddess Scholars List I belong to. I waited until I’d seen the film to read any of the posts, because I didn’t want to prejudice my reaction to it. The GoddessScholars’ discussion reminded me a lot of a Women and Science Fiction class I taught in the 1980s. In my classes I always had a check-in before we began (despite the fact that they were university courses), because then we had deeper discussions. One of the odd things about the Women and Science Fiction class that semester was that there was a sizable minority (about 7 women out of 24) who were big football fans.

General News

Satan Responds to Pat Robertson on Haiti

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Yesterday in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Satan resonded to Pat Robertson’s recent attack. See for yourself why he thought Robertson was making him look bad:
Dear Pat Robertson,
I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher.

Gender and Sexuality

Mary Daly Lives On

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I’ve been reading the GoddessScholars list and surfing the web looking for eulogies of Mary Daly, the radical feminist theologian (from theos, ancient Greek for God) who made thealogy possible (from thea, ancient Greek for Goddess). And in reading through several of them, I’ve been remembering how important she was to me in the early 1970s. At that point in time, I could buy every book on feminism that came out, and I did. But not each one opened up my mind like Beyond God the Father. I can tell from my notes that although it was published in 1973, I must have read it in 1974.

Culture

Finding Hope in the Newspaper?

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My newspaper this morning gave me hope. And brothers and sisters, that doesn’t happen very often. On the front page, taking up about one third of the sheet, there was an article entitled “Trying to open the ‘inner eye.'” It was a piece that described the new Center for Conscious Living, an offshoot of the Church of Religious Science, which the pastor said is “reinventing the idea of church, with ‘stand you up music,’ meditation, singing, chanting and ‘an inclusive message of self-empowerment.'” Above this article, the top story was about our governor’s clean energy plan, in which 25 percent of the Wisconsin’s energy must come from wind, solar, biomass, or other renewable sources by 2025. My friend Jack Kisslinger, whose website is called Planet for Life, tells me that 25% might be a good number, but it has to be 25% of reduced overall energy consumption. So the governor’s goal is at least a step in the right direction.

Culture

Pagans at the Parliament (1)

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In 1993 representatives of the Greek Orthodox Church publicly pulled out of the Parliament of World Religions (PWR) to protest the inclusion of “godless” Pagans. They haven’t come back. But that may change if Angie Buchanan has her way. Angie, as well as two other Pagans — Andras Corban Arthen and Phyllis Curott — are on the 35-member Board of Trustees of the Council of the Parliament of World Religions. They’ve worked diligently to build bridges to other faith traditions since they were elected to the Board — Angie in 2002, Andras in 2006, and Phyllis just this year.