General News

The Utne Award and the Future of Tikkun

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Former managing editor Dave Belden, Associate Editor Peter Gabel, and I were honored to receive the Utne Independent Press Award won by Tikkun Wednesday night at a ceremony attended by staff from some of the most significant magazines in the United States (Managing Editor Alana Price was unable to attend but was with us in spirit). The awardees were selected from some 1,300 magazines reviewed. Tikkun won in the category of Best Body/Spirit Coverage. The other nominees were: The Christian Century, Commonweal, Geez, Resurgence, Sojourners, Tricycle, and Yes!Magazine. In accepting the award, we want to acknowledge the excellence of the other nominee magazines as well!

Education

Attend a Free Peace Conference in New Jersey: Move the Money – Turn Swords into Plowshares!

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At a time when people are suffering from the economic downturn, political battles are still raging over how to cut the budget and the nation is still involved in several wars, we believe our nation’s priorities need to change. FY 2011’s military budget is the largest since the end of World War II, even though the Cold War is over and there is no longer the threat of aggression from a major power. The purpose of the “Move the Money” conference is to help change our nation’s priorities by promoting the reduction of military spending by at least 25% and “Moving the Money” from nuclear weapons, their support systems and unnecessary defense items to humanitarian, social and environmental needs. Ultimately all nations will need to greatly reduce their military spending and eliminate nuclear weapons in order to address human needs and make the world safe for our children. Here’s the info:
MOVE THE MONEY: TURN SWORDS INTO
PLOWSHARES

Saturday, June 4, 2011
From 9:30 am to 4:00 pm
Hosted by:
The Jam-e-Masjid Islamic Center in Boonton
110 Harrison Street
Boonton, N.J. 07005
To help achieve these goals, at the conference we will also promote the advancement of the Global Marshall Plan, a key element to a sustainable just world based on our shared human values of compassion and justice, which our keynote speaker, Jonathan Granoff, will talk about.

Empathy

The Assassination of Osama Bin Laden: A Spiritual Response

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The struggle against terrorism will not be won through killing, no matter how many people we assassinate. You don’t fight malaria by seeking to kill every mosquito on the planet, but rather by draining the swamps. Similarly, you can’t eliminate terrorism by seeking to kill every terrorist (and in the process killing a lot of innocent others as well), but only by draining the swamps of hatred that have been built up as a response to the suffering generated by global inequities and injustices.

Christianity

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week: Easter

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Some Thoughts on Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Beyond
by Matthew Fox
Michael Lerner has asked me to write a few thoughts about the message of Good Friday and Easter. I appreciate his invitation, a sign of the meaning of deep ecumenism and what we have to learn from each others faith traditions. To me, the “paschal mystery” of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the rabbi is an archetypal reminder about how, as science now teaches us, all things in the cosmos live, die and resurrect. Supernovas, galaxies, solar systems, planets, beings that inhabit our planet – we all have our time of existence and of passing out of existence. But we leave something behind for further generations and that constitutes resurrection.

Culture

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from Jonathan Granoff, a nuclear weapons activist, attorney, and Tikkun author. Granoff writes about the danger of pursuing profit maximization while disregarding its impact on our natural world. The piece below was published on the Worldshift Council’s website last October. Our Choice: Creativity or Destruction
by Jonathan Granoff
The natural world has value independent of the markets of man and we ignore this fact at our peril. Corporations and states can no longer operate as if they are independent of the natural world.

Culture

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom on unconditional love comes from Joyce Rupp’s “Fragments of your Ancient Name: 365 Glimpses of the Divine for Daily Meditation.” Rupp is an author, retreat leader, and spiritual midwife. For more information on Rupp, visit her website. Captain of My Heart
Rabia al-Adawiyya
Do I consent to your being in charge,
Leading the daily dealings of my heart? Am I able to yield my comfortable control
Even if I prefer to do things my own way?

Politics & Society

Wisconsin Unions, Israeli Settlement: Brief Notes from Rabbi Lerner

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Wisconsin Unions: The destruction of public sector unions in Wisconsin will directly undermine your economic well-being in the years to come. Almost all of us who are not rich have for decades derived hidden benefits from the ability of unions to set wages at a level that makes it possible for a middle class family with two wage earners to make a decent living. Their actions have a ripple effect that goes all the way up and down the class ladder. If the unions are smashed, don’t be surprised if your job options and pay diminish dramatically in this decade. And that’s only one of many reasons not to allow the forces that wish to take care of the needs of America’s wealthy and powerful elites first before taking care of the rest of us to get away with destroying public sector employees — and these forces are in both major political parties and demonstrably in the Obama Administration as well.

Culture

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom on unconditional love comes from Joyce Rupp’s “Fragments of your Ancient Name: 365 Glimpses of the Divine for Daily Meditation.” Rupp is an author, retreat leader, and spiritual midwife. For more information on Rupp, visit her website. Unconditional Love
You are Love like no other. Love so large you contain our smallness.

Politics & Society

Another Betrayal: Obama Begs U.S. Corporations to “Invest In America”

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To mostly positive media reviews, President Obama yesterday addressed the Chamber of Commerce in Washington. Though a number of stories describe the reception afforded the president as rather chilly, the coverage tends to present him as focused on the economic recovery, and reaching out to his political opponents in order to spark job creation. ABC World News said the president
delivered an urgent message to the companies to get in the game, start spending money and hiring workers — throwing down a gauntlet but also trying to build a bridge. The CBS Evening News said:
Obama continued his campaign to improve relations with business, … [urging] corporate America to invest the nearly $2 trillion it has saved up and start hiring again.

Politics & Society

Obama Abandons Egyptian Democracy Demonstrators’ Demand to Oust Mubarak

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With the political crisis unresolved in Egypt, the volume of U.S. media coverage continues to dwindle — but remains considerable. For the first time since the protests began, not all three networks led with the story, which continues to receive coverage on the front pages of major dailies. Reports and analyses agree that the Obama administration, after what the AP describes as “several days of mixed messages about whether it wants to see [Hosni] Mubarak stay or go,” yesterday “conceded Monday that it will not endorse the demands of Egyptian protesters” for the “embattled” president Mubarak “to step down immediately, saying a precipitous exit could set back the country’s democratic transition.” The administration “coalesced around a position that cautiously welcomes nascent reform efforts begun by newly appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman that may or may not result in Mubarak’s resignation before September.” The CBS Evening News reported that President Obama “said …