Buddhism

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron is our source of spiritual wisdom this week. Pema Chodron is a respected teacher in the Shambala tradition. She is also the founder of Gampo Abbey, a Buddhist monastic community in Canada. These quotes come from her book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times:
“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh.

General News

Shame on the ADL for Opposing the Mosque Two Blocks from Ground Zero

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The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) publicly opposes the construction two blocks from Ground Zero of the Cordoba House (also known as Park 51), which the planners imagine as hosting a range of activities similar to those offered at the 92nd Street Y and would include a Mosque at which Muslims could worship. The plan, supported by Mayor Bloomberg, is opposed by some who have consistently used the attack on the World Trade Center as justifications for war and for stoking fear and hatred of Muslims.
ADL leader Abe Foxman presented the position of this organization, which claims to oppose discrimination, by reading a formal statement that seemed to be a perfect example of “shooting and crying” (first you attack brutally, then you cry about how sad it is to be put into this difficult position, often blaming the victims for having “forced” you to attack them). The key to that statement was this:
Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right.

Buddhism

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual comes from Vietnamese Buddhist monk and leader in engaged Buddhism Thich Nhat Hanh. Both poems come from “Call Me By My True Names: The Collected Poetry of Thich Nhat Hanh.” WALKING MEDITATION
Take my hand. We will walk. We will only walk.

General News

Israeli Orthodox Establishment have a woman arrested for carrying the Torah near “The Wall,” only one dimension of how they are defaming Judaism, God and Israel

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The latest outrage came today when Anat Hoffman, a leader of the Women of the Wall, Jewish women who want to pray at “the Wall” (the remaining part of the ancient Temple, now a wall that sits directly at the western edge of the Temple Mount in a plaza which is also frequently used for Israeli state occasions including induction into the Army), was arrested. The charge was suspicion that she might be planning to disobey a recent order of the Israeli courts prohibiting women from reading the Torah at the Wall–a suspicion based on the fact that she was carrying the Torah near the Wall. Though Orthodox law prohibits men and women from praying together, there is nothing in traditional Jewish law that would forbid women from praying in a women’s section at the Wall. But the Orthodox leadership in Israel has once again extended Jewish law in an oppressive and patriarchal direction. Tikkun recently co-sponsored a talk by Anat Hoffman in San Francisco, and we consider her one of our heroes in Israel–not only for her work in defending the rights of women, but for her previous work when, as a representative of the Meretz party she was elected to the Jerusalem city council and there championed the rights of Palestinians and the poor (including the Orthodox poor, of whom there are many in Jerusalem).

Culture

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom is a beautiful poem that Ned Green wrote on the Appalachian Trail in his journal in 1997. On February 18, 2001, at age 26, he passed away while doing what he loved most — climbing. After his support on an ice ledge gave way, he fell into a deep chasm on Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. Precarious

A grounded bird
Perched feet from sheer faces,
Freefalls and deadly drops
Flying on jutted thrusts of rock
I suddenly feel boreal
And pseudo-alpine.

Rethinking Religion

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from poet Mark Siet:
And yet still through these hands do we mold
Our lives of caring from young until old. Nothing else matters but the Creator in every breath
What else could compare to this sublime holiness
Knowing that with each step there is only One
In the rising of the moon and the setting of the sun. There in that place where nothing may be perceived
A curious fashion comes into being whereupon received
The threads of Torah’s living letters the vine upon the Tree
Weave these pesukim flowing through Tzimtzum to the sea
Joining the waters above with those that are below
With every meaning shared light there does show
For after all this is the very purpose of divine connection
To reveal in each moment by our infinite reflection.

Culture

An Interdependence Day Celebration for July 4

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Faced with July 4th celebrations that are focused on militarism, ultra-nationalism, and “bombs bursting in air,” many American families who do not share those values turn July 4th into another summer holiday focused on picnics, sports, and fireworks, while doing their best to avoid the dominant rhetoric and bombast. This year that kind of celebration is particularly difficult when many of us are in mourning because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We in the Network of Spiritual Progressives believe that avoiding July 4 or turning it into nothing more than a picnic with friends is a mistake for progressives. There is much worth celebrating in American history that deserves attention on July 4th, despite the current depravity of those who lead this country, though the celebration-worthy aspects of our society are rarely the focus of the public events. We also acknowledge that in the twenty-first century there is a pressing need to develop a new kind of consciousness — a recognition of the interdependence of everyone on the planet.

Earth-based Religions

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom was sent to us by a member of the Faith and Spirituality group with which Tikkun is working to plan many workshops, a service, and a sacred space at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, Michigan, June 22-26. The member, Louisa Davis, suggested this poem as a blessing for the social change work taking place at the forum:

Another World is Possible
[br]
by Rose Flint
[br]
We can dream it in, with our eyes
Open to this Beauty, to all
That Earth gives each of us, each day
Those miracles of dark and light–
Rainlight, dawn, sun moon, snow, storm grey
And the wide fields of night always
Somewhere opening their flower
stars – this, this! Another world is
[br]
possible. With river and bird
Sweet and free without fear, without
minds blind to harmony, to how
We can hold. We have been too long
Spoiled greedy children of Earth, life of rocks and creatures
Slipping out of our careless hands.

Gender and Sexuality

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week I’d like to share some of my own thoughts on God, emotion, and patriarchal thought with you all:
The richness of human emotions, the wealth of nuance and excitement that can be generated by human neediness, the depth of love that can be generated by human relationships — these magnificent aspects of reality are likely to be aspects of God as well. Why should God be any less wonderful than human beings? If one rejects the notions of perfection that come from Hellenistic and patriarchal thought, then one could easily see that attributing emotions, personality, feeling, and caring to the spiritual Being that permeates all of reality is not a put-down or a belittling, but a celebration in God of what we can and ought to honor in human beings. And if we recognize that a caring being is also a being that hurts, yearns and desires, then there is no reason to think we are belittling God when we see that S/He (as the unity of all being) is a yearning, desiring and sometimes hurting totality. It is only if we accept the male-dominated vision that perfection is that which has no needs or lacks and that God must be perfect in this sense that the Jewish conception of God becomes a scandal.

Politics & Society

Why Are Jews Creating a Memorial for Muslims who Died in the Gaza Flotilla and Offering Prayers of Healing for those Wounded or Killed?

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You probably heard or read that we at Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives, as part of our conference this weekend in Washington D.C. (info: www.spiritualprogressives.org/conference) will be holding a memorial service for those killed on the Gaza Aid Flotilla last week, as well as prayers for healing of those who have been wounded (including Israeli soldiers who, for no fault of their own, were sent on this “fool’s mission” by the arrogant and militarist leaders Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak), as well as prayers for the release of Gilad Shalit by Hamas, and release of thousands of prisoners now held by Israel, many of them never even charged with a crime, and most never given a jury trial. Though convened by Tikkun, the Memorial service led by Rabbi Arthur Waskow and Rabbi Michael Lerner will also have Christian prayers presented by Rev. James Winkler (chair of the Board of Church and Society of the United Methodists of America) and Rev. Ama Zenya of the United Church of Christ, and by Sayyid Syeed of the politically moderate Islamic Society of North America. It will take place in Lafayette Park across from the White House from 11-1:30 as part of our larger rally supporting Obama to BE The OBAMA MOST AMERICANS THOUGHT WE ELECTED in 2008. Let me explain my motivation. I am totally opposed to Hamas and support the nonviolent overthrow of their regime in Gaza, not by Israelis bombing or starving the people of Gaza, but by the Palestinian people themselves.