General News

Renewing All Religious Holidays: and here are some ideas for Easter and Passover

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We are seeking to build a resource center for spiritually alive practices to support the growing spiritual renewal of ancient traditions in frameworks that emphasize universal themes and a commitment to love, justice, caring for each other and for the planet. We are looking for readings or rituals that make traditional religious holidays come alive, so that others can access them — on our website here. We welcome you to submit to us your own article giving guidance to people within your tradition about how to make any particular holiday become spiritually deeper and accessible to a contemporary spiritual progressive who might be having difficulty with traditional understandings or rituals connected to that holiday. We invite submissions for any holiday celebrated by any of the religions we have listed on that page. To give you an example of what we mean, we urge you to look at our Passover Seder Supplement for 2010.

Politics & Society

Obama Needs Our Help to Stand Firm Against Israeli Building Projects in East Jerusalem

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Not every moment is as promising for changing the dynamics in Israel/Palestine as the current one. It is time to support the Obama administration, which momentarily has developed a bit of a backbone in response to the Israeli government, which revealed its total arrogance and lack of respect for the United States and for the possibility of any real concessions for peace by announcing that it was going to build 1,400 more housing units in Palestinian East Jerusalem (not the Old City, where Jews have an historic claim that deserves respect, but in the part of Jerusalem built by and for Arabs in the past 200 years and then conquered by Israel in 1967). [brclear]
The Obama administration’s new backbone is unlikely to last in the face of the assault already started by AIPAC friends in Congress, unless there is a loud cry of support for his administration’s demand that building new housing in Jerusalem stop during negotiations. The construction of housing must stop because whether Israel has jurisdiction to build or run East Jerusalem is part of what the negotiations are about and therefore shouldn’t be resolved by Israel “creating facts” on the ground which de facto render the negotiations moot. So here is what you can do: Send an email to your congressperson and senator telling them of your concern.

General News

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom is an old Eastern parable adapted by Phillip Cousineau:
A very long time ago there was a traveler who was making a journey across the wild steppes when he suddenly heard the roar of a tiger. Terrified, he turned and saw the beast charging him. The traveler wasted no time. He ran for his life across the barren land – but saw no refuge until a dried up well loomed in the distance. He felt his blood surging as he gripped the end of the well and leapt inside.

General News

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom is entitled “Prayer for a New Beginning” and is written by Tikkun reader Sulha Shalomi:
Dear God,
We cannot ask President Obama to be or do what we ourselves, in our hearts and minds, are not willing to be or do. When we ask for President Obama to have the courage of his convictions, may we also receive this grace. When we ask that he remember who he is and reclaim his vision and highest and best unfolding, may we likewise be blessed. When we ask that he promote peace and reconciliation among peoples and countries, may we also be graced with peace in all of our relationships and interactions in the home, workplace, and community. When we ask that his faith be strengthened, and that he be shown a clear path to allow his vision to become reality, may we also understand that we, too, will be shown a path.

Politics & Society

My Response to AlterNet Commenters

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Crossposted from AlterNet where the editors added this introduction:

Editor’s Note: Last week, AlterNet ran an article that featured a piece by Chris Hedges and another by Rabbi Michael Lerner, titled: “Should Progressives Give Up on Obama?” The article incited lively debate in the comments section and now, Rabbi Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine and head of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, has penned a response to the article’s comments addressed to him by AlterNet readers. It follows here. The dispute between me and Hedges is about what is the best strategy to rebuild a powerful anti-corporate movement, not about whether or not we like Obama’s policies. As editor of Tikkun, I’ve been outspoken in opposition to his war in Afghanistan, his continuation of the human rights violations of the Bush administration, his handing trillions to banks and investment companies rather than creating a national bank to fund social projects and allowing the privately owned banks to be dealt with by the “free marketplace” that conservatives have been praising all these decades, his failure to support Medicare for Everyone (single-payer) health care reform and instead embracing policies that will further enrich the insurance companies and pharmaceuticals, his support of “cap and trade” rather than a carbon tax to stem global warming, his capitulation to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu rather than using American power to end the Occupation of the West Bank, his rejection of the Goldstone recommendations on Israel’s human rights violations in Gaza, his support for firing teachers in Rhode Island for working at a school that did not meet the teach-to-the-test absurdities of No Child Left Behind rather than question the validity of the goals that are measured by that legislation, and the list goes on and on and on.

Politics & Society

Why I Disagree with Hedges and Nader on Obama

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Many of the specific failures highlighted by the article I linked to Tuesday by Chris Hedges criticizing the performance of the Obama Administration are legitimate points. But the way Hedges’s positions are stated, and the conclusions drawn from them are not the path of spiritual progressives, in my view. There was too much anger in his statement overshadowing our spiritual progressive commitment to compassion and to a spirit of generosity toward others with whose politics we disagree. And not enough sympathy for the problems anyone would face trying to get elected as President and to repair the damage of the past 30 years. I have great respect for Chris Hedges, as one of the very few people who was a respected journalist at the New York Times and subsequently left the Times in protest of the way they ignored those of us in the anti-war movement who were warning about the lies of the Bush Administration and opposing the use of violence to achieve US ends in the Middle East, and because I am grateful that he has written a brilliant article in Tikkun on the Obama Brand and has accepted our invite to speak at our conference in D.C.
Yet in this post I want to state places where I disagree with Hedges article, although I do at first affirm some things that are right about Hedges’ position even while I don’t affirm the tone and style of his communication (which, to be fair to him, was written for a different venue and not at all like the more nuanced pieces he has put into Tikkun magazine).

Spirituality

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr.:
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads to the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.

General News

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom is a prayer written by the Reverend Samuel F. Pugh (1904-2007):

Oh, God, when I have food,
help me to remember the hungry;
When I have work,
help me to remember the jobless;
When I have a warm home,
help me to remember the homeless;
When I am without pain,
help me to remember those who suffer;
And remembering,
help me to destroy my complacency
and bestir my compassion. Make me concerned enough to help,
by word and deed,
those who cry out
for what we take for granted.

General News

Reviving the American Liberal Movement

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This first appeared on Huffington Post:
Close to 600 people in the San Francisco Bay Area gave up their President’s Day Monday vacation to spend some nine hours in a “Strategy Conference for Liberals and Progressives” to address “How To Support Obama to BE the Obama Americans Thought We Elected” and “How to Launch a Constitutional Amendment to Restrain Corporate Power” after the Supreme Court’s recent decision to allow unrestrained corporate spending on elections. For many, just being in the context where this discussion was happening in a face-to-face encounter with others, rather than as isolated individuals reading it on a computer monitor, seemed an important step toward re-empowerment. Many are suffering from post-traumatic Obama abandonment syndrome — an ailment that came from being severely traumatized by Obama’s political moves in the past thirteen months. A palpable sadness, depression, anger and even despair carried by many who had worked for Obama and now felt betrayed by his choices in his first year in office was mixed with compassion and a strong determination to not allow the political Right to use our despair as their ticket to a political revival. The conference was conceived by Tikkun Magazine and its interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives (including secular humanists and atheists who consider themselves “spiritual but NOT religious”) as a way to allow people who have been having these feelings privately to both receive the comfort of sharing those feelings with other liberals and progressives, and then to move beyond them to actually face the critical question: “What do we in the liberal and progressive world do now, if we face three, or hopefully seven, years of an Obama presidency?”

Gender and Sexuality

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from “Building Cultures of Peace: Four Cornerstones,” an essay by author and historian Riane Eisler:
To spread the consciousness that we can, and must, change traditions of domination requires courage. It takes courage to challenge domination and violence in both international relations and intimate relations. It takes courage to actively oppose injustice and cruelty in all spheres of life: not only in the so-called public sphere of politics and business but in the so-called private sphere of parent-child, gender, and sexual relations. It may not be popular, and may even be dangerous to do so, since domination and violence in intimate and intergroup relations are encoded in some religious and ethnic traditions that are our heritage from a more rigid dominator past. But it must be done.