Health

Assessing the Kinds of Public Option

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One reason why so many people find it difficult to enthusiastically advocate for health care reform is that we still don’t know which bill and which proposals are being included and which not. The details matter. In How the PUBLIC OPTION Measures Up to “A Faith-Inspired Vision of Health Care.” (downloadable PDF, from Faithful Reform in Healthcare, and we also posted the text here), we find an assessment from a spiritual progressive perspective of some of the key elements in what a “public option” might look like as articulated in one of the bills with greatest support. It remains to be seen whether the actual health care bill that emerges from Congress will have this kind of a public option or not–because it is quite possible to imagine a “public option” remaining in the health care bill, but it being eviscerated even further than it has so far.

Rethinking Religion

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from Jonathan Granoff, the author, attorney, and peace activist whose writing we featured earlier this summer:

May we know our connection with the living Earth, our connection with all lives, our connection within with the qualities that lead to wisdom, and with the omnipresent light that brings us upwards into the Source and Sustainer of all. May our feet walk in beauty with softness on the earth and may we be at one with all life. May we separate from ourselves that which separates us from our fellow human beings. What separates are qualities reinforcing the illusion of separation such as selfishness, anger, falsehood, jealousy, and pride. May we be imbued and saturated with the life affirming qualities of love, compassion, justice, peace, patience, and gratitude.

Environment

Van Jones’s Resignation: Bad for the Country and Bad for Obama

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This moment will be looked back upon as giving a signal of encouragement to some of the most fascistic elements in the American political Right. I signed the same statement on 9/11 that Van Jones signed, and there was nothing immoderate about it. It didn’t say what the Right claimed it said (and the mainstream media chimed in without investigation). I’ll explain below. Jones’s resignation is bad for the country and for the Obama administration.

Humanism

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom was written by Harold W. Becker, president and founder of The Love Foundation, Inc:

From the laughter of children at play to the golden rays of the sun beaming through the sky at sunset, the eternal song of love permeates all creation. Each beat of our heart pulses to this rhythm in a majestic and graceful dance connecting us to everyone and everything. Life is magnificent when we quiet our outer selves and become fully present and aware of our own loving essence. To know this grander love is to go beyond the sensation of a first kiss or a mother’s tender touch in time of need. Although these extraordinary expressions reveal the existence of love, there is so much more.

Health

A Disappointing Health Care Call

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The religious community had high expectations for the conference call with President Obama today, but the call itself was a disappointment. Obama himself was only on for about seven minutes (to hear his bit, download the podcast and scroll to 30:29). He restated why it is urgent for people to let their elected representatives know their concerns about health care and why we need health care reform. He took on some of the popular misconceptions that the Right has been spreading and showed why they were wrong. What he did not do is answer the challenges from the Left — e.g. those articulated by Dennis Kucinich on Tikkun’s website or Bob Herbert’s piece yesterday in the New York Times arguing that the Obama plan, as now whittled down, would actually be a give-away to the insurance industry and forestall serious reform.

Health

Faith-Based Health Care Call With Obama Today

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Today a faith-based coalition will host a nationwide telephone call-in with President Barack Obama about health insurance reform. Participating in this gathering — by telephone or online — is an important opportunity to show your support for patient’s rights. You can join the national call-in with President Obama today — Wednesday, August 19th — at 5:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time. 2 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. Simply log on to faithforhealth.org in the minutes approaching the call, or dial 347-996-5501 (no pass code, long-distance charges may apply).

Islam

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom is from Jalal al-Din Rumi’s Mathnawi story of the man who swallowed a snake, in a version by Coleman Barks:
Jesus on the lean donkey,
this is an emblem of how the rational intellect
should control the animal-soul. Let your spirit
be strong like Jesus. If that part becomes weak,
then the worn out donkey grows to a dragon. Be grateful when what seems unkind
comes from a wise person. Once, a holy man,
riding his donkey, saw a snake crawling into
a sleeping man’s mouth!

Environment

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week I’d like to share with you a passage from my book Spirit Matters:
Everything that has ever happened in the history of the universe is the prelude to each of our lives. Everything that has happened from the beginning of time has become the platform from which we launch our lives. We are the heirs of the long evolution of Spirit. Each of us is the latest unfolding of the event of Creation. Our bodies are composed of the material that was shaped in the Big Bang.

Health

Only YOU Can Save Health Care Reform- so please ACT NOW!

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These next few weeks when Congresspeople and Senators are in their home districts is the critical moment. The Right knows that. They’ve organized their zealots to disrupt Congressional public meetings to give the false impression that there is a populist revolt against extending health care to the poor and against challenging the private insurance companies and pharmaeuticals. The liberals have disempowered themselves by trying to come up with health care plans that extend coverage but meanwhile protect the insurance companies, pharmaceuticals and hospital/medical profiteers. The only way they can do that is to raise the costs on the Middle Class, either through taxes or through reduction of services or through hidden price increases.

Judaism

Study: U.S. Jews drift from faith

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From an article in the Washington Times, whose reporter interviewed me about the significant decline in Jewish observance. The rate of religious observance among American Jews has dropped precipitously over the past two decades, to the point where more than one out of every three Jews is thoroughly secularized, according to a new survey…. “I attribute the shift to a combination of disaffection from Judaism and intermarriage,” said Barry Kosmin, who co-directed the 2008 AJIS survey. “Since 1990, half of all marrying American Jews have married non-Jews, with the result that there are two new mixed households for every homogeneous Jewish one.” …Some voices in the Jewish community blame the state of American synagogues for the drop in Jewish practice.