Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/culture/empathy-culture/page/17/)
If Radical Decency challenges us to be decent at all times and without exception does this mean that those of us who are not saints are doomed to fail? This blog tackles this issue; framing Radical Decency as an aspirational practice; arguing that we realize its promise – not when we’re perfect – but when we practice it with focus, persistence, imagination, and guts.
Let us no more attend to what is missing when we do not forgive. Give attention rather to what is present when we do. To forgive is to correct the false impression that you- Christ in you- has been harmed, or ever can be.
I’m going through one of those bumpy passages on the journey to belonging.I moved a couple of months ago, and while the reason was love and I feel the opposite of regret, the adjustment to a new community is pushing some ancient buttons. As with many children of immigrants, I know what it’s like to feel in it but not of it. By now, the catalog of my own complaints is intensely boring to me: I don’t know how to meet the people who might belong to my own quirky tribe if only I knew who they were; I’m always getting a little lost; the relatively short distance to my old neighborhood and old friends seems much longer now that I’m on the other side of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. I imagine that this too shall pass, and probably pretty quickly. I’ve moved more than 25 times in my life, so I know the dance.
Many are complaining about mixed moral messaging coming from Pope Francis, including on the subject of abortion. Is it not better to ask if Pope Francis and Spiritual Progressives can find common ground to that assert all human beings are made in the image of God?
Pope Francis has been placing a great deal of emphasis on mercy and compassion. Will he also emphasize that Jews and people of other faiths, or no faith, can be just as merciful and compassionate as Christians?
Have you ever felt that the social justice work you’re involved in is merely addressing symptoms rather than the underlying cause of what ails us? At its core, the problem we face is values-based. I’d like to make the case for embracing a very different set of values I call “decency” and practicing them “radically”–at all times and in every area of living. Radical Decency could be an approach to living that speaks with special force to the central challenge we face as we seek to create better lives and a better world.
This May, I had the joy of taking part in the first International Conference on Faith and Reconciliation in Peja, Kosovo. Little did I realize that in this corner of the Balkans, social media would have such an impact. Posting on Facebook about an upcoming dinner at the conference, I quickly received a reply from a friend in Washington, D.C. telling me that her father would be present. About an hour after that, her father came and sat down with me at a table full of diplomats from around the globe. It was a wonderful evening of dialogue.
At the age of eighteen years, four months, and six days, I was cast into the SHU where I stayed for two and half years, alone, without a window, a television, or a radio. How can I make anyone understand what it’s like to cling desperately to the hope of someday being heard because that’s the only hope left? That’s one reason why the hunger strike going on across California’s prisons matters.
You’re driving somewhere, in a perfectly normal state of mind, and suddenly, you see someone following you… after a few blocks, you see flashing lights behind you… police lights… how does it feel? Your heart races, even if you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. When I was around 17 years old I had a beat-up car, and almost every time I crossed the county line from Poor America into Wealthy America , I got pulled over. One day I stood up to the police officer. What’s the difference between me and Trayvon Martin? Beyond my living to be able to tell the story, there are actually a few more.
At a bar yesterday, the MSNBC coverage was on Zimmerman and Trayvon and pain. A pain that still has not dissipated. I sat down and ordered a local brew from Eli, the bartender. We struck up a conversation about the injustice of it all, about this country we live in. Eli and I are both white. So too was the gentleman who was sitting a stool over from me. When a lull hit, he took a swig, leaned toward me over the empty chair between us and said, “It’s just white guilt.” I shook my head.