Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/culture/non-violent-communication-nvc/page/42/)
It is the mission of those who hate, righteously they believe, to spread their hatred or at least make their voices heard. So must the lovers of the world. Their mission may be more challenging. They have to love the haters, too, or at least not hate them.
The second part of a series of discussions with conservative relatives over the holidays, and how to respond in a civil manner when they make questionable assertions about people and politics.
My hope of the New Year, for the new Congress, for all of us in this country is that we will practice or politics with a passionate love.
Thoughts on how to have discussions with conservative relatives when they try to inform you about “facts” that aren’t quite true, and how to turn this into a civil conversation.
At the last Tikkun gathering that I attended back in February one of the speakers talked about how Jews and Christians are united in their discomfort about the fact that Jesus was Jewish. So I laughed with everyone else, and have shared this insight with many others since, and still see that I personally love it that he was Jewish, because I feel a sense of connection with him that is rendered more meaningful this way. Which almost begs the question: how would a Jewish woman born and raised in Israel develop a sense of connection with Jesus? Loving No Matter What
The year was 1991. I was having a fight with a friend during and after a back-packing trip.
In conversation with the staff here, Tikkun intern Eamon O’Connor has been developing his critique of the famous rally and of the left critics like Medea Benjamin, Chris Hedges and more than a few Tikkun readers and writers who, in vigorously dismissing the rally, missed something crucial about it. This is about how to engage people in political discourse in the future, not just about what happened at the last election. By Eamon O’Connor
Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity may have come and gone in popular consciousness, and most people will remember it as little more than a hybrid media spectacle/ Halloween party thrown by our nation’s most popular political satirist — a Be-in for a generation raised on a diet rich in irony. The event left many progressives shaking their heads, wondering why worthier causes couldn’t garner the same attention, or attendance. After heaving a collective sigh of frustration, or indifference, we went along with our business.
Crossposted from The Fearless Heart. This week I finished teaching a 5-session phone class called Feedback without Criticism. The first 4 sessions were about giving feedback, and last night’s session was about receiving feedback. After last night’s session I have so much compassion for the untold millions who are regularly on the receiving end of both formal and unsolicited feedback which is so hard for them to receive. As a continuation to earlier posts on the topic of feedback, today I want to take a closer look at the role of self-acceptance in receiving feedback, as well as offer a few more tips to those who routinely provide feedback.
A person reveals a lot by the website they choose for their home page. Some people want to have their own blog; others have Google news. There have been times when I’ve had both of those, but for the past four years I’ve been firmly linked to Reddit. Reddit is a community forum on which people post, either their own comments or links to sites, news, pictures, whatever. Users can comment on these posts, and discussions, sometimes heated ones, follow.
Last weekend I was invited to take part in the 4th annual Faith and Feminism/Womanist/Mujerista conference at herchurch in San Francisco. The theme this year was “Reclaiming the Divine Feminine — pathways to a sustainable world.” Now, I consider myself a feminist in that I support equal rights and protection for women and believe that women have unique experiences that give them a different perspective on life and different needs than men, but I’m not the type to identify myself as a feminist first and foremost. And I’ve never been to a feminist conference. You could probably call me a mainstream feminist.
What is it that makes us so attached to privilege when we have it? I have seen a lot of polarity in discussions about privilege, with people who have little access to class, race or gender privilege often having disparaging views about those who do have such access, while those who do have the privilege feeling confused, ashamed or guilty, but nonetheless unable to make a decisive stand on it in terms of their own lives. I remember in particular a striking example that happened in 1994. I was at the time part of a group of people who were very committed to a shared vision of a transformed society, similar in many respects to the vision that I am working towards these days. At one point in one gathering of the group, the person who was facilitating the gathering asked the people present what would get in their way of committing a significant portion of their income or savings to the joint project.