Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/culture/page/101/)
Posts about culture, the arts, the media, book reviews, movies etc.
Last week, I posted a very personal entry. I told about my inner process while it was still unfolding, not waiting for anything to settle so I could package it. Since the topic was vulnerability, my own path of it, I was at one and the same time being on my path and writing about it.
Last week, when graphic designers Ronny Edry and Michal Tamir decided to counter the war drums beating in Israel with a simple message of peace to the people of Iran, little did they know it would create a viral Facebook initiative which would help to inspire a massive anti-war rally in Tel Aviv. On Saturday night, this is precisely what happened, as Israelis flooded Habima Square in Tel Aviv to protest the elevated war rhetoric coming from their leaders and to stand squarely against the hypothetical bombing of Iran. It’s not difficult to trace much of the momentum for Saturday night’s rally back to the married duo of Edry and Tamir, who last week created images of themselves with the superimposed message, “‘Iranians, we will never bomb your country. We ♥ You.'”
Their images inspired countless Israelis to post their own Facebook versions, which in turn inspired Iranians to do the same, creating a virtual, imagistic message of love cycling between the two peoples. That message also helped to inspire Israeli activists – many of whom were involved with this summer’s social justice protest movement (J14) – to organize the county’s first significant anti-war rally concerning Iran.
The Jewish Daily Forward website, and other sources, are reporting upon this positive phenomenon of Israelis and Iranians reaching out to each other, via the Internet, to renounce war. Unfortunately, these do not include the decision makers in their respective governments. This article includes recent survey data showing 50% of Israelis “completely opposed to an attack on Iran, even if diplomatic efforts to stall the nuclear program failed” and 78% knowing “that even a successful attack would at best delay Iran’s acquisition of an A-Bomb by a few years.” The following is the heart of this Forward blog piece:
…. On Saturday night, two graphic designers, Israeli couple Ronny Edry and Michal Tamir uploaded photos of themselves superimposed with a logo saying, “Iranians, we will never bomb your country.
Friend and prophet Rev. Jim Burklo shares his thoughts on a quite powerful border experience in his latest “musing.” I’m honored that he lets me share this with all of you on Tikkun Daily. Click here to visit his blog site, Musings. DESCONOCIDO
A small wooden cross stands next to a cholla cactus in the desert of southern Arizona. Across it is written a word in Spanish: DESCONOCIDO.
Over the many months of writing this blog, I have alluded many times to having chosen vulnerability as a path of spiritual practice for myself, most recently when I wrote about the freedom of committing to a path. As I’ve been on this path for almost 16 years, I wasn’t expecting to be bumped back almost to the very beginning. This is precisely what happened to me over this past weekend as I was sorting out a painful reaction I had to something said about me. In the past few weeks, I was exposed to quite a number of statements about me that took some effort to digest. I am grateful to years of practice that enabled me to go beyond old habitual ways of taking things personally.
In his 2011 State of the Union Address President Obama endorsed the view that American superiority in space was the result of Cold War competition and that “after investing in better research and education…we unleashed a wave innovation.” Perhaps, that is the inspiration for Obama’s assertion that in order to “strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people” Americans must replicate the levels of research and development achieved at the height of the “space race.”
I have often wondered why it is that there is so much strife and conflict in so many of the communities and movements I know of. This has been especially challenging to grasp when the groups I am talking about are generally committed to a vision of a peaceful world and the individuals in them aspire to personal integrity and compassion in their relationships. I am very well aware I am not the only one wondering about this, and many have had things to say about it already. Some think of it as inevitable, part of human nature. Some think of communities as going through pre-determined phases.
Prof. Lipstadt readily stipulates that the US administration should have done more to let in Jewish refugees, … but she warns against judging Franklin D. Roosevelt and the American Jewish community of that time too harshly …; she characterizes such an imposition of present standards on past eras as a fallacy called “presentism.” She also criticized those in the pro-FDR “defensive school”…who indignantly countered that the US did all it could to save Jews during the ’30s and ’40s.
“If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” — Longfellow
Recently I received an email from someone I will call Julie in which she expressed her profound reservations about two of the seventeen core commitments that form the basis of the Consciousness Transformation Community and which to me describe the foundation of a consciousness of nonviolence. Here is the text of these two:
Assumption of Innocence: even when others’ actions or words make no sense to me or frighten me, I want to assume a need-based human intention behind them. If I find myself attributing ulterior motives or analyzing others’ actions, I want to seek support to ground myself in the clarity that every human action is an attempt to meet needs no different from my own. Resolving Conflicts: even when I have many obstacles to connecting with someone, I want to make myself available to work out issues between us with support from others.
Darth Vader recently agreed to make an appearance in support of Mr. Yoo, the Bush-era lawyer who wrote the memorandum justifying the use of torture.