Culture

The Tea Party, a Middle Class Mob; and a Return to the Fifties

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In April, I was riding the DC Metro to the Capitol Mall, when several Tea Party demonstrators got on and sat a few seats away from me. The first, a young white man, wore red-and-white striped shoes with blue tops and other Uncle Sam garb; the young, white woman with him carried a hand-made sign on which was glued an old document titled “The Constitution” and the words, “Miss me yet?” Their origins, judging by hair, clothes, accent, and where they got on seemed to be lower middle class church goers. Not rich. Not sophisticates.

Media Tools

Can You Give Tikkun Daily a Sandwich a Month?

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Mmm, nourishing: a veggie sandwich, just like Tikkun Daily. A smorgasbord of good things. We are looking for 200 of our readers who could give us $5 a month to keep us going, the price of a sandwich a month. Would you consider being one of them, by clicking here? Or would you give us a larger one-time donation?

Culture

State of Grace

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I heard about Maureen McCarthy and the State of Grace Document about seven years ago, and I quickly knew I wanted to connect with her. The bold claim that we can create and maintain a state of grace in our relationships intrigued me. The simplicity of the tool – a few essential questions that help spell out nakedly and gently what it would take to maintain a state of grace between two people – won me over. I wanted to learn more, and to explore the parallels and complementarities I saw between this work and Nonviolent Communication. To cut a medium-size story short, Maureen and her partner Zelle just left my house a few hours ago, after visiting the Bay Area for nine days, including teaching a workshop that BayNVC hosted this past weekend.

Empathy

Examining Islamophobia

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We probably all start out prejudiced; having been brought up by people who look and act like us and believe the things that we learn to believe, we start by assuming that our way is the right way to do things, and if people do things differently they must be wrong. The need to grow beyond that childhood perspective is what led Mark Twain to optimistically claim that, “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.” But though we now live in a global village, in which the floods in Pakistan or fires of Russia are no further than a click away, an irrational fear of Islam or Muslims, Islamophobia, has been rising as fast as the floods, and spreading as fast as the fires. The most obvious examples are the inchoate rage some have felt at plans to build a Muslim community centre two blocks from ground zero, and the proposal to burn Qur’ans sponsored by a fringe Florida pastor. But it goes a lot further: last week Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic, wrote: “Muslim life is cheap, particularly to Muslims…

Empathy

Finding Inner Peace In an Age of Strife: A Few Good Quotes

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A friend of mine collected these. I find them helpful, and thought maybe others might find them helpful, too:
“What have I got to fear from my enemies? I carry my Paradise in my heart; it goes where I go.”- Ibn Taymiyya
“Be kind; for everyone you meet is fighting such a hard battle.” – Philo Judaeus
“God made all of us, and we all come from one woman, sucked one bubby; we hope we shall not quarrel; that we shall talk until we get through.” -Chief Holata Mico to Gen. Wylie Thompson, Oct, 24,1834, in Seminole treaty negotiations
“Man never reaches so high an estate, as when he knows not whither he is going.”

Culture

#Boulderfire: Twitter Echoes The Shofar

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Sue Salinger is a long-time media writer/producer, student of Reb Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, and doctoral student in media philosophy: a new academic discipline to my ears at least. I met her at the US Social Forum where she was training novice reporters, one of whom shepherded me through an interview on Free Speech TV. She just sent me this post about the role of Twitter in the recent fires in Boulder, Colorado. She describes the thousands who used Twitter to tell each other about the direction of the fire, to offer help, prayers and information as “A beautifully anarchic collaboration.” I am personally resisting Twitter though we use it to promote Tikkun and this blog, but this impressed me.

Culture

Yom Kippur Beyond Right and Wrong

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When I was a young girl in Israel, in the early 60s, one of my favorite days of the year was Yom Kippur. For a full 25 hours a great silence descended on the Jewish parts of Israel. No traffic, radio, or commercial activity of any kind took place. For many families, including mine, this was the one time a year we went to synagogue. In the silence I could hear everyone’s footsteps echoing in the empty streets.

Christianity

Bishop Gene Robinson Speaks: "The Greatest Coming Out Story Ever Told"

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In this last installment of my interview with Bishop Gene Robinson, we discuss interpreting collective story in an inclusive fashion culminating in Gene’s interpretation of Exodus as “The Greatest Coming Out Story Ever Told.” Feel free to check out the first two installments if you are so moved:
Morning Feature: Bishop Gene Robinson Speaks About Obama and “The Left”
Furthermore! Bishop Gene Robinson Speaks: From Tolerance to Empathy

LR: In organized religion, there seems to be a tendency to substitute a particular interpretation of a collective ambiguous story for the story itself. And often, the narrow interpretation excludes specific people from participating in the power structure. So as a bishop, you are now a participant in the power structure.

Christianity

Bishop Gene Robinson Speaks: From Tolerance to Empathy

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This diary is dedicated to Father Paco Vallejos, who has facilitated my own journey from tolerance to empathy. Several weeks ago, I interviewed Bishop Gene Robinson, a leader in the modern civil rights movement for Tikkun Daily. Bishop Robinson, who delivered the inaugural prayer, is the first openly gay Episcopal Bishop. You can read the first installment of my interview about Obama and “the Left” here. LR: My second question for you is a little bit more spiritual in nature.

Empathy

Why I Gave 20 Vials of Blood for a Blogger

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Unless you have been blogging at community sites such as Daily Kos and Streetprophets, you probably do not know that a blogger who calls herself Kitsap River needs a kidney. Some of us contributed to the community quilts Sara R made for River and her husband, CharlesCurtisStanley. For the past year, I have been (somewhat ambivalently) completing requirements necessary to donate a kidney to River. River lives far from me, and even if she lived nearby, she is not someone I would have been likely to cross paths with. We frequent different worlds.