Culture

Be Ready for Overwhelming Joy

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Last week, I had the privilege of reading from my novel, Hold Love Strong, at Pete’s Candystore, a great venue in Brooklyn, a few blocks from 334 Manhattan Avenue, where once I lived in the middle of a friend’s apartment and often climbed the fire escape to the roof where I began to piece my life back together; or rather, began the process of reflection and self-possession necessary for living a full and meaningful life. After I read, Nadia and I had the chance to speak with Mira Jacobs, one of the curators of the event and a mother to a one-and-a-half-year-old son, Zakir, a name that means remembering and/or grateful. Talking about new motherhood, pregnancy, and childbirth, Nadia repeated a phrase a friend had recently said to her, and although she meant it in reference to having a baby, it is, I think, at the very core to the solutions of our present social and political problems, and thus what we — those of us who wish for a peaceful, humane world if not for ourselves then for our children — must do and anchor ourselves to in order for there to be the chance for the world we can imagine, the world we deserve. “Be ready,” she said, “for overwhelming joy.” Mira agreed with Nadia, and she expanded on the statement, speaking about her son and motherhood with exuberant reverence.

Culture

Is Resentment Inevitable?

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Recently I talked with a friend about why he harbors so much resentment towards his partner and their 13 year old child, that he sometimes reacts with intense anger to relatively minor snappy expressions. My friend, let’s call him Fred, wanted to free himself from the grip of unconsciously chosen anger, so he could choose how to respond. Invisible Contracts
As we talked, Fred recognized that it’s highly unlikely that he can transcend his reactivity in the moment. It’s almost always too late. The moment of true power is earlier, when he makes his own choices about what he will or will not do.

Culture

Where Two Or More Are Gathered – Asylum May Be Granted

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As I headed into what we hoped would be the last of a long series of hearings, to decide whether our friend would be granted asylum, I wondered what good, if any, our silent witness had been. At each hearing at least six of us sat in the back, listening to testimony, watching exhibits argued over by our friend’s attorney and the attorney for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)… Did it make any difference for us to be there, other than providing support for our friend? A bit of background. Our friend had been a vocal opponent of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in her country.

Culture

April Fools: Jokes, Friendship, and Erasmus?

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“Have a seat!” I’d say on April Fool’s Day, offering a classmate a little wooden chair. If she were foolish enough to accept my kindness, I’d jerk it back and she’d fall on her butt. Or I’d point to a friend’s shirt: “Oh my God! There’s a spider on your pocket!”

Buddhism

Food for thought for Quran-bashers

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Sometimes as a Muslim I feel suspect that the simplest, most effective way to begin to answer the many burning questions Westerners have about Islam and Muslims isn’t to give them a Quran or even the most erudite and engaging book on Islam. For many living in our postmodern world, such a discussion needs to start far closer to home, with a crash course in Western religious history and the basic ideas of the Judeo-Christian Tradition. Not only is that often a necessary remedial measure, but in this day of –to borrow an inspired metaphor once applied to U.S.-Iranian relations–“mutual Satanization” I think it is for many probably the only way to begin this critical conversation. As an undergrad studying French in the early 1990s, I took a class on the Francophone literature of Quebec. Until recently in most Western societies literature was riddled with references to and assumptions of familiarity with the Bible, and this was especially true of Quebec’s literary output thanks to the province’s tradition of being *plus catholique que le pape*.

Culture

Power and Grace

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When you think about power, what are some of the words or images that come to mind? More often than not, I’ve heard people associate power with domination, coercion, or extreme force. For many, their relationship with power is at best ambivalent. What if you were to think of power as the capacity to mobilize resources to attend to needs? What happens when you imagine increasing your internal resources, bringing more choice, decisiveness, and resilience to your life and work?

Culture

"Avatar," Exodus, & Kabbalah

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Our deeply beloved ally Rabbi Arthur Waskow has important insights into contemporary culture that should be read by everyone! The film AVATAR weaves together what we usually call the spiritual and the political. Indeed, whether its director realized it consciously or not, AVATAR echoes two major strands of religious wisdom that began in Jewish thought but have had deep influence on cultures far beyond the boundaries of Jewish peoplehood. The two strands of ancient wisdom are “archetypal” — that is, they appear over and over again in human thought because they arise in human experience and yearning — with or without conscious transmission of the stories.One is the biblical story of the Exodus from slavery under Pharaoh (rooted in the Spirit but notably political) ; the other, the Kabbalistic metaphor of God as the Tree of Life, unfolding through successive emanations from the Infinite to the Incarnate so that its roots are in Heaven and its fruit is our world. This wisdom is notably “spiritual,” but has as its roots a political vision of sharing food among the whole community, and sharing God’s abundance with all living beings.

Culture

What Is “Nonviolent” about Nonviolent Communication?

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Crossposted from The Fearless Heart:
One of the most frequent questions I hear when I talk about Nonviolent Communication is “Why Nonviolent?” People feel uneasy. They hear the word nonviolent as a combination of two words, as a negation of violence. They don’t think of themselves as violent, and find it hard to embrace the name. For some time I felt similarly.

Culture

Empathy – the Most Revolutionary Emotion

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I want us to organize, to tell the personal stories that create empathy, which is the most revolutionary emotion. – Gloria Steinem
It’s a good quote and you can find much more in Edwin Rutsch’s third Empathy Cafe newsletter just out. It’s worth scrolling through the whole newsletter–there’s a lot of depth there, from Obama to Tikkun author Kirk Schneider, Colbert to George Lakoff to HuffPost’s series on Empathic Civilization, in which various writers take off from Jeremey Rifkin’s new book of that name. Edwin is a videographer who went to the California Republican Party 2010 Spring Convention this weekend to ask people about empathy. He has more often asked people on the political left but he tells me he had a good time.