Culture

Mo'nique's Oscar, Racial Stereotypes, A Black Man Gives Up On Hollywood

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Novelist and Tikkun Daily reader Gwendoline Y. Fortune wrote us these comments about a critique of Monique’s Oscar that she likes and adds her own son’s experience of trying to make a difference in Hollywood. The following is from a college friend. The author is the president of Bennett College for Women, where I attended during my first two–and crucial–years of college. Knowing that her position will be critiqued, I am comfortable with the values, training and attitudes I was taught that are congruent with Dr. Malveaux’s, and not with less. Mo’nique’s Oscar — Victory and Setback By Julianne Malveaux
The comedienne, talk show host and actress Mo’nique became just the fifth African American woman to win an Oscar last week.

Culture

Signs of Progress: Nothing But A Dog

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Is this a less racist, sexist, homophobic country than it used to be? Some activists I know seem reluctant to agree that it is, because there is so far still to go that they feel it will sap our determination to go there. The problem I have with this is not just that it’s wrong to say nothing has really changed but that it is so disrespectful to the activists of yesterday who did, actually, make a difference. It is also, for me anyway, much more dispiriting and likely to sap my activist energy if I think past activists had no real effect than if I feel they are heroes whose shoulders we can stand on. So when I see significant generational differences between my generation of baby boomers and people in their twenties and thirties, I stand up and cheer.

Culture

Finding Art and Romance in Craigslist's Missed Connections

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The rush and anonymity of city life draws us apart, even as it draws us together. Jammed in the bus and streaming through the street, millions of strangers cross paths without hearing each other’s stories. Those who do exchange a word or a glance often lose each other to the closing of a train door or a shy failure to exchange phone numbers in line at the pharmacy, and many end up posting plaintive regrets in the “Missed Connections” section of Craigslist’s online classifieds site. Sophie Blackall, an artist based in Brooklyn, brings to life strangers’ sometimes poignant, sometimes funny searches for each other by illustrating a new post from the New York City listings every week. To see more illustrations of missed connections posts, visit the Tikkun Daily Art Gallery.

Buddhism

Meet HuffPost's New Religion Editor, Paul Raushenbush

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On February 24, Rev. Paul Raushenbush issued a call for articles entitled “Dear Religious (and Sane) America” to inaugurate the launch of the Huffington Post’s new religion section. According to the article,
HuffPost Religion is dedicated to providing a provocative, respectful, and hopefully productive forum for addressing the ways in which religion intersects our personal, communal, national and international life. HuffPost Religion will demonstrate the vibrant diversity of religious traditions, perspectives and experiences that exist alongside and inform one another in America and throughout the world. Huffington is clearly trying to expand its reach and become one of the big players in religion media, much as it already has in politics, popular culture, and even business. Based on initial responses to the section, it appears to be well on its way.

Culture

Making Empathy Concrete

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One of my biggest passions is finding ways to make what I do teachable, especially in the area of empathic presence. It’s not only a passion, but a necessity. Our times, more than ever, require empathy to become widely accessible to people. I want to find a way to replicate what I do, to build capacity for the work necessary to create a world that works for all. Could this blog be a way to do that?

Culture

Nourishment in Hard Times

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Where we get our fuel from for being our truest selves and for remaking the world — which are two sides of one coin in my worldview — is always a question for me. I meet someone who is creative, or who struggles on over decades to care for some part of the world, and I want to know: what has kept you going, what feeds your spirit? They may be successful at their struggle and they may be well loved, or they may be a burr in others’ flesh and feel that their success is way too little and unappreciated: or both of these! But how have they not burned out? How do they keep giving?

Culture

Constraining Play: How Surrealist Art Can Nourish Our Political Imaginations

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In one image a winged bird flaps her wings but remains rooted to the ground. In another a fork-headed monster rushes by, a small bird fluttering at its heart. Nearby a masked bundle of writing appears to be stuck in a toilet bowl. These are just a few of the uncanny creatures that emerged three years ago when some friends and I started playing “exquisite corpse,” a collaborative drawing game invented by surrealists in the 1920s. So many of the drawings evoke unexpected scenes of constraint.

Culture

About Gratitude

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Despite years of knowing that gratitude contributes to life, and suggesting to people in my workshops to start a gratitude practice in their lives, it is only in the last couple of months that I was finally able to start my own practice. In the past, using gratitude as a PRACTICE instead of just when it arose spontaneously (which I am blessed to have happen often) just wasn’t working for me. But the times were hard enough in my life, and the draw strong enough that I started. So, for a couple of months now, during a period that included some of the most challenging times in many years, I end each day lying in bed, breathing fully and slowly, and reviewing my day, looking for everything that could possibly be a source of gratitude. Not as a check list, but really pausing with each one, putting my attention again and again on the mystery, wonder, magic, and awe that is the experience of whatever happened, whoever contributed to it.

Culture

Why Write A Blog?

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I have started a new blog, The Fearless Heart, and am going to crosspost to Tikkun Daily. This is my introduction. One of the biggest treasures I have is a diary that my mother kept about me when I was a child. Most of the entries are from when I was about 5. I love it, in large part, because I so completely recognize myself in that girl.

Culture

Dear Abercrombie & Fitch – Did you really fire a Muslim for wearing a head scarf?

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On Abercrombie & Fitch’s web site, they say “At Abercrombie & Fitch we are committed to increasing and leveraging the diversity of our associates and management across the organization. Those differences will be supported by a culture of inclusion, so that we better understand our customers, enhance our organizational effectiveness, capitalize on the talents of our workforce and represent the communities in which we do business.” If that’s true, how could one of their management team have fired a Muslim for wearing a head scarf? I’ve sent the following message to the Diversity Department at Abercrombie & Fitch, and have yet to hear back from them. Dear Diversity Staff,
I received a message from CAIR (Council of American Islamic Relations) saying that an A&F (Hollister) employee was fired for wearing a head scarf.