Culture

Repurposing

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I’ve noticed that increasingly I’ve been getting irritated with friends when they refer to me as “retired”. They seem, fairly enough, puzzled by this. Wasn’t it Peter who held a wonderful online retirement party when he stopped teaching high school in 2003, who happily lives on the pension with which the Ontario Teachers Pension fund continues to supply him, and who collect Canadian Pension payments from the federal government? Most of all it puzzles them because I described myself as retired. And now all of a sudden I’m bridling and sputtering that I’m not retired?

Culture

On Art, Despair, Contempt, and Healing From Same

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So let’s imagine you are a progressive, committed to social justice and peace — and close to burning out. You once had tons of social change energy, but now are deeply despondent about the state of the world or the corner of it you have been trying to improve, and just as despondent about your relationships with your activist colleagues who are, to say it politely, difficult. It happens. So you turn to — what? Banned substances? Passivity?

Media Tools

Bloggers Unravel British Gag Order in Hours!

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Yesterday, I wrote about an unusual British gag order in a diary entitled “Free Speech News Round-Up.” The UK Guardian had mysteriously reported that a parlaimentarian had asked a question that was tabled until the following week. According to the October 12 issue of The Guardian:
Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found. The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament.

Culture

Raving at LovEvolution: SF's Biggest Congregation

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As one of the newest interns at Tikkun I was pretty eager to prove my dedication to the magazine as we were nearing our print deadline, so I was a little more than irritated when my boyfriend asked me to take off to attend LovEvolution with him in San Francisco last Saturday. “I don’t think they’d appreciate it if I took off to go to a rave,” I said with just a tinge of impatience. SF’s City Hall During LovEvolution

“Erin, it’s not just a rave. It’s LovEvolution!” He proceeded to explain how, for the nonreligious like himself, festivals like LovEvolution are the closest he ever gets to an opportunity for congregationalism.

Culture

Ken Burns/Dayton Duncan: The National Parks–America's Best Idea. See it!!

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A pleasure of doing this blog is the people who write in suggesting ideas and then make good on them. Last week someone I don’t know emailed me with the above heading and the suggestion that we should cover it on Tikkun Daily because “Spiritual Progressives can draw sustenance from it.” I asked him if he could write a post explaining why. Here it is, in three parts, with our thanks, from Jan Garrett, who is a (nearly) life-long Unitarian Universalist and a professor of philosophy at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green KY. I
Like many others in this country, last week I spent my evenings watching “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” directed by Ken Burns and co-produced by Dayton Duncan, on my local public television network.

Culture

Coming Out Day

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Sunday we’re celebrating “Coming Out Day” at First Unitarian in Madison, and I’ve been asked to tell my coming out story. Compared to many, mine is pretty painless. It’s a story of ignorance, invisibility, and ultimately of the ability to pass. You see, I’m a bisexual woman in a committed heterosexual relationship. I grew up in a small town in Upstate New York.

Culture

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom is an excerpt from a prayer written by World Peace Prayer Society member Peace Representative in Greater Boston Penny Joy Snider-Light. The prayer was offered on September 19, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, at Harvard University’s Hillel Reform Service last month in honor of the UN International Day of Peace, which took place on September 21. PRAYER
Dear G-d,
We give You this moment. Pausing in spiritual reflection,
We join with humanity all over the world,
Who are re-affirming a commitment to serve
the essence of Peace – Shalom. As we honor this sacred opportunity to dedicate this moment to You,
So, too, do we honor this sacred opportunity
to dedicate ourselves to You,
And we offer our prayers for both personal and planetary Peace.

Culture

Young People Today…

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So we got our Nov/Dec issue of Tikkun to bed yesterday and the first thing I want to do on this blog is personal. I wanted to write something about my son, Rowan, getting to 21 years old over a week ago, Sept 29, but what to write? It would take thought. I didn’t have time in the deadline madness. Here are two representative pictures, from preschool and from last week, when his band, A World Familiar, played their first real gig, at the Knitting Factory in Los Angeles on Saturday.

Buddhism

Buddha Park

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I’ve been thinking recently of Buddha Park, which Diana and I visited in Laos almost five years ago. There are ways it seems less bizarre now than it did at the time, and ways in which it seems even stranger. I guess some explanation is needed. (And since a picture is still worth over 900 words (the exchange rate has dropped slightly with the advent of digital cameras) visit the Buddha Park page in Tikkun Daily’s art gallery!)
Buddha Park (more formally known as Xieng Khuan) is one of two sculpture parks created by Bunleua, an apostate Buddhist monk who created his own religion, a syncretic blend of Buddhism and Hinduism. Both Buddha Park, built in 1958, and Sala Keoku, created in 1977, (I saw it in 1988, just across the Mekong river in Thailand) feature giant concrete sculptures of major and minor Hindu and Buddhist deities, interspersed with more than a few pinches of surrealism.

Culture

Fox Boycott

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I just got this email from my friend Taylor Eskew in New York. She’s a Quaker, an engineer, my neighbor for years, a fun person and a good person. I have no idea how to start this for real but. . .