Culture

Soul Talk Radio

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Just imagine how it would affect this country if Religious Left radio became as popular as the many broadcasts of the Religious Right … I know it’s unlikely, but I let myself envision that scenario for just a second after meeting radio host Chuck Freeman, a minister from the Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church in Austin, Texas. As the co-founder of the Austin chapter of the Network of Spiritual Progressives and the founder of the Free Souls Project (a nonprofit organization that aims to use mass communication tools to open new conversations about spirituality, democracy, and ethics in the public square), Chuck is on fire with excitement about creating new spaces for spiritual progressive speech. I just listened to his interview with Islam Mosaad and I’m looking forward to checking out more podcasts from his radio show (click on “free podcasts”). Here’s a bit of text from his website about the mission of Soul Talk Radio:
We live in a culture where words, and specifically religious teachings, are often used to harass and bludgeon us, thus slamming the door of “the kingdom” in our faces.

Culture

Remembering Racism in an Obama Age

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On Nov 11, 2008 (just a few days after the historic win of Barack Obama) the German paper Der Speigel interviewed Professor Niall Ferguson, a historian at Harvard to discuss among other things, Obama’s historical election victory. Fergusen said: “Yes, it was a very moving moment. It was similar to the release of Nelson Mandela. When Obama was born, in 1961, mixed marriages between blacks and whites were still illegal in one-third of the American states

Culture

Ressentiment, or: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us

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As I touched upon in a recent post, there is a palpable fear and loathing in certain quarters of America. The din has been getting louder; people are livid, shouting down one another at “townhall” meetings; some are making offensive and incoherent claims about President Obama (that he is, for instance, both a fascist and a communist). As is often the case, the mainstream media has sensationalized the affair. But their coverage has been simultaneously overbroad and underdetermined. Opposition to Obama’s health care plan is portrayed as being rooted in contending ideologies over government’s proper role, with opposition growing organically out of a disaffected electorate.

Buddhism

Interfaith Weddings in a Unitarian Universalist Landmark

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I perform weddings as a lay minister at First Unitarian Society in Madison. Frank Lloyd Wright built our original church, so many non-members want to get married there — too many for our professional ministers to handle. As a result, I often have the opportunity to perform interfaith weddings where I put my Unitarian Universalist (UU) principles to work. UU’s believe in the “inherent worth and dignity of all people,” “acceptance of one another,” and “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Instead of a creed or dogma, what holds us together is a set of seven principles, three of which I just listed for you.

Culture

Finding Inner Wisdom

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Some of you might have been surprised to learn that I wrote about tree divinations in the latest Matrifocus. Actually I’ve been writing an entire book — The World is Your Oracle — in which I compile and create oracular techniques, a volume I trust will prove useful to practitioners of many faiths. Why? Because I believe that divination allows us to get in touch with our own inner wisdom. And because we have reached a point in our history where change is occurring so rapidly that we need to rely on our own know-how and skills, not just those of the “experts.”

Culture

Supplicant

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Hearing about our Phone Forum with psychologist Michael Eigen, the artist Barrie Karp wrote us that she is a regular member of Eigen’s seminar. Her painting “Fear and Hope” appeared in Tikkun last November with the remarkable article “Love in Adversity” by Alix Kates Shulman: the two women are friends. It was a pleasure to hear from her and discover this other connection. She attached this painting, “Supplicant,” which she felt was relevant to Eigen’s themes of shame, humility, vulnerability, despair, and hope.

Culture

Matrifocus – the Breadth of the Goddess Movement

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Before I started blogging for Tikkun Daily, my web publishing consisted of my own website, www.mamasminstrel.net, and articles in Matrifocus, the web magazine by and for Goddess women published four times a year. What I love about Tikkun Daily — the lively interaction that’s beginning to occur — is something I found in embryo in Matrifocus. Matrifocus always has a wide variety of articles that inform me, entice me, lead me to think a little differently, and most importantly, feed my soul. Often it includes essays by some of he most interesting thinkers in feminist spirituality: Patricia Monaghan, Vicki Noble, Susun Weed, Max Dashu, Johanna Stuckey, and even occasionally Starhawk. It always includes poetry and beautiful art, as well reader-submitted reviews of Goddess books, DVDs, theater, and films.
This quarter the articles range from my description of “Tree Divinations” to two articles on permaculture by Mary Swander and Madelon Wise plus a lovely introduction to fairies and devas by Susun Weed.

Culture

Siona Benjamin's "Finding Home"

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Tikkun lies at the heart of Siona Benjamin’s work. “To repair the world through images,” she says, “is what I seek to do.” Born into the Bene Israel Jewish tradition, Benjamin grew up Jewish in a Muslim and Hindu community while attending Catholic and Zoroastrian schools. Living her life at the intersection of multiple faith traditions, as well as moving from Bombay to Iowa for graduate school and then to New Jersey where she is currently based, has made her desire to find “home” a constant preoccupation of her life. The conclusion Benjamin has come to: home doesn’t exist.

Culture

The Movie "Doubt" – Some Thoughts

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My spouse Mark and I watched Doubt last night. We both found it quite thought-provoking. Not because it concerned clerical pedophilia, but because it made us think about how we judge situations and people. As many of you know, the movie takes place in a Catholic middle school in the Bronx during the fall and winter of 1964. The main characters are a new, progressive priest in the school (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) and the conservative Mother Superior, who has run the school for many years (played by Meryl Streep).

Culture

Individualism Won't Get Us There

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Dave Belden’s last post “So What’s a Spiritual Progressive to Do?” stuck with me all last night. Dave’s voice rings with urgency, an urgency to which all of us spiritual progressives respond. Who doesn’t know that we have to make change now? At least as quickly as humanly possible?