Christianity

Weekly Sermon: On Attention

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I am drawn to an idea set down by the Spanish philosopher Spinoza a long time ago. “Any thought not interrupted by another thought becomes action.” You can prove this. Hold your hand open. Think about closing it. If you think only that thought, you will close your hand. Otherwise, you will pass on to some other matter, more important. In other words, you will interrupt the thought; no action will follow. All action is composed of thought held like a flame until it catches the will in action. All inaction is composed of interruptions that douse the flames of thought.

Christianity

Guardians of the Garden: What's My Faith?

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Each of these religions offers me different ways to understand and deal with the challenges of the human condition–but, above all, what I have come to embrace most deeply in my search for faith, is not an official religion, with a title or building or set of written laws, practices, and rules, but my experience of and with nature.
It turns out that my greatest devotion, commitment, love and joy, outside of parenting, or perhaps integrally linked to it, is connecting with and protecting the earth–soil, rock, water, mountains, oceans, rivers, trees, animals, birds, reptiles, and all living creatures.

Culture

Landmark Court Decision about Hijab May Pave the Way to Tolerance

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Until today, American Muslim women have been fighting an uphill battle for their right to cover their heads in the traditional hijab. Whether at school, work, even government offices, we have stood unflinching as the debate about Islamophobia, creeping Shariah and all the other ugly words associated with being Muslim in America have swirled about us. Hearing negative comments, facing discrimination in hiring, being marginalized in social groups or treated with sympathy for assumed oppression, we have faced it all while defending our right to express our faith through our dress. Until today.

Culture

Enlarging our Moral Language

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When the Gaza war began in November 2012, American Jews’ lack of an embracing moral language, a language that could acknowledge all viewpoints, sufferings, terrors, humanity, became painfully obvious. To speak of the civilians dying in Gaza was, to many American Jews, to attack Israel and deny its legitimate rights to exist and defend itself from missiles. We seemed to have no language in which we could speak both of Israeli families huddling in bomb shelters as far north as Jerusalem and children crawling through Gaza rubble. Indeed, to judge by the anguished, enraged Facebook and Twitter exchanges I saw, we didn’t even have a language in which we could acknowledge and address the feelings and perspectives boiling among American Jews.

art

Getting Centered: A Musing by Jim Burklo

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I don’t understand the mathematics behind the gomboc. But my intuition suggests that its shape has some kind of eternal, universal quality about it, as does a sphere or a cube. In some way, it must be a shape that describes gravity itself. It’s a shape that represents, but also actually embodies, one of the fundamental relationships forming the cosmos.
Perhaps also it evokes the shape of the soul, tumbled about by this rough world but created to right itself in relationship to its divine Source. Had Bodhidharma lived long enough, and meditated deeply enough, perhaps his body would have melted further into the shape of the gomboc. Then the daruma doll would need no extra weight at the bottom to get it to return to “center”!

Judaism

Torah Commentary Perashat Mishpatim: Tikkun Olam and Tsunamis- Jewish Views on Science and Spirit

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As is usual with events of the magnitude of tsunamis, earthquakes, and hurricanes, at some point theologians, essayists, and pundits of various sorts will attempt to make some sense out of the catastrophe. One question which arises (usually sometime after the question arises as to who will pay for the damages) is the old theological question, “where was God when all this happened?” or, “how could a God let this happen”?

Interfaith

Religious Clergy Represent All of Us: A Reponse to the Allegations against Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf

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Yesterday’s report from the New York Daily News of former Ground Zero Mosque advocate Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf allegedly stealing funds has left me – and countless other Muslims – reeling with shock. A person viewed by many as the moderate face of Islam in America, so different from the radical Muslim clergy of the Middle East and South East Asia, the Imam was the last person I would have expected to be… like everyone else.

Christianity

Liberty, Justice, and Fr. Sirico

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I first met Father Robert A. Sirico at a conference in western Connecticut 13 years ago. Sirico is a big man who bears a family resemblance to the character Paulie Walnuts on The Sopranos—his older brother, the actor Tony Sirico, played the part—and his commentaries have frequented the Wall Street Journal and other high-profile media outlets. His writing sparkles, but the talent is marshaled in the service of basically one thing—promoting pure, unbridled capitalism.

Christianity

Corporate Globalization and God's Good Creation

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As a new Tikkun Daily author, this is an introduction to the themes I will cover in my postings to this blog. Many of these themes are covered in detail in my book, Shaking the Gates of Hell: Faith-Led Resistance to Corporate Globalization, which makes the case that today’s dominant global economic system, based on unrestrained free market capitalism, is damaging the human family and destroying the earth. The book is a call to action and a call to spiritual renewal.