Spirituality

Good Deeds on a Tiny Scale

By |

Truly healing and mending the world can seem like an overwhelming task, beyond the capacity of everyday folks. It’s easy to feel that only big actions — starting an organization, a publication, a nonprofit, or a school and reaching at least thousands — counts. In today’s post, I’d like to say a word in favor of one-to-one generosity because recently I experienced several instances that were balms and blessings. Case One, the Restaurateur
Over winter break, my family and thousands of others attempted to visit the Academy of Science. It should have been a tip-off that vehicles lined even the furthest edges of Golden Gate Park, so, after learning that we’d have to wait three hours or make alternate plans, we began trudging back to our distant, expensive parking lot.

Culture

How can we mature enough so we share the salmon?

By |

Long ago–actually not that long ago, less than two centuries–the peoples of the North American Pacific coast knew how to maintain salmon stocks and share them so everyone had enough. They had the technology to wipe out the salmon as well as we do. They restrained themselves. More on that below. Today, those of us who eat fish wonder what salmon is safe to eat.

Spirituality

A New Year, a New World

By |

Could this be the year that we lay down our weapons of warfare and study war no more? Could this be the year when we make the ploughshare our weapon to wage a just peace? Our prayers for peace are powerful to make us all better, more righteous, more patient, more joyful, more loving. Our prayers can make us fierce and fearless to re/create the world.

Christianity

The Sacred Feminine at the Parliament of World Religions

By |

I’m surprised that almost none of us blogged about the Parliament of World Religions (PWR) in Melbourne, Australia (12/3 – 12/9). I realize that the US Congress was still discussing the health care bill, Obama had just given his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and the Copenhagen Climate conference was underway. So we all have good excuses. Here at Tikkun Daily, we heard from Dave Belden, who wrote about Rabbi Michael Lerner’s workshop on the spiritual progressive movement. And Rabbi Lerner also wrote about the great disappointment world spiritual leaders at the PWR felt at Obama’s speech in Oslo.

Environment

Good Deeds on a Small Scale No.1

By |

Genesis
Twenty years ago (already!), I belonged to an activist church with a woman minister, gay leaders, and a social justice agenda. I chose it and similar organizations because my life of getting and spending, work and amusement, politics and personal life, felt empty and insufficient. So I took up a two-stranded way, spiritual and political, protests and potlucks, rallies and fund raisers, services and singing, meetings and celebrations. The church became an important community to me, but I needed further growth. Let me illustrate:
Our church owned and rented a tiny house to a woman and her teenaged son who were not parishioners.

Politics & Society

Mimi teaches the principles of Christmas — that it's about giving

By |

This is a story for Christmas about an extraordinary Jewish woman: Mimi Silbert, who founded the famous Delancey Street self-help drug rehabilitation center. She lives on the job:
Many of Silbert’s roommates have bottomed out after an average 12 years of drug addiction and four trips to prison. Delancey dwellers spend an average of four years rebuilding their lives, learning values and a trade in one of many Delancey enterprises: the Christmas tree lots, the restaurant, the moving company, or wood furniture making. My wife and son and I buy our tree each year from the Delancey Street lot in El Cerrito. The service there is something special: you know that everyone has a story and you see the hope in their eyes and their energy.

Earth-based Religions

Livin on the Edge

By |

In the Talmud in the tractate Brachot (Blessings), the rabbis raise the question of what is meant by the mishnaic statement “ha oseh tefilato keva, ain tefilato tachanunim – the one who makes his prayer fixed, his prayer is not one of supplication.” One explanation given is that our prayer lacks supplication when it is not done “eem dimdumei chama – with the reddening of the sun.” While on a peshat level the rabbis may be referring to the need for one to be earnest in his or her prayer in order for it to be supplicatory, I think there may be another level to their words. Perhaps here the rabbis are also emphasizing the importance of being awake to the daily moments of transition, of remaining grounded in ourselves through the discomfort of not knowing what will come next and the fear of no longer being rooted to where we once were. Like the gradual shift as the sun reddens and night gives way to day and day to night, praying eem dimdumei chama may be being offered as a daily practice for us to remain present, conscious, and grounded through life’s changes.

Culture

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week – In Praise of Santa Claus!

By |

Thomas Moore, the psychotherapist and author of many books, including Care of the Soul and The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, wrote this beautiful piece, “The Eternal, Holy Night,” about Christmas for Tikkun in 2003. It is no accident that the festival of Christmas occurs at the time of year when the darkness has reached its low point and winter light begins to appear. Christmas is the honoring of light and the hope that comes with the end of nature’s and the human soul’s dark night. In the symbolic turning of time, Christmas is that part of the annual cycle that invites us to leave darkness behind and enter a new way of being, to start a new “year,” that is, a new era of enlightened decisions rather than unconscious acts. The most stirring songs of the season, “O Holy Night” and “Silent Night,” and the popular verse-tale “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” explore the emotion of night, especially this night on which light once again shows itself.

Health

Can Jingle Bells Make You Cry? Yep.

By |

This was my father’s second Christmas season living in his “board and care” home. Jocelyn, the amazing woman who runs this and several other houses had arranged for children from her church to come to the house and sing carols for the residents and their families. If you ever wondered whether such small acts of kindness make a difference, stop wondering. They do. My father has a condition known as “Lewy Body Dementia” which has Parkinsons symptoms plus intense hallucinations, sleep-walking / acting out dreams physically, and an overall decline in cognition.