Gender and Sexuality

Borders vs Limits (Part 1)

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Think back to the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. One of the issues that generated a lot of heat was the immigration debate. While the debate touched on several other issues, such as unemployment and national identity, at its heart the debate centered on this: the rights of those who were not U.S. citizens but live within its borders, or of those who do live outside its borders and are trying to get in. After all, borders are there to establish who’s in and who’s out, right? Now, fast forward nearly almost one year.

Judaism

Sweat your Prayers?

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Whenever I am in a really good movement class, be it yoga or Nia or some other type of dance, I become grounded in my body and feel connected to The Force of the Universe in such a direct and visceral way. My movement then becomes a prayer practice – a process that wakes up every part of me, shakes off the dust, fills me with energy, and allows me to connect to something greater than myself. However, alive and energized from the movement, I often leave these experiences longing for a way to connect these moments of resonance to my Jewish prayer practice. I feel a profundity that I yearn to share in a community of shared language and experiences. At the same time, as I sit and stand and bow, singing and chanting my way through traditional Jewish prayer, I often feel as though I am only engaging from my shoulders up.

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.

Earth-based Religions

Baking Cakes for the Queen of Heaven

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Teaching the “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” curriculum (and blogging about it) lit a fire under me. The title of the course refers to a story told in the book of Jeremiah. This week I finally recorded the song I wrote about this tale on YouTube. Now others can learn the tune and sing it in their “Cakes” classes. [youtube: video=”m7Mv5bxeDEo&feature=channel_page”]
If you don’t know the story, here’s a synopsis: Jeremiah rants and rails against the Queen of Heaven, telling the people that worshipping Her is a betrayal of YHWH.

Judaism

You Get What You Ask For

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Last week in my homiletics class we were given an assignment to write a prayer that we can say to ourselves before giving a d’var Torah (sermon). I found this very useful in terms of thinking about what effect I would want my words to have. What would be the feeling in the room? What impact would I want to make? I can imagine it will be much easier now to write that 15 minute sermon that is due in a few weeks, having created this intention through prayer.

Buddhism

True Nature

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From Barbara Bash’s beautiful blog True Nature. Barbara is a Buddhist, a calligrapher, artist and writer of children’s books and of a memoir of a year’s quest for connection with spirit and nature which is destined to be a classic. It’s worth going to her blog just to see what happens to this picture of the tips of the corn. I am tempted to say that if you are short of a present for a special person this Christmas Chanukah Kwanzaa Solstice, you might want to look at that memoir, but we are four hours away from putting an issue to Tikkun to bed in which we are promoting the idea of giving people home made things and services you can perform…. Barbara was a neighbor and dear friend of ours back in the Hudson Valley before we moved to Berkeley so I could work on Tikkun.

Culture

Don't Miss the Phone Forum!

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Every Monday night there is a fascinating community meeting near you: as close as your phone, in fact. You can join in from your armchair or your washing-up sink. Better still, thanks to the wonder of the web, you can listen in at any time on your computer or iPod. It’s like a Tikkun radio show for the first twenty minutes, in which I interview some of the people most interesting to spiritual progressives. Then I unmute the lines and you can offer your own questions and comments to the speaker for their response: the Q and A is sometimes the best part.

Culture

Sarah, the Priestess

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As I told you a few weeks back, the “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” curriculum empowers women in remarkable ways. During last night’s class I discovered that it sometimes empowers in different ways at the same time. Our reading for the evening was a compelling story — the attempted sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham (Genesis 22). As told in the Bible, this tale contains no mention of Isaac’s mother Sarah. Instead YHVH tells Abraham to demonstrate his loyalty by making a ritual offering of his one-and-only child.

Culture

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from Jonathan Granoff, the author, attorney, and peace activist whose writing we featured earlier this month:
A Flood of Joy
The Earth will ultimately make its claim
The Water lets us know our frailty
The face inside the face of bones
The face we had before the bones
The face we have after the bones
The face of the body of light and limitlessness
beyond claims, beyond frailty
dances across
birthless
deathless
celebration of the eternal essence of life
joyously celebrating our mortality
while we are here
dancing a celebration of the eternal essence of life

Politics & Society

Confessions of Effort

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Confessions of effort say what we are doing toward achieving a greater goal. Confessions of effort are a kind of confession of innocence while it admits that if our efforts stop or falter, we will be guilty of stopping too soon.