Politics & Society

Let's hear it for nonviolent bank terrorism!

By |

Amazing article in my local newspaper about a national phenomenon I had totally missed: a nonprofit out of Massachusetts called NACA (Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America) has been organizing massive mortgage restructuring events across the country. NACA’s Save the Dream tour has become a nationwide phenomenon, drawing more than 180,000 desperate people this summer to gigs in Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis and Atlanta – where a 2-mile-long line of people waiting to get in wrapped twice around the Georgia Dome. The pitch: a mobile loan-servicing operation where struggling homeowners can arrive with their paperwork and leave with a more affordable mortgage. …

Culture

Body of the Goddess

By |

Today an email arrived that bowled me over. It’s from Shailja Patel. I love the synchronicity of its arrival. Balmurli Natrajan has been blogging about Hindu fascism from a secular perspective. Shailja Patel enlarges that point of view by adding a Goddess perspective.

Culture

Unlimited Abundance: The Art of Lanell Dike

By |

“Answers are limiting.” — Lanell Dike
Years into a successful career as a fundraiser, Lanell Dike informed the people in her life that she was leaving her job to live on her savings and create art. Having no formal training as an artist, Lanell sought advice from experts on how to make a living in her new career. “I was meeting with an art consultant, and I took a class about how to sell your art,” she says. “Neither of those experiences resonated with how I wanted to live my life.”

Rethinking Religion

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

By |

This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from composer Gary Malkin, president of Wisdom of the World, who wrote this piece on April 18, 2009:
Global Peace Prayer
Mother, Father,
God, Goddess
Ancestors and Spirits of the Land
Artist of the Cosmos
Source of all that is
Creator of Music, Beauty, Comfort, and Inspiration
Author of Clarity, Courage, Discernment and Illumination
Mother of all things alive, pulsing with life
Father of all things illuminated with consciousness and presence
Help us to be here now
as we engage our hearts, minds, bodies, souls and spirits
in a holy prayer for global peace. Awaken us to the light and shadow in each moment
so that we might learn to see our reflection in everything
and everyone we behold
Help us to become aware of the beauty and the horror
that each of us are capable of
So that we can learn to live with humility, gratitude, grace, and love. May we cultivate a true understanding of life’s impermanence,
so that we will remember what matters most —
to live our lives with a respect and reverence for ourselves
and for all of life. May we soften around the parts of ourselves that cling to certainty, righteousness, and dogmas that divide us. Help us to strengthen our inner resilience —
So that we can see the loss and challenge of these times
As birth pains towards a new emergence of a cooperative, sustainable, just and fulfilling human presence on the earth.

Judaism

Jewish Renewal and the High Holy Days

By |

Tonight is Erev Rosh Hashanah, the eve of the Jewish New Year. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, Rabbi Lerner’s synagogue will spend the evening romping indoors and out, singing, dancing, doing inner spiritual work, and yearning toward political and social transformation. It’s not your typical Rosh Hashanah service. No matter what your faith, it’s worth visiting one of Beyt Tikkun’s High Holy Day services to experience one of these  emotional neo-Hasidic “Jewish Renewal” services. Inspired by Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, the Jewish Renewal movement has inspired many initiatives and congregations, most of which can be located through the organization Aleph.

Culture

Living Landscapes, a Win-Win for Conservation and for People (Sister Talk 4)

By |

As I told you in my first post in this “Sister Talk” series, my sister Amy Vedder — with her husband Bill Weber — first realized the importance of the human connection in conservation efforts while working in Rwanda in the 1970s. Since then they’ve always tried to create win-win situations for the animals and the people affected by their projects. After many years this strategy resulted in a conservation program called “Living Landscapes.” The projects under the umbrella of this program have all involved large-scale conservation efforts that extend beyond the borders of parks and reserves. Their breadth has been necessary in order to meet the needs of both the wildlife species as well as the people in nearby areas.

Judaism

Novels to Recommend? Here's one: The Promised Land

By |

Do you have a good novel to recommend for readers of this site? Novels get classified this way and that, literary, genre, experimental, rollicking good read and what have you. I’m no lit crit guy, just someone seeking help to lead my life. Trying to understand the world, people, nature; how to lead a good life; change the world; small stuff like that. What are we trying to do here?

Judaism

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

By |

You do not have to be Jewish to use these spiritual practices that I have culled from the Jewish tradition. As Jews around the world enter into the Jewish High Holy Days (starting Friday night, September 18, with the eve of Rosh Hashanah and concluding Monday night, September 28th at the end of Yom Kippur) they and everyone else is invited to use these key spiritual practices. Practice number two, the Forgiveness practice, should be used every night throughout the year. A Spiritual Practice of Forgiveness and Repentance
Practice 1: Repentance
Carefully review your life — acknowledge to yourself whom you have hurt and where your life has gone astray from your own highest ideals. Find a place where you can be safely alone, and then say out loud whom you’ve hurt how, and how you’ve hurt yourself.

Culture

Darkness and Light: The Drawings of Helena Tiainen

By |

“I am not sure I would call my work revolutionary. I think I would call it transformational. I do believe that if openly perceived it can unlock new ways of seeing and being to the viewer.” — Helena Tiainen
In Finland, in the long winter months in the part of the country that lies above the Arctic Circle, the sun does not rise at all for weeks on end. It is during this time of extreme darkness each November that Finland’s capital city of Helsinki is transformed by the festival of Valon Voimat, “Forces of Light.”

Judaism

New Life in Old Age

By |

As we prepare for Rosh Hashana at the end of this week we enter into one of the most spiritually powerful periods in the Jewish calendar. Rosh Hashana marks the intensification of a period of introspection or teshuva begun at the start of the Hebrew month of Elul, just a few weeks ago. We move from Rosh Hashana, the Day of Judgment through a ten-day period where our teshuva process is revved to its highest point, reaching its apex on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The totality of these days are known as the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe. Rosh Hashana is a time when we thoughtfully examine the ways in which we have succeeded or fallen short in our relationships with ourselves, others, and the Great Power of the Universe.