Culture

"Nature-Deficit Disorder" (Part 2 of Sister Talk)

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I’ve been reading a lot lately about “nature-deficit disorder.” I guess this is a result of Richard Louv’s recent book Last Child in the Woods, where he coined this term to describe the human costs of alienation from nature. According to Louv, the proliferation of structured activities (homework and sports), fear of “stranger danger,” and video games keep children from playing outside in nature. Lots of these same young people can tell you all about the destruction of the Amazon rainforests and which species are endangered, but they don’t know much of anything about the bugs and birds in their own backyard. I agree with Louv when he says that children need time to bond with nature on their own terms, time to play without any necessary goal beyond following their curiosity.

Health

Building on the Hopeful Aspects of Obama’s Health Care Speech and Helping Him Get Beyond His Internal Contradictions

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Media analyses of President Obama’s health care speech were divided on whether he had indicated serious support for a public option or had, instead, cleverly tossed a bone of “recognition” to the progressives while simultaneously demanding that they drop their insistence that the health care reform undercut insurance company profits. The confusion, for once, is not with the media but with the incoherence of a centrist politics. Obama wishes to relieve the suffering of Americans, but he does not wish to challenge the profit-uber-alles old “Bottom Line” of the competitive marketplace. Unfortunately for him and for most Americans, he can’t have it both ways. FDR recognized that — and so was willing to stand up to the vested interests of the class from which he emerged, not only rhetorically, as Obama is willing to do at some rare moments like his Health Care speech, but in the actual policies he promoted.

Earth-based Religions

The Answer to the Question

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It is the middle of July, and I am carefully layering sheets of pure gold over the statue of Saraswati that will sit in the centre of my altar. It is a finicky task, and while I’m trying focus my concentration, I suddenly notice a question flashing through my mind: what’s a good Jewish boy doing gilding a Hindu goddess for a Pagan altar? I was raised as a Jew, and phonetically memorized enough Hebrew to stumble through a Bar Mitzvah. But I was never part of a Jewish community, and as I never understood Hebrew, the times when my parents dragged me to a synagogue were leaden painful hours, an experience to be dutifully endured rather than anything that opened onto a spiritual path. For twenty years I would assert that I wasn’t Jewish, because I didn’t believe in any of the theology, and it wasn’t until I found myself teaching a World Religions course, doing research on what Jews believe, that I realised how much of the ethical framework which I embraced was Jewish.

Rethinking Religion

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 summer:

May we know our connection with the living Earth, our connection with all lives, our connection within with the qualities that lead to wisdom, and with the omnipresent light that brings us upwards into the Source and Sustainer of all. May our feet walk in beauty with softness on the earth and may we be at one with all life. May we separate from ourselves that which separates us from our fellow human beings. What separates are qualities reinforcing the illusion of separation such as selfishness, anger, falsehood, jealousy, and pride. May we be imbued and saturated with the life affirming qualities of love, compassion, justice, peace, patience, and gratitude.

Christianity

Cakes for the Queen of Heaven — Women's Empowerment

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This fall I’ll be teaching “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” again. Shirley Ranck wrote this groundbreaking curriculum about women in Western religion in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but it was first published in 1986. The fact that it took the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) at least five years to put it out says a lot about this pioneering course. The UUA is notoriously liberal, even progressive. But this class pushed the buttons of Unitarian Universalist’s still largely male hierarchy, and they delayed publication.

Spirituality

Dreaming of Peace, Taking Notes

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A mature student at the University of Missouri (MU) sent us two poems that I liked, but couldn’t fit into what we were calling our “college issue”–the current issue of Tikkun that is being promoted in over 600 college bookstores. So I have posted them on our poetry site, here. Of his two poems, ‘Dreaming of Peace, Taking Notes’ and ‘A Prayer,’ Brad Jacobson writes: “Both of these poems are inspired by my experiences in Israel. The first poem is built around being in a tailor shop in the Old City of Jerusalem. The second poem is about my jog along the beach in Jaffa.”

Earth-based Religions

Thomas Friedman a Wiccan?

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I don’t normally read Thomas Friedman’s op. ed. pieces. But this one — “Connecting Nature’s Dots” — drew my attention, probably because of the word “Nature” in the headline. Practicing Wicca attunes me to nature, since to me it’s sacred.

Christianity

The Evolution of God

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I’ve been reading a fascinating book, Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God. Wright is the author of Nonzero and The Moral Animal, both of which have received great acclaim. I was led to The Evolution of God through an interview in Salon, which led me to the book’s website. The website serves as a wonderful teaser: Wright has the opening thousand words to each of the book’s twenty chapters, which are divided into four sections, one on the birth and growth of gods, and one on each of the Abrahamic religions. Be warned: by the time I finished the third, I knew I was going to buy the book.