Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/religion-spirituality/spirituality-religion-spirituality/page/26/)
Organizing as a Healing Process: A Fresh Look at PTSD is a Netroots Nation panel discussion about organizing as a tool for spiritual healing. Panelists discuss historical trauma, genocide and troop PTSD in the context of social justice.
Nancy wrote a very pertinent comment to my post of yesterday and my response got so long I am writing it here. She talked about the way that second wave feminists (those of the baby boomer generation) institutionalized advances in ways that first wave feminists (19th and early 20th century) could not do. Of the first wave, she wrote:
They just didn’t get around to creating structures that would last past their time, and as a result, we lost their wisdom and had to invent it all over again. I think there’s something more there to be brought out than the creation of new structures. It’s something about how it was that the second wave changed their own lives to such an extent that they could and did dedicate themselves to building such structures.
I was raised in a religious milieu in which it was thought that ‘personal change’ was the primary way to create a world without war, hunger, and class conflict. “You will never cure war in the world,” I was taught, “until you cure war in the home.” Leaders who had unresolved issues of ego, arrogance, resentment, desire for praise and so on in their personal lives, who could not get on with their own families and colleagues, could not create peace or unselfish social reform. So we had no idea what to do with leaders like Martin Luther King, who was a sexual philanderer, or the Kennedy brothers. From today’s New York Times:
Born to one of the wealthiest American families, Mr. Kennedy spoke for the downtrodden in his public life while living the heedless private life of a playboy and a rake for many of his years.
This week’s spiritual wisdom was written by Harold W. Becker, president and founder of The Love Foundation, Inc:
From the laughter of children at play to the golden rays of the sun beaming through the sky at sunset, the eternal song of love permeates all creation. Each beat of our heart pulses to this rhythm in a majestic and graceful dance connecting us to everyone and everything. Life is magnificent when we quiet our outer selves and become fully present and aware of our own loving essence. To know this grander love is to go beyond the sensation of a first kiss or a mother’s tender touch in time of need. Although these extraordinary expressions reveal the existence of love, there is so much more.
One of the better aspects to living in the global village is how it provides us with a pleasingly wide range of radio stations. A new discovery I’ve made is the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) program Tapestry. Its basic focus is on spirituality, in the widest possible sense, with guests ranging from rabbis and roshis to rock stars and writers. Mary Hynes is the host, and she is adept at not getting in the way, gently helping her guests to share their fascinating explorations of how we can best align with the Mystery, through the wide range of perceptions that they bring of what It might be. You’re probably either familiar with Tapestry, or thinking what a shame it is you can’t pick up CBC.
I stumbled on a moving story the other day — a story that disrupted my humdrum mood and reminded me of the radical wonder of life in this world. At the time I was searching for videos of Merce Cunningham, the brilliant and playful modern dance choreographer who passed away on July 26. Having trained seriously in Martha Graham’s modern dance technique as a teenager, I’ve always thought of Cunningham as some sort of immortal uncle. I was feeling sad about his death. Here’s the story:
Helen Keller had struck up a friendship with Martha Graham and used to visit her dance studio.
Just imagine how it would affect this country if Religious Left radio became as popular as the many broadcasts of the Religious Right … I know it’s unlikely, but I let myself envision that scenario for just a second after meeting radio host Chuck Freeman, a minister from the Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church in Austin, Texas. As the co-founder of the Austin chapter of the Network of Spiritual Progressives and the founder of the Free Souls Project (a nonprofit organization that aims to use mass communication tools to open new conversations about spirituality, democracy, and ethics in the public square), Chuck is on fire with excitement about creating new spaces for spiritual progressive speech. I just listened to his interview with Islam Mosaad and I’m looking forward to checking out more podcasts from his radio show (click on “free podcasts”). Here’s a bit of text from his website about the mission of Soul Talk Radio:
We live in a culture where words, and specifically religious teachings, are often used to harass and bludgeon us, thus slamming the door of “the kingdom” in our faces.
This week’s spiritual wisdom is from Jalal al-Din Rumi’s Mathnawi story of the man who swallowed a snake, in a version by Coleman Barks:
Jesus on the lean donkey,
this is an emblem of how the rational intellect
should control the animal-soul. Let your spirit
be strong like Jesus. If that part becomes weak,
then the worn out donkey grows to a dragon. Be grateful when what seems unkind
comes from a wise person. Once, a holy man,
riding his donkey, saw a snake crawling into
a sleeping man’s mouth!
This week I’d like to share with you a passage from my book Spirit Matters:
Everything that has ever happened in the history of the universe is the prelude to each of our lives. Everything that has happened from the beginning of time has become the platform from which we launch our lives. We are the heirs of the long evolution of Spirit. Each of us is the latest unfolding of the event of Creation. Our bodies are composed of the material that was shaped in the Big Bang.
I perform weddings as a lay minister at First Unitarian Society in Madison. Frank Lloyd Wright built our original church, so many non-members want to get married there — too many for our professional ministers to handle. As a result, I often have the opportunity to perform interfaith weddings where I put my Unitarian Universalist (UU) principles to work. UU’s believe in the “inherent worth and dignity of all people,” “acceptance of one another,” and “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Instead of a creed or dogma, what holds us together is a set of seven principles, three of which I just listed for you.