Supermoon
November 14, 2016, 6:49am
Supermoon
The moon looks bigger
Than the sun.
Do you see
What we know?
Bob Schwartz
November 14, 2016
November 13, 2016
Lessons from the Election: Vote Even If You’re Not Fired Up or Feeling It
Many Americans are not happy with the results of this presidential election. And many of those people did not vote, or are not even registered.
People have a lot of reasons for why they don’t vote. None of them are good.
You don’t have to be fired up and feeling it to vote.
Millions of Americans go to work every day not feeling it. They may not put a smile on their faces. They may curse their bosses and torture their coworkers at every opportunity. But they show up.
Millions of Americans have sex with their spouses or partners not feeling it. Sometimes, of course, this is because of coercion or aggression, which is a bad, bad thing. But sometimes it is to help the relationship and because they care.
The next election, don’t wait until you’re fired up or feeling it. Vote because you will win the right to legitimately complain (which non-voters don’t have this time around). Vote because something good might happen or something bad might be prevented. Vote because you care.
November 11, 2016
More About Jim Wallis: The Truth Will Set You Free
Yesterday I posted about Jim Wallis of Sojourners and his post-election essay Time For Healing. And Resistance. Hopefully you had a chance to look at the essay and learn about Jim Wallis and Sojourners.
I just started reading the most recent of his many books about the religious imperative of social justice. The following is from the Introduction to America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America.
In the following pages we will take a positive, hopeful, and forward-looking approach. We will talk about what it means to “repent” of our original sin—and repentance means more than just saying you’re sorry. It means turning in a new and better direction, which I believe we can do. We look backward in order to look forward. And this book makes a spiritual statement: our racial diversity and social pluralism are a great strength and a gift for our future, because our primary identity is as the children of God—all of us are created in God’s image. Thinking about ourselves in that deeper way helps us to sort out a lot of things.
So what can the truth do for us?
You will know the truth, and the truth will make you defensive? I think we can do better than that.
You will know the truth, and the truth will make you dishonest? I don’t think we want to keep doing that.
You will know the truth, and the truth will make you deceptive? We’ve seen way too much of that from public officials, and many people are now calling for accountability.
You will know the truth, and the truth will make you bitter? That just makes us miserable, and miserable to live with.
You will know the truth, and the truth will make you angry? Anger can be a positive thing, but only if it is channeled toward constructive change and gives us energy instead of hatred. We can eventually move beyond that too.
You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. I truly believe that would be the best thing for all of us.
To become more free because of the truth.
To become more honest because of the truth.
To become more responsible because of the truth.
To become better neighbors because of the truth.
To become more productive and contributing citizens because of the truth.
To become better Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, people of other faiths, or people of conscience with no religion—all better because of the truth.
To become a better and freer country for all of us because of the truth.
And a big issue for me, as the father of two teenage boys, is how we can all become better parents who are more supportive of other parents because of the truth.
Finally, to become better and freer human beings because of the truth. I think that’s what Jesus was getting at in the Gospel passage.
We can no longer be afraid of the truth about race in this country—past, present, and future—because our fears will keep us captive to all kinds of untruths.
This book is about how to find the truth together in these difficult, challenging, and complicated matters of race in America.
We will try to answer the question Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. named in the title of his last book, released just months before we lost him: Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? A new generation will answer that question for a new time.
I crossed the famous Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on the fiftieth anniversary of the historic march that helped bring voting rights to all our fellow citizens. It was then I realized that the answers to these questions will be found in crossing another bridge—the bridge to a new America that will soon be a majority of minorities. This book seeks to describe that new bridge and how we and our children can cross it together.
We need to better understand the past so we can cross the bridge to a new, freer American future where our growing diversity is experienced as a great benefit and not as a great threat. I hope you will take this book as an invitation—to explore the truth of America’s racial past, present, and hopeful future so that, yes, together, we might all become more free, our congregations more faithful, and the state of our union “more perfect.”
You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
November 10, 2016
Sojourners: Time for Healing. And Resistance.
Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, has long been the loudest, most articulate, and most respected voice on behalf of social justice from a genuinely Evangelical Christian perspective. Not “Evangelical Christian” in the sense of those who have made that identical with a right-wing political agenda. “Evangelical Christian” in the sense of what Jesus would have those who claim to follow him do.
His post-election essay, Time for Healing. And Resistance. is so coherent and inspirational that it doesn’t bear quoting from in pieces. Please read it, whatever your religious or spiritual leanings, if any.
Jim Wallis writes, “I just want you to know that I AM IN for whatever this will require of us.” He is speaking to and about Christians, but he is really challenging those of all faiths or of no faith at all to speak out and stand up.
November 10, 2016
Veterans Day and Operation Unite America
Friday, November 11 is Veterans Day, which this year arrives during the same week as Election Day (you remember that day, don’t you?)
The great Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) has organized Operation Unite America:
Veterans Day 2016 is just 3 days after Election Day. Join IAVA’s campaign to do the impossible: bring together all Americans.
After a long, brutal and disgusting election season, everyone’s had it. It hasn’t been a good look for America. Everyone is exhausted–many are outright embarrassed. But Republican, Democrat, Independent, Other…we’re ALL sick of the bickering, the commercials, the debates, the politics, the fighting.
Here is your mission (if you choose to accept it!), JOIN US:
Tag your Veterans Day activities on social media with #veteransday
Donate $11 to IAVA to help us support veterans
Attend a #veteransday #VetTogether
In the wake of Election Day, it is happy news to report that Rep. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois won a seat in the U.S. Senate. She is an Iraq War veteran, awarded the Purple Heart after losing both her legs. She joins a number of women warriors in Congress, which needs more women and more experienced warriors who know how to choose our wars carefully. And who will take good care of other warriors when they come home.
November 9, 2016
Sweet Things Happened on Election Day Too
Eight dozen cupcakes were baked, filled and decorated here on Election Day, having nothing to do with Election Day. Lemon, red velvet, chocolate raspberry, etc. Sweet things from the heart happened and will continue to happen. (They are delicious!)
November 9, 2016
Readings for the Day of National Healing
Here are readings for the Day of National Healing from Ocean of Dharma: The Everyday Wisdom of Chogyam Trungpa, a recommended collection of very brief excerpts from his talks and texts. The image above is of the Medicine Buddha.
THE FUTURE IS IN OUR HANDS
We hold the threshold of the future of the world in our hands, on our path. When we say this, we are not dreaming. We are not exaggerating. We hold a tremendous hope, maybe the only hope for the future dark age.
We have a lot of responsibilities, and those responsibilities are not easy to fulfill. They won’t come along easily, like an ordinary success story. They have to be stitched, painted, carved, step by step, inch by inch, minute by minute. It will be manual work. There will be no automatic big sweep, or solution.
When something good is done in the world, it is usually difficult. It is manual, rather than automatic. When something bad is done, usually that is automatic. Evil things are easy to catch, but good ones are difficult to catch. They go against the grain of ordinary habitual tendencies.
PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE
Humans are the only animals that try to dwell in the future. You don’t have to purely live in the present situation without a plan, but the future plans you make can only be based on the aspects of the future that manifest within the present situation. You can’t plan a future if you don’t know what the present situation is. You have to start from now to know how to plan.
CONVERSING WITH OUR NEGATIVITY
You can always count on the fact that our aspect of viciousness or apelike quality will reflect back to us. Then we can either project it onto somebody else or we can reflect and realize the situation within ourselves. Quite precisely, when you are in that particular state of mind, there is a kind of conversation going on. You may try to tell yourself to calm down and not worry. But then the undercurrent of the force of the projection tries to pierce through again and again. There is always this conversation going on with one’s own negativity. The neurotic aspect of mind is always willing to fall into either the extreme of left or right. The right extreme is anger, the masculine extreme. The left is passion, the feminine extreme. This symbolism is true and universal—a cosmic symbol, which happens with all of life. These symbols are not based on Indian, Buddhist, or Tibetan stories at all. These are utterly cosmic principles, as far as the symbolism is concerned.
WORK WITH THE PRESENT SITUATION
The buddhist tradition teaches the truth of impermanence, or the transitory nature of things. The past is gone and the future has not yet happened, so we work with what is here—the present situation. This actually helps us not to categorize or theorize. A fresh, living situation is taking place all the time, on the spot. This noncategorical approach comes from being fully here, rather than trying to reconnect with past events. We don’t have to look back to the past in order to see what people are made out of. Human beings speak for themselves, on the spot.
November 8, 2016
Presidents Are Like Weather
Presidents are like weather. They are atmospheric conditions that don’t necessarily change the details of how our days, or even our lives, go. But they are a presence, and something we have to live with, or learn to live with.
I’ve lived in different places with very different weather. I’ve lived with a number of Presidents, each of whom brought their own particular atmosphere. I like some of the weather more than others, I liked some of the Presidents more than others, including the different ways they affected the environment.
People ask and people discuss the effect of choosing one candidate over another. Some say: whichever one wins, we will survive. That may be true. But also true is that there may well be a different atmosphere, a different environment with one or the other.
Some also say: I can isolate my life from whoever is chosen. That may be true too. If you’re in a rainy place, you can carry an umbrella. If you’re in a cold place, you can bundle up. If you’re in a cloudy place, you can live (or think you can) without very much sun. Still, the question remains: if you have a choice, is that what you prefer?
Bob Schwartz 