December 2018 - Dialogue - lists.wedgeblade.net

2018 Fall Sojourn Board Report revised
by Jean Long (via Google Docs) 29 Dec '18

29 Dec '18

I've shared an item with you: 2018 Fall Sojourn Board Report revised https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qbDIcf7nYD55EMzNHk4o2e2_jBjpW-Fk3TBFisV… It's not an attachment -- it's stored online. To open this item, just click the link above. Greetings as we turn the corner to a new year - --This is a report on the Fall Sojourn Week that was shared with the ICA Board. It is a shorter version - there is a link in the report that will take you to a longer report. --It was a watershed week. The physical structure of the website is developed to the point where some of the Collections (Image Based Learning and Facilitation Methods in partcular) have link capability from the topics on the home page to documents at other levels. --The major focus was figuring out how to get digitized documents into the website frame - and that task happened. --Now Doug Druckenmiller is training people virtually in each of the Collection categories to be able to do that procedure. --One of the next major tasks will be to write contexts of the "what, why and how" for each Collection and the methods and procedures listed under them so that the material becomes user friendly. The Spring Archives Sojourn week will take place at the Greenrise Building in Chicago from Sunday, April 14 (arrive) - Saturday, April 20th (depart). To share your questions or responses with the Archives Advisory Committee, please send them to: jean.long512(a)gmail.com 720-633-5008

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12/27/18, Progressing Spirit: Joran Slane Oppelt: The Sound of Silence: Valuing the "Via Negativa"; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 27 Dec '18

27 Dec '18

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!important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv2506014273 #yiv2506014273templateBody .yiv2506014273mcnTextContent, #yiv2506014273 #yiv2506014273templateBody .yiv2506014273mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv2506014273 #yiv2506014273templateFooter .yiv2506014273mcnTextContent, #yiv2506014273 #yiv2506014273templateFooter .yiv2506014273mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } It is in this new post-modern, plugged-in environment we must consider and give context to the value of silence and to the virtues of stillness. | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The Sound of Silence: Valuing the Via Negativa Column by Joran Slane Oppelt December 27, 2018 “Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.” – Simon and Garfunkel SILENCE Every second Tuesday, I host a “Silent Reading and Writing Party” at our meditation center in St. Petersburg, FL. We gather in the classroom, silence our phones, relinquish them into a wooden bowl, get comfortable on the floor, bolstering ourselves with pillows and cushions, and retreat into a good book. We ceremoniously begin and end the sustained 90 minutes of silence with the sound of the gong that rests in the corner of the room. And, inevitably, the silence we enter is not-so-silent. There are sounds of traffic from outside, the occasional sounds of someone scribbling in their journal, the sounds of someone getting up and making themselves a cup of tea or coffee. Even the creaks, pops and groans of the human body seem loud and out of place in that hushed room. At the end of each session we share a bit about what we’ve read (or written) and even those nervous first-timers (those who cling to and hesitate to give up their device or who go wide-eyed at the sound of the gong) share an appreciation for the chance to be in proximity to others without the obligation or expectation to speak. The average American spends more than 11 hours per day staring at a screen — reading, watching, listening or interacting with media (or each other). That is most of our waking hours. Worldwide, people send 23 billion text messages per day. That’s 16 million per minute. It seems that we are communicating more, but that we are communicating more silently. A silent, permeating hum. And, any glance around the dining room of a local restaurant — once a table has exhausted all conversation and small talk and turned once again to their phones — will prove there is no longer such a thing as awkward silence. LANGUAGE In his book, The Four Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World, Laurence Scott illustrates the sometimes confusing new language used to describe the sensory range of digital life. “Consider, for instance,” he writes, “the photographic meaning of ‘digital noise’ as referring to a graininess or unwanted pixelation of the computerized image.“ There is also the concept of “muting“ an advertisement or text message conversation, rendering it invisible as opposed to inaudible. The official language in Twitter‘s 2014 announcement debuting its silencing feature read, “Muting a user on Twitter means their tweets and retweets will no longer be visible in your home timeline.“ Imagine reading that statement in 1980 (or even in 1990). Then there is the “chat.“ Whether with a family member, coworker, customer service representative or robot, “chatting“ is something we now do in a small square window on our mobile device or desktop. Of course, there are options for “Voice Chat,“ and as Scott writes, “This one-time redundancy, which prior to the digital age would have seemed as strange a term as, say, ‘Ear Listening,’ now offers a valid distinction. ‘Chat’ alone no longer implies vocals. Voice Chat thus efficiently suggests, in two words, how our assumptions about sound, and the ways we perceive it, are not what they used to be.” THE VOID It is in this new post-modern, plugged-in environment we must consider and give context to the value of silence and to the virtues of stillness. The words “fasting“ and “cleanse“ — usually reserved for diet and nutrition — are now used in conjunction with media and personal screen time. And, the long-term effects on the body and mind of this new way of being — this digital everywhereness or embeddedness — are still unknown. What is known is that deep in the heart of stillness and the silence of solitude, there is the opportunity for reflection, contemplation, creation and growth. Seasonally (and spiritually) there is a benefit to entering the darkness or the void of Winter after having taken the inventory of the harvest and contemplating what to re-plant or re-seed. The phrase “dark night of the soul“ (first coined by St. John of the Cross) has long been used to describe the suffering of those who are grieving or of those who have chosen to dance the tortured path that winds along the precipice of creation and transformation. But, we all experience our own dark night. Episcopalian priest, Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox has argued that the Neo-Platonic three-fold path of purgation, illumination and union, used in much of Western philosophy and spirituality, is sorely antiquated. In books like Creation Spirituality and Original Blessing, he has proposed a new four-fold path — the via positiva, via negativa, via creativa and via transformativa — the ways of wonder, mystery, creativity and justice. Commenting on the via negativa in Meditations with Meister Eckhart, Matthew Fox writes, “As divine as all creation is, the human person must learn to let go of things in order to let things be things and in order that reverence might be learned. Things are not bad but the human propensity to cling to things is harmful and creates the dualisms that result in all sin. When we let go and let be we learn new levels of trust including trust in the dark and in our experiences of nothingness, both personal and political.“ Consciously and deliberately moving into stillness, darkness, silence and the void can be terrifying. We may find ourselves going wide-eyed at the sound of the gong — the signal for us to leap. We may freeze. We may stand on the edge of the precipice, leaning forward into the wind-whipped emptiness and find ourselves without the courage to simply fall forward. Luckily for us, the decision to grieve or transform is rarely ours to make. It is made for us by God, the machinations of the cosmos, the wind that carries us over the edge, or by the gentle (or not-so-gentle) hand of another. Fox reminds us, “There is no moving from superficiality to depth — and every spiritual journey is about moving from the surface to the depths — without entering the dark.“ “Daring the dark means entering nothingness and letting it be nothingness while it works its mystery on us. Daring the dark also means allowing pain to be pain and learning from it.“ In Creation Spirituality, Fox offers us this commandment — “Thou shalt dare the dark” — but he does so not without first instructing us through the via positiva. It is by first passing through and celebrating our sense of awe, wonder, gratitude and joy that we are able to enter into darkness and the mystery of The Void. This is what carries us through the other side into a new season of creation and reinvention. This is the lantern that we bring with us into the cave, that burning ember — or promise of the birth of the Christ child within — that gives us hope. FORWARD MOVEMENT In his book, Religious Inquiry – Participation and Detachment, Holmes Rolston III writes, “Algebra is an activity that one cannot watch with any notion of what is going on unless he himself knows how to do it. All those parts which one cannot do, one cannot understand. Religion is like this. Unless one can do it, what he or she observes makes no sense.” All the sacred language and meaning-making in the world is nonsense unless we can survive transformation at the deepest center of our being. If we don’t rise every morning and return to our advocacy and activism, if we don’t eventually reawaken from that dark night of the soul to experience more beauty, goodness and truth, then we are lost in The Void. Our effort to survive will be predicated on our ability to bridge the gap between understanding and undergoing. Trusting that we are the process is the process. Knowing that the question is always part of the answer is wisdom. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke said, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves.“ Going forward, we must not fear change. We must learn to love the unsettled and unfinished parts of ourselves. We must brace ourselves for the sound of the gong and enter that silence bravely. We must relinquish our smartphones to the wise, wooden bowl and find each other through the sharing of stories. We must carry our coffee and tea, our culture and technology, with us into Winter, knowing that we will encounter someone along the way to share a cup and a conversation with that may be more wounded or angry than we are. We must be comforted that we will be held through every transformation, every loss, every rotation of the Cosmic spiral by the steady, certain hand of faith. That this, too, shall pass. We must always remember that we learn by doing — by picking up and putting down. As we learn to test the waters, and push our chests out into the wind as we dive off the edge of doubt, we improve with every turn at rising again. We show future generations how easy it can be to grieve, to forgive, to reconcile and to rebuild. We show them how to relight and pick back up the torch of their sacred work — that crude hand-fashioned tool used to transport the divine spark which can illuminate the shadowy, darkened corners or burn the whole thing down. A WINTER PRAYER Spirit, grant me the strength To rise and relight my torch That I may build something new. Grant me the insight To understand and undergo My transforming, ever-broadening, edges. Grant me the peace To love the unfinished parts within. Grant me the wisdom that comes With always becoming. ~ Joran Slane Oppelt Click here to read online and to share your thoughts About the AuthorJoran Slane Oppelt Joran Slane Oppelt is an international speaker, author, interfaith minister, life coach and award-winning producer and singer/songwriter. He is the owner of the Metta Center of St. Petersburg and founder of Integral Church – an interfaith and interspiritual organization in Tampa Bay committed to “transformative practice, community service and religious literacy.” Joran is the author of Sentences, The Mountain and the Snow and co-author of Order of the Sacred Earth (with Matthew Fox), Integral Church: A Handbook for New Spiritual Communities and Transform Your Life: Expert Advice, Practical Tools, and Personal Stories. He serves as President of Interfaith Tampa Bay and has spoken around the world about spirituality and the innovation of religion. He has presented at South by Southwest in Austin, TX; Building the New World Conference in Radford, VA; Parliament of the World’s Religions in Salt Lake City; Embrace Festival in Portland, OR and Integral European Conference in Siófok, Hungary. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Heather What is the relationship between Christianity and other religions? A: By Bishop John Shelby Spong Dear Pauline, Every religious system the world over begins as a way of enabling people to enter the experience of transcendence and meaning. There is something about self-conscious human beings that forces us to seek to commune with the source of our life. That experience is so deep that I am not sure there is such a thing as a nonreligious human being. There are certainly human beings who reject a particular religious content but none that fail to raise the ultimate questions that create our various religious answers. All of this is to say that the great religions of the world have codified that eternal quest into systems of thought that now dominate the various regions of the world. Christianity is today primarily the religion of the Western world and those areas that have been colonized by Western powers. Islam is the religion of the Middle East stretching into Africa in the West and Indonesia in the East. Hinduism and its child Buddhism dominate the religious landscape of the East. There are clearly many divisions inside each of these religious traditions. There are also minority religious movements like Jews and Jains that are scattered throughout the regions of the world and that live under the domination of one of the majority traditions. Conflict arises in the world of religion when any system decides that it has captured the Ultimate Truth of God and therefore all other systems are defective or subject to conversion. I honor the pathway that Christianity has offered me since it enables me to walk into the wonder of God. This does not mean, however, that I am, somehow, incapable of also honoring the pathway that others walk. If we believe that God is one then all pathways to God are in the last analysis, journeys toward the same goal. I intend to live within my faith traditions as deeply as I can. That does not mean that I will ever allow my devotion to the God I meet in Christ to be used to denigrate any religious system different from my own. I hope that religious maturity might soon lead us all in this direction. ~ John Shelby Spong Originally published October 8, 2003 Click here to read and share online | | | | | | | | | | Join our FB community today! Spread the word, share with friends. Thanks! | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Study of New Testament Miracles, Part III Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong on October 4, 2006 In the opening column in this series on miracles in the Bible, I noted two things. First, the accounts of miracles in the Bible are generally limited to three cycles of stories within the biblical narrative. They are part of the Moses-Joshua cycle of stories, the Elijah-Elisha cycle of stories and the Jesus-Disciples of Jesus cycle of stories. There is an occasional supernatural tale in other parts of the Bible, but these are the only areas where they are concentrated. Second, miracles in the biblical story are not necessarily moral acts. The plagues inflicted on the Egyptians at the time of the Exodus, which included the divine killing of the first-born son in every Egyptian household, are hardly moral by any standard we would employ today. The narrative of Joshua asking God to stop the sun in the sky to allow him and his army more daylight hours to complete the slaughtering of his Amorite enemies is also a rather bizarre divine act. In that analysis, we discovered that in the Moses-Joshua stories, the miracles recounted are almost exclusively nature miracles, by which I mean they are stories of the manipulation of natural forces to achieve a human goal. The plagues on Egypt involved turning the Nile River into blood, commanding hailstones and darkness to fall upon the nation, the affliction of the people with boils and the livestock with disease were all, the Bible says, miraculously sent to accomplish specific human purposes. The idea that anyone has the power to command what we regard as the natural forces of the universe to enter into his or her service is very strange indeed. The miracles of Elijah and Elisha also tended to occur in the natural order. These prophets were said to be able to manipulate the weather patterns to achieve their purposes and Elijah was deemed capable of calling down fire from heaven to burn up his enemies. However, the content of miracle accounts grow in the Elijah-Elisha cycle, for it is here that miraculous healings and even accounts of raising a dead person back to life enter the biblical tradition. When we come to the gospels, we discover that Jesus was said to be capable of performing miracles in each of these three areas of life. Associated with him was a series of nature miracles: Jesus stilled the storm, walked on water, expanded the food supply and caused a fig tree to die by laying a curse on it, all of which involved manipulating the natural order. Yet the gospels also portray Jesus as a healer, enabling the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the lame to walk, the mute to sing and those who were “possessed by demons” to be cleansed or exorcised. Jesus was said to have had this healing power even though some of the first century diagnoses, like ‘demon possession,’ are today dismissed as pre-modern ignorance. There are also three stories told in the gospels in which Jesus was said to have the power to raise the dead. They were the daughter of Jairus, whose story is told in Mark, Matthew and Luke; the raising of a widow’s son from death in the village of Nain, told only in Luke, and finally the story of the raising of Lazarus, told only in John’s gospel. The point I want to make in this brief analysis is that each type of miracle that is attributed to Jesus in the gospels also occurs in the earlier cycles of Moses-Joshua and Elijah-Elisha. So my first inquiry into understanding the miracle stories in the gospels leads me to ask whether the miracles attributed to past biblical heroes might have been used to help shape the miracle accounts told about Jesus. Pursuing this line of inquiry raises the possibility that these miracles stories might have been developed to serve the interpretative purpose of seeing Jesus as a new Moses or a new Elijah far more than they were the descriptions of actual events that literally happened in history. This week I explore this possibility more deeply. Note first that Moses as the father of the law and Elijah as the father of the prophetic movement represent the twin towers of the Jewish religion. The religion called Judaism was said to “hang on the law and the prophets.” Moses and Elijah also loom large in the background of the gospels. As I mentioned in the second column of this series, Moses’ name appears seventy-eight times in the New Testament and Elijah’s twenty-nine times. In the dramatic story that Christians call the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah were said to appear on that mountaintop with Jesus and to converse with him. When Peter responded to this vision with the suggestion that three tabernacles be built to mark this event, one for Moses, one for Elijah and one for Jesus, he was raising Jesus to the highest status that a Jew could imagine by making Jesus equal to Moses and Elijah. The fact that in this story Peter was rebuked by a heavenly voice that elevated Jesus above both Moses and Elijah probably reflects the early struggle among the disciples of Jesus about who he was and how his life was to be understood. It is clear from a study of the gospels that some stories that had been told about Moses and Elijah were retold about Jesus. In the minds of the first Christians a mutual dependency binding Moses and Elijah with Jesus is obvious. However, these stories are magnified to demonstrate Jesus’ superiority, which was the conclusion his followers had drawn. One thinks immediately of the story told only in Matthew’s gospel about a wicked king named Herod who sent his troops to Bethlehem with orders to kill all the Jewish male babies less than two years of age. His desire was to destroy God’s promised deliverer. When Moses was born another wicked king, that time named Pharaoh, also ordered all Jewish boy babies destroyed in a vain effort to remove God’s promised deliverer. Matthew had Mary, Joseph and Jesus fleeing to Egypt to escape this purge. This also meant that just as God called Moses to come out of Egypt, so God could now call Jesus, the new Moses, to come out of Egypt. Jesus’ baptism is filled with Moses images. Moses splits the ‘Red Sea’ to lead people to understand that God is working through him. Jesus, the new Moses, splits the heavens, which contain ‘the waters above the firmament’ (Gen. 1:6), which then flow down on him as the Holy Spirit so people can see that God dwells in him. In the wilderness Moses asks God to send heavenly bread, called manna, to the starving multitude. In the wilderness Jesus expands five loaves to feed a multitude. The stories are related. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) Jesus is portrayed as the new Moses, on a new mountain, giving a new interpretation of the Torah. Once again the evidence reveals that the story of Jesus has been shaped by the story of Moses. Elijah is not as prominent as Moses in the New Testament, but he is still a figure in the background of the gospel tradition. In both Mark and Matthew, the Elijah role is delegated to John the Baptist. Luke, however, counters this by saying that John the Baptist is not the new Elijah, but only the one who comes in “the spirit of Elijah.” The reason for this becomes obvious when Luke reaches the climax of his story and begins to portray Jesus as the new Elijah by expanding the Elijah story from the Book of Kings. In Luke’s unique story of Jesus raising the only son of a widow from the dead, the echoes of Elijah raising a widow’s son from the dead are heard. However, the key place where this identification focuses is found in the comparison of the ascension of Elijah (II Kings 2) with the story told only in Luke of Jesus’ ascension (Acts 1,2). Luke is clearly building the Elijah story into his portrait of Jesus. In these two narratives both Elijah and Jesus ascend into heaven. The text about Elijah indicates that he needs a magical chariot, fiery horses and a God-sent whirlwind to accomplish this feat. Jesus, the new and greater Elijah, is portrayed as ascending on his own power. Elijah pours out on his single disciple and successor, Elisha, a double portion of his enormous, but still human, spirit. Luke, however, portrays Jesus as pouring out the infinite power of God’s Holy Spirit on the whole gathered community of disciples in sufficient supply to last through all generations. Under the skill of Luke’s quill, the fire from Elijah’s horses and chariot becomes the tongues of fire that light on the disciples’ heads and Elijah’s propelling whirlwind becomes the “mighty rushing wind” of the Holy Spirit filling the whole room on the day of Pentecost. There are other connections between Jesus and the Moses and Elijah cycles that space does not allow me to cover in this brief article. Taken together, however, they form the basis for the suggestion that long before the gospels were written, both Moses and Elijah had become models through which Jesus’ followers understood him and by which they processed the Jesus experience. In this way, Moses and Elijah stories were in fact wrapped around Jesus, becoming the source of at least some of the miracles attributed to Jesus in the gospels. I conclude this column by examining just one. Moses demonstrated God’s power over water in the Red Sea narrative. After Moses died, this power was celebrated in the writings of the prophets and in the psalms until it became a regular part of the Jewish understanding of God found in their liturgies. These liturgies proclaimed that God could make a divine path in the ‘deep,’ that God’s footprints could be seen upon the water. When the disciples of Jesus began to say that they had met the presence of the holy God in Jesus, they simply attributed those ancient God concepts to Jesus as the only way that human language could be stretched sufficiently to capture the meaning of their experience. Like God, Jesus could still the storm. Like God, Jesus could walk upon water. These were not observed miracles being described by eyewitnesses; these were interpretative words describing the God presence they believed they had met in Jesus. As we begin to see these connections, a new way to look at the miracle stories emerges. The nature miracles are not supernatural acts so much as they are interpretative signs. They are Moses and Elijah stories magnified. We thus misread the gospels by literalizing them. There is far more data to be considered, but this is a start. We destabilize the literal view to capture the experience that literalism can never capture. This study will continue. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community! | | | | | | | | Announcements Now Available as a PDF Download! Bishop Spong's The Origins of the Bible: The Old Testament Introducing Bishop Spong’s landmark series on the Origin of the Bible covering both Old and New Testaments. His scholarly analysis and signature insights breakdown the past, present and future of these sacred texts. Click here for more information ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Fwd: Witness- Birthday
by Richard Alton 20 Dec '18

20 Dec '18

*Oh My God, Life* …the things that happen in life are astonishing..being driven to and fro by the mystery.. a few recent examples I attended part of the ICA USA Board meeting last month. We broke up into small groups and I was in a group with John Cock II. He and I were in Kenya together. I think it was John’s 9th grade trip. I was impressed to hear him rattle off the villages he worked in: Kwangware, Kamweleni and Mugumwoini...just like he had been there yesterday. John was a great addition. Probably, the first Board member literally born into the organization- now an urban engineer with a focus on bike trails. Had his middle school daughter with him. I wonder when she is going abroad. The afternoon I was there, the Board brainstormed ICA core values- things like community development, ToP methods, being a learning organization, even poverty, chastity and obedience. I struggled with this question of core values. I think the core of the core is the ability to give a witness.. to stand present to one’s life and the amazing things revealed or that happen to one…the mystery at work in one’s life. Like on Halloween night I was coming home late at night on my bike and ran right onto a big pile of leaves- it knocked me off my bike, split my lip and banged up my ribs. I made it home but the next day was having trouble breathing so went to the hospital. They performed a CT scan. There were no broken ribs, but the scan showed that I had spots on my lungs...so this all happened to catch my attention about my lungs... and on Halloween (the Day of the Dead). The second part of my Halloween leaf event: it seems the leaves grabbed my phone- so the day after the fall, I could not find my phone- that really hurt. I went back to all the places I had been including the leaf place but no phone. Finally, after I had given up Sally asked me, “doesn’t Apple have an app that will help you find a lost phone?” so on my computer I found the lost apple link and sure enough on the screen map there was a flashing signal. It was about a 100 yards from where I fell. So I follow the map and there is my cell on the curb like it had been waiting for me… think those leaves put it there. Is this not The Other World in the midst of this world…a Visit to the Land of Mystery? These Visits seem to come in 3s. I work on the One Earth Film Fest through which we show environmental movies all over greater Chicago and engage people in conversation and action in response to the films. So I received an email from a Dexter Watson at St Malachi/Precious Blood Parish about showing a movie. I set up a meeting with Dexter on the Westside of Chicago. It turns out Dexter is not only the parish coordinator but also the former Alderman of the area. And yes, Fifth City is in his former Aldermanic area. In fact, one of Dexter’s favorite people and a mentor was the late Verdell Trice, the head of the Fifth City Auto Center and board member of the Preschool. Dexter even tried to have a street named after Verdell at one time. This is the second time I have been driven back to 5th City. You know we are going to have a great film fest event there. Dick Alton, introduced to the mystery in December,1968 and working with the mystery on the future of planet Earth ever since. Oak Park, Illinois -- Richard H. T. Alton One Earth Film Fest ( OEFF) Green Community Connections Interfaith Green Network T: 773.344.7172 richard.alton(a)gmail.com **Save the Date! One Earth Film Festival 2019, March 1-10* http:www.oneearthfilmfestival.org Make Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2 -- Richard H. T. Alton One Earth Film Fest ( OEFF) Green Community Connections Interfaith Green Network T: 773.344.7172 richard.alton(a)gmail.com **Save the Date! One Earth Film Festival 2019, March 1-10* http:www.oneearthfilmfestival.org Make Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2

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Winds and Waves reminder for December
by ICA International 16 Dec '18

16 Dec '18

Any problem reading this message please click or paste this URL in your browser's address bar http://windswaves.icai-archives.org/new-ww/ en français en español November 2018 This is a reminder for entries to our new Winds and Waves Magazine We are delighted to invite you to share your stories here via this link medium.com/winds-and-waves We also welcome videos that show the work you are doing. And we would be delighted if you would share stories from Winds and Waves on your own social media networks. For information about how to work with Winds and Waves on Medium: Please see attachment here Please be sure to send this invitation on to your ICA members and friends, colleagues, partners, family, so they too can participate. You can get further information by contacting us at icawindandwaves(a)gmail.com Best wishes, Robyn, Dharma, Roma, Rosemary, Isabel, Peter, for W&W team Published by The Institute of Cultural Affairs International, 401 Richmond Street, West, Toronto, ON. M5V 3A8, Canada All rights reserved. For more information or to unsubscribe, email: inform(a)ica-international.org

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Re: [Dialogue] Fwd: Witness- Birthday
by Del Morrill 16 Dec '18

16 Dec '18

So great to get this sharing. Hope the lip and ribs are now okay. Enjoy the season. Del From: Dialogue <dialogue-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> On Behalf Of Jeanette Stanfield via Dialogue Sent: Friday, December 14, 2018 5:37 AM To: Colleague Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Cc: Jeanette Stanfield <jstanfieldica(a)gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Dialogue] Fwd: Witness- Birthday Thank you Dick. Wow! Sent from my iPhone On Dec 13, 2018, at 10:29 PM, Richard Alton via Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> > wrote: Oh My God, Life …the things that happen in life are astonishing..being driven to and fro by the mystery.. a few recent examples I attended part of the ICA USA Board meeting last month. We broke up into small groups and I was in a group with John Cock II. He and I were in Kenya together. I think it was John’s 9th grade trip. I was impressed to hear him rattle off the villages he worked in: Kwangware, Kamweleni and Mugumwoini...just like he had been there yesterday. John was a great addition. Probably, the first Board member literally born into the organization- now an urban engineer with a focus on bike trails. Had his middle school daughter with him. I wonder when she is going abroad. The afternoon I was there, the Board brainstormed ICA core values- things like community development, ToP methods, being a learning organization, even poverty, chastity and obedience. I struggled with this question of core values. I think the core of the core is the ability to give a witness.. to stand present to one’s life and the amazing things revealed or that happen to one…the mystery at work in one’s life. Like on Halloween night I was coming home late at night on my bike and ran right onto a big pile of leaves- it knocked me off my bike, split my lip and banged up my ribs. I made it home but the next day was having trouble breathing so went to the hospital. They performed a CT scan. There were no broken ribs, but the scan showed that I had spots on my lungs...so this all happened to catch my attention about my lungs... and on Halloween (the Day of the Dead). The second part of my Halloween leaf event: it seems the leaves grabbed my phone- so the day after the fall, I could not find my phone- that really hurt. I went back to all the places I had been including the leaf place but no phone. Finally, after I had given up Sally asked me, “doesn’t Apple have an app that will help you find a lost phone?” so on my computer I found the lost apple link and sure enough on the screen map there was a flashing signal. It was about a 100 yards from where I fell. So I follow the map and there is my cell on the curb like it had been waiting for me… think those leaves put it there. Is this not The Other World in the midst of this world…a Visit to the Land of Mystery? These Visits seem to come in 3s. I work on the One Earth Film Fest through which we show environmental movies all over greater Chicago and engage people in conversation and action in response to the films. So I received an email from a Dexter Watson at St Malachi/Precious Blood Parish about showing a movie. I set up a meeting with Dexter on the Westside of Chicago. It turns out Dexter is not only the parish coordinator but also the former Alderman of the area. And yes, Fifth City is in his former Aldermanic area. In fact, one of Dexter’s favorite people and a mentor was the late Verdell Trice, the head of the Fifth City Auto Center and board member of the Preschool. Dexter even tried to have a street named after Verdell at one time. This is the second time I have been driven back to 5th City. You know we are going to have a great film fest event there. Dick Alton, introduced to the mystery in December,1968 and working with the mystery on the future of planet Earth ever since. Oak Park, Illinois -- Richard H. T. Alton One Earth Film Fest ( OEFF) Green Community Connections Interfaith Green Network T: 773.344.7172 richard.alton(a)gmail.com <mailto:richard.alton@gmail.com> *Save the Date! One Earth Film Festival 2019, March 1-10 http:www.oneearthfilmfestival.org <http://www.oneearthfilmfestival.org> Make Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2 -- Richard H. T. Alton One Earth Film Fest ( OEFF) Green Community Connections Interfaith Green Network T: 773.344.7172 richard.alton(a)gmail.com <mailto:richard.alton@gmail.com> *Save the Date! One Earth Film Festival 2019, March 1-10 http:www.oneearthfilmfestival.org <http://www.oneearthfilmfestival.org> Make Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2 _______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net

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Man on fire is on PBS here in Arizona next week
by James Wiegel 15 Dec '18

15 Dec '18

https://www.pbs.org/video/man-fire-trailer-uvtw81/ Jim Wiegel 401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353 Tel. 011-623-936-8671 or 011-623-363-3277 jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. "But that is not what great ships are built for." Clarissa Pinkola Estes

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Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] Interesting article -- especially for Social Process collection -- common religion triangle and Inner life/other world and all
by Randy Williams 15 Dec '18

15 Dec '18

Every person and culture has a story of reality that informs our active living in the world, whether or not it’s been “canonized” and/or “institutionalized.” For me the Christian story is neutered when it becomes a story of how to save oneself from an evil world rather than why and how to serve a suffering world. Maybe that perversion has contributed greatly to the demise of what Douthat calls the “Protestant establishment.” I like the thought that I first encountered in Harvey Cox’s book The Future of Faith, that faith is less about what you believe or how you worship and more about how and on behalf of what you live your life. If this is what Douthat means by “a social gospel denuded of theological content” then I am guilty as charged. Randy > On Dec 13, 2018, at 5:49 PM, James Wiegel via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: > > The Return of Paganism: Maybe there actually is a genuinely post-Christian future for America. > By Ross Douthat Opinion Columnist Dec. 12, 2018 > > Here are some generally agreed-upon facts about religious trends in the United States. Institutional Christianity has weakened drastically since the 1960s. Lots of people who once would have been lukewarm Christmas-and-Easter churchgoers now identify as having “no religion” or being “spiritual but not religious.” The mainline-Protestant establishment is an establishment no more. Religious belief and practice now polarizes our politics in a way they didn’t a few generations back. > > What kind of general religious reality should be discerned from all these facts, though, is much more uncertain, and there are various plausible stories about what early-21st century Americans increasingly believe. The simplest of these is the secularization story — in which modern societies inevitably put away religious ideas as they advance in wealth and science and reason, and the decline of institutional religion is just a predictable feature of a general late-modern turn away from supernatural belief. > > But the secularization narrative is insufficient, because even with America’s churches in decline, the religious impulse has hardly disappeared. In the early 2000s, over 40 percent of Americans answered with an emphatic “yes” when Gallup asked them if “a profound religious experience or awakening” had redirected their lives; that number had doubled since the 1960s, when institutional religion was more vigorous. A recent Pew survey on secularization likewise found increases in the share of Americans who have regular feelings of “spiritual peace and well-being.” And the resilience of religious impulses and rhetoric in contemporary political movements, even (or especially) on the officially secular left, is an obvious feature of our politics. > > So perhaps instead of secularization it makes sense to talk about the fragmentation and personalization of Christianity — to describe America as a nation of Christian heretics, if you will, in which traditional churches have been supplanted by self-help gurus and spiritual-political entrepreneurs. These figures cobble together pieces of the old orthodoxies, take out the inconvenient bits and pitch them to mass audiences that want part of the old-time religion but nothing too unsettling or challenging or ascetic. The result is a nation where Protestant awakenings have given way to post-Protestant wokeness, where Reinhold Niebuhr and Fulton Sheen have ceded pulpits to Joel Osteen and Oprah Winfrey, where the prosperity gospel and Christian nationalism rule the right and a social gospel denuded of theological content rules the left. > > I wrote a whole book on this theme, but in the years since it came out I’ve wondered if it, too, was incomplete. There has to come a point at which a heresy becomes simply post-Christian, a moment when you should just believe people who claim they have left the biblical world-picture behind, a context where the new spiritualities add up to a new religion. > > Which is why lately I’ve become interested in books and arguments that suggest that there actually is, or might be, a genuinely post-Christian future for America — and that the term “paganism” might be reasonably revived to describe the new American religion, currently struggling to be born. > > A fascinating version of this argument is put forward by Steven D. Smith, a law professor at the University of San Diego, in his new book, “Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars From the Tiber to the Potomac.” Smith argues that much of what we understand as the march of secularism is something of an illusion, and that behind the scenes what’s actually happening in the modern culture war is the return of a pagan religious conception, which was half-buried (though never fully so) by the rise of Christianity. > > What is that conception? Simply this: that divinity is fundamentally inside the world rather than outside it, that God or the gods or Being are ultimately part of nature rather than an external creator, and that meaning and morality and metaphysical experience are to be sought in a fuller communion with the immanent world rather than a leap toward the transcendent. > > This paganism is not materialist or atheistic; it allows for belief in spiritual and supernatural realities. It even accepts the possibility of an afterlife. But it is deliberately agnostic about final things, what awaits beyond the shores of this world, and it is skeptical of the idea that there exists some ascetic, world-denying moral standard to which we should aspire. Instead, it sees the purpose of religion and spirituality as more therapeutic, a means of seeking harmony with nature and happiness in the everyday — while unlike atheism, it insists that this everyday is divinely endowed and shaped, meaningful and not random, a place where we can truly hope to be at home. > > In popular religious practice there isn’t always a clean line between this “immanent” religion and the transcendent alternative offered by Christianity and Judaism. But clearly religious cultures can tend toward one option or the other, and you can build a plausible case for a “pagan” (by Smith’s definition) tradition in Western and American religion, which in his account takes two major forms. > > First, there is a tradition of intellectual and aesthetic pantheism that includes figures like Spinoza, Nietzsche, Emerson and Whitman, and that’s manifest in certain highbrow spiritual-but-not-religious writers today. Smith recruits Sam Harris, Barbara Ehrenreich and even Ronald Dworkin to this club; he notes that we even have an explicit framing of this tradition as paganism, in the former Yale Law School dean Anthony Kronman’s rich 2016 work “Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan.” > > Second, there is a civic religion that like the civic paganism of old makes religious and political duties identical, and treats the city of man as the city of God (or the gods), the place where we make heaven ourselves instead of waiting for the next life or the apocalypse. This immanent civic religion, Smith argues, is gradually replacing the more biblical form of civil religion that stamped American history down to the Protestant-Catholic-Jew 1950s. Whether in the social-justice theology of contemporary progressive politics or the trans-humanist projects of Silicon Valley, we are watching attempts to revive a religion of this-world, a new-model paganism, to “reclaim the city that Christianity wrested away from it centuries ago.” > > These descriptions are debatable, but suppose Smith is right. Is the combination of intellectual pantheism and a this-world-focused civil religion enough to declare the rebirth of paganism as a faith unto itself, rather than just a cultural tendency within a still-Christian order? > > It seems to me that the answer is not quite, because this new religion would lack a clear cultic aspect, a set of popular devotions, a practice of ritual and prayer of the kind that the paganism of antiquity offered in abundance. And that absence points to the essential weakness of a purely intellectualized pantheism: It invites its adherents to commune with a universe that offers suffering and misery in abundance, which means that it has a strong appeal to the privileged but a much weaker appeal to people who need not only sense of wonder from their spiritual lives but also, well, help. > > However, there are forms of modern paganism that do promise this help, that do offer ritual and observance, augury and prayer, that do promise that in some form gods or spirits really might exist and might offer succor or help if appropriately invoked. I have in mind the countless New Age practices that promise health and well-being and good fortune, the psychics and mediums who promise communication with the spirit world, and also the world of explicit neo-paganism, Wiccan and otherwise. Its adherents may not all be equally convinced of the realities that they’re trying to appeal to and manipulate (I don’t know how many of the witches who publicly hexed Brett Kavanaugh really expected it to work), but their numbers are growing rapidly; there may soon be more witches in the United States than members of the United Church of Christ. > > What ancient paganism did successfully was to unite this kind of popular supernaturalism with its own forms of highbrow pantheism and civil-religiosity. Thus the elites of ancient Rome might reject the myths about their pantheon of deities as just crude stories, but they would join enthusiastically in public rituals that assumed that gods or spirits could be appealed to, propitiated, honored, worshiped. > > To get a fully revived paganism in contemporary America, that’s what would have to happen again — the philosophers of pantheism and civil religion would need to build a religious bridge to the New Agers and neo-pagans, and together they would need to create a more fully realized cult of the immanent divine, an actual way to worship, not just to appreciate, the pantheistic order they discern. > > It seems like we’re some distance from that happening — from the intellectuals whom Smith describes as pagan actually donning druidic robes, or from Jeff Bezos playing pontifex maximus for a post-Christian civic cult. The 1970s, when a D.C. establishment figure like Sally Quinn was hexing her enemies, were a high-water mark for those kinds of experiments among elites. Now, occasional experiments in woke witchcraft and astrology notwithstanding, there’s a more elite embarrassment about the popular side of post-Christian spirituality. > > That embarrassment may not last forever; perhaps a prophet of a new harmonized paganism is waiting in the wings. Until then, those of us who still believe in a divine that made the universe rather than just pervading it — and who have a certain fear of what more immanent spirits have to offer us — should be able to recognize the outlines of a possible successor to our world-picture, while taking comfort that it is not yet fully formed. > > Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009. He is the author of several books, most recently, “To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism.” > > > > > > > COMMENT OF THE MOMENT > jim kunstler commented December 12: Saratoga Springs, NY > > Andrew Sullivan got it right in NY Magazine this week when he noted that Wokesterism is the replacement du jour for Christianity. It has its sacred characters (identity groups) and a notion of original sin (white privilege), and requires sinners to apologize abjectly... but is absolutely unforgiving. That’s how crazy we have become. > > Comments 1280 > > LES commented December 12 As Epictetus, the grand old man of Greco-Roman philosophy pointed out two thousand years ago it is one thing to talk about philosophy/region and it is another thing to live the teaching and seek truth. > > Middleman Eagle WI USADec. 12 One of the principle drivers of a post-Christian future is people's need to experience their sexuality without the horrible schism imposed on it by the Christian religion. I once visited an exhibit of sexuality in art in Hamburg, Germany and what struck me the most about it was the sad evidence of how Christianity had literally driven a line through the center of the body, and above the navel was 'for God,' and below, the devil. People who chose their sexuality over church-sanctioned piety literally danced with the devil. Such demonization continues today, in subtler, but still life-destroying forms. This and Christianity's own hypocrisies about sexual behavior within their institutions have left many of us to walk away from the faith of our upbringing to find compassion and spirituality in other ways and other communities and fellowships. > > North Carolina commented December 12 The country is moving away from organized Christianity because people are disillusioned, defeated, and dismayed by the total corruption of our religious leaders whether from the Catholic Church or the Protestant churches, see the Fort Worth Star Telegram's investigation into sexual misconduct at nearly 1,000 churches and organizations affiliated with the independent fundamental Baptist movement across 40 states and Canada, in which 168 church leaders have been “accused or convicted of committing sexual crimes against children.” You simply can't be a part of organized religion without encountering human corruption on a massive scale. And it is this corruption, this hypocrisy that ultimately drives people from churches and organized religion. That is not going to change. Instead, people are going to find other places to connect to the universe, their planet, their family and friends, and themselves to the greater and find God or Goddess out there away from men who are completely corrupt. > > Kjensen commented December 12Burley Idaho Another pathetic attempt by Mr. Douthat to lament the decline of organized religion. For me it can't come fast enough. As for the resurgence of so-called paganism, with its new ageism, self-help gurus, revival of ancient religions, it's really the same old thing that is embodied in the popes, prophets, and the priests that Mr. Douthat wishes were still absolutely preeminent in our society. Yes, in my opinion, these new age religious movements are the same old charlatans just cut from a different bolt of cloth. > > Ron commented December 12 FloridaDec. 12 Douthat uses the term “paganism” to describe various New Age and Wicca movements, but he says almost nothing about the paganism of the Religious Right. Was Nazism, with its symbolism, mass gatherings, and return to a “greater” Teutonic past, pagan? Undoubtedly. And why was it essentially pagan and anti-Christian? Because it exalted the nation state and its leader above all moral considerations. Does that sound familiar? Do we see that today? Donald Trump and his millions of faux Christian, evangelical followers are the real pagans of our time. (Note that Trump even refused—or was unable—to recite the Apostles' Creed at G. H. W. Bush’s funeral.) > > doughboy commented December 12 Wilkes-Barre, PA Douthat’s continued use of pagan hides the origin of that term. When Christianity received the official backing of the Roman emperors, it turned on all other religions. Their attacks on Roman, Greek, Egyptian, etc religion introduced the term pagan to undercut these practices. Catherine Nixey’s The Darkening Age and Charles Freeman’s The Closing of the Western Mind details the harm that this zealotry did. The murder and dismemberment of Hypatia in Alexandria in 415 and the closing of Athens’ Academy in 532 are but two illustrations. The Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli wrote, “The anti-intellectual violence of the Christianized Roman Empire managed to suffocate almost every development of rational thought for many centuries.” This trend did not end in the early centuries. The execution of Giordano Bruno in 1600 and the Inquisition continued the suppression. Blaise Pascal wrote, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” This animus remains today whenever atheists protest religious symbols on public land. How many members of Congress are declared atheists? “Pagans” are neither ignorant nor stupid. Symmachus, in the face of the Christian onslaught, challenged the new faith when he said, “We see the same stars, the sky is shared by all, the same world surrounds us. What does it matter what wisdom a person uses to seek for the truth?” > > Kaye commented December 12 Connecticut I grew up second-gen in a Neopagan religion. Like most second-gen individuals in new religious movements, I tend to be more conservative (religiously, not politically) than people who are converts because I was raised in an environment where there were correct and incorrect ways of doing worship. This article assumes that "paganism" is a mercurial thing that is just "not Christianity." The term paganism is still sometimes used as a religious slur in opinion pieces describing a person's lack of morality, and the term is adapted to fit ideas ranging from atheistic pan(en)theism to the New Age movement. I rarely ever use the term — I call myself a polytheist. While like a Roman elite I don't believe in the literal truth of myths, I believe in gods. Almost all of my worship is conducted in the home. Another correction: "explicit neo-paganism" offers help and sense-making practices. Wicca has a moral code based on non-harming. Polytheist revivalist religions like Hellenism, Asatru, Religio Romana, and Kemetism draw from the wealth of philosophical and moral writings in antiquity to offer grounding and solutions to devotees regardless of the issues they are confronting in their lives. We have a resurgence of people in both Pagan Studies (ex: Chas Clifton) and philosophy (ex: Edward P. Butler, who does polytheologies and engages in dialogue with ancient writers like Proclus and Iamblichus). Neopagan movements are not bereft of 201- and 301-level sense-making practices at all. > > dogma vat commented December 12 Washington, DCDec. 12 Interesting commentary, but a bit over my head. However, I'll say this- modern life is making us weak, lonely people. Too many choices, too much freedom and opportunity, along with the eradication of our Judeo-Christian identity has decimated families and enabled our culture to be filled by grunting, flatulent creatures like our current president on the right and woke religious zealots on the left. These folks are turning the established order of decency upside down and turning this country into the idiocracy many have feared. We need religion because the alternative seems to be Donald Trump or wokeness or something else that is totally incoherent. > > Walter L. Maroney commented December 12 Manchester NH A couple of fundamental misunderstandings here, Ross. First, we are not supposed to be a Christian Nation. Our founders conceived of our polity as determinedly secular. It was not until the Great Awakenings of the early to mid 1800s that Christianity assumed the character of a shibboleth in our public discourse. And the "Under God" and "In God We Trust" memes are Twentieth Century inventions, which have only been part of our national fabric for about 70 of our nearly 250 year history. Second, for all your talk of heresy, you miss the obvious fact that American Evangelical Protestantism, with its Prosperity Gospel doctrine and its perverse twisting of the doctrine of election into an us vs. them political/social context (we are the elect on Earth, all others are hellbound) is itself the foremost Christian heresy of our time. > > Jocelyn commented December 12 Vista, CA There are many troubling aspects to this essay, but perhaps the most troubling is the author’s assertion that what paganism (and this term, as applied to the wide range of practices and beliefs referred to here, is not unproblematic) may appeal to the wealthy and well-off, but what those who are impoverised and suffering need is help. I was nodding along until it became clear that what he meant by “help” is belief in divine intervention and/or an afterlife. This completely misses the point that an understanding of the world as infused with divinity calls - in fact, obligates - us to take better care of it and one another. Christianity has not historically done a good job of this, and has, unfortunately, used promises of heaven and threats of hell to keep people from seeking a more harmonious relationship with one another and the planet as a whole in this lifetime. To judge what he calls paganism through the lens of Christianity both misses the point, and attempts to colonize the term and practices associated with it, turning them into just another Christian sect. > > Emma commented December 12 Indiana There is this interesting notion at the end of the article -- that there is comfort that the "old way" dictated by the Bible and its interpretation have not been eclipsed by paganism. I find the opposite comforting. The old way, which served a specific societal master and has been used in every era as a cudgel against racial, religious (ironically), and sexual minorities, was not wholly positive. It should be comforting that the essence of spirituality in the global north is being reworked in a more equitable fashion. You will probably find that today's spiritual adherents are unwittingly closer to the teachings of Jesus than the religious zealots that claim to be so godly in their actions. > > LJ commented December 12 MA Overlooked in your essay is the individualizing of spiritual practices—so Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus may attend a meditation or “satsang” group together, for example. Or non-Jews adopt Kabbalah traditions, etc. People are cobbling together practices from various religions and activities to express and develop their spiritual sides (even Non-believers can appreciate a walk on the beach....) The commonality all the “great” religions share is that the foundation is Love, and that all we are here to “get,” whether Christian, Atheist, Agnostic, Muslim, Humanist, Capitalist, Marxist, etc., is to love one another. That is the sum total of the Game of Life. > > jim kunstler commented December 12 Saratoga Springs, NY Andrew Sullivan got it right in NY Magazine this week when he noted that Wokesterism is the replacement du jour for Christianity. It has its sacred characters (identity groups) and a notion of original sin (white privilege), and requires sinners to apologize abjectly... but is absolutely unforgiving. That’s how crazy we have become. > > Androculus commented December 12 Far Left Don't worry, Ross, Catholicism and paganism can exist side by side, as they have for centuries in New Orleans. Good Catholics here, without conflict or contradiction, can also practice Voodoo, because the two religions compliment each other. In fact, they are so interrelated that the saints of one (Virgin Mary, St. Patrick ) are seen as the gods and goddesses of the other (Maitress Erzuli, Dambala Wedo). Just let people be, Ross; they can figure out what makes them happy or gives them comfort. > > Joseph Huben commented December 12 Upstate NY Pagan? Witches? Neither existed as concepts before Christianity and the “demonization” of all beliefs or ways of life that was not “Christian” as defined by “Christians”. Is Douthat condemning or demonizing or belittling all non-Christians? Are all Hindus or Buddhists or Taoists pagans? They all pre-dated Christianity and were designated pagan by early “Church Fathers”. “modern societies inevitably put away religious ideas as they advance in wealth and science and reason, and the decline of institutional religion is just a predictable feature of a general late-modern turn away from supernatural belief.” Supernatural belief is protected by the First Amendment. So is “putting away religious ideas” in favor of science and reason. Could the clinging to “religious ideas” be the real problem? In the world today we all recognize that religious fervor is the source of global terror. And where denial of science and reason are incited to prevent remedies to global warming, poverty, hunger and disease they have the “unintended” consequences we live with? Marx said religion is the opiate of the people. He was wrong. Religion is the enemy of reason and science and the exploited wedge that justifies savage cruelty. > > Dave commented December 12 Boston As a scholar of Religious Studies, I’m sorry to report that it’s my opinion that Mr. Douthat’s propositions are rather uninformed. He is captivated by a picture of religions as a set of discrete beliefs about the nature of the divine or supernatural. This way of thinking about religion is a product of 19th century taxonomies, a mode that still has a lot of popular pull today but that is generally discredited in scholarship. More troublingly, he seems to think that it makes sense to speak about what “we Americans” believe, relying upon an uncritical assessment of vaguely worded polls. The United States is and always has been composed of an incredible diversity of beliefs, making such generalizations about allegedly epochal shifts extremely difficult to make with any accuracy. More often than not, these kind of generalizations reflect the preoccupations of the one making them, rather than anything about the actual state of affairs. > > David Patin commented December 12 Bloomington, IN To the list of religious trends in the United States in Douthat’s first paragraph I would have added a political party that teams up with a religious denomination to force the tenets of that faith on everyone else. Yet it isn’t just forcing the tenets of their faith on everyone else, it’s also declaring that anyone who doesn’t agree with their dogma is somehow less American than they are. And from some of the more extreme members of this Republican/Religious Party, those who don’t believe just like them are bringing about the decline of the United States. That this forcing of faith on others might possibly be contributing to the secularization of the United States somehow Ross Douthat can’t imagine. > > esp commented December 12 ILL Confusing. Does one have to choose between "religion" or paganism? Can't one just "be". Be spiritual, yet not have a tag, like "religious" or pagan? Can't people exist spiritually without reading "self-help" books, or reading a religious text like the Bible or worshiping nature. Or perhaps people could find some things helpful in "self-help" books, a religious text, and/or a walk in nature. Wisdom can be found in all of these without having to be "religious" or "pagan"? Do we need to worship something? > > Ellen commented December 12 Williamburg One of the benefits of paganism is that most forms of it are nature and earth centered in belief. In a time of climate change provoked by neglect and abuse of our shared environment, we could use more religion that offers respect for Mother Earth and the natural processes that have allowed living forms to largely thrive until our time. > > candideinnc commented December 12 spring hope, n.c. I chuckled at the characterization of the burgeoning secularists in America as being the gullible victims of "self-help gurus and spiritual-political entrepreneurs." Oh my goodness, no, Mr. Douthat! We do not need shamans and priests to encourage us to be skeptics. We are actually capable of rational thought, all under our own power. We are not little children who are indoctrinated with the superstition that if we are good little boys and girls, we will go up in the sky back in the arms of Mommy and Daddy, all under the benevolent supervision of the great, long bearded patriarch sky daddy. We are fully capable of distinguishing between fables and reality under our own power. > > PJ commented December 12 Salt Lake City Thank you Mr. Douthat for another challenging and interesting read. I too think about the decline of Christianity in the United States, but have not come across a lot of anecdotal evidence suggesting the rise of paganism. No doubt you are better versed in theological studies than I am, but I would bet I interact with far more individuals than you do as I work as an ER clinical social worker. I rarely meet individuals who claim to be Pagan, though I have met 1 or 2 Wiccans over the course of many years. I meet many individuals who express spirituality and also disdain for organized religion of any sort. The fact that they search for God in nature, the universe, and not inside a church, does not mean they are Pagan - which would be traditionally defined as believing in many Gods. I rarely meet individuals who believe in many Gods... The more likely hypothesis, I believe, is that people are being pushed out of Protestant, Mormon, Catholic, and other Christian churches because those religions continue to line up more with the political right, their values and prejudices, than the values and teachings of Jesus Christ. I long for the fellowship of religion, the ceremonies and rituals, but I will not pay tithes to any church that excludes people because of their identity, and is loyal to the political right. A kind man once told me: "if there were a true church of Christ in our midst, there wouldn't be people dying in our streets from the cold". There are... > > reaylward commented December 12 st simons island, ga Douthat misidentifies what's happening to religious, in particular Christian, institutions: it isn't a rise in secularization but sectarianism, the sectarianism practiced by the growing movement of independent evangelical churches. One is either a member and believer, or one isn't really a Christian. These churches are usually led by a highly charismatic minister, a cultish figure who determines the beliefs and practices to be followed and who has unquestioned authority, both as the result of his or her charisma and the absence of any hierarchy above him or her to which to answer. The only authority above the minister is God, and the minister is the mediator between the minister and his followers. These are by far the fastest growing Christian churches, and their increasing numbers come at the expense of mainline protestant churches (Methodist, Presbyterian, etc.). It's not a big leap from such cultish churches to a political cult, which helps explain Trump's overwhelming popularity and support among the members. > > Didier commented December 12 Charleston, WV Perform this experiment. Over the next few months, visit several mainline Protestant churches where you live. Don't worry; they will welcome you. But, what you will generally see are older congregations, empty pews, and large structures in need of repair. The membership of mainline Protestant churches and particularly regular church attendance is cratering. I read an article recently that said, demographically, there are only about 23 Easters left for mainline Protestant churches. But, as I've sat in many of those churches for the last few years and looked around, and heard the few left decrying their decline, something has occurred to me. What if this isn't what God wants? What if hierarchical organizations and large buildings were a mistake? Something that satisfied human aspirations, but not spiritual ones. There will always be those, like me, whose lives are, in part, a search for the divine, but it is time to look and listen and reevaluate what it means to be a searcher. I will still go to church because it is there I find something -- even if it is one I have never attended before -- that I cannot personally find elsewhere. But, I do not begrudge those who choose a different path. I celebrate the journey, the search for the divine. > > Norwester commented December 12 Seattle Douthat suggests that Judeo-Christian religions offer "help" where paganism does not, in a "universe that offers suffering and misery in abundance." Christianity may offer opium to sufferers, but it does nothing to allay suffering and misery in any permanent way. No religion does. As Harris says, only when we recognize that there is no supernatural solution and we humans are accountable for solving our own problems will we actually band together and solve them. In the mean time, we'll throw bones at the poor, fight over magic books, fail in stewardship of our planet and waste time, money and resources on superstition, incense and prayer, none of which have any real benefit whatsoever. > > Paul commented December 12 Richmond VA Call me a pagan, but the idea of a divine that pervades the universe strikes me as much more meaningful and profound than the notion that this is all the result of the snap some celestial magician’s fingers. If we don’t seek the divine within us and all things, we’ll never find the divine without. Relying on an external divinity, though, leads inevitably to the widespread practice of what Niebuhr called “bad religion” — religion that reserves the ultimate sanction for itself. That road starts with the Crusades and leads remorselessly to 9/11. > > > > Jim Wiegel > “That which consumes me is not man, nor the earth, nor the heavens, but the flame which consumes man, earth, and sky." Nikos Kazantzakis > > 401 North Beverly Way,Tolleson, Arizona 85353 > 623-363-3277 > jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com > www.partnersinparticipation.com > _______________________________________________ > OE mailing list > OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net

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Re: [Dialogue] Fwd: Witness- Birthday
by Richard Alton 14 Dec '18

14 Dec '18

Wow, gravesweeping is something I will look into Thanks, Dick Sent from my iPhone > On Dec 14, 2018, at 8:06 AM, mary hampton via Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: > > Thank you Dick and Jack. A great way to start my day. Yesterday Stuart and I spent the day driving to and from Abilene and Albany with my mom for what the Chinese call gravesweeping. To put new remembrances on family graves. > > Care as deep value speaks to me. > > mary > > Sent from Mail for Windows 10 > > From: Jack Gilles via Dialogue > Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2018 11:13 PM > To: Dialogue Listserve > Cc: Jack Gilles > Subject: Re: [Dialogue] Fwd: Witness- Birthday > > Dick, superb witness! > > A little reflection on your context on the struggle with an organizations core values. An organization is not a conscious entity. It is a creative collection of people about something. Its value system is about how it goes about doing that task. So its value system is clearly contextual. It may value speed, or innovation, or quality, or design, or flexibility, simplicity, etc. It is what enables them to do what they do exceptionally well. Organizations should have a limited number so that those values enable the collective capacity and all can easily speak about the corporate culture. I refer to these values by having a small ‘v’. > > Individuals also have small ‘v’ values. They usually govern our behavior and tend to be related to our priorities in life. Most people put high value on their family, health, career, job, and how they are seen as human beings. But they may or not be Universal Values. Let me illustrate with my own life. For many years I saw myself as having a value of care. I tried to be such a person in situations that confronted me. Life became a budgeting task as there were many things I cared about. I felt my budget was pretty well balanced, but there were occasions where I had to make adjustments, mainly regarding family. > > I thought I had care, but then Life hit me hard, and I discovered that I didn’t have care, Care has me. Care (C) is Universal Value, it is just the way Life is. And when Care has you, it will take you where you do not want to go. I believe there are five Universal Values; Care (we often call that Love), Mercy, Justice, Compassion and Truth. The trouble comes when we try and define what these mean. They are just words, and words are the vehicle of the left brain rational knowing. But Universal Values are the domain of the right brain, and that brain is mute. It “knows” and communicates in a different way. It is the domain of our relationship to the Mystery, TWLI, or G-O-D. Therefore we can never be sure our response will be “right”, for we are not GOD, we are the instrument of the Mystery. And it is our requirement therefore to act, take responsibility and then render the deed to history. > > We grow in our understanding of these things, that is what the Journey is all about. We grow in our ability to understand what it means to be a child of the Mystery and a servant of the Mystery. And sometimes it takes a fall on a bike to remind us the Truth of that fact. > > Peace brother! > > Jack > > > > > > > On Dec 13, 2018, at 21:29, Richard Alton via Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: > > > Oh My God, Life > …the things that happen in life are astonishing..being driven to and fro by the mystery.. a few recent examples > > I attended part of the ICA USA Board meeting last month. We broke up into small groups and I was in a group with John Cock II. He and I were in Kenya together. I think it was John’s 9th grade trip. I was impressed to hear him rattle off the villages he worked in: Kwangware, Kamweleni and Mugumwoini...just like he had been there yesterday. John was a great addition. Probably, the first Board member literally born into the organization- now an urban engineer with a focus on bike trails. Had his middle school daughter with him. I wonder when she is going abroad. > > The afternoon I was there, the Board brainstormed ICA core values- things like community development, ToP methods, being a learning organization, even poverty, chastity and obedience. I struggled with this question of core values. I think the core of the core is the ability to give a witness.. to stand present to one’s life and the amazing things revealed or that happen to one…the mystery at work in one’s life. > > Like on Halloween night I was coming home late at night on my bike and ran right onto a big pile of leaves- it knocked me off my bike, split my lip and banged up my ribs. I made it home but the next day was having trouble breathing so went to the hospital. They performed a CT scan. There were no broken ribs, but the scan showed that I had spots on my lungs...so this all happened to catch my attention about my lungs... and on Halloween (the Day of the Dead). > > The second part of my Halloween leaf event: it seems the leaves grabbed my phone- so the day after the fall, I could not find my phone- that really hurt. I went back to all the places I had been including the leaf place but no phone. Finally, after I had given up Sally asked me, “doesn’t Apple have an app that will help you find a lost phone?” so on my computer I found the lost apple link and sure enough on the screen map there was a flashing signal. It was about a 100 yards from where I fell. So I follow the map and there is my cell on the curb like it had been waiting for me… think those leaves put it there. Is this not The Other World in the midst of this world…a Visit to the Land of Mystery? > > These Visits seem to come in 3s. I work on the One Earth Film Fest through which we show environmental movies all over greater Chicago and engage people in conversation and action in response to the films. So I received an email from a Dexter Watson at St Malachi/Precious Blood Parish about showing a movie. I set up a meeting with Dexter on the Westside of Chicago. It turns out Dexter is not only the parish coordinator but also the former Alderman of the area. And yes, Fifth City is in his former Aldermanic area. In fact, one of Dexter’s favorite people and a mentor was the late Verdell Trice, the head of the Fifth City Auto Center and board member of the Preschool. Dexter even tried to have a street named after Verdell at one time. This is the second time I have been driven back to 5th City. You know we are going to have a great film fest event there. > > Dick Alton, introduced to the mystery in December,1968 and working with the mystery on the future of planet Earth ever since. Oak Park, Illinois > > > _______________________________________________ > Dialogue mailing list > Dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net

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Re: [Dialogue] Fwd: Witness- Birthday
by Marianna Bailey 14 Dec '18

14 Dec '18

Thank you, Dick. A beautiful witness to life. By the way, Happy Birthday! Marianna Bailey Sent from my iPad > On Dec 14, 2018, at 9:06 AM, mary hampton via Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: > > Thank you Dick and Jack. A great way to start my day. Yesterday Stuart and I spent the day driving to and from Abilene and Albany with my mom for what the Chinese call gravesweeping. To put new remembrances on family graves. > > Care as deep value speaks to me. > > mary > > Sent from Mail for Windows 10 > > From: Jack Gilles via Dialogue > Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2018 11:13 PM > To: Dialogue Listserve > Cc: Jack Gilles > Subject: Re: [Dialogue] Fwd: Witness- Birthday > > Dick, superb witness! > > A little reflection on your context on the struggle with an organizations core values. An organization is not a conscious entity. It is a creative collection of people about something. Its value system is about how it goes about doing that task. So its value system is clearly contextual. It may value speed, or innovation, or quality, or design, or flexibility, simplicity, etc. It is what enables them to do what they do exceptionally well. Organizations should have a limited number so that those values enable the collective capacity and all can easily speak about the corporate culture. I refer to these values by having a small ‘v’. > > Individuals also have small ‘v’ values. They usually govern our behavior and tend to be related to our priorities in life. Most people put high value on their family, health, career, job, and how they are seen as human beings. But they may or not be Universal Values. Let me illustrate with my own life. For many years I saw myself as having a value of care. I tried to be such a person in situations that confronted me. Life became a budgeting task as there were many things I cared about. I felt my budget was pretty well balanced, but there were occasions where I had to make adjustments, mainly regarding family. > > I thought I had care, but then Life hit me hard, and I discovered that I didn’t have care, Care has me. Care (C) is Universal Value, it is just the way Life is. And when Care has you, it will take you where you do not want to go. I believe there are five Universal Values; Care (we often call that Love), Mercy, Justice, Compassion and Truth. The trouble comes when we try and define what these mean. They are just words, and words are the vehicle of the left brain rational knowing. But Universal Values are the domain of the right brain, and that brain is mute. It “knows” and communicates in a different way. It is the domain of our relationship to the Mystery, TWLI, or G-O-D. Therefore we can never be sure our response will be “right”, for we are not GOD, we are the instrument of the Mystery. And it is our requirement therefore to act, take responsibility and then render the deed to history. > > We grow in our understanding of these things, that is what the Journey is all about. We grow in our ability to understand what it means to be a child of the Mystery and a servant of the Mystery. And sometimes it takes a fall on a bike to remind us the Truth of that fact. > > Peace brother! > > Jack > > > > > > > On Dec 13, 2018, at 21:29, Richard Alton via Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: > > > Oh My God, Life > …the things that happen in life are astonishing..being driven to and fro by the mystery.. a few recent examples > > I attended part of the ICA USA Board meeting last month. We broke up into small groups and I was in a group with John Cock II. He and I were in Kenya together. I think it was John’s 9th grade trip. I was impressed to hear him rattle off the villages he worked in: Kwangware, Kamweleni and Mugumwoini...just like he had been there yesterday. John was a great addition. Probably, the first Board member literally born into the organization- now an urban engineer with a focus on bike trails. Had his middle school daughter with him. I wonder when she is going abroad. > > The afternoon I was there, the Board brainstormed ICA core values- things like community development, ToP methods, being a learning organization, even poverty, chastity and obedience. I struggled with this question of core values. I think the core of the core is the ability to give a witness.. to stand present to one’s life and the amazing things revealed or that happen to one…the mystery at work in one’s life. > > Like on Halloween night I was coming home late at night on my bike and ran right onto a big pile of leaves- it knocked me off my bike, split my lip and banged up my ribs. I made it home but the next day was having trouble breathing so went to the hospital. They performed a CT scan. There were no broken ribs, but the scan showed that I had spots on my lungs...so this all happened to catch my attention about my lungs... and on Halloween (the Day of the Dead). > > The second part of my Halloween leaf event: it seems the leaves grabbed my phone- so the day after the fall, I could not find my phone- that really hurt. I went back to all the places I had been including the leaf place but no phone. Finally, after I had given up Sally asked me, “doesn’t Apple have an app that will help you find a lost phone?” so on my computer I found the lost apple link and sure enough on the screen map there was a flashing signal. It was about a 100 yards from where I fell. So I follow the map and there is my cell on the curb like it had been waiting for me… think those leaves put it there. Is this not The Other World in the midst of this world…a Visit to the Land of Mystery? > > These Visits seem to come in 3s. I work on the One Earth Film Fest through which we show environmental movies all over greater Chicago and engage people in conversation and action in response to the films. So I received an email from a Dexter Watson at St Malachi/Precious Blood Parish about showing a movie. I set up a meeting with Dexter on the Westside of Chicago. It turns out Dexter is not only the parish coordinator but also the former Alderman of the area. And yes, Fifth City is in his former Aldermanic area. In fact, one of Dexter’s favorite people and a mentor was the late Verdell Trice, the head of the Fifth City Auto Center and board member of the Preschool. Dexter even tried to have a street named after Verdell at one time. This is the second time I have been driven back to 5th City. You know we are going to have a great film fest event there. > > Dick Alton, introduced to the mystery in December,1968 and working with the mystery on the future of planet Earth ever since. Oak Park, Illinois > > > _______________________________________________ > Dialogue mailing list > Dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net

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half price books at ICA store
by Lynda C 14 Dec '18

14 Dec '18

In case you missed the ICA-e News today, with its amazing story of the 5th year of CSLN ( Chicago Sustainability Leaders Network), go back and look again. Of other interest is this special sale of ICA books in stock...maybe for a Christmas gift. Lynda C. With more than fifty years of leading human-centered community development and social change movements worldwide, there is a lot to know about ICA. Thankfully, much of that history and unearthed insights have been documented, organized, and published by ICA colleagues. Now through the end of January, 2019, use the code IMPACT when purchasing through the ICA online store to get 50% off classic texts such as Pilgrimage<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0016xSlxnmrGAR1jN7TPqsJPBgwDjDawT2xdVKZNlWkbr-i…>, The Circle of Life<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0016xSlxnmrGAR1jN7TPqsJPBgwDjDawT2xdVKZNlWkbr-i…>, and A Chronological History of the EI &ICA<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0016xSlxnmrGAR1jN7TPqsJPBgwDjDawT2xdVKZNlWkbr-i…>. Please note that only books in the ICA Classics category are eligible for this discount. Visit our store<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0016xSlxnmrGAR1jN7TPqsJPBgwDjDawT2xdVKZNlWkbr-i…>

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