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Website Archive Collection Framework
by Karen Snyder (via Google Docs) 28 Nov '18

28 Nov '18

I've shared an item with you: Website Archive Collection Framework https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w3oQkQQEY_cSwsG-61h1unccKcRk8nVejb9azda… It's not an attachment -- it's stored online. To open this item, just click the link above. Greetings from the ICA Global Archives Team, We are focused on re-creating the Global Archives Website to be launched March 2019. Archival material is now organized in nine collections under three pillars called the Archives Website Collection Framework. We now invite your feedback and input: Please comment on this framework. Click on the blue button below to see the brainstorm of items within each collection. Email us stories that were life-changing for you or, that you saw transformed the lives of others. You may have effective models, documents that still communicate ‘how tos’ that could be learned from. Rather than sending boxes of materials, we know that many of you now have the capacity to scan documents into PDF files. This is the best way to send info you wish to share. Snail mail still works, but is not as efficient relative to ensuring the information is transferred to the website. Email stories and PDF documents to Jean Long (jean.long512(a)gmail.com) who will forward to the appropriate collection. We hope to hear from you soon so that you can be a part of the Website launch this coming March. Peace, The Archives Team

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11/22/18, Progressing Spirit: Felton/Spong: A Conversation with Bishop John Shelby Spong: Part 3 “On Conservatives, Liberals, and the Way Forward”
by Ellie Stock 22 Nov '18

22 Nov '18

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!important;line-height:125% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv1765969432 h4{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv1765969432 .yiv1765969432mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv1765969432mcnTextContent, #yiv1765969432 .yiv1765969432mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv1765969432mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv1765969432 #yiv1765969432templatePreheader{ display:block !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv1765969432 #yiv1765969432templatePreheader .yiv1765969432mcnTextContent, #yiv1765969432 #yiv1765969432templatePreheader .yiv1765969432mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv1765969432 #yiv1765969432templateHeader .yiv1765969432mcnTextContent, #yiv1765969432 #yiv1765969432templateHeader .yiv1765969432mcnTextContent p{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv1765969432 #yiv1765969432templateBody .yiv1765969432mcnTextContent, #yiv1765969432 #yiv1765969432templateBody .yiv1765969432mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv1765969432 #yiv1765969432templateFooter .yiv1765969432mcnTextContent, #yiv1765969432 #yiv1765969432templateFooter .yiv1765969432mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } The following is taken from an interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong on September 18th, 2018. Recorded at his home in Richmond, Virginia. | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | A Conversation with Bishop John Shelby Spong: Part 3 “On Conservatives, Liberals, and the Way Forward” Column by Rev. David M. Felten November 22, 2018 The following is taken from an interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong on September 18th, 2018. Recorded at his home in Richmond, Virginia, it has been edited for length and thematic focus. David Felten: You’ve talked about how hard it is for people to grasp what is meant when we’re talking about atheism or non-theism. There’s another word that a lot of people aren’t completely happy with but it’s the one we’ve kind of been shackled with. Is there a word other than “progressive” we can use – another approach? Jack Spong: Yeah. Progressive. That’s like talking about liberal and conservative. There is no such things as a liberal scholar or a conservative scholar. There is a scholar. You take the scholarship and it goes wherever scholarship leads. Then you can relate to those conclusions in a liberal way or a conservative way, but you don’t have liberal or conservative scholarship. I did a radio interview with Jerry Falwell one time and he was introduced as a conservative biblical scholar. He wasn’t a conservative biblical scholar, he was an illiterate biblical scholar, but for me to say that about Jerry would not have been appreciated because it would not have been considered nice. Jerry’s long dead and he’s probably a lot wiser today than he used to be. I always thought he was a “good ol’ boy.” He wasn’t an evil man, he was just an illiterate man and a good showman. At Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg he put on a show every week and it was really wonderful to watch. He’d have the chaplain of Bourbon Street come and talk and he’d have somebody wrestle with a bear. It was a big show every week and he packed that place. The Lynchburg paper built him up because he was a conservative pastor. When I was in Lynchburg with him, he was really a racist. He started Liberty Baptist College as a segregation academy. It’s not a segregation academy anymore. He tried to grow on the gay issue, but he could not quite make it. A ghost writer wrote his autobiography… David Felten: Mel White. Jack Spong: Yes. Jerry hired Mel to write his autobiography because Jerry’s not a writer. While he was getting the data to write the book, Mel shadowed Jerry very closely for a year or two years, maybe three years. Then the book came out and Mel came out the same week! Jerry suddenly realized that he’d been in pretty close association with a gay person for years. Mel tried to get him to agree to talk with a born again Christian gay person, but Jerry didn’t believe there was such a thing. You know, “You can’t be a born again Christian and a gay person at the same time.” But Mel got a bunch of these gay Christians to come down to Lynchburg and Jerry agreed to have dinner with them and to talk with them. I think it was about the year 2000 and there was a religious right presidential candidate running in the primary, along with George Bush… David Felten: Gary Bauer? Jack Spong: Yeah. Gary Bauer. He began to put pressure on Jerry not to have dinner with those born again gay people. So, Jerry had a conversion experience, went to Mel White and said, “Well, I’ve given my word that I’d meet with them and I will. But I can’t eat with them because the Bible says you don’t eat with sinners.” And we said, “Well, who do you eat with then, Jerry? Do you ever eat alone? Are you able to do that?” — just to show the irrationality of that sort of thing. Well, I think Jerry was trying to grow in all of those areas. I liked him. I didn’t care for Pat Robertson. Pat Robertson was devious. He was a law school graduate; he was not dumb. He was the son of a Virginia senator. The senator was retired to private life by my first cousin in 1966, an interesting period of time in history. Jerry was just a good ol’ boy, and that’s all he was. Interestingly, his son is a University of Virginia Law School graduate and is now president of Liberty University. He’s conservative and applauding Trump all the time. But, he’s a jump ahead of where Jerry was and he is going to have children who are a jump ahead of where he now is. David Felten: And by “jump ahead” you mean? Jack Spong: More liberal. Jerry Falwell, Jr. couldn’t go to the University of Virginia’s law school without having some brains. That’s a good law school. But he’s caught in the world he’s living in. David Felten: Growing up, you were caught in a very particular world yourself. You’ve overcome so much of your conventional religious “programming.” Jack Spong: My earliest religious experiences were where I would bargain with God. I was age 12 and didn’t have a father. I had a “Heavenly Father” – and I bargained with God because if I did so-and-so, God would let the Charlotte Hornets win their baseball game that night. So, I really played this game all the way through then. David Felten: How did that work out? Jack Spong: Not so well. Yeah, not so well! I also remember when my father died – he died when I was 12 and I didn’t really know him, although I remember he didn’t have much use for church. But when he died the people from church came to me and said, “Your father is so lucky because now he’s gone to be with God.” But before he died those same people were saying my father’s never going to be with God because he did everything the church said you shouldn’t do: he drank too much, he played cards, he did all sorts of “evil” things. That’s part of my upbringing and where I began to move away from institutional Christianity. You can’t live by the way the church taught at that time. You just can’t do that. David Felten: In your Twelve Theses and your latest book, Unbelievable you’ve outlined a number of ways the church needs to “jump ahead.” If you had to make one thing a priority moving forward, what would it be? Jack Spong: I don’t know. I don’t know that you can chart it that way. I think you have to speak to the priority that is emerging because you are in the world and you can’t predict what issue will come up. I could be blatantly political and say, “If the Christian church doesn’t engage Donald Trump and his amoral behavior, there’s not going to be much left for us to do after he gets through.” But how do you engage Donald Trump? You’ve got do it with a strong person and that person’s going to get clobbered. He or she has not yet appeared. It’s not that Trump is conservative. We’ve had some great conservative leaders in our nation. Ronald Reagan didn’t hurt this nation. He was a strong leader, but he was a strong leader from a conservative point of view. Donald Trump is a strong leader from an amoral point of view – and he doesn’t know anything that isn’t in his own self-interest. That worries me a great deal. I don’t know how we’ll get through four years of this man. It’s strange listening to the news and it’s easy for me to understand why Trump thinks the media is all corrupt: the media is constantly bringing to the attention of the people of this nation what an inadequate person this man is in this office. I don’t know how he gets away with what he gets away with. He’s got five or six members of his administration already indicted and he keeps saying it’s a witch hunt. He is also an unindicted co-conspirator according to his former lawyer.. David Felten: It’s a hoax. Jack Spong: Yeah, it can’t be a witch hunt if you’ve indicted five or six people. We’ve got to live through some tough times and I don’t see anybody speaking truth to power today. I look to Republicans in congress to speak truth to power and they don’t. They leave – the senator from Tennessee, the senator from Arizona – they leave rather than take him on. And that’s sad. The Democrats are not much better. David Felten: What are some of the big questions you’re living with these days? Jack Spong: Well, I like the title “Living the Questions” (which you’ve made famous) because I think that’s what the church ought to be doing. We’ve portrayed ourselves as the institution that has all the answers, and that’s just not so. We have the questions and have to articulate those questions with honesty. David Felten: How about life in general? Jack Spong: In my present life, I have a sense of real contentment. I’ve done everything in my life that I wanted to do. I’ve loved being a priest and being a bishop – and I’ve loved being the kind of priest and bishop I was. I love the fact that I had 16 years since I retired and before I had the stroke, to be a very active person doing my thing, carrying my message, writing books, doing my weekly column. I don’t know why I would have any regrets. I don’t know if I’ll be alive a year from now. In a great sense it doesn’t really matter. What difference is a year or a year-and-a-half or two years going to make to the world? Not much. But I don’t have any regrets and don’t want to change anything. I will have some regrets: I’ll regret losing Chris. She is a fascinating woman. She’s been so deeply a part of my life that I don’t know who I am without her. She’ll get along fine: she’s the most competent woman I know. It is now easy living for us. We’re in a condominium and buying prepared meals – sort of one step closer to a retirement home. I told my doctors that if they couldn’t keep me alive for one year, it was not worth the move because moving is really a difficult thing to go through. But if I keep alive for a year I’ll be happy. And if I get two years, I’ll be happier. But I don’t feel anxious about it. It’s fun to be in my old church, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond. I hadn’t been to that church for 42 years. Can you imagine what it’s like to leave a church and come back to it 42 years later? The only people I know are elderly. Most of the people I don’t know at all. There’s a vigorous spirit there and I’m enjoying just simply being a member in the pew. I don’t force my opinions on anybody else. I’ve been here enough so they have a real sense of who I am and they’ve read my books. It is a joyful experience to be there on Sunday morning. I’m not trying to create anything there. I’m not concerned with creating a church in my own image. David Felten: …enjoying the privilege of just being there. Jack Spong: Yeah, just being. I hope I won’t be a problem to the next rector. If I am, I’ll have to leave. But I also loved being a member of St. Peter’s in Morristown, and I loved my rector there very much – and that’s all been a retirement experience. It’s been fun. David Felten: Well, you’ve been extremely accommodating and I appreciate you sharing so much. Jack Spong: I appreciate you, David, more than you know. You and Jeff Procter-Murphy have done for the Methodist church what I think I’ve been doing for the Episcopal church. David Felten: They haven’t made the mistake of making one of us a bishop though! Jack Spong: Well, one of my predecessors at St. Paul’s was Walter Russell Bowie, who taught at Union in New York for years and was rector of Grace Church in New York. He was elected bishop of Pennsylvania and turned it down. He had great sense to do that. He said being a bishop is a staff job and you have to leave the ministry to do it. If I hadn’t turned being bishop into a teaching role, I think I would have gone crazy. But it’s not a very happy job. I’d much rather be a rector of a parish and be with people in trouble, sorrow, need or sickness and any other adversity and watch the cycles go. I had a wonderful time at St. Paul’s. David Felten: Any closing advice as we finish up? Jack Spong: I would say that you have got to spend your time relating to the issues of your world – and I don’t know what they’re going to be. But if you can’t make the Christian church speak to the issues of the world, then it will quickly become irrelevant. David Felten: That kind of advice makes a lot of clergy nervous. Jack Spong: Well, that’s not a comfortable role to be in. I think most clergy seek comfort and it’s a rare group – maybe a minority, maybe 1% of the clergy – who see the way things are and are not content to just ask, “Why?” They dream of things that never were and ask, “Why not?” That puts you in a different mode. You have to be willing to be a change agent. But if you’re nothing but a change agent, after a while you wear out your congregation. They get tired of changing. But that’s the key, you’ve got to have that element in there. I would hope that the clergy would stay informed professionally and I think that means knowing the Bible. That sounds so strange but I go to church and I hear people say, “Our second lesson this morning comes from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.” Well. I immediately say, “But Paul didn’t write it! He had been dead ten years before Ephesians was written!” That is such a simple thing and there is no reason why we can’t be on top of that little detail. David Felten: Yeah, but those little details are intimidating to some folks. Added together, they may leave people with no other choice than having to change their understanding of the Bible. Jack Spong: Bible study is able to do that. I don’t see why people ever thought that the Christian stories were anything but myths. They didn’t develop for decades. You don’t have a star in the sky that sends off a message of a child being born, a star that moves, that has a GPS system that allows camels to follow it to the promised land. Or wise men hanging out in the wilderness because they know the Messiah is going to be born so they keep a good supply of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and a couple of camels around the place. It’s amazing to me that anybody ever thought that was anything other than a myth – it’s a glorious myth – but it’s a myth. And I think we ought to say that. Most people don’t believe in the virgin birth, either, but they don’t know what to do with it because it’s been crammed down their throats. It is the same thing with resurrection. We’ve confused resurrection with resuscitation and we’ve got people convinced that if they don’t believe in the resuscitation of Jesus they can’t be Christians. That’s absurd. Resurrection does not mean resuscitation. It’s a whole new word. That should be just elementary stuff for the Christian pastor. David Felten: It sounds like you’re touching on one of my soapbox issues: the expectation that pastors be honest. Jack Spong: Well, yeah, that’s right. An honest person would never present the virgin birth story as anything but a myth. It just doesn’t make sense any other way. The resurrection – the body of Jesus – doesn’t appear until Matthew’s gospel, that’s in the year 90. It’s resuscitation by that time and that’s what we’ve got people believing. Well, they misread Paul. Paul says, “If Christ be not raised, we are of all people most to be pitied.” I think that’s true, but it’s not resuscitation that he’s talking about. What is the role of miracles? There are no miracles in Paul and miracles don’t appear until Mark. Paul never knew Jesus as a miracle worker. You’ve got to go back to the Jewish root to see them. Did Judas exist? No, I don’t think he did. Every detail of the Judas story is a detail of an Old Testament “traitor story” applied to Judas. To name the traitor Judas (which is simply the Greek spelling of Judah) is just too clever. Then people say, “Well, why did Jesus die?” I think he was a radical that they executed to get rid of him. I think that’s what happens to most radicals. I feel very lucky to have survived. David Felten: I think you’re hitting on your favorite themes here with Judas having been a fictional character and Paul perhaps having– Jack Spong: …been a homosexual. David Felten: Yes! There’s a play-list of sensational Jack Spong ideas that, when people know your name even beyond the church, they say, “Oh yeah, he’s the one.” Jack Spong: That’s right. That’s right. It was a wonderful career… David Felten: Thank you so much. Jack Spong: …and thanks for coming by to spend some time with an old man. I hope you can make something out of that. ~ Rev. David M. Felten Click here to read online and to share your thoughts About the Author Rev. David M. Felten is a full-time pastor at The Fountains, a United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, Arizona. David and fellow United Methodist Pastor, Jeff Procter-Murphy, are the creators of the DVD-based discussion series for Progressive Christians, “Living the Questions”. A co-founder of the Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology and also a founding member of No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church and tries to stay connected to his roots as a musician. You’ll find him playing saxophones in a variety of settings, including appearances with the Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet. David and his wife Laura have three children. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Dear Friends, Your letters come in such numbers that if I responded to each one I would need a full time staff. I can assure you that every one of them is read and I try to pick the most interesting ones for publication. Using only one each week, however, means that inevitably most of your questions do not get the response that they deserve. For that reason, periodically, I devote a whole column to a series of your letters and their questions. I am doing that this week. The range of these questions is amazing. They go from trying to unload the hostility that has been associated with a particular biblical text, to a question about Mary Magdalene, to a quotation from the late Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, to a question on sexuality. I thank all of you for your letters and hope that this column will continue to elicit them from you. Enjoy the “dog days of summer.” ~ John Shelby Spong (Originally Published August 16, 2006) Questions Garnet and Douglas, Unity Ministers from Little Rock, Arkansas, write: “We know that it is generally known that Mark 16:9 to the end of that final chapter was a much later addition to Mark’s Gospel. Since the statement, ‘Go in to all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation’ is in that added segment and is USED as the excuse to ‘go into all the world and push certain religions on people.’ I am interested to know if there are any clues as to ‘who’ created this idea, when, and what was their real purpose?” Dear Garnet and Douglas, The quotation you cite is from one of two proposed endings that were attached to Mark in the early years of the second century. In the King James Version of the Bible they are still included in the text. In both the Revised Standard Version and in the New Revised Standard Version, these additions are either separate from the text or footnoted to inform the reader that they are not part of the earliest Marcan documents that we possess. The verse you cite (Mark 16:15) is thus not regarded as authentic Marcan material. A close reading of these added verses makes it clear that a later editor was attempting to harmonize Mark with several of the later gospel accounts. The original “Go into all the world” text is found originally in the second resurrection story told by Matthew (Matthew 28: 16-20) so the person who wrote this new ending to Mark took it from there. Matthew’s version has come to be called “The Great Commission” or “The Divine Commission.” Since Matthew is the originator of this phrase, to answer your question we need to understand what it meant to Matthew. There is no doubt that these texts have been used throughout history to justify missionary and conversion activities that are less than edifying, to say nothing about being out of touch with the spirit of Jesus. Matthew was the most Jewish of all the gospel writers. It is terribly important to him to show the Jewishness of Jesus. That is why he opens his narrative with a genealogy of Jesus that grounds Jesus’ very DNA in the line from Abraham to King David, to the Exile and finally through Joseph to Jesus. That is also why Matthew wraps Jesus in the Scriptures of the Hebrew people. “This was done that it might be fulfilled that was spoken by the prophet,” is a regular refrain in Matthew’s gospel. This is also why even the Wise Men in Matthew’s gospel are forced to consult the Jewish Scriptures before they know that the new King of the Jews is to be born in Bethlehem. However, this intensely Jewish Jesus is wrapped in an interpretive envelope that Matthew uses to show that although Jesus arose from the Jews and fulfilled the expectations of the Jews, his ultimate purpose was to bind the human community into one community in which there were no barriers of tribe, race, or national identity. The first part of that envelope is the story of the Star of Bethlehem. Matthew, following a long time Jewish practice, says that a star announced the birth of Jesus. The unique thing about the star is that it shines not just on the land of the Jews but is seen across the world. That star draws the world, in the persons of the Magi, into the worship of this Jewish Jesus. Jesus called all people to step beyond their boundaries into a universal humanity. This vision also fulfilled the original call of the Jews. They were not the Chosen people as a sign of privilege, they were chosen to be the people through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Matthew proceeds to tell the story of Jesus from his baptism to his crucifixion and resurrection. In this narrative, the barriers that divide human beings fall before Jesus. A new humanity bound together only by love is portrayed. The Jesus invitation is, “Come unto me all ye,” not, “some of ye.” A barrier separating anyone from the God met in Jesus would destroy all that Jesus stood for. So Matthew comes to the very end, the last five verses of his gospel in which the first and only time he has the risen Christ speak. His message is simple, “Go into all the world!” Go to those who are different, who you previously have called gentiles, unclean, uncircumcised and proclaim to them the message of the universal love of God. Tell them about God’s love that transcends all human barriers and all human limitations. That is still the purpose of the Christian Church – to proclaim the love of God for all that God has made. Only when Christianity identified its message with particular beliefs about God and Jesus that needed to be imposed on others in order to be saved do we get the kind of missionary imperative about which you speak in your question. That attitude is about as far away from Jesus’ original meaning as one can get. You cannot love a person when you say to them, “My religion is better than yours so I intend to impose my religion on you.” You cannot proclaim the love of God if you approach someone under the stance, “I’m OK, you’re not OK. And you will not be OK until you are just like me!” Unfortunately, that is what so much of the missionary activity of the Church has tended to do. Henrietta writes: “I am currently reading a book about Mary Magdalene written by Bruce Chilton that has a map in the beginning of the book that clearly shows a town of Magdala that is in Galilee. He states that Mary Magdala is from that village of about 3000 people. It is an extremely interesting book. Can you please explain your reason for not believing in a village of Magdala? (you might find a lot of food for thought in this book as well.) Thank you.” Dear Henrietta, Bruce Chilton is a good friend and admired colleague. He has accepted common wisdom and common maps on the subject of Magdala. There is no evidence that there was ever such a place but because Magdalene was interpreted to be Magdala, efforts have been made to find a town that might have been called by a different name. Dalmanutha is the favorite candidate. Truth was not served in that enterprise but the tourist industry was. I wonder why people would not have said Mary of Magdala in the New Testament if ‘Magdalene’ meant her place of origin. They knew how to say Jesus of Nazareth, Paul of Tarsus, and Peter of Bethsaida. Why not say, Mary of Magdala? They did not, I am convinced, because that was not what Magdalene meant. Only two names have words attached to them in the New Testament that are written as if those words are part of their names. They are Judas Iscariot and Mary Magdalene. Once people argued that “Iscariot” meant that Judas came from the village of Kerioth and that Magdalene meant Mary came from the village of Magdala. I do not believe that either claim can be substantiated. So I think Bruce is wrong – so are most of the sources I looked at on the Internet that struggle to identify the location of the mythical Magdala. To pretend that Magdalene means she hails from Magdala hides something of the true meaning of Mary Magdalene that I think comes from the Hebrew word, Migdal, which originally meant a large tower which shepherds climbed to keep watch over their sheep. In time the word came to mean large in the sense of being great. I think the attaching of Magdalene to Mary was an affectionate way the early disciples referred to her and it meant ‘Mary the great’ or the great Mary. Her place in the early Christian movement was far higher than that assigned to her by the later church that invented the idea that she was a prostitute. Thankfully we are just now beginning to recover something of her original stature. Bill from Norfolk, VA, asks: “Would you please comment on the late Roman Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s comment that, ‘Since God is just, I believe there is a hell; since God is merciful, I believe there is no one in it’.” Dear Bill, Fulton Sheen was expressing his hope in such a way so as not to contradict the teaching authority of his Church. It was a good compromise. Yet the idea that either hell or heaven is a place to which people go is a part of the human experience of limited language. We are beings, God is Being itself but in human language we conceptualize God as a Being, for that is all we understand. We are creatures bound by time and place and so we describe life beyond this life in terms of linear, spatial concepts. We have no other language. The problem arises when we assume our language is literally true. It isn’t. If God is life then heaven is life in God, Hell is life apart from God. It is about relationships not about space. Is anyone apart from God? That is not for me to say. Do we have the capacity to say a final and ultimate “No” to God? I suppose that is theoretically possible. The Church has always used both heaven and hell as promise and threat in the task of behavior control. Bishop Sheen’s answer comes out of that mindset. I find those categories meaningless. If we would stop worrying about other people and concentrate on our own relationship with God and others, we would have a better world. S. M. Cornwall of Exeter, England, writes: “In your recent talk in Exeter, the implication seemed to be that homosexuality is either a chosen path (and thus undesirable/reprehensible) or unchosen (and thus not reprehensible). Is it not possible that, for some individuals, homosexuality is chosen but not thereby inherently reprehensible? To say otherwise risks the implication that homosexuals are only homosexual because they have no choice and that if they had a choice, they would probably choose heterosexuality. ‘Nature’ as a category is highly problematic but there do appear other ‘unchosen’ human impulses (e.g. exploitative sexual activity), which are still not viewed as ‘desirable.’ Dear S. M. Cornwall, It seems to me that your letter misunderstands two things. First, if sexual orientation is a given then it cannot be something judged as evil simply because it is a minority expression of our humanity. Homosexuality/heterosexuality is like skin color, racial characteristics and lefthandedness/righthandedness. It is a given in life, something to be accepted as that which is. It is true that the boundary between the genders in all of nature is not near as severe as we once thought it was but none of that is now seen as unnatural or abnormal. When you then move on to exploitative sexual behavior or, as some have argued to an innate propensity for alcoholism that they suggest is also “unchosen,” you have introduced a whole new element and confused the discussion. Exploitative sexual behavior and alcoholism both have a victim. Someone’s humanity is diminished by this behavior including certainly the humanity of the sexual exploiter or the alcoholic. Homosexuality surely can be acted out in such a way as to produce a victim but it may also be acted out in such a way as to enhance life for both partners. What we forget in our prejudice is that the same thing can be said for heterosexuality. Both sexual orientations are morally neutral. Both can be expressed in moral and in immoral ways. It is harder to do that when society condemns one that is the minority orientation and says that no expression of that orientation is ever good. No exploitative behavior is ever desirable. No self-destructive behavior is ever desirable. Sexual orientation is not, per se, exploitative. That is a difference not to be confused. ~ John Shelby Spong Click here to read and share online | | | | | | | | Announcements 4 Ways to Compassion in the City this Holiday Season Spirituality & Practice's Online Course is from November 26th to December 23rd. Wen we are able to find our inner peace, and then reach out to others with kindness and appreciation, this holiday season in the city can become something truly nourishing. Click here for more information/registration... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Islander Club, Enid
by Terry Bergdall 15 Nov '18

15 Nov '18

Many on this list have first-hand experience in the Marshall Islands while others have heard countless stories. Therefore, I thought some might be interested in this story from my hometown, Enid, Oklahoma. It has become a major immigrant destination for Marshallese in the US. Who'd a guessed? Certainly not me! Terry Bergdall

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11/15/18, Progressing Spirit: Felton and Spong: A Conversation with Bishop John Shelby Spong: Part 2 “On Revolutions and Relationships”
by Ellie Stock 15 Nov '18

15 Nov '18

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!important;line-height:125% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 h4{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 .yiv9354090223mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent, #yiv9354090223 .yiv9354090223mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templatePreheader{ display:block !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templatePreheader .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent, #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templatePreheader .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templateHeader .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent, #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templateHeader .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent p{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templateBody .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent, #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templateBody .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templateFooter .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent, #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templateFooter .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } The following is taken from an interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong on September 18th, 2018. | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | A Conversation with Bishop John Shelby Spong: Part 2 “On Revolutions and Relationships” Column by Rev. David M. Felten February 21, 2018The following is taken from an interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong on September 18th, 2018. Recorded at his home in Richmond, Virginia, it has been edited for length and thematic focus.David Felten: Despite conflict and resistance, you’ve managed to help “move the needle” on a number of issues over the course of your career. Where do you think you’ve had the biggest impact?Jack Spong: Well, I think they’re all the same issue, but with different manifestations. The first one was race. We are ethnic people and the first thing we had to do was to get beyond racial identity.I grew up in the South in a very segregated world. I didn’t know how racist I was, but I was always uncomfortable with it. I remember when I was about three years old, my father hired two men to help him build a brick wall in the side yard. He told me I could help them and I looked forward to that. When the day came, the two men arrived, and they were both Negroes. Black men. One was an older black man, and one was a younger black man, his helper. During the course of that morning, as I was helping, this older black man said something to me. I don’t remember what it was. And I responded the way I’d been taught to respond to my elders: I said, “Yes, sir.” Or, “No, sir.” I don’t remember which.My father stopped what he was doing, hauled me physically into the house, sat me down and told me, “You do not say ‘sir’ to a Negro.” That was in the 1930s. I didn’t know what that meant. My father taught me to say “sir” to my elders. This man was my elder. I didn’t understand. There was truly something in that mix that I didn’t understand. And I did what people usually do: I filed it. And I thought to myself, “My father’s wrong.”That’s not a radical thing. Every child, by the time he’s 13, thinks his father is hopeless and wrong in everything.David Felten: But at age three, that’s pretty perceptive.Jack Spong: Something about that was just negative to me.Then I went to school. I didn’t know I went to segregated schools. It didn’t occur to me there were no black children there. But I had an experience when I was in about the fifth grade where I went over to another school in Charlotte. It was a black school with black teachers and a black principal. I just sat there with my eyes wide open: “Blacks do go to school. They just don’t go to my school.”I remember that we were in an assembly. We were honored guests of this black school. I think the principal who took us over there was pretty courageous. It was 1942 and the race question wasn’t raised in the South. They sat all of us honored guests on the stage and in the course of that morning, they went through their ritual: they sang the National Anthem, they said the Pledge to the flag, and they said The Lord’s Prayer together.Well, I knew all those things. But, so did all those black children. They prayed the same prayer I prayed to the same Lord. But we didn’t pray it together. I wondered why that was. It just didn’t make sense to me. And again, I didn’t know what to do with that, because I was about 10 years old.Later – when I was 15, 17, 18 – I was active in the Young People of the Diocese of North Carolina. I got to be elected President of the Young People and went to a church convention. There I met another person who told me he was the President of the Young People of North Carolina, the Episcopalians of North Carolina. I said, “How could that be? I was elected President.” But he was black – and that’s the first time I knew we had two systems, a black Young People and a white Young People. His name is Perry Leazer. He’s still a friend of mine.I went to my Bishop and said, “I think we ought to have a meeting, an annual convention (which they had every year of all the white Young People). But why don’t we invite Perry Leazer and the black Young People? (we called them ‘colored’ Young People at that point). And the Bishop looked at me and said, “You know I just don’t believe the people of North Carolina are ready for that.”Well, I was a person in North Carolina. And I was ready for that. I wondered who he was talking about – I remember wondering about that. The Bishop was a godly man. I had great respect for him. But I suddenly said to myself, “He’s like my father. He’s wrong. He hadn’t thought about that idea.”Well, those are just experiences of my youth. But that became a huge issue. I was in seminary when Brown v. Board of Education was passed and I knew that was going to dominate my life as I stayed in the South. And it did. I couldn’t do a thing in Lynchburg or in Richmond or in Tarboro (the three churches I served) that didn’t have to take race into consideration.Today we’ve got an African American presiding Bishop of the Episcopal church. It just makes my heart warm. He was also the Bishop of North Carolina, my diocese, before he was elected. That’s one revolution. And the heroes in that movement are Martin Luther King, and Jesse Jackson, and Desmond Tutu, and just impressive people that I’ve had the pleasure of knowing.So that’s one revolution – and it’s not considered very revolutionary today. It’s been a long time. But that was an enormous revolution in consciousness. Now we’ve had a black President. I was so proud to have a black President.The second revolution is women. I didn’t know I was a sexist, a patriarchal sexist, but I was. But that’s the way I was raised. My mother used to never let me do anything in the kitchen except take out the garbage. That was man’s work. Everything else was women’s work. And I learned to cook, and I learned I was a good cook. And my mother never could understand that: “That’s not something men do.”In the church, women were the “auxiliary.” That’s the strangest thing in the world. We called them the “auxiliary” to the church. They weren’t “the church.” The church was male and women were auxiliary to the church.So, we had a great battle. I was in Richmond when it began. I remember appointing a woman to be a lay reader. That doesn’t seem like a very revolutionary thing today, but then it was just radical. She was an English woman who spoke beautiful English. She stood up and read the lessons and the congregation about fell over. When she administered the chalice at communion, nobody came to her side of the altar!Girls couldn’t be acolytes. Well, as a father of three daughters, I didn’t know why girls couldn’t be acolytes, so I appointed the first girl to be an acolyte and put her on at the 8:00 service (a service where only the holy few are there). I knew I was in trouble when she fainted dead away in the middle of the service – but I just knew we had to tap the leadership of women.We had never had a woman on the vestry of our church in Richmond. We tried several times. I’d get them to be nominated but they’d never be elected. So, I went to the richest woman in our church (whose pledge to the church was bigger than most people could think about) and I asked her if she’d be a candidate for the vestry. She agreed. I had her nominated and dared that church to turn down the biggest giver they had. And they didn’t. They elected her. She was, without a doubt, the worst vestry woman I’ve had. She was to the right of Attila the Hun. But she broke the barrier – and I gave thanks for her every day for breaking that barrier. And after that, we had a stream of good women who were of the generations they represented.And then to nominate women to be priests: I think I was responsible for women being priests – I know I was for England – I ordained the first English woman priest. When we brought African Bishops to my diocese while I was the Bishop, they would see women priests working. They’d go back home and they’d ordain women priests in Uganda and Kenya and in Liberia. I think I was responsible for having women enter the priesthood in those churches, too.And today, that’s not an issue. We’ve had a presiding Bishop who’s a woman. And even England, as slow as they are, now has significant women Bishops. They haven’t yet become the Archbishop of Canterbury, but they will. And that was the second revolution.We uncapped black Americans, and we uncapped white women, and black women, too. The new Bishop of our diocese is a black woman. And that’s a very important thing.David Felten: And the third revolution was the affirmation and inclusion of LGBTQ folks.Jack Spong: I was in the center of that, too. I don’t know how I happened to be in the center of so many! I don’t think it’s because I started out liberal. I was raised as homophobic as anybody. And I didn’t know what a homosexual was until I was 15, 16 years old. And then when I heard the word, and somebody told me what it meant, I assumed the definition of my church: If you were liberal, these are people we pitied – they were sick. If you were conservative, these are people that should be condemned because they’ve chosen an evil lifestyle.Well, I became convinced that to be a homosexual meant you simply were responding to a difference in your own internal being. Nobody chooses to be homosexual. You don’t choose to be heterosexual. As soon as that was clear, it was clear to me that we’d done something terrible to the homosexual population. I don’t remember knowing but one homosexual person before I was a bishop, and that was a sickly woman who fulfilled all the stereotypes that I’d grown up with. She was sort of sickly and that’s what I thought homosexuals were.Then I went to Newark and I experienced homosexuals in the priesthood and homosexuals in the lay leadership of my church. And they weren’t even ashamed! I couldn’t believe that that was true. So, I had to do some learning.I went to Cornell School of Medicine and talked to a doctor friend of mine named Robert Lahita. He invited me to come over and see what research they were doing on sexuality and I did. I worked with him for about six months. I met all the doctors over there and not-a-one-of-them thought homosexuality was evil. They just saw it was different. But red hair is different. Left-handedness is different. You can be different without being evil. They were all convinced it had nothing to do with choice – that people didn’t choose their sexuality.And when I got that through my head, then I had to act on it – ‘cause you can’t believe something and not act on it. And so I became open to the possibility of ordaining gay people. I ordained the first man – I was told that I had ordained the first homosexual man, but that was laughable – I ordained the first man who was living in a publicly acknowledged homosexual relationship. In the end, he didn’t turn out to be a very good choice, but he still accomplished the purpose.There was a revolution in the church: they fought – unbelievable. I had death threats and all sorts of things. And that was probably, emotionally, the most difficult of the three. But now that’s so over. Gene Robinson was elected bishop of New Hampshire and he was confirmed after a mighty revolution in the House of Bishops. This was three years after I retired. He became a great bishop and since then, we’ve had other gay and lesbian bishops. In New York, a lesbian ran second in the biggest diocese in our country, a lesbian ran second to the man who won, who just barely beat her out.I look at the church and the enormous revolution we’ve gone through: we’ve got gay people serving openly all over the church today – 35 in my diocese when I retired. I don’t know how many there are now. Probably a good many more than that. But they’re everywhere and it’s not even controversial.I remember when George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury came to the United States and addressed the House of Bishops. He said, “It’s time for the church to turn away from their concerns about sexuality and get around to preaching the Gospel.” And I stood up and said, “That is preaching the Gospel. You can’t separate people out like that.” George Carey eventually retired as probably the most unsuccessful Archbishop of Canterbury we ever had.But the church has moved passed that. And that gives me great courage. I look back and see heroes in the church who were hiding in their closets and doing great work and serving in places where heterosexual couples wouldn’t like to go. They’d be in the inner cities transforming those cities.So, we’ve come a long way in those three revolutions and I think the church is more whole, it’s more holy, it’s truer to its nature, in those things. And I really was glad to be a part of all three of those revolutions.David Felten: And every one of them involved doing the hard work of educating yourself.Jack Spong: That’s right. And educating the people, too. You couldn’t do that if you weren’t committed to the institution. It was in the institution that I had the people and I educated the people. When I was the Bishop of Newark, we had a lecture series called “New Dimensions”, and three or four times each year I’d bring to that diocese one of the great leaders of our church, it was just a wonderful series. And they would do a day of lectures. There was this constant stream of new ideas coming in and changing the way people think. We raised up a whole new generation of people.And that’s what has to be. You can’t run the church for the benefit of those who are in it, you run the church for the benefit of those who aren’t in it. And you keep opening the doors and cracking the structures and bringing people in. And sure, they get upset. You can’t be a Christian without being controversial, I’m convinced. But you go ahead and be controversial. It’s important that you love people while you’re doing this. That’s the key. I loved even the people who disagreed with me the most – and I made sure that they knew that they were loved.But that was a hard thing to do. Other people were thrown out for doing the same thing that I did, but I don’t think I ever came close to being thrown out of the church.David Felten: And what do you attribute that to?Jack Spong: Well, because I took my other role seriously. When I went to Richmond, I got a list of all the sick and shut-ins. Our parish was a great big church: about 1,800 members. I got a list of our sick and shut-in people and I made a strong effort to go see every one of them and to drink tea. I have drunk more tea than you can shake a stick at. And I’d listen to these people tell me the history of that church. It was the history of the Confederacy, by-and-large, and I cared about those people and I learned from those people.And when I’d do something that some considered crazy, people would go up to them and ask, “What do you think, you reckon?” And they’d say “Well, he’s a little ahead of himself, but he comes by and he drinks tea with me.” And that was all that mattered.They wanted a relationship and I gave them that. And I loved doing it because they gave me a great deal. I’ve got wonderful stories of people 80 and 90 years old. I was all of 38 when I went to Richmond.There was this one little maiden lady who died when she was about 90. She left instructions in her will that she was not to be embalmed. Well, that was an interesting thing. She said the reason was that no man had ever seen her naked and she didn’t want any man looking at her when she was dead. I just loved that, it was hilarious. I don’t how the undertaker managed that, but he did (at least I hope he did!)Remember, the Richmond church was very much a Confederate church. And during World War II, some sailors from Norfolk got into a battle in downtown Richmond with some local characters from Richmond. They started throwing rocks and some sailor threw a rock through the Robert E. Lee window. The federal government came to our church and said they were sorry, that this was a conscript of the United States Navy, and they’d be glad to pay the repair bill. This woman rose up in our church and said “No federal money ever went into the Lee window and no federal money will go into the Lee window now.” And she paid it herself. Those are great stories.Today I’m looking at that church from the vantage point of a person sitting in the pew. It has a significant black population, has a black senior warden, and the President of the University of Richmond, who’s a black man, is a member of St. Paul’s. I’m so proud of it.In Tarboro, I served two Episcopal churches, one block apart. One was white, one was black. Bringing them together was hard, but today they are very much together. In the summertime, they close one church and all the people worship at the other for four weeks in July and then they go to the other church for four weeks in August. And friendships are formed and this just gives me so much pleasure, to see the changes that are taking place.David Felten: What would you say is the next revolution? What’s the fourth revolution?Jack Spong: For years I thought it was climate, but I’m afraid we’re not going to ever address climate. We have to. Climate is one of those things where you can’t do it alone. You’ve got to do it together. And it means some people are going to have to sacrifice for the thing to become real. Individualism is not going to solve climate change.But at one and the same time, I think the Christian church has got to see itself in a different way. I think Jesus was a boundary breaker and I think every time there’s a boundary that sets one person off against another, I think the Christian faith has to break that boundary down. That’s the salvation of the church. If we can do that, we can keep relevant.David Felten: So the next boundary to be broken may be a theological boundary – a breaking of the theistic focus?Jack Spong: Yeah, I think we ought to break every boundary. You’ve got to break the boundary around the creed, the literalism of the creed. You’ve got to break the boundary around theology. You’ve got to break the boundary around practice: who’s in, who’s out class warfare. Christianity can’t live in a world that’s got boundaries that sets one person off against another person. So we’re always going to be controversial, we’ve got to be controversial. By our very nature we’re controversial. And if we ever cease to be controversial, we’ll cease to be Christian – and that’s not easy for people to embrace. But that’s where we are.David Felten: But that’s not the message that most people hear growing up in American churches – in fact, it’s just the opposite.Jack Spong: You’re exactly right, it is the opposite. Now to counter that, you’ve got to be examining the story and look at what Jesus did: he was always bringing the outsiders inside. Whether they’re Pharisees on one side or prostitutes on the other. He was always bringing them inside. And that’s what the Christian church has got to do.In the last installment of “A Conversation with Bishop John Shelby Spong,” Felten & Spong will discuss Liberals, Conservatives, and the Way Forward.~ Rev. David M. Felten Click here to read online and to share your thoughtsAbout the Author Rev. David M. Felten is a full-time pastor at The Fountains, a United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, Arizona. David and fellow United Methodist Pastor, Jeff Procter-Murphy, are the creators of the DVD-based discussion series for Progressive Christians, “Living the Questions”.A co-founder of the Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology and also a founding member of No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church and tries to stay connected to his roots as a musician. You’ll find him playing saxophones in a variety of settings, including appearances with the Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet. David and his wife Laura, have three children. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Judy I just finished "Unbelievable" and found many things in the book that I was unaware that I believed. I am curious to know how you feel about/reconcile people who are truly evil or unrepentantly evil like child abusers/pornographers. I can deal with people whose belief systems are different than mine but not with people who purposefully hurt other people, especially children. Some even believe it is their right to do so. How can we love these people wastefully?  A: By Fred Plumer Hi Judy. Thank you for writing. Your question is one I have had to deal with many times over the years. It is one of the hardest things to practice in the entire Christian tradition, but I still find it mystifying that so many Christians in our world today do not take this issue seriously. In fact, it seems sometimes they believe being a Christian gives them the right to hate or at least dislike anyone who disagrees with them. Certainly that is not the way Jesus expected his followers to behave, nor is it the way Bishop Spong expects us to behave if we actually want to learn and experience what it means to walk the Christian path. We know that and most of us do pretty well with “most people.” However, if we take “loving everyone wastefully” there are some things we must address to make it work with others, or as you put it, people who are truly evil, or unrepentant child abusers/pornographers. First, you must not think of this “love” in the same way that you love your children, a spouse, or a best friend. Marcus Borg probably explained this as well as anyone I know or have ever read. In his book, Meeting Jesus for the First Time, Again, 1995, Borg, addresses this difficult issue. He explains the word “compassion” in Hebrew (as well as in Aramaic), is usually translated in the plural form of the noun. In its singular form, however, the word means “womb.” In the Hebrew Bible, compassion is both a feeling and a way of being that flows out of one’s sense of compassion. It is frequently linked to its association with womb: a woman feels compassion for the child of her own womb; a man feels compassion for his brother, who comes from the same womb. For Borg, compassion is a spiritual shift and is a result of some pretty hard work for most of us. According to Borg, there are four different types of compassion. Reflective (thinking), emotional (feeling), active (doing), and contemplative (experiencing). While our goal, according to Borg, is to integrate all four of these at some point, he admits that this is a challenge. He explains we are called as followers of Jesus to show compassion (love-as a mother loves her unborn child). I think this means you may not know your child, who she is or he is going to be, but you still “love” or feel compassion for her/him. My suggestion is that you at least can love or have compassion for the kinds of people you describe but it might be limited to a thinking type if that is the best you can do. This does not mean you must run up to one of those of these incorrigible people and tell them how much you “love” them. But you could take the time to wonder what kind of childhood they had and what kind of an early life they had to endure. You might wonder what kind of early influences made them so sick. Most serious studies indicate that the significant number of these very sick people were abused, sexually and in other ways, as children. I know this is, in Borg’s words, reflective or thinking compassion but it can bring you to another place that might feel better for you. It might even help you feel some compassion for this person.  Let me close with a personal story. My wife recently retired from her job as a nurse and director in the county health department. For the first five years of her job, she was required once a month to go a prison on an island in our area that held unrepentant child molesters that have been deemed by Washington State judges as incorrigible. They will never be healed nor will they ever be let out of prison. When she first went there she was disgusted and nervous working around them. But she was in awe of how kind and “loving” most of the nurses who worked there regularly were toward these men. My wife never felt comfortable asking these nurses how they did it but she watched closely. My guess is that most of them saw something in these men through the eyes of “god” rather than the judge who put them there. This would be, I believe, something of Borg’s idea of reflective or thinking compassion. My wife learned many lessons from these nurses, as have I.   I hope this helps. ~ Fred Plumer Click here to read and share onlineAbout the Author In 1986 Rev. Plumer was called to the Irvine United Congregational Church in Irvine, CA to lead a UCC new start church, where he remained until he retired in 2004. The church became known throughout the denomination as one of the more exciting and progressive mid-size congregations in the nation. He served on the Board of Directors of the Southern California Conference of the United Church of Christ (UCC) for five years, and chaired the Commission for Church Development and Evangelism for three of those years.In 2006 Fred was elected President of ProgressiveChristianity.org (originally called The Center for Progressive Christianity - TCPC) when it’s founder Jim Adams retired. As a member of the Executive Council for TCPC he wrote The Study Guide for The 8 Points by which we define: Progressive Christianity. He has had several articles published on church development, building faith communities and redefining the purpose of the enlightened Christian Church. His book Drink from the Well is an anthology from speeches, articles in eBulletins, and numerous publications that define the progressive Christianity movement as it evolves to meet new challenges in a rapidly changing world. | | | | | | | | This Rabbi On That Rabbi A modern Portland, Oregon rabbi explains Jesus’s messages in a 6-Part Video Series. View this exclusive video content below ReLOVEution - Jesus the Revolutionary: How to fight power without fighting or resorting to violence Jesus and anger. Following is the summary of Part 2. Resisting oppression with neither violence nor anger When we’re feeling oppressed, we feel the urge to turn towards violence. That is human nature. When we feel like we’ve been violated, we want to right that wrong. Like many other species, when we feel threatened, we are inclined to retaliate by being hurtful, angry, and violent in our behavior. I am in favor of overcoming the oppression of tyrants. But the question is how should I do that? Jesus gave three strategies for resisting the Roman empire and the Jewish leadership around him. In our contemporary world, we might think of ‘our empire’ as the economic and social forces all around us, the overpowering American corporations that confront our daily life, or in a mythical sense the Star Wars cosmic struggle we have moment by moment with our spiritual “dark side.” How do we, as a human being, resist the lure and power of the empire? Jesus gave us three different strategies to resist oppression with neither violence nor anger. - Turn the other cheek - If somebody asks you for your coat, give him your second one, too - If you are asked to walk a mile, take the time and walk the second one as well ....Matthew 5:38-41 ....You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ ....But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on ....the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone ....wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. ....If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. One, two, and three Jesus was suggesting revolutionary, clever, non-violent approaches to being violated. Clever? Yes. Very clever. When Jesus urged his followers to be non-violent, he wasn’t suggesting that they were to be passive. No. Jesus’s three suggestions are also about demanding the full respect of one’s oppressor – in a sense saying, “If you are going to insult me, I demand that you really insult me.” Turn the other cheek If somebody slaps you, Jesus said to turn the other cheek. Escalating violence with violence brings violence. As we heard from Martin Luther King Jr., ....“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. ....Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Turn the other cheek. This is good advice. But there is more to the words than turn the other cheek. Jesus taught, “If they slap your right cheek, present them your left.” This detail of which cheek is being slapped is important. Ancient Near East, like every culture, had its mores and norms. Slapping someone on the right cheek was insulting because it meant that you were slapping them with the back of your hand. (Left-handed people would have to wait millennia for respect. All insult-slapping in the ancient world was done with the right hand.) So, Jesus was saying, “If they slap you as though you weren’t worthy of a full slap with an open hand, force them to strike you on the left cheek like they would do to anyone else of more prominent status.” In doing so you will be removing the shame from their aggression. If somebody asks you for your outer coat, give him your inside one as well. Jesus said that if somebody asks you for your first coat, you should give him your second one, too. In the time in which Jesus lived, people had two garments. There was an inner garment and an outer garment. The former was what you wore during the day. The latter was similar to our underwear. If someone asked for your outer garment, they were attempting to take your warmth, your protection. Jesus was saying that you should give them that garment, and then offer your inner garment, as well. This is a very snide response, and it’s also somewhat humorous. Because if you tell me you need my overgarments, I am going to tell you, by my actions, that I assume you are so desperate that you’ll need my undergarments, as well. And by doing this – giving you my underwear – I will be standing there naked before you. And I will be then breaking my Jewish societal mores because of you. The fault is on you. You, my oppressor, will be the source of your own embarrassment at the sight of my nakedness. It is clear that Jesus is addressing this strategy to the Jewish leaders who were also oppressing the peasants of Jesus’ day. In a sense, by giving you my second coat, I am saying to you, “I am going to take your oppression to its obvious next level and make you the one responsible for my culturally-taboo state – standing there naked, without any clothing.” Jesus was telling his followers that by their actions they could engage in non-violent revolution and say, “If you are going to oppress me, oppress me all the way – and even then, you will not crush my feeling of love – my innate connection to the ways of the Kingdom of Heaven protects me from your wicked ways My nonviolence protects me from incurring guilt and places it where it rightly belongs.. If you are asked to walk a mile, take the time and walk the second one as well. In the days of the Roman hegemony of Israel, centurions were allowed to order people to carry their belongings. The oppressor could order the oppressed to make oppression easier for them! Roman centurions produced so much bad blood by forcing people to carry their things that Rome made a law forbidding the centurions from asking people to carry something for more than one mile. Once again Jesus was saying to do more for the oppressor and thereby place the guilt and shame on them as their burden to carry instead of yours to carry, and all without resorting to violence in doing so. ....“If we continue to carry the centurion's belonging after the first mile, ....the centurion will have to ask us to stop. If we still don’t stop, the ....centurion will have to beg us to stop! How funny is that! Make ....them beg us to not help them oppress us!” Jesus was not just saying be passive. He was saying be passive and smart. Put the guilt on them for their oppression. Turn the other cheek, give the second coat, forgive someone, walk another mile after the first. Oscar Wilde and John Lennon added their words millennia later: ....Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. - Oscar Wilde ....When it comes down to having to use violence then you are ....playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you, ....pull your beard, flick your face to make you fight. Because ....they’ve gotten you to be violent, they know how to handle you. ....The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor. ....-John Lennon Rabbi Brian’s gloss on non-violence and non-anger. The only way to win a fight against whomever or whatever is oppressing us is to turn the other cheek. As long as we know we are connected to the Ein Sof (the one without end), as long as we know that we live in the Kingdom of Heaven, then we can take the abuse without being crushed by it. Fight back, certainly – but don’t lose your inscrutable, internal choice to live a blessed life. A bit about Jesus and Anger. Jesus preached turning the other cheek – certainly. And, in our society, we think of Jesus, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King Jr. as our icons of what it means to fight violence with nonviolence. But Jesus is not a two-dimensional character who never got angry. In fact, Jesus got angry, furiously angry, when he was in the temple. This is recorded in multiple gospels Mark 11:15-17 On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’ But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.” Luke 19:46 Then Jesus entered the temple courts and began to drive out those who were selling there. He declared to them, “It is written: ‘My house will be a house of prayer.’ But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” Matthew 21:12-13 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’” ....Luke 19:46 ....Then Jesus entered the temple courts and began to drive out those ....who were selling there. He declared to them, “It is written: ‘My ....house will be a house of prayer.’ But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” ....Matthew 21:12-13 ....Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying ....and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers ....and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said .... to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are ....making it ‘a den of robbers.’” Let’s look at why he got so mad. What was the context? What was so upsetting to Jesus? (Note: Bruce Chilton’s book Rabbi Jesus goes into far more detail than I will.) He was furious because the temple was being used for something other than its purpose. The purpose of the temple was to help connect God and people. However, the temple authorities, in a political move of power consolidation brokered by Rome {need fact check on this}, moved the selling of the animals for sacrifice from outside of the temple to inside, to increase their control over this commerce. Think of it as a big box store coming into town and ruining local merchants, only worse...like the big box store has a slogan “Making great communities greater.” (This analogy isn’t quite right, but it gives you a sense of the outrage.) This decision by the temple authorities was unimaginable to Jesus. How could a place, an institution that’s supposed to be standing up for the common good, align itself with the oppressors? Jesus quotes the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah. Isaiah 56:7 These I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. Jeremiah 7:11 Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the LORD. He said that God’s house had become a den of robbers. Rabbi Brian’s gloss on anger Everything from the above about non-violence and non-anger is true. But there is only so much that any son or daughter of man can bear. We are all going to get angry. Yes, resist oppression with non-violence and non-anger as long as we can. But there are times when we feel so much moral outrage that we should allow ourselves to be angry – at the right time, in the right place, at the right people, and for the right reasons. Finally, let me end here with a modern adaptation of the beautiful words of Jesus from the end of this fifth chapter of Matthew ....Anyone can love people who love them. Even the most heinous ....people love their own. You must love better than that! You must ....love even those who persecute you; you must love even your ....enemies. Love with perfect love, as you know God loves you. With Love, Rabbi Brian Rabbi Brian is the C.E.O. of Religion-Outside-The-Box, an internet-based, non-denominational congregation nourishing spiritual hunger. Find out more about newsletter, podcasts, videos, and other good ROTB.org is doing for thousands every week. This Rabbi on That Rabbi is a co-production of Religion-Outside-The-Box and Progressing Spirit. This is a 6-part video series also available for purchase here, it is made available to our subscribers to purchase as a gift or for a study group - the course contains six videos and audios along with their written companion PDFs. | | | | | | | | | |

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Winds & Waves Reminder for November
by ICA International 15 Nov '18

15 Nov '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. Here is this month's featured story; the title is: Rebuilding young people’s trust in politicians and democratic life: Sharing ethical practices that work! The video was submitted by Catalina Quiroz of ICA Spain/ICA Espana, and Abel Ferrero, ICA Spain Ethics Works! youth coordinator. https://medium.com/winds-and-waves/rebuilding-young-peoples-trust-in-politi… 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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From Genesis Farm: Honoring Thomas Berry
by Ellie Stock 09 Nov '18

09 Nov '18

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width:100% !important;} #yiv9450689226 table.yiv9450689226MainSide { display:none !important;} #yiv9450689226 img.yiv9450689226MainSide { display:none !important;} #yiv9450689226 td.yiv9450689226MainSide { display:none !important;} #yiv9450689226 .yiv9450689226rsvp-button-inner { padding:0px 0px 10px 0px !important;} #yiv9450689226 .yiv9450689226rsvp-button-outer { width:100% !important;max-width:100% !important;} #yiv9450689226 .yiv9450689226footer-main-width { width:100% !important;} #yiv9450689226 .yiv9450689226footer-mobile-hidden { display:none !important;} #yiv9450689226 .yiv9450689226footer-mobile-hidden { display:none !important;} #yiv9450689226 .yiv9450689226footer-column { display:block !important;} #yiv9450689226 .yiv9450689226footer-mobile-stack { display:block !important;} #yiv9450689226 .yiv9450689226footer-mobile-stack-padding { padding-top:3px;} } @media screen and (max-width:320px){ #yiv9450689226 .yiv9450689226layout { padding:0px 0px 0px 0px !important;} } | Honoring Thomas Berry | | | | | | | | Genesis Farm | | | November 9, 2018 | | | | | | | | | | WHAT MUST DIE WHEN THE SEED FALLS INTO THE GROUND? | | | | | | | | Today is the closing of a metaphorical portal that covers the lands of Genesis Farm. This day concludes a period that marks a seasonal shift in the northern hemisphere. It is the mid-point, or cross quarter, between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. In some Gaelic cultures, this period was known as Samhain. Hundreds of generations of humans who lived before us, gathered at this time to express their intentions to face into the mystery of death as a prelude to ongoing life. The impulse to do this, to pay attention to the greater natural and cosmic forces, is a universal human impulse. Far beyond our notice, every creature on the hillside of this land--microbes, roots, insects, birds and plants--are intimately attuned to these cycles of life, death and rebirth. They know what they are doing. Instinctively. In seeds, in seasons, in all living beings, and in the thousands of rituals that people create to revere and remember their beloved dead, we too close this portal and face into the mystery of winter: the dark, the unknown. Like the seeds and the countless companions who live here with us we surrender into the dark of winter. And we wait for the return of Sun. ******** Today is also a day special to us, and to all who revere the life and spirit of Thomas Berry. Author, philosopher, cultural historianand voice for Earth’s voiceless,Thomas was born 104 years ago on this day, November 9.Genesis Farm, as it has emerged over these last 38 years, was born into the legacy of his wisdom. | | | | | | | | In 1993, Berry wrote a paper that would later be revised, edited and included as a chapter in one of his major books, The Great Work: Our Way Into the Future. In light of this week’s United States elections and with the unpredictable future shaped by climate crisis, the escalating loss of living species,the disturbing rise of facism, militarism and endless war making,we wish to share Thomas Berry’s wisdom with you.It is a way of celebrating his life and the seeds of vision he planted, even while he grieved the terminal phase of Earth’s Cenozoic Era. | | | | | | | | | | | | The Great Work; Our Way Into the FutureThomas Berry Chapter 10 TheNEW POLITICALALIGNMENT THE OLDER TENSION IN HUMAN AFFAIRS BETWEEN CONSERVATIVE and liberal based on social orientation is being replaced with the tension between developers and ecologists based on orientation toward the natural world. This new tension is becoming the primary tension in human affairs. So too the political tension between the empires and the colonies is being replaced by an economic tension between village peoples of the world with their organic modes of agriculture and the transnational corporations with their industrial agriculture. This new alignment should not be taken as if the ecology movement were a New Left movement or a new liberalism. For the ecology movement has moved the entire basis of the division into a new context. It is no longer a division based on political party or social class or ethnic group. It is a division based on the human as one of the components within the larger community of the planet Earth. In this new alignment those committed to industrial-commercial development of natural areas see this development as inherently progressive. Those committed to the integrity of the natural world and their indigenous peoples see this development as degradation, since the intrusion of the human into the life systems of the planet has already gone beyond any acceptable limits. To the one group the human is considered primary in terms of reality and value while the larger, more integral Earth community is a secondary consideration. In the other group the integral Earth community (including the human) is seen as primary while human well-being in itself is seen as derivative. The one insists that the natural life systems must adapt primarily to human purposes. The other insists that the human must adapt to the priority of natural life systems. Ultimately there must be a mutual adaptation of the human and the natural life systems. Reconciliation of these tensions is especially difficult because the commercial-industrial powers have so overwhelmed the natural world in these past two centuries that there is, to the ecologist, serious difficulty in further adaptation of natural systems to the human. Oppression of the natural world by the industrial powers has so interfered with the functioning of natural forces that we are already into an extensive disruption of the biosystems of the planet at the expense of the health and well-being of both humans and the natural world. We cannot mediate the present situation as though there were some minimal balance already existing that could be slightly modified on both sides to bring into being a general balance. The violence already done to the Earth is on a scale beyond acceptability. It can only be considered as the consequence of a severe cultural disorientation. The change required by the ecologist is a drastic reduction in the plundering processes of the commercial-industrial economy. Until this is recognized there can be no way in which an acceptable reconciliation can be attained. Yet we are so deeply committed to the exploitative mode of relating to the natural world that those in control of the great corporations can hardly think about modifying the exploitation in any significant manner. Even official movements toward “sustainable development” must be recognized as efforts to avoid the basic issue. Our sense of reality and of value has been so fully committed to the norms governed by the industrial process that such an abrupt shift is too difficult for serious consideration. These industrial norms of procedure are now functioning on a global basis through the transnational corporations. These corporations, in alliance with the governments of the world, are now related to or organized into such establishments as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the International Chamber of Commerce, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and the International Organization for Standardization. Bonding of common interests has become so coordinated that it is increasingly difficult to escape not only their influence but their control over the various nations and cultures of the world. So influential is the present commercial-industrial order that our dominant professions and institutions are functioning in this context; not merely our economic system, but government, jurisprudence, the medical profession, religion, and education. Every aspect of life has been absorbed into the commercial-industrial context. We seem not to know how to live in any other way. In the industrialized nations the automobile, the highways, parking lots, shopping malls, all seem to be necessary for survival at any acceptable level of human well-being. Through the Internet a more extensive range of human transactions will be carried on without travel or physical presence, yet this will not remedy or remove the waste heaps, polluted waters, sterile and eroded soils, forests devastated by clear-cutting, toxic chemicals, radioactive waste, the thinning ozone layer. We see all this, yet we continue creating these chemicals, clear-cutting the forests, polluting the waters, piling up enormous waste heaps, destroying wetlands. We do this even though the industrial bubble is already dissolving. The end of the petroleum-based economy is in sight. Yet even now the commercial-industrial world insists that this is the only way to survive. The tendency is to insist that ecologically oriented persons will accept the existing situation with some slight modifications. The system itself must continue in the existing pattern of its functioning. The alternative, the radical transformations suggested by the ecologists—organic farming, community-supported agriculture, solar-hydrogen energy system, redesign of our cities, elimination of the automobile in its present form, restoration of local village economies, education for a post-petroleum way of life, and a jurisprudence that recognizes the rights of natural modes of being—all these are too unsettling. Even though such books as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring are proving to be valid statements of the future that awaits us, they are still considered as too extreme to be accepted. Never before has the human community been confronted with a situation that required such sudden and radical change in lifestyle under the threat of a comprehensive degradation of the planet and its major life systems. The difficulty can only increase. Tensions between capitalism and socialism, between liberalism and conservatism, are disputes over minor differences in comparison with the issues now before us. Both capitalist and socialist regimes are committed to ever-increasing commercial-industrial exploitation of the resources of the planet. Neither is acceptable to the ecologist. Fixation on the primacy of industry in the well-being of the human is producing a recession of the basic resources of Earth, which is now a permanent condition. This recession is not a temporary economic recession of any one nation, nor the recession of some financial or commercial arrangement, it is an irreversible recession of the planet itself in many of the most basic aspects of its functioning. The Earth simply cannot sustain the burden imposed upon it. The air in many places has become polluted. The water of the planet has become toxic for an indefinite period of time. The soils of the Earth are saturated with chemicals. We have only the slightest idea of the consequences for the physical and psychic life of the human community, especially for the children who have lived in this chemically saturated environment since the day of their conception. Physical degradation of the natural world is also the degradation of the interior world of the human. To cut the old-growth forests is not simply to destroy the last 5 percent of the primordial forests left in this country. It is to lose the wonder and majesty, the poetry, music, and spiritual exaltation evoked by such awesome experience of the deep mysteries of existence. It is a loss of soul even more than a loss of lumber or a loss of money. Loss of spiritual, imaginative, intellectual, or aesthetic experience is considered irrelevant by the developers as soon as a territory is identified as a place where money is to be made. In North America, even after taking 95 percent of these forests, developers insist on the right to cut the few timberlands that survive, while speaking of the extreme demands of the ecologists. The severity of the tension between the developers and the ecologists can only be fully realized if, in addition to what has already been indicated, we understand that the exploiters have been in control of the North American continent since the beginning of its settlement by Europeans in the seventeenth century. Americans have never known any other way of life. The original settlers came here for religious freedoms but also for a “better” life than was available in the European world. The spaciousness of the continent, the luxuriance of its coastlands, its woodlands, its fertile soils, the beaver and deer and buffalo—all these seemed, in their abundance, to be beyond the capacity of any human force to diminish in any significant manner. The attrition of most life forms has been severe in these past few centuries. Then came the capacity to exploit the coal deposits, the gold fields, the copper and iron ores; the skills to build the canals, the railroads, the highways; the ability to dam the rivers for irrigation and for power at a thousand different places. All this was done with a certain arrogance of the settlers, from the beginning. The rights of the indigenous peoples, the rights of living species, the rights of natural modes of being to exist, none of this evoked from the settlers any adequate sense of responsibility for their actions. When the chemical and electronics industries were established, when the power systems were put into place, when automobiles began to spread their exhaust over the countryside, even these events caused no adequate reflection or even interest in what was happening. Waste was simply poured into the air or dumped into the rivers or used as fill for wetlands. Only the bright side of all this development was seen. The dark side, the toxic waste, was denied, ignored, hidden from sight, buried. Now, when the immense amount of such waste can no longer be hidden, when the poisons begin to affect the health of the populations, when the lead in the air and in the paints begin to affect the brain functions of children, when the “Love Canals” are identified, when the people of Louisiana begin to realize how extensively the countryside along the Mississippi has become saturated with chemicals, then the new alignment of forces begins to take shape. The assault of developers on the ecologists has already increased in its pervasiveness and intensity. A person need only read The War Against the Greens by David Helvarg to understand the extent of this opposition. Insensitivity toward the devastation of the natural world led to disregard of the environmental issue throughout both the 1992 and the 1996 campaigns for the United States presidency. The most acute antagonisms of the past have seldom evoked such deep feelings of being threatened. Yet a polarity has evolved that now finds expression in every aspect of contemporary life, in our social and political and economic institutions, in our professions of medicine and law, in our educational programs, in our religious traditions. This polarity in life attitude pervades the public and private order of our society. There will, naturally, be an infinite number of variations in the emphasis that will be given to various plans of action. But the main outlines of the tension are clearly evident. The tensions created will ultimately be even more severe than the capitalist-Communist tension that dominated political-social activities of the human community from the publication of The Communist Manifesto in 1848 until 1991, when the Soviet collapse occurred and left the capitalist world and its market economy in control. In understanding these new tensions a person need only read a few surveys, such as the attack on the ecologists in The True State of the Planet, a book edited in 1996 by Ronald Bailey, or Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order, which identifies the controlling power of the corporations, by Richard Barnett and John Cavanaugh. In addition to these a person might read The Ultimate Resource by Julian Simon, someone who argues that there is no real resource problem, population problem, or soil problem. Yet there is still a tendency to think of ecologists as radical, romantic, or trivial New Age types. If by clear-cutting the last 5 percent of the surviving old-growth forests we provide jobs for the present, then clear-cutting is justified. This is the realist position. Forests are seen as so many board feet of lumber whose primary value is to be cut down for human use. The sense of meaning, of entry into the mysteries of existence, the grandeur experienced in their presence, all these are marginal to the essential thing of life, which is to exploit the forests for their passing human use and their monetary value. Such issues require a reorientation of all the professions, especially the legal profession, which is still preoccupied with individual “human” rights, especially with the limitless freedom to acquire property and exploit the land. The number of lawyers hired by single corporations to defend themselves against any limitation of their perceived rights to exploit the natural world is evidence of the strange principles of jurisprudence that allow the devastation of the planet to proceed. Universities are still preparing students for professional careers in the industrial-commercial world even as this world continues its planetary destruction. The medical profession is only beginning to recognize that no amount of medical technology will enable us to have healthy humans on a sick planet. A new awareness is emerging, however, throughout every realm of human activity. The term sustainable development is now the single most significant phrase in any discussion of these issues. This phrase obtained currency in the 1987 report (Our Common Future) of the World Commission on Environment and Development. It was later used to indicate the central concern of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. So central is this phrase at the present time that it could be said that whoever owns it controls much of the discussion concerning the future. Indeed, at the present time few persons would directly confront the proposal that development can no longer be as unlimited as it has been in the past. So prevalent is this phrase, sustainable development, and so widespread the claim to be acting with regard to the environment, that the deeper question has now become the question of authenticity in fulfilling its demands. Are contemporary commitments to safeguarding the environment merely up-front appearances with little substantial regard for the natural world, or is there a true commitment to limit industrial activity so that no real harm is done to the ecosystems of the planet? The more realistic response to this phrase is that development is simply not sustainable. What is needed is a sustainable way of life. Paul Hawken goes further than sustainability with his proposal that a “restorative economy” is already in process. This view is presented in his book on The Ecology of Commerce (1993) and carried out in its basic principles through the movement known as “The Natural Step.” Another more rigorous critique of the corporations is presented by David Korten, When Corporations Rule the World (1995). Both are working toward a depth understanding of the present situation with suggestions as to a viable way into the future. David Korten makes proposals for the sequence of intermediate steps needed if we are to move into a sustainable mode of human presence on the planet in a later book, The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism. A further observation might be made that a sustainable mode of survival at our present level of economic well-being in the industrialized countries is hardly possible as a universal attainment. It is estimated that to support our present Earth population at the level enjoyed in North America would require two or three planets. The more ultimate question has to do with the “soul” of the future as this finds expression in the single life principle of the planet Earth. There is much consideration of the physical and biological modes of survival with relatively little comment on the soul of the future. Here we are mainly concerned with the “soul” as the shaping spirit within any vital process. These, the inner spirit and the outer form, are two distinctive aspects of a single mode of being. In considering the soul of the future, I am concerned with the inner vision that we need if we are to make the intellectual, social, economic, and religious adjustments required for a viable future. That the human and other components of Earth form a single community of life is the central issue of the Great Work. We can hardly repeat too often that every mode of being has inherent rights to their place in this community, rights that come by existence itself. The intimacy of humans with the other components of the planet is the fulfillment of each in the other and all within the single Earth community. It is a spiritual fulfillment as well as a mutual support. It is a commitment, not simply a way of survival. Anything less, to my mind, will not work. The difficulty we confront is too great. The future is too foreboding. We need to think of twice the present human population facing the future with half the resources. The next generations need a truly inspiring vision of the wonder and grandeur of life, along with the beginnings of the new technologies they will need. The profoundly degraded ecological situation of the present reveals a deadening or paralysis of some parts of human intelligence and also a suppression of human sensitivities. That exploitation of the Earth is an economic loss should at least be evident, especially when we observe such extinctions as have occurred in the seas. There we can observe that some species of fish have become commercially extinct because humans would not limit their take to the reproduction rate of the fish, even though this reproduction rate was almost astronomical in the abundance of its production, as was the case with salmon in the Pacific and cod in the Atlantic. When the proposal is made that we must continue what we are doing “in order to provide jobs” it must be considered as an unacceptable solution when a much greater abundance of jobs is available for repairing the already damaged environment. In all of these instances we can see a disposition toward biocide, the destruction of the life-systems of the planet, and geocide, the devastation of the planet itself, not only in its living creatures but in the integrity of the nonliving processes on which the living world depends. Read the publications of the business world —Fortune, The Economist, or the Wall Street Journal —to observe the abandonment of any discipline that would limit the moneymaking concern of our industrial society, for it is precisely by this grasping after greater wealth to sustain a “better life” that we perceive “progress.” The pathology of this attitude is the limitless straining after what cannot be attained by any level of consumerism. As with any addiction, the addiction itself is seen as the way to life. The authentic remedy, the only valid way to life, is perceived as too painful for acceptance. What we propose here is not a solution of the issue but a clarification of the fact that the real issue before us is no longer finding expression in terms of liberal and conservative but rather in terms of the ecologist or environmentalist on the one hand and the commercial-industrial establishment on the other. A new alignment of forces is taking place throughout every institution and every profession in our society. It is important to understand this new situation, the inherent difficulties of reconciliation, and the new language that has come into being. Only in this manner can we appreciate the true nature of the issues under discussion and the magnitude of change required in shaping a viable mode of human presence on the planet Earth for the future. All our professions and institutions need to be reinvented in this new context. We must in a manner reinvent the human itself as a mode of being. Eventually this implies rethinking the planet and our role within the planetary process. | | | | | | | | Sent By: office(a)genesisfarm.org and threeriversmm(a)gmail.com | | | | | | | | | | | | Genesis Farm | 41 A Silver Lake Rd, Blairstown, NJ 07825 | | | Unsubscribe elliestock(a)aol.com | | Update Profile | About our service provider | | Sent by office(a)genesisfarm.org in collaboration with | | | | | | Try it free today | | | |

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11/08/18, Progressing Spirit : A Conversation with Bishop John Shelby Spong (2018): Part 1 “On Small Minds and Big Ideas”
by Ellie Stock 09 Nov '18

09 Nov '18

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!important;line-height:125% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9904737274 h4{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9904737274 .yiv9904737274mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv9904737274mcnTextContent, #yiv9904737274 .yiv9904737274mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv9904737274mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9904737274 #yiv9904737274templatePreheader{ display:block !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9904737274 #yiv9904737274templatePreheader .yiv9904737274mcnTextContent, #yiv9904737274 #yiv9904737274templatePreheader .yiv9904737274mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9904737274 #yiv9904737274templateHeader .yiv9904737274mcnTextContent, #yiv9904737274 #yiv9904737274templateHeader .yiv9904737274mcnTextContent p{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9904737274 #yiv9904737274templateBody .yiv9904737274mcnTextContent, #yiv9904737274 #yiv9904737274templateBody .yiv9904737274mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9904737274 #yiv9904737274templateFooter .yiv9904737274mcnTextContent, #yiv9904737274 #yiv9904737274templateFooter .yiv9904737274mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } An interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong on September 18th, 2018. | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | A Conversation with Bishop John Shelby Spong: Part 1 - “On Small Minds and Big Ideas” Column by Rev. David M. Felten November 8, 2018 The following is taken from an interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong on September 18th, 2018. Recorded at his home in Richmond, Virginia, it has been edited for length and thematic focus.David Felten: For years you’ve been sounding the alarm that the church is in trouble. What would you say the state of the church is today – and where do you see us needing to go?Jack Spong: Well, we’re almost in a Dark Age.In the Roman Catholic Church, the sexual abuse crisis has gotten to be so big, and they finally are facing the fact that it’s real. It’s been in every country of the world. It has to be a systemic problem. So, what is there about the Roman Catholic Church that includes this thing?In the Evangelical Protestant Churches, they’re anti-intellectual – they’re always behind the curve. They’re insecure more than anything else – and that’s demonstrated by their abandoning all of their principles and supporting Donald Trump (who is not an Evangelical at all). He practically spits on their values, but they support him, which indicates to me it’s not a religious movement at all. It’s a security movement.So when somebody looks for a church, they have a hard time. I’ve been able to find one. But, there aren’t very many. I know a lot of churches, and to have a church that engages you, inspires you, and you want to be a part of, is a really difficult thing to do today.David Felten: So, on the whole, the Roman Catholics are morally compromised over their failure to respond to the sexual abuse crisis. The Evangelicals are morally compromised out of their fear and obsession with security. And in the face of all this, the Mainline church is just impotent.Jack Spong: That’s right. The Mainline knows too much to be Evangelical, but they don’t know who they are. And they’re not gonna buy into the Roman Catholic thing – and the thing I’ve spent my life doing still has a very difficult time finding expression in the institution today. But I still think it’s worthwhile.David Felten: Give me an example of that life’s work that still needs to find expression today.Jack Spong: Well, let’s just start with the basic concept of God. I don’t think God’s a being, and yet that is a sort of assumed thing in all the churches. I think God is the “Ground of Being.” That’s a Tillichian phrase. It doesn’t mean a lot to people, but it just gives me a different way to say it. I think God permeates the world. It just may be that God is the ground of all that is. And you try to say that in church and it’s not – not “comfortable.” It doesn’t give you security.One of the things that I think about the church today is that if it’s being true to itself, it doesn’t give you security. It gives you the ability to live with insecurity. And that’s not as popular. People like to be deluded. And they’re not going to be deluded by a church that has integrity.David Felten: Ouch!Jack Spong: That’s right. I don’t know what to say. I’ve spent my life in the church. I’ve been executive in charge of lots of churches, and I can’t think of many of them that I would want to go to as a lay person sitting in a pew. There are enough – there are a few of them – enough that gives me some hope that there’s such a thing as integrity in the church, but it’s not a lot.I look around at people that have responded to my ministry over the years, and they keep trying to go to church and it doesn’t work for them. Some of my closest friends are “believers in exile.” They want to believe, but they don’t find anything in the church that gives them enough to hang their hat on — so they’re sort of in exile somewhere.David Felten: Say something about that inexpressible kind of belief that is not being met in the church, but people still have a hunch about.Jack Spong: I don’t know how to talk about that. I’m convinced that there is a God. I’m convinced that there’s a spiritual dimension to life that I want to be in touch with. I’m convinced that it can be experienced in all of life, but I have a hard time saying what it is.David Felten: But you’re not giving up.Jack Spong: That’s right. I’m one of those people who refuses to let go. I’m like Jacob wrestling with the angel. I’m not gonna let it go until it blesses me. And it’s just terribly important to me. And I can’t always communicate that to other people.If I’ve got the full panoply of church activities, I can find a way to make those activities speak loudly about something. But I think churches have either turned themselves into religious institutions (which is surefire away to die) or they change themselves into social activity churches (which is also a surefire way to die). And we don’t ever bring the two together. We don’t ever show Christianity as the expression of my being into the world.David Felten: You’ve made a career out of trying to express some of these thoughts and clearly, people are hungry for what you’ve offered.Jack Spong: I think that’s true – and what that is, I don’t know. But in all my life, everywhere I went, I had people coming who were hungry, who came with an expectation that they could be fed, and an expectation that I was in touch with something that they weren’t in touch with.And that’s been a powerful thing for me. But I have a hard time articulating what that is. But I think you can see it. It’s like the pornography definition in the Supreme Court. You don’t know what it is, but you’d recognize it when you see it.And I think that’s the way it goes right now. I’m not despairing. I’m not thinking about leaving the church. I will die in the church. It’s been my home, it’s been a place I’ve loved. But it also is my exasperation. It just, it takes all I’ve got to stay in the church.David Felten: What do you find most exasperating?Jack Spong: Well, the small minds. And I don’t know how else to say that, but people come to church hoping to be made to feel secure and they don’t. If they are made to feel secure, they’ve missed the point of the Christian church. The job of the Christian church is to help us live in the insecurity of our life. We’re not going to “get over” the insecurity of life. We’re all going to die. We better get prepared for that. We’re all in aspects of life that don’t last forever. And if you let that get hold of you, you just sort of sink into despair because you don’t have an answer.But there’s something beyond what I can see and know and touch and feel that I’m in touch with. And I don’t know how to talk about it. But I will never let it go. And it’s a sustaining thing for me.David Felten: It seems that one of the ways you’ve processed that “something beyond” has been through your writing. Out of all your books, is there one you can say you’re most proud of, that kind of speaks for you and your outlook?Jack Spong: Yeah. I’d say the book I enjoyed most was called Liberating the Gospel, Reading The Bible With Jewish Eyes.David Felten: You discovered a lot of fresh material there.Jack Spong: Yeah, I did. But I didn’t discover it out of nowhere. I was led into it by a great teacher named Michael Goulder. Michael was not a great communicator, but he was a great scholar and I was able to articulate his point of view. I’ve really appreciated him. He’s no longer alive.What I came to see in that book is that Christianity is Jewish at its core. It was born in the Jewish world. Jesus was a Jewish man. His mother and his father were Jewish people. His disciples were Jewish people. They lived and moved in their environment as Jewish people.The first Gospel didn’t get written until Jesus had been dead for 40 years. It had changed a lot since then. The Second Gospel didn’t get written until Jesus was dead about 50 years, the third Gospel, about 60 years. And the fourth Gospel, about 70 years. By the time those Gospels were written, they changed the Christian faith because it was moving in a different world. And people began to try to relate Jesus to another form of life that wasn’t his own. Now you don’t deny that, because it’s important to see that. But you need to look and see how those things go together.I don’t believe that Jesus ever thought of himself as the second person of the Holy Trinity. I don’t believe he ever thought of himself as a divine God-man. But I think he taught and so lived his life that you could see in him and through him how all of us – the God-men and God-women that we are – can’t be human alone. I think that’s the answer to the deepest yearnings in people’s minds. But it’s a long way from what Christianity is in the world today.David Felten: What would you say is one of your books that you’d just as well have back – and why?Jack Spong: I think the worst book that I wrote was called, Living The Commandments. It’s basically about The Ten Commandments. The reason that I’d want it back as it was poorly edited. I wrote it in the interim between being Rector of St Paul’s in Richmond and Bishop of Newark. In Richmond, I had some outstanding people who worked with me and who edited. In Newark, I hadn’t found those people yet, and so I edited it myself. And it’s poorly done.David Felten: So, note to aspiring authors: don’t edit your own books.Jack Spong: I later married my favorite editor. And Chris could take my books and make them shine just beautifully. A good editor is to a Bishop like a Chief of Staff is to a President of the United States. I say if you have a good Chief of Staff, you’re going to be a good President. If you have a good editor, you’re going to be a good writer – and writing became a passion for me. It’s hard work, but it was a creative passion, and I produced a book about every two years, every two and a half years (which is a pretty good rate). But I had a good editor working with me all the time.David Felten: So, content-wise, you’re satisfied with it, it just wasn’t as readable as your other books.Jack Spong: Yeah. I’m still satisfied. But I wouldn’t buy it if I were the average person looking at a bookstore!David Felten: Well let’s say you are wandering through a bookstore today. What authors excite you and get you thinking? Who’d you like to have a conversation with?Jack Spong: Well, somebody asked me who I’d like to have dinner with and that’s the same kind of question. And I said I’d like to have dinner with the late physicist, Stephen Hawking. I’d like to have dinner with him ’cause I think he was a fascinating man.I’d also like to have dinner with Richard Dawkins, the anti-God philosopher and biologist. And I’d like to have dinner with Albert Einstein. Now, I don’t think any one of the three of them would be Christians by the normal definition, but I think they’d be expansive people.I actually did have dinner with Richard Dawkins in Oxford when I was studying over there. I’d been in the Bodleian Library that day and I’d read The Selfish Gene, which is one of his earlier books. As I was speaking at New College that night, I had dinner at the high table. We lined up and walked into the high table and I sat down beside this man and I stuck out my hand and said, “I’m Jack Spong, who are you?” And he said, “I’m Richard Dawkins.” And I said “Well, I just finished reading your book today.” We had a delightful conversation. He was a very attractive and funny guy. He said in one of his books there weren’t but two bishops in the English church that knew what he was talking about and I was one of them! Richard Holloway, of Scotland, was the other. And I always appreciated that. I think I could make Richard a Christian if I had enough time. I thought of all those people who wrote anti-God books, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and the others…David Felten: Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett.Jack Spong: Yeah. I thought Richard Dawkins was the best of them. I disagree with only some of his conclusions. He was raising the same questions that I raise – I don’t believe that God’s a supernatural manipulative person, either. He doesn’t see the church saying anything else and I say the church must say something else.David Felten: What does he say to a comeback like that, where you agree that God isn’t a supernatural manipulative person? Does he see you as an anomaly or does he deal with you as one who represents a legitimate point of view within the church?Jack Spong: He thinks Richard Holloway and I don’t believe in God, either, so we’re “on his side.” I can only say, “We don’t believe in the God he doesn’t believe in.” I don’t know how you say it any differently: “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in. I don’t believe in that God, either.” He doesn’t understand that. People have been trained for so long to think in terms of supernaturalism and theism. And atheism doesn’t mean you don’t believe in God. If you want to be literal about it, it means you don’t believe in the theistic concept of God.David Felten: It’s a hard concept for people to get.Jack Spong: It’s really impossible. I say that all the time and they say, “What?” Someone asked me one time if you had to be a theist to be a Christian. I wrote a column on that. It’s one of fourteen years of columns in the archives. And I said, “No, you don’t have to be a theist to be a Christian.” Theism is one way of thinking about God. It’s not the ultimate, only way to think about God. Most of the people I know who are in the church are going to regard that as beyond the pale. But I think that they are simply beyond the pale on the other side!David Felten: I think it’s just those kinds of clear statements that stand as a tribute to what you’ve expressed for so many years in your columns and your books – and lays out a clear direction in which we still need to move.Jack Spong: Yeah. Well, it’s as clear as I can make it in my last book – and Unbelievable is my last book. I wrote the last part of it after I had a stroke and I can’t write anymore – I can’t write another book. And that’s okay.I knew one professor who wrote 105 books in his life. You can’t have an unpublished thought if you write 100 books. And we used to say to an old Quaker scholar that I knew well who wrote a book a year, I said, “Well, what did you call your book this year?” And he would give me the title. But it’s the same book.David Felten: New title every year, but same book. It’s like my sermons every week.Jack Spong: That’s right. People don’t have that many fresh ideas. My books are clearly repetitive, but they are repetitive in the “sparrow sense.” I go back and touch the ground and then go on to new things and then go back and touch the ground and go on to new things.David Felten: …so people can get a broad sense of where you’re coming from.Jack Spong: I think it’s important for your audience that you do that. You carry them with you so you can come to where you are and then make another leap.David Felten: Bring them along.Jack Spong: Yeah. I loved writing.David Felten: Well, besides your books and columns, my favorite Jack Spong moments have usually come when I’m listening to you field Q&A sessions after a talk. What are a couple of the best questions you’ve ever been asked?Jack Spong: There were two questions that always came up. If they understood what I was saying, they thought Christianity was shaking. And the two things they would ask were, “Do you pray?” and “Do you believe in life after death?” Those two were a constant, usually within the first two or three questions I’d get asked in every gathering. So I wrestled with those questions in particular.I was talking with Gretta Vosper one day about those two questions and she asked, “Why don’t we work on those? I’ll take prayer and you take life after death and write a book on it.” Well, I did and she did. Her book is called Amen, and my book is called Eternal Life: A New Vision: Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell. I happen to believe in life after death and that surprises my friends in the Jesus Seminar. But I don’t believe in heaven and hell. People say, “If you don’t believe in heaven and hell, you can’t believe in life after death.” But I believe there’s something deeply spiritual about human life, there’s something about our consciousness that gets beyond my limits and leads me into relationship with God. I trust it. That’s all I can say. I think that was one of the great books of my life but I don’t know that it’s gonna be an answer for people. It was an answer for me.People apply the same criteria to life after death that they apply to religion, so it doesn’t make sense. It either makes you feel secure and keeps you not-afraid-when-you-die, or it’s nothing but idolatry. So where many are today is, “There is no life after death.”What I’m trying to say is there’s a different way to look at this – to force us to think differently. But it’s hard to talk about. I remember several letters I got after that book came out that said, “I was right with you until you got to the end. And then you don’t believe anything!” I think that was a common perception, but it’s not accurate to say I don’t believe anything. I don’t believe I can say anything about what I believe. I have absolute trust that I am part of something that is bigger than I am and I can’t tell you why or how. It doesn’t necessarily make me feel more secure when I die but death is an interesting thing.What I worry about with death is leaving Christine and leaving my daughters. It’s not whether I live or die. Those things are far more important to me. I know Christine could get along fine, she could run the UN! She doesn’t need me to run her life. We’ve had such a marvelous relationship. She’s shared in my life and I’ve shared in hers and we’re lucky people to have the kind of relationship we have. That’s where the anxiety is for me, it’s not anywhere else.I’ll be 88 my next birthday. I think that’s right remarkable! I don’t know that I’ve got any regrets, David. I think I’d probably live my life pretty much the same way I’ve lived it, if I had a chance to do it all over again. I don’t think there’re many people that can say that. But I’ve really had a wonderful time and I’ve loved my work. I’ve loved being a symbol. I’ve loved opening this church. I look back on our history and we don’t have many people like me. We can’t stand many like me.David Felten: I’ve heard that said.Jack Spong: You know, I think one to two bishops like me is about all a church can tolerate at one moment. I think that’s enough. But without those one to two, I think the next generation is … I don’t know who the new person is, but they will emerge. Somebody has gotta be doing it and I think we’ve got them somewhere.In the next installment of “A Conversation with Bishop John Shelby Spong,” Felten will ask Bishop Spong about his legacy and what he sees as the next revolution.~ Rev. David M. Felten Click here to read online and to share your thoughtsAbout the Author Rev. David M. Felten is a full-time pastor at The Fountains, a United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, Arizona. David and fellow United Methodist Pastor, Jeff Procter-Murphy, are the creators of the DVD-based discussion series for Progressive Christians, “Living the Questions”.A co-founder of the Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology and also a founding member of No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church and tries to stay connected to his roots as a musician. You’ll find him playing saxophones in a variety of settings, including appearances with the Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet. David and his wife Laura, an administrator for a large Arizona public school district, live in Phoenix with their three often adorable children. | | | | | | | | | | Join our FB community today! Spread the word, share with friends. Thanks! | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Gary We always hear that Christianity is shrinking, but is progressive Christianity growing or shrinking? A: By Eric Alexander That is a great question Gary.While I don’t have any firm statistics to back up anything I am about to say, I would offer a suggestion that the tangential and experiential evidence would say it depends on what we mean by progressive Christianity.For example. Over the past 5 years I have moderated some large progressive Christian groups on Facebook. What I have found is that progressive Christianity is definitely growing, but at the same time the original charter has seemed to become more amorphous. But that is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on what one is looking for.When I first started gravitating toward the label, progressive Christianity stood for serious academic theological exploration, which naturally led most to have very unorthodox views of scriptural and spiritual norms. It was mostly led by older white men, and it was mostly intellectual. Naturally I fit right in (chuckle). But as it has evolved, its gate has become much wider, and the tent much larger. Which in many ways has made it more prolific.These days, a progressive Christian may still come across quite evangelical in nature, but trend toward the progressive spectrum because they have become less literal about the Bible and hell – while also becoming affirming of folks in the LGBT community. That is a great thing by all accounts, however when some of the newer folks hear some of the veterans in the camp talk about theology, it can start some hearty debates.So the tradeoff is a growing diversity, especially with more women, people of color, and folks in the LGBT community; as well as a growing focus on the social good that can come as society evolves. The evolution has also sparked a growing renaissance of community Church-like expressions. Therefore the answer to whether progressive Christianity is growing probably just comes down to how strictly one defines what it means to be a progressive Christian, and how open one is to change.Thanks for the great question.Peace and Blessings - Eric Click here to read and share onlineAbout the Author Eric Alexander is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He is a board member at ProgressiveChristianity.org, and is the founder of Jesism, Christian Evolution, and the Progressive Christianity and Politics group on Facebook. Eric holds a Master of Theology from Saint Leo University and studied negotiations at Harvard Law School, and and is author of Teaching Kids Life IS Good. | | | | | | | | 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 ..Patience Builders – 2018 Online November 12th - December 2nd As a nod to the patience we all need in order to hold steady during turbulent times (as well as during the holiday season!), Spirituality & Practice decided to create this special 2018 edition with an online Practice Circle. You will find many kindred spirits there with whom to share your experiences and reflections. Click here for more information/registration ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Global Buzz November
by ICA International 07 Nov '18

07 Nov '18

Enjoy catching up with what is happening in ICAs across the globe.... Global Buzz Report: November 2018 Click above or copy and paste this URL into your browser's address bar http://globalbuzz.icai-archives.org/7dayreport-18/2018-11 01.php And: read the latest ICAI Winds & Waves Magazine brought to you now on Medium.com See here: https://medium.com/winds-and-waves ICAI Communications

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A Reflection: Havdalah of Hope
by Ellie Stock 05 Nov '18

05 Nov '18

Hi Folks, Below and attached (whichever works) is a reflection: Havdalah of Hope, written after participating in the Havdalah of Hope Service at the B'nai Amoona Congregation Saturday evening to remember those killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue. Ellieelliestock(a)aol.com HAVDALAH OF HOPE Oneflaming candle,multiplewicks burning as one,lightfrom many candles woven togethershinesboldly beyond a single capacity… Thisnight, biddingfarewell to Shabbatandwelcoming the new week,Havdalahcandle’s brillianceisnow surrounded by a circle of eleven candles,lightresurrected from life snuffed out atthe Tree of Life Synagogue,(asign in front reading, Love yourneighbor, no exceptions)brothersand sisters, kindred souls, part of Creation’s family surgingbefore, behind, above, below, around, withinandconnecting us all in thegreat animal, vegetable, and mineral TREE OF LIFE. Thisnight the yarmulked, prayer-shawed, clergy-collared,kufi-hatted, seculared,(witnessedby the uniformed and plain-clothed guardians)men,women, and children, wearinggold(not sewn Star of David) No Place for Hate paper lapelstickers,circlethe encircled candle,abeautiful solemn assembly,armsweaving through each other,swaying,gently, rhythmically as one, tearsswelling, flowing,butnot quenching the light,listeningas thelilting angelic voice of the cantorswirlslike creation, through and around them,Eliyahu Hanavi…Elijah the prophet…Bimhera B’yameinu yavo eleinu…Come speedily and in our day…Andsoon the voices of all become onewith the one, one with the One,praying,praising, imploring, blessing,trustingthatdovka—“in spite of” they’ll neverstopdancing, trying to make theworld the way it needs to be. And,in Spirit, this circle is surroundedand also lighted by candlesof Charleston, Parkland,SandyHook, Columbine,Laramie,Orlando, Ferguson,Charlottesville, TallahasseeSelma,Birmingham, WoundedKnee, Sarajevo,Kristallnacht,Auschwitzand Buchenwald…aneternal circle, too many to name,butthis day must not forget,theirblood spilled, victims oftheviolence of hatred, prejudice,systemicracism,culturaland religious bigotry. Butthis day these diverse souls,neighborsin humanity and creation, willnot forgetL’Simcha, Tree of Lifebutdovka, will move on in hope—Hopebeyond hopes,andweaving arms once more forthefinal song and prayer,ofhealing and peace, bideach otherShavuah Tov, A Good Week!—knowingtheir combined brightnessisstronger than the darkness of hate—and,as, in all Jewish communities,theyenjoy food and drink togetherandthen departintoa cloudy night, starsand firey fall leaves hidden,buthealing hearts rekindled by loveand shalom. ejhs11/05/18 When EvilDarkens Our WorldBy Chaim Stern Whenevil darkens our world, let us be the bearers of light.Whenfists are clenched in self-righteous rage, let our hands be open for the sakeof peace.Wheninjustice slam the door on the ill, the poor, the old, and the stranger, let uspry the doors open. Whereshelter is lacking, let us be builders.Wherefood and clothing are needed, let us be providers.Whereknowledge is denied, let us be champions of learning. Whendissent is stifled, let our voices speak truth to power.WhenEarth and its creatures are threatened, let us be their guardians.Whenbias, greed, and bigotry erode our country’s values, let us proclaim libertythroughout the Land. Inthe places where no one acts like a human being,letus bring courage;letus bring compassion;letus bring humanity. Olam ChesedYibanehBy Rabbi Menachem Creditor I will build this world from love…You must build this world from love…If we build this world from love…Then God will build this world from love…

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11/01/18, Progressing Spirit: Eric Alexander: Are You a Spongian?; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 01 Nov '18

01 Nov '18

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!important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv1908871394 #yiv1908871394templateBody .yiv1908871394mcnTextContent, #yiv1908871394 #yiv1908871394templateBody .yiv1908871394mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv1908871394 #yiv1908871394templateFooter .yiv1908871394mcnTextContent, #yiv1908871394 #yiv1908871394templateFooter .yiv1908871394mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } I was glad to have found the Spongian tribe, and excited about what the future might hold. | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Are You a Spongian? Column by Eric Alexander November 1, 2018 It was a little over a decade ago that Bishop Spong met me exactly where I was. He didn’t know it at that time, as it was only through books and videos that I was able to access his wisdom back then, but he was a very real friend to me even though we’d never met.At that time in my life I was grinding my gears at an impasse in my Christian journey. I was leading a large Christian organization, and I had reached the edges of my ability to toe the line anymore. My theology had progressed far outside of where anyone else around me in the ministry was willing to go, and my socio-political views were not within the majority among the southern ecclesial institution. I was heading one of the most active campus ministries at one of the largest universities in the U.S., but I was secretly drowning in theological loneliness. I was wandering the amorphous outskirts of mainstream Christianity, desperate to find someone who was also excited about all the theological exploration and discovery that was happening.I became frustrated with Christianity becoming so closely linked with the spheres of anti-evolutionary science, anti-LGBT equality, anti-gun sense, anti-climate justice, and anti-prison reform. And the evangelical core being cynical about women’s rights, race relations, and economic equality.When it came to theology, I certainly didn’t believe that the earth was only five thousand years old, or that God needed to sacrifice his only son (i.e., himself) to atone for his own design flaws in his first humans. My view was that if God was going to put two brand new creations down here on earth to initiate the world’s population, and then create a talking snake to trick them into a life of trouble for themselves and all of their ancestors, then that blunder was on God, not us. Now of course, we know that is a figurative story, but even in that context the moral remains untenable in an allegorical sense.I also didn’t believe that God physically resuscitated the corpse of that savior to redeem humanity (if we professed to believing in him). Nor did I believe God was even a “him.” None of it made much sense to me, and I couldn’t keep my concerns to my safe inner circle any longer. Literalism, conformity, tribalism – none of it was tolerable. I came to feel that my life might be better off without Christianity. Either it had to change, or I had to conform to a life of creedal orthodoxy; so I decided that it would have to be the one to change, because squelching exploration was simply not going to be an option.During that time I had come across writings from some of modernity’s theological greats, which kept me hanging on; such as Raymond E. Brown, Marcus Borg, and Dominic Crossan. I liked what they were saying. They were each highly credible and thoughtful in discerning the historicity and intent of the original scriptural authors. However, they were mostly focused on Biblical scholarship, and not necessarily dissecting the elements of the Christian faith – at least to the degree I was yearning for. They were powerful forces in the burgeoning movement of modern biblical criticism, but I was ready for the next phase of how this new knowledge would shake out beyond the walls of academia, such as in the pulpits and pews. At that time I needed to hear someone address the state of the faith in the trenches, and let the chips fall where they may. That’s when I found Bishop Spong.In finding the good Bishop, I was able to embark on a great catharsis. Finally someone understood how I felt. Finally someone was saying exactly the things I was experiencing. Finally I felt validated. At that time the atheists weren’t scratching my itch, and neither were Buddhists or the new-thought spirituals. I had certainly been studying those paths for some time prior, and had gleaned much wisdom from them, but there was still something about my Christianity that needed to be resolved before I could experience my next metamorphosis.   I couldn’t shed the paradigm I was raised with without a proper evolutionary process. It was a system that I’d seen so much good come from. A system with so many loving and selflessly giving folks. A system where people took risks to their own personal security and treasure to help others who they didn’t even know. A system with a rich tradition of community. A system where a revolutionary like Jesus could be exalted. There was something about that system that I wanted to retain; while releasing all the frustration that had built up around it.That was when Bishop Spong was the light unto my path. He gave me permission, so to speak, to pull every last theological board down to the foundation to see what (if anything) still remained salvageable. It seemed as if every thought and feeling I was having had already been spoken or written about by the good bishop. There was nothing new under the sun it seemed, and that was a great comfort.After some time of hashing through all that deconstruction, I was able to reconstruct my paradigm with the help of Bishop Spong, and others including Brown, Borg, and Crossan. It all felt very good and natural to me at that point. I was able to fairly easily re-articulate my paradigm using affirmative language (see here for one such foray). Bishop Spong helped me fast track my walk through the valley. His having been there before me was an incredible guide and comfort. His approach of putting all cards on the table was what I needed. Finally someone understood how I felt.I realized that my apprenticeship with Bishop Spong wasn’t the end of a journey, but the beginning. The cause he championed opened the flood gates for free and refined theological exploration. This new generation of thinkers would be handed an invitation to discover where we go from here. It would turn out to be up to this hive of Spongians to navigate where this thoughtfully deconstructed Christianity might remain relevant, applicable, and valuable. I was glad to have found the Spongian tribe, and excited about what the future might hold.I realized that I could help people in similar situations that I had been in, and contribute to organizations that were helping guide people through their awakenings. In my view, Bishop Spong would go down in history as a one-of-a-kind evolutionary. In that light, it seemed obvious that the next frontier was to build upon his work and help enlighten Christianity for future generations.Soon after coming to that conclusion I received a note from Deshna Ubeda: Director for ProgressiveChristianity.org. She had come across my early work and suggested that I come speak at their board meeting. I did, and it was an instant connection. Especially upon meeting another theological giant, Fred Plumer, who was, and still is, the President of the organization. Within a day of meeting Fred I realized what a kindred spirit I had connected with. I also quickly realized why Bishop Spong had chosen he and Deshna to administer his newsletter.Since then, over the past five years, I have been glad to play a part in leading Bishop Spong’s newsletter forward from here. My esteem for Bishop Spong is astronomical, and it is a great honor and privilege to be part of this next phase of discovery, along with all of his readers and fans. This is a true sisterhood and brotherhood of awakening souls. In fact, it is a great testament to Bishop Spong that his fans are so highly educated and discerning. It has been a great honor to be part of such a fan base.  I believe that there is much good that can come from these new, higher, awakening paradigms that are being explored. There are millions of humans on this earth with some kind of Christian paradigm that can greatly benefit from the foundation Bishop Spong has been trailblazing, and which many in the movement are taking in exciting and innovative directions.So are you a Spongian? Well I doubt most in this domain would want to sign up to many new labels these days. But if we define being a Spongian as being a people who heartily respect the potential within the Christian tradition, while having full license and courage to question anything and everything, then you may indeed qualify as a Spongian. If we are genuinely open to spiritual, theological, and social evolution toward our best internal and external actualizations, then that would seem to be a Spongian in the purest sense of the label.There are many reasons to take this new thing forward as a bright light in this transitioning world. Next week Bishop Spong joins us again through an interview by another talented modern progressive leader, Rev. David Felten. Keep an eye out over the next few weeks for David’s 3-part interview with Bishop Spong that you won’t want to miss!Until next time, peace and blessings to you –~ Eric Alexander Click here to read online and to share your thoughts About the Author Eric Alexander is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He is a board member at ProgressiveChristianity.org, and is the founder of Jesism, Christian Evolution, and the Progressive Christianity and Politics group on Facebook. Eric holds a Master of Theology from Saint Leo University and studied negotiations at Harvard Law School, and and is author of Teaching Kids Life IS Good. | | | | | | | | | | Join our FB community today! Spread the word, share with friends. Thanks! | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By A Reader How does the church and God feel about transgender people? Will they go to hell? A: By Rev. Irene Monroe Dear Reader,Trans issues in our churches are not addressed enough. However, trans activism has taken place in both Catholic and Protestant churches across the country. DignityUSA is one such organization that focuses on LGBTQ rights and the Catholic Church. And, their voices want to be heard in Catholic dioceses across the country that will eventually inform and impact the Vatican.Of the many breakout sessions at the DignityUSA conference in 2017, I wished Pope Francis could have sat in on “Trans Catholic Voices,” because his transphobic pronouncements have and continue to be hurtful. Francis compared transgender people to nuclear weapons. His reason is that transgender people destroy and desecrate God’s holy and ordained order of creation.“Let’s think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings,” Francis stated in 2015 in an interview with the National Catholic Reporter “Let’s think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation.”With pronouncements like that, especially from a pope, it's easy to think transgender people are damned to Hell.Across the country, there are epic battles in many states to either pass or not pass transgender bathroom bills. In my state of Massachusetts, the bluest of blue states, we’re asking voters to vote “YES” on Question 3, Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Veto Referendum, to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity in public places—such as hotels, restaurants, and stores.As a black lesbian in this Trump administration, I now feel like I am moving into a new Jim Crow era reestablishing discriminatory laws targeting LGBTQ Americans. I grew up knowing about racist placards that said “Colored Water Fountain,” “Waiting Room For Colored Only,” ”We Serve Whites Only, and “No N-word Allowed, to name a few.Since Trump has taken office, there has been an erosion of LGBTQ civil rights under the guise of religious liberty. For example, transgender Americans being denied access to public lavatories is eerily reminiscent of the country’s last century Jim Crow era denying African Americans access to lunch counters, water fountains, and, libraries, gas stations, theaters, and restrooms, to name a few. Signs that read “whites only” prohibited entry.In Jim Crow America restrooms were a hot-button issue, as today, and a battleground for equal treatment. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on national origin, race, hue, gender, and religion. The law mandated desegregation of all public accommodations, including bathrooms. The Obama administration expanded the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect LGBTQ Americans. However, in February Trump ’s administration revoked federal guidelines permitting transgender students from using “gender-appropriate facilities ” which aligned with their gender identity.However, the good news is that there are several trans-affirming stories in the Bible. My favorite one is about Philip the Evangelist and the Ethiopian eunuch conversion to Christianity in Acts 8:26- 39.We can deduce from this pericope that the teachings of Christ circulated widely across the world and how Christ’s teachings spread, at least one way, throughout the continent of Africa through the Ethiopian Eunuch. Traveling south from Jerusalem to Gaza, Phillip meets the Ethiopian Eunuch, a court official of the Queen of Ethiopia, in his chariot reading from the scroll of Isaiah that theologians commonly refer to as “the Third Suffering Servant Song.” The Ethiopian eunuch had traveled to Jerusalem to worship and was headed home. God tells Philip to follow the Ethiopian to baptize him so that he, too, can spread the good news of Jesus.While traveling down the road together, Phillip explained the Isaiah text and the Ethiopian asked to be baptized. When they came upon a body of water, Philip baptized him.Deceased John J. McNeill, a Jesuit priest and theologian, affirmed that the story of the Ethiopian eunuch is evident of “the first baptized gay Christian. This scripture reveals to many progressive Biblical scholars that God welcomes and affirms gender-variant individuals. Eunuchs, for example, were castrated, homosexual, and intersex men. Today the terms could easily translate to mean sexual minorities, referring to LGBTQIA individuals. The term means “the keepers of the bed.” These gender-variant men served and guarded the women in royal palaces and wealthy households.Also, the story of the Ethiopian eunuch highlights that the early beginnings of Chrsitniaty welcomed not only sexual minorities but also different races, and ethnicities. The Ethiopian eunuch is an example of a queer foreign black man as the first non-Jewish convert to Christianity.During the “Trans Catholic Voices” breakout season at the DignityUSA conference, an African American transwoman pointed out that Francis statements about transpeople deny them of basic human dignity and perpetuates violence against them. The life expectancy for black trans is 32 years old.In her closing remarks, the African American transwoman in “Trans Catholic Voices” asked for help from advocates and allies in the room that nearly brought me to tears.“Trans lives are real lives. Trans deaths are real deaths. God works through other people. Maybe you can be those other people.”How churches feel about transgender people will vary. However, how God feels about transgender people has always been welcoming and affirming since the beginning of time.~ Rev. Irene MonroeClick here to read and share online About the Author The Reverend Monroe is an ordained minister. She does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on WGBH (89.7 FM), a Boston member station of National Public Radio (NPR), that is now a podcast, and a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS (NECN). Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston’s Black Women Abolitionists (Boston) - DetourMonroe’s a Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist. Her columns appear in cities across the country and in the U.K, Ireland, Canada. Monroe writes a column in the Boston home LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and Opinion pieces for the Boston Globe.Monroe stated that her "columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As an religion columnist I try to inform the public of the role religion plays in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Because homophobia is both a hatred of the “other ” and it’s usually acted upon ‘in the name of religion,” by reporting religion in the news I aim to highlight how religious intolerance and fundamentalism not only shatters the goal of American democracy, but also aids in perpetuating other forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, classism and anti-Semitism.” Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College's research library on the history of women in America. Click here to visit her website. | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited Emily Jane Failla: A Special Life Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong on July 26, 2006 The community of St. Peter’s Church in Morristown, New Jersey, where my wife and I worship, gathered this week to celebrate the life of Emily Jane Failla and to bid her farewell. Most of my readers will not know Emily but she illustrates so many of the realities that plague both our humanity and our religious faith that her story has the potential to be a universal story.I first met Emily on an August Sunday morning 21 years ago. She was an absolutely charming little girl of 3. She and her family were newcomers to our church on that particular Sunday, so as a member of the congregation and therefore quite anonymous to this new family, I simply greeted and welcomed them. Her father Frank had moved to New Jersey as part of the management of a pharmaceutical company. Her mother Kay was a lovely young woman with a southern accent that probably warmed my transplanted southern soul. Emily had a little sister named Lauren, who was only a few months old at the time and seemed not terribly interested in church or strangers. Emily was, however, adorable, vibrant, friendly, responsive and ever smiling. As the father of daughters, she elicited the warm feeling of my early years as a parent and stole my heart at once. Forever afterward, in some strange way, she occupied a special place in my affections. In time my anonymity was blown and she came to know that this man, to whom she was always warmly responsive, was also her bishop.I watched this child grow up over the years. She engaged life with great gusto. Her whole family became part of the core of St. Peter’s Church, serving in every conceivable capacity. Emily was herself deeply involved in Sunday school, the youth group and starred in the girl’s choir. That church was this family’s second home.When Emily reached confirmation age, my assistant was scheduled to be the confirming bishop at St. Peter’s. However, a shift was made so that I could lay my Episcopal hands on the head of this special young lady who, by then, had become a budding adolescent. It was her choice, her family’s choice and mine. Bishops can manipulate their schedules to do things like this, you know. They just don’t admit it publicly!Life goes on after confirmation and Emily became an outstanding student and a superior athlete in high school. Tennis was her sport of choice and her proficiency and popularity were such that she was chosen to be the captain of the Morristown High Girls’ Tennis Team in her senior year. Emily was an outdoors type and a wide variety of athletic activities attracted her. She graced all of them with competence, great zest and enthusiasm.When she graduated from high school and headed for Vanderbilt University, just six short years ago, a great sense of vitality disappeared from her church, except at Christmas and during the summer when Emily returned for holiday visits. A junior year abroad in New Zealand only served to round out this spectacular person who grew into a stunning young adult. She was as pretty as she was kind, gentle and loving. She had the ability to wring from each day every ounce of sweetness that it possessed. She scaled life’s heights and plumbed life’s depths, missing very little of what life had to offer. I remember kidding her about moving to Nashville, Tennessee, for her education. Nashville is a city that I know well and enjoy greatly, having lectured there on several occasions. “Nashville is a schizophrenic small city,” I told her one Sunday when we met in church. “It cannot decide whether it is best known for Vanderbilt University or for Minnie Pearl and the Grand Ole Opry.” However, Nashville was right for Emily and she graduated with full honors, to accept a fourth grade teaching position in the State of Washington. She was drawn to the northwest by its outdoor beauty and by mountains that she enjoyed climbing, becoming quite expert in this activity.On Sunday, July 2, Emily and friends were rappelling down a popular climbing spot in Central Washington known as Condor’s Pitch on Icicle River when something went terribly wrong two thirds of the way down. She fell 400 feet to a quick and certain death. The news broke over Morristown like a clap of thunder. The grief that engulfed the congregation of St. Peter’s was palpable. Emily had not only been special to me, I discovered, but to a very large segment of church members. Her high school principal described exactly what I had experienced. “She had incredible social skills,” he said, “the sense of how to talk to almost anyone.”As people tried to make sense out of this tragedy, they ran the gamut of emotions and reasoning. There was anger at God and at the unfairness of life. There was resentment that such a thing could happen. Hundreds of people, I heard one person say, live out their lives in nursing homes with various levels of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease and each day seems like an eternity with all meaning in life lost. Yet here was one whose vibrancy and vitality was snuffed out before she had really entered fully into adulthood. Others lapsed into pious language depicting Emily as dancing on the clouds in some external heavenly setting. Perhaps that helped momentarily but ultimately that kind of religious imagery means very little to most people today.The eternal question of ‘why’ was asked in a thousand different ways, all of which assumed that a heavenly parent figure is in charge of the world, so there must be an explanation. The only proper response is to listen in the face of the tragedy. Whatever provides the cushion to allow grieving people to walk through what surely is life’s deepest pain is simply accepted. There will be time later to pick up the pieces, process the pain and embrace the hardness of reality. The great temptation of the professional clergy in times of tragedy is to seek to explain it, to provide answers where there are none, and to state in some authoritative way that God still reigns. No one, however, in the trauma of grief hears these words and they are better left unsaid. The only ministry anyone really has to offer in such times is the ministry of presence and availability. If the bereaved ones want to scream in anger at God, listen, accept and absorb it. If they want to retreat into silence, let them and be silent with them. It is the power of loving relationships that will get them from today into tomorrow, not words, not explanations, not piety indeed not even prayer. Prayer ofttimes meets the needs of the one praying more than the needs of the bereaved.I have never lost a child. I cannot even imagine what that is like. I have lost a father, a mother, a wife, a brother, a rector and countless friends. Each grieving experience was different. My father died at 54 when I was but 12. My wife died after a long and debilitating illness at age 59. My mother died at age 92 when her body simply wore out. My brother died peacefully in his sleep without any visible sickness at all. My rector died on an operating table undergoing what was called “a routine and minor procedure.”What I learned in those quite diverse circumstances was that the deeper and more interdependent the relationship, the larger was the aching void in the heart of the survivors. Those who love little, grieve little. Those who love much, grieve exceedingly. Would any of us then choose to avoid grief by avoiding loving? I would not. The very depth of life’s meaning is experienced in giving yourself in love to another person even though that opens each to pain at the time of separation.I have never felt that assurances of life after death brought comfort to grieving people. It comes across as a kind of panacea that seeks to deny the depth and reality of the loss. It is not that I do not believe in life after death, for I do in a very deep way. However, it does not affect how I live. I make no decisions based on that conviction. I also do not know how to conceptualize this hope or even to talk about it without sounding sticky and pious. I believe that God is real, though I do not envision God in traditional theistic terms as a supernatural being, dwelling somewhere outside this world and intervening periodically in miraculous ways. That God feels more like Santa Claus than God to me. I experience God rather as the Source of life, calling me to live, as the Source of love, calling me to love and as the Ground of Being calling me to have the courage to be all that I am capable of being.I serve this God by seeking to build a world where everyone in it can have a better chance to live, to love and to be who he or she is in the infinite variety of our humanity. I am a disciple of Jesus because I see in him the fullness of life, the completeness of love and the uncanny ability to possess himself so completely, that he can give himself away totally.That is why I see God in Jesus. Since I experience this God as a breaker of those barriers that diminish our humanity, including that ultimate barrier of mortality, I live each day in the confidence that I am part of that which is eternal. I cannot talk about it. I can only live it out. In the living of this kind of life, I experience God as my ultimate truth.Is life fair? No! Is God in charge? If you mean a God who like Santa is making a list and checking it twice in order to make sure that reward and punishment are fairly distributed, then my answer is also, ‘No!’ But is God real? Is life holy? Can I find the courage to be? Can I discover the ability to allow others to be who they are? My answer to those queries is yes, a thousand times yes. In that God I believe I touch eternity.Emily Failla knew the reality of this God experience and she lived it out. Those who loved her grieve with aching hearts but, because of her, all of us will live again and love again. In that conviction, we can walk today through the valley of the shadow of a wrenching death, but we find the strength to keep on walking. ~ 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 The Spiritual Legacy of Reb Zalman By Sage-ing International, Nadya Gross, Victor Gross Online eCourse Nov 1st - Nov 30th This four-week e-course aims to bring to life the legacy of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924 – 2014), respectfully called Reb Zalman, who was one of the spiritual masters of our time. He was both a product of and contributor to the movement from religious parochialism to universalism. His devotion to paradigm shift gave birth to the Jewish Renewal movement, as well as to the Spiritual Eldering movement. Click here for more information/registration. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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