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Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] ICA Zimbabwe HIV/AIDS-Dec. 3
by Lynda Cock 25 Nov '13

25 Nov '13

The UMC that I grew up in has contributed $1000 from my father's designated-for-missions part of his estate to the church. Unfortunately, it was sent just weeks before we got word of the doubling. However, if every UMC congregation represented on this list serve would rally $500 which would be doubled into $1000, we could cover that budgeted amount for the Zimbabwe HIV/AIDs account and more. Thank you, Richard, for your leadership in this project and to OliveAnn and Jim for their follow-up. Heed OliveAnn's words below and call early before the doubling cap is reached. We also give thanks for the work of Louise and John Singleton, Sandra and Bob True, and many others who have worked diligently on this project through the years. As you may recall, we have two grandchildren adopted from Ethiopia's crowded orphanages making us very aware of the scourge of HIV/AIDS all across Africa's poorest countries. Programs such as this one have high potential for being replicated. With care and gratitude, Lynda and John _____ From: oe-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Jim & OliveAnn Slotta Sent: Friday, November 22, 2013 1:19 PM To: Richard Alton Cc: Order Ecumenical; dialogue Lists Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] ICA Zimbabwe HIV/AIDS (-from OliveAnn Slotta in Denver)   Thank you, Dick, for calling our attention to this extraordinary opportunity. Everyone can "double their donation money" to an ICA supported and inspired Zimbabwe HIV/AIDS Project. I have been working to remind friends and Denver area United Methodists of this unique opportunity. Yesterday, with a nudge from local ICA colleague Clarence Snelling, I found an article in the Nov./Dec. issue of the UMC publication The Advance (see pg. 39) and became a true believer! I learned that this Special Advance of the United Methodist Church features over 850 approved programs, and is supported by more than 3000 non-profit partners. "Giving Tuesday" is a way of giving back that takes place nationwide on Dec. 3; all donations will be matched, you need not be a United Methodist to participate. (List serve readers: You may recall that this HIV/AIDS approved program was initiated by Dick Alton's United Methodist Church in Oak Park, Illinois under Dick leadership. See also his March 21st e-mail to each of the list serves. And of course, Dick has more riveting background information, which he has sent me and you can presumably also receive from him.)   Please note these important details --the matching program caps at $500,000 total and $10,000 per project, implying that, like John Wesley, you might want to arise early on the 3rd to make your donation (or stay up until midnight on the 2nd); Louise Singleton notes that this potential sum constitutes a full year of operating money for the Zimbabwe project! Again, the project number is #3021529. Donations must be made through the website below using a credit card; they may be made by individuals or congregations. If you are a member of a United Methodist Church, it may not be too late to speak to your Missions Commission about designating some of their global mission dollars for this Zimbabwe HIV/AIDS Special Advance approved program with matching funds on December 3rd. To donate, on December 3rd go to:   www.umcmission.org/give   Yours in mission,   OliveAnn On Nov 3, 2013, at 9:24 AM, Richard Alton wrote: Dear Colleagues, great way to support ICA's global work. Every dollar you give will be matched. You give on December 3 by credit card. See below for details Zimbabwe HIV/AIDS: Advanced Special number 3021529: ICA Zimbabwe's HIV/AIDS project has been chosen as an Advanced Special of the United Methodist Church's Board of Global Ministries. The Zimbabwe project is a comprehensive community based approach to addressing HIV/AIDS. It starts with a massive push on door-to-door testing followed by working with HIV+ people using a program developed by Stanford University Medical School, Living Well with AIDS, a 7 week program to teach self management skills. Finally, this flows into savings/social support groups called Self-Help Groups. The Zimbabwe project will work with 50 villages involving 500,000 people over the next 3 years. Zimbabwe needs your support: Zimbabwe is experiencing one of the harshest AIDS epidemics in the world. In the last decade the population has decreased by four million, infant mortality has doubled and the average life expectancy for women, who are particularly affected by Zimbabwe's AIDS epidemic, is 34-the lowest anywhere in the world. Zimbabwe has a higher number of orphans, in proportion to its population, than any other country in the world. "The United Methodist Board of Global Ministries is participating in UMC <http://www.umcmission.org/Learn-About-Us/News-and-Stories/2013/October/1015 -UMC-GivingTuesday-Promises-to-Multiply-Impact> #GivingTuesday on December 3, 2013. Gifts made online through The Advance on UMC #GivingTuesday will be matched dollar for dollar, meaning that 200 percent of every donation through your Advance number on December 3 will directly go to impact your ministry. This is a great opportunity for you to reach out through your networks and let them know about this one-day event and how it can support this important work." Dick Alton, (Richard.alton(a)gmail.com; 773.344.7172) Richard H.T. Alton 166 N. Humphrey Ave, Apt, 1N Oak Park, IL 60302 T:1.773.344.7172 richard.alton(a)gmail.com Don't let the fear of striking out hold you back Babe Ruth _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net

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Good evening Dialogue!
by Joan Knutson 22 Nov '13

22 Nov '13

http://dinlemecihaziistanbul.com/contacter/facebook.php?rksfhh184qwzcg Joan Knutson jfknutson(a)aol.com \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- Sorry if I was a little... rambunctious... -- Adam Rifkin

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from Jaime - 'Sleepwalking to Extinction'
by Ken Fisher 20 Nov '13

20 Nov '13

On 2013-11-20, at 8:16 AM, Jaime R Vergara wrote: Ken, Might you shoot this to the listserv? Longish but sobering. On the particle content in the air, where one is the recommended normal content, and four is beyond the danger zone, we hit 40 in Harbin 4 hrs. by train north of us here in Shenyang last week. We might have registered a count of 20 here guessing from the number of face masks worn around! I might have avoided Fukushima's radiation in Saipan but with the pollution in China's northeast, I just traded cancer for asthma! Jaime Published on Friday, November 15, 2013 by Adbusters 'Sleepwalking to Extinction': Capitalism and the Destruction of Life and Earth by Richard Smith (Image: STEVE MEISEL / AFP) When, on May 10th, scientists at Mauna Loa Observatory on the big island of Hawaii announced that global CO2 emissions had crossed a threshold at 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in millions of years, a sense of dread spread around the world and not only among climate scientists. CO2 emissions have been relentlessly climbing since Charles David Keeling first set up his tracking station near the summit of Mauna Loa Observatory in 1958 to monitor average daily global CO2 levels. At that time, CO2 concentrations registered 315 ppm. CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations have been rising ever since and have recently passed a dangerous tipping point: 440ppm. For all the climate summits, promises of “voluntary restraint,” carbon trading and carbon taxes, the growth of CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations have not just been unceasing, they have been accelerating in what scientists have dubbed the “Keeling Curve.” In the early 1960s, CO2 ppm concentrations in the atmosphere grew by 0.7ppm per year. In recent decades, especially as China has industrialized, the growth rate has tripled to 2.1 ppm per year. In just the first 17 weeks of 2013, CO2 levels jumped by 2.74 ppm compared to last year. Carbon concentrations have not been this high since the Pliocene period, between 3m and 5m years ago, when global average temperatures were 3˚C or 4˚C hotter than today, the Arctic was ice-free, sea levels were about 40m higher and jungles covered northern Canada; Florida, meanwhile, was under water along with other coastal locations we now call New York, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Sydney and many others. Crossing this threshold has fuelled fears that we are fast approaching converging “tipping points” — melting of the subarctic tundra or the thawing and releasing of the vast quantities of methane in the Arctic sea bottom — that will accelerate global warming beyond any human capacity to stop it. “I wish it weren’t true, but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400 ppm level without losing a beat,” said Scripps Institute geochemist Ralph Keeling, son of Charles Keeling. “At this pace, we’ll hit 450 ppm within a few decades.” “It feels like the inevitable march toward disaster,” said Maureen E. Raymo, a scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a unit of Columbia University. Why are we marching toward disaster, “sleepwalking to extinction” as the Guardian’s George Monbiot once put it? Why can’t we slam on the brakes before we ride off the cliff to collapse? I’m going to argue here that the problem is rooted in the requirement of capitalist production. Large corporations can’t help themselves; they can’t change or change very much. So long as we live under this corporate capitalist system we have little choice but to go along in this destruction, to keep pouring on the gas instead of slamming on the brakes, and that the only alternative — impossible as this may seem right now — is to overthrow this global economic system and all of the governments of the 1% that prop it up and replace them with a global economic democracy, a radical bottom-up political democracy, an eco-socialist civilization. Although we are fast approaching the precipice of ecological collapse, the means to derail this train wreck are in the making as, around the world we are witnessing a near simultaneous global mass democratic “awakening” — as the Brazilians call it — from Tahir Square to Zucotti Park, from Athens to Istanbul to Beijing and beyond such as the world has never seen. To be sure, like Occupy Wall Street, these movements are still inchoate, are still mainly protesting what’s wrong rather than fighting for an alternative social order. Like Occupy, they have yet to clearly and robustly answer that crucial question: “Don’t like capitalism, what’s your alternative?” Yet they are working on it, and they are for the most part instinctively and radically democratic; in this lies our hope. Capitalism is, overwhelmingly, the main driver of planetary ecological collapse From climate change to natural resource overconsumption to pollution, the engine that has powered three centuries of accelerating economic development, revolutionizing technology, science, culture and human life itself is, today, a roaring out-of-control locomotive mowing down continents of forests, sweeping oceans of life, clawing out mountains of minerals, pumping out lakes of fuels, devouring the planet’s last accessible natural resources to turn them into “product,” while destroying fragile global ecologies built up over eons of time. Between 1950 and 2000 the global human population more than doubled from 2.5 to 6 billion. But in these same decades, consumption of major natural resources soared more than sixfold on average, some much more. Natural gas consumption grew nearly twelvefold, bauxite (aluminum ore) fifteenfold. And so on. At current rates, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson says that “half the world’s great forests have already been leveled and half the world’s plant and animal species may be gone by the end of this century.” Corporations aren’t necessarily evil, though plenty are diabolically evil, but they can’t help themselves. They’re just doing what they’re supposed to do for the benefit of their shareholders. Shell Oil can’t help but loot Nigeria and the Arctic and cook the climate. That’s what shareholders demand. BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and other mining giants can’t resist mining Australia’s abundant coal and exporting it to China and India. Mining accounts for 19% of Australia’s GDP and substantial employment even as coal combustion is the single worst driver of global warming. IKEA can’t help but level the forests of Siberia and Malaysia to feed the Chinese mills building their flimsy disposable furniture (IKEA is the third largest consumer of lumber in the world). Apple can’t help it if the cost of extracting the “rare earths” it needs to make millions of new iThings each year is the destruction of the eastern Congo — violence, rape, slavery, forced induction of child soldiers, along with poisoning local waterways. Monsanto and DuPont and Syngenta and Bayer Crop Science have no choice but to wipe out bees, butterflies, birds, small farmers and extinguish crop diversity to secure their grip on the world’s food supply while drenching the planet in their Roundups and Atrazines and neonicotinoids. This is how giant corporations are wiping out life on earth in the course of a routine business day. And the bigger the corporations grow, the worse the problems become. In Adam Smith’s day, when the first factories and mills produced hat pins and iron tools and rolls of cloth by the thousands, capitalist freedom to make whatever they wanted didn’t much matter because they didn’t have much impact on the global environment. But today, when everything is produced in the millions and billions, then trashed today and reproduced all over again tomorrow, when the planet is looted and polluted to support all this frantic and senseless growth, it matters — a lot. The world’s climate scientists tell us we’re facing a planetary emergency. They’ve been telling us since the 1990s that if we don’t cut global fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions by 80-90% below 1990 levels by 2050 we will cross critical tipping points and global warming will accelerate beyond any human power to contain it. Yet despite all the ringing alarm bells, no corporation and no government can oppose growth and, instead, every capitalist government in the world is putting pedal to the metal to accelerate growth, to drive us full throttle off the cliff to collapse. Marxists have never had a better argument against capitalism than this inescapable and apocalyptic “contradiction.” Solutions to the ecological crisis are blindingly obvious but we can’t take the necessary steps to prevent ecological collapse because, so long as we live under capitalism, economic growth has to take priority over ecological concerns. We all know what we have to do: suppress greenhouse gas emissions. Stop over-consuming natural resources. Stop the senseless pollution of the earth, waters, and atmosphere with toxic chemicals. Stop producing waste that can’t be recycled by nature. Stop the destruction of biological diversity and ensure the rights of other species to flourish. We don’t need any new technological breakthroughs to solve these problems. Mostly, we just stop doing what we’re doing. But we can’t stop because we’re all locked into an economic system in which companies have to grow to compete and reward their shareholders and because we all need the jobs. James Hansen, the world’s preeminent climate scientist, has argued that to save the humans: “Coal emissions must be phased out as rapidly as possible or global climate disasters will be a dead certainty ... Yes, [coal, oil, gas] most of the fossil fuels must be left in the ground. That is the explicit message that the science provides. […] Humanity treads today on a slippery slope. As we continue to pump greenhouse gases in the air, we move onto a steeper, even more slippery incline. We seem oblivious to the danger — unaware of how close we may be to a situation in which a catastrophic slip becomes practically unavoidable, a slip where we suddenly lose all control and are pulled into a torrential stream that hurls us over a precipice to our demise.” But how can we do this under capitalism? After his climate negotiators stonewalled calls for binding limits on CO2 emissions at Copenhagen, Cancun, Cape Town and Doha, President Obama is now trying to salvage his environmental “legacy” by ordering his EPA to impose “tough” new emissions limits on existing power plants, especially coal-fired plants. But this won’t salvage his legacy or, more importantly, his daughters’ futures because how much difference would it make, really, if every coal-fired power plant in the U.S. shut down tomorrow when U.S. coal producers are free to export their coal to China, which they are doing, and when China is building another coal-fired power plan every week? The atmosphere doesn’t care where the coal is burned. It only cares how much is burned. Yet how could Obama tell American mining companies to stop mining coal? This would be tantamount to socialism. But if we do not stop mining and burning coal, capitalist freedom and private property is the least we’ll have to worry about. Same with Obama’s “tough” new fuel economy standards. In August 2012 Obama boasted that his new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards would “double fuel efficiency” over the next 13 years to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, up from 28.6 mpg at present — cutting vehicle CO2 emissions in half, so helping enormously to “save the planet.” But as the Center for Biological Diversity and other critics have noted, Obama was lying, as usual. First, his so-called “tough” new CAFE standards were so full of loopholes, negotiated with Detroit, that they actually encourage more gas-guzzling, not less. That’s because the standards are based on a sliding scale according to “vehicle footprints” — the bigger the car, the less mileage it has to get to meet its “standard.” So in fact Obama’s “tough” standards are (surprise) custom designed to promote what Detroit does best — produce giant Sequoias, mountainous Denalis, Sierras, Yukons, Tundras and Ticonderogas, Ram Chargers and Ford F series luxury trucks, grossly obese Cadillac Escalades, soccer-kid Suburbans, even 8,000 (!) pound Ford Excursions — and let these gross gas hogs meet the “fleet standard.” These cars and “light” trucks are among the biggest selling vehicles in America today (GM’s Sierra is #1) and they get worse gas mileage than American cars and trucks half a century ago. Cadillac’s current Escalade gets worse mileage than its chrome bedecked tail fin-festooned land yachts of the mid-1950s! Little wonder Detroit applauded Obama’s new CAFE standards instead of damning them as usual. Secondly, what would it matter even if Obama’s new CAFE standards actually did double fleet mileage — when American and global vehicle fleets are growing exponentially? In 1950 Americans had one car for every three people. Today we have 1.2 cars for every American. In 1950 when there were about 2.6 billion humans on the planet, there were 53 million cars on the world’s roads — about one for every 50 persons. Today, there are 7 billion people but more than 1 billion cars and industry forecasters expect there will be 2 to 2.5 billion cars on the world’s roads by mid-century. China alone is expected to have a billion. So, at the end of the day, incremental half measures like CAFE standards can’t stop rising GHG missions. Barring some technical miracle, the only way to cut vehicle emissions is to just stop making them — drastically suppress vehicle production, especially of the worst gas hogs. In theory, Obama could simply order GM to stop building its humongous gas guzzlers and switch to producing small economy cars. After all, the federal government owns the company! But of course, how could he do any such thing? Detroit lives by the mantra “big car big profit, small car small profit.” Since Detroit has never been able to compete against the Japanese and Germans in the small car market, which is already glutted and nearly profitless everywhere, such an order would only doom GM to failure, if not bankruptcy (again) and throw masses of workers onto the unemployment lines. So given capitalism, Obama is, in fact, powerless. He’s locked in to promoting the endless growth of vehicle production, even of the worst polluters — and lying about it all to the public to try to patch up his pathetic “legacy.” And yet, if we don’t suppress vehicle production, how can we stop rising CO2 emissions? In the wake of the failure of climate negotiators from Kyoto to Doha to agree on binding limits on GHG emissions, exasperated British climate scientists Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows at the Tyndall Centre, Britain’s leading climate change research center, wrote in September 2012 that we need an entirely new paradigm: Government policies must “radically change” if “dangerous” climate change is to be avoided “We urgently need to acknowledge that the development needs of many countries leave the rich western nations with little choice but to immediately and severely curb their greenhouse gas emissions... [The] misguided belief that commitments to avoid warming of 2˚C can still be realized with incremental adjustments to economic incentives. A carbon tax here, a little emissions trading there and the odd voluntary agreement thrown in for good measure will not be sufficient ... long-term end-point targets (for example, 80% by 2050) have no scientific basis. What governs future global temperatures and other adverse climate impacts are the emissions from yesterday, today and those released in the next few years.” And not just scientists. In its latest world energy forecast released on November 12, 2012, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warns that despite the bonanza of fossil fuels now made possible by fracking, horizontal and deepwater drilling, we can’t consume them if we want to save the humans: “The climate goal of limiting global warming to 2˚C is becoming more difficult and costly with each year that passes... no more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the 2˚C goal...” Of course the science could be wrong about this. But so far climate scientists have consistently underestimated the speed and ferocity of global warming, and even prominent climate change deniers have folded their cards. Still, it’s one thing for James Hansen or Bill McKibben to say we need to “leave the coal in the hole, the oil in the soil, the gas under the grass,” to call for “severe curbs” in GHG emissions — in the abstract. But think about what this means in our capitalist economy. Most of us, even passionate environmental activists, don’t really want to face up to the economic implications of the science we defend. That’s why, if you listen to environmentalists like Bill McKibben for example, you will get the impression that global warming is mainly driven by fossi- fuel-powered electric power plants, so if we just “switch to renewables” this will solve the main problem and we can carry on with life more or less as we do now. Indeed, “green capitalism” enthusiasts like Thomas Friedman and the union-backed “green jobs” lobby look to renewable energy, electric cars and such as “the next great engine of industrial growth” — the perfect win-win solution. This is a not a solution. This is a delusion: greenhouse gasses are produced across the economy not just by power plants. Globally, fossil-fuel-powered electricity generation accounts for 17% of GHG emissions, heating accounts for 5%, miscellaneous “other” fuel combustion 8.6%, industry 14.7%, industrial processes another 4.3%, transportation 14.3%, agriculture 13.6%, land use changes (mainly deforestation) 12.2%. This means, for a start, that even if we immediately replaced every fossil-fuel-powered electric generating plant on the planet with 100% renewable solar, wind and water power, this would only reduce global GHG emissions by around 17%. What this means is that, far from launching a new green-energy-powered “industrial growth” boom, barring some tech-fix miracle, the only way to impose “immediate and severe curbs” on fossil fuel production/consumption would be to impose an EMERGENCY CONTRACTION in the industrialized countries: drastically retrench and in some cases shut down industries, even entire sectors, across the economy and around the planet — not just fossil fuel producers but all the industries that consume them and produce GHG emissions — autos, trucking, aircraft, airlines, shipping and cruise lines, construction, chemicals, plastics, synthetic fabrics, cosmetics, synthetic fiber and fabrics, synthetic fertilizer and agribusiness CAFO operations. Of course, no one wants to hear this because, given capitalism, this would unavoidably mean mass bankruptcies, global economic collapse, depression and mass unemployment around the world. That’s why in April 2013, in laying the political groundwork for his approval of the XL pipeline in some form, President Obama said “the politics of this are tough.” The earth’s temperature probably isn’t the “number one concern” for workers who haven’t seen a raise in a decade; have an underwater mortgage; are spending $40 to fill their gas tank, can’t afford a hybrid car; and face other challenges.” Obama wants to save the planet but given capitalism his “number one concern” has to be growing the economy, growing jobs. Given capitalism — today, tomorrow, next year and every year — economic growth will always be the overriding priority ... till we barrel right off the cliff to collapse. The necessity of denial and delusion There’s no technical solution to this problem and no market solution either. In a very few cases — electricity generation is the main one — a broad shift to renewables could indeed sharply reduce fossil fuel emissions in that sector. But if we just use “clean” “green” energy to power more growth, consume ever more natural resources, then we solve nothing and would still be headed to collapse. Producing millions of electric cars instead of millions of gasoline-powered cars, as I explained elsewhere, would be just as ecologically destructive and polluting, if in somewhat different ways, even if they were all run on solar power. Substituting biofuels for fossil fuels in transportation just creates different but no less environmentally-destructive problems: converting farm land to raise biofuel feedstock pits food production against fuels. Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas or grasslands to produce biofuels releases more CO2 into the atmosphere than the fossil fuels they replace and accelerates species extinction. More industrial farming means more demand for water, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. And so on. Cap and trade schemes can’t cut fossil fuel emissions because business understands, even if some environmentalists do not, that “dematerialization” is a fantasy, that there’s no win-win tech solution, that capping emissions means cutting growth. Since cutting growth is unacceptable to business, labor and governments, cap and trade has been abandoned everywhere. Carbon taxes can’t stop global warming either because they do not cap emissions. That’s why fossil fuel execs like Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil (the largest private oil company in the world) and Paul Anderson, CEO of Duke Energy (the largest electric utility in the U.S.) support carbon taxes. They understand that carbon taxes would add something to the cost of doing business, like other taxes, but they pose no limit, no “cap” on growth. ExxonMobil predicts that, carbon tax or no carbon tax, by 2040 global demand for energy is going to grow by 35%, 65% in the developing world and nearly all of this is going to be supplied by fossil fuels. ExxonMobil is not looking to “leave the oil in the soil” as a favor to Bill McKibben and the humans. ExxonMobil is looking to pump it and burn it all as fast as possible to enrich its shareholders. Hansen, McKibben, Obama — and most of us really — don’t want to face up to the economic implications of the need to put the brakes on growth and fossil fuel-based overconsumption. We all “need” to live in denial, and believe in delusions that carbon taxes or some tech fix will save us because we all know that capitalism has to grow or we’ll all be out of work. And the thought of replacing capitalism seems so impossible, especially given the powers arrayed against change. But what’s the alternative? In the not-so-distant future, this is all going to come to a screeching halt one way or another — either we seize hold of this out-of-control locomotive, or we ride this train right off the cliff to collapse. Emergency Contraction or Global Ecological Collapse? If there’s no market mechanism to stop plundering the planet then, again, what alternative is there but to impose an emergency contraction on resource consumption? This doesn’t mean we would have to de-industrialize and go back to riding horses and living in log cabins. But it does mean that we would have to abandon the “consumer economy” — shut down all kinds of unnecessary, wasteful and polluting industries from junkfood to cruise ships, disposable Pampers to disposable H&M clothes, disposable IKEA furniture, endless new model cars, phones, electronic games, the lot. Plus all the banking, advertising, junk mail, most retail, etc. We would have completely redesign production to replace “fast junk food” with healthy, nutritious, fresh “slow food,” replace “fast fashion” with “slow fashion,” bring back mending, alterations and local tailors and shoe repairmen. We would have to completely redesign production of appliances, electronics, housewares, furniture and so on to be as durable and long-lived as possible. Bring back appliance repairmen and such. We would have to abolish the throwaway disposables industries, the packaging and plastic bag industrial complex, bring back refillable bottles and the like. We would have to design and build housing to last for centuries, to be as energy efficient as possible, to be reconfigurable, and shareable. We would have to vastly expand public transportation to curb vehicle use but also build those we do need to last and be shareable like Zipcar or Paris’ municipally-owned “Autolib” shared electric cars. These are the sorts of things we would have to do if we really want to stop overconsumption and save the world. All these changes are simple, self-evident, no great technical challenge. They just require a completely different kind of economy, an economy geared to producing what we need while conserving resources for future generations of humans and for other species with which we share this planet. The spectre of eco-democratic revolution Economic systems come and go. Capitalism has had a 300 year run. The question is: will humanity stand by and let the world be destroyed to save the profit system? That outcome depends to a great extent on whether we on the left can answer that question “what’s your alternative?” with a compelling and plausible vision of an eco-socialist civilization. We have our work cut out for us. But what gives the growing global eco-socialist movement an edge in this ideological struggle is that capitalism has no solution to the ecological crisis, no way to put the brakes on collapse, because its only answer to every problem is more of the same growth that’s killing us. “History” was supposed to have “ended” with the fall of communism and the triumph of capitalism two decades ago. Yet today, history is very much alive and it is, ironically, capitalism itself which is being challenged more broadly than ever and found wanting for solutions. Today, we are very much living in one of those pivotal world-changing moments in history. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that this is the most critical moment in human history. We may be fast approaching the precipice of ecological collapse, but the means to derail this train wreck are in the making as, around the world, struggles against the destruction of nature, against dams, against pollution, against overdevelopment, against the siting of chemical plants and power plants, against predatory resource extraction, against the imposition of GMOs, against privatization of remaining common lands, water and public services, against capitalist unemployment and precarité are growing and building momentum. Today we are riding a swelling wave of near simultaneous global mass democratic “awakening,” an almost global mass uprising. This global insurrection is still in its infancy, still unsure of its future, but its radical democratic instincts are, I believe, humanity’s last best hope. Let’s make history! This article is an excerpt from Smith's essay, "Capitalism and the destruction of life on Earth," published in the Real-World Economics Review.

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FW: Jeju Island to Afghanistan: Many Faces Oppose U.S. Bases
by John Cock 19 Nov '13

19 Nov '13

>From Bob Hanson (ko shin) re the piece at the bottom of the page. _____ From: Bob Hanson [mailto:koshin@centurytel.net] Sent: Monday, November 18, 2013 10:02 PM To: John Cock Subject: FW: Jeju Island to Afghanistan: Many Faces Oppose U.S. Bases John I have forgotten how to get this on the OE or ICA network, but thought some might be interested in this..I remember my visits to the project there. peace, ko shin, Bob Hanson (In the future please use <mailto:koshinbobh@gmail.com> koshinbobh(a)gmail.com, thanks) 7/17/2013 Blog: <http://2013warriorpoet.blogspot.com/> http://2013warriorpoet.blogspot.com/ NEW BOOK: Warrior Poets:a path and a task that does not end, Published April 2013 You can order this fine book on Amazon.com or CreateSapace.com! "I hope nothing. I fear nothing. I am free." ― <http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5668.Nikos_Kazantzakis> Nikos Kazantzakis Who says my poems are poems? My poems are not poems at all! Only when you understand that my poems are not poems can we begin to talk about poems.. Ryokan, Japanese poet Emily Dickinson wrote, "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry." "Poetry is for me Eucharistic. You take someone else's suffering into your body, their passion comes into your body, and in doing that you commune, you take communion, you make a community with others." Mary Karr from her 2010 interview with Judy Valente on PBS' Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. "I used to think I wrote because there was something I wanted to say. Then I thought, 'I will continue to write because I have not yet said what I wanted to say'; but I know now I continue to write because I have not yet heard what I have been listening to." - Mary Ruefle, "On Secrets" (from Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures) From: Voices for Creative Nonviolence [mailto:info=vcnv.org@mail158.atl21.rsgsv.net] On Behalf Of Voices for Creative Nonviolence Sent: Monday, November 18, 2013 3:13 PM To: koshin(a)centurytel.net Subject: Jeju Island to Afghanistan: Many Faces Oppose U.S. Bases Afghanistan to Jeju Island: Many Faces Say No U.S. Bases Is this email not displaying correctly? <http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=32c7f127e5 &e=52b590cd6a> View it in your browser. <http://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id= 1cdc77efb2&e=52b590cd6a> Voices for Creative Nonviolence South Koreans on Jeju Island and the Afghan Peace Volunteers Say "No!" to U.S. Military Bases by Hakim and the Afghan Peace Volunteers November 14, 2013 <https://gallery.mailchimp.com/ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340/images/Jeju_Island_ South_Korea.jpg> <https://gallery.mailchimp.com/ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340/images/APVs_at_Band _i_Amir.jpg> APV, Ghulam Hussein: When did the people of Gangjeong Village in Jeju Island start their struggle? Jeju Island activist, Sung Hee: In 2007, the Republic of Korea military quietly sneaked into the village, without the knowledge of most villagers. As soon as the villagers realized the navy's intention to build the naval base in their hometown, the villagers non-violently protested in whatever ways they could, including walking around Jeju Island in protest. A Jeju-born female member of the South Korean National Assembly held a 27-day hunger strike. There are about 1,900 villagers in Gangjeong Village and in a vote on August 20 that year, 94% voted in opposition to the construction of Jeju Naval Base. ............................ APV, Ali: The Afghan Peace Volunteers are mainly young. Are there many young people in your work? Jeju Island Activist, Paco: Yes, we have people as young as 13 attending our week-long Peace Schools. We also have grandfathers and grandmothers. ............................. APV, Abdulhai: We understand that Jeju Island has UNESCO Heritage sites. Has the UN or UNESCO protested against the military base construction? Jeju Island Activist, Paco: UNESCO has been evading our requests for more information. We asked for a map of the exact boundaries of the UNESCO Heritage Sites because we had conflicting information, but they wouldn't help us. APV, Abdulhai: Afghanistan also has UNESCO Heritage sites like Band-i-Amir in Bamiyan Province. So, Afghanistan and Jeju Island have the same struggle against militarism destroying their land and people. <http://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id= 02315d9188&e=52b590cd6a> Read More <http://gallery.mailchimp.com/ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340/images/Cinquera_Chap el.1.1.1.jpg> Killer Drones- Vehicle of Empire November 22 VCNV will help present this workshop. The next generation of drones, developed by GA Tech, tested at Ft. Benning, will "hunt, identify, and kill based on calculations made by software, not decisions made by humans." <http://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id= a3f413a444&e=52b590cd6a> Read More <http://gallery.mailchimp.com/ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340/images/beanpoll.1.jp g> Buddy Bell and Kathy Kelly Interviewed on Chicago Public Radio's Worldview November 7, 2013 Kathy Kelly has visited Afghanistan a dozen times. She says that the United States should be investing more in humanitarian efforts there and less in military aid. Kelly and Buddy Bell, fellow co-coordinator of the group Voices for Creative Non-Violence, join us to discuss their latest trip to Kabul and US policy in Afghanistan. <http://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id= 161990ce26&e=52b590cd6a> Listen <http://gallery.mailchimp.com/ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340/images/Where_Days_Ar e_Stones_Front_Cover_lores.1.jpg> Where Days Are Stones By David Smith-Ferri Portraits in poetry of people of Afghanistan and Gaza maintaining dignity and humanity while experiencing the deprivations of war and sanctions <http://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id= 2cedf6c193&e=52b590cd6a> Price: $14.95 <http://vcnv.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id =8f50b32a27&e=52b590cd6a> <http://vcnv.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id =b27bb09844&e=52b590cd6a> follow on Twitter | <http://vcnv.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id =4f50f48c1f&e=52b590cd6a> <http://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id= f0e90b3806&e=52b590cd6a> friend on Facebook | <http://us1.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=32c 7f127e5&e=52b590cd6a> forward to a friend Copyright © 2013 Voices for Creative Nonviolence, All rights reserved. You are receiving our newsletter because you either signed up at vcnv.org or signed up at one of our events. Our mailing address is: Voices for Creative Nonviolence 1249 W Argyle Street Chicago, IL 60640 <http://vcnv.us1.list-manage2.com/vcard?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=4c589 1c24e> Add us to your address book <http://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id= 4c5891c24e&e=52b590cd6a&c=32c7f127e5> unsubscribe from this list | <http://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/profile?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340&id=4c58 91c24e&e=52b590cd6a> update subscription preferences <http://vcnv.us1.list-manage.com/track/open.php?u=ad474c00c83953a2b8e225340& id=32c7f127e5&e=52b590cd6a>

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Part VII Matthew: The Shady Ladies of Matthew's Genealogy
by Ellie Stock 14 Nov '13

14 Nov '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Part VII Matthew The Shady Ladies of Matthew's Genealogy The audience for which Matthew wrote was conversant with the Jewish Scriptures, so when he mentions Tamar in the genealogy, they would know her story. The Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) was read in its entirety in the traditional synagogues on the Sabbaths of a single year. The 38th chapter of Genesis, where Tamar’s story is told would thus be read on the sixth or seventh Sabbath following the beginning of the liturgical cycle in the month of Nisan. Tamar’s story interrupted the familiar story of Joseph, so it stood out in clear relief. Listen now to her story. Judah, the son of Jacob, had married the daughter of a Canaanite man named Shua and by her he had three sons, Er, Onan and Shelah. While in the land of Chezib, Judah took for Er, his oldest son, a wife whose name was Tamar. She too was a Canaanite. Er, we are told in the Bible, was wicked and “God killed him.” So Tamar, in accordance with Jewish practice, was given to Onan, Er’s brother, to be his wife. Onan, however, did not want to raise up children to his deceased brother, so he practiced “coitus interruptus,” which has given us the word “Onanism.” This so displeased God, the Bible tells us, that God killed Onan also. Shelah was next in line to take Tamar as his wife, but he was only a small boy and by this time Tamar’s reputation for being responsible for the deaths of her first two husbands was fixed. Shelah, therefore, was not interested in or desirous of doing his culturally-assigned duty. So, Judah, Tamar’s father-in-law, sent Tamar back to her father’s house in disgrace. She was now considered “damaged goods,” one who would not bring a proper “bride price.” Judah did promise her that when Shelah came of age, she would be sent for and would become his wife. Time passed and this promise was soon forgotten. During those years of passage, however, Judah lost his wife and thus became a widower. After a period of mourning, Judah planned to go to the village of Timnah to have his sheep sheared. Tamar learned of this proposed trip and made her own plans. By this time, she was aware that Shelah, now grown, had not been offered to her as a husband. So Tamar took off her widow’s garments, put on a veil, wrapping herself in the garb of a prostitute and took a seat at the gate of her village. She knew that her village was on the road to Timnah and that Judah would have to pass her way. When Judah saw her, assuming that she was a prostitute, he went over to her to negotiate for her services offering her a lamb from his flock in payment for her “favors.” She demanded that he give her something of value to secure the promise; a pledge, if you will, until the lamb was delivered. She requested Judah’s signet ring, his cord and his staff. Judah gave them to her without debate and so the act was consummated. The next day Judah, acting, he felt, in good faith sent the lamb with one of his servants and asked Tamar to return his possessions. Tamar, however, could not be found. The people of her village denied that there ever was a prostitute who solicited business at their gate. So the lamb came back to Judah. To avoid embarrassment, he simply charged this experience off as a bad business deal. Three months later, the rumor came to Judah that Tamar his daughter-in-law was pregnant. He was angry and when this rumor was confirmed, he took action to have her put to death at the stake for the crime of “harlotry.” As Tamar was being brought forth to be burned, she sent a message and some gifts to Judah. “I am with child,” she said, “by the owner of this ring, this cord and this staff.” Judah recognized them as his own. He then repented of the way he had treated Tamar and took her into his home and harem. She produced twins and one of them, a boy named Perez, was in the line between Abraham and Jesus. By the standards of that day, sex with one’s father-in-law was considered to be incest and was condemned. In Matthew’s genealogy, however, the proclamation was made that the line that produced Jesus had flowed through the incest of Tamar. It was a strange and fascinating way to open the story of Jesus. The second woman mentioned in this genealogy was named Rahab. Her story is told in chapters two and six of the book of Joshua. She lived in Jericho, a Canaanite city, where she ran a brothel in the red light district. She was known in the book of Joshua as “Rahab the prostitute.” When Joshua sent spies into Jericho, they went to the house of Rahab, which was built into the walls that encircled the city. When rumors of the presence of these spies spread throughout the city, Rahab hid them from the searching authorities and when the gates of the city were locked after dark, she let them down outside the walls in a basket so that they could make their escape. She exacted a promise from them, however, that when the invasion of Jericho came, she and her family, all of whom would be gathered in her house, would be spared. It was done and they were saved. Rahab married a Jew named Salmon, perhaps he was a soldier in Joshua’s army, perhaps he was even one of the spies. In this story Matthew now says that the line that produced Jesus flowed through Rahab, the prostitute. The intrigue grows. The third woman in Matthew’s genealogy was Ruth the Moabite, whose story is told in the book that bears her name. A Jewish family, Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their two sons Mahlon and Chilion, moved from Israel to Moab to escape a famine. Both sons soon married Moabite women, whose names were Orpah and Ruth. Then tragedy struck and the three men in this family died, leaving a Jewish widow and her two Moabite daughters-in-law. Naomi urged her two daughters in law to return to the protection of their fathers. Orpah did so, but Ruth refused and she and Nomi returned together to the land of the Jews. Two widowed, and thus single women, did not constitute a viable family in the Jewish world. There were no jobs for women; they lived by begging and gleaning. Gleaning was the process of allowing the poor to scour the fields after the harvest for enough grain to keep one alive. This is what Ruth did each day for Naomi. In this capacity, she came to the attention of the owner of the fields, a man named Boaz, who was a distant relative of Elimelech, Naomi’s deceased husband. Boaz protected Ruth from the male workers in the field and ordered them to leave some grain deliberately in the field for her to gather. He also saw to it that she got water. Naomi, pleased when she heard of these signs, planned her own course of action. A celebration was to be held when the crop was harvested. At this celebration there would be revelry and much wine. Naomi instructed Ruth to go to the celebration, bathed, perfumed and in her best dress. She was, however, not to make herself known to Boaz until “his heart was merry” with wine. Ruth agreed. When Boaz was well drunk, he lay down on the floor and went to sleep. Ruth put a pillow under his head and a blanket across his body and then climbed under the blanket with him. At midnight Boaz awoke and discovered Ruth under the blanket with him. “Who are you?” he asked, but Ruth having successfully seduced him, responded by saying, “Marry me,” for “you are next of kin.” Boaz protested that there was a kinsman closer than he. That kinsman, however, renounced that claim and Boaz married Ruth and they produced a son named Obed. The line that produced Jesus, said Matthew, now flowed through the seduction of Ruth. The mystery thickens. The final woman in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus was “the wife of Uriah, the Hittite.” Her story is told in II Samuel 11. Her name is Bathsheba. She came to King David’s attention while bathing on the rooftop of her home in what she thought was privacy. David’s rooftop towered above hers, however, and he could and did look down on the bathing scene. Smitten by her charms, he sent emissaries to her house inviting her to come to the king’s palace for a “tryst.” She came. Whether she had a right to refuse is not stated, but it was improbable. A few months after this tryst, Bathsheba sent word to King David that she was pregnant with his child. David demurred. She was a married woman, how did she know in this pre-DNA world that it was his child? Bathsheba responded that her husband was away serving in the king’s army and that he had been gone for months. You alone, she said, can be the father of this baby. David sought to give Uriah a furlough so that he could come home, enjoy his wife and thus become the “presumptive father.” The baby just came early, people would say. Uriah, however, refused to cooperate. So David had Uriah killed in battle and took Bathsheba into his harem. Matthew was now saying that the line that produced Jesus of Nazareth flowed through the adultery of Bathsheba. We cannot help but wonder why he is introducing his story of Jesus in this way. The incest of Tamar, the prostitution of Rahab, the seduction of Ruth and the adultery of Bathsheba were the experiences in his ancestry through which Jesus came to be born, as shown in the story of Matthew’s genealogy. All of these women were foreign, and by the standards of that day, all of these women were sexually compromised. This is the way Matthew introduces the story of Jesus’ birth. What was Matthew seeking to communicate? Surely he did not have birth records so that he could trace Jesus’ lineage with any degree of accuracy. Both Matthew and his reading audience would have known this. They would have been amused that anyone at any time would have thought of this family tree as literal history. We need to recognize, however, that Matthew is the first gospel writer to suggest that the birth of Jesus was supernatural and miraculous. He introduced this tradition into Christianity, but it was not until the ninth decade of the Christian era that it appeared. Simultaneously he suggested that the line that produced Jesus passed through incest, prostitution, seduction and adultery. When this series continues we will begin to unpack this dramatic introduction. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer David Dodson, via the Internet, writes: Question: With so much modern information embedded in your views, I find it odd that you would still believe in prophecy. Do you? Or do you call Jesus of Nazareth “Christ” out of habit and not because he did or will fulfill the messianic prophesies of Jewish lore? Do you actually believe that anyone can know the distant future in great detail? Or, do you believe that the stories of Jesus of Nazareth were made up from an inaccurate Greek translation of those prophecies long after the events transpired and by ghost writers and not the sources cited? Answer: Dear David, Your letter makes so many strange assumptions and then on the basis of those assumptions engages in hostile charges that it is almost unanswerable, but I shall try to make sense out of it for you and for my readers. Biblical prophecy had little to do with predicting future events. Prophets in the Old Testament served primarily to articulate the yearnings of the Jewish people for vindication as they suffered the slings and arrows of their rather violent history. The word “messiah” in the Jewish scriptures literally meant “the Anointed One” and was originally no more than a title for the King of the Jews, who was inducted into his office by being anointed with oil. If you were to read the two books of Samuel you would discover that Samuel, the prophet, anointed both Saul and David to be kings of the Hebrew nation. When the Jewish monarchy was destroyed, following the defeat of the Jews at the hands of the Babylonians in the 6th century BCE, the Jewish concept of the “anointed one,” departed from their history and entered into their dreams and their mythology. Messianic images then began to appear in Jewish thinking in many forms ranging from a messiah who would be a conquering military leader riding to victory in order to restore the Jewish nation, to the suffering servant who would drain the world of its hostility by absorbing it and returning it as love. Between the death of Jesus about 30 CE and the writing of the gospels from 70-100 CE, it is clear that the followers of Jesus searched the Jewish Scriptures to find what they came to believe were hidden references to what they had experienced in Jesus of Nazareth and then they wrote their stories of Jesus to conform to those prophetic expectations. The idea that people years before predicted events in Jesus’ life is patent nonsense. The fact is that it was exactly the opposite; the memory of Jesus was twisted so that he could be seen to conform to messianic expectations in the Bible. I treated this subject in much greater detail than I can do in this question and answer format in my book: Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World where I have a whole section on the prophets. No, I do not think that anyone can know the future in any way: I include in this would be fortune tellers, those quacks who regularly predict the end of the world and certainly those who predict political events by reading the book of Revelation! In regard to the stories of Jesus, there is clearly an historical memory of a powerful person and personality imprinted on the lives of Jesus’ followers that the gospel writers drew on when they wrote their books. By the time those books were written, however, some 40-70 years after Jesus’ death had passed. One translation from Aramaic to Greek had also taken place for Greek was a language that neither Jesus nor his disciples spoke. The gospels are not therefore either history or biography. They are interpretive portraits painted by Jewish artists trying to give expression to an experience of transcendence that they had experienced in the life of Jesus. One cannot literalize that which was never meant to be literalized. Since you seem to be aware of none of this, I do not find the categories you mention to be helpful in getting to the truth. My best, John Shelby Spong Announcements A Few Things About ProgressiveChristianity.org You Might Be Surprised to Learn... You might be surprised to learn that we are a small non-profit with a small budget and only four part-time staff members. You might be surprised to learn that our President/Director works full time as a volunteer. You might be surprised to learn that we funnel most of our donations right back into the meaningful projects that we have taken on to help evolve and support faith communities. You might be surprised to learn that we offer most of our resources- like our Weekly Liturgy- for free to our web visitors. You may even be surprised to learn that we do all that we do with very few donations and no grants. But mostly you may be surprised that as a non-profit we often forget to ask for donations! Surprised? Can you help support our little organization? We are here for you! And we would love to continue creating and gathering resources for your spiritual evolution, which includes the Bishop Spong Website. But every once in awhile, we do need to ask that you be there for us too. Please donate today… and maybe you’ll surprise us! READ MORE HERE .

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The New Realistic Living www. is LIVE
by Ken Fisher 13 Nov '13

13 Nov '13

Colleagues of the way, Gene has published four books in the last five years. Some of them are available as downloads. This is well worth the look. Ken Dear Colleagues, The very much revised Realistic Living web site is now LIVE! Alan, Joyce, Wayne Marshall, and I have been working on this transformation for several months. Take a look and see for yourself: http://www.RealisticLiving.org Gene

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(no subject)
by dj.jewell＠comcast.net 11 Nov '13

11 Nov '13

http://porcelainepier.be/reply.mymail.3friend.private.php

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From Mike Tippett: Deadline approaches.
by Jayandem2＠aol.com 10 Nov '13

10 Nov '13

Annual apology to Dialogue recipients if this a second or third copy of this urgent message. Mike This is a final reminder to get your corrections to me ASAP. I need to go to press by the 20th.. Also, why not renew your subscription to the 2014 Edition of the Directory!! Dear colleagues, Please check over your entry in The 2013 Directory. Indicate below any changes necessary. If you don’t have a 2013 Directory and want to see your entry, please email me with your request. For those who aren’t familiar with The Directory, it is a listing of names, addresses, phones and emails and occupations of several hundred people who have been at one time or another associated with the I.C.A., or the Ecumenical Institute, or its programs and projects. If you aren't listed, and want to be, fill out the form below and either mail it to me, or email it. If you want to order a directory, complete the order form and send your check (made out to Michael B. Tippett). In preparation for the Directory, I need input from you. A. In Memoriam: Please let me know of any colleagues that have died since the last Directory was published. Also, if you know the year of death that isn’t listed for a colleague, let me know. B. Cover for the 2014 Directory: For the past several issues of The Directory, I have featured a picture, a written piece, and/or artwork submitted by colleagues. I would like to hold a contest this year for artwork or a photo to put on the cover. If you have something you would like to submit as a cover possibility, send it to me. The first and second place winners will get a free Directory, and the first place winner will be featured on the cover. It will be interesting to see what the response is. REPLY TO THE DIRECTORY EMAIL ADDRESS, WHICH IS: _movementdir(a)aol.com_ (mailto:movementdir@aol.com) THE DIRECTORY REGISTRATION FOR INDIVIDUALS OR FAMILIES: Please use to update PERSON # 1: Name as it should appear in THE DIRECTORY:________________________________ Date of birth: __________(m/d/y) [optional] Occupation: ____________________________________________________________ (Maximum 45 characters) Office Phone: (__) [____] _______________ Office Fax :(__) [ ___ ] _____________ Bus. E-mail: _________________ (Country Code) [Area or City Code] Local Number PERSON # 2: Name as it should appear in THE DIRECTORY: _______________________________ Date of birth: __________(m/d/y) [optional] Occupation: ____________________________________________________________ (Maximum 45 characters) Office Phone: (__) [____] _______________ Office Fax : (__) [ ___ ]____________ Bus. E-mail: _________________ (Country Code) [Area or City Code] Local Number Home Address: _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ Home Phone: (__) [____] _______________ Home Fax :(__) [ ___ ]_____________ Home E-mail: _________________ (Country Code) [Area or City Code] Local Number Children living with parents: (Include birth dates, also, if desired) ____________________________________________________________________________ _____________ Individual or Family listing is FREE! Cost of the Directory is $20.00 for either the booklet form or a CD copy. If you order 2 forms, it will cost $30.00. DEADLINE FOR ADDITIONS/CORRECTIONS IS NOV. 7TH **************************************************************************** ******************** ORDER FORM NAME: ______________________________ Email: ________________________ ADDRESS: ____________________________ CITY/STATE/POSTAL(ZIP) CODE/COUNTRY: ____________________________________ Please send me a copy of the directory: [ ] Booklet form [ ] CD Cost of the Directory is $20.00 for either the booklet form or the CD. If you order 2 forms, it will cost $30.00 . The CD will contain In Memoriam and Names and Addresses, etc, in Microsoft Word format. I enclose $___________ (Check/Money Order made out to Michael Tippett) Re: PayPal: I’m sorry, but I can no longer accept PayPal. I’ve had too much trouble with it in the past. Also, I can’t accept Credit Cards. I hope it isn’t too much of an inconvenience to send a check or money order. The CD will contain In Memoriam and Names and Addresses, etc, in Microsoft Word format. Send orders to: Michael B. Tippett, 4676 32nd Court East, Bradenton, FL 34203-3946 USA Phone: (941) 753-5189 Email: MOVEMENTDIR(a)aol.com

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10/07/13, Spong: Part VI Matthew: The Genealogy (1:1-17)
by Ellie Stock 08 Nov '13

08 Nov '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Part VI Matthew The Genealogy (1:1-17) “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham” — that is how the gospel of Matthew begins. The word “genealogy” means “origins,” beginnings. It could thus also be translated the book of the “genesis” of Jesus, the messiah. For “genesis” is what is being described in this opening chapter and Christ is simply the Greek translation of the Hebrew word “machiach,” which means messiah. If the words “genesis” and “messiah” were both used in an English rendition of this text, it would become very obvious that Matthew was a Jew writing to a Jewish audience about the Jewish Jesus to make the claim that he was the expected Jewish messiah. I suspect that all of these things were obvious both in Matthew’s mind and in the minds of the Jewish audience for whom he wrote. Matthew, we will discover later, will divide his teaching of Jesus into five major blocks, just like the Torah was divided into five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. So it should not be surprising that Matthew opens his gospel with his account of Jesus’ “genesis.” Today we will circle back to the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel to examine his view of the “genesis” of Jesus. Matthew’s genealogical narrative begins with Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation. Jesus is to be heir to and the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham. In this “genesis,” Matthew will also touch a second major moment in Jewish history. This was their memory of the days of Jewish glory, the golden age of Jewish history, which they had identified with King David. Among his many accomplishments David had begun the plans for the building of the Temple in Jerusalem. His son Solomon had brought this Temple to completion. As the years rolled by King David, despite many character weaknesses, still had his reputation filled with the mythological content of heroes. Ultimately all Jewish dreams of the coming messiah included in them the re-establishment of the royal house of David as the mark of the arrival of the Kingdom of God. Matthew touched all of these bases in his “genesis” of Jesus. He was the son of Abraham, the son of David and the messiah for whom the people yearned. The third experience in Jewish history to which this “genesis” would allude was the most painful moment these people ever endured. They called it “The Babylonian Exile.” It came about after the defeat of the Jews at the hands of the Babylonian army that happened first in 596 BCE and then once again a decade later in 586 BCE, when an ill-conceived rebellion broke out in Jerusalem. To pacify the land, the Babylonians moved significant numbers of the Jewish population to the land of Babylon, where they became an underclass of cheap labor. That kind of exile normally ended in the loss of national identity as intermarriage occurred and the people forgot their own biological roots and places of origin. That had been the fate of the Northern Kingdom of Israel when they were defeated by and exiled into the land of the Assyrians in the 8th century BCE. Today, we call them “The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.” Matthew, however, was well aware that the defeated Jewish people survived this crisis of the exile. They did it with Herculean efforts to keep themselves apart from the people of Babylonia. They accomplished this by emphasizing those things that made them separate and different. The Jews of the Exile observed the Sabbath by refusing to work on the seventh day of every week; they adopted Kosher dietary laws that prevented them from eating with and thus from fraternizing with non-Jews, and they placed the sign of their Judaism, circumcision, on the bodies of every Jewish male. Those intense efforts at separation paid off and in time these exiles were able to return to their homeland as a cohesive people. This was the time when they began to dream of the one who would someday come to restore the power and the fortunes of the Jewish people. These were the notes that Matthew struck in his genealogy. He wanted his readers to know that Jesus was the son of Abraham, the son of David and the expected messiah. Despite the boring nature of these opening verses this “genesis” was terribly important in developing the purpose of Matthew’s work. Everyone, including Matthew and his original readers, knew that this genealogy was not literally accurate. It was filled with stylized numbers. All of the great moments of Jewish history were divided, said Matthew, by fourteen generations. From Abraham to David was fourteen generations, from David to the Exile was fourteen generations and from the Exile to the birth of Jesus was fourteen generations. What was that about? Since seven was the holy, perfect and lucky number, the generational dividers were double sevens or fourteen in number. It was an interesting, but historically impossible claim to make. The years between Abraham and David were about 900, the years between David and the Exile about 400 and the years between the Exile and Jesus were about 600. If a generation was 20 years, which would be the average measure in a world where the life expectancy was 30-40 years, the separation between Abraham and David would be closer to 45 generations; between David and the Exile, 20 generations, and between the Exile and Jesus, 30 generations. In the line that connected David to the Exile, Matthew claimed to be following the kings of the Southern Kingdom, but he still left out some kings that were actually named in the biblical story in order to produce his rounded symmetry. Matthew surely knew this. The audience for which he wrote would also have known this, for they were both conversant with the Jewish Scriptures and with Jewish history. Thus it would not have occurred to them to think that this genealogy or “genesis” of Jesus was to be treated literally. That would be the later contribution of the Gentiles who became almost exclusively dominant in the Christian church by 150 CE. Lacking the Jewish knowledge and background to read or to understand these basically Jewish gospels, they assumed that they were reading literal history. I repeat a general theme of this entire series. Biblical fundamentalism was born in Gentile ignorance. It is a “Gentile Heresy!” One other detail in this “genesis” must have leapt out at the original Jewish reader. Four women are named in the genealogy of Jesus, all of whom have their stories told in the Bible itself. To include women in a genealogical line of ancestors, whether historical or mythological, was quite rare because in the ancient world, the role of women in reproduction was simply not understood. Western science did not definitively establish the existence of an egg cell in the female until the early years of the 18th century. People thought of reproduction after the analogy of a farmer planting his seed into the womb of Mother Earth. The role of Mother Earth was to nurture the man’s seed to maturity, not to contribute genetically to that seed. Women were thus thought of as the incubators of life, which was a product only of the male. So, in the ancient world, women did not make it into genealogical lines because they were not thought of as primary contributors. Yet, in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, four women are included. They are Tamar, whose story is recorded in Genesis 38; Rahab whose story is recorded in the 2nd and 6th chapters of the book of Joshua; Ruth whose story is recorded in the book that bears her name and especially in chapter three, and the wife of Uriah, who is unnamed in the genealogy, but since her story is told in II Samuel 11, we know that her name is Bathsheba. What are these women doing in the genealogy? What do they contribute to Matthew’s story? What was his purpose in including them? Why did he name these four and not others? Major female figures in the Old Testament like Sarah, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel, for example, are not included. These questions simply were not asked before the dawn of critical, biblical scholarship, and since these women were hidden in a genealogy, which is so boring that most people skipped over them anyway, their presence was barely noticed until relatively recently. What can we say about them in this introductory study of Matthew? Our answer involves at least three things. First, each of these women was a foreigner, a Gentile, not a Jew. Matthew will open his gospel with a story of Gentiles in the form of the Wise Men coming to pay homage to the infant Christ Child at the moment of his birth. When he reaches his climax in the final chapter, Matthew will have the risen Christ send his disciples “into all the world,” beyond the boundaries of the Jews “to make disciples of all nations.” So breaking down the barriers that divide Jews from Gentiles is a very important theme of this gospel. It is, therefore, not surprising that in the line that produced Jesus four foreign women find a place in Matthew’s genealogy. Tamar was a Canaanite woman, Rahab a citizen of Jericho, Ruth a Moabite and since Uriah was a Hittite, we must assume that his wife was also. Bathsheba’s name literally meant “daughter (bath) of Sheba” and the Queen of Sheba in the biblical story was certainly a foreigner when she came to visit King Solomon. So the first interpretive clue to the inclusion of these women in the genealogy is that none of them was Jewish, all of them were foreigners, “unclean” foreigners. There was one other surprising clue that comes only when these women’s stories are read in the Bible. All of them were, by the standards of that day, sexually-compromised women. One was guilty of incest, one was a prostitute, one was a seductress and the last was an adulterer. We will turn to their stories next week. Until then ask yourself why Matthew would introduce four sexually-tainted women into the genealogy of Jesus in the verses that form the preamble to his story of Jesus’ miraculous birth? Then recall that the Virgin Birth makes its first appearance in the Christian tradition as the immediate follow on to Matthew’s startling genealogy! It is at the very least a strange way to introduce the Messiah. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Pamela Keane, via the Internet, writes: Question: I'm sure you have answered this question many times but I can't find the answer on the website. What do you mean by the phrase you use so often "for the non-religious?" Do you mean those who don't go to church or do you mean those who don't believe in God? Or something else? Answer: Dear Pamela, It is not that easy. Lots of people who do go to church are "non-religious." Lots of people who say they don't believe in God are profoundly spiritual and searching people. What I seek to describe with the phrase "the non-religious" are those for whom the traditional religious images have lost their meaning. There is no God above the sky, keeping record books, ready to answer your prayers and come to your aid. There is no tribal deity lurking over your nation or any other nation as a protective presence. There is no God who will free the Jews from Egyptian slavery; put an end to the Inquisition or stop the Holocaust. If these goals are to be accomplished, human beings with expanded consciousness will have to be the ones to accomplish them. This means that the category we call “religious” is too narrow and limited to work for us in the 21st century. The question I seek to answer is that when we move beyond the religious symbols of the past, as I believe our whole culture has already done, do we move beyond the meaning those outdated symbols once captured for us, or is the meaning still there looking for a way to be newly understood and newly symbolized? The word “God” is a human symbol. I believe though that the word God stands for a reality that the word itself cannot fully embrace and that no human being can define. To worship God in our generation means not that we must move beyond God, but it does mean that we will have to move beyond all previous human definitions of God. So to be “non-religious” is just a way of saying that the religious symbols of the past have lost their meaning. That does not mean the search for God is over; it means the quest for new and different symbols has been engaged. I hope this helps. John Shelby Spong Announcements ProgressiveChristianity.org is hiring! We are are non-profit organization that provides spiritual resources and networking for an evolving faith. Position Available: Business Administrator, Marketing & Communications Education and Experience: BA required MA or MDiv would be an asset Job Summary This position requires an independent and outgoing person with a background in religious studies, marketing and communications to staff an office in downtown Tacoma. Tasks are multi-faceted and include: writing, editing, social networking, donor relations, fundraising, research, web posting, communications, event planning, and accounting. Staffing the office also involves fulfilling orders, answering the phone and administrative responsibilities. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO!

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The Teilhard Project
by Ellie Stock 08 Nov '13

08 Nov '13

Hi folks, If anyone is interested in learning more about a developing film/websites project about the life. writings, and contemporary implications of the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (French priest, paleontologist, and author whose thinking and writing--integrating science/evolution and religion--were foundational to the paradigm and work of the Institute), check out the info with link below. The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to shake off our ancient prejudices and to build the earth. ~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Ellie Stock elliestock(a)aol.com . . . Mary and Frank Frost live in VA near DC. Frank is an award-winning producer especially recognized for bringing religion to the public marketplace through a number of television documentaries on religious and spiritual issues and personalities. Several have already been shown on PBS. Presently, he and his wife/co-producer Mary, are deeply engaged in creating a Television Biography of Teilhard de Chardin. They are well along the way with the project, having already done extensive field work in France, England and just recently, in China. In all three places, they had access to key personalities, archives, geologic sites, etc., all central to Teilhard's life. Their project also includes a website, www.teilhardproject.com, which they hope will provide a way for viewers of their documentary and others to pursue the ideas of Teilhard that interest them in dialogue with others. They are hoping to provide links to [other] sites, encouraging dialogue about evolution and how it enhances our religious convictions. . .

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