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The Spirituality and Practice e-newsletter is a regular update from Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat with teaching stories and links to new posts on the site. Sign up here. |
Spiritual Literacy BlogFrederic and Mary Ann Brussat read the "book of the world" for spiritual meanings. A Hymn for Haiti Carolyn Winfrey Gillette is the author of Songs of Grace: New Hymns for God and Neighbor (Discipleship Resources Upper Room Books, 2009) and Gifts of Love: New Hymns for Today's Worship (Geneva Press, 2000) and the co-pastor of Limestone Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware. She has written many hymns to help churches and individuals respond to disasters and other current events. Carolyn visited Haiti on a mission trip when she was a Lebanon Valley College student. Here is her hymn for Haiti. You can read more about Carolyn and the hymn, and hear an audio download, at DelawareOnline.com. In Haiti, There is Anguish
Churches that support Church World Service are granted permission for free use. Other groups can email Carolyn for permission at bcgillette@comcast.net. (Posted 01/16/2010) Permalink
The Kogi, descendants of a pre-Columbian civilization in Columbia, see themselves as guardians of the Earth. They call themselves the Elder Brothers. In a column in The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof writes about the concerns of another group called the Elders, a small council of retired leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela. They have issued a joint statement calling on religious leaders to "change all discriminatory practices within their own religions and traditions."
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter spoke out on this subject at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Australia:
It is refreshing to see these Elders speaking out when many religious institutions still exclude women from their hierarchies and rituals. Like the Kogi, they have wisdom to offer the world that is sorely needed. It is also imperative for us to be receptive to what these Elders are saying out of respect for their lives and service to humanity. (Posted 01/13/2010) Permalink
Friendship is not what it used to be. In this era of Facebook and other social media, we have "friends" we may not know very well. In this well-developed article for The Chronicle Review, William Deresiewicz runs through a brief history of friendship from ancient times to the present. The capitalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries took the idealism and emphasis upon virtues out of friendship and made it more impersonal, focusing on affection and affinity. In modern times with the faltering of family life and the rise of divorce, friends become the family we choose. Deresiewicz notes: "We're busy people; we want our friendships fun and friction free." Facebook enables us to devolve this closeness from a relationship to a feeling. Instead of conversations, we and our friends engage in "broadcasting our stream of consciousness." The author is very hard on the idea of this new group friendship and claims that it fosters an emphasis not upon experience but information. We agree with some of Deresiewicz's criticisms of the new face of friendship in the era of social networking. That's why we have made our Spirituality & Practice Facebook page a content-rich arena where people can share stories and experiences from their spiritual journeys. We are also emphasizing the ancient virtues many of them also known as spiritual practices. When we engage with practices, we can upgrade the way we interact with social media. (Posted 01/11/2010) Permalink
In The New York Times Barbara Strauch reports that in middle age (from the 40s to late 60s), the brain has trouble holding on to information. One example is that you get interrupted and instead of picking up where you left off before the distraction, the brain falls into the default mode where it wanders off and begins daydreaming. Another is that the brain's neural connections weaken and we experience "tots those tip-of-the-tongue times when you know something but can't quite call it to mind." But there's good news. Researchers have discovered that there are ways of training the aging brain: it is possible to "jiggle our synapses a bit" by confronting new or alien viewpoints. Another way is to critically reflect on long-held assumptions. We leaped for joy upon reading this fascinating article for it presents the spiritual practice of openness as "a way of cracking the cognitive egg and scrambling it up." This receptivity to the bizarre, the unknown, and the alien has many more advantages than we ever thought possible! (Posted 01/06/2010) Permalink
On January 4-6, 2010, PBS will air a three-part documentary series titled This Emotional Life. Vulcan Productions and NOVA/WGBH have joined forces with Harvard psychologist and bestselling author Daniel Gilbert (Stumbling on Happiness) to examine the important role of emotions in our lives. We were able to screen it in advance and highly recommend this series. The first two-hour episode, "Family, Friends & Lovers," covers the social relationships that are central to our development as human beings. The second segment, "Facing Our Fears." examines feelings we consider to be obstacles to our happiness anger, fear, anxiety and despair. The last episode, "Rethinking Happiness," covers the positive emotions (silence, compassion, forgiveness, and altruism) which play a major role in our happiness and well-being. Each of these two-hour programs includes stories of ordinary people and the latest scientific research on the emotions. Anyone interested in emotional intelligence and the impact of our feelings upon all dimensions of our lives will want to tune in. It also provides an added perspective to two books edited by Daniel Goleman that grew out of conversations with His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the confluence of science, the mind, emotions, and spirituality: Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them? and Healing Emotions. This Emotional Life also nicely complements our recent map to Happiness. The film is supported by a content-rich website, www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife. (Posted 01/04/2010) Permalink
Cynthia Bourgeault, one of our Living Spiritual Teachers, challenges Christians not to use mystical experiences as brownie points but to open their hearts and minds to unitive seeing which "requires and confers far greater capacities of spiritual attention, surrender, clarity, and equanimity." She salutes letting go and humility as pathways to seeing from Oneness. It is good to end the year with a thoughtful essay on nondual consciousness in times when either/or and good/evil hold sway in the public consciousness.(Posted 12/31/2009) Permalink
Jody Williams was the founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, for which she was awarded, along with the organization, the Nobel Peace Prize. So imagine her shock when she learned that the latest Nobel Laureate, Barack Obama, and his administration have decided to follow George W. Bush's example and not sign the International Mine Ban Treaty which was established in 1997 and has the support of 156 nations. All of the United States' major allies including the 27 other members of NAT0 are on board. All the countries in the Western hemisphere have signed, except the U.S. and Cuba. Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, and Algeria support the ban. The holdouts besides the United States are Russia, China, and India. U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly explained the Obama Administration's decision: "We determined that we should not be able to meet our national defense needs nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we sign this convention." Williams finds this answer to be patently absurd and goes on to say that Obama's position on land mines calls into question his expressed views on multilateralism, respect for international humanitarian law, and disarmament. How true and how sad. We hope and pray that one day these insidious weapons of indiscriminate violence will be banned by all the nations of the earth. (Posted 12/14/2009) Permalink
John Dear is one of our Living Spiritual Teachers, and we treasure him as one of the most articulate and passionate advocates of nonviolence in our time. In his column in the National Catholic Reporter, he laments President Obama's decision to expand the war in Afghanistan even though most Americans want us out of there and only about 100 Al Qaeda members remain there. Dear writes: "The war is illegal, immoral, impractical, and plain foolish. It will further divide us. It will lead us into debt beyond our means. It will sow the seeds of terrorist attacks to come." Pondering the messages of this Advent season, he lays out things to think about including the challenge to stop making an idol out of Obama, the need to rise up and speak out against our nation's imperial ambitions, the necessity of building a new nonviolent movement from the ground up, and the importance of putting our hopes in the peacemaker of Jesus who modeled for us a life of forgiveness, reconciliation, compassion, and love. (Posted 12/09/2009) Permalink
Scientists are finding by testing children and then comparing this data with research on chimpanzees that helping is a natural inclination, not something imposed by parents or culture. In this article by Nicholas Wade in The New York Times, he points out that many children are more cooperative outside the home where they are not acting within a pattern of family competition. Michael Tomasello, a developmental psychologist and author of Why We Cooperate, notes that "Children are altruistic by nature." What animates them to do good is shared intentionality. Much of same conclusion is reached by Frans de Waal in The Age of Empathy. Now if we could only rid ourselves of the cooperative venture of war making, the world would certainly be a better and more peaceful place! (Posted 12/03/2009) Permalink
Here's something to be thankful for: three clergymen who call themselves "the interfaith amigos." Laurie Goodstein writes in The New York Times about their presentation at a Presbyterian church in Nashville, Tennessee, with 250 people in attendance. Rabbi Ted Falcon, the Rev. Don Mackenzie, and Sheik Jamal Rahman "put everything on the table: the verses they found offensive in one another's holy books, anti-Semitism, violence in the name of religion, claims by each faith to have the exclusive hold on truth, and of course, Israel." This certainly takes interfaith dialogue beyond the traditional areas of discussion. Each also emphasized what was most important in his faith: the rabbi chose "oneness," the minister "unconditional love," and the shiek said "compassion." We have reviewed their book Getting to the Heart of Interfaith. The three amigos are to be commended for offering churches, synagogues, and mosques a viable and imaginative model of the spiritual practice of hospitality. (Posted 11/24/2009) Permalink
Here's something to be thankful for: three clergymen who call themselves "the interfaith amigos." Laurie Goodstein writes in The New York Times about their presentation at a Presbyterian church in Nashville, Tennessee, with 250 people in attendance. Rabbi Ted Falcon, the Rev. Don Mackenzie, and Sheik Jamal Rahman "put everything on the table: the verses they found offensive in one another's holy books, anti-Semitism, violence in the name of religion, claims by each faith to have the exclusive hold on truth, and of course, Israel." This certainly takes interfaith dialogue beyond the traditional areas of discussion. Each also emphasized what was most important in his faith: the rabbi chose "oneness," the minister "unconditional love," and the shiek said "compassion." We have reviewed their book Getting to the Heart of Interfaith. The three amigos are to be commended for offering churches, synagogues, and mosques a viable and imaginative model of the spiritual practice of hospitality. (Posted 11/24/2009) Permalink
In a report on global pop culture for the Christian Science Monitor, Amelia Newcomb writes that Japan is "setting the trend in what's cool." Japanese women are experimenting with blogs and cellphone novels but the big news is in serial cartoons. "The American 20th-century ideal of the individual superhero is wearing thin," says Roland Kelts, professor at the University of Tokyo. "The Japanese model is of self-denial and the sublimation of selfish desires for the sake of group harmony. This is becoming a multipolar world. The desire to be part of something harmonious rather than the leader of the pack is growing." Manga creators Shin Kibayashi and his sister Yuko believe that the way we perceive villains and good guys is also changing: "Now the world has changed. Nobody is sure who is good or who is evil . . . The whole world is becoming borderless and unstable. The manga world's ambiguity has become realistic." We have noticed this Japanese contribution in the films of Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle) where there is no simplistic division of "us" versus "them." Humans, demons, sorcerers all demonstrate moments of goodness, selfishness, and folly. Japan's pop culture creators deserve to be commended for advancing our appreciation of the interconnections of all beings, no matter how strange or unappealing they may seem at first! (Posted 11/18/2009) Permalink
Nanci Rose-Ritter, a writer and student of world religions and philosophies for over 35 years, pays tribute to the life and writings of the American-born Tibetan Buddhist monk Pema Chodron. She, as we do, appreciates her unique blend of Tibetan wisdom spiced with personal stories and practical suggestions for spiritual practice. Rose-Ritter singles out Chodron's emphasis on the eleventh century lojong (mind training) teachings which spark the cultivation of compassion. Equally important are her tonglen exercises which open our hearts to others. Chodron teaches regularly at Gampo Abbey, Nova Scotia. (Posted 11/16/2009) Permalink
The "Idea of the Day" column in the New York Times quotes an article in Travel & Leisure by Peter Jon Lindberg, He complains about the noise pollution in public spaces not people talking, but the omnipresent bad music in shopping centers, elevators, fancy resorts (even underwater in pools), airports, and on and on. He makes a whimsical point that if he has to listen to music, he would much prefer Mozart to Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Bob Dylan to The Eagles. We concur with his affirmation of "the right not to listen to music." Why do we have to have some kind of noise always besieging our already fried brains? Can't we do anything without a soundtrack? And what does this assault on our ears say about our fear of silence? (Posted 10/27/2009) Permalink
On his official website, the prolific and always entertaining Robert Fulghum notices that in these economically depressed times, shoe shine stands have proliferated. Many of those doing this work are now old men. Fulghum recalls that when he was a freshman in college 50 years ago he landed a part-time job in a shoe repair shop in Boulder, Colorado. Meryl, the owner, gave his customers 100 per cent attention and always knew what they needed just by looking at their shoes. Fulghum remembers his experiences there and muses on the importance of taking care of your feet, shoe maintenance, the realization that no job is small or unimportant, and that you can apply creativity and imagination to everything that you do. He outlines what it means to practice spirituality at work. (Posted 10/21/2009) Permalink
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Life is a sacred adventure. Every day we encounter signs that point to the active presence of Spirit in the world around us. Spiritual literacy is the ability to read the signs written in the texts of our own experiences. Whether viewed as a gift from God or a skill to be cultivated, this facility enables us to discern and decipher a world full of meaning. Spiritual literacy is practiced in all the world's wisdom traditions. Medieval Catholic monks called it "reading the book of the world." Muslims suggest that everything that happens outside and inside us is a letter to be read. Native Americans find their way through the wilderness by "reading sign." From ancient times to today, spiritually literate people have been able to locate within their daily life points of connection with the sacred. The Spiritual Literacy Blog is our attempt to read the book of the world as revealed through articles and images available on the Internet. We hope you find it interesting and inspiring. • A Hymn for Haiti • Religion and Women • Faux Friendship • How to Train the Aging Brain • This Emotional Life • Mystical Experience or Unitive Seeing • United States' Shameful Land Mine Policy • Our New War President • We May Be Born with an Urge to Help • Three Clergymen, Three Faiths, One Friendship • Three Clergymen, Three Faiths, One Friendship • Japan Cracking U.S. Pop Culture Hegemony • Ani Pema Chodron • Must We Have Bad Music in Public Spaces? • Shines of the Times • A Short Manifesto on the Future of Attention • Three Ways You Can Turn Panic Into Happiness • The Day's First Stop Is Online • We are All Hindus Now • Look • A Celebration of the Life of Ted Kennedy • On Vacation? Send in Your Prayers via Twitter • We Are All Immigrants • Old People on Facebook and Twitter • The Unhappiness Gap • Laughter and Learning • God Is Still Spanking. . . . Lou Dobbs? Sergeant Crowley? • The Dharma of Celebrity Death • To Be a Pilgrim • God and the Recession • Inspiration Stew • Michael Jackson • More Better Faster! • Saying It With Silence • Elegant Simplicity • The Joy of Less • Why Have We Stopped Talking about Guns • Thomas Berry's Contributions to the Western Spiritual Tradition • Paul Hawken's Commencement Address to the Class of 2009 • The Century of the Rights of Mother Earth • Do Everybody a Favor: Take a Sick Day • Obama on Empathy • Will The Planet Be Saved in 10 Easy Steps? • The American Way • Compassion for Pirates • Lessons in Empathy for Gossip Girls and Boys • Information Age Prayer • Earth Hour • When the Economy Sours, Tootsie Rolls Soothe Souls • An Interview with Karen Armstrong • Jewish Nones • Better Cheer Up • Is the Future Going Down the Drain • Making Room for Miss Manners Is a Parenting Basic • Five Post-Valentine's-Day Reflections • Outer Critics, Inner Adversary • Repossessing Virture • Terrain.org Interviews Scott Russell Sanders • Humility and Awe • Lazarus sits up and goes on and on . . . • The End of Solitude • Thomas Moore on the Economic Crisis • Lottery Sales Are Rising in Recession • It's a Dog's LIfe for Pets in Hard Economic Times • Radical Rest • As the Rich Get Poorer, Teenagers Feel the Crunch • Top Ten Humanitarian Crises of 2008 • For Craft Sales, the Recession Is a Help • Downturn Spurs Survival Panic for Some • Trickledown Downsizing • Bad Times Draw Bigger Crowds to Churches • Surviving Winter • The Law of Giving and Receiving • How Crying Can Make You Healthier • Blessing of the Waves • Dealing with Anxiety • Home, Sweet Home • A Leaf Ritual to Celebrate the Season • Some Pointers for Dealing with Financial Meltdown Stress • Food for the Soul • Sharing Ramadan • Working with Your Enemies • Scoping Out the Best Places for Books • The Sounds of Silence • The Other Book of God • Pico Iyer Is Lost • When Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans • The Myth of Multitasking • Complaining to God • A Life Saver Called Plumpynut • Taming Your Inner Hulk • Let Us Try to Think of Ourselves as a Community • The Power of Kindness and Emotional Intelligence • Conversation with J. Brent Bill • Cultivating the Heart • War on Bottled Water • When You Wake Up • Ichigo Ichie, One Time, One Encounter • MInistering Angels • Interview with Elizabeth Gilbert • U. S. Supreme Court Upholds Use of Lethal Injection • The Work to Free Tibet • The Cost of War • Blessing • The Problem with Praise • How I Found the Farm • My Favorite Pastime: Complaining • A New Religious Landscape in America • Australia Apologizes to Aboriginal Population • Robotic Lives • Honor Your Father and Mother • Spiritual Perception • New Year's Message from Reb Zalman • How Big Is Your Family? • Feeding the Spiritually Hungry • We Don't Need No Supervision • Reading the Sky • Thinking about Tigers • Goodness Revealed • Why Giving Makes You Happy • Anselm Grun: We Should Be Asking Ourselves What We Can Learn From Islam • The Secret Library of Hope • John Hopkins Civility Project Makes Peace Person to Person, Then Nation to Nation • On Retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh • One in Four Read No Books Last Year • The Shared World of Gate 4-A • A Palestinian Pastor Speaks • We Brake for Ducks • Iraq Vets Bear Witness • The Evolution of Dance • A Good Day • Shadows • Meditations on my mother, failing • A Journey of Self-Forgetting • Love Thy Neighbour, for He Is Me • We're No. 1! America Leads the World in War Profits • An Ideology of "Gunism" • Shift Happens • The Damaging Export of Electronic Waste • The Wisdom of Kindness • RIP: Maha Ghosananda • Hollywood's Insatiable Appetite for Torture Porn • The World's Happiest Man • Urban Gardens • Deeper in Prayer, and Quieter • The Paradise We Seek • In Search of Silence • A Time for Anger, A Call to Action • Speaking of the Faults of Others • Run for It • America's Homeless Population • Sermon of the Weak • The Daversity Code • Morality: Is It a Many-Splendored Thing? • U.S. On List of UNICEF'S Worst Countries for Kids • Phantom of the First Grade • Kid Turns 70 and Nobody Cares • Top Ten Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2006 • 100 Things We Didn't Know Last Year • Non-violence, More Than a New Year's Resolution • Rust Belt Rembrandt • Letting Go and Daily Life • Four Days of Thanksgiving • The Power of (Every) One • The Most Important Minutes in Your Lives • What the Amish Are Teaching America • Three Responses to Pope Benedict XVI • A Weekend with Nobel Peace Laureates • Ethics and Reality TV • Mahatma Gandhi: A Century of Peaceful Protest • The Modern Successor to the Slave Trade • The Joy of Working • True Dharma Confessions • The Ecology of Magic • How Much Longer? • The Baby Bump Is So Hot Right Now • Healing by Design • Robert Coles and the Moral Life • Oh, Please: This Is Not "Defense" • This Is the Buddha's Love • Give Me That Old-Time Feminism • Mensch and Mitzvah • A Hug Above • Arundhati Roy: Back in the U.S.A. • Of Loss and Hope • Don't Give Up • Iraq in the Heart • Answering Questions about a U.S. Department of Peace • The Journey from Fear to Faith • Remembering William Sloane Coffin • Is Morality a Wild Thing? • Taking the Gay Insults Personally • Failed States, Rogue States and America • Global SOS: Save Our Sacred Sites • No One's Laughing at This Deja Vu All Over Again • Gunning for Wolves in Alaska • Exploring the Common Ground Between the World's Great Religions • Islamophobia Worse in American Now Than after 9/11 • Dearest Friends • Can We Do Better Than Our Present Prison System? • When the Loser Is a Winner • It's Not Sexy Being Green • Confessions of Crimes Against the State • Misunderstanding Muslims • The End of the Internet? • The Unintended Politics of Brokeback Mountain • The Other Side of the Coin • Mother and Activist, Clare Grady, Sentenced in Federal Court • One Death Every Minute • Top Ten Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2005 • After the War • Peace on Earth Means No More War • The View from San Quentin Village • Hungering for the Serious • The Rebel Jesus • The Heresy of National Narcissism • A Season of Remembrance • Spirit Rising • Hedge Funds Against Malaria • Practice Compassion and Someday You Will Become It • None of us have the right to avert our gaze • A Heretic for Our Times • Working Hard or Hardly Working • All God, All the Time • The Market in Fear • Kicking the Plastic Bag Habit • In Pan-en-theism, God Exists in Beings Everywhere • When Maxims Mislead • No Place for a Poet at a Banquet of Shame • A Mother's Plea • What the Waters Have Revealed • U. S. Leads the World in Sale of Military Goods • Tears Are for the Soul • Sucker's Bets for the New Century • I Am a Homeless Man • Hiroshima Spirits, Nagasaki Voices • For Whom the Cell Tolls • The Border Mentality • Mysterious Connections that Link Us Together • Martin Marty on the Religious Right • Complaining • Entering the Mind of Nature • A Sufi Online Oracle • Escaping Michael Jackson • Frustration as the Doorway to Daily Spiritual Practice • Looking for Signs • Save the Libraries • Understanding the Universe On Its Own Terms • Confessions of a Listener • Social Security • A Prayer for Our Persecutors • When the Going Gets Rough • Mapping the Moment • A Planet on the Brink • What's in a Name • Living By Faith • Calling Evil By Name • Take Up Your Cross • Boundless Qualities of Mind • The How and Why and What of Prayer • Lost Is a Place, Too • Working for Peace, Living in Hope • What Practice Is • Throwing Things Away • Where Was God in the Tsunami? • Focus on Kabbalah • The Power of Service • Billion Children Under Threat • The Revolutionary Practice of Gratitude • Christian Hospitality Too Controversial? • Calling All Abolitionists • Mindfulness in Daily Life • Reading the Book of Nature • The Truly Offensive • Practicing Inner Citizenship • The Power of Reconciliation • Not Hateful but Grateful • Blessed Are the Peacemakers • Lift Every Voice Declaration • Eyes Wide Open • 2004 Parliament of the World's Religions • Greed Is Not Good • From Waste to Wonder • Genocide Alert • The Little Boy in the Bright Red Shirt • Praying the News • Arc of Activism • Air's Job • Suffer the Little Children • Readers Needed • Unequal Nation • Economic Practice • Zen Writing • National Hunger Awareness Day • Grappling with Greed • The World According to Kurt • Schoolyard Bullies • Speaking Truth to Power • Daring to Believe • Politics as Practice • Back to the Basics • Sanctuary from Information Overload • Follow the Money • Bucket Brigades • Terrorism as a Seductive Emotion • Catholicism's Clerical Divide • The Face of Love on Death Row • Daily Internet Use • Opposing Worldviews • Angelic Leaders? • Goodbye American Dream • Disconnecting Via Cell Phone • State of the World • Overhyped, Underreported, Misreported, and Overlooked • Keep Hope Alive • Post-Tsunami Questions • Dreaming of a White Christmas? • New Security Culture • Third Cinema • Who Does That Work? • Be an Artist • Free Speech • Hope Dies Last • Spirituality in the Workplace • Positive Peacemaking • Turkey Talk • Lost Scripture • The Meatrix • What God Has Joined • Negative Seeds • Warring Economies • Time Theft • Corporate Theft • Beauty on Campus • All One People • Makeover Mania • Giving Blood • Open-mindedness Mentor • Forgiveness • The Kingdom of Singlehood • Environmental Terrorism • Insulting God • It Gets Worse • Shopping Locally • Newsworthy • Toxic Junk? • Glorified Violence • Sacrifice • Ethical Choices |