Spirituality & Practice E-Newsletter: October 31, 2009

October 31, 2009

Teaching Story

In the south of Thailand some years ago, a famous abbot was building a new hall in his forest monastery. When the Rains Retreat came, he stopped all work and sent the builders home. This was the time for quiet in his monastery.

A few days later a visitor came, saw the half-constructed building and asked the abbot when his hall would be finished. Without hesitation, the old monk said, "The hall is finished."

"What do you mean, 'The hall is finished?' ' the visitor replied, taken aback. "It hasn't got a roof. There are no doors or windows. There are pieces of wood and cement bags all over the place. Are you going to leave it like that? Are you mad? What do you mean, 'The hall is finished'?''

The old abbot smiled and gently replied, "What's done is finished," and then went away to meditate.

This is the only way to have a retreat or to take a break. Otherwise our work is never finished.

— Ajahn Brahm in Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung?

Now at SpiritualityandPractice.com

What a comfort that teaching story is to us as we enter yet another extremely busy period — the rush to cover the end-of-the-year films and to complete our reviews of 2009 books, not to mention e-courses on two of our favorite spiritual teachers, Joyce Rupp and Thich Nhat Hanh. Even as our "To Do" lists grow, we can happily declare that "What's done is finished."

One reason we are so busy is that the budget for Spirituality & Practice does not cover "support" staff. We do hire a web development company when we can afford to add new features to the site, and we pay them a maintenance fee to make sure we can respond quickly to any technical glitches. We have an editorial assistant who comes in one day a week to help post the reviews and a work-study student who puts in another 10 hours a week — but that's it. Everything else the two of us do: reading, viewing, reviewing, article writing, teacher profiles, e-courses, e-course customer service, and on and on.

Not that we are complaining. We love this work and are happy in so many ways to be able to do it. But, believe it or not, there is a lot more we could be doing if we had some people working with us. For example, we have 30,000 quotations collected from the books we've reviewed all these years that we'd like to put in a searchable and thoroughly sourced online database. We have a collection of spiritual practices for another database. Just imagine if you could have access to these resources — all identified by tradition, original source, and theme! Plus we have the raw data for countless articles on how people are applying their spirituality to daily life.

Spirituality & Practice has been called a "wisdom archive" of our times — a good description of a website with 19,000 pages of content, including 4,800 book reviews, 4,000 film reviews, and 2,700 book excerpts. Visitors describe it as a "spiritual oasis," a "deep well," a "cosmic cathedral of unity," and "an awesome collection of resources." But S&P is proving to be more that a resource center. We also are a worldwide spiritual community of kindred spirits. We've seen the Practice Circles for our e-courses and online retreats become safe havens where people can explore deeply and honestly how they are trying to live a spiritual life every day, supporting, nurturing, and inspiring each other.

When we admit to frustration, it is only because we know there is so much more that we could offer our visitors . . . if we had a staff (not a big staff; just any staff!). So we are setting the intention that we will in the coming months find a way to do this. And, as we've learned from the wonderful people in our Practice Circles, we need to ask for help when we need it.

So . . . please financially support Spirituality & Practice and help us:

• continue to provide positive, spiritually literate reviews and commentary on contemporary culture and the spirituality movements of our times;
• keep the website ad-free (and make sure Mary Ann doesn't have to spend her valuable time soliciting ads);
• improve our outreach, especially for the e-courses and online retreats, which are our main source of income;
• make our searchable and sourced Spiritual Practices and Spiritual Quotations Databases a reality on the web;
• hire some staff.

As you plan your end-of-the-year giving and your 2010 pledges to your spiritual communities, please remember Spirituality & Practice. We are a (501)(c)(3) nonprofit organization, so your gifts are tax-deductible. Any amount will be helpful; recurring monthly donations are especially appreciated (and will help us plan our staff expansion — yes, we are seriously putting this need out there!).

You can make a secure online donation here. Or you can send a donation to: CIStems, Inc. (our corporate name), 15 W. 24th St., 10th Floor, New York, NY 10010.

With gratitude for your support,

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

Site Highlights

New Current E-Courses with Practice Circles: We'll be running two 40-day email courses in November/December. Chaplains can get Continuing Education Hours for participating.

Practicing Spirituality with Joyce Rupp will draw from the writings of one of the best practitioners of everyday spirituality we know. Themes will include pulling through life's losses and sorrows, ways to soften our hearts, the meanings of the four seasons, the ties that bind us to earth and the cosmos, sacred teachings about Sophia, and so much more. See details and sign up here.

Practicing Spirituality with Thich Nhat Hanh is a rerun of the very popular 40-day program (previously offered in 2007 and since then through our on-demand system). Learn mindfulness, unity, and compassion practices for living in our world today. See details and sign up here.

Focus on Happiness: It's been ten years since His Holiness the Dalai Lama published The Art of Happiness, which became a national bestseller. Happiness is still in the news, the focus of college courses, professional conferences, and scientific research studies. We've chosen 12 books and 12 films on happiness and also included 30 quotations in a Mini-Course on Happiness Frederic sent out via Twitter. This map to the resources on S&P will give you a good overview of signs and practices of happiness.

Join Us for a Spiritual Adventure on Facebook: We mentioned above that kindred spirits are finding each other through S&P. One of the places where that is happening is on Facebook where we are building a community of people on the same path of caring and sharing. Each week we're exploring one of the practices in the Alphabet of Spiritual Literacy through daily posts of quotes and links to resources. In turn, our fans are adding comments on how they practice; their favorite books, films, and teachers; where they see spirituality manifesting around them. It's a lot of fun and truly inspiring to interact with a worldwide community this way. Join us by becoming a fan.

Books on Social Media and Children's Books. We are well into the fall publishing season and have reviewed new books by Eckhart Tolle, John Shelby Spong, his Holiness the Dalai Lama, Debbie Ford, and Thich Nhat Hanh. We found two books fascinating because they have helped clarify today's social terrain: Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don't Seem to Matter . . . But Really Do and Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives.

We have also been reviewing more children's books over the past six months and hope you are enjoying this new section — especially parents looking to share spirituality with their children and grandparents seeking gift ideas. A few of our favorites are June and August, Praying in Color, Big Bear Hug, Piglet and Granny, and Grandpa's Soup.

Noteworthy Film Releases: One of the best films of the year is A Serious Man written and directed by the Coen Brothers; it salutes the mystery of God, the futility of seeking answers, and the need to live as best we can in a sea of roiling troubles and uncertainties. We also were impressed by the depth of insights into human nature in The Invention of Lying and the cleverness of the hard-hitting attacks on corporate malfeasance in The Yes Men Fix the World. We were wowed by the cinematic inventiveness and the ethical depth of Where the Wild Things Are. Two foreign films worth checking out are The Wedding Song, about the close friendship between a Muslim girl and a Jewish girl in Tunis during 1942, and The Maid, Chilean director Sebastian Silva's exploration of the emotions which bring chaos and troubles into the life of a live-in maid. Women are front and center in Amelia about the famous aviatrix and Motherhood about a time-starved and check-list obsessed housewife in Manhattan.

DVDs for Weekend Viewing: If you like a little diversity in your DVD viewing, check out American Violet on racism in America, Every Little Step on dancing in A Chorus Line on Broadway, Medicine for Melancholy on intimacy between two African-Americans, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs about an extended family of animal friends, Adoration about family secrets, and Beauty in Trouble about the difficulty some have in accepting the kindness and good fortune which comes their way.

Living Spiritual Teachers Project: This section of the website features teachers we think you should meet on your spiritual journey. This month's new additions are Jane Vennard, known for her writings on prayer, and David Whyte, a poet known for encouraging soul at work.

Spiritual Literacy and Spiritual Rx Special Offer: It's not too soon to be thinking about holiday gifts, and this DVD series makes a great gift. You can sample the riches at our YouTube channel for the series. If you purchase or give the entire series (which comes in an attractive box), we'll also send our book Spiritual Rx as a free bonus. Get both Spiritual Literacy on DVD and Spiritual Rx here; the cost is $125.00. Order individual volumes for $24.95 each here. If you would prefer to call in an order, we're at 212-691-5240.

From Frederic's Desk:

Fred's the main reader at Spirituality & Practice, and his books are always well underlined. He can't resist a good quote, so here are some of this week's gleanings:

Eternal Life
"If in life we have touched the transcendent and eternal, and have shared through self-consciousness in the life, love and being that flows through the universe, then I believe we can find the courage to lay this phase of that journey down when it is appropriate to do so and to enter what is to come."
— John Shelby Spong in Eternal Life: A New Vision

Adopt an Everything Is Okay Attitude
"I know I need to remind myself of this daily: The point of everybody else's life is not to make me happy. What would your relationships be like if you accepted the people around you exactly as they are? There is nothing as transformative as being okay with everything. The craving to transform, to change, to make rules, to push people into shapes we like, isn't effective."
— Daniel Doen Silberberg in Wonderland: The Zen of Alice

Only Connect
"All you need to do is connect. The ubiquity of human connection means that each of us has a much bigger impact on others than we can see. When we take better care of ourselves, so do many other people. When we practice random acts of kindness, they can spread to dozens or even hundreds of other people. And with each good deed, we help sustain the very network that sustains us."
— Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler in Connected

Here and Now
"We have forgotten what rocks, plants, and animals still know. We have forgotten how to be — to be still, to be ourselves, to be where life is: HERE AND NOW."
— Eckhart Tolle in Guardians of Being