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Michael Berg, The Way
Transforming our desire to receive for ourselves into a desire to share is the hardest task we will ever attempt. But remember: Every positive action we perform, every empathetic thought that passes through our minds, every emotion of love and caring in our hearts, brings forth the Light and moves us closer to oneness with the Creator.
Transforming our desire to receive for ourselves
The Perfectly Perfect Wish
What happens when you come across exactly one wish — no more, no less? Lisa, the star of this story, has to grapple with this dilemma when she finds a bright-shining token with just one rule inscribed on its surface: "No wishing for more wishes." She tells her school-bus driver, who encourages her to think hard because "it will need to be a perfectly perfect wish."
Lisa starts polling all her friends about what they would wish for if they were in her shoes. She sympathizes with their desires. Some yearn for the standard fare of childhood, like a puppy or real ballerina pointe shoes. Others' yearnings are more poignant, like Mark's wish that his daddy would come home safely.
Illustrator Jessica Courtney-Tickle portrays ordinary life in gentle grays, except for the wish energy, which is golden. But the wishes of friends appear in full color. Her illustration of Mark's wish shows him at a birthday picnic with his family, blowing out the candles on his cake, above which appear smoke silhouettes of him and his father reunited.
On her school-bus ride home, Lisa reflects on each wish, with a clear-headed understanding of what would and would not work if she were to wish them for herself. But as she realizes that her own wishes seem too small, she envisions a much more encompassing wish that's full of compassion. The joyous full-color series of illustrations of her special wish coming true are sure to lift the hearts of the 4 - 8 year olds for whom this book is meant, and also anyone sharing it with them and having the opportunity to consider what matters in life.
How considering the needs of others allows a single wish to blossom into many.
John Chryssavgis, Light Through Darkness
When through silence and detachment we learn to share, the spiritual world is anything but disconnected from the "real" world. Then, the real world becomes one with the heavenly reality, which must be infused upon and inform this world. Then, we can no longer lead lives disengaged from the injustice in our world. Then, our vision becomes enlarged, able to contain so much more than ourselves or our own. Indeed, our heart is then able "to contain the Uncontainable." Whenever we embrace such a cosmic vision, we cease to narrow life to our own concerns, our own desires and our own selves, attending in the process to our vocation to transform the entire creation of God.
Containing the Uncontainable
What We Talk about When We Talk about Books
We truly enjoy reading — it is one of the ways we practice gratitude, meaning, hospitality, openness, and enthusiasm. Some books we pick up when we're seeking knowledge on a subject that interests us. Or we may feel like exploring an alternate world created by a novelist or sci-fi writer. In the process, reading also exercises our faith, fires our imagination, stirs our soul, and expands our circle of compassion.
Lina Weltner hits the nail on the head when she writes: "In real life I have qualms, a moral code, a sense of duty. I live within confines. In books, I am free to soar and to explore. There are no limits to my being." We get the feeling that Leah Price, a distinguished professor of English at Rutgers University, is in sync with the same love of reading.
In this spunky and enlightening book, she reveals the many times books have scurried out from under ominous death sentences in the past. In fact, statistics show that print sales have increased in the United States each of the past four years and that a third of Americans in their late teens and twenties reported reading an e-book in 2017.
Even though Price stands by the idea of the solitary reader, she also believes that books should be celebrated for their important role in building community. Bookmobiles keep great works of literature and modern best-sellers out on the streets. A nonprofit called Libraries Without Borders places books in laundromats in the Bronx.
All those who really care about books are finding many new and creative ways to share them with others. Now there's some good news for these troubled times!
Reassurance that whatever the medium, immersion in a world of words will survive.
Becoming a Soulful Educator
Rabbi Aryeh Ben David, a world-renowned educator, is the founder of Ayeka: Center for Soulful Jewish Education, which trains educators of all denominations, campus, professionals, and staff of middle and high schools how to teach Jewish subjects with more soulfulness, personal meaning, and impact on life. He has been the keynote speaker for national conferences of Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox rabbis, and has served as the educational consultant for Hillel International.
For far too long, Jewish learning has been an intellectual affair with study itself as the main goal. David is convinced that there needs to be a paradigm shift, a re-shaping of pedagogic goals: "We must move from the '"knowledge for survival" emphasis to "know to grow."
What is involved in this transformational method of education? David presents "The Six Essential Steps of Soulful Education." Here are two of them.
1. "Transitioning into the class" gives the author a chance to vent his negative feelings about multi-tasking which he sees as the most troubling phenomena of the modern era. One of the greatest gifts a soulful teacher can give is helping students move from the scatteredness of multi-tasking to "a universe of full engagement, focus, and commitment."
2. "Heartful engagement" builds on the fact that the heart learns differently than the mind. It accentuates the art of imagining a better self and the yearning for learning to have an impact after class. Soulful education works wonders when students achieve sharing experiences that deepen trust and mutual excellence.
Becoming a Soulful Educator is designed for students, whether children, adolescents, or adults who want to "discover their better selves through learning."
A cogent call for a paradigm change in Jewish learning and education.
Serve Freely
If you have a skill or service that you do professionally, find ways to offer it to those who cannot afford it. You might provide your services as an outright gift, but you could also barter your work for something that your client can do. If you find yourself resisting this practice, pray over it, asking for the courage and trust you may need to let an opportunity to make money go by. Have faith that what you give to others will come back to you threefold.
Sharing your skills without being paid.
College and University Chaplaincy in the 21st Century
"I know from my own life that when someone with multiple identities, racial or otherwise, experiences repudiation of parts of herself, the result can be brokenness and bitterness. Integrity and identity can only be redeemed through honoring her non-dualistic complexity. In the same way, the religious and spiritual brokenness and bitterness that individuals and communities feel can also be redeemed in honoring the complexity of our individual and collective religious and spiritual landscapes. As more and more persons become aware of their own multiple identities and the fractures that inhibit our ability to see other people in close proximity, we increase our need to develop the capacities to dwell interstitially.
"In interstitial space we cannot focus on a single spiritual or personal narrative. When many share a space and each is honored, a shared narrative may arise so that the intuitive awareness of our connection is nurtured into bloom. The intimacy of sharing our personal narratives with each other allowed us to see the co-dependence of our lives, illuminating the connective web of similarities and differences that make us human.
"I have found that when one nurtures the interstices, it's not a matter of 'hoping' that connections will happen — they do happen.
"In doing this, we open space to work through emotionally intense conflict peacefully and with goodwill or to hear a call to prayer for the first time as a prayer and not a call to war. These in-between relationships teach us much about what it is to be human, complex, and beautiful in ways that transcend material limits. The spiritual practices of translating, connecting, and holding that we learn here may allow us to move forward into the complexities of the future, from a place of mutual understanding.
Linda J. Morgan-Clement on how nurturing the interstices makes us human.
Textual Intimacy
Wesley A. Kort is Professor of Religion at Duke University and the author of Place and Space in Modern Fiction. In this scholarly work, he examines the quest for religious identity in the autobiographical writings of nine contemporary writers including Maya Angelou, Philip Roth, Mary Gordon, Frederick Buechner, Kathleen Norris, and Anne LaMott.
The textual intimacy of those who write freely about their religious experiences is very appealing and revelatory at the same time. In the first section of the book, Kort explicates what he calls the three arenas, the four constituents, and the role of narrative in self-disclosure. This is followed by a discussion of the hazards of autobiography and the complexities of disclosing a religious identity.
Kort divides the nine autobiographical writers into three groups: Religious Debters, Religious Dwellers, and Religious Diviners.
The author salutes the strength and resiliency of Maya Angelou's spiritual journey, the ways in which Philip Roth confronts the religious content of his past, the important role of place in the writings of Dan Wakefield, the fluid and expansive religious identity of Kathleen Norris, the illumination Christianity provides for the life of Frederick Buechner, and the capacity of Anne LaMott to receive and rejoice in the help that comes from others. Kort ends the book with an essay on his own religious identity.
An examination of the quest for religious identity in the writings of nine contemporary, autobiographical writers.
Day & Night
Day & Night was originally a six-minute 3-D animated film that preceded Disney/Pixar's Toy Story 3 in theatres all over the country. Now, with some added dialogue and illustrations, Teddy Newton's creative story has been made into a picture book for children ages 4 through 8. DAY, in the silhouette of a schmoo-like character, awakens in the morning and does his usual rituals. Then he unexpectedly comes upon "an odd little figure" who happens to be NIGHT. They scare each other and even have a brief skirmish. But then NIGHT sees a butterfly on DAY's chest and he is happy. NIGHT reciprocates by showing his new friend something equally delightful. And soon they are sharing magical moments with each other and the fear has dissolved into friendship as they both see the good in the other.
Teddy Newton has written a parable about hospitality and openness that speaks to the tensions, bigotry, and fear of the "other" which haunt our times. Where there is genuine sharing and caring, hope is always on the horizon!
How sharing, caring, and seeing the good in others can turn enemies into friends.
Subverting Greed
"It is no coincidence that the Greek word for house, oikos, is the source of our words for economics, ecology, and ecumenical. The three belong together: in order for the whole household of the planet to flourish, the earth's resources must be distributed justly among all its inhabitants, human and earth others, on a sustainable basis. The three basic economic rules for all to thrive in this household are: take only your share; clean up after yourself; and keep the house in good repair for those to come. These rules should be pinned up on the planet's 'fridge' for all members to memorize and follow. They are necessities, not suggestions, that constitute the basic economic laws for long-term planetary well-being. . . .
"If we were to follow these rules we would be living within a different vision of the good life, the abundant life, than is current in our consumer culture and that is destroying the planet. We would begin to accept what ecological economist Robert Costanza calls our greatest calling: 'Probably the most challenging task facing humanity today is the creation of a shared vision of sustainable and desirable society, one that can provide permanent prosperity within the biophysical constraints of the real world in a way that is fair and equitable to all of humanity, to other species, and to future generations.' "
Paul F. Knitter and Chandra Muzaffar on the household rules for a just, sustainable society.