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Kindred Spirits
True story: In 1847, a community of Choctaw people — whose ancestral villages had been burned and who had been forced to walk 600 miles to new territory — heard about the Irish Potato Famine. Immediately their empathy was aroused. Here were other people oppressed by a dominant culture, who were losing their land, removed from their homes, and left to starve. In honor of the suffering of both Nations, the Choctaw community scraped together $170, the equivalent of about $5,000 today — a huge amount for people struggling to survive. They gave this money to the Irish people for famine relief.
A series of short, in-the-moment scenes make this story — which, all told, covers nearly 200 years of history — accessible to readers ages five to eight. A young girl runs along rows of potato plants, whose leaves were bright green until today, when they are wilted and blotchy. She warns her father, a farmer, who can't explain the overnight change. The famine has begun. In another scene, we look back to 1832, and see:
"Mothers', fathers', and grandparents'
faces are streaked with tears
as they think about their own losses.
"They think now of the anguish they felt
when their land was stolen
and their villages burned to the ground."
What fills this book with hope is the cycle of generosity that continues. Seven generations in the future, the Irish people remember the sacrificial gift of the Choctaw. Irish sculptor Alex Pentek creates a monument named Kindred Spirits: an empty bowl made of nine 20-foot-tall eagle feathers, recalling the past hunger of both nations. Generosity goes even further when people in Ireland learn of the spread of Covid among Navajo and Hopi tribes, for whom hospitals are few and far away. They raise more than three million dollars to help.
The book closes with further historical information and an illustrated timeline. A glossary helps with Irish and Choctaw words interspersed throughout the story, and a resources section lets readers know where they can learn more.
Illustrator Johnson Yazzie's realistic paintings reveal the compassion, helpfulness, and humanity of the people he portrays. He is a member of a non-profit group, Reunion of the Masters, that works with the Southwest Indian Foundation of Gallup, New Mexico to promote Native American art and to develop artistic talent among students.
Author Leslie Stall Widener is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and has illustrated six Choctaw-related picture books. This is her nonfiction debut as a picture book author. She closes her author's note by reminding us that "Good deeds from the heart, large or small, often have far-reaching effects that one cannot anticipate."
A history of nearly 200 years of caring between the Choctaw and Irish Nations.
Kabir Helminski, Living Presence
Religion is reverence. It has been brought by Abraham, by Jesus, and by Muhammad. We can find it in the Word and penetrate to its essence. Perhaps we shouldn't be too concerned with the forms if we haven't practiced the essentials. We can begin with humility, honesty, generosity, patience, kindness, and goodwill. All the religious rituals and esoteric sciences exist to serve these fundamental virtues and not as an end in themselves. If we use these rituals and sciences to support our self-importance, we are hurting ourselves. If we remember humility, honesty, generosity, patience, kindness, and goodwill, we will be serving the Beneficent Reality and the true religion of Oneness. We will be the rose garden.
Religion is reverence.
Donella Meadows, What Does It Mean To Be Human?
To be human is to be born with an enormous package of potentials, for hatred and suspicion, for love and trust, for greed, generosity, passion, apathy — and a long list of other positive and negative traits. I guess all those traits can be found in many mixtures inside each of us. I sure can find them all in me.
Born with an enormous package of potentials
Radical Loving
"What the world needs now is Love Beyond Love — Radical Loving. Radical Loving is:
the absolute recognition and celebration that God loves us with greatest love — with eternal love;
being with God in a covenantal relationship of mutual and reciprocal faith and trust, responsibility, and accountability;
seeing the Face of God in every being, seeing the Divine in everyone and everything;
the Divine in me acknowledging the Divine in you — Namaste;
making the life of another as precious as our own;
responding to hatred, anger, and, particularly, fear — with deep, unconditional, passionate, intense love;
being in constant and extreme grace, kindness, caring, compassion, goodness, righteousness, generosity of spirit, decency, and dignity;
giving our hands, resources, and hearts to repair and rejuvenate our world;
consciously knowing and being continually aware that at the core of our being all is One. One God — One World — One People.
"A world of unity can — and will — be built when we love radically, unconditionally, intensely, passionately.
"A world of unity can — and will — be built out of the Radical Love of one human being for another and for God.
"We can love God.
We can love each other.
We can love all humankind.
"And the world can unfold into Love.
"Through acts of love and loving kindness, we can affirm the best, the most thorough, the most passionate way to love:
"With Radical Love
With Greatest Love.
With Eternal Love."
A definition of radical loving.
The Barn Raising Lineage
In rural America during the 18th and 19th century, it was common for a community to come together to build a barn. Every farmer needed a barn, but it was impossible for one family to put one up themselves. So their neighbors joined in, knowing full well that should they ever need to build or replace a barn, they would get help in return.
Barns are not the only acute need that have been addressed by community efforts throughout history, both in the United States and elsewhere. We see the barn raising lineage alive and well during the coronavirus pandemic.
In rural America during the 18th and 19th century, it was common for a community to come together to build a barn. Every farmer needed a barn, but it was impossible for one family to put one up themselves. So their neighbors joined in, knowing full well that should they ever need to build or replace a barn, they would get help in return.
Barns are not the only acute need that have been addressed by community efforts throughout history, both in the United States and elsewhere. We see the barn raising lineage alive and well during the coronavirus pandemic.
Don't Ask Why
Movie Line
Why is this happening?
-- Tilley in Tin Men
Movie Line
Why is this happening?
-- Tilley in Tin Men
The Power of Ideals
William Damon, Professor of Education at Stanford University, and Anne Colby, Consulting Professor at Stanford University, argue that there is too limited a view of human nature in the new science of moral psychology which makes too much out of "biological reductionism." They see in this trend a cynical view of human morality.
Damon and Colby emphasize the active, ideal-seeking and motivated moral self. They feel that this understanding can best be appreciated through an analysis of the words, deeds, and life histories of six men and women widely respected for moral leadership during the twentieth century.
The authors begin with Jane Addams who opened the doors of the twentieth century with her ideas about democracy and her progressive passion for social change. Nelson Mandela modeled for people around the world a special brand of justice and the big-hearted spirit of forgiveness.
The other four figures have different gifts. Dag Hammarskjold was committed to inner truthfulness. Abraham Joshua Heschel's religion served as a seedbed for an understanding of the sacredness of life and human rights. Dietrich Bonhoeffer went to his death with grace, peace, and dignity. And Eleanor Roosevelt forged a creative approach to human rights internationally.
Damon and Colby see the virtues of inner truthfulness, humility, and faith as invaluable spiritual resources for leaders of all stripes. They provide a full and rich assessment of these virtues and go on to explore why people struggle with honesty, the importance of open-mindedness, and the personal and societal benefits of humility. They conclude with a tribute to faith as "a source of serenity and courage in the face of extreme circumstances, danger, and death."
Profiles of six leaders who made moral choices based on virtues of truthfulness, humility, and faith.
Charity
In this stellar meditation on the biblical practice of almsgiving, Gary A. Anderson, a Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Notre Dame, presents some helpful ways to think about charity to the poor. For many Jews and Christians, it is natural to see this act of giving to the needy as "an expression of faith in God." Anderson would also have us open our hearts to beggars and bums looking for handouts as opportunities to meet God in the face of the poor.
The author turns to the biblical books of Tobit, Sirach, and Proverbs along with rabbinical commentary for his contention that almsgiving is a stay against the habit of the rich to seek security by hoarding. The spiritual path lies in taking a leap into the dark by trusting that good will come out of our giving to the poor. We were quite taken with the idea of giving alms as a loan to God.
Other aspects in the divine-human economy covered in the book include sections on storing good works in Heaven; the links between prayer, fasting, and almsgiving; sacrificial giving; and your alms as a memorial. So the next time you encounter a poor person on the streets asking for food or money, respond in love and rejoice that your charity is an expression of faith, a sacramental act, and a loan to God.
A reframing of charity as an expression of faith, a sacramental act, and a loan to God.
Franklin's Thrift
David Blankenhorn is the founder and president of the Institute for American Values and the author of Thrift: A Cyclopedia; Barbara Dafoe Whitehead is codirector of Rutger's University's National Marriage Project and an award-winning journalist; and Sorcha Brophy-Warren was an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values where she researched thrift and wrote a review of business ethics curricula. In the introduction to this lively collection of essays on the historical understanding of thrift, the editors point to this enduring value's breadth and depth as a broad conception of "social thriving," a source of self-help and mutual aid, a spur of cooperative institutions and associational bonds, a model of generosity and kindness, and a source of pleasure. They also note:
"Thrift has demonstrated great resilience over time. For more than three centuries, it has served as a renewable source of social energy and institutional creativity. [Benjamin] Franklin established a legacy of thrift for future generations, but it has not been a legacy frozen in time. On the contrary, each generation has had to invent a new case for thrift and to come up with institutions that fit contemporary conditions. Today, as the nation faces the failure of major financial institutions, a crisis of overindebtedness, and the depletion of our natural resource wealth, our generation is called to the task of renewing thrift once again."
As Barbara Dafoe Whitehead states in "Franklin's Way to Wealth," the word thrift carries many negative vibes for people today: they think of stinginess, images of grinding deprivation and joyless self-denial; and an anachronistic value from the long-ago past. But for the colorful Benjamin Franklin, thrift was a way of life, a pathway to economic freedom, and the ticket to a new society full of possibilities. The essays here chart the course of this value after Benjamin Franklin in institutions and movements such as mutual savings banks, thrift shops, and credit unions.
The last section of the book presents ideas on "For a New Thrift: Meeting the Twenty-First Century Challenge" with essays on confronting the debt culture, crafting policies to encourage thrift, and private enterprise's role in increased savings. Blankenhorn, Whitehead, and Brophy-Warren conclude that "thrift is a renewable cultural resource. It offers a set of guiding ethical and social principles from which Americans today, no less than in the past, can draw upon in responding to the grave challenges we face today."
An engrossing series of essays on thrift as a renewable cultural resource that serves as a spur to saving, conserving, and sharing with others.
Why Good People Do Bad Things
In her sixth book, New York Times bestselling author Debbie Ford returns to a subject she covers in her workshops and has written about in previous works: the darkness that lies within us all and causes us "to act out in inappropriate ways, destroy our relationships, sabotage our dreams, and place ourselves in harm's way." According to the author, the source of our doing bad things is the false self which is animated by our wants, needs, and deep feelings of unworthiness. Within each of us a war rages between "the good self and the bad, the light and the dark, the id and the ego, the Jekyll and Hyde."
Another cause for our self-destructiveness is unacknowledged and unprocessed shame, that abundant storehouse of negative messages we have received from those around us. One reasons for the popularity of courtroom TV, reality shows, shock jock radio, and gossip rags is that they all deliver an unconscious outlet for the toxic hatred and criticism we have about ourselves. Ford suggests that we deactivate the shame virus in our personal software.
Underneath our acts of self-sabotage are unexpressed emotions such as hurt, hopelessness, sadness, anger, jealousy, and hate. With creative élan, Ford offers a revealing guided tour of some of the masks which the false self and the wounded ego dons in the name of fear and shame: the seductress, the charmer, the people pleaser, the quiet snake, too cool, the martyr, the good girl, the nice guy, the abuser, the eternal optimist and more. A major challenge of adulthood is to discard the masks we have constructed and to express our authentic self. To do so, we could use this ritual:
"My friend Jorge once told me about an ancient African religion that advocates hanging a mask in a visible location near the entrance of one's home. This custom serves as a reminder that people enter our lives under a variety of pretenses. It is believed that the symbol of the mask helps us to recognize and protect ourselves against those who are there to take rather than to give, or who may not have genuine friendship or our best interest in their hearts. Hanging a mask near the entranceway of our home reminds us to look past the outer façade of all who enter our lives and see the true nature of the person hiding behind the mask."
In one of the best chapters, Ford outlines seven states of being that are driven by the false self along with the spiritual antidotes to these imbalances:
• Guardedness and its spiritual antidote of vulnerability
• Greed and its spiritual antidote of generosity
• Arrogance and its spiritual antidote of humility
• Intolerance and its spiritual antidote of compassion
• Self-absorption and its spiritual antidote of being of service
• Stubbornness and its spiritual antidote of willingness
• Deceit and its spiritual antidote of integrity
Ford ends this multidimensional examination of why good people do bad things with a look at the relevance of the spiritual practices of love and forgiveness. Waking up from denial and becoming the person that we were meant to be means making peace with ourselves and our imperfections and conflicting desires:
"Every wounding incident holds the potential to be a catalyst that will mend the separation between our lower self and our higher self. But if we don't make amends for the things we feel bad about, if we don't start treating ourselves with the love, care, and attention we so desperately need, the sad reality is that we probably will in fact continue to be our own worst enemies."
Forgiveness challenges us to mine the gold of our unwanted selves and to make the most of the wisdom in our wounds. Ford suggests a daily practice of saying to ourselves, "You are a jewel." She concludes: "So I invite you to put away your judgments, lay down the boxing gloves that keep you fighting, and surrender to the love you are looking for. That love lives inside you."
Examines the wants, needs and habit energies that animate us to self-sabotage and self-destructiveness and then provides some spiritual solutions and practices as antidotes.