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Sounding the Trumpet
J. Alfred Smith, Sr., former Senior Pastor for Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, offers wise counsel to Brooks Berndt, a pastor of a church in white suburbia, who wants his congregation, like his mentor's, to prioritize the pursuit of justice and liberation. Both ministers have a connection with each other through the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, when Bernt was a student in Smith's preaching class.
They open this paperback with a dedication:
"In West African folklore, the Sankofa bird flies forward while at the same time looking backward with an egg held in its mouth. In looking back, we dedicate this book to our foremothers and forefathers who have shown us the way. In flying forward with our egg, we dedicate this book to our children and all of the inspiration they give us."
Smith and Bernt agree to write letters to each other about social justice as it is played out in their ministries and private lives. In response to the suburban minister's complaint that in his church, "the God of justice seems to be more a theory about life lived in a distant land rather than a reality lived each day," Smith admonishes him to be patient and to see that he is in the right place at the right time. Bernt shares his "Moses Project" designed to get members active in justice programs, and his mentor is happy to hear about it. In a sermon, the suburban minister preaches on Mother's Day about the leadership of Lois Gibbs' in fighting against the toxic waste dump beneath Love Canal. He calls her a Moses for our time.
Bernt keeps sounding the trumpet at his church with sermons on problems with immigration policies and the plight of poor children in America. He also understands that unions are allies in the struggle for justice. Both ministers see Howard Zinn as "a hero in God's modern Hall of Fame." When Bernt finishes off his Moses Project, Smith rejoices with him and tells him to take delight and satisfaction in what he has accomplished.
A collection of letters in which a social justice minister is spurred on by the wise counsel of his former homiletics teacher.
Meal by Meal
May 12
"For some, leftovers are associated with poverty. For others, they signify a treasure that is not to be wasted. It seems that people either love leftovers or hate them.
"After a meal, what do you do with the leftovers? Do you consistently eat more than you want to avoid leftovers and feel guilty about doing it? Do you cringe at the idea of reheated food? Or do you find ways of combining your leftovers to make a new and unique meal? In this sense, leftovers may tell you more about yourself and your willingness to adapt.
"Even if you cannot stand to eat leftovers, you can still find a way to offer the food to others. A gift of food to another is always appreciated with love and joy."
Donald Altman on being kind with our leftover food.
Survival Lessons
Choose to Share
"Talk to a stranger. Join a support group. Reach out even if you're not the sort of person who does that. Even if it's not your style.
"When you share something, the act of sharing changes you. I remember calling friends of friends, people who were complete strangers to me, just to hear the story of their survivorship. In each case these women talked to me for hours. Though we had never met, they gave me their wisdom and shared their experiences. They had already been through the war and could report back as survivors who knew the score.
"During my treatment for breast cancer I joined a support group. I am shy and usually unable to have a decent conversation with someone new, which means anyone I have known for less than twenty years. All the same, I found myself telling women who were complete strangers the most personal details of my life. We discussed night sweats and nightmares. Love, betrayal, fears, all of it, as if we had known one another not for twenty years, but a hundred and twenty.
"If you join a support group, call one of these strangers in the middle of the night and cry. Go ahead; she won't be annoyed even if it's two in the morning. Unlike everyone else you know, she won't tell you everything is fine. She'll listen to you and she'll understand. Then she'll tell you you had better plan to survive."
Alice Hoffman on how sharing during an illness means that we help one another.
How to Be an Adult in Love
"Love is a specific kind of connection; it is a caring connection. The word caring is from the Latin for 'dear.' We care about someone who is dear to us. Dear also means costly; love requires a selflessness that is challenging and taxing at times.
"When we care about someone, he or she really matters to us. Caring includes noticing, taking an interest in, and responding to the specific needs of others. It includes a genuine concern for what happens to someone and a hope for positive outcomes.
"Love happens between us and others when we welcome connection from them and make connections to them. To decide if an act is loving, we can ask, 'Does it serve to connect us in a caring way?' We learned in grammar school to convert fractions by finding the lowest common denominator. Caring connection is our lowest — and finest — common denominator of love in this world of so many unconverted fractions. . . .
"Giving and receiving love can become our primary life focus. Focusing on this combination is a way to become fully human, to fulfill ourselves psychologically. If love comes our way, it is welcome and enriching. But in spiritual practice, our focus is on giving love rather than finding someone from whom to receive it. We feel fulfilled spiritually when we show all the love we have, no matter how others respond or act toward us. This is a radical alternative to showing love in order to receive it in return or showing it only to those who love us.
"We will probably fail at this spiritual style of love almost every day. But as long as we maintain a pure intention to be as loving as we can be and keep putting honest effort into it, we are already on the path to spiritual awakening. Truly enlightened living is knowing that love is all we ever want and making it all we ever give.
"Loving becomes easier when we open to it as our inner psychological and spiritual code, the equivalent of a genetic code. A code dictates how we fulfill ourselves as individuals and how we make our contribution to the world of others. It provides us with a blueprint. The code of love tells the whole story of what it means to be human and what the world we inhabit means by its very existence. Love is the point of it all. What we can be is the same as what love can be: endless in duration, infinite in extent. Yes, we humans have that much time in our story (as much as eternity), that much space in our hearts (as limitless as outer space)."
David Richo on how love is the point of it all.
The Art of Conversation
"When it works, conversation can come close to heaven. Be it sharing a laugh with a stranger, transforming a contact into a friend; that joyful moment when you click, share a joke, or spark a new idea; or just letting off steam with someone who knows how to listen — there are countless adventures between minds out there, waiting to happen, in each encounter, each day of our lives.
"Networking is part of conversation's value, although the word sounds chilly and strategic. Conversation is something bigger: It is the spontaneous business of making connections, whether for work, friendship, or pure, fleeting pleasure.
"Some writers have argued that it's where the raw stuff of life is spun into art. Speech — the gift of provoking thoughts in others' minds by rapidly modulated outtakes of breath — is certainly a wonder, and conversation a miracle upon that miracle. Indeed, if evolutionary psychologists are right, it fathered language, out of grooming, the conversation of apes, when our ancestors sat about picking off fleas, flirting, working out who was boss.
"But I find simpler reasons to treasure it. Get on with others, you will get on in life, and enjoy it more. Good talkers get dates, win contracts. They make job interviews fun, whichever side of the desk they are on. Furthermore, the qualities of a satisfying chat — vitality, clarity, wit, relish, tact, a light touch — are the same as we want of the people around us. Respect the rules of artful conversation and not only are you on your way to being a better person, but learn to steer discussion, to entertain not dominate, and you're on the road to power.
"Conversation is brilliant at both polishing thoughts and frothing up new ones, and although professionalism encourages us to wring the maximum from meetings in minimum time, serendipity produces many of the best ideas. Since information flows better through stories than through year-end reports, censoring gossip — whether at the water cooler or on email — can dull a business's cutting edge.
"Just as monarchs had their favorites and Arab rulers their salaried nadim ('cup companions') with whom to trade jokes and keep track of the court's mood, not to mention boost their own, so productivity and morale shot up when a Puerto Rican tobacco company started paying a cigar roller the same hourly rate to down tools, sit in the middle of the work area, read papers aloud, chatter, and clown.
"There are other benefits. Paul McCartney loves talking as well as crooning to audiences because 'I remember stuff that I'd forgotten for thirty years in explaining it.' Holocaust survivor Alice Herz-Sommer, a 103-year-old concert pianist, would agree. Asked about her fizzing social life, she confided she wasn't avid to hear about 'lives and problems' purely out of altruism or curiosity: 'This is good for the brain . . . better than a hundred pills.'
"How come she was so skilled at conversation? 'Chamber music is a discussion with your partner. You have to listen.'
"More than words, conversation is music: Its harmony, rhythm, and flow transcend communication, flexing mind and heart, tuning us for companionship."
Catherine Blyth on the joys and benefits of creative conversation.
Sharing Food
May 12
"For some, leftovers are associated with poverty. For others, they signify a treasure that is not to be wasted. It seems that people either love leftovers or hate them.
"After a meal, what do you do with the leftovers? Do you consistently eat more than you want to avoid leftovers and feel guilty about doing it? Do you cringe at the idea of reheated food? Or do you find ways of combining your leftovers to make a new and unique meal? In this sense, leftovers may tell you more about yourself and your willingness to adapt.
"Even if you cannot stand to eat leftovers, you can still find a way to offer the food to others. A gift of food to another is always appreciated with love and joy."
Provides ideas and suggestions for being kind with our leftover food and sharing it with others.
Rachel Carson in Full Esteem Ahead
If a child is to keep alive an inborn sense of wonder, he needs the company of at least one adult who can share it, and rediscover the joy and mystery of the world we live in.
If a child is to keep alive
Barbara Cawthorne Crafton, Meditations on the Book of Psalms
Standing at the door of St. Paul's Chapel one noonday, I was helping with the distribution of bag lunches to the hungry who gathered there every day. There were always 150 lunches to give, never more, never fewer. The one-hundred-fiftieth man in the line reached out and took his lunch; I told Number 151 that I was sorry. Number 150 opened his bag and pulled out the sandwich in it; he held out half to 151, who took it. The two of them walked off together. They had nothing, and they split it. The presence of God.
They had nothing and they split it
Nilton Bonder, The Kabbalah of Envy
Jewish tradition cautions us to take great care with the roles we allow others to play in our lives. Once we give the object of our hatred access to our imagination, we give him or her the right to be linked to our lives, and we end up sharing a common future.
Take great care with the roles we allow others
Meister Eckhart, The Vein of Gold
Human beings ought to communicate and share all the gifts they have received from God.
Human beings ought to communicate and share