Friends, Enemies, and Hatred

Hatred is not the answer. It is never the answer.

At the same time, while I don’t regard those who back Trump and his worldview as my enemies, I certainly don’t regard them as my friends. Those who want to take away my rights and the rights of those I care about are not my friends. Those who spew hate toward minorities and immigrants are not my friends. Those who view victims of sexual assault as non-entities or worse are not my friends. Those who are happy to let our planet die are not my friends. Those who want to deny health care to others are not my friends.

https://www.kentucky.com/living/religion/paul-prather/article219868740.html

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Evangelical Leaders Abandon God

https://religionnews.com/2018/07/18/why-mariia-butina-wasnt-the-only-russian-targeting-the-national-prayer-breakfast/

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Demonstration of Solidarity of Christians and Jews at Temple Adath Israel: Friday, August 18, 2017

Thanks to support from our Christian friends for the Jewish community on Friday. With me is Rev. Marsha Charles who helped to organize this demonstration of solidarity at Temple Adath Israel. She is a mensch and my former student at Lexington Theological Seminary!

 

Elie Wiesel: Neutrality

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Elie Wiesel

Time Never Stops: Except on Shabbat

Time never stops. It is inexorable. In moments of joy and tragedy, the earth continues to rotate and the seasons continue to alternate. Shabbat and meditation offer a glimpse of existence outside of time. There we reside in the presence of the Source: no limits, no boundaries, only the vibrations of no/thing.

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Idolatry

Anything can be idolatrous. Therefore, question everything.

What Are We?

We are intersecting fields of eternal becoming.

Moving from the Light to the Darkness

We don’t move forward to the light until we first step through the darkness.

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Poems and Dreams

My poems are dreams in word form.

Shape Shifting

I love the protean quality of both dreams and poems. You never know what an image or word will turn into. Life is like that; only we don’t see it that way. Everything seems permanent and fixed, but it isn’t. As we get older and look back on our lives, we realize how much like a dream or poem it all is.

Thinking is a Scion of Feeling

Thinking is a scion of feeling, one of the senses, a metaphorical, symbolic realm filled with the vibrant colors of awareness, the smells of memory, the voices of inspiration, the touch of knowledge, and the light of clarity.

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Being and Becoming

Being is who we are authentically. Becoming is why we enter the cycle of life.

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Poetry and the Bible

Poetry is the warp and woof of the Bible.

What are Symbols?

What are symbols? The medium through which we see and create our worlds.

Feeling

Feeling involves all the senses, including thought.

Sparks

Each spark seeks another spark to make a fire.

Time Expands

Time expands when you focus on what is truly important.

Poetry as Form

For me poems are as much oral as visual, as much spoken as written. I need to perform them as much as I need to write them.

Symbols, Poetry, and Dreams

Symbols fill the gap between raw energy and form. Poetry and dreams do the same.

Poetry and Dreams

Poetry and dreams are two of the most potent vehicles for unveiling the unconscious.

Fear and Courage

Fear is a cover for the courage that lies just beneath it.

Poems and Play

Playing board games is great preparation for writing poems. They both involve play.

How Ideas Come to us

The most powerful ideas come to us mysteriously–like dreams.

Shabbat: When Time Stops

Some physicists say that time is ultimately an illusion. Shabbat feels a little like that. Time seems to stop. That’s when life comes close to ‘Olam haba, the world to come, eternity, home.

The Play of Poems and Dreams

Poems let you play with words, just as dreams let you play with images.

Finishing a Poem

Whenever I complete a poem or any writing project, I feel as if I’m sending my child into the world.

Death and Rebirth

How many times do we die before we die? Life is a series of transformations, shifting of shapes. We are constantly preparing for a next act.

Change

Human beings generally don’t like change, yet flexibility is the key to survival and flourishing.

Poetry as Fragments

I love poetry in part because of its fragmentary quality, like dreams.

Poems and Dreams

Poems resemble dreams in the rich symbolism their words express and the protean quality of their embedded images.

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Poetry: What it Does

At its most profound, poetry unites meaning, beauty, truth, wisdom, and love.

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Symbols

Symbols channel energy into form.

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Fragmentation and Integration

We don’t begin with integration. We conclude with it. Fragmentation is always a prelude to integration.

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Is Belief a Jewish Notion?

A good discussion: Howard Wettstein argues that the question of belief is not important in Judaism. The question as to whether or not God exists is the wrong question. Rather the questions should be:  What is your experience of God? How do you relate to God? Judaism is experiential and practical, not theological: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/is-belief-a-jewish-notion/?

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What is a Week?

Six days and Shabbat: the many in the midst of the One.

What is Compassion?

What is compassion? Recognizing that you and I are related.

How to Respond to the Boston Marathon Bombings

Whoever did the Boston Marathon bombings, lets make sure we don’t demonize a group of people, lump people into categories, or try to close ourselves off from the rest of the world. That would be the worst possible outcome I can imagine. Of course, we should protect ourselves and seek justice, but let’s make sure we keep our hearts and heads present and realize that we are living in a fragmented, broken, wounded world. We are all wounded. While we defend ourselves and seek to defeat terrorists, we also need to reach out to one another. It’s difficult to engage in battle and to reach out to others at the same time, but that is the task we have before us.

Martin Luther King as a Visionary Activist, not a Domesticated Politician

This article  puts MLK into perspective, reminding us that he was not a bourgeoise moderate politician, but a radical social and spiritual acitivist with an economic vision for justice and equality. Whatever one thinks of his economic solutions, there is no question that levels of inequality in our society threaten our way of life, our democracy, and our freedom. MLK was well ahead of his time on that. We need to remember who MLK was and his vision of a just society and not depict him as the main character in a romance novel in order to domesticate him for popular consumption.  .

 

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/martin-luther-king-jr-was-radical-not-saint

 

 

 

Mormon Women Protest by Wearing Pants

In a move to assert their rights in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and to bring attention to gender inequalities, Mormon women put out a call to wear pants to church. We may think of women as having achieved parity in many sectors of American society, but in religious institutions women often find themselves caught in the backdraft of ancient traditions and historical precedents.

In my own Jewish tradition, for example, women have found themselves arrested by Israeli police simply for wearing a prayer shawl (talit) while praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. In fact, there is nothing in Jewish law that would prevent women from doing this: it’s simply a custom that men in authority don’t like.

This is another example of religious institutions trailing behind other sectors of society in promoting economic and social progress. In the modern world, organized religion has in fact mostly stood as an impediment to the expansion of freedom and to cultural advancement. In contrast, spiritual thought and practice is much more attuned to the unfolding consciousness that is very gradually bringing humanity to a higher state of awareness and living.

Thanks to these Mormon women for helping humanity move forward just a little bit further.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/us/19mormon.html?_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/us/19mormon.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121220&_r=1&

 

 

 

Real Change

In the post-Enlightenment era, at least in developed societies, most profound social and spiritual change does not come from religious institutions, but from the middle class.

Larry Kant, Mystic Scholar

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