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Fifty years ago, in 1974, the Combahee River Collective was founded in Boston by several lesbian and feminist women of African descent. As a sisterhood, they understood that their acts of protest were shouldered by and because of their ancestors—known and unknown—who came before them.
Who could have imagined only a few years ago that there would be controversy in the United States of America about the importance of democracy?
Will American politicians stand up to Putin? Will they learn anything from the sacrifice of Navalny?
Vigils are being held regionally and all over the world to protest the horrific war in Israel. Pro-Israeli and Pro-Palestinian advocates are demanding their people’s plights be heard.
Fierce love pursues peace through nonviolence
If we want peace, it has to start with us. We must uproot violence from our language, in the ways we relate to one another.
We recently celebrated the life, faith and non-violence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The moment triggers within us a host of emotions-thankfulness for heroes such as he, distress about the state of our country, anxiety about the future, and fear for the present.
There’s no such thing as a nobody. That’s the message of Mary. Until her immaculate conception, until she howled out the Magnificat, she had become accustomed to being treated as a nobody.
Decades ago, I wrote a blessing prayer for this season that began with a reference to nothing but a flicker of hope in “the fading glory of these autumn days, when night creeps early on to darkness; and leaves us, bound in shadows, longing for the light.” And yet, it remains that flicker of hope that I want to write about.
I am deeply concerned about the rise of Christian nationalism in this country. I say this not just as a Christian but as the president of Pacific School of Religion (PSR), a progressive Christian seminary founded in 1866.
Today, the NAACP has an LGBTQIA Committee Chairperson, Demar Roberts from S. C., who works to protect and advance the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.
When I look at the writers who examine the relation between religion and politics, most take their cues from the Bible. There are two problems with this approach.
As our world faces the spectacle of Russia still harming civilians while it rampages through Ukraine, we re-visit our award-winning series, “The Power of Nonviolence”. The focus is to tell poignant stories about alternatives to military destruction and other violence, and to illustrate that there are more humane and saner ways to resolve conflict — a theme urgently needed now.
Advent holds such a sacred space – the story and formation of the womb is tucked into our souls. Advent is most often thought of as an individual journey, even though we may celebrate together.
One must always act with a sense of humility and respect for the views of others which may be different. Our hope is that, over time, in the words of Martin Luther King “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” If Dr. King is correct, the sensations of love and goodness from God will win out in the long run.
Many people are confused, angry, and worried about the future — while others feel their longest hoped-for political dreams have become reality. The air is full of tension, even on these sunny summer days, and it seems as if the nation has somehow cracked open.
“Never in any case whatever is a genuine effort of the attention wasted. It always has its effect on the spiritual plane and in consequence on the lower one of the intelligence, for all spiritual light lightens the mind.”
We continue our meditations on Evil and Hatred. To go deeper, to face these realities, we must become stronger. How do we do that?
Burklo’s book refocuses Christianity away from doctrine and belief to knowing God through mindful practice and the compassionate action that follows from an enlarged perspective.
A Review
This is an important book because it provides clear evidence that spiritual practices work. Imagine if the members of Congress meditated before the start of each session.
The practice of contemplating the Stations of the Cross, depicting the final hours of Jesus’ life, is a very old one. Many Catholic churches have gardens or sanctuaries in which the stations are situated. Each of the 14 stations marks a point along the way to Jesus’ death.
Do you love who you are becoming? Are you enjoying the giddy delight of tumbling down the flume? Because in your delight in becoming, the Knower within you will transform your relationship to time, and usher you into the eternal now - the kin-dom of heaven on earth - where there is nothing to grasp, and everything to love...
I teach meditation as an adjunct therapy for mood disorders, and I get a surprising amount of pushback from a sizeable group of people. Many of these people have a strong faith in God and are skeptical of therapies that we in mental health see as only helpful.
In John 8, Jesus observes that when you know the truth, "the truth will make you free." In the Bible, truth-telling is an important matter. Indeed, the commandment truth of the ninth commandment spells this out for us: "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor".
In the shadow of COP26 we are meditating on the powerful role that Deep Ecumenism can and must play in the future of the planet. To get the most out of individual humans and our diverse communities, we must include the spiritual dimension. That is where the fire of excitement and passion, sacrifice and visions, is lit and stays lit.
Many of us wrestle with fear, despair, insecurity, and loneliness in this time of sustained global crisis. I worry for the future of the human family and life itself. But these times are also an invitation.
We cannot be separate from God or from each other. Yet, we can spend much of our lives imagining that this is the case.
Wisdom not much different than what St Benedict, a founder of Christian monasticism, observed about the contemplative life: “Always we begin again.” Or what the 20th century Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, wrote about prayer: “We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners.”
Very little of the 19th century theology and practice, designed precisely for coexisting comfortably with slavery and segregation, has been reformed. From colonial America on, white Christians have literally built - architecturally, culturally and theologically - white supremacy into an American Christianity that held an a priori commitment to slavery and segregation.
If one chooses to interpret the story of Jesus fasting in the desert symbolically, the story becomes an allegory of transformation.