1969 was a year that changed the lives ofLen and Libby Traubman. Their first child, Eleanor, was born. And like millions of other people, they saw the first photos of Earth taken from space. The image of our planet “embedded itself in us,” notes Len, and “emphasized the idea of echad, of wahad,” as “oneness” is known in Hebrew and Arabic. While it was a particularly formative year for the Traubmans, their life’s work to promote dialogue had not yet begun.

After years of volunteer work, in 1984 the Traubmans went to the Soviet Union as part of the Beyond War movement to find out whom these “enemies” actually were. In meeting face to face with many Soviet citizens who were assumed “ready to extinguish us at a moment’s notice,” they “found a way to connect through the telling of personal narratives.” The two had come to the table of dialogue with one “internal set of images” but left with another.

In the late 1980s, Beyond War and the Traubman couple were approached by Palestinian and Israeli citizen-leaders to apply their knowledge of dialogue to deeply troubled Middle East relationships. This resulted in the historic June 1991 conference in the California redwoods, which established a signed “Framework For A Public Peace Process” and affirmed that authentic citizen-to-citizen relationships and models of cooperation were necessary for any government treaty to succeed. This 1991 moment introduced to the world the term “public peace process,” having previously been known as “track-two diplomacy.” Even as government representatives meet to negotiate what everyone hopes will be a final peace accord, true peace cannot be reached until large numbers of individual Palestinians and Israelis engage to humanize one another by hearing one another’s stories with a new quality of listening-to-learn.

Polarizing behavior in Israel–it’s disturbing. Very disturbing.

I’ve gotten a slew of emails and forwarded posts this week about the sad state of disrespectful discourse towards righteous Jewish progressive nongovernmental organizations in Israel.

For those who don’t yet know, Professor Naomi Chazan, president of the New Israel Fund (NIF), an illustrious non-profit group whose mission since 1979 has been to fight for social justice and equality for all Israelis, was personally demonized with a full-page cartoon ad taken out by a group calling themselves “Im Tirzu,” (“If you will it.”) The cartoon depicted Professor Chazan wearing a horn, reminiscent of Nazi era anti-Semitic propaganda. In creating this ad, this organization has delegitimized itself and its theoretical message.

Rabbi Arik Ascherman, described by Rabbi Arthur Waskow as “one of the most courageous and honorable Jews in the world today,” is the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel (RHR). Rabbi Ascherman wrote the letter below, and I’d like to share it with you:

I don’t know how accurate this is but I do know I enjoyed reading it and hope it is.

I’m fascinated by the germination of good deeds. Where do they begin? How do they grow from a mere idea to an actuality?

On the 26^th of January, I caught up by phone with José Chavez, a custodian in the San Jose, California, Unified School District who’s been instrumental in creating a library for the village school in Limón, Michoacán, Mexico, where he grew up. (I learned of his project through a librarian friend who was soliciting books in Spanish.) Not only did he lead the library project, but he helped (physically) build a concrete plaza and paved areas in the village. When that was finished, the priest in the village called him up and said, “Why don’t you help us make a little room behind the church for people to meet?” So he raised $3,000 from among his friends and relatives in the immigrant community, many of whom gave $50, $100, $200.

I imagine that many people, like me, dream about all the good we’ll do someday when we acquire enough wealth to have a personal foundation. Here was a working class person who didn’t wait to be rich before taking action.

Below are extracts from our conversation:

LK: Tell me about how you started this library.

JC: I was born in Limón, Michoacán, and when I came here in 1974, I was thinking one day, ‘We don’t have any books [in the village].’ Three of us came from the same school, and [when we went there] the government only gave us three or four books, so I said to my friends, “Why don’t we try to build a library for the kids in that school?” So we [Salvador Andrade, Mario Andrade, and José] filled out an application to the government in Sacramento [Mexico] to see if the government will help us. The government said it would give 75 percent, if we would give 25 percent. So we started to collect the money [from other immigrant friends and family in the San Jose area].

[This story also appears  at Illume Magazine, an American Muslim news site.]

The recent passage of a ban on the construction of minarets in Switzerland has a very interesting side story. A member of the political party that pushed for the minaret ban announced that he had become a Muslim. Outside of Switzerland, the mainstream media has ignored this. Muslims around the world, however, have picked up on this story, circulating it on blogs and on Facebook. In the process, however, the story has become distorted into a fairly bizarre shape, and so creating some confusion. Meanwhile, at least one anti-Muslim blog has picked up on the story. Looking at the comments it appears that some opponents of Muslim immigration want to dismiss the fact of his conversion all together. Nevertheless, it is a verifiable fact that a Swiss elected official belonging to the Swiss People’s Party- the principal backer of the minaret ban- converted to Islam.

Original here.

Thanks to my friend Dan Broadhurst for sending the link

Read Lynn Feinerman’s new piece for Tikkun, “Torture Continues And Comes Home To Roost.”

Contrary to the claims of President Obama in his recent state of the union address, news reports assert that the US is still torturing. Anand Gopal’s recent article in the Nation magazine reveals the existence of many secret field sites in Afghanistan where torture is continuing apace, while the US maintains a somewhat cleaner game in Bagram Air Base.

And while the US courts have blocked torture survivors like Maher Arar in their efforts to sue the US government for damages, and the Obama justice department has swept all the crimes against humanity of the Bush years under the rug, a sinister blowback of this “war on terror” is creeping into the US itself.

Nov 25 2009: Brooklyn College Professor Jeanne Theoharris speaking at the weekly vigil for Fahad Hashmi, a former Brooklyn College student who has been in solitary confinement for three years without a trial

One of the worst cases is that of Fahad Hashmi, suspected of al Qaeda involvement. He has been kept in solitary confinement for three years without trial.

Recently on DEMOCRACY NOW!, Dr. Atul Gawande, a physician and surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a teacher at Harvard University, spoke about medical research into the effects of solitary confinement on prisoners, hostages and detainees. Researchers did brain scans and found that people who have sustained head injuries have the same scan indications as people in solitary confinement for long periods. Said Dr. Gawande on air, “…The science of what happens to people deprived of social contact is they have to fight for their sanity. And many lose their sanity. That…. led me to ask the question, is solitary confinement, the way we’re practicing it now, torture?”

I guess I would have missed it altogether. I never watch the Super Bowl. I never watch TV. I don’t subject myself to its violence and idiocy. I get my information by reading, whether on the internet (more and more) or through print media.

But I’m on the NARAL list, so now I know that CBS is going to subject 100 million viewers to an ad from Focus on Family during the Super Bowl. Supposedly CBS has an advocacy ad policy, but when it comes to “the family,” they don’t seem to be abiding by it. If you don’t know about Focus on Family, they’re a right-wing, anti-choice, anti-birth-control, anti-sex-education, anti-gay organization. They’re against pretty much everything I stand for.

The only thing that made me smile about all of this is the following Youtube video from the Raging Grannies:

If you want to sign a petition protesting the Focus on Family ad, you can go to NARAL.

From the beginning of his Presidency, Obama has been guided by one fixed principle: keep the right wing of the Republican Party at the center of the nation’s consciousness. The reason is obvious. Compared to Neanderthal Republicans, even the lamest, most conservative, most devoid of ideas Democrat will look good.

Let us examine how this works. Find a Republican who thinks we should not help people out of work; by comparison, a Democrat who wants to spend a thousand dollars on jobs looks like a latter-day Franklin Roosevelt. Find a Republican who wants to use small-scale nuclear weapons in Afghanistan; just one row over, a Democrat who only sends an army looks like Gandhi. One sees the method in Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann nightly: right wing idiocies are trotted out so that the liberals and Democrats can feel superior. Above all, never examine Obama’s policies. That would be “divisive.”

Ultimately I would love to be able to produce art which helps people respect and connect with the natural world in a more realistic way. To make them aware of their dependence on it and the way their choices and actions affect it. It’s not something to fear, or to control, or to endure while we wait for some Great Hereafter – it’s the only home we’ll ever know, and we’re doing our best to wreck it for our kids.–David Bygott

Did you realize the giraffe antelope has the ability to stand upright on its hind legs?

Did you know there was any such thing as a giraffe antelope?

Chances are you didn’t. And chances are there won’t be much longer. The giraffe antelope is one of thousands of species that have existed for millennia on the African continent that are being threatened by human folly.

Thankfully, for we billions who have not yet had the chance to contemplate their beauty or their importance, Artist/Zoologist David Bygott has been working diligently for more than three decades photographing and sketching the giraffe antelope and the rest of Africa’s disappearing animal companions.

Recently in an effort to expand further his means of self-expression, Bygott began participating in digital photography manipulation contests on a website called Freaking News in which artists compete to create doctored images relating to current events.

A frequent winner, Bygott uses the Freaking News forum to express his sensitivities toward consumerism, vanity and the other unsustainable human values which threaten the animal diaspora.

flickrcc/olibac

This week’s spiritual wisdom is from Reverend Father Thomas Berry (1914-2009):

You see we are at the terminal phase of the Cenozoic, the last 65 million years. We’re not just passing into another historical period, or another cultural modification, we are changing the chemistry of the planet. We are changing the biosystems. We’re changing the geosystems of the planet on a scale of hundreds of millions of years. But more specifically, we’re terminating the last 65 million years of life development. Now a person would say, “Well, where do we go from here?” To my mind we go from the terminal phase, if we survive it, … into a really sustainable world.

We will be passing from the terminal Cenozoic into what I call the Ecozoic. And the primary principle of the Ecozoic that we have to learn, I’m saying, is that the universe (and in particular planet Earth) is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.

Please send this out widely to seek signatures. From the people at Free Speech For People:

They write:

To correct the damage the Supreme Court has done to the First Amendment, we need to pass a constitutional amendment of our own that puts people ahead of corporations.

Below is our resolution in support of the Free Speech for People Amendment.

ADD YOUR NAME IN SUPPORT OF THIS RESOLUTION»

I have a friend who says that February is the longest month of the year. Even though this seems nonsensical, I know what she means. It’s still deep winter, but the holidays are over, the Yule lights have been put away — and there’s nothing much to distract from the bare, white winter landscape except for the frigid deep freeze. The cold keeps us inside more than usual, so many of us get cabin fever, that restless, bored, listless, frustrating desire for something you can’t find unless you flee Wisconsin for the southlands.

February is the fallow time of year, with bleak landscapes that can either be beautiful in their stark simplicity or deadly boring because of their lack of color and activity. No iridescent hummingbirds hover at our back window these days as they did in summer, and the chickadees, nuthatches, juncos and downy woodpeckers who keep me entertained when they come to our feeder are black-and-white just like the season. The occasional cardinal is the exception that proves the rule. As a result of this lack of warmth and color, it can be a long and difficult time until spring.

This is the season of Brigid or Imbolc, the traditional pre-Christian Celtic holiday for this time of year (February 1st or 2nd), a holiday which has come down to us as Groundhog’s Day when Sun Prairie Jimmy (or Punxsutawney Phil) sees his shadow in the sunlight (or doesn’t). Winter is half over (by the calendar at least), but it’s usually the coldest time of the year. Nature seems to be resting and preparing for the new life of spring. Covered with a blanket of snow, seeds that fell in the autumn are protected until spring when they begin to grow. All plant life seems to sleep in the death-like grip of winter, but the days are longer now, and the increasing sun promises the renewal of spring. Just like Jimmy, we emerge a little from our hibernation to look for the light.

In President Obama’s first State of the Union Address, he spoke of a loss of faith in our nation’s biggest institutions. He is correct.  Faith is a fragile thing.  It is intangible.  We cannot measure it, or weight it, or know what color it is or how it smells or tastes.  We cannot tell by touch the texture of it.  Faith never stands alone.  It walks hand in hand with doubt.  “I believe, help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24).  When faith is broken, it is very very difficult to repair.  Faith, like love, requires courage because we expose our vulnerabilities when we believe.

Carl Woese

You might think, on this site, that I would be talking up a sacred biologist, someone who combines a spiritual worldview with strong scientific credibility, but I don’t know too many of those (Francis Collins is one). I look forward to seeing more come out of the woodwork as this century progresses. This purely scientific story, though, does have spiritual implications for us. It tells us that the whole biosphere is much more interconnected at the DNA level than biologists including Darwin previously thought. I’m throwing in a related story about our human DNA, which it turns out isn’t so simply human after. First the “more important than Darwin” biologist:

JUST suppose that Darwin’s ideas were only a part of the story of evolution. Suppose that a process he never wrote about, and never even imagined, has been controlling the evolution of life throughout most of the Earth’s history. It may sound preposterous, but this is exactly what microbiologist Carl Woese and physicist Nigel Goldenfeld, both at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, believe. Darwin’s explanation of evolution, they argue, even in its sophisticated modern form, applies only to a recent phase of life on Earth.