Crossposted from The Fearless Heart:
One of the most frequent questions I hear when I talk about Nonviolent Communication is “Why Nonviolent?” People feel uneasy. They hear the word nonviolent as a combination of two words, as a negation of violence. They don’t think of themselves as violent, and find it hard to embrace the name.
For some time I felt similarly. I was happier when I heard people talk about Compassionate Communication instead of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), because it felt more positive. After all, isn’t the practice of about focusing on what we want, where we are going, instead of looking at what’s not working? Why would the name be any different?
Like others, I was unaware of the long-standing tradition of nonviolence to which Nonviolent Communication (NVC) traces its origins. Then I learned more about Gandhi. I became more acquainted with the story of the Civil Rights movement. Then I fell in love with the name Marshall Rosenberg gave to this practice, and more so over the years. Here’s why.
Not every moment is as promising for changing the dynamics in Israel/Palestine as the current one.
It is time to support the Obama administration, which momentarily has developed a bit of a backbone in response to the Israeli government, which revealed its total arrogance and lack of respect for the United States and for the possibility of any real concessions for peace by announcing that it was going to build 1,400 more housing units in Palestinian East Jerusalem (not the Old City, where Jews have an historic claim that deserves respect, but in the part of Jerusalem built by and for Arabs in the past 200 years and then conquered by Israel in 1967).
Israel's Gilo Settlement in East Jerusalem
The Obama administration’s new backbone is unlikely to last in the face of the assault already started by AIPAC friends in Congress, unless there is a loud cry of support for his administration’s demand that building new housing in Jerusalem stop during negotiations. The construction of housing must stop because whether Israel has jurisdiction to build or run East Jerusalem is part of what the negotiations are about and therefore shouldn’t be resolved by Israel “creating facts” on the ground which de facto render the negotiations moot.
This week’s spiritual wisdom is an old Eastern parable adapted by Phillip Cousineau:
A very long time ago there was a traveler who was making a journey across the wild steppes when he suddenly heard the roar of a tiger. Terrified, he turned and saw the beast charging him. The traveler wasted no time. He ran for his life across the barren land – but saw no refuge until a dried up well loomed in the distance. He felt his blood surging as he gripped the end of the well and leapt inside.
The traveler fell, and as he fell he noticed to his horror a fire-snorting dragon far below, its jaws snapping viciously.
Desperately, the traveler reached out and grabbed hold of a long vine growing out of the bricks in the well. Miraculously, the vine held him and for a few precious moments he clung for his life against the cold brick walls of the well.
Above him, the tiger gnashed his teeth. Below him, the dragon licked its chops.
Originally posted under Dave Belden’s name, now under Mike’s so all his posts can be accessed together.
Mike Godbe, a young American on a free Birthright tour of Israel, continues his diary and photos of the tour, reporting his experiences and the ways the tour staff present the history and politics of the country. Earlier posts are here and here.
Friday, March 12th, 2010
Today was spent in the incredible and ancient city of Jerusalem, a city that has been besieged 36 separate times. Today was a beautiful clear day, unlike the past few days that have been dusted by the sandy haze created by changing seasonal winds blowing from the east. The sense of history and time in this city is almost overwhelming, Sandstone pathways in the old city are smooth and shiny from centuries of traffic, ancient mosques and churches decorate the skyline. It was difficult to take it all in in just a day . . . Luckily we have tomorrow as well.
On the short bus ride to the old city we were told that the IDF had retaliated for rockets launched from Gaza into southern Israel, and that no Israelis were hurt but a few Palestinians were injured. One of the few more-religious kids on the trip sitting in front of me exclaimed “yes!” and clapped at the news of injured Palestinians. While it was surely a somewhat facetious remark, it underlines — in my opinion — the lack of understanding and compassion which allows such a remark to be acceptable to say (or perceived to be), even it if was said in part as a joke. I’m glad to say that two or three of my peers who were within earshot vocally reacted to the remark. Anyway, back to Jerusalem . . .
I want us to organize, to tell the personal stories that create empathy, which is the most revolutionary emotion. – Gloria Steinem
It’s a good quote and you can find much more in Edwin Rutsch’s third Empathy Cafe newsletter just out. It’s worth scrolling through the whole newsletter–there’s a lot of depth there, from Obama to Tikkun author Kirk Schneider, Colbert to George Lakoff to HuffPost’s series on Empathic Civilization, in which various writers take off from Jeremey Rifkin’s new book of that name.
Edwin is a videographer who went to the California Republican Party 2010 Spring Convention this weekend to ask people about empathy. He has more often asked people on the political left but he tells me he had a good time. He started by asking people about their values. One student leader said “protection!” was a primary value for him, and Edwin asked about who he was protecting — it was his family etc. — and from whom. He asked if he was protecting his people from others who don’t feel enough empathy for them. “I guess so,” said the young man, a bit surprised to find he was objecting to people not having enough empathy. After another such talk that introduced the topic of empathy and made it seem relevant a student leader said, “You’re an interesting guy!” which of course delighted Edwin, promising that further connection and talk would be possible.
We have had a few posts here talking about how to talk with people across the political divide. Mike Ignatowski wrote about his Conversations at a Tea Party, and Miki Kashtan about Town Hall Blues.
This is the second post from Mike Godbe, who is on a Birthright tour of Israel (the first is here). Mike is a 2009 graduate of Vassar College, who has been working with Peace Action West in Oakland, CA. He has a thoughtful take on the way that young Jews like himself are introduced to the history and issues of Israel / Palestine on these tours, that are provided free to any first time Jewish visitors to Israel who are aged between 18 and 26. [Originally posted under Dave Belden’s name, now under Mike’s so all his posts can be accessed together.]
Thursday March 11th, 2010.
We began the day with a wonderful hike down the cliffy mountainside of the Arbel. We explored a stunning centuries-old castle built into the hillside and avoided some cows as we made our way down to the bus with the Sea of Galilee barely visible in the distance through the haze.
Next we visited a Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu, a large and unique kibbutz that was founded in 1939. While many of Israel’s kibbutz’s have strayed from their hard-line socialist and agricultural ideals over the years, Sde Eliyahu remains completely cooperative with every member getting equal pay, and completely agricultural . . . and organic too. They have a whole host of organic solutions to common problems faced by large agricultural productions ranging from owls to donkeys to rotational planting. I almost ate too many of their delicious dates before a new friend reminded me of the undesirable effect that eating too many dates can have.
Artist Christopher Reiger sent Tikkun an email expressing his differences with my piece “A Call for Sacred Biologists,” which his painting “submerged in his erotic mystification” accompanied in the March/April 2010 issue of Tikkun. I responded and a conversation developed. Our intern Sarah Ackley has edited our emails down to this post.
If I could sum it up in a phrase, I would say that Christopher is committed to the idea that science and religion are both valid ways of knowing but they are separate ways, whereas I believe we have to move towards a unified approach to knowledge (the nature of which I’ll take up in a forthcoming issue of the magazine). I was happy to have such a reasonable conversation about a topic that arouses such passion. We’ve laid out his emails as the indented quotes and mine as the text in between. Christopher Reiger has given us two recent drawings to accompany the exchange.
Reiger begins:
In “A Call for Sacred Biologists” Gabel explores the gulf between a strictly rational, scientific world view and that of, for lack of a better description, holistic panentheism. Gabel’s subject is near and dear to me, but his language unfortunately suggests that he has a deep-seated mistrust of, as he puts it, “the so-called ‘scientific method’” (emphasis mine).
"A beating of kettles and cutlery, to scare the beast" by Christopher Reiger.
What is it like to go on a Birthright tour of Israel? These are free tours provided to first time Jewish visitors to Israel between the ages of 18 and 26. Tikkun reader Mike Godbe, who is on one of the tours right now, is sending us his impressions. We will be running them over the next few days, along with his photos. [Originally posted under Dave Belden's name, now under Mike's so all his posts can be accessed together, by clicking on his byline above. We are happy to welcome Mike as the latest blogger on our team].
Tuesday, March 9th 2010
After an eleven hour flight from Newark, we landed in Israel. We arrived at midnight east coast time / 7am Israel time, and we started the first of many full days.
With achy shoulders and sore necks, the forty of us poured out of the airport and onto decorative slabs of the huge yellow limestone that cover this county. “We are not trying to indoctrinate or convince you of anything,” was the very first thing we were told as a group. If we were secular–great, religious–great, feel like moving to Israel and joining the army–great, don’t feel moved to do anything Jewish ever again–that’s okay too. Among other things, we were told that we would be sent home if we got drunk but that consensual sex was fine; I believe our programmer’s smile-complemented words were, “no means no . . . but yes, we’re fine with yes.”
Bustling around as a huge group, a bunch of young people trying to feel each other out, I was floating in a cloud from jetlag / lack of sleep and that feeling of landing in a new place with thicker wetter air. I was brought back to earth when I got my first touch of guns in Israel, meeting our group’s private security guard. Having finished his tour in the IDF 8 months ago, Davir was still younger than me, 22. Young, thin, and always carrying a rifle.
Fox News host Glenn Beck has created a firestorm by calling for Christians to leave congregations that preach and teach social justice. According to Beck, this is code for a socialist agenda. He has said that the one idea that Nazis and Communists have in common is the concept of social justice. Many Christians, and I would dare say many non Christians, are outraged by such statements. It is clear that Beck has neither a clear understanding of what social justice is or what most religions require of believers. Moreover, social justice is not only a requirement of faith, but it is a duty of citizenship.
Novelist and Tikkun Daily reader Gwendoline Y. Fortune wrote us these comments about a critique of Monique’s Oscar that she likes and adds her own son’s experience of trying to make a difference in Hollywood.
The following is from a college friend. The author is the president of Bennett College for Women, where I attended during my first two–and crucial–years of college. Knowing that her position will be critiqued, I am comfortable with the values, training and attitudes I was taught that are congruent with Dr. Malveaux’s, and not with less.
Mo’nique’s Oscar — Victory and Setback By Julianne Malveaux
The comedienne, talk show host and actress Mo’nique became just the fifth African American woman to win an Oscar last week. Her portrayal of Mary Jones, the revolting and depraved mother of Precious, was arguably masterful, and she now joins Hattie McDaniel (who played a maid), Halle Berry (who played a sex-starved fool), Whoppi Goldberg (who played a medium in Ghost), and Jennifer Hudson (who played a singer).
I mention the roles that African American women played to win their Oscars because the roles African American women get in Hollywood are too frequently stereotypical, and it is these stereotypical performances that are often lifted up. While I am glad for Mo’nique’s victory, I did not relish the Precious story of welfare pathology making it to the screen. Why not more positive roles for African American women?
Above: The Revs. Rosemary Bray McNatt and Charles Ortman listen to questions posed to them by students during the workshop "Whose Job Is It Anyway? The Ministry of Antiracism, Anti-oppression and Multiculturalism."
The Census Bureau projects that by 2042, whites will no longer constitute a majority of the U.S. population… the fastest growing group will be those who identify as multiracial…. If we fail to respond to this new multicultural reality – if we choose to stand rather than to move – we will not only fail to honor this core principle of liberal theology, we will simply become irrelevant.
This is from the lead article in the current Unitarian Universalist magazine, UU World.
Being good liberals, Unitarian Universalists have been engaged in wrenching self-examination for several years now, at least since the 1992 General Assembly Resolution on Racial and Cultural Diversity.
But the demographics show UUs are as white as they ever were. In a follow up article, well known UU minister Rosemary Bray McNatt writes:
News of progress on health care reform is breaking like a tsunami throughout the Blogosphere.
In the past, industry lobbyists, able to rely, on their ability to lurk in shadowy back room secrecy, cut deals with Senators that sucked the lifeblood from our public sector. The public was locked out of the black box. We had no understanding of parliamentary procedure, no ability to influence it, no say in the process. Congress was like a kitchen overrun by cockroaches. The Sugar Pops belonged solely to them.
The internet has enabled average Americans to break open the Congressional black box. We are able to observe procedure. We know who the parliamentarian is, what he does, why it matters. We can initiate public action at the drop of a dime. Four years ago, who could have imagined an overnight calling campaign in support of “the self-executing rule?”
This is why I am taking a brief break from meaningful spiritual dialogue to bring you Senatorial minutae. I think I know why James Joyce an entire chapter of Ulysses to a description of Leopold Bloom enjoying his morning crap.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused Israel of increasing its arbitrary repression of Palestinian non-violent activism lately. Abdullah Abu Rahma’s arrest — which I reported on in the second segment of my interview with Starhawk — is part of this crack-down in Bil’in, Nil’in, and Ramallah, where grassroots demonstrations have begun to mobilize Palestinians, Israelis, and international solidarity against the wall being built between the occupied territories and Israel. According to HRW,
Israel is building most of the barrier inside the West Bank rather than along the Green Line, in violation of international humanitarian law. In recent months, Israeli military authorities have arbitrarily arrested and denied due process rights to several dozen Palestinian anti-wall protesters.
Starhawk believes that the Israeli government fears this non-violent resistance more than the violent action they’ve contended with for years. Why? Because the government knows the movement’s power to shift public opinion and mobilize people against Israeli injustice. These grassroots efforts undermine several pillars of Israeli control in the occupied territories, according to Starhawk, and start to shatter the story that Palestinians are all evil terrorists.
Christopher Hitchens has an interesting praiseworthy comment for Stephen Batchelor’s new book “Confession of a Buddhist Atheist:”
“The human thirst for the transcendent, the numinous – even the ecstatic – is too universal and too important to be entrusted to the cultish and the archaic and the superstitious. In this honest and serious book of self-examination and critical scrutiny, Stephen Batchelor adds the universe of Buddhism to the many fields in which received truth and blind faith are now giving way to ethical and scientific humanism, in which lies our only real hope.”
Mark Vernon reviews Batchelors new book and reflects on Hitchens statement.
In God is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens writes of Buddhism as the sleep of reason, and of Buddhists as discarding their minds as well as their sandals. His passionate diatribe appeared in 2007. So what’s he doing now, just three years later, endorsing a book on Buddhism written by a Buddhist?
The new publication is Confession of a Buddhist Atheist. Its author, Stephen Batchelor, is at the vanguard of attempts to forge an authentically western Buddhism. He is probably best known for Buddhism Without Beliefs, in which he describes himself as an agnostic. Now he has decided on atheism, the significance of which is not just that he doesn’t believe in transcendent deities, but is also found in his stripping down of Buddhism to the basics.
Reincarnation and karma are rejected as Indian accretions: his study of the historical Siddhartha Gautama – one element in the new book – suggests the Buddha himself was probably indifferent to these doctrines. What Batchelor believes the Buddha did preach were four essentials. First, the conditioned nature of existence, which is to say everything continually comes and goes. Second, the practice of mindfulness, as the way to be awake to what is and what is not. Third, the tasks of knowing suffering, letting go of craving, experiencing cessation and the “noble path”. Fourth, the self-reliance of the individual, so that nothing is taken on authority, and everything is found through experience.
The delightfully wacky HCR (Health Care Reform) circus caravan rolls on.
As of March 11, 41 Senators had either signed or issued statements of support for a letter to Harry Reid initiated by Alan Grayson and the PCCC urging passage of the Public Option through reconciliation. For the first time, the Public Option is looking like a very real possibility.
Only three Dems have come out absolutely opposed (not including Liebermenace who, perhaps as a ploy to reinvigorate his flagging attentometrics, is playing coy). The Dems can lose up to six fence-nesters and still pass the Public Option. “And how,” you might be tempted to ask, “has Alan (The-GOP-healthcare-plan-is-die-soon) Grayson, an outspoken House Freshman, managed to get 41 Senators to support his letter despite White House efforts to back-burner the entire endeavor?”
Simple! The PCCC conducted a series of statewide polls demonstrating tremendous support for “socialized Medicine” among Democratic and Indie voters!
Gotta luv that guy! Maybe Rahm should try to twist his arm in the shower. Or at least poke him in the chest.
by: Dave Belden on March 10th, 2010 | Comments Off
Is this a less racist, sexist, homophobic country than it used to be? Some activists I know seem reluctant to agree that it is, because there is so far still to go that they feel it will sap our determination to go there.
The problem I have with this is not just that it’s wrong to say nothing has really changed but that it is so disrespectful to the activists of yesterday who did, actually, make a difference. It is also, for me anyway, much more dispiriting and likely to sap my activist energy if I think past activists had no real effect than if I feel they are heroes whose shoulders we can stand on.
So when I see significant generational differences between my generation of baby boomers and people in their twenties and thirties, I stand up and cheer.
Protestors take over the 880 freeway in Oakland in both directions as part of last week's Day of Action for education funding. Photo: Reginald James/TheBlackHour.com
Chris Hedges put up another vehement piece on Truthdig on Monday: “Calling All Rebels.” Representative quotes:
There are no constraints left to halt America’s slide into a totalitarian capitalism… The old game of blaming the weak and the marginal, a staple of despotic regimes, will empower the dark undercurrents of sadism and violence within American society and deflect attention from the corporate vampires that have drained the blood of the country… The engines of social reform are dead…. The elites and their apologists call for calm and patience. They use the hypocritical language of spirituality, compromise, generosity and compassion to argue that the only alternative is to accept and work with the systems of power.
The rush and anonymity of city life draws us apart, even as it draws us together. Jammed in the bus and streaming through the street, millions of strangers cross paths without hearing each other’s stories.
Those who do exchange a word or a glance often lose each other to the closing of a train door or a shy failure to exchange phone numbers in line at the pharmacy, and many end up posting plaintive regrets in the “Missed Connections” section of Craigslist‘s online classifieds site. Sophie Blackall, an artist based in Brooklyn, brings to life strangers’ sometimes poignant, sometimes funny searches for each other by illustrating a new post from the New York City listings every week.
Blackall, who calls herself “a terrible eavesdropper,” is perhaps best known as the illustrator of the Ivy and Bean series and of other children’s books.
Like most Jewish kids in postwar America, Starhawk grew up believing that Israel was the salvation of the Jewish people. She collected pennnies to plant trees in the Holy Land, learned Israeli folk songs and Israeli dances, and dreamed of going to Israel. At 15 she finally attended a Zionist program in Israel.
Star believes that she was raised with a compelling story — that Jews were kicked around for 2,000 years, almost exterminated in the Holocaust, and out of those ashes, finally got their own land again. “And by God,” she adds, “nobody’s going to take an inch of it away from us.” This is a persuasive story for many people, according to Starhawk. But unfortunately, the Palestinians aren’t in it.
For Starhawk, as for many American Jews of her age, it was painful to face the injustice that Israel was carrying out against the Palestinian people. Star senses that much of this injustice stems on a deep psychological level from an inability to see the Palestinian people as people — with their own humanity, their own rights, their own desires and flaws. Denying Palestinians that full range of humanity — and acknowledging that their ranks include the good, the bad, the vicious, the kind, the compassionate — is at the root of the unjust treatment they receive. Seeing every Palestinian as a suicide bomber who wants to kill an Israeli will not resolve this conflict. Nor will denying the existence of the Palestinians.
Starhawk hopes that another compelling narrative will begin to take the place of the one that she grew up with. This is a tale that’s very familiar to readers of Tikkun. It’s the story that Judaism stands for justice, for the regneration of the world, for tikkun olam. This, too, is a powerful story. And Star believes that if we can call people back to that story — as painful as it is to face the truth of what Israel has done to Palestine — then we can actually stop this injustice.
