Part 1 of this topic was posted on Aug 8, and links are provided below to all the other parts of this mini-series. This is the last segment. If you would like to participate in a real-time conversation with me about these topics (this Sunday, 9:30 – 11:00am Pacific Time), see below for more details, or go here to register.

I started this mini-series with noting that none of us ultimately knows what would (will? could?) bring about significant change, beyond our experiments with alternatives, beyond a vision absent material resources, beyond the smallness of our efforts. Before concluding, just a few comments about these unanswerable challenges.

Scaling up

To inspire confidence – both for ourselves and for others – in our ability to create significant change that affects large numbers of people, we need to find a way to continue to operate in radical, visionary, uncompromising ways while scaling up. We need to find ways to break out of the conviction that we can only do radical experiments with small numbers, and that becoming more visible, increasing our numbers, and gaining power and influence are bound to bring corruption, and/or bureaucracy, and/or inefficiency, and/or all other social evils. This conviction will either keep us small and ineffective, or become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I don’t know the answer. I am convinced it exists. I will continue to look for it, and to keep imagining and encouraging everyone I know, including myself, to move towards it without fear of falling.

Crossposted from The Huffington Post

Shortly before the California Democratic primary in 2008, the San Francisco Chronicle invited me to write a short article explaining why I, chair of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives, was supporting Barack Obama. Like most other progressive activists, I understood that a president is limited in what s/he can accomplish in limiting the power of America’s economic and political elites and in restraining the military-industrial complex, the pharmaceutical and health care profiteers, the oil industry’s relentless destruction of the environment, or the selfishness and materialism that had become the hallmark of Wall Street and increasingly the “common sense” that was conveyed by the media and advertising into the consciousness of many Americans.

But what a president can do is to challenge the ideas of the powerful and rally those who have become aware that the current system is not only destructive to the future of the planet, but also to the possibility of constructing lives that have a sense of higher meaning than accumulating money and things, or building families and friendships that are about love and not dominated by the self-interest “what’s in it for me” consciousness of the capitalist marketplace.

Well, it’s only an apparent tide and to the extent to which it seems to have momentum, it is reversible. Those are conclusions of what is, in my opinion, an excellent analysis of the current political state of play on the immigration rights issue, in a just published article, “The Preventable Rise of Arizona’s SB 1070,” by Justin Akers Chacon.

Last June the General Assembly of my Unitarian Universalist denomination adopted Immigration Rights as a 4-Year Study-Action Issue, orienting its associated congregations, as much as possible given UU pluralism, toward a single primary topic of shared conversation. Since then I have been looking for a coherent way to understand the causes, the political forces standing in the way of a just resolution, and a sense of how progressives might engage this issue with some chance of a positive outcome.

Chacon’s article is the best analysis I have seen so far. On a first reading, three major points stood out.

Before, behind and within the statistics and theories regarding violent conflict, poverty, violation of human rights and the misery that these realities bring, there stands the laughter and tears of ordinary human beings longing for peace. In his remarks before various meetings at the United Nations, President Obama gave a concrete illustration of a just peace philosophical pragmatism. It is an approach that speaks to the aching human desire for peace and requires real life results.

It’s the latest term being used to describe how the search for the highest self can be bridged with social change: spiritual activism. Now more than ever you can hear yoga instructors, meditation teachers, small groups and personal life coaches speaking about the value of taking spiritual principles into the world for the betterment of the planet. Yoga Kula [formerly Yoga Sangha], a San Francisco studio, hosted a “Spiritual Activation” series in 2007 where inspirational talks by John Robbins, Julia Butterfly Hill and Jack Kornfield were followed by a yoga class. For the yogi or engaged Buddhists seeking to become involved in activism, there are numerous new organizations and opportunities: you can volunteer to teach yoga in prisons or the juvenile justice system, fly to Cambodia or Africa to serve people, create your own local service project for social change, take a yoga class for cancer and HIV awareness, or support yoga teachers in Africa. Transformation is in the air. What was once the domain for an individual’s spiritual and physical growth is quickly becoming a useful resource to harness a new force for social justice. And with over 20 million yoga practitioners in America, and as more and more people seek spirituality in non-religious ways, it has the potential to be a powerful movement. This new spirit of transformation is all wonderful, right? Not exactly.

As an activist and yoga instructor I’m all for inspiring people to make a difference in the world. And this new spiritual activism movement has lots of potential. But taking the best of what is taught on the yoga mat off into the world, as one program advertises, isn’t enough to create just and sustainable communities for social change. Nor is meditation or a personal spiritual practice. Why not? Because yoga or meditation do not teach about how power functions to maintain oppressive systems such as racism, cultural imperialism, and patriarchy. Without this perspective we stand the risk of reproducing some of the most harmful effects of them. In Acting With Compassion: Buddhism, Feminism and the Environmental Crisis, Stephanie Kaza illustrates the importance of bridging spirituality with an understanding power dynamics, “Political, economic, and personal power can serve the environment, if illuminated by awareness and social consciousness of the logic of domination. Without this awareness, the critical role of power can be overlooked by the Buddhist practitioner focusing on the beauty and miracle of interdependence.” Recognizing that our activism — despite peaceful and loving intentions — can actually cause harm with or without our being aware of it is a crucial component to a just and sustainable future. In other words the impact of our actions is more important than our intentions. This awareness is a central component of an anti-racist approach to social justice. Let’s remember that the intentions of the 18th & 19th century Christian missionaries were mostly good as they sought to help civilize and educate.

Seane Corn - International celebrity yoga teacher and founder of Off the Mat, Into the World.

One of the most prominent leaders of this fast growing spiritual activism movement is the international yoga celebrity Seane Corn. As a pioneer in the field she has successfully combined the art of yoga with motivational leadership designed to empower people to make a difference in the world. Corn got her start teaching yoga to at-risk teenage girls in L.A. and became a YouthAIDS ambassador in 2005 to help raise funds and awareness about the HIV/AIDS crisis. She received both harsh criticism and support in 2001 when she represented Nike and took part in a commercial for them called, “Nike Goddess.” She defended her actions by saying that Nike explained to her that they had made progress in their manufacturing efforts in the global south. With her non-profit Off the Mat Into the World (OTM) she is now trying to bridge spirituality and activism and train a new breed of leaders by tapping into the market of 20 million yogis in the United States. One of the central projects are their “Seva Challenge” or “Bare Witness” trips which lead people to Cambodia, Uganda and South Africa for service. As I illustrate below, this well-known spiritual activism group is well-intentioned but it produces problematic issues of paternalism, “feel-good” service, white U.S.-centric privilege and racism. Understanding how this program reproduces some of these forms of oppression can provide some insights for the future of the spiritual activism movement. And for those combining yoga — still a predominantly white middle class phenomenon — with service, lessons can be gained about the more complex dimensions of social justice.

From Barbara Bash’s visual blog True Nature:

An image from one of the pioneers of a gift economy: charityfocus.org

This mini-series started on Aug 8, and this is the seventh post so far. The previous post was on Sep 24. Each of the posts can be read separately.

Example: Gift Economy

Because I have such a deep longing for a gift economy, so deep that truly every day hurts in seeing how far we are from such a system, I continually look for examples of gift economies already operating so I can sustain and expand the solidity of my faith in this possibility.

I am less interested in hunter gatherer societies that still have gift economies than in examples within the existing modern capitalist economy. Here are a few. If you have examples that you know of, I invite you to comment on this blog. This can be food for all of us.

Antiracist Rally, Sydney, 2005 (no attribution)

I’ve been reflecting on Theodore Parker recently, the 19^th century Unitarian minister who came to his social justice work (abolition in particular) through his liberal Christian beliefs. Since 2010 is Parker’s 200^th birthday, it’s not a bad time to think about him or the work he did. But there’s another reason Parker is on my mind, which is that it is just as possible to come to spirituality through social action as it is to come to social action through spirituality. And here, I am thinking about the spirituality of ally work.

Ally work can range from donating money, to moving into a neighborhood where your presence will support people in need, to leading workshops for other potential allies to practice daily the art of interrupting violent comments and demeaning jokes. There are many ways to be a good ally, some of them noted by Tim Wise, Paul Kivel, Allan Johnson, Meredith Maran, and others. All it takes is a serious commitment to the dignity, well-being, and empowerment of those in a social group to which you don’t belong, those who suffer from a form of inequality in which you are on the privileged end of things.

Ally work is important because all hands are needed on deck to heal the world. But ally work can have an important “side effect” if we let it: it can become a form of spiritual discipline as profound as prayer or meditation. Here are three spiritual elements of ally work that I have experienced:

Sukkah photo courtesy of Jeremy Price (flickrcc/forestfortrees).

The following note from Rabbi Arik Ascherman raises for us a very important question: is it anything more than hypocrisy for Jews to dwell in sukkot this holiday, pretending to make ourselves vulnerable to material insecurity, when in fact we have huge material and military security but instead are imposing insecurity on the Palestinian people?

It’s a troubling question.

Rabbi Ascherman is the courageous chair of the Israeli branch of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel, and his experience this week in the Silwan section of East Jerusalem gives us a better understanding of what is at stake in the demand by Palestinians that Israel continue its temporary ban on settlement building or expansions or home demolitions or evicting Palestinians from East Jerusalem, at least while the negotiations are continuing.

We in the U.S. might also add a note of our domestic hypocrisy in claiming to care about the poor and the oppressed, but allowing the Democrats to have spent this past year and a half providing almost no relief to those who are being thrown out of their homes for inability to pay off outrageously high mortgage rates — rates that were imposed on them by banks that made loans without adequately alerting the borrowers to the likelihood that their mortgages would be much more expensive soon.

We Jews at least should be giving this issue a much higher priority than our Jewish community has done so far.

IAVA volunteer embraces an amputee at Dodger Stadium. From ptsddiary.com.

Contrary to popular belief, our soldiers are currently fighting three wars – two in the Middle East and one at home. With politicians and pundits endlessly evoking the “war on terror” and security concerns, it is the men and women who serve in our Armed Forces that back up all the tough talk and rhetoric. However, when these brave souls return from combat, our society is not adequately prepared for their arrival. The regrettable treatment of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan is shameful.

Over two million men and women have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more than 40 percent of these soldiers have served at least two tours. In addition, around 300,000 troops have served three, four or more times. As a result, American soldiers today have spent more time in combat than at any point in U.S. History.

A Pentagon report in 2006 stated that the Army was “stretched to breaking point.” That year, a Congressional report claimed that “this strain, if not soon relieved, will have highly corrosive and potentially long-term effects on the force.” In 2009, Secretary of Defense Gates warned that “the Army faces a period where its ability to continue to deploy combat units at acceptable fill rates is at risk.”

“Justice is co-created through the joining of deep neighbor-love with delight in the holy.” I love that sentence from Mike Hogue’s recent post.

If that’s what it takes to create justice, no wonder we have so little of it.

I mean, isn’t it a given that you lose deep neighbor-love when you move into the middle class? Isn’t losing deep neighbor-love the way that you make it yourself? Whether you can find it again once you’ve made the upward class leap is a question that haunts the suburbs and many of our lives.

How do you enjoy all the fruits of individualism, and still commit to community that’s powerful enough to overcome the divides between the classes and races?

In a recent comment here, an Australian progressive Christian includes among “the sometimes negative sides of progressive agendas” the “emphasis on personal autonomy at the expense of community.” Yes, indeed.

I was breakfasting this week with friend and Tikkun Daily blogger, Nichola Torbett, and our talk went to the costs of moving from poverty into the middle class. Nichola is going the other way, choosing to live in a neighborhood known for poverty, drugs, and crime, living on the most minimal income, so she and Lynice Pinkard and their mostly Christian circle can create community across class and race barriers through the joining of deep neighbor-love with delight in the holy. She tells me about unlikely connections she is experiencing across the class and race barriers. Despite all the problems involved, she glows with health and happiness. She readily talks about the costs of middle class life, the widespread depression, the fear of falling.

So how do you get into the middle class?

This mini-series started on Aug 8, and this is the seventh post so far. The previous post was on Sep 10. Each of the posts can be read separately.

Working towards and creating change (as distinct from change happening, which is a constant in life) involves conscious choice and action. On the personal level, this means becoming more the person we would like to be, and creating new options for ourselves. On the social level, this means moving towards the world of our dreams. In either case, three things need to be in place:

• Clarity that what is happening is not to our liking, and having a clear sense of what we want instead. Only knowing we don’t like what is will result in change. We need to have enough faith that something else is indeed possible to imagine mobilizing the resources necessary.
• Having or knowing how to materialize the resources needed to create the change, and trusting our capacity for accessing the resources. Resources here are both internal, in the form of skills, faith, consciousness, courage, presence and the like, as well as external, in the form of support from others, material resources where needed, access to the people with influence and the like. The faith in our capacity to access and mobilize resources is an irreducible part of what’s needed to move towards the change.
• Making the choice to take action. This is not a trivial step. Both personally and collectively we find ourselves in situations where we know we want something done, we know we can do it, and we still choose not to take action. The willingness to commit is the final element that moves us into action.
  
  

I mentioned in my last post that the question I was raising – how  to respond morally to change when even our moral sources are changing – is an ancient question.

Consider the story of the ancient Greek philosopher Cratylus, who was influenced by the philosophical vision of Heraclitus. Though the name Heraclitus may be unfamiliar, his dictum that “you can’t step into the same river twice” is probably very familiar. Heraclitus was one of the original philosophers of process and flux – everything is dynamic, whatever is, is in motion.

Cratylus was deeply influenced by this idea and followed it to what he deemed to be some of its logical consequences: he argued that not only can one not step into the same river twice, but one can’t step into the same river once.

This week a friend of mine forwarded me an email containing the following sermon which was given this past Yom Kippur by the Rabbi Samuel M. Stahl, Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Beth-El in San Antonio. Although I have never had the opportunity to meet Rabbi Stahl in person, I contacted him and he was kind enough to allow me to share his words here on Tikkun Daily.

As a Muslim my heart is warmed and my spirit lifted by his empathy and genuine concern for those of us who are suffering under the latest wave of paranoia and ignorance to wash over the American psyche.

September 18, 2010- Yom Kippur Morning

This morning, our Reform Torah portion is different from the one our Conservative and Orthodox co-religionists read. Ours comes from the book of Deuteronomy. Theirs comes from Leviticus. In that portion, we learn about an exotic ritual. On the day of Yom Kippur, the High Priest took two male goats and placed lots upon them.

One lot was marked: “For the Lord.” The other lot was marked: “For Azalzel.” Azalzel was probably some dreaded demonic figure living in the desert. The High Priest sacrificed the goat designated for the Lord. He sent the other goat, designated for Azalzel, into the desert. That goat was to carry away his own sins, as well as the sins of the people.

Little Rock, 1959. Rally at state capitol, protesting the integration of Central High School.

In April, I was riding the DC Metro to the Capitol Mall, when several Tea Party demonstrators got on and sat a few seats away from me. The first, a young white man, wore red-and-white striped shoes with blue tops and other Uncle Sam garb; the young, white woman with him carried a hand-made sign on which was glued an old document titled “The Constitution” and the words, “Miss me yet?”

Their origins, judging by hair, clothes, accent, and where they got on seemed to be lower middle class church goers. Not rich. Not sophisticates. And not stupid. I wanted to ask the woman, “Which part of the Constitution do you see as lost?” Had she read it all the way through?

Who Are These People?

Who dresses up in red, white, and blue costumes, demonstrates, and now, votes for astonishingly extremist candidates in New York and Delaware? What motivates them?

We hear from investigative reports that the Tea Party is, by and large, a middle class group, including ironically people with jobs in the Department of Defense (never a waste of tax dollars), and nourished behind the scenes by wealthy conservatives like Dick Cheney and his daughter, but it has spread. Looking at those two, I caught a glimpse of a world they probably longed for, a world I grew up in, a place that we, as a country, have been before.

Mmm, nourishing: a veggie sandwich, just like Tikkun Daily. A smorgasbord of good things.

We are looking for 200 of our readers who could give us $5 a month to keep us going, the price of a sandwich a month. Would you consider being one of them, by clicking here? Or would you give us a larger one-time donation?

Alana and I were told by blog experts before we started this blog in July 2009 that we would need another staff person to do it. There was no money for that, so we did it anyway, working long hours like everyone in low budget nonprofits. It’s a small miracle that we pulled it off, just as it’s a large miracle that Tikkun magazine has survived all these years: Tikkun‘s 25th Anniversary comes up in 2011. As with the magazine, the blog’s strength has been in all the writers, artists and interns who contributed for no pay at all. Would that we could pay them, but it’s a struggle just to stay afloat as we now are.

In fact we are entering tough times and Tikkun Daily needs to pull its weight financially. $5 a month would be your vote to continue the blog and build it up further. Please help!

Tikkun Daily has been an exciting trip, as much because of what it could become as because of what it already is. Our vision is for it to be a place where anyone who wants a more spirituality- or values-based radical politics can come to connect with serious thinking and a living online community. It’s more conversational than the magazine, less edited, less like attending a formal speech and more like being at dinner beforehand with the speaker. It’s a daily dose of thinking from people not so different from you, and from you yourself every time you comment. It links you instantly to some of the best on the web. It’s interfaith and includes “spiritual” atheists and agnostics even if they don’t use the “s” word. It builds the thinking of the global circles of those who want to create a world based on a New Bottom Line. It’s opinion and commentary, and increasingly we want it to be reporting about the activism that is combining personal transformation, relational empathy, and radical political change.

$5 a month from 200 people would be a huge vote of confidence for Tikkun Daily and would launch us into 2011. Please also let us know in the comments below how you would like to see the blog develop or what you value about it. Is it as nourishing for you as a monthly sandwich?

Note about a possible glitch: If you have recently donated online, and you go one of our two pages to donate to this Tikkun Daily campaign (here for $5 a month, here for a one time donation), you may see a box offering to update your information, login and password. This box is NOT enabled at present, so to get a fresh donation page, you simply enter your email address, even if it is the one that is already in our system.

by John Dear

“Fourteen anti-war activists may have made history today in a Las Vegas courtroom when they turned a misdemeanor trespassing trial into a possible referendum on America’s newfound taste for remote-controlled warfare.” That’s how one Las Vegas newspaper summed up our stunning day in court last Tuesday, when fourteen of us stood trial for walking on to Creech Air Force Base last year on April 9, 2009 to protest the U.S. drones.

We went in hoping for the best and prepared for the worst. As soon as we started, the judge announced that he would not allow any testimony on international law, the necessity defense or the drones, only what pertained to the charge of “criminal trespassing.”

With that, the prosecutors called forth a base commander and a local police chief to testify that we had entered the base, that they had given us warnings to leave, and that they arrested us. They testified that they remembered each one of us. Then they rested their case.

We called three expert witnesses, what the newspaper called “some of the biggest names in the modern anti-war movement:” Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general under President Lyndon Johnson; Ann Wright, a retired U.S. Army colonel and one of three former U.S. State Department officials who resigned on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and Bill Quigley, legal director for the New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights. We presumed they would not be allowed to speak.
All fourteen of us acted as our own lawyers, and were not allowed any legal assistance, so members of our group took turns questioning our witnesses, and trying not to draw the judge’s wrath. Lo and behold, the judge let them speak, and they spoke for hours.

I heard about Maureen McCarthy and the State of Grace Document about seven years ago, and I quickly knew I wanted to connect with her. The bold claim that we can create and maintain a state of grace in our relationships intrigued me. The simplicity of the tool – a few essential questions that help spell out nakedly and gently what it would take to maintain a state of grace between two people – won me over. I wanted to learn more, and to explore the parallels and complementarities I saw between this work and Nonviolent Communication.

To cut a medium-size story short, Maureen and her partner Zelle just left my house a few hours ago, after visiting the Bay Area for nine days, including teaching a workshop that BayNVC hosted this past weekend. Meeting them has been one of the most delicious and unexpected treats that have come to me because of starting this blog. Knowing Maureen and Zelle has been full of surprises, deep engagement, learning, and inspiration.

Here’s a picture from the workshop last week:

Left to right: top row - Ruth, Smita, Cindy, Kathy; bottom row - Zelle, Miki, Maureen

As you look at the picture, bear in mind that Maureen – this vivacious, smiling, vibrant woman – is operating on 10% lung capacity from a rare and ultimately fatal lung disease she’s had for 22 years. Which doesn’t prevent her from saying, with a big smile on her face, that she has a better life than anyone she knows. I believe her. As I see it, the qualities that make this possible are the very building blocks of the tool she and Zelle live and teach: simplicity, authenticity, clarity, and self-responsibility.

On Friday my husband and I cooked wild caught salmon over a wood fire. We enjoyed it with garden vegetables and maybe a little too much wine. When the subject of genetically modified salmon came up, I was surprised to find that we disagreed – vehemently on my part.

The Food and Drug Administration is currently holding meetings (for only two days!?) on whether or not to approve marketing of a species of salmon genetically modified to produce growth hormones all year long instead of seasonally. Proponents argue that this fast-growing salmon would be a significant new food source whose consumption would also spare wild salmon populations. Critics are concerned about allergens in this untested food and also about what could happen if genetically modified salmon were to escape. Would their rapid growth mean that they would consume more food to the detriment of existing wild species?