Anna Stevenson, her beloved husband Lewis, and their beloved pooch, Poppy.

Yesterday was a bit of a hard day. I had to do end-of-the-year tax payments and the gozintas and gozoutas for the year weren’t looking very good. Some other stuff was going on that really had me down. Sigh.

I had to open up my old email software to find the message from our accountant so I could print out the quarterly payment forms. When I clicked on my “personal” folder it opened to a message from my friend Anna which she wrote to me back in 2004. Anna died around a year ago and I was pretty surprised that on the day before New Years Eve I’d land on a message from her.

Intrigued about what she had to say? Read on.

UU Flaming Chalice (author unknown)

It’s common around the turning of the year to look forward, to make resolutions of change, to wonder what new experiences might await us. Today, I would like to do something different: in honor of the year just passed, I would like to list the five most important lessons I learned this year as a spiritual progressive. I’m culling these lessons from three particular sources: my seminary experiences to date (since starting in August), my experiences writing for Tikkun (which began late spring), and my long, slow, and incomplete recovery from a detached retina in late August, which has cost me a fair amount of vision in my right eye. I realize these experiences are individual and personal, but my sense is that the insights that have come from them are not particularly unique. Indeed, I would normally say that these lessons are simply clichés, but for me they have been hard won and so are precious. In no particular order:

It should be impossible, shouldn’t it? But now it’s looking possible and some researchers think they have found evidence of it.

A major milestone in the development of evolutionary science was the defeat of the idea held by evolution’s first great theorist, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744 – 1829), that offspring could inherit the characteristics that their parents had acquired during their lifetimes. This was before it was worked out that biological inheritance works through genes and the language of DNA. While your DNA can be damaged, there is nothing you and your mate can do to otherwise change the genes you pass on to your biological kids. So if you learn to live in the desert or play the violin, you can teach the desert or violin skills to your kids but they won’t inherit them. “Lamarckism” became a major heresy in evolutionary science.

There is a great deal of hope and comfort in this for anyone who has lived through the worst that humans can do to each other: war, genocide, famine, prison, or other horrors. At least your kids can get a fresh start, if you can raise them somewhere safe. Yes, your own fears and trauma will inevitably be transmitted to them in some ways, but that will happen culturally, not, thank goodness, biologically. Biologically they will be a blank slate.

Now it appears it is not as simple as that.

“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8)The shepherds make for a nice presence, don’t they, both in Luke’s nativity and more recently in countless nativity pageants the world over. In Luke’s version of the nativity story, the shepherds are the first to receive the good news of Jesus’ birth.

The shepherds matter to my understanding of Jesus – of Yeshua ben Miriam – because of where they stood in the social hierarchy of their day. So who were the shepherds? Peasants at best, and therefore marginal figures. There is some possibility they even belonged to the outcast class, according to writings from after Luke’s time. They were not people with power or status. Who would they be in our time? Poor kids who are lucky to get fast food jobs, maybe. If they really were outcasts, perhaps undocumented immigrants. We have plenty of shepherds today. And we know who they are.

What would constitute “good tidings of great joy” (luke 2:10) for the shepherds of Judea, circa 4 BCE? Maybe the announcement of a particular birth: the birth of a man who would, as an adult, go into the synagogue and say that God had anointed him to bring good news to the poor. And especially in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus had a lot of good news for the poor. He said they were blessed. He said the Kingdom of God was theirs. He ate with them and healed them and invited them to walk with him along the way. What an incredible experience that would have been, to be a marginal figure in society and suddenly to find oneself in relationship with a God-intoxicated prophet and teacher.

At the last Tikkun gathering that I attended back in February one of the speakers talked about how Jews and Christians are united in their discomfort about the fact that Jesus was Jewish. So I laughed with everyone else, and have shared this insight with many others since, and still see that I personally love it that he was Jewish, because I feel a sense of connection with him that is rendered more meaningful this way. Which almost begs the question: how would a Jewish woman born and raised in Israel develop a sense of connection with Jesus?

Loving No Matter What

The year was 1991. I was having a fight with a friend during and after a back-packing trip. We were lying on my bed, facing each other, talking, and trying to get to the bottom of what was going on. We weren’t getting very far, though we were getting friendlier than before. Then my friend expressed an entirely new piece I hadn’t heard before: she was upset with me for not protecting myself at all. It drove her crazy, she said, that all through the trip I continued to reach out to her, extended my love and friendship, and tried to connect. I was distraught, to the core. I started crying, I just couldn’t contain my helplessness. I couldn’t fathom how someone could be upset with me for loving, for reaching out. In my agony I cried out that I didn’t want to learn to protect myself. I knew even then, before discovering Nonviolent Communication, that I didn’t want to learn to protect myself. And right there, in the midst of crying, I suddenly sat up, agitated and excited. I understood, intuitively, from the inside out, from within the despair, what Jesus was trying to do: he was trying to love no matter what. I felt an enormous sense of kinship with him. Not because I was anywhere near where I sensed he got to. That didn’t matter. I was on the same path, and I was not the only one. In that moment, without knowing hardly anything about him, I found peace and inspiration in this way of understanding his life.

It is a time of year when many of us take special occasion to reflect on whether we’ve been living our lives the way we mean to, whether our communities and our society as a whole have become a little more sane-minded, more sustainable, more beautiful, a little more just in the past year.

In my experience this exercise often leads to heartburn and nausea: the gap between the way things are and the way I hope for them to be is so vast as to seem impossible to bridge.

Our editor Rabbi Lerner wrote these prophetic words in early September for the Nov/Dec issue of Tikkun. Now that they have come true, it’s worth reading this article and paying especial attention to his recommendations in the last part of the editorial.

Middle East Peace Negotiations?

By Rabbi Michael Lerner

Until the populations of Israel and Palestine really want peace, the peace negotiations will be nothing but a slightly sad sideshow, unless the Obama administration, momentarily freed from its own electoral concerns, is prepared to put forward a substantive peace plan of its own.

It used to be that the elites in both societies would tell you that once they worked out a deal, their relatively excitable populations would embrace it. Perhaps. But what has become clear in recent years is that neither side has sufficient stability based on popular support to actually make the compromises necessary to negotiate a peace agreement with terms that could actually work.

So, instead of playing to each side’s elites, those who seek peace must now launch a broad educational campaign to reach ordinary citizens (if necessary, over the heads of those elites) with a message that is convincing — a message that says, here are the terms of a fair peace agreement and here is why we believe that if each side makes the necessary compromises, it will work to meet your best interests.

All photos on this post are from the rally

In conversation with the staff here, Tikkun intern Eamon O’Connor has been developing his critique of the famous rally and of the left critics like Medea Benjamin, Chris Hedges and more than a few Tikkun readers and writers who, in vigorously dismissing the rally, missed something crucial about it. This is about how to engage people in political discourse in the future, not just about what happened at the last election.

By Eamon O’Connor

Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity may have come and gone in popular consciousness, and most people will remember it as little more than a hybrid media spectacle/ Halloween party thrown by our nation’s most popular political satirist — a Be-in for a generation raised on a diet rich in irony. The event left many progressives shaking their heads, wondering why worthier causes couldn’t garner the same attention, or attendance. After heaving a collective sigh of frustration, or indifference, we went along with our business. But those who are concerned for the possibility of efficacious public demonstrations would do well to reconsider the Rally to Restore Sanity. In an age of profound cynicism, it is critical to be fluent in the language of satire.

About two months after Malcolm Gladwell’s notorious (and notoriously dismissive) proclamation, “The revolution will not be tweeted,” we find ourselves in the middle of the Wikigate scandal. There is a metaphysical lesson in there, I’m sure.

Now that WikiLeaks — legitimately or otherwise — has leaked a massive amount of confidential information, and now that different agencies of control — legitimately or otherwise — are trying to punish its founder and indirectly intimidate those who might attempt something similar in the future, a different kind of battle is being shaped: the battle over who gets to control the digital space. From our point of view, this mean means: who gets to voice their opinion online and how will online protest techniques be shaped? How can we make them have the largest impact possible? In the near future, protesting online will become as important as following causes or donating money, and social media will play a big role in shaping how those protests are expressed, as well as their effectiveness. This is something that progressives need to keep an eye on.

On the darkest day of the year in the northern half of the globe, the deepest gloom has already passed, and the next day will be brighter.

Darkness serves a purpose. It is necessary for rest and for regeneration. Unpolluted black velvet starless moonless night does not differentiate. Deprived of sight, we see through sound, taste, touch and the mind’s eye imagining fresh possibilities both alluring and frightening.

Even before the winter solstice the cold comes with its secret that the only way to stay warm is to relax into its frigid embrace. Some of us migrate. Some hibernate. Most of us continue our work as best we can as the weather allows. When the snow falls softly, quietly and blankets the landscape there is a deep peace. A friendly fire or a warm comforter keeps us company. It is the season for hot chocolate, stews, soups, chowders and chili warming us from the inside out.

The sparkling bare beauty of winter is fleeting. In a few short weeks, we will be planning the spring garden. The earth will be soft again, the flowers laughing in pastel colors again. Then summer heat and autumn cool and winter will be back again.

DADT Defense Dept. Report

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has been repealed by the Senate, and now only awaits the President’s signature. A great day for social justice, right?

It is. But my joy is profoundly mitigated by the Senate’s failure to pass the Dream Act, a bill that would have granted legal status to undocumented immigrant students and allowed them to go through a process by which they could have become U.S. citizens. What a wonderful pro-lives stance that would have been. And with the incoming Congress, we can’t reasonably expect to see the bill passed anytime soon.

Neil Hanson continues his series of posts about the shared ground he sees between progressives and those he calls “true conservatives.”We would also like to draw your attention to Paul Krugman’s column “When Zombies Win” today, which clarifies the danger of President Obama compromising on ideology, not just on actions taken.

By Neil Hanson

Like an addict who can’t focus on anything but his drug once it’s time to feed his addiction, Congress has whipped itself into a frenzy to once again do the bidding of the right-wing media, and continue to draw the knife of certain bankruptcy across the throat of the American future. This knife has a name, and it’s called continued revenue reduction, or lower taxes.

It’s unfortunate that the voice from the Progressive movement in the country seems to be primarily focused on the lack of “fairness” in the fact that the tax cuts are being extended to the uber-wealthy along with the other 98% of us. I say unfortunate, because what this does is provide the right-wing media with exactly the soundbite they need to continue to paint Progressives as the movement that wants to tax people.

If the Progressive movement could connect with the TRUE Conservatives in this country, the shape of the argument could be radically changed, and Progressives could become the movement of responsibility.

Extending unemployment benefits: $57B. Extending tax cuts: $208. Changing the tone in Washington enough to enable the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: priceless.

Sign from the Rally for Sanity

I’m currently reading the book Common Groundby Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel. Written before the 2008 election, they predicted that the time is coming for a growing public demand for bipartisan cooperation in Washington. Indeed, recent pollsfrom this fall show that an overwhelming 75% of people wanted more bipartisan cooperation. Ihave also written in other postsabout the growing movement of interfaith dialogue and cooperation that I have been witnessing in my community.

Like most people (poll results here), I did not favor extending tax cuts for billionaires, and was initially disappointed that President Obama was willing to do that as part of a package deal involving extended unemployment benefits and other issues. While the deal adds a whopping $850B to the deficit, and Obama did a poor job of selling it to his base and the public in general, I’m beginning to understand that the benefits were greater that I had originally realized. Besides the compassionate extension of the unemployment benefits (whichwere an economic stimulus by the way), its most important benefit may be the change of tone in Washington. Let me explain.

We are beginning to put videos of some of the speeches from our conference in June up online. To get you started we’ve got some great speeches by Rep. Keith Ellison, Lester Brown, Sister Joan Chittister, Gary Dorrien, John Dear, Rev. Dr. James Forbes, and a Q&A with Rabbi Lerner, Peter Gabel, and Sister Joan Chittister. More to come after the new year . . .

Check out the videos here! Happy holidays and new year; stay warm.

The past few months I had the opportunity to participate in a short documentary project about Muslim women. Yasmin Diallo Turk, a graduate student at the LBJ School of Public Policy at the University of Texas invited me to be featured along with a couple other women from Austin’s diverse Muslim community. It was an honor to work with her and to have my family involved.  I hope you’ll enjoy our efforts:

Muslim Women Do That

If you are interested in supporting a full length feature based on this short film please see the Kickstarter page.

Tell Your Senator to Vote for Cloture

Senator Reid has announced that he’ll take a cloture vote on Saturday on two bills that have been passed by the House of Representatives. The first bill would repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the immoral and harmful rules preventing gay people from serving honestly in the armed forces. The second bill, known as the Dream Act, would help children of undocumented immigrants get an education and allow them to embark on a path to citizenship.

The Senate requires 60 votes for cloture, closing debate on a bill and moving it forward for an up or down vote by senators. Senator McCain, among others, has threatened to fillibuster to prevent cloture. We need to tell all of our senators that these two bills deserve a simple up or down vote and that they should stop any fillibuster that would prevent a vote on these bills. As you can guess from my previous posts, I support repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tel and I support the Dream Act. No matter what your position on these two bills, they deserve to be voted on. Contact youu senators  now and tell them to vote for cloture on these two bills. Demonstrate that our democracy still works.

by Harold Jacobs

There recently has been a wave of commentary in the established media depicting President Obama as being concerned more with appearance than specific substantive accomplishments, craving acceptance by the economic and political establishment, and unwilling to fight for what he professes to believe in. Some commentators point to Obama’s personality as the problem: he is viewed as far more peculiar and strange than envisioned by those who voted for him. But whatever Obama’s quirks or insecurities, they do not appear to be more acute than those of previous presidents, such as Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, who nevertheless, for better or worse, governed with vigorous determination.

Supporters of Obama claim that given the political forces at play (the blanket opposition of the Republicans, the splits inside the Democratic Party, the power of outside vested interests, etc.), he has done the best he could, that is, he has acted in good faith in attempting to implement his campaign agenda. After the Democratic Party’s overwhelming defeat in the recent Congressional elections, Obama is said by his supporters to be in “learning” mode.

For Alex Shaland’s accompanying photographs of South African rock paintings by the indigenous San people on our art gallery – click here.

Secrets Hidden in the Rocks: The Spirituality of the South African Pre-Historic Paintings

by Irene Shaland

Rocks as canvas: the world’s largest open art gallery

A few hours of scenic driving from bustling Cape Town (and seventeen endless hours of flight from the US) will transport you into an other-worldly realm: the South African Cederberg Mountains, a massive rock wilderness where wind and rain have sculpted giant sandstone boulders, piled one upon the other, into bizarre shapes and towering surreal creations in every shade of rust red, brown, yellow, orange and white.

The Cederberg is the canvas for some of the oldest and most spiritual art ever created, and the mountains – home to the highest number of painted images per square kilometer – are one of the richest areas of rock art in South Africa – indeed the world. And, unlike France or Spain, where the well-known Stone Age paintings of the Lascaux and Altamira caves are located, in South Africa deep caverns are rare, so most paintings are in small shelters or rock overhangs. This means that most South African paintings are easily viewed, but they have also been exposed to merciless sun and rain for many centuries. They are pale remnants of once brightly colored images.

Crossposted from The Fearless Heart.

This week I finished teaching a 5-session phone class called Feedback without Criticism. The first 4 sessions were about giving feedback, and last night’s session was about receiving feedback. After last night’s session I have so much compassion for the untold millions who are regularly on the receiving end of both formal and unsolicited feedback which is so hard for them to receive. As a continuation to earlier posts on the topic of feedback, today I want to take a closer look at the role of self-acceptance in receiving feedback, as well as offer a few more tips to those who routinely provide feedback.

Conditional Self-Acceptance

In preparation for the class, I asked participants to read Overcoming Defensiveness, my earlier blog piece about the challenges of receiving feedback, which highlights the role of self-acceptance in being able to receive feedback effectively. With self-acceptance we are stronger, because our own view of ourselves is less dependent on what other people think or perceive about us. So it came as no surprise that people named the experience of someone catching them unprepared to give them critical feedback as being particularly painful. The deeper issue, as we learned together, is that very often our self-acceptance is conditional on being a very certain way. It’s as if we are telling ourselves: “I will accept myself for as long as I am always impeccable in how I do my work, or for as long as I always care about other people and the effect of my actions on the rest of the team members,” or whatever else you can insert there for yourself.

What would it mean to accept ourselves unconditionally, exactly the way we are? Imagine the freedom that can come from complete self-acceptance, without conditions, without having to be any particular way, without the pressure to be perfect. Imagine how much stronger we would become in facing whatever people say when we are not scrambling to hide the truth about ourselves. Working on accepting that which we don’t like in ourselves can reduce and ultimately eliminate the exhausting endless inner war in which so many of us live. With honest self-acceptance we come more fully into our place in the human fabric, alongside everyone else who’s also human, also glorious, also imperfect, also capable of making mistakes. We become less separate, and by extension more able to accept others, too.

Crossposted from Huffington Post.

While making a deal to protect billionaires from $145 billion in taxes that they might otherwise have used to solve pressing domestic problems or to create over 3 million jobs at $30,000/yr., some Democrats and their advisers pointed out that the progressives who dissented from the deal Obama had worked out with the Republican leadership — and which, despite the non-binding vote in the Democratic caucus on Thursday to oppose the deal, is likely to retain most of its giveaways to the rich — had really no place to go in 2012 but to blindly support Obama, so why take seriously all their huffing and puffing about Obama’s list of betrayals?

Sure, they said, Obama had led peace and justice-oriented liberal and progressive movement people to believe he would end rather than escalate middle east wars, punish rather than ignore those who had lied us into the Iraq war and those who had ordered or carried out torture, end discrimination against gays in the military and elsewhere, secure rather than undermine domestic civil liberties and human rights, fight for rather than duck serious changes in immigration and in environmental protection, and insist on at least a public option in health care and lowered prices for pharmaceuticals. But, hey — those people who paid attention to these details were only a small minority, and they would rally around Obama no matter what, giving him no incentive to listen to them. After all, Obama was just being “realistic” about the limitations of his power.