Really Really Free Market in San Francisco

Yesterday I went to the monthly East Bay Really Really Free Market (a.k.a. Hella Free Day), which is on the north side of Lake Merritt. It’s a non-commercial, mutually supportive event. People bring things to share to which anyone is welcome — objects they don’t want anymore, skills, their presence and company. The idea is that through convening non-commercial and mutually supportive events, our social fabric can be transformed — oh yeah, and it’s fun, too.

The Really Really Free website lists some platitudes that express what Really Really Free Markets are reacting to, and what they aim to create. Why have a Really Really Free Market?

Because there is enough for everyone

Because sharing is more fulfilling than owning

Because corporations would rather see landfills overflow than anyone get anything for free

I snapped this photo of an ad in a BART station in September 2007. Viewed now, in the midst of a recession, the image takes on extra realism and a tone of increased urgency.

Not convinced we need a New Bottom Line? It’s revealing that a line like “Now you can pay rent and eat” is an effective marketing strategy, catering to people’s anxieties and realities. Needless to say, it greatly saddens me that people find themselves having to choose between shelter and food.

What are you looking for in a Church, and what do you see?

Perhaps it is a common struggle among spiritual progressive types to find themselves at odds with certain teachings of the faith tradition they call their own. When this happens, it can seem that the only tenable option is to leave the Church. But it is true that certain traditions get woven into the fabric of the soul in no small way, and simply leaving a Church is not always a viable option at all when it comes to holistically addressing one’s emotional and spiritual history, needs, and gifts for expression as they develop throughout one’s life.

People’s relationships to churches and Churches are intensely creative, personal, and not always what they seem. With devotion to some honest searching it may be possible to stay within a tradition that speaks your language even if you disagree with some of the pronouncements it makes.

Resources, energy, and luck permitting, it may even be possible to challenge the the church or tradition you love toward changing from within.

A friend forwarded me this recent installment in the New York Times Blog series “Happy Days: The Pursuit of What Matters in Troubled Times”: an essay by Michele Madigan Somerville called “Born Again in Brooklyn“. It beautifully describes Somerville’s emotional and political qualms regarding the Catholic Church, and the process by which she decided not to renounce it, but ended up returning in full force on her terms, as a feminist-progressive born-again radical Catholic. I say Hurrah!

Here’s an excerpt:

Roman Catholic, as it turned out, was the language my spirit already knew. Burning hyssop and frankincense, the stark and heart-charging splendor of Gregorian chant, Marian devotion; the iconography, the Latin Agnus Dei and Litany of the Saints, the Angelus bells, the rapture at the crux of Catholic worship have always held fierce sway with me.

Erik Slutsky's Menorah

Montreal-based artist Erik Slutsky is not a religious man, but viewers of his paintings might be tempted to jump to a different conclusion.

Many of his paintings prominently feature Jewish imagery: a colorful menorah, a figure clad in Jewish regalia crying a prayer to the heavens, a woman wearing a star of David necklace. Look more closely, and you will also see Christian crosses and Muslim crescents accompanying the Jewish symbols in his paintings.