On February 24, Rev. Paul Raushenbush issued a call for articles entitled “Dear Religious (and Sane) America” to inaugurate the launch of the Huffington Post’s new religion section. According to the article,

HuffPost Religion is dedicated to providing a provocative, respectful, and hopefully productive forum for addressing the ways in which religion intersects our personal, communal, national and international life. HuffPost Religion will demonstrate the vibrant diversity of religious traditions, perspectives and experiences that exist alongside and inform one another in America and throughout the world.

Huffington is clearly trying to expand its reach and become one of the big players in religion media, much as it already has in politics, popular culture, and even business. Based on initial responses to the section, it appears to be well on its way.

Newspaper Vendor

My newspaper this morning gave me hope. And brothers and sisters, that doesn’t happen very often. On the front page, taking up about one third of the sheet, there was an article entitled “Trying to open the ‘inner eye.’” It was a piece that described the new Center for Conscious Living, an offshoot of the Church of Religious Science, which the pastor said is “reinventing the idea of church, with ‘stand you up music,’ meditation, singing, chanting and ‘an inclusive message of self-empowerment.’” Above this article, the top story was about our governor’s clean energy plan, in which 25 percent of the Wisconsin’s energy must come from wind, solar, biomass, or other renewable sources by 2025. My friend Jack Kisslinger, whose website is called Planet for Life, tells me that 25% might be a good number, but it has to be 25% of reduced overall energy consumption. So the governor’s goal is at least a step in the right direction. These days we’re at less than 5%!?! But the miracle is that some of Wisconsin’s business leaders are lining up behind the governor, including executives of Johnson Controls, an auto parts and building products manufacturer. All of this combined with the EPA’s stricter standards for smog-causing pollution made me ebullient.

I’ve been really angry at the Obama administration lately, so it was nice to agree with them for the first time in what seems like months. The last straw for me was Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech, coming right on the heels of his announcement about expanding the war in Afghanistan. Until then had I tried to see his incrementalism as “realism.” But Rabbi Michael Lerner‘s editorial in the latest Tikkun, “Afghanistan: Obama Capitulates to the War Makers,” says it all. I agree with Rabbi Lerner that Obama’s announcement represented “a decisive endorsement of the strategy of domination.” And then Obama’s Nobel Prize speech tried to justify his decision by saying that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes, that “Evil does exist in the world.” When Obama used that final phrase, I stopped listening to him. Christopher Hedges‘ article in the same Tikkun, “Celebrity Culture and the Obama Brand,” describes the shift in my opinion at that point: “President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another.” I stopped believing in Brand Obama.

It’s hard to be optimistic given the world situation these days. But I believe that the three stories that filled me with hope today are related in a way that may not be immediately apparent. Without more spiritual exploration, people in this country will have trouble opening their minds to the changes in store for us. And those changes are going to be very fast, whether for the better or for the worse. As I said in a post several months ago,

This week’s spiritual wisdom is a selection from the Shvetashvatara Upanishad as translated by Eknath Easwaran, who is known and respected around the world for being the father of passage meditation.

Shiva painting from Wikimedia Commons.

The learned say life is self-created;
Others say life evolved from time. In truth
The Lord brought the cosmos out of himself.

He is pure consciousness, omnipresent,
Omnipotent, omniscient, creator
Of time and master of the three gunas.
Evolution takes place at his command.

Those who act without thought of personal
Profit and lead a well-disciplined life
Discover in course of time the divine
Principle that all forms of life are one.
They work in the service of the Lord and
Are freed from the law of karma.

Know him to be the primal source of life
Whose glory permeates the universe,
Who is beyond time and space, yet can be
Seen in our hearts in meditation.

In one room, young Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, secular humanists, and others cluster in a circle to learn strategies for facilitating constructive interfaith discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Down the hall, more young people — bareheaded or wearing headscarves or kippot — crowd together to discuss multifaith intentional living communities, learn about the Baha’i faith, create videos about youth-led interfaith activism, and train to volunteer as advocates for undocumented immigrants.

Talk about a rich space for conversation.

All this happened during one morning of the Interfaith Youth Core‘s 2009 conference, which took place October 25-27 at Northwestern University, just north of Chicago. The conference brought high school and college students engaged in interfaith work together with religious leaders, politicians, and authors interested in interreligious cooperation. Speakers included Greg Epstein, the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard; Tikkun Daily blogger Joshua Stanton, who founded the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue; Rami Nashashibi, the inspiring director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network; Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), who has worked with Tikkun to garner support for a Global Marshall Plan; and others.

On October 2, 2009, we commemorated the 140th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi by having a discussion at my university. The title of the event was “Practicing Satyagraha in a Violent World: Conversations on Peace and Justice.” As Director of the Gandhian Forum for Peace and Justice, I had invited Ted Glick as one of two speakers.

Ted Glick is a long-time activist and organizer who has worked on building grassroots resistance and raising the level of public debate on issues of militarism, state repression, environmentalism, tenant rights, community development and racial justice issues in the NY/NJ area. For the last four years Ted has played a national leadership role in the effort to stabilize our climate and for a clean energy revolution. He was a co-founder in 2004 of the Climate Crisis Coalition and in 2005 coordinated the USA Join the World effort leading up to December 3rd actions during the United Nations Climate Change conference in Montreal. Most interestingly for our Forum, Ted has participated in and led numerous public actions of nonviolent civil disobedience and has courted arrest many times in that process. In May, 2006 he became the national coordinator of the U.S. Climate Emergency Council. For three and a half months in the fall of 2007 he ate no solid food as part of a climate emergency fast focused on getting Congress to pass strong climate legislation. On a national scale he has been a leader in coalition-building and independent politics efforts. From 1995 to 2005, he was the National Coordinator of the Independent Progressive Politics Network.

Meet Samantha Kirby on the Phone Forum this Monday (she'll be calling in from Chicago not the desert)

Every Monday night there is a fascinating community meeting near you: as close as your phone, in fact. You can join in from your armchair or your washing-up sink. Better still, thanks to the wonder of the web, you can listen in at any time on your computer or iPod.

It’s like a Tikkun radio show for the first twenty minutes, in which I interview some of the people most interesting to spiritual progressives. Then I unmute the lines and you can offer your own questions and comments to the speaker for their response: the Q and A is sometimes the best part.

There is no phone company charge: the call is free. This is our gift, though, to those who subscribe to Tikkun (only $25 a year, $18 for students, and you can do it online) or join the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP), which is a sliding scale fee and is a way to support our work beyond the magazine.

So check out the recordings of past Phone Forums online and if you’d like to be on the conference call itself, please subscribe and just call in (no one will ask if you are signed up, and if you truly can’t afford it, call anyway).

The last two Tikkun / NSP Phone Forums were on vital topics

Subject: Body Of The Goddess

Dear Friends,

Today is Vijaya Dashami, the Day of Victory that completes the 9-day Hindu Navaratri celebration of the Goddess in all her aspects and manifestations. In mythology, Vijaya Dashami marks the final triumph of the Goddess, after nine days of battle, over the demon Mahishasur. It also marks the start of the harvest season, and invokes the Divine Mother as all the powers of fertility and the life-giving gifts of the earth.

I stand firmly, fiercely, and unequivocally against the global rise of Hindu fundamentalism, and its appropriation of Hindu traditions for its fascist agenda. And at the same time, I reclaim my Hindu spiritual and cultural heritage as a feminist scholar, radical activist, and artist.

Here’s a poem that Shailja sent to illustrate her opposition to Hindu fundamentalism:

Imagine that government services were designed and delivered by people who really care. Wouldn’t that have been so attractive we would have had universal healthcare by now?

But what does it mean to really care for the people who receive government services?

My friend Chase knows what it means for her in her office. She is a member of the covenant group my wife and I joined at our Unitarian Universalist Church. The group meets twice a month to talk about our lives. I didn’t expect much when Chase said she would tell us about her spiritual practice as a government employee, but I was blown away. Chase is a quiet woman, who doesn’t say much. But this is what she said that evening she talked about her work. She gave me permission to publish it here.

What has stayed with me from that evening wasn’t so much that I could imagine doing the same practices as Chase myself: it was the quiet glow about her as she told us what a difference it had made to her, her fellow workers and her clients for her to pray on behalf of each client coming to the office. It made me want to find what the equivalent kind of spiritual practice might be that would work for me: some day when the hectic rush dies down, I’ll try and think about that again. Chase said:

My Work as Spiritual Practice:

When I first decided to make my job a spiritual practice I realized that the energy in my cubicle was chaotic and anxious. I wanted to change the energy and the only way I knew to do that was to create sacred space, which I did in two ways. I put up symbols of my beliefs, prayer flags, pictures of Buddha, a Zen garden, and hindu gods and godesses, and muslim prayers beads. And I conscientiously began to pray, chant and meditate at my desk periodically throughout the day. One of my prayers is by Shantideva:

Shantideva

May I be a guard for those who need protection
A guide for those on the path
A boat, a raft, a bridge for those who wish to cross the flood
May I be a lamp in the darkness
A resting place for the weary
A healing medicine for all who are sick
A vase of plenty, a tree of miracles
And for the boundless multitudes of living beings
May I bring sustenance and awakening
Enduring like the earth and sky
Until all beings are freed from sorrow
And all are awakened.

I perform weddings as a lay minister at First Unitarian Society in Madison. Frank Lloyd Wright built our original church, so many non-members want to get married there — too many for our professional ministers to handle. As a result, I often have the opportunity to perform interfaith weddings where I put my Unitarian Universalist (UU) principles to work.

UU’s believe in the “inherent worth and dignity of all people,” “acceptance of one another,” and “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Instead of a creed or dogma, what holds us together is a set of seven principles, three of which I just listed for you. What this means in practice is that although I’m a pagan, I accept others’ belief systems as appropriate for them, respecting their inherent dignity and their search for truth and meaning. When I perform a wedding, I respectfully work with the couple who comes to me to create a ceremony that’s right for them.

It was bound to happen. Religious “leaders” (the quotes are meant to highlight the fact that the existence of “leaders” depends entirely upon the legitimacy and consent they enjoy or don’t among their so-called followers) from the major religions in India – Hinduism, Islam and Christianity – decried the recent court ruling decriminalizing LGBT sex (article 377, or 377 for short; see my earlier blog). Over the last couple weeks these “leaders” (who are usually busy fighting with each other in India) came together on this platform of opposition to 377 using any or all of four arguments that I am sure many of us have heard before in other spaces, other times. At the heart of each of their objections was the attempt to label LGBT sex-act as:

A) “unnatural” and then offer “cure” it through psychological/ psychiatric/yogic counseling, or

"Blue God I" by Salma Arastu

The Hindu Lord Krishna began to dance his way back into Salma Arastu‘s paintings, years after her conversion to Islam. How and why did it happen?

I wanted to tell this story in “Painting Past Borders,” my article in the July/August issue of Tikkun, but didn’t have the space.

Looking through Arastu’s beautiful art book, I became curious about her “Blue God” series. Like the rest of her work, the lyrical lines in this series echo the flow of Arabic calligraphy, which the artist studied after leaving behind her Hindu past and embracing Islam. But the paintings also hint at the Hindu stories of her childhood, weaving together both of her spiritual lives. How did Lord Krishna dance back into Arastu’s paintings?

Here’s the story she told me: