Tucsonans arrive in the International Airport of Tel-Aviv. Credit: Paul Afek.

Last November a group of us from Tucson, Arizona, went on a trip to Israel/Palestine. For the last four years I have been a member of a local Tikkun discussion group. Before that I had not known much about Zionism or the foundation of Israel, or the condition of the Palestinians. I became impressed with people who were assertively Jewish, but equally passionate about questioning the policies of the state of Israel. And so I became invested in learning about the Israel/Palestine situation, and when the occasion presented itself, I decided to undertake this trip, which brought together participants in the Jewish-Muslim Peace Walk of Tucson, members of the International Center for Peace and Justice, and our Tikkun discussion group.

The ancient religious aura of Jerusalem and the rest of “The Holy Land” can be felt everywhere. To enter the Holy Sepulcher which encloses Golgotha, the mountain where Jesus is said to have been crucified, and which was founded by Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, or to gaze at the magnificent Dome of the Rock, or to watch Orthodox Jews praying so fervently at the West Wall is to witness a place where people strive to touch the immaterial, where, perhaps, they long for immortality.

At first, I was worried that a one-day conference wouldn’t be worth $99 or, at the last minute, $149, but the moment I was welcomed into the Unitarian church on Franklin, I received a nice string backpack containing three new books, all useful, and two, especially valuable. Already I had recouped $60! And there was much more. This is a conference I believe many Tikkun readers would appreciate.

photo by Marty Castleberg

Hawken and the Seattle Protests: Writing That Changes the World

The best moment – Paul Hawken’s speech – came first. It was wonderful to hear that someone hugely successful, the pal of people like Clinton, had shown up in person at the WTO protests in Seattle, an event he felt was grossly misrepresented by the likes of Tom Friedman who opined from a continent away. In response, he wrote a 10,000-word email. He asked for no payment from the publications that accepted it, but wanted them to give up exclusive rights so that it could be freely and widely shared. Eventually, it turned into his latest book, Blessed Unrest, a title that came from Martha Graham’s words:

I’ll be leading a 3-week online course beginning June, 19th that explores the theological and intellectual influences of Dr. King. We’ll look at how he interpreted the Christian doctrines, his experience in seminary and higher education, the role of the African-American Christian religious experience in his life and some of the key ideas and people that shaped his thinking. See www.radicalking.com for more information.

Do you remember the news story in September of 2010 about President Obama and a misquoted phrase on his new Oval office rug? The rug contained a popular line that Dr. King used frequently. It read “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” However, as multiple news sources pointed out, it was the Unitarian minister and social reformer Theodore Parker who stated this, not King. In 1853 Parker said, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one. . . . But from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.” While many Unitarian Universalists already knew the correct source of the quote it was fascinating to see the public get a small lesson in Unitarian history.

As highly noted liberal religious reformers of their day, King and Parker shared some other interesting similarities. They both had originally wanted to be lawyers, but ended up as ministers. Each of them was exceptionally smart from a young age. King memorized Bible passages when he was a child, entered Morehouse college at age 15, graduated from Crozer Seminary as the Valedictorian and completed a PhD from Boston University. By age eight Parker had read Homer, at age ten he began studying Greek and Latin and could memorize 500 to 1000 word poems after one reading. He began teaching at age 16 and he read the entire Harvard college curriculum on his own before later being accepted into the Divinity school. Both men had very supportive and large families and were nurtured by their church community. Each spoke out against war, poverty and the injustices of the day and suffered from public scorn for speaking their truths.

One day in Lent went like this: another scattered stupid day of laundry, a crazy amount of mediocre cooking, bad feelings about myself and my negligible achievements, and attempts to pull myself out of self-absorbed self-criticism. Scurry, scurry, worry, worry, and meta-worrying about worrying. Tiring.

I got simple things done – a haircut, but only after wasting inordinate amounts of time surfing the web for “flattering haircuts for older women,” printing some images, doubting, looking for signs, irked at having to make all these decisions myself without clear divine commands. (Maybe the command I didn’t hear was, “Is this really important? Please live with more gratitude and now-ness.”)

That night, trying to decide whether to add doing a textbook to my list of tasks, I went to a Taize service at a local Church, a ritual I got into last year with my friend, Marilyn. I love to watch the candles, flickering as if they have a soul. Sitting in the dark, the computer well out of reach, I try to spare thought for others, think about Jesus in Gethsemane. Up above the altar, a big, round stained-glass window shows that scene, idealized. Why, I wonder, is Jesus’s face raised to the sky in prayer? Why that posture? Wouldn’t his head be down on the stone in agony and pleading? Around him are brilliant reds like chili peppers, and stunning blues. Closer to the congregation, two white lambs stand guard, one proudly holding a denominational banner, apparently with its leg. I wonder (but not in a harsh way) why martyrs need clean robes and how lambs can super-proud without dirt on their wool. Is this representation of myth an acknowledgment that daily life has so many dirty clothes and animals acting like animals? What would it be like if the lambs in church looked real, silly and fearful with maggots in their tails? What if Jesus looked like an everyday person in a country under occupation? Maybe we would find it hard to hope; maybe we’d resent being reminded of the world too much around us.

I believe in the value of ritual. Though not Catholic, I like to observe Lent in an interfaith way: a little bit of Ramadan for solidarity with the poor, a little bit of Judeo-Christianity for depth in simplicity, a little bit of Native American enlightenment through solitary retreat, a Jungian belief in the balance of feast and fast. In an unorthodox way, I decided to try out the experience of relinquishing several needless things during this period between Mardi Gras and Easter: candy was the first thing. For years, I never ate candy and somehow I’d started eating it regularly. The second thing was crabby negativity, a lifelong habit. You can guess which one was easier to give up.

Between January 9-13, I taught an ethics course called “Resilience and Resistance” at Starr King School for the Ministry, a member school of the Graduate Theological Union. Eleven faith leaders of multiple religious traditions explored life stressors, historical trauma, and health in the context of oppression, white supremacy and social movements. Through rigorous study, dialogue and spiritual reflection, the students analyzed and interrogated the historical and cultural dynamics of stress and resilience, hoping to identify contextual factors and healthy strategies and promote cultures of resistance in their ministries and activism. Course readings, guest presentations, and class discussion drew heavily from the scholarship from and lessons learned through movements led by people of color and poor/working class people. A website designed for the course will make available to the public some of the student’s final projects and begin a collection of web resources designed by seminarians for faith leaders involved seeking social justice.

Opportunities for praxis (reflection-and-action as an emancipatory component of education) were crucial to the course. One Phoenix-based Master of Divinity student, Nastasha Ostrom, spent her time applying her street medic skills and interest in resilience/resistance to Occupy Oakland. Her reflections show a piece of what self-care looks like in the context of protest, state violence, and community activism. As Occupy Oakland experienced yet another wave of police brutality, and arrests, as well as solidarity from various other cities’ demonstrations this past weekend, Ostrom’s insights seem increasingly relevant in the public dialogue about caring for each other in the faith-full struggle for social justice.

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
- Joseph Campbell

I can remember the moments just like they happened yesterday. On one occasion my friend and I were standing in the parking lot of my high school next to my gray two-door ’88 Nissan Sentra. He was looking at a paper I had written when he casually said, “you write like a girl.” For some reason, unknowingly to me in that moment, time stopped. His words resonated deep in my body. Despite this event occurring 15 years ago I can tell you the first and last name of the person who said it, the weather outside, the time of day, where we were standing in relation to my car…etc. Another time a high school friend told me that my leopard print steering wheel cover “was for girls.” When I bought it I had never even thought twice about it. It was simply what I wanted. But, again time stopped and I became extremely present. On one occasion a coworker told me I looked like a woman. His words shook me. All of these incidents shook me. While I wasn’t thinking this at the time I suppose at some deep level my spirit was saying in each occasion, “Oh, my god he knows.”

When these incidents occurred – in high school and in my early twenties I had never heard the word transgender before. This was in the mid 90′s and early 2000′s. I’m sure I’d heard the term transexual used in a pejorative manner, but my knowledge was extremely limited. Like many other teenage boys I had been called “gay,” “fag,” or “sissy” and a whole wide range of other terms – typical of the homophobia rampant in our culture. I know that I also participated in this homophobia by joining my guy friends in using this kind of language with each other. We’d also throw around sexist and racist jokes not realizing the impact these types of words have in everyday lives of people of color and women. But, despite me being called gay or fag those moments never stayed with me. I can’t remember even one specific incident in which I was called this, yet I can remember in painstaking detail the times I had been called a woman or a girl.

Anyone driving through Madison, Wisconsin in April and May would have recognized those nine beeps of car and truck horns, ubiquitous throughout the city: This is what democracy looks like!

Wisconsin State Capitol

The mainstream media focused on unions, of course, public and private, coming together in unexpected solidarity, but not everyone realized that spiritual and religious groups played a significant role as well. And here’s something that will challenge your prejudices: evangelical groups were among them. Together with the religious organizations that form the usual progressive “suspects,” they chanted their own variation on a theme: This is what religion looks like.

Bruno, Hawkings, Dowling at WCSA

Houses of Worship: the new “public” spaces for political action?

Churches, temples, synagogues, and mosques have an ambivalent history with social justice, but a panel at the Working Class Studies conference in Chicago this June offered evidence of deep and innovative support for justice movements, worker rights in particular, which really inspired me. Not everyone knows, for example, that during the Wisconsin Uprising, a Shabbat service was held in the Capitol with Hebrew songs in which Rabbi Renee Bauer played a key role. Or that four hundred clergy signed a statement of support, and one hundred fifty of them marched in the protests. Robert Bruno, author of Justified by Work, moderated an impressive panel consisting of Father Larry Dowling, a Catholic priest from a 50 percent unemployed, 55 percent ex-incarcerated parish, and Rev. C. J., . Hawking, Executive Director of Arise Chicago, and Minister of Social Justice at the Euclid Avenue Methodist Church. Unfortunately, Rabbi Brant Rosen, leader of an activist Jewish Reconstructionist congregation, and a Muslim Imam were not able to come.

Parable of the Leaven (etching by Jan Luyken, photo by Phillip Medhurst)

This sermon was preached at the High Plains Church, Unitarian Universalist, on Colorado Springs Pride Day, 2011. The sermon has been modified somewhat to fit the current context.

Luke 13:20-21: And again he said, “To what should I compare the Kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

In 2009, I went to theannual conference for my Unitarian Universalist district, where singer and activist Holly Near gave the keynote speech, which was really more of a keynote sing with brief stories between the songs. We all sang along and had a marvelous time. When Holly got to “Singing for Our Lives,” which we often sing during pride services, she introduced it with an explanation for a recent change of words in one of the verses.

Across California, 6,600 prisoners have joined in the hunger strike that began July 1 with prisoners held in security housing units, a sanitary term for solitary confinement, inside Pelican Bay State Prison refusing food and issuing demands that include adequate food and nutrition, an end to group punishment and abuse, as well as compliance with the 2006 Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons recommendations on ending solitary confinement practices. On the outside, demonstrators and coalitions have shown their solidarity with the prisoners through rallies in various cities, online petitions and calls to action. So far, the California Department of Corrections and “Rehabilitation” (CDCR) has refused to negotiate or show any signs of addressing prisoners’ demands.

I wrote about the start of the Pelican Bay Prison hunger strike in a July 2 posting;in the meantime, solidarity with prisoners has expanded both inside and outside the prison. There are ways to get involved and express solidarity: call the CDCR or your elected officials and urge them to honor the prisoners’ demands. You can also tell them you are a person of faith and why you support human rights and true justice for all people. (Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity, the coalition of organizations outside of prison speaking on behalf of and supporting the striking prisoners, even has a sample script and list of phone numbers to make it easy for you to do yourself and share with friends.)

While many people of faith reject the death penalty, solidarity with prisoners has been a difficult pill to swallow for many people of faith on the outside, particularly those of us who believe ourselves to be personally disconnected from the prison system or not “having friends who are felons.” Similarly, we may have thought at some point that having solidarity with prisoners is to turn our backs on victims of violence. There are facts and statistics that can help us deal with this discomfort. For instance, prison sentencing for nonviolent crimes has expanded heavily in just the past few decades. Also, solitary confinement has been practiced under the auspices of deterring violence inside prison, not because of original crimes committed outside (and that method has its fill of unjust procedures, like the debriefing rule, which the hunger strike and the video linked below help to illuminate). Still, something stops a large number of us from saying “yes” to solidarity with prisoners and no to solitary confinement. Luckily, many of us rely on traditions and sources of moral wisdom, which for centuries, have called for human dignity, liberation and freeing the captive.

Robert Kessler (photo by Janet Lincoln)

Three generations of us sat at the Café Figaro on Bleecker Street in New York City. My grandfather sat there with his son. My father sat there with me. I sat there with friends, boyfriends, girlfriends. All of us drank cappuccinos and ate pastries and fixed the world, in our conversations at least.

This Father’s Day I remember those coffee drinks and pastries but mostly I remember those conversations. And this Father’s Day I want to honor both my father and his father for making me the left-leaning progressive I am today.