Doves fly over the Israeli Separation Wall in a graffiti art piece near the military checkpoint in Qalandia.

Abu keeps rabbits on the roof of his family’s home. There are five of them and they’re brown, white and black. He tosses them a handful of yesterday’s pita and they scamper underfoot, nibbling on the edges of the bread.

“You see the fat one?” he points, “She’s the mother. The first one I owned.”

Downstairs, Abu lives with his wife and his newborn daughter. They stay on the third floor; his father and mother live on the second and his two brothers live on the first floor. Abu also has two sisters who live in Jerusalem.

It’s early in the morning, but the sun is bright. I shade my eyes with my hand to look into the light. Abu wants to show me the view from the roof. Ramallah, he explains, is behind us.

“And you see that building?” Abu says, stretching his arm out and pointing to the west. The building that he’s pointing to looks like it’s on the same block, but it isn’t. It’s in another city. “That’s my sister’s house. That’s Jerusalem.”

He takes me by the arm, to the edge of the roof. “And right there is the Israeli wall,” he points down.

On Thursday, February 17, I received one of the best phone calls of my life.

I wondered who was calling me from the (306) area code. Where was that anyway?

“It’s mrghhtbfxr,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

“Who?” I asked.

“mrghhtbfxr!” repeated the voice excitedly.

“Who????!!!!!”

It’s River! I’ve found a kidney!” Kitsap River is a Daily Kos blogger. I had been trying to give her a kidney.

I was so happy for River. But I was also so happy for me!

After a year of tests, I had just been confirmed as a match. I was mustering my courage for a SERIOUS TALK with the husband and kids.

Saved by the bell! Now I could keep my kidney without feeling guilty.

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.

Camino de Paz Team

In May of 2010, a group of northern New Mexico middle school students helped to train the 2nd 45th Agricultural Development Team of the Oklahoma National Guard techniques of organic permaculture farming. The youngsters showed troops how to milk goats, clean eggs and care for bees in preparation for their deployment to Afghanistan in September, 2010. The three week training was coordinated by the Pojoaque, NM-based Permaculture Institute.

These children from my community are the only youngsters who have ever trained US troops.

Some of you Tikkun-ers have told me from time to time: “Share with us about the people who inspire from your context in Brazil.”

Fair enough. I’ve already posted a link to one other video of my dear Brazilian friend, Claudio Oliver. But I couldn’t resist posting another: a video interview that took place earlier this week in Australia. This video continues the same line of reflection regarding poverty, friendship, and the presence/action of the local Christian communities.

To set the stage, I’ll just mention 2 key themes:

Last Saturday, my son Benjamin became a Bar Mitzvah. His Torah portion is Yitro. I would like to share his D’Var Torah which was packed with insight about participatory government as well as the taking and giving of good advice.

My parsha is Yitro. It comes right after B’shallach, in which the Israelits left Egypt by the Reed (Red) Sea. In a nutshell, during Yitro, Moses’ Father-in-Law says, “Oy! What the heck are ya doin’?” and tells Moses to correct himself by appointing judges. “Sheesh. Dumb kids!” After that, God apparently thought that Moses should beef up, because God sent Moses up and down Mt. Sinai three times. Finally, God gives Moses and the Israelites the Ten Commandments.

Most normal people with this parsha would choose to talk about the Ten Commandments; but then again, my family is far from normal (although apparently we rank only 5th most eccentric by Ellen’s standard [Ellen is his Hebrew tutor]). I chose to focus on the creation of the judicial system and God’s apparent need to repeat Himself.

In 1993 representatives of the Greek Orthodox Church publicly pulled out of the Parliament of World Religions (PWR) to protest the inclusion of “godless” Pagans. They haven’t come back. But that may change if Angie Buchanan has her way.

Angie, as well as two other Pagans — Andras Corban Arthen and Phyllis Curott — are on the 35-member Board of Trustees of the Council of the Parliament of World Religions. They’ve worked diligently to build bridges to other faith traditions since they were elected to the Board — Angie in 2002, Andras in 2006, and Phyllis just this year. As a result of their efforts, Pagans (in which I include Wiccans like myself) are finally coming into our own. I know it’s been a difficult road, and there’s still room for improvement.

But when people develop meaningful personal relationships while working together — as Angie, Andras, and Phyllis have with the Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, American Indians, Protestants, Jains, Baha’is, Zoroastrians, etc. on the Parliament’s Board — they begin to see each others’ religions through the lens of their respect for that other person. That’s a very good thing for Pagans, since so many misconceptions and prejudices exist about us among mainstream religions.

In the past the spectrum of disrespect for Paganism has extended from branding us as Satanists to dismissing us as superstitious. From the perspective of Abrahamic traditions, Paganism has essentially been viewed as a heresy. Thus the Greek Orthodox walk-out. But at this Parliament, Pagans made it very clear that we’re aligned with other indigenous religions. Wiccans and Pagans practice the remnants of the pre-Christian, indigenous religions of Europe. Like other indigenous religions, we practice an Earth-based Nature religion. And like other indigenous religions, ours was persecuted by conquerors, who forced us to go underground during the Christianization of Europe.

We’ve started a new program named “Quest” at First Unitarian Society (FUS). FUS created Quest in order to help members who want it to develop a deeper commitment to their spiritual journey. Some of the introductory writings about the program describe it as “a journey toward wholeness, holiness, and peace.” It’s a very exciting two-year “pilgrimage,” and I’m blessed to be a part of it as a mentor to two women who are participants.

Today one of my partners contacted me. I’d just finished re-reading a chapter from Parker Palmer‘s A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life about “Being Along Together,” a good metaphor for my role in this process. And yesterday I had finally bought two chairs for my meditation room, where I hope to meet with my partners –if that’s what they want. So synchonicities are lining up to indicate the “rightness” of this choice.

For several years now, I’ve been considering spiritual direction as a new option in my life, and being asked to become a Quest mentor helped strengthen this interest. Sometimes referred to as spiritual guidance or spiritual friendship, spiritual direction like mentoring takes place in a one-to-one relationship, in which a person who wants to become more attentive to their spiritual life meets regularly with a “spiritual director,” in order to awaken more fully to the presence of spirit and how it moves through their existence. I’m not using “God language” here, because not all UUs are comfortable with it. But what I realized while re-reading Parker Palmer is just how uncomfortable I am with the term “spiritual direction.”

In the years since September 11th, I’ve often heard radio-talk-show hosts / callers, chatterers at family gatherings, and TV pundits asking “Where are the peaceful Muslim leaders?” as though there were none out there condemning violence and encouraging friendship and peace. Whenever I have a chance to directly answer that question I’m very happy to have some solid examples of incredible Muslim leaders who have spoken out and continue to work for peacemaking and friendship. On September 11th, one of my closest friends and colleagues helped organize a gathering outside the White House, lighting the night for peace and friendship.

Thursday Night is Health Care Change Night at ePluribus Media and Daily Kos. This week, new diarist evelette posted a lyrical account of her own reckoning with death in her diary, (linked above) When Health Care Works.

When evelette learned she was suffering from cancer, she was given three choices:

1. Undergo a single mastectomy with or without reconstruction;
2. Undergo a double mastectomy with or without reconstruction;
3. Do nothing and hope for the best.

Fortunately, thanks to state subsidized health coverage in New Mexico (partially socialized medicine), evelette was able to make the right choice for her. Her decision has deepened her already strong relationship with her boyfriend, and also with her friends and co-workers, and brought new joy into her life. You can find out how that happened by reading her diary.

On streetprophets, diarist ramara (who is also a cancer survivor) reflected on her joy at playing Beethoven’s eroica a year after her kidney was removed. She wrote a D’Var Torah about “First Fruits” as her offering of Thanks. The D’Var Torah blossomed into a weekly series. To celebrate the return of “First Fruits,” she reposted her diary last night.

I hope these diaries inspire a joyous and fruitful Labor Day Weekend.

Dave Belden’s last post “So What’s a Spiritual Progressive to Do?” stuck with me all last night. Dave’s voice rings with urgency, an urgency to which all of us spiritual progressives respond. Who doesn’t know that we have to make change now? At least as quickly as humanly possible?

But those two — now and as quickly as humanly possible — are different animals. Now would have been yesterday for Dave, since he wrote his piece on the 30th. And humanly possible…that’s the rub for us. Humanly possible should be yesterday as well. But there are a lot of us humans, and we spiritual progressives have to educate many before the changes can be made.

All those “others” is what frustrates us, but it’s also our liberation in a paradoxical sense. I know that I can’t do this myself. And I can’t do it all. Each of us has to do what we can. And that means that some of us will work more locally, while others work more nationally. It means that some us will be learning how to more effective, while others are putting that knowledge into action. It means that some of us will take a spiritual retreat to rejuvenate ourselves, while others throw themselves into the middle of change-making.

“Spiritual progressive” as a term is only problematic when we look at it from an individualistic perspective, when we somehow expect everything to come together in each person, rather than in an entire movement. I don’t fault Dave for that understanding. It’s mine, too. I’ve been molded by the most individualistic culture in the world, that of the United States of America.

Ritual is not a word that we Unitarian Universalists tend to use. We think of it as formal, rigid, hollow of any meaning, coming out of traditions that have prescribed rules and customs that we no longer perceive as valid. Ritual, as I said, is not a word that we UUs tend to use.

Unless we’re pagan UUs. Then the word has very different connotations and meanings. Ritual, for me as a pagan UU, has to do with creating an experience that shapes energy in a particular way with a particular group of people for a particular purpose. It’s will in action, directed energy. Ritual is a participatory experience. And as Margot Adler (another UU pagan) says (in Drawing Down the Moon),

Ritual seems to be one method of reintegrating individuals and groups into the cosmos, and to tie the activities of daily life with their ever present, often forgotten, significance….Just as ecological theory explains how we are interrelated with all other forms of life, rituals allow us to recreate that unity in a non-abstract, gut-level way. Rituals have the power to reset the terms of our universe until we find ourselves suddenly and truly “at home.”

It was one of those moments that make or break meetings, the kind of moments that cause meeting facilitators to hold their breath and pray. We were “just” checking-in, just getting started with the gathering. The participants–all leaders of one sort or another within nonprofit social change organizations in the East Bay area of Northern California–were sharing what they’d been working on, thinking about, or struggling with in the month since the group’s first meeting: new programs, questions about the tone of a policy campaign, struggles to lead with integrity–that sort of thing. Then, near the end of the check-in round, one woman shared the depth of her agony as she struggled to follow God’s call within the institutional expectations of the organization for which she worked. There was something in the way she spoke, something in her refusal to tidy up her feelings, to be “upbeat” or casual or mater-of-fact, that plunged the group into new territory.

Over the last several years–six to be exact–lots of groups and individuals have come our way in order to experience something of life here in Brazil. We’ve received everything from local church youth groups, to seminary interns, to pilgrims on a journey to “holy sites” on the margins.

It’s interesting that almost all of these folks/groups share certain features, such as:

#1) They have a deep desire to connect with and serve others beyond the borders of the own country.
#2) They are committed to #1 because of their commitment to and relationship with Jesus.
#3) They understand #1 and #2 to be part and parcel of something called Christian mission.

#4) They have a sense that commitment to #3 (Christian mission) is part of what it means to be a faithful Christian, yet #3 involves a complex history that weaves faithfulness with much UNFAITHFULNESS.
#5) They want #1 without the problems of #4.

What we hear a lot goes something like this:

“People everywhere (and U.S. Christians, especially) are hungry to get to know their brothers and sisters in other places. We want to relate to Christians “across the borders” because we believe that we belong together. But here’s the thing: It has got to be more than a one-way, top-down, us-to-them attempt to share some of what we have, or to do something for them based on what we think their needs are.”

In a nutshell, what we hear from our friends who come to Brazil is that Christian mission has to be reimagined and performed differently that the (neo) colonial paradigm–even in its most benevolent forms. There’s a growing sense that it’s just not

One of my favorite things about my 3 year old daughter is her warm, convivial nature. Upon meeting someone new, particularly another child, she quickly begins referring to them as her “friend.” “Where’s my friend?” she asks. “Where’s my new friend? And what’s her name?” For her, friendship isn’t bound up in long acquaintances or even name recognition; it often stems from nothing more involved that the mere presence and personhood of the other child. Granted, she gets in your average number of spats with her friends both old and new, but her standard position is one of welcome.

There is something hopeful in this approach to life. In our community we often ask, “What is our reflex? What attitudes and postures are we attempting to cultivate?” If our initial thought about someone is “friend”, our interactions with them will have a fundamentally different tone than if we view them as “foe” or even as a neutral “unknown.” If we normatively grant others the privileged status of one who is included, the very trajectory of our interactions will be realigned.

Friends help you live longer. And the reason is mysterious to researchers who have barely looked at this before! Only smoking was as important a risk factor as lack of social support for the health of 736 middle aged Swedish men. I love this article.

“In general, the role of friendship in our lives isn’t terribly well appreciated,” said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. “There is just scads of stuff on families and marriage, but very little on friendship. It baffles me. Friendship has a bigger impact on our psychological well-being than family relationships.”

In my own life, I have found the making of friends to be as mysterious as falling in love. Some friendships catch and deepen and some don’t. Some people seem to have friendship in their focus, so they are willing to get together or write as if it’s important to them, and some don’t. Others no doubt are baffled when I don’t make more effort, but maybe the chemistry wasn’t there for me. Or it was but I was too busy.

The best way to make friends I have found is to be doing something regularly with them–work or an evening class or a congregation. In England after an evening class half the class goes to the nearest pub: I miss that in America. I miss the kitchens of the “left ghetto” in Leeds, Yorkshire–a bunch of communal houses in Chapeltown, a depressed area then in that northern city–where people dropped in unannounced and had cups of tea or spliffs. Dropping in isn’t practiced much in America. It’s doing things together that seems to work best here.

But keeping friends you no longer see regularly at work or elsewhere, that’s hard. I recommend breakfast dates: a great way to keep up. Now my wife’s been laid off from her nonprofit–because foundation funding is tanking due to the economic meltdown–I have to eat half a breakfast at home first to save money and just have coffee and a side with a friend at a cafe. We cut the breakfasts out when we were budgeting last weekend and then put some back in. This article’s confirmation: my life might depend on it!