On Monday morning I awoke before dawn and somehow managed to crawl out of bed, fumble my jeans and boots on, and sling my drum and backpack – the one that has become the indefinite home for my first aid kit, a patchwork bag of herbal tinctures, a squirt bottle half-full of milk of magnesia, a bottle of bubbles, and some lavender essential oil – over my shoulder.
As I checked my back pocket one more time for my ID and locked the back door, the clock on the microwave read 5:08 AM. By 5:39 AM, I was snaking through the dark streets of West Oakland in what seemed to me to be a much-too-small crowd, mostly quiet except the occasional heartbeat of a lone drum or the sleepy but hopeful cheer that rose up as we passed under the overpass of Mandela Parkway. It was somehow comforting to hear our own voices echoing off the walls – it helped us remember our power.
You better believe I was asking myself the same questions that CNN, the Huffington Post, the BBC, and Mayor Quan had that morning: Why on earth are we doing this?Are you absolutely out of your gourd, trying to shut down all of the major ports on the West Coast?
Artist Yoram Raanan seeks to revive life and purpose. His characteristic style drips with vibrant colors and processions of people that practically melt into each other and their surroundings. While his work is inspired by the “Jewish people who are happy in being a part of this sort of resurrection,” he attracts a wide-ranging audience – from Toronto to London to Israel, where he lives.
Artist Carl Gopal’s interests are expansive, but he is by no means a dilettante. He is gifted with an ability to analyze current events in the context of the “big picture” without getting overwhelmed, weaving together schools of thought as diverse as popular culture and politics, spirituality and quantum physics. He is afraid that amid the exhilaration of rapid scientific advancement, we are losing the sense of humble awe at the universe that spurred our curiosity in the first place.
One week after Jews all over the world nosh on Haman’s hat, dress in kooky costumes and party until we no longer recognize the difference between the ancient Persian equivalents of Hitler and Einstein, our preparation for Passover begins. On Shabbat Parah we study the enigmatic commandment to purify ourselves from contact with the dead through the sacrifice of a young, unblemished, red cow.
In many ways, this reading seems to continue the comedic inversions and paradoxes of Purim, the Jewish Mardi Gras. But surprise and delight at our continued presence on earth gives way to thoughtful reflection on emancipation from slavery and the attendant new-found responsibility we incur as a nation of free citizens. Observance takes a serious turn. Passover swings into view.
Parshat Parah is a pivotal passage. Why does this turning point in an overwhelmingly patriarchal text appear to revolve around menstruation?
In the churches of my childhood, the ministers would intone, “Let us give thanks,” perhaps after the collection plate had been passed, and we would all bow our heads and go through the motions. I don’t remember feeling actual gratitude.
But that wasn’t for lack of reminding. A hymn too exhorted us, “Count your Blessings. Name them one by one, and you’ll be surprised at what the Lord has done.” I do not recall ever literally counting my blessings or being surprised, except in a bad way, at what the Lord had done. Being the pious kind of person who read the Bible from cover to cover on summer vacation, I must have gone through the exercise, in prayers on my knees, but I do not recall feeling grateful. Maybe I thought my blessings wouldn’t add up to much, or maybe I didn’t know how to be grateful. Gratitude was hard to muster; however, sardonic and sarcastic responses arose with great ease.
Isn’t gratitude just happy talk, denial, and bullshit? Isn’t it masochism?
In this last installment of my interview with Bishop Gene Robinson, we discuss interpreting collective story in an inclusive fashion culminating in Gene’s interpretation of Exodus as “The Greatest Coming Out Story Ever Told.”
Permaculture for Starhawk is a practical application of Paganism. This is the link that connects the Goddess(es) and our vegetable gardens. The Goddess, as we know her within Wicca and other forms of Paganism, represents the cycles of birth – growth – death – decay – and regeneration, exactly the cycles that permaculture deals with in a more pragmatic way.
To say that the Goddess is sacred doesn’t mean you have to believe in something outside of yourself, according to Starhawk. It simply means that you need to shift your attitude towards viewing these natural cycles as amazing, even miraculous. Spiritually, we need to pay attention to how they’re happening around us all the time. They are the ways we connect with each other most deeply and with all other life forms on the planet. If we approach them with awe, reverence, and respect, these natural processes will lead us into ways of living and working that will create more health, abundance, beauty, and biodiversity as well as more joy and freedom on the planet. And if we don’t, Starhawk admonishes, we’ll get the mess we’re in today.
This translation of and reflection on Psalm 30 was a part of an assignment for a Psalms class we are taking in rabbinical school this semester with Dr. Nehemia Pollan. It has been amazing to learn about the Psalms as the music and poetry of the Bible. Through this translation assignment we were able to find the depth and myriad meanings in each word and to familiarize ourselves with the vastly different and extremely moving translations that have been published, including Robert Alter’s The Book of Psalms and Norman Fischer’s Opening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms. There is a new book of Psalms translations written by a woman in our community, Pamela Greenberg, The Complete Psalms which I am excited to check out!
Here is my translation for Psalm 30, which is part of the daily liturgy of traditional Jewish prayer.
Growing up I believed that you could get either love OR respect in life, but not both. This was my mother’s understanding of the way the world worked — one she taught me from day one — and maybe it was true for her or even for women of her generation. But over the years, I’ve discovered that without respect, love is a hollow sweetness, and that without love, respect can result in a distance that undoes its best intentions.
These insights came back to me Sunday at First Unitarian Society in Madison as I listened to our associate minister Karen Gustavson offer one of her best sermons ever. It was well-crafted, contained great stories and great intelligence, but I disagreed completely with what she had to say. The sermon was also about a topic that I care about with every cell in my body — about our need to love and care for the Earth. And so I feel compelled to present a different viewpoint.
We in the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) are considering changes in the language of our “Principles and Purposes,” the statements that guide our work together as an association of free, but interdependent congregations. Karen was responding on Sunday to the rewording of the seventh principle, a change that would substitute the word reverence for the word respect in the phrase “we covenant to honor and uphold … respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” She made an effective appeal for retaining the original language –respect — because she believes that to revere something implies a certain passivity — true for our fundamentalist brethren, but not for me and other people on the left hand of God — while respect indicates an active response. Obviously, this is not my experience.
What all Unitarian Universalists want in this rewrite of the seventh principle is language that reflects care for the Earth as a religious imperative, not an optional activity.
I’ve been organizing two Starhawk workshops here in Madison, so that’s why I haven’t been blogging recently. That’s the bad news. But the good news is that I hope to include an interview with her on this site in about two weeks. Who knows whether she’ll talk about Israel and Palestine, permaculture, the WTO, Wicca, or all of the above. She’s a multifaceted person, and the interveiw may be wide-ranging.
In other pagan news, many of you know that the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs had a problem with religious bigotry about five years back. Evangelical Christian cadets harassed other cadets who didn’t share their faith. There were anti-semitic slurs. And one of the chaplains claimed she was fired for criticizing the proselytizing that was going on. Even the Yale Divinity School issued a report on religious intolerance at the academy.
After much work to correct these problems, there seems to be greater openness in Colorado. In a few weeks, Earth-centered religions– including Wicca, Neopaganism, and Druidism — will dedicate their own worship space. This sacred site will increase the collection of worship areas at the academy that already includes Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist chapels. As opposed to the other indoor areas, the pagan site is a lovely stone circle on the top of nearby hill overlooking the academy. It was created by moving some large boulders that originally sat near the Visitor Center. Here’s what it looks like:
I have a friend who says that February is the longest month of the year. Even though this seems nonsensical, I know what she means. It’s still deep winter, but the holidays are over, the Yule lights have been put away — and there’s nothing much to distract from the bare, white winter landscape except for the frigid deep freeze. The cold keeps us inside more than usual, so many of us get cabin fever, that restless, bored, listless, frustrating desire for something you can’t find unless you flee Wisconsin for the southlands.
February is the fallow time of year, with bleak landscapes that can either be beautiful in their stark simplicity or deadly boring because of their lack of color and activity. No iridescent hummingbirds hover at our back window these days as they did in summer, and the chickadees, nuthatches, juncos and downy woodpeckers who keep me entertained when they come to our feeder are black-and-white just like the season. The occasional cardinal is the exception that proves the rule. As a result of this lack of warmth and color, it can be a long and difficult time until spring.
This is the season of Brigid or Imbolc, the traditional pre-Christian Celtic holiday for this time of year (February 1st or 2nd), a holiday which has come down to us as Groundhog’s Day when Sun Prairie Jimmy (or Punxsutawney Phil) sees his shadow in the sunlight (or doesn’t). Winter is half over (by the calendar at least), but it’s usually the coldest time of the year. Nature seems to be resting and preparing for the new life of spring. Covered with a blanket of snow, seeds that fell in the autumn are protected until spring when they begin to grow. All plant life seems to sleep in the death-like grip of winter, but the days are longer now, and the increasing sun promises the renewal of spring. Just like Jimmy, we emerge a little from our hibernation to look for the light.
Yesterday I posted some ecofeminist reflections on Avatar. Today I want to take on the racism issue that several Goddess Scholars as well as bloggers here at Tikkun Daily have raised. Originally I thought this movie was carefully crafted to bring the (mostly) white audience into an understanding that indigenous people already have — the importance, even sacredness, of their world ecology. The hero is Jake Sully, a human who becomes a Na’vi, thereby moving from one world to the other. He begins by betraying the people who ultimately become his own, so it’s not like his first actions are laudable — he’s actually an anti-hero in the beginning, not meant to be liked. But he realizes his mistake, and fights to rectify the situation.
This plot structure reminded me of one of the most subversive literary strategies I’ve encountered when it comes to women’s issues, used by Jean Auel in Clan of the Cave Bear. Every reader of this book has to identify with the female protagonist Ayla, even men, because she’s the only Cro-Magnon person in it; the rest of the characters are Neanderthals. As a result, men get to experience the degradation of rape, and hopefully understand it from a woman’s perspective.
I think the same sort of thing happens in Avatar. Indigenous folks don’t have any trouble identifying with the Na’vi, but for those white folks for whom that’s a stretch, they can identify with Jake, moving from invader to become a part of the land (indigenous). My first thought was that this narrative strategy might actually win us some allies in our environmental fights. And I recognized it as a part of the strategy that I use in my work — to invite people to become indigenous, i.e. a part of the land they inhabit, something we ALL need to do more of. Pat Monaghan on the Goddess Scholars list summarized this take on the the plot most succinctly by saying
A man, crippled because of his involvement with militaristic capitalism, is helped by five female powers (an Amazonian pilot, a sage scientist, a lover-huntress, a female shaman, and the Goddess herself) to discover that his culture is utterly wrong. Through them, he learns to give up the apparent privilege that comes with the culture and to literally become a being that was not only alien but defined as “enemy.”
I’ve really been enjoying the Avatar discussion, both here on Tikkun Daily and on the Goddess Scholars List I belong to. I waited until I’d seen the film to read any of the posts, because I didn’t want to prejudice my reaction to it.
The GoddessScholars’ discussion reminded me a lot of a Women and Science Fiction class I taught in the 1980s. In my classes I always had a check-in before we began (despite the fact that they were university courses), because then we had deeper discussions. One of the odd things about the Women and Science Fiction class that semester was that there was a sizable minority (about 7 women out of 24) who were big football fans. When they checked in they would say things like, “I’m doing great. The Packers won.” Or: “I’m really down. The Vikings lost.”
The discussion I remembered as I was perusing the GoddessList concerned the subgenre of Sword and Sorcery. This subgenre is a lot like Dungeons and Dragons — magic is real, and life is more or less medieval, and battles take place with swords and magic (and battles take place pretty frequently). When I asked whether the class thought Sword and Sorcery was amenable to a feminist message, there was a clear split between the football fans and the rest of the class. The fans were sure this subgenre could be used to send a feminist message, while the others were astounded that anyone could hold such an opinion when the writing was rampant with violent images of battle.
Like my students, some of the women on the GoddessScholars list believe (as I do) that feminism is only compatible with pacifism, while others think that there are situations where war may be necessary and (perhaps) just. Some of the women on the list are also survivors of interpersonal violence (as I am, as a rape survivor) and didn’t want to submit themselves to film violence that might trigger post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As a result, some of the GoddessScholars have avoided Avatar despite its Goddess content.
I actually hold a different opinion than these polar opposites. Although I’m a pacifist, I believe there can be anti-war literature and films that involve warfare, for e.g. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. War is shown as so horrifying that almost any reader or viewer, even those who started out believing in the possiblity of a just war, ends up repudiating that view.
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,
In the Talmud in the tractate Brachot (Blessings), the rabbis raise the question of what is meant by the mishnaic statement “ha oseh tefilato keva, ain tefilato tachanunim – the one who makes his prayer fixed, his prayer is not one of supplication.”
One explanation given is that our prayer lacks supplication when it is not done “eem dimdumei chama – with the reddening of the sun.” While on a peshat level the rabbis may be referring to the need for one to be earnest in his or her prayer in order for it to be supplicatory, I think there may be another level to their words.
Every year at winter solstice, I perform in a Interfaith Yule celebration at First Unitarian Society in Madison. Every year I tell a story and sing a song. This year I told a T’salagi (Cherokee) tale explaining why some trees are evergreen. In the spirit of the season, I’d like to share it with you.
In order to really understand the Cherokee story, you need to know that the T’salagi or Cherokee people lived in the southern Appalachian mountains until they were forced onto the “Trail of Tears” by white settlers who wanted their land. This part of the world is extremely luxuriant. In fact, there are more plant species in the mountains of Georgia and the Carolinas than in all of Europe. As a result, the T’salagi — living as they did in harmony with the land — knew a lot about the flora of their native territory and respected its medicine. The evergreens were among the most sacred plants and were only harvested by a shaman for healing purposes.
Another fact also brings this story alive. When Cherokee children went through their rite of passage to adulthood, they participated in a vision quest, during which they were to stay awake for seven days and seven nights. Here’s my retelling of the story:
Many religious leaders like to feel in control and give others advice. Though I am still a very much a rabbi-in-progress, with three-and-a-half years of study to go before ordination, I think it would show a great deal more strength for clergy to admit their shortcomings and be honest about how often they (and fairly soon soon we) don’t know what to do or how to do it.
In the spirit of seeking, rather than giving, advice, I wanted to share some of the fears that I have about my future career – and lifestyle – as a rabbi. I was recently asked to record these as part of a professional development course at Hebrew Union College but thought they might be of interest here and foment conversation about the difficult life’s choices that many religious leaders face.
Hi all! I wanted to share with you a recent piece I wrote for the Theology of Prayer class I am currently taking with Rabbi Art Green. This piece is another segment in the exploration of traditional Jewish prayer and embodiment.
For those who are unfamiliar with the framework and language of traditional Jewish prayer, the “Amidah,” which I am writing about in this piece, is known as “the standing prayer,” “the silent prayer,” or sometimes even just “the prayer.” It is the central point of the traditional service, the crescendo in a long flow of liturgy. Traditional Jews recite the Amidah three times a day. In rabbinic literature there is a set posture for the Amidah: standing, and an established choreography that one follows throughout the 19 blessings that make up this prayer.
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As we approach the Amidah during this morning’s tefillah I want to offer one way of expanding our connection to this foundational prayer of our davening. Not only does this prayer give us an opportunity to approach the Divine through the framework of tradition, history, and community, but it also allows us to come into deeper relationship with our own physical form as a means of accessing Gd.
During a discussion in the Talmud, the rabbis ask what it is that establishes the number of brachot we have in the Amidah. To this question, three possible answers are given. The first two responses say that the number of benedictions reflects the number of times the Divine name is mentioned in David’s Psalm 29, or the number of mentions of Gd’s name in the Shema. Both of these answers use textual evidence as their basis. The third answer given seems in stark contrast to the first two. Rather than citing a biblical passage, Rav Tanchum says in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi that the number of blessings is related to the number of vertebrae in the human spine.
Through these answers, three paradigms are given for understanding prayer. From the first, we understand prayer as an ancestral paradigm, connected to our past and future. The second ties prayer to a revealed paradigm, linking it to Torah. From the third, prayer is seen as a personal paradigm, connected to our bodies.
I love reading emails from the GoddessScholars list serve. This group of women includes some of the most knowledgeable people in the world when it comes to the divine feminine. The core members — out of several hundred women — are scholars, but the e-list contains artists, musicians, story-tellers, and ritualists as well. Reading their posts, I discover what’s new in the “Goddess Sphere.” I discover where the current controversies lie. And sometimes I discover just how ignorant much of the rest of the world is about this area that’s intensely meaningful to me.
A few months ago the controversies surrounded whether or not new archaeological finds were Goddess figures or not. Then it was on to the Catholic parish worker here in Wisconsin who was fired for her feminist views. After that it was the fact that Marija Gimbutas’s work has been hidden from view, even in events seemingly spawned by her research. And the latest battle seems to concern the very center of our connection with each other — the sacred feminine.
This latest brou-ha-ha began when one member wrote about a friend who was completing her M.A. in Art History. The friend wanted to concentrate on Botticelli’s representation of a variety of Goddesses. But when she approached her advisor, he told her that the sacred feminine was NOT a scholarly topic, but instead a term Dan Brown made up to sell The Da Vinci Code. Whoa! I think every woman on our e-list felt personally assaulted by this unbelievable statement.
We’ve been studying, celebrating, painting, telling stories, ritualizing, and singing songs about the sacred feminine for over 30 years, many on this list — including myself — for that entire time. My response was immediate and critical:
“The fun of the story for us,” say the Coen Brothers, in their gloss on A Serious Man, “was inventing new ways to torture Larry.” He’s the only nice person in the film, and if torturing nice people is your idea of a good time, this might be the film you’re searching for. Or if you have always wondered what self-hating Jews really look like, here’s a matched set of brothers to demonstrate.
It’s a natural phase to go through as a child, that when your life is miserable, you take out your toys and torture them. But by the time you’re in your fifties, surely it’s time to move on. Much has been made about the similarity of A Serious Man‘s setting to the Minnesota world the Coens grew up in. But surely even Minnesota, let alone Hollywood, has therapists that could help? Torturing two-dimensional puppets is no occupation for two grown men, let alone the basis of an entertaining spectator sport.
Every year at winter solstice, I perform in a 
