Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2012/page/12/)
Few successful conspiracies are published. Most conspiracy theories are incredible because they presuppose that the conspirators can keep a secret. The truth is the more people involved the less likely that the conspiracy will remain secret. In the GOP inauguration night conspiracy, somebody talked. And Robert Draper reported it in his book “Do Not Ask What Good We Do.”
On Wednesday October 10th, in a conversation with the editorial board of the Columbus Dispatch, Mitt Romney said “We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” Sit with that quote a minute and think. Really? Beyond knowing in your gut that we do, in fact, have people who die in their apartments, homes, backyards, on the streets, in shelters, at soup kitchens, and in all sorts of places, in part, because they don’t have access to adequate health care, Mitt Romney is missing other parts of the nightmare that is, for 50 million Americans, the reality of not having health insurance. I’ve written about my friend Anna before, and I will keep writing about her, until and maybe even after we get health care in this country right.
Our friend Julie McDonald is traveling across the country by Greyhound bus to talk to real people about their lives and how their life experiences and current situations are impacting how they feel about the upcoming election. She had conversations across America by scooter in 2008 and her storytelling from those conversations touched thousands of lives. Yesterday, Julie watched as mothers put their children onto buses heading to Nogales and then had a conversation about immigration policy with an amazing woman who works at that station every day. Here’s a link to that story, which includes an amazing audio interview. I hope once you hear this first interview you’ll decide to follow Julie as she continues her trek across the county, to bring us more stories.
Barack Obama lost the first debate for one reason: he couldn’t take a consistent left/center position and defend it coherently for 90 minutes.
“Micro-Church” is a term I made up (unless it is out there somewhere being used in which case let me know which of my fellow spiritual journeyers I can connect with, in such a like mind) but it depects not necessarily an antagonistic or pejorative response to the “Mega-Church” model and phenomenon but rather a counterbalance.
The Yoga service organization Off the Mat, Into the World recently garnered some heavy criticism (see: It’s All Yoga Baby, The Babarrazi, Nathan Thompson on Elephant Journal & Salon.com) for co-organizing and participating in the Huffington Post’s “Oasis” at the Republican and Democratic Conventions. Receiving a hefty sum of $40,000 from the HuffPo, Seane’s yoga group spent a year organizing and co-curating this “Oasis,” a super plush center in the midst of the “madness” that provides “private and group yoga classes, massages, mini-facials, makeup refreshes, sleep consultations, meditation and healthy snacks.” Why? They “want the politicians who are making decisions on our behalf to be centered and well-rested, not harried and sleep deprived.” While I certainly understand the concerns raised by the numerous bloggers I think the issue is more complex than it has been made out to be.
Some time ago I was sitting with a group of Nonviolent Communication enthusiasts on a cold winter night, watching the fireplace crackle, eating, laughing, and talking. The group invited me to support their development as a leadership group of their community. A few years before they had gotten together to make NVC known and visible in their town. When I was visiting, they were celebrating their success, as more and more people in their town came to know about NVC through their efforts and have come to trainings they organize. Now they wanted to take their work to a new level, to break free of the social homogeneity of their group and its members, to reach into communities and populations they had not yet connected with.
It’s Sukkot, the seven or eight-day autumn holiday (depending upon how you classify Simchat Torah) in which religious people eat their meals in a loosely constructed booth (a sukkah) gaily decorated with plant materials. “Ushpizin” is a charming seriocomic Israeli drama, made in 2004, depicting a particularly tempestuous Sukkot in the lives of a Hasidic couple in modern-day Jerusalem. Liberal Jews have strong feelings about the limited cultural vistas and the unhealthy political influences that we see on Israeli policies from this quarter–more perhaps in the intrusion of religion into the affairs of state and civil life than on attitudes toward peace-making, where the Haredim (ultra-Orthodox) are often confused with the national-religious camp. But this film reminds us of the positive spiritual dimension to the Haredi lifestyle. Dramatic changes of fortune are seen as divine intervention, an answer to their devotion and a part of their ongoing dialogue with God.
As I was sitting here in our shop, stocking the shelves while Debate Bingo cards print in the background (yes – we’re going to play debate bingo tonight), I spotted a new email from Rev. Jim Burklo, his latest musing. This is one I simply had to share. He starts with the question “How can we put faith into how we vote?” Read on for his answer. Musings by Jim Burklo
www.tcpc.blogs.com/musingsfor current and previous articles
10-3-12
(This “musing” is excerpted from a speech I gave this past Sunday at First Congregational UCC Church of Palo Alto, CA.You can hear an audio recording of my talkhere.)
SOULFUL CITIZENSHIP
How can we put faith into the way we vote?
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love you. Psalm 122:6
Those of us who spend time thinking about the connection between justice and peace, thinking about ways to make peace– personal and political, local and global – can learn very much from the speeches of world leaders at the opening of the UN General Assembly. Since the question of whether or not Iran will develop a nuclear weapon is an issue in the presidential campaign, the remarks of President Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and Iranian President Ahmadinejad received the lion’s share of media attention around this year’s opening. However, one speech that we ought to consider carefully is that of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He painted a disturbing portrait of the state of the relationship between the Government of Israel (GOI) and the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority (PA).