General News

When Positive Thinking Becomes Religion: How "The Secret" and Law of Attraction Poison Spirituality

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We must understand that the founder of a cult or new religion has no room for compromise: absolutes are necessary. True believers in mystical psychotherapy will not embrace a gospel with modest claims: it must be all or nothing. – Martin Larson
“He could go to school and daydream.” That was the advice given by positive thinking guru, law of attraction teacher and “channel” Esther Hicks aka “Abraham” to a black woman who asked how her son should approach learning about the difficult history of slavery in school. After telling the curious mother “none of that [slavery] has anything to do with him,” and that “he won’t have to deal with it” Abraham-Hicks proceeded to equate the teaching of African-American history with a family legacy of passing down “bad” feelings.

Buddhism

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual comes from Vietnamese Buddhist monk and leader in engaged Buddhism Thich Nhat Hanh. Both poems come from “Call Me By My True Names: The Collected Poetry of Thich Nhat Hanh.” WALKING MEDITATION
Take my hand. We will walk. We will only walk.

Politics & Society

Faith Leaders Protest Anti-Immigrant Arizona Law

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A judge agrees! “Judge Blocks Key Parts of Immigration Law in Arizona.” Judge Susan Bolton said:
“There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens,” she wrote. “By enforcing this statute, Arizona would impose a ‘distinct, unusual and extraordinary’ burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose.”
Also nice to get this email today:

On Eve of Anti-Immigrant Arizona Law Taking Effect, U.S. Faith Leaders Descend on State
Launch Coordinated Weekend of Protest
TODAY at 2 p.m. EDT, religious leaders from across the country, all of whom are in Arizona to protest SB-1070– the anti-immigrant law there, will hold a telephone press conference to denounce the law, which is scheduled to go into effect on Thursday, and unveil their weekend of coordinated action to stand against punitive laws that divide families and communities. These faith leaders will stand alongside hundreds of other people of faith who are leading events in several cities as part of the National Weekend of Prayer and Action for Immigrant Justice, coordinated by Interfaith Worker Justice July 29- August 1.

Christianity

Toasters, Homelessness and Mental Illness – Musings for the Day

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My mother-in-law thinks we are crazy, taking half a day off work to cook, serve, and clean up for around 50-100 homeless folks who come to our church on Wednesdays. We only do this once every five weeks, part of a rotation of folks who make sure that there’s a hot meal for homeless folks in Palo Alto every day. Yes, at the end of our six hour shift I am pretty exhausted, more so, it seems, now that a decade has passed since we started. But crazy? No.

Christianity

The Catholic Crisis: Part II: When faith is challenged, Catholics must grow up

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Many years ago, when I was struggling to understand the smoke-and-mirrors world of corporate journalism, a Washington, D.C., veteran passed on to me a bit of wisdom:
When I was a reporter, an old PR pro once told me something. He said ‘You come to the press conferences and you listen, and the first mistake you make is that you think we’re lying. You discover we’re not lying. Then you make a greater mistake. You think we’re telling the truth.’

Empathy

Bad temper in inter-faith dialogue

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I guess I’m not alone in sometimes being mystified by myself and my reactions. I want to be a peace-maker – yet I sometimes lose my cool, and can provoke others to rage, without meaning to. I am part of an inter-faith committee in Geneva, Switzerland, the city where I live. We’ve built up some good friendships, relationships across divides – but the tensions in the world beyond our borders often touch us. Which is no big surprise.

Buddhism

Nuns, Invisibility, and the Question of Buddhist Activism

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There is a huge movement going on in Buddhism today, one that could make Buddhism the only major world religion with gender equal access to ordination in nearly all denominations. All over the Buddhist world, women are battling for full ordination of nuns, something that is now only consistently available in one tradition and is hotly debated in the others. It’s also shockingly overlooked outside of these debates. Consider an audience member’s question during a wonderful presentation by David Loy and Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi at the recent NSP conference. A long-time activist who’d been involved in Buddhism for a decade and a half wondered why most Buddhists aren’t also activists.

art

The Feast of Mary Magdalen: Celebrating Incarnation

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I would like to declare July 22nd a feast day to celebrate our incarnation on this earth, something all of us alive and who have ever lived share with all life and life to come. We are made of the same substance; we are subject to the same joys and sufferings of the flesh.

Christianity

Does Religion Cause Bad Behavior? Hitchens Can't Decide

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Christopher Hitchens’s book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is a lengthy and detailed description of what happens when religious people behave badly. And this apparent correlation between religion and bad behavior is perhaps one of the most common reasons cited by the new atheists as to why all religion should be abandoned. But does Hitchens really believe religion causes people to do bad things? As I illustrate his position is unclear. An interview with Jian Ghomeshi on QTV reveals the double standard that Hitchens has about the cause/effect relationship of religion and human behavior.

Culture

Free Speech?

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How would you react if you saw a sign like the one in this image on a bus you were about to board, but change a few words. “Facing Ex-Communication? Eternal damnation for your soul? Is your minister  threatening you? Leaving Christianity?”