Weekly Recap for Tuesday, September 6, 2016 from ProgressiveChristianity.org in Gig Harbor, Washington, United States "The importance of standing up for and defending Sacred Land. This and more in our Free Weekly Recap of our most viewed and new resources from last week."
Last Week At ProgressiveChristianity.org ...We delved into the topics of: Defending Standing Rock , Racism, Lessons in Chaplaincy and September 11th.
Visit our website to join in on the discussion and to view our thousands of spiritual resources!
We are entirely reader supported, please support us today.
ProgressiveChristianity.org is a global portal for authors, scholars, theologians and liturgists to share their resources for the progressive spiritual journey. 
In So Many Ways, We Have Already Won
Sarah Sunshine Manning
Standing Rock has changed us forever. Our hearts are with the water, the land, and with each other.
READ ON ...
Colonization tragically forced many indigenous people to forget and forsake our innate connection to Earth. But many of us today are beginning to remember. What is taking place in Standing Rock is awakening what once lied dormant in so many of our people: the Earth is our Mother, and Water is Life.
It was late at night when I drove into the conjoined Oceti Sakowin and Red Warrior camp in Standing Rock. I set up camp in the rain with my sisters, crawled into bed, and eagerly anticipated waking up wrapped in the energy of unity that next morning. That is exactly what happened.
Standing Rock has changed us forever. Our hearts are with the water, the land, and with each other.
READ ON ...
Colonization tragically forced many indigenous people to forget and forsake our innate connection to Earth. But many of us today are beginning to remember. What is taking place in Standing Rock is awakening what once lied dormant in so many of our people: the Earth is our Mother, and Water is Life.
It was late at night when I drove into the conjoined Oceti Sakowin and Red Warrior camp in Standing Rock. I set up camp in the rain with my sisters, crawled into bed, and eagerly anticipated waking up wrapped in the energy of unity that next morning. That is exactly what happened.
We woke up to sounds of joy- laughter, conversation, and warm greetings of “Good Morning.” We woke up to lingering fragrances of camp fires, coffee, and smoldering sage and cedar. Near our camp was the central gathering place, where early risers were already congregating over coffee, while others were making huge amounts of breakfast over open fire.People of all tribes and many ethnicities gathered. I admit, that I was a little giddy just at the site of a blond gentleman there with his family — a wife and two young children. I admit, that I have been conditioned if not traumatized while living in the Dakotas for the last decade to expect much less than warmth from the majority of non-Natives in the area. But what I immediately saw in the camps at Standing Rock was pure unity of humanity. Unity for Earth, and solidarity for life. And it was beautiful. There were several non-Natives present, standing with the Lakota and Dakota people of Standing Rock as fellow human beings.
Friends and relatives who were there for weeks at the Sacred Stone, Red Warrior, and Oceti Sakowin camps oriented new comers, and shared emotional stories of bravery. They recounted events from the past week when the first non-violent actions of water defending were carried out and the first arrests were made.
We basked in their energy. The powerful energy and joy from those most intense moments endured, even days after the peak of the conflict between water defenders and Dakota Access Pipeline workers. Construction had been halted, and campers stand by guarding the water, awaiting a ruling.
On the weekend of August 19 through 21, the camps in Standing Rock swelled dramatically, nearing three or four thousand, according to some estimates. Caravans of several cars from out of state poured in day and night. Busloads of people, and truckloads of supplies came. The central gathering area drew more and more newcomers, many of whom took to the microphone to read resolutions passed by their respective tribe, or to offer a prayer in their indigenous language from afar.
Young men sang songs from Haudenosaunee territory in the northeast, and Navajo women from the southwest stepped up in numbers to make frybread for the growing camp. Women and men of all nations stirred huge pots of soups and hot dishes on the fire. And as new groups entered and unloaded their donations and expressed their support, that beautiful feeling grew more palpable each and every time.
We showered each other with unity, strength, and love, and the outpour flowed continuously.
What many outsiders might not know, is that the gathering of hearts and minds in Standing Rock is truly an ensemble of some of the most brilliant indigenous intellects, the most respected of spiritual leaders, the most seasoned organizers and environmentalists, and solid organizations known for defending the sacred.
It was a great surprise that I even ran into a beloved college professor, whom I hadn’t seen in over a decade. Indigenous lawyers and paralegals were there, too, teachers, youth, and college students, veterans, government employees, entrepreneurs, medical doctors, athletes, runners, writers, journalists and photojournalists, musicians, artists, and entertainers. They were all there, and many still are. Mothers and grandmothers, children and even precious, tiny babies. Grandpas with their horses, and young men helping individual family camps with everything under the sun, from gathering wood, to delivering supplies.
You couldn’t have assembled a more powerful and able group. Today, we are stronger and more capable than ever to stand up to corporate greed and American attacks on all that we hold most precious. These are the defenders who stand together in Standing Rock.Tribes from coast to coast were everywhere in the camps, flying their tribal flags and making new relatives. And I was delighted to run into relatives from across the Rocky Mountains, fellow Shoshone and Paiute people, coming together in the land of the Lakota and Dakota.
After spending only a few days there, I regrettably returned home to tend to “life on the outside,” as some have called it. I left deeply imprinted with the love and passion of thousands. I left changed, and like many, I am still adjusting to being away, leaving behind a power unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
Standing Rock Chairman, Dave Archambault II, articulated that feeling of longing and bitter sweet separation that so many of us can relate to as we departed camp. In a message shared on the Standing Rock Sioux Facebook page, he wrote, “it was like coming out of the Sundance; I didn’t want to go.”
Chairman Archambault closed his message, “I just kept thinking about the camp and I’d close my eyes and pray for everyone there and the future of our people. Praying for good long lives for all our nations.”
The Sacred Stone, Red Warrior, and Oceti Sakowin camps mark a place of strength and prayer. A bona-fide place of power. Water defenders and prayerful warriors hold the post, still, along the Missouri River in Standing Rock. Many caravans continue to come and go. Supplies and bodies are still needed. Prayers must remain constant.
When I close my eyes, I can still see the mist in the camp in the morning and feel the power in the shaking voices of the women who stormed in front of moving machinery to stop the pipeline construction as they told their stories late into the night.
Standing Rock has changed us forever. Our hearts are with the water, the land, and with each other. Today, we stand armed with the medicine of unity and prayer, and the strength of our ancestors. Still standing for water. Still standing for life.
In so many ways, we have already won.
Sarah Sunshine Manning (Shoshone-Paiute, Chippewa-Cree) is a mother, educator, activist, and an advocate for youth. Follow her at @SarahSunshineM.
Originally Published Here: Indian Country Today Media Network-------
Trump ripped the scab off our country’s racism.
Egberto Willies
Let's get to work at eradicating the infection. The question is whether we will have the courage to address the problem head on, once and for all
READ ON ...
Every thinking American knows that Donald Trump has ripped the scab off a very infected wound. We all know that America still suffers from the infection that is racism. But most people figured as long as we didn’t talk about it, we could avoid dealing with it. There were many who remained willfully ignorant.
Then Trump came along, and dissed political correctness. He gave many the freedom to say what they genuinely felt. And guess what shocked the willfully ignorant? The increasingly clear fact that a large percentage of the American population is still racist.
Before anyone in our progressive sphere starts feeling smug, rest assured that when it comes to race relations, liberals are not that different. They are just better at controlling their worse angels. Go to the websites of most NGOs. Attend a Netroots Nation conference. Attend any liberal organization’s conference (I have attended many). How much do they look like America? They almost never do. How inviting are these organizations?
A quick story: When Black Lives Matter interrupted Netroots Nation 2015 in its attempt to have the conference and the candidates address an existential problem, half of the ballroom was irate. Reporters from Blue Nation Review stood outside with cameras, interviewing people exiting the ballroom. When I noticed only black people were getting interviewed, I proceeded to ask the BNR reporter why they were only interviewing black people. She said no white person wanted to go on camera.
I saw three white men and a young white woman in a group, conversing. I approached them and told them what the reporter told me, and encouraged them to talk to BNR. None of the guys would, but he young lady said she was willing. One of the guys blurted out with disdain, “Go be our token white person.” I looked at him with disgust and he immediately apologized. The young lady gave a passionate and progressive interview that detailed her transition to understanding what had occurred on the conference stage. I could relay similar stories at many liberal conferences, and know many minorities in fact simply feel like props in these organizations, used to illustrate a point: “We are better than they are.”
And now there is Trump, who is allowing the examination of various types of racism. And it is way overdue.
Trump preys on racism born out of fear and socioeconomic displacement. He makes it clear with his inferences that those others (read: minorities) are stealing their birthright. This gets traction because our derelict media fails to articulate the reality: That their plight is borne from the economic policies which are crafted by and benefit a select few—people like Trump himself. At the end of the day, there is little left to extract from the poor. As such, white middle-class America is being welcomed to the reality of the less fortunate others. Fertilizing and nurturing the inner racist in a segment of our society is just a deflection, a survival mechanism for the plutocracy.
But Trump does more than that. He touches a nerve in some who believe America’s “natural pecking order” must be restored. I read between the lines when otherwise intelligent engineers and lawyers tried to explain to me why they are voting for Trump. What they were unable to say spoke much more clearly than their bumbling reasoning.
And then there is an insidious racism—racism effected through invisibility, disregard, and neglect. This type is manifested in dozens of ways, but most aren’t easily pinpointed. It’s apparent in things like potholes that are fixed promptly in predominantly white neighborhoods but rarely in poor, predominantly minority areas. It’s the poor service received by people of color at restaurants and other places of business, the assumptions made about the intelligence of kids and their promotion into higher-level classes. It’s the disregard of input provided at work or at conferences, being offered less than preferable rates on loans, and important medical news reports and research that ignore segments of the population.
Many of these have economic—and life or death—consequences. A few years back there was a meningitis scare in my area. One of the symptoms described had to do with how the skin would change color. That characteristic does not apply to 40 percent of the Houston area, based on citizens’ skin color.
Many view the South, or tea party members, or folks supporting Trump and other overtly racist politicians as the problem. That would be much too simplistic. The South is no more racist than the North. While some politicians are happy to blurt out their racist rants, we should fear the ones who actually write policies that are implicitly biased. While Trump voices anti-immigrant rhetoric, many others quietly exploit the immigrant. While Trump denigrates blacks, it is Hollywood and others that stereotype them. While Trump wants a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., many others discriminate against them in a myriad of ways. Trump is just America’s exaggerated alter ego.
Racism is an ingrained problem that is taught. From childhood, we are presented with subjective standards of beauty. Those in power make assumptions about crime, intelligence, and worth. Racism is a necessary tool to keep us divided, and most of us don’t realize it’s on autopilot. An unfair, extractive economic system needs racism as a tool in order to deflect the plutocracy’s failures.
Trump is upsetting that status quo. He turned off the autopilot and went full-throttle. The question is whether we will have the courage to address the problem head on, once and for all. We must not only throttle back: We must eradicate the autopilot once and for all.
Article Originally Published Here: Daily Kos-------
Let's get to work at eradicating the infection. The question is whether we will have the courage to address the problem head on, once and for all
READ ON ...
Every thinking American knows that Donald Trump has ripped the scab off a very infected wound. We all know that America still suffers from the infection that is racism. But most people figured as long as we didn’t talk about it, we could avoid dealing with it. There were many who remained willfully ignorant.
Then Trump came along, and dissed political correctness. He gave many the freedom to say what they genuinely felt. And guess what shocked the willfully ignorant? The increasingly clear fact that a large percentage of the American population is still racist.
Before anyone in our progressive sphere starts feeling smug, rest assured that when it comes to race relations, liberals are not that different. They are just better at controlling their worse angels. Go to the websites of most NGOs. Attend a Netroots Nation conference. Attend any liberal organization’s conference (I have attended many). How much do they look like America? They almost never do. How inviting are these organizations?
A quick story: When Black Lives Matter interrupted Netroots Nation 2015 in its attempt to have the conference and the candidates address an existential problem, half of the ballroom was irate. Reporters from Blue Nation Review stood outside with cameras, interviewing people exiting the ballroom. When I noticed only black people were getting interviewed, I proceeded to ask the BNR reporter why they were only interviewing black people. She said no white person wanted to go on camera.
I saw three white men and a young white woman in a group, conversing. I approached them and told them what the reporter told me, and encouraged them to talk to BNR. None of the guys would, but he young lady said she was willing. One of the guys blurted out with disdain, “Go be our token white person.” I looked at him with disgust and he immediately apologized. The young lady gave a passionate and progressive interview that detailed her transition to understanding what had occurred on the conference stage. I could relay similar stories at many liberal conferences, and know many minorities in fact simply feel like props in these organizations, used to illustrate a point: “We are better than they are.”
And now there is Trump, who is allowing the examination of various types of racism. And it is way overdue.
Trump preys on racism born out of fear and socioeconomic displacement. He makes it clear with his inferences that those others (read: minorities) are stealing their birthright. This gets traction because our derelict media fails to articulate the reality: That their plight is borne from the economic policies which are crafted by and benefit a select few—people like Trump himself. At the end of the day, there is little left to extract from the poor. As such, white middle-class America is being welcomed to the reality of the less fortunate others. Fertilizing and nurturing the inner racist in a segment of our society is just a deflection, a survival mechanism for the plutocracy.
But Trump does more than that. He touches a nerve in some who believe America’s “natural pecking order” must be restored. I read between the lines when otherwise intelligent engineers and lawyers tried to explain to me why they are voting for Trump. What they were unable to say spoke much more clearly than their bumbling reasoning.
And then there is an insidious racism—racism effected through invisibility, disregard, and neglect. This type is manifested in dozens of ways, but most aren’t easily pinpointed. It’s apparent in things like potholes that are fixed promptly in predominantly white neighborhoods but rarely in poor, predominantly minority areas. It’s the poor service received by people of color at restaurants and other places of business, the assumptions made about the intelligence of kids and their promotion into higher-level classes. It’s the disregard of input provided at work or at conferences, being offered less than preferable rates on loans, and important medical news reports and research that ignore segments of the population.
Many of these have economic—and life or death—consequences. A few years back there was a meningitis scare in my area. One of the symptoms described had to do with how the skin would change color. That characteristic does not apply to 40 percent of the Houston area, based on citizens’ skin color.
Many view the South, or tea party members, or folks supporting Trump and other overtly racist politicians as the problem. That would be much too simplistic. The South is no more racist than the North. While some politicians are happy to blurt out their racist rants, we should fear the ones who actually write policies that are implicitly biased. While Trump voices anti-immigrant rhetoric, many others quietly exploit the immigrant. While Trump denigrates blacks, it is Hollywood and others that stereotype them. While Trump wants a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., many others discriminate against them in a myriad of ways. Trump is just America’s exaggerated alter ego.
Racism is an ingrained problem that is taught. From childhood, we are presented with subjective standards of beauty. Those in power make assumptions about crime, intelligence, and worth. Racism is a necessary tool to keep us divided, and most of us don’t realize it’s on autopilot. An unfair, extractive economic system needs racism as a tool in order to deflect the plutocracy’s failures.
Trump is upsetting that status quo. He turned off the autopilot and went full-throttle. The question is whether we will have the courage to address the problem head on, once and for all. We must not only throttle back: We must eradicate the autopilot once and for all.
Article Originally Published Here: Daily Kos-------
Lessons in Chaplaincy…Part 1~ Divine Synchronicity
Deshna Ubeda
Synchronistic, that I would return to my roots to explore my own theology and to deepen my spiritual underworld.
READ ON ...
I recently started a 2 year long program to become an Interfaith Chaplain, through The Chaplaincy Institute in Berkeley, CA. The journey began long ago as I began soul searching for my next learning experience that would lead me to be able to share my gifts at a deeper level. My love for and fascination with religions, the cultural psychology they are born out of, as well as the all inclusive impact they have had on our world – political, social, artistic, lingual, cultural, emotional, etc – leaves me ever curious about the potential for world healing these ancient stories and words might have and how they might continue to evolve in order to build bridges between cultures and heal wounds.
As I walked the hills of Berkeley, I was struck with the full awareness of divine synchronicity. Everything happens for a reason, as they say. And while I admit that it’s much easier to believe that notion when things feel good and right, than when life throws you tragedy, loss, or heartbreak, in my life, I have been able to look back at those moments of desperate sorrow and see the perfect path they led me down. Without those, then this wouldn’t have happened. I lived in Berkeley when I was three to seven years old. My father was in seminary at PSR and most of my first memories were of those streets, smells, and parks. It is so synchronistic that I would end up in school just a few blocks from where my father went to school right around the age I am now. And not just any school but both of us in schools to become spiritual counselors, reverends at that!
Synchronistic that I would find a home to stay in during my school times with a soul brother whom I met in a very synchronistic way as well, who’s house is just a 10 minute walk to my campus. That his home, my temporary home, would be full with images and reminders of these ancient wisdoms… Buddha and Ganesh statues, prayer beads and altars, crystals, sacred art, and my favorite, obviously divinely inspired flower, the Passion flower growing all over his backyard. That when I went for a meditation walk I was met with a mother and baby deer, still as statutes also, as they watched me walk by, rare in that urban setting…another reminder of Source,.
Synchronistic, that I would return to my roots to explore my own theology and to deepen my spiritual underworld. I am not a religious person, though I love religion. At my core, I am a seeker and “broadband” minded. I appreciate ancient wisdom as I see it being less encumbered by our modern cultural dogma and woundedness. But my respect and wonder over these long ago teachers and seers doesn’t come out of attachment, but rather curiosity and reverence. Reverence not because these old religions are perfect or the answer but because of the Sacred Source they point to. Not that they are necessarily the voice of Source, but because they come from people who have danced with Source, with “God.” I yearn to feel and to dance with Source. And I do dance with Source, when the winds blow, when music moves my soul and my soles, when my baby girl’s laugh takes me out of my egoic body vehicle and into Spirit. But I haven’t yet developed or sensed a deep relationship with Source. The skeptic in me speaks loudly. And so, part of my journey through this program is to sit with both my inner skeptic and my inner sage and find the Tao in the middle of those, so that I might open up to that hand, knocking at my soul’s door. So that I might become more ensouled, as Rabbi Zalman writes.
Life is full of these kinds of sacred signs, when we are open to them. They are like the sign posts pointing us down the paths of our dreams. They are like the nudges our loving mothers give us to move forward in spite of our fears. They are the reminders of what we already know but have mostly forgotten, like the dreams that fade when awakening. I know I am on the right path, when things easily fall into place and magical moments occur.
In one of my classes, during the Islam module, I was struck by the depth of life, the immense gift we have been given and at once its profound temporality. Life is HUGE and yet so tiny all at once. We are large and yet we are nothing all at once. We are star dustand we are God. I walked outside on our break and saw a bee on its back fluttering in desperate vulnerability. Something was wrong…I carefully turned it over onto its legs but within a few seconds, its twitching flipped it back over onto its back. I got all the way down to the ground and watched it “suffering” and likely dying. I could see fear in its eyes, I could feel its life force slipping away. Maybe that was my own story telling based on my emotional and psychological beliefs, but regardless, for me, that was my real experience. Tears sprung to my eyes. How could I help this little being suffer less? I knew I couldn’t end its life, I knew I just had to witness its struggle. So I laid down on the cement sidewalk and got eye to eye with this tiny being and held space for its journey to be easeful, for the next part to be longer…maybe another type of life without a stinger, maybe another life that wasn’t so full of hard work, maybe another life that wasn’t so adversely affected by human greed and denial. Maybe that little bee would become an eagle on his next step and be able to soar in playful delight on the winds of Spirit. I cried as I blessed its journey, as I saw myself in that tiny being.
When it was time for me to go back in, a friend and I placed the still stirring bee under a huge sunflower and I was reminded of an art piece I had done for my Art Awareness homework in which I drew myself practicing Salat, which is the Islamic 5 daily prayer in which one “prostrates” before Allah in humility and wonder. In my drawing, I had made myself tiny against the backdrop of the huge sunflower and the expansiveness of the Universe…and here I found yet another divine reminder, another synchronicity- just like this little bee, my time is short and struggle as I might, I will pass on… and yet the magnificence of Infinite Source is close at hand and I am in awe of it.
A few weeks later, my 12 year old daughter and I witnessed a horrible and tragic accident just down the street from our house, when a young man sped down a busy, pedestrian filled boulevard and hit a 15 year old girl who was trying to cross the street. We didn’t see the collision, but we heard it and the car came careening down the street to us, its windshield shattered and its bumper broken off and the metal screeching on the gravel. Once I realized there was someone on the ground in the street, I started running up the 2 blocks to where the girl was lying. There were already a few people trying to help her, straightening her legs out from underneath her, tying their shirt around her leg to stop the bleeding. When I got there a man was feeling for her pulse and listening for breathing and then immediately started pumping her heart with his hands. There was a large, expanding pool of blood around her head.
Intuitively, I knew she was gone. It was then that her mama ran out of a nearby store (it had only happened minutes before and she must not have known what was going on) and started wailing, screaming, like a dying animal, an other worldly cry. It absolutely tore me apart. It is every mother’s worse nightmare. And again, I was faced with the reality of our temporality. Any second this could end. This will end. Life is so fragile! Seeing there was nothing I could do once the ambulance had arrived, I ran back to my daughter who was waiting 2 blocks down. She stood on the sidewalk just sobbing…she had heard the mother’s crying as well. I grabbed her and wrapped my arms around her as tight as I could. We held each other and sobbed knowing that could have easily been us.
Hearts are tender when we allow them to be wide open. I am already finding that this program is bound to stretch my comfort levels and push the boundaries of the protective guard I keep around my heart, as most of us do. I realize that I will have growing pains due to that widening…but at the same time, my spirit feels pregnant with possibility and that is exciting. I embrace the pain that will arise while at the same time I know that it will close the gap between self and Self. As Rabbi Zalman puts it, how can we tend to the needs that arise at the deepest level of our being, our soul? How can we care for the ones that are transitioning, who might be suffering in that shift, like the mother who lost her beloved child? I trust in divine synchronicity that I may get the chance to do so as I also till the soil of my own sacred journey. I look forward to the ride.
Synchronistic, that I would return to my roots to explore my own theology and to deepen my spiritual underworld.
READ ON ...
I recently started a 2 year long program to become an Interfaith Chaplain, through The Chaplaincy Institute in Berkeley, CA. The journey began long ago as I began soul searching for my next learning experience that would lead me to be able to share my gifts at a deeper level. My love for and fascination with religions, the cultural psychology they are born out of, as well as the all inclusive impact they have had on our world – political, social, artistic, lingual, cultural, emotional, etc – leaves me ever curious about the potential for world healing these ancient stories and words might have and how they might continue to evolve in order to build bridges between cultures and heal wounds.
As I walked the hills of Berkeley, I was struck with the full awareness of divine synchronicity. Everything happens for a reason, as they say. And while I admit that it’s much easier to believe that notion when things feel good and right, than when life throws you tragedy, loss, or heartbreak, in my life, I have been able to look back at those moments of desperate sorrow and see the perfect path they led me down. Without those, then this wouldn’t have happened. I lived in Berkeley when I was three to seven years old. My father was in seminary at PSR and most of my first memories were of those streets, smells, and parks. It is so synchronistic that I would end up in school just a few blocks from where my father went to school right around the age I am now. And not just any school but both of us in schools to become spiritual counselors, reverends at that!
Synchronistic that I would find a home to stay in during my school times with a soul brother whom I met in a very synchronistic way as well, who’s house is just a 10 minute walk to my campus. That his home, my temporary home, would be full with images and reminders of these ancient wisdoms… Buddha and Ganesh statues, prayer beads and altars, crystals, sacred art, and my favorite, obviously divinely inspired flower, the Passion flower growing all over his backyard. That when I went for a meditation walk I was met with a mother and baby deer, still as statutes also, as they watched me walk by, rare in that urban setting…another reminder of Source,.
Synchronistic, that I would return to my roots to explore my own theology and to deepen my spiritual underworld. I am not a religious person, though I love religion. At my core, I am a seeker and “broadband” minded. I appreciate ancient wisdom as I see it being less encumbered by our modern cultural dogma and woundedness. But my respect and wonder over these long ago teachers and seers doesn’t come out of attachment, but rather curiosity and reverence. Reverence not because these old religions are perfect or the answer but because of the Sacred Source they point to. Not that they are necessarily the voice of Source, but because they come from people who have danced with Source, with “God.” I yearn to feel and to dance with Source. And I do dance with Source, when the winds blow, when music moves my soul and my soles, when my baby girl’s laugh takes me out of my egoic body vehicle and into Spirit. But I haven’t yet developed or sensed a deep relationship with Source. The skeptic in me speaks loudly. And so, part of my journey through this program is to sit with both my inner skeptic and my inner sage and find the Tao in the middle of those, so that I might open up to that hand, knocking at my soul’s door. So that I might become more ensouled, as Rabbi Zalman writes.
Life is full of these kinds of sacred signs, when we are open to them. They are like the sign posts pointing us down the paths of our dreams. They are like the nudges our loving mothers give us to move forward in spite of our fears. They are the reminders of what we already know but have mostly forgotten, like the dreams that fade when awakening. I know I am on the right path, when things easily fall into place and magical moments occur.
In one of my classes, during the Islam module, I was struck by the depth of life, the immense gift we have been given and at once its profound temporality. Life is HUGE and yet so tiny all at once. We are large and yet we are nothing all at once. We are star dustand we are God. I walked outside on our break and saw a bee on its back fluttering in desperate vulnerability. Something was wrong…I carefully turned it over onto its legs but within a few seconds, its twitching flipped it back over onto its back. I got all the way down to the ground and watched it “suffering” and likely dying. I could see fear in its eyes, I could feel its life force slipping away. Maybe that was my own story telling based on my emotional and psychological beliefs, but regardless, for me, that was my real experience. Tears sprung to my eyes. How could I help this little being suffer less? I knew I couldn’t end its life, I knew I just had to witness its struggle. So I laid down on the cement sidewalk and got eye to eye with this tiny being and held space for its journey to be easeful, for the next part to be longer…maybe another type of life without a stinger, maybe another life that wasn’t so full of hard work, maybe another life that wasn’t so adversely affected by human greed and denial. Maybe that little bee would become an eagle on his next step and be able to soar in playful delight on the winds of Spirit. I cried as I blessed its journey, as I saw myself in that tiny being.
When it was time for me to go back in, a friend and I placed the still stirring bee under a huge sunflower and I was reminded of an art piece I had done for my Art Awareness homework in which I drew myself practicing Salat, which is the Islamic 5 daily prayer in which one “prostrates” before Allah in humility and wonder. In my drawing, I had made myself tiny against the backdrop of the huge sunflower and the expansiveness of the Universe…and here I found yet another divine reminder, another synchronicity- just like this little bee, my time is short and struggle as I might, I will pass on… and yet the magnificence of Infinite Source is close at hand and I am in awe of it.
A few weeks later, my 12 year old daughter and I witnessed a horrible and tragic accident just down the street from our house, when a young man sped down a busy, pedestrian filled boulevard and hit a 15 year old girl who was trying to cross the street. We didn’t see the collision, but we heard it and the car came careening down the street to us, its windshield shattered and its bumper broken off and the metal screeching on the gravel. Once I realized there was someone on the ground in the street, I started running up the 2 blocks to where the girl was lying. There were already a few people trying to help her, straightening her legs out from underneath her, tying their shirt around her leg to stop the bleeding. When I got there a man was feeling for her pulse and listening for breathing and then immediately started pumping her heart with his hands. There was a large, expanding pool of blood around her head.
Intuitively, I knew she was gone. It was then that her mama ran out of a nearby store (it had only happened minutes before and she must not have known what was going on) and started wailing, screaming, like a dying animal, an other worldly cry. It absolutely tore me apart. It is every mother’s worse nightmare. And again, I was faced with the reality of our temporality. Any second this could end. This will end. Life is so fragile! Seeing there was nothing I could do once the ambulance had arrived, I ran back to my daughter who was waiting 2 blocks down. She stood on the sidewalk just sobbing…she had heard the mother’s crying as well. I grabbed her and wrapped my arms around her as tight as I could. We held each other and sobbed knowing that could have easily been us.
Hearts are tender when we allow them to be wide open. I am already finding that this program is bound to stretch my comfort levels and push the boundaries of the protective guard I keep around my heart, as most of us do. I realize that I will have growing pains due to that widening…but at the same time, my spirit feels pregnant with possibility and that is exciting. I embrace the pain that will arise while at the same time I know that it will close the gap between self and Self. As Rabbi Zalman puts it, how can we tend to the needs that arise at the deepest level of our being, our soul? How can we care for the ones that are transitioning, who might be suffering in that shift, like the mother who lost her beloved child? I trust in divine synchronicity that I may get the chance to do so as I also till the soil of my own sacred journey. I look forward to the ride.
For more information on the Interfaith Chaplaincy Program, click here.Here is the Art Awareness project I did for my first module on Islam…
-------
Liturgy Selection
“September 11”It’s fair to say the world changed for most of us on September 11, 2001.
READ ON ...
It’s fair to say the world changed for most of us on September 11, 2001. So each year, as that date rolls around again, we are given an opportunity to remember and reflect and recommit ourselves to a world where the children of Abraham can live side by side in peace. Music helps us express the powerful emotions this singular event calls to mind.
Doxology for Post-September 11th
“Praise God whose love surrounds us all…”read more
Doxology for Post-September 11thSung to the traditional tune
by Rev. Roger Lynn
Praise God whose love surrounds us all;
Praise God who lifts us when we fall;
Praise God for hope in times of fear;
Praise God who always holds us near.[written on September 12, 2001]
-------
"God, Whose Love Is Always Stronger"
God, whose love is always stronger… Than our weakness, pride and fear,
In your world, we pray and wonder… How to be more faithful here.read more
“God, Whose Love Is Always Stronger”by Carolyn Gillette
God, whose love is always stronger
Than our weakness, pride and fear,
In your world, we pray and wonder
How to be more faithful here.
Hate too often grows inside us:
Fear rules what the nations do.
So we pray, when wars divide us:
Give us love, Lord! Make us new!
Love is patient, kind and caring,
Never arrogant or rude,
Never boastful, all things bearing:
Love rejoices in the truth.
When we’re caught up in believing
War will make the terror cease,
Show us Jesus’ way of living:
May our strength be in your peace.
May our faith in you be nourished;
May your churches hear your call.
May our lives be filled with courage
As we speak your love for all.
Now emboldened by the Spirit
Who has given us new birth,
Give us love, that we may share it
Till your love renews the earth
Hymn in Response to 9/11 by Andrew Pratt God’s on our side and God will grieve
at carnage, loss and death;
for Jesus wept, and we will weep,
with every grieving breath.
God’s on their side, the enemy,
the ones we would despise;
God quench our vengeance, still our pride,
Don’t let our anger rise.
God’s on each side, God loves us all,
and through our hurt and pain
God shares the anguish, nail-scarred hands
reach out – love must remain.
God show us how to reconcile
each difference and fear,
that we might learn to love again
and dry the other’s tear.[Andrew Pratt copyright Stainer & Bell Ltd,
Tune: Amazing Grace]
-------
Click on Amazon Smile and choose ProgressiveChristianity.org as your charity - when you shop Amazon donates .05%.
Events and UpdatesHenri J. M. Nouwen: Be Still! Be Loved! Be Grateful! Three Imperatives of the Spiritual Life
September 22nd in Decatur, GA, Nouwen's student and friend, Chris Glaser brings these dimensions into a review of Nouwen’s contributions to Christian spirituality through personal stories, audiotape and videotape
.
READ ON...
Henri J. M. Nouwen: Be Still! Be Loved! Be Grateful! Three Imperatives of the Spiritual Life
READ ON...
Henri J. M. Nouwen: Be Still! Be Loved! Be Grateful! Three Imperatives of the Spiritual Life
Henri giving Chris a cross from El SalvadorDescription: Henri Nouwen, the author and priest who described the minister—every Christian—as The Wounded Healer, published 40 books on the spiritual life during his lifetime, and more posthumously. Readers of his serious reflections who never had the opportunity to meet or hear him may miss his charisma, humor, and playful personality. His student and lifelong friend Chris Glaser brings these dimensions into a review of Nouwen’s contributions to Christian spirituality through personal stories, audiotape and videotape. Glaser studied with Nouwen at Yale Divinity School in the 1970s and, after his unexpected death in 1996, began leading interactive workshops and retreats on his life, culminating in Glaser’s book, Henri’s Mantle: 100 Meditations on Nouwen’s Legacy.
Location: Columbia Theological Seminary
Instructor: Chris Glaser
Schedule: The schedule begins at 5:30 on Thursday evening and concludes at noon on Sunday. The daily schedule includes morning and evening prayers, plenary sessions, and small groups. Participants are encouraged to participate fully in all aspects of the course. See the schedule HERE
Program Fee: $285
Housing: Available on campus. Options include double occupancy; $44.94 per person/night, tax included; single rooms $70.62 per night, tax included and queen suites 79.18 per night. (Housing fees are refundable if received 48 hours prior to the course; after that time, a one night’s fee is retained as a cancellation fee).
Meals: Program fee includes Thursday dinner, Lunch on Friday and Saturday. Breakfasts and the remaining dinner on Friday will be ala carte (cash only) in the Richard’s Center refectory or on your own in Decatur. The Harrington Center also has a kitchen available for your use. Saturday evening we will eat at Decatur restaurant as a celebration of our time together. We will pay individually for the meal.
Additional Information: the reading list will be provided on registration. If you are able, please submit Book Reflection Papers by September 15.
Contact: LifelongLearning@ctsnet.edu
Click here to register by mail.PLEASE NOTE: Your registration is not complete until you have successfully completed the entire process and received a printable confirmation page and an email confirmation.
Payment and Cancellation Policy: Your balance is due 30 days before the class begins. If you need to cancel, please submit a cancellation form or call 404-687-4577. Cancellations must be received 10 business days before the class to receive a refund of the program fee minus deposit. (Deposit is $50 unless otherwise stated). Deposits are non-refundable and non-transferable.
Earning CEUs for this course
If you desire to earn a certificate confirming earned CEUs in this course, please contact the Center for Lifelong Learning.
In order to qualify for CEUs in this course you must fulfill the following requirements:
Confirm that you have read the assigned text.
Participated in the full course and all discussions.
Completed any assignments and projects.
Completed the course evaluation.
Made a formal request for a CEU certificate.
Images
Start: September 22, 2016
End: September 25, 2016
Location: Columbia Theological Seminary
The Center for Lifelong Learning
The Center for Lifelong Learning
Decatur GA
Register: $285
Website: https://app.certain.com/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x22756125c6b
Email: LifelongLearning@ctsnet.edu
Telephone: 404-687-4577
Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org
4810 Point Fosdick Drive NorthWest#80
Gig Harbor, Washington 98335, United State
-------
-------
No comments:
Post a Comment