Mata H's blog

One man, one woman. Three legs. Three arms. Big spirit.

2009-11-06T23:12:19-06:00

Ma Li has only one arm. Zhai Xiaowei has one leg. And below is a video of them dancing. They dance into the holes in people's lives. In the wordlessness of their dance, libraries of the soul open and volumes of unutterable wisdom fly off the shelves. A knowing comes forward.

We all know this. We recognize the feeling of brokenness. We know what we do not have, will never have. We know that all the pieces in the world are not whole, not complete. We know that we needed, and that we need.

In the dance, we see that aching need and see that it can be as beautiful as it is heartbreaking. We are dumbstruck by the transformative power of the human heart. I have been haunted by this video since my friend, Marge, sent it to me this week. I play it and cry for its beauty, for the longing, for the dream of it. The video has been circulating since 2007.

Ma Li and Zhai Xiaowei. Who are they? Ma Li was a promising 19 year old professional ballerina when she lost her right arm in a car accident in 1996. Her handsome boy friend walked away from her. She tried to kill herself, but was saved by her parents. Zhai Xiaowei lost his leg in a tractor accident when he was 4, and had never danced until less than two years before this video was made.

The story of how they met can be found here and here. By the time they met, Ma Li had won a competition for disabled dancers, and Zhai Xiaowei had entered the Paralympics in cycling. He moved in with Ma Li and her boyfriend/agent and began intense training in dance.

As I read what small information there is on the web about them in English, what stood out for me (in addition to the triumphant nature of the story) is that Ma Li was afraid when she first started dancing again that her stump would be seen by the audience. She was embarrassed.

But them I thought, is that not what accompanies all our brokenness? Shame, embarrassment, shyness. We don't want people to know, to see, to realize how imperfect we are, how flawed. So we hide those parts as best we can. At first, Ma Li had a special soft fabric limb made so that when she goes out it looks as though she has one hand in her pocket.

But her passion drew her back into dance. She not only felt the tugs of who she was meant to be, she followed them, and through agonizing training to re-learn such basic things as balance in dance, her spirit began to push out of the shadows into the light.

But if their bodies apart show us something about being broken, not whole, incomplete -- what does the dance show us?

Redemption.

Community.

Love.

Grace.

It is almost cliche to say it, but combining our brokenness with others allows us to produce a whole thing, unique and beautiful - not whole in the usual sense, but fully functional, and complete in our own new way. The combination is more than the sum of its parts. Once combined, no one is adding them up any more. What is, is.

Think back to obstacles in your own life, Maybe they weren't as obvious as these dancers' obstacles are, but they are just as real. Think about what you did to get to the other side of them. Now let yourself feel the beauty in that, just as real as the beauty in this dance. To not just survive, but to live -- that is our calling, all of us.

It doesn't matter that we are not whole, imperfect, incomplete. We are not meant to be stand-alones. We are part of a tribe -- the human community. We are obligated to each other.

When you are bent and falling it is my job to help you up. When I fall, you must provide a hand. That is the only way any of us makes it in this world. And, like the dancers, we'll practice until we get it right -- one fall, one bruise, one celebration, one lift at a time.

RELATED BLOGS:

Oksana observes:

Unfortunately, many people lack the kind of attitude that has helped Ma and Zhai redefine the possibilities of dance. Most of us tend to fall into one of two traps: we either see other peoples' needs but refuse to offer our strengths in assistance, or we choose to focus our lives on things at which we're not gifted, fruitlessly trying to perform an arabesque without a leg to lift while our healthy arms dangle unused.

Miss Cellania has pictures and stories of other dancers - salsa, ballet, hip-hop who use crutches while performing. She says "...most of us, using crutches to get around would be an excuse to sit on the side of the dance floor. A select few take those crutches and outshine everyone around them. Here are the stories of four men who have two things in common: they use a crutch or two, and they are very, very good dancers."

Sony was also moved. She writres:

My eyes actually welled up with tears watching them perform. It wasn't just their handicap that touched my heart - the serene music, the liquid movements, the genuine emotions - everything was awesome! They are a living proof for how valor conquers physical disabilities. And here I am, cribbing about a minor body ache!

Kim Chow says:

Watch their spectacular dance and splendid choreography - a breathtaking interpretation of how people overcome life’s frustrations and reap the joy of love.
Watch it on full screen to enjoy the full impact of the dance. It's okay if your eyes are misty. We cry not for broken bones but cry in celebration of the unbroken human spirit.

Wendy says: I am dedicating this video to anyone who has ever been told they couldn't do something or even felt a goal was out of their reach. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that applies to everyone, including me.

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It took us so long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
Kurt Vonnegut

Mata H, CE for Religion & Spirituality, blogs at Time's Fool

The care and feeding of the Ordinary Miracle

2009-11-03T19:45:57-06:00

I was thinking about miracles today -- not the big mamma-jamma miracles of the world, but the little ones. I spent some time appreciating the sweet surprises of meaning, the shock of good news, the offer of help when none is expected, the sympathy or kindness of a stranger. These are all the ordinary miracles of a day, moments when the soul is warmed, when the eyes of the heart open wide.

I got an email today from a friend I had not heard from for a long time. Oh, yes, a miracle! So I decided to wander about and see what everyone was saying about life miracles.

You Mommy-bloggers are great in mentioning miracles -- the births of your children, or their recoveries from illness. The phrase "miracle baby" occurred more than once.

But then I read N and M's blog. N and M talk about what they refer to as the "bittersweet miracle" of adoption. Miracles for one can be something else for another.

There are always two sides to every story. Adoption is no different.
As blessed as we have been to get the honor to raise S, we also recognize that is another side of adoption. The choice. The heartache. The consequences.
The loss. ...

These folks are pretty remarkable in that they appreciate the loss that it was for their particular birth-mother. Miracles can be dense events, with layers of meaning, not all of them lovely for everyone.

Life has taught me to live expecting miracles to happen -- but generally not the miracle I ask for, and generally arriving in strange clothing and at odd times.

In the words of Sarah McLAchlan's tune, "Ordinary Miracle"

When you wake up every day
Please don't throw your dreams away
Hold them close to your heart
'Cause we're all a part of the ordinary miracle

There is a thread in life that connects us. Sarah's right about us all being part of the Ordinary Miracle. When I sit here looking art my computer and realizing that I am connecting with you in a fashion here -- it stuns me. The miracle of wired relating -- a new thing in this world as things go. And yet, what riches of friends it has brought me. A miracle.

When I get observant and quiet enough I start seeing miracles everywhere.

I have a rescue dog. The day I got her, and for the first two or three days after, I was convinced I had made a mistake. She was small, skittish, shy. I was used to big old sloppy bowzer boy dogs. Yet she is now such a joy, and truly a part of my heart. She filled a small pooch shaped hole in my life that I didn't know I had. Zoe is a miracle of the first order.

I should be dead, by all statistics. I never should have discovered my cancer over 25 years ago. My doctor said the pap test was just a slight abnormality and that we should check back in six months. If I had waited, and not changed doctors, I would be dead. The surgeon said that the cancer should not have even shown up on the test the first doctor did. Yet here I am. A bigger miracle, but there it is. I, who resist seeing doctors, pushed on. That's the small personal miracle, that I pushed on. Big miracles are random, in my opinion anyway.

It's the little ones that we can foster and nurture -- by living openly. By living with open arms and an open heart. By inviting possibility, not avoiding it. I loved this story by Kristin about her friend, Jodi. Kristin writes brilliantly about being in downtown Toronto with her friend. They see a woman in the middle of the street dressed in shabby clothing, waving a stick in the air and cursing. Kristin is scared. Jodi walks up to the woman and finds out that she is poor, blind, and has been dropped off by a person who had been on her bus in the middle of the street. The woman is terrified and lost. Jodi helps her to her destination -- a local church across the street.

Jodi left the woman on the curb of All Saints, still blind, still poor, still grumbling about that disappearing bus rider. But at least she had her bearings. She was no longer alone in her panic. It only took a moment of stopping, of noticing, and of reaching out, to restore a human to dignity and to bring a taste of God’s kingdom to a sketchy downtown street corner. Which of course begs the question of how many other moments could be cracks through which that kingdom could shine if only I’d take the time to notice.

It is like a version of the child's game "How many miracles can you see in this story?" The woman gets help. Jodi's friend gets a surprise teaching. Jodi gets to help someone. And on and on.

Acts of kindness ripple outwards. Can it be that ordinary miracles are contagious? Can it be that as we experience something as a miracle that the energy can flow outwards? Can our gratitude fuel the exchange?

Dawn and Louise share a moment of miracle. Louise talks about the miracle contained in the first sermon given by her friend, Dawn (and the miracle that she got up and went to church an hour away to hear it!) She quotes the sermon in which Dawn talks about the miracle of acceptance:

To stand among people who did not ask me to hide my orientation or my politics was amazing. To converse with people who did not judge me because I had ideas that were different from theirs was enormous. To be welcomed and introduced to other, out queer people in a church was all a bit much ...I had no idea church could be like this.

Imagine that. Someone greeting dawn and accepting her for who she is, felt like a miracle. The persons greeting her, welcoming her, probably had no idea that she would be so moved. And that her friend, Louise would weep when she heard the story. But it all happened just like that. Miracle upon miracle. One begets another.

Sometimes we go out in search of a miracle. Rosemary did, with happy results. Rosemary found some old pictures and letters of a man who had been friends with her mother many years ago around WWII. She wrote a letter to six people she found with that last name around the country and found his family! He died several years ago. The pictures and letters are being sent to his delighted family. She finds this wonderful discovery to be nothing short of miraculous.

Or, sometimes, we are just walking around, minding our business, when a miracle quietly presents itself in an act of sharing. Anaby speaks of the "everyday miracle" of running into some strangers, two older ladies, on a walking path, and sharing a moment with them of quiet peace and giving.

I have no idea what had happened in her life and or if maybe she had been sad or lonely, or hurt for some reason, but I felt that this little gesture made offered something to her. Some kind of release. I was thankful to be able to be a 'tool' to give a little hope to that elderly lady on that day.
Having that feeling to take the bread with me on that day and meeting those ladies on that day and talking to them was a miracle for me that day. And it granted a wish I had had - to be able to give.

Little or large, ordinary or surprising, what miracles have happened for you lately? What surprises of grace, or goodness or kindness have found their way into your path?

May you all have a life full of miracles, miracles that you share and acknowledge. In closing, please enjoy this snippet of Walt Whitman's from his poem, "Miracles"

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same;
Every spear of grass—the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that
concerns
them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

Mata H, CE for Religion & Spirituality can be found amidst miracles and/or at her blog, Time's Fool

The Day of the Dead - a time for celebrations, home altars, sugar skulls

2009-10-30T22:59:45-05:00

The Day of the Dead (El Día de los Muertos ) is a celebration of the deceased which occurs on November 1 and November 2, mostly in Mexico and among Mexican Americans, coinciding with the Roman Catholic celebrations of All Hallows Eve, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. The origins of this celebration can be traced back to the Aztecs and Mayans as long as 3,000 years ago. Then along came the colonizers.

Pre-Catholic festivities were presided over by the goddess Mictecacihuatl, known as the "Lady of the Dead", and were dedicated to the celebration of children and the lives of adult dead relatives.

When the Spanish Conquistadors arrived in Central America in the 15th century, in an attempt to convert people to Catholicism, they moved the festival from late summer to the beginning of November. That way they made it coincide with All Hallows Eve, All Saints and All Souls days. ( All Saints' Day is the day after Halloween, which was in turn based on the earlier pagan ritual of Samhain, the Celtic day and feast of the dead. So everything pretty much got stacked together. Or, another way to view it is that the need to celebrate the dead is universal, appearing in various forms throughout the history of religions. )

The Day of the Dead is far from a mournful occasion. This is a time to really party about and with the lives that went before us. Rather than fear evil or malevolent spirits, families plan for weeks in advance to make tributes to their ancestors that are happy and respectful and even playful.

For example, families build altars to the dead in their homes They surround these altars with flowers, food and pictures of the deceased. They light candles and place them next to the altar.

The day also includes visits to the cemetery to clean and decorate graves. Some families may offer gifts there, or may actually spend the night there with loved ones by candlelight, offering food and strong drink or milk to their ancestors.

t is believed that the veil between death and life is thin at this time, so that communication with the dead is possible. Marigolds are a flower commonly put on graves in Mexico to help attract the souls to the grave so that communication may occur. But this is not a spooky sort of scary time. It is a fiesta. People laugh and recall funny memories of the departed. Picnics are held at graveside by some. Smiling sugar skulls are eten and used as decoration.The good times are remembered.

As I researched this article I thought how wonderful it must be to be able to picnic at a loved one's grave site -- for some reason the idea just turns the American way of grieving on its head. We almost make death itself sacred in this country and in many other western countries.

As for me, I love the idea that people might decorate and tidy up my grave every year and laugh about the good times. I'd sure visit them if I could. We could hang out and share a sip of tequila, have some Day of the Dead bread and maybe fly a kite. It would be nice to visit with everyone, to find out how they are doing, to check in once a year.

I think that on the day I may just bring lunch over to my parents' grave -- you know, just to tidy things up, relax, check in with them, and laugh about how sweet it was (correction: IS) to be a family.

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RELATED BLOGS

Lady of the Dead has an excellent photo gallery of Los Angeles Day of the Dead celebrations.

Catherine Al-Matan explains:

Traditionally, the altar consists of four sides and four levels, representing the four stages of life and the four directions. The four seeds used in building the altar include tomatillo, corn, chile, and cacao. Each of the four elements is represented in the altar, fire (candle), air (flute, feather), earth, and water (shell). Each of the four stages of life are represented in the four growth stages of corn (seed, fresh, dried, and corn used in different foods like tortillas and tamales)...Offerings are also included on the altar, including salt, sugar, and maize (corn), flowers, platanos (bananas), and orange

Caroline wants to set up an altar in her home honoring the dead in her life.

The sad truth is that, as I get older, more and more people pass out of my life. A good friend died, unexpectedly, a few years ago. My last surviving grandparent died a year or so later. My father-in-law died last year. Another close friend’s father died just a few months ago..'These are people I don’t want to forget, and assembling their photos in a little tableau once a year — in the autumn, when the year is dying as well — seemed like a nice way to remember them. You’ve probably seen these altars before: the annual displays of photos of loved ones who have died, decked out with flowers, candles, and edible treats. They’re set up for November 1 and 2, the days just after Halloween, by families throughout Latin America and by Latinos living in North America.

Theinternationalmom describes the Guatemalan custom of building Day of the Dead kites

So, after Halloween is over and the kids have decided that they really don’t want to eat five pounds of sugar, we turn to El Día de los Muertos. The kids will likely add to an altar, already started, in the front hall. We will serve the Guatemalan Fiambre, a delicious pickled red salad, with dinner. Unlike Guatemalan tradition, we do not visit, party and eat at relatives’ gravesites (many have been cremated). But, weather permitting, we will try to fly kites.

Pan de Muerto (bread of the Dead) is made and placed on home altars. A recipe can be found here by Chelsea. Also listed are other Day of the Dead recipes for Calabaza En Tacha- Candied Pumpkin and Sugar Skulls

Christina mentions her building of an altar, and makes suggestions for the symbolism of contents of altars built for this day.

Being that I love making retablos (altars) with images of the divine feminine, such as the Guadalupe and Conquistadora, and have those retablos all over my house, decorating an altar for the season comes naturally.

For me personally, the time of Dia de los Muertos begins in October and continues to about mid-November. This is a beautiful season and a time that I specifically ask my ancestors and deceased friends and relatives to visit me with their gifts of wisdom and love. I usually get some sort of revelation or enriching experience during this time that especially helps me for the ensuing year.

Mata H , CE for Religion & Spirituality blogs at Times Fool and has lot of folks with whom she will talk and celebrate on The Day of the Dead.

The Wiccans are coming! The Wiccans are coming! Wait. What is a Wiccan?

2009-10-28T00:19:03-05:00

It's that time of the year. In a few days, children will be looking up at the night sky, expecting the dark silhouette of a witch on a broomstick to cross the face of the moon. What better time to talk about (and do some myth-busting about) Wicca?

Most folks do not know much about Wicca, but the population of Wiccans in America is growing.

The number of American Wiccans is uncertain, as there may be a stigma to people openly proclaiming their affiliation. However, according to the American Religious Identification Survey the number of Wiccans more than doubled from 2001 to 2008, from 134,000 to 342,000.

Wikipedia describes the origins of Wicca:

The origins of Wicca are much debated. Gerald Gardner brought the religion to public attention in the early 1950s. He claimed that...he encountered a coven of witches located in the New Forest in southern England, (the "New Forest coven") and was initiated into it. In line with the popular Witch-cult hypothesis, he claimed that the religion practised by the coven was a survival of a pagan religion of pre-historic Europe, known as Witchcraft to its adherents. Subsequently fearing that the religion would die out,he published details of its beliefs and practices in a series of books: his novel High Magic's Aid (1949) and his non-fiction works Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959). These books helped to attract many new initiates to a coven that he formed, the London-based Bricket Wood coven.

Wicca.com says:

Witchcraft and Wicca, while similar in many respects, are not the same. One can be a Witch, without being a Wiccan, just as a person can be a Christian, without being a Baptist. Futhermore, Wicca is a recognized religion, while Witchcraft itself is not considered a religion. Thus, Wicca might best be described as a modern religion, based on ancient Witchcraft traditions...
I suppose the only way to navigate this question safely is to point out what some may consider the main differences. In general, Wiccans feel free to review different belief systems, such as Celtic, Norse, Essene, Gnosis, or Shamanism, and then blend together any points that "feel" right into their own personal path. Pure Witchcraft on the other hand, may focus a little more tightly on using Magick and ritual to work with the elemental and spiritual forces in nature. Regardless, I feel the differences are slight in that Wicca and Witchcraft both work to achieve balance and harmony within nature and self.

Some say that Druids are their own branch of neo-paganism; others see them as a subcategory of Wicca.

Grey Cat, High Priestess, NorthWind Tradition of American Wicca has a list of various branches of Wicca here.

There are a variety of approaches to deities in the branches, as well. Some traditions would say that the universe itself is God, and within that are the polarities of the Goddess and the Horned One, the hunter/male. Some revere a wider spectrum of multiple deities. Some revere Old Norse or Celtic deities, or Egyptian or Roman. Then there are the Faerie Folk. Faerie Faith.net says "The Faerie Faith is both a belief system and a tradition. In its most basic form, it is a belief in, and almost a symbiotic relationship with, the Faerie Folk or Little People."

Some are animist (souls exist not just in humans, but in features of earth, animals, natural phenomena and in some concepts), some are polytheistic (having many gods, occasionally hierarchies of them), some pantheist (There is no personal God. God is in everything).

There is a lot of variety among groups calling themselves Wiccan, or Neo-pagan, or Witches. Yet they all intertwine in some way, mostly in that they represent themselves as contemporary expressions of (in many cases reinterpreted) ancient pre-monotheistic ways that are tied to nature.

Most Wiccans would say that they believe in the "Rede". To whit: "an ye harm none, do what ye will". Most branches would include the celebration of eight seasonally-based festivals, a basic code of morality, and the ritual use of magic.

According to Wikipedia:

Aleister Crowley, for instance, declared that magic was "the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will", and MacGregor Mathers stated that it was "the science of the control of the secret forces of nature". Wiccans believe magic to be a law of nature, as yet misunderstood by contemporary science. Other Wiccans do not claim to know how magic works, merely believing that it does because they have seen it work for them.

I learned a bit about Wicca in the writing of this assignment. (As much as one can learn in short external reading, anyway.) I was surprised by the variety of groups, and the variety of traditions. Almost all writing about Wicca emphasize that the true Wiccan is not Satanist and, by adhering to the Rede, vows to not do harm. Modern writers from within the traditions emphasize balance, harmony and a reverence for nature. Several blogs I read highlighted the politics between certain groups within Wicca, so in that manner it is no different from other groups outside of Wicca.

It's been an interesting read. The internet is full of information and sites welcoming the curious. Here are a few sites to read if you have further interest.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
The US Military Chaplaincy Handbook entry on Wicca
Thorn Magazine - a neo-pagan online and print magazine
The Witches' Voice - an online magazine for "the neo-pagans and witches of the world"
Military Pagans Network - a support site that estimates over 4,300 Pagans in the military, of which over 2,000 are Wiccan.
and states "According to the last publicly available estimate of Pagans in the Air Force (2004), Wicca was the third-largest non-Christian religion in the Air Force behind Judaism and Buddhism."
Crone Magazine - which states, "Our readership includes women (and some men) of any age who respect and honor the Crone archetype as the third aspect of the Triple Goddess—Maiden, Mother, Crone—as she reveals herself within the third stage of life.

RELATED BLOGS:
Lupa writes a review blog of pagan literature.
Greekwitch is blogging about preparations for the festival of Samhein, and also speaks about the diversity within Wicca.
Sorita a priestess in the UK, writes about the relationship among "The Goddess, Wicca, and the Qabalah"
Juno describes and explains Wiccan symbols.

Mata H, CE for Religion & Spirituality, lets her soul shimmy at Time's Fool. She loves nature, but is not Wiccan.

Pope Benedict XVI says OK to married priests

2009-10-23T19:09:25-05:00

There is one hitch. You have to be a disgruntled Anglican who has left the Episcopal church because you object to either women and/or gay/lesbian people in the priesthood. Then, it is OK if you are already married. Let me explain.

For years, the Episcopal church in the US (part of the worldwide Anglican Communion) has been in a struggle over the issue of (consciously) ordaining gay and lesbian people. Before that, there was a struggle over ordaining women. Some clergy (and in some cases their congregations) decided to leave the Episcopal church in the US because of one or both of those "issues". This gets very complicated because not only is it soul-wrenching for a lot of people, but there is also a lot of money involved -- pensions, real estate, buildings. Who owns what and who owes what when a congregation leaves is a big argument.

The people leaving say that THEY are the "authentic" Anglicans, and that they have been abandoned by the other group. The people staying say that THEY are being left, as they represent the legally constituted denomination. There is a mixture of church law and civil law involved that will be an unholy tangle for a few years to come.

OK. Hold that thought. Now we will jump in the "Way-Back-Machine" and look at the beginnings of Anglicanism. Anglicanism is commonly understood as representing a middle ground between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. It is often referred to as being a via media (or middle way) between these traditions. Here is how it got there.

You remember the Henry the VIII story about the divorces, right? In 1534 there had already been rumblings about an English Reformation. But it got political support when Henry VIII wanted an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon so he could marry Anne Boleyn. Pope Clement VII refused. Henry, although his beliefs were largely still Catholic, appointed himself Supreme Head of the Church. He was excommunicated.

Voila! Church of England.

This is, with some exceptions, the birth of Anglicanism.

It left bad blood. But it also left many of the Anglicans, even as they changed some of the traditions, longing for the connection to Rome. Even today, some Episcopal churches look/feel/act more Roman Catholic than the local Catholics. The separation has always felt a bit vague.

Yet Rome would have none of it -- no reunion there unless they accepted the Pope, had celibate clergy, tightened up their theology to levels of Catholic strictness -- essentially, unless the Anglicans fully converted back.

Zoom forward to 2009. We have a large group of disgruntled Anglicans with people, money and property. The Catholic church has a shortage of priests and funds.

The Catholic church has resisted internal movements to ordain women and/or non-practicing gay men. There is support for the Vatican's position among these disaffected Anglicans, here and abroad.

According to the New York Times "...the Vatican said it would help Anglicans uncomfortable with female priests and openly gay bishops join a new Anglican rite within the Catholic Church. The invitation also extends to married Anglican clergy. "

How is the Pope doing this? He is suggesting that a special area be set up within the Roman Catholic church in which the Anglican Book of Common Prayer will be used, the liturgy will be Anglican, and the priests who are still married can stay that way. It will be like a sect or an order within Catholicism.

The Times also observed: "Many liberal Catholics in the United States lamented that the decision over the Anglicans again demonstrated that Benedict reached out only to the most conservative elements on the Catholic spectrum, not the more progressive ones."

It was interestingly summed up by my friend, Sandra, who is a practicing Catholic. When I told her of the Pope's decision she said, "It just shows you how far he will go not to ordain a woman."

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And now let's hear from bloggers directly affected by this decision:

Mary Hunt a Catholic Ph.D. and theologian calls the move "a scandal" and says:

These Anglicans can even make the transition as congregations or whole dioceses if they choose. They will be Catholics, but like the Eastern Rite Catholics they will do it their way. They can bring their own smells and bells and their Book of Common Prayer; even their own priests and bishops who will head the “Personal Ordinariates” which will function like dioceses. Come as you are, welcome to discriminate to your heart’s content in the name of God.
Rome changes not one whit on the arrival of the dissident Anglicans. It keeps in place its celibate clergy while welcoming married Anglican men with gusto. I predict more than a little consternation in the Roman ranks on that score. Current policy allows Lutheran and Episcopal married priests to jump the fence with the family in tow. Yet Roman Catholic men who wish to marry, never mind Roman Catholic women who might even agree to celibacy, are prohibited from being ordained. No Roman Catholic official seems to be able to say in a straightforward way why this is the case. They mumble something about tradition and certain distinctions. But the rhetoric is increasingly thin as they defend the indefensible against their own practice. It is not pretty.

Cassandra finds pluses and minuses in the move, but is saddened.

It's this last that leads me to doubt whether absorbing Anglicans into the Catholic communion will work? The heart and soul of the Episcopal church, to me, was always that we loved and understood the need for rules and structure and an attempt - however imperfect that might be - to live up to God's word. But we also appreciated how God's word can be corrupted by self-serving and fallible human beings. Therefore, we deeply distrusted the politics and power plays involved with church life. That healthy (in my view) skepticism resulted in a congregation and celebrants who tend to be tolerant of human foibles while we're aiming for a standard few if any of us will ever measure up to.

Caitlin an Episcopalian says:

Nora was recently installed as the rector of our 150-year-old church. I wept with pride and pleasure. I was thrilled and surprised to see so many other women ministers show up for this important ceremony, offering her their moral, emotional and spiritual support. It felt like having a crowd of unicorns in our pews to see so many women at once wearing clerical robes and collars.

Power is something women everywhere fight for daily, in ways small and large, whether political, economic, intellectual, sexual, spiritual. No church that refuses women the pulpit can woo or win me.

Sarah points to the vast number of questions that this move raises:

Now some Catholic priests are starting to wonder if the Catholic Church will be moving to allow married priests. Also, would a unmarried Anglican priest have to take a vow of celibacy? There are also some loopholes created by this arrangement with the Anglican Church. Can people convert to Anglicanism to get married an then convert back? It seems like taking advantage of the system, but I think technically it would be ok, even if it’s not alright morally. Celibacy is a foundation of Catholic tradition for its priests and bishops. Would changing this rule change the religion too much? Or could it simply be adapting to modern times? There is a shortage of priests in the world because it’s getting harder to get young men to agree to being celibate and giving their life to the church. The modern world doesn’t seem to view it as much of an honor as it once was thought. I know it is still an amazing honor to many men and many families, but there certainly are less of them.

Is this move to allow Anglicans to come back into the Catholic Church married a bad one? Does trying to unite Christianity come at the cost of changing traditional church doctrine?

Mata H, in the interest of full disclosure, is an ex-Roman Catholic. She blogs at Time's Fool.

She is green, compassionate, and a goddess.

2009-10-20T22:27:42-05:00

Tara is the Goddess of Compassion in Tibetan and Japanese Buddhism. Tara was quite a surprise to me. I had not expected to find a such a feminist among the early goddesses. Tara appeared in Buddhist writings after she had also been a part of Hinduism, after about the year 500.

One story has it that she was born from the tears of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. (A bodhisattva is a person who has attained Enlightenment, but who postpones Nirvana in order to help others on earth to attain Enlightenment.) He wept as he looked upon the world of suffering, and his tears formed a lake in which a lotus sprung up. When the lotus opened, the goddess Tara emerged.

Rose tells us that:

One story of Tara tells how she reached a high level of spiritual attainment and was advised that she should ask to come back as a man on the next turn of the wheel so she might progress further. She was incensed and declared she would only incarnate as a woman, and when she does transcend she will be a woman. She was also saddened by the lack of those working for the enlightenment of women.

It was radical to defy the tradition of assuming only male rebirths after taking the Bodhisattva Vow, let alone to make a second immediate vow - to work for others forever in the form of a woman.

Alana tells us even more about Tara.

Like Chinese Buddhist's Quan Yin, Tibetan's Tara has a heavy heart for humans, especially her followers who were tortured and killed in Tibet. She is the mediator between The Buddha and humankind, and all who ask for her help and mercy will be answered. She is the Goddess of action.
Goddess Tara is often depicted as a green skinned woman, at her right hand is the conventional truth, positioned in the perfection of charity and her left hand symbolizes the absolute truth and protection from terror. Her right foot is stretched out is the abandonment of all defects, and her left foot is drawn back to symbolize the understanding of qualities. The lotus flower represents the giving of great joy to all and is the universal Tibetan symbol of compassion.

The Goddess Tara,also called "The Mother of all Buddhas", is a collection of attributes, and is pictured as many as 20 different ways. Green Tara, with a partially opened lotus blossom , is of the night. The daytime Tara is the white Tara, with a fully opened lotus blossom.

Tara is a compassionate woman elevated to deity status, a rare thing in world religions. And she loves her womanhood, refusing opportunities to come back in another life as a man. She is compassionate, but not subservient.

To hear a mantras for both the green and white Taras, access Paula's Buddhist music site.

Some of the other colors of Taras are
Red Tārā, of fierce aspect associated with magnetizing all good things
Black Tārā, associated with power
Yellow Tārā, associated with wealth and prosperity
Blue Tārā, associated with transmutation of anger

These colors get important when Thangka are made. These are iconic religious scroll paintings done in profound detail according to set rules. Ashley wrote about her trip to Tibet and blogged many fine photos of an artist at work in his Thangka shop.

When Anna went to Tibet, she carried with her a statue of Tara that her friend wanted her to bring back to Tibet with her. Anna says:" The Tara that I had been entrusted with was, appropriately, Tara who protects from political oppression." Her blog tells the story of that eventful trip.

Eccentric Yoruba tells us what attracted her to Tara:

So...why do I like Tara so? First of all I like her name a lot, to me it is just so simple. Secondly, she had helped break down some negative views I had of Buddhism because I honestly thought that no woman could attain enlightenment till she was reborn as a man. As long as Tara exists, that sort of squashes that notion. Thirdly, I like that she was stood up to the monks who suggests that she pray to be reborn as a man and I like that she is concerned with the welfare of females. This makes her so real to me, it makes her identifiable. Thus, though Tara may not be a warrior goddess like those violent ones I love who feast on the blood of their victims and destroy (within reason), she is still fierce in her own way. Warrior goddesses are great but it is nice to have the saviour goddesses too because it creates a balance. It may take a while before another goddess 'finds' me and I am motivated to write about her.

Even the Dalai Lama admires her :

A quote from H.H the Dalai Lama about Tara, spoken at a conference on Compassionate Action in Newport Beach, CA in 1989:
"There is a true feminist movement in Buddhism that relates to the goddess Tara. Following her cultivation of bodhicitta, the bodhisattva's motivation, she looked upon the situation of those striving towards full awakening and she felt that there were too few people who attained Buddhahood as women. So she vowed, 'I have developed bodhicitta as a women. For all my lifetimes along the path I vow to be born as a woman, and in my final lifetime when I attain Buddhahood, then, too, I will be a woman.' This is true feminism."

The spiritual images we have of women in Western traditions are not usually as vivid and as powerful as Tara. I hope you have enjoyed reading about her.

Mata H also blogs at Time"s Fool

Happy Diwali -- the Festival of Light (and the story of an epic romance)

2009-10-16T21:39:03-05:00

Diwali begins Saturday. This is The Festival of Lights in Hindu, Jain and Sikh (and some Buddhist) traditions. President Obama reached out to the people of these traditions with this address, and a small ceremony at the White House.

Diwali can be up to 5 days in length (starting Saturday the 17th). Forms of celebration can differ widely depending on which religious community or country is celebrating. The Sikh community has a very different approach than the Hindu community, for example. But regardless of the community, the emphasis is on celebration, family and charity.

(from various sections of Wikipedia)
DIWALI and the Sikh community:
The story of Diwali for the Sikhs is a story of the Sikh struggle for freedom., starting from the time of Guru Nanak (1469 – 1539), the founder of Sikhism. When the Muslim king was ruling he locked up the Guru but while the king had tried to make him eat he refused and fasted. It was then realized that outside the palace people had gathered around with lanterns, candles, torches and protested to set the Guru free and the king had eventually agreed that his greediness had got in the way of his responsibilities and released the Guru and the people celebrated his release known as Diwali.

DIWALI and the Hindu community - The return of Rama
Lord Rama is pictured as the ideal man and the perfect human. For the sake of an old oath taken by his father in a moment of anguish, Rama abandons his claim to the throne to serve an exile of fourteen years in the forest. His wife, Sita, and brother Lakshmana, are bereft and join him in exile. Ravana, the demon monarch of Lanka, sees Sita and must have her, so he takes on the guise of a young deer, who captivates Sita and leads her into the forest while Rama is hunting. The demon then kidnaps her. After a long and arduous search for years that tests his strength,virtue and love for Sita, Rama fights a colossal war against Ravana's armies. In a war of powerful and magical beings, greatly destructive weaponry and battles, Rama kills Ravana and frees his wife. Having completed his exile, Rama returns to be crowned king in Ayodhya (the capital of his kingdom) and eventually becomes emperor,after which he reigns for eleven thousand years – an era of perfect happiness, peace, prosperity and justice known as Rama Rajya. The diya, or lights, were set out to welcome him home at the end of his exile.

Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth is also honored by Hindus during Diwali. Some businesses even start their financial year on Diwali. In order to ease Lakshmi's entrance, Hindus will leave the windows and doors of their houses open. Often, designs of the lotus flower, her favorite blossom, are drawn on the floor to welcome Lakshmi. The Diwali lamps are placed in rows to make it simple for Lakshmi to find her way to houses.

This in a drawing of Lord Rama and Sita, enthroned after Lord Rama's triumphant return.

I love the romance of this story -- Rama enduring many trials for many years in a devoted search for his beloved wife, who has been cruelly beguiled by another, masquerading as an innocent deer. And, after they are reunited, his triumphal return from exile. It is a sweet day when the devoted hero wins, and loved ones are reunited at last. This story is one of deep devotion, honor and perseverance. It ends, thankfully, in celebration of the triumph of good over evil.

The story of Rama and Sita is told in one of the two major books of epic poetry in the Hindu tradition -- the The Ramayana, which means "Rama's Journey", an ancient Sanskrit epic of over 24,000 verses. This book is considered so sacred that the reading if it is said to confer blessings on the reader and the listener. A translation of the Ramayana can be found here.

We wish a fine Diwali to all BlogHers who are celebrating it. May your year be sweet and prosperous.

RELATED BLOGS

Mariellen who describes herself as an "travel writer, yogi and Indiaphile" says:

Diwali means “rows of lighted clay lamps” and that is exactly how Indians decorate their homes on the evening of Diwali, as the light of the sun fades. I helped light hundreds of them two years ago when I was in Delhi celebrating Diwali with Ajay and his family. After a family puja in the prayer room, we all gathered on the terrace to add our fireworks to the cacophony of sight and sound over Delhi. Millions of people joyously, noisily celebrating, the sky ablaze with fireworks in every direction for hours. It’s a wonderful time of year to be in India. Shubh Deepavali!

Preethi J says that now is the time to turn off the media:

In our world of Facebook/Orkut/Twitter addictions, Blackberry thumbs and SMS responses, we seem to have forgotten how to function in the real world. How to reach out, share a joke, be naughty, be brave, believe, debate or just have a conversation with a neighbour.

This Diwali, log off the Internet, shut down the PC, retire the mouse, switch off your mobile and walk out of your home, socialise. Meet people and re-connect without mentally imagining what their profile would read or if you should remember to add them as a “friend” later.

It’s a complex life and Diwali makes it all simpler, brighter, more real. People are smiling, handing out sweets, donating blessings and it’s easy to escape the virtual world and re-join the real social network. Try it, have a blast!

Priya tells the story of Diwali (excerpted here):

Diwali is the festival of lights. The tradition of celebrations goes back to the ancient times & can be traced to the Golden days of Ayodhya. (A full account of this is a tale called Ramayana, a book available at all book stores selling Indian titles). The story unfolds like this - Lord Rama was sent on an exile for 14 years by his father Dashratha from the kingdom of Ayodhya... It is said that people welcomed him back by lighting clay oil lamps, hence illuminating the whole place, signifying the belief of victory of good over evil.

Americanepali the American half in a Nepali/American relationship gives her views on the acknowledgment of Diwali by the White House:

Although it was the Bush White House that began celebrating Diwali, the Indian festival of lights, in 2003, Obama became the first President to personally grace the ceremony — a brief affair that began with a rather incongruous performance by the well-regarded Hindi a-capella group Penn Masala, and ended with a Sanskrit invocation by a priest from the local Siva-Vishnu temple.”

According to the post “the White House kept it light and simple” but at least it’s nice to see the US government acknowledging an important cultural festival in the world that is often overlooked in the West.

Mata H blogs at Time's Fool and remembers Diwalis past in Jackson Heights, NY where she lived a long time ago.

Question: What percentage of the world population is Muslim?

2009-10-09T21:45:07-05:00

A recent study was just released by the Pew Research Center called Mapping the Global Muslim Population".

Most of us know very little about Muslims, with the exception of the limited (and often alarming) views we get from the media. Let's go a little deeper, learn some facts, and hear from some Muslim women bloggers.

Here are some interesting facts taken from the Pew report:

1. More than 60% of the global Muslim population is in Asia
2. About 20% is in the Middle East and North Africa
3. More than 300 million Muslims, or one-fifth of the world's Muslim population, live in countries where Islam is not the majority religion.
4. India has the third-largest population of Muslims worldwide.
5. China has more Muslims than Syria.
6. Russia is home to more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined.
7. Of the total Muslim population, 10-13% are Shia Muslims and 87-90% are Sunni Muslims.
8. Most Shias (between 68% and 80%) live in just four countries: Iran, Pakistan, India and Iraq.

By the way, the Sunnis and Shia Muslims divided after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 over a difference of opinion about how his successor should be chosen to lead the community -- whether it was by bloodline connected to the Prophet (Shiites) or by a man chosen for his qualities (Sunni). (Each group has its fundamentalist extremists, just as in Christianity and Judaism.)

Sufism arose in the 8th and 9th century as the mystical branch of Islam, known to many Westerners by its chief poet, Rumi. Here is one of his poems:

Love rests on no foundation.
It is an endless ocean,
with no beginning or end.
Imagine,
a suspended ocean,
riding on a cushion of ancient secrets.
All souls have drowned in it,
and now dwell there.
One drop of that ocean is hope,
and the rest is fear.

Now, to answer the question posed in the title of this post -- the study says:

A comprehensive demographic study of more than 200 countries finds that there are 1.57 billion Muslims of all ages living in the world today, representing 23% of an estimated 2009 world population of 6.8 billion.

One in every four people worldwide is Muslim. (By contrast, Christians are one in every three people.) France and Germany have approximately 6% and 5% of their population identifying as Muslim. Each has about twice as many Muslims as the US. We have less than 1% of our population as Muslim.

The size alone of the Muslim world means that we need to understand it more fully, in order to build bridges, and to build dialog. Yet, the average person in America can tell you very little about Muslim belief.

We all need to be able to learn how to speak with each other, how to find a common language that heals this earth instead of destroying it with fear and hatred.

Here is a basic history found on InfoPlease

Muhammad was born in A.D. 570 at Mecca and belonged to the Quraysh tribe, which was active in the caravan trade. At the age of 25 he joined the trade from Mecca to Syria in the employment of a rich widow, Khadija, whom he later married. Critical of the lax moral standards and polytheistic practices of the inhabitants of Mecca, he began to lead a contemplative life in the desert. In a dramatic religious vision, the angel Gabriel announced to Muhammad that he was to be a prophet. Encouraged by Khadija, he devoted himself to the reform of religion and society. Polytheism was to be abandoned. But leaders of the Quraysh generally rejected his teaching, and Muhammad gained only a small following and suffered persecution. He eventually fled Mecca.

The Hegira (Hijra, meaning “emigration”) of Muhammad from Mecca, where he was not honored, to Medina, where he was well received, occurred in 622 and marks the beginning of the Muslim era. After a number of military conflicts with Mecca, in 630 he marched on Mecca and conquered it. Muhammad died at Medina in 632. His grave there has since been a place of pilgrimage.

Muhammad's followers, called Muslims, revered him as the prophet of Allah (God), the only God. Muslims consider Muhammad to be the last in the line of prophets that included Abraham and Jesus. Islam spread quickly, stretching from Spain in the west to India in the east within a century after the prophet's death. Sources of the Islamic faith are the Qur'an (Koran), regarded as the uncreated, eternal Word of God, and tradition (hadith) regarding sayings and deeds of the prophet.

Let's check in with some bloggers. Many blogs by Muslim women are written in a variety of other languages. Here are a few written in English.

------------------

Muslima has a lot to teach us. This link takes us to her section called "News" but she is also a crafter and her clothing section features many of her hand-knit items that go with her traditional dress.

Cwzy Muslima is a Pakistani American woman who wishes that the place of women within the Mosque was different. She imagines:

I imagine an event where the men sit in the women's room and the women sit in the men's room. An event where women may go to the mosque and worship in huge halls while men are crowded together into back rooms. An event where women can sit and read Quran or make dhikr in peace while men contend with hyperactive children and screaming babies.

Ginny speaks about an Egyptian cleric's attempt to ban all full veils.

So if you want to argue from an Islamic basis why niqab isn’t necessary, that’s one thing, but to argue for a ban of it, because in today’s climate it just so happens to be a symbol, to some, of “extremism”, is just wrong, again, IMHO. Islamic concepts should be argued from an Islamic point of view, not argued based on the whims and caprices of the “modern” world or what non-Muslims think of our practices and customs. Because where will it end? The day that a scholar from Al-Azhar tells the Muslims that we don’t have to pray if our employer bans prayer in the workplace?

Our worlds may seem eons apart, and in fact in many cases they are. But we will only widen the gap unless both groups, Muslims and non-Muslims, work to understand the passions and hopes of the other.

For those who wish to learn more -- try starting at the Islam and Muslims section of Beliefnet.com .

What Muslim blogs do you read regularly? What blogs can you recommend? And to our Muslima BlogHers - What internet sites would you point people to who wanted to learn more about Islam?

Mata H is a CE for Religion and Spirituality. Her blog is Time's Fool and she'd like to hear some advice about how to best get a Muslim/non-Muslim dialog started.

Let's change the world this week -- in our spare time.

2009-10-06T23:50:55-05:00

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work. --Thich Nhat Hanh

This quote by the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, really touched me. I found myself coming back to it over and again this week.

It all started last Saturday when I drove by a group of peace activists standing in the rain outside the farmer's market in Greenfield, Massachusetts. They held signs and just stood quietly, a silent witness to their longing for peace. Many of them were my age -- they'd "been there, done that" before during the Vietnam war - and here they/we are again.

One of the signs said "Make Peace".

The war has been troubling me again. War troubles me. The feeling of helplessness I have in the face of it troubles me. So I vote in a particular way, and send money to causes that believe as I do, nd write letters to decision-makers. And I pray. But I am nagged by the feeling that it isn't enough. How do *I* "make peace"?

And then along comes Thich Naht Hanh and he tells me to find my peace, my personal peace -- and that finding it will be an important part of peace work. And, I think he is right. Unless my heart and soul are at peace, I cannot think or see clearly. I can be of less meaningful help.

Then I thought of a hymn I recall singing:

Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me

Imagine if we all did that -- all found the place and circumstance that gave us the most personal peace, and we created that place for ourselves as often as possible. It is something we can do in the odd moments, in the seams of the day.

If we focus on it in meditation, we can even have it when we are not there. If, for example, you are at your most peaceful when at the ocean, meditating about the ocean, and remembering the peace you felt, can bring that peace back to you. You can find the rhythm and let it flow through you again.

Or maybe, that peace can come by us making room for it to arrive more often. If you are most at peace while writing -- why not write more?

Being at peace with ourselves quiets the clatter that keeps us from being in the world in a peaceful way. It helps us know what to do next, and gives rise to acts of kindness.

Being at peace, real peace, shuts out those feelings that get us and the world in trouble.

Think about it this week. Here are some bloggers who talk about what makes them "most at peace".

Mothermari recalls time with her Grandmother as times of deepest peace.

Grandmother Leah (or Lee as everyone called her) was a wonderful cook. She was the master of fried chicken, and the wizard of cherry pie. Each presented to me every year as one of her gifts to me on my birthday.
She would begin early in the morning preparing the birthday feast by wearing her best appron that always had tucked inside one of the pockets a dainty handkerchief. She seemed to moved around the kitchen effortlessly as she prepared each dish. The smells of the birthday treat would drift through the house as she started cooking.

BonnieRose speaks of the serenely quiet moments in her search for moments of peace.

I crave the quiet, the prayer times, the meditation, the stillness of just being alone with myself. It is during these times when I am the most -- at peace.

Christine finds peace in an unexpected place:

I’ve always believed that each person has a certain place in the world where their heart feels most at home. The world could be falling down around you and you wouldn’t even notice. There’s a comfort when you walk on certain territory, just knowing that there’s nowhere on this earth that God wants you to be rather than where you are at that moment.
Right in the midst of poverty and lost people and orphans and street boys and a language that I can’t wrap my mind around for the life of me…this is my heart’s home: Ethiopia.
This is where I feel most at peace…but at the same time, I’m still unsettled.

Connie finds peace while cross stitching:

I am most at peace when I am stitching, listening to good music, with my faithful little companion at my feet. No matter what is going on in my life, stitching makes me feel much more calm and peaceful. The stress and cares of the day just melt away.

Angela decided on med school vs law school based on which one made her feel the most at peace when she thought about it.

Annette is clear about what brings her peace :

I’ve found that I feel most at peace when I’m near the ocean. Something about the ebb and flow, the constant cycle of its soothing sound. The feel of the sand, shifting under my bare feet. I also feel the most bliss when I’m warm. I’ve visited cold states and countries and have discovered that cold weather makes me tense and irritable---and only a half step away from homicidal.

In a world so obsessed by the large scale gesture, it seems almost foolish to suggest that something I do or you do can change the world. But if *we* do it, then maybe it can.

We mirror to the outside world, reflecting outward what is happening in our inside world. We impact the world of people in our lives based on what is happening inside us. Everyone we touch in a day, a week, a year, is affected in some way by whether or not we are at peace.

Maybe it is a memory of a beloved relative, or the call of meaningful work in Ethiopia, or the sea, or writing or stitching or any number of things that brings you real peace. Get quiet enough to think about that -- where or under what circumstances are you most at peace? Try imagining how you might bring more of that into your life this week. It will energize you, fulfill you, and will improve the world, one person at a time.

It will "Make Peace".

Sukkot -- a week to be happy when the sky shows through your roof

2009-10-02T22:28:17-05:00

Five days after the most serious day on the Jewish calendar -- Yom Kippur -- here are the seven days of joy called Sukkot (also referred to as Succos). Sukkot begins on Friday, October 2nd at sunset.

This is a celebrative harvest festival that involves the construction of fragile, decorated huts, called sukkah, or booths. While the huts may be made of a variety of materials, it is required that the sky be visible through the roof of the sukkah.

While it is commonly said that these huts are a reminder of the way that Jews lived when they wandered the desert for 40 years, I did find a Rabbi who contests that, saying the Jews lived in tents in the desert, not huts, and adds "The sukkah is in fact reminiscent of the temporary shelters used during the autumn harvest in which both harvest and harvesters took shelter."

During Sukkot week, all meals are to be eaten in the sukkah, which has been festively decorated by the family. Sukkahs vary from family to family, climate to climate. Some are wooden, others canvas -- they all follow a set of instructions about general size and certain qualities, but they differ widely based on the builders. Kits can be purchased for "pre fab" sukkahs, design plans can be obtained on the web or they can be built from scratch.

Even families living in apartment buildings find ways to build a sukkah.

This is a huge contrast to the holy days and deep inner contemplation that have preceded it. It is a sort of grand exhalation, a stretching of the spirit upwards, a shout of Halleluia.

Nina reminds us that this holiday has lessons in it for people of all faiths:

The sukkah symbolizes the fragility of all life, which can be taken down, removed, at any moment. Much like our bodies, it offers temporary shelter, and if we take the time to look through the cracks in the roof we can see through to essence of who we are and to our connection with Source. Jews decorate these sukkot (plural for sukkah) with things that represent that which sustains all of humanity-all the goodness and abundance of the world around us, such as the harvest items.
Then, inside these structures, they feast and pray by getting up and shaking ritual items in a physical celebration of life. They joyously celebrate another year of their own life as well as the life of the earth itself, the essence of physicality, and all that She gives to sustain us.

The ritual items she mentions are these :
"The Four Elements" (list taken from Wikipedia)

* Lulav – a ripe, green, closed frond from a date palm tree
* Hadass – boughs with leaves from the myrtle tree
* Aravah – branches with leaves from the willow tree
* Etrog – the fruit of a citron tree

Some groups of Jews build the roof of their sukkah with the Four Elements. Most, however, gather the branches of the elements together to ritually wave them as they pray special Sukkot prayers.

Sarah gives a good Biblical summary of the roots of Sukkot:

In Leviticus, God told Moses to command the people: “On the first day you shall take the product of hadar trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook” (Lev. 23:40), and “You shall live in booths seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in booths, in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt” (Lev. 23:42-43). In the time of Nehemiah, after the Babylonian captivity, the Israelites celebrated Sukkot by making and dwelling in booths, a practice of which Nehemiah reports: “the Israelites had not done so from the days of Joshua” (Neh. 8:13-17).

This festival is a family and neighborhood event, with families helping others build their sukkahs, and everyone admiring and often visiting everyone else's.

The spiritual joy is also in the reminder that fragile dwellings saw the Jews through their exile, because the real substance was their relationship with G-d. Home quite literally was where the heart was, where the faith was.

Debbie describes a bit about the sukkah here :

They decorate the Sukkah (singular of the word) and eat all meals there during the holiday. (My father used to sleep in it, too.) It is very fun for kids because they help decorate the sukkah, and also visit other Sukkot in the neighborhood, eating candy and other treats there, sort of like on Halloween (but no tricks or treats, and it’s way more spiritual).
It’s a very nature-oriented/outdoorsy holiday: At night, you have to be able to see the stars through the leaves and branches that compose the roof. And many of the traditional decorations are gourds and colored, dried corn.

Sara compares Sukkot to Thanksgiving -- she also has a great looking recipe for chicken with honey date sauce!

Sukkot is the Festival of Booths, Huts, and/or Ingathering, depending on where you get your information. The third agricultural festival of the secular calendar, and the one that corresponds to the end of our growing season, it is a celebration of the bounty of the season and thanks to God for making it happen.
Sukkot is a particularly fun holiday in my book — you eat outside under your sukkah, use food as art, and revel in the freshest stuff the farmers market has to offer — because it doesn’t matter where you’re celebrating, the point is to celebrate what grew in your neck of the woods.

Aliza, a convert to Orthodox Judaism, exlaims her love for this holiday:

Maybe I just love sukkahs. I think that's probably it. I adore the miniature versions you see on the terraces of homes in Brooklyn ("sukkah in a box," anyone?). I love the grand (darn, already used that word in this post) sukkahs in Los Angeles. One of them I said was "the best restaurant I'd ever been to" because the decorations were fierce (fake grapes, anyone?) and the food was divine (if unidentifiable). My engagement party was one big sukkah party where my husband told everyone I was his kind of weird and that's why he loved me. (Okay, he put it more eloquently than that.) And something about sukkahs takes me back to building fort-like structures in my living room in Washington Heights. Sigh. Oh, Sukkot, how I love thee.

Rachelhas a great display of sukkah taken as "they spring up almost overnight" in Jerusalem.

Tzipporah in Oregon will be inviting company to share meals in their sukkah for the first three nights. She links to an exciting recipe for "Duck with Honey and Lavender" served with "garlicky greens, carrots and parsnips".

Karen includes a list of various green Sukkot events in Tel Aviv this year.

Mrs Anna T enjoys the festivity of the holiday:

This weekend and next week we will be celebrating Sukkot. After two days of hard work, our sukkah is already set up in the yard and waiting, the only thing that is left is to decorate it. I love seeing all the sukkot springing up around the neighbourhood; it's so lovely to see families gathered in there, a little crowded but happy, eating festive meals and simply being together.

Elana talks about the hierarchical gender distinctions that are made during Sukkot. She describes them in some detail. She concludes by saying:

The message of Sukkot should be an equalizing one. We are all stuck in the huts, all equally exposed to the elements. Living in the desert, no one family had a bigger house, job, or paycheck and everyone relied on God’s generosity and compassion.
I’d like to bring back some of that equality. That’s why I sleep in the Sukkah with my kids. We should all breathe the same air and wake up with the same cricks in our backs. Now that, to me, is the Jewish way.

How many of you have actually built a sukkah? Please share your Sukkot experience with us.

To those of you celebrating this happy occasion -- may you be blessed with joy throughout the year ahead!

Mata H is CE for Religion and Spirituality and blogs at Time's Fool

Bring your pet to church. It is the feast day of St Francis -- and they are invited.

2009-09-29T23:45:41-05:00

The official "Feast Day" of St. Francis in the Catholic church is October 4th. This Sunday in many Catholic, Lutheran and Episcopal churches -- and some other congregations who enjoy and honor the tradition, animals are welcomed and will get a special blessing from the clergy.

I love the story of St. Francis. In the 1200's, after returning from the wars, he stood up to his rich parents and left the family wealth and comfort behind to live in poverty among the poor. He chose to live gently in the world. He spent time with people that no one cared about. He loved the earth and was enraptured by it. And he talked with the animals.

St. Francis is most well known for his love of animals and his deep love for the earth. His commitment was not just to meditate upon the wonders of the earth, but to engage himself in healing what he could. How one lived was more important to him than what one said. He is known for saying: "Preach the Gospel at all times. Where necessary, use words."

The most well-known film about St Francis takes its name from his "Canticle for the Creatures": Brother Sun, Sister Moon, directed by Franco Zefferelli.

St Francis "got it" about a lot of things, way back in the 13th century. He is perhaps best known for his prayer:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

But I always think of him as the animal loving saint. My images of him are deeply sentimental ones -- a bird perches on his arm, as an adoring dog is at his feet. He speaks to a deer who understands him. But can that be possible?

Years ago I was at a Buddhist shrine in Hawaii. The grounds were lovely, and there was a wide koi pond. A small old man was standing near the pond, dressed in shabby clothes. He had a sweet quality, though, so when he started a conversation with me, I felt happy to be invited into it.

"I have a pet fish," he said. The pond was teeming with hundreds an hundreds of koi fish -- maybe thousands. "Oh?" I said humoring him, not wanting to offend him. He seemed harmless enough. "You don't believe me," he said matter-of-factly.

He stepped to the shore and whistled, and clapped his hands. I saw a ripple on the water bee-lining itself toward him from midway across the pond. "Watch," he said. he then walked along the water, calling to his fish. The fish followed him, leaping out of the water as he went. "See?" he asked. "I see!" I replied.

"Now watch," he said. He stood beneath a tree near me and softly hummed. Before long a bird flew over from another tree on the grounds and landed on his hand. He kept humming, and the bird stayed there -- content, gazing at him. Then he released the bird into the air with a gentle wave of his hand.

"May I ask who you are?" I asked. "No one in particular," he said, smiling.

And I knew that I was in the presence of someone saintly, someone who revered nature in a special and deeply loving way -- with a patient and understanding love -- someone who did not expect it to be anything but its own true self. And Nature responded, loving him in return. He was someone a lot like St. Francis.

I love the magic that can happen between a human and a chosen animal creature. The bond is like no other, as anyone who has lost a beloved pet can tell. What a fitting way to remember the life of St. Francis, a man who chose to do no more harm in the world, than with something s gentle as the pet-blessings that will be happening all over the world on Sunday.

And I treasure those houses of worship that bless pets and animals this coming Sunday. Good for them! To me, to have a pet blessed is to have an acknowledgment that they are an important part of the family of G-d. It is a tribute to their hearts and to their giving natures.

As I browsed the web I noticed that many churches, synagogues and even Buddhist temples hold pet blessings. Many are combining it with a collection for the local pet shelters of pet blankets or pet food. Some even have adoptable pets on site. Check your local papers for listings, or call a few of the larger churches in your area.

Or, just gaze into your pet's loving eyes and say a thankful prayer for their well-being.

RESOURCES:
This article on eHow is a fine resource on how to attend or hold your own pet blessing .

This is a a listing (partial) of Catholic churches around the country holding pet blessings this Sunday (or in some cases, Saturday)

RELATED BLOGS
Sarah has some pictures of a Unitarian pet blessing event in June.

Christine says

St. Francis was known for calling things around him brother and sister, be it a bird, a rock or even the sun and moon. While often caricatured as nothing more than a hippy idiosyncrasy, it in fact reflected a very sophisticated understanding and appreciate for God’s creation. While he would never have equated the value of a bird with that of a person, Francis saw the hand of a Creative and Loving God on every part of Creation, created by the same Father that formed us. And so he embraced all of Creation as brothers and sisters under God.
While pet blessings might go a bit far, and while I am not advocating the veneration of Creation, I would encourage you to consider your pets in light of God’s sacred intention for all Creation. Take the time to foster the spiritual practice of caring for the animals in your world.

Karen has a group of lovely pictures of her dog Jaxon's blessing.
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JUST FOR FUN

Many of you may recall the BBC series Vicar of Dibly. Geraldine, the vicar, has decided to hold a Blessing of the Animals. The powerful head of the church council is opposed. Geraldine goes ahead, but fears it will be a failure. This is a 10 minute video of what happens on the fateful day of the Blessing.

Mata H is a CE for Religion and Spirituality. She blogs at Time's Fool and will be taking her rescue pooch, Zoe the Bichon, to get blessed on Sunday.

Yom Kippur, the most solemn of the Holy Days

2009-09-25T23:57:00-05:00

Yom Kippur is the holiest of all the Jewish holy days. It begins at sundown on Sunday the 27th, and ends 25 hours later on the next day.

This year is Yom Kippur of the year 5770 on the Jewish calendar.

It will be spent by observing Jews by fasting, the giving of charity and in prayer. Even the most non-observant Jew is likely to observe some, if not all, of the traditions associated with Yom Kippur. It is the most solemn of the Holy Days.

This is the conclusion of the 10 day period of introspection called the Days of Awe that began at Rosh Hashonah last week. It is thought to be the same day that Moses brought the second set of tablets bearing the commandments down from the mountain.

On Yom Kippur, one's fate for the next year is sealed in the Book of Life. That is why the week prior to Yom Kippur is to be used to self-reflect, to make amends and to do what is needful for a good judgment.

It is a profound time, a reach to the sacred, the expression of longing for At-One-ment with G-d. It is a time to remove barriers between people, and between people and G-d. It is a time that focuses on forgiveness -- seeking it and granting it.

I have searched the web for women bloggers talking about this holiday. Here is a sample of their fine writing:

Sarah Chandler suggests a variety of ways to make Yom Kippur meaningful to children, and closes by saying:

However you choose to connect your children to the rituals of this holy day, keep in mind that though they may not yet be mature enough to express it, children are spiritual beings. Giving them an opportunity to sit and listen to the sounds of the service, and explaining to them the adult experiences of the day, can provide children with a chance to reflect and connect. Indeed, just by taking a few simple steps to translate for your children the complicated symbolism and meaning behind your rituals, you have the power to enhance your own personal connection to the holiday.

Anna T wishes the traditional greeting on her blog:

I'm not sure I will be able to write before Yom Kippur, so I thought I'd just drop by to wish all Beit Yisrael Gmar Chatimah Tovah - May you be inscribed in the Book of Life for Good! I hope you all have an easy, spiritually profitable Yom Kippur.

Linda B describes some of the traditions:

Traditions: We wear white clothing to be “like the angels,” we fast (a method of purifying ourselves to approach G-d), we don’t wear leather or gold, and we admit our sins as a community. On this day, G-d hears our pleas for atonement and at the conclusion of the service, the Book of Life is closed. The slate is clean and we are turning a new leaf, returning to G-d and doing good deeds.

Juday at Jerusalen diaries describes the days leading up to Yom Kippur in her home in Israel:

Many of the rabbis providing commentary on Yom Kippur in the Israeli media emphasize the festive nature of the day--not only the obvious solemnity. Be happy, we're told, that God grants us this grand opportunity to get a new lease on life--the possibility of teshuva (return) shows that Judaism is optimistic and forward-looking and allows for the reformulation of both our interpersonal relationships and our relationship with God. Singing and dancing are the de rigeur ways in which many congregations here, especially those at yeshivot, end the Yom Kippur day expressing joy at the soul having been uplifted...
As the siren sounds marking the start of the Day of Reckoning and reports of the Iranian threat and corruption trials of former Israeli political leaders are quieted for at least 25 hours, you may be sure that our prayers will include a plea for a better year than the one before. Beyond that, who knows?

Gedalia in Perth Australia says:

This Yom Kippur we should focus our attention on being happy, joyful and content. It means appreciating what we have, instead of yearning for what we don’t have. It means being grateful for our opportunities instead of being resentful of the opportunities of others. It means being at peace with ourselves and satisfied with our productive contribution to others. It means being understanding of, and motivated towards, reaching our potential for acheivement.
Yom Kippur is also a time of happiness, because it teaches us about spiritual purity, and allows us to achieve spiritual purity. However, the right type of focus and ethical base must be in place if we are to strive to such a level.

Dr Mom writes about Yom Kippur's emphasis on forgiveness -- asking for it from others and giving it to those who ask it of you. She even asks for forgivess from her readers whom she may have wronged.

As many of you know, the only transgressions which can be forgiven during the High Holiday periods are those that are made against G'd. The sins we have made against our fellows must be forgiven by the victim. We must ask for forgiveness. So dear reader, if I have done anything to hurt you, disappoint, offend or cause you ill, I ask your forgiveness.

Schelly discusses what it is like breaking the Yom Kippur fast in Tehran, Iran in the Sephardic tradition. Here is a hint of the foods she mentions:

Persian break-fasts include anything and everything, from kuku a kind of thick egg omelette made with green herbs or potato or with chicken, eaten room temperature (and also great for picnics). There will be chelo (white steamed rice) or polo (the same rice mixed with herbs or vegetables), and over the chelo will be ladled various stews with meat or chicken.
In Teheran, fall fruits were quince and pomegranate, so we often had khoresht-e-beh (quince stew), with sliced sauteed quince in a tomatoey-lemony sauce with meat or with chicken, or the Persian classic, khoresht-e-fesenjan, with its ground walnut-and-pomegranate paste sauce in which chicken or turkey was cooked until it disintegrated into shreds. And there was always the chicken soup in which the gonde had been cooked.

Jewcy talks about the principles inolved, and then tells a story of un-forgiveness.

I love the High Holidays, and have since I started practicing Judaism. Sure, I always grumble and moan about making it through a whole day of fasting on Yom Kippur, but I find great joy and strength in the Days of Awe. Not coincidentally, a lot of that has to do with the fact that the High Holidays are always around my birthday ...Birthdays are a natural time of year for reflection, so tying that in with the Jewish calendar is a beautiful way to gather my thoughts and set new priorities for the year to come.
One hallmark of the Days of Awe is, of course, atonement. I don't think it's inappropriate to apologize via email - that is how we communicate now, and as long as the intention is genuine, I don't think it is a big deal what form the apology comes in. That said, a few years ago I received an apology via email that I refused to accept...

Melissa speaks of the need to also forgive herself on Yom Kippur:

So why is it so hard for us to forgive ourselves? I can’t help but wonder, why does it take a holiday like Yom Kippur for me see that ultimately, forgiveness needs to come from within? That I need to make amends with me, too, and that it’s not a selfish thing to think about?
I don’t have the answers, but my gut tells me that some people are simply more inclined to “beat themselves up” than others.

Abigail sees forgiveness as an ongoing task.

...Just because we feel that we can repent during this time and be absolved doesn't mean we shouldn't go into everyday looking to be the best person we can be in every situation; it doesn't mean that we shouldn't apologize and forgive every chance we get; it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to do everything we can to be in the good graces of G-d.

“May you be sealed for a good year in the Book of Life.”

Mata H also blogs at Time's Fool

Slice, meditate, dice, meditate, peel, meditate

2009-09-22T21:38:35-05:00

Peeling, coring, slicing, dicing, straining, roasting, brining, blanching, chopping, simmering, canning, freezing, preserving --- the activity of an autumnal New England kitchen, and the rhythm of a spirit-filled home. There is something comforting about "putting things up", as they say -- whether it is canning or drying or freezing. It is the familiar moment of years and generations past. It is a rhythm like clicking rosary beads, familiar and full of meaning.

The sound of the pots and pans, the noise of the chopping makes me wonder how so many have so much less than this, and who stand outside doors of fullness, listening.

As I plunge tomatoes into boiling water and them cold water to release their skins, I think of how my mother taught me that. I see her bending over her stove, wiping a small curl of disobedient hair from her face with the back of her hand. I smell the scent of her tomato sauce. I stir mine with the same stir spoon she used to use.

What a blessing that I had a good mother. I feel the abundance of her love.

Or I think back to my great aunt, who gathered up the mushrooms that we had all foraged or in the woods, sorted out anything that would kill us, and strung the rest on threads to dry in her cellar next to the coal furnace. On Christmas Eve they would re-appear miraculously as wild mushroom soup.

There is a magical sense of mystery in the beloved crones of our families. They seem to know such deep things, and to produce such exotic results.

Generations of women have stocked larders for uncertain winters. They knew that in the dead of winter, their family could look forward to the taste of freshly canned peaches, or the briny tang of preserved mustard pickles or sweet pickled watermelon rind.

I feel the caring in these actions over time. To cook for people is to love them, to keep them safe from want and nurtured in a certain way.

We didn't waste things when I was little. We couldn't afford to. We scavenged the woods for mushrooms, and picked our gardens' provender right up to and beyond frost.

I love that the earth surrenders her treasures for us in such profound and ample ways.

We knew we could save the green tomatoes left on the vine before the first killing frost by wrapping them in newspaper and setting them out on window screens which had been set across saw horses in the basement. That way the air could circulate around them, and they would still ripen, but slowly now.

We can be so clever with small things, we humans. We really don't have to waste nearly as much as we do.

Those of us who didn't have orchards went to the pick-your own orchards so we could get them at half the price or less than if the farmer had picked them for us. There were even farms with pick-your-own green peppers and tomatoes in addition to the more familiar fruit farms.

Even the farmer figured out a system that helped him save his aching back. One person's need is another person's solution. We can make this world work if we just figure out how to cooperate. It's all about a need exchange.

My family scraped together enough money for a 20 cubic foot freezer and promptly filled it with my father's summer garden and meat gotten in bulk on sale. It felt wonderful watching it fill up.

After days of producing paper and typeface on a screen, all this preseving has me ein a state of delight -- look -- I am making something practical, something useful!

The storage shelves were lined with beautifully arranged jars of peaches, pears and plums. Fruit that wasn't pretty enough to can got made into sauces and jams, jellies and chutneys.

Everything and every body has a use. Sometimes the most damaged fruit can end up making the most elegant preserve,

My dad just grew enough onions to eat in summer -- after all he wasn't a farmer by trade. Gardening was his "extra" thing. So we'd buy a 50 pound bag of onions to cut up and freeze. Finally, when we got tired of slicing and crying, we would make a huge pot of onion butter. Onion butter is miraculous. Lots of big chunks of onion. Water. Salt. Cook on simmer for about a 24 hr day.

There we go again -- something with an unexpected result. If the goal is to make everything useful, it somehow happens. The lowly onion, grown face down in the dirt, emerges as a rich, exotic, dark brown butter. And with our advantages, what can we become?

But what Dad loved most about his garden was growing enough to give away. He'd leave bags of corn or tomatoes on the doorsteps of our neighbors, or with the nuns at church, or at a local orphanage. It made him so happy to do that, even though he had to deliberately plant more than we needed, and work that much extra after coming home from the factory.

In so many ways, there is always enough to give some away -- whether it is money or food or prayers or love or sincere wishes or a helping hand. We never run out of the ability to be of use to the world in some way.

There is something good about doing all this. Done over time it is not huge work. Done in a group it is fun. Several of us used to get together years ago and pool our money -- we'd buy veggies, take them to one of our houses where everyone would have brought their canning jars and we'd spend the day canning and laughing. At night we'd split up what was made.

Shared work for mutual benefit -- it really felt great! I wonder if we make the benefits of cooperation clear enough in America and the world at large?

But there is a feeling of righteousness that comes with this. By not allowing things to waste, by being frugal, we walk with a lighter footstep on the earth.

It is an important act of the spirit to not waste, to do what we can to use what the earth gives us with care. We are stewards of this vast creation. We need to find ways to do what we can, where we can, to support an un-wasteful life. In doing so, we honor and bless our earth, the earth that has such deep woman wisdom in her.

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RELATED BLOGS

Great pictures of the process of canning tomatoes at Food In Jars. She also says:

Because my life is busy, I rarely do my tomatoes in one great, big canning day. Instead, I stretch the process out over several post-work weeknights. I’ll do four quarts at a time, because that’s how much my stock pot can hold during processing, and it keeps me from feeling overwhelmed. I find that a 25 pound box of tomatoes will make approximately 12-14 quarts of tomatoes, and so I do four jars a night for three nights in a row. It keeps me sane and keeps my pantry filled with wonderful, local tomatoes all winter long.

Lori starts getting thankful as she cans her tomatoes.

Today as I was starting the tomato canning process, I thought again about the availability of water. I am so thankful for running water! No kidding! I often think of that and breathe a little prayer while I'm doing some task where water at the touch of a faucet handle is indispensable.

Gayla finds a connection between canning and meditation:

I’ve been canning long enough that it has become like meditation in motion. It’s one of those activities that allows me to focus one part of my brain on the doing while another part relaxes and opens up.

Dana observes some great things about fun and the kitchen:

In our history and throughout many cultures, cooking is seldom a solitary event. Resources are shared among the tribe, the extended family, the neighbors. And with that sharing and abundance arises an opportunity for enjoyment, camaraderie, playfulness.
The kitchen can be a place of worry and fret, or the boring routine of obligation, or the showcase for a monster ego. But sometimes, perhaps more often than not, it can be just plain old fun. Measuring and mixing and chopping and splashing about are almost primal activities. There's a reason most children play with mud pies and sandbox concoctions!

Mata H -- CE for Religion and Spirituality -- just froze a huge bunch of tomato sauce, and today bought apples and pears and lemons for applesauce. she'll be meditating her way through it. Onions are next. Maybe peppers. She can be found blogging at Time's Fool.

Give yourself (and a friend) the gift of renewed friendship

2009-09-18T23:38:57-05:00

Today I phoned a friend with whom I hadn't spoken for several years. Today I thought - what if she died and I hadn't called her? We have lived in different states for many years now, and had fallen out of touch. Many years ago I had a friend die with me still owing her a letter. It felt awful, knowing that I had missed a chance to tell her one last time that I loved her.

Why is this on my mind? There are two reasons.

Reason One: My last close living relative is 86. The days are getting shorter. I make sure I call her every day. We get together at least once a week. She has friends who help her shop, but she lives alone, is entirely "with it" and independent despite diabetes and a heart condition. Last night when I called her she started talking about some ways she wants things handled when she dies. It started to feel real. It's going to be sooner rather than later, even if she lives to 100. I started thinking up new ways to show my love to her, new things we could share in addition to our current adventures.

Reason Two: Mary Travers died. She was 72. The first thing I did after being shocked was that I subtracted my age from hers and came up with 12. The gap between me and 72 is getting smaller. Tickety Tick. Tockety tock.

OK I am almost 60 -- which is older than many of you -- most of you, in fact. But what I am about to say is for everyone, regardless of age.

Don't wait. When it comes to loving someone -- do not wait.

Life is short. Shorter for some. And living with the regret of unexpressed love or compassion is not a good idea.

Think for moment. Are there friends from whom you have been absent? It gets to be a cycle. You owe them a call. You feel bad about that. Then it feels so bad that you should have called, that you don't call out of embarrassment. That's how it had become with Teresa and me. Then today I called.

She was so happy to hear from me! Whoda thunk it? We laughed and got caught up in a hour long phone call full of the old warmth and friendship rhythms of before. As the minutes passed, time compressed and we found our way quickly back into the easy groove of our long friendship.

What contact or gesture are you delaying? Who would love an email from you? A call? A note? A surprise bouquet of flowers? Don't fret about whose turn it is to make contact. Just do it.

Renew. Go "green" and recycle your own friendship.

Think back to high school or college -- are there people from the past that you do not know how to find but would love to surprise? Is an old friend on classmates.com? I have been contacted by a few old classmates, and it felt wonderful! can you find an old friend on switchboard.com? On Facebook? MySpace?

It takes a community to get through life. The more dear ones, the merrier, the richer, the healthier. Besides, why feel guilty for a second longer? Pick up the phone -- or a pen -- or the keyboard -- and get back in touch.

Being remembered and remembering is real soul food. Cherishing a friendship, nurturing it, caring for it when it has gone dry -- all these are important ways to care for the relationships with which we have been entrusted.

Besides, it was so much pure fun to talk with Teresa again. Do it for the joy of reconnecting, for the sheer pleasure of hearing a familiar voice that is so happy you called.

Who can you contact this week?

Who needs to be told that you love them?

Who needs to hear that you've missed them?

Who needs an extra hug, just because?

"A Friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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RELATED BLOGS

Juliana Rincón Parra wtites about how it is a month of Friendship Days in Colombia every September.

On these days not only romantic couples give each other presents, but friends also get together for drinks or to eat, and one of the most frequent ways to celebrate the month is through gift exchanges, quite common in workplaces and classrooms.

Kim speaks of her recently renewed friendship:

Last week I was truly delighted to make contact with an "old" school friend, Missy, who had gone through grade school and high school with me. When she wrote back to me, she said she had JUST been thinking about me. What? How can this be?

Mama C writes about a renewed friendship with such joy.

We spent the rest of the night watching old videos of the two of us and wondering where those young girls on the videos had disappeared to. We talked and reminisced until about 3 a.m. I think we're caught up on our lives now and back on the BFF track of life. Hopefully there will be many more memories and Attitude Adjustment Conferences. I think in view of our renewed friendship, I'm changing our A.A.C. name to "Attitude Adjustment Adventures". A new name for new times in our lives.
I'm looking forward to new adventures, and with new adventures comes lots of stories. Look out world, here comes Jen and Bren again!

Marie posts about her anxiety over a meeting with an old friend she had not seen in years. (And she expresses her relief that it all went well.)

Mata H is a CE for Religion and Spirituality. She also connects with folks on her blog Time's Fool where she currently is feeling sad about Mary Travers.

46 years ago - The Birmingham church bombing - A memory and a warning

2009-09-16T01:10:12-05:00

September 15th was the 46th anniversary of the 1963 KKK bombings at a Birmingham Alabama church that killed four little girls. 8,000 people attended their funeral. Not all of their known killers were brought to justice. Of the five suspects, three were brought to trial. The last two of those three were not brought to trial until 2001 and 2002 respectively.

Here are the pictures of the murdered children. Sweet and innocent little girls who attended Sunday school were killed by hatred. Some might ask why we need to remember them, to call them forward. I believe that we forget them at our peril.

I want to be optimistic. I want to believe, as did Martin Luther King at their funeral, that transformation is possible. I wish I could say that what happened to those four children could not happen again. I want to be able to be proud that we have turned the nation around, and have removed the thorn of hatred from the soul of America.

But, no one needs to make a case that the tension in our country is again at a difficult place. The rise of the far right fudamentalist hate media and hate groups is obvious.

If you have the heart for it, I'd like you to look at a video that includes interviews with many of the 9/12 protesters. There is a shocking lack of depth. But there is a stunning anger and sense of conviction. One protester and her husband are angry with the appointment of "czars" -- equating them with "Russia". They were surprised to hear that the idea of advisers called czars started with Reagan. They still were worried that the czars would be given land.

These folks have had ordinary fears fanned into an angry belief system without accompanying reason by the merchants of discord and hatred. It is a nine minute lesson in the gap between facts and rage. It is a lesson in how fear and uncertainty can be fanned into commonly held and frightening mythologies.

Some sites feature a series of photos of 9/12 demonstration signs. Some of the ones that haunt me say "I came to Washington unarmed -- this time" and "Where is my gun?" and "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy". Pictures of President Obama as Hitler, or signs with supposed aborted African American fetuses, or the same tired references to "Hussein" in Obama's name, or signs questioning his parentage - all paint a nasty, racist and angry picture.

Michelle Goldberg in the Daily Beast blogs, addresses the rise of the white militia movement that began in the 1990's. She points out that all protesters are not militia, but notes the history.

It simply means that the rhetoric dominating the protests comes straight out of the militia milieu. The militia movement was convinced that sinister elites were plotting to force murderous collectivism on an unwilling populace. They hated a federal government that they saw as being in thrall to foreign agents. The town-hall mobs’ cries about standing against despotism, their warnings of mass euthanasia, and their red-faced excoriations of the president owe much more to longstanding tropes of the far right than to anything contained in actual health-care bills.

What does all this have to do with Religion and Spirituality? Whenever hatred is on the rise, it is the responsibility of the faithful of all religions to speak out, to stand in opposition to hatred, to speak the truth, to be the voice that reclaims "faith based speech" from the hijacking of the conservative right.

These four little girls were killed by hatred. And hatred is starting to rear its head again with a new language, a more sophisticated delivery system. At stake is nothing less than the heart and soul of our nation. At stake is justice.

If we are silent, if we do not take the time to correct the facts for those who have been fed the propaganda of divisiveness by the extreme right wing -- than we are as guilty of their acts of hatred as if we had done them ourselves.

We all need to speak up, and those of us who pray, also need to pray. We need to not support companies and organizations that back divisiveness. And then we need to stand up and speak up some more.

Look at the faces of those four children and imagine that one of them is part of your family. Because she is. She was a daughter of this country like the rest of us. She belonged here as much as any of us. She deserved a future. The tragedy experienced by her family is an American tragedy.

Yet, despite all that we have learned, hate groups are on the rise. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

Racism is a serious problem in America. Fueled by immigration fears, the economic crisis and the election of a black president, racist hate groups increased their numbers again in 2008. The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented a staggering 926 hate groups operating in our country — a more than 50% increase since 2000.

Hate group leaders are exploiting the difficult economic times to swell their ranks, and their anti-Semitic, white supremacist propaganda is promoting violence. A neo-Nazi leader was quoted in USA Today saying, "When the economy suffers, people are looking for answers. ...We are the answer for white people."

Click on the map of hate groups by state provided by the Southern Poverty Law Canter. Check your state. Prepare to be shocked.

Martin Luther King spoke at the funeral of these four children. In 1963 he said:

These children—unoffending, innocent, and beautiful—were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.
And yet they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans.
They have something to say to every Negro who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.

If the next generation of Birmingham Girls live in fear, it is on our hands.

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Renee is touring the area with her family. Her blog has many fine pictures of the memorials there. Here is only a small bit of her commentary:

We drove about 3 hours and then stopped in Birmingham, Alabama, to see the Civil Rights’ Museum, as well as the park next to the 16th Street Baptist Church that was bombed in 1963 by the KKK (and in which 4 little girls were killed). (the church has been rebuilt)
It was very emotional, and I began to cry as soon as I entered the museum. I put my sunglasses down because it seemed strangely indulgent.

Noemiplaces this event in an even broader context:

In the fast paced and self serving society we live in it is easy to lose sight of what matters. It is easier still to be concerned with what is going on without letting it really matter to us. The families torn apart; the fathers murdered in front of their children and the babies dragged screaming from their mothers’ arms by Hitler’s armies, mattered. Four girls in their Sunday morning dresses who left their families to praise God and were blown to pieces months after King wrote his famous letter, matter. Yet the victims of the Holocaust remain nameless; faceless, and how many school children known the names of the Birmingham church bombing victims?
As a society we credit ourselves with progress; as a nation we believe ourselves compassionate and concerned. Yet civil war continues in Africa and the violence committed by human beings against neighbors, friends, lovers, children, is no less horrific than what Hitler ordered done to the Jews. Again, we must question the global silence of a country terrified of grandmother killing “death panels” but indifferent to five year old boys being forced to use automatic rifles to slaughter their own family members.

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EPILOGUE

This tragedy spawned many songs and poems by artists of the time. The impact was profound. John Coltrane wrote the song 'Alabama' in response to the bombing. He patterned his saxophone playing on the cadence in Martin Luther King's funeral speech.

(The quartet included John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones)
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BlogHer remains neutral and does not take a political position. I, as an individual, am not neutral.

Mata H blogs, struggles and speaks her soul's mind at Time's Fool