A friend of mine asked me for 10 reasons to be kind. I thought that was a great way to start this month off. In the process of thinking about and researching this, I found a pre-existing site. So let's start with these reasons as to why be kind
Kindness is encouraged by every major religion, by leaders as diverse as the Dalai Lama to Richard Carlson, the popular author of the Don't Sweat the Small Stuff series. These books are really about kindness. I did an analysis of the 100 strategies listed in the first book of the Don't Sweat series. 85 of the 100 strategies listed related either to ways to be kind to yourself or others. The title of the series is even the result of a kind act!
Sacred Activism
It is hard to talk about justice without talking about the activist work, intentionally or accidentally, which is needed to bring change in our world. While there are things that are going well and are worthy of being celebrated in the ongoing fight for human rights and justice, there are also numerous crises facing our world including extreme poverty, environmental destruction and depletion, emotional, mental and relationship disconnects in life. In efforts to bring about systemic and structural change, activists often feel discouraged and doubt their ability to make a difference. Building on the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., Andrew Harvey offers an approach known as sacred activism, which engages compassion and love. Harvey offers eleven practices which we can do to engage in sacred activism in our daily lives. These practices call on us deepen and nourish our personal connection with spirit and then to use this deeper connection in our actions to transform this world.
1. Be Grateful. Harvey suggests that each day we write down one thing which make you feel grateful to be alive.
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Contemplation, Social Action and Justice
As I have listened to people talk about who their Presidential candidates are and why, I have come to realize that we live in a world where technology is allowing for the spread of information which has the potential to dismantle the structure of inherited power. It is clear that how things are has failed to solve society’s problems. We see grassroots organizations of all kinds forming again seeking to bring about change or to maintain the status quo. What I have come to realize is that it is easier to speak up and out when one has some form of privileged status in one’s life. How do we help those who have been made to feel completely helpless by these systems to feel their needs are being heard as well? How do we give voice to those who feel completely voiceless and have forgotten how to hope, dream, and are just moving through life waiting to die.
Read moreDo we do justice?
Every once in a while someone asks me a question that makes me stop and think. The question asked of me was whether or not Inspiritual is a social justice organization. I have always said that Inspiritual is a space for spiritual evolution and transformation, but I had never thought about whether we are a social justice organization. So this question has had me in a state of reflection all week. Rather than share my response with the person who asked it, I thought I would make that the focus of my blog for this week.
As I thought about this question, I had to begin by defining what social justice meant to me and to Inspiritual.
Read morePoetry Jam
There are numerous ways to bring attention to injustice in the world. Some of the most powerful pieces I have read about justice and/or injustice have been poetry. As Audre Lorde once said, poetry is not a luxury. So today, I thought I would share a few pieces of my favorite justice poems including one of my own.
Read moreApplause
A few months ago, I was invited to give my first public talk since I stopped pastoring. There are so many things about public speaking, which make me nervous. It is not that I cannot speak publicly, it was that for the longest time I took others response to my sermons or talks as an evaluation of my message. It was as if I was giving others the power to tell me when I was doing a good job and when I was not. I struggled with my response to others applause and comments, or lack thereof. I was intentionally working on moving to the place where my self-evaluation was unrelated to the evaluation of others, albeit positive or negative. There were times people would clap wildly, jump to their feet, yell out “you betta say that Pastor” or some other expression. I struggled with how much value I placed on their reaction.
Read moreSimple Joy
This past Tuesday my spiritual granddaughter passed away on her 43rd birthday after a long struggle with kidney disease. It was a day of mixed feelings and emotions. There was the expected feeling of loss, grieving, numbness, sadness accompanied by feelings of regret, compassion, and a whole host of feelings. Then there was joy; joy that she was no longer suffering. Joy that she got to celebrate her birthday with her mother, who had transitioned a few years earlier. Joy I had been able to know her and joy I could grieve her passing.
As I moved through my feelings, I began to realize that joy is a simple state. When I am practicing joy, I am happy, light, and at peace. The grieving and the sadness were complicated.
Read moreMore than Doughnuts
There are so many ways to practice creating joy in our lives. This weekend I was watching a CNN report of a group of Muslims who brought 1000 doughnuts to a Donald Trump rally. In the midst of people saying derogatory things to them, they came from a space of love and kept offering doughnuts, passing out over 300 to people who had seconds before shouted hateful words about them. A doughnut became the vehicle, which might have a longer lasting effect, then one may realize.
Read moreFlash of Joy
The other day I was having a conversation with someone about flashmobs and the first one that came to my mind was the one we do each year at SUNY Brockport, where I teach part time, in March as part of the One Billion Rising movement. While I was searching online for examples of flashmobs to share with my friend, I came across this one, which captured my heart and reminded me to fill my moment with joy.
It has been a while since I have listened to the final of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125. I had forgotten how it fills my heart and soul with joy just to listen to it.
Read moreUse Your Spiritual Imagination
So often, when we think about our imagination and using it, we think about creating something like some of artwork or creative writing. We think of works of art that we see in museums, galleries, or hear at poetry readings, writing exchanges, or even at comedy nights at local clubs. We tend to think of things that occur with some sort of external presence we have experienced or witnessed. However, as I have been thinking about imagination one last time this month, I began to think about how we can use our imagination as a way of experiencing compassion for others in all aspects of our life or even gaining a deeper understanding of any sacred texts, which are a part of one’s faith tradition.
What if we imagined the Divine in everyone and every situation that we met?
Read moreA Never Ending Story
I thought it would be fun to build on one of the Sharing Time exercises where I asked people to look at a picture of clouds and tell me what they saw. The other day I posted the image from above on my personal FB page and several of my friends used their creativity and imagination and helped write a story that began with Once upon a time. Here is the result of our collective imagination.
Once upon at time,
Read moreAssumptions and Imagination
Earlier today I woke up singing The Temptations song, It’s just my imagination and at first it reminded me of all the times I had been told to not be so imaginative. There are times that having an imagination can be positive and help us develop a deeper relationship with the Divine. There are also times our imagination can be harmful. One of these ways is when we use it to answer questions we don’t know the answer to. Rather than ask questions and seeking clarification, we imagine the answers. We begin to imagine what people are doing or saying. We imagine what they are thinking. Sometimes we even imagine what they are wearing, where they are sitting, and before we realize it we have created this whole story to answer a question we do not know the answer to.
Read moreHands
Hands have always fascinated me. When I was younger, my grandmother used to let me play with her hands. Her skin, as I remember it was wrinkly, soft, and baggy. Baggy might seem like a strange word to describe skin, but it was. She would play this game with me. She would pinch my skin and it would go right back into place. Then she would let me pinch her skin and it would form little peaks and valleys. Her skin became like clay that I got to play with and create landscapes. Her skin had also become more translucent, you could see the veins, and they become streams of water flowing into the peaks and valleys I was creating in her hands. Her hands would fascinate me for hours as I sat and moved skin around creating ever-changing images.
Read moreIs the universe a friendly place or not?
The universe has a sense of humor. Recently I had read that Albert Einstein, when asked to identify the most important question in life, said, "Is the universe a friendly place or not?" Shortly, after reading the question on which I was going to reflect, my computer began dinging, the equivalent of you’ve got mail. It is the beginning of the semester where I teach part time and as with every semester, students are stressed because something has not come in yet. This normally means that either their financial aid has not come in or the books they ordered online have not come in yet.
Read moreLessons from the Desert Dweller
One of my favorite places to go for nourishment and inspiration is the Spiritual Literacy library on YouTube. This week I was pulled in by a one-minute story about the hospitality of a person known as nothing more than the Desert Dweller. According to the story, this person has lived in the desert most, if not all, of his life. At the end of each day, the Desert Dweller leaves a lit lantern by the side of the road and a now worn out note in a plastic sheet protector letting people know how to find his cottage should they be in need. This story comes from a book by Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart.
For me this story is about the attitude we have about our willingness to open our hearts and homes to others. It is not about whether or not people accept our invitation. Rather, it is about our willingness to extend the invitation in the first place.
Read moreHospitality and Hostility
It is interesting how hospitality and hostility sound so much alike but are practiced so differently. Other than the first three letters, these practices have nothing in common. Hospitality is about building bridges and welcoming all of humanity. Hostility is about building divides that separate us from one another. Hospitality thrives on peace and healing and hostility thrives on conflicts and confusion. Practicing hospitality helps us to increase our tolerance of those whose lives are different from ours. Practicing hostility helps us to become more distrustful and suspicious of others.
Read moreThe tie that binds
One of the things I so appreciate about our love and inspiration group is that I always leave with some sort of inspiration. This weekend we spoke about being mindful about what makes us feel welcomed. What is it that hosts do that makes us feel welcomed? What do we do to make our guests feel welcomed?
A while back I heard a story about a pastor who would stand outside her church and greet the migrant workers as they came in from the fields. She spoke to them in Spanish and they responded. And soon a bridge was forged. This rural community embraced the migrant farm workers and welcomed them. They offered them radical hospitality and in doing do they discovered that it is the recognition of our common humanity which binds us together
Read moreThe Tightrope Walker
I have been struggling this month to find the words to write about hope. Each week I would hope for the words or inspiration about hope to come, but then I would fail and I had to be okay with that. It was when I found this video about the tightrope walker that I began to understand that this past month for me has been like the process of being a tightrope walker. Every time I sit down to blog, it is about climbing up to the tightrope. The climb up can seem secure, at least in contrast to being on the tightrope, but even in the climb, one can fall. Acknowledging that one can fall and climbing anyway is part of the practice of hope. You acknowledge what can happen and you move forward in faith on the hope that it won’t.
Read moreThis Little Light of Mine
My friend Kelleigh says “Hope is something you don’t know you have until you don’t have it.” It seems that this is when we look at those who have hope and it is like a lighthouse, it seems to provide a path to safety. This is what Kert Nerburn writes about in his book Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace. He said,
We are not saints, we are not heroes. Our lives are lived in the quiet corners of the ordinary. We build tiny hearth fires, sometimes barely strong enough to give off warmth. But to the person lost in the darkness, our tiny flame may be the road to safety, the path to salvation. It is not given us to know who is lost in the darkness that surrounds us or even if our light is seen. We can only know that against even the smallest of lights, darkness cannot stand. A sailor lost at sea can be guided home by a single candle. A person lost in a wood can be led to safety by a flickering flame. It is not an issue of quality or intensity or purity. It is simply an issue of the presence of light.
Read moreI Can See Clearly Now!
Someone asked me what I do when I feel like giving up. I do a few things. I pray, I light candles to remind me to focus on the light at the end of the tunnel and I listen to some rock music. Rock music, in its own way always inspires me and reminds me the best is yet to come. Amongst my favorites are Jonny Nash’s song “I Can See Clearly Nos, Sly and the Family Stone’s “You Can Make It If You Try, Bob Dylan’s, “I Shall Be Released”, and Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.” They all have a common theme. No matter what is going on in my life, the best is yet to come. As the song says all of the bad feelings will wash away and I will see clearly now because the rain has come.
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