LivingNonviolence

Fixing Things

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Sun, 19 May 2013 16:10:00 +0000

I was celebrating not long ago.

It all started when my wife was mowing the lawn. She came into the house with the news that the self propelled component wasn't working. This was an emergency! She says she can't push a mower, that if she's going to mow, the mower needs to be self propelled. In other words, the mower needed to be fixed quickly or I would end up finishing the job, pushing the mower myself. I'm not aware of any emergency small engine places in town. My experience in the past has been waiting more like a day or two, or six. Given all the rain predicted, this couldn't wait.

I'm not known for my ability to "fix things." Nevertheless, not seeing any other options, I took my new tool kit out on the lawn to see what I could do. My guess was that the belt had come off. This proved to be correct, so I set out trying to find the easiest way to get it back on. After two or three false starts and removing more coverage than I had initially hoped, I "fixed it." My wife was pleased and surprised, but not nearly as much as I was. I quietly celebrated.

Like I said, I'm not known for my ability to fix things. When you live in a 123 year old home, there are usually things to fix. Often my efforts at plumbing end in tragedy and the plumber we call has a larger problem to solve. My wife still reminds me of the time I put the screwdriver through the web between thumb and index finger, instead of in the screw head. I'm still not sure how that happened.

An old friend often reminds me of the time he and I took the family Volkswagon apart. We were going to fix it. We never quite got the pieces back together. Then we moved. We borrowed a friend's car to get to our new home. A mechanic I knew gave me a few dollars for all those car pieces and hauled them out of the new owner's garage.

I've come to the conclusion there's something in the male psyche, perhaps because of our conditioning process, that we are to be "fixers." If something's broken, we should be able to fix it. If life is not going so well, we should be able to change it. Some men take to this role with enthusiasm while others of us have modest or no aptitude. But whatever the aptitude, there's always that pressure, "you need to fix it."

I realized mid way through marriage that my wife didn't always expect me to "fix" things that weren't going right for her. I always thought, "she's not happy about this. I need to fix it." Most of the time all she really wanted me to do was listen to her. I didn't have to "fix" her feelings. Usually she managed to do that just fine on her own, especially if she had someone to listen to her and share her concern.

Then there are the demands for "quick fixes." We're under pressure to get the blood pressure down, so we opt for an enormous pharmacy, ignoring lifestyle changes or a search for the cause. Or, we don't want to spend money and men on war derailing a tin horn dictator, so we flaunt international conventions and laws with assassination attempts, ignoring any promise of diplomacy or reflecting on the causes of our impotence.

When I worked at a college in Maryland a donor had given money for an outdoor pool. A date was set when it would be dedicated and the donor would be honored. It was a rainy spring and summer. The pool was way behind schedule and the dedication fast approaching. I was at the meeting when the President told the staff member in charge of buildings and grounds he didn't care about the rain and problems of concrete setting. The pool was to be finished for the presence of the donor. Period. Weather be damned. Fix it.

For me, men having to "fix things" is just another one of those stereotyped gender roles. My wife is better at fixing things around the house than I am. So is my son. We all do much better when we listen, understand what's broken, consider our options with others, assess skills and liabilities, and then choose the appropriate solution that will actually "fix it" for the long term.

This is a suggestion for all those intent on fixing things, like budgets, relationships, torrential rain, international conflicts and lawn mowers. It's called using common sense and the nonviolent wisdom we all possess.

Carl Kline

Sunshine

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:30:00 +0000

Every once in a while I come across something that gives me hope for our energy future. It cries out, "people are smarter than we seem." The latest example comes from an article in "Sierra" magazine.

Jong Bok Kim, a researcher in chemical and biological engineering at Princeton University, was sitting outside his office thinking about his research subject. He was asking, what is the most productive and efficient skin for a solar cell: pyramids, strips, mirrors? As Kim gazed at a nearby shrub he realized he was looking at the answer. A leaf is covered with transparent cells that act like magnifying lenses and there are millions of ridges that guide the light deeper into the inner workings of the shrub. When Kim created a solar skin like a leaf, he discovered it absorbed six times the light of a flat surface.

Did you know how researchers at MIT discovered the best arrangement for a concentrated solar plant? They arrange solar mirrors around a central tower in such a way that the light is reflected to the tower's tip. They learned this design from a sunflower, one of the best and most efficient conductors of solar energy.

Or, a scientist in China made a solar cell arranged like the tail of a swallowtail butterfly. The butterfly's wings have ridges and valleys that deliver maximum warmth when the wings are spread wide. Rather than use his butterfly solar cell to create electricity, this scientist used it to create hydrogen, a clean burning fuel that could power cars of the future.

All of these discoveries reminded me of a visit I made to a house in my hometown of Brookings with a built in passive solar system. The thing that most impressed me was the design of the roof. It was constructed in such a way that when the sun was in the southern sky in the winter, it entered the house under the roof line. When the sun was high in the sky in the summer, the roof line shaded the house. At the time I remember thinking, how bright! Such a simple recognition of how nature operates saves on heat and air conditioning. It begins with observation of how the world operates and adapts human operations to nature.

What a difference to the typical Western attitude, where we say this is what we want to do and if nature can adapt fine, if not, nature be damned! As if we weren't part and parcel of nature!

Exxon Mobil or not, solar power is coming. Solar installations in the U.S. more than doubled from the second quarter of 2011 to the second quarter of 2012. In California, utility scale solar production last year matched that of a large coal burner or nuclear plant. In the meantime, the rooftop solar production in the state reached a comparable level, plus 20%. At West Oakland's Peoples Grocery, 70 community members financed an 8.6 kilowatt solar project on the store roof that will save $32,000 over ten years, just one of several projects enabled by Mosaic, a solar start up. St. Vincent de Paul, serving a thousand meals a day, found 80 supporters for a rooftop project that saves them about $1,200 a month. It's estimated that the rooftop potential in the U.S. is about a fifth of the electricity demand we had nationally in 2011.

And solar costs are coming down. Expectations are that in two or three years, New York and California will have "grid parity," when power from the sun is no more expensive than normal electricity for one's home. 41% of building permits in Hawaii now include requests for installing solar.

Then there's Germany. On May 26 of last year, rooftop solar in that country produced half their electricity demand. In a country that's not known for sunniness, the investment in solar bodes well for their future. And the costs of installing solar in Germany are half what we would pay in the states, partly as a result of less red tape.

You would think it would be a no brainer. Sunshine is free! It's the free gift of the creator to power the growth of flowers and trees, butterflies and bees, and you and me. But there's the rub! It's free! In a world of our creating, someone has to "own" the sunshine, or the wind, or the water, or the heat of the earth, in order to satisfy the "green frog skin" of Lame Deer fame. Instead of choosing a vision where we live in harmony with the creation, too many continue to choose a path of exploitation and profit, pitting one person or one country against another.

Our living room has several large windows, facing south. The sun in the winter comes streaming through those windows with warmth and cheer. They say sun on the back of your neck is good for depression so if I'm feeling down I sit on the couch, set just right, so the sun hits the back of my neck. And then I read about smart people, mostly young, who are looking at the world and realizing how we might fit in better. The sun and their intelligence, give me hope.

Carl Kline

Poisoning the Planet: Bees First

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Wed, 08 May 2013 16:59:00 +0000

One year the house got painted by my own hand. There was some help from my two children. But my son was basically a slop painter. He only wanted to do large areas, none of the subtle work around windows. And although my daughter was better at the heights than I and could do trim, whenever she was ready to start painting a friend would come by and she'd be off someplace. So most of the work I did myself.

One day, as I was scraping on the porch roof under the eaves, I disturbed a family of bees. Mind you, I don't like heights and wasn't all that comfortable on a slanting roof in the first place. But with one of those angry bees staring me in the face, just buzzing in place, I was doubly uncomfortable. So I swung at it with my putty knife and connected. The bee flew off, angry I guess, because a few seconds later it came flying back and stung me on the nose.

So here I was on a slanting roof, panicked by an angry bee, my nose hurting, afraid I was going to fall off the roof. So what I did was what I usually do when I'm in trouble, called for my wife; who calmed me enough to come down the ladder to the ground and helped me get a home remedy paste on my nose. (I know she was smiling inwardly the whole time, or outwardly, behind my back). She said I looked funny, with a red, swollen and pasty nose.

This was my first close-up and personal experience of bees. I'd watched interaction with bees from a distance before.

There was the time a friend was stung while we were hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He had a bee allergy. I remember the panic we felt getting him down the mountain. Fortunately he didn't swell badly, or die.

There was the time a whole host of bees invaded the downtown business area of the town where we lived in Maryland. People were frightened and panicked and business owners called the police. Instead of trying to kill them all with a flamethrower or spraying them with chemicals, someone had the good sense to call a beekeeper who brought a hive and took them home.

And then there were the times I visited a friend who lived south west of Brookings on a rural acreage and kept a few hives of bees. They had lots of flowers and their hives thrived, except when the neighbor had aerial spraying of his crops and the wind drifted toward their hives. Those years, all the bees died.

Bees are struggling these days. Slowly it's dawning on us how important they are to the functioning of a healthy food system. About one third of every bite we take goes into our mouths through the work of bees pollinating our crops. Approximately 130 different crops in the United States are pollinated by bees including apples, broccoli, almonds, watermelon, onions, cherries, blueberries and many other fruits and vegetables. It's not just honey production at stake with colony collapse disorder and other bee die offs. Our dinner table is seriously at risk.

As the crisis grew early last decade, the suggested culprits multiplied. Investigators identified the possible cause as bee mites, viruses, drought, even cell phones. But increasingly attention is centered on a particular pesticide, neonicotinoids, a nicotine derived pesticide European regulators implicate in bee deaths there. "The explosive growth of neonicotinoids since 2005," according to a recent article by Michael Wines in the New York Times, "roughly tracked rising bee deaths."

This is a systemic pesticide, applied to seeds that travels into the plant and into the pollen the bees carry. They take it back to their hives. It's a neurotoxin and Dave Goulson, professor of biology at the University of Sussex concluded from his research, "Exposure to these pesticides, which are essentially a neurotoxin, was affecting the ability of the bees to learn, to find their way home, to navigate, to collect food, and so on, which is hardly surprising if you realize they're neurotoxins. ... What we found, which was I must admit surprising in its extent, was that the treated nests did grow more slowly, but most dramatically, the effect on queen production was really strong. So we had an 85 percent drop in queen production of nests that were exposed just for that two-week period to pretty low concentrations of these pesticides compared to the control nests."

Since last year, when bee deaths averaged about 30%, the problem has grown. Now beekeepers are losing between 40 and 50% of their hives.

Needless to say, the big chemical multinationals like Syngenta and Bayer, Monsanto and Dow, have mobilized their public relations firms, their legal staffs and their lobbying dollars to secure their bottom lines. Monsanto even purchased a major bee research company, Beeologics. It is another instance of a company creating a problem, then trying to create a technological fix for it, and making profits both ways. It seems to be a burgeoning strategy in the business world of multinationals.

In the meantime, we'll have more flowers in our backyard than ever (chemically free). I'll continue believing that the wisdom implicit in the harmony of creation is healthier for us all than the experiments with nature being engineered in corporate labs through poisoning seeds and genetic manipulation. And if I paint my house this summer, as I should, I'll actually welcome a bee sting or two. It's all in respect for the wisdom of nonviolence and the harmony of creation.

Carl Kline

Toward Healing and Wholeness

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Fri, 03 May 2013 15:47:00 +0000

Standing in the garden, feeling the gentle breeze upon my face, hearing the rustling of leaves touched by the breeze, hearing the gleeful voices of children at play in the school yard just beyond, the song of birds in the air, I was immersed in solitary witness, joined with all of Boston in a minute of silence one week to the moment when two bombs shattered our city and our hearts. That stillness of witness speaks so loudly of our being one, across all lines that would divide. In pausing we are touched by a spirit of gentleness, the heart open to hear its own beating, to hear the still small voice of God. In that moment of collective stillness when we pause to remember and affirm, our shared vulnerability becomes our strength and seeds of hope and possibility are planted.

The challenge is to hold on to that sense of oneness and unity that is spun from the silence. As so many reach out to each other, shrill voices rise to shatter the stillness, even as the bombs themselves have done, adding to the pain and heartache, breaking grieving hearts into yet smaller pieces. So did my heart break further in reading the op-ed in the Jewish Advocate that condemned our Muslim neighbors, poison words meant to sow fear; that would divide us from each other. The Muslim community has probably been the most organized of all of Boston’s faith communities in its response to the tragedy, organizing blood drives, providing space, collecting money, coordinating volunteers to help in whatever way called upon, providing counseling services for their own community and beyond. And yet they have had to defend themselves and their religion, to justify their own grieving among the citizens of Boston.

In the Torah portion of that week, Parashat Emor, we are told, and do not profane My holy name/v’lo t’chal’lu et shem kodshi, for I will be sanctified among the children of Israel/v’nikdashti b’toch b’nei Yisrael, I, God, make you holy (Leviticus 22:32). This becomes the basis for Kiddush Hashem/the Sanctifying of God’s Name. In its most extreme expression, Kiddush Hashem refers to martyrdom, when all that is left is to affirm with one’s life. More importantly, to affirm with one’s life applies in every moment of our lives. A way of life, Kiddush Hashem is a commandment to each one of us to live in a way that sanctifies God’s name through deeds of righteousness and goodness, affirming the best of who we are meant to be. I received a gift during the week following the bombing, one that came as an opportunity to sanctify God’s name in the face of so much that would deny it. A friend and colleague in “Building Bridges through Learning,” a program to bring imams and rabbis together, called me late one night. The associate imam of the Cambridge mosque so much in the news, as the mosque attended on occasion by the bombers, he asked me if I would offer a prayer during their first Friday service since the bombing. Toward cleansing and healing, standing with and for each other, it was a great and humbling honor to be among this congregation. I was moved to tears by the sobbing of an elderly man as I spoke. He was sitting on the prayer rug just to my left, saying over and over through his tears, Amin, Amin. As we reach out to our neighbors, may the Holy One say Amin/Amen.

Prayer at the Islamic Society of Boston Mosque

April 26, 2013

Rabbi Victor H. Reinstein

Asalaam U'aleikum/Shalom Aleichem/Peace be Upon You

God of Avraham/Ibrahim, Hajar and Sarah, Yitzchak and Ismail, guide us please in their footsteps along paths that are so beautifully different and the same. Open our hearts to know that until we embrace each other we cannot fully embrace You or be held in the fullness of Your embrace.

Holy One of Being in Whose image each of Your children is created, receive our tears that flow from so many eyes into one great wellspring of humanity, waters of life freely cried, rivers that join us all in so much pain and sorrow. As You comfort us, we shall comfort You, receiving Your tears in the vessel of our prayers, holding them in the tenderness of our hearts, honoring Your tears, dear God, with deeds of loving kindness one to another.

Of so many bowed in body and spirit, Healer of Shattered Hearts, bind up our wounds and make us whole, raise us up to reach for the sky, each of us an angel in Your service when extending a hand to another. Let us be at all times in the spirit of those who rushed to the fallen on that day. Give succor to the wounded and the grieving, healing those of broken limbs and torn bodies that they might dance and sing and smile again. Hold close to You the souls of those whose lives were cruelly taken, torn in all their beauty like springtime flowers from the garden of Earth. May we honor You in the noble and worthy ways of our honoring them.

Let not our fear give rise to hatred, of finger pointing and blame. That is not the way You seek of us, not the way to ease Your pain, nor to look beyond our own. Open our lips to speak Your name with holy words of love and hope, that we not succumb to tough talk that in its speaking divides people into us and them. We are all one, and of one faith, whatever its name and path to You, in our city, in our state, in our country; hands reaching around the whole world in one great yearning, a prayer for violence to end, a promise to work for peace.

May the echo be heard and magnified, the spirit of their words rising, of a gathering of imams and rabbis that was held in this holy space, coming to learn each other's sacred texts, building bridges from heart to heart and house to house. Let that be the message that goes out from this mosque, from this house of Your dwelling among us, God of Ibrahim/Avraham, of Sarah and Hajar, of Ismail and Yitzchak. May we, Your children and theirs, go forth together, walking hand in hand in the springtime sun toward healing and wholeness.

And let us say, Amin/Amen

Rabbi Victor H. Reinstein

Dear President Obama

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 03:26:00 +0000

Dear President Obama & Secretary of State Kerry,

When I started thinking about this letter, the focus was simply the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. I'm deeply and passionately opposed to it, as I'm convinced it will dig us farther into a fossil fuel future that means climate catastrophe. But more importantly, I love this good earth we've been given and don't want to see any bit of it lost or destroyed; not the pine trees in the Black Hills; or the golden eagles flying down the canyon; or the bison running down the hill; or the cougar eyeing the deer; or the sweet flowing waters of Rapid Creek. It's all precious and sacred to me.

But as I sat down to write you about the pipeline, I was looking at a picture of our grandchildren. They are at an age in the picture where all five are sitting on or close to our laps. Like all grandparents, we want the very best for them and their future. And I must confess, sometimes I feel sad about the world I'll be departing and they'll be inheriting. I've begun to realize that there's a fundamental issue at stake with the pipeline. It's about violence, about how we understand the world and choose to act in it. Are we at war, or can we live in harmony?

For a long time I've been thinking how when I was born, the world was just giving birth to nuclear weapons. When I was still small, two of them visited absolute horror on civilian populations. That's part of the legacy of my generation to my grandchildren. That man-made hell of nuclear weapons is still very much with us and threatens through accident or hate to visit us again.

More recently, I've become aware of the dangers to human health and the health of all living things by the war we wage against "pests." So we kill the bad bugs with toxic chemicals, only to see them become worse bugs as our children develop more insidious diseases. I'm convinced the pesticide legacy of my generation is a poisoned nest for my grandchildren.

Yesterday reminded me of how much we're at war with each other, as our U.S. Senate was unable to even ask for background checks on gun sales. It's as if people are at war with the government, or the police, or the criminals, or their neighbors and family members, or even school children and marathon runners. It's all fear and war and little harmony, though 90% of the nation desires and deserves it. My grandchildren need it.

And most alarming and most relevant to the decisions you will make about the pipeline, is our war on the earth. Perhaps it's the fundamental war that feeds all the others. Somehow, we've lost our connection to the earth as our home, to "God's Body," as the theologian Sallie McFague puts it; or to Mother Earth, as Indian nations have long understood.

If you will just look at those pictures of the tar sands fields in Canada and the wonderful boreal forest that's being destroyed by that mining; if you would just talk to the Indian nations being decimated by toxic air and water from the mining process; if you will just watch those huge machines, grabbing trees and pulling them out of the earth to clear the pipeline path in Texas; if you could just walk the fields of those stolen by the first Keystone and see the fruitful grasses turned to weeds; if you would just walk through the stench and back yards of the recent spill in Arkansas or canoe the Kalamazoo river in Michigan, even now, years after that spill, or walk the rivers edge in Yellowstone or fish for shrimp in the Gulf or talk to the shrimpers; if you would do this, then you might have some first hand knowledge of the despoiling of the planet by fossil fuels and the war we're waging on nature and on those living close to the pillage.

But, one fears, you'll instead fly to disaster areas, like after Sandy, and try to comfort the victims.

Sadly, we're beholden to a spirit of war in this country. We're unable to see that we're all related; that what we do to the trees we do to ourselves; what we do to the insects comes home to bite us; what we do to another impacts our own spirit; what we do to the earth we do to our home.

I agree with Martin Luther King, Jr. We have a choice, between nonviolence and nonexistence. And it's never been more evident and more pressing than now with our war on the earth. As some have remarked, at least with nuclear weapons our war madness is reversible. And we've made some modest strides. But with climate change, what we're doing to our earth home will be with us, even without the pipeline, for generations to come. The carbon we've already put in the environment is too much with us. And all of this while those more harmonious alternatives are readily available; wind, solar, geo thermal, hydro, wave action.

There's a film being shown in our town Sunday night at the local United Church of Christ. It's called "A Sea Change." It's a great film. It's about a grandfather and his grandson on a search together for the truth about climate change and what's happening to the oceans. We don't hear much about carbon in the oceans, so the film is educational as well as engaging. One learns about pteropods. I had no idea there was such a thing and their importance in the ocean ecosystem. We're connected to them!

So I like the film because it's educational, because it ends with hope and faith in the rationality of the human community, and because it's about a grandfather intent on trying to leave a better planet for his grandchild.

Thank goodness for all those other grandparents working to do the same, who aren't at war with the world but wanting to live in harmony with it. And my prayer for you is, that you will help your generation leave a more promising and peaceful legacy for your grandchildren, one without the XL pipeline.

Sincerely,

Carl Kline, Grandparent

A Path of Life in the Valley of the Shadow of Death

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Friday following the Boston Marathon bombing, the city is at a standstill, explosive violence during the night in pursuit of the bombers. Amid the mundane details of rising into the day, not quite sure at first what we are hearing and reading, trying to take it all in, bewildered. The chaos of the world immediately outside, all so close, begins to filter through, unfiltered. The word used over and over again since Monday, surreal, how is this happening here? Describing a way of artistic expression, surrealism draws from the swirling world of dreamscapes, the chaotic and unformed, the place where dreams become nightmares, what we thought we knew shimmering as the ground shifts beneath our feet. The mirage of thinking we know, the moment of its being cruelly wrenched away, itself the story in real time on NPR this morning. Perhaps you were listening too as the reporter realized in a short span of time that she knew the surviving terrorist, a member of her nephew’s high school class, he had even been at a prom party at her home, appearing in pictures she had saved from that happy time, hosting young people coming of age, the world before them. She contacted her nephew on air to ask concerning his classmate, of insights or hints he might offer, but there was nothing, all unfathomable, unreal, surreal, only to console, her nephew and us. Of what it means to be brothers lost on the two who have wreaked such havoc, not only as brothers with each other but with all of flesh and blood. Describing human beings, the same stuff of life, flesh and blood, gore upon the Marathon ground, that until it is wasted gives physical substance to those who do good and those who do evil. In the jagged contrasts, also the sameness, questions that hover in the acrid air between, why is one path taken and not the other? The brother killed in a hail of bullets, a bomb strapped to his chest to kill more, was twenty-six years old. The police officer the brothers killed during the night was twenty-six years old.

It is the fine line between death and life, not of a peaceful end to a life well lived, but of death as a way of life. And it is of death that is not natural, that does not come in the fullness of years, but grabs at tender sprouts and tears them from the ground, challenging us to the core. It is of this death that this week’s Torah portion speaks and in whose face it dares to teach. A double portion, Parashat Acharei Mot/K’doshim (Leviticus 16-20), there is revealed in the space and tension between them a path of life in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Acharei Mot means After Death and K’doshim means Holy. The backdrop is death, untimely and cruel, acharei mot sh’nei b’nei Aharon/after the death of the two sons of Aaron. Right from there the process of t’shuva/repentant turning is laid out, the way of turning toward healing and wholeness with ourselves and with each other. As Acharei Mot turns to K’doshim the way becomes clearer, K’doshim ti’h’yu/you shall be holy, as I, God, your God, am holy. A lengthy list of commandments follows, guideposts along the path of life, most having to do with relations among people. The way of holiness is in the realm of human affairs, not far off, not in the realm of mystery or the mystical, or perhaps it tells of the truly mystical, expressed in the here and now. K’doshim ti’h’yu/you shall be holy…, leave the corners of your field, leave the gleanings of your harvest where they fall, leave the unripe grapes upon the vine and leave berries where they fall, you shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger…; the wages earned by a day laborer shall not remain overnight with you until the morning; do not curse one who is deaf, nor place a stumbling block before the blind…; do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor…; you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

For all of the emphasis of the portion K’doshim on living life and finding holiness in the social realm, in relation to other people, the word kadosh/holy means in its root, separation. Rashi comments that to be holy means to separate our selves from sin. Concerned that we might come to think that this means to separate ourselves entirely from other people and from human society, the nineteenth century Chassidic rebbe Kalonimus Kalman Epstein, known as the Ma’or Vashemesh, warns against fleeing to the forests, for this will only serve to save a person from the things that impede the service of God, but one will not merit to attain the holiness of Above until joining with others and participating together with them in great service…. Separating from evil, we transcend it only to the degree that we join with others to do good.

As much as we might yearn during times such as these to flee to the forest, our task is to be here among people. However surreal the context in which it is expressed, goodness is always real. The heroism that was manifest amid the horror of Monday, and as it all continues now, is a reminder of how we are meant to respond to the needs of others at all times. That is one of the lessons that we learn from extreme times. In the learning of this lesson, that we are joined flesh and blood with each other and are responsible one for another, we transcend the horror. Holiness is found in the ordinary details of life, in the way of our being in relation to others and in the way that together we nurture a society that reflects the best of who we are and are meant to be. Amid the chaos in the world around us now, small acts of kindness help to keep us grounded. Putting aside anger, speaking a gentle word, thinking good thoughts all help us to walk surely on the path of life even in the Valley of the Shadow of death. In the face of death and destruction, we affirm life in pursuing the holiness of caring for each other. In the glow of the Sabbath candles, may we see illumined the path of life.

Rabbi Victor H. Reinstein

Seeds Of Meaning

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 20:39:00 +0000

Each morning, I watch an amusing ritual through my front kitchen window. Our “squirrel proof” bird feeder hosts at least two impish squirrels before the bird population begins to feed. They leap from the nearby tree trunk or skitter down the chain that holds the feeder in place and hang rather whimsically by their back feet to reach the bottom tray of the feeder for their breakfast of black oil sunflower seeds. One morning, after a north-easter had blown through, the cap from the feeder had disappeared in the wind. On that particular day, one of my little friends pushed its head and front feet well down into the feeder tube to get at the seeds. “Squirrel proof” indeed!!

When they first began sharing the feeder with the birds I wondered if there would be any seed left to attract the cardinals and finches and chickadees that we enjoy thorough the winter. I needn’t have worried. They all seem to work out a fairly harmonious feeding pattern and there is enough to go around.

While observing the squirrels, I have also been watching the mourning doves - - ground feeders. The squirrels are either overly sloppy or overly generous. Whichever is the case, there are plenty of dropped sunflower seeds on the ground under the feeder to kept the mourning doves well fed and happy.

In the last few days following the bomb explosions at the Boston Marathon Finish Line, I have felt like a mourning dove. I have been reading the newspaper accounts of the bombing, of the heroic responses, of the tragic loss of life and of the horrific road that many of the victims will travel on their way to wholeness again as they recover from their injuries. Much of the commentary has a familiar ring to it. 9/11 is not that far from memory. I read and read - - looking - - pecking around perhaps, for that particular word that will help me begin, once again, the process of making meaning of yet one more public and far reaching act of violence.

The seeds are there. Scattered randomly - - appearing in surprising and sometimes seemingly unrelated places.

On April 17, Scot Lehigh, OpEd columnist for the Boston Globe, called for a “Dream Team” of Boston’s finest minds to create a foundation that would reach into the future to assist victims of the bomb blasts - - and to improve the city of Boston for all its citizens - - a “charitable foundation dream team” – to create something that would “let us channel our concern and sympathy into something large and lasting and let us feel that we’d reclaimed Patriot’s Day and our marathon from the horrific event by responding to unspeakable individual evil with committed collective good.”

So – that was a tasty seed - - respond to unspeakable individual evil with committed collective good.

This morning, a prayer by Rabbi Stanley F. Chyet, dropped from the “feeder” – again on the OpEd page of the Globe:

We oughtn’t pray for what we’ve

Never known

Unbroken peace

Unmixed blessing

No.

Better to pray for…

The will to see and touch

The power to do good and make

New.

After breakfast (toast and eggs –not sunflower seeds!) yet another offering appeared to further my quiet quest for meaning and understanding –this time from Rainer Maria Rilke in a collection of daily readings from his works. Titled “Survival of the Soul”, it pulls me together for another day of reflection: “What more can we accomplish now than the survival of the soul. Harm and decay are not more present than before, perhaps, only more apparent, more visible and measurable. For the harm which humanity has lived daily since the beginning cannot be increased. But there is increasing insight into humanity’s capacity for unspeakable harm, and perhaps where it leads. So much in collapse, so much seeking new ways out. Room for what new can happen.

It was the reading intended for April 15, the day of the bombings.

My seeds keep echoing the same theme - - an ancient one - - that out of chaos comes order and creativity….In the beginning when God was creating…. So a composite prayer takes shape:

May we see and know how to respond to unspeakable individual evil with committed collective good.

May we seek the will to see and touch the power to do good and make new.

May we, in the midst of collapse and seeking, make room for the new thing that may happen.

My thanks to the “feeder” for nourishing seeds dropped where I might find them.

A YEAR WITH RILKE Daily Readings from The Best of Rainer Maria Rilke translated and edited by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows, HarperCollins, 2009 p.105

Vicky Hanjian

Reaching Out When Logic Says We Shouldn't

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 16:03:00 +0000

It started with a phone call early last Thursday morning, as I was gathering my books before leaving to teach an early morning Torah class. The call troubled me, distracting me even as I tried to teach a little while later. The next day, the original call and several subsequent calls from the same person continued to distract me. The voice was clearly that of an Israeli, speaking in rather gruff Hebrew, shifting back and forth between Hebrew and English. There were expressions of deference, saying in Hebrew, lichvod ha’rav/with honor for the rabbi, if not a tone of deference. The words came with urgency, a medical emergency, used to live in Boston, recently moved to New York, only health insurance is in Massachusetts. He had returned to Boston, therefore, for a diagnosis and, presumably, treatment of a growth in his mouth. He was convinced it was cancer. He had an appointment later that morning. Taking in as much as I could while standing on one foot – the Talmudic sage Hillel said to love your neighbor as yourself while standing on one foot -- trying to stuff books into my bag, I said I would call him at 9:00 o’clock after my class.

I called him when I returned, at first trying to calm his agitation. He said he was on his way to the hospital. Then the request came for money. Could I wire him money through Western Union? That should have been enough to end the conversation, the connection, but connections don’t necessarily end because we see through them. I told him I would not do that, even though I admit to briefly considering it. I told him I wanted to hear from someone at the hospital. A little while later he called and put someone on the phone whom he said was his doctor. Suspicious, I called the department he said he was calling from, no such doctor. I told him I couldn’t help him. He then left a scathing phone message, aren’t Jews supposed to help each other, you don’ want to help, don’t help, it was between me and the Kaddosh Borechu/the Holy Blessed One. I struggled with myself, what if after all I was wrong, wouldn’t I prefer to err on the side of helping, of compassion, what if it wasn’t a scam, what if he really was sick? I called him back and told him I would pay for a couple of nights in the hostel he was staying in, which I then took care of with a credit card.

That night, feeling uneasy, I did a Google search of the man’s name, arrested twice for fraud, time in prison. There were some others of the same name; perhaps I had the wrong one. The next morning I called the hostel and asked to cancel the reservations I had paid for. The clerk took the information and said she would take care of it even though she shouldn’t on such short notice, telling me to give more notice next time I needed to cancel. All day I struggled with conflicting feelings. On one hand I felt relieved, on the other I felt concerned and guilty, still wondering if perhaps he really was sick, thinking about how he would feel when he returned to the hostel and found he had no place to stay, even if he was a scoundrel. I kept waiting for an angry phone call. Just before Shabbos, the phone rang. Seeing it was him, I didn’t pick it up. A little while later, taking a deep breath, I listened to the message, words of profound apology, so grateful that I had paid for a place to stay, thanking me for all of my help, wishing me a Shabbat shalom and joyful Purim. For all of my consternation, for all of my certainty that it was a scam, I felt a wave of relief that the clerk had not come through with my request to cancel. Most of all, I felt relief that a human being had not experienced a moment of shock and betrayal on my account, however malicious his own intent may have been.

It was the week whose Torah portion opens with the law of the half-shekel, a tax for the upkeep of the holy Temple (Ex. 30:11-16). A minimal amount of money with maximum symbolic import, the poor are not to give less and the rich are not to give more. All are equal in God’s house, each one but a half, the presence of each needed to create wholeness. We had read the same words a few weeks earlier on Shabbat Sh’kalim/the Sabbath of the Shekels, the first of four special Sabbaths that precede the month of Nisan, each helping us in a different way of preparation for Passover and the journey to freedom.

That week was the third of the four special weeks, Shabbat Parah/the Sabbath of the heifer. The ritual of the red heifer as described in the Torah is a mysterious rite (Numbers 19:1-22). A red heifer is slaughtered and burned, cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet wool dipped into the blood, the priest then to bathe in mayyim chayyim/living waters. Of those involved in the ritual, the pure become impure and the impure are made pure, an intermingling of states, perhaps of identities and perceptions of self. It is a rite to be utilized following contact with death, a way of purification and transition. Marking a way of ritual purification, it comes also to be a way of moral purification, of starting again, reminding us of what it means to be alive, to truly choose life. That is the intent of the prophet Ezekiel’s words as read on that Sabbath, I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the heart of stone out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:16-38).

The Sabbath of the Heifer offers a teaching about the rough edges of life. In its themes and contradictions, this Sabbath confronts our being with our not being, death in the grand scheme and in the small ways of life diminished. There is a dying moment when the rough edges of two half-shekels don’t fit neatly together to bring wholeness. As we reach out to help another, the purity of ideals and intentions can come to feel sullied. The pure may come to feel as impure, all seeming uncertain, confused, the ways of the Holy One mysterious, like the ancient purification ritual itself. Is it possible then, that here too the reverse can be true, that the impure may become pure, touched at least in some small way by its opposite? In reaching out or responding to one whom logic says we shouldn’t, perhaps our ideals and intentions serve a higher purpose and remain unsullied after all. Perhaps on some level his heart was touched, in some small way his spirit made new as it once had been, touched, if but for a moment, by intimations of the holiness underlying the words he spoke, Shabbat shalom, Purim same’ach (a joyful Purim), the name of the Holy One.

Seeking God’s forgiveness of the people for the sin of the golden calf and renewal for his own flagging faith, Moses asks to see God. Instead, God reveals the essential attributes of compassion by which we are able to see God’s presence in the world and which we are to emulate: Holy One of Being, Holy One of Being, God merciful and compassionate, patient, abounding in love and faithfulness, assuring love for thousands of generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin…. Striving toward wholeness amidst life’s contradictions, confident in the judgment of the Holy One, I entered last Shabbos with a sense of inner peace, grateful for a clerk’s error.

Rabbi Victor H. Reinstein

No Higher Calling

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:33:00 +0000

What is Non-Violence and why is it called NONVIO: No Higher Calling? This idea of non-violence is both a personal and internal, yet also a grand phenomenon occurring as a struggle in society and our own lives. Everyone sees violence as a problem, yet fighting AGAINST violence makes us violent as well. It has turned the greatest leaders into aggressors leaving a wake of sadness behind. Intelligent forces, presidents, leaders of countries are at war fighting a seemingly good fight for peace and freedom in order to eradicate a problem. However, this results in more war and pain, loss of men and women, and suffering to their families, the destruction of countries and the consciousness of its nation. If violence spurs more violence and promotes unending war, then why do we keep doing it? It seems like the only solution but fuels a chain reaction of devastation. Why does this happen?

The best answer I have found is something I learned on a personal experience that caused me a lot of grief and I couldn’t figure out the mechanism. But the lesson came clear only recently, and I often found it difficult to understand given that society seems to frown upon “victims” and applauds bullies. But what finally made sense is that violence happened on the inside. I realized it had little to do with the aggressor. It had much to do with my own decision to take something personally or get offended. I had merely chosen to react to a provocation of violence. Or rather, conceded to the perception that an act committed by someone, outside of myself, relatively important (or not important) could impel influence over my state of mind, mood or succeeding action. This seemingly automatic response assumed that the trigger subject proposed a threat to my ego, hence my self-promoted perception of who I am. It convinced me to defend my perceived image through aggression. But only because I decided that my ego (self-assessment) would somehow suffer or be endangered had I not. Hence, the idea that seems to be overlooked is that anger is a response to a perceived threat arising from an underlying fear, whether real or imagined.

If violence comes from the feeling of hurt and the need to redeem ourselves, anger then is nothing more than a disguised fear positioning itself as a hero in our society and our mind. And it makes sense. Of course, I wouldn’t react angrily towards a house fly who accidentally hit my face on its way to its destination. I would dismiss it as a non-threat occurrence. Likewise, if an apparent insult transgressed between myself and a mentality impaired individual, I would naturally ignore the offender. Thus, the defense mechanism is triggered only by my own self-assessment and the judgment (idea) I hold about the “opponent” in relation to myself.

As highly unpopular as it seems, non-violence is the ultimate resolution of a healthy mind free from fear and a healthy assessment of oneself. Thus, I might resolve that the person attempting to insult me sees me as a threat, and I might even take it as a compliment. I believe fear takes root in the mind of aggressors. After all, they are walking around protecting themselves from perceived enemies in a loud cry of defense. It dawned on me that aggression towards another emerges from an unhealthy or small perception of oneself hoping to receive temporary validation through a violent act. When people stop recognizing life in another and a feeling of compassion is absent, it is a signal that awareness has dulled giving will to violence. Furthermore, I believe persons with a confined self-image are likely to suffer from this kind of overactive defense mechanism or unconscious fear which shows itself through frequent episodes of aggression.

It occurs to me that the same mechanism is responsible for war and affects even whole nations and leaders. Strongest nations become subject to the idea that if they destroy their enemy, they will win honor or peace or power. On an ascending scale these intentions arise as a reactive response towards our loved ones, children, neighbors, men and women, groups, ethnicities, gangs, armies, countries and the whole world becomes a slave to violence--a slave to fear. It occurs that we live in a society fueled by fear instead of love; As advanced and intelligent as we are, why do we still react to these provocations?

Where does the root cause of violence begin? The problem, I reckon, originates in our false ideas about our true nature. It is common to identify ourselves with our ego which is our perceived idea of who we are as we relate to the world around us. However, the more we identify with our egos, the more we form internal prejudice, scales, ideas about good and bad, creating limitations for ourselves and others. Our views become narrow making it harder for us to relate to others and we feel separate adapting a “me against the world” mentality.

We are so used to this common cycle of behavior that we misunderstand what is happening. We fail to recognize our true nature of oneness beyond the ego and the nature of the world we live in. Since nature loves diversity and accepts all possibilities and people, our conditioned minds explode within us continuously, when our ideas are tested in the real world, forcing us into conflict. As we begin to realize that conflict with others doesn’t resolve the problem but recreates it, why not break down our conditioned minds instead? It is important to take a step back and notice our ego absorbed state of mind when we are faced with a conflict. Exercising our will over violent impulses can help us prevent consequences which activate a vicious cycle. Also, becoming in charge of our emotions helps us avoid the feelings associated with a violent act that stay in our systems long after the event has passed.

Surprisingly enough, every spiritual text points us in the direction of acceptance. Accepting ourselves and one another can heal our feelings of separateness. We don’t need to prove anything or exclude anyone. We don’t have to suffer from the idea that we are only as big as our physical body or accumulations. That is the idea of our ego-dominated mind, ridden with fear, yet it seems to have won the world over. We are told through sacred teachings that LOVE is the greatest power that can transform any problem. And after evaluating the cause of violence, it becomes apparent that expansion is the engine toward peace. Not the individualized ego persona trying to force its undifferentiated ideals. We are together in this, and each one of us breathes, drinks, bleeds, hurts and desires understanding much the same way we do. Nature created us in a multitude of color, culture, opinion, religion, orientation, sex, etc. We are blessed to exercise free will, as human beings, through life affirming acts. There is nothing to lose, but our fears and anxieties. By giving our unconditional love to ourselves and others, we will culture internal freedom and a society free from hate and violence.

I realize this is easier said than done, at first, but I invite you to take your first step right now by joining the Non-Vio movement and create your very own act of non-violence. Contribute your voice to making Non-Violence louder than violence. By coming together as like-minded individuals, we will reach 1 billion acts of non-violence.

What does non-violence look like? It could be actions big or small - from turning the other cheek in the vein of Gandhi and MLK or to simply choose not to use offensive language or reframe from substance, or extend forgiveness to someone you know you hurt. The key fact is that these millions of actions by thousands of people will create a shift in our being and bring awareness to our core human values that, in my opinion, have the greatest ability to shift the fabric of our society. Join the movement: NONVIO.org

"I am only one, but still I am one; I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; And just because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do." - Helen Keller (1880-1968)

Guest Blogger - Ilona Noskova

Bringing the Great and Awesome Day of God

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:09:00 +0000

There is an almost tangible excitement in the air as we approach Passover. Even in the fitful coming of spring, there is something in the turning of seasons, a sense of nature’s own awareness of change within itself that sings of liberation and renewal. We become attuned to the way of change, to the turning in time that is happening around us. The very first instructions concerning Passover in the Torah are immediately preceded by the commandment concerning Rosh Chodesh, the beginning of each new month, that we are to mark time by sighting the crescent of the new moon (Ex. 12:1-2). Passover occurs at the full moon, a time of hope fulfilled, every month reminding us of the journey from hidden to revealed.

Change in the natural realm happens independently of us, as long as we humans don’t destroy the delicate mechanisms upon which all life depends. Of the human quest for freedom, we ourselves are the actors, the ones upon whom change depends. That is the spiritual and even political message that underlies all the drudgery of cleaning for Passover. The chametz, all the leavened products that we strive to rid ourselves of represents all that we seek to change, all the ways of oppression, of oppressing and being oppressed, in our own lives and in the world. The process of removing chametz is meant to remind that change doesn’t just happen, that freedom doesn’t just arrive. Preparing for Passover is hard work, all the little details, perhaps seeming insignificant in themselves, are the stepping-stones to the great and awesome day.

It starts small, right at home, in the details of our lives. That is the message of the Sabbath just before Passover, Shabbat HaGadol/the great Sabbath. Rising to a crescendo of hope, in the prophetic reading for that Sabbath the prophet Malachi sings: Behold, I will send you Elijah the Prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of God; that he may turn the heart of the parents to the children, and the heart of the children to their parents (Malachi 3:23-24)…. It starts in the small worlds of our own lives, making peace and wholeness there before it can happen in the great world beyond. The great and awesome day of God of which Malachi tells is not only the source from which comes the name Shabbat HaGadol. More importantly, the vision of that day, made real in our own homes, is the source of its own fulfillment. The very words are meant to remind that the goal of Passover is to bring that great and awesome day which Elijah will announce, the day of swords turned to plowshares and spears to pruning hooks, the day of the Messiah, of peace. It won’t just happen, we need to prepare the way and make it happen. That is why it begins at home.

It is hard work to prepare for Passover, great meaning hidden among the details. That is the metaphor in the nature of this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Tzav. It is one of those portions that seems opaque on the surface, filled with details of the offerings to be made in the sanctuary. We look more closely, at the names and nuance in reference to the offerings, all meant to restore wholeness, to bring people close again to each other and to God, to turn the hearts of one to another. There we find the peace offering, the sh’lamim. More than shalom, the word suggests shalem/wholeness, completeness. There is an entire teaching in the interplay of grammatical forms. There can only be peace when there is wholeness, when the circle of human belonging is complete, shalem.

From such a hint hidden there among the details, the rabbis create a treatise of teachings on peace. There in a midrash on this at first opaque Torah portion, the rabbis offer practical guidance toward bringing the “great and awesome day of God,” the ultimate Shabbat HaGadol. That it is up to us to bring that day is brought home in a teaching on the unique nature of the commandment, the mitzvah, to pursue peace: Chiskiya said, “Great is peace, for it is written concerning all mitzvot, if you see, if you encounter, if it happens; that is, if the opportunity to fulfill a mitzvah comes to you, you need to do it, and if not, you don’t need to do it. But in regard to peace, it is written (Psalm 34:15), Bakesh shalom v’rodfehu/seek peace and pursue it – meaning, seek it in your own place, and pursue it in another.

Shabbat HaGadol, as it comes in the midst of preparing for Passover, calls us to be rodfei shalom/pursuers of peace. We are the crucial link, called to do our part in bringing the great and awesome day. In the verses following the commandment to mark Rosh Chodesh, the new moon, that we are to look to the cycle of the moon for inspiration and hope, the rabbis deduce two Passovers. The first is Pesach Mitzrayim/the Passover of Egypt, the actual Exodus, observed once for all time, only by those who actually came out of Egypt. The second is Pesach L’dorot/the Passover of the Generations, our Passover, as observed every year since the first year after the Exodus. The rabbis speak of a third Passover, Pesach L’atid/the Passover of the Future. That is the Passover that has never happened, not yet. It is the ultimate redemption, the flowering of peace and freedom for all. Pesach L’atid and Shabbat HaGadol refer to the same time, and so too the Day that is all Sabbath/Yom She’kulo Shabbos.

As in the way of our preparing for Passover each year, so too in our preparing for the Sabbath each week, it is not for these holy days that come with the turning of days and weeks and seasons for which we are really preparing. In all of the hard work of getting ready, we are really preparing for Shabbat HaGadol and Pesach L’atid, the Great Sabbath and the Passover of the future. If we prepare with enough intention and commitment, realizing in the process to carry our preparation beyond the walls of our own homes and into the world beyond, then every Sabbath can become Shabbat HaGadol and every Passover, Pesach L’atid. If we can remove the chametz, the leavening agents that become the rising of arrogance and strife, of violence and oppression, of all that divides people from each other, then as surely as the seasons turn, we shall bring that great and awesome day of God.

Rabbi Victor H. Reinstein

The Art of Living Movement

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 15:14:00 +0000

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar leads
America to Stand-Up to Violence with One Billion Acts Of

NON-VIOLENCE!

His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, world’s leading voice for non-violence,
launches “Non-Violence: No Higher Calling” movement

Bold U.S. campaign seeks to generate one billion acts of non-violence;
5-city U.S. tour to cover San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago, N.Y. and Atlanta

Given all the violence we have witnessed in America, I want to share with you a movement that inspires me--a bold plan to counteract America’s 100 million acts of violence every year. Not with legislation, rhetoric, or more sedatives and tranquilizers...but with the most powerful force on the planet: the love and conscience of an awakened people.

This month, the Art of Living is launching a national movement lead by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, founder of AOL. He is an internationally acclaimed humanitarian, a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, and the recipient, this month, of this year’s Ghandi-MLK-Ikeda award for Nonviolence bestowed by Morehouse College. For over 30 years, his mission of uniting the world into a violence-free, stress-free global family inspired the lives of over 300 million people who participated in Art of Living programs, in over 151 countries. Sri Sri has been a strong supporter of the anti-corruption movement in India, a voice for women’s empowerment throughout the world, and an advocate for countless other humanitarian causes.

Starting March 25, through April 3, Sri Sri will be visiting the US during his five-city tour through San Diego, L.A., Chicago, New York and Atlanta. The New York event will launch March 30^th in the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, in midtown Manhattan at 2pm. We invite you to join us at the event and to commit to your own act of non-violence. ( http://nonvio.org/ ) With our commitments, we will make the voice of non-violence louder than violence. Together we will reach 1 billion acts of non-violence.

"Often violence comes with noise. Non-violence happens in silence. People

who are violent make loud noise; they make it known. People who are

non-violent are quiet. But the time has come for people who are non-violent

to make noise so that the violence will quiet down. The message of

non-violence has to come loud and clear so that it can be heard from a

young age.

A sense of shame has to be connected with anger and violence. The reason

for violence in young people is a sense of pride in anger and violence, not

a sense of shame. People feel proud that they are violent or angry. They

think it is prestigious or a status symbol to be aggressive. Aggression is

not thought to be a quality to be ashamed of. This promotes aggression and

violence in the whole society, and when aggression and violence are

promoted, human values diminish. Some movies and modern music glorify

frustration, anger and revenge and make these a role model for children."

-- Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Nonviolence: No Higher Calling seeks to make the voice of nonviolence loud; for every action of violence we commit to 100 actions of nonviolence. We start now, together. Commit today to an action of nonviolence at nonvio.org.

Ilona Noskova, Guest Blogger

Loving Wells

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 18:58:00 +0000

Lunch was over. Bread was baking in the oven. I was ready to sit down to relax for an hour. The phone rang. A member of one of the small congregations on the island calling. The church music committee had met the day before and the meeting ended in a blow-up. Would I be willing to meet with the church leadership to see how to bring things back to a “higher level” of relating?

My mind immediately went to the first paragraph in the foreword of a book I just bought titled THE SACRED ART OF LOVINGKINDNESS: Preparing to Practice by one of my favorite teachers, Rabbi Rami Shapiro. The foreword by Marcia Ford begins this way: “Lovingkindness is one of those topics I love to read about. It’s such a lofty quality. I’ll finish reading a book about it, and I’ll sigh, wishing I could be like some celebrated Buddhist leader whose very name is synonymous with lovingkindness. Who wouldn’t want that? The problem is, I haven’t put much of what I’ve read into practice. Oh, I’ve exercised my version of lovingkindness for a day or two at a stretch, but soon enough, I revert to my baser nature and wish that all manner of evil would befall the unbelievably rude guy who cut in front of me at the post office.

I recently realized that I clearly needed to take action if I was ever going to integrate this noble quality into my very ordinary life. So I did what I usually do when action is required: I read yet another book.”

I had to laugh. Marcia Ford’s experience so parallels my own that I could have written that paragraph myself.

The same small congregation with the conflagrating music committee has been working at a commitment to live in right relations with one another. It was the featured article in their last newsletter. My heart went out to them. How difficult it is to live out the intention to be in right relations. I am to preach in this congregation on Sunday. I had taken the newsletter article for my preaching theme.

Little did I know…

How do I help anyone else when I am still, after all these years, so inept at the practice of lovingkindness? How do I dare to say a word when I do not consistently practice what I preach? I find myself in a state of chagrin with Aldous Huxley who quipped “ It’s a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find that one has no more to offer [by way of advice] than this: Try to be a little kinder.”

So - - I read another book…and another…and another. There is a discipline of cultivation that feeds the intention to live a life of lovingkindness. While I believe that we all have the capacity for it, it doesn’t come automatically. Like a precious seed, it needs to be cultivated. I need to keep returning again and again to the various wells of spiritual tradition to nurture the easily parched beginnings into stable growth. The wells of Christian and Jewish and Buddhist and Islamic tradition, the traditions of indigenous peoples, all offer the sweet clear water of guidance for living in lovingkindness. At the deepest bottom of each well is the universally acclaimed truth that we are all one - - members of one another - - created in the same image and likeness - - drawing our humanity from the same source of all being whether we believe that source to be a divine creator or we believe we have our origins in the stars.

Sufi master and poet, Hafiz, wrote:

God has a root in each act and creature

that He draws His mysterious

Divine life from.

The Beloved with his own hands is tending,

Raising like a precious child,

Himself in

You.

A little support for my intention to live in lovingkindness. It may only serve today. But the wells are there and I can return and drink and live another day, and another and another. Maybe that is the best I can do – practice lovingkindness, one day at a time.

Vicky Hanjian

Armed School Sentinels

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 01:56:00 +0000

In some ways, I just wish the subject would go away. I'm not a gun owner. I don't ever expect to be one. The first time I shot a gun was as a kid. It was a BB gun, and the local grain elevator was a great spot to shoot birds. They were mostly sparrows and seemed like a dime a dozen to me. I remember how I felt hitting them, until the police arrived and told me I couldn't do that.

The feeling was different as an adolescent, the first time I killed a water bird. There wasn't any interest in taking another, ever.

So excuse my lack of experience when it comes to a fascination with guns and what they can accomplish. And pardon my ignorance when it comes to understanding what drives so many to want them.

The latest statistics I heard on the news were that 5,305 applications for conceal and carry permits were received in South Dakota in the month of February. That's 603 more than January of 2013 and 3,534 more than in February of 2012. Even several years ago, South Dakota was first in the U.S. in permits per capita. Imagine what it must be now. Somehow, it doesn't make me feel safer.

This news came the same day I read about two guys in Rapid City, South Dakota. The Associated Press reported they both accidentally shot themselves. The one guy was working on his handgun and shot himself in the hand. The other was putting his pistol in the holster and shot himself in the foot. Embarrassing! I hope they aren't applying for the job of South Dakota school sentinels.

That was another piece of gun news the same day, "school sentinels." The title conjures up this picture of a sentry on a battlement or a minuteman ready to take on the British. Our state legislature passed the school sentinel legislation with our former Brookings Mayor voting for it. Although most school boards, school administrations and teachers don't want guns in the schools, they can now have them, in the hands of "appropriately trained" persons.

I'm not sure about kids today, but my friends and I would have known quickly which teacher had a gun in school, where it was kept and what it looked like. We would have managed to check it out, under lock and key or not. I'm not going to say how we would have done it, but as kids we saw and figured things out adults didn't think we could.

There are a couple of justifications for school sentinels and other "good guys with guns" that need to be exposed. They are constantly put forward by the National Rifle Association and their political supporters as reasons for having "good guys" with guns to protect us from "bad guys" with guns. Neither rationale stands up to scrutiny.

Perhaps you heard of the celebrated military sniper who was shot and killed at a gun range in Texas. Ironically, Chris Kyle, a former Navy SEAL and sniper with 150 alleged "insurgent" kills, was unable to protect himself or a friend from an assailant, even at a range loaded with guns, and with other "good guys" with guns. Funny, you would have thought his killer would have been taken out, or at least shot right there, after he did the initial damage. No such luck. He left without a scratch.

Or how about the argument that guns offer protection for one's person and property? Before the NRA killed the research by convincing Congress to pull the funding, the Centers for Disease Control did some investigation of gun violence in the U.S. back in 1996. This is what they found, in the words of Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who was Director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

"One of the critical studies that we supported was looking at the question of whether having a firearm in your home protects you or puts you at increased risk. This was a very important question because people who want to sell more guns say that having a gun in your home is the way to protect your family.

What the research showed was not only did having a firearm in your home not protect you, but it hugely increased the risk that someone in your family would die from a firearm homicide. It increased the risk almost 300 percent, almost three times as high.

It also showed that the risk that someone in your home would commit suicide went up. It went up five-fold if you had a gun in the home. These are huge, huge risks, and to just put that in perspective, we look at a risk that someone might get a heart attack or that they might get a certain type of cancer, and if that risk might be 20 percent greater, that may be enough to ban a certain drug or a certain product.

But in this case, we're talking about a risk of not 20 percent, not 100 percent, not 200 percent, but almost 300 percent or 500 percent. These are huge, huge risks."

I'm not sure who he is, but a quotation attributed to Jef Johnson says it best for me. Forget about putting armed sentinels in every school, or guns in every home. Jef suggests, "Put a teacher in every gun store." And I'd give them a yardstick and an evil eye like Mr. Gruey used to give us kids in my sixth grade class.

Basically, guns are about power. With a gun, there's no forgiveness. There's no chance for the despair of suicide to turn into hope or for doubt to turn into faith. There's no way love can be salvaged from hate or calm from rage. It's not likely an enemy will be made a friend, or sins be redeemed, or evil transformed into good. There's finality in the power of guns.

Weapons are not a creative power. They're of their very nature a destructive power. And a society that ignores the deeper needs of the human heart and the human being in favor of an armed camp, is morally and spiritually bankrupt.

Carl Kline

On the Wing of Every Snowflake

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 02:39:00 +0000

The light was palpable. The Vermont hills were bathed in all the shades of winter’s light, surrounding, enveloping, breathtaking, breathgiving. From hilltop to valley, through field and forest, we followed the cross-county ski trails, a thread of light unfolding around us and within us, a tapestry of light, threads of morning, noon, and night. The azure sky so vast and deep, opening into the heavens. Myriads of twinkling stars at night, but the moon was shrouded in gauzy haze. Of time and change, telling of transition, not of our own a single mood to hold, steely light of snow on the wind, opaque. We awakened to the snow and skied in its falling. We felt like little figurines in a snow globe amidst the swirling flakes, all turned upside down, renewed and pure.

There is an ethereal light that shines as a gift all around, its kindling not of our own intent or making. It was there from the beginning, the light of creation in its birthing, light that was there before the light that was created on the fourth day. It is that light which the Holy Blessed One put aside and stored for the righteous in the future to come. It is a light that shines with a vision of the future. It is the light of the future, illuminating the path to its own fulfillment. Beyond human ability to create that light, it is yet for us to raise it up and allow it to shine out from the place it is stored.

Instructions are given at the beginning of the Torah portion T’tzaveh (Exodus 27:20-30:10) for the lighting of the menorah in the desert sanctuary and the Temples later to come. Instructions are given to Aaron, and so it comes to be for each one of us, to take for you pure olive oil, pressed, for lighting, to raise up light continually/l’ha’alot ner tamid. It is not for us to kindle, l’hadlik, the word usually used for lighting, as with a match, but to raise up pre-existing light that comes of a prior source. In the way of its description, the light of the menorah comes to represent the or ha’ganuz, that stored up light waiting for the future that is for us to create. Of that light raised upon the menorah of life, the Slonimer Rebbe teaches, it was not a material light/lo haya or gashmi, rather there shined through it the light of God.

Of that light, there is also meant to shine the light of God’s comfort, so hard to find sometimes amidst the darkness. Returning from Vermont, I attended a shiva service of mourning so filled with darkness, as palpable as the light had been, for a young man of nineteen whose family I had known when teaching in a Jewish day school. A freshman in college, he had died in his sleep. Ages and times reversed, his grandfather led the prayers, his mother’s voice so strong in saying the words of the mourner’s Kaddish, words to ward off the darkness. And of the stored light, even of the young man’s soul, the Slonimer Rebbe teaches in the same teaching of the menorah’s light Isaiah’s words that we say upon the ending of shiva: your sun will set no more, neither will your moon be withdrawn, for God will be your enduring light.

And then we came to Purim in the offing beyond Shabbos. It is a day of masks and merry-making, the hidden and revealed, a celebration of salvation in ancient Persia, perhaps catharsis meant in the telling, the Jews in the end slaughtering those who would have slaughtered them. It is the story told in the Scroll of Esther, called the Megillah, violence and vision, pain and pageantry, too much for God, Whose name does not appear in the scroll at all. So quickly come the transitions in all the moods and shimmering hues of life and light, so hard to navigate, every season and mood as a snowflake upon the hand, none to hold for long. One of my favorite lines in the Megillah is near the end, a line we repeat at the close of the Sabbath every week as we look to the time of stored up light revealed, la’yehudim hayta orah v’simcha v’sason vikar/there was light for the Jews, and joy, and cheer and honor. It is the reverse of the annihilation that was meant to be. There is a teaching; those who walk in darkness saw great light. So may it be for all who mourn; and for all who struggle to transcend the violence that is part of the Purim story, part of the world in which we live.

Purim is meant to be a time of turning reality on its head, so the masks and costumes and strong drink, of turning upside down what is and seems to have always been. As we did to our enemies what they had planned to do to us, the goal should not be to reverse and do the same, but to transcend and reverse an entire way of response, to truly turn reality on its head. That is the secret message, the deeper message of Purim, to change the way of our own response, even to those who would do us harm. We are told in the Book of Proverbs that the Torah is light, its practical expression, its raising up, in our hands, in our deeds of goodness, ner mitzvah v’Torah or/the commandment is a candle and the Torah is light. Of the light that shines at the end of the Megillah, the rabbis say, orah zu Torah, she’b’z’chut ha’Torah nitzlu/this light is Torah, for through the merit of Torah we are saved. It is not through arms and the doing of violence in kind that we shall be saved, but through the raising up of light to dispel the darkness. The light that shines at the end of the Purim story bids us look beyond the darkness of the Purim story itself. It is the light that was stored up at the very beginning that is for us to raise up now, finally turning reality so fully on its head that we find a new way of being in the world. It is the palpable light that is heaven’s kiss upon the earth, touching every hilltop and valley, carried on the wing of every snowflake, infusing all with gentleness. It is the light of the human soul, God’s candle in the world.

Rabbi Victor H. Reinstein

Gifts

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 02:36:00 +0000

There was a film at church last night that got me thinking about gifts. The film was "The Way." Martin Sheen is the main character and the film is directed by his oldest son, Emilio Estevez. In short, in the film, Sheen's character loses his son to a hiking expedition on the "Way of St. James" (also known as the Camino de Santiago). This is a pilgrimage of hundreds of miles that ends in Spain at a cathedral where St. James is said to be buried.

When Sheen's character goes to pick up his son's body, he decides to have him cremated and to make the pilgrimage for him. As he travels the "way," he distributes his son's ashes along the path.

The symbol for the pilgrimage is a shell. I have one hanging on a leather cord in my office, stamped Camino de Santiago on the back. I believe it's silver-plate, with the cross of St. James on the front. It was a gift, from a friend in Germany, who lives near the way.

Watching the film and seeing the shell like mine in an early scene, took my breath away. You see, I told my friend when I took the gift, I wouldn't wear it till I had made the pilgrimage, walked those many miles with my own two feet. That's why it hangs in my office around a pin and not around my neck. At my age and with bones that sometimes ache when I wake in the morning, not from walking but just from normal everyday living, I'm not sure this pilgrimage on my bucket list will actually happen. I may need someone to do it for me, with my ashes.

Some people are amazing when it comes to selecting gifts. First of all, they know the person they are gifting. They actually think about that person, what they like, what they are like, and they go for it. Often they're willing to risk. If their gift brings tears, or laughter, or joy, or stunned silence, they'll risk it. Because it's not just a thing they're giving. Whatever the gift is, there's soul, there's spirit or love in it.

Homemade things usually have soul. Christmas at our house always brings some homemade gifts from friends that we've come to expect and treasure: homemade candy, homemade bread and jam, homemade caramels, homemade cinnamon candy, and homemade cards. The personal touch always seems to give it a special quality, a bit of spirit.

I wish I were better at gift giving. Probably I don't spend enough time meditating on the person I'm gifting. Although come to think of it, I've had lots of practice with the humorous kind. Family have come to expect it of me. So when my brother unwrapped the Christmas gift that had leftover tea bags in it, everybody laughed, including my brother (at least he smiled). Or when I would don my santa mask and play the santa role for friends and family, everyone knew they were going to get something wild pulled from a box of discarded auction remnants from out in the shed.

Thinking of auctions, I always wonder about those old photographs you find. Somebodies grandfather, sitting stiffly for the photographer, dressed in Sunday best and wearing his most dignified expression. Or the children, looking nervously uncomfortable or a bit robotic, so you know a parent is standing just to the side of the camera ready to pounce should they blink. Who knows who these people are? Were the photographs given as gifts and now are long forgotten, unknown to the living?

Another gift giving I'm moderately good at is my annual book give away. It all started when I left my office in campus ministry. There were way too many books, collected over many years, to take home. So we filled three banquet tables with books and put them in the lounge with signs that said "please help yourself, they'e free." Everyone did. They were all gone in four days.

Now the book give away happens every year just before Christmas. The reason I say I'm good at it is, I often suggest certain books for certain people. They are actually in my mind when their book goes on the table. This once a year event of gifting others allows me to gift myself the rest of the time and the book piles don't get overwhelming. I can't think of another gift with as much soul as a good book.

Sometimes, as I work at a local antique store, I'm aware that a purchase becomes a gift. The buyer, appreciating the quality and history of an item, realizes there is more to the item being purchased than appears on the surface. And often that realization comes in a memory of what grandmother had on her dining room table, or grandfather had out in the barn. The purchase becomes a gift, with the spirit of those who went before attached by memory to the material in ones' hand.

"When you makest presents, let them be of such things as will last long; to the end they may be in some sort immortal, and may frequently refresh the memory of the receiver." So says the 17th. century English divine, Thomas Fuller.

Of course, there are other kinds of gifts than those we purchase or even hold in our hands. Children are often born with certain gifts that begin to be revealed as they grow and mature. There was the film of the 5th. grader playing varsity basketball on the news last evening. He's small, but good. He seems to have a special gift.

And then in so many ways we've all been given unexpected and often undeserved gifts. In Christian theology it's called "grace." It's all those everyday experiences where we're surprised by beauty, or joy, or love. We see the snow falling gently on an all white world or see the bright red of a cardinal against the snow or watch our child making a snow angel. Small gifts with lots of soul.

Carl Kline

Softening Our Hearts, Learning to Love God

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 05:28:00 +0000

The oppression is deep, the chains of slavery heavy on our feet. There are glimmers of hope in the air, Moses coming before Pharaoh, a drama unfolding toward freedom. A dramatic tension turns on the beginning of the Ten Plagues. It is troubling, suffering brought to one people on behalf of another. That we are troubled is good, worrisome when we are not. The other is our oppressor; to be troubled for the oppressor’s suffering is a sign of our ability to look deeper toward a common humanity, however buried beneath hubris. Knowing that we are joined even to the oppressor, we yet strive and struggle to overcome, deep in our hearts believing that we shall, many to suffer along the way, our own and of the oppressor.

The setting of the story is long ago, in the ancient land of Egypt. It is easy to read the account of Israel’s enslavement and liberation as a story about another time and place. The great danger is to forget that it is about us. The Torah speaks the language of an eternal present, yearning for a flowering of hope that depends on us. The Torah is not a history book, but a guide for life, a map through time, pointing to a path upon which all are meant to walk. The Slonimer Rebbe always asks of particular accounts in the Torah, mah ha’nitzchiyut/what is eternal, what is the eternal message, how is it about us? At the beginning of a teaching concerning the Ten Plagues, the Slonimer says, The Holy Torah is a Torah of life, to teach the way in which we shall go/l’horot et ha’derech asher yelchun ba. He then says of the Exodus from Egypt, it is an eternal matter, and is not simply a story of the past/eyn zeh rak sippur ha’avar…. This comes to be the meaning of the timeless challenge given voice at the Passover seder, b’chol dor va’dor/in every generation a person is obligated to see themself as having coming out from Egypt. It is a story ever renewed in our own quest for freedom.

The Ten Plagues are not simply about suffering brought upon Pharaoh and his people for the sake of Israel’s redemption. They are meant to train us to identify with the pain of others, even of the oppressor. We are to feel the pain of the victim from deep within ourselves, knowing what it is like. Of oppressor and victim, we then look more closely at the unfolding of the plagues and we see how easily we too can become the oppressor, how easily our own hearts can harden. The plagues teach us about the way we direct our steps and our hearts in life, whether we come to incline our selves toward good or toward evil. The path toward one or the other is shaped ever so gradually, formed of incremental steps, from our faltering first steps as children to the sure strides of the adults we become.

Through the Ten Plagues, we see a hard heart become calcified. Arrogant in his own power, Pharaoh becomes stuck in his ways, unable to change. That is the danger that we are to see and take note of, to be wary of rigid ways that enslave. A dynamic lost in translation and clouded by popular assumption, God does not harden Pharaoh’s heart until the end. Through the first five plagues, the verb for hardening of the heart is either passive, va’yechezak lev Paroh/and Pharaoh’s heart remained hard, or it is active in relation to Pharaoh hardening his own heart, va’y’chabed Paroh et libo/and Pharaoh hardened his heart. In the sixth plague, a transition begins to occur, with God hardening Pharaoh’s heart for the first time. In the seventh plague there is a return to the passive tense, his hardened heart a reflection of the callous way to which he himself has become enslaved. The shift happens gradually, in the back and forth a shimmering of conscience, of insight, perhaps ready to let go, to release the slaves, to release himself, but so hard to change. In the end, Pharaoh is not able to let go, habituated to the ways of power, to greed, his steps too firmly set on the path he established long ago.

Among the messages of the plagues that calls out to us, if we would soften our hearts to hear, is a teaching to be heeded by each one and all together, don’t become stuck in ways that hurt. Given to Israel while still in Egypt, while still enslaved, a commandment for the future, free the enslaved, do not oppress. In matters of both national policy and personal practice, for individuals and nations, the plagues offer teaching that comes with great urgency, whether we incline toward good or evil is up to us, so the way shall be set, a “tipping point” to come. When hearts are softened to hear the cries of others, goodness welling up, all the plagues of human making shall be washed away in a torrent of tears. As the Torah is meant to guide, the humble author of the “Sefer Ha’Chinuch, the Book of Instruction,” an anonymous medieval work, points to the purpose of the commandments, to the doing of holy deeds: to teach our souls to love the good. Softening our hearts, learning to love the good, may that be our way in the world.

Rabbi Victor H. Reinstein

Mama Earth Mojo on the Move

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 20:08:00 +0000

What a day at the Forward on Climate rally in DC! A determined, passionate crowd estimated at 50,000 strong. 150 bus-loads of citizens from 30 states. 170 partner organizations. Wow. Mama Earth mojo is revving up!

If you'd like to see some photos I took in DC, check out this link (you don't have to be a Facebooker to view them):http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.582339675128411.147063.434151056613941&type=1&l=7be601df27

Now allow me to share some quick thoughts....

On Saturday, the day before the rally, I visited the Holocaust Museum in DC. My most vivid memory: A room full of shoes that once belonged to Jewish people who were killed in one of the death camps. A faint smell hung in the room, an exhaust fan in the ceiling unable to completely remove it--the smell of old leather, and dust, and earth, and smoke....

Now fast forward from that museum to the rally and related events in DC. Listen to the strong women of the First Nations of Canada describing how their peoples are suffering because of tar sands mining projects. And hear me when I say this: What is happening to them is a holocaust of a different sort, and just as evil. What ever happened to the cry, "Never again!"?

And the First Nations are not alone. Think of how many other people and creatures are already suffering due to climate change. They are "expendable," and therefore "killable"--because of humanity's addiction to fossil fuels. Mother Earth herself is being made a gigantic sacrifice zone, where greed trumps life. Some call this ecocide. We could just as easily call it Earth holocaust.

We dare not accept that, my friends.

What I know now that I didn't know yesterday is that tar sands mining is even more devastating than I thought. The depth of my moral outrage at this point seems bottomless. But my commitment to defending the Earth and her inhabitants, and my ability to do just that, are also bottomless--not because of any special gifts I have, but because like you, I AM SOMEBODY. And because I am Somebody, I can do Something. And I am not alone. The numbers of people wanting to protect the Earth are surging, and we've got tremendous power. We may not have money, but we've got the truth, and we've got to wield the truth like a sword. The truth can overcome anything, but we've got to pick it up and use it.

Are you ready? Pick up the sword. Put your fist in the air. Keep love in your heart. Be strong in your spirit--

And let's go!

Phyllis Cole Dai

There Is No One Else

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 18:51:00 +0000

From the very beginning of the Torah a tension is set forth, a thread begins to unfold that defines human existence. Creation itself becomes the paradigm, the emergence of purpose and meaning out of nothingness. Even before there are people, there is modeled an inexorable journey toward hope. Encompassing the realities of life and the vicissitudes of history, it is the journey from chaos to harmony, from destructiveness to wholeness, from oppression to freedom, from God’s spirit all alone to the flowering of the human spirit. It is all contained in the second line of the Torah, v’ha’aretz hay’ta tohu va’vohu v’choshech al p’nei t’hom/And the earth was tangled and confused, and darkness was over the face of the deep, v’ru’ach Elokim m’rachefet al p’nei ha’mayyim/and a breath of God hovered over the face of the waters.

In the two parts of this verse that sing the birth pangs of creation, the rabbis rooted the entire drama of human history, the tension that plays out, as they see it, from exile to redemption. Peering through the lens of one people’s story, the rabbis see in the first part of the verse, in the earth all tangled and confused, Israel’s experience of exile and oppression: tohu/tangled – this is the Babylonian exile, and vohu/confused – this is the Persian exile, and choshech/darkness – this is the Greek exile, al p’nei t’hom/over the face of the deep – this is the Roman exile…, and the Egyptian exile encompasses them all. In the second part of the verse, in the gentle stirrings of creation, God’s breath upon the water, the rabbis see the ultimate redemption in universal terms, the time of swords turned to plowshares. God’s breath is to be the breath of the Messiah and is described as the fluttering of a dove above her nest/k’yonah ha’m’rachefet al ha’ken, an image of peace from the very beginning.

In the beginning of the second book of the Torah, the Book of Exodus we encounter the journey in real time, the playing out of human history through the experience of Israel. All of what has come before is the backdrop, having set the stage for the inevitable, and now the exile and slavery begin. The narrative begins in the present tense, These are the names of the children of Israel who are coming to Egypt/ha’ba’im Mitzrayma (Ex. 1:1). Not to be read as history, the Torah in all of its parts is about us, in the present tense. That we are to feel the exile as our own, the Slonimer Rebbe says, each and every word of the holy Torah is meant to teach us paths of life, that we might ask, what does this teach us? As at Passover, we are to see ourselves as having come out of Egypt, as the oppressed slaves, striving to overcome.

Each of us is entrusted with the sacred task to bring redemption. Each of us is the liberator, each in our own way, according to our own gifts. Called to his mission in this portion, to the task to which he is uniquely suited, Moses pleads with God to find someone else. Struggling to evade the destiny that is his, Moses says, mi anochi/who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the children of Israel out from Egypt? Through the telling of the rabbis, God responds with exasperation, im eyn atah go’alam eyn acher go’alam/if you do not redeem them, there is no one else who will redeem them.

These words to Moses are meant for each of us, a call to each one to step forward and take our place in the unfolding of history. We are each as midwives called to birth the promise of creation from the very beginning. In the unfolding from chaos to harmony, exile to redemption, the entire Torah is the telling of a journey from slavery to freedom. All of the details that are given are given along the way of the journey. Now enslaved to all that binds humanity, brutalized by the violence done to earth and people, it is for each one of us to lead the way out and let the journey to freedom begin. If we do not do our part, there is no one else.

Rabbi Victor H. Reinstein

Rivers and Dams

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 19:34:00 +0000

"Think more like a river and less like a dam." This is a sentence that caught my attention in an article I saw in an issue of National Geographic. The article was about some of the great protected rivers in the United States. I don't remember the author of the article but I quickly memorized the line.

Still, as much as I like the line, I'm not always sure how to implement it. The flow of my mind can be filled with dams.

Take lutefisk, for instance; dam. I can't get my mind around that one. Or how about sardines out of a can, or oysters, or even shrimp. I mean, I can't imagine how some people actually chew oysters. It's bad enough to imagine them slithering down my throat in a single swallow. And how can people eat shrimp when they still have that funny tail thing, on or off. I think like a dam when it comes to eating some of those creatures from the ocean, including octopus.

Since my father was a minister, I grew up in the forties and fifties in a fairly conservative Christian home. We kept the sabbath (Sunday) holy. We read the Bible in a literal way. I had never heard of biblical scholarship and didn't know you could read Scripture contextually. There was a huge dam holding my religious thought in place. I remember feeling guilty, because the day we arrived in New York City to start Seminary, was a Sunday. Here we were, unloading the car and "working" on the sabbath.

Seminary blew a hole in my dam of fundamentalist piety. I learned how asking a few simple questions, like Who, When, Where, What and Why about the Bible, revealed all of this astounding and interesting information about an ancient yet modern way of understanding the world. My mind started flowing more freely over unknown terrain, all along the riverside, often spilling over the surrounding floodplain. What can one say except that it was a great release. That's how my mind felt.

That brings me to dams on the Missouri River here in South Dakota. I don't know what's happening in Montana. But if our mild winter weather in South Dakota is any indication, people may be wishing we had some of that water from previous flood years in the system this year. Maybe folks will just blame the Corps of Engineers again. But one of the dams in our thinking we need to remove is floodplain development. Why in heavens name would you build a nuclear power plant on a Missouri River floodplain, except you'd have a cheaper and closer water source; but at what risk? I suppose you can come up with the same cost-benefit rationale for building them on earthquake faults? Or why do people insist on building homes on a floodplain?

A Lakota friend once told me we have too little respect for what he called "the water people." He personified water. Water had rights, just like human beings. One of the rights of water was to flow freely, just like we humans want to be able to travel without restrictions. What would you think about roadblocks between your hometown and the next. Dams! No travel allowed.

A friend was showing me an article the other day about the partnership that's beginning to emerge between Oberlin College and the city of Oberlin, Ohio. They are experimenting with a new venture that promises to break down some dams in the way people think about town and gown, as well as the way they understand development. The project is about development from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. It promises bottom up development as distinct from top down.

We need lots of holes in those old dams of development. Often, for communities like Oberlin and my own, always looking to outside entities ultimately results in de-development. There is so much clean water that can flow from releasing the waters of community and college creativity behind those dams of "it can be done better by someone else."

Thinking about this project in Oberlin, I couldn't help but think about the dam I've heard in local decision making, "we've never done it that way before." It kept the City Council from considering glass pave, or grass pave, or a permeable concrete, when my neighborhood decided to pave our alley. So we have asphalt, that cost an arm and a leg when oil was at its' highest peak, and all our neighborhood water flows into a waste water system that pollutes local creeks and has to be rebuilt since it can't accommodate all the water flowing from newly paved alleys, parking lots, etc. What a dam it can be, (especially in churches), "we've never done it that way before."

And likely the biggest dam has been built around warfare and violence. People find it so hard to imagine any other way of being in the world, even with examples like Gandhi and King and Thich Nhat Hanh and Jesus and so many unknown to the larger consciousness.

There's a form of meditation where you let the mind flow freely, like a river. You don't pass judgment on where it goes. You recognize that your thoughts can come and go, jumping here and there, like a monkey in a tree. You just gently bring your thoughts back to the center of your mind. Gradually, with practice, it takes you to unexpected places and uncharted depths.

Meditation helps me when my mind is cluttered and damned. It's a useful and healthy practice for anyone. It can help us think more like a river and less like a dam.

Carl Kline

Starting the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 21:40:00 +0000

I awoke with a question trying to form itself at 5:30 this morning. Before even making it to breakfast I was impacted by the headlines telling of an armed man who has kidnapped a five year- old little boy from his school bus and is holding him hostage in an underground bunker in a backyard somewhere in Alabama.

With the issue of gun control in the foreground of so many conversations, it seems that the universe actively conspires to keep it from sliding into the inner pages of the newspapers. The forces in favor of instituting a variety of measures aimed at limiting access to a range of weapons organize their strategies. The pro-gun elements re- trench and dig in to resist any limitation on their freedom to be armed.

The question that has been trying to form is one about the mindset of the most vocal and vociferous proponents of the 2^nd Amendment right to bear arms. What I find myself wanting to ask is “What is the unnamed terror that resides in the collective unconscious of a population that needs to have unencumbered personal access to weapons of the kind that caused the Newtown devastation?”

As I listen to the rhetoric of the leadership of the NRA and other equally strident voices in favor of gun freedom, something inside me wants to ask, “What are they afraid of?” “What is it in their spirits that makes the world so dangerous for them that they must be armed for any eventuality?”

As I keep nattering about with the question, I realize that it will probably not be answered. There is something about great fear that seems to get expressed in anger. The anger precludes any insightful conversation about the hidden foundation beneath the anger and the literal defense of that subterranean foundation that requires being heavily armed.

The issue of gun control is a fertile playground for self -examination. In recent weeks I have been struggling to discern the middle way between a soft and, perhaps, unrealistic compassion on the one hand and a fear based anger response on the other. I want to be able to respond to my perceived enemy (symbolized by the angry proponent of gun ownership) in a compassionate way – to understand the suffering that motivates him but I do not wish to be lazily complacent in the face of a very difficult and dangerous conundrum.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s guidance for managing personal anger is, through mindfulness, to accept and embrace and cradle my own anger as I would a hurt child, to attend to it with compassion. If I can learn to do this perhaps I can extend the same comfort to another angry and fearful person. Sadly, on any given day, I would rather they just undergo a complete transformation and give up their gun-wielding ways without my having to interact at all. Still – that seems to be the first level of engagement – cradling and comforting my own anger –my own fear - - coming into intimate and compassionate relationship with the same fear that resides in me as resides in the pro-gun human being.

In my morning reading two brief statements are so conveniently juxtaposed as to both challenge and support my questing today. First, I encounter Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche: “The burning flames of anger have parched the stream of my being.” In the presence of this teaching, I am reminded that this is the nature of the spiritual dilemma I encounter in my own question and it prompts another: “Who am I in the face of the parched stream of being who faces me behind the defense of gun-ownership?”

The second statement I encounter is from Ian McClaren: Be compassionate, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”

And so my day begins…..

Vicky Hanjian

Love and Fear

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:55:00 +0000

I'm not sure about you, but I'm feeling plenty upset and uneasy these days as I read about all the spiraling gun sales in the United States. Honestly, in an area like I live in, Brookings S.D., where crime is relatively modest, why are 8 people a day applying for concealed weapons permits?

So we read the other day about a shooting in Brookings, where an argument between a young man and his girlfriend's father, escalated to the point where the guy goes to the bedroom, grabs a handgun and proceeds to threaten and shoot the other. How many arguments in my community will escalate to new levels with more handguns?

Or for heavens sake, isn't it plainly ironic that on "Gun Appreciation Day" in America, 5 people were shot at 3 different gun shows?

Or what about the young men fooling around in Pierre S.D. that left one of them dead and the shooter changed forever. How many new gun sales will mean adolescents, just fooling around, will end up in the morgue?

Or I wish some of these proponents of more guns in schools or on college campuses would have to sit with those surviving a friend's suicide, because they were depressed (more common than the common cold) and couldn't face life anymore. Then, too, a gun was handy.

Or let them explain the 15 year old in Houston who was upset with his mother so he got a gun and let it express his feelings, killing her, then three siblings, then his father, and prepared to kill many more till a friend convinced him to talk to someone at church. All of this because he was upset with his mother, feeling suicidal, and had access to an assault weapon and several other guns belonging to his father.

The story goes, his father wouldn't let him play violent video games, but he did. How many 15 year olds get angry with their mother and disobey their father? How many kids play violent video games, without consequences for the good guys or seeing what really happens with dead people, and are unable to truly distinguish fantasy from reality? So let's all have guns and violent video games around the house?

Or let these proponents of guns for all, like befalls pastors and counselors, try comforting the bereaved or the frightened, because of a multiple killing in the community. I suppose they would comfort people by explaining how they will fight for more guns for everyone.

God help us!

I've been thinking a lot about this rush for guns lately. Perhaps because it's high on the national agenda; perhaps because the shooting incidents are coming at us in news stories daily; perhaps because I've always believed there were alternatives to violence and the human impulses that drive it.

One of those human impulses is fear. People are afraid. So they buy guns and if they become fearful enough, of life, of others, of authority, they use them. Sometimes, instead of always associating weapons with warriors and those who are courageous, we should recognize the face of cowardice and fear. People are afraid of life and what it brings, of truly living it. People are afraid of other people. People are afraid of those who exercise authority over them and sometimes want to strike back at a boss, a supervisor, a teacher, a politician.

The increase of fear in our land coincides with a decrease in spiritual conviction and practice. Fearlessness is only possible with a grounding in confidence, trusting in a higher power and the ultimate might of right. As Gandhi claimed, "Fear of man argues want of faith in God. Only he trusts to his physical strength who has no faith or very little faith in God's omnipresence." And again, "When God is our protector and companion, why or whom shall we fear, however fierce be the storm, however deep the darkness."

Gandhi's point of view is repeated by the first letter of John in the New Testament, "There is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love." This is the same passage where the writer gives us the most simple yet comprehensive definition of God in all Scripture, "God is love."

Or we might listen to the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., who we say we honor but seldom follow. "I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. 'And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid.' "

Carl Kline

Small and Large

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 20:12:00 +0000

There was a story this morning from the Associated Press about a new storage site that can hold material from millions of CD's in a space the size of the tip of a little finger. The material can be stored in this site for centuries, as long as it is kept in a cool, dry and dark place and isn't disturbed. The researchers who discovered this storage site placed all 154 Shakespeare sonnets, a photo, a scientific paper and a 26 second sound clip from the "I Have a Dream" speech of Martin Luther King on a barely visible bit of this material.

You might think this is some new and fabulous computer chip. It isn't. It's DNA, the storage site for characteristics of all things living.

If new discoveries continue to boggle the mind with the smallness of things, it works in the other direction as well. A recent article crossed my desk where astronomers are now convinced there are billions of worlds like the earth in our galaxy, many of them circling stars like our own sun. Estimates are the Milky Way galaxy has a total of a hundred billion planets in all.

Of course, then we have to recognize there are likely more than 170 billion observable galaxies in the universe. When you multiply the number of galaxies by the number of worlds in each galaxy the numbers become unfathomable.

How is it then that the human being is so arrogant and self righteous? In the face of such awesome realities, where the universe seems to go on forever in both large and small dimensions, how is it that we make our understandings and convictions and limited knowledge the sine qua non of existence?

I'm convinced much of our problem is ignorance, material distraction and lack of a contemplative practice.

In materialistic societies like my own, we have turned education into preparation for productivity. Instead of going to the university to find your place in the universe, students attend to find their place in the job market. Or, at least that's the way the university tries to structure itself. So you have university Presidents sitting on the boards of multinational corporations they become beholden to serve and accepting capital improvements from institutions wanting to employ their student "products."

If you really want to discover your place in the universe, overcome your ignorance and avoid all the material distractions of the day, you may have to seek it outside the bounds of traditional institutions, including the church.

So many Christian churches these days preach the "prosperity gospel." You know, God wants you to be rich, to have what you need and want. So don't be afraid to go after it. Seldom do people find time for meditation and contemplation as church becomes another thing to do, another distraction on the road to personal well being and personal progress. Seldom are we encouraged to stand in awe at the magnificence of the creation, the amazing harmony, and to discern our place in it.

Gandhi said, "It has been well said that the universe is compressed in the atom. There is not one law for the atom and another for the universe." And again, "As with the self, so with the universe. It is not possible to scan the universe, as it is to scan the self. Know the self and you know the universe."

Carl Kline

Opposites

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 21:27:00 +0000

I am currently teaching an Introduction to Ethics class. It is quite interesting to engage with the students seeking to pull from them their ideas, values, understandings while hoping they assimilate the technical language of ethical theories.

I have in this class a young man full of life and ideologies. He is a passionate wonderful young man and if he and I were to fill out a conservative to liberal line graph, we would find ourselves at opposite ends.

In class recently this young man says, “Our society is going in the wrong direction. We have become permissive and allow people to do bad things.” Guess what? I AGREE!

But how he and I analyze this statement, or how we identify the “why” of this statement will greatly differ.

He bases his opinion on granting gay rights, reproductive choice and a lack of “God” in our schools, which is much different than why I say our society is going in the wrong direction. I say it based on the devaluation of women, the poor, the “other.” I say it based on the power systems that are corrupt and exist in schools, businesses, and churches. I say it based on the exploitation of people, relationships and things that are holy and sacred.

How do we find a way to meet with such different ideas of what makes our society broken? How do we find a way to come to the table as one humanity seeking a common goal of living in peace?

Kristi McLaughlin

Reverence

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 20:33:00 +0000

While purging my library of books that I have read and will not read again, I came across a small volume by Paul Woodruff titled “Reverence”. I scanned again some of the underlining I had done when I first read it in 2003. In the light of the recent slaughter of innocents in Newtown, Connecticut, Woodruff’s words ring with astounding clarity: We have the word “reverence” in our language, but we scarcely know how to use it. Right now it has no place in secular discussions of ethics or political theory.

A little farther along I read: Simply put, reverence is a virtue that keeps human beings from trying to act like gods…..To forget that you are only human, to think you can act like a god – this is the opposite of reverence.

As I read the newspapers and follow the conversations and rhetoric about a proposed ban on assault weapons, Woodruff’s words on reverence interweave with the strangely confusing “logic” of arguments in favor of armed police and personnel in our schools, in favor of the right of Americans to be armed to the teeth if they so choose. I ponder the disconnect. Albert Schweitzer’s notion of “reverence for life” swims in front of my eyes. I read a little farther in this small volume that almost made my “discard” pile: Ancient Greeks thought that tyranny was the height of irreverence, and they gave the famous name of hubris to the crimes of tyrants. An irreverent soul is arrogant and shameless, unable to feel awe in the face of things higher than itself. As a result, an irreverent soul is unable to feel respect for people it sees as lower than itself - - ordinary people, prisoners, children….Any of us is better for remembering that there is someone, or Someone to whom we are children; in this frame of mind we are more likely to treat all children with respect. And vice versa: if you cannot bring yourself to respect children, you are probably deficient in the ability to feel that anyone or anything is higher than you.

Just yesterday, the Boston Globe reported the removal of violent video games from several rest areas on a Massachusetts highway in response to a parent’s protest when he saw a young child playing a video game where the child was virtually aiming an automatic weapon at someone else. Reverence – respect for children – somehow they get lost in the battle between the right to bear arms and the right of a child to live a life of hospitality and compassion. One parent’s respect and reverence for the life of his child led to a nonviolent action that got results.

Woodruff’s words again: Reverence has more to do with politics than religion. We can easily imagine religion without reverence; we see it, for example, wherever religion leads people into aggressive war or violence. But power without reverence – that is a catastrophe for all concerned. Power without reverence is aflame with arrogance…politics without reverence is blind to the general good and deaf to advice from people who are powerless.

As I listen to the many and complex arguments and opinions regarding the reshaping of our gun control laws and as I read the statistics about the number of lives lost in America each year to gun violence, I wonder if, as a culture, we are on the slippery slope to our loss of reverence for life. Power without reverence seems to have the edge in the deliberations over gun control and an assault weapons ban. Collectively, we seem incapable of protesting as effectively as that one father did in the service of his respect and reverence for his child’s life and wellbeing.

Curiously, I sat in services this morning and realized that I am seeing more parents are accompanying their children to shul, including them in the Torah discussions, exposing them to other adults who respect them and engage them in thoughtful dialogue around serious questions. My inward heart rejoices in this homely sign of hope. Perhaps this is our nonviolent protest against the absence of reverence –that we work more carefully to surround our children with esteem, and wisdom and respect – that we consider with them what a life of reverence and moral rigor might look like. Sooner or later, these children will emerge on the national scene of politics with their sense of respect and reverence for human life intact - - and they will make a difference.

Meanwhile, our local paper announces that budget restrictions will not permit the cost of having an armed police officer in our local high school and the discussions continue about whether weapons make us feel safer. As Joe Biden says, there simply has to be a place of common ground where we can all meet to create a safer world for our children. Perhaps the way there is through the examination of the role that reverence plays in all our decision making.

Vicky Hanjian

Good Guys and Bad Guys: The Grim World of the NRA

noreply@blogger.com (Carl Kline) — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 18:56:00 +0000

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." So says Wayne LaPierre, chief executive and spokesperson for the National Rifle Association (NRA), in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

Honestly, seeing him on national television and hearing him voice that infantile cops and robbers mentality and utterly repugnant statement took my breath away. His philosophy of life places all of us in the jungle, prepared to kill or be killed; survival not just of the fittest but the best armed. Really, have we come to that as a country?

I've already seen far too much of that mentality and it's consequences. It's happening daily, after Sandy Hook. How about the guy in New York state who shot and killed the two firemen on Christmas eve after he set his house on fire with his sister in it. He used the same weapon as at Sandy Hook, one he got a friend to buy for him, since as an ex con who killed his grandmother with a hammer years earlier, he couldn't own guns. He had three guns at the scene.

Or how about the 11 year old in Utah who took a .22 pistol to school at the insistence of his parents, to "protect himself" after Sandy Hook. His teacher found out about it after he pointed it at the head of a girl at recess and told her he was going to kill her.

Or how about the Alabama guy who didn't think his wife was receiving proper care at a hospital so he brought his gun at four in the morning and wounded three before he was killed in a shootout with police. Or how about the urban killing fields like in Chicago, so often ignored by the media, where gun violence is an everyday occurrence. Gun murders, some of them multiple since December 14, are in the hundreds.

Having just returned from two weeks of driving on Massachusetts highways, I can't imagine a gun in every car. Not knowing my way on occasion, I likely would be dead now. And South Dakotans in my town probably didn't hear about the school buses in Haverhill, MA. Somebody was shooting them with pellet guns, shattering bus windows and frightening children inside. One window shattered next to the head of a child. So, Wayne, should we give every child on the bus a gun to shoot back, or must every school bus carry an armed "good guy?"

Sorry Wayne, I'll opt for a different vision of the society I'd like to inhabit.

I'm sure LaPierre believes what he said. But he's certainly paid well to say it. The latest compensation figure I found for him was $845,469. It wasn't quite as much as what the Executive Director of General Operations of the NRA, Kayne Robinson earned, at $1,027,217. And when you check the compensation figures for many of the top executives, they fall in that $400,000 plus income bracket.

Looking at those figures, I began to have a little different perception of the NRA. I'd always seen it as an organization of mostly guys who like to hunt. I'm not a hunter myself but know many who I respect. They are hunters, not killers. Some use bows. Many use shotguns. They walk the fields for pheasants or they stalk deer. They don't want or need assault weapons. They make up some of the membership of the 4 million in the NRA, perhaps the great majority, I don't know. But if so, their voices are not the ones being heard in the halls of Congress and in state legislatures around the country through the likes of ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) and through the Corporate Partners and Funders of the NRA. 74% of those corporate funders are arms manufacturers. It's their voice being heard in political circles.

In the four counties around Newtown, Connecticut where the massacre of the innocents took place, there are more than 400 gun dealers. There are more gun dealers in the U.S. than there are MacDonald's restaurants and Supermarkets. In the same Newtown where Sandy Hook elementary is located, is the headquarters of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. They've spent $1.7 million lobbying on gun legislation since 1998 and spent three quarters of a million on elections since 1990. They're one of several organizations, besides the NRA, overwhelming the political potency of organizations like the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Just the NRA alone spent 73 times more than the Brady Campaign on lobbying the 112th. Congress.

So, once again, we're talking about big money behind big organizations influencing big government. Sandy Hook will likely fade into the distance just like Aurora and Tucson and Virginia Tech and Columbine and all those other multiple killings we would like to forget. And the NRA will continue to press for more and more potent weapons in the hands of more and more "good guys."

At the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference, LaPierre told a cheering crowd "the guys with the guns make the rules." It's not intelligence or knowledge or creativity or morality or character, or God forbid, love of neighbor, that's the basis for rule making. No, for Wayne, it's guns.

Unless more of us who have another vision we want for our children and grandchildren find our voices and act on that vision, the U.S. will remain in the hands of the likes of Wayne, a veritable killing field.

If we only will, we can renew our commitment to mental health care for those who need it. We can teach creative conflict resolution in our schools and work places. We can pass some sensible legislation that keeps assault weapons off the streets. And most of all, we can reclaim a fundamental assumption implicit in our nation, that we're all in this together. It's not a dog eat dog, good guys and bad guys world; it's one of mutual aid and love of neighbor. That's our heritage and our mandate for the future.

Carl Kline