[+] A bedtime meditation/prayer on forgiveness

by Rabbi Michael Lerner

A central message of the Tikkun Community is that inner healing and transformation is an important element in, though not the totality of, the social, economic and political transformation of the world.

I thought I'd share with you a prayer that I use each evening before I go to sleep. Perhaps you might want to use this prayer, or modify it in any way that fits for you (for example, eliminate the prayer element and turn it into a before-sleep meditation)...

[Please] use in any way that seems fitting to you...


Bedtime Prayer of Forgiveness

YOU, my ETERNAL FRIEND, WITNESS now that I forgive anyone who hurt or upset me or who offended me-- damaging my body, my property, my reputation or people that I love; whether by accident or purposely; with words, deeds, thoughts or attitudes.

I forgive every person who has hurt or upset me. May no one be punished because of me. May no one suffer from karmic consequences for hurting or upsetting me.

Help me, Eternal Friend, to keep from offending You and others. Help me to be thoughtful and not commit outrage by doing what is evil in Your eyes.

Whatever sins I have committed, blot out, please, in Your abundant kindness, and spare me suffering or harmfulillnesses. Help me become aware of the ways I may have unintentionally or intentionally hurt others, and please giveme guidance and strength to rectify those hurts and to develop the sensitivity to not continue acting in a hurtful way. Let me forgive others, let me forgive myself, but also let me change in ways that make it easy for me to avoid paths of hurtfulness to others.

I seek peace, let me BE peace. I seek justice, let me be just. I seek a world of kindness, let me be kind. I seek a world of generosity, let me be generous with all that I have. I seek a world of sharing, let me share all that I have. I seek a world of giving, let me be giving to all around me. I seek a world of love, let me be loving beyond all reason, beyond all normal expectation, beyond all societal frameworks that tell me how much love is "normal," beyond all fear that giving too much love will leave me with too little. And let me be open and sensitive to all the love that is already coming to me, the love of people I know, the love that is part of the human condition, the accumulated love of past generations that flows through and is embodied in the language, music, recipes, technology, literature, religions, agriculture, and family heritages that have been passed on to me and to us. Let me pass that love on to the next generations in an even fuller and more explicit way.

May peace prevail on earth and let it begin with you and me.

Rabbi Michael Lerner

Religious Left Seeks Center of Political Debate: Call For Stronger Media Voice

by Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, June 10, 2004; Page A02

More than 350 political liberals of many faiths gathered in Washington yesterday to begin what some pollsters say is a quixotic task: restoring the voice of the religious left in the nation's political debate.

"Progressive religious voices, which historically have fueled so much social change in this country, seem to have been washed out of the public dialogue in recent years," said John D. Podesta, a Roman Catholic who was White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton. Podesta now heads the Center for American Progress, the Democratic think tank that organized the conference to highlight the "proud past" and "promising future" of the religious left.

Speakers celebrated the role of religious liberals in the civil rights movement, protests against the Vietnam War, the nuclear freeze campaign and sanctions against South Africa's former apartheid system. They called for a stronger, more clearly religious voice against the Bush administration's foreign policy and for environmental stewardship, universal health insurance, and efforts to fight poverty at home and abroad.

Yet even as the conference at times took on the enthusiasm of a pep rally, there were sobering reflections on why the religious left lost its prominence after the 1970s and how hard it may be to regain it. At the core of those concerns was a simple set of statistics, reinforced by numerous polls: People who say they are frequent churchgoers vote Republican by a ratio of about 2 to 1.

"All the surveys show that if you ask about either church attendance or attitudes -- how important is religion to you in your daily life? -- you get the same thing: the more religious, the more conservative," Gallup pollster Frank Newport said in an interview. "I certainly remember the days when being religious meant fighting for civil rights and social justice, and it's not that those people aren't still out there. But religious liberals are a small minority today."

Some liberals dispute that conclusion.

"Church attendance is not the only indicator of living out your faith," said the Rev. Brenda Bartella Peterson, executive director of the Clergy Leadership Network, a group devoted to "leadership change" in Washington. "The vast majority of people of faith in this country are center to left, politically. But if you only measure religious commitment by butts in the pews, that's what you get."

Conference attendees also blamed the media, saying news reports tend to play up the simple dichotomy between the secular left and the religious right rather than citing the full range of religious views.

"It really bothers me that whenever the media and others talk about people of faith, they talk only about the religious right and don't seem to realize there are people like me, who grew up Baptist and believe in God and have strong religious values, but who want different policy outcomes," said Melody Barnes, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former chief counsel to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

But some of the Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims at the conference also said they have felt excluded or even disdained by the secular left. The Rev. James A. Forbes Jr., senior minister at the Riverside Church in New York City, told the audience in his keynote address that "we have got to find a way not to be embarrassed" to speak about religion with secular progressives.

And there was no lack of hand-wringing among the conferees about what the religious left has done wrong.

"Part of it is our fault. We should take back the Bible, take back the theological principles and not just cede them to the religious right," said the Rev. Susan B. Thistlethwaite, a minister in the United Church of Christ and president of the Chicago Theological Seminary. "It's not good enough to talk in vague terms about values. We can do better than that. We can make the theological arguments."

Historian Taylor Branch said that in the 1970s, the abortion issue split the progressive religious alliance that had formed in the civil rights movement. Since then, the left has done no better than the right in "moving beyond polemics," he said.

"Not many people who call themselves pro-choice actually want to celebrate abortion, and not many of those who call themselves pro-life want to put women in jail for having abortions," he said. "It's more of a show than a debate, with polarizing options that aren't real. Both sides profess that they love children, but you don't really have the two sides doing very much to cooperate to reduce the number of neglected and abandoned and unwanted children, or to care for them."

The Rev. Charles Henderson, a Presbyterian Church (USA) minister who publishes the interfaith quarterly CrossCurrents, said that from the 1950s through the 1970s, the mainline Protestant denominations took for granted that their values would infuse television and the public schools. Evangelicals, who felt shut out of establishment institutions, created their own schools and broadcast outlets. "Then you wake up one day in 1984 and the Christian right is dominant, and you wonder why," he said.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

[+] The Wall is Worse Than You Can Imagine

by Uri Avneri, Tel Aviv

The Nightmare Comes True - I thought it was terrible. I was wrong. It is far, far worse!

These words sum up my feelings at that moment. I was standing on a hill overlooking the infamous Kalandia checkpoint. Below me was a narrow road, packed with Palestinians in the blazing sun, 30 degrees centigrade in the shade (but there was no shade) trudging towards the checkpoint. Very soon this road will be transformed. It will be widened to three lanes and be reserved for Israelis: on both sides of it, 8-meter high walls will spring up. It will allow the settlers of the Jordan valley to reach Tel-Aviv in about an hour. The Palestinians living on either side will be cut off from each other.

This is a small part of the new reality that is rapidly being created on the West Bank and that is changing the country we knew and loved beyond recognition.

I was standing near the edge of a-Ram. Once this was a small village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, on the road north to Ramallah. Since successive Israeli governments have prevented the Palestinians in East Jerusalem from building new homes, the severe overcrowding has forced a mass exodus to a-Ram, which has grown into a town of 60 thousand inhabitants. Most of them are officially still Jerusalem residents, carrying the blue identity cards of inhabitants of Israel. This allows them to come to Jerusalem, a drive of 10 minutes, work there, tend to their businesses, go to the hospitals and the universities there.

This is about to stop. Along the age-old road from Jerusalem to Ramallah (leading on to Nablus, Damascus and beyond) construction of the 8-meter wall is due to start any minute now - not across the road, but along the middle of the road, the full length of it. The inhabitants of a-Ram, east of the wall, will not only be completely cut off from Jerusalem, but also from all the townships and villages to their west - their relatives, the schools which thousands of their children attend, their cemetery and their places of work. A small part of a-Ram remains outside the wall and will be cut off from the main part of the town in which they live.

But this is only part of the story. Because the wall (or in some places a barrier, consisting of a fence, trenches and roads) will completely surround a-Ram from all sides. The sole exit from this walled-in area will be a narrow bridge connecting it with the adjacent area to its east, consisting of several Palestinian villages, which will be surrounded by another barrier. This enclave will have a narrow exit to the Ramallah enclave. Through this it will be possible for a person from a-Ram to reach Ramallah, God willing, by a roundabout route of some 30 kilometers, instead of the ten minutes or so it took before the occupation. A few kilometers to the west of a-Ram lies a group of villages centered around Bidou (where five Palestinians have been killed so far in protests against the wall). This area is rapidly becoming another enclave, completely surrounded by a separate barrier. The only way out will be a tunnel to be built under road No. 443 - the settlers' road of which the section I mentioned before will become part. All existing roads to Bidou have long since been cut off by trenches or piles of dirt, one can enter only at one spot controlled by a checkpoint. This will cease to exist. If a villager from Bidou has some business in a-Ram, he will have to go through the tunnel to Ramallah, turn to the enclave east of a-Ram and enter a-Ram by the narrow bridge, a semicircle of about 40 kilometers instead of a drive of a few minutes. A-Ram will be especially hard hit. Because of its location, it has developed in the last few years into a kind of transshipment point for goods travelling from Israel to the West Bank and vice versa. Israelis and Palestinians do business there. All this will end with the wall. The means of livelihood for many of its 60 thousand inhabitants will disappear.

This is only one example of what is happening now all over the West Bank, turning it into a crazy quilt of walled-in enclaves, "connected" by bridges, tunnels or special roads, which can be cut off at any moment at the whim of the Israeli government or of a local army officer - and, all around them, roads-for-Israelis-only, expanding settlements and military installations. Every Palestinian town - Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Kalkilia, Bethlehem, Hebron and others - will become the "capital" of a tiny enclave, cut off from all the others, from their "hinterland" and villages, except by tortuous roundabout routes. Fifty-five percent of the West Bank will be Israeli, the Palestinian enclaves will amount to 45% (about 10% of historical Palestine).

This is no longer just a nightmarish future prospect - it is happening now, visible to the naked eye, while Sharon babbles about a "disengagement" to happen sometime in the future in one small part of the occupied territories. Practically no Israeli has any idea about all this. It may be happening one kilometer from his home (in Jerusalem, for example), but it might as well be on far side of the moon. The media are not interested, nor is the world. This is the peace Sharon has been dreaming about. This is the "Palestinian State" George Bush promised. This is a cornerstone of the new democratic Middle East. It will lead, of course, to bloodshed on an unbelievable scale. No people on earth will submit to such a life. For thousands and thousands of young Palestinians, a martyr's death will be preferable.

And sometime in the future this awful structure will be torn down, like the Berlin wall, which, evil as it was, was much less inhuman. As always, after much suffering, the human spirit will prevail. -- Uri Avneri, leader of Gush Shalom in Tel Aviv, Israel

[Thanks to Uri Avneri and to Rabbi Michael Lerner, Tikkun Mail, for forwarding.]

Bush Attempting To Forge Church-Based Political Machine

Americans United for Separation of Church and State

Washington, D.C.--A plan by the George W. Bush reelection campaign to enlist 1,600 "friendly" houses of worship in Pennsylvania is a misguided attempt to build a church-based political machine that should be dropped immediately, says Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Americans United asserts that the plan jeopardizes the tax-exempt status of churches and could divide congregations with partisan politics.

"This is the most shocking example of politicizing churches I've ever seen," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. "The last thing this country needs is a church-based political machine. The Bush campaign should abandon this plan immediately.

"By enrolling churches in an election scheme, the Bush campaign is endangering those churches' tax exemptions," Lynn continued. "That's bad enough, but the introduction of partisan politics into the pews will also divide congregations and entangle politics and religion in very unhealthy ways."


An e-mail from the Pennsylvania affiliate of the Bush Campaign says, "The Bush-Cheney '04 national headquarters in Virginia has asked us to identify 1600 'Friendly Congregations' in Pennsylvania where voters friendly to President Bush might gather on a regular basis."

The e-mail says the campaign would like to "identify a volunteer coordinator who can help distribute general information to other supporters." It goes on to say, "We plan to undertake activities such as distributing general information/updates or voter registration materials in a place accessible to the congregation."

In a telephone conversation with AU's Lynn, Luke Bernstein, the Pennsylvania Bush staffer who sent the e-mail, confirmed that the program is under way.

Lynn noted that the Internal Revenue Code strictly forbids churches, which are tax exempt, from endorsing or opposing candidates for public office or intervening in partisan campaigns directly or indirectly.

[+] Reagan's Legacy

by Jim Lowder

I'm pretty cynical about the U.S. media, so I don't know why I am so bothered by the non-stop coverage of the "Reagan legacy," with commentators trying to outdo one another in making us all feel warm and gooey. They are depicting him as all of the super-heroes all bound into one.

Maybe it disturbs me because my personal experience was so different. I moved to California in June, 1981, about six months after Reagan was first elected president. He had previously served a stint as governor of that state, where he had an enormous impact. I would soon learn about it first-hand.

By 1982 California cities were inundated with homeless people, with more than 30 percent of them having mental disabilities. Turns out that Reagan, as governor, had pretty much dismantled the mental health system (among other things) in California.

As Reagan's social policies were implemented in the early 80s, the rich got richer and the poor got - well, precious little, if anything. One columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle summarized Reagan's policies as "unleashing greed."

Our church was besieged with families needing shelter, food, clothing, actually, just about everything. Homelessness had previously been consigned to a few "rescue missions." But now a new genre of services known as homeless shelters and transitional housing were coming into being. What had been a couple hundred homeless persons in San Francisco now mushroomed into thousands. But job training, mental health services, and affordable housing programs were being reduced at both the federal and local level. At the same time, under the leadership of Reagan, the U.S. was creating the greatest "peacetime" financial deficit in its history.

About 40 miles east of San Francisco were the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. These labs were the "brain center" of U.S. nuclear weapons development. And they were an example of how a nation could be spending so much money while more and more of its citizens were being pushed into poverty. Many people of faith and conscience recognized that, tried to close the labs, and received an education about the U.S. prison system from the inside.

And then there were the refugees. Despite everything Reagan could do to stop them, refugees poured into the U.S. By 1986, it was estimated that 50,000 men, women, and children from El Salvador alone were living in San Francisco. There were brutal dictatorships all over Latin America supported by the U.S. And where there wasn't one, Reagan and his men were determined to create one. Most notably in Nicaragua. Reagan's support of the "contra war" in Nicaragua cost more than 30,000 lives.

Through the media, the Reagan administration tried to market this effort as working for democracy. But too many of us had personal connections for that lie to be completely pervasive. Our church, like many others, had a "sister congregation" in Nicaragua and we traveled there and met with folks who gave us a picture of a completely different reality.

Not that Reagan limited his strange and perverse international policies to Latin America. A certain Donald Rumsfeld in the Pentagon was good buddies with a "friendly" leader named Saddam Hussein. It seems that no one in the media coverage of Reagan's legacy is talking about the years of U.S. support of Iraq under Hussein.

And, of course, there was that little matter of the Reagan administration covertly selling weapons to, of all places, Iran. And, if that wasn't illegal and immoral enough, then using the money to fund rebel contras seeking to overthrow a legitimate government in Nicaragua. And killing thousands of innocent citizens. And lying about it. And then lying about lying about it. And then denying that Reagan had known or said anything about any of this in the first place.

And so while Reagan was playing superhero in the White House, the members of our little church (like countless other churches all over the U.S.) were frantically finding housing for homeless families, sheltering refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala (where a previous U.S. superhero had overthrown a democratically elected president and replaced him with a genocidal dictator), providing residence for a Nicaraguan family, and a host of other things that resulted from the now "feel good all over and be nostalgic" Reagan legacy.

I certainly have sympathy for Nancy, other members of Reagan's family, and his close friends. Losing a loved one is difficult and traumatic, even when that death has been expected and anticipated for so long. I know that it is a tremendous loss for them and I have prayed for them. Such loss binds us all together as a human family.

And I understand that the death of a former president, prime minister, or top leader is a significant event for any country and needs to be ritualized.

But forgive me if I don't stand up and cheer or shed a tear with all of the corporate media falling all over themselves to salute the Reagan legacy of leadership and statesmanship. I've shed too many tears for too long over the pain and suffering that his policies caused.

Which brings me to one final Reagan policy that affected so many of us in the U.S. and literally millions of people around the world. As Reagan began his first term in office, what was to be known later as the AIDS epidemic was also beginning. Reagan had an opportunity to be truly a superhero had he made it a priority to find a cure for this virus and to provide support and care for those who contracted it. But his policies of neglect and indifference ensured that a world-wide pandemic was our destiny. Reagan demonstrated his homophobia as the disease's first impact in the U.S. was in the gay community. It led him to comment at one point that "maybe the Lord brought down this plague because illicit sex is against the ten commandments." Bad policy and bad theology.

My pastoral ministry in California was more defined by the AIDS epidemic than by any other single factor. In many ways, it affected my entire life. I lost count of the funerals of friends and colleagues as the number swelled into the dozens. Jerene and I were married in 1994. On our first anniversary, we reflected that eight persons in our wedding pictures were no longer living because of AIDS.

The media coverage of the last few days has done one thing for me. I have paused and reflected on Reagan's legacy. And I have wept again for all those who suffered and died because of his policies and practices. For their sakes, I will rededicate myself to work with renewed energy for peace with justice. Because those same policies are still alive in Washington and other parts of our world.

Jim Lowder
Interim Director
Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America

P.S. Pasted below is a very poignant letter about Reagan and the AIDS epidemic sent to me by a friend.

For Reagan, AIDS was a blind spot
By MATT FOREMAN

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, wrote this letter yesterday to his friend Steven Powsner, the former president of the New York City Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center.


Dear Steven,
I so much wish you were here with me to tell me what to do. You would know if I should comment on President Reagan's death or just let the accolades pass. But you're not here. You died in November 1995, at age 40, of complications of AIDS.

The policies of the Reagan administration saw to that.

I do feel for the family and friends of the former President. The death of a loved one is always a profoundly sad occasion, and Reagan was loved by many. I have tremendous empathy and respect for Nancy Reagan, who lovingly cared for him through excruciating years of Alzheimer's.

But even on this day I'm not able to set aside the shaking anger I feel over his nonresponse to the AIDS epidemic.

AIDS was first reported in 1981. Reagan could not bring himself to address the plague until March 31, 1987. By then, there were 60,000 reported cases of full-blown AIDS - and 30,000 deaths.

I remember that day, Steven. You were staying round-the-clock at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, caring for your dying partner of 15 years, Bruce Cooper. There would be another 41 days of utter agony for both of you before Bruce died.

During those years of White House silence and inaction, how many other dear friends did we see sicken and die hideous deaths?

I know for a fact that you would be alive today, Steven, if the Reagan administration had mounted even a tepid response to the epidemic. If protease inhibitors had been available in July of 1995 instead of December, you'd still be here.

I wouldn't feel so angry if the Reagan administration's inaction was due to
ignorance or bureaucratic ineptitude. But it was deliberate. The government's response was dictated by evangelical Christian conservatives who saw gay people as sinners and AIDS as God's just punishment.

Remember? The White House director of communications, Patrick Buchanan, would later go on to write that AIDS was nature's revenge on gay men. Reagan's secretary of education, William Bennett, and his domestic policy adviser, Gary Bauer, made sure that science (and Christian decency, for that matter) never got in the way of politics or what they considered God's work.

I do not presume to judge Ronald Reagan's soul or heart. But I do know his AIDS policies resulted in despair and death.

That is why I write this letter. And why you will never read it.

Love, Matt

Religious Leaders Assail Amendment on Gay Marriage

by David D. Kirkpatrick

Published: June 4, 2004

Officials of several religious organizations, including the Presbyterian, Lutheran and Episcopal churches, sent an open letter to Congress yesterday opposing the proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

"Although we have differing opinions on rights for same-sex couples, we believe the Federal Marriage Amendment reflects a fundamental disregard for individual civil rights and ignores differences among our nation's many religious traditions," the letter said. The United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association, which recognize same-sex marriages, also signed the letter. So did representatives of the Anti-Defamation League, the Union for Reform Judaism, the liberal Alliance of Baptists and the Quakers.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, helped orchestrate the letter. As United Church of Christ minister, he said, "I am disturbed that even though I can perform a religious ritual to unite a same-gender couple, the state won't recognize it because some different religious group thinks I am theologically wrong."

But Diane L. Knippers, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a group that seeks to push the liberal Protestant denominations in a more conservative direction, called the letter "a blatant attempt by left-leaning religious leaders to undercut and intimidate other religious voices." She said the amendment would define marriage in civil law, not religious ritual.