Bill Moyers' address at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY, 5/20/2006

Pass the Bread

 

by Bill Moyers
Text of Baccalaureate Address
Hamilton College, Clinton, NY
May 20, 2006

I will make this brief because I know you have much to do between now and your farewell to Hamilton tomorrow, and that you are eager to get out and enjoy this perfect day in this glorious weather that somehow never gets mentioned in your promotional and recruitment literature.

One of my closest friends and colleagues, David Bate, graduated in 1938, and patriot that he is, headed right for the U.S. Navy where he served throughout World War II. David's father graduated from Hamilton in 1908 and two of his children continued the tradition. I asked David what he learned at Hamilton and he told me Hamilton is where you discover that being smart has nothing to do with being warm and dry...Just kidding! Thank you for inviting Judith and me to share this occasion with you. Fifty years ago both of us turned the same corner you are turning today and left college for the great beyond. Looking back across half a century I wish our speaker at the time had said something really useful--something that would have better prepared us for what lay ahead. I wish he had said: "Don't Go."

So I have been thinking seriously about what I might say to you in this Baccalaureate service. Frankly, I'm not sure anyone from my generation should be saying anything to your generation except, "We're sorry. We're really sorry for the mess you're inheriting. We are sorry for the war in Iraq. For the huge debts you will have to pay for without getting a new social infrastructure in return. We're sorry for the polarized country. The corporate scandals. The corrupt politics. Our imperiled democracy. We're sorry for the sprawl and our addiction to oil and for all those toxins in the environment. Sorry about all this, class of 2006. Good luck cleaning it up."

You're going to have your hands full, frankly. I don't need to tell you of the gloomy scenarios being written for your time. Three books on my desk right now question whether human beings will even survive the 21st century. Just listen to their title s: The Long Emergency: Surviving the Convergence Catastrophe; Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed; The Winds of Change: Weather and the Destruction of Civilizations.

These are just three of the recent books that make the apocalypse prophesied in the Bible...the Revelations of St. John...look like child's play. I won't summarize them for you except to say that they spell out Doomsday scenarios for global catastrophe. There's another recent book cal led The Revenge of Gaia that could well have been subtitled, "The Earth Strikes Back," because the author, James Lovelock, says human consumption, our obsession with technology, and our habit of "playing God" are stripping bare nature's assets until the Earth's only consolation will be to take us down with her. Before this century is over, he writes, "Billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be kept in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable." So there you have it: The future of the race, to be joined in a final and fatal march of the penguins.

Of course that's not the only scenario. You can Google your way to a lot of optimistic possibilities. For one, the digital revolution that will transform how we do business and live our lives, including active intelligent wireless devices that in just a short time could link every aspect of our physical world and even human brains, creating hundreds of thousands of small-scale business opportunities. There are medical breakthroughs that will conquer many ills and extend longevity. Economic changes will lift hundreds of millions of people out of absolute poverty in the next 25 years, dwarfing anything that's come along in the previous 100 years. These are possible scenarios, too. But I'm a journalist, not a prophet. I can't say which of these scenarios will prove true. You won't be bored, that's for sure. I just wish I were going to be around to see what you do with the peril and the promise.

Since I won't be around, I want to take this opportunity to say a thing or two that have nothing to do with my professional work as a journalist. What I have to say today is very personal. Here it is:

If the world confuses you a little, it confuses me a lot. When I graduated fifty years ago I thought I had the answers. But life is where you get your answers questioned, and the odds are that you can look forward to being even more perplexed fifty years from now than you are at this very moment. If your parents level with you, truly speak their hearts, I suspect they would tell you life confuses them, too, and that it rarely turns out the way you thought it would.

I find I am alternatively afraid, cantankerous, bewildered, often hostile, sometimes gracious, and battered by a hundred new sensations every day. I can be filled with a pessimism as gloomy as the depth of the middle ages, yet deep within me I'm possessed of a hope that simply won't quit. A friend on Wall Street said one day that he was optimistic about the market, and I asked him, "Then why do you look so worried?" He replied, "Because I'm not sure my optimism is justified." Neither am I. So I vacillate between the determination to act, to change things, and the desire to retreat into the snuggeries of self, family and friends.

I wonder if any of us in this great, disputatious, over-analyzed, over-televised and under-tenderized country know what the deuce we're talking about, myself included. All my illusions are up for grabs, and I find myself re-assessing many of the assumptions that served me comfortable much of my life.

Earlier this week I heard on the radio a discussion in New York City about the new Disney Broadway production of Tarzan, the jungle hero so popular when I was growing up. I remember as a kid almost dislocating my tonsils trying to recreate his unearthly sound, swinging on a great vine in a graceful arc toward the rescue of his distressed mate, Jane, hollering bloody murder all the time. So what have we learned since? That Buster Crabbe and Johnny Weismuller, who played Tarzan in the movies, never made that noise. It was a recording of three men, one a baritone, one a tenor, and one a hog caller from Arkansas--all yelling to the top of their lungs. This world is hard on believers.

As a young man I was drawn to politics. I took part in two national campaigns, served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and have covered politics ever since. But I understand now what Thomas Jefferson meant back in 1789 when he wrote: "I am not a Federalist because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men, whether in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or anything else. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." Of course we know there'll be no parties in Heaven. No Democrats, no Republicans, no liberals, no conservatives, no libertarians or socialists. Just us Baptists.

The hardest struggle of all is to reconcile life's polar realities. I love books, Beethoven, and chocolate brownies. Yet how do I justify my pleasure in these in a world where millions are illiterate, the music never plays, and children go hungry through the night? How do I live sanely in a world so unsafe for so many?

I don't know what they taught you here at Hamilton about all this, but I trust you are not leaving here without thinking about how you will respond to the dissonance in our culture, the rivalry between beauty and bestiality in the world, and the conflicts in your own soul. All of us have to choose sides on this journey. But the question is not so much who we are going to fight against as it is which side of our own nature will we nurture: The side that can grow weary and even cynical and believe that everything is futile, or the side that for all the vulgarity, brutality, and cruelty, yearns to affirm, connect and signify. Albert Camus got it right: There is beauty in the world as well as humiliation, "And we have to strive, hard as it is, not to be unfaithful...in the presence of one or the other.

That's really what brings me here this afternoon. I did put myself in your place, and asked what I'd want a stranger from another generation to tell me if I had to sit through his speech. Well, I'd want to hear the truth: The truth is, life's a tough act, the world's a hard place, and along the way you will meet a fair share of fools, knaves and clowns--even act the fool yourself from time to time when your guard is down or you've had too much wine. I'd like to be told that I will experience separation, loss and betrayal, that I'll wonder at times where have all the flowers gone.

I would want to be told that while life includes a lot of luck, life is more than luck. It is sacrifice, study, and work; appointments kept, deadlines met, promises honored. I'd like to be told that it's okay to love your country right or wrong, but it's not right to be silent when your country is wrong. And I would like to be encouraged not to give up on the American experience. To remember that the same culture which produced the Ku Klux Klan, Tom DeLay and Abu Ghraib, also brought forth the Peace Corps, Martin Luther King and Hamilton College.

And I would like to be told that there is more to this life than I can see, earn, or learn in my time. That beyond the day-to-day spectacle are cosmic mysteries we don't understand. That in the meantime--and the meantime is where we live--we infinitesimal particles of creation carry on the miracle of loving, laughing and being here now, by giving, sharing and growing now.

Let me tell you one of my favorite stories. I read it a long time ago and it's stayed with me. There was a man named Shalom Aleicheim. He was one of the accursed of the Earth. Every misfortune imaginable befell him. He lost his wife, his children neglected him, his house burned down, his job disappeared--everything he touched turned to dust. Yet through all this Shalom kept returning good for evil everywhere he could until he died. When the angels heard he was arriving at Heaven's gate, they hurried down to greet him. Even the Lord was there, so great was this man's fame for goodness. It was the custom in Heaven that every newcomer was interrogated by the prosecuting angel, to assure that all trespasses on Earth had been atoned. But when Shalom reached those gates, the prosecuting angel arose, and for the first time in the memory of Heaven, said, "There are no charges." Then the angel for the defense arose and rehearsed all the hardships this man had endured and recounted how in all the difficult circumstances of his life he had remained true to himself and returned good for evil.

When the angel was finished, the Lord said, "Not since Job himself have we heard of a life such as this one." And then, turning to Shalom, he said, "Ask, and it shall be given to you."

The old man raised his eyes and said, "Well, if I could start every day with a hot buttered roll..." And at that the Lord and all the angels wept, at the preciousness of what he was asking for, at the beauty of simple things : a buttered roll, a clean bed, a beautiful summer day, someone to love and be loved by. These supply joy and meaning on this earthly journey.

So I brought this with me. It's an ordinary breakfast roll, perhaps one like Shalom asked for. I brought it because it drives home the last thing I want to say to you. Bread is the great re-enforcer of the reality principle. Bread is life. But if you're like me you have a thousand and more times repeated the ordinary experience of eating bread without a thought for the process that brings it to your table. The reality is physical: I need this bread to live. But the reality is also social: I need others to provide the bread. I depend for bread on hundreds of people I don't know and will never meet. If they fail me, I go hungry. If I offer them nothing of value in exchange for their loaf, I betray them. The people who grow the wheat, process and store the grain, and transport it from farm to city; who bake it, package it, and market it--these people and I are bound together in an intricate reciprocal bargain. We exchange value.

This reciprocity sustains us. If you doubt it, look around you. Hamilton College was raised here by people before your time, people you'll never know, who were nonetheless thinking of you before you were born. You have received what they built and bequeathed, and in your time you will give something back. That's the deal. On and on it goes, from generation to generation.

Civilization sustains and supports us. The core of its value is bread. But bread is its great metaphor. All my life I've prayed the Lord's Prayer, and I've never prayed, "Give me this day my daily bread." It is always, "Give us this day our daily bread." Bread and life are shared realities. They do not happen in isolation. Civilization is an unnatural act. We have to make it happen, you and I, together with all the other strangers. And because we and strangers have to agree on the difference between a horse thief and a horse trader, the distinction is ethical. Without it, a society becomes a war against all, and a market for the wolves becomes a slaughter for the lambs. My generation hasn't done the best job at honoring this ethical bargain, and our failure explains the mess we're handing over to you. You may be our last

chance to get it right. So good luck, Godspeed, enjoy these last few hours together, and don't forget to pass the bread.

God Is Still Speaking...

There is a voice that doesn't use words. Listen ~ Rumi

 

Spirit … where are you?
1 Cor. 2: 6-13    John 14: 15-17

Reverend Cathy Fransson

---

That same morning Cleopas and I decide to leave Jerusalem. We could hardly take it in, the terrible reality that Jesus was gone. Emmaus was not the most exciting place to go, but it was someplace when any place would do. It was the going we needed, not the place.

 

That very morning the women came back saying they had seen a vision of angels; he was alive. We didn't go. Others did and saw nothing. Our best move was to get out of town, try to forget what we'd seen and heard, think what to do next.

 

A stranger came alongside; we looked only at the path. He fell in step and asked why we were so depressed! He didn't know? Didn't everyone know of Jesus claiming he was God's son? Meeting his death at the hands of our own chief priests!

Cleopas and I filled him in as we walked; it passed the time. Our hearts were heavy; telling the story kept going, dropping our words into the dust, trampling them underfoot—as if we could forget them.

 

Last Tuesday night I ate dinner in the dining room next to the china cabinet my mother refinished, its curved glass panels and door testament to her care for her mother's most prized possession. Tears came to my eyes. There was the old photo of her, my grandmother and me, a stair-step of height and age. Grandma's etched crystal goblets, Mother's 1940s etched goblets. Not that long ago Mother insisted I move the cabinet to my house; it was time. It seemed the beginning of an end. And now, it's all over. Both Mother and Dad gone in only four short years. Life is different now. I treasure each small keepsake my mother cherished, but don't even know all the stories.

 

You've been here? Haven't we all? The day of the accident, the morning after the murders. The afternoon after the planes brought down the towers when all we saw were replays of crumbling buildings, over and over again.

 

Every trauma, every disaster has an aftermath, a time the papers say "counselors" are sent to the middle or high school after students are killed by one of their peers. The day we try to foresee and prevent. The horrors we know only through the tales of those who lived through them, and through television reenactments and the books that follow, recounting how ordinary the day was, how unsuspecting the friends.

 

We live in a violent time. So did Jesus. Roman centurions marched into any province they chose and completely decimated the population in a few hours. Roman roads, 50,000 miles of them, originating in the Roman Forum, were built to facilitate troop movements, but also made travel
and communication easy for others, including Saul, who became Paul. Such a convenience could be a gift or it could be deadly. Crucifixions, the capital punishment of the day, were everywhere, posts and beams in some places stretching as far as one could see, where broken bodies would be thrust up to die of trauma, exposure, and the weight of the body collapsing the lungs.

 

Today simple white crosses mark the place where families and friends offer flowers and tributes at the site of deaths—intentional or accidental.

 

There isn't one of us in this sanctuary not touched by loss. No one who hasn't had to collect herself the afternoon after the tragedy, or the morning after the midnight call to the ER, or had to walk out of the hospital with belongings no longer needed.

 

The mound of eye glasses in the National Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. is almost more moving than the pictures of the barracks where Jews and homosexuals were warehoused in Germany. People's glasses, once perched on their noses to read the daily news, or write a letter or make a note on a calendar. The most ordinary things.

 

The dream dies. The future collapses like a house of cards. There is only the whoosh of wind as it soars in and takes the rest of the dream with it, and then silence, fluttering paper, tinkling shards of glass.

 

Spirit, where are you?

God's world demands a "but" at such junctures. As the story goes, Gracie Allen left a farewell note for George to be read after her death: "Never place a period," she wrote her husband, "where God has placed a comma."

Easter people are called to be "people of the comma," people who believe that the last word has not been spoken of life or death, war or peace, injustice or freedom, exclusion or welcome, hope or despair. God is still speaking! No matter who we are, no matter where we are, no matter in what circumstance we find ourselves, God is still speaking. [UCC media piece]

 

We're celebrating Eastertide, the great fifty days of Easter between the resurrection and Pentecost, when the Spirit appears to the Galileans—when, Paul explains, God pours out God's spirit upon all flesh; sons and daughters will prophesy, youth will see visions, old ones will dream dreams.

 

But now, in the time between the death of Jesus and that glorious revelation of spirit, many struggle to find God. Indeed, in any of the holocausts I have already mentioned, and those you are remembering in your heart, all of us struggle to find God still speaking in the midst of our everyday terror, pain, and loss.

 

Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor explains that since our language has limits, "we know what it is to come to the end of speech—to come to the very end of language—and to gaze slack-jawed at what still lies beyond." She compares it to standing at the edge of a cliff over the sea and feeling a strange, frightening pull toward the brink. "There is a human fascination with limits that is both holy and chastening at the same time." [When God is Silent, Cowley 1998, p. 91] Cleopas and his friend, who many think is a woman, were standing on the brink of a precipice.

 

At the edge of the abyss, in that silence, we most need to stutter ourselves into speech, speak what is unthinkable and now must come to pass. Theologian Nelle Morton spoke of the need for us to "hear one another into speech." It is in just this silence that we most need to stammer our deepest fears, our closest comforts, the experience of being lost—and found—at the same time.

 

When I was finishing my theological education in the late nineties, I sometimes opened my mouth—and nothing came out. I wanted to respond, to comment, to contribute my own experience. But having discarded much of the speech of my forebears in the churches I attended faithfully over the years, there was no language that would carry my lived experience. No words came at all.

 

Sometimes that is just what we need.

 

Taylor comments that, for the same reason, Jesus never completed the stories he told. His hearers left his gatherings shaking their heads: the elder brother didn't go into the house to welcome his sibling; there was no commentary on the farm manager who paid all the workers the same wage at the end of the day, regardless how long they had worked. "[Jesus] left the problems in [the stories], so that his listeners could experience the silence for themselves."

 

Silence. No doubt the two who walked to Emmaus spent the first hours of their sojourn in silence. Eventually they began to tell their tales of the long weekend. And then a stranger came alongside and invited them to tell him. He didn't say, What did you think of the fabulous resurrection my father pulled off! He simply asked them what they had been talking about. God is like that: appearing when we least expect, showing up in the people and circumstances we are least likely to identify as godly.

 

Silence. If we are full of answers, how will others ever hear the silence that leads them to their own speech? Silence beckons us each into our own darkness, our lack of solutions, our very real encounter with the unknown, something we face sometimes in the middle of the night, as the clock ticks from 2 to 3 a.m. Or in the morning after, when everything has changed as it had for the followers of Jesus, who had to invent the day for themselves for the first time in years.

 

Did they remember the parables? The comforting sayings John eventually records years later? I will not leave you comfortless? I doubt it. John tells us God sends the Spirit of Truth whom the world does not know, assuming we do. "You know him, because he abides in you and he will be in you."

 

The Spirit will be in you.

 

Silence.

 

When I was away in Orlando, I spent a few hours at the pool in the afternoon sun. It was too hot to sit in a lounge chair. There was no breeze. So to stay cool I waded in the pool and just walked around, luxuriating in the sparkling turquoise water, musing over the morning sermon. Then I spied a tiny little bug floating in front of me. It looked like a ladybug, and I tried to scoop it up and put it back on the poolside so it could fly away.

 

I managed to get it into my palm and discovered it was not a ladybug at all. It was segmented like an ant. I don't know what it was. But even in my hand it began to flex its wet wings and unstick its legs. I dropped it off on the hot tiles at the edge of the pool, and was delighted to see it flutter its wings, move all its legs and, I hoped, fly into the trees safe from drowning.

 

That done I turned back to the water and looked ahead of me to see yet another bug, and as I headed for her, several more, and finally at least a hundred bugs floating, some already drowned.

 

I stopped rescuing bugs. There were too many. I can do only so much, and that has to be enough. But I witnessed these, and remember them, and in a way, it was a hearing into speech of their own experience.

 

Cleopus and his friend listened to Jesus tell them the whole gospel from Moses up to the present: Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory? Then, as he seemed to be heading on down the road as they turned in for the night, they begged him to stay for supper.

 

The three of them sat down together at a little wooden table with a rough loaf of bread. As he blessed the loaf, broke it, and offered it to them, they saw him. They saw Jesus. And then he was gone.

 

Taylor tells us "no one will listen to us unless we can offer them evidence of our own relationship to silence." You have to walk there. You have to sit there. You have to confront your own darkness before you can comfort anyone else. You have to know how to drag the truth out of your own heart, bug by bug, before you can offer solutions to others. It isn't really a solution they're after. It's you, and your experience with death and resurrection, like Cleopas.

 

Spirit, where are you? Paul explains that God's truths are meant to be secret, hidden from common sense, often illogical, but to those who know God, they're as clear as the lines in our palm, as clear as the ordinary bread we will break this morning and share among us.

 

It is God's wisdom we yearn for, but what is more important is our yearning itself, the desire God has woven into the sinews of our bodies that prepares us for the relationship God cherishes with us.

 

Silence. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard what God has prepared for those who love God." [Isa 64:4] Neale Walsh made a lot of money describing his conversations with God, but he has nothing to say compared to what each of us can say to each other, if we're listening. When we listen, when we pay attention, we hear God in news headlines, in overheard conversations on a crowded bus, in the sharing of friends who're not talking about God at all, in the crystalline pool where the insects float, in the rustling grass.

 

When God is silent, it is our turn to pay attention, to be silent, too, to allow God time to speak.

 

All these circumstances we've remembered here are merely circumstances after all. And it is not the circumstances that determine God's presence in our world—or God's absence. The circumstance we anguish over is not the problem. Our connection with God is.

 

Just before his trial and execution Jesus tells the disciples, "You will all leave me, but I will not be alone. My Father is with me." Jesus did not focus on being abandoned; he focused on his relationship with God.

 

Is God silent? The question is, rather, are you listening?

Confessions of a Liberal Mystic

by Rev. Rodney R. Romney

Periodically I receive communications of this nature: "We appreciate
receiving your sermons and thoughts, but we sometimes wonder: How is
Rod? How is everything going with him personally."

It has never been my intention to hide or disguise what is going on in
my mind and heart, but I confess I am still a bit reluctant to apply a
descriptive tag to myself, as I did in the above title. That is
because who I am today is not necessarily who I will be tomorrow.
Moreover, words, such as liberal or conservative, mean different
things to different people. But here, to the best of my ability is an
attempt to share how well things are going with me currently in my
outer as well as in my inner world.

I have heard people say, particularly ministers, that in retirement
they are happier and freer than they have ever been in their lives.
When retired ministers say that, it generally means that they have
finally found a place of freedom in their theology, which they could
not express when they were serving in a church. That has not been
true for me. In the two churches I served during my forty years in
ministry (Lakeshore Avenue Baptist in Oakland, CA and First Baptist in
Seattle, WA), I always felt totally free and unrestricted when it came
to sharing my thoughts and ideas.

There was never a time when I could not share what I was thinking or
how I was feeling, and as a result my time in ministry was never a
period where I felt muzzled or unhappy. Yet I am happier in my
retirement because I am now responsible to no one but myself.
Moreover, I don't feel that I have retired, or ever will retire, from
the theological and spiritual exploration that has comprised most of
my life.

This is what sustains me today. Here are some of the ideas which I
often ponder. Here is what gives me joy in this period of my life. I
am responsible to no one but myself for my thoughts and conclusions.
I am free to cast out suppositions that no longer seem important or
which don't work for me any more. I am free to make mistakes, as we
all do from time to time. I am free to worship where, when and how I
please. I am free, totally free.

Much of that has always been true for me to some degree, but during my
ministry I could never escape from the reality that a group of people
who paid my salary had some ownership in what I said and did. I was
responsible to them as their pastor, and if I had doubts about a
theological premise, such as the virgin birth of Jesus, the
infaillibility of the Bible, or the existence of a place called hell,
it was best to keep that to myself. Today that is no longer true.
Now when I am a guest speaker at a church or an organization, I am
free to speak from my heart and mind. If people don't like what they
hear, they don't have to invite me back.

For example, I applaud the controversy that Dan Brown has caused with
his book, "The DaVinci Code," because it says to me that some of what
we once thought to be inviolable religious truths may not be so at
all. I also appreciate what contemporary writers and thinkers are
saying about matters of biblical interpretation and the ongoing
discussions of what Jesus said and who he was. There is currently a
new freedom of religious scholarship and thought being expressed by
many that resonates with many of the ideas I have carried in my mind
for a long time.

I still believe that Jesus Christ and his teachings are central to
Christian thought and practice, but I don't think we can know with
exact certainty what he taught, due to the fact that he never wrote
down anything, as well as the long period of oral transmission that
followed his life. Nor do I see Jesus as the force that holds us
apart from other religions; rather he is the driving force that should
send in search of new ways to communicate with one another. The
essence of what he taught, "Love one another as I have loved you,"
should bring us together with all religions rather than holding us
apart.

The Christian church has been notably wrong in the past on some
matters, and its current division over the matter of homosexuality is
an example of its most recent error. Just as the church slowly
amended its views on the equality of race and gender, it will
ultimately need to amend its views on sexual orientation and realize
that all sexuality is genetic and not a matter of choice. It needs to
be celebrated, not castigated.

The church has also been wrong in its views of an infallible Bible.
Modern scholarship has proved that the creation and transmission of
the Bible was a human process, subject to human errors and limited
thought. We are closer today to knowing how the Bible was created and
what it really says than we have ever been before, but there is more
to come. We should welcome these changes, for they will give us
greater freedom and accuracy in creating a world of acceptance and
compassion for everyone. They should help us fulfill the commandment
of Jesus that we become one with each other and all that is.

I no longer view God as a person. Rather God is the mysterious and
mystical presence that inhabits all life and constantly seeks to bind
us together in love and compassionate service. I no longer use prayer
as a pattern of words to express what I want. Rather prayer for me is
a practice of silence that directs me to the divine that indwells all
creation, and subsequently to a life of service that benefits all
life, human and non-human.

This past year I turned 75 and Beverly, my loving companion for
forty-two years turned 70. We remain in wonderfully good health, due
in part to her nutritional cooking and the fact that we remain
physically active by going to a gym several times a week. While good
health is partially genetic, it is also maintained by following
certain rules on a regular basis. In a similar way, the spiritual
life grows and unfolds within us as we follow certain disciplines.
These are different for all of us, and may vary as we age, but the
spirit requires the same kind of exercise and nurture that the body
needs.

The one thing that remains constant for me today is the mystical sense
of a Divine Presence that fills me and all life, which gives me
meaning and hope, and which directs me where to extend my efforts and
talents. In the several places where I have lived, I have always
found a holy place to remind me of that presence.

Here in Idaho Falls, we have a patio that looks across a beautiful
golf course with the Teton Peaks to the east and the Lemhi Mountains
to the north. It was in the shadow of those mountains where I grew up
and began to experience the mystical wonder of life. We have planted
the yard surrounding the patio with a few aspens and firs. These were
the trees that nurtured my early years of growth and remind me today
what the poet Joyce Kilmer wrote years ago: "Poems are made by fools
like me, but only God can make a tree." There is another aspect to
that saying for me, and it is this: "Only God can make a me, as well
as a we."

Each of us is a unique piece of divine creation, and each of us is
called to grace this world with our own particular expression of
beauty and love. I am grateful I have been allowed to do that. When
I sit on our patio and look at the sky, the mountains and trees, I
am filled with gratitude for the truths I have learned, the life
experiences I have shared with so many dear and wonderful friends, and
the call that was issued to me at an early age that I am here
principally to fill this world with love.

Love to each of you. My life has been blessed and enriched because of
you and all the people I have known. I am grateful for the occasional
opportunity to share some of my thoughts with you.

"The Hijacking of Jesus" by Dan Wakefield: Every American should read this book!

Reviewer: Helen Weaver "Read about me at www.daisysutra.com" (Woodstock, NY, USA)

Dan Wakefield has written an important and eye-opening book about the Religious Right in America. Liberal and proud of it, Wakefield has been concerned with social justice since the fifties when, as a young reporter for The Nation, he published his ground-breaking study of Spanish Harlem, Island in the City. Some time in the eighties this hard-drinking non-believer experienced a spiritual awakening and returned to the Christian faith of his Indiana boyhood, a journey he recounts in Returning.

But unlike some who turn their lives around when they accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior, Wakefield did not abandon his commitment to the liberal causes of his non-believing years. On the contrary, his faith is rooted in the ethical teachings of the Jesus who preached peace, tolerance, and compassion for the poor: the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount.

As an articulate political liberal who is also a devout Christian, Wakefield is uniquely qualified to comment on the co-opting of the Christian faith by the eerily well-organized juggernaut that is the Religious Right, whose leaders preach war, intolerance, and hate and who believe that the Sermon on the Mount is "no longer relevant for our times." Their political agenda is nothing less than the replacement of what's left of our democracy by a theocracy, and their "wedge" issues are anti-abortion and anti-gays, which are far more important to them than peace, social justice, or the environment, for the simple reason that those two hate issues are the ones that get votes, that get an increasingly impoverished and uninformed electorate to vote against their own self-interest.

This is an angry book, but beneath the anger is the pain of a man who loves his country deeply and watches in horror as he sees it torn apart and in danger of losing the very values on which it was founded. He traces the gradual Republican takeover of our government - and the exponential growth of the religious right that supported it-to the election of 1964, when Barry Goldwater suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Lyndon Johnson with his New Deal-like War on Poverty and Great Society. That's when the forces of reaction began to get organized.

The great mistake of the left, as Democrats are only beginning to realize, has been their blindness to the importance of religion and spirituality in American life. The brilliant political satirist Bill Maher has a blind spot when it comes to religion, and in this he is typical of the American left. Well, Bill Maher should read this book, because Dan Wakefield is just as mad as he is at the hawkish, sexist, gay-bashing evangelicals who don't give a damn about global warming because Armageddon is right around the corner and we're all going to die anyway-but Wakefield is a man of faith who hasn't lost his mind. Every Democrat should read this book. Every American should read this book!
--
"On three things the world stands: on justice,on truth, and on peace." -- Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel

Comments on "God's Politics" by Jim Wallis

Since when did believing in God and having moral values make you pro-war, pro-rich, and pro-Republican? And since when did promoting and pursuing a progressive social agenda with a concern for economic security, health care, and educational opportunity mean you had to put faith in God aside?

While the Right in America has hijacked the language of faith to prop up its political agenda -- an agenda not all people of faith support -- the Left hasn't done much better, largely ignoring faith and continually separating moral discourse and personal ethics from public policy. While the Right argues that God's way is their way, the Left pursues an unrealistic separation of religious values from morally grounded political leadership. The consequence is a false choice between ideological religion and soulless politics.

The effect of this dilemma was made clear in the 2004 presidential election. The Democrats' miscalculations have left them despairing and searching for a way forward. It has become clear that someone must challenge the Republicans' claim that they speak for God, or that they hold a monopoly on moral values in the nation's public life. Wallis argues that America's separation of church and state does not require banishing moral and religious values from the public square. In fact, the very survival of America's social fabric depends on such values and vision to shape our politics -- a dependence the nation's founders recognized.

God's Politics offers a clarion call to make both our religious communities and our government more accountable to key values of the prophetic religious tradition -- that is, make them pro-justice, pro-peace, pro-environment, pro-equality, pro-consistent ethic of life (beyond single issue voting), and pro-family (without making scapegoats of single mothers or gays and lesbians). Our biblical faith and religious traditions simply do not allow us as a nation to continue to ignore the poor and marginalized, deny racial justice, tolerate the ravages of war, or turn away from the human rights of those made in the image of God. These are the values of love and justice, reconciliation, and community that Jesus taught and that are at the core of what many of us believe, Christian or not. In the tradition of prophets such as Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, and Desmond Tutu, Wallis inspires us to hold our political leaders and policies accountable by integrating our deepest moral convictions into our nation's public life.

[Thanks to David (Sky) Enroth for forwarding this review from publicity for Wallis's appearance, Seattle First Baptist Church, Seattle, WA]

--
"On three things the world stands: on justice,on truth, and on peace." -- Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel

Why the Christian Right is Wrong

by Robin Meyers

Why the Christian Right is Wrong: A Minister's Manifesto for Taking Back Your Faith, Your Flag, Your Future

"I join the ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus but whose actions are anything but Christian."
- Robin Meyers, from his "Speech Heard Round the World"

Millions of Americans are outraged at the Bush administration's domestic and foreign policies and even angrier that the nation's religious conservatives have touted these policies as representative of moral values. Why the Christian Right Is Wrong is a rousing manifesto that will ignite the collective conscience of all whose faith and values have been misrepresented by the Christian Right.

Praise for Why the Christian Right Is Wrong:

"In the pulpit, Robin Meyers is the new generation's Harry Emerson Fosdick, George Buttrick, and Martin Luther King. In these pages, you will find a stirring message for our times, from a man who believes that God's love is universal, that the great Jewish prophets are as relevant now as in ancient times, and that the Jesus who drove the money changers from the Temple may yet inspire us to embrace justice and compassion as the soul of democracy. This is not a book for narrow sectarian minds; read it, and you will want to change the world."
-Bill Moyers

"In this book, a powerful and authentic religious voice from America's heartland holds up a mirror to the Bush administration and its religious allies. The result is a vision of Orwellian proportions in which values are inverted and violence, hatred, and bigotry are blessed by one known as 'The Prince of Peace,' who called us to love our enemies. If you treasure this country and tremble over its present direction, this book is a must-read!"
-John Shelby Spong author, The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love

"This is a timely warning and a clarion call to the church to recover the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to a great nation to resist the encroachment of the Christian Right and of Christian fascism. Many of us in other parts of the world are praying fervently that these calls will be heeded."
-Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Here is an excerpt (copyrighted) from Chapter One of the book:

Christians Don't Start Wars, They Try to Stop Them

When you start a war on false pretenses and then act as if your deceptions are justified because you are doing God'swill and that your critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some of uswho have given our lives to teaching and preaching the faith who believe that this is not only not moral, but immoral. If the whole, terrible, wretched truth could be known about the Iraq war—in one blinding, bloody moment like looking into the sun without blinking—anyone with a conscience would turn away and vomit. In the moments that follow, in the empty, clarifying calm that comes just after, such a person would begin to feel something else. The sadness would be joined with righteous indignation, because it is impossible to love the world and not hate what destroys it. For every fallen soldier, for every dark-eyed Iraqi girl and boy, for every wailing mother wandering in the carnage of the latest bombing, the only truly religious response to an unnecessary war is rage. Until we feel it, and do not for a moment confuse our fears with our faith, there can be nothing that approaches righteousness in us. Even though we are not allowed to see the flag-draped coffins coming home or the true horror that is this tragic misadventure, we can see it in the "imagination of our hearts." And because we can, there should be "neither rest nor tranquillity," as Dr. King [told us].   COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL

Meyers is a United Church of Christ minister and a nationally known peace activist. For twenty years, he has been pastor of Mayflower Congregational Church, an "unapologetically Christian, unapologetically liberal" church in one of the most conservative states in the country, Oklahoma.

A syndicated columnist and award-winning commentator for National Public Radio, Meyers has appeared on "Dateline NBC," "ABC World News Tonight," and "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."

On "The Secret Message of Jesus" (by author Brian D. McClaren)

The Secret Message of Jesus (Brian D. McClaren) 

I'm thrilled because I think this will be the most important book I've written so far. It pulls together the themes that have captivated my heart over the last ten years or so. -- Brian McClaren

A number of people have asked about the title. Some people are concerned that it has "Gnostic connotations." Obviously, I was aware that some might draw this conclusion, but my main audience for the book (and really, for most of my books) is not members of the Christian subculture who would even know what "Gnostic" means. Instead, my primary audience is the "spiritual but not religious" people who are interested in what Jesus was about, but are generally turned off by the Religious Right, institutional religion, etc. I felt that the title would connect with this audience, and I was willing to risk being misunderstood for that purpose. Jesus, I think, took similar risks again and again.

As I worked on the book, I was repeatedly struck by how "strategically indirect" Jesus was – hiding his message in parable, sign, and wonder. I began to realize that this strategy of hiddenness was integral to Jesus' whole message and ministry. I think people who read the book will be struck by this theme as well.

I'm a little nervous because it breaks my heart to see people who haven't even read the book (or at least, not read it carefully!) writing negative and unfair things about it. It's funny – it hurts more to read harsh things written about one of my books than it does to read personal attacks. I suppose one's books are like one's kids – every parent wants their kids to be treated fairly when they send them out into the world.

It's quite sad to see the way that some readers (generally those of a more fundamentalistic bent) respond to the book on amazon.com and elsewhere on the web. Some write reviews without having read the book. Others misinterpret or miss the main point in nearly unbelievable ways. Many say, "McLaren says" or "McLaren believes" – with no apparent basis at all for their assertions, ignoring places where I say the very opposite of what they claim. Several friends have told me that these kinds of caustic reviews actually help sell the book, but I'm sad anyway because I think this kind of sloppy thought and uncharitable rhetoric doesn't reflect well on our common Christian faith.

Of course, the people who write these kinds of reviews must feel the same way about me and my book – which reminds me that most of us are doing the best we can, and so we should try to be understanding and gracious with one another. I just read Bob Dylan's wonderful autobiography (Chronicles: Volume One – what a great read!), and at one point Dylan meets this odd character named Sun Pie deep down in Louisiana. Sun Pie asks him if he's a praying man, and if so, what he prays for. "I pray that I can be a kinder person," Dylan replies. Not a bad idea!

[Thanks to David ('Sky') Enroth for forwarding.]

--
"On three things the world stands: on justice,on truth, and on peace." -- Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel

Open Letter to Pat Robertson (CA Council of Churches)

April 25, 2006
OPEN LETTER TO REVEREND PAT ROBERTSON
California Council of Churches/California Church IMPACT
If you would like to sign onto this statement and place your name and/or organization's name here, please fill out the form below.

198 signatures as of 11 May, 2006

Dear Rev. Robertson:

We have heard your call on the “700 Club” saying that “Islam is not a religion of peace” and that its goal is ‘world domination’. You have stated publicly on the BBC that some Muslims are motivated by ‘demonic power’ and on Hannity & Colmes that the Muslim prophet, Muhammad was a ‘wild-eyed fanatic…a robber and a brigand” and that ‘to think that this is a peaceful religion is fraudulent.”

You have further said the “Individual Christians are the only ones really – and Jewish people, those who trust God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – are the only one that are qualified to have the reign, because hopefully, they will be governed by God and submit to Him.”

We, the undersigned, represent that vast majority of mainstream Christian and Jewish clergy, laity, and scholars who repudiate your statements utterly and without reservation. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam share common and inalienable roots grounded in our long Abrahamic traditions. We share a reverence for the common principles that affirm love of our one Maker, regardless of name, and principles of righteousness, peace, and humanity. Your characterization of Islam reflects the very anger and hate that you ascribe to Muslim people.

The Qur’an itself manifests the unity of Islam and Christianity: “The closest in Affection to [Muslims] are those who say: ‘We are Christians’ for among them are priests and monks and they are not arrogant.” (Qur’an 5:82) After centuries of suspicion and hostility between Islam and the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council urged reconciliation. “For the benefit of all…let them together preserve and promote peace, liberty, social justice, and moral values.” (Nostra Aetate, 3) This document affirms the very point you make concerning submission to God: “They (Muslims) strive to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God.” If that is your test, then Muslims, Jews, and Christians carry the same point of devotion into all of the world. Your hostility thus fails its own great test.

It is not from the Catholic Church alone that the efforts toward reconciliation and peace have emerged. April 25, 2003 the Alliance of Baptists affirmed that in the Christian Scriptures God has not rejected the descendants of Abraham – Jews and Muslims as well as Christians – but recognizes our common historical roots “in the faith of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar.”

Those of us who stay close to the teaching of Jesus, direct you to Mark 12:28 –34. When Jesus was asked what are the most important commandments, he replied “to love the Lord your God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself.” Observant Muslims observe these standards faithfully; yet your insensitive and cruel remarks reflect nothing of that love. If your condemnations cannot be grounded in Scripture – if your arguments fail their own tests - we assert that you cannot and do not speak for the broadest and largest numbers of Christians or Jews. Your accusations come not from sources of faith but from a political wellspring that does violence to Judeo-Christian principles, as well as to Islam and Muslim people.

You have the right to speak your mind, but we believe that you do not speak for those who seek to be faithful to the Torah or to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We absolutely reject your hostility to true Islam and the gracious people who follow the Muslim faith. We reject your dissemination of such vicious, unprincipled, and groundless attacks on our neighbors and fellow human beings with whom we share so much.

Sincerely,

Signed,
Elizabeth Sholes
Director of Public Policy
California Council of Churches/California Church IMPACT

Dr. Fredrick E. Wiliams
Organization: First Christian Church Alameda
City: Alameda
State: CA

Drew Nettinga
Organization: Northern California Nevada Conference United Church of Christ
City: San Leandro
State: CA

Albert G. Cohen
Organization: Southern California Ecumenical Council
City: Pasadena
State: CA

Rev. Dr. Jerry S. Maneker
Organization: Retired
City: Chico
State: CA

Rev. Mary P. Conant
Organization: UCC
City: Sunol
State: CA

Reverend Ruth Sandberg
Organization: United Church of Christ
City: Alameda
State: CA

Arlene K Nehring
Organization: Eden United Church of Christ
City: Hayward
State: CA

Suzanne Darweesh
Organization: CCI/PCU
City: Fullerton
State: CA

Jeffrey Spencer
Organization: Niles Congregational Church UCC
City: Fremont
State: CA

Revd. John L. Freesemann
Organization: Vice President, California Church IMPACT
City: San Jose
State: CA

S. Kay Wellington
City: Concord
State: CA

Rev. Dr. Alan Jones
Organization: United Methodist Church
City: Hayward
State: CA

Kathryn Burroughs
Organization: Northminster Presbyterian Church
City: El Cerrito
State: CA

Rev. Jim Hopkins
Organization: Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church
City: Oakland
State: CA

Ellen T. Shaner
Organization: a United Methodist Christian City: San Jose
State: CA

Rev. Rick Mitchell
Organization: PeacePolitical News
City: Concord
State: CA

Rev. Carol Evans LeBlanc
Organization: Bethany Presbyterian Church
City: Sacramento
State: CA

Joan Mortenson
City: Huntington Beach
State: CA

James (Jim) Miller
Organization: Member and Elder-Christ Presbyterian Church-Carlsbad
City: Carlsbad State: CA

Peggy Roark
City: Sacramento
State: CA

Warren R. Uhte
Organization: Mill Valley Seniors for Peace
City: Mill Valley State: CA

Jan Adams
Organization: parishioner -Episcopal Church of St. John Evangelist
City: San Francisco
State: CA

Doris Young
Organization: Delta District United Methodist Women
City: Folsom State: CA

Rev. A. Daniel Fowler
Organization: 1st Presbyterian Church of Fort Bragg
City: Fort Bragg State: Ca.

Rev. R. Richard Roe
Organization: United Church of Christ
City: Palo Alto
State: CA

Carolyn Olney
Organization: First Congregational Church Pasadena
City: Los Angeles
State: CA

Joe Elmore
Organization: Retired Professor of Religion
City: La Mesa
State: CA

Rev. Dr. Rick Schlosser, Executive Director
Organization: California Council of Churches/California Church IMPACT
City: Sacramento
State: CA

Rev. Easton & Jeannie Long
Organization: Retired
City: Sacramento
State: CA

Laurence L. Brunton
Organization: UCSD and Mission Hills UCC
City: San Diego
State: CA

Rev. Dale K. Edmondson
City: San Leandro
State: CA

Dr. Lynn Rhodes
Organization: Pacific School of Religion
City: Berkeley
State: CA

Loyd Nolen Dunaway
City: Oklahoma City
State: OK

Walter Schlosser
City: Los Angeles
State: CA

Russell Hafner, Valorie Hafner
Organization: UMC
City: Buena Park
State: CA

Rev. Joanne Whitt
Organization: First Presbyterian Church
City: San Anselmo
State: CA

Rev. Dale Heckman, PhD.
Organization: United Church of Christ
City: Davis
State: CA

Paula Miner
City: Duarte
State: CA

Michael Adam Reale, Pastor
Organization: New Hope United Church of Christ
City: Owensboro
State: KY

Rev. Margo Tenold
Organization: Councilof Churches of Santa Clara County
City: San Jose
State: CA

Dorothy Reardon
City: Carmichael
State: CA

rev. richard chiolis
Organization: retired presbyterian minister
City: woodland
State: CA

Rev. Jim Burklo
Organization: Sausalito Presbyterian Church
City: Sausalito
State: CA

John Zachary
Organization: Claremont United Methodist Church
City: Claremont
State: CA

Walter T. Davis, Jr.
Organization: First Presbyterian Church
San Anselmo, CA
City: San Anselmo
State: CA

Rev. Dr. Mark Richardson
Organization: Trinity United Methodist Church
City: Los Osos
State: CA

Robert Carter
Organization: Moderator, Belmont Congregational Church
City: San Carlos
State: CA

Rev. Dr. Ted H. Sandberg
Organization: First Baptist Church
City: Chico
State: CA

Rev. Dr. Luke Adams
City: Oakland
State: CA

LaVerne Uhte
Organization: Fairfax Community Church UCC
City: Mill Valley
State: CA

Dr. Donna Llindsey
City: San Diego
State: Ca.

Yolanda Engiles
City: 80 South 5th street
State: CA

Terry Preston
Organization: Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento
City: Sacramento
State: CA

Judi Rath
Organization: United Methodist Church
City: Sacramento
State: CA

Elbert D. Hoffman
Organization: Interfaith Council of San Joaquin
City: Stockton
State: CA

Henry Jefferson
City: Ontario
State: CA

Cameron Hearn
City: Santa Rosa
State: CA

Diane M. Cripe
City: Burbank
State: CA

Jane Okubo
Organization: Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
City: Carmichael
State: CA

Dorthy Vance
City: Walnut Creek
State: CA

Deborah Park
City: San Diego
State: CA

Rev. Richard O. Moore
Organization: United Church of Christ
City: Claremont
State: CA

Christine Berardo
Organization: Mustard Seed Pictures
City: Studio City
State: CA

William Cox
Organization: United Church of Christ
City: Morgan Hill
State: CA

Jeane Minsky
Organization: Pilgrim United Church of Christ
City: Oceanside
State: CA

Cloene I. Marson
Organization: United Methodist Church
City: Oxnard
State: CA

Jackie Thompson
Organization: First United Methodist Church
City: Sacramento
State: CA

Rev. Dr. David Borglum
City: Alameda
State: CA

Merilie Robertson
Organization: Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.
City: Canoga Park
State: CA

Rev. Dr. Herman C. Waetjen
City: San Anselmo
State: CA

Rev. Adiel DePano
Organization: St. Paul's United Methodist Church
City: Oxnard
State: CA

Susan Eaton
City: Newport Beach
State: CA

Mary Ann Reynolds
Organization: retired teacher
City: Merced
State: CA

Karen Tokash
City: Auburn
State: CA

Theadora Davitt-Cornyn
Organization: Unitarian Universalist
City: Alameda
State: CA

Rev. Stephen Haley
City: Foster City
State: CA

Richard L. & Theresa Weiche
City: Oxnard
State: CA

Judy Church
City: Modesto
State: CA

Rev. Dr. Gaye G. Benson, pastor
Organization: United Methodist Church
City: El Sobrante
State: CA

Betty Person
Organization: Member, United Methodist Church

Robert F. Clazie
Organization: United Methodist - Retired
City: Santa Rosa
State: CA

Jean E. Barker
Organization: member 1st Pres., Palo Alto
City: Palo Alto
State: CA

Rev. AmyJo Mattheis
Organization: Way of Christ Community
City: Stockton
State: CA

Rev. AmyJo Mattheis
Organization: Way of Christ Community
City: Stockton
State: CA

JoAnne Jennings
City: Huntington Beach
State: CA

JoAnne Jennings
City: Huntington Beach
State: CA

Marie Losh
City: Claremont
State: CA

Jeanne Whitesell
Organization: Orange County Interfaith Coalition for Social Justice
City: Orange
State: CA

Rev. Pam Fine
Organization: United Methodist Church
City: Nevada City
State: CA

Daniel Whitesell
City: Huntington Beach
State: CA

Lundy Lovelace
Organization: Furst-Centenary United Methodist Church
City: Chattanooga
State: TN

Janet Williams
Organization: Poway Interfaith Council
City: San Diego
State: CA

Beverly Maloof
City: Alta Loma
State: CA

Sam Maloof
City: Alta Loma
State: CA

Rev. Larry Hixon
Organization: Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Pacific Southwest Region
City: Altadena
State: CA

Rev.Dona Smith-Powers
City: Palo Alto
State: CA

Phillip Shigekuni
Organization: Methodists for Social Action
City: North Hills
State: CA

Levonne Kelly
Organization: United Methodist Church
City: Huntington Beach
State: CA

Nancy Fowler
City: San Diego
State: CA

Mary Tucker
Organization: Member Methodist Church
City: Nevada City
State: CA

Kristine Cole
City: Fresno
State: CA

Gwen Watson
City: Lafayette
State: CA

Catherine Coleman
Organization: First Presbyterian Oakland
City: Alameda
State: CA

Terrance Andrew Robinson MD
Organization: Starr King School for the Ministry
City: Berkeley
State: CA

Carroll Cotten
City: Saint Helena
State: CA

Reverend Norman Cram
Organization: Saint Elizabeth's Church
City: Sonoma
State: CA

Sandi Ehlert
City: Encinitas
State: CA

Georgann S. Pearce
City: Huntington Beach
State: CA

Linda Moore
Organization: Shasta District United Methodist Women
City: Cottonwood
State: CA

Frederick H. Reardon
City: Carmichael
State: CA

James McReynolds
City: Berkeley
State: CA

Kathleen Malloy
Organization: Seminary Student - Unitarian Universalist
City: Alameda State: CA

Catherine L. Beatty
Organization: Sonoma United Methodist Church
City: Sonoma
State: CA

Rev. Dr. Herbert R Reinelt
Organization: United Church of Christ
City: Stockton
State: CA

David A. Smith
Organization: Irvine United Congregational Church
City: Irvine
State: CA

Rev. Pamela D. Cummings
Organization: Sonoma United Methodist Church
City: Sonoma
State: CA

Connie Hunter
Organization: W. Jurisdiction, United Methodist Women
City: San Jose
State: CA

Clay Berling
City: Carmel
State: CA

Joyce Georgieff
Organization: United Methodist Church, Interfaith Peace Ministry of Orange County
City: Santa Ana
State: CA

Tracy Avent
Organization: Unitarian Universalist Association
City: San Jose
State: CA

Tiffany L. Heath
City: Washington
State: DC

Daniel Bradfield
Organization: pastor: Fairview Community Christian Church
City: Rio Oso
State: CA

Mark Gotvald City: Pleasant Hill
State: CA

Karen Dickinson
Organization: Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco
City: Hayward
State: CA

Marguerite Chatigny
City: Martinez
State: CA

Dennis W. Short
Organization: Harbor Christian Church
State: CA

Carolyn Rissanen
Organization: United Methodist Church
City: Richmond
State: CA

Patricia Hug
Organization: Presbyterian Church USA
City: Irvine
State: CA

Ruth G. Lohrer
Organization: St. Peter's by the Sea Presbyterian Church
City: Palos Verdes Estates
State: CA

Rhetta Alexander
Organization: United Methodist Church PWJ Educator
City: Van Nuys
State: CA

Bruce Olstad
Organization: Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto
City: San Jose
State: CA

Mary-Ann King
Organization: A United Methodist Christian

Rev. Carol Barriger
Organization: 1st Congregational, United Church of Christ
City: Redwood City
State: CA

Dennis W. Short
Organization: Harbor Christian Church
State: CA

Reverend Julia Older
Organization: Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Redwood City
City: Redwood City
State: CA

Rev. Jackie Kortright
Organization: UCC/FUMC of Loomis City: Loomis
State: CA

Dr. Donald Will
Organization: Chapman University
City: Orange
State: CA

Rev. Dr. Liza H. Klein
Organization: San Rafael First United Methodist Church
City: San Rafael
State: CA

Robin Ann Lambert
Organization: Community Church of Poway UCC
City: Poway
State: CA

Robert Brophy
Organization: Peter Carr Peace Center
City: Los Alamitos
State: CA

Gerald L. Harper
City: Artesia State: NM
Barbara W. Johnson
Organization: member of United Church of Christ
City: Fullerton State: CA

The Rt. Rev. Bishop Jerry A. Lamb
Organization: Episcopal Diocese of Northen California
City: Sacramento State: CA

Disa E. Lindgren
Organization: La Mesa Presbyterian Church
City: Culver City State: CA

Rev. Harry Allagree
Organization: St. John's Episcopal Church
City: Lakeport State: CA

Rev. Wilfredo Benitez
Organization: St. Anselm of Canterbury Episcopal Church
City: Garden Grove State: CA

David A Bessler
Organization: none
City: Pasadena State: CA

Margaret Hutchinson
Organization: Orange Grove Friends Meeting, member
City: Los Angeles State: CA

Barbara Liles
Organization: Seaside Church, UCC
City: Torrance State: CA

Diana Bauer
Organization: Concord United Methodist Church
City: Clayton State: CA

Miriam Benitez-Nixon
Organization: Grace Episcopal Church
City: Bronx
State: NY
Lulu Emery
Organization: St. Anselm of Canterbury Episcopal Church
City: Huntington Beach
State: CA

Rev. Darrel Meyers
Organization: Presbyterian Church (USA)
City: Burbank
State: CA CA

Maureen Kemp
City: Long Beach
State: CA

Rev. James Sheehan
City: Bronx
State: NY

Florence Isovic
Organization: Concerned Christians
City: Los Angeles
State: CA

Ted & Sharon Shohfi
Organization: Presbyterian Church (USA)
City: Huntington Beach
State: CA

Eddie Lopez, Jr.
City: New York
State: NY

Susan Lansdon
Organization: St. Anselm's Church
City: Garden Grove
State: CA

Patricia P. Alexander
Organization: Grace Episcopal Church
City: City Island
State: NY

Rev. Lilian Patey
Organization: Minister with the United Church of Canada
City: Windsor
State: Ont., Canada

Michel Shehadeh
Organization: Committee For Justice
City: Bend
State: OR

Linda Cahill
City: Anaheim
State: CA

Malcolm J. Blue
Organization: Episcopal Church
City: Valencia
State:CA

Vicki Tamoush
Organization: Middle East Fellowship of So. Calif.
City: Tustin
State:CA

Carolyn P. Harris
City: Los Angeles
State:CA

Catherine Standiford
Organization: St. Anselm's Episcopal Church
City: Garden Grove
State:CA

Ana Sanchez
Organization: Our Lady Queen of Angels Church
Newport Beach,
State:CA

Roberta Ranstrom
City: Davis CA
State:CA

Randall Heyn-Lamb
Organization: Episcopal Church
City: Pasadena
State:CA

Nabil Dajani
Organization: ADC
Westminster
State:CA

Wardeh Abdelmuti
Organization: Realtor
Huntington Beach
State:CA

Brice Harris
City: Los Angeles
State:CA

Denise Stanley
City: Anaheim
State:CA

Nidal A, Barakat
City: Van Nuys
State:CA

Jane Rinaldi
City: Placentia
State:CA

Kathleen Russell
Organization: West Michgian Coalition for Justice and Peace
City: Grand Rapids
State:MI

Robert Rickun
Organization: All Saints Church
City: Pasadena
State:CA

Elizabeth Lindeman
City: Los Angeles
State:CA

Janet Maker
City: los angeles
State:CA

Carrie Vanston
Organization: Network of Spiritual Progressives
City: Austin State: TX

flo a weber
Organization: catholic & member of san fernando valley network for peace and justice
City: woodland hills State: CA

Suzanne Brown
Organization: St. Paul's Episcopal Church
City: Rochester State: NY

Walter L Johnson
Organization: Holy Faith Episcopal Church
City: Inglewood
State: CA
Rabbi Steven B. Jacobs
City: Woodland Hills
State: CA

Rosemary Johnston
Organization: Interfaith Shelter Network
City: San Diego
State: CA

Joyce Breslin
City: Pasadena
State: CA

Richard & Carolyn Rosenstein
City: Los Angeles
State: CA

Jane E. Bellesorte
City: Walnut Creek
State: CA

Rev. Anthony Bellesorte
Organization: Roman Catholic Church
City: Vina
State: CA

June E. Rothe-Barneson
Organization: Trinity United Methodist Church
City: Chico
State: CA

Rev. Waliya Perkins
Organization: Church of All
City: Los Angeles
State: CA

A.U. Shaikh
Organization: Center for Religious Tolerance
City: Lemon Grove
State: CA

Elizabeth Whitesell
City: Los Alamitos
State: CA

Philip Gerson
Organization: Temple B'nai Torah
City: Redmond
State: WA
Name: Helen Vandeman
Organization: Interfaith Council of Washington
City: La Conner
State: WA

Name: Saleem Juma
Organization: none
City: Kent
State: WA

If you would like to sign onto this statement and place your name and/or organization's name here, please go to this site:

http://icujp.org/04.25.06_robertson.html

and fill out the form (reprinted below). Please allow up to 24 hours to see your signature as each name is added individually by the webmaster (to avoid spammers abusing this page). [Active form for actual submittal is at the page address URL above.]

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Comments:

Help fight for Internet freedom at SavetheInternet.com

The House of Representatives will soon vote on whether or not to preserve Internet freedom—and our fight to protect Network Neutrality is gaining huge momentum.

The SavetheInternet.com Coalition now has 524 member organizations, 637,386 petition signatures to Congress, 3,251 blog links, and 5,634 MySpace friends. We will only win this fight if the public is mobilized, Congress is bombarded from all angles, and word spreads around the Internet like prairie fire.

A MoveOn.org petition can be seen and signed at http://civic.moveon.org/save_the_internet/. You are also urged to call your elected representatives at http://www.moveon.org/r?r=1670 .

Here are some additional resources to provide information about the current threat to Internet freedom:

MoveOn's blogger resource page is full of facts and links to inform people about Net Neutrality: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=1771 

MoveOn member Mari Fetzer designed a FANTASTIC image with links to 5 things people can do today to preserve Internet freedom. The coding is at the bottom of: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=1769

Several fun videos are now on the SavetheInternet.com Coalition website, including a great Halo mimick on Net Neutrality: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=1770

Comedy site "Ask A Ninja" has a unique perspective on Net Neutrality: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=1768

Please share your ideas on how thousands of MoveOn blog owners and blog users can work together to maximize our effectiveness in the blogosphere. Your advice will be very valuable as we think about ways to empower MoveOn members to make waves in the blogosphere.

–Adam Green, Noah T. Winer, and the MoveOn.org Civic Action team
Thursday, May 11th, 2006

Key Links

MoveOn petition. (Please include - each signer will get future action items.)

Call Congress today.

Original MoveOn email describing the issue.

How gutting Net Neutrality affects regular people (Ipod users, Google users), and proof that telecom companies abuse their power.

Actress Alyssa Milano blogs on Internet freedom.

Our coalition MySpace profile – including a video explaining this issue (please include).

Coalition website (please include – mentioning our partners Gun Owners of America and Craig from Craigslist).

Coalition blog – good recent developments.

A key House committee already voted against Internet freedom. See if your representative is on this committee.

Find out where your representative stands.

Good Articles

"Gun Owners, Librarians Unite Against Bells," Telephony Online, April 24, 2006

"New Group Aims to ‘Save the Internet’" CNet News, April 24, 2006

"Average Joe And Saving The Internet," Webpronews.com, April 24, 2006  

"Net Losses," New Yorker, March 20, 2006

"Panel Vote Shows Rift Over 'Net Neutrality'" Los Angeles Times, April 27, 2006

"Save the Internet," Jeff Chester article on Alternet.org, April 27, 2006  

Click here for the MoveOn.org home page

Nobel Laureate Tutu brings laughs, advice at Seattle cathedral

By Tan Vinh
and Tom Reese / The Seattle Times

Decked in a purple cassock, retired South African Anglican ArchbishopDesmond Tutu stepped into St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral on Wednesday to celebrate the church's 75th anniversary.

But it was his laugh — a hearty, head-back, hands-on-tummy roar echoing throughout the church — that announced to the crowd the Nobel Laureate had arrived in Seattle.

The charismatic Tutu kicked off his two-day tour with a morning visit to St. Mark's, where he was to receive a lifetime achievement award later at a $150-a-plate dinner.

The public can hear him preach at the Festival Evensong at St. Mark's at 7 tonight. Cathedrals such as St. Mark's have a special place in society, he said at a news conference.

It's "a place of innovation, a place of excitement and exhilaration," Tutu said. "It is also a place that embraces, and a place that is on the cutting edge of gospel.

"St. Mark's is what a cathedral should be," said Tutu, making his fourth visit to the Capitol Hill church in the past 20 years.

The man who helped end apartheid in South Africa didn't speak much of the ongoing violence in Sudan and the Middle East but said he wished the United States and Iran would "defuse the tension" and resolve their dispute over Iran's nuclear ambition peacefully.

Tutu sermon

Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu will preach at 7 tonight at Saint Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, 1245 10th Ave. E., in Seattle. The event is open to the public. Seating is first-come, first-served.

Tutu, who led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, a courtlike body that allowed victims of violence to be heard, reiterated that the United States would benefit from a similar exercise to deal with racism.

Racism, he said, is "a pain that is hitting the tummies of most African Americans and Native Americans."

For the most part, Tutu kept his news conference informal with jokes.

He also shared some private time with his friend, the Very Rev. Robert Taylor, dean of St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, whom Tutu helped bring to the United States in 1980.

Taylor, who was a finalist for the position of bishop of the Diocese of California, said his mentor seems to love every moment of life.

Tutu "has a huge dose of joy and laughter," said Taylor, the founding president of the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation, which raises money for Tutu's peace center in Cape Town, South Africa.

After Tutu's sermon tonight, the church will hold a reception in honor of St. Mark's anniversary as well as Tutu's birthday. He turns 75 in October.

"The archbishop is excited to blow out the candles on the joint birthday cake," Taylor said...

Tan Vinh: 206-515-5656 or tvinh@seattletimes.com

Copyright (c) 2006 The Seattle Times Company

A Spiritual Covenant with America: the center of a spiritual progressive politics

On Monday night, May 9, we heard Rabbi Michael Lerner speak at the Danville Congregational Church (UCC) in Danville, CA, on the following topic. He and other progressive spiritual leaders have developed a challenging vision of a new political focus which has great potential for changing the face of American politics -- countering and to some extent neutralizing the undue influence the so-called religious right has had on our national political scene during the past few years. Rabbi Lerner explains why he believes this happened and how we in the center and left of political thought can act to change it. I am convinced he has many valid points and that attention must be paid by the Democratic party and other political parties to the need to develop and articulate an understanding of what some have called "the vision thing." Although this is a deeply-rooted Biblical point of view ("Without a vision, the people perish," paraphrase of Proverbs 29:18), it is also a highly practical one, as most political analysts agree. This has widely been applied to the Democratic party in recent years, and Lerner says it applies also to a vast number of Americans who have lost faith in our system, "dropped out," and facilitated the ascendancy of the Republican party and right-wing political interests at all levels of government in the U.S. Read in this article some of his piercing analysis of how this situation occurred and his proposals of how to go about changing it effectively.
-- Rev. Rick Mitchell ("Revrickm"), Editor, PeacePolitical Digest and Interfaith News Digest.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rabbi Michael Lerner <community@tikkun.org>
Date: May 2, 2006 10:21 AM
Subject: A Spiritual Covenant with America: the center of a spiritual progressive politics

The Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP), A Project of the Tikkun Community

   Here is the summary version of our central document: A Spiritual Covenant with America. It's our alternative both to the Gingrich Contract with America and to the attempts by some political consultants to the Democrats to re-package the current liberal/progressive agenda without really rethinking it. Though it's a vulgar summary of a more sophisticated vision articulated in my The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right, it will nevertheless be extremely useful if you want to have a document that could show some of the consequences of adopting  the perspective of the Network of Spiritual Progressives.

When people ask you what exactly is a spiritual progressive poitics, show them this as a first step. And take this to the media, to local and national professional organizations, unions, churches, synagogues, mosques, ashrams, civic organizations, colleges and universities, and to your local city councils and anyone asking for your political or financial support and ask them to publicly endorse this Spiritual Covenant. This is one way to start the discussion that might actually begin to shift public consciousness about what is to be valued in our lives. Please circulate it to every email list to which you have access, starting with your own friends and family.

Love and blessings,
Michael

Rabbi Michael Lerner,
National co-chair, The Network of Spiritual Progressives
  RabbiLerner@tikkun.org

*********************************************************************************************

A Spiritual Covenant with America
                   
(The Central Vision of the Network of Spiriutal Progressives to be presented to Congress and Media May 17-20 in Washington, D.C.—a summary of the fuller articulation in The Left Hand of God by Rabbi Michel Lerner)
 
Many liberals and progressives who affiliate with the Democrats are disillusioned with the lack of vision projected by their party, but continue to believe that they will make huge strides without a vision in the 2006 and 2008 elections because of the growing backlash against the foolishness of Republican policies.  They may be right, but unless those Democrats feel that they have a mandate for a new direction, they are likely to repeat the same errors Democrats made when they controlled the presidency and Congress in the early years of the Clinton Administration, promoting policies that appeared to many disillusioned Americans to be less of the dramatic change promised in the Clinton presidential campaign of 1992 than a continuation of the self-interest politics of the Reagan/Bush years and thus undermining the momentary flurry of hope that Clinton's election generated.
 
 At moments when Democrats are perceived as acting from the same "self-interest" perspective that motivates Republicans, many people who hunger for idealism and allowed their more hopeful side to "come out of the closet" quickly retreated into a deeper cynicism, They opt for more conservative politics and a narrower conception of their own self-interest that involves rejecting policies that might involve higher taxes. Democrats can only expect to have a mandate for fundamental change if they are willing to buck the "political realists" and articulate a policy vision that excites and inspires people to transcend their fears and connect to their most expansive hopes for the world that they really believe in. Democrats in power who continue the rhetoric of fear of the supposedly ever-present terrorist danger or who continue to believe that "we" need to see the economic advances of other countries as a threat to America, or that education must be based on fears that we will lose our competitive edge with China or other countries, are likely to reiinforce the very worldview that will lead to a return to power of the Republicans in iever more extreme forms—because when people feel that the times require fear and power over others, they get attracted to the political parties most experienced in projecting those kinds of dynamics (which is one reason we may see fear and domination of others placed in the national orbit again in the next few months before the next election).  

            The way to start to build a new kind of understanding in America  is by challenging the "old bottom line" that teaches people that their life's activities will be judged by how much they can advance their own material well-being power and prestige. Surrounded by an ethos of selfishness generated by the old bottom line, people increasingly treat each other as vehicles to satisfy their one's one personal needs. Instead of seeing other people as embodiments of the sacred, they are viewed instrumentally as "useful" or as "human resources" for the sake of advancing societal goals. Living in a society where people regularly absorb and hen act upon this "marketplace rationality" in which "looking out for number one" seems the only rational way to live, many people feel lonely, alienated and scared even in the midst of friendships and marriages—because they see themselves surrounded by so many people who only seem to care about them to the extent that they can "deliver something" or care about their needs.
 
            What we need, then, is a New Bottom Line, one which judges institutions, corporations, legislation, social practices, health care, our educational and legal systems, and our social policies by how much love and compassion, kindness and generosity, ethical and ecological sensitivity they inculcate within is, and by how much they nurture our capacity to respond to other human beings as embodiments of the sacred, who can and to respond to the universe with gratitude, awe and wonder at the grandeur of all that is.
 
            It is that New Bottom Line that has led us in the Network of Spiritual Progressives to urge people to join us in Washington D.C. May 17-20 to present a Spiritual Covenant with America that will both provide an alternative Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" and  economistic visions of  American society that have been developed  by liberal and progressive think-tanks who are trying to help the Democrats out of their dogmatic slumbers. Imagine how different politics would look if progressives were to present themselves as fighting for a New Bottom Line and for this particular way of translating that into political terms. That is what this Spiritual Covenant with Americans is all about. We invite you to  join us in taking the idea of the New Bottom Line and the ways it plays out  in the Spiritual Covenant with Americans and making these ideas the center of a new progressive spiritual politics (more info at www.spiritualprogressives.org )
 
            Here is the Spiritual Covenant with America

1. We will create a society that promotes rather than undermines loving and caring relationships and families.  We will challenge the materialism and selfishness (often rooted in the dynamics of the competitive marketplace) that undermine loving relationships and family life. Every institution or social practice that encourages us to see others as instruments for our own advancement rather than as embodiments of the sacred must be reconceputalized and rebuilt so that it instead maximizes our capacities to be loving and generous and caring. We will challenge cynical attempts to reduce life to self-interest. And we will oppose the cheapening of sexuality that regularly occurs as marketers use sex to sell their products and seek to do so with teens and now pre-teens. Sure, we need full employment, child care, flex time, a coordinated assault on poverty,  and many other economic changes, so we support all these elements of the traditional liberal agenda—but our spiritual focus goes beyond the normal liberal list of demands to insist on a fundamental change in the values that our society promotes: our society must be safe for love rather than fostering the qualities in people that make love more difficult to sustain: cynicism, harshness, individualism, self-centeredness,  despair about ultimate meaning, insensitivity to the possibility of transformation, and fear.

          CONTRAST: LIBERAL AGENDA—Family support always posed in terms that emphasize economic entitlements, but since everyone knows that family breakdown is not confined to those lacking economic supports, the liberal appeal is seen as just using the family issue for its pre-existing agenda rather than actually addressing the fear in people's lives about the breakdown of loving commitments and the resultant feelings of loneliness. We agree with the supports, but see them as necessary but not sufficient.

          CONTRAST: CONSERVATIVE AGENDA—Family support for them conservative ideology often means restricting the rights of gays and lesbians to marry (as though that had anything to do with why families break up), teaching women to be subordinate to men in family life (a strategy that requires women to give up their own natural intelligence and wisdom to "go along" with men, rather than to build partnership relationships  based on mutual respect which have a much stronger foundation and greater prospect of lasting), opposing abortion (but giving little support to the child one it is born) and providing religious communities in which families are embedded are central (a positive aspect of the conservative agenda which has to be emulated by creating progressive "communities of meaning" but without a right-wing ideology governing them.
 
 
2. We will take PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for ethical behavior, reviving the sacred element in sexuality, shaping a purpose-driven life connected to our highest values, building an inner spiritual life, devoting time and energy to caring for each other as well as in self-development, affirming pleasure and humor and joyfulness and celebration of the grandeur of the universe and the mystery of being, and recognizing that government cannot replace our own efforts to build a spiritually grounded life. We will be compassionate toward each other, recognizing that each of us is unlikely to be the fullest embodiment of our own highest ideals.

     CONTRAST: LIBERAL AGENDA-- Liberal politics rarely articulate any sense of personal responsibility, because they claim that these issues are "personal" and have no role in the public sphere. We agree with them in opposing legislation on these issues, but not in believing that they have no appropriate public place. A movement can foster an "ethos" as well as legislation, and that is exactly what we did do when we fostered the ethos of respect for women, gays and lesbians, and minority groups. Taking personal responsibility is not just a personal issue. It is an issue of creating a form of community-creation that encourages, supports and rewards people for so doing, and that is absent from the liberal discourse. of the liberal world.

     CONTRAST: CONSERVATIVE AGENDA—Conservatives talk about taking personal responsibility as their alternative to badly needed social programs whose funding they continually seek to slash (health, welfare, education, support for the poor and the homeless). They claim to be concerned about poverty, but then say that individuals should take responsibility for eliminating poverty (for example, urging people to take jobs that don't actually exist particularly given inadequate child care) or homelessness (but then they don't actually take homeless people into their homes each night to provide the 'personal responsibility' alternative to abandoning the homeless to hunger and the streets of our cities).. So when we talk about taking personal responsibility, we do so not to replace government and societal programs, but to address areas in our own personal lives where we could have a huge impact.

3.    We will build Social Responsibility into the normal operations of our Economic and Political Life. The Social Responsibility Amendment (SRA) to the U.S. Constitution that we propose requires corporations to get a new corporate charter once every ten years which would only be granted to those corporations which could prove to a jury of ordinary citizens that it had a satisfactory history of social responsibility. This is one step toward our larger goal of transforming the bottom line in our economy, government, and social institutions.
While seeking support and endorsement of the SRA, we will encourage public officials to establish a Social Responsibility clause onto every contract-awarding process, so that corporations competing for public funds must present a detailed social responsibility report and private citizens and local community groups and unions can challenge the accuracy of that report to the governmental body deciding on awarding of city, state and federal contracts of over $100,000.
 
To make this happen, we will also seek public funding of all state and national elections and instant runoff procedures for counting votes.

CONTRAST: LIBERAL AGENDA—They Liberals continually seek to legislate minor restrictions on corporate avarice and social irresponsibility, and usually fail to get those passed such laws adopted because of the tremendous power of corporations to influence provide financing for the legislators who must pass these bills. Meanwhile, corporations throw all their weight into opposing each little reform measure. We seek one big reform which that would end the need for countless smaller reforms. While the SRA may take several decades to pass, the struggle for it will concentrate attention on the systemic nature of the problem we face.

CONTRAST: CONSERVATIVE AGENDA—Conservatives typically oppose any attempts to put constraints on corporate social irresponsibility because they believe that the best good for all will be achieved if each corporation pursues its own self-interest unrestrained and then the profits it amasses will "trickle down" to the rest of the population.

4.    We will reshape our education system to teach the values of love, caring, generosity, intellectual curiosity, tolerance, gratitude, awe amd wonder at the universe,  democratic participation and environmental responsibility. We will emphasize education for these values without abandoning necessary reading and writing skills—and focus on learning respect, thanksgiving and awe for the wonders of the universe, and celebration of all the goodness that has passed on the cultural and scientific wisdom of the human race.

CONTRAST: LIBERAL AGENDA—Liberals focus on getting better pay for teachers and more money for building schools with lower teacher-student ratios. But they'd be far more effective in getting support for these important demands if they gave more attention to demands about the moral and spiritual content of what is being taught.

CONTRAST: CONSERVATIVE AGENDA—Conservatives correctly criticize the values that are actually being taught in our schools (materialism, competitiveness) but then fail to note that these values reflect the values of the marketplace that conservatives champion. And they propose false solutions whose underlying intent is to dismantle the public school system or at least wildly under-fund it and thereby "prove" that everything "public" must be a failure and that the only good thing is the private sector.

 
5. We will seek a single payer national health care plan and also broaden the public's understanding of health care. Our physical health cannot be divorced from environmental, social, spiritual, and psychological realities—and the entire medical system has to be reshaped in light of that understanding, focus on prevention, encourage alternative forms of health practice along with traditional Western forms, and insist that because human beings have many levels of reality, health care must reflect that rather than seek to reduce the human to the merely material.

CONTRAST: LIBERAL AGENDA-- Liberals seek the gradual addition of benefits for different sectors of the population but leave the whole system in the hands of the profiteers, thus guaranteeing that their proposed changes will be undermined by the insurance companies and drug companies who raise their costs to make huge profits and thus make these health care reforms unreasonably costly. The single payer plan does not increase but decreases the total amount spent on health care by the U.S.

CONTRAST: CONSERVATIVE AGENDA--Conservatives continually place private profit over public need when it comes to health care. They think of health care as something that needs to be earned rather than as a sacred obligation we have to care for each other.

6.    We will be stewards of the environment. We will champion voluntary simplicity and ethical consumption while seeking to change the global economy so that it is ordered in rational and sustainable ways. We will bring spiritual wisdom into daily life to change our addiction to endless consumption and challenge the media and advertising-driven belief that how many and how costly the things we own are the measure of our worth in the world.

CONTRAST: LIBERAL AGENDA—Liberals fight for partial reforms which rarely take into account the systemic and global nature of the problem and rarely notes that for every reform they win, there are ten new areas in which environmental damage is intensifying. They have no global plan or willingness to imagine how to recast the global economy to make our planet environmentally sustainable. And they liberals avoid any serious discussion of, much less fostering, an ethos of voluntary simplicity.

CONTRAST: CONSERVATIVES- Conservatives cheerlead for policies that actually reduce the amount of land protected from corporate abuse. They put the interests of corporate profit above their responsibility to be stewards of the planet, and often deny the urgency of global warming and other environmental disasters.

7.    Foreign policy and homeland security transformation: We will build a safer world and a rational approach to immigration through a strategy of non-violence and  generosity that eliminates poverty both in the US and in every other country.   The well-being of Americans depends on the well being of every other person on the planet and the well-being of the planet itself. We will support a Global Marshall Plan to use 5% of the GDP of the advanced industrial countries societies—each year for the next twenty years) to end global poverty, hunger, homelessness, inadequate education and inadequate health care. This will do more for homeland security and military safety than sinking trillions of dollars into wars and strategies of world domination that can never work and are immoral. Ending poverty both at home and abroad is both an ethical and security priority.

 And We will challenge the globalization of selfishness promoted by Western corporations (and their clones in China, India and Japan) and promote spiritual values of solidarity, caring for others, and love as the most effective way to build a sustainable society and to achieve "homeland security." Our path to a world of peace must be a path of peace, social justice, sensitivity to cultural differences and to environmental needs,  and non-violence. We will maintain an army on our borders and carefully search every container that comes into the country, and redirect the trillions of dollars that will otherwise be spent on military to ending global poverty and creating adequate education and health care. So while we support the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and the creation of an international Non-Violent Peacekeeping Force to prevent conflicts from escalating, we do so in the context of a coherent global policy that immediately implements the Global Marshall Plan (not by dumping money into the hands of corrupt governments, but through cooperation with non-governmental organizations committed to human rights, democracy, environmental sustainability, and enhancement and respect for native cultures and traditions).

We seek full rights for all immigrants who have made it to our shores. And we will solve the immigration issue in the only possible way—by making the countries from which immigrants are fleeing much more economically successful. Instead of imagining new methods of repressing of the desire that so many immigrants have to live a life freed of extremes of  from poverty and political oppression, we will support the Global Marshall Plan in ways that would build the economic infrastructure of the "underdeveloped" world, ensuring that its benefits flow to all people and not just to the economic elites of those countries. We seek a world in which open borders are the norm and there is no fear that the rich countries are being overrun by immigrants because their wellbeing has improved so much in their own countries.

                 CONTRAST: LIBERAL AGENDA—Still stuck in the militarist assumptions of the past, liberal politicians compete with the conservatives about "who is most effective" in projecting American power and domination around the world. They are more concerned to prove that they are "tough" than to prove that they actually have policies that could conceivably address the issues that drive people into wars and terrorism. Similarly, their correct desire to avoid repression of immigrants does not link to a coherent answer to "what can be done to prevent future millions from risking their lives to get across our borders if we create incentives for them to take such risks?"

                           CONTRAST: CONSERVATIVE AGENDA—Though quick to demand testing of the effectiveness of liberal programs,  conservatives have never proved the effectiveness of their strategy of providing security through wars and the domination of other countries. Distorted by their own "arrogance of power," they can neither acknowledge that 5,000 years of war-making has not worked to bring peace and security but only, century after century, increased the numbers of people killed in wars. Nor can conservatives see that their wars have actually undermined the internal life of America and increased our propensity to rely on violence as a solution to otherwise frustrating problems. They call for more repression of countries that do not follow our rules, and the repression of immigrants, but seem unable to acknowledge that such programs do not work

8.    We will seek the separation of Church, State and Science. We will protect our society from fundamentalist attempts to impose a particular religion on everyone, but will not fall into a first-amendment fundamentalism which attempts to keep all spiritual values out of the public sphere. We will protect science from invasion by the state, religion or corporate priorities, but reject "scientism"-- the worldview that claims that everything capable of being known or worthy of our attention can be fully described in scientific terms.
 
 CONTRAST: THE LIBERAL AGENDA—Liberals mistakenly confuse the separation of Church and State with the separation of spiritual values from the state. They claim to be defending the neutrality of public space, but fail to realize that there is already a religion operating in the public space, the religion of the dollar, of materialism and selfishness, the religion whose highest belief is that all that is real or at least all that can be known is that which can be verified through sense datum or measured by the principle of exchange (which, for the public realm, usually means: money, the one thing most easily validated and measurable). Thus, liberal defense of the first amendment is based on the false assumption that we actually have a neutral public space and that it must be protected from all values.

CONTRAST: THE CONSERVATIVE AGENDA—Conservatives  often seek to privilege Christian values in the public sphere and get lots of support from many Americans who know that when their children come home from school drunk with the disease of "making it" in the larger society (either through good grades to get the best career, or by physical prowess and active domination over others) and "making it in their peer group" (either by conforming to the peer group standards of the group or, increasingly for young girls, by responding to the sexual pressure championed by a growing sector of the media even for pre-teens,) these children are responding to a public sphere drenched in corrupt values which loving parents want to resist. Using this perfectly legitimate desire for alternative sets of values, the conservatives offer rush in with a repressive agenda that will do little to solve the social problems, and in addition will or seek to eliminate or dramatically weaken the actual functioning of the separation clause of the Bill of Rights.

Neither liberals nor conservatives understand how much "science" is driven in its choice of research topics by the requisites of the marketplace, so neither has seriously addressed how to protect science from the pressures of both the economic marketplace. And those same pressures exist, though in somewhat different form, in many religious communities which have become dependent on the support of the wealthy or those who have bought into the assumptions of the marketplace to keep their open. Too often this has resulted in a clergy more subordinate to the fund-raisers than to their own highest moral and spiritual values.

We seek to change all this.

This vision, needless to say, is "unrealistic" in the sense that it does not conform to the assumptions of politicians, and pundits in the mainstream mass media. For most Democratic Party leaders, that ends the discussion, because they've consistently been unwilling to risk any electoral loss for the sake of some higher good in which they believe. But that is precisely why so many Americans have come to distrust the Democrats—because if they won't fight hard for their own beliefs, how can they be counted on to fight for the best interests of American society when the going gets rough?

Liberals and progressives (including the leaders of the Democratic Party) need to learn that in order to win with their ideals, they have to be ready at times to lose with their ideals. Or to put it another way, anyone with a backbone worthy of respect doesn't reject ideas because they are unrealistic by contemporary standards, but only because they are inherently bad ideas.

         So, like the women's movement in its early years, or the civil right movement, or even the movement against the war in Iraq, we don't expect  Congress to embrace a new philosophy. But for those who are tired of the visionlessness of the Left, our attempt to develop a progressive spiritual politics may spur them to develop their own visions. This is when interesting conversations will reignite American politics.

         We are a consciousness-raising movement, and so our primary task like  the other major movements that have had a lasting impact on American society is to not compromise what we believe in for the sake of short-term political gain. We must instead advocate for our fullest vision and insist on why it makes more sense.
      

 So when we encourage people to meet with elected officials every year, it is only a small part of what we need to do to get our ideas into the public consciousness, and we are sure that you can devise many more imaginative steps to take.

We encourage people in our movement to take the following steps:

1.    To get the Spiritual Covenant endorsed by local and national professional organizations, unions, civic organizations, churches, synagogues, mosques, ashrams, college and universities, individual legislators and by local City Councils and State Legislatures.  2. To create a Spiritual Caucus in every political party (including but not exclusively Democrats, Republicans, Greens) and seek to convince those parties to adopt the Spiritual Covenant not as another plank but as the shaping plank of their approach to the world.  3. To write op-eds and other means to communicate this vision and popularize it in their communities, workplaces, religious and cultural institutions, and professional organizations.  4. To organize public demonstrations, marches, plays, concerts, playful activities, confrontational activities, and any other legal means to get these ideas discussed.

The full version of the Spiritual Covenant and what it implies can be studied in The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right , chapters 9-12.  Please get and read The Left Hand of God and create a study group on it.
 
        The Network of Spiritual Progressives is holding its national conference May 17-20 in Washington, D.C. at which it will seek to present these ideas to the public, the media and the government.  It is not too late to register: www.spiritualprogressives.org   or 510 644 1200 (during working hours, Pacific Standard Time).
  
 
 
Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine, author of ten books including most recently the national best-seller  The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right, and rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in San Francisco, California. RabbiLerner@tikkun.org. To help get this message in your local or national media, you may wish to approach them and ask them to cover the Spiritual Activism Conference in D.C. or to interview Rabbi Lerner (which can be arranged by calling one of his assistants at 510-528 6250 during work hours, Pacific Standard Time). You can write to the Network of Spiritual Progressives: NSP@tikkun.org or  The Network of Spiritual Progessives, 2342 Shattuck Ave, Suite 1200, Berkeley, California 94704.  www.spiritualprogressives.org