Browsing the archives for the Spiritual Values tag

21 May 10

Good for Goodness Sake: A Fool’s Errand or a Way of Life?

by Robert V. Taylor

Mpho Tutu, Robert V. Taylor & Archbishop Desmond Tutu

A blog conversation between Robert V. Taylor and Mpho Tutu about her new book Made for Goodness: And Why This Makes All the Difference co-authored with her father, Desmond M. Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town. Mpho Tutu is the Executive Director of The Tutu Institute for Prayer and Pilgrimage.

RVT: So many people feel overwhelmed by daily life. What was it that prompted you and your father to write about your belief that we are Made For Goodness?

MT: We wrote with two thoughts in mind: my father is often asked,given his life, what accounts for his joy? In our ministries each of us has encountered people who struggle to make sense of their lives; we wanted to tell the source of my father’s joy. We wanted to share what we have learned of how to make some sense of life, how to hold on to hope, how to be incurably infected with joy.

RVT: I know that individuals often test my core beliefs and practices for daily life.  You write that each day brings an opportunity to practice goodness.  Is there a defining moment for you when you thought, “Yikes! Is goodness possible here?”

MT: No. I never wonder “is goodness possible?” I do wonder “how is goodness possible? What am I not seeing? How can I learn to see rightly that I may act aright.

RVT: Since reading the book I’ve found myself imagining new ways in which goodness can change the world and our daily lives.  Is there an experience which transformed your life choices about goodness?

MT: I would love to be ale to say “one miraculous day I got it and ever after I have been able to live solely out  of the best that is in me” But, for me, goodness, like prayer, is a practice. I must turn often and again to rediscover my best self. There are still days when I argue with my husband, still moments when I snap at my children, still times when I am thoughtless or unkind. I take no joy in those experiences and the joylessness does its own work of transformation.

RVT: Someone recently asked me if it was possible to be good and not have the ability to forgive someone.  What wisdom would you offer that person?

MT: Forgiveness is a gift we give to those who have harmed us. But forgiveness is,first, a gift we give ourselves. It is a gift of healing. We can refuse healing, picking at the wounds to ensure that they fester and grow; we can refuse to forgive, deliberately reanimating the hurt whenever it shows signs of ebbing. We can wish ourselves healed, we can do all the things that promote healing but, ultimately, healing takes grace and time. It is not a matter of goodness or deserving.

RVT: You write that we should stop “being good” and live from our goodness.  So many people beat themselves up for not being “good enough”.  Are their practices that invite a shift from not being “good enough” to living from our goodness?
MT: “Being good” comes with a train of “shoulds” in attendance. It brings few joys in its wake. Living from our goodness crams joy into every corner: not happiness, that thing wreathed in smiles, but true joy the thing ringed around with deep satisfaction. The practices of looking for joy, of living mindfully, of becoming and being self-aware are those that help us to shift from the desperate struggle to be good enough to the true peace of living out of our goodness. It is living from the inside out rather than from the outside in.

RVT: I work with groups exploring the truth of each person being made in the imagination of the Creator.  Is there a way that this imagination infuses the truth that we are made for goodness?

MT: We are made, so scripture says, in the image and likeness of God. God is the very definition of goodness. God engenders goodness. Goodness is the whole imagination of God. We cannot compass or fathom God. Yet each of us contains God, holds God in the center of our being. This Godfulness, this goodness is our defining characteristic.

RVT: When someone lives with negative energy, anger or discrimination directed towards them, what would you say to them?

MT: I do not want to sound flippant. I know that many, many people live in the firing line. They are the targets of violence, oppression, abuse, anger and discrimination. None of us can choose the circumstances of our life. Each of us can choose how to respond to those circumstances. Each of can choose to be a victim or a survivor. Each person makes the choice with each challenge that faces them. For some people the challenges are daily and grinding. For some the challenges are intermittent. But none of us must face any challenge alone. There is a God who stands with us in the fieriest of the furnaces that we face

Robert V. Taylor

RVT: Concepts of goodness, kindness and compassion are consistent themes in many traditions, inviting us into living lives of integrity and wholeness.  Has your own experience been enriched by the wisdom that several traditions speak to?

MT: I have friends of many faiths. They teach me from the wisdom of their traditions. Practices of prayer and fasting and meditation that I have learned from Christian teachers have been enriched by teachings on those subjects by friends of other faiths. The Buddhist practices of mindfulness, the Jewish concept of shalom that encompasses more than peace and reaches out to include wholeness, the Muslim understanding of  Halaal right relationship rather than only  dietary purity these things and  more deepen my understanding of my own faith. They send me home to Christianity with sharpened vision.

RVT: What was your most surprising “wake up” experience of goodness?

MT: In January I co-lead a group on a pilgrimage to South Africa. On one of our first days there we visited a community center in the informal settlement of Kliptown. SKY is a non-profit youth center in the middle of a squalid township. There was an old woman there, a retired nurse, who came each day to prepare breakfast and lunch for children who might not otherwise have a meal. Her face was creased with smile lines. She was leaky with joy. Her warmth spilled over onto anyone within hailing distance. She had found her vocation and standing near her one was infected with the sense of possibility. That is the surprise of goodness, finding and living from our goodness can help other people to find and touch their own goodness.

Share your story here

Buy a copy of Made for Goodness: And Why This Makes All the Difference by Desmond M. Tutu & Mpho Tutu – click here

Visit the Made for Goodness website by clicking here

Join the YouTube conversation with Robert on Spirituality and Ethics – click here

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19 May 10

Harvey Milk & God Terrified Me

by Robert V. Taylor

Harvey Milk and God each terrified me.  In that order.  I was a young white anti-apartheid activist in South Africa in the nineteen-seventies.  To be openly gay filled me with more fear than the fight against apartheid.  Yet I knew in my bones that Harvey Milk and anti-apartheid activists were pointing to the same truth about the magnificence of each person.

As a young man I rejected the theological and political notion that apartheid was divinely sanctioned.  It was inconceivable to me that humanity could be denied to another person based on race.  Yet that was the moral and religious justification claimed for a system based on the superiority of whites in South Africa.

My activism was strengthened by the courage of religious leaders like Desmond Tutu. They insisted that God loves every single person.  Equality, justice and human rights were expressions of that love.  As a young man I was certain that our differences were less significant than the oneness of our humanity. Except when it applied to me.  

Learning about Harvey Milk’s election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977 was shocking news. It seemed impossible to conceive of an openly gay elected official in South Africa where legislation gave impunity to the police to act against LGBT people.

I was a candidate for ordination to the Anglican priesthood in South Africa in the nineteen seventies.   I’d witnessed the witch hunt conducted by the church against gay seminarians.  I used to go to Mass each day to get on my knees to plead for God to change me; to take away my sexual orientation. 

Following Harvey Milk’s assassination in 1978 I experienced an epiphany.  If God had no use for hatred and exclusion based on race, surely the same was true about sexual orientation.  The truth of this filled me with terror.  Was Harvey Milk’s courage an invitation for all LGBT people everywhere to stop pleading to be changed?

The possibility of Harvey Milk and God offering an invitation to get up off our knees was an exhilarating truth.  It would take me years to live fully into that liberating notion of becoming fully human.  In the process I discovered that the root word for courage is the same word for love.  Maybe Tutu was correct that the Holy loved all people without condition. I imagined God smiling on Milk’s courage.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mpho Tutu & Robert V. Taylor

Fifteen years later I asked Desmond Tutu when he would add LGBT people into his compelling vision that we are all “made for oneness.” He assured me that it would be after the fall of apartheid.  This iconic leader has been true to his word.  To the ire of many and the delight of others, Tutu is insistent that there are no outsiders with God or the human family. 

The shadow side of Milk’s invitation to courage was violence.  To be physically harmed or killed because of who you are is not something that most people seek.  My experience of threats directed against me over the years because of my openness as a gay man remind me that we have a long way to go in the United States before LGBT people know that we are viewed as outsiders.

But Harvey Milk’s life continues to have a ripple effect.  The young videographer who recently filmed me for a Seattle Men’s Chorus video unexpectedly told me that I’d been a hero of his.  I could not imagine why.  He said that as a high school student my prominence as an openly gay leader had given him courage in grappling with his own sexuality.  It was a simple moment.  In every encounter like that one I give thanks for the courage of people like Harvey Milk.  A young millennial man took for granted his ability to be open about his identity.  It seemed like reason enough to celebrate!

In the rural farming community of Eastern Washington where my partner and I spend time, we know that the politics is not as progressive as it is in cities like Seattle or New York.  But we hear the stories of families who accept, love and include their LGBT members.  For these families it is not a struggle, but a given.  I imagine Harvey Milk and God smiling on such inclusion.

The terror that Harvey Milk and God instilled in me have long dissipated.    Terror has made way for courage.  My own experience of exclusion is a reminder that it is dangerous to dismiss or exclude any person or group of people.  Harvey Milk’s courage is an invitation to celebrate oneness with our own self and others.

Share your story here!

Join Robert’s YouTube conversation about the Holy who includes and delights in each person – Exclusion in the Name of God – by clicking here

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14 Apr 10

Kumbaya Comapssion? Or the Real Thing?

by Robert V. Taylor

“Just another Kumbaya song” is a common side-lining of compassion.  Yet we want it for ourselves.  There’s the rub!  Compassion is a shift from “me” to “we” thinking. To be compassionate comes from inner strength and grounding.  What happens when a city signs up to be a Compassionate City?

On April 24 Seattle will become the first city in the world to officially affirm the Charter for Compassion.  It begins a 10 year Campaign for Compassionate Cities. Over half the world’s population now live in cities.  Will this movement transform how we think about one another beyond our own self interests?

I was involved in helping to organize the event known as Seeds of Compassion two years ago.  Over 150,000 people attended events over a four day period in Seattle, highlighted by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I was struck by the hunger of those attending.  For many it was a desire to shift the paradigm from “me” to “we”.

In late 2009 the Charter of Compassion was unveiled. It was the vision of Karen Armstrong, the insightful chronicler of religion today.  She used the cash award that came with the 2008 TED prize to offer a concrete way for transforming our thinking of what it means to be fully human. No wonder Armstrong will be in Seattle to speak and help celebrate that city becoming the first of many Compassionate Cities.

So is this all just feel good Kumbaya? Not for a moment.  If the universal spiritual and moral principle of compassion is about intentionally treating others as we want to be treated, it affects our choices.  This is about the sanctity of each person – with no exceptions.  The Charter for Compassion reminds us that respect, equity and justice for each human being is inviolable.  In the urban cauldrons of many cities that is a fragile concept.

The Charter for Compassion looses it steam when talking about what people should refrain from.  Yes, it is despicable to deny basic rights to another, to incite hatred, to act or speak violently.  In many cities such restraint would be a breath of fresh air to many! The Charter doesn’t pull off an irresistible invitation to the truth that there is no “me” without “we”.

Cities which sign on to the Campaign for Compassionate Cities will surely be held accountable to demonstrate how compassion is being restored to a central moral or ethical value?  It is not a bad place to begin by expecting – not encouraging – “accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures”.  Gender, sexual orientation and various family configurations will hopefully be added to this list by cities like Seattle.

Beyond any quibbles with the “committee-written” feel of the Charter, its purpose and intent is powerful.  It takes strength, courage and a commitment to the long haul to expect cities to be able to measure their compassion index.  Yes, there is a compelling need to “make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world.”

Imagine the Compassionate Cities finding ways to celebrate the crossing of boundaries or the ways in which previously unknown interdependence is experienced between people. Now that would be an expression of enlightenment!

Karen Armstrong is to be admired for the vision of a Charter for Compassion galvanizing so many people.  It could be placed as a mantra in every kitchen.  Compassionate Cites is a movement that can make significant measurable changes to the lives of ordinary people.  Seattle embodies the best of American innovation and generosity of spirit in leading the way as the first city in the US and the world to sign up. Vancouver BC is likely to be the second city to sign up. How might it affect Cleveland, Boise, Fort Myers, Washington DC or your own city?

Compassionate Cities, like the Charter, will have their greatest impact in lives changed and transformed by everyday acts of compassion.  It is about the courage, strength and willingness of each person who commits to compassion as a way of life.

There’s no Kumbaya about “me to we”.  It’s the real thing.

To buy tickets for Karen Armstrong’s April 24 two presentations click here.

Robert V. Taylor – Being A Repairer of the World

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18 Feb 10

Dalai Lama – Invitation to Show Up with Compassion

by Robert V. Taylor

The Dalai Lama invites us into compassion as a way of life.  Today’s meeting with President Obama at the White House elicited both praise from Tibetans and condemnation by the Chinese government.   While the politics of Tibetan-Chinese relations remain unresolved, it is the spirituality of His Holiness that makes him a global moral voice. He speaks to our hunger for meaning and purpose.

The Dalai Lama has said, “My religion is very simple.  My religion is kindness.”  No wonder so many throng to hear him.  Or that his spirituality connects with those on a spiritual quest.  It is a message of simplicity without being simplistic.  It stands in stark contrast to the divisiveness so often expressed in the name of religion.

I once heard His Holiness counsel a member of the audience not to abandon her own religious tradition, but instead, learn how to be more compassionate and kind in her daily life.  His lack of proselytizing or expecting a “buy-in” to all Buddhist teachings from the spiritual seeker is telling.  In itself it is an example of practicing the compassion and kindness that he expresses as the heart of spirituality.

People who encounter His Holiness invariably leave with a renewed sense of life, usually feeling optimistic about their own purpose and spirituality.  It is a message far more profound than passing “feel good” emotions.  His message is rooted in the moral high ground of what we call inclusiveness; of what he describes as all things and all people, being intertwined.

The question which the Dalai Lama has suggested we ask in our conversations with the Holy is how can I “show up in the world in a way that will cause the world itself to change.”  Compassion and kindness impact our way of being.  They offer a new mindfulness to whom and how we are!

The issue may be human rights in Tibet, the way in which we each exercise leadership, our care for the environment, the hope of a more compassionate world for our children or any number of things affecting the life of all.

Compassion and kindness are not just good ideas!  It is about how we show up in the world each day. No wonder the Dalai Lama connects and speaks to our longings, inviting us to become fully alive.  Kindness and compassion are possible to practice, to integrate into our living.  As if he is always coaxing, inviting us on, the Dalai Lama knows how to keep showing up.

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11 Feb 10

Mandela – the Spirit of Being Human: 20th Anniversary Celebration of His Release.

by Robert V. Taylor

Nelson Mandela is a reminder of what it means to be authentically human.  As the world celebrates the 20th anniversary of Mandela’s release from prison, a story of courageous hope and courage is celebrated.  His authentic leadership and bridging of divisions are rare commodities of hope.  There is a craving for such integrity among the global human family. We celebrate an icon who reminds us of what it means to part of the human family.

Many throughout the world remember exactly what they were doing on the day of Mandela’s release on February 11, 1990.  I was leading church services in New York as a global audience watched him walk out of the Victor Verster prison.   A few hours later he stood on the balcony of Cape Town’s City Hall and spoke to the world and the 50,000 who had gathered there.  “Our march to freedom is irreversible” he said.  As a young anti-apartheid activist I had often sat on Cape Town’s Signal Hill, looking across Table Bay to Robben Island wondering if he would ever be freed.  Many of us were as joyful, as we were incredulous, at his release.

During apartheid it was a criminal offense to own the writings of Mandela and quote or display images of him in public.  My heart pounded as I smuggled his writings into South Africa in 1978.  Government paranoia of his message was related to its powerful simplicity.  He envisioned a diverse nation in which democracy, freedom and equality for all were the foundation of a thriving country.  Apartheid enforced divisions were the antithesis of his vision of a shared and common future for all.

Mandela re-appeared on the world stage, striding out of prison on February 11, 1990.  In spite of being jailed for 26 years, his own persona remained free, courageous and unwavering in his vision.   He may have been in prison, but his personal identity and vision were never imprisoned.  His release from jail was a reminder that he had never left the world stage; he was re-entering it with even greater gravitas.

The attempt to silence and diminish Mandela was an unmitigated failure – a truth that F.W. De Klerk, then President of that country, acknowledged in admitting the moral failure of apartheid’s cruel, unjust divisions.  De Klerk said he realized that all South Africans were “an omelet you could not unscramble.”

A more compelling version of De Klerk’s observation was the message constantly offered by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, that all people are made for oneness.  Mandela’s iconic status is etched in history because of his leadership in building common ground, unity and oneness out of the ashes of division.

Clint Eastwood’s Invictus is a reminder that Mandela steadfastly resisted the yearning for payback expressed by some of his supporters. Instead, Mandela was resolute in using every tool at his disposable to work for the oneness so often elusive in post-traumatic political landscapes.

The South African Constitution, widely regarded as a model of constitutional law, reflects Mandela’s vision and the yearning of a nation with no outcasts among its citizens.  Unique among constitutions, it enshrines legal protections for children, women and gay and lesbian South Africans among others.

Mandela and Tutu believed in a proactive effort to avoid any possibilities of vengeance.   These two Nobel Peace Laureates set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Tutu.   Any South African could apply for amnesty from civil and criminal charges if they confessed to and asked for forgiveness for their actions.  Nothing quite like it had ever been attempted in any part of the world.

Mandela’s life story and integrity supported the words he spoke 20 years ago that “the march to freedom is irreversible.”  In a country where the roadblocks to freedom for all were abundant, Mandela led the widening of the path to oneness and unity.

Mandela the icon may be iconic because he transcends the politics of divisions.  In place of discord, his life story is about freedom for all, an innate freedom that not even the harshest imprisonment can destroy.  The march to freedom is irreversible. Hundreds of millions in the global family know it. We celebrate freedom, justice and dignity for all in Mandela even as we yearn for others to take up the mantle of his spirit.  The mantle of being authentically human.

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5 Feb 10

Your Footprint of Compassion

by Robert V. Taylor

The compassion of people throughout the world to the people of Haiti has been remarkable.  Some estimate that at least 50% of all Americans have contributed to the Haitian relief effort in some way!  I believe we are each hard-wired to be compassionate and generous.

If you haven’t done so yet, please consider supporting groups with trusted, effective on-the ground relief capacity in Haiti.  Perhaps an organization like one of these:

Every compassionate and generous action makes a difference, joining that of others. We are hard-wired for generous compassion.  We grow into it by practicing compassion and generosity. Soon your part and mine reveals the face of compassion, hope, love and justice.  So we begin to leave a footprint of compassion.

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26 Jan 10

Compassion Unfolding? A Spiritual Touchstone

by Robert V. Taylor

Compassionate hearts unfolding and stretching are the touchstone of our spirituality. The tragedy still playing out in Haiti provokes many reactions in us. Our varied responses to the people of Haiti change our spiritual compass. What has it changed in you?

I was in South Africa when the Haitian earthquake happened. From people living in squatter shacks, township homes or the upscale neighborhoods of Cape Town there was an outpouring of disbelief, horror, along with practical aid offered to the Haitian people. In a country which has experienced dehumanizing brutality the empathy quotient was high.

Flying home through Chicago people were glued to TV screens in the airport. These travelers seemed unwilling to miss a single word being reported out of Haiti. Back home the conversations in person and on Facebook have a strong focus on responding to the people of Haiti. Every TV show that I’ve watched invites me to give to the Haitian relief and rebuilding.

Unleashed generosity in you or me towards others brings a gift to us. Compassion is the spiritual mark of how alive we are. Generous compassion is the sign of our willingness to be stretched beyond our own comfort, beyond our own needs. We may hear people asking “Why did God allow such a terrible thing to happen?” We might have even asked it ourselves. Blaming God or the victims of any tragedy is usually a defense to keep ourselves from unfolding generous compassion. When blame or judgment is offered, run for cover because they never have anything to do with spirituality.

I don’t know your experience, but I do know that compassion unfolds when I feel like part of me is broken, or I’m grieving, or stepping through muck of some kind. It’s as if the broken bits offer us a choice. We can step on them and be cut by their jagged edges. Or we can discover the unexpected surprising beauty of the broken or chipped pieces being reconstituted with the help of the muck, grief or anger that we’re detaching from. In reconstituting the pieces I’m stretched. When I’m stretched compassion unfolds and grows deeper inside of me.

Those of us who live in the shadow of places such as Mount Rainier or the Golden Gate Bridge know that an earthquake can happen in an instant. There is not much distance between us and the people of Haiti. We are them and they are us.

Maybe that’s part of what I experienced in the South African responses to Haiti. Empathy, unfolding compassion and generosity are where we discover that we are all one human family. That changes what it means for us to be alive. To become fully alive, fully human, is the invitation of the spiritual quest.

You’ve probably already given to the Haitian people. If you have not or if you are planning to give again there are several great organizations, including CARE and Doctors Without Borders, on the ground in Haiti.

How has your reaction to what has happened in Haiti stretched you or drawn you into unfolding, generous compassion? Please join the blog conversation at http://www.robertvtaylor.com/blog/archives

Be sure to check out the videos on Robert’s YouTube Channel: robertvtaylor1 or at http://www.robertvtaylor.com/blog/archives

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27 Dec 09

A New Year Spirituality of Hope?

by Robert V. Taylor

Does the turning of a year invite some spiritual optimism and hope for what lies ahead?   Joyful, festive celebrations express a spirituality of delight and feasting.  But is there something that reminds us of the other dimensions of a spirituality of oneness, of unity and of justice for all?  I believe there is.

For over three decades my own New Year’s Day practice has been to recite, sing or reflect on the words of the gospel song, This little light of mine.   The song is a reminder of the spiritual light which flickers in each of us, going before us, illuminating the path and inextinguishable.  This annual practice has always felt to me like a reminder of the light which precedes us in the world.  A light which invites us to be radiant in what we try to do.  This annual practice and tradition is a reminder of the ground beneath me and before me.

A practice much older than mine provides a reminder of a profound spiritual yearning for freedom, emancipation, justice and liberty.  For surely these things are the expression of any spirituality of love and compassion?  At the cusp of a new year the reminder of this yearning comes in the form of Watch Night.

Watch Night is a prayer service that takes place on New Year’s Eve in black churches across the United States.  The practice began in 1862 when free African Americans, joined by abolitionists, gathered to pray that the Emancipation Proclamation would be signed by President Lincoln as he had promised to do on the next day, January 1, 1863.

In many black churches the Emancipation Proclamation is still read in its entirety, or in part, at every Watch Night service.  In some churches the lights are dimmed for the service and then completely turned off for the five minutes before midnight as congregants kneel in prayer. As midnight strikes, the lights are turned on and people rise from their knees and a new year is celebrated!

This tradition may celebrate one particular emancipation epiphany.  Its particularity invites reflection and participation in the universal hope it points to. It invites us to the window of what a spirituality of being beloved of the Holy means for the emancipation of all people.  The Watch Night rhythm of prayers offered on bended knees, the movement from dimmed light to darkness which welcomes the blazing light of a New Year is a metaphor for the cycles of dimness, darkness and the many shades of light which lead into promises of hope, justice and emancipation for all.

The celebratory partying of New Year’s Eve need not stand alone as an expression of a spirituality of delight and joy.  The Watch Night tradition is a reminder of the hopes for oneness and unity emerging from the shadows into the full disclosure of light.  The two strands of celebration are not separate but spiritual cousins.

My own treasured tradition with, This little light of mine, at the turning of the year is not diminished by these other traditions.  It is enriched and enhanced by them.  I am reminded that we each play a role in making the promises of the year ahead happen.

Perhaps your own traditions at the turning of the year reveal spiritual insights for yourself and others?

Join the blog, post a comment at http://www.robertvtaylor.com/blog/archives

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12 Dec 09

Breaking out the light of Chanukah?

by Robert V. Taylor

Chanukah is a reminder of light breaking out.  One rabbi refers to the light of Chanukah as “holy sparks”.  Another says that within Judaism there as many words for “light” as Eskimo’s have for “snow”.  Chanukah offers a reminder to what grounds our way of being.  What does it mean to discover sparks of light in our lives?

It is not by accident that the Hindu festival of Diwali, the Christian celebration of the birth of Christ known as the “light who shines in the darkness” and Chanukah all come within weeks of the shortest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere.  These celebrations of light occur when lengthening shadows and parsed light invite us to reconsider light as the metaphor which grounds our lives.

Chanukah is a lesser Jewish festival with wide appeal inviting non-Jews into its radiance.  It transcends its own tradition because we each know about shadows or darkness.  We might wonder how to bring light to endless teenage killings in Chicago, the homeless hungry in our cities, justice and peace in the Middle East, Burma or the Congo.  Chanukah makes Jews of us all, if only for a season.

The lighting of the Chanukah candles, placed in a window, is a powerful symbol inviting us to ask how we ground our lives.  It says, “I invite the light of the Holy in.”  It is a life-affirming consciousness that it is possible to move from darkness to light.

What happens when we shine a light on what needs to be repaired, healed, restored or re-created in our own life or the life of the world?  We can choose to become part of the “holy sparks” of making the world a better place for all.  Chanukah offers a consciousness about how we want to be throughout the year.

The Buddha once told his followers to “Make a light of yourself”.  We are not created to be passive, pliant people.  The gospel song, This Little Light of Mine was originally sung to remind people of the Holy light burning inside of them, that no person could ever extinguish.  It was also a song of claiming our own destiny and power as people made I the imagination of the Holy.  Was this why it became an anthem of the Civil Rights movement?

Light can never be stopped from bursting out.  Our part is to let it shine.  Leonard Cohen wrote that we should “Ring the bells that can still ring” suggesting that we forget about perfection and perfect offerings.  He says “There is a crack in everything.  That’s how the light gets in.”

Chanukah invites us to be gentle to those “cracks” and so allow light in.  The light of Chanukah summonses our own courage to the let the light be radiant as we go about our daily lives. Those holy sparks become grounding for lives of justice and compassion.

This may be a lesser Jewish festival elevated to broad popular acknowledgment.  But I’m grateful to our Jewish friends for such a gift.  A gift of holy sparks breaking through the cracks.

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10 Dec 09

Obama – Our Prince of Peace?

by Robert V. Taylor

Is President Obama our Prince of Peace?  Whether you think the President deserves the 2009 Nobel Peace prize or not, the award sticks to him like bees drawn to nectar.  Expectations about him as a peacemaker or the dismissal of the award coming too soon in this young presidency both miss the point.  The more significant question is how we are each peacemakers in our own spheres of influence.

When the Obama’s attend church on Christmas they will be among the hundreds of millions reminded of the birth of a child revered as the Prince of Peace.  The Christ of the Christian tradition speaks about peacemakers being “blessed”.   The juxtaposition of the peace prize being awarded within days of a deeper commitment to the war in Afghanistan is an irony reflecting the precarious nature of what we understand as “peace”.

In the time of Christ peace was widely understood to mean the absence of conflict for the Roman Empire.  The Hebrew tradition of Christ viewed peace as the “well-being” of all.  This was a social construct.  It was about the well-being of economic, spiritual and social relationships.  Quite different from an absence of conflict.  The Prince of Peace’s peace is proactive and engaged.  It is a peace that celebrates our inter-connectedness.  We are part of one human family in which our own well being is only possible when the well-being of all is actively pursued.

Obama is not the Prince of Peace.  Time will tell whether he is an active peacemaker or not.  But he does bring a refreshing understanding of what it means for Americans to be part of the human family that includes all, not just some.  If he becomes an activist peacemaker his successes will reflect how we each  understand ourselves to be about peace, about well-being for all.

From his Hindu tradition Gandhi believed swaraj, the concept of self-restraint, meant that all of the necessities of life should be enjoyed alike by all – the wealthy, poor and comfortable.   Gandhi said, “I give you a talisman:  Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test.  Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself is the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him.  Will he gain anything by it?  Will it restore him to a control over his own fate and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj for the hungry and starving millions?  Then you will find you own doubts and yourself melting away.”

What a talisman for us and the newest Nobel Laureate!  Although Gandhi was never awarded the Nobel, even thought he was nominated for it five times, he is the spiritual and moral leader of the non-violence movement.  Gandhi, like the Noel Peace Laureates Muhammad Yunus, Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela, understood that without the well-being of all, peace is an illusion.

Leaders can’t do it alone.  Leaders need the encouragement and participation of others.  No wonder Mr. Obama paid homage today to the organizations and legions of people working for peace and well-being around the world.  The President has the moral leadership and capacity to engage and invite us to each to support the well-being of all.

While congratulating the President on becoming a Nobel Peace Laureate, it is we who are invited to be re-engaged with the entire human family.  Then peace will begin to break out.

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