Justice
Journalism’s New Paradigm
March 4, 2021
“Did you know 86% of people consider themselves to be spiritual?”
-Fetzer Institute
KEY FINDINGS
Insight into the spiritual lives of people across the U.S.
“JUSTICE TAKES TIME.” -VERNON E. JORDAN
As we are loved.
December 25, 2020
“A new commandment I give to you, the you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”
-Jesus of Nazareth, John 13:34
~
‘I know why I celebrate the Christian message. It is because I am grateful for what I have learned from Jesus: to be courageous and dare to question the established ways of thinking;
to speak up about unjust laws;
to be fearlessly compassionate;
to reach out to those who are sick and suffering; to attend to my short-comings before judging others for theirs; to be empathetic and reach across tribal boundaries to embrace people of all kinds, even those who are traditionally thought of as enemies; to have personal dignity under stress and
not buckle under the weight of popular opinion;
to be true to myself when the masses disapprove; to be charitable and stand for forgiveness and help those who are disproportionately disadvantaged; to be down to Earth about my spirituality and to practice it; and above all, to have a direct and personal relationship with the Divine.’
-Rev. Dr. Edward Viljoen
~
I, the father of this universe, the Mother, {GAIA, Sofia, Bafflement}, the Supporter, the Grandsire, the Holy One to be know, the Wood of Power.’ -The Bhagavad Gita
The Tao produced One; One produced Two; Two produced Three; Three produced All things. -Tao Te Ching
In a moment of realness, the clouds in our mind clear and our passion is restored, and our walls crumble when no one is looking. It all continues and refreshes, if we let it. It all renews so subtly. -Mark Nepo
“Behold, I make all things new.”
☆☆•*¨*•.¸¸
Dorothy Day.
November 23, 2020
With author David Brooks & publisher Robert Ellsberg.
“In anticipation of our upcoming commemoration of the the 40th anniversary of Day’s death on November 29th 2020, we remember the eulogy given by Father Geoffrey B. Gneuhs, O.P. at the funeral of Dorothy Day, Nativity Church, New York City, December 2, 1980:”
In her book The Long Loneliness, Dorothy wrote, “All my life I have been haunted by God.” And where did this haunting God lead her? To a life of simplicity and poverty with the poor, to solidarity with the outcasts—today in this city of New York there are more and more people homeless as mental hospitals close and social services are cut back, while at the same time this country spends $170 billion a year for armaments.
This haunting God led Dorothy to jail because
she spoke and acted for the rights of women and men, of laborers and workers; she was led to jail because she stood with the farm workers, and to prison because she would not tolerate the militarist posture of this country. She was led ultimately to community, to love.
This being haunted by God became for her a stupendous and extraordinary pilgrimage, a pilgrimage of faith. For sure, the Sermon on the Mount sums up the entire life and spirit of Jesus, and it is an invitation which Dorothy with consummate conviction accepted. She realized that love is an exchange of gifts: the gift of faith, and she in turn offered the gift of her life lived in faith, given for us and thousands of others. The Sermon on the Mount, along with the 25th chapter of St. Matthew, the cornerstone of the Catholic Worker movement, is not some general guide or optional outline. It is the very expression of the flesh and blood of Jesus—the Incarnation of Truth.
In our country, those who have so much, too much, are apt to declare “Well, the poor you’ll always have with you”—not realizing or hearing Jesus speak the Truth in the Sermon, not hearing the Truth call out. That is precisely the point. Christ the poor one is always with us!
Dorothy, with dear Peter Maurin, of whom she wrote, “He was my master and I was his disciple, he gave me a way of life,” realized this Truth so well. She said, “What a simplification of life it would be if we saw Christ everywhere we go.” Did you give me clothes? Did you give me food? Did you give me shelter in the empty room in your home, of your rectory or priory?
To love, for her, was not a duty but a privilege. And should it not be for all of us? It begs the question: Do we want to meet Christ? Do we really believe? We do not have to go far to see Christ, to invite Christ, and to be invited by Christ. The invitation is offered for loaves and fishes, more often at our houses, soup and bread and tea. To those of us who doubt, to us Christians who waver, Dorothy showed by her love that, yes, the Gospel is possible. The Gospel is so possible it is now and cannot wait for the future. The moment is ours. Dorothy seized the moment given her. The Truth called her forth and she accepted the invitation—solidarity with those without the arrogance and dominance of wealth, power, and prestige. She lived the Truth with all its starkness and abruptness, with all its freedom and its love.
She wrote, “We cannot love God unless we love each other and to love we must know each other—and we will know Him in the breaking of the bread—and then we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.” Love is not meant to be a half measure, nor is it meant to be easy. Dorothy on her pilgrimage knew that violence and war are not the way of Christ, that love is the only measure. Thus Truth again called her forth and she accepted the invitation to speak out against war and the crucifixion of humanity by nuclear armaments.
Wouldn’t it be a tragedy for us to equivocate or to dilute the spirit of her life?
She was utterly convinced of the rightness of pacifism and of nonviolent resistance to statism. And never, even at age 83, did she waver in the clarity of her vision of Truth and in her conviction.
Today the romance of war and power and individualism ignores the capacity of the human imagination imaged in God to see and to live the Gospel of gentle personalism and unconditional love. And Dorothy loved life, believed in life, enjoyed life. It was the very life of a child that welled up in her the invitation to the pilgrimage. In St. John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I have come to bring life, to bring life more abundantly.”
Remember when Jesus was on trial for his actions of Truth? He said to Pilate, “Mine is not a kingdom of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my men would have fought…. I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.”
And what was Pilate’s reply? “Truth,” he said, “what is truth?” In a truthless world, some have struggled to listen to His voice and to continue to speak Truth—the Truth of Christ. And one was Dorothy: in her commitment to justice, to freedom and to peace, her resistance to the kingdoms of this world, and her unflinching commitment to the belief that love will redeem the world, Dorothy had a dream of this Truth, the dream became a vision, and the vision became a light for the world. The Truth guided her pilgrimage and she admitted, “We confess to being fools and wish that we were more so.” Oh, thank God for such foolishness!
And so Dorothy, the pilgrimage is over. You’re home now. The Truth invites you to the eternal banquet.
Dorothy Day’s granddaughter sentenced to prison for nuclear base break-in
Martha Hennessy, a granddaughter of Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, was sentenced Friday (Nov. 13) to 10 months in prison for breaking into Kings Bay Naval Base in Georgia two years ago to protest its stockpile of nuclear weapons.
Hennessy’s was the lightest sentence given for the break-in at the Navy base 40 miles south of Brunswick, Georgia, on April 4, 2018, in which Hennessy, 65, was joined by six other Catholic pacifists. Together they are known as the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, named after the Plowshares anti-war movement founded 40 years ago by Daniel and Philip Berrigan and six others.
On Thursday, Carmen Trotta, of St. Joseph Catholic Worker in New York City, was sentenced to 14 months in prison, while Clare Grady of the Ithaca Catholic Worker was sentenced to 12 months. Both have spent their lives at Catholic Worker houses in New York state, which house and feed the needy. All were also sentenced to probation and will be required to repay the Navy base a total of $33,500 in damages.
Hennessy is the only one of Dorothy Day’s nine grandchildren to dedicate herself to what Catholics call “works of mercy.”
Hennessy — in a statement right before her sentencing — said she regarded the action as a religious exercise, likening it to Jesus’ action of overturning the money-changing tables at the entrance to the Jerusalem Temple, as described in the New Testament gospels.
“I had no criminal intent,” she said. “I wanted to prevent a nuclear holocaust.”
‘…and it bends towards justice.’
January 20, 2020
‘Superman could bend steel with his bare hands.
Along the way, we’ve been sold on the idea that difficult tasks ought to be left to heroes, often from somewhere far away or from long ago. That it’s up to them, whoever ‘them’ is.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. quoted Theodore Parker: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
But it’s not bending itself. And it’s not waiting for someone from away to bend it either.
It’s on us. Even when it doesn’t work (yet). Even when it’s difficult. Even when it’s inconvenient.
Our culture is the result of a trillion tiny acts, taken by billions of people, every day. Each of them can seem insignificant, but all of them add up, one way or the other, to the change we each live through.
Sometimes it takes a hero like Dr. King to wake us up and remind us of how much power we actually have.
And now it’s our turn. It always has been.’
-Seth Godin
‘To do the right and love goodness.’
August 2, 2019You have been told . . . what is good
And what the Lord requires of you:
Only to do the right and to love goodness,
And to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)
╭ღ╯
“It has always been much easier (because it has always seemed much safer) to give a name to the evil without than to locate the terror within.”
“We ought to try, by the example of our own lives, to prove that life is love and wonder and that that nation is doomed which penalizes those of its citizens who recognize and rejoice in this fact.”
Timeliness from Baldwin, born on this day in 1924.
“I can conceive of no better service,” Walt Whitman wrote, “than boldly exposing the weakness, liabilities and infinite corruptions of democracy.” Nearly a century later, James Baldwin (August 2, 1924–December 1, 1987) — another poet laureate of the human spirit — embodied this ethos in one of his shortest, most searing, and timeliest essays.
“We are living through the most crucial moment of our history, the moment which will result in a new life for us, or a new death… a new vision of America, a vision which will allow us to face, and begin to change, the facts of American life… This seems a grim view to take of our situation, but it is scarcely grimmer than the facts. Our honesty and our courage in facing these facts is all that can save us from disaster. And one of these facts is that there has always been a segment of American life, and a powerful segment, too, which equated virtue with mindlessness… It always reminds me of a vast and totally untrustworthy bomb shelter in which groups of frightened people endlessly convince one another of its impregnability, while the real world outside — by which, again, I mean the facts of our private and public lives — calmly and inexorably prepares their destruction.”
“We must dare to take another view of majority rule… taking it upon ourselves to become the majority by changing the moral climate. For it is upon this majority that the life of any nation really depends.”
Aroha.
November 28, 2018
Spirit of justice creator Spirit;
help us to make and keep this country
a home for all its different peoples,
and grant to our government and all its representatives
imagination, skill and energy
that there may grow amongst us Aroha and peace.
-New Zealand Prayer Book
[Aroha is the creative force behind all dreams.]
︶⁀°••°⁀︶
“The age of nations has passed.
Now unless we wish to perish, we
must shake off our old prejudices and build the earth.”
-Teilhard de Chardin:
Transpersonal Alchemy
January 18, 2018
2018 is an 11 year which means it’s less about our own ego needs and more about what is the best for the collective. It is also a year of Justice so we can, and should, focus on balance. We need to balance our own needs with those of others. Balance between work and play will be a theme. And, perhaps Justice… in the cosmic sense… will help restore the balance that has been tipped way out of range this last year.
As the Moon increases in light, let your feelings surface, unjudged, to simply flow from you to the Youniverse.
Remember, little acts of self care & nurturance become giants as our numbers grow. We Are healing the Divine Feminine through our be-ingness and She is in deep gratitude.
☆☆•*¨*•.¸¸☆☆
From Joyce/Skyfire:
“If you’re in need of a session, I am still taking appointments for Fridays through Sundays. Give me a call to book a time.
480-577-1939
Be well. Stay safe. Be love!”
Paradigm shift.
January 8, 2018
If you want a new paradigm, first you must become it.
-Jennifer Rose
“Is it the innate desire of people trying to simply reconnect, driven perhaps by hostile environments? Is it simply missing the ease with which we used to greet one another? Is it the reconvening of safe, casual boundaries that were blasted away through manufactured fear and hatred? Whatever it is, count me in. I am making the effort to engage in the ‘kindness movement’. Something we can all do. We can all be more present to what goes on around us. One of the most wonderful ways to do this is when we serve, when we can help satisfy another’s needs, when we bring the natural healing element of love to a wounded situation. We can do this.’
-Science of Mind
The world, with all of its challenges, can feel overwhelming sometimes, as it may be feeling for many of us right now. And we may wonder if we are ready to meet these challenges and if we can meet the doubt and fear that naturally arise within us. Perhaps our own freedom and the freedom of others is wrapped up in simply realizing that we were born for such a time as this.
-Rev. Masando Hiraoka, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Depersonalize the issue and act from understanding, not agreement. Speak up, not from anger but from compassion. Take action, not from vengeance but from love.
I yearn for the day when I can watch the news and be immune to the negative energy I feel around the perceived absurdity of the actions of the unskillful in our society. I want to instead simply recognize the lack of skill and take all action necessary to ensure no further harm with only one movivation: love. This our practice, and it is our call.
-Dr. Kenn Gordon, Kelowna, British Columbia
We must shock this nation with the power of love.
We must shock this nation with power of mercy.
We must shock this nation and fight for justice for all.
We can’t give up on the heart of our democracy.
Not now, not ever.
–Rev. Dr. William J. Barber
We must in our own nature see the necessary reason for every fact…see how it could most be.
-Emerson
What we reach for many be different, but what makes us reach is the same.
Imagine that each of us is a spoke in an Infinite Wheel, and, though each spoke is essential in keeping the Wheel whole, no two spokes are the same. The rim of that Wheel is our living sense of community, family, and relationship, but the common hub where all the spokes join is the one center where all souls meet.
So, as I move out into the world, I live out my uniqueness, but when I dare to look into my core I come upon the one common center where all lives begin. In that center, we are one and the same. In this way, we live out the paradox of being both inique and the same.
For mysteriously and powerfully, when I look deep enough into you, I find me, and when you dare to hear my fear in the recess of your heart, you recognize it as your secret that you thought no one else knew. And that unexpected wholeness that is more than each of us, but common to all–that moment of unity is the atom of Gaia.
-Mark Nepo
True love is…to accept those who are in need of our time, our friendship, our help.
-Pope Francis
Vulnerable communication.
December 8, 2017
‘You and I should form the habit of taking definite time each day to pray for peace with justice, for there is not peace possible without justice. […] We should not only pray, we should act, each contributing the best they have to the common purpose, each willing to make any sacrifice necessary…for there can be no individual self-preservation without the preservation of all.’
-Ernest Holmes
︶⁀°• •° ⁀︶
In this current cultural climate and in my new position as a social justice minister, I’ve found myself continually pondering what it is that motivates us to take a stand for the rights of others. How do we do this ethically and not paternalistically? I’m discovering that my spiritual path deepens greatly when I’m connecting my own identity to the identity of the whole, realizing that who I am extends far beyond the cones of this ego self. I am the Oneness that Holmes spoke of above: Self-preservation does not exist without the preservation of all. The wellness and dignity of the whole is an inextricable truth of Oneness.
Taking action on this belief can be difficult because to be a presence for healing and equity, we must become aware of what needs to heal in us and the unconscious ways we may be perpetuating inequity without meaning to.
There are many ways in which I have been sheltered from the inequities of the world because I have grow up in a society that unconsciously perpetuates systems that benefit some to the detriment of others. In other ways, as a person of color, I have experienced what race – and ethnicity – based inequity feels like.
To be in a place where I am genuinely present to creating a world of peace and prosperity for all means that I also am invited to be in a place where I get to explore my own privileges and inequities. I get to be in conversation with people who also want to heal and be agents of helping. These conversations can be uncomfortable and painful, but they are also medicine.
I think as we strive to create a world that works for all, we are being offered an invitation to heal and to be medicine in this world through vulnerable communication with folks who have different experiences than we do.
-Re. Masando Hiraoka
Albuquerque Center for Spiritual Living in New Mexico
❥Blessed are the peacemakers.
September 12, 2016
‘Beauty Is Physics’ Secret Weapon’
March 1, 2016
‘I don’t think any of the received religions do justice to what I’ve discovered about the physical world.’
Nobel laureate and physicist Frank Wilczek maps his path to discovery.
‘You have to view the world in different ways to give it justice.’
‘That’s a central element of human life and should be central to a scientific worldview – to try to understand things whole.’
—
Nautilus
http://nautil.us/issue/32/space/beauty-is-physics-secret-weapon
We recognize beauty when we see it, right? Michelangelo’s David, Machu Picchu, an ocean sunrise. Could we say the same about the cosmos itself? Frank Wilczek, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thinks we can.
[…]
At the frontiers of physics, we’re dealing with realms of the very small and the very large and the very strange. Everyday experience is not a good guide and experiments can be difficult and expensive. So the source of intuition is not so much from everyday experience or from a massive accumulation of facts, but from feelings about what would give the laws of nature more inner coherence and harmony. My work has been guided by trying to make the laws more beautiful.
Einstein was the decisive figure in bringing this second aspect of the beauty of nature—symmetry—to new heights. The theory of relativity is very much in the mold of change without change. You can look at the world from a moving platform and different things rushing at you or away from you will look quite different, but the same laws will apply as in the stationary frame. That’s the essence of the theory of relativity. You change the way things look and yet the laws are still valid.
[…]
Does the world embody beautiful ideas? You can look at that question in an enlightening way by looking at the history of people’s ideas about beauty before they knew the laws of physics and then compare that to what we’ve actually found. You get an enriched perspective on both art and science.
[…]
The concept that space is an empty, passive receptacle that has no inner life is totally wrong. In quantum mechanics, space has spontaneous activities. These are called “virtual particles.” Part of what I got the Nobel Prize for was figuring out how virtual particles affect the real particles we see.
{…]
Do you think science will ever crack the fundamental problem of how we get our mental world out of material stuff?
Yes, I do. How should I say it? I think we’re maybe 90 percent of the way there.
Dialogue for Criminal Justice Reform
July 27, 2015
Equal Justice Initiative
“Seeking justice for all treatment…”
slate.com
John Oliver, ‘Last Week Tonight’:
‘Mandatory minimum sentences can send Americans to prison for decades for even low-level drug offenses—regardless of context—as John Oliver explained on Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight. Even the judges who are forced to issue these sentences often think they’re egregiously unfair.
So why do we have them? Most mandatory minimum sentencing laws were written during the height of the crack epidemic in the 1980s and ’90s, when politicians from both sides of the aisle raced to outdo each other when it came to being “tough on drugs.” Though the policies were immensely popular, almost everyone agrees they were a mistake, and what’s worse, they’ve contributed to the United States’ insane incarceration rate.’
Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/sandra-bland-bail-bond-system
“The large companies behind many local bondsmen are part of the American Bail Coalition, a powerful national association that has spent three decades pushing legislation that makes it harder for defendants like Bland to get out of jail without paying large sums of money. Before ABC began lobbying, in 1990, commercial bail accounted for just 23 percent of pretrial releases; today it’s 49 percent. Average bail amounts for felony cases have almost tripled in the past 25 years. Meanwhile, between 2004 and 2012, ABC companies whose income comes almost entirely from bail saw their revenues increase 21 percent.”
NPR
“About 1,000 people die in American jails (not prisons) every year, and about a third of those are suicides.”
http://www.npr.org/2015/07/27/426742309/the-shock-of-confinement-the-grim-reality-of-suicide-in-jail