happy red fire dog year

Happy Red Fire Dog Year, the first day of the Lunar New Year 4704!

Donut, who is also known as Donut-Ponut (lying with her Hedgehog)

how the heart hardens

I have wrestled a bit with the part of the Moses-Pharoah-Exodus story where it says that "god hardened Pharoah's heart"--in that case, whose responsibility is it that the Egyptian people in the myth suffer through all those plagues? Whose choice was it, if Pharoah would have given in, but for his heart being hardened against his will?

So, I am happy to read this interpretation from a much more muscular wrestler than I am, Rabbi Arthur Waskow of The Shalom Center. This piece of his is posted at a new group blog, Radical Torah, "a weblog which features multiple takes on parshat hashavua (the weekly Torah portion), as seen through the lens of progressive religious and political viewpoints. The project seeks to create a resource of authentically Jewish responses to pertinent social justice issues, timed in accordance with their relevancy to the Jewish calendar."

Perhaps the greatest archetypal tale in all of human culture about addiction to top-down, unaccountable power is the story of Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus.

Now, today, we are seeing this tale lived out before our own eyes. The present government of the United States has become so addicted to its own power, so swept away by its own arrogance, that it is playing out the tale of Pharaoh.

And the US government is not alone: the present government of Iran is talking like Pharaoh; Al Qaeda acts like a mini-Pharaoh.

Pharaoh begins by hardening his own heart to the plight of the poor and powerless, and after a series of disasters (the "plagues") brought on by his own arrogance, his addiction takes over.

God – read "Reality" – takes over, and from then on it is God Who hardens his heart.

What is this like? — Use heroin once, twice, thrice – and you are making a free choice. But at some point the addiction takes over, Reality takes over, God takes over. Now it is the heroin that is doing you, not you doing heroin.

If you choose hard-heartedness so long you get addicted to it, at some point you are no longer choosing: God, Reality, is hardening your heart.

...

Even when Pharaoh's own advisers shriek at him, "You are destroying Egypt!" he can no longer turn back.

Pharaoh has so addicted himself to his own uncontrollable power that he can no longer make a free choice. Unfortunately, when people who have great power insulate themselves in arrogance, the disasters they create do not wound only themselves. They wound the whole society...

Read the rest here.

slow light

Hmmm. Not blogging for a few weeks is a tiny bit like not sending out holiday cards for the past 4 or 5 years (or maybe it is 6). The time has been so full, I wonder: where shall I start?

But that's too daunting. Instead, I'll just start here, and say that this morning the sky was clear--so rare in the past few months--and the sun was angled low in the sky like it is all winter, and casually brilliant. I so much appreciate days like today when none of my things-to-do are too precisely time-bound. How luxurious to roll very slowly along in the morning commute traffic, and not feel hurried. To be able to notice all of the trees growing on the freeway covers and be filled by the sunlight glinting on the mountains and the lake, and know that it will be fine with my friend Jana whether I arrive at her house at 9 or 9:30 or later.

By lunchtime it was raining again (though the chill was warmed by getting to have lunch with Rabbi Ted!)

And now, in the dark, I'm still full of the slow light of this morning.

This Pillar of Sun, taken in Maine by Lucy Orloski, is from the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day site

floating past the bridges

"...You know how a good bass player is just there, in the music, not the main thing but just a continual presence. This dissertation is always there, no matter where I live or what I do for work or how I feel.

Okay, so I was working on my dissertation the other day, and I encountered a new reality. Stepped right through the filmiest of barriers to this other side.

I realized that I'm done. This dissertation is done."

Congratulations, Jeff! I'm so glad you're inviting us back to cross the rio-grandio with you again!

life is the only way to rise on wings

A lovely selection via Panhala, by Polish poet and Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska:

A Note

Life is the only way
to get covered in leaves,
catch your breath on the sand,
rise on wings;

to be a dog,
or stroke its warm fur;

to tell pain
from everything it's not;

to squeeze inside events,
dawdle in views,
to seek the least of all possible mistakes.

An extraordinary chance
to remember for a moment
a conversation held
with the lamp switched off;

and if only once
to stumble upon a stone,
end up soaked in one downpour or another,

mislay your keys in the grass;
and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;
and to keep on not knowing
something important.

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

everything is waiting

My friend Bruce said something in an ImagineCascadia (more on that another time) email conversation that reminded me of this favorite poem by Whidbey Island poet David Whyte :

(I first got to hear David recite this in his wonderful and inimitable style during a conversational presentation that was recorded and is available as "A Change for the Better: Poetry & the Reimagination of Midlife"):

EVERYTHING IS WAITING FOR YOU
(After Derek Mahon)

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

NJ teasing the Pacific

sugared ice

The hummingbird feeder outside our dining room window had ice in it the other day! But only partially, and only till the afternoon. The hummingbirds who live in our neighborhood are the most audible birds around at this time of year, with their chp chp chp chp chp coming from various high-up places.

An Improbable Prayer

From Phelim McDermott, artistic co-director of Improbable, a theater company in the UK-- an open space manifesto from before he knew about "open space":

An Improbable Prayer.

We will say we don’t know when we don’t know.
We will say we are scared when we are scared.
We will not pretend everything is ok when it isn’t.
We will never ask a performer to do something we wouldn’t be prepared to do ourselves.
We love performers.
We believe they often know more than the director.
We love the audience.
We believe they often know more than either the performers or the director.
Anyone is free to leave at anytime.
It is better to leave than to be there and not really be present.
If someone leaves we will do it.
A comedy store joke in serious theatre is just as valuable as serious theatre at the comedy store.
We will never do something just to be different.
We will be prepared to be obvious.
When things get scary we will stay awake.
When things get scary we will look after each other not ourselves.
We will have a good time.
The audience see everything.

metaphorest walk

With the light and warmth of gathering around glowing embers on a dark winter day: I am grateful to see that Chris Weaver at metaphorest walk is blogging again.

preparing for liftoff

it is the night of la guadalupana
and each one of a trillion brown oak leaves
(now on the ground) turns
his leathered elder face in a light wind
to face the sky, eyelids closed beneath
the endless black branches of his mother
tree as she swings under the clouds,
each old face awaiting a kiss
from a snowflake, spiraling
downward from the unseen stars,
a gift

for a job well done

posted by chris weaver dec 11 2005

gratitude experiment

My friend Emma sent me the link to Stacey Robyn's very sweet Go Gratitude Experiment, a "journey together into the core of Gratitude," which begins with this brief flash video.

Inspired by Masaru Emoto's photos of water crystals, which he says are evidence of water taking on the shape of the intentions and energies poured into it, Stacey Robyn describes her vision of:

"... a wake of Gratitude rolling across our planet, re-connecting our water bodies to Love . Passed person to person, heartbeat by heartbeat, this wake would roll through our bodies - mostly water - to create a massive tide of change by simply focusing on Gratitude."

gratitude-water-crystal
masaru emoto

habitat jam

The government of Canada will be hosting the 3rd session of the United Nations World Urban Forum, in Vancouver from June 19-23, 2006, with the theme of "Our Future: Sustainable Cities -- Turning Ideas into Action.

As part of the preparations for the Forum, the Canadian government, IBM, and UN-HABITAT (the United Nations Human Settlement Programme) are sponsoring what they hope will be the largest internet conversation to date, the "Habitat Jam", beginning tomorrow, Dec. 1, through Dec. 3. Anyone who wants to add their voice is invited to participate, and input will be gathered and analyzed in order to influence the agenda of the Forum in June.

"The Habitat JAM is about adding your ideas into the global conversation about the future of our cities. It's about having your say on important issues that affect you. It's about building new global networks of people who wouldn't have connected before. It's about working together across the globe to find solutions to critical urban problems."

I think registration is still open, till 15:00 GMT (7 am here PST)

devotional moon

blue moon

Ready for Silence

The devotional moon looks into
the heart and is in the heart.

When the heart has a Friend like
you, the universe cannot contain

their pleasure. Anyone warmed
by sun feels courage coming in.

If grief arrives, you enjoy it.
Generosity: that's your hand in

my pocket giving your wealth away.
Yet you run from me like one

raised in the wild. Here comes
this strange creature: me, in a

hands-and-feet shape! The formless
tries to satisfy us with forms!

A transparent nakedness wearing
pure light says, Blessed are those

who put on gold brocade! You may
not see him, but Moses is alive,

in this town, and he still has his
staff! And there's water and thirst,

wherever and however water goes, and
the one who brings water. The morning

wind broke off a few branches in the
garden. No matter. When you feel

love inside you, you hear the
invitation to be cooked by God.

It's that creation the heart loves.
For three winter months the ground

keeps quiet. But each piece of earth
knows what's inside waiting: beans,

sugarcane, cypress, wildflowers. Then
the spring sun comes talking plants

into the open. Anyone who feels the
point of prayer bends down like

the first letter of pray. Anyone who
walks with his back to the sun is

following his shadow. Move into your
own quietness. This word-search poem

has found you, ready for silence.
- Jelaluddin Rumi

from the pure and beautiful exploration of mystery at whiskey river

language of the divine

From Rabbi Marc Gafni of Bayit Chadash("A new home for ancient souls"), in the Dec-Feb issue of What is Enlightenment? magazine:

"...The Zohar says that we are God's name--we're God's verbs, we're God's adjectives, we're even God's dangling modifiers. We're the language of the divine in the world, and in that way, we become the voice of the meshiach--the messiah. Anything less than the realization of that is called, in the inner mystical tradition, heresy. The core liberation teaching of Kabbalah is that to be a heretic is to believe that God does not need me, that I am not required to participate in the evolution of God. But enlightenment means we participate in divinity; we don't just submit to it by responding to the evil and suffering in the world with a traditional theology or a theodicy.The ultimate response to the suffering of the world is, like that of the Hebrew mystic, to cry in protest and to let that protest translate into action. I call this nondual humanism, which means that I participate in God's evolving self, now.

As the great nineteenth-century Hasidic master Nachman of Bratzlav implied, the most important thing in the world is to be willing to give up who you are for who you might become. He calls this process the giving up of pnini, which literally means "what is within." For Nachman, that means the old, familiar thing that comforts even when it no longer serves--and that can include our spirituality and religion, and even the very core way we understand our relationship to the divine ground of being..."

kaffeeklatsch with god

I Got Kin

Plant
So that your own heart
Will grow.

Love
So God will think,

"Ahhhh,
I got kin in that body!
I should start inviting that soul over
For coffee and
Rolls.

Sing
Because this is a food
Our starving world
Needs.

Laugh
Because that is the purest
Sound.

~Hafiz
version translated by Daniel Ladinsky, The Gift

macchiato,

the contribution to last week's Photo Friday
(the challenge/theme was "Delicate")
from Andrea Scher of Superhero Designs

heavenward

Strive each day to make your life purer, richer, and more luminous.
You will subtly and imperceptibly lead all of creation heavenward.

Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

from: Word for the Day, Gratefulness.org

garments of god

Rabbi Shefa Gold writes about blessings, challenges, and spiritual practices for every weekly Torah portion. This week we begin again at the beginning, with the first word of the first chapter of the first book, B'reishit ("in beginning," "in a beginning," "with beginning")(there's no "the" included in there, by the way). Remembering and reliving the energies of creation.

"Every Shabbat celebrates the Creation and thus the re-creation of our world. Creation begins with Light, which is another word for consciousness. The Zohar, in describing creation says, "The silkworm wraps itself within and makes itself a palace. This palace is its praise and a benefit to all." God wrapped us within garments of skin (Or) which is Light (Or) made dense. Our journey of consciousness/Light leads us through embodiment, which is the palace of existence...

… The first practice is called, 'Seeing the world without its clothes on.' Sit outside in a place of natural beauty and power. Close your eyes and gently let go of every thought. Return to the knowledge that the world before you consists of the garments of God. With each out-breath, allow the world to undress, with each in-breath, breathe in the light that shines out from within Creation."

Thank you to Thomas for responding to my use of that phrase "garments of god" this morning by sending this beautiful Flickr photo by Willem Velthoven of a boy in Mumbai, glowing in his skin of Light.

bet alef banner

These photos give just a little fragrant hint of this very beautiful and glowing quilted banner, designed by member Elizabeth Burton of Bet Alef Meditative Synagogue, fused and stitched up by Elizabeth and more volunteers, and commissioned by a large proportion of the whole congregation. It was presented to the community last Shabbat. The Hebrew letters spell out the words of a core wisdom of Judaism: the Shema including the V'ahavta (declaration of Oneness and Love). Member families had the opportunity to contribute by "buying" one of the letters for the banner. Parts of the border are made from bits of fabric that have significance to people in our community.

I hope you will have a chance to come see it up close. You will be dazzled!

every day a good day to help

It is almost the end of this "blog quake day," but there's never a better time than right now to send support to those doing relief work.

This blog-quake-relief-day was organized by Ash at Desipundit (where there is good list of effective relief organizations accepting donations; I also like Mercy Corps), provided with a logo by Sepoy of Chapati Mystery, and orginally inspired by Anna of Sepia Mutiny, who quoted the BBC news article reporting that

People in India’s Andaman and Nicobar islands are yet to recover from last year’s tsunami, but they are now helping South Asia quake victims.…A senior official of the Andaman and Nicobar Chamber of Commerce and Industries, Mohammed Jadvet, said the first consignment of relief materials included 200 tents, over a 1,000 blankets and three tonnes of biscuits.

and then suggested that "We have no excuse, when those who have so little are giving so much."

one place, one face

If I were you, and I am
I'd let the question take my hand
If you were me, and you are
You'd let the question take your heart

It's all one Place
It's all the Original Face

~Stuart Davis

microcredit "loans that change lives"

From Worldchanging.com, via NextBillion.net, is the story of Kiva, a charitable organization that lets individuals make small loans (starting at $25) to other individuals in rural areas of the developing world (currently, they are all in Uganda) who have, or are starting, their own businesses. Since it's a loan, the lender receives the money back (without interest) 6-12 months later, as well as receiving e-mail updates on the businesses you choose to sponsor. Kiva was founded by Jessica and Matthew Flannery, who have experience in microcredit development in Africa, and in software engineering.

From their About page:

Kiva is the first and only existing option for you to make a loan to a unique microenterprise. No other organization offers the opportunity to loan - instead of, or in addition to, making a donation - to a real person and then get your money back. Furthermore, when you loan to a Kiva business, every dollar you loan goes to that business. Kiva is a very low-overhead organization that raises money offline to support its small budget. None of the money you loan goes to fund administrative costs.

Direct, real-time, one-to-one connection. The individuals featured on our website are real people who need a microloan. They are waiting for socially-minded individuals like you to lend them money. They will not receive a loan until a Kiva lender provides it. Our data is real, not representative. Once funded, sponsored entrepreneurs are diligently tracked and the real results of their efforts are propagated through email updates and on our website.

I love that you can read about the people whose businesses are being supported, and follow along with how they're doing.