Tag: Community

Walking. God is not Dead!

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57° F. yesterday, Spring is in the air. I contemplate dragging out the outdoor furniture from the basement.

Then, this morning arrived. 20° F, feels like 3° F, winds up to 20 mph from the North. Brutal.

I walk, thinking about sitting on the outdoor furniture in the basement, reading a chapter or two — with a floor heater at my feet. Maybe the furniture goes out next month.

I walk. It’s been 1,762 consecutive (almost) days on this daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a Row.

The park, with its handful of regulars, has had a new entrant. Let’s call her Janet. Janet rolls into the park taking the same route each morning, skipping along the breakwall to the cliff, pausing for 5-10 minutes to belt out a tune at the top of her lungs, arms and hands clutching for the heavens. Unclear what she’s singing and why she needs to belt it out at earsplitting levels that can be heard at the far reaches of the Park.

So this morning, just another morning, here comes Janet. And there goes the Wildlife, DK and other park patrons quickly moving in the other direction.

Charlotte Wood: “The beauty of being here is largely the silence, after all.“

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That’s my diagnosis

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That’s my diagnosis. My prescription might be simple: be kind to each other, remembering the distress we’ve all lived through; defend the facts with ardor; fight fascism and climate chaos in the ways you’re best equipped to (and if you’re lucky, that will connect you to other good people doing that crucial work). And if you’re lonely know that even in that you’re not alone; millions are, in large part because of how our world got rearranged. But diagnosis is the first step of treatment or cure, and just talking about how personal the impact is of this chaotic new era matters.

— Rebecca Solnit, from “Trump, Covid, the climate crisis – we’ve had a hard few years. The wounds linger.” (The Guardian, June 4, 2024)

Tell me about your sorrow

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A somewhat obscure text, about 2,000 years old, has been my unlikely teacher and guide for the past many years, and my north star these last several months, as so many of us have felt like we’re drowning in an ocean of sorrow and helplessness.

Buried deep within the Mishnah, a Jewish legal compendium from around the third century, is an ancient practice reflecting a deep understanding of the human psyche and spirit: When your heart is broken, when the specter of death visits your family, when you feel lost and alone and inclined to retreat, you show up. You entrust your pain to the community.

The text, Middot 2:2, describes a pilgrimage ritual from the time of the Second Temple. Several times each year, hundreds of thousands of Jews would ascend to Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious and political life. They would climb the steps of the Temple Mount and enter its enormous plaza, turning to the right en masse, circling counterclockwise.

Meanwhile, the brokenhearted, the mourners (and here I would also include the lonely and the sick), would make this same ritual walk but they would turn to the left and circle in the opposite direction: every step against the current.

And each person who encountered someone in pain would look into their eyes and inquire: “What happened to you? Why does your heart ache?”

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In a sense every day is judgment day…

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This quote is from a sermon that Martin Luther King Jr. delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, on August 11, 1957. The sermon was titled “Conquering Self-Centeredness” and it explored the theme of altruism versus selfishness. King urged his listeners to dedicate their lives to serving others and to follow the example of Jesus Christ12. He said:

In a sense every day is judgment day, and we, through our deeds and words, our silence and speech, are constantly writing in the Book of Life. Light has come into the world, and every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?”

Quote Source link here.

It’s a sense that there is a sacredness to life

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It’s the Christmas season, and that means I’m looking forward to going to church. On its own, that might not sound too surprising: Half of Americans plan to do the same this holiday season. But in my case, it might seem a little strange. While I still know all the prayers and when to sit and stand, from my days as an altar boy, I left my faith and churchgoing behind long ago. As a scientist, I wouldn’t be hubristic enough to claim that God doesn’t exist; that’s a question science can’t definitively answer. But neither can I find any objective evidence for God’s fingerprints in this world. So for me, church has lost its luster—except, that is, at Christmas.

When late December rolls around, I want to go to church, even though I don’t believe in much of the creed. And if recent surveys about Americans’ holiday plans are accurate, I’m not alone. Many people who don’t set foot in a church through most of the year show up at Yuletide, including 10% of nonbelieving atheists and agnostics. Why? That’s a question to which I think I’ve finally found an answer.

The Christmas mass isn’t just an entertaining thing to do, like going to see Radio City’s Christmas Spectacular. Nor is it a simple reminder of cherished family holiday traditions. For me, and I suspect many others, going to church at Christmas offers a different kind of experience, one that’s spiritual if not religious.

That might sound like an oxymoron, but in practice it’s not. Following a religion means embracing a theology and often an institution. There’s a set of beliefs laying out what God is and what God wants, and also a list of rules to follow. Spirituality, on the other hand, tends to be more experiential than cerebral. It’s a sense that there is a sacredness to life, something ineffable but not necessarily divine, that we can catch glimpses of or even commune with at times. Religion and spirituality aren’t mutually exclusive; one can often lead to the other. But they are separable.

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