Laura Ava-Tesimale, 47, remembers the moment she became an interfaith peace activist. “When it happened, I was changed forever. I prayed fervently to God. Tell me what to do, where to go, whom to meet.”
An Open Letter to All Peoples of Faith & Practice
This is a pivotal time in the saga of human history. The human species comes in all sizes, shapes and varieties of color. All living creatures of the earth including us, the human species, are bound by the universal laws of nature. These laws will prevail over and beyond the laws created by people. I speak of the laws that challenge the balance of nature’s laws to serve the interests of one species of humanity against another and against the principles of equity and peace.
“I’ll Have a Dark Roast Mocha Latte with Social Values to Go”
Java. Joe. Brew. Whatever you call it, coffee is a fixture in American culture, a heart-warming part of our national diet. With average consumption exceeding 400 million cups a day, America is the leading consumer of coffee in the world, an $18 billion dollar market that secures 90 percent of its production from the third world. While the cost of an average cup now ranges from $1.25 to $2.50 in the US, not counting higher priced gourmet specialty brews, millions of farmers in countries like Nicaragua, Ethiopia and Sumatra, working year ‘round growing the beverage we imbibe, receive but a tiny fraction of that price for their labor. Too often, the multi-national financial machinery that grinds out our richly flavored brew leaves poverty in its dregs.
Starting with Moksha and Karma Yoga
Finding meaning in life is an age-old quest that has perplexed people across geographical frontiers and transcended religious and spiritual affiliations. It attracts the interest of sages, religious scholars, and ordinary individuals alike. From distinctions between faith traditions to individual differences within a single religion to variances in time and space, every person will answer this question their own way, uniquely. It is therefore a quintessentially individual and personal search involving a diversity of perspectives.
Rita Semel’s 90th Birthday
San Francisco’s new mayor came to the 7:00 am interfaith Thanksgiving Prayer Breakfast this year. So did the city police chief, the fire chief, half the city’s supervisors, San Francisco’s own Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, and 400 clergy and lay leaders. For a prayer breakfast in San Francisco?!
It was also the 90th year birthday party for the woman who made such an event possible. The theme for the day tells the story – “Healing the World: Honoring the Work of Rita Semel.”
Compassion, Charity, and Interfaith Culture
Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation (2007) suggests that compassion became a dominant theme in human experience for the first time between 800 to 200 BCE, called the Axial Age by German philosopher Karl Jaspers. Armstrong notes that over this 600-year period a religious revolution occurred in four different regions of the world: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism on the Indian sub-continent; Confucianism and Taoism in China; monotheism in the Middle East; and philosophical rationalism in Greece. In each case we discover ancient traditions calling followers to compassionate, ethical behavior.
Occupy's Sacred Mob and the Politics of Vagrancy
It is 1 a.m., 37 degrees. Between two noisy bars, twelve people are trying to sleep in their tents, four more are drinking coffee and holding watch. We talk to drunks as they pass by; sometimes we find allegiance that may or may not be remembered in the morning, and sometimes we just bore potential attackers into docility by inviting them to explain their politics. Tent-kickers are rarely brave enough to kick a person, and “Get a job!” is easily answered by “I have two, but unemployment in North Carolina is over ten percent.” This is the Occupation of Chapel Hill. It is the morning of Halloween.
Keynote Address Electrifies Claremont Lincoln University Launch
Selecting an academic keynoter to launch a new kind of boundary-breaking theological institution was surely a daunting assignment. Attendees at the September 6 opening convocation of Claremont Lincoln University were clearly excited about seeing the world’s first intentionally multireligious school of theology come to life. But they probably didn’t expect to be electrified by the keynote address, didn’t expect to jump to their feet with cheers and applause when it ended. Which is what happened.