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

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."

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.

the bliss of with

The Bliss Of With

I
You have come to me out of antiquities
We have loved one another for generations
We have loved one another for centuries

You teach me to trust the voice of my voices
You teach me to believe my own believings
You touch the palpability of my possibilities

Together we reflect what our mirrors conceal
Together we upgrade the sun in our meridians
We remain open night and day to transcendence

You are incompletely disguised as a mortal
You are the eternal stranger I have always known
I saw your wings this morning
I saw your wings this morning

by James Broughton (also known as Big Joy)

and who said in an interview:

Most poets, like most people, try hard to be like someone they admire or they are possessed with an image of what they ought to be. Trusting your individual uniqueness challenges you to lay yourself open. Wide open. Some artists shrink from self-awareness, fearing that it will destroy their unique gifts and even their desire to create. The truth of the matter is quite opposite. Consciousness is the glory of creation. And remember Gertrude Stein’s comment, “It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing.”

pandemic flu, earthquakes, and taking care of each other

(cross-posted to Original Medicine)

Last week was Pandemic Flu Awareness Week, organized by the folks who started the Flu Wiki, which is an international collaborative project aimed at collecting useful information and guidelines to share with communities and individuals for planning and preparing in the event of an influenza pandemic. There is excellent information there on influenza history, epidemiology, immunology, etc., as well as suggestions for public health considerations and areas communities and individuals would do well to consider beforehand.

There was indeed much more information in the news about pandemic flu preparedness (or, in most cases, the acute lack of preparedness so far) than there had been before the collective mind had been put on alert by Hurricane Katrina. King County executive Ron Sims convened a Business Forum on Pandemic Flu in the Seattle area, telling the 75 attendees, “This is the one that keeps me up at night,” and "spoke of 'devastating consequences' and 'extraordinary measures' that will follow when – not if – the avian flu virus mutates to allow human-to-human contact and attacks the globe." There was discussion of, and lots of commentary on, the federal government's preparedness plan (still in draft form, not publically released yet) in newspapers and in blogs.

DemFromCT at The Next Hurrah suggests that "We don't all need to turn survivalist today, but educating ourselves about the potential risks and keeping up with the news is a prudent thing to do. Some preparation efforts will serve you in a hurricane, a blizzard, a blackout or an earthquake. The difference with pandemic flu is that everyone is affected, and that's another thing to keep in mind (you can't expect huge amounts of help from a neighbor state)."

and, writing also at The Daily Kos says, " So what's a reasoned approach? In a nutshell, plan for the worst and hope for the best. All this discussion, this hype, if you will, is designed to teach people that the reality of a pandemic is real and that planning is worthwhile and can save lives. it also should teach everyone in Congress and the WH that having an intact public health apparatus (as my Flu Wiki colleagues the reveres at Effect Measure put it) that it's core public health functions (surveillance, vital records, maternal and child health, substance abuse, communicable disease, immunization, etc., etc.) that have been shafted and need to be built up. First responders are part of that. We should have learned that from 9/11, another teachable moment, but instead funds to support them have continued to be cut."

Such an important part of an "intact public health apparatus" is the strength of community relationships and networks. Remembering that "primary care" and "first response" begin with taking care of ourselves and our friends and relations, at the same time or before we turn to "experts" and "authorities". Knowing our neighbors and neighborhood resources, knowing who might need what kind of support if all the schools and stores and pharmacies are closed for a while.

Also see The Emergency Toolshed at global villages for some good ideas (thank you to Lucas Gonzalez, an Open Space friend and a physician in the Canary Islands, for a lot of this information).

new spaces

In just this past week, three inviting new spirit-infused community on-line spaces have been opened up:

The Easily Amazed Forum, hosted by Ashley, a place to explore, wonder, notice, exclaim
The Open Space Sangha group blog, hosted by Wendy, "A place to grow our community through sharing practices that deepen our experience of Spirit and Being in Open Space"
And the Bet Alef Meditative Synagogue On-line Community wiki web, a place to share experiences and to deepen our being in touch.

The timing of beginning to invite participation this week is very sweet:

This was the week of Rosh HaShanah, the beginning of the Jewish calendar New Year. "Rosh" means "head", or "beginning," and "Shanah" means "year"--but also, like all Hebrew words, "shanah" derives from a root, a combination of letters that has over time given rise to many words. Each word, then, is a mandala of inner meanings all connected to the root, and one of the root cousins of "shanah" is "shinui" which means "change"; one of the inner vibrations of Rosh HaShanah is Beginning of Change. (thank you to Amy and Olivier for this teaching!)

And astrologically, t's a charged-up time. My favorite astrologer, Eric Francis, writes:
WE ARE IN the interval between two eclipses. Think of it as a hidden valley of time; like a waking dream wherein our actions are more influential and symbolically meaningful, and where we are more impressionable. The intensity of the relationship between our individual minds and our environment shifts to a higher level of intensity, and the decisions we make have greater sway over the course of events. (read the rest here and subscribe here)

wildpeace

From Joe at Panhala, a "bonus track" for subscribers, to note Rosh HaShanah, the birthday of the world, and the beginning of Ramadan, a month of special blessing (these potent holydays coincide this year and for the next couple, and then not again for another 30+ years).


What actions are most excellent?

To gladden the heart of a human being.
To feed the hungry.
To help the afflicted.
To lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful.
To remove the wrongs of the injured.
That person is the most beloved of God
who does the most good to God's creatures.

~ Muhammad ~

Wildpeace
Not the peace of a cease-fire
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill, that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds - who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)
Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.
~ Yehuda Amichai ~
(The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell)

jerusalem is walking in this world

From Julia Cameron's Walking in This World:
This is a great happiness.
The air is silk.
There is milk in the looks
that come from strangers.
I could not be happier
if I were bread and you could eat me.
Joy is dangerous.
It fills me with secrets.
"Yes" hisses in my veins.
The pains I take to hide myself
Are sheer as glass.
Surely this will pass,
The wind like kisses,
The music in the soup,
The group of trees
Laughing as I say their names.

It is all hosannah.
It is all prayer.
Jerusalem is walking in the world.
Jerusalem is walking in the world.

words, water, plants, the heart, and the breath of god

Slowly reading--well, more like dipping into, being briefly immersed, then emerging and still wet slipping into the next:

Total I Ching: Myths for Change, by Stephen Karcher (thanks to Patrick's mystic scholar friend Steve)
Magic of the Ordinary: Recovering the Shamanic in Judaism, by Rabbi Gershon Winkler (thanks to Jeff Aitken for this and many other wonderful things to know about)
Nourishing Destiny: The Inner Tradition of Chinese Medicine, by Lonnie Jarrett
my "birth portion" in the Torah, which is Eikev

there is some place where these all touch, and I don't think it's too far under the surface.

Assorted snips:

Karcher: "Perhaps the best way to imagine Change is as a stream, a living stream of images, words, emblems and myths that marks the Way of Water, the fundamental image of the Dao. It is a flow of symbols like the images in dreaming. This flow is described as wang lai, going and coming. It is a river of time on which the seeds and symbols of things flow toward us...This Way of Water began in a kind of divinatory practice known all over the world that links water, plants and words."

Torah: "therefore impress these my words upon your very heart; bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead"

Winkler: "The tree or grasshopper that you pass as you take your daily stroll, is therefore also the Breath of God. All that exists, is being breathed into being or it wouldn't be. If you are being is'd by the same breath by which the tree is being is'd, then you and the tree are one. Not the same, just one, nurtured into being by the same Breath."

Lonny Jarrett: "In health, these three--the heart, mind, and will--are one. The functions of the mind and will are transparent in communicating the nature of the world to the heart and the nature of the heart to the world. In illness, however, these three functions can be seen to act independently as the will initiates action, ignoring the heart in a vain attempt to satisfy the mind's desires."

nourishing the fulfillment of destiny

Lonny Jarrett, LAc, will be coming to town next month to teach a continuing education course to acupuncturists. In his book, Nourishing Destiny, The Inner Tradition of Chinese Medicine, he says,

"A basic premise of Chinese medicine is to move stagnation before tonifying and there is no greater stagnation in life than having forgotten one's true self. Thus we recognize that nourishing the fulfillment of destiny is the heart and soul of our medicine."

"...Another hallmark of the inner tradition is that it explicitly serves as an extension of the practitioner's own spiritual quest and path. A foundational princiople of this tradition is that a practitioner may only engender a virtue in a patient to the degree that he or she is able to access that virtue within."

helping enrich the field

Michelle and Joel Levey, radiant and soulful friends and mentors, will be two of about 60 professional facilitators working to support the interactive conversation portions of the inaugural meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York Sept. 15-17.

From the statement of mission by President Clinton:
"...This nonpartisan conference will concentrate a diverse and select group of current and former heads of state, business leaders, noteworthy academicians, and key NGO representatives to identify immediate and pragmatic solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems. The workshops will focus on how to reduce poverty; use religion as a force for reconciliation and conflict resolution; implement new business strategies and technologies to combat climate change; and strengthen governance. Our meeting will emphasize dynamic group interaction to identify an agenda we can actually implement.

By identifying specific ways to address the challenges of our time and asking each participant to make a specific commitment to take action in one of the areas discussed, I believe this Initiative will prove to be a unique and effective forum for leaders and their communities around the world. What we begin during three days this September will continue throughout the year to come with coordinated implementation of our agenda..."

and,
"In my life now, I am obsessed with only two things: I don’t want anybody to die before their time. And I don’t want to see good people spend their energies without making a difference…You can change the reality of human history by systemic action."

The coordinator of the facilitator group, Ruthann Prange, sent this request to subscribers of the Collective Wisdom Initiative listserv:
"If you are drawn to look at the website you'll see the issues being addressed (poverty, religion, climate change, governance) and the invited participants from around the world would certainly be well served by the wisest available collective intelligence. So please send your strongest signals our way on the 16th and 17th, help enrich the field in which the conference participants will be working. And help those of us physically present to BE present, intentional about holding the space, and freed from our personal advocacy positions so that we can support emergent collective intelligence.

"the beginning of the end?"

Michael Herman writes:
"...If 9-11 made it all too clear that we are actually part of the rest of the world, Katrina (if not already Iraq) will teach us that we are not in control of much of it.

The only solution must be an active cultivation of individual, personal and direct responsibility and contribution. Everybody pays attention. Everybody helps out. Everybody is responsible for getting and keeping themselves out of danger. And everything that the federal government does is gravy.

And to be clear, I don’t see this as a step back, but a step forward for us all, albeit a long and difficult one to make. Or maybe it’s a very short one. What can you do? Who do you know? ...

We’re all in this together. And last I checked, despite the wobbling, we are still a democracy, which means we are the federal government. All of us. Let’s get it in session! …and get it in gear! This end must be our beginning."

From my little viewfinder, I see our clinic's health-care approach as a companion trail to Michael's track forward--we think of "self-care as true primary care," along with taking care of each other, our family and friends and community. As that (when that? if that?) becomes the norm, then our role as health-caring professionals could be much more of a supportive role, much more education-oriented, our strongest interventions needed much less frequently. The kinds of things we so often do now--our diagnostics and treatments of situations that could have been prevented by "paying attention" and "active cultivation of individual, personal and direct responsibility and contribution" --could be gravy, too. (Or dessert) One little piece of the compelling call to learn and practice personal responsiblity and contribution.

http://www.hurricanehousing.org

My friend Victor shared a story from his colleague, Debra, who lives in Texas:
"We moved to Austin from New Orleans last year so we have many, many ties to the folks there. Some of the poorer inner-city kids that I taught in New Orleans called me and told me that four families pooled their money and their two cars and just drove as far as they could go until their money ran out. Only one person in the two cars had ever been out of New Orleans before. Lost, stranded, no money, scared and no homes to return to. The scope of their pain is more than I can even understand.

I am trying to make my home open to as many as I can. I think that one of the best things that folks can do is to "adopt a family" and share their homes. There will be literally hundreds of thousands of folks who are now homeless, jobless, and isolated from friends, family and all support systems."

MoveOn.org has organized a housing share connection project:
Tens of thousands of newly homeless families are being bused to a stadium in Houston, where they may wait for weeks or months. At least 80,000 are competing for area shelters, and countless more are in motels, cars, or wherever they can stay out of the elements. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Red Cross are scrambling to find shelter for the displaced.

This morning, we've launched an emergency national housing drive to connect your empty beds with hurricane victims who desperately need a place to wait out the storm. You can post your offer of housing (a spare room, extra bed, even a decent couch) and search for available housing online at:

http://www.hurricanehousing.org

Housing is most urgently needed within reasonable driving distance (about 300 miles) of the affected areas in the Southeast, especially New Orleans.

Please forward this message to anyone you know in the region who might be able to help.

filling a bowl with water

Today is my day off, and waking early, I feel myself seeping full to overflowing (spilling now into this keyboard and then onto this page) thoughts and questions and things to do, filling any space opened during brief yoga and morning tea: remembering something I want to get for my husband for his birthday which is tomorrow, coordinating picking up and dropping off my sons who are getting together as often as possible with their friends in these last few days before school starts, getting together myself with friends I used to work with at the Bastyr clinic, for "high tea" at the ornate Victorian tea parlor. Planning for a practitioner meeting at my current clinic at lunchtime, and calling in supply orders and a CT scan order that I faxed last night that apparently didn't go through. Catching up on reading, evocative articles and essays , blog and listserv and forum posts, noticing I am not reading every word but skimming and buzzing through (hmm, am I even breathing while I read?). In the background, feeling live wires sizzling and waving and seeking to connect all the thoughts and questions.

And then sitting down with the newspaper and seeing New Orleans under water, a city nestled in a bowl filling with water. Sitting, then; my own small sense of over-brimming in perspective, now. Sending blessings, and money (I like the American Red Cross). More blessings.

Lots of blogging people are gathering resources and connecting and organizing information to help in a variety of ways (these links thanks to Nancy White).