Learning Opportunities
Monday: noon: Misquoting Jesus—chapter 6 led by Dr. Fred Richart, in the circle area, food court, MBSC
Tuesday: Noon: The God within—led by Barbara Catterton; Library coffee area
Folding and mailing a flyer to parents of freshman students, 1:30 PM at Pacific Hills Lutheran Church. We need your help.
Wednesday: noon: Community of Faith—led by Liz Polivka; MBSC food court.
Thursday: Nebraska AIDS project, 10am – 2pm. Check UNO enotes for more details
Friday: Planning: Responses to Intimate Partner Violence ( we’ve scheduled Jackson Katz for Februrary 6, 2007)—meeting at SPO 11:30 am.
And we’ll be putting out flyers to get the word out about the trip to New Orleans, leaving December 30. Please fill out yours and email it in or send it to me. Questions? I’ll be happy to answer them. More info below.
Next week: Misquoting Jesus group Meets at 6 PM Wednesday for supper. Bring something to share. RSVP me for the address and details.
Now for the blog:
Compassion and Responsibility
I’ve just finished listening to Karen Armstrong’s book, “The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions.” In this book, she comments about the Axial Period which begins in the 9th century B.C.E.: “we often equate faith with doctrinal conformity, but the traditions of the Axial Age were not about dogma. All insisted on the primacy of compassion even in the midst of suffering.”
The difficulty in our lifetime is not simply identifying the things about which we can be compassionate. Out difficulty also resides in being compassionate at all when we see so many needs, difficulties, criminal activity and war on television, hear it on the radio, or read about it in print. We note terrorism through car bombings and warlords, natural disasters like tsunamis, hunger, starvation, disease and global warming issues.
Suffering requires a compassionate response.
I just received a copy of “An Inconvenient Truth.” I watched in some months ago and ordered a copy. This is a movie that is really a simple explication of issues of the physical planet—global warming. Using his Mac and Keynote (the OSX version of .ppt), Al Gore takes us on a journey of what’s wrong with our planet, and how we might nurse it back to health. Taking responsibility for this shift in our consumer habits is being compassionate; and it also can be responsible. Being compassionate can also mean we’re responsible.
Here’s a story I heard about Texas. In years now gone, when land changed hands through wills and estates, the bottom areas were considered more valuable. This was because oil rigs could more easily get to the oil and gas from a lower ground level. But the oil wells dried up over time, and now there’s a new money maker there—electrical power generated by wind. Huge farms (after all, this is Texas), have allocated lots of space for these wind machines. The best wind farms are at the tops of hills, where the wind is most likely to be unencumbered.
In those parts, the folks who got the worst land and least amount of money through family estates, now have the best land and the good money through wind generated electricity—and the electricity is clean and responsible.
Life’s not perfect but sometimes there are ironic twists that make us all smile. Shifting when we can from coal, oil and other types of fossil fuel to those energy forms that are renewable is a compassionate, and responsible, way of living for our planet.
--Fred
Random House, the publisher, says about Armstrong’s book:
“In the ninth century BCE, the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity to the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Later generations further developed these initial insights, but we have never grown beyond them. Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, for example, were all secondary flowerings of the original Israelite vision. Now, in The Great Transformation, Karen Armstrong reveals how the sages of this pivotal “Axial Age” can speak clearly and helpfully to the violence and desperation that we experience in our own times.
Armstrong traces the development of the Axial Age chronologically, examining the contributions of such figures as the Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the mystics of the Upanishads, Mencius, and Euripides. All of the Axial Age faiths began in principled and visceral recoil from the unprecedented violence of their time. Despite some differences of emphasis, there was a remarkable consensus in their call for an abandonment of selfishness and a spirituality of compassion. With regard to dealing with fear, despair, hatred, rage, and violence, the Axial sages gave their people and give us, Armstrong says, two important pieces of advice: first there must be personal responsibility and self-criticism, and it must be followed by practical, effective action.
In her introduction and concluding chapter, Armstrong urges us to consider how these spiritualities challenge the way we are religious today. In our various institutions, we sometimes seem to be attempting to create exactly the kind of religion that Axial sages and prophets had hoped to eliminate. We often equate faith with doctrinal conformity, but the traditions of the Axial Age were not about dogma. All insisted on the primacy of compassion even in the midst of suffering. In each Axial Age case, a disciplined revulsion from violence and hatred proved to be the major catalyst of spiritual change.”
(You can also look up Dr. Armstrong in an interview with Bill Moyers at: http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_armstrong.html)
--Fred
Time is running short to sign up for the “volunteer to make a difference” trip to New Orleans during the Christmas break (December 30-January 8).
Here’s what you get for $250:
- Round trip passage to Gretna
- Food while you’re there
- An opportunity to serve those who have been busted by Hurricane Katrina
- Worship opportunities with a progressive bunch
- A week out of Omaha
- Do some research on the project and the needs in New Orleans: the city and the towns around are still suffering from Hurricane Katrina
- Decide you want to do something tangible,
- Ask your parents
- Ask some friends
- Write a note to grandma
- Ask your church, synagogue or civic organization
- Talks to your boss at work
Interested folks should give me a call. You can be a member of any faith group. I’ve included 2 pdfs that can get your thinking started and your body motivated.
