Our times . . . These are our times.
Some politicians are preferring to speak of the covid-19 pandemic in the past tense. Never blame politicians – they are ever only saying what we voted for them to say. And if sanity has failed to outvote insanity, that’s on all of us – it’s on me, and it’s on you. So there is a portion of us that wants to believe the pandemic is over. Therefore, let us be committed to not believing what we may want to. Let us not choose our beliefs, but believe what reality and our best dispassionate understanding -- which we also do not choose -- dictate and compel. Let us believe what we have to, not what we want to. Let us honor the evidence, however inconvenient, and make meaning of it with an imagination that encompasses multiple perspectives.
In fact, in the US, we saw declines in our death rate in May and June, then it climbed in July, leveled off in August, and is now declining, more slowly than it was in May and June. The US is still seeing a 7-day average of almost 1,000 deaths a day. That is half the death rate of last April, yet almost twice the 7-day average we got briefly down to in early July. One thousand deaths a day! We will reach a total of 190,000 deaths in the next few days.
Every human life this disease takes is a tragedy, wherever the person happens to have lived. Worldwide, the 7-day average of deaths per day from Covid-19 has barely budged for over a month. The disease continues to claim over 5,500 lives a day, as it has since mid-July. We are headed toward total deaths surpassing one million before the end of September.
Last Sunday (Aug 23), Kenosha police shot Jacob Blake. He was unarmed. He was shot in the back – seven times. After George Floyd’s murder 16 weeks ago, we saw an uprising – worldwide. But the police officers weren’t marching. Nothing about those demonstrations changed anything about the assumptions and methods of the average officer on patrol. Policing will change only when the structures and policies change. It will take some time to devise and implement new structures and policies. It will take some time for officers to adjust to different job descriptions, and structures of accountability, or be replaced. When I say it will take time, I am not prescribing what Dr. King called “the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” I prescribe, not a tranquilizer, but a stimulant, that, though the night be long, our eyelids grow not heavy, but our eyes stay wide and on the prize. We’ve got to know that we are in this for the long haul. Surely, we did not expect to be allies of justice for one season, and then it would be done? We will keep up the justice work, knowing that more killings will come – that we are far from peace and justice, but not as far as we were.
These are our times. May we give to them, as people of faith, the courage and care that is the best that we have and are.
Yours in the faith we share,
Meredith
This week's Practice of the Week: Morning Orientation, Evening Orientation
2020-08-28
2020-08-26
Religious Education: August 27 - September 3, 2020 (incl. Fall 2020 RE Schedule)
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2020-08-25
Morning Orientation, Evening Orientation
Practice of the Week
Morning Orientation, Evening Orientation
Morning Orientation, Evening Orientation
Category: Slogans to Live By: Carry these reminders at all times. These practices don't require setting aside a separate substantial chunk of time -- but they will slow you down a bit (and that's a good thing.) Resolve to get stronger at living by these slogans, day by day. Sometimes make one of them the focus of your daily journaling.
from Training in Compassion
Norman Fischer, adapted
Norman Fischer, adapted
“Today I want to dedicate myself, to the best of my ability, to being generous and openhearted and benefiting others.”That’s the point of today. That’s why you are getting up and not staying in bed. That’s why you are going to work or doing whatever it is you are doing. If you are a daily meditator, you can then go to your meditation in this same spirit.
At the end of the day, before going to bed, perhaps sitting on the edge of the bed or getting into the bed, take a few moments to review the day’s activities. Let your mind lightly slide over events that occurred, moments that will pop into your mind when bidden. And say to yourself:
“May everything that I have done today, with whatever level of skill or good intentions, in some way benefit others.”The biggest problem with the idea of doing spiritual practice in our contemporary world is that there doesn’t seem to be time for it. No time to meditate at home in the morning – must rush off to work. No time to meditate in the evening – too tired and, anyway, there’s family, meals, more work, e-mails, phone calls. Certainly no time to go to a retreat, no time to go someplace to meditate with others – my schedule won’t permit it, it is too expensive, too far away, and so on.
This may all be true. But certainly there is no one who can’t afford or is too busy to have a thought in the morning and a thought in the evening. Cultivating the discipline to practice this slogan, even if it is the only one you can manage to practice, is sure to have a big impact on your life. It will change the way you feel about your days and how you view them.
You have been going through your life with some underlying attitude. Probably you don’t even know what it is. But it conditions how you feel about your life. Practicing this slogan will ennoble and elevate that attitude. And that change of attitude will being to affect everything in your life.
"Two Activities: One at the Beginning, One at the End"
Judith Lief, adapted
Judith Lief, adapted
When you start your day, you could actually take a moment to think about what you are doing. Instead of just launching in, you could begin properly, with something in mind beyond just getting through your to-do list. In particular, you could look on each day as an opportunity to train your mind.
At the end of the day, before you fall asleep, instead of just flopping, you could review how you have done. You could begin by appreciating the times you were connected with compassion and joined it with what you were doing. Then you could also reflect on the times when you lost your connection to compassion and acted accordingly.
The idea is not to beat yourself up for losing your sense of compassion, nor is it to give yourself a medal for being good. You do not need to blame yourself or to blame anyone else. The idea is simply to take note so that you can shift your energy gradually in the direction of kindness and awareness.
The life of compassion and wisdom is a life-long journey, but that journey takes place one day at a time. You cannot do anything about days gone by, and speculating about the future can be overwhelming and somewhat pointless. But you can look at each day as a practice period, with a beginning and an end. So every morning you take a fresh start, and every evening you have a chance appraise how you have done.
Practice: Notice how easy it is to get so caught up with your life that you never have a chance to see it in any larger perspective. What happens if you take even a little time at the beginning and end of the day to step back and look at what you are doing? What makes you remember your commitment to compassion and what makes you forget?
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2020-08-21
Religious Education: August 21-28, 2020 (incl. Fall 2020 RE Preview)
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