Sustaining the real presence of community on Zoom

Meeting for worship on Zoom

Excerpts from “A Jewel in the Lotus: Buddhist chaplaincy includes compassion and ‘skillful means,'” by Chris Berlin, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Autumn/Winter 2020


Chris Berlin, is an instructor in ministry and spiritual counseling and the denominational counselor to Buddhist students at Harvard Divinity School.  With his colleague Cheryl Giles, he teaches the course Compassionate Care of the Dying: Buddhist Trainings and Techniques.

The course interweaves teachings in the Buddhist view of impermanence and death with

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Dismissing essential workers as “heroes”

"USDA subcontract staff boxing multiple-week supplemental food boxes for children in rural locations," by Lance Cheung

We Are All Called to Be ‘Heroes’,” by Elam D. Jones (Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Autumn/Winter 2020, 19-21)


In “We Are All Called to Be ‘Heroes’,” Elam D. Jones explains why he is wary of the popular pandemic practice of calling essential workers “heroes.”

I have come to understand that the label “hero” and how it has been employed in the United States to refer to essential workers not only generates complicated and ambiguous feelings

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The pain of witnessing & the action of caring

11/23/2020 Poor People's Campaign caravan in Topeka KS

care (v.)
Old English carian, cearian “be anxious or solicitous; grieve; feel concern or interest,” from Proto-Germanic *karo- “lament,” hence “grief, care” (source also of Old Saxon karon “to lament, to care, to sorrow, complain,” Old High German charon “complain, lament,” Gothic karon “be anxious”), said to be from PIE root *gar- “cry out, call, scream.” —Online Etymology Dictionary

Our hyper-connected media world forces us all to wrestle with an extra layer of emotional suffering: that

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Claudia Rankine: Uncomfortable conversations

Just Us: An American Conversation, by Claudia Rankine (2020)
Excerpts from Ismail Muhammad’s  review in The Atlantic


In 2016, African-American poet and scholar Claudia Rankine was not sure that her Yale students “would be able to trace the historical resonances of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant demagoguery.”  She wanted them to connect the current treatment of Mexicans and other Hispanic people with America’s 19th century treatment of Irish, Italian, and Asian immigrants.

It

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William Stringfellow, Part 2: “The Fall” as metaphor for American political reality

"We the People" text from the US Constitution

Last week I posted excerpts from the preface to William Stringfellow’s 1973 book, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land.  Central to Stringfellow’s argument is his assertion that Americans are “grossly naive or remarkably misinformed” about the biblical concept of “the Fall.”

Christian ideology, in particular Protestant Christian ideology, has dominated the nation’s distorted self-image and consequent hurtful policies and culture from the beginning.  The churches project “too mean, too trivial, too narrow, too

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Vivian Gornick on “the ever-enlivening fellowship of suffering”

The following excerpts are from “Why Some of Us Thrive in a Crisis,”
by Vivian Gornick, in The Atlantic, June 2020, pp.18-20.


Vivian Gornick has observed a wide-spread phenomenon in the midst of the pandemic: “Loners who sped into public service faster than altruism could explain. These were people who trusted no one, joined nothing, signed nothing; yet here they were making masks, checking on neighbors, bagging groceries.”

As she delves into

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Fouling the public sphere: Can I avoid causing social media harm?

Blue Water Lily" by Mike Shell (8/3/2018)

I’ve pondered for years the dilemmas of using social media.

Quill & InkThere I find ready communication with long-time friends, who rarely use email any more. There I can easily share information, uplift, and humor with a broader readership. Yet there I am also drawn down into the anger, resentment, and despair that seems the default setting for our culture.

How does one discern a way to positive engagement with what

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Spiritual life is physical

Human dualism drawing

In “Loss of shared space: the second pandemic” (4/17/2020), I wrote:

Our brains are hardwired so that the mere sight of a face [online] in real time minimally satisfies the need for a sense of presence with each other. But, our brains are in bodies in the material world. And our bodies need more than that minimal sight on a screen in order to feel—to know in the blood—that we are really in the midst of other people.

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