Revaluing Our Values – Dr. King

My heart feels sorrow that every single year I post the words below because they are vitally necessary.

We need a revolution of values. Badly. This year, I hope each of us pledges to do our best to make the world more equitable and just. We can do this in ways both large and small. We can be kinder to each other. We can educate ourselves on the ways of systemic injustice. We can work to topple the racist and criminal drug war and prison industrial complex. We can stare down rape culture. We can sow more love.

So, as I post every year, here is an excerpt from Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (all points of emphasis are mine):

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Please take some time today and listen:

#MLK #revaluingvalues

Poisoned Waters: We Can Help

Update 1/22/14: Since the 15th, Solar Cross has received $1237 in donations. We will be sending money to West Virginia today. We give thanks to everyone who spread the word, and to Crow, Ellen, Kristina, Shannon, Christine, Jenya, Samara, Marian, Laura, Helene, Mary, Fortuna, Jody, James, Tony, Sean, Joan, Lily, Karen, Denise, Rebecca, Rosalind, Kimberly, Elizabeth, Jason, Gerald, Lezlie, Kimberly, Justyna, Christine, Rhiannon, Jennifer, Misha and Benjamin.

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This piece has was updated 9 hours after the posting of the original to add the new quote from Kelly Mir and some new information gathered from Pagans on the ground in West Virginia. Thank you to everyone who has written in, and to all of you donating to help.

“I have felt so enraged since the chemical spill last week in the Elk River. I realized yesterday that my heart feels like West Virginia and her inhabitants have been made into victims for so many years because of the coal industry. It feels like it has become part of the West Virginia DNA to believe that industry and jobs are more important than safety or the environment… Don’t [people] understand that if we don’t protect the land we don’t have anything?” – Shannon Swan, West Virginia local 

The story about the poisoning of West Virginia water is both convoluted and simple: “clean coal”, mountain top removal, crushing poverty, and greed. A heedless corporation – Freedom Industries – spilled 4-methylcyclohexane methanol from “clean coal” operations into the watershed and more than 300,000 people, plus local fish, birds, and animals, ended up with toxic water.

These people are struggling. Even though the water has been deemed drinkable by officials, brown, toxic smelling sludge continues to flow from the taps. 

When I first heard about the disaster, my thought was to raise funds to send water shipments to the hardest hit towns. In talking with local Pagan, Shannon Swan, I was pointed to a different need:

No clean water means that restaurants, cafes and other places many working class people rely on for income are closed, or, as some locals have told me, though some restaurants have re-opened, things like coffee are being made with affected water. Restaurant workers in the US, as we know, rely on tips to survive. A week without work, plus these ongoing conditions, is making life very difficult.

Paul Dalzell of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Charleston writes:

 “I have worked in, and have many friends in, the food service industry, and I am very concerned for them.  This is an urgent problem for both the minimum wage workers who barely make it in the best of times, and the waitstaff and help who often live from day to day on their tips.”  

These people already live close to the bone. Solar Cross Temple is raising funds to send to the Unitarian church in Charleston, who will get the money to local people in need.

This is a disaster for the trees, the water, the animals, the land, and the people. If you cannot afford a donation, please offer whatever prayers you can, and pass this announcement along. Donations of any amount are welcomed. Donations to Solar Cross Temple are tax deductible.

Please send money via PayPal to solarcrosstemple@gmail.com with the subject and a note “West Virginia Disaster”.

We will pool the money and send it in lump sums to the congregation in Charleston, so they don’t have to deal with multiple small checks.

Resident Kelly Mir wrote to me, saying:

Thank you for being attentive to this; we {West Virginians) are in a location openly called a “sacrifice zone,” but few are paying attention. I am a Reclaiming Priestess, a student of Feri, a graduate of Vanderbilt Divinity School, and a long-time active member of the UU Congregation of Charleston, WV, where efforts are being made to help those most harmed by our most recent crisis. I am also a descendent of some of the first Europeans into this area, and of some of the Original People as well. This land is held deeply in my heart, and the oppression of this land and its people goes back many, many generations.

Everything helps. If you would rather donate directly, Paul writes: “make checks available to UUC and write “Service Worker Fund” on them.” The address is

Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 520 Kanawha Blvd. E, Charleston WV 25302

And let us continue to work for a world based on love and justice rather than profit and greed.

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Addendum:

I also just read this piece on emergency rooms being flooded with people who ingested the water that was recently deemed “safe”. 

“Thank you” messages are already coming in from West Virginians via my Facebook page at the prospect of donations. Everything helps, even just the thought that people care.

#disasterrelief #toxicspill #WestVirginia

Every Day is Practice

“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.” 

– Mevlana Rumi

Some days, even Rumi is wrong.

I’ve been sick this week. One of my partners brought home a bug and, careful as we try to be in our communal household of five people, I succumbed.

Mostly I’ve slept. Done some reading. Snatches of work that had to be done – a new class starting, things to schedule with students and clients, conference deadlines. Slept some more. Read some more. Slept some more.

I’m not so good at resting, but this week, the extra sleep and reading have been good. Every morning, I’ve still risen to my prayers. Every morning – yes later than usual – I’ve done a few minutes worth of meditation. Then tea. Then food. Then mostly back to sleep.

My brain isn’t even really clear enough to find a flow in this piece of writing this morning.

So why am I doing it? Why am I making this less than perfect offering (cue the Leonard Cohen)? Because it is my practice. I write a post every week, just as I pray and meditate each morning. After this, I’ll get more rest.

There are many things included in my practice. But this week, mostly, my practice has been listening to my body.

Not telling my body what I think it should be doing. Listening. And that listening has led to the practice of sleep. 

I’ve done daily spiritual work for years. Struggled with it. Embraced it. Felt held by it. Fought it. Returned to it. My life is supported by this practice. It makes it easier when the practice needs to broaden, soften, or change.

My wish for you, is that you offer yourself gentleness when you need it, and firm direction when that is what you need.

No matter what our days look like, practicing is up to us. 

What do you want? What do you really need? What does your practice look like, for today?

#practice #sleep