“Sometimes, one must look into the ashes to find a solitary spark.” Dov Ber of Mazeritch “Torah is not education, it is transformation.” Rebbitzen Dena Weinberg So, you may have gathered from the title of this piece that what I … Continue reading
(Normally, I don’t post sermon texts, but some have asked for this one. From this morning, July 1, 2018; 1 Kings 17. Seems word gets round. So, here it is.) So, lately, I’ve been thinking about this idea, G-d the economist. … Continue reading
Though its been over 30 years since Audre Lorde prophesied the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house (Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, 1984), the movement for a just, equitable society continues: a large, lumbering conglomerate creature, stuffed to the water-starved gills with organizations and leaders hell-bent on using every tool from the master’s box, tightly gripped in one hand, while extending the other to shake hands with the master’s gate-keepers. This, despite the cries—and the deaths—of the people. And, so it is; the empire grows bigger and stronger and fatter on the diseased fruits of its own planting, while the dream of a just peace flops and flounders, gasping for breath on the littered beach of the common good. Continue reading
I’m drawn to pondering Jesus’ use of the word we translate as salvation—a word, since, oddly associated with this far-off, yet-to-come intervention on which we wait; a word concerned, long now, with the state of our eternal souls rather than the state of our world. The Hebrew word for salvation, yeshuah, comes from the root, yasha, which means to be or to make wide. Danger and evil are narrow spaces—places where circumstances are closing-in; where enemies are surrounding; where things are tight. Continue reading
From rape-culture college campuses to domestic relations, from corporate offices to doctor’s offices, from street corners to clergy offices and confessionals, from casting couches to ordinary job interviews—however subconsciously or unspoken—from back rooms to the Oval Office, the personhood of a woman is reduced to her body. Women are still colonized, on the landscapes of their bodies, by those who wish to occupy them.
Given this reality, it is not difficult, at all, to see how readily this belief system—rooted in the core belief of male primacy—morphs and twists into the colonization of other bodies.
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There is a spirit, ancient and eternal, within and among us all, holding us, binding us together across time and difference, joining us in an ever-evolving web of interdependent, sacred abiding. For this, let us be grateful. There is a … Continue reading
It’s that time of year when we are called to be still enough to reflect and express gratitude for all we have—even amid all that is troubling and not what we want, or perhaps, need it to be. These times … Continue reading
“Wake up, you who are in sound sleep, and slumberous people: stop hibernating, look into your deeds, repent and remember your Creator. Those who forget the truth in the vanity of time and wander in their sleep through nonsense and … Continue reading
When I was growing up in the 1960s, it was a particularly difficult time to be a child discerning a gender-identity different from one’s gender assigned at birth. In a time where everything our culture saw as normal and “just … Continue reading
(Or…the Soothing Sound of Katydids) It is evening here, in North Carolina, where House Bill 2 (the first of the “bathroom” bills) once loomed heavily, casting a storm of attention over our lives and giving the shelter of darkness to … Continue reading
