Seeds for a world change #8/9

For September 23-26, 2012

In the circle of the Goddess create consensus while respecting diversity of opinion. On the path of the Goddess there are many paths.

From Book of the Goddess, by Anna Livia Plurabelle.

http://sacred-texts.com/wmn/bog/bog27.htm

Infographic: Occupy Movement Bears Fruit — YES! Magazine

Infographic: Occupy Movement Bears Fruit — YES! Magazine

Taproot cancelled today (Sept. 16)

The Taproot meeting today is cancelled due to scheduling issues.

Seeds for a world change #7

English: Imam Ali Mosque - Shrine of: 1st Shia Imam - Ali ibn abi Talib; Prophet Adam; and Prophet Nuh. (Najaf, Iraq) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For September 16-19, 2012

Justice is the essence of the people's welfare as well as the adherence to the Divine path... Justice is life and cruelty is the death of society.

-- Imam Ali, Qisarul Jumal.

Iris in September

Occupy Portland anniversary open house

All Roads Lead To Wall Street

Occupy Portland celebrates the one year of the Occupy Movement this Friday at St. Francis (1131 SE Oak Street, Portland) from 5-10 p.m.

Featured speaker: Paul Cienfuegos
Live music and performances
Door prizes

http://occupyportland.org/2012/09/02/save-the-date-opdx-open-house-all-roads-lead-to-wall-street/

Seeds for a world change #6

Seafront at Ortygia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

September 12-16, 2012

Who rules in her own right is a tyrant, or yet in the right of other maids. There is but one authority and the truth alone is true. Do neither eat the bread of tyrants nor drink their drink, but offer them first to She that owns them. Do neither join in their contentions, neither be a party to one side nor to the other, for they are lawlessness.

-- Heart of Water

Seeds for world change #5

September 9-12, 2012

Poppies
Mary Oliver

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Taproot time change effective immediately

Due to scheduling and attendance issues, we are changing the time of Taproot as follows effective immediately:

Wednesday: cancelled until further notice
Friday: moved to Sundays 7 p.m. starting Sept. 9.

Seeds for world change #4

Cover of World of Your Dreams

For September 5-9, 2012

May your eyes shine with the light of Torah,
And your face be radiant as the brightness of the sky.
May your lips speak words of wisdom, And may the world you live in be the world of your dreams.
May you see your world created in your lifetime.
May you see your visions come to be.
May your hope touch every generation to come.
These are the prayers we have for you.

CHORUS
May you be blessed with understanding,
With wisdom and compassion in your heart.
May your tongue be filled with song,
And your lips sing out for justice.
These are the prayers we have for you. 

“World of Your Dreams” by Debbie Friedman

Towards a missional approach

Cover via Amazon

In book Missional Renaissance, Reggie McNeal contrasts the approaches taken by the postmodern "missional" Christians to those taken by the "traditional" church models of as recently as the megachurches and "seeker-friendly" churches of the 1990s.

In the book, McNeal points out that a missional church is not about providing religious commodity and products to the marketplace and thereby attracting consumers to become "assimilated" into a church and its own insular "Christian" subculture, but rather going out to a real world to be a blessing.  In the course of becoming a missional church, McNeal argues, that a church must become simplified, less institutionalized and less internally-focused, and rather ask itself how it can become a blessing to the communities out there, not just their own people and not just "Christians" who agree with them.

A missional approach places far less emphasis on doctrinal orthodoxy -- or for that matter, orthopraxy.  Much of what an "incarnational" (as McNeal calls this missional movement) church does is not about "proclamation, but demonstration."

Even more interesting is that this approach engages "non-Christians" in a way no conventional church ever has.  After all, most of what a missional church does to bless the world around it have a universal appeal.

Thinking of it, in retrospect, I feel that this group -- now called the Interfaith Solidarity, formerly the Interfaith Guild of Chaplains -- has also been stuck in the old paradigm even amidst the new paradigm prefigured in the Occupy movement.  In our early days we were just as obsessed with programming and attracting people to our events as the conventional churches and parachurch organizations are.  We atrophied as soon as the memory of the Occupation faded into history, just like conventional churches are often impotent and incompetent outside their walls and their constructed "Christian" subculture.

This was not what we envisioned or see it coming.

Maybe we need to start asking ourselves how we can start blessing the community -- and by community it is not just Occupy people.  How many Occupiers have thus far gone out to be a blessing to the wider community, aside from endless marching and protesting?  Maybe the Occupy movement will once again rise if Occupiers started serving the community and its most marginalized segments -- instead of being known mostly for disrupting commuter rush-hour traffic, for being beaten up by cops,  and for property destruction?

On that note, I propose that we think of ways to bless Portland in a tangible way this month of September as we celebrate the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street.  This can be a series of projects that can engage many Occupiers outside the Interfaith Solidarity as well.

And importantly, you can be an atheist, a Buddhist, a Jew, a Muslim, or anything else for that matter -- to be a blessing.

Sarah Morrigan
Interfaith Solidarity

Seeds for a world change #3

For September 2-5, 2012

The person who is to succeed will never let his mind dwell on past mistakes. He will forgive the past in his life and in the lives of other people. If he makes a mistake he will at once forgive it. He will know that so long as he desires any good, there is nowhere in the universe anything that opposes him. God does not damn anyone or anything; man damns everyone and everything.

God does not make things by comparing His power with some other power. God knows that when He speaks it done; and if we partake of the divine nature we must know the same thing in our lives that God knows in His.

– Ernest Holmes, CreativeMind and Success(1919).