For me, watching it brought a host of emotions. It brought me back to the warmth and light of my beloved India, a country filled with paradox. It is at once ancient and modern, wealthy and poor, religious and secular. The colors and sounds and scents are heady and intense, from the swirling pinks and oranges of colorful saris to the blaze of billboards advertising modern wares with bright white Bollywood smiles on ancient buildings, from the gossipy chattering of lime green parrots in the trees to the endless metallic din of motor rickshaw traffic, from the rose and jasmine tinged incense wafting up in morning prayer to the smoky peat of cow dung patties being burned for warmth and cooking fires. As the video clip shows, it is a country of astonishing wealth and luxury such as can be found in its glittering five-star Taj hotels, and a country of despair-inducing poverty, the squalid slums outlining the cities reeking of excrement, trash and urine. It is, for many visitors, a country of chaos. It is also a country of an ancient order, the caste system.

I’m not qualified to comment on the current understandings of the caste system in India, or on prevailing systemic injustices that call for change. What I do wish to lift up is how this man’s calling spontaneously led him out of the ‘acceptable’ order of his life and society, into a life of scandalous love. I would lift up, too, something I feel even more deeply moved by in watching this video. This man exudes a tangible love for the people he cares for. He seems to exude love in an effortless, easy way that attends his every movement, touch or gesture while with them, and which makes me feel that he must be enormously rich; he is rich in love. There is economic poverty, but there is also a very real poverty of love. In his ministry, it seems this man is engaging with both from a wealth of both. Relating and feeding are not separated; body and psyche are kept together, and he offers a healing and nourishing outpouring on both.

1 John 4:19 says “We love because he first loved us.” From psychoanalytic insights, we know that our ability to give love is primarily and deeply related to the ways in which we have received love. Yet many people suffer from wounds of love; an absence of an affirmation of, and a relating to, our deepest selves. Even those of us who consider ourselves among the fortunate in the world, those of us who seek to be givers, caretakers, ministers, may struggle with loving, feeling at some deep level that we were, or are, not loved ourselves. And we blame ourselves. Yet, we all deserve the experience of receiving love, not just a belief in it, and we thrive when we have this experience with enough constancy to make it true in our bones, so true that it gives rise to its natural corollaries of deep inner freedom and the ability to love others in the same unconditional way. This grace-filled love just may break through into narcissistic systems, internal and external, bringing the life-giving good news of true relatedness where there was captivity, despair, and broken-heartedness.

Love is abundant. Yet, we often find ourselves squabbling like a flock of sparrows over the last crumb, as though we must frantically fight to get our little piece before flying off with it to some protected place and devouring it, and peering enviously at others who arrived first or more aggressively and took their share. Or perhaps we give up our share entirely, believing that it is starvation that is required of us to save others from our own hungering, rather than a joyful feasting together.

The absence of love where there should have been love is extraordinarily painful. Yet, this movie clip inspires me. It inspires me because I feel reminded, in an embodied way, that the reality of love is that it is endlessly real and utterly generous. Love is not a zero-sum commodity, as though love for oneself comes at the cost of love for others, rather than both bubbling up from the same deep well-spring and building gloriously and joyfully on each other, tumbling us into new spaces of freedom, creativity, generosity and even play.

Whatever my past experience has been or whatever corresponding beliefs about myself I arrived at, I don’t actually have to fight for my share of love, earn it by conforming to expectation, or affirm or partake in any system that overtly or covertly claims that I do. Neither does anyone else. This, to some of parts of some of us, is just as scandalous as it may have been to that man’s family when he stepped out into his call. Just as he had to break with the oppressive and unjust aspects of is social context to live out this life of love for others, so too is it given to us to break with inner systems that are oppressive and conditional and would dehumanize the needy and vulnerable, and also the hopeful and lively and loving, within ourselves and others, and to withstand the inner scandal that such  grace may bring. The more love we know, and allow ourselves to know, the more we will be able to offer both food and love to a world in an agony of starvation for both.

More can be learned about his work at www.akshyatrust.org

Pia Chaudhari is a Ph.D. student in Psychology and Religion .

He has been doing a great service both in Uganda and in the United States. The churches need not only more Christopher Senyonjos, but more of us to recognize and publicize efforts like this. Please share this article far and wide.

This is a great day. Twenty-one years ago today, Nelson Mandela was freed from Victor Verser Prison: this too was televised. The media has a great responsibility to the people not as our opiate but as a partner in liberation.

Mubarak has resigned.

الله أكبر

Protester faces off against police forces in Egypt

We are so accustomed in the Abrahamic tradition to see Egypt as the oppressor to be overthrown. It is a central part of the Exodus narrative, which has been crucial in Jewish history as well as African-American Christian identity. So what happens when Egypt itself yearns for freedom?

That is precisely what we are seeing now. The people of Egypt are straining against the bonds of a modern-day Pharaoh, and he’s one that the United States has nearly unequivocally supported. The Sarthanapolos blog has an excellent guide about “How Not To Say Stupid Stuff About Egypt”, which contains many corrections to the distorted view that we have had of our Muslim sisters and brothers for years. Notably, it points out that Mubarak and Nassar before him were not peace-seeking fonts of stability but repressive dictators and that the Muslim Brotherhood is not anything like Al Quaeda.

How long must we follow Constantine before we remember Christ?

More information:
Al Jazeera English’s special coverage
follow @AJELive on Twitter
NPR has coverage of Egypt and the wider Middle East

This seminarian is no different from anyone else. These have been disturbing, nonsensical days that I can hardly begin to make meaning of one way or the other. When I don’t understand–especially when phrases from the middle ages pop up in present political rhetoric–I look to the wiser ones that have gone before me. So what does blood libel mean anyway? Union’s Mary Boys talked to CNN today to help us understand. Yes, Wheat and the Chaff is actually highlighting religion in the media. Imagine that. Enjoy!

And friends, I don’t know much, but if you have someone you love, tell ‘em. That may not seem to have anything to do with this article, but I can assure you it has everything to do with the healing we all need right now.

I'd Rather Love A Jesus Who Loves Us All

It’s National Coming Out Day today. We’ve also heard a lot lately about LGBTQ teen suicides. If you haven’t yet, I implore you to read Rev. Dr. Patrick Cheng’s Huffington Post article on the suicides, Rev. Irene Monroe’s Huffington Post article on bullying and homophobia and spend some time in thoughtful reflection on what your church has or has not done for LGBTQ people whether they are teenage, pre-teen, adult or senior.

I am not gay, and cannot therefore offer a queer perspective on these issues. I defer to others that they might speak for themselves as regards their own pain and joy. But homophobia is my problem too. It is my problem because it hurts people I love. It is my problem because too many people cloak their prejudice in the language of faith and that hurts every person of faith. It is my problem because every day straight allies neglect to speak out against it is another day that homophobia remains a “socially acceptable” prejudice. It is not acceptable. If we profess that we are made in the image of God, then God is also a gay man, a lesbian, transgender, transsexual, gender non-conforming AND yes heterosexual too.

If God is a God of justice, mercy and righteousness, then God is queer. God is with the terrorized young people of our world–never in judgment but always in love.

The median household income in America is $50,000 a year. The Donnell’s live off exactly that number. They used to earn two times that, swimming in the river of the American myth of prosperity, and living by an ethos of, as Gregg Donell puts it, “the need for more things.” They stopped living that way, though, beginning to recognize and appreciate their gifts rather than succumb to the desire to buy them.

Quantitative easing is something altogether different. Its a complex word with a simple meaning. Remember when your parents would tell you money doesn’t grow on trees, they were right; it can come out of thin air. QE is essentially what happened in the 2008 stimulus package that went out to major banking centers. Firms possessed large bundles of bonds no one would buy so the Federal Reserve bought them. And here’s the trick, they did it with a surge of money right off the press.

QE is an answer to the necessary task of keeping our economy afloat. And as Paul Krugman argues another wave of stimulus money is very necessary, even if it is politically unappetizing. QE exemplifies the paradox of our current economic state. If we don’t funnel money into credit lending institutions our economy sinks further, but when that money for nothing is handed over it sets a priority for the way we organize our society. And that’s what’s troubling about QE: it’s a lesson in how our supply-side economy works vis-à-vis how we act as a society. The Federal Reserves’ money out of thin air goes into the major financial firms which,  further fuels speculation, further widens the income gap, further allows exploitation of limited resources, and further instantiates a psychological entitlement for the proverbial “more.”

The question I have is does this pattern of economic practice continue to delay the inevitable? That is, as a country we have been living beyond our means for far too long. Is austerity really our enemy?  I wonder what would happen if middle-class families started making financial decisions the way the Donnell’s do: living by what they need rather than living through the desire for more. Of course a large spending freeze doesn’t sound good to any economist, but what would it mean to finally realize we have more than enough to live content lives. The Niebuhrian in me tells me to get real, but what a hope. More Donnell families might just have the power to do something radically sublime. It may instill enough humility that we can move from conversations about quantitative easing and the desire for more to conversations about the joys of living with enough. Oh but the doubting question remains: can middle-class families make such radical financial  statements, or be faulted for not doing so, when the seduction of wealth continues to always beckon one nigh?

Rosa Parks' mugshot, courtesy mindfully.org

Tuesday’s New York Metro newspaper headline about the Park51 center read “You Guys Don’t Look Like Rosa Parks To Me”. The article was slightly less pugnacious, but the question remained about Ms. Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Dr. King and the current predicament not only of the Park51 center but of Muslim believers in America in general.

Rosa Parks is presently an honored and cherished part of United States history. She was not in 1955. In 1955, Rosa Parks was a trouble-maker. She was not honored by the establishment for her courage, but was derided as disruptive. Why couldn’t she just let the system exist in peace? Why did she have to remind the white citizens of Montgomery that there were black citizens in their midst who paid the same taxes and the same fares on the city bus?

So too, unfortunately, today. Why does Park51 have to be in lower Manhattan? Why can’t these troublesome Muslims just exist somewhere out of sight where we don’t have to do anything more than pay lip-service to the plurality of cultures in our nation? Why indeed.

The why is the same for Rosa Parks and for Park51. The why is because it is hypocrisy to say that those different from the majority can only exist if they are out of sight and do not trouble our conscience.

Arizona Snowbowl and the Hopi Reservation

Over the weekend, the Wall St. Journal reported about a conflict between the Hopi people and a ski resort. At issue in this conflict is the plan from Arizona Snowbowl (the resort) to use recycled water to make artificial snow in an expansion into land that the Hopi and several other indigenous peoples believe to be sacred. What is interesting here is less that this is a possible church-and-state issue regarding religious rights. Rather, it is a conflict between two religions: the Hopi’s and American Civic Religion.

The Hopi object on two grounds: first, that the water originally proposed was non-potable sewage water; second, that making artificial snow is an affront to the sovereignty of Nature. Nature decides when it snows, not the manager of the ski resort. The response from the government has been in defense of that most sacred tenet of Civic Religion: the right of a business to operate and make money. To be sure, the American fervor in supporting the Church of the Almighty Dollar is rarely less intense than what could be found at a revival meeting.

What insights might we gain from asking the question about a conflict between religions rather than a conflict between a religion and a secular state? Wouldn’t the issue be different if it were two churches vying for the same plot of land for a sanctuary? What about the Temple Mount in Jerusalem?

NY Times illustration for Dr. Francis' article

Guest writer Pia Chaudhari is a Ph.D. candidate at Union in Psychiatry and Religion.

In response to the New York Times Op-Ed of August 14, 2010 titled ‘Good Grief ‘by Allen Francis, I wish to share my relief in Dr. Francis’ defense of the sacred rituals of mourning and the process of grief and its resolution.

What is frightening about the proposal for the DSM 5 to label common symptoms of grief as major depressive disorder is that it is symptomatic of the splitting of our fast-paced, technology-oriented, scientifically-minded society away from the roots of deep human wisdom and experience. Much necessary good has come from the advances in psychiatry of the past 150 years, but scientific reasoning can not and should not replace the capacity for deep feeling or the derivation of meaning in our lives. In our culture’s quest to promote a life entirely free of pain, we risk losing our own deepest capacities for joy. If we as a society are no longer willing to tolerate the suffering that comes with loving, with caring, with being human in an uncertain world, then we will no longer be able to tolerate love, care or the uncertainties of being human. There is no drug which will make life free of suffering or uncertainty, but there is comfort and healing to be found in loving relationships, trusted community and sacred rituals–all of which we risk losing at our own deep peril.