InSpiritry

Both the marketplace and the political world have seen a “dangerous erosion of the rules and principles” that have made American economy thrive in the past…“Instead of thinking about what’s good for America or what’s good for business,” he said, “a mentality has crept into certain corners of Washington and the business world that says, “what’s good for me is good enough.” Baltimore Sun article, September 17, 2007

I couldn’t have said it better myself!

These comments were made by Presidential candidate, Barak Obama, in a speech at NASDAQ this week where he chastising Wall Street values. Whether we support Senator Obama or not, his remarks are worth noting and worth expanding past financial considerations to the world at large. I think it is safe (and sad) to say that most of us operate with the mentality he described: what’s good for me is good enough.

You might ask: 

• What’s the problem with that? (more…)

A convoy of American soldiers rolls into town, again. They have shelled the buildings where insurgents may be hiding. Now they will go through neighborhoods, searching house to house, guns ready, kicking in doors, hoping no one is inside. They have lost dozens of buddies to the fighting. They are terrified. Sometimes their fight returns to the streets where everyone looks like an enemy and every package an IED. Their commander reminds them that their aim is to “make Iraq safe for democracy” and to “free the Iraqi people.”

These young men are certainly facing death every day, but what about the Iraqi people who lived in those towns and houses, the citizens who did not start this war? (more…)

There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Jelaluddin Balkhi (Rumi)

The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

Imagine yourself so filled with gratitude and joy that you feel compelled to kneel–to kneel!–and kiss the very ground on which you stand, to thank God/Nature/Life for the pleasure and priviledge of living! Now imagine a hundred ways to express that joy!

(more…)

What a sign of hope, if a somewhat typically capitalistic one!

Today, July 18th, is the launch by green retailer Whole Foods Market and upscale designer Anya Hindmarch of their cotton cloth shopping bag emblazeded with the phrase:

I’m Not a Plastic Bag.  (more…)

Fifty thousand years ago, a small group of Africans set out to explore their world in search of food. Their journey, with its expanding routes and constant divergences, lasted for hundreds of generations until it inevitably led to the population of the entire world. 

If this is news to you, stretch your mind! (more…)

Posted by Anne McCrady

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In case you haven’t heard, there is a debate rumbling in American evangelical circles about what constitutes “the great moral issues of the day.” With the presidential race heating up and the Republican party struggling to find its way forward, the Religious Right is jockeying to decide what should matter most to its constituency. (more…)