JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE : BDS & antisemitism - Live on Facebook

Take heart and never stop taking heart.

One of the most welcome pieces of writing that drops into The Editor's Gmail comes from Michael K Marsh, a priest in the Episcopal Church in the USA.

Michal writes a blog called Interrupting The Silence.

To-day, he has written in a heart-breaking manner of the 

violence and loss of life in Charlottesville, Virginia in the USA 

stirred up by neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.

Please read Michael's blog post

which he concludes by saying

What do you see when you look into your heart?

Are you afraid? I sure hope so. 

I hope you and I are always afraid, afraid enough to take heart, 

to take heart again, and to never stop taking heart.

“Take heart, it is I,” Jesus says. 

Hear his words again, “Be courageous, I Am/am.”

Will we be?

Crowd funding - Muslim style - comes to Gaza and its communities.

Walid Mahmoud 

During a workshop in Gaza city, I talked about my success on the
LaunchGood funding platform and the impact which I made in the community.
I was invited by a local charity association.

For a long time now, I have been a Facebook Friend of Walid Mahmoud. Walid lives in Gaza - a very troubled place, a teeny-weeny strip of land in the world caught between two competing Palestinian political factions, the Israeli Government and the West Bank Jewish Settlers.  It is not a placid place. It is a place to test your survival skills each and every day.

So I am pleased to hear of Walid's initiative and wish him well and hope that it is able to bring brightness into the lives of down-on-the-ground Palestinians.

Christianity is on its way to becoming a minority religion in Australia?

From Matt Wade in The Age

During my lifetime, the share of Australians without a religious affiliation has gone from one in 100 to about one in three.

That's what you call a momentous social change.

The latest census data has been collected and analysed. Here's a snapshot of Australia shown as a group of 100 people.

The spike in people opting for "no religion" was one of the big stories to come out of the 2016 census results released in June. More than 7 million Australians said they have no religious affiliation, a 46 per cent increase on the previous census in 2011.

Given that trend, you might expect the share of the world's population with no religion is also on the rise.

The experience of Western, Christian-majority countries is not necessarily the global experience.

Most Americans think so. A recent US poll found 62 per cent of respondents believe the share of people with no religion will increase between now and 2050. My guess is the share in Australians making that assumption would be even higher.

But long-term population projections by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre show the global reality is quite different to what's going on in Australia and other Western nations.

"The experience of Western, Christian-majority countries is not necessarily the global experience," said Conrad Hackett, a senior demographer with Pew Research who visited Australia last week.

"There was perhaps this sense in the 1960s that religion might be on its way to extinction … but that just hasn't played out."

Pew's report says about one in six of the world's people now has no religious affiliation. But that's forecast to shrink to just one in eight of the global population by 2060.

Why? Because those who opt for "no religion" on their census forms are heavily concentrated in places with ageing populations and low fertility, such as China, Japan, Europe, North America and Australia. The majority of the world's "religiously unaffiliated" are in China (61 per cent) and Japan.

By contrast, populations in places with many religious adherents – mostly developing countries where birth rates are high and infant mortality rates have been falling – are likely to grow strongly. Much of the worldwide growth of Islam and Christianity, for example, is expected to take place in sub-Saharan Africa.

The trend for people to switch to "no religion" in Western nations like Australia is likely to continue, mostly at the expense of traditional Christian denominations. But that won't be nearly enough to offset population growth in places where people are still happy to be affiliated with a religious faith.

The Pew report describes this as the "demographic challenges of the religiously unaffiliated".

Between 2015 and 2020, the total fertility rate for women with no religion is projected to be 1.6 children per woman while the rate among women with a religious affiliation is forecast to be 2.5 children per women.

Pew estimates the world's "no religion" ranks will grow by a paltry 3 per cent between now and 2060. That compares with projected growth of 70 per cent for Muslims, 34 per cent for Christians and 27 per cent for Hindus (the global population is forecast to grow by 32 per cent in that period).

As a result, the share of the world's population identifying with a religion is set to rise from 84 per cent to 87 per cent between now and 2060, the Pew study predicts.

Australia might be losing its religion, but the world isn't.

Music for a Warming World - an event of Melbourne's Greenfaith-ARRCC

Nivy Balachandran	10 August

Dear friends,

Check out the event below for one of our fellow CCs Greenfaith 

"Music for a Warming World", taking place on 13 August 2017 in Melbourne.

Try Booking site for this event

Thanks Jonathan and Andrea 

for sharing this with us and for inviting us along.

Do get a long and check it out, 

and please share with your networks!

(Please email me if you have events you'd like to share with the URI network).

Kind wishes

Nivy

Nivy Balachandran

Regional Coordinator, 
Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands 
Part time - Office days are Wednesday and Friday.

Phone: +61 433 238 406 | Skype: nivy.bala | www.uri.org 

Women in the Russian Orthodox Tradition

There are some feisty, feisty women in the Russian Orthodox tradition. Here is one from the long,long ago. To-morrow, I will have one from more modern times - and noted, even though she was wearing, a nun's habit, for smoking!!!

‎Elijah Borek‎ to Ask About The Orthodox Faith

Yesterday at 05:31 · 

St Olga Equal to the Apostles

Saint Olga, renowned for her wisdom and sobriety, in her youth became the wife of Igor, Great Prince of Kiev, who ruled during the tenth century. After her husband's death, she herself ruled capably, and was finally moved to accept the Faith of Christ. She traveled to Constantinople to receive Holy Baptism. The Emperor, seeing her outward beauty and inward greatness, asked her to marry him. She said she could not do this before she was baptized; she furthermore asked him to be her Godfather at the font, which he agreed to do. After she was baptized (receiving the name of Helen), the Emperor repeated his proposal of marriage. She answered that now he was her father, through holy Baptism, and that not even among the heathen was it heard of a man marrying his daughter. Gracefully accepting to be outwitted by her, he sent her back to her land with priests and sacred texts and holy icons. Although her son Svyatoslav remained a pagan, she planted the seed of faith in her grandson Vladimir (St Vladimir Equal to the Apostles), the Baptizer of Rus'.

Saint Olga left our world in 969. Prince Vladimir placed her incorrupt relics in the Desyatinnaia cathedral. It was the first time that sacred relics were revealed in Russia. Later (before the Mongol invasion) God glorified the relics of the Princess Olga with miracles and she was canonized a saint.

"LGBT Inclusion In Faith Communities" Parliament of the Worlds Religions...

LGBTI Inclusion in Faith Communities
Please note: The music on this vid takes quite a while to 
play through before you get to a speaker.
Thanks to Brandan Robertson for uploading this to the net
for The Editor of Beside The Creek to discover.

This video is from a discussion at the Parliament of the World Religions,
a worldwide interfaith organisation.
It has nothing to do with the event promoted below -
except that it is on a similar topic.
The video is on the USA situation.
The event below is the Australian situations.

The Victorian Government is holding a forum about LGBTI Inclusion in Faith Communities. The Forum will address the role that faith and community leaders play in fostering inclusive environments for LGBTI people of faith. 

Thursday 17 August, 2017
9.30 am – 3.15 pm: 
LGBTI Inclusion in Faith Communities

Guest speakers will include Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Robin Scott MP; Minister for Equality, Martin Foley MP; leaders from diverse faith communities; and LGBTI people of faith. Participants will have the opportunity to share best practice approaches, including the provision of pastoral care to LGBTI people of faith, the use of inclusive language and interpretation of scripture. We invite you as a faith and/or community leader to contribute to a sensitive and respectful conversation to support positive mental health and well-being outcomes for LGBTI people of faith. 

Please advise of your attendance, including any accessibility and dietary requirements, to shoshana.silverman@dpc.vic.gov.au by no later than 8 August 2017. The Forum will be held at Woodward Conference Centre.

Here are details borrowed from a different function

with details of how to get to the Woodward Conference Centre

Where is faith in all this?

I stopped being a Muslim, although I was born a Muslim and grew up a Muslim. This is the position of Sami Shah, who decided to come to Australia from Pakistan.

He and his family are now living here happily and he is becoming well known as both a comedian and writer.

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Comedian Sami Shah. Photo: Supplied

Sami's first child was a daughter, and her gender was what finally prompted him and his wife to migrate to Australia. If their child had been a son they probably wouldn't have come, but as the child was a girl they migrated because the women aren't treated well in Pakistan, as in many parts of the developing world.

So, Sami decided to give up his religion. And giving up religion in his country is punishable by death in his and some other countries.

So what then? Having found the Koran dense and convoluted he looked beyond Islam and carefully considered both the Old and New Testaments, but found them both incapable of having relevance to his modern life.

So where is faith in all this? All humans have a natural need to seek meaning. This natural desire for something to believe in is frequently not much helped by religious structures. We're too often told that "this is the truth and if you don't accept it you should just go away".

The result of that stance has meant that organised religion as a means to find belief is rejected by many. It's why people listen to the militant atheists who see religion as a positive evil. So much organised religion is restrictive, although it also is a means through which many people find their faith. And many religions express that faith by reaching out to serve people in need regardless of belief – the Salvation Army, Anglicare, Jewish Care, Catholic Social Services etc.

So all religious structures are flawed. Like all human structures, from political parties to large corporations to golf clubs to mothers' groups. They're all human. There's often division. Religious structures can offer a vehicle through which people can discover a meaning in their lives. They can find that loving our neighbours, forgiving others' mistakes, accepting others' failures is the true way of expressing faith – whatever one it may be.

Meditating and worshipping is comforting and helpful, as long as the resulting faith leads to ensuring that we live our lives positively and work to enhance the humanity of the people around us.

Don Mackay is a Melbourne writer.

Be careful what you wish for. The mystical experience. Or, at least, some sorts of mystical experience

From Patheos

« Letting Go of Fundamentalism

A PATRIOTIC BLIND EYE »

Re-interpreting Mystical Experience

May 18, 2017 by Linda LaScola 30 Comments

Editor’s Note: If you’ve ever thought of trading your current set of beliefs (or non-beliefs) for mysticism, this discussion will give you pause. It’s written by an expert – a former long-term yogi who is now an atheist.

=====================

By “Scott”

What creates feelings of ecstasy and a sense of contact with universal oneness? What’s the link between these feelings and spiritual disciplines, meditation practices, and religious frameworks?

There is no question that mystical experience is a powerful and can be a valuable experience. But society tends to explain mystical experience as something mysterious, religious, or supernatural. Most people have neither sufficient knowledge nor the confidence in their own minds or bodies to question or understand mystical experiences. Nor are most people aware of the role of psychology and physiology in mystical experience.

In this post, I try to answer generally what is mystical experience. Then I describe two feelings common of mystical experience. Next, I describe the reported physiological (bodily) and psychological (emotional/mental) effects. And lastly, I list eight bodily and mental processes that can drastically alter our perceptions and that can produce mystical experience.

What is mystical experience?

Two feelings–ecstasy and a contact with universal sense of oneness–are common denominators of mystical experience.¹ The reports of mystical experience often include effects that are both physiological and psychological.

Psychological effects that are reported can include visions, out-of-body sensations, or unconsciously expressed behaviors such as speaking in tongues, feelings of being possessed by a spirit, crying from happiness or feelings of extreme exhilaration or profound calmness. Consider this example:

But as I turned and was about to take a seat by the fire, . . . the Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul. I could feel the impression, like a wave of electricity, going through and through me. Indeed, it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love . . . it seemed to fan me, like immense wings.

No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart. I wept aloud with joy and love; and I do not know but I should say I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushings of my heart. These waves came over me, and over me, and over me, one after the other, until I recollect I cried out, ‘I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me.’ . . . yet I had no fear of death.²

Physiological changes in heart or breathing rate, or in body temperature and so on are often reported. Sometimes chemical or neurological imbalances in the brain can produce mystical experience. Consider for example:

Lucinda has temporal lobe epilepsy and says things like,

“during the seizure, I experience God—I see the meaning of the universe, the true meaning of the universe, for the first time in my life. I understand my place in the cosmic scheme of things.”³

Body/brain alterations and mystical experience

Generally speaking, physiological and psychological changes (such as those reported in mystical experiences) can be expected whenever basic bodily or mental processes are altered drastically. Many effective alterations include⁴:

1) Drugs–mind-altering chemicals–man- or plant-made, such as psychedelics, alcohol, opiates, and anesthetics–directly affect body and brain processes and are perhaps the easiest route to unusual perception or mystical experience.

2) Alterations in breathing–holding the breath, slowing the breath, or deep, rapid breathing are ways of altering the oxygen/carbon balance in our blood and brains, often produce bodily and perceptual alterations.

3) Fasting–lack of nutrients, abstaining from certain foods, can alter our bodily and mental perceptions. Progressive starvation (nutritional deprivation) can lead to altered states of consciousness (including hallucinations or death).

4) Deprivations–frustration, repression, or extreme denial such as loss of sleep, fatigue, unexpressed sexual or intimate feelings, including self-inflicted pain or suffering, can break down physical and psychological stability and can produce mystical states.

5) Fever–delirium and hallucinations it is well known, can be produced by lengthy or high fever or body temperature.

6) Excitement, exertion–these conditions create changes in the breathing, heart rate, oxygen and blood balance in the body that can alter perceptions.

7) Combinations of the above–for example, combining fasting, loss of sleep, and extreme sexual abstinence (celibacy or chastity) can produce altered states of consciousness.

8) Random or unknown–seemingly for no known reason an altered state or mystical experience can be produced. However, not knowing reason doesn’t excuse interpretations that we then claim to “know” the reason is some god, spirit, or supernatural power.

Mystical experiences can be powerful and valuable.

It is possible for us to develop greater self-awareness and trust in our own capabilities without interpreting or concluding that mystical experience is:

1) Evidence of the supernatural or some god or spirit.

2) A hoax or delusion.

Through better understanding of drastically altering body/brain processes and what mystical experiences are–psychologically and physiologically–we can appreciate these powerful and valuable experiences. We need not dismiss or assume mystical experience is something mysterious, religious, or supernatural. By developing better self-awareness and self-trust we can avoid pitfalls of using interpreters of mystical experience–whether these interpretations are filtered through holy books, gurus and presumed enlightened masters or other second-hand, so-called authorities.

=================

Bio: “Scott” was a monk at the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) ashram for 14 years before leaving to complete his education and enter the business world. Raised Roman Catholic, he got into eastern religious practices and was influenced in his 20’s by reading The Autobiography of a Yogiv by SRF founder Paramahansa Yogananda. He is now a member of The Clergy Project and a successful business consultant. He discusses the hidden, and sometimes-dangerous side of meditation practices, systems and groups at SkepticMeditations.com. This post is republished with permission from his blog.

_{Notes
1 I’m indebted to Andrew Neher’s excellent book,} Paranormal and Transcendental Experience: A Psychological Examination, _{p 106, for his simple and elegant explanation of these two common feelings.}

₂ The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, _{William James, The Project Gutenberg EBook, retrieved 23 Apr 2017 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/621/621-h/621-h.html}

_{3 Read my post God in a Seizure: Epilepsy & Mysticism, http://skepticmeditations.com/2014/12/11/god-in-a-seizure-epilepsy-mysticism/}

_{4 I’m indebted to Andrew Neher’s excellent book,} Paranormal and Transcendental Experience: A Psychological Examination, _{p 19, for his list of things that can drastically alter body and brain processes.}

>>>>photo credits: By Alvesgaspar – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43527951

The Makomanai Cemetery in Japan with its giant statue of Buddha

Normally a cemetery wouldn’t be on our list of recommended sites to see, but the Makomanai Cemetery is one of the most awe-inspiring places we’ve ever been. Located in the outskirts of Sapporo, a large stone Buddha occupies the sprawling landscape. All 1,500 tons of it has sat alone there for 15 years. But when the cemetery decided they wanted to do something to increase visitor’s appreciations for the Buddha, they enlisted architect Tadao Ando, who had a grand and bold idea: hide the statue.

See and read more here