| Except for monthly Vital Conversations convened by David Nelson, CRES programs arise by request. Our management principle is "management by opportunity." Every year we are delighted by the number of opportunties given to us, as, for example, last year's list demonstrates. (Of course we also provide free consulation to organizations and other services as requested, not listed on our public website.) |
Transcendent meanings from COVID?
#Benedict
#Stephan Robert T Stephan, 1933-2023
As a child, Bob experienced religious prejudice and worked endlessly as judge, as the longest- serving attorney-general in Kansas history, and as citizen to promote human dignity and justice, and to relieve suffering. He worked especially on consumer protection and the rights of victims. He was courageous as he answered political smears and in his repeated contests with painful cancer; and his amazing quick wit and humor brought perspective and delight to those around him. He died January 2. Our deepest condolences to his beloved wife, Marilynn, and family. #Hamline CRES supports Dr Erika López Prater, along with the Middle East Studies Association, the Medieval Academy, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and other organizations and (so far) over ten thousand knowledgeable academic and religious leaders -- and thanks Prof Christiane Gruber, PhD, for helping us to protest against Hamline University for dismissing Dr López Prater because of a complaint over the inclusion of an honored painting in her art history class. The action was not only based in ignorance of the subject and situation, the teacher was afforded no due process to respond.  Here is a link to the 2023 January 8 New York Times story, A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job. After
an outcry over the art history class by Muslim students, Hamline
University officials said the incident was Islamophobic. But many
scholars say the work is a masterpiece.Here is a link to Prof Gruber's article about the dispute in New Lines Magazine. She is professor of Islamic art in the History of Art Department at the University of Michigan. Here is a link to the statement by Eboo Patel, one of America's most highly regarded Muslim and interfaith leaders, in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Muslim Public Affairs Council has strongly supported the Dr López Prater. Even the statement in support of Dr López Prater by the more conservative Council on American-Islamic Relations, while it supports the right of students to raise the issue, notes that views about the depiction of the Prophet vary within Islam and that the circumstances of this cases make the charge of Islamophobia against Dr López Prater unfair. Here is a link to updates. CRES condemns Islamophobia and, in this case, laments the student's ignorance of Islam and the student's shameful organization of other students who had no first-hand knowledge of the situation to pressure the school into an unexamined response. The response from the Hamline administration is reprehensible. Here is an NBC News story. Here is a story from Minnesota Public Radio. Here is a link to an article in the Atlantic. Here is a story from the Washington Post. UPDATE, January 17-- "Hamline University officials made an about-face on Tuesday in its treatment of a lecturer who showed an image of the Prophet Muhammad in an art history class, walking back one of their most controversial statements — that showing the image was Islamophobic. They also said that respect for Muslim students should not have superseded academic freedom." --NYTimes Dr López Prater's suit against the school continues because of devasting harm to her and her career. She plans to teach at Macalester College in the spring. A compilation of comment at InterfaithAmeica. Islamic Art . . . for understanding . . . the Muslim World Historic debate over Christian images Panelists discuss Hamline controversy #MLK  King Holiday Essay — 2023 January 16 Download a PDF of Vern's 2-page summary of the genius of the spiritual approach of Martin Luther King Jr by clicking this link. You can also read the Letter from a Birmingham Jail here. Bill Tammeus writes about King's visits to Kansas City here. Vern writes:
I remember meeting King in a church basement in
Washington, DC, the year before he was assassinated. I remember his
appearance was delayed quite a while as his team checked the church for
threats and dangers, as those of us gathered to hear him hoped to see
him alive. It was a dark time. I remember his brilliant analysis of
Vietnam, and particularly its effect on young Black men.
I was a student at the University of Chicago Divinity School when he was assassinated. The next Sunday was Palm Sunday, April 7, and I was to be a guest preacher. I remember struggling to find something uplifting to say, and thankfully, able to rely on King's teachings and his public ministry in the context of the Christian story. I used a recording of the April 3 "Mountain Top" speech in many sermons in the following months. I remember studying the writings and speeches of King, with their eloquence and depth. Each year I continue to reread the Letter from the Birmingham Jail, which every year renews me with astonishment. I also especially cherish his last sermon, March 31, at the Washington National Cathedral, a few days before his assassination. And I claim King also as an exemplar of interfaith respect, which is why I wrote this essay. February 1-7   #230116KingDayWmJewell  CRES senior associate minister David Nelson enjoys the company of Alvin Brooks, the recipient of the Invictus Award for Social Justice at William Jewell College in a ceremony honoring Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. January 16 at the school's John Gano Memorial Chapel. The 39th annual King Celebration was sponsored by the Clay County African American Legacy and the Northland Martin Luther King, Jr. Program Committee. February 22 Wednesday 4-6 pm, Al will be the featured guest during Black History Month at the observance of the 125th anniversary of the Westport Branch Library, which he mentions in the Acknowledgements in his memoir, Binding Us Together: A Civic Rights Activities Reflects on a Lifetime of Community and Public Service, copies of which will be available for purchase and signing. A video made in January with Al and CRES minister emeritus Vern Barnet will be screened during the celebration. #Mysticism230209
Sufi talisman (Louvre) and Dore's Dante Paradiso Canto 31 Islamic and Christian mysticism Forrest Pierce and Kurt Knecht in Dialogue new compositions for organ and voice by them both w i t h s o p r a n o Sarah Tannehill Anderson Pierce: Verses of Light Meditation on Qur'an 24:35 (ayat an-nur) by Neil Douglas-Klotz -- 20 minutes Knecht: I am my beloved's (from The Song of Solomon) -- 12 minutes St Paul's Episcopal Church, 11 E 40th, KCMO 2023 February 9 Thursday 7 pm, free YouTube recording - 1 hr 40 min  Forrest Farhad Pierce teaches composition at the University of Kansas and is a practicing Sufi. Kurt Knecht is St Paul's organist and a composer with a long time interest in Christian mysticism and contemplative practices. #LentenSeries When
Even Evil
Will Ordain the Good 2022: Mar 2, 9, 16, 23
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD
Lenten Series:
THE 8-PAGE STUDY GUIDE PDF THE SONNETS AS EXPECTED IN THE REVISED EDITION-- PDF Lent is a special time to explore the powerful mysteries of the crucified and resurrected love of the Christian Savior. As terrain for this exploration, the Reverend Vern Barnet, DMn, offers sonnets from the “Credo” section his book, Thanks for Noticing: The Interpretation of Desire with art and music for discussion. Vern wrote the Wednesday "Faith and Beliefs" column 1994-2012 for The Kansas City Star and has written a dozen essays for the diocesan magazine, Spirit, 2015-2017. He is a layman at Saint Paul's Episcopal Church and he has served the Episcopal churches in many capacities, including on the diocesan Commission on Ministry. He is minister emeritus at CRES — the Center for Religious Experience and Study, a ministry to the interfaith community in the area. He founded the Kansas City Interfaith Council in 1989. Free copies of the book will be given to class members to celebrate the publication of the second edition if it is ready in March. Copies of the sonnets for the series will be supplied for each session.  Mar 2 - The Jesus of History or the Christ of Faith? Mar 9 - A Paradox of Salvation Mar 16 - The Gospel Theater Mar 23 - The Mystic Vision Download the 8-page study guide in PDF Download the 8-page Sonnets booklet in PDF Readings: Theme Sonnet 82 Mar 2: Sonnet 79 Mar 9: Sonnet 80 (perhaps also 85) Mar 16: Sonnet 84 Mar 23: Sonnet 86 (perhaps also 88) #LentArt theme music "Third Tune" by Thomas Tallis an instrumental version - a choral version - Fantasia by RVW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8oKEx1-J1w - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD5TG8z3-SM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihx5LCF1yJY - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0AuHYNj8qQ 
Two views of an icon of Christ teaching ("written" by Thomas J Dolphens) and Diego Velázquez’s "Christ after the Flagellation contemplated by the Christian Soul" Mar 2 and Mar 9 theme music for Mar 9: Bernstein Candide "The Best Of All Possible Worlds"
Book Banning In response to a page 1, 2023 March 24 story in The Kansas City Star, I wrote the reporter the following note. I sent the second paragraph with an introduction to the Superintendent of the School district, and received a favorable reply.
Thank you for your story about books being pulled from library
shelves. It is important that the public know about the power
exercised by this one mom against the professional judgment of
those charged with making reading materials available to growing
human beings. Your article is a public service of importance.
 I worry that parents who are concerned about certain books in school libraries fail to evaluate the context in which passages which trouble them appear, and do not understand the use students may make of such books as they further their education. Why do these parents not seek to ban the Bible, which contains disturbing accounts of masturbation, rape, incest, adultery, attempted filicide, wanton murder, destruction of property, homosexuality, abortion, advice to hate parents, polygamy, and human sacrifice? The Bible is an essential product of Western civilization, and Shakespeare's plays, including Romeo and Juliet are part of the literary canon, but newer books may more immediately and accessibly speak to a young person's growing awareness of oneself and the world. All sorts of professionally evaluated reading materials should be available on library shelves to illumine the lives and understandings of young people. #Worship Worship  "Religion" Detail-mural-lunette-series Charles Sprague Pearce, 1897 Vern visits with Dr Rebecca Johnson's Central Seminary students about "Worship" 2023 March 30 Thursday 6:15p THANKSGIVING ----------------------------------1. That which is always and everywhere true (God’s grace) must at some time and some place with some folks be noticed, accepted, and celebrated. (Michael J. Himes.) FORM FROM FORMLESSNESS 2. That which is without form must be put into form (incarnation) in order to be known. PARADOXES OF AWARENESS 3a. Only by separating ourselves from the world can we be united with it. 3b. God veils himself in order to reveal himself. 3c. A temple is sacred space reminding us that everywhere is sacred space. PLAY 4a. The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. The liturgy "means foregoing maturity with all its purposefulness, and confining oneself to play, as David did when he danced before the Ark." —Romano Guardini 4b. For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. . . .For we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance. —Thomas Merton 4c. "The holy, or 'numinous,' to use the term Otto has coined, is something beyond rational and ethical conceptions." —Thomas F O'Dea 4d. "In the form and function of play, itself an independent entity which is senseless and irrational, man’s consciousness that he is embedded in a sacred order of things finds its first, highest, and holiest expression." —Johan Huizinga 4e. "Only when one is playing is one wholly human.” —Friedrich Schiller ENTERING MYTHIC (SACRED) AWARENESS 
5a. Worship requires a playful “willing suspension of
disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.” —Samuel
Taylor Coleridge5b. “The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction, and that you believe it willingly.” —Wallace Stevens 5c. “It is as meaningless to ask whether one believes or disbelieves in Aphrodite or Ares as to ask whether one believes in a character in a novel; one can only say that one finds them true or untrue to life. To believe in Aphrodite and Ares merely means that one believes that the poetic myths about them do justice to the forces of sex and aggression as human beings experience them in nature and in their own lives.” —W H Auden  5d. Vico's Verum factum principle — that truth is not observed but constructed. 5e. "At the end of the Twelfth Century a Latin theologian, Berengarius of Tours, was condemned for his teaching on the Eucharist. He maintained that because the presence of Christ in the Eucharist elements is ‘mystical’ or ‘symbolic,’ it is not real. The Lateran Council . . . condemned him and . . . simply reversed the formula. It proclaimed that since Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is real, it is not ‘mystical.’ . . . Western theology thus declared that . . . [the] ‘mystical’ or ‘symbolic’ is not real, whereas . . . [the] ‘real’ is not symbolic. This was . . . the collapse of the fundamental Christian mysterion, the antinomical ‘holding together’ of the reality of the symbol and of the symbolism of reality, . . . a collapse of . . . Christian . . . ontological sacramentality." —Alexander Schmemann 6. Barnet’s Stages of Disclosure adapting Merlin Donald’s Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition 1. Episodic — unitive, concrete, immediate 2. Mimetic — ritual, liturgy 3. Narrative — myth, sacred story 4. Cognitive — creed, theological formulations 5. Modern — secularism produces literalism 6. Postmodern — crypto-sacred cf ¶5 7. Basic Styles or Formats of Corporate Christian Worship 1. altar-centered, sacramental: liturgical churches (and non-Christian Abraxas) which often mark seasons with various colors and have verbal and musical forms repeated as part of a set sequence, varied by season * The Christian liturgical 2-part service can be considered patterned after the Emmaus experience (Luke 24:13–35): 1. listening (the Word) 2. the meal (Eucharist, Communion, Mass Proper). * Liturgical churches construct their annual calendars to retell the large story from which their traditions arise. While other Christian churches may celebrate Christmas and Easter, liturgical churches extend these festivals: Advent>Chriistmas>Epiphany and Lent>Easter>Pentecost and include many other special observances and commemorations. * DAILY offices are seldom observed in parish life, but are part of monastic practice; these may include Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, Nones, Vespers, and Compline. * The Abraxas liturgy enacts a mythic adventure ("hero's journey," "rite of passage") in four acts, patterned from modified initiation rituals and pedagogy, variously labeled: 1. Entering (or Separation or Initiation) 2. Joining (or Interaction) 3. Venturing (or Revelation or Investigation) 4. Return-Integration In Act I, we enter the sacred presences—-air, gravity, evolution, desire, etc-- those processes on which we depend, which have Worth. Yet we do not enter, for we are already sustained by them; rather they may enter our awareness. This leads, in Act II, to a sense of our connection with them, and with one another as we acknowledge our forgetfulness and rediscovery. Thus prepared for the venture itself, in Act III we explore these presences in some particular topic or theme. In Act IV we review the meaning of the hour and ready ourselves for turning again, the communal worship houir ending, to the world of ordinary living, seen afresh. DAILY Abraxas offices are morning Matins (Nature. primal traditions), noon Eucharist (General Thanksgiving), evening Vespers (Community, monotheistic faiths), and night-time Compline (Self-hood, Asian resources). 2. pulpit-centered, proclamatory: mainline protestant and evangelical churches 3. waiting on the spirit a. Pentecostal and charismatic churches (with witnessing) b. non-program Quaker c. Shaker (aleatoric) 8. Some Other Styles 1. Buddhist temple meditation 2. Hindu family puja 3. Jewish synagogue prayer cantor-led 4. Shrine Shinto practices 5. Muslim Friday mosque prayer 6. Primal traditions' practices, such as the American Indian sweat lodge  Rockefeller Chapel, University of Chicago NOTES How a Heretic Worships -- toward a personal liturgical apology under construction Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi My interpretation: From profound worship, we know how to trust, and that is how to live. As I understand the Anglican tradition, I'd be a Latitudinarian or a Broad Church Episcopalian. Although I write as a Christian (heretical but not schismatic), folks of other faiths may some of these ideas useful.
Additional theological notes of my medieval-postmodern perspective are part of an interview of my book of sonnets here. My view on the avaiability of the Eucharist during COVID here. #SevenDays2023   The themes help us focus on kindness in seven different ways, on seven different days. 2023 April 5-13 LOVE DISCOVER OTHERS CONNECT YOU GO ONWARD The SevenDays website gives you the SevenDays story (with the horrific past on April 14, 2014), the present, and the future, the
SevenDays events this year, how to get involved, resources, and an
opportunity to shop and various sponsorship opportunities.  CRES
is glad to have been involved from the very first year with an
interfaith panel, and admires the folks and the organization involved
for turning tragedy into continuing community benefit by advancing
understanding and relationships. #TammeusEasterColumn Many faiths flourish in Kansas City We reprint this column, in print on Easter Sunday in the Kansas City Star, because -- in such a small space -- it so well summarizes the opportunities for those of good will wishing and working for better understanding of the faiths and organizations that enrich our community, one of which, the Interfaith Council, highlighted in red, was created as a program of CRES. A link to the "Faith Matters" Blog by Bill Tammeus always appears on the CRES home page in the right-hand column. All of Kansas City must conquer hatred together Opinion BY BILL TAMMEUS SPECIAL TO THE STAR APRIL 08, 2023 5:00 AM https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/readers-opinion/guest-commentary/article274086425.html
Print edition, Sunday, April 9, 2023, page 17A  Last fall, vandals spray-painted the headquarters of the
Dialogue Institute in Kansas City, Kansas, with symbols including a swastika. When vandals ransacked and spray-painted swastikas and other hate symbols on the headquarters of the Dialogue Institute of Kansas City last fall, people of faith responded quickly and with heart. First, they spread the word about what had happened to this Turkish-based Muslim group, which has promoted interfaith understanding here for years. Then they gathered at the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood to hear speakers from various religious traditions pledge to stand with the institute and its shocked constituents. That’s what Kansas City’s interfaith community does when slimy hate slides from under rocks to spread revolting messages of bigotry. And it’s been doing that for decades. So on this Easter Sunday, I give thanks for this important work symbolized by the overlapping of major religious observances of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam): Lent (Feb. 22-April 6), Passover (April 5-April 13) and Ramadan (March 22-April 20). Healthy, generative religion, it turns out, is still immensely important in Kansas City. Yes, Christianity still has the most followers here, but America’s changing religious landscape has affected the metro, too, as American Christianity suffers diminishment and as the number of religiously unaffiliated people (called the “nones”) grows. Religion’s fingerprints are all over Kansas City’s history. Sometimes in uplifting ways, sometimes far from it. That history includes everything from fights over biblical support for slavery to the founding here in the 1890s of Unity, a spiritualist movement, to construction in Independence of the world headquarters of the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints). As for theological seminaries and Bible colleges, we’ve got a handful of them. One organization that has done as much as any other to foster religious education and dialogue is the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council, created in 1989 by the Rev. Vern Barnet, long an advocate for religious literacy and cooperation. Among other initiatives, the council sponsors the annual Table of Faiths dinner at which the area’s rich heritage of religious diversity is celebrated. All of these efforts reveal that the need for reasonable religious voices hasn’t disappeared and may be more necessary than ever as our profound political divisions get reflected in our religions and sometimes result in people of faith dehumanizing others. But as the Interfaith Council, the Dialogue Institute, the Good Faith Network of Johnson County and other risk-taking groups seek harmony, several agencies here are dedicated to working against the hatred displayed in racist, antisemitic and homophobic vandalism such as that found on Blue Valley High School’s football stadium press box in January. Immediately after news of that hate crime broke, both the Jewish Community Relations Bureau/American Jewish Committee and SevenDays, an organization working to overcome hate through education and dialogue, issued not just condemnations of what happened but offers to help heal what was wounded. The SevenDays statement included words from Emma Sandler, a Jewish high school senior at Blue Valley. She serves on the SevenDays Kindness Youth Leadership Team, which helps teenagers promote acts of kindness, especially on social media. “I am both heartbroken and furious, but will move forward with kindness, not hate,” Sandler said then. (Disclosure: I serve on the boards of both SevenDays and the {Midwest Center for Holocaust Education}, an organization dedicated to teaching about the Holocaust to stop indifference, intolerance and genocide. The annual SevenDays “Kindness Walk” happens next Sunday.) This stuff is important to me. It’s why I’ve written about it in more than 5,000 posts on my “Faith Matters” blog since 2004 and in more recent years in my {monthly column for Flatland}, KCPT-TV’s online magazine. There I’ve described, among other things, the work of such Black pastors as the Rev. Darron Edwards to seek better police-community relations. Edwards, in fact, is representative of how important religion has been among people of color in Kansas City — and not just for Christians but for others, too, including Muslims, as represented by Imam Sulaiman Z. Salaam Jr. of the Al Haqq Islamic Center. But whether it’s the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Crescent Peace Society or any other faith-based organization dedicated to making our area more welcoming, the bitter truth is that it’s not been enough. Religious, racial and other hatreds still stalk our sometimes-anarchistic streets. And each of us, whether religious adherents or not, must work to stop it. Today. Bill Tammeus is a former Kansas City Star columnist who now writes for Flatland, KCPT-TV’s online magazine. His latest book is “Love, Loss and Endurance: A 9/11 Story of Resilience and Hope in an Age of Anxiety.” Email him at wtammeus@gmail.com. Bill's Blog link appears on the CRES home page in the right-hand column. #JoshZenBuddhism Zen Buddhism by Joshua Paszkiewicz Zen Buddhism: Your Personal Guide to Practice and Tradition ISBN 10: 1577153650 / ISBN 13: 9781577153658 Published by Wellfleet Press, 2023  Congratulations to our extraordinary friend Josh (the Most Ven. Joshua R. Paszkiewicz, DHA(c), D.Min, LPC, BCCC, Dipl.CPSP), on his newest publication! He writes: "When I was a kid, B&N was my Shangri-La, and having a book on their shelves was a wild dream of mine; that seems to have come to fruition." We celebrated his earlier book, Zen and Happiness, last year here and it was the subject of Vital Conversations in last December, with quotations and notes here. Although Josh was a seminary student of mine five years ago, I learned more from him than he from me, as did the class. His depth of knowledge of several religious traditions is astonishing. His term paper compared how the koan is used in two distinctly different Buddhist traditions, which almost no one else has the background to do. Josh is not merely a brilliant and wide-ranging academic, he is also a practitioner of humane skill and wisdom. # 91 AL BROOKS CELEBRATION
 Please join the Brooks family, Vern, and other friends
at an open house to celebrate the induction of Al Brooks into the Black Archives of Mid-America Heritage Hall on his 91st Birthday. 1:00 - 6:00pmWednesday, May 3, 2023
The Black Archives of Mid-America1722 E 17th Terrace, Kansas City, MO 64108In lieu of gifts, donations can be made to www.blackarchives.org The Black Archives is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization LAST-MINUTE UPDATES:  Location: Black Archives of Mid-America Heritage Hall, 1722 E. 17th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64108. The museum itself is featuring much to see about our friend. The Black Archives staff and volunteers will be help guest register when you arrive. The museum has a large parking lot. Time: 1-6 pm, May 3 Wednesday, with remarks and the Historic Induction Ceremony at 4 p.m. Dress: Business casual is preferred. Food/Beverages: We will be serving hors d'oeuvres and dessert. Bottled water and punch available. Alcoholic drinks have been donated by Beam Suntory -- we will have a “signature cocktail” served during the event. Food and drink are allowed in designated areas. Book Signing: If you have not had an opportunity to purchase Alvin Brooks’ book Binding Us Together, copies will be for sale in the Black Archives Gift Shop. Al would love to personally sign your book. Support Alvin Brooks Charities: * Metropolitan Community College Penn Valley campus is home to the Brooks Institute. Established in 2000 and named in honor of Alvin Brooks, the Brooks Institute supports the Civil Rights Learning Community, Civil Rights Pilgrimage and Civil Rights/Social Justice Speakers Bureau. * Alvin Brooks Center for Faith-Justice at Rockhurst University. The center will house many of the university’s faith-justice related efforts, including a chapel, mission and ministry programs, and diversity, equity and inclusion programs. #Sonnet84 On my 81st birthday As you know, most of my career has been devoted to the question, "What is sacred?" I have sought to bring the various answers to this question from the world's religions to address the three great crises of our time -- environmental, personal, and social.  While I have sought
substantial familiarity with the world's faiths, I also have immersed in one. Choosing one was not easy, but as my late friend
Huston Smith said, you are more likely to get water by digging one
100-foot well than ten 10-foot wells. Still, the tools for such
excavation can be, and in my case, are, the insights from the other
traditions.My 2015 book of 154 sonnets, Thanks for Noticing: The Interpretation of Desire, (website here) arrayed both the splendor of wisdom from the universe of faiths and the treasures within one (I chose a strange Hellenistic cult which has developed in curious ways over 2,000 years); and seven of the nine sonnets sonnets in the CREDO section of the book use Christian images to explore the most difficult questions of faith. In this and other sonnets, I suggest the old choices -- taking religion literally, or understanding religion symbolically (some might say "metaphysically"), or simply rejecting religion -- do not satisfy me. Rather for me, entering into the narrative, the myth, is life-giving and can guide me forward, even through my failures. My friend Anton Jacobs wrote me, "The wealth of effort, insight, and erudition in your sonnets deserves serious attention." Like me, Anton has been both pastor and academic. Below is my Sonnet 84 with the glosses, followed by his "hermeneutic of a sonnet." 84. Postmodern Faith: What is Truth? My God, is this a dagger that I see? Am I observing actors in a play? Is this a dream or film of tragedy? or just computer games where I’m to slay with it? Perhaps I’m high on LSD or wearing VR glasses that display an archetype if not a snickersnee. Is this getik, menok, or Judgment Day? Oh no, no dagger but Christ’s cross, that tree which bares illusions in one Truth, one Yea! It tears and it repairs reality and wakes us to attend and watch and pray. I know the Gospel is a pious tale, but who grabs facts when worship cannot fail?
On Knives: Vern Barnet’s ‘Postmodern Faith: What is Truth?’ By Anton K. Jacobs 
Knives…. Dr. Vern Barnet’s sonnet titled, “Postmodern Faith: What is
Truth?” plays with metaphors of the knife. It begins with a quote from
Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “My God, 'is this a dagger that I see?'”
Raising questions pertinent to perception and conception, from LSD to
VR (that might mirror archetypes), Barnet wonders if a snickersnee is
displayed. Towards the conclusion of the sonnet, he takes us to
“Christ’s cross” as no dagger but nevertheless as an instrument that
“tears and…repairs reality,” thus waking “us to attend and watch and
pray.”Every seeing is a seeing from some angle, and for human becomings, that is always and unavoidably conditioned by time and place in history and culture. One of postmodernism’s patron saints is Friedrich Nietzsche (Cahoone calls him “the godfather of postmodernism”), who argued that there are no facts, only interpretations, and that perspectivism is the only way to see. “Henceforth, my dear philosophers,” writes Nietzsche, “let us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a ‘pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject’; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as ‘pure reason,’ ‘absolute spirituality,’ ‘knowledge in itself’: these always demand that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense.” When we seek to freeze life in this manner, argues Nietzsche, it is a type of revenge on life. In other words, the quest for the one, pure, objective, correct, absolute, incontestable truth—metanarrative––a quest characterizing the history of much of Western philosophy, religion, and more—is a fool’s quest. Lyotard’s concern reflected the historical atrocities, which social critics from the Frankfurt School to postmodern thinkers saw as culturally rooted in the West’s drive for the one perfect, timeless, and unchallengeable truth, a drive that went on secular steroids during and after the Enlightenment in dialectical relationship with the priorities of capitalism’s instrumental reason. As Lyotard states, “The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have given us as much terror as we can take. We have paid a high enough price for the nostalgia of the whole and the one, for the reconciliation of the concept and the sensible, of the transparent and the communicable experience.” As I have written elsewhere, “Postmodernism is a highly varied movement of the last sixty years that promotes the idea that all human knowledge is relative to its historical and cultural context, and that modernism’s attempts to find the one true and rational blueprint for organizing human life has been misguided and contributed to some of the horrors of the twentieth century.” If I understand the argument of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, the dialectic of Enlightenment on the cultural level between secular reason, on the one hand, and religious faith and mythology, on the other, resulted in the demise of religious mythology and its bastardization into fundamentalism and consequently to the disenchantment of life, the world, and the universe. However, that very triumph of Enlightenment reason in service to the alienating structures of bourgeois priorities resulted in a new mythological faith with a legitimation of domination and alienation. This has resulted in a dehumanizing world in which individuals measure themselves according to their monetary worth, while feeling controlled by powers of which no one appears in charge. Among the results are increased vulnerability to the resentments thereof which make fertile ground for fascism. Another intellectual development of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with some likeness to postmodernism was carried, primarily first, by the pioneer anthropologists and then deeply cultivated by what I’d call the metamythologists. These are the likes of Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell, Alan Watts, William Irwin Thompson, to a lesser extent Carl Jung and followers, and many others. Their cross-cultural investigations and correlations of humanity’s mythologies have helped us get away from the narrow and sometimes violent provincialisms and dogmatisms of so much of the world’s religions to appreciate the challenging and liberating aspects of nature’s and culture’s marks of transcendence. “An experience of transcendence has always been part of the human experience,” writes Karen Armstrong, and she echoes Campbell when she writes, “A myth…is true because it is effective, not because it gives us factual information.” In a footnote for a different sonnet, Barnet writes that “a myth is a story that reveals the nature and structure of sacred reality.” It might not be wrong to suggest that the metamythologists and postmodernists, each in their way in their respective venues in modernity’s alienated cultural segmentations, have been doing much the same thing. They have sought to contribute to the liberation of souls and bodies from the unnecessary spiritual and material brutalities of the societies of human becomings. These are not minor objectives. Barnet has fruitfully mined the canons of the metamythologists, whom he cites regularly, even having studied under Eliade. They serve him well for his, if you will, sonnetical remythologizing of human desire, including its erotic and mystical drives that, I think he suggests and, if so, I agree, cannot be separated. They come to us as two-edged swords, though, as mystics and lovers have always discovered. The ecstasies of human love and of mystical union are always shadowed by their opposites—whatever you want to call them at any given time—heartbreak, tragedy, loss, alienation, dark night, fear, anxiety, terror. Which brings us back to the dagger of Christ’s cross. “Indeed,” writes the unknown author of the Christian epistle to the Hebrews, “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” At their best, so it seems to me, that is the project of the metamythologists and postmodernists alike. They exegete and deconstruct and interrogate to tear and repair human existence and open up to us the authentic realities of the thoughts and intentions of our hearts; and, perhaps, in the process, alongside the Gospel’s “pious tale,” waking “us to attend and watch and pray.” The cornerstone, still, of any discussion of postmodernism, and which Barnet cites in a footnote, is Jean-François Lyotard’s statement, “Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodernism as incredulity toward metanarratives.” However, the common core of postmodern sentiment is the insight that there really is no escape from an angle of seeing. Ironically or paradoxically, this insight at the center of postmodern thought is true of postmodernism itself. Defining postmodernism is near impossible, which the leading postmodern advocates acknowledge and probably embrace. Postmodernism is “contested terrain between moderate and extreme postmodernists,” notes Stephen Best and Douglas Kellner, referring to complete ultraskeptics and relativists, on the one hand, and, on the other, to those still in pursuit of constructs on which to do philosophy and social critique in light of that understanding that we cannot stand nowhere. Simply stated, there is no ultimately objective and infallible blueprint that can be imposed on reality or society without violence and atrocity.
Anton K. Jacobs, Ph.D. Instructor, Kansas City Art Institute Author of Religion and the Critical Mind; My Country, My Faith, & Me; and a few other things.  Our friend Steve Nicely alerts us to the Funeral Consumer Alliance
spring newsletter containing updated funeral prices for 114 funeral
homes in our area, with practical information for clergy, social
workers, health care providers and others. Here is the website: funeralskc.org where you can read the articles and survey the research data. #AI230613 AI: The Singularity Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness, and the Soul  "One possibility is that people would add a computer’s processing power to their own innate intelligence, becoming supercharged versions of themselves. Or maybe computers would grow so complex that they could truly think, creating a global brain. "In either case, the resulting changes would be drastic, exponential and irreversible. A self-aware superhuman machine could design its own improvements faster than any group of scientists, setting off an explosion in intelligence. Centuries of progress could happen in years or even months. The Singularity is a slingshot into the future. . . . . "Sundar Pichai, Google’s usually low-key chief executive, calls artificial intelligence 'more profound than fire or electricity or anything we have done in the past.' Reid Hoffman, a billionaire investor, says, 'The power to make positive change in the world is about to get the biggest boost it’s ever had.' And Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates proclaims A.I. 'will change the way people work, learn, travel, get health care and communicate with each other.' "A.I. is Silicon Valley’s ultimate new product rollout: transcendence on demand." --David Streitfeld, The New York Times, June 11, 2023  Notes: The luncheon meeting of Retired Clergy of All Faiths A Discussion with Vern 2023 June 13 Does does AI differ differ from a thermostat in kind or degree? Does the universe permit an entity to organize and govern itself? Does AI support Cartesian Dualism or rebuke it? How will business, government, and rogues use AI? How will AI shape homo sapiens with devices and implants? How does the debate about abortion relate to the idea of the soul in AI? This is what I wrote in 1969 (in my Klindebook) -- 21. With surgical shaping of body and brain, the State crushes utterly! he shouted, fighting his way through the fleshy programmed robots, working on social security. The spirit controlled by a switchboard, the body is like a machine, the mind made lame, the soul disposable! O Brain! pricked with electronic spikes and probes controlling emotion, action, consideration, within the skull enlarged from infancy to house the coils, the cords, the needles and transistors needed to receive the orders from a local console run by a local positivist who loves control of his slave village and all the merit he will get if his boss is amused. Now I am more concerned about corporate than state control. Remembering working with the University of Chicago's IBM 360 in 1968-70 (all those punch cards!), I discuss VR goggles, medical-electronic-computerized implants (without such assistance, Stephen Hawking could not have been productive for so long), the smart phone, and what arguments about "when life begins" in the abortion debate reveal about consciousness and personhood. Our bodies themselves are communities with more non-human than human cells on which we are utterly dependent. I argue that consciousness arises when an entity moves beyond merely reacting to its environment (a thermostat senses its environment) but also has sufficient data not only to have a model of the world (or immediate environment) but also a model of itself. That model of itself is the soul. And it is illusory, as David Hume (d. 1776) and the Buddha showed. A cockroach responds to its environment but probably has a very rudimentary model of its environment with which to negotiate its activities, and hardly any model of itself; a dog more; elephants perhaps even more; and whales may be as sophisticated in their models of themselves in their environment as humans in ours. Douglas Hofstadter's 1979 Godel, Escher, Bach and his 2007 I Am a Strange Loop [see the David Brooks column added below] show how consciousness develops and examines whether computers can be conscious. (Of course most of our functioning depends on non-conscious operations. I sketch his 1983 lecture at KU -- one of the greatest lecture I have ever heard. A computer can approach human consciousness -- or what it is like to be a human -- only when it utilizes similar sensory pathways as humans have (sight, hearing, touch, smell, etc). I reject John Searle's "Chinese Room" response to the Turing test as defective, but admire Thomas Nagel's 1974 "What is it like to be a bat?" I think much of Gilbert Ryle's 1949 Concept of Mind ("category mistake") has stood the test of time. Both materialism and dualism as usually discussed are inadequate; and the subjective experience cannot be reduced to an objective account, but neither can consciousness or the soul be separated from the material basis. I find David Chalmers to ignore a proper application of non-reductive epiphenomenonalism. A car is a machine; what it does is move through roadways. A brain is an organ; what it does is (help to manage bodily functions and) give rise to present consciousness (and think). A computer (with hardware and software and inputs and outputs and "memory") is a device which, when it will have a sophisticated model of the world and of itself in real time will be a singularity worthy of being considered conscious and possessing a soul. OTHER NOTES: rectangle, triangle, circle, psychiatrist; Hitchhiker's, Tad/Hiroshima, self-organizing (salt in water), Mona Lisa coffee cups, abacus.  I asked the computer: "Is there a God?" After 11 seconds, the computer answered: "There is now." -------- An
article appearing after this presentation was given identifies
three ways Artificial General Intelligence will dehumanize us by its
corporate use based on these beliefs: that private actors outperform public ones (the market bias), steigman that adapting to reality beats transforming it (the adaptation bias) and that efficiency trumps social concerns (the efficiency bias). A.G.I. will never overcome the market’s demands for profit. A.G.I. will dull the pain of our thorniest problems without fixing them. A.G.I. undermines civic virtues and amplifies trends we already dislike. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/opinion/artificial-intelligence-danger.html VOX: artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-safety-alignment Forbes: 15-biggest-risks of AI Benefits_and_Risks_of_Artificial_Intelligence Douglas Hofstadter Now Terrified Douglas Hofstadter on the state of AI today (2023) go to minute 21 #DavidBrooks230713 David Brooks on AI What follows was added here 2023 July 14 because it largely revolves around Douglas Hofstadter, perhaps the key figure I discussed in the luncheon presentation, notes for which appear above. I think Brooks may misinterpret Hofstadter's early work, but otherwise I applaud this column, though I would add the caveat that real-time AI consciousness like that of humans would be dependent upon sensory inputs quite like our eyes, ears, fingers, etc. Click on the title-link immediately below to go to see the Brooks column as it appears in The New York Times. ‘Human Beings Are Soon Going to Be Eclipsed’ July 13, 2023 By David Brooks Opinion Columnist Recently I stumbled across an essay by Douglas Hofstadter that made me happy. Hofstadter is an eminent cognitive scientist and the author of books like “Gödel, Escher, Bach” and “I Am a Strange Loop.” The essay that pleased me so much, called “The Shallowness of Google Translate,” was published in The Atlantic in January of 2018. Back then, Hofstadter argued that A.I. translation tools might be really good at some pedestrian tasks, but they weren’t close to replicating the creative and subtle abilities of a human translator. “It’s all about ultrarapid processing of pieces of text, not about thinking or imagining or remembering or understanding. It doesn’t even know that words stand for things,” he wrote. The article made me happy because here was a scientist I greatly admire arguing for a point of view I’ve been coming to myself. Over the past few months, I’ve become an A.I. limitationist. That is, I believe that while A.I. will be an amazing tool for, say, tutoring children all around the world, or summarizing meetings, it is no match for human intelligence. It doesn’t possess understanding, self-awareness, concepts, emotions, desires, a body or biology. It’s bad at causal thinking. It doesn’t possess the nonverbal, tacit knowledge that humans take for granted. It’s not sentient. It does many things way faster than us, but it lacks the depth of a human mind. I take this to be good news. If A.I. is limited in these ways, then the A.I. revolution will turn out to be akin to the many other information revolutions that humans have produced. This technology will be used in a lot of great ways, and some terrible ways, but it won’t replace us, it won’t cause the massive social disruption the hypesters warn about, and it’s not going to wake up one day wanting to conquer the world. Hofstadter’s 2018 essay suggested that he’s a limitationist too, and reinforced my sense that this view is right. So I was startled this month to see the following headline in one of the A.I. newsletters I subscribe to: “Douglas Hofstadter Changes His Mind on Deep Learning & A.I. Risk.” I followed the link to a podcast and heard Hofstadter say: “It’s a very traumatic experience when some of your most core beliefs about the world start collapsing. And especially when you think that human beings are soon going to be eclipsed.” Apparently, in the five years since 2018, ChatGPT and its peers have radically altered Hofstadter’s thinking. He continues: It “just renders humanity a very small phenomenon compared to something else that is far more intelligent and will become incomprehensible to us, as incomprehensible to us as we are to cockroaches.” I called Hofstadter to ask him what was going on. He shared his genuine alarm about humanity’s future. He said that ChatGPT was “jumping through hoops I would never have imagined it could. It’s just scaring the daylights out of me.” He added: “Almost every moment of every day, I’m jittery. I find myself lucky if I can be distracted by something — reading or writing or drawing or talking with friends. But it’s very hard for me to find any peace.” Hofstadter has long argued that intelligence is the ability to look at a complex situation and find its essence. “Putting your finger on the essence of a situation means ignoring vast amounts about the situation and summarizing the essence in a terse way,” he said. Humans mostly do this through analogy. If you tell me that you didn’t read my column, and I tell you I don’t care because I didn’t want you to read it anyway, you’re going to think, “That guy is just bloated with sour grapes.” You have this category in your head, “sour grapes.” You’re comparing my behavior with all the other behaviors you’ve witnessed. I match the sour grapes category. You’ve derived an essence to explain my emotional state. Two years ago, Hofstadter says, A.I. could not reliably perform this kind of thinking. But now it is performing this kind of thinking all the time. And if it can perform these tasks in ways that make sense, Hofstadter says, then how can we say it lacks understanding, or that it’s not thinking? And if A.I. can do all this kind of thinking, Hofstadter concludes, then it is developing consciousness. He has long argued that consciousness comes in degrees and that if there’s thinking, there’s consciousness. A bee has one level of consciousness, a dog a higher level, an infant a higher level, and an adult a higher level still. “We’re approaching the stage when we’re going to have a hard time saying that this machine is totally unconscious. We’re going to have to grant it some degree of consciousness, some degree of aliveness,” he says. Normally, when tech executives tell me A.I. will soon achieve general, human level intelligence, I silently think to myself: “This person may know tech, but he doesn’t really know human intelligence. He doesn’t understand how complex, vast and deep the human mind really is.” But Hofstadter does understand the human mind — as well as anybody. He’s a humanist down to his bones, with a reverence for the mystery of human consciousness, who has written movingly about love and the deep interpenetration of souls. So his words carry weight. They shook me. But so far he has not fully converted me. I still see these things as inanimate tools. On our call I tried to briefly counter Hofstadter by arguing that the bots are not really thinking; they’re just piggybacking on human thought. Starting as babies, we humans begin to build models of the world, and those models are informed by hard experiences and joyful experiences, emotional loss and delight, moral triumphs and moral failures — the mess of human life. A lot of the ensuing wisdom is stored deep in the unconscious recesses of our minds, but some of it is turned into language. A.I. is capable of synthesizing these linguistic expressions, which humans have put on the internet and, thus, into its training base. But, I’d still argue, the machine is not having anything like a human learning experience. It’s playing on the surface with language, but the emotion-drenched process of learning from actual experience and the hard-earned accumulation of what we call wisdom are absent. In a piece for The New Yorker, the computer scientist Jaron Lanier argued that A.I. is best thought of as “an innovative form of social collaboration.” It mashes up the linguistic expressions of human minds in ways that are structured enough to be useful, but it is not, Lanier argues, “the invention of a new mind.” I think I still believe this limitationist view. But I confess I believe it a lot less fervently than I did last week. Hofstadter is essentially asking, If A.I. cogently solves intellectual problems, then who are you to say it’s not thinking? Maybe it’s more than just a mash-up of human expressions. Maybe it’s synthesizing human thought in ways that are genuinely creative, that are genuinely producing new categories and new thoughts. Perhaps the kind of thinking done by a disembodied machine that mostly encounters the world through language is radically different than the kind of thinking done by an embodied human mind, contained in a person who moves about in the actual world, but it is an intelligence of some kind, operating in some ways vastly faster and superior to our own. Besides, Hofstadter points out, these artificial brains are not constrained by the factors that limit human brains — like having to fit inside a skull. And, he emphasizes, they are improving at an astounding rate, while human intelligence isn’t. It’s hard to dismiss that argument. I don’t know about you, but this is what life has been like for me since ChatGPT 3 was released. I find myself surrounded by radical uncertainty — uncertainty not only about where humanity is going but about what being human is. As soon as I begin to think I’m beginning to understand what’s happening, something surprising happens — the machines perform a new task, an authority figure changes his or her mind. Beset by unknowns, I get defensive and assertive. I find myself clinging to the deepest core of my being — the vast, mostly hidden realm of the mind from which emotions emerge, from which inspiration flows, from which our desires pulse — the subjective part of the human spirit that makes each of us ineluctably who we are. I want to build a wall around this sacred region and say: “This is essence of being human. It is never going to be replicated by machine.” But then some technologist whispers: “Nope, it’s just neural nets all the way down. There’s nothing special in there. There’s nothing about you that can’t be surpassed.” Some of the technologists seem oddly sanguine as they talk this way. At least Hofstadter is enough of a humanist to be horrified. #230704 Three Independence Day readings * David Nelson * Vern Barnet * Frederick Douglass
Remembering the Past: Commemoration vs. Celebration David E. Nelson, D.Min
The following remarks were presented in person
to the Gladstone City Council and Clay County Commissioners. As a
fuller picture of our past becomes clearer, and as we observe the
American Independence Day this year, these thoughts are worthy of
contemplation. David Nelson is senior associate minister of CRES and
president of The Human Agenda.  I volunteer one day a week to be a docent at the Atkins Johnson Farm and
Museum. I have enough time sitting on the front porch to ponder the
past, the present and the future. Like other human beings, I decide how
to spend my time. Pondering the past is my focus in this statement. ---------------
---------------
#Tammeus230711 Supreme Court religion ruling is good news for all #Brous BY BILL TAMMEUS Special to The Star The recent unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision, Groff v. DeJoy was not the most important religious case on which the court has ever ruled. Still, the justices' affirmation of the importance of individual religious freedom gives Americans a new chance to grasp the significant changes in our nation's religious landscape over the past 60 or 70 years. If, as a result, Americans gain a better appreciation Of the many faith traditions now followed in the U.S., that would be good news. That hope may sound ephemeral, but let's not dismiss it immediately. Rather, let's put the decision in historical context and see if we can better understand and appreciate the range of religious choices we Americans have — and should have. The suit described plaintiff Gerald Groff as C' an evangelical Christian who believes for religious reasons that Sunday should be devoted to worship and rest." Ian Millhiser, a senior correspondent for Vox, summarizes the case this way: "The Groff case involves a postal worker who wanted to be exempted from working on Sundays because of his religious beliefs. (Although the post office typically does not deliver mail on Sundays, the postal service contracted with Amazon in 2013 to deliver Sunday packages.) The post office claimed that this worker's request could not be accommodated because he worked in an office with only a few employees, and exempting one of these employees from Sunday work would place too much of a burden on the other workers, who would have to pick up his Sunday shifts. "The Supreme Court, however, did not resolve whether this particular request for a religious accommodation should have been granted. Instead, it sent the case back down to the lower courts to reevaluate this request in light of the court's newly announced, more proworker rule. ' So we can expect many court challenges from people asking lower courts now to outline specifically what constitutes too heavy a burden on employers. FAITH'S CENTRAL ROLE This affirmation of religious liberty gives us a chance to recognize the dozens and dozens of faith traditions (including none) to which Americans now pledge allegiance. After all, even if our neighbors don't follow the religion with which we're most familiar, they're still our neighbors. And religion has played a central, but shifting, role here since before the U.S. became a nation. Indigenous residents of this land, Of course, had (and have) their own spiritual practices. But then European invaders arrived, imagining they were going to help save the souls of "savages" by converting them to Christianity. (You can find the term "merciless Indian savages" in the Declaration of Independence.) If Indigenous people are called savages, what more accurate term might describe the imperious Europeans who were following the pope's 1493 "Doctrine of Discovery" as they uprooted ancient cultures and tried to convince natives that they were sinners in the hands of an angry (Christian) god? "White supremacists. Since then, the story of religion in what's now the U.S. has been complex. The American court system has added to that complexity and confusion in various ways, including in the previous decision that the Groff case has undone. Still, the courts are required to make sure that Americans can practice their religions without invasive government mandates or other interference. I found it intriguing and encouraging that, as the Religion News Service reported, the Groff ruling is also popular with Americans Of non-Chistian faith traditions because it protects their rights, too. There's still much to negotiate about time off requests based on religious practice. But it's now clear to everyone that religion still matters in the U.S. So this would be a good time for Americans to learn about when and why not just Christians but also Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Baha'is, Jains, Sikhs and American followers of other faith traditions might ask an employer for a religious accommodation to the work schedule — and when. For Passover? For Ramadan? For Vaisakhi? For Ridvån? (You could look those up.) The U.S. still has an opportunity to show the world what it looks like to live in religious harmony in a multifaith country. That's been a goal of the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council since its founding in 1989. Because the Groff decision keeps that hope alive, our frustrating Supreme Court, in this limited circumstance, deserves some applause. Bill Tammeus is a former Kansas City Star columnist. Read his Faith Matters blog at billtammeus.typepad.com. Email him at wtammeus@gmail.com Bill is a friend and inspiration to many people and organizations, including CRES. An earlier column this year appears on this website here: https://www.cres.org/programs2023.htm#TammeusEasterColumn Remembering Tom Brous "I'm looking forward to my next adventure."  This photo was taken at Burnt Norton manor house near Chipping Campden, England, best known for being the inspiration for T.S.Eliot’s poem of the same name. Thomas Richard Brous, 80, died peacefully with family surrounding him on June 24, 2023, after a hard-fought battle with cancer.  Tom
was born on January 7, 1943, in Fulton, MO. After his father returned
home from WWII, he and his parents moved to Kansas City, MO where he
attended Kansas City schools, was known as “T.D.”, and was a proud
Eagle Scout. He was president of his Southwest High School class of
1961. He graduated from Northwestern University (Bachelor of Science in
Economics) in 1965 and the University of Michigan (Juris Doctor, cum
laude) in 1968. He was a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity at
Northwestern. He was the Assistant Editor, Michigan Law Review,
1967-1968.While at Northwestern, he met Patty Catlin, who was also from Kansas City. They married in 1964, moved back to Kansas City, and had two children, Anna, and Joel. Tom and Patty were devoted parents, enjoyed the arts, and spending time at Ottertail Lake, Minnesota and Santa Fe, New Mexico. After passing the Missouri Bar exam in 1968, he served four years as a captain in the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps. Following military service in 1972, he spent his law career with Watson, Ess, Marshall & Enggas and Stinson LLP, until his retirement in 2016. Tom was a national speaker and thought leader in his practice focusing on taxation and employee benefits. For over ten years, he taught tax courses as an adjunct professor at the University of Kansas School of Law. After 35 years of marriage, Patty died in 1999. Tom was blessed to meet Mary Lou McClelland Kroh through a mutual friend and they were married in 2001. Tom and Mary Lou shared a passion for travel, T.S. Eliot, family, and each other, for 21 glorious years. Tom was a philanthropist, serving as a trustee for Kansas City Repertory Theatre, The Barstow School, and various other boards and organizations, as well as an active member at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (serving multiple terms on the Vestry including Senior Warden and Chancellor) and Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral (Chancellor). Tom was a voracious, life-long reader, published author (“Why Read Four Quartets?”), avid runner, loyal attendee of Anna and Joel’s sporting events as they grew up, movie buff, fan of Northwestern and Michigan football, art and theater enthusiast, and Civil War expert. Tom is preceded in death by his parents, Richard Pendleton Brous, and Augusta Gilpin Brous, and first wife Patty Catlin Brous. Tom leaves his second wife Mary Lou Brous, children Anna Catlin Brous Mills and Joel Pendleton Brous (Carrie Brous), stepsons Bradford Piersol Kroh (Jan-Marie Kroh) and Miles Reed Kroh (Alice Kroh) and eleven grandchildren: Skylar Catlin Mills, Samantha Reddington Mills, Sloane Grace Mills, Zoe Catlin Brous, Phoebe Callin Brous, Sophie Mulholland Brous, Caroline Grace Kroh, Claire McClelland Kroh, Brigid Christine Kroh, Emily Elizabeth Kroh and John Patrick McClelland Kroh. A service and celebration of life was be held on July 24, 2023, at 11:00 AM at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, 415 West 13th Street, Kansas City, MO. Donations in Tom’s name will be graciously accepted by St. Luke’s Hospice House, saintlukesgiving.givevirtuous.org. Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.mcgilleymidtownchapel.com for the Brous family. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Some years ago I heard Tom lecture on Four Quartets, and wanted to make his acquaintance. When some time later I thought to become an Episcopalian, I had some questions. He was Chancellor  of
Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral at the time and took me to lunch.
It was not lost on either of us that Eliot had been a Unitarian who
became an Anglican, and here was I, a Unitarian minister seeking
adoption into Anglican tradition. I wrote about Tom's love of Four Quartets, and how it affected his life, in one of my weekly Kansas City Star columns in 2004. His 2017 book, Why Read Four Quartets?
summarizes his immersion of many years in the Eliot poems and the
background research he did to understand their references and context.
It was fun to promote the book in several ways, including a mention
(page 3) in the program
for the 2018 CRES Candlemas which included lines from Eliot. I could not have imagined the profundity of our friendship. I should not have been surprised, however, that in hospice he would say, "I'm looking forward to my next adventure." Since I am an Episcopalian layman, not a priest, I never would have guessed that he would ask me to lead his memorial service. In the context of family and friends present on that occasion, using the theme of Incarnation highlighted by Tom's study of T S Eliot renewed and enlarged my own understanding of the meaning of the gift and grace of Incarnation, and the breath and depth of Tom's faith. --Vern Barnet Here is a link to the printed bulletin for the July 24 memorial service, which includes my setting of lines from Four Quartets to the "Sursum Corda" hymn tune: https://cres.org/BrousThomas 2023_PROGRAM_final.pdf Here is a link to the text of the KC Star column: https://cres.org/star/star2004.htm#eliot Here is a link to Tom's book on the Target website: https://www.target.com/p/why-read-four-quartets-by-tom-brous-paperback/-/A-87475948 Why Read Four Quartets? is offered to encourage readers unfamiliar with T. S. Eliot's masterpiece to ""take up, read, and inwardly digest"" these beautiful and sacred poems. Commentary is offered to hopefully make the poems more accessible to a general reader. Most critics and commentators do not seem to take Eliot's own spirituality seriously, or at least they don't choose to comment on it. Literary analysis is often emphasized to the exclusion of viewing the quartets in a personal or biographical manner. In sharp contrast to these typical studies, this book endeavors to show that the quartets, along with his earlier post-1927 poetry (Ariel Poems and Ash Wednesday), can be read as the story of Eliot's own mystical journey to the Divine. ""Good teachers convey a sense of wonder about their subject. Tom Brous demonstrates himself to be such a teacher in this deeply personal and passionate account of his sustained meditation on T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. Brous' expert knowledge is everywhere evident, but his aim is not narrowly academic: it is to inspire in us a love for this poetry, and to empower us to undertake our own journey of understanding. The book is wonderful."" --Edward Upton, Christ College, Valparaiso University Tom Brous is a retired attorney-at-law and adjunct law professor. He has studied and lectured on Four Quartets for over thirty years and wishes to share his insights with the general reader.The book is also available from other booksellers. World Religions and the Three Great Crises of our Age with Vern Barnet September 17 Sunday 9-9:50 am St Paul's Episcopal Church Sunday Forum Garden Room, 11 East 40th Street at Main, KC, MO 64111  From
"100-thousand feet," is there a way to see the world's religions that
will show us how to deal with three great dangers of our time -- the
harm we are causing creation, the violation of personhood, and our
broken communities? Such an overview is possible if we ask the question, "What is Sacred?" and attend to the answers the various faiths offer. With three religious objects and four stories, we will find that the Primal traditions locate the sacred in nature, the Asian faiths in selfhood, and the Monotheistic traditions in the history of covenanted community. With their wisdom we can move toward the restoration of nature, the self-made whole, and community governing though justice. Handouts supplemented the presentation. (Thanks to Dr Joshua Paszkiewicz for the photo.) ● In Primal faiths we find ecological awe: nature is respected more than controlled; nature is a process which includes us, not a product external to us to be used or disposed of. Our proper attitude toward nature is wonder, not consumption. Our lives depend on nature.This gift from three different directions can bring us together to save the person, the society, and the planet. This interfaith promise is nothing less than the restoration of nature, the recovery of the whole self, and the life of a community of love. ___________ Here are some CRES resources: A View of Our Decacralized Society and the World's Religions as a Whole System Caveats for the Study of Religion Awe Is the Cure Perhaps the best single book on world religions to disrupt many common misconceptions is Stephen Prothero’s 2007 Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. His 2011 God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World is a readable and accurate account. My late friend, Huston Smith, wrote what was for many years the standard text, The World's Religions, which went through many editions; and while it focused on the wisdom of the faiths, important history was given secondary place; still, the book reveals an unrivaled love affair with the world's traditions in extraordinarily cogent and beautiful writing. #220911 #911 A way of understanding the years since 9/11 While the 9/11 attacks opened new gates of hell, the way our government has responded has brought us inside hell's domain. The smoke from that day, the acrid fumes, amplified into war, brings us purblind to the charred and hobbled Body Politic. How do we understand what has happened? How do we move forward? And what of other international conflicts, especially the war of Russia against Ukraine? and the attack by Hamas on Israel? 9/11: METAPHORICAL MALADY:
1. Before 9/11, terrorism had been dealt with as a CRIME, internationally and at home. The violation of life and property in an otherwise orderly society makes the terrorist an especially despised outlaw. We employ a legal system to assure justice by punishing the criminal and removing the criminal from society. International courts have done the same. 2. But since September 11 we have used a WAR metaphor. Of course the metaphor is hardly new. We love war. We have fought the war against poverty and the war against drugs, though it is hard for us to admit defeat, even though Vietnam and Afghanistan are history now. We still fight the war against cancer, against crime, against . . . you name it. But a war against terrorism was new. The metaphor had power because we struggled not just against isolated attack but against an organized force seeking not just advantage through harm of a target but rather destruction of a government or civilization. Though we ourselves use violence, we assumed our own righteousness would bring us victory over evil. Both of the metaphors of crime and war too easily commend themselves because they are simple, and rest on the assumption that we are wholly good — and our opponents are completely evil. 3. A third metaphor might come closer to the
complexity of the situation: DISEASE.
Here the metaphor suggests not separate, competing powers but of
all
humanity as a sick body, within the organs of communities, cities, and
nations, afflicted in various ways, degrading or sustaining each other
in different degrees, infected with individuals and groups poisoned
(using
Buddhist language) with greed, fear, and ignorance. COVID
should have taught us that, as Martin Luther King said, “Whatever
affects one directly,
affects all indirectly.” To think clearly about war, it is critical to distinguish cause from justification.
Many causes might have contributed to the 2023 attacks by Hamas on
Israel -- In the context of the religious obligation to respond to hatred with love, all this does not justify the attacks by Hamas; it may explain, but not justify. A disease metaphor helps in focusing on causes since disease cannot be justified. Focusing on causes as factual matters than as blame is more likely to lead to restoration of health. As
a preface to discussing problems with the Israeli response to the
wicked, violent, horrific attack by Hamas on Israel in the fall of
2023, Zeynep Tufekci in her October 31 NYTimes column says --
You can read how she continues her analysis of the Hamas-Israel conflct here. Is the disease metaphor give us any insights into the war of Russia against Ukraine?
I think this metaphor gives us an essential insight
into debilitated world governance, enfeebled by the failure to
place armaments under international control requiring some body (a
strengthened United Nations) to manage conflict between states when
states cannot resolve problems peacefully. One way of looking at this
situation, using the disease metaphor, is the war as an auto-immune
disease of the world body; Russia, which benefits from a peaceful world
order, attacks that very order, and the body must address this
illness by sending resources to return to homeostasis. Just as
chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, and other cures, can destroy healthy
cells, so the body's response to Russian aggression requires the
short-term sacrifice of some otherwise healthy parts for long-term
health. Whether the expansion of NATO will inspire a true government of
all nations is very unclear, and whether the many increasingly complex
forces of civilization lead to planetary senescence and death, or to
universal peace and florescence is a question we might ask as we work
for health. What about the Israel-Hamas War? Of all people, Thomas L Friedman
commends the restraint of India's Prime Minister then, Manmohan Singh,
when Pakistani terrorists attacked India as Friedman views the attacks
of Hamas on Israel: What was Singh’s military response to India’s Sept. 11? You can read his October 29 NYTimes column as he applies these lessons to the Hamas-Israel situation here. The
billions of foreign dollars Netanyahu approved these past years to fund Hamas, and the Israeli
strategy of keeping Gaza and the West Bank separate in order to prevent
the creation of a unified Palestinian state, are horribly ironic facts that, among so many others, deserve
considering in this continuing and complex human
tragedy, in order to think better ways forward. Netanyahu's coalition government's policy statement makes clear that the West Bank and Gaza are to become part of Israel, thus ending any hope for a Palestinian state. MORE These two wars and causes that precipitated them are assaults against nature, against persons, and against social order in so many ways. Just so, CRES insists that the three great crises of our time, in the environment, in personhood, and in the social order, are all intertwined. And the world's Primal, Asian, and Monotheistic traditions, respectively, provide the therapy to heal the planet, revivify personhood, and restore social order. Let us bring these healing powers to bear. With generosity, fellowship,
and understanding to one another, unless sorrow can be redeemed by an expanding circle of service. Religious teachers of many faiths have in one language or another said that hatred does not cease by hatred but by love. Using
Buddhist language again, greed, fear, and ignorance arise from
political pride, from decades of military occupation, and from
division. A
strengthened United Nations is one therapy that might reduce the fever in the world's body
and lead to clearer thought and fairer consideration. WWI
led to WWII and its horrors, and WWII has led to the disputes
in the "Holy Land," where, without justice, one war generates
hatred in the defeated people which leads to the next war, and on and
on. War calls us to choose sides and tempts
us toward dehumanization of the "enemy" as we
dehumanize ourselves. War does not cease by war but by justice and
peace. Rather than kill one another, let us attend to the disease and find the cure in understanding, forgiveness, and compassion. (Medicine such as this.) --- President Biden's statement of 2023 November 19 A very imperfect geographical perspective: The area of Gaza (141 sq mi) is
less than half of the City of Kansas City, MO (319 sq mi) with a density of 1,614 per sq mi and the
population of Gaza (2,375,259) minus recent deaths is about five times
that of the City of Kansas City, MO (508,090), with the initial Gazan density of 16,853 per sq mi increasing
during the relocations), or about ten and a half times the KC density.
At its longest, the Gaza strip is about the distance from
downtown Kansas City to Olathe; its average width is like the distance
from State Line Road east to Arrowhead Stadium. Vern _______________________
On the first anniversary of 9/11, CRES opened a day-long observance beginning with a water ceremony between City Hall and the Federal Justice Center, later shown on national CBS-TV. Click here to see a 3-minute excerpt from that ritual. #Aporia200524
Vern offers his conclusions
from over 50 years of experience and study: in a troubled world, what paths
lie forward? and how can one dare offer praise for the intertwined mix
of the horror and the beauty of existence?
Interfaith Exchange about the Gaza War The following is a major excerpt from a Kansas City Star editorial October 13, 2023, page 6. Without supporting any particular statement, CRES applauds the Council for discussing an issue in which religious identities are entwined. A HISTORY LESSON Monday night, the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council had its monthly meeting. When we learned the theme — Israel and Palestine — we knew we had to join and hear what this multicultural, multiethnic and multi-religious organization had to say about what was happening. That night, a group consisting of members from the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Scientology and transcendental faith traditions listened to a Jewish man talk about the war and the history of the land people are fighting for. Alan Edelman, chair of the interfaith organization, said the conflict is as old as the Bible, and that one way to understand it is by asking an important question, maybe the question: "Is it possible for two people to share one piece of territory that is sacred to both of them?" Edelman described himself as a member of the peace movement. "In the peace camp, we like to say that the Palestinians (need to) understand that after 2,000 years of homelessness and a good deal of persecution, the Jewish people are entitled to return to their homeland." But then he added: "And the Jews have to understand that when they got a homeland, the Palestinians lost theirs." After Edelman gave a history lesson on the land and its people, he said the thing on everyone's mind: "If you're confused, join the club. It's a complicated situation." Edelman said he believes both the average Israeli and the Palestinian just want to raise their families in peace. "The innocent people suffer" at the hands of extremist leaders making decisions. "You really don't have a government on the Palestinian side or the Israeli side who wants to have conversations about peace. What is going on now isn't going to encourage anyone to come to the table to talk peace," he said. Edelman gave a measured, informative talk, but did he provide solutions? Could anyone? Zulfiqar Malik, not a Palestinian but a Muslim and Interfaith Council member, thanked Edelman for the presentation, and added, "I am of the Abrahamic faith and, God willing, we have to continue our efforts. We have to pray for it. I know it takes a lot of effort, a lot of patience, a lot of prayers for peace. If we don't have peace in our hearts how can we expect peace around the world?" UNPROVOKED ATTACK? As we listen to the many sides invested in the conflict, we can say who we think is more right or more wrong. Was it wrong for Hamas to attack the way it did? Many news outlets are using the words "unprovoked" attack. On the surface and at the level of aggression used, it certainly was. But could the attack be a response to human rights violations outlined in a United Nations Human Rights Council report in April 2023? The UN council said it was "gravely concerned about the dire humanitarian, socioeconomic and security situation in the Gaza Strip, including that resulting from the prolonged closures and severe economic impediments and movement restrictions that in effect amount to a blockade." The report called Israel "the occupying power." The Rev. Kelly Isola of the Unity faith said she saw terms such as "occupied" and "under oppressive rule" used on social media. She said people are discussing this in a "binary way" but believes there's more than two sides. "I don't support Hamas and yet there's innocent people everywhere being killed and paying the price. I don't want to discount that," she said. The council wants to educate people and craft a statement against the violence, and we think that's a good idea, but it won't end a war. Only peaceful talks will. And as it stands, the ongoing violence, pain and grief will prevent that from happening anytime soon. A message for those of us neither Jewish, Muslim nor Palestinian: One way to work toward peace in our community is to get to know those different from us. There are many groups, such at the Interfaith Council, that can provide an answer. The council has an upcoming "Table of Faiths" dinner next week For more information, visit kcinterfaith.org/2023-table-of-faiths The Kansas City Star Editorial Board wants to hear the voices of Palestinians and Jews on the topic of peaceful solutions to the war. Please send your thoughts to oped@kcstar.com --- Note: CRES founded the Council in 1989 as one of its ongoing programs and helped the Council become an independent organization in 2005. [eBlast 231013] #TableOfFaiths Greater KC Interfaith Council's annual Table of Faiths event - with awards to our friend of many years, Karta Purkh Khalsa, and a key organization seeking to cure prejudice, MCHE, the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education, and remembering CRES Amity Shaman Ed Chasteen 
A NOTE FROM VERN TO THE COUNCIL 2023 Oct 27 I regret I cannot attend the 2023 Table of Faiths event tonight. There are two reasons especially, in addition to the importance of the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education heightened by the current events in the Holy Land. Ed Chasteen was a great friend. One story from when we used to meet monthly. We asked, What were our favorite books? Ed's answer was Uncle Tom's Cabin, signifying his long career seeking understanding amkong all people. A prolific writer and organizer, he accepted the staff position at CRES of "Amity Shaman." Indeed, he had a unique spiritual capacity to transform strangers into friends. No religious leader has been more faithful for as long in supporting and promoting interfaith understanding in Kansas City as Karta Purkh Khalsa. Almost as soon as I moved here, I learned about him and became acquainted. Before the formation of the Interfaith Council, he helped survey the area for activities of interfaith interest. I have personally benefited from his spiritual advice, so today's award has personal as well as institutional meaning for me, and I am sure many others. Vern Barnet minister emeritus, CRES founder, The Kansas City Interfaith Council A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE Table of Faiths EARLY YEARS -- #CouncilPhoto1989_____________________________________________________________The first Table of Faiths event, with David Nelson as convener, was a luncheon at the Marriott Muehlebach Hotel downtown Nov 10, 2005. Alvin Brooks, one of the co-chairs (Gayle Krigel, Mahnaz Shabbir, and Chuck Stanford), welcomed guests. Mayor Kay Barnes was the keynote speaker and presented the first Table of Faiths Award to Vern Barnet. The second Table of Faiths luncheon, Nov 14, 2006, honored Don and Adel Hall and Ed Chasteen. The third Table of Faiths luncheon, Nov 7, 2007, honored Alvin L Brooks and The Kansas City Star. The fourth Table of Faiths luncheon, Nov 13, 2008, included a presentation of Donna Ziegenhorn's play, The Hindu and the Cowboy. Honored were Robert Lee Hill and the Shawnee Mission Medical Center, and Steve Jeffers (1948-2008) was lovingly remembered. The fifth Table of Faiths luncheon, Nov 12, 2009, introduced The Steve Jeffers Leadership Award, given to Ahmed El-Sherif. All Souls Unitarian Church was also recognized, and Allan Abrams (1939-2009) was lovingly remembered. The sixth Table of Faiths luncheon, Nov 11, 2010, honored Notre Dame de Sion High School with the Table of Faiths Award and Queen Mother Maxie McFarlane with the Steve Jeffers Leadership Award. The seventh Table of Faiths luncheon, Nov 10, 2011 honored the Kansas City Public Library with the Table of Faiths Award and Donna Ziegenhorn with the Steve Jeffers Leadership Award. The eighth and last Table of Faiths luncheon, Nov 8, 2012, presented the theme of "Spirituality and the Environment: Caring for the Earth, Our Legacy." The Steve Jeffers Leadership Award was given to Mayor Sly James and the Table of Faiths Award went to Unity Church of Overland Park. There was no Table of Faiths event in 2013. Beginning in 2014, Table of Faiths events were no longer major downtown civic luncheons involving elected, cultural, and business leaders. With a longer evening format, the first in the new Table of Faiths dinners was held May 8, 2014, at Unity Village. --CRES ARCHIVES Vern Barnet founded the Council
in 1989 as a program of CRES and is Council Convener Emeritus. The Council newsletter has
published his brief notes about three
milestones in the early history of the Council.
#Funeral The Funeral Consumers Alliance Annual Program  CELEBRATING & CARING FOR OUR DEAD IN A CHANGING, DIVERSE LANDSCAPE Friday, Nov. 3 ● 1:00–4:00 p.m. All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church 4501 Walnut St., Kansas City, Mo. Free and open to the public 3 free continuing education credits! Attend in person or on Zoom  Our friend Joe Walker and George Gordon are featured in the 3-3:50 session on Spirituality around Death Rituals. Gordon is the retired minister of pastoral care at Country Club Christian Church, where he has presided at more than 700 funerals. Joe is the current minister of pastoral care at the church. Gordon says Walker is “undoubtedly the most widely read person and minister that I know in the area of devotional literature, from almost every tradition known to humankind.” They will address contemporary spirituality, the changes they have witnessed, and the lessons they have learned in their roles. We know Joe from his extraordinary work for interfaith understanding.  Congratulations and Thank -You
to our friend Steve Nicely who is retiring after 18 years editing the
Funeral Consumers Alliance newsletter and serving on the organization's
board. You'll want to read this last newsletter's two short essays by
Steve on page 7: "She was dead but she changed my life" about a
youthful experience that produced the arc of Steve's personal and
professional life, and "Exposure to death can begin early" about
his son Ben and Ben's dog. Both essays are simply and beautifully
written, and touching, as you'd expect from a master writer.#current #ThgvgSunday 2023 Nov 12 Sunday 4-6 pm Annual INTERFAITH THANKSGIVING Dinner Unity Village, 1901 NE Blue Parkway, Building 500, Lee’s Summit, MO  Information about purchasing tickets soon.
Thanksgiving dinner options include traditional and vegan options. You are invited to come early to experience Unity Village's new labyrinth! Sponsored by Heartland Alliance of Divine Love and
The Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council  The 2023 Vern Barnet Interfaith Service Award,"so named in 2010 in recognition of the lasting contribution of the Rev. Vern Barnet to our vibrant interfaith community," is presented to The Rev. Mary Gibson McCoy and The Rev. Gregory McCoy "The event offers traditional Thanksgiving and vegan meals, including dessert and refreshments. We will bless our space, food, and each other as we listen to prayers from multiple faith traditions, and enjoy sacred ceremony and music for Diwali, the Hindu holiday that falls on this same day as our Thanksgiving dinner." The dinner includes a presentation by documentary filmmaker Cynthia Lukas on her latest film about the wife of Mahatma Gandhi, “Kasturba Gandhi, The Accidental Activist.” Annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Dinner Tickets, Sun, Nov 12, 2023 at 4:00 PM | Eventbrite $25.00
To the sponsors'
announcement above, CRES is happy to add its congratulations in the choice of the Gibsons for
the award. One cannot think of another couple who, for so many years, has
done more together to support interfaith understanding in so many ways,
both behind-the-scenes grunt-work and in leadership. -----------------------------------As visible examples, above we show Mary's 2021 book, Ethics without Scripture: Creating a Code of Conscience. To the right, from 2014, we show Sheila Sonnenschein (who received the "Vern Barnet Interfaith Service Award" in 2017) with Mary and Greg at the Plaza Library opening of the Human Spirit section of interfaith books which the McCoys created. It was the McCoys who, in 2010, after the CRES announcement ending a 25-year tradition of a Sunday Interfaith Thanksgiving Meal, and found ways to continue it, and instituted an award in the name of the founder of the Council, initially as a program of CRES. So it is especially fitting that they themselves should receive the award this year. Of course the countless invisible examples are impossible to show except in the effects of a continuing interfaith community which they persistently and inspiringly represent. The annual observance was sponsored by CRES
for its first 25 years as a family ritual meal. Since 2010, the
event has been updated and sponsored by the Heartland Chapter of the Alliance of
Divine Love, and the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council (GKCIC), in
cooperation with the interfaith community. This year, 2023, is the 38th year of the tradition and
we are indeed grateful to both sponsors for continuing to celebrate the
place of Thanksgiving in all faiths.
#231217 #231227 An Impromptu Report on an Unexpected Work of Public Art  Several
times a week I walk through Mill Creek Park just east of the Country
Club Plaza Shopping District with its famous (I think cruel) fountain
which you can see in the background of the photo above. December 27 I
was surprised to encounter what, from a distance, looked like a
mandala. I returned the next day to study it more carefully and was
pleased it did not appear to have been molested. I remain worried that
this ephemeral, complicated, thoughtful public art at the
southwest end of the park will be vandalized soon. I wish I had a drone camera so I could get a better, higher view of what has obviously been constructed with great thoughtfulness and care. Careful to plant my feet not to disturb any part of the piece, I saw that a ring near the center were stones wrapped with white children's socks, and the yellow ring you can make out in the photo is made of pencils. In between are peppers. I saw other produce as well. I read the labels around the circle: 23 hospitals 100 journalists 296 schools 10305 children 473 health staff 52390 injured 1900000 displaced 26612 martyred At the outside of the circle large stones near Mill Creek Parkway read "1 stone = 1 martyred in Gaza." I do not know how accurate the statistics might be. This closer look made clear that this is not a mandala except in the original Sanskrit sense of "circle." It reminded me not Buddhist or Hindu art but rather of Picasso's Guernica which I first saw at the modern art museum in New York when I was young, before it was repatriated to Spain, where I saw it again more recently in Madrid. Reading this Mill Creek art as a pro-Hamas statement, as I suppose is possible in our reactive, political environment, is as much a misinterpretation as viewing Guernica as a pro-Socialist statement. Though not composed of cloth and pigment, the ground itself becomes its canvass with materials like stones and socks and pencils and bits of food, transporting the rubble we see in the news from there to here, and from horror to art we can just barely endure*. Like Guernica, it is a statement about the violence and horror of war, and transcends the particular occasion which originated the artistic expression. Would that such art be heeded with compassion. Hatred does not cease by hatred but by love -- such statements are found throughout the religions of the world. 2024 January 3 NOTE: Except for the missing vegetables, this art seems unmolested. MORE ON 9/11 AND OTHER FOLLIES * “For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure . . . ." --Rilke OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS
Having spawned several other organizations, including the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council, we continue to offer programs initiated by and through others but we no longer create our own in order to focus on our unique work. For interfaith and cultural calendars maintained by other groups, click here. |
You are welcome even if you have not read the book or seen the movie A Free Monthly Discussion Group Led by David E Nelson C R E S senior associate minister president, The Human Agenda “The purpose of a Vital Conversation is not to
win an argument,
"Listen with curiosity, not judgement.” —David Nelson in dialog that will add value to the participants and to the world. In Vital Conversations, we become co-creators of a better community. —David Nelson The discussions began May 24, 2002, at the CRES facility by examining Karen Armstrong’sThe Battle for God 2023 Vital Conversations Schedule
2023 January 11 Wednesday 1-2:30 p.m. hybrid on Zoom and in person 100 Views From This Seat by Leroy Seat 
Leroy and his wife June attended Vital
Conversations from the time we started meeting at the MCPL – Antioch
Branch over 10 years ago. He is clearly a “thinking friend” and remains
persistent in sharing his reflections. Beginning in 2009 he has blogged
on every day divisible by five. “Reflections about Life, Love, Light,
and Liberty” have been both personal, light-hearted, religious,
ethical, and political. I have appreciated these provocative
reflections even though I have not responded to every one of them. This
collection is an excellent representation of the delicious variety of
subjects. I invite you buy his book, select one of your favorites and
come on Zoom or at the library to thank Leroy and give some response.The View from This Seat blog 
On this date (January 9, 2023) as I write this review, I am anticipating that tomorrow Leroy will be posting his 1,000th blog post!. Then the following day he will be meeting with the Vital Conversations book group to discuss this book, and presumably there also will be some discussion of posts made since the era covered by this book including his 1,000th blog post. His posts over these past twelve years have provided reflections on religious, ethical, and political issues as well as personal experiences and memories. His views come from eighty-four years of living, beginning in rural northern Missouri, then obtaining a PhD, and then working as a Baptist missionary to Japan and as full-time faculty member at Seinan Gakuin University (Fukuoka, Japan) from 1968 to 2004. Since his retirement he has continued to be active in many facets of life including the writing of the following books in addition to 100 Views from This Seat (links are to my reviews). Fed Up with Fundamentalism: A Historical, Theological, and Personal Appraisal of Christian Fundamentalism, by Leroy Seat The Limits of Liberalism: A Historial Theological and Personal Appraisal of Christian Liberalism, by Leroy Seat Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now, by Leroy Seat A Wonderful Life: The Story of My Life from Birth until my 82nd Birthday (1938~2020), by Leroy Seat I have found Leroy's blog posts quite readable, partly because he conscientiously kept the word count per post below 700. Now that I've read this book I know of another reason seven hundred is a good word limit, it fits on two pages (front and back). Thus the one hundred posts fit neatly onto two hundred pages of this book. This word limit also allowed the inclusion of some of the comments left by readers on the blog. Those of you who are personally acquainted with Leroy will probably recognize some of the names of the comment writers. I was surprised to discover two comments written by me! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - #vcFeb2023 February 8 Wednesday 1-2:30 p.m. Hybrid on Zoom and in person. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83235346541 100 The Way of Happiness by L. Ron Hubbard 
This is a non-religious moral code based on common sense
distributed by the church of Scientology worldwide. “The Way to
Happiness” and the program it inspired have helped millions around the
world lead happier, more fulfilling lives.” Present for our Vital
Conversation will be members of The Kansas City Church of Scientology.
The booklets are free, and you can pick one up from me (David Nelson)
or free online at www.thewaytohappiness.org.We will have members of this "new" religion with us. You can visit their website, https://www.scientology.org, to view very professionally done videos. Remember to listen and watch with "curiosity not judgement" as we seek to understand others [This
program should not be construed as an endorsement or disparagement
of Scientology or this booklet. This session of Vital
Conversations is an opportunity to learn first-hand about
Scientology and to share our varied perspectives about it, with the
opportunity to pose questions and seek clarifications. -Vern] Releasing Conversation: Share your name, and your Star (*) and your arrow (»). Look over these 21 items from The Way to Happiness and select the ONE you are personally very efficient in doing, good enough to coach others in doing. Put a Star (*) by it. Look over list again and put an arrow (») pointing to the one you personally need to work on to be more effective as a human being. Are there any on the list you do not understand, disagree with, or would like to discuss further? If so put a question mark (?) by it. ⦁ Take Care of Yourself. ⦁ Be Temperate. ⦁ Don’t be Promiscuous. ⦁ Love and Help Children. ⦁ Honor and Help Your Parents. ⦁ Set A Good Example. ⦁ Seek To Live With the Truth. ⦁ Do Not Murder. ⦁ Don’t Do Anything Illegal. ⦁ Support A Government Designed and Run For All the People. ⦁ Do Not Harm A Person Of Good Will. ⦁ Safeguard and Improve Your Environment. ⦁ Do Not Steal. ⦁ Be Worthy of Trust. ⦁ Fulfill Your Obligations. ⦁ Be Industrious. ⦁ Be Competent. ⦁ Respect the Religious Beliefs of Others. ⦁ Try Not to do Things to Others that you Would Not Like them to Do to You. ⦁ Try To Treat Others As You Would Want Them to Treat You. ⦁ Flourish and Prosper. Q: Using this “research program chart,” describe the “new religion” of Scientology. Which of the three families of faith would you say Scientology fits best? Q. If you could put the message of Scientology in a sentence parallel to the Four Wisdom Treasures, what would that sentence be? Q. Describe the worship, education, evangelization, outreach, service, and other practices of Scientology. Q. Are there sacred texts in Scientology? Q. Are their core theological doctrines in Scientology? Q. Who is L. Ron Hubbard? Do you worship or honor him? Q. Does Scientology continue to adapt scientific findings into their practice? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - #vcMar 2023 March 8 Wednesday 1-2:30 p.m. in person at the library and on Zoom ID: 832 3534 6541 ABOUT VITAL CONVERSATIONS -YOUTUBE VIDEO To Keep From Undressing by Aisha Sharif 
“From the intersection of Black culture and
religion, to conversations with jinn, to motherhood, marriage and the
meaning of hijab, Ms. Sharif beautifully melds private and public,
interweaving bold and delicate themes into a one-of-kind tapestry of
words and freeing truths.” --Nadirah Angail. Aisha Sharif shared an original poem at the last Tables of Faith gathering of the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council and will be with us to share in our conversation. When I read her poems, I feel like I am eavesdropping into the personal journey of a sister I long to know better. We will meet two weeks before the beginning of Ramadan.  Aisha Sharif's website poetry:https://aisha-sharif.com/poetry Releasing Conversation: Share your name and an opening line or sentence quote from a poem that says something about you. It could be a lyric from a song, classic poetry, or personal poem. Q. Aisha, will you share the poem you wrote for and shared at The Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council Table of Faiths Dinner? Quotes and Questions My Islam be black.Q. Why have you chosen poetry to tell your story, share your religion, and connect with world in such a personal and inviting way? “To My Muslim Father” Q. Reading this poem, I felt grief and joy. What were you feeling when you wrote it? How do you feel about it now? “If My Parents Hadn’t Converted: Questions & Answers” Parts 1-5 “A very special thank you to my family: to my parents, you stepped out and spoke the truth of your belief and taught me that I can do the same, and through you, I learned how to own my background and create a path reflective of that…to my extended family, thank you for showing me how faith and love blend beyond religious line!” (p 95) Q. You keep coming back to your parents’ conversion. “How They Remained” tells us a great deal about them. Was there a time when you were not Muslim? Q. Would you read "Security" out loud while we listen? Listening to an “art form” is important because what we hear, and experience is important. Before you tell us about the poem, participants can share their feelings, thoughts, questions from listening with our ears, hearts and minds. Q. "Iddah: Part I and Part II" tells a story of a period for waiting after a divorce. Why did you choose a line from this poem for the title of your book? Q. "Hijab Be" (p 89) When I read your poem out loud it felt like rap. Is that your intention? “The jinn are spiritual beings made of smokeless fire, neither angels nor devils. They have free will and can inhabit the earth in a physical form, acting as somewhat of a trickster for the purposes of good or evil. Every human is said to have a jinn. The Prophet Muhammad was said to have made his jinn Muslim.” (p 94) Q. Can you tell us more about a jinn? Have you revealed your jinn in these poems and in this conversation? Do other participants understand more about their jinn at this moment? Q. Do you have other books of your poetry?
The poems are mostly autobiographic in nature and divided into five segments that are roughly chronological in order. Issues of being black, muslim, and wearing a hijab are frequently addressed. The early poems address the author's experience of being identifiably different from her classmates. Also the fact that her parents were converts to the Muslim faith prior to the author's birth is repeatedly addressed. Each of the book's five sections contains a poem titled "If My Parents Hadn't Converted, Questions and Answers..." Since most of the poems appear to be autobiographic, when I came to a poem toward the end of the book titled "Vanna White Reconsiders Her Pact with Her Jinn" I assumed that it must be a metaphor applicable to her own life in some way. The poem ends with the phrase, "I want to solve by own puzzle." I wondered if that meant she was rebelling against something in her life. I asked the author to explain the Vanna poem during our group's meeting with her. She said the poem was simply a product of her interest in watching the TV show Wheel of Fortune. She imagined Vanna may have made a wish to her Jinn that she become a show business star, and subsequently it came true but not in the way she had hoped. Vanna's career ended up being one who obediently turned letters as requested by other people. This collection of poems conveys truths and meaning beyond the finite collection of words. The insight into the author's life seems intimate and personal. I'm glad to have had an opportunity of read this book. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - April 12, 2023, Wednesday 1-2:30 p.m. David Nelson, humanagenda@gmail.com Freshwater Road: A Novel by Denise Nicholas 
This book tells the story of one young woman’s
coming-of-age in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Nineteen-year-old Celeste Tyree leaves Ann Arber to help register voters in Pineyville, a place best known for a notorious lynching that occurred a few years earlier. As the summer unfolds, Celeste confronts not only the political realities of race and poverty in this tiny town but also the deep truths about her family and herself. a summary of the book appears here. Dear Friends, I am thrilled that Denise Nicholas has agreed to join our Vital Conversation on April 12th. Denise is an actor and writer who has starred in numerous films and TV shows, including "Room 22", for which she earned three Golden Globe nominations, and "In the Heat of the Night", for which she also wrote several episodes. Freshwater Road, her novel, is our book for April 12, according to the Washington Post, "Surely the best work of fiction about the civil rights movement since Ernest J. Gaines's The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman." I invite you to read her book and join us either at the library or on Zoom. "Quotes and Questions" will be sent the week before the gathering. All are welcome. --David  Please
watch this interview and read the most important book I have read in years. Denise Nicholas will be with us on Zoom on April 12th at 1 pm (CT) for Vital Conversations. This book is disturbing and redeeming. It tells a story we all need to hear again. --David Releasing Conversation: Share your name, your location and what you were doing during the summer of 1964. Quotations and Questions 1.
“Dear Daddy: By the time you read this, I’ll be in Mississippi
volunteering for the Freedom Sumer project to help with voter
registration. I know you know what’s been going on down there. Lots of
kids from schools all over the country are going down. It’s a big
thing. Maybe by the end of the summer, the whole racial thing will be
different in the south, the rest of the country, too. This will be
great if I go to law school, don’t you think? I’ll be fine. Don’t
worry. You can leave a message from me at the One Man, One Vote office
in Jackson, Mississippi. Will call as soon as I can. Love, Celeste.” (p
15) Think of a time you had hope to make a big difference in something. What drove Celeste and what drives you to follow your dream? 2. “The local newspaper carried stories about the invasion of northern ‘rabble-rousers.’ She never thought of herself as a rabble-rouser, and she didn’t think fo Pineyville’s Negroes as rabble. She saw the Freedom Summer volunteers as right up there with the great patriots, the idealistic founders, supporting the idea of one person, one vote, making America more true to itself.” (p109). Celeste is experiencing large difference between Michigan and Mississippi. Compare and contrast these differences with the divides in today’s America. 3. “They grubbed an existence in the weather-beaten, no-industry towns of Southern Mississippi all week long. This church was theirs and they came to it for rest and reprieve. All Celeste could think was God bless Sophie Lewis. She reminded herself that it was 1964, that she wasn’t watching a film based on a history often distorted and mostly forgotten. This obsolete place lived, and it was like a movie. What might have been quaint looked dispossessed up close with living people. This wasn’t some anonymous village in Africa or South America where people washed their clothes in a stream, emptied their bowels just yards away, and drank the water from the same stream a few yards in the other direction...The sermons stoked the burn and led the way, and the way was nonviolence. The road was steep and hard, but no other road offered redemption to the oppressed and epiphany to the oppressors. The old way reiterated bad treatment, deception, and deprivation.” (p116-117). Describe the many roles of the church in the deep south in 1964. How has religion been both a divisive and a healing factor in the civil rights movement? Read out loud p.117-118m. 4. “Pass it down.’ She handed the picture of Frederick Douglass to the boy sitting on the end of the row. ‘Stand and say your name.’ She asked them to stand and say their names before speaking when it became very clear that they seemed to feel more comfortable staring at the ground whey they spoke. It was a way of encouraging them to inhabit the space they lived in, a way for them to plant themselves in the earth and say, ‘I’m here and I matter.’” (p.156) What was Freedom School teaching and why? Tell about the Freedom School at Rainbow Mennonite Church in Kansas City, KS. 5. “The night heat spread the smell of their lovemaking all through the car. She imagined it smoothing out over Freshwater Road like the smell of night jasmine, like the faint scent surrounding the stands of long-needled pines.” (p191). What role does Celeste’s love for Ed play in this story? 6. “Celeste had an urge to sit on the grass in the shade, lie down under the grand canopy of trees. Then she wondered which of the town’s old trees had suspended the dancing apoplectic feet of a bug-eyed Negro man who had laughed walking down the street or turned his head to a white woman whose sweat-wet dress clung to her body, or simply didn’t step off the pavement when a white person walked by. And the boys. What had been the last thing they heard or saw or thoughts? All of life ahead of them, all the good in the world in the to give.” (p.195). When reality presses you down, how are you restored? Where do you find hope when you are experiencing nothing but dead ends? 7. After reading a letter from her birth mother Wilamena, informing her that her birth father was not Shuck, who had been her father all her life: “She’d never speak to Wilamena again. She’d never say a word about it. Do like the people in Mississippi do. It never happened. She’d throw the letter in the outhouse hole in the morning. For now, she put it back in its envelope and stuffed it into the pocket of her suitcase as if otherwise it might gather strength and run out into the world screaming.” (p 203). How do you deal with shocking news about your family, your community, your personal life? What are the ways you sooth your wounds? Are they adequate? 8. After little Sissy’s body was found, “She was child, like the children in the church in Birmingham, completely innocent, no threat to anyone for any of the well-known reasons. A child who wanted to dream herself out of this place.” (p231. “They mourned her as if by rote, as if mourning children compared to feeding chickens. The Negro community of Pineyville crying, sobbing really, but no one said a word.” ((p240). Are we getting used to mourning our children and accepting that it is inevitable, outside our control? 9. “Sissy had drawn Frederick Douglass with wings in the night sky and the north star up on the corner. The drawing vibrated with color. Douglass’s dark skin and beard and huge crinkled hair flowed back in a draft of flight.... Sissy’s self-portrait as Frederick Douglas reminded her that if she hadn’t come to Pineyville talking about freedom, north stars, and better places, Sissy would still be alive.” (p 310) In the human drama sometimes death and life, captivity and liberation, despair and hope are so close they almost connect. Can you share a story when your life was renewed, turned around, or liberated through pain? 10. “Hard to summarize Pineyville, though. There were so many stories, burned-down churches and houses shot into and injuries and incarcerations, but she accepted the movement’s statistical version, its shorthand. Her truest life, she felt, had stretched out over her time on Freshwater Road. Sissy’s death. Ed’s birth in her life.” (p. 322) Sometimes we do not recognize the mystery of the sacred in our lives until we have lived through it and beyond. -----  Clif Hostetler's review on Goodreads.com -- click for embedded links bookshelves: historical-fiction -- really liked it This
novel tells the story of the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi. The
story is told from the viewpoint of a female African American college
student from Detroit who spends the summer as a volunteer in the Black
community of a small Mississippi town organizing a voter registration
drive and leading a Freedom School for the children. The book provides a thorough description of life in a fictional small town typical for Mississippi at the time. This is a long book (16.5 hrs audio) that takes its time to fully recreate a historic time that compares the Black community of Detroit with that of rural Mississippi and provides a descriptive pass through Hattiesburg, Jackson, and New Orleans. Aside from the the historical outline the book fills the pages with a fictional cast of characters which illustrate the divisions between and within the Black and White communities as well as the variety of personalities involved. It's a story that explores issues of family loyalties and infidelities. The book includes elements of a romance, and it tells of a mysterious death of a child that may have been murder. These elements of the book conclude much the same as the historic summer of 1964—not all mysteries and problems have been solved. The book's narrative frequently reminds the reader that danger lurks from all directions, and the locals—including some of the Black population—don't appreciate the presence of these outsiders. This is the summer when James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered, and the mystery of their disappearance hangs heavily over the first half of this book's story. It doesn't take much imagination to fear that the same fate could happen to any of the other Freedom Summer volunteers. This book does strive to recreate a specific time and place in history. However, it is a work of fiction and it's interesting to note some of the obvious name changes of organizations that the book used. For example the organizing entity for Freedom Summer in this book was named "One Man One Vote" whereas in actual history it was COFO or SNCC. Also, there's an organization in this book's story that doesn't agree with the nonviolent approach that goes by the name "Deacons of Justice."—probably patterned after the "Black Panthers". ________ The following are some excerpts from the book I found of interest. I included my own introductory comments for context. Early in the book the protagonist acknowledges her relatively privileged background, but understands that race in America transcends class. ... race in America lived outside the purview of class or privilege, out there in a world all its own, not tethered to anything except hatred. (p.23)Near the end of the summer our protagonist considered staying in Mississippi, but she discerned the following message from the local community she had been serving. ... that the Negro people of Pineyville needed the best: no more half-educated teachers, no more zealous "would-be-if-onlys." (p.461)_____________ In the near future I look forward to participating in a book group Zoom meeting that will also be attended by the author Denise Nicholas. The following is a link to an interview with her. She talks about writing this book from 22 to 25 minute point. https://www.youtube.com/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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#vcMay May
10, 2023, A Political Reading of the Life of Jesus From 1984 until 1996 he resided in Nicaragua and
worked in both a religious and a political setting. In this book
he tells the story of Jesus and the Biblical theme of liberation, as
seen through the eyes of the poor. He now lives here in the
greater Kansas City area. Releasing Conversation: Share your name, location, and briefly a time your theology and life were interwoven. Quotations and Questions 3. “A
major shift in my Christology emerged while living and participating
with pueblo (the people) in Nicaragua over a period of the next twelve
years. Before going to Nicaragua, I would have expressed my Christology
in a very orthodox manner. In other words, my belief was basically in
agreement with the Biblical theme of salvation, which is the prevailing
approach to understanding Christianity in our society. Drawing upon the background I would have written my Christology in three chapters: Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection.” (16) Would you agree with this orthodox view? Has this been your dominant view 4.
“No universal doctrine of atonement has ever been adopted. However,
linking personal salvation to the atonement is what we have inherited
through orthodox Christian tradition.” (17) Which of these or other “theories” make the most sense to you? Why has “Atonement” continued to be part of Christian theology? 5.
“Reflecting on the Biblical theme of liberation has led to some major
changes in my Credo, especially withregard to my Christology. There is
a wealth of scholarship identified as Liberation Theology.” (19).
Read the letter written after 7 months back to friends and family in
the US. (p.20-21). What stands out? Why does it end of Poverty, Peace,
and Love? 6.
“I have come to a better understanding of Jesus by including this major
segment of his story in my Credo: Incarnation, Insurrection,
Crucifixion, Re-Insurrection.” (22-23). Discuss
INSURRECTION and RE-INSURRECTION. What do these words mean to you? Why
is this important in your Christology? What is new for you? What
questions remain for our conversation? 7. “The Biblical theme of liberation reveals that God does not require some kind of payment or ransom before being willing to engage in the pain and suffering of the human community.” (25) Do you agree that a doctrine of atonement is no longer necessary? 8.
“The prophets (of the Hebrew scriptures) called for repentance and made
it clear that the promotion of justice is the true expression of
faithfulness in response to the God who brought them out of slavery in
Egypt.” (28) 9.
“To say that people were ‘converted’ on the day of Pentecost means they
came to believe that the liberation of their Jewish homeland could be
achieved in the manner which Jesus had taught, i.e., through
non-violent insurrection. In that sense, Jesus becomes the hoped-for
Messiah. This was not a conversion to save their souls; this was a
conversion to engage in the re-insurrection...It meant turning around
from cooperating with the Powers.” (31) “Adopting the Politics of
Liberation and Freedom was a dangerous undertaking, so they had to
conceal some of their activities.” (32) What
would a commitment to the politics of liberation and freedom look like
today? Where have you witnessed it? Where have you entertained the idea
for yourself? How might issues of racism, gun violence, gender equity,
classism, and peace building fit into the politics of liberation and 10.
“It is not easy to be the re-insurrection body of Christ. The cost of
disciple- ship seems far too great. The Biblical theme of
liberation calls us to expend the full extent of our energy and agape
in the political task of creating the reign of God on this earth. It
seems that as a society we prefer to adopt Salvation Theology and
personalize our religion in the hope that we may go to heaven when we
die.” (53) What steps can you take today, this
week, this month to be part of the “re-insurrection of the body of
Christ”? What can you do to stay 11.
“Expressing what I believe about God is a process of discovery as new
levels of understanding about the Bible, tradition and my own
experience take shape in and through reasoned expression and dialogue.
Expressing my Credo is not simple an intellectual conclusion to which I
come but an awareness that leads to - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - #vcJun June 14, 2023, Out of The Pews and Into Politics: Francis Schaeffer and the
Evangelical Takeover of the Republican Party
Releasing conversation: Share your name and say something about your political activity. 1.
“Judge Broomfield, are you a secular humanist? (p 7) Secular Humanism:
‘The Western world in general and the United States in specific have
been undergoing a process of secularization since the eighteenth
century. Sociologists identify secularization in general as ‘the
process whereby religious sentiment and organizations lose their
dominance over culture.’” (p 15) Q. Charlie, are you a secular humanist? Share some highlights of your life journey that have brought you to write this book. #vcJul United States Constitution #vcAug Wired For Love: A Neuroscientist’s Journey Through Romance,
Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection
"I used to see love only through the lens of science, but my
husband taught me to see it through the lens of humanity as well. And
once I did, my life and my research were changed forever. So in this
book, I have tried to tell both the story of my science and the science
behind my story, in the hope that it will help you not only
appreciate the nature of human connection but also give you some
inspiration for how to find and sustain love in your own life." --Stephanie Cacioppo, PhD. 1. “Loneliness has in fact become so pervasive and so damaging that many public health experts describe it now as a full-blown epidemic, one that touches not only single people but also unhappy couples.” (p3). We have experienced an epidemic in recent years. Would your experience agree with these public health experts? 11. “Emotions are merely emotions – neither positive nor negative. It’s how we react to them that will determine whether they have a positive or negative impact on our health, our happiness, our longevity.” (p180) “Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” --Antoine de Saint-Exupery
A
unique mix of neurology and memoir, this book describes brain activity
caused by falling in love, and then the author goes on to recount her
own personal experience of falling in love. Readers who enjoy a true
love story will find it here, and unwittingly learn a bit of science
while immeshed in the love story. “By looking deep into the brains of people in love, we discover that this complex neurobiological phenomenon activates not just the brain’s mammalian pleasure centers but also our cognitive system, the most evolved, intellectual parts of the brain that we use to acquire knowledge and make sense of the world around us.” The
author is a credentialed social neuroscientist who has researched the
human brain’s reactions to falling in love, and she also has
experienced falling in love and getting married at midlife at age
thirty-seven. After seven years of marriage her husband died,
consequently the experience of grief is explored near the end of the
book. Ironically, her husband was an internationally renowned scholar
author of multiple books about grief and loneliness. Their friends
referred to their match as the marriage of love and grief.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - #vcSep Fratelli Tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship
1.“Let
us dream, then, as a single human family, as fellow travelers sharing
the same flesh, as children of the same earth, which is our common
home, each of us bringing the richness of his or her belief and
convictions, each of us with his or her own voice, brothers and sisters
all.” (p13). RELEASING CONVERSATION: Share you name, current location and briefly a dream you have about a better world in the future. Introductory remarks about Pope Francis
Fratelli
Tutti (translates to Brothers All) is an encyclical from Pope Francis
in 2020 which encourages a spirit of human social friendship (a.k.a.
fraternity), and it is a plea to reject wars. It was written during the
first year of the COVID-19 so the encyclical also notes that the global
management of the pandemic had revealed a failure in global cooperation.
I found the following excerpt from Chapter 7 of particular interest.
8. Religions at the service of fraternity in our world - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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Releasing Conversation: Share your name, location and identify an organization that has been important on your human journey. Q.
What is the history and significance of Freemasonry, and how has it
evolved? What are the core values and principles and how do they
shape the organization’s activities and goals? “Symbols
are only the vehicles of communication. They must not be mistaken for
the final term, the tenor, of their reference.” This
quotation from Joseph Campbell, a renowned mythologist
and scholar, offers an insightful perspective on the human
attraction to symbols and ritual. Liturgical Christianity and
Freemasonry are rich in symbolism and ritual. What is it that is
so attractive? Would you agree that these practices tap into
universal human needs for belonging, meaning, and connection to the
sacred? Q. Can you explain the role of secrecy and confidentiality in Freemasonry, and how it is maintained with the organization? Q. What misconceptions or myths exist about Freemasonry? What would you like to never hear about Freemasonry again? Q. "Founded
in 1821, just a year after Missouri became a state, the Grand Lodge of
Missouri has chartered more Lodges in other states than any other Grand
Lodge.” (Preface) Please share some of the stories of
freemasons of Missouri. Thomas Hart Benton (the first).
David Rice Acthison. William H. Russell. Other brothers you
appreciate. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - #vcNov
CHAPTER TITLES
Quotations and Questions “Adults
who are racked with death anxiety are not odd birds who have contracted
some exotic disease, but men and women whose family and culture have
failed to knit the proper protective clothing for them to withstand the
icy chill of mortality.” – Irvin Yalom, PsychiatristRELEASING CONVERSATION: Share your name and very briefly your plans for funeral and burial. 1. “Show me the manner in which a nation cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land and their loyalty to high ideals.” – William Gladstone (8) Why is the care of the dead so central to our tender mercies? Tell a story about special care of the dead you have experienced. 2. “Many of the rituals in this book will be very different from your own, but I hope you will see the beauty in that difference. You may be someone who experiences real fear and anxiety around death, but you are here. Just like the people you are about to meet, you have shown up.” (15) Think about your feelings about death and the presence of a dead body. What feelings do you have? 3. “Cremation machines only grew larger, faster, and more efficient. Almost 150 years later, cremation has reached record heights in popularity (for the first time, in 2017, more Americans will be cremated than buried).” (27) Does that surprise you? “From the ash pile he pulled out the largest bone fragments –chunks of femur, rib, and skull – which some families like to take home and keep as relics.” (39) Would you like to keep a small bone relic from a loved one? 4. “According to their animistic belief system, there is also no barrier between the human and nonhuman aspects of the natural world: animals, mountains, and even the dead. Speaking to your grandfather’s corpse is a way to build a connection to the person’s spirit.” (56-57). Do you speak to your death loved ones? Do you have pictures or places where you connect with them? 5. “For Torajans, hauling someone out of their graves after their death is not only respectful (the most respectful thing they can do, in fact), but it provides a meaningful way to stay connected to their dead.” (76) Why in one culture is this OK and in another it seems totally bizarre? 6. “In the last forty years, Dias de los Muertos has come to represent popular culture throughout Mexico. And Mexico itself is viewed as a world leader in practicing engaged, public grief.” (81). Describe Day of the Dead. Have you witnesses some of these events? How else does Mexico engage public grief? (91,92) 7. “How else to explain the increasing popularity of the refrain: ‘When I die, no fuss. Just dig a hole and put me in it.’ A sensible request, indeed. Sending your corpse back into nature would seem to be both the most inexpensive and the most ‘green’ option for your death. After all, the plants and animals we consume during our lives are grown and nourished by the soil.” (108). How do you feel about this simple suggestion and solution? What about the various ways of composting that are mentioned in this chapter? 8. “The dead at Roques Blanques start out in a ground grave, or in a wall mausoleum. But the dead haven’t purchased a home at the cemetery as much as they have rented an apartment. They have a lease, and their time in the grave is limited…This ‘grave recycling’ is not just a Spanish practice.” (144-145). As space demands will this become more common in cities in America? 9. “Undeterred, Hachiko (a real dog) returned to the station every day for the next nine years, when his own death, halted the ritual. Dogs are a solid meeting point from a cross-cultural perspective. Everyone respects a devoted canine.” (153) Tell about a comfort pet you have experienced. Some pets were buried with their owner in some cultures. 10. “The cultural meaning of suicide in Japan is different. It’s viewed as selfless, even honorable act. The samurai introduced the practice of SEPPUKU, literally ‘cutting the abdomen,’ self-disembowelment.” (155). There seems to be expanding conversation about physician assisted dying. Share your feelings about this possibility. 11. “The sixty-seven skulls in Dona Ely’s house were NATITAS. The name translates to ‘flat noses’ or ‘little pug-nosed ones,’ an adorable infantilization of a skull. To be a natita is to have special powers to connect the living and the dead. As Paul put it, ‘Natitas have to be human skulls, but not every skull gets to be a natita.” (189-190). Women like Dona Ana and Dona Ely represent a threat to the Catholic Church. Through magic, belief, and their natitas, they facilitate a direct, unmediated connection to the powers of the beyond, no male intermediary required. It reminded me of Santa Muerte, the Mexican Saint of Death, who is unapologetically female.” (195) Skulls seem to be very present in Mexican markets, homes, and churches. Compare and contrast how skulls are viewed in your community. 12. “Death avoidance is not an individual failing; it’s a cultural one. Facing death is not for the faint-hearted. It is far too challenging to expect that each citizen will do so on his or her own. Death acceptance is the responsibility of all death professionals…It is the responsibility of those who have been tasked with creating physical and emotional environments where safe, open interaction with death and dead bodies is possible.” (232) How do you think and feel about dying and dead bodies? How can you become more open in this conversation and living fully even as you ponder the reality of death and dying? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - vc#Dec The
United States faces dangerous threats from Russia, China, North Korea,
Iran, terrorists, climate change, and future pandemics. The great peril
to the country, however, comes not from abroad but from within, from
none other than ourselves. The question facing us is whether we are
prepared to do what is necessary to save our democracy.
If American democracy is to
endure, This is a vital work for a decisive time.”
Releasing Conversation: Share your name and identify from the list above your strongest habit as a citizen. Also share the one you need to improve. A.
“The Bill of Rights made progress in protecting individuals against the
federal government but not the states…The Civil War resolved what the
Constitution had not, and established the supremacy of the national
government over the states.” (11) Discuss the
relationship between the states and the federal government today. Who
has more power? Is that as it should be in your opinion? Think about
“the electoral college”? E.
“None of what is essential for a democracy to thrive is automatically
passed on from generation to generation.To the contrary, it needs to be
taught, including its history, values, and obligations. There is no
accepted national curriculum. It is impossible to preserve a system
that is not widely understood or valued.” (33) What is the state of civic education? Share your experience as a student, educator, and citizen. 1. BE INFORMED.-- “An INFORMED CITIZEN is someone who understands the fundamentals as to how the government and the economy and society operate, the principal challenges facing the country at home and abroad, and the contending options or policies for dealing with those challenges.” (41-42) 2. GET INVOLVED.-- “What matters in a democracy is not the views of a majority of the populace but those of a majority willing to get involved politically.” (56) Share examples of where this matters. “Ronald Reagan in 1989: ‘All great change in America begins at the dinner table. So, tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the talking begins…That would be a very American thing to do.’” (58) Do you talk about democracy and our nation at your dinner table? 3. STAY OPEN TO COMPROMISE.-- “Compromise is the process by which all relevant parties are incentivized to go alone with an alternative arrangement. An all-or-nothing approach to bargaining will almost always result in the latter.” (65) 4. REMAIN CIVIL.-- “George W. Bush expressed it this way: ‘Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment; it is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos.’ Opponents on one issue need not become opponents on all issues, much less enemies. Civility greatly decreases the chances that disagreements will spill over into violence.” (75-76) “Changing one’s mind can be a sign of strength and wisdom, especially if new facts emerge or if what were thought to be facts are shown to be otherwise.” (78) 5. REJECT VIOLENCE.-- “There are multiple alternatives to using violence in pursuit of political ends…double down on efforts…registering more citizens to vote…civil disobedience, or nonviolent political action…accept the penalties …protest …good trouble (John Lewis) …Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and others.” (90-91) 6. VALUE NORMS.-- “Norms are the unwritten traditions, rules, customs, conventions, codes of conduct, and practices that reduce friction and brittleness in a society….Laws provide the scaffolding of a society, but norms are what fill it in and make it livable, the furniture within the building, so to speak.” (97) 7. PROMOTE THE COMMON GOOD.-- “Equal opportunity is not to be equated or confused with equal outcomes. To the contrary, unequal outcomes in society are inevitable, the result of what we are born with, and what is garnered from effort, experience, opportunity, luck, and more. A society does, however, have to grapple with whether to limit inequality, either by forming a government-provided safety net or setting a ceiling on income, inheritance, or wealth through taxation, or some combination of the two.” (117) 8. RESPECT GOVERNMENT SERVICE.-- “Why should we want young Americans to perform one or two years of government service? One reason is that a common experience would help break down some of the barriers that have arisen owing to geography, class, race, religion, education, language, and more.” (127) “It would also expose young people to government, breaking down the perception of government as alien from the people.” (128) 9. SUPPORT THE TEACHING OF CIVICS.-- “No people should assume their history, their heritage, and what is central to it, is widely known among them much less automatically handed down. Collective identity, along with an appreciation and understanding of what lies behind it, is a matter of teaching, not biology. This is true of particular groups of people, be they defined by religion or gender or race or geography or history. It is less true of a people who constitute a nation, in this case the American nation.” (134) 10.
PUT COUNTRY FIRST.-- “I speak of the obligation to put the country and
American democracy before party and person. This obligation is a thread
that helps bind the fabric of this society and is an essential element
of patriotism.” (148)
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Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd 
Visit 
George Baldwin, who will be with us on May 10th, was a local
pastor for twelve years and a seminary professor for fourteen years. He
felt called to live in voluntary poverty and moved into a community in
Kansas City. 
David says: I invite you to read the US Constitution and Bill of Rights as
well as other resources about citizenship. I invite you to take
the test for US Citizenship. I invite you to pick a specific
amendment or portion of the Constitution to introduce in depth with the
group. You can also take The US Citizenship Test to see how you would do.
One
of the world’s leading authorities on the neuroscience of human
conditions. Her work on the neurobiology of romantic love and
loneliness has been published in top academic journals and covered by
The New York Times, CNN, and National Geographic, among others. In Wired for Love,
Stephanie tells not just a science story but also a love story.
She shares revelatory insights into how and why we fall in love, what
makes love last, and how we process love lost – all grounded in
cutting-edge findings in brain chemistry and behavioral science.
In
his third encyclical, Pope Francis reflects on a topic of great
important: human solidarity and friendship. Following his
election to the papacy, Pope Francis first greeted the world with the
words Fratelli e sorelle – “brothers and sisters.” In this
encyclical, he continues to address all men and women as his brothers
and sisters, calling us to consider what our common brotherhood
requires of us. By fostering a genuine affection for all, we
affirm the dignity of every human person created in the image and
likeness of God.
By
the end of the 18th century, Freemasonry in America had advanced to the
shores of the Mississippi River. With the advent of the Louisiana
Purchase, the population began to shift westward. Freemasonry
followed suit and, in many cases, led the way. Freemasons were
among the pioneers who traveled across what was called the “the great
American desert,” and, upon settling in their new homes, wanted to
resume their symbolic journeys as Freemasons. Early in the 19th
century those pioneers, in the interest of time and limiting the
grueling travel back to the eat, called upon the closest established
group of Masons to charter their lodges – the Grand Lodge of Missouri.
Fascinated
by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty embarks
on a global expedition to discover how other cultures care for the
dead. From Zoroastrian sky burials to wish-granting Bolivian
skulls, she investigates the world’s funeral industry – especially
chemical embalming – and suggest that the most effective traditions are
those that allow mourners to personally attend to the body of the
deceased. Exquisitely illustrated by artist Landis Blair, this
book is an adventure into the morbid unknown, a fascinating tour
through the unique ways people everywhere confront mortality. 
“Richard
Haass has turned his keen mind