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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 private consulation to organizations and other services as requested, not listed on our public website.)
This page is continuously updated.
Events listed by date, earlist first

 2024 PROGRAMS
ANNOUNCEMENTS - LINKS - REPORTS - DETAILS
General Announcements Link to eBlast Archive
1982 - 2012 Archive on request About CRES participation
.
On-line Archived Program Announcements and Reports
 
2023
 2022  2021  2020  2019  2018  2017  2016  2015  2014  2013
         
 

About Vital Conversations
Program 2d Wed 1-2:30 pm  Coffee 4th Mon 8 am
Photos and reports are arranged by month
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec

Transcendent meanings from COVID?
Essay for the Interfaith Council Newsletter  also  yellow box on Vern's Sidebar page


#240103
 
NEW YEAR UPDATE

Last December 27 I discovered this and wrote:
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.

MORE ON 9/11 AND OTHER FOLLIES

* “For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure . . . ." --Rilke

A week later, except for the missing vegetables, this art seems unmolested:
 


January 7: small stones on the perimeter seem to have been added with words like prayers. Long-stem rosebuds, symmetrically placed, appear half way in to the center.

February 22: a couple pieces of fire wood have been added in the middle of the large circle -- is this a trivial addition by someone unaware of the symbolic meaning of the art, or does this represent the conflagration of the Middle East? -- or some other significance which escapes me?


Feb 27 -- Except for the firewood art is still mainly unmolested for two months in the park in the entire KC region best known for demonstrations of all sorts.




#240112Brooks
No layman in Kansas City has done more
to promote interfaith understanding and comity
than Al Brooks, so we are eager to share this announcement:



Kansas City’s cultural landscape is once again set to be illuminated on the silver screen, this time through the lens of Oscar-winning filmmaker and University of Kansas Professor Kevin Willmott. Known for his screenplay “BlacKkKlansman,” Willmott’s latest project promises to be a cinematic exploration of themes that resonate deeply within the heart of Kansas City through the life of Alvin Brooks.

In a city where the tapestry of history is rich with stories of civil rights battles and cultural evolution, Willmott’s film is expected to weave a narrative that not only honors this history but also reflects the ongoing journey of Kansas City’s diverse community. This new production comes at a time when the city’s civil rights stories, exemplified by local activists like Alvin Brooks, are increasingly gaining recognition.

Brooks, a civil rights icon whose memoir was released in 2021, represents the resilient spirit of KC. His decades-long fight for justice and equality echoes the sentiments that Willmott’s film aims to capture. Brooks’ story, from his time as a police officer to becoming a pivotal figure in the city’s civil rights movement, illustrates the complex layers of the city’s past, much like the narratives that Willmott has skillfully brought to life in his previous works.

Willmott’s approach to storytelling, often interlaced with profound social commentary, has the potential to spark conversations and reflections on issues that are as relevant today as they were in Brooks’ era.

The film is also a testament to the artistic and creative talents that thrive in KC. With a local luminary like Willmott at the helm, the production is set to showcase the city not just as a backdrop but as a character in its own right. It’s an opportunity to highlight the city’s landmarks, its unique vibe, and the stories of its people.

Moreover, Willmott’s involvement in this project reaffirms Kansas City’s position as a growing hub for arts and culture. The city’s evolving narrative is being shaped by those who know it best – its artists, activists and storytellers. As Willmott brings his cinematic vision to life, he also brings with him a spotlight that shines on the richness of Kansas City’s history and its potential future.

In anticipation of this film, Kansas City stands ready to see its stories told through the eyes of one of its own. Willmott’s film is not just a mirror held up to the city’s past; it’s a doorway into understanding the tapestry of experiences that make Kansas City what it is today. As audiences await its release, there’s a palpable excitement about how this film will contribute to the ongoing narrative of a city that continues to inspire and evolve.

Katie Baldwin

The filming is underway now. To complete the production costs of $110,000, your contribution is desired. Direct your 501(c)(3) tax-deductible gift to the Black Archives of Mid-America (Brooks Documentary), 1722 E 17th Terrace, Kansas City, MO 64108. Th
ose who help fund the project will be listed as producers in the film.




#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 I was thankful to be 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.     
#ThurmanInBrooks   
  
     In a NYTimes column, David Brooks discusses Robert Thuman's summary of the principles of non-violence. (We can add that it was in meeting Thuman that Gandhi said, “It may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of nonviolence [Gandhi's satyagrapha, or 'Truth-force'] will be delivered to the world.” Later King went to India himself, and kept a photo of Gandhi above his desk.)
     Here is a passage from Brooks which includes the summary: 
To be a good citizen, it is necessary to be warmhearted, but it is also necessary to master the disciplines, methods and techniques required to live well together: how to listen well, how to ask for and offer forgiveness, how not to misunderstand one another, how to converse in a way that reduces inequalities of respect. In a society with so much loneliness and distrust, we are failing at these social and moral disciplines.
     Similarly, to create social change, it is necessary to have good intentions, but it is also necessary to master the disciplines and techniques of effective social action. The people in the civil rights organizations in the 1950s and ’60s spent a lot of time rigorously thinking about which methods would work and which would backfire. Thurman’s emphasis on methodological rigor and technique influenced King’s brilliant and often counterintuitive principles of nonviolent resistance:

     1. It is not a method for cowards. It is active nonviolent resistance to evil.
     2. It seeks not to defeat or humiliate the opponent but to win his friendship and understanding in order to move toward a beloved community.
     3. The attack is directed against the forces of evil rather than against the people who happen to be doing the evil.
     4. One must have a willingness to accept suffering without retaliation, to accept blows from an opponent without striking back. Unearned suffering is redemptive.
     5. It avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of the spirit. It is a refusal to hate.
     6. Nonviolent resistance is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice. It has a deep faith in the future.

There are obviously times when this nonviolent strategy is inappropriate — in a state of anarchy or war, when the very existence of your people is under threat. But these techniques did work in Birmingham, Selma, Chicago and beyond. Most important, they altered people’s souls, fortifying the state of consciousness of the disinherited, undermining the state of consciousness of the dominators and elevating the consciousness of those who looked on in awe and admiration.
     These thoughtful techniques are a long way from the tit-for-tat crudities that now often pass for public discourse, the tantrums of the merchants of rage, the 57 percent of Republicans and the 41 percent of Democrats who regard people in the other party as their enemies.
     As many have noted, we’re not going to solve our problems at the same level of consciousness on which we created them. If the national consciousness, the state of our national soul, is to repair, it will be because people begin to think as deeply as Thurman did and begin to be intolerant of the immoralities of their own side.
  #PeterJarosewycz



  Peter Jarosewycz, 1948-2024

We are greatly saddened by the death of our friend, Peter Jarosewycz. Throughout his own physical challenges, in so many ways in our community and beyond, he was a strong and faithful supporter of religious pluralism, and his constant underwriting of CRES efforts over the years must be acknowledged. He arranged many opportunities for CRES to present programs for various groups. His clear understanding of the profound and discriminating way CRES presents the special treasures of the Primal, Asian, and Monotheistic faiths, and the huge corpus of columns (947) CRES provided to The Kansas City Star, made him one of our chief advocates. The obituary appearing in the Star January 14, noted his extensive philanthropy, his study at the University of Chicago*, and support of Ukrainian causes. Although his presence was not commanding, there will be a huge gap in gatherings of interfaith organizations this year and forward. 

*
" . . . about my college, the University of Chicago.  They say that Chicago is a Baptist school where atheist professors teach Jewish students St. Thomas Aquinas. That’s your Interfaith America right there."  -- David Brooks
 
#240128GenevaNain






We are so proud of our former intern, Geneva Blackmer, MA, MESt, studying and working in Europe. She made many Kansas City friends and greatly enhanced the effectiveness of CRES in the community in the years she was here. She has now visited 26 countries is impressing her professors as she completes her PhD and her colleagues with her experience in electronic communications of many kinds and her work with numerous local and international interfaith organizations -- including CRES!

In fact, in discussing the project announced below, she bragged about the involvement CRES had with the formation of the North American Interfaith Network --  NAIN (in 1988 Vern was a member of the planning committee for its first conference, and this in turn, lead to CRES founding of the Kansas City Interfaith Council in 1989).

She currently works at the University of Bonn, Germany, in the field of Digital Religious Communication and holds a master’s degree in Religious and Ecumenical Studies. She has served as a Digital Literacy Instructor for Guiding Ohio Online, working to bridge the digital divide in rural, lower-income communities throughout that state. The discussion also addresses increasing technological hesitancy, social media awareness, and the discernment of misinformation in a digital space.

Below is a presentation she makes January 28 Sunday 2 pm Central Time in the US (CET=Central European Time).



The consequences of the Digital Divide are far-reaching, affecting education, employment, healthcare, and access to government assistance. Students without reliable internet access or necessary devices face significant barriers to online learning. Job seekers with limited digital skills may struggle to compete in the modern job market, perpetuating cycles of poverty. Inadequate access to technology can limit access to essential health information and services, exacerbating health disparities. Bridging the Digital Divide requires concerted efforts to ensure technology is more equitably distributed and that individuals of all backgrounds have the tools and knowledge to fully participate in the digital age.

Faith communities can play a crucial role in closing the digital divide by leveraging their resources to promote equitable access through actions like community technology centers, digital and media literacy programs, technology donations and drives, promoting affordable internet access, community empowerment and helping develop critical media literacy. By actively engaging in these initiatives faith leaders and congregations can contribute significantly to closing the digital divide and ensuring that all individuals have the opportunity to participate fully in the digital age.
https://mailchi.mp/e512c664f9db/nain-update-03-10684142

#240128GenevaNainAfter

-----------------------------------------------



Above is a screen shot from Geneva's Zoom lecture and discussion from Bonn, Germany, for dozens of American and Canadian friends involved with interfaith work. In addition to our very own favorite, Geneva, we reconnected with Betinna Gray, who with Vern, was on the planning committee in 1988 for the continent's first conference espressly for interfaith organizations, programs, and offices. You can read The New York Times report here. Betinna also remembered CRES arranging a continental NAIN-Connect in Kansas City some years back.

Using up-to-the-minute scholarship and published studies, made vivid by her own experiences, Geneva presented the surprisingly acute problem of inadequate access to critical digital information and opportunities and the alarming lack of digital content literacy, With so many occasions for religious ignorance and bias to shape our collective lives, this program made clear the harm from both mere misinformation and from pernicious disinformation. Acquainting digital users with such basic questions as the following would support more accurate information about various faiths and their adherents:
     
     * Where did you find this information?
     * Is this a reputable source?
     * Does your source of information have a particular bias?
     * What are the implications of posting this information?


Participants exchanged responses to this problem as well as how various groups employed digital media in their own religious organizations and in thinking about interfaith activities.
(CRES initiated our website in 1997 and has always managed it; so it is surprising how many faith groups are still wrestling with digital issues. We are grateful for the gifts of our friends who continue to make our digital work possible, as we are grateful for the opportunity to serve in so many ways since CRES was incorporated as a non-for-profit 501(c)3 in 1982, the oldest multi-faith civic formation, research, and educational institute in the area.)

#IFHarmony


 
February 1-7

To observe World Interfaith Harmony week, we offer one of our most cited essays, "Stealing Another's Faith." The question of honoring without misappropriating material from others is not so easy, and this essay raises awareness so faiths can be less in conflict and more in harmony. Read, download this PDF, and share this important essay by Vern -- with excerpts from Huston Smith and Harvey Cox.

 #EIHKC


update
 
The Ecumenical and Interfaith History of Greater Kansas City
 

 
This valuable resource for understanding interfaith work in Kansas City, linked from the CRES home page (right column) and directly available here
is now also available to researchers throughout the world through the ProQuest academic library database. Our former intern, Geneva Blackmer, prepared the history. The History includes both text and video. The website includes a page inviting additional contributions to further detail this critical, but often overlooked, dimension of religious and civic life in our region.



#CivilReligion
Discussion Notes

"Civil Religion"

“Civil Religion” has a bad name. Even sociologist Robert Bellah, who popularized the term in 1967, abandoned it because it has come to connote right-wing desires to fuse church and state as in the case of one proposed Constitutional amendment meant to recognize the “sovereignty of Christ.” But isn't citzenship -- beyond sectarian and partisan claims -- really a sacred gift and responsibility?

 --The first paragraph of Vern's essay, "Sacred Citizenship"
with (now-dated?) themes of Loyalty, Freedom, and American Greatness

Benjamin Franklin used the expression, "Public Religion." The term “Civil Religion” comes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

"Civil religion, also referred to as a civic religion, is the implicit religious values of a nation, as expressed through public rituals, symbols (such as the national flag), and ceremonies on sacred days and at sacred places (such as monuments, battlefields, or national cemeteries). It is distinct from churches, although church officials and ceremonies are sometimes incorporated into the practice of civil religion. Countries described as having a civil religion include France, the former Soviet Union, and the United States." -- Wikipedia

¤ More simply, civil religion is interpreting civil places, persons, and events within the categories of faith.
Thus Donald Trump is seen by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others as a "King Cyrus of Persia" figure delivering America (Israel) from the bondage of wicked Democratic control of the United States.

"The Almighty has his own purposes.  "Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."  If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him?" --Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural

Here are images over several centuries to provoke consideration of the phenomenon scholars have studied, especially since the 1967 paper by Bellah

The round image and the detail below it is the oculus in the rodunda of the US Capital. The final image shown here needs no identification for Kansas Citians.



stars,

SOME US HISTORY IN BRIEF

QUOTED AND PARAPHRASED

Because states had different established churches, the delegates at the1787 Constitutional Convention agreed that the national government should not establish any religion, with the the First Amendment ratified in 1791 which sspecified that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . " This did not, and has not, settled questions of the separation of chuch and state. 
* Can non-Christians be witnesses in federal courts? (settled)
* Federal support for missionaries to Indians continued. (ended)
* Paid Congressional chaplains continue, as well as in the armed forces.
* Should the postal service operate on Sundays?
* Should Christmas be a federal holiday (1870)? what about Columbus Day (1968) which some see as celebrating the genocide of American Indians?
* Can tax money be used to pay for playground equipment for parochial schools?
* Should students persuing theological studies have the same options for federal financial aid as students in engineering or music?
* Why was "Under God" added to the 1892 Pledge of Allegiance in 1954?
* Why did "In God We Trust" replace the original US motto of "E pluribus unum" in 1956?    
* Should we continue names of places that honor sectarian religious figures and places? -- St Louis (MO), San Francisco (CA), St Augustine (FL), the Vishnu Temple (Grand Canyon), Bethlehem (PA), Mount Zion (GA), and Mecca (CA)?
* Is a fetus a person? A fertilized egg? The Roman Catholic position holds that IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) is immoral for several reasons and the Alabama State Supreme Court has found IVF is illegal because a fertilized egg is a person.
Even after 1791, states continued to have established official and tax-supported churches. through gradually these practices ended. In 1833, Massachusetts became the last state to end its state religion.  But not until 1844 did New Jersey's constitution protect the right of anyone of any faith to be elected to office.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-ushistory1ay/chapter/religious-freedom/
https://undergod.procon.org/religion-in-the-original-13-colonies/#NewJersey



TWO EARLY EXAMPLES OF CIVIL RELIGION AND CHUCH-STATE SEPARATION

A Letter from the President
TO: The Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island
18 August 1790

.  .  . The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

. . . May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.

Geo: Washington

Treaty of Tripoli
"The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion." --negotiated under George Washington, approved unanimously by the U.S. Senate and signed by President John Adams in 1797.



ABOUT PUBIC PRAYER

Please see  https://cres.org/pubs/InterfaithPray.htm  for discussion and examples.
 

An opportunity to understand better who we as a community are
     1. No prayer or respectful silence
     2. Traditional prayers in turn (at one gathering or rotating over time)
     3. Inclusive prayers using universal language ("Spirit of Generations," etc)

Here is a sample of a prayer/utterance/meditation/poem seeking to be inclusive:
     Spirit of Community,
     vivid expression of our lives together in this town,
     we gather as atheists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists,
          and those with no particular label for our faith or no faith;
     and we rejoice in our pluralism, not only about religion,
          but in the different colors of our skin, the heritage and backgrounds
          that are ours, our different styles of individual and family life,
          and the diversity of our occupations and pursuits --
     we gather that we may better understand one another
          as we prepare advice to send to the City Council
          on the priorities we wish expressed in the budget for the coming year.
     May we listen to one another attentively and with compassion;
          and, as we feel best, contribute to the conversation
          with the insights we offer to one another.
     And may we always remember and celebrate that we are part of one another
          as we particpate in our own ways with our sundry gifts
          to our Community Spirit.
         

TWO COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS

The idea that the American colonies were established for religious freedom is misleading. New England settlers were largely Puritan and wanted religious freedom for themselves, but not others. Even New York (New Netherland) had to be forced by the Dutch West India Company to allow Jews to do business there. The colonies, especially the southern colonies, were chartered as commercial enterprises, not religious havens for al faiths.
     But a shout-out to Rhode Island, the 1663 charter for which did include the right for anyone to practice any religion, although there were some civic and political restrictions. And Pennsylvania, which at one time was the most diverse of the colonies, also welcomed folks of all faiths, though only Christians could vote.
 
Diana Eck, a distinguished researcher and scholar, made the claim in her day that the United States was the most religiously pluralistic country in the world. Now Great Britain has every right to challenge that, with the influx of immigrants from the former British Empire. The current (2024) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is Rishi Sunak, for example, is a Hindu. The city of Manchester, for example, can boast of pagans, Wiccans, Satanists, Zoroastrians, Taoists, Yazidis, Shamanists, Shintoists, followers of traditional African religions, Druids, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews. The King has embraced religious diversity.
     The United States, because of its size and the diversity of its immigrants, does offer a special environment for the world's faiths as they explore the core meaning of their faiths apart from the particular cultural inflections the immigrants associate with their faith. For example, Muslims from Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Egypt, Black communities in America, and other places have the opportunity to discover their faith expressed in different cultural contexts, and to uncover or develop a form of Islam apart from these particular cultural backgrounds, or one that fits best in a country, such as the United States, where the government welcomes the free practice of all faiths. Muslims, to continue this example, also have the opportunity to engage with other faiths, which they may not have been able to do in their native countries.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

PRAYER.-- Whether shared silence or prayer or affirmation or poem or mission statement or other use of time is best depends on the nature of the occasion, the expectations of the group, and other such factors. For example, when invited specifically to give the prayer on a regular occasion for a legislative body, one does not simply ask the members of the body to stand in silence in their chamber, violating and insulting their expectations. The same was true in my Rotary Club where  my opening phrase, "O Spirit of Generations" was picked up by other members when it was their turn to offer the opening prayer.
     So much depends on the occasion and expectations. For example, I learned from offering prayers to begin meetings of the KC City Council. You'll find them here: where you'll also find my reflections on my mistakes --"Where was God" in my prayer?--expectations are so important! On one occasion -- the installation of a judge, I gave a "Prologue," (item #5) as I called it; I was asked to do something that functioned like a prayer, but was not a prayer. These things are tricky, but I was apparently successful since my text was published in a legal journal.
     Again, I do believe one must honor expectations and the nature of the occasion. Silence would have been insulting and an opportunity to articulate an important expression of values lost. 
 
IN GENERAL, I think the problem of church-state separation is insoluble. What with chaplains for the Congress and in the military? Do soldiers have a right to exercise their religion by consulting with spiritual advisors? Are prisoners rightly deprived of their First Amendment rights to exercise their faith if they are jailed for theft? To what extent are tax dollars to pay for such services justified?
     I will not criticize Abraham Lincoln for obvious "civil religion" in his Second Inaugural. It spoke to the occasion in a powerful way that a merely civil text could not have done. I do not want the ceiling of the Rotunda painted over.
     I think the path forward is through recognition of America's diversity, including (as with a recent state execution, an atheist chaplain). One of the issues included above is "* Is a fetus a person?" I do not think we are likely to have the Alabama Supreme Court in vitro fertilization decision here without a political and judicial recognition of religious diversity, which would be a strong argument against the state's use of a single faith, Chrristianity, and just a portion of that faith, with many other Christians in profound disagreement (and those of other faiths as well)  to define a fertilized human egg as a person. (Read this decision's use of the Bible and Christian theologians to justify this obvious violation of church-state limits.) My 2006 multifaith assessment of when a fertilized egg becomes a person is here.
     Above I listed other problems, a couple marked resolved, such as whether mail should be delivered on Sundays, and others unresolved. I do not like Christmas as a federal holiday, or Columbus day, either, which insultys American Indians. I think moving custom toward recognition of diversity is all we can hope for in the immediate future. I think the example of Judge Waxse (now of blessed memory), who was a vocal supporter of the ACLU and strongly in favor of church-state separation, charted that way forward.


ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

¤ Vern's essay, "Sacred Citizenship"  available in PDF (two pages)

¤  On-line text of "Civil Religion In America" by Robert N Bellah
http://robertbellah.com/articles_5.htm

originally publisjed in 
Dædalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
in the issue entitled, Religion in America, Winter 1967, Vol. 96, No. 1, p1-21.
It was reprinted with comments and a rejoinder in The Religious Situation: 1968, p331-356.

¤  An important contribution to the discussion:
"Divided We Fall: America's Two Civil Religions" by Robert Wuthnow

https://moodle.swarthmore.edu/pluginfile.php/487604/course/section/169180/wuthnow.pdf
Christian Century 1988 April   20, p395-399


¤  Two brilliant books on this topic by Forrest church:
     * The American Creed: A Spiritual and Patriotic Primer, 2002
     * The Separation of Church and State: Writings on a Fundamental Freedom by America's Founders, 2004.


¤  Abraham Lincoln's 1838 conception of "political religion":
 https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm


¤ The Christian Persecution Narrative Rings Hollow
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/25/opinion/christianity-evangelicals-persecution-faith.html
     
¤  A couple sites for images

https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/images-of-liberty-andpower-presidents-day-apotheosis-of-washington


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apotheosis_of_Washington



#Shared



TWO EVENTS FOR BUILDING
UNDERSTANDING and RELATIONSHIPS

Since 1982, CRES has promoted community and international understanding. Here are two events that demonstrate our commitment, especially in these recent extraordinarily difficult months for folks particularly attuned to the Holy Land and the increase in religious prejudice in our own nation.
   
First:

 
Join a 1-hour gathering
to show care for each other
and all that's happening in our world today



Church of the Resurrection
February 25 Suday 2-3 pm


This Sunday, February 25th at 2:00pm an event titled "CREATE SHARED HOPE THROUGH PERSONAL CONNECTION" will be held in-person at Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, KS at 13720 Roe in Building C Basement.

Dr. David E Nelson, president of the Human Agenda and CRES senior associate minister, is a key figure in this opportunity for Jews, Muslims, and Christians to share hope in the context of current events through personal connection.

From the event's description: "As we take in all that is happening in the world, we are tempted to retreat into our own safe tribes and families and yet our hearts long for a wider reach and a more inclusive sharing.Deep listening and strong sharing can allow us to find hope within our diverse paths and our individuals pains. As we listen to understand and share to be heard and understood, something special can happen. We together find strength to hope, ideas for action, and courage to stay human."

RSVP at bit.ly/sharedhope   (Advance contact information for the meeting was: Andy at campandy@me.com (913) 481-3738 or Ken at kensonnenscheinmd@gmail.com (913) 205-5962.)

 ---------------------------------------


UPDATE AND REPORT: By all accounts, the gathering was a successful, even moving opportunity for people to build relationships with each other. Activities included small group discussions.
     Folks particularly expressed gratitude for David Nelson's leadership. David is an expert on Appreciative inquiry and in designing interfaith encounters.

Here are two entries from https://mjsight.wordpress.com/  
February 26, 2024

¤ The humble and amazing David Nelson, from The Human Agenda led us in the Appreciative Inquiry process. He asked each of us to “talk through one significant experience / personal story that shaped us – that gives hope in times of fear.” When I first read the question I couldn’t really balance the two parts of that question. Until we started talking.
     The magic happened when one at a time, as a pair we each interviewed the other. Six minutes to actively listen to the other person (no talking). After twelve undistracted minutes of listening, it’s incredible what we learned about our partner.
     Hope. It’s what I was looking for. My partner was articulate and insightful – a Turkish Muslim gentleman, Mehmed who came to the US from Turkey 30 days before September 11th. I listened to him explain how the events of 9/11 made him feel, his subsequent work at the Dialogue Center of Kansas City, and what he and his wife and family are now feeling – after October 7. I grew interested in knowing more. His recount of 9/11 and the days and months thereafter made me feel with 
him what it must have been like as a Muslim at that time in the United States.  His mother was fearful to go out wearing her hijab. I could feel it was a terrifying time for them.
     When it was my turn, I re-told my October 7th story, and my experience that day. The fear, the anger, and the heartbreak for my people. The fear that our children must have been feeling. But when we returned from Israel, somewhere inside of me was a desire/need to meet a Muslim. To put a face with a real person, and to hear the yin to the yang of all that I’ve been consuming as I learned more about Hamas for the past six months.
     Mehmed (a Turkish Muslim) spoke of 9/11. October 11 was Israel’s 9/11. A connection…shared empathy…a feeling of being heard.
     I have a feeling that everyone in that room connected with the other over a story, a relevant experience, and just listening to someone else’s challenge.
     I think can say with confidence that each of us in that room left different than when we walked in.

¤ I thought the Shared Hope event was very good. How [David] facilitated us to open up to our partner of the day was excellent. I was able to connect with a young lady who was born in South Korea, raised in China and now has lived in the KC area for 10 years. Her viewpoints of America and American life were very interesting. I am inspired to reach out to others that I do not know currently and learn about their perspective of life and how to improve our shared time on earth. 

-----
Below are the texts from the card everyone received at the meeting, and we are glad for permission to include it -- both sides -- here.

Gathering for Our Shared Hope for Humanity,  February 25, 2024

Assumptions of Appreciative Inquiry 
* In every human being and organization something works.
* What we focus on becomes our reality.
* Reality is created in the moment, and there are multiple realities.
* Being present to another person influences the person in some way.
* People have more confidence and comfort to journey to the future (the unknown) when they carry forward part of the past (the known.) 
* If we carry parts of the past forward, they should be what are best about the past.
* It is important to value and celebrate differences.
* The language we use creates our reality.
Topic Statement: Our Hope for Today
* The human family in its delightful diversity shares a common creation and a common hope for community. 
* In times of division and war, as we take in all that is happening in the world, we are tempted to retreat into our own safe tribes and families and yet our hearts long for a wider reach and a more inclusive sharing. 
* Deep listening and strong sharing can allow us to find hope within our diverse paths and our individuals pains. As we listen to understand and share to be heard and understood, something special can happen. 
* Together we find strength to hope, ideas for action, and courage to stay human.

1. Why was it important for you to be here today?  What brought you to this gathering?
2. Tell me a story from your faith tradition or personal experience that gives hope in times of fear.  What does that story suggest about restoring, nurturing, and maintaining community?  What can your faith community contribute to a more peaceful world?
3. Do you have a suggestion for a next step from today's gathering?


#JCM

Second:

Offering experience and study,
CRES promotes the wisdom of Primal, Asian, and Monotheistic faiths
to treat the crises of the environmental, personal, and social pandemics.
This was live-streamed on YouTube 2024 March 3 Sunday 2 pm CT,
co-moderated by CRES former intern Geneva Blackmer in Bonn
and including panelist, Kansas City's own Alan Edelman:

Jewish-Christian-Muslim Dialogue:
Recentering Our Common Humanity Amidst Conflict



presented The Interfaith Center at Miami University, and cosponsored by CRES,
 the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council, URI North America, and the Dialogue Institute of Kansas City.
 
PROGRAM THEME: As tensions continue to escalate around the globe in response to the war in Gaza, Antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents have reached alarmingly high rates in North America (with the Anti-Defamation League and the Council on American-Islamic Relations reporting an increase of 200-300% since October 7th). As an interfaith community, this reality calls us to reflect upon how we can remain in relationship with one another, and maintain recognition of our common humanity, even when it feels like our lives are under attack. We invite you to join us in an honest and open dialogue which considers how the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths might guide us towards a path of reconciliation in our relationships with one another and the way we interact in the world.

UPDATE AND COMMENT:
RECORDING on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH1D92gLadg

With a series of questions led by the co-moderators and comments among themselves, the panelists faithfully spoke from the heart of their own traditions with respect and high regard for the faiths of the others. This meant perspectives were sometimes aligned, sometimes varied, but always in the service of understanding and justice.
     Among the many issues raised, particularly for interfaith organizations and individuals doing interfaith work, is the unfair expection that religious groups should solve what are political problems. The conflict in Gaza is not a Jewish-Muslim problem; it is a political problem. Yet the panelists agreed that identifying and uplifting the demands of justice is a religious obligation. It would be interesting to have additional conversation about this vexing dilemma.
     (A possibly relevant discussion, also available on YouTube, is "Interfaith Understanding is too Slight a Thing.")
     Perhaps not emphasized, but implicit in the panelists comments, I think, is the failure within communities identified with each tradition to uphold the morally urgent principles of justice. This is true not only in the Holy Land but also where we may be of most immediate service, in our own local communities.
     The entire conversation was important, useful, and at times, inspiring. Knowing that so many of us are suffering as we seek to fully understand the unfolding horrors of the news, and finding ways to recognize that suffering in one another and one another's communities, is surely a critical step toward the time envisioned in the closing prayer, offered by Alan Edelman:
A Prayer for Peace

May we see the day when war and bloodshed cease, when a great peace will embrace the whole world.
     Then nation will not threaten nation, and humankind will not again know war.
     For all who live on earth shall realize we have not come into being to hate or to destroy.
     We have come into being to praise, to labor and to love.
     Compassionate God, bless the leaders of all nations with the power of compassion.
     Fulfill the promise conveyed in Scripture: I will bring peace to the land, and you shall lie down and no one shall terrify you.
     I will rid the land of vicious beasts and it shall not be ravaged by war.
     Let love and justice flow like a mighty stream. Let peace fill the earth as the waters fill the sea.

(from the liturgy of the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism, adapted and translated from the Hebrew of Rabbi Natan Sternhartz,
19th Century Ukraine)
--V
#LentenEssay



For our Christian Friends:

The St Paul's Episcopal Church asked me to contribute a thought about the last of the "Seven Last Words of Christ" as part of the Lenten season.

"Father, 'into thy hands I commend my spirit.'" --Luke 23:46
 
This series is based on the Seven Last Words from the Cross.


For the past few weeks, I have been drawn repeatedly to Gallery P5 of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. A 13th Century wood sculpture labeled “The Dead Christ” hangs there, high on the east wall. Last week I realized my visits had become for me one of the “Stations of the Cross.”

The image was originally painted flesh tones with streaks of red for blood. With the nail holes as well, I’m sure that the drama portrayed was deeply meaningful to its Catalan congregation; but today, almost colorless, the starkness of the art strikes me not so much as the historical Jesus but rather as the Christ of faith. For such contemplation, the final text in this Lenten series seems to fit: “Father, ‘into your hands I commit my spirit’” (Luke 23:46, quoting Psalm 31:5).

This absolute, complete surrender to God the Father, is parallel in form, through not in content, with the radical acceptance of what is necessary, amor fati, “love of fate,” an idea often associated with the anti-Christian philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, though it is an ancient Stoic theme.

I am a Christian and not a Stoic because the Christ of faith leads me beyond myself into the conditions and situations of others. Fr. Steven wrote a few days ago, “we see all of the human experience, all of humanity’s shortcomings and misgivings, all of our successes and joys intersect on a cross.” Yes.

So how can I see “The Dead Christ” who took upon himself the suffering of the whole world and not see the violence at Union Station, the war in Ukraine, the famine in Gaza? By following Christ, my love can embrace both the horrors and the mercy and beauty the world offers and which He redeems. 

Of course the soldiers stretched out the arms of Jesus to intensify his agony and shame. This is often portrayed. But this portrayal, this “Dead Christ,” with no cross and no historic background shown, to me presents that moment between life and death as he yields utterly to the will of the Father. With this shift of perspective, the agony of stretched arms becomes the blooms of cosmic love, a universal embrace for us, in our minute ways, to imitate.
--Vern Barnet





#240402
THE WRITE BRIDGE
Winter 2023/2024 Journal Edition:
"Solitude & Solidarity"

Vern read his entry below 2024 April 2 Tuesday 4:30-6:30 as part of a Read-Around, recorded here
beginning at about 43:45. In the Journal, it appears on page 66. Besides Vern, another alumnus from The Kansas City Star is George Gurley, who describes himself as a "professional octogenarian," another similarity the two share. His reading of his poem, "What You've Left Behind," is on page 69; and in the recording, at about 14:30
     
An in-person event celebrating the publication is April 27 Saturday 3:30-6:30 at the Watkins Museum, Lawrence, KS. Thanks to the  Anamcara Press staff led by Maureen (Micki) Carroll, "Editor, Photographer, cat-herder." The WINTER 2023/24 Journal is available in Kansas City at Prospero's, 1800 W 39, and on line.




 
Two details from the scroll -- (1) Su Shi alone, (2) the moonlight picnic
(The story moves from right to left. The entire scroll is on Wiki.)
In the left detail, Su Shi, facing right, is in the upper left corner.

An American Looks at Su Shi’s Night Portrayed in Qiao Zhongchang’s
"Illustration to the Second Prose Poem on the Red Cliff"


     You left your friends to be alone,
     unsettled into nature’s rocks and streams,
     familiar trees were changed as moonlight shown
     into mystery and history’s regimes.
     The overgrowth and tangles trip your voice
     to shout into the cliff which echoes out
     a question charged, Do we have fate or choice?
     With crane’s sharp cry your quiet boat marks doubt.

     I see you dream Immortals in your home, 
     but what is space and time and really real?
     How much environment, how much genome?
     Are choices freely made or by fate's wheel?

     So Han, or Gettysburg, or World Trade plots—
     In God’s great gambling house, are such just slots?

Qiao Zhongchang was active in the early 12th Century. The handscroll (629 cm -- 248 in -- 18 feet -- length) inspiring this sonnet was itself inspired by the earlier poem by Su Shi (late 11th Century), who was jailed for his political opinions. This world-famous work is in the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO. Because of its age, it is rarely displayed. The Red Cliff was the site of a decisive battle in 208/9 at the end of the Han dynasty prior to the beginning of the Three Kingdoms.
     The story in brief: Su Shi and a couple buddies go for a midnight picnic with wine and fish. For a time Su Shi and his friends are separated. "And to climb up trees twisted like horned dragons, I pulled myself up to the precarious nests of falcons, and peered down at the hidden palace of the River God Pingh Yi. My two guests were unable to follow me this far. I suddenly let out a sharp cry. The plans and trees were startled and shook; mountains resounded, valleys echoed. Winds arose, and the water become agitated. For my part, I became hushed and 
melancholy, awed, and fearful. Then I began to tremble so that I could no longer remain there." As they returned by boat, a crane overhead let out a piecing cry. That night Su Shi dreamt of two Daoists who he thinks might have been the crane. Waking, he looks for the Daoists and wonders if the whole sequence was real.



#Voss

Occasionally I'm asked to write a "blurb" about a book, and I am often happy to read and prepare a such a comment. I actually had written about an earlier book,
What Number is God?  a couple years into my weekly 1994-2012 column for The Kansas City Star, which you can read here.

Now Dr Sarah Voss invited me to write about her new book, Math Mystic's Guide to Creative Spirituality, available in hard cover, paperback, and ebook. Since the other blurbs were from a physicist, psychologist, and two mathematicians, I wrote within a religious context:

Do you want to know the truth? Do you want to know what is real? Both the languages of mathematical science and the revelations of faith claim to offer us truth. But with a phase/phrase change from metaphors to mathaphors and from theology to matheology, Sarah Voss, the mathematician-mystic, constructs bridges between the two languages so we can better understand--and improve--reality.
--VERN BARNET, minister emeritus,
Center for Religious Experience and Study
#Shouse
Here's another recent "blurb"--


Deborah Shouse, who used to write the Love Story (not advice!) column for The Kansas City Star, writes on many subjects (from several volumes in the Yes, You Can financial series to Antiquing for Dummies (with Ron Zoglin) to two books about people who are living with dementia and their care partners: Love in the Land of Dementia: Finding Hope in the Caregiver's Journey and Connecting in the Land of Dementia: Creative Activities to Explore Together. In fact she and Ron have presented their dementia stories and ideas in England, New Zealand, Chile, Costa Rica, India, Italy, and Turkey.

She has written hundreds of articles, essays, and short stories, and a novel, An Old Woman Walks Into a Bar. Shortly after completing the novel, Deborah's older daughter Hilee died from a drug overdose. Undertaking the process of writing to, and receiving letters from, her dead daughter, was remarkable spiritual medicine which might help many others who experience such 
devastating loss.

Deborah asked me to write one of the blurbs for this harrowing,
but ultimately life-affirming, book. This is what I wrote:

Letters From the Ungrateful Dead: A Grieving Mom's Surprising Correspondence with Her Deceased Adult Daughter,  by Deborah Shouse, is a spiritual testament to many truths. Here are three.
    
° First, whether one is a believer or not, death may end a life but it does not end a relationship. Just as we can sense connection with those we love even when we are separated by many miles, so our lives remain interwoven even when death parts us by days and years.
     
° Second, in the words of Alfred Tennyson: "I am a part of all that I have met." We are who we are because of others, and to varied degrees can know how they  think and feel. Sir Philip Sidney's sonnet, "My True Love Hath My Heart," employs the conventional poetic conceit of the exchange of hearts, but its very convention demonstrates how legitimate Shouse's exercise actually is.
     
° A third point: the great Iranian mystic, Yahya Suhrawardi, saw that through imagination, more than any other method, certain truths can be found. William Blake put it this way: "Imagination is Eternity." By accessing Imagination, writing to, and receiving letters from, her dead daughter, Shouse discovered in their relationship a kind of healing truth.
--The Rev. Vern Barnet, DMin
minister emeritus, The World Faiths Center for Religious Experience and Study

I knew the this was too long, so I am delighted the editors were able to distill a useful point to invite readers into the book's astonishing and revelatory exercise. This link will take you to an interview about the book.
     Also: visit deborahshousewrites.com/  and  thecreativityconnection.com/

   






SEVEN DAYS 

#SevenDays2024




The themes help us focus on kindness in seven different ways, on seven different days.
2024 April
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.


#GenevaCommentary


The Future of Interfaith Work

Perhaps the most significant recent comment about interfaith work was just published by the Interfaith Council of Metropolitan Washington, a critique of
the many shallow and self-defeating approaches to interfaith work I've seen in my 40-some years of labor in this area.

           
The commentary says that the over-emphasis on commonalities has undermined using the wisdom of the world's distinct traditions toward the "restoration of the environment,
the dignity of the human person,
and the healing of our broken community
."  

This was written by our former intern, Geneva Blackmer, now in Germany where she is a research assistant at the University of Bonn. Because of her work with a dozen interfaith groups, we can hope her message will change things.
 
If you'd like to see what she wrote on the agency's website, click here. Or for conveneince, you'll find it right below the logo.  

But first, a "save the date" note: Above we show Geneva with Al Brooks in 2016 when none of us would have guessed that we are now ready to announce that the feature about Al by Oscar-winning Kevin Willmott premieres Wednesday, June 19 (Juneteen) at Screenland, 408 Armour Rd, North Kansas City. Since I was the developmental editor for Al's memoir, I was one of many people Kevin interviewed for this film. With two showings that evening, times and other information will be announced shortly.                                                                      --Vern


Here is Geneva's commentary:
What is the Future of Interfaith Work?
   

April 26, 2024

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the interfaith movement is headed towards a radical paradigm shift. As young people around the world exhibit a rapid decline in religious affiliation, important questions arise not only regarding the sustainability of the movement, but also its relevance in contemporary society. Authentic interfaith engagement is inherently advantageous and well positioned to address all the great crises of our time. It is a sacred space where we can behold the wisdom of our many beloved traditions, towards the restoration of the environment, the dignity of the human person, and the healing of our broken community. It is the place where we can arrive as our wholly authentic selves- where the complexity and intersectionality of our human identities are embraced and celebrated. And yet, contrary to common interfaith discourse, these aims prove to be largely aspirational.
     
Despite the interfaith movement’s vision to aspire towards justice, equity, unity, and peace, interfaith spaces have become remarkably fragmented. Our collective understanding of interfaith engagement is often quite superficial- satisfied with mere religious tolerance and an overemphasis on sameness rather than difference. This emphasis on commonality inadvertently encourages conformity with Western epistemology, and the perpetuation of colonialism and Christian privilege. In this context, the use of the word “colonial” aims to describe the academic discourse surrounding “the experience, knowledge, history, and dynamics which are the result of the process of colonization” (Crist 2021).
     
In effect, interfaith activity often inevitably serves as simply a more legitimate form of spiritual bypassing. In the face of systemic injustice, its allyship frequently equates to pleasing words and empty gestures that uphold the same oppressive structures it ideologically opposes. Often this is a consequence of our tendency to boast of religious diversity, while lacking any real racial, social, and cultural diversity. Attempts at radical inclusivity become limited when most participants are disproportionately white and demographically homogeneous.
     
The absence of youth in religious spaces also speaks to a larger problem regarding a lack of accountability. Young people will not tolerate our inefficacy, nor will they find safety in spaces that cater to the comfortability of their most privileged members. For the interfaith movement to effectively fulfill its mission, it seems inevitable that we must work towards pragmatic accountability for our historical relationship with, and legacy of, colonialism. Are we, as an interfaith community, brave enough to admit the ways in which individuals, religious organizations, and institutions, directly or indirectly contribute to the perpetuation of inequities?
     
My hope is that we will seize the opportunity to do better. That we will make the decisions now which set a new precedent for the future. That we can meet new voices with embrace, rather than resistance, and see to the allocation of our resources in ways which produce equity rather than uphold disparity. Perhaps then, future generations will return to a view of religion and spirituality as a means of transformation and transcendence, rather than an obstacle to progress, and we can collectively work together towards the restoration of environment, person, and community. After all, is there any option left for us?

By Geneva Blackmer
Interim Director
The Interfaith Center at Miami University
References
Barnet, Vern. “A View of Our Desacralized Society and the World’s Religions
     as a Whole System.” CRES. 2005. https://cres.org/
Crist, Teresa A. Decolonizing Interfaith Interaction: Common Humanity and
     Colonial Legacies.
ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2021.
Pew Research Center, June 13, 2018, “The Age Gap in Religion Around the World” 


 #Aporia200524         #Aporia




From Aporia to Praise:
TO BE SCHEDULED
(postponed from 2020 May 25)
A very, very late observance of
the 50th anniversary of Vern Barnet's ordination
Aporia: "impasse, puzzlement, doubt."
 
      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?
* Doing theology is less like mathematics and more like expounding why you love someone.
* My passion for "world religions" in the context of the crises of secularism.
* The mystic's vision (amour fati - love of fate) and the public expression in worship.


#BrooksFilm   #Juneteenth



  Film About Al Brooks Premieres


No one in the Kansas City area has done more to promote interfaith understanding -- as well as addressing racism, sexism, homophobia, and all forms of prejudice keeping us from seeing one another as sacred children of the universe -- than our friend, Alvin Brooks. One of the greatest privileges of my life was to help Al with his powerful and fascinating memoir. Now 92, Al is still is going  strong, recently winning a seat on the Hickman Mills School Board because he cares about kids. His heavy schedule of speaking and consultation continues apace. We are so blessed to have Al's healing energy given to us.

Now Kevin Willmott, the prize-winning filmmaker (with Spike Lee he shared an Academy Award for BlacKkKlansman), is premiering his film about Al's life (so far!), Binding Us Together (for which I was developmental editor), premiering locally  on Juneteenth at the Screenland Armour theater. Here is an announcement (more below):


PLAYBILL

Black Archives of America presents
The Heroic True-Life Adventures of Alvin Brooks
Produced by Kenneth Wilmott
Based on the Book Binding Us Together written by Alvin Brooks
In conjunction with the Second Annual Juneteenth Film Festival

Synopsis
The Heroic True-Life Adventures of Alvin Brooks is based on Binding Us Together, the autobiography of Mr. Brooks, published by Andrews McMeel in 2021.  Binding Us Together is a unique personal story of character, activism, and perseverance -- and the public story of connection to city and national leaders during dramatic times. It offers a hands-on guide for future generations for vigilance against bias. Mr. Brooks is often called Kansas City's most beloved civil rights activist and public servant.        
     Few people have faced adversity like Alvin Brooks. He was born into an impoverished family, nearly lost his adoptive father to the justice system of the South, and narrowly survived a health crisis in infancy. All the while, he was learning how to navigate living in a racist society. Yet by rising to these challenges, Brooks turned into a lifelong leader and a servant of his community. He shares personal anecdotes over the years about caring for his family, supporting Black youth, and experiencing historic events like the 1968 riots through his eyes
 
Screenland Armour
408 North Armour Rd.
North Kansas City, MO 64116
816-994-7380

#Brooks_Willmott_Star  ---------------------------------------------------------

Oscar-winning filmmaker gives KC icon superhero treatment
BY DAN KELLY
dkelly@kcstar.com

CAPTION: Kansas City icon Alvin Brooks, 92, has yet to see "The Heroic True-Life Adventures of Alvin Brooks." He wants to watch it for the first time with an audience. (Tammy Ljungblad)

CAPTION: Kevin Willmott, who won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay in 2019 for "BlacKkKlansman," says of his new documentary, "More than anything, it's Mr. Brooks telling his life story." (File photo)


Kevin Willmott has been breathing rarefied air in the world of film and television since winning an Oscar for best adapted screenplay in 2019 for "BlacKkKlansman."

"That opened the floodgates, really," the Junction City, Kansas, native and University of Kansas professor said. "I never worked so hard in my life."

Willmott said he is "juggling five or six projects right now,' including one with famed director Spike Lee, his partner on "BlacKkKlansman." Also in the works (with "Bridgerton" star Regé-Jean Page and Morgan Freeman) is an eight-part series for Peacock about Muhammad Ali and a project for Nettlix about Ebony magazine.

But Willmott has kept his roots firmly planted in Lawrence and the Kansas City area, carving out time in his schedule to make small-budget films of local interest. His nonprofit Do Good Productions has produced "Gordon Parks Elementary" (2016) and "No Place Like Home: The Struggle Against Hate in Kansas" (2022).

His most recent effort is "The Heroic True-Life Adventures of Alvin Brooks," about the Kansas City political and civil rights icon. Its world premiere will be June 19 — Juneteenth — at the Screenland Armour as part of the Juneteenth Film Festival.

The 90-minute documentary is a follow-up to Brooks' 2021 book "Binding Us Together. A Civil Rights Activist Reflects on a Lifetime of Community and Public Service."

"In many ways, it's an adaptation of the book," Willmott said. "But really, more than anything, it's Mr. Brooks telling his life story."

Yes, the 64-year-old writer-director always refers to the 92-year-old local legend as "Mr."

"That's Kevin," Brooks said. "I call him either Maestro or I call him Sir Sir Willmott."

Willmott opted not to keep Brooks' title "Binding Us Together" for the documentary, however.

"It's a great book title, but movies have to be a little more provocative," he said.

Brooks loves the name — ' 'It blew me out of the water," he said — and it's appropriate because "The Heroic True-Life Adventures of Alvin Brooks" has the flavor of a superhero comic book. Willmott describes Brooks' life as a "blues kind of almost folktale reality," and the documentary uses animation when illustrating some of Brooks' colorful stories.

"He made it incredibly easy because he has such a rich memory, and such a detailed memory," Willmott said. "He's 92, and it's just amazing the details that he knows about addresses from 1935 and what somebody was wearing in the 1950s."

Born in North Little Rock, Arkansas, Brooks was raised by a moonshiner who moved with his wife and young Alvin to Kansas City after killing a white  [
page 2C ]  man in a bootlegging dispute. Alvin married as a senior in high school, worked as a janitor and became one of the few Black officers on the Kansas City police force before serving as human relations director, assistant city manager and mayor pro tem for Kansas City. Brooks launched the city's Ad Hoc Group Against Crime in 1977.

"It's a story that can never be told fully, except by those who lived it," he said.

"It's many different lives, and in that sense it makes you almost believe it's not true," Willmott said. "It's clearly all true."

Willmott said Brooks' origin story might surprise viewers. In the documentary, he returns to scenes from his past.

"A policeman put a gun to his head as a kid and told him to run up the hill or he was going to kill his ass," ' Willmott said. "And he ran up the hill.

"He was with some white buddies, and they laughed about it then. But afterwards he realized that was the moment he understood segregation and hate. And we go to that same spot 82 years later, and he tells that story."
Willmott, whose credits also include "Da 5 Bloods" (with Spike Lee), "Chi-Raq," "The Only Good Indian" and "C.S.A.: The Confederate States Of America," met Brooks and heard many of his stories about 20 years ago while he was making the film "From Separate to Equal, the Creation of Truman Medical Center. "

They reconnected when the filmmaker wrote a blurb for Brooks' 2021 book.

"It reminded me of how 20 years ago I said his stories would make a great film," Wilmott said. "And we finally got it together.

"I would consider him a historical figure. With people who have a real place in history, you don't often get a chance for them to tell their story first person. That was the other thing that really made me want to do it right now."

Brooks said he is in the process of setting up the Binding Us Together Foundation to use the film's proceeds to assist first-generation college students interested in writing and producing. He also is working on a children's book based on his life.

Meanwhile, he's looking forward to seeing "The Heroic True-Life Adventures of Alvin Brooks" for the first time.

"I don't want a preview of it," Brooks said. "1 just want to sit there with the rest of the audience and watch it and laugh.

"I know it's going to be good, it's going to be fun. There's probably going to be some sad moments. And the animation is going to be outstanding.

"I'm just thrilled and excited and thank God I've been able to stick around here long enough to do this."

'THE HEROIC TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURES OF ALVIN BROOKS'
• World premiere at Screenland Armour, 6 p.m. (sold out) and 8:30 p.m. June 19; showings followed by Q&A. screenland.com.
• Also, 6 p.m. June 30 at Lawrence Arts Center as part of Free State Festival. freestatefestival.org.
• A 46-minute version will be shown on Kansas City PBS, Channel 19.1, at 7 p.m. July 11 (followed by "Art House Live!" featuring Kevin Willmott at 8 p.m.) and 6 p.m. July 14. kansascitypbs.org.

A FEW TRUE-LIFE HONORS
• President George H.W. Bush named Alvin Brooks one of America's 1,000 Points of Light in 1989 and appointed him to the President's National Drug Advisory Council.
• Brooks received the Harry S. Truman Public Service Award in 2016.
• The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce named him Kansas Citian of the Year in 2019.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#240620
ADDITIONAL MEDIA REPORTS ON THE FILM 



https://www.kmbc.com/article/kc-icon-alvin-brooks-honored-oscar-kevin-willmott/61181710

https://www.kcur.org/podcast/up-to-date/2024-06-19/a-new-documentary-gives-kansas-city-civil-serva-alvin-brooks-a-folk-hero-treatment


https://www.facebook.com/TheCommunityVoice/videos/the-heroic-true-life-adventures-of-alvin-brooks-trailer/989576729046020
/   2 min trailer
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdmPVP19xMA  Fox4
 
https://fox4kc.com/news/alvin-brooks-documentary-premieres-at-juneteenth-film-festival/

https://missouriindependent.com/briefs/willmotts-latest-documentary-chronicles-life-of-civil-rights-leader-alvin-brooks/

https://www.thepitchkc.com/kevin-willmotts-doc-the-heroic-true-life-adventures-of-alvin-brooks-premieres-june-19/

https://kansascitymag.com/celebrating-alvin-brooks-legacy/

https://news.ku.edu/news/article/kevin-willmotts-new-film-shines-light-on-kc-civil-rights-figure

https://www2.ljworld.com/news/general-news/2024/jun/15/kevin-willmotts-latest-film-documents-life-of-civil-rights-figure-alvin-brooks/


https://www.examiner.net/new-documentary-chronicles-life-of-kansas-city-civil-rights-leader-alvin-brooks/#/

https://freestatefestival.org/event/alvin-brooks/





Video for Black History Month  2 min 31 sec
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--KFiFJ6PoA






 #July4
 Independence Day readings
     * Vern Barnet
directly below
     * Frederick Douglass second below
     * A 2024 Episcopalian perspective:  Fr John Spicer
here
 

Visit Sacred Citizenship for a 2-page PDF version of our June, 2001 Many Paths essay with themes of loyalty, freedom, greatness. Does this essay still work after September that year, and as we are continuing to come to a fuller appreciation of our history, from before 1619 to the present disfunction of much of government, local, state, federal -- as well as international agreements?

---------------

Oration
Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, NY
by Frederick Douglass
July 5th, 1852
Rochester: Lee, Mann & Co., 1852

[Frederick Douglass, 1817/1818--1895]

"The 4th of July Address, delivered [on the 5th] in Corinthian Hall, by Frederick Douglass, is published on good paper, and makes a neat pamphlet of forty pages. The 'Address' may be had at this office, price ten cents, a single copy, or six dollars per hundred."   {Visit oration for the text.}




#ChristianNationalismStar
"Christian Nationalism"

excerpt from The Kansas City Star editorial by Yvette Walker, Aug 9, 2024

WHY SEPARATE
A public opinion poll by PRRI, a nonpartisan research organization, found that 40% of people in Missouri, and 38% of people in Kansas either adhere to or sympathize with the idea of Christian nationalism, based on five statements:
• The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation.
• U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.
• If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.
• Being Christian is an important part of being truly Amencan.
• God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.

Not all of us agree, even among the faith community. Michael Stephens,
pastor of Southwood United Church of Christ in Raytown, told me of monthly gatherings that push back against Christian nationalism, and restate the need for separation of church and state.  "1 have attended marches in Liberty and Olathe. Next week I plan to attend one in Platte City, " he said.

Stephens said he and a team are planning a march in Jackson County on Oct. 17, when they will walk from the Peace Pavilion in Independence to the Jackson County Courthouse.                                             . . . .

In his 1785 book "Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson wrote: "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

That was 239 years ago. What do people in the faith community say today?

Alan Edelman, chairperson of the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council, told me he thinks the separation not only exists, but is necessary. The GKCIC represents 24 distinct faith philosophies, including Christian, Jewish, Islam, Hindu, Baha'i, Buddhist and more.

Edelman said: "Although some in our country would like to promote it as a myth, it is one of the foundations of our democracy. When we consider the number of people who have been killed in the 'name of God' throughout the centuries (and sadly today), it is clear why it is important to value and promote the separation of church and state. Thank God our Founding Fathers understood that. "



#AnsweringExtremism  #240821
 
The Interfaith Center at Miami University and CRES present:
Answering Religious Extremism:
Two Creative Responses to Personal Violence


August 21 Wednesday 12 Noon CT | 1:00 pm ET YouTube recording here.

 

Speakers: Mindy Corporon and Bill Tammeus

Moderators: Geneva Blackmer and Vern Barnet
Advance registration


The program was recorded: use this link:
https://www.youtube.com/live/_T-DpP2MJsY?si=RirU83sOFqbjgZwV

Vern's introductions:

Introducing MINDY
     I lead an interfaith organization, proud of our work in Kansas City to uplift religious diversity, so I was shocked and remain unsettled by the murder of three Christians who happened to be on Jewish sites and were presumed to be Jews by the anti-Semite white supremisist with the weapon. How do you respond to such utter wickedness?
     Mindy Corporon, whose father and eldest son were two of the victims, showed the community how. An entrepreneur and former CEO of a successful wealth management firm, Mindy was reaching the pinnacle of her career when, ten years ago, this day of terror and loss changed everything. Mindy’s life purpose was transformed from guiding people financially to working for kinder communities. She founded Seven Days, Inc., to engage schools, businessess, and communities to “Make a Ripple, Change the World.” This non-profit offers opportunities for learning and dialogue for people to know and appreciate each other.
     Mindy also created  the organization Workplace Healing and the revolutionary Human Recovery Platform™, guiding corporate leaders to strengthen their empathy muscle while preserving their organization’s cultural and financial well-being when an employee suffers from a life disruption. Mindy certainly knows about that.
     An inspirational speaker and the author of Healing a Shattered Soul, published in 2021, Mindy shares the story of her family’s struggle, the support of the faith community, and her commitment to courageous kindness. 
 
Introducing BILL
     Not long after I came to Kansas City in 1975, I asked Bill Tammeus to address my Rotary Club because I admired his writing, and particularly his understanding of faith, from reading his columns in The Kansas City Star, where he worked almost 36 years. Bill was a member of the Star staff that won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting.
     His many other awards include several from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and the American Academy of Religion, in addition to receiving the 2005 Wilbur Award given annually to the best religion column in the country.
     Since 2004 he has written the “Faith Matters” blog. He also writes columns for Flatland, the digital magazine of Kansas City PBS, and, until recently, for The National Catholic Reporter and The Presbyterian Outlook.  His sixth book, The Value of Doubt: Why Unanswered Questions, Not Unquestioned Answers, Build Faith, was published in 2016. Bill is an elder at Second Presbyterian Church in Kansas City and a cherished teacher in many religious circles.
     Bill was the main speaker at the city’s central observance on the  first anniversary of 9/11. His latest book, Love, Loss and Endurance: A 9/11 Story of Resilience and Hope in an Age of Anxiety, was published in 2021, arose, painfully, from the death of his nephew on that day of horror.

Here are the main questions explored:

  • Please share your personal story and experience with religiously motivated violence.
  • What was your response to these overwhelming personal tragedies? (Bill’s book, the founding of Mindy’s organization.)
  • How did you feel that you were effective? How much of this was due to your own personal engagement or the result of your organized efforts?
  • Is there something about religion that leads some people to violence?
  • There are all kinds of violence (the violence of oppression [racism, etc.], the rule of one country by another, etc.) Do you have any comments on how the methods of Gandhi and MLK, Jr. might serve as a model for such situations?
  • Since white supremacy in the United States seems intrinsically linked with Christian nationalism, how do you tease apart the religious from the political and how do you fashion an effective response to preserve the peace?
  • Do you have suggestions for how to speak with a family member who has a different religious or political point of view?
We are pleased to have had 82 folks join in the program on Zoom, Facebook, and YouTube. Here are some of them. Here's the YouTube recording.

Here are additional resources:


* SevenDays https://sevendays.org/ 
* September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
   https://www.peacefultomorrows.org/
       
Bill Tammeus' writings:
* Faith Matters blog: https://billtammeus.typepad.com

Upcoming Interfaith Center Events:
* Sept. 5th, Confronting Prejudice: Exploring Antisemitism and Islamophobia
* Sept. 11th, Compassionate Responses to Systemic Violence
     
A few of the 82 participants: 




#240901


   
Entire Video https://youtu.be/GrGvRdAKeo0   
 (about 57 minutes long)
Sermon begins https://youtu.be/GrGvRdAKeo0?t=1908  (about 20 minutes long)

CALL TO WORSHIP (OPENING WORDS)

Out of the stars, and the dust of stars,
Out of the play of chemicals
     in the oceans’ thermal vents,
Out of the evolution of microbes and moieties,
Out of the rush and pause and turn
     of human history,
Out of accident and plan, of chaos and order,
Here we are, surprising ourselves
     when unexpectedly we might see a pattern,
When amid uncertainty we might discover
"That there is something right in the world,
That follows its own law consistently,
Something we can trust,"*
A transcendent pattern that brings us
     to this moment with each other,
That brings us to this moment.
The CALL TO WORSHIP text (left) prepared for the occasion has been requested, so here it is.
     *
Paraphrased from the reading for the day from Leonard Bernstein's book,

The Joy of Music.

     
A question about patterns wove the sermon together, which included a provocative Zen saying: "One accident is worth a thousand meditations." The sermon told of a suicidal student at Allegheny College, a baby left unattended on a beach, a thought both impermissible and irrepressible in the autobiography of Carl Jung, the mystics' understanding of God as Reality, the student no longer suicidal, and a famous insight from Reinhold Niebuhr:
     "Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love."




  #anger

Suggestions for Anger Management


VERN: A friend asked me for thoughts about reducing a habit of the inappropriate feeling of anger. My thoughts follow:

1. Consider whether anger and maybe some anxiety arise from situations where we feel we cannot control things the way we want.
     1a. Identify what triggers the anger -- and plan to be ready to breathe deeply when the trigger appears.

2. Imagine what we actually want and what is keeping us from that.

3. Anger (or other destructive emotions like anxiety) can be tamed.

4. Practice realizing that living with less anger is healtier and more enjoyable.

5. Persistent anger, anxiety, and such are destructive because they cloud clear thinking about what to do.

6. Some anxiety may arise from biological imbalences and certain medications may help.

7. Practice realizing that there was a cause for whatever caused anger, and before that, that was caused, and before that, that was caused, and so forth. People are not born to be mean but learn it from bad things that happen to them, and can unlearn the unhealthy reaction or replace it with more compassionate, wholesome emotions.

8. Collect funny cartoons from newspapers and magazines or funny TicTok or YouTube clips and review them when tired of anger or anxiety. Old humor programs -- Jack Benny, I Love Lucy, Beyond the Fringe, and others, and maybe some newer programs, give us laughs and shake anger from our body.

9. When anger flares up, give it a reasonable time limit, 2 days, or 10 hours, or 5 minutes whatever. Write down how long you've allowed the flare to last.

10. The next flare, try shortening the length of time the flare lasts. Keep an on-going journal of progress, back-sliding, and progress.


Gensha, the Zen master, said, 'There is nothing left for you now but to have a good laugh." Contemplating Zen stories can be helpful. Here are two.

1. A famous soldier came to the master Hakuin and asked: "Master, tell me: is there really a heaven and a hell?"
     "Who are you?" asked Hakuin.
     "I am a soldier of the great Emperor's personal guard."
     "Nonsense! " said Hakuin. "What kind of emperor would have you around him? To me you look like a beggar!" At this, the soldier started to rattle his big sword in anger.
     "Oho!" said Hakuin. "So you have a sword! I'll wager it's much too dull to cut my head off!"
     At this the soldier could not hold himself back. He drew his sword and threatened the master, who said: "Now you know half the answer! You are opening the gates of hell!"
     The soldier drew back, sheathed his sword, and bowed. "Now you know the other half," said the master. "You have opened the gates of heaven."

2. A student came before the master Bankei and asked to be helped in getting rid of his violent temper.
     "Show me this temper," said Bankei."lt sounds very fascinating.
     "l haven't got it right now, so I can't show it to you," said the student.
     "Well then," said Bankei, "bring it to me when you have it."
     "But I can't bring it just when I happen to have it," protested the student. "I'd surely lose it again before I got it to you."
     "In such a case," said Bankei, "it seems to me that this temper is not part of your true nature. If it is not part of you, it must come into you from outside. I suggest that whenever it gets into you, you beat yourself with a stick until the temper can't stand it and runs away."







#240911  #911

https://mailchi.mp/bd986ec70d8b/on-the-20th-anniversary-911-a-metaphorical-malady?e=d9e1721627

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?

One way of understanding what happened, and is still happening, is by looking at the metaphors we use to explain things and which shape our responses.

9/11: METAPHORICAL MALADY:
CRIME, WAR, DISEASE

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. Now, with COVID, we are learning that, as Martin Luther King said, “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

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

--
Added after watching the 2023  Political Conventions:
     I was bothered by the use of "fight" and I think a metaphor of healing would have been far better: a fight suggests two combatants contesting over a prize, the old GOP-DEM political exercise. But "healing" the political situation implies we are sick; it frames the nature of the problem not in terms of "winning" but in terms of a restoration of well-being.
Vern

#CPS





Crescent Peace Society Annual Dinner

Tickets and information:.crescentpeace.org/

9005 W 151st St, Overland Park, KS 66221

The Islamic Center of Johnson County

Sept 27, 2024, 5:30 – 8:30 pm


CRES is pleased to have been part in the formation of the Crescent Peace Society. Vern was a speaker at its first annual dinner, and was recognized as the recipient of the 2002 “Community Service Award” and the 2010 "Lifetime Service Award."

CRES expresses admiration for the leaders of CPS and
 
and  congratulates  this year's speakers and honorees:

 
Scheduled Speakers
Imam Mohamed Herbert, resident scholar of the Islamic Center of Johnson County
Elizebeth Alex, board member for Hope Faith Ministries
Rabbi Doug Alpert, leader for Congregation Kol Ami

Honorees:
¤ Lifetime Achievement Award: Peggy Dunn, Former Mayor of Leawood
¤ Leadership Award: Alvin Brooks - Civil Rights Leader
¤ Writer Awards:
   Kalsum A. Choudhry - Author of "18 Stories of Hope, Joy & Endless...Faith"

    AND
   Farrukh Jamal: Author of "Intrepid Souls"
¤ Community Service Award: Saima & Syed Imtiaz
¤ Syed Farrukh Shabbir, M.D., Memorial Scholarship Award Winner:
   Aliya Haq, Blue Valley High School

 
About the Shabbir Scholarship
Syed Farrukh Shabbir, M.D., was a founding member of the Crescent Peace Society who passed away in 2006 after spending twenty-seven years of his life serving and supporting our community. In his memory, the Shabbir family founded the Syed Farrukh Shabbir, M.D., Memorial Scholarship through the CPS. The scholarship is awarded to a college bound graduating senior who has written the most compelling essay about the importance of peace and understanding in a pluralistic world. The 500-word essay contest is open to any graduating senior from a high school in the greater Kansas City area.

The Crescent Peace Society
is a Kansas City not for profit organization established in 1996. The Society was formed after the Oklahoma City bombing affected not only the victims and their families, but also our entire nation. For the Muslim community, it affected children who were afraid to attend their schools while much misinformation was spread about who committed this heinous crime.





#TableOfFaiths   TO UPDATE
CRES applauds the 2023
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


#IFCHistory   

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE Table of Faiths EARLY YEARS --

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
#CouncilPhoto1989_____________________________________________________________

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.

The Council's ancestry, in brief: the 1893 Chicago Parliament of World Religions; the interfaith gathering in Assisi, Italy, convened by Pope John Paul II, the first such gathering in North America since the 1893 Parliament, the "North American Assisi" held in Wichita, KS (Vern was on the planning committee), and with some from the Kansas City area and others who had been drawn into interfaith relations through CRES, the hosting organization, the members of 12 different faith traditions began their work to honor and learn from one another and encourage the community to celebrate the rich diversity available in the Kansas City area.

#NYTimes1988




 
 
 #ThgvgSunday


2024 November 10 Sunday 4-6 pm
Visitation Catholic Church, Tighe Hall,
5141 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64112

INTERFAITH THANKSGIVING GATHERING
“Promoting Interfaith Peace, Renewal and Regrowth”
For more information, please text Kara Hawkins at at 816-509-7984.
Dinner and program: $25 tickets available at the door and at Eventbrite.
  


This year's recipient of the
Vern Barnet Interfaith Service Award
is Teresa Albright, Pastoral Associate
at Visitation Parish, a Catholic Community.

This year's gathering is planned and h
osted by
the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council,
the Heartland Alliance of Divine Love,
and the Kansas City Pipe Circle.


For over 25 years Teresa's academic and personal focus has been religious literacy, interfaith dialogue, and peacemaking. She has served on nearly a dozen interfaith commissions, and is a vowed Lay Associate of the Congregation of Notre Dame de Sion. Since July, 2019, she has been the KCSJ Diocesan Ecumenical Officer and Chair of the Ecumenical/Interreligious Commission, advancing the work of the past ecumenical officers, now-Abbot Primate Gregory Polan and Father Paul Turner, while incorporating her own interests and experiences. She has a Master of Arts degree in Comparative Theology. She was at Westminster College to work on the Central Missouri Interfaith Initiative, and later for the Diocese of Jefferson City as a curriculum writer in the Office of Religious Education. She applies her training and leadership skills to facilitate unity and friendship among Catholics, non-Catholic Christians, Jewish, Hindu, Muslims, Buddhist, and Tribal faith-filled peoples. Read more about this year's honoree's work in Houston and elsewhere here.
-----
An annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Sunday observance was sponsored by CRES
for 25 years, 1985-2009. The KC Interfaith Council was a program of CRES,
1989-2004. We are grateful to the current sponsors for perpetuating
a recognition of the place of gratitude in every faith.
   




OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS

WEDDINGS of all kinds click for information

We can provide a customized ceremony. We regularly work with the great folks at Pilgrim Chapel and are happy to serve at any venue. 

THANKS to Robert and Shye Reynolds, a CRES fund to assist couples with fees for weddings  has been established, to celebrate their marriage June 19, 2002, on the occasion of their thirteenth anniverary.

FORTHCOMING BOOKS 
see also
our publications page

in progress: KC Star, Many Paths columns and fresh essays:
The Three Families of Faith and the Three Crises of Secularism
     Many have asked for a compilation of columns Vern wrote for the KC Star, 1994-2012,  and the essays fatured in Many Paths. Here are tentative chapter headings for the selections:
      ? The Three Families of Faith ? Faith and the Arts  ? Science and Religion  ? Teachers of the Spirit ? Ritual and Worship ? Religion and Public Policy ? Specific Faiths (Buddhism, Islam, etc) ? Comparative topics (reincarnation, gods, water, prophets, etc) ? How the column began and ended
 

OTHER 
PROGRAMS
and SERVICES

If you would
like to engage Vern 
or another member 
of the CRES staff
for a speech,
consultation,
a wedding,
a baptism,
or other work
with your organization 
or personally, 
please visit 
www.cres.org/work/services.htmor email vern@cres.org

ABOUT CRES PARTICIPATION
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.




#VC

A Vital Conversation Coffee
Vital Conversations
monthly  hybrid  schedule  with
 ZOOM
2nd Wedneday each month 
1-2:30 pm
MidContinent Public Library  Antioch Branch,
6060 N Chestnut Ave, Gladstone, MO
64119 and via Zoom
 (816) 454-1306   --   to receive the active zoom link, email

humanagenda@gmail.com -- or call David at (816) 453-3835
#VCvideo


David answers questions about Vital Conversations
 

A 13-minute YouTube video with Vern
 
¶ What is VC? ¶ You initiated it. When and why? ¶ Who sponsors it? ¶ Give some examples of the range of topics. ¶ You have had a number of authors, local and national, participate. name some and talk about why you like to feature them. ¶ Who attends and who is welcome to attend? ¶ How can people prepare if they wish, even if they don't read the book? ¶ Where is VC held? Is there a dress code? ¶ What changes did COVID bring about? ¶  What is OWL? ¶ When have you done remote locations? ¶ How do people find announcements and the material to prepare?


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
CRES  senior  associate minister
president, The Human Agenda

“The purpose of a Vital Conversation is not to win an argument,
but to win a friend and advance civilization.”  Vern Barnet

"Listen with curiosity, not judgement.”  David Nelson

Vital Conversations are intentional gatherings of people to engage
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

Reading is magic and a mysterious activity that feeds the mind, transports the imagination, sooths the soul, and expands life.  It is most often done in solitude and yet connects us to so many others both near us and far from us.  Many readers enjoy the opportunity to share their reading discoveries and to expand from the sharing of others.  Reading is an important aspect of our common humanness.
David E. Nelson
Vital Conv. Coffee
an open exchange of ideas
with no preset agenda
 4th Monday monthly 8 am
Now on Zoom
311 NE Englewood Road
Kansas City, MO 64118
816-453-2770


2024 Vital Conversations Schedule
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec

 
To see last year's fascinating programs, click here.


#vcJan  
2024 January 10 Wednesday 1-2:30 
pm.  David Nelson, humanagenda@gmail.com 
In person at the
library and on Zoom ID: 832 3534 6541
ABOUT VITAL CONVERSATIONS: YOUTUBE VIDEO

 
God Is Red: A Native View of Religion
50th anniversary and earier editions available
Vine Deloria,  Jr. 

The 50th Anniversary Edition and many copies of the original are in libraries and used book stores.  This book remains the seminal work on Native American religious views.  Deloria's classic work reminds us to understand that we are a part of nature, not a transcendent species with no responsibilities to the natural world.  Time magazine named Vine Deloria, Jr. as one of the greatest religious thinkers of the twentieth century.

1. “I have been gradually led to believe that the old stories must be taken literally, if at all possible, that deep secrets and a deeper awareness of the complexity of our universe was experienced by our ancestors, and that something of their beliefs and experiences can be ours once again.” (xvi)
Share your name and location. What do you now embrace from your ancestors that you once doubted or rejected?

2. “What we dealt with for the major portion of a decade was not American Indians, but conception of what Indians should be. While Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was selling nearly a thousand copies a week, the three hundred state game wardens and Tacoma city police were vandalizing the Indian fishing camp and threatening the lives of Indian women and children at Frank’s Landing on the Nisqually River. It is said that people read and write history to learn from the mistakes of the past, but this could certainly not apply to histories of the American Indian, if it applies to history at all.” (30)
Why did romanticized views of historic Indians get respected even as contemporary acts of violence and plunder were common?

3.“When AIM (American Indian Movement) captured a dormitory at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and presented a set of demands carefully worked out by sympathetic Lutherans in secret sessions, the Lutheran churches eagerly embraced the Indian cause…In a real sense, Christian churches bought and paid for the Indian movement and its climactic destructions of the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) headquarters as surely as if they had written out specific orders to sack the BIA on a contractual basis.” (41)
Why were Christian leaders eager to partner with AIM and address the evils done to Indian families and children?

4. Through nearly two decades while American Indians were rediscovering the integrity of their traditional religions, the rest of American society has torn itself and its religious traditions apart, substituting patriotism and hedonism for old values and behaviors.
Give illustrations of this and discuss why this happened.

5. Developing a sense of ourselves that would properly balance history and nature and space and time is a more difficult task than we would suspect and involves a radical reevaluation of the way we look at the world around us. Do we continue to exploit the earth, or do we preserve it and preserve life? (54)
Read chapter 4: THINKING IN TIME AND SPACE, and prepare to define history, nature, space, and time and discuss how different groups understand them.

6. Both religions (Christianity and Native) can be said to agree on the role and activity of a creator. Outside of that specific thing, there would appear to be little that the two views share. Tribal religions appear to be there-after confronted with the question of the interrelationship of all things. Christians see creation as the beginning event of a linear time sequence in which a divine plan is worked out, the conclusion of the sequence being an act of destruction bringing the world to an end. The beginning and end of time are of no apparent concern for many tribal religions. "The phrase 'all my relatives' is frequently invoked by Indians performing ceremonies and this phrase is used to invite all other forms of life to participate as well as to inform them that the ceremony is being done on their behalf." (76)
Discuss the consequences of this different belief. (Snake dance – Morning Prayer – January 20th)

7. Indian tribes combine history and geography so that they have a 'sacred geography,' that is to say, every location within their original homeland as a multitude of stories that recount the migrations, revelations, and particular historical incidents that cumulatively produced the tribe in its current condition. (110)
Share some of those stories from the book or your own history. Do you have some "sacred geography" in your life?

8. Tribal peoples, who had no difficulty with death, and saw it as part of a natural progression in the stages of life, seem to have no memory of promises of specific delights and rewards. However, they have a healthy attitude toward death that is a result of living completely within the normal earth cycles of life and death. (149)
Compare that to the common Christian idea of death as reward or punishment. Read out loud Chief Seattle's speech on page 159.

9. A substantial number of people believe that becoming a Christian involves a radical change in the human being's constitution. (repent, turn around, be born again, etc.) In contrast to this attitude, the Indian tribal religions do not necessarily involve any significant change in human personality but encompass within the tribal cultural context many of the behavioral patterns spoken about by Christians
(be human, kind, compassionate)." (169) What difference do you see in these contrasting ideas?

10. When we turn from Christian religious beliefs to Indian tribal beliefs, the contrast is remarkable. Religion is not conceived as a personal relationship between the deity and each individual. It is rather a covenant between a particular god and a particular community. The people of the community are the primary residue of the religion's legends, practices, and beliefs. Ceremonies of community-wide scope are the chief characteristic feature of religious activity. (178)
How do you feel about this difference? Do you prefer your religion/spirituality to be personal or community based? Read Chapter 12 THE GROUP and prepare to share your opinion.

11. The status of native peoples around the globe was firmly commented by the intervention of Christianity into the political affairs of exploration and colonization. They were regarded as not having ownership of their lands, but as merely existing on them at the pleasure of the Christian God who had now given them to the nations of Europe
(the doctrine of Discovery). (239-241) Discuss the doctrine of Discovery and it's current status in the world. Why have many Christian organizations taken a stand against it?

12. These crises point to Deloria's most significant contribution to humanity and the balance of life on this planet: a need to see the world—the cosmos—and our human place within it through a new lens… The non-alter-Native worldview Deloria offers essentially does the three things that are much needed. First, it suggests we return to an ancient kinship view of our relationship with the balance of life on this planet. Second, Deloria proposes that space and places should frame our understanding of history, not an abstract timeline view of history like that embodied in the US Manifest Destiny mythology. Finally, Deloria's commitment to human experience as the touchstone for what we think we know could reap tremendous rewards in this age of information and communication technology – driven nowhere spaces selling the Big Lie.” (306)
Do you agree with Daniel Wildcat in his statements offered in the afterword? What other learnings are you taking from this book and our Vital Conversation about the book?

30th anniversary PDF link

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#vcFeb
2024 February 14 Wednesday 1-2:30 
pm.  David Nelson, humanagenda@gmail.com
TIME CHANGED TO ACCOMMODATE AUTHOR: 6 pm
In person at the library and on Zoom ID: 832 3534 6541
ABOUT VITAL CONVERSATIONS: YOUTUBE VIDEO

Postwar Journeys: American and Vietnamese Transnational Peace Efforts since 1975
by Hang Thi Thu Le-Tormala

Hang will be with us on Zoom and will share her rich insights into the relationship between these two nations and how human interaction can heal brokenness after war.  “Underscoring that premise, this study explores US-Vietnam postwar relations through the transnational peace endeavors of ordinary US and Vietnamese citizens.  In an attempt to understand how people transformed their negative emotions into positive actions, and how those acts helped reshape the relations between the two countries, the study choose as its subjects the lesser-known people who endured the effects of the Vietnam War.” (4)

1. INTRODUCTION
     “The label ‘enemy’ that they had put on one another quickly dissolved, they were but men, women, and children who endured undeletable scars of a destructive violence.  The pains that they shared served as a foundation for their aspirations for peace.  This book presents a picture of vibrant interactions between the two countries in the postwar years.” (6). It has been almost 50 years since The Vietnam War ended.  Many citizens have learned the reality that “there are no human enemies”, we must be conditioned to engage in war.  How has your thinking and conditioning changed in the past 50 years in respect to Vietnam?
     
“Immediately after Hanoi took over Saigon and ended the war in April 1975, Washington extended the 1964 trade embargo on North Vietnam to all of Vietnam…the United States declined to recognize a reunified country renamed the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV)…The War on Vietnam continued; only the weaponry had changed.” (10-11). Unlike the previous wars in the twentieth century, the United States did not see why it should help reconstruct the country that it had damaged, neither in terms of reparations nor humanitarian aid.” (15) In your opinion, why did the US continue hostile relationships with Vietnam? 

2. BREAKTHROUGHS
   
 “Individuals such as Martha Winnacker were groundbreakers for the postwar transnational network of US and Vietnamese citizens who worked for peace and the betterment of people’s lives.” (17)  March 16, 1977, Friendshipment had received donations from 12,852 American for the construction of a hospital on the My Lai massacre…The idea of turning a massacre site into a hospital vindicated a profound symbol of reconciliation…The My Lai hospital, founded on blood stains of a dishonorable past and built by the compassion of borderless hearts, upholds the ideal that reconciliation is always possible.” (21). Citizens, with compassion and courage, did what US as a nation was unable to do.  Men and women donated and dreamed and began nurturing the healing needed.  How can we promote more of these kinds of human responses?

3. BOATPEOPLE
     “The Los Angeles Times defined the boat people as follows: ‘They put to sea in small, overcrowded boats that are easy prey for storms, pirates, and the hostile naval forces of Vietnam and Cambodia.  If they survive – and many haven’t – to reach a foreign shore, they may be interned or turned away and forced to try their luck elsewhere.  These are the ‘boat people.’” (32) Tell some stories of the “boat people” and what happened to them.  Explain the role National Security Advisor Brzezinski, Senator Kennedy, and President Carter all played.

4.
AMERASIANS
     “Amerasians, children of US personnel and Vietnamese women during the Vietnam War, underwent multilayered discrimination…considered bastard because of the absence of their fathers…Culturally, xenophobia caused many Vietnamese people to be racists against descendants of interracial parents.  Although Vietnam consists of more than fifty ethnicities, few interactions happened among them…’imprisoned in their own skin’”.
(42) Share stories about these children and what they have encountered.  What did reporter Bill Kurtis do?  What about the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, Vietnam Veterans of America, and other organizations?  “Despite the lack of love in their childhoods, many Amerasians nurtured the seeds of tolerance and compassion to effect change.  Born in circumstances of hostility and growing up with a plethora of hatred, they deeply understood the thirst for love.  Their experiences of animosity transformed them into peaceful, loving individuals.  Some even used their nationless states as an advantage to advocate borderless love.” (65)

5. VIETNAM VETERANS
   
 “Most noticeable was the participation of America’s Vietnam veterans.  In efforts to heal the wounds of war – for themselves and for Vietnamese people—many US veterans returned to Vietnam.  Together with their former enemies, they build schools, medical clinics, and houses for the disabled.  They organized cultural and academic exchanged, thus creating channels of communication that helped bring Vietnam out of isolation under the effects of the embargo” (76) “Stories of American and Vietnamese veterans working side by side to rebuild their shattered worlds remained little known…It was their shared pasts that drove the closer to one another.  In their postwar struggles to adjust to their societies and to redefine themselves, these former adversaries realized they had more in common than they did with some of their compatriots” (83). In reading these stories we realize that we can now see Vietnam as a country instead of a war.  Read out loud p. 93-94 “Larry Hlavaty…..felt at peace.”

6. HUMAN CONNECTIONS
     “At first glance, the bonds among American and Vietnamese people—the people on opposing sides of one of the most devastating conflicts in the twentieth century –may seem paradoxical and unfathomable.  A closer look at the nature of their relationships, however, revealed a logical explanation. The national, and perhaps political, boundaries imposed upon these people were social constructs.  Because they were social constructs, these boundaries were created and recreated over time.  They were but temporary labels.  The one thing that was permanent lay in their shared human emotions.  Despite the military uniforms that they had put on, or the flags that they had chosen to carry, they all want peace—peace of mind and peace for their living space.” (162)  Is war itself an “artificial construct” and can we nurture a global community that refuses to see war as an alternative?

7. TELL US
     Tell us about your current research regarding indigenous schools.  How are your students being involved?  How can we learn more about Native American Exhibits?

------

Clif Hostetler's complete review on Goodreads.com
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6249723495

As indicated by the title and subtitle, this book is a history of postwar relations between the peoples of the two nations, United States and Vietnam. I very purposefully used the term "peoples" in the previous sentence to emphasize the nature of many of the initial actions taken to achieve peaceful reconciliation. In the early decades after 1975 many of these contacts were made in spite of embargoes and trade restrictions imposed at the national level.

I pause here to reflect on the use of the term "transnational" in the book's subtitle. I wondered how the meaning of this word differs from "international." They both refer to crossing national borders, but after reading this book I believe transnational is the appropriate term to use in this case because it has a connotation of somehow floating over national boundaries as if they didn't exist. Such was the case in this history because "individuals or groups of individuals in the United States and Vietnam contested their national boundaries as well as reshaped relations between former enemies."

War is a source of unpleasant memories, and one could at first think that reaching out to communicate to the other side would be painful. But the stories in this book indicate that it is those unpleasant memories of a brutal war and the consequential desire for peace that was the incentive which drove "the painstaking journeys of individuals from varied political, cultural, and social backgrounds" to put those old memories to rest.

To illustrate how people transformed their negative emotions into positive actions, and how those acts helped reshape the relations between the two countries, this "study chose as its subjects the lesser-known people who endured the effects of the Vietnam War. The subcategories of these
people included Vietnamese refugees, children of US personnel and Vietnamese women, US and Vietnamese veterans and their families, relatives of fallen soldiers on both sides, and other civilians who experienced the impacts of war one way or another. The study also highlights the roles of nongovernmental organizations and individuals who strove for peace and mutual understanding through transnational humanitarian and cultural activities."

This book contains four chapters. The following four paragraphs are short descriptions of their content.

The first chapter examines the initial turbulent years following the war. Vietnam was still listed as an "enemy country" by the US government in those years.

The second chapter is about Amerasians-children of mixed US and Vietnamese parentage. Amerasians had the double disadvantage of being ostracized by Vietnamese society and generally grew up in poverty with minimal education.

The third chapter describes the groundwork for normalization by ordinary citizens, with an emphasis on US veterans' contributions, from 1980 to 1994. This was the era in which USA policy inexplicably refused to label the Cambodian Pol Pot regime as "genocidal" because it would result in siding with the Vietnamese government.

The fourth chapter discusses peace efforts after the establishment of diplomatic normalization. This chapter contains some emotionally touching stories about returning keepsakes to families of fallen soldiers and reconnecting family members who had been separated for many years by the war.

I have a rule that I don't give five stars to a book unless I was so emotionally moved by its contents that it brought tears to my eyes—Chapter 4 did that.


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#vcMar
2024 March 13 Wednesday 1-2:30 
pm.  David Nelson, humanagenda@gmail.com
In person at the library and on Zoom ID: 832 3534 6541
ABOUT VITAL CONVERSATIONS: YOUTUBE VIDEO

 
Forgotten Founders: Black Patriots, Women Soldiers, and Other Thinkers and Heros Who Shaped Early America
by Mifflin Lowe
copies available at the library.
“The purpose of a Vital Conversation is not to win an argument, but to win a friend and advance civilization.” --Vern Barnet.

“Listen with curiosity not judgement.” --David Nelson


 We continue to prepare to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the United States independence in 2026. Never in my lifetime has awareness of the Constitution and the significance of this experiment in democracy seemed so essential. We are now in the midst of a presidential campaign, and we seem so divided.
     The two quotations in red at the top remain my deep desire for a Vital Conversation.  We each have wisdom to share, and we are all capable of listening with curiosity rather than judgment.  It is my hope that these conversations can become models for each of us as we live in a political world. 
     Rather than listing “quotes and questions” this month, I am asking you, the participants, to read and come prepared to share some of your insights and opinions. The book Forgotten Founders: Black Patriots, Women Soldiers, and Other Thinkers and Heros Who Shaped Early America by Mifflin Lowe and illustrated by William Luong, is available in most libraries. We have multiple copies at the front desk at the Antioch library which you can check out. There will be copies on Wednesday so you can come a few minutes early to read and prepare your comments. You could also pick some other resource to explore the women and men on whose shoulders we stand as citizens today.
     Each participant will be given time to share a story of a “forgotten founder” and then assist in a conversation about this ally. The following questions can influence your presentation, but feel free to develop your own way for sharing.
⦁    What impresses you about this person? What attracted you to his/her story? Tell the story in your own words if possible. Tell it as a story with characters, plot, situation, and resolution.
⦁    What can we learn to from this individual?  Why did this person make a difference in their world?
⦁    How can we be better citizens in today’s hotly divided world?
⦁    How can we better use this time from now through 2026 to increase our personal participation in the political world?  How can we lower the temperature in our interactions and increase the wisdom and enlightenment?
     I am requesting you to select one person from the list in the copy below and let me know by email, so we have a rich variety of people to converse about.  I will send out a list several times before Wednesday with the names already selected. --David

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#vcApr

2024 April 10 Wednesday 1-2:30 pm.  David Nelson, humanagenda@gmail.com
In person at the library and on Zoom ID: 832 3534 6541
ABOUT VITAL CONVERSATIONS -YOUTUBE VIDEO


Broken We Kneel: Reflections on Faith and Citizenship by Diane Butler Bass

The relationship between Christian identity and secular citizenship has been a source of tension and conflict since the fourth century when Emperor Constantine "made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire."* The tragic events of September 11, 2001, renewed the ancient debate about the roles of church and state as people of faith have struggled with issues of war and peace, of terrorism and homeland security.
     Drawing on her personal experience as well as her knowledge of religious history, Diana Butler Bass examines the contour of the uniquely American relationship between church and state. Christian identity and patriotism, citizenship, and congregational life. This book attempts to answer the central question that many are struggling with in this age of terror: “To whom do Christians own their deepest allegiance? God or country?”
 
*VERN'S NOTE:
While Constantine did become a Christian and supported Christian causes (he convoked the Council of Nicea, 325), he continued the centuries of Roman toleration for a wide variety of religious practices. This wording above from the book cover contrasts with scholarship. For example, in Roland H Bainton's classic Christendom, vol 1, p103: "Theodosius . . . established what even Constantine had never envisaged: the Christian state." Many scholars point to the Edict of Thessalonica, 380, which seems to have decreed Nicene Christianity to be the official state religion of the Roman Empire, though local custom and variation persisted for some time.

RELEASING CONVERSATION:
Share your name and say something about religion and politics.

QUOTATIONS AND QUESTIONS

1. “President Lincoln knew terrorism and war; he knew about good and evil. Yet at this painful moment in American history, he chose not to invoke God on behalf of victory for his cause. Rather, President Lincoln mused upon the complexities of faith and nationhood for both the Union and confederacy: Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other . . . . The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. . . . With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds . . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” (6) What can these words continue to bring to our understanding of the role of politics and religion?

2. “Historian Martin Marty once grouped the two major traditions into the large categories of ‘priestly’ and ‘prophetic’ civic piety. Priestly civil religion tends to bless the established order that fuses a ‘historic faith’ with ‘national sentiments.’ Prophetic civil religion, on the other hand holds the nation accountable to God’s standards and judgement.” (8). Discuss how that distinction clarifies the political rhetoric in this year’s presidential campaign.

3. “To represent who we have become, civic faith needs to be deeply ecumenical and represent the faiths of the whole world.” (9) “I think Americans deserve the democratic process, as well as the spiritual practice, of forging a new sacred canopy of meaning together in community.” (10-11) Do you agree? What would that mean as you converse about politics and religion?
     VERN'S NOTE: A quibble.-- The word "ecumenical" properly used means the "household," the 'whole world" of Christianity, including Lutherans and Catholics, for example; "interfaith" is best used when referring to two or more different religions, such as in a "Christian-Muslim" dialogue. Other important related words are "multifath" and "intra-faith."

4. “The citizens of God’s city may be found in every earthly city. They are scattered among the nations. Their unity in Christ transcends the divisions of ethnicity, class, and nationhood and constitutes a new people who embody God’s reconciling peace. According to biblical witness, Christian citizenship is fundamentally at odds with violence on behalf of the state’s political, economic, and geographical division of humanity.” (28) What would it mean if we really believed that and lived it in our everyday thinking and living?

5. “Redemption is not a matter of human will, moral purity, or military might; redemption is the free gift of a suffering and bleeding God. In the Christian story everyone—and every nation—stands in need of God’s redemption. And the Bible itself teaches that no one, apart from God’s action, is holy.” (54). How can we authentically be both American citizens and baptized Christians? Discuss living our faith in our nation and in other nations.

6. “God changes us through the compassionate hospitality of love. Church is an encounter with a reality only distantly perceived in other parts of life, the place where the veil between earth and heaven is rent, and where through each other, we can finally touch God. Chapel is about controlling the disorder, about making religion easy. Church is never easy the way chapel can be. Church is about the kind of comfort that makes God’s people fearless comforters. Chapel is about what is. Church is about entering into divine chaos, trembling with fear and vulnerability, and finding—at the edges of the universe—God’s suffering, reconciling love.” (82) Say that in your own words and talk about what that means in your congregation or religious organization. What is the difference between being CHURCH and being CHAPEL?
     VERN'S NOTE: This may be misleading. Both church and chapel are Christian places for worship and other activities. (Some chapels may be designated "interfaith.") Generally a church usually has a regular congregation served by permanent clergy such as priest or minister. A chapel is often a part of a larger institution, such as a hospital, military base, or university, or palace, and may or may not have permanent clergy attached; if so, positions may be named dean or chaplain. Chapels may serve restricted groups, such as royal families, sailors, school bodies; and they may have specialized functions, such as memorials or for weddings. It is not unusual for a church to have one or more chapels within it for use for services that are attended by a portion of the congregation.

7. “From the very beginning, the majority of Jesus followers understood themselves to be citizens of God’s city, who repudiated the ‘militaristic nationalism’ of the surrounding culture.” (86) Why do you think that changed? Is it possible to reembrace that earlier understanding of what it meant to be Jesus’s followers?

8. “Christian empire is an oxymoron, fundamentally an earthly impossibility, despite what may seem to be manifestations of it. . . . As Richard Horsley points out, “Many Americans cannot avoid the awkward feeling that they are now more analogous to imperial Rome than they are to the ancient Middle Eastern people who celebrated their origins in God’s liberation . . . who lived in covenantal principles of justice.” (96) How do you sort out your faith and your place in America in 2024? Discuss the distinction God’s Liberation vs. Christian empire.

9. “The cross is our patris; God’s peace is our security. The goal of God’s people is shalom, dedication to a way of life that embodies peace – not security. Ours is a spirituality of exile, of quest for a homeland that remains elusive, and of trust that God’s love is our only true security.” (109) Discuss this vision that for so many seems beyond our current possibility. Should our “reach exceed our grasp” as visionaries have suggested or must we settle for less in our world?
 

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#vcMay
2024 May 8 Wednesday 1-2:30
pm.  David Nelson, humanagenda@gmail.com
In person at the library and on Zoom ID: 832 3534 6541
ABOUT VITAL CONVERSATIONS: YOUTUBE VIDEO

How to Know A Person: The Art
of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
by David Brooks.
Video of Brooks speaking about his book.

“The way to heal these great divides in one person at a time.” David Brooks, the celebrated pundit, 62, has turned his gaze to America’s Divisions. “I think as a society we are over-politicized and under-moralized. We spend too much tie thinking about politics and not enough time on the things that really matter, which are having courage and honesty, being honorable and being capable of great love.

I have learned something profound along the way. Being openhearted is a prerequisite for being a full, kind, and wise human being. But it is not enough. People need social skills. The real process of, say, building friendship or creating a community involves performing a series of small, concrete actions well:

• Being curious about other people;
• Disagreeing without poisoning relationships;
• Revealing vulnerability at an appropriate pace;
• Being a good listener;
• Knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness;
• Knowing how to host a gathering where everyone feels embraced;
• Knowing how to see things from another’s point of view.”

Releasing Conversation: Share your name and your star and arrow.
Put star * by the one above you do best and could teach others.
Put an arrow > by the one above you need to develop more.

Read p. 16-17 out loud. Define “BEHOLDING” and share moments you have experienced it.

“Features of the Illuminator’s gaze:
1. Tenderness
2. Receptivity
3. Active Curiosity
4. Affection
5. Generosity
6. A Holistic Attitude

“Every man bears within him the germs of every human quality, and now manifests one, now another, and frequently he is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.” (36) “Morality is mostlyabout how you pay attention to others. Moral behavior happens continuously throughout the day, even during the seemingly uneventful and everyday moments.” (38). As you continue to mature and grow in integrity describe how David Brooks reflections are helpful to you. Share illustrations from your own life.

Read page 64 out loud. “Constructionism is the recognition, backed up by the last half century of brain research, that people don’t passively take in reality. Each person actively constructs their own perception of reality.” (64) Discuss what this reality means to you and those your know and love.

Nonobvious ways to become a better conversationalist.

     1. Treat attention as an on/off switch, not a dimmer. SLANT method: sit up, lean forward, ask questions, nod your head, track the speaker. Listen with your eyes. That’s paying attention 100 percent.
     2. Be a loud listener. When another person is talking, you want to be listening so actively that you’re practically burning calories.
     3. Favor Familiarity. Find the thing the other person is most attached to. It’s your job to draw out what lessons they learned and how they changed as a result of what happened.
     4. Make them authors, not witnesses. They don’t only want to talk about what happened; they want to know how you experienced what happened.
     5. Don’t fear the pause. Because speaking and listening involve many of the same brain areas, so once your go into response mode, your ability to listen deteriorates.
     6. Do the looping. If you try this looping method, you realize often you are interpreting people incorrectly.
     7. The midwife model. A midwife is there not to give birth but simply to assist the other person in creation.
     8. Keep the gem statement at the center. This is the truth underneath the disagreement, something you both agree on.
     9. Find the disagreement under the disagreement. Being curious about your friend’s experience is more important than being right.
     10. Don’t be a topper. If you want to build a shared connection, try sitting with their experience before you start ladling our your own. (74-81)


“Life tasks: The Imperial Task (self-centered) > The Interpersonal Task (greater capacity to experience another person’s experience) > àCareer Consolidation
> The Generative Task > Integrity verses Despair. Wisdom at this phase of life is the ability to see the connections between things. It’s the ability to hold
opposite truths—contradictions and paradoxes—in the mind at the same time. . . . . It’s the ability to see things from multiple perspectives.” (190-211) Can you reflect on your life and how you have navigatedeach of the life tasks? Have some come more easily that others?

“There’s a certain spot on this earth that is somehow sacred, the place where you come from, the place your never quite leave.” (230) What is that place for you? It may be your hometown or a space you often visited, as a child and adult.

“What is culture? It’s a shared symbolic landscape that we use to construct our reality. People who grow up in a different culture see the world differently – sometimes on the most elemental level.” (237) “But people are not passive vessels into which culture is poured; each person is a cultural con-creator, embracing some bits of their culture, rejecting others – taking the stories of the past and transforming them with their own lives. To see a person well, you have to see them as culture inheritors and as culture creators.” (236). Describe cultures you have inherited, cultures you have encountered and cultures you have created.

---

Clif Hostetler's complete review on Goodreads.com
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6439182437

In this book the author David Brooks makes reference to an array of literary, scientific, and psychological sources using an engaging writing style that is easy to follow. He shares personal anecdotes as well as profile stories of others to illustrate his message. The title uses the term "how to know a person," which seems to me could be rephrased as "how to be a better friend."
     The book is divided into three parts, the first of which consists of seven chapters that describe various tools and techniques that can be used to aid in the process of getting to know another person. An example of one such tool is being self aware of functioning as a “diminisher” or “illuminator” during encounters with others. Brooks admits that this and other tips discussed in Part 1 assumes relationship occurring “as if we live in normal times.” But we don’t live in normal times with healthy cultural environments where “webs of friendship, trust, and belonging” can be counted on to foster positive relationships.
      Part 2 of the book addresses relationships within today's hostile environment, and is titled "I See You in Your Struggles." It explains how to know somebody within an “environment in which political animosities, technological dehumanization, and social breakdown undermine connection, strain friendships, erase intimacy, and foster distrust.” These obstacles as well as various human tendencies create obstacles to mutual understand in relationships. Many people are affected by experiences of trauma and depression which need to be recognized and acknowledged appropriately.
     And finally in the five chapters of Part 3 titled “I See You with Your Strengths” the book explores pockets of resilience that can usually be found in human relationships if one looks for and encourages them. The variety of energies found in human personalities as well as the healing properties of life tasks and stories are examined in this part of the book. It concludes with a discussion of “What is Wisdom?”
     I as a reader can hope some of the insights and wisdom presented in this book might rub off on me and make be a better friend, but I doubt it will turn me into an extrovert.

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#vcJun  
 
YOUTUBE VIDEO ABOUT VITAL CONVERSATIONS
2024 June 12, Wednesday 1-2:30 
pm. David Nelson, humanagenda@gmail.com
In person at the library and on Zoom ID: 832 3534 6541
 

The Education of Corporal John Musgrave: Vietnam and Its Aftermath by John Musgrave.

John Musgrave looked forward to the day he could serve his country as his father had done. He served in the Vietnam War until in the Vietnam jungle a chest injury nearly killed him. John vividly describes the difficulty of returning home to a society rife with antiwar sentiment, his own survivor’s guilt, and the slow realization that he and his fellow veterans had been betrayed by the government they served. I met John as he ultimately found peace working to end the war. Musgrave writes honestly about his struggle to balance his deep love for the Marine Corps against his responsibility as a citizen to protect the very troops asked to defend America at all costs. John will be with us to have a conversation about staying human during a time of deep divisions.

Friends: Below is a brief statement about "Patriotism - Needed in 2024." I am inviting all of us to engage in the conversation as we prepare to commemorate our 250th birthday in 2026, which I wrote to invite you to ponder what patriotism means to you and to share in a Vital Conversation in June.


Patriotism — Needed in 2024
David E. Nelson — The Human Agenda

Patriotism — noun, the quality of being patriotic; devotion to and vigorous support for one's country.

I am writing this on Memorial Day: 20242 a holiday celebrated since the end of The Civil War of remembering those who have served in the armed forces of the United States and have died. Originally it was called "Decoration Day": referring to the practice of decorating the graves of men and women who served in the military. Today: there is more talk of weather, travel: and the beginning of summer season. This moming: however: I am pondering something much more important: at least for me. This nation is just a few months away from our 250 birthday: July 42 2026. Many claim we are even more divided politically than any other time in our life. All three branches of the govemment of the United States are being criticized and attacked. The media is as divided as the nation: with the internet providing a platform where any story can be published and shared regardless of its basis in facts. Even current events are presented through different lenses that result in little consistency of understanding reality.

Patriotism to me means accepting that the United States of American is my country and I arn both devoted to it and responsible for it. This nation has made some serious mistakes: but it is not a rmstake: arid we can continue to leam from the past to nurture a continuing promise of the founding patriots. Patriotism takes many forms, including unifonned support and civil protest. Patriots can be men and women: old and young: gay and straight: rich and poor: white arid people of color: republican and democrat__ _ you get the idea. No one definition or action stands unique or alone in the behaviors of patriotism. I will illustrate my thinking with three vignettes from my current experiences.

The Vietnam War played a major role m the years of my education and early adulthood. I became involved in the movement to end the war I felt was a mistake. I had many allies in that movement. John Musgrave, also from Kansas, proudly served in the Marine Corps until a life changing Injury sent him home: where his welcome was less than gracious. We met at a rally, both protesting the war. John writes about his • 'survivor's guilt" and the slow realization that he arid his fellow veterans had been betrayed by the government they served in his book, The Education of Corporal John Musgrave: Vietnarn and Its Aftermath. John is a patriot and his actions as both a manne and a protester demonstrate his love for and devotion to his country

One of the worst mistakes we made in Vietnam xvas the tragic My Lal massacre. It is a stain on our nation's integrity. Our mutual fiend: Hang Thi Thu Le-Tormala: in her book, Postwar Journeys: American and Vietnamese Transnational Peace Efforts since 1975, shares an important story. By March 16, 1977, Friendshipmenthas received donations from 122852 Americarls for the constmction of a hospital on the My Lai massacre site. "The My Lai hospital, founded on the blood stains of a dishonorable past and built by the compassion of borderless hearts, uphold the ideal that 
reconciliation is always possible." America makes mistakes: but this nation is not a mistake. We learn from our mistakes arid reclaim compassion and action.

A second vignette involves The Haskell Indian University in Lawrence: Kansas. I attended the graduation ceremony May 3: 2024. This US government institution was part of a mistaken idea that the indigenous population of this land needed to be "civilized" and educated to be more like the European American population that continued to dominate the United Staes culturally. It is a sad and tragic chapter in our nation: and we clearly recognize now that it was a mistake. Graduation was a powerful and emotional gathering ofthousands to celebrate their sons and daughters: completion and reception of a variety of degrees. It was a celebration including tribal customs and rituals that embraced their rich culture and renewing it for this and fiture generations. America makes mistakes but it is not a mistake. We have learned about this past behavior and nurtured its trarlsformation_ Some of the students are being trained to interview former students to further document and address the past wrongs.

My final reference is a response to Peggy Noonan's column m last Saturday's Wall Street Joumal. She writes that we should 'Teach Your Children to Love America." I could not agree more However, when she suggests "We live in an age—I'll say this part quickly as we all know it — in which children are instructed in 100 different portals that America is and always was a dark and scheming place, that its history is the history of pushing people around, often in an amoral quest for wealth but also because we aren vepy nice. And we never meant it about the Declaration." I must take exception. I grew up m a W)rld where we learned about the past: mistakes and all: but was taught: we are not a mistake. We are a nation that is not afraid to study arid discover to the best of our ability's truth. But we are not stuck there.

Learning about past mistakes is an important exercise in patriotism. Our founding parents: our government through the almost 250 years have attempted to lead and nurture the habits of good citizens. The record is, of course, uneven. Even m our reading of history we will be divided as to what was good and what was not good or even evil. But we must continue the search for insights and nuggets of history that reveal the tmth most accurately. The temptation to change our narrative based on contemporary understandings is not healthy and will not bring greater unity. To attempt to rewrite the truth about history to pursue our current carldidate or policy IS: itself: a mistake. Yes: we make mistakes: but we are not a mistake. The United States is an exciting and noble effort at forming a nation: not based on geography but on an idea that the power belongs to the people: all the people. This nation will survive the current divisions and continue to be a message of hope to the W)rld community as we recognize that like all other countries: we make mistakes: and we learn from them to do better. We press on to form amore perfect union for all who live in this precious land.


Clif Hostetler's complete review on Goodreads.com
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6529148722


This memoir begins with the author's enthusiastic enlistment to join the U.S. Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. He was 17 years old, but was 18 by the time he reported for bootcamp training. He looked so young at the time that a reviewing officer asked to see his proof of age. He shares in considerable detail his experiences in bootcamp which to me seemed needlessly rough and overly focused on details of behavior and speech. Nevertheless as described here, the training seems to have resulted in strong identification and pride in being a Marine.

The next part of the book tells of his experiences in Vietnam. At first he was assigned to an infantry unit guarding a military police unit which didn't satisfy the author's desire to see combat action. So when the opportunity was available to transfer to an infantry unit near the DMZ he took it. He then tells in jarring detail the experiences of combat including killing another human at close range and physical discomforts of jungle warfare.

His combat deployment came to an end when he received a serious chest wound which once he reached medical care resulted in one doctor
calling for a chaplain because he couldn't do anything for such a serious wound. Fortunately another doctor saw things differently and saved his life. From there the author returned to the States and worked hard on rehabilitation hoping to be able to rejoin the war. But he was unable to pass the requited physical tests and was discharged from the Corps.

The author's disability benefits enabled him to attend college where he encountered considerable antiwar sentiment. At first he resisted the antiwar activities, but slowly his perceptions of the war changed. He began to see that he and his combat units were asked to fight under circumstances which made the war unwindable and thus futile. He joined a new organization called Vietnam Veterans Against the War and for a time became a spokesman for the group in the midwest region.

Today the author works with issues related to PTSD and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. He was interviewed in the documentary The Vietnam War produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.


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#vcJul
 YOUTUBE VIDEO ABOUT VITAL CONVERSATIONS
2024 July 10, 2023, Wednesday 1-2:30 pm.  David Nelson, humanagenda@gmail.com
In person at the library and on Zoom ID: 832 3534 6541 Passcode: 076621

"Restorative Justice: We Need a New Paradigm"

Kendall Hughes, a colleague and friend who has embraced "restorative justice" in his work and life joins us.  Kendall was my supervisor in the "Life Connections Program" at the US Penitentiary in Leavenworth.  He is the founder and leader of "Three Rivers Restorative Justice" in Minnesota.  You can prepare by reading Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Need to Repair by Danielle Sered. You can also read my statement below and look for stories to share from newspapers, your reading, and life experiences.

Restorative Justice:
We Need a New Paradigm

For too long we have practiced retribution justice. When a crime occurs, we seek the perpetrator and we start a process that investigates, tries, convicts, and punishes a person who now is a convicted felon. Punishment occurs, but very little has been done about changing the circumstances of the community.
     Restorative justice is a philosophy that aims to repair harm caused by criminal behavior by focusing on the needs of victims, offenders, and the community. Here are some benefits of restorative justice to all concerned parties:

1. Victims: Restorative justice empowers victims by providing them with a voice in the justice process. It allows them to express their feelings, ask questions, and seek answers from offenders. This can lead to a sense of closure, healing, and emotional restoration for victims. Think about victims of crime that you know or about yourself if you have been a victim. We can be people of compassion and action using restorative practices.

2. Offenders: Restorative justice encourages offenders to take responsibility for their actions and make amends for the harm they have caused. By participating in restorative processes such as victim-offender dialogues or community service, offenders can gain insight into the impact of their actions and work towards rehabilitation and reintegration into the community. People can change since no one is an offender by nature. Restorative practices make possible change in thinking and behavior.

3. Community: Restorative justice promotes community healing by involving community members in the justice process. It helps build trust and communication between community members, victims, and offenders, leading to a stronger sense of accountability and cooperation within the community. Crime impacts more than just a victim and offender. Restorative practices enable the whole community to build a more welcoming and hospital space to live.

4. Cost-Efficiency: Restorative justice programs have been shown to be cost-effective compared to traditional criminal justice processes, as they often require fewer resources and lead to lower rates of recidivism. By addressing the root causes of criminal behavior and focusing on rehabilitation, restorative justice can help prevent future crimes and reduce the burden on the criminal justice system.

5. Equity and Fairness: Restorative justice prioritizes the needs and perspectives of all involved parties, promoting a more equitable and inclusive approach to justice. It acknowledges the complexity of crime and its effects on individuals and communities and seeks to address these issues in a holistic and meaningful way.

Overall, restorative justice offers a more compassionate, responsive, and community-centered approach to addressing crime and harm, with benefits for victims, offenders, and the wider community.
Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and A Road to Repair
by Danielle Sered

Quotations and Questions

“If incarceration worked to secure safety, we would be the safest nation in all of human history.” (6). From your reading and experience why doesn’t incarceration work to prevent crime?

“In clearly, directly, and repeatedly affirming that what a survivor sustained is wrong, we stake a claim for a world in which people endured should not have happened in the first place, we walk with them in the process of re-creating and returning to (or creating in the first time) that world.”
(24) “Survivors are right to want to speak. Speaking about their experience helps in the formation of their story and can contribute substantially to the abatement of their symptoms and to their healing.” (26) “For many survivors, repair can be most meaningful when it comes from the person who caused the harm.” (28) Surviving a crime can be lonely and isolating or it can be an opportunity for healing and creating a safer space. Take about ways of nurturing the later.

“But every single survivor we have spoken to has wanted one thing: to know that the person who hurt them would not hurt anyone else.” (30) Revenge is not what most want. Instead of revenge and punishment, restorative justice can provide healing and hope for all concerned. Can we make this change in our communities?

“A number of rigorous and highly regarded meta-analyses…have found that incarceration is associated with increases in recidivism.” “Prison is characterized by four key features: shame, isolation, exposure to violence, and a diminished ability to meet one’s economic needs.” (67) “Prison takes away the very power people should be obligated to use to make things right, thus rendering the possibility of repair nearly impossible.” (94) If our desired outcome is a safer community rather than punishment, what are alternatives available to prison time?

“Justice, then, exists when all parties exercise their power in a way that is consistent with the humanity of everyone involved and in the interest of the greater good. In the aftermath of violence, mercy plus accountability equals justice.” (95). “Restorative justice requires a fundamental belief in the humanity of those who have been harmed and those who caused harm…It is not the harmed party’s innocence that entitles them to repair, it is their humanity.” (139) What does it mean to be human? Can we see all parties as siblings in the human journey and seek to restore and provide healing space for everyone?

“Incarceration has to be rendered an option of last resort, so that ultimately, we would talk not of community-based interventions as ‘alternatives to incarceration,” but of incarceration as an ‘alternative to community interventions.’” (160) Can you imagine such a day? Ponder the possibilities.

Clif Hostetler's complete review on Goodreads.com
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6608387756

The United States has one of the highest per-capita criminal incarceration rates in the world, yet the prevalence of violence is relatively high. It's apparent the high incarceration rates are not achieving the desired results.
This book presents the tools and techniques of restorative justice as a proposed alternative to the use of incarceration by the criminal justice system. Restorative justice is a philosophy that aims to repair harm caused by criminal behavior by focusing on the actual needs of victims, offenders, and the community.

The practitioners of restorative justice work to ensure that offenders take responsibility for their actions, to understand the harm they have caused, to give them an opportunity to redeem themselves, and to discourage them from causing further harm. For victims, the goal is to give them an active role in the process, and to reduce feelings of anxiety and powerlessness. I have included a longer description of restorative justice in "message 1" following this review.

The author of this book has for a number of years directed an organization named Common Justice in New York City. The framework they use and that is explored in this book adheres to four core principles: "survivor-centered, accountability-based, safety-driven, and racially equitable."

It's interesting to note that the cost of incarceration is so high that the costs of administering a restorative justice system can be economical by comparison. It also has the additional advantage of low rates of recidivism.

In the book where the author was beginning her discussion of alternatives to incarceration, I found the following excerpt to be a poignant observation about one of the advantages of "whiteness."
... we do have an example of what non-prison-based solutions to crime look like at a systematic level: it is what we do for white kids, and for middle-class and rich white kids in particular. We could reasonably describe whiteness as the oldest alternative to incarceration in America. (p.185)
I was shocked to read the following quote taken from a woman explaining why she didn't report sexual abuse that she experienced as a young person. I think it's an example of the need for the availability of alternative approaches within the criminal justice system.
... I had no interest in my father being incarcerated or my mother being deported or in I being taken away from my family. Even as a child I knew that if I told anyone what was happening in my home, any of these things could have happened ... (p.222)
I have included addition quotations from the book in "message 2" following this review.

[Please visit https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6608387756 for additional messages including comments from readers.]
#240710NotesMaggie 


Notes from Maggie Finefrock
TWO VIDEOS about Restorative Justice

     A 4-minute animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLPZy2wW-x8

     A 29-minute edit from a Restorative Conference with 14 people in a school setting
     about a fight as well as racial and sexual orientation slurs.  

Kansas City CENTER FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION: https://www.ccrkc.org/


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#vcAug
 YOUTUBE VIDEO ABOUT VITAL CONVERSATIONS
2024 August 14 Wednesday 1-2:30 pmDavid Nelson, humanagenda@gmail.com
In person at the library and on Zoom ID: 832 3534 6541
August Recess

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#vcSep
YOUTUBE VIDEO ABOUT VITAL CONVERSATIONS

2024
September 11 Wednesday 1-2:30 pmDavid Nelson, humanagenda@gmail.com
In person at the library and on Zoom ID: 832 3534 6541

Democracy Awakening:
Notes on the State of America

by Heather Cox Richardson,
author of the newsletter "Letters From An American."

At a time when the very foundations of American democracy seem under threat, the lessons of the past offer a road map for navigating a moment of political crisis. In Democracy Awakening, acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson delves into the tumultuous journey of American democracy, tracing the roots of Donald Trump’s “authoritarian experiment” to the earliest days of the republic. She examines the historical forces that have led to the current political climate, showing how modern conservatism has preyed upon a disaffected population, weaponizing language and promoting false history to consolidate power.
     With remarkable clarity and the same accessible voice that brings millions to her newsletter, Letters from an American, Richardson wrangles a chaotic news feed into a story that pivots effortlessly from the Founders to the abolitionists to Nixon to the January 6 insurrection. An essential read for anyone concerned about the state of America, Democracy Awakening is more than a history book; it’s a call to action. Richardson reminds us that democracy requires constant vigilance and participation from all of us, showing how we, as a nation, can take the lessons of the past to secure a more just and equitable future.

September 11th (Patriot Day)  Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America
by Heather Cox Richardson.

Richardson explains how, over the decades, a small group of wealthy people have made war on American ideals. By weaponizing language and promoting false history they have led us into authoritarianism. In this compelling and original book, she reminds us that it is up to us to reclaim the principles on which the nation was founded, principles that have been repeatedly championed by marginalized Americans. Their dedication to the promises embodied in our history has renewed our commitment to democracy in the past. As we prepare for the 250 Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 2026, that commitment is where we can find the road may for the nation’s future.

Quotations and Questions

PATRIOTS
“This book is the story of how democracy has persisted throughout our history despite the many attempts to undermine it. It is the story of the American people, especially those whom the powerful have tried to marginalize, who first backed the idea of equality and a government that defended it, and then, throughout history, have fought to expand that definition to create a government that can, once and for all finally make it real.” (xvii). Who are those people? Who do you appreciate in the story of America?

CONSERVATIVE
“The word conservative began to take on specific political meaning in the U.S. when antislavery northerners refused to honor the Fugitive Slave Act that was part of the Compromise of 1850. That law required federal officials, including those in free states, to return to the South anyone a white enslaver claimed was his property. Black American could not testify in their own defense, and anyone helping a ‘runaway’ could be imprisoned for six months and fined one thousand dollars, which was about three years’ income.” (7). What does the word “conservative” mean to you today?

GOVERNMENT
“When voters elected Lincoln president, his centering of the Declaration of Independence led the Republican Party to create a new, active government that guaranteed poorer men would have access to resources that the wealthy had previously monopolized. They put men onto homesteads, created public universities, chartered a transcontinental railroad, invented national taxation (including the income tax), and, of course, ended Black enslavement in America except as punishment of crime. As Lincoln wrote, ‘The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities.” (9) How have you been impacted by the above actions?

SOCIALISM
“The use of the word socialism by those opposed to the liberal consensus had virtually nothing to do with actual international socialism, which developed in the late nineteenth century and burst into international prominence when the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia overthrew Czar Nicholas II. International socialism is based on the ideas of mid-nineteenth-century political theorists Karl Marx who believed that as the wealthy crushed the working class during late-stage capitalism, people would rise up to take control of the means of production: factories, farms, and so on.” (26) How do you understand socialism today? What is democratic socialism?

REASON AND INDIVIDUALISM
“Enlightenment thinkers had rejected leadership based on religion or birth, arguing instead that society move forward when people made good choices after hearing arguments based on fact. But this Enlightenment idea must be replaced, William F. Buckley Jr. argued in God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of Academic Freedom, because Americans kept choosing the liberal consensus, which, to his mind, was obviously wrong. He concluded that the nation’s universities must stop using the fact-based arguments that he insisted led to ‘secularism and collectivism,’ and instead teach the values of Christianity and individualism. His traditional ideology would create citizens who would vote against the orthodoxy of the liberal consensus, he said. Instead, they would create a new orthodoxy of religion and ideology of free markets.” (29) How have you experienced the debate about universities, secularism, and individualism?
LIBERALS
 “On one hand were the ‘Liberals’ who they insisted were basically communists (they capitalized the word to make it like the Chinese Community Party, which was on everyone’s mind after its 1949 takeover of China’s government). This was not some limited group of conspirators; it was the vast majority of Americans: anyone, Republican or Democrat, who believed that the government should regulate business, protect social welfare, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights, and who believed in fact-based argument.” (30) How has your understanding of “liberal” changed or evolved for you?

CONSERVATISM
“In Goldwater, Movement Conservatism and the racist mythology of the post-Civil Way years came together. Hoping to boost Goldwater for president in 1960, his supporters hired Bozell to write a position platform for him. Published as a book under Goldwater’s name, it was titled The Conscience of a Conservative. Joining the opposition to the federal defense of civil rights with Movement Conservative hatred of business regulation, it was more than a part platform. It was a general manifesto against the liberal consensus.” (32) Can you explain the difference between conservative and conservatism? Liberal and liberalism? Why is that important to discern?

AUTHORITARIANISM
“The southern strategy marked the switch of the parties’ positions over the issue of race. Johnson knew what that meant; the nation’s move toward equality would provide a weapon for a certain kind of politician to rise to power…The stage was set, with rhetoric and policy, for the rise of authoritarianism.” (39) “The idea of ‘alternative facts’ revealed that this seemingly stupid lie about the crowd size was not only a way to get media coverage but also an important demonstration of dominance…Trump straight-up lied, and he demanded that his loyalist parrot his lies.” (95) “Republican congresspeople, who surely knew that what they were hearing was completely divorced from reality, repeatedly jumped to their feet to applaud it. The president had made it clear he controlled the reliably Republican voters in his base, and no Republican could cross him. It was clearly Trump’s party, to do with as he wished.” (132) Does this description of the politics during your lifetime seem accurate to you? How would you explain it? Has your party identification assisted you in being a thinking patriot and working for a more perfect union?

RECLAIMING AMERICA
“Today's crisis in democracy has brought us back to the same question that haunted the founders: Are the principles on which this nation was founded viable? Is it really possible to create a country in which everyone is equal before the law and entitled to have a stay in their government or are some people better than others and thus have the right and the duty to rule?” (163) How do you answer the 2 questions above? “The same men who put their lives on the line to establish that all men are created equal literally owned other human beings. They considered indigenous people ‘savages’ and women subordinate to men by definition. Neither black men nor Indians nor women fall into theirdefinition of people who were ‘equal’ or who needed toconsent to the government under which they lived” (164). Read OUT LOUD p. 168

LINCOLN
“The Gettysburg Address marked the birth of a new nation, one that would not include human enslavement except as punishment for crime…for the first time in history, a constitutional amendment increased, rather than decreased, the power of the federal government.” (205). “The Civil War and its aftermath were America’s second attempt at creating a nation based on the Declaration of Independence, establishing once and for all the supremacy of the federal government, and using it to guarantee equality before the law and equal access to resources.” (209) Do you agree that Lincoln’s address marked a new beginning? Make the case. As you plan for the 250 Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration and the US Constitution, are the daily comments of Heather Cox Richardson helpful? Where else are you seeking information and news? Share some of your sources. How can we continue moral discourse in a manner that respects diverse opinions, honors different understanding and does not tear at the communities we value
?


Clif Hostetler's complete review on Goodreads.com

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6812312420
For embedded links, vist the Goodreads web page above.

In this book the author Richardson explores examples in American history where forces of authoritarianism (and restriction of rights) have been stopped by holding true to the promise of equality in the Declaration of Independence.

Part 1: Undermining Democracy

The book traces the battle between the development of the liberal consensus through the 40s and 50s and the eventual resurgence of movement conservatism in the 80s and beyond as the Republican adopted the Southern strategy using fascist strategies that pushed fears of race relations. This created conditions conducive to the shift toward authoritarianism.

Part 2: The Authoritarian Experiment
Trump behaved like an authoritarian from the beginning functioning as a populist leader driven by self-interest and vengeance by replacing competent civil service employees with often inexperienced loyalists. This was not the intent of establishment Republicans, but Trump was a new and dangerous kind of president who was beyond their control.
 Part 3: Reclaiming America
Richardson returns to the nation’s founding to demonstrate that the history of America offers a roadmap for resisting authoritarianism. Beginning with the promise of equality contained in the Declaration of Independence American history is filled examples of expansion of rights versus examples of restriction of rights to help maintain minority rule. Equality expansion has prevailed in the past and it can again in 2024,

Conclusion

2024 is a dangerous moment in history with an authoritarian Trump running for president again, but Richardson finds hope in the examples of Americans’ rising up in the past to defend the Founders’ ideals of equality.
 

Excerpts:
The following excerpts from Democracy Awakening were selected by David Nelson for the Vital Conversations group.
   
[These are listed above.

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#vcOct
 YOUTUBE VIDEO ABOUT THE VITAL CONVERSATIONS SERIES
2024 October 9 Wednesday 1-2:30 pmDavid Nelson, humanagenda@gmail.com
In person at the library and on Zoom ID: 832 3534 6541

Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and The American Experiment
by Allen C. Guelzo


Allen C. Guelzo, one of America’s foremost experts on Lincoln, captures the president’s firmly held belief that democracy is the greatest political achievement in human history. While many books have been written about Lincoln’s temperament, judgement, and steady hand in guiding the country through the Civil War, we know less about Lincoln’s penetrating ideas and beliefs about democracy, which were every bit as important as his character in sustaining him through the conflict.

This book is a study of Abraham Lincoln’s powerful vision of democracy, which guided him through the Civil War. Professor Guelzo faces Lincoln’s racial attitudes boldly and unflinchingly. Guelzo lays out the damning evidence of Lincoln’s white supremacist racism throughout much of his career, which included his denunciation of abolitionists, his opposition to Black voting rights, his refusal even to support Blacks’ right to testify against whites, and Lincoln’s long-held desire to colonize African Americans outside the United States. Lincoln was driven to save the union rather more than end racist slavery practices.

It is painful for me to read about this American hero who remained racist much of his life. Famously, of course, Lincoln’s position changed. People impact history and history can change people. It is tempting to use current understandings to judge past behavior. Some label this “modernism.” I remain a fan of President Lincoln and better understand, with honesty, the confusing reality of humans being “simultaneously saint and sinner.”


QUOTATIONS AND QUESTIONS

“What Americans must do in this new age, he reasoned, is to ‘re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it.’” (14) Can we assign new understandings to ancient words? Can we reclaim the Declaration of Independence today with the many changes that have taken place?

“But Lincoln’s only attempt at actually defining democracy occurred, almost in passing, in a note he jotted on the eve of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and at the moment, it was more of an effort to set democracy apart from slavery: ‘As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.’” (25) “’According to our ancient faith,’ Lincoln said in 1854, ‘the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed.’” (25) CONSENT was a key concept for Lincoln. What does it mean today for you?

“It did not matter that technically, democracy is a political system and slavery an economic one, for in Lincoln’s mind, the boundary between economics and politics was thin to the point of evaporation.” (30) Discuss the relationship between politics and economics. Lincoln was more concerned with saving the union than ending slavery.

“But the premises on which they erected those rational structures were inherited from authority, and especially the authority of the Bible or Aristotle, or both in tandem. What distinguished the Enlightenment’s reason was the breaking up of the authority of those premises, and the employment of reason as an authority itself, to persuade rather than to threaten.” (38) “In Lincoln’s concept of democracy, reason stood on one side, passion and ‘outrages committed by mobs’ stood on the other.” (41) Discuss the difference between reason and passion
“But he (Lincoln) struggled to be guided by ‘the dictates of prudence, as well as the obligations of law,’ and labored to convince himself that reason would eventually prevail, even among the Southern public… Is it passion which will make some of us slaves, and others of us masters? It is a question which, to Lincoln’s dismay, was not precisely answered, except by an assassin’s bullet.” (47) Can we change people’s opinions and behavior with logic and reason OR with stories and feelings? What has been your experience?

“In Lincoln’s world, there need be no slaves and no masters except the self-driven and the self-mastered. To see such a world prevail became the cause of his life.” (63) Do you have a cause for which you are willing to live and to die?

“Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865 cut short his life, but not the trajectory of his economic reconstruction of the Union. Even had there been no civil war, it is safe to say that Lincoln’s administration would still be regarded as a hinge presidency in American history, if only for the way his economic policies inaugurated a new political generation that glorified free labor, protective tariffs, and federal encouragement for infrastructure while pushing back against the Jeffersonian glorification of agriculture and its animus against commerce…he was denounced, then and now, as the architect of a new, more expanded and intrusive federal government…that can better expand the welfare state, regulate the economy, or adopt socialism.” (74) The Homestead Act and the transcontinental railroad have impacted this nation and the world. How has your life been impacted by the presidency of Lincoln?

He (Lincoln) was inviting not the descent of a veil of ignorance about the right or wrong of slavery but a pure confession of guilt from the limited stumbling realization—that all Americans had been invested in the evils of slavery; that all had suffered in the war that ended it—that Lincoln could hope for a democracy that rose above the giddiness of venom…There was no question that slavery was beyond some ‘consensus’, but that did not mean that its human perpetrators were beyond forgiveness.” (153) Have we been faithful to Lincoln’s invitation for remembrance and confession? What have you learned about slavery and America in this book and in your conversations?

“Even in its faults then and now democracy is still the best method for people to live lives free from domination and exploitation at peace with themselves and with others embodying ‘a progressive improvement in the condition of all men…and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all peoples of all colors everywhere.’ Lincoln then was not wrong to trust that ‘our principle however baffled or delayed will finally triumph…men will pass away – die – politically and naturally but the principle will live and live forever.” (171) In the final weeks before the elections of 2014 are you in agreement with this final paragraph no matter who is elected President?


Clif Hostetler's complete review on Goodreads.com

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6856442404
For embedded links, vist the Goodreads web page above.

The author Allen C.Guelzo begins this book with an introduction that describes the disposition of democracy and why in human history it is so unusual and prone to failure. Some critics of democracy have concluded it is too weak to survive the forces of authoritarianism while other critics believe democracies have evolved to be too strong and have become allies with political authoritarianism. It’s at this point that Guelzo introduces the rest of the book with, “It will be worth our while to examine what he [Abraham Lincoln] says about democracy.”

Guelzo has written a number of other books about Lincoln. (view spoiler) So what prompts the writing of this book at this time? Apparently Guelzo sees threats to American democracy in today’s political climate and, referring to Lincoln, he puts it thus, “I take up his principles with the yearning that once again, this last, best hope of earth may yet have a new birth of freedom.”

The subtitle of this book is descriptive of the book's content, but I was a bit puzzled by the title, Our Ancient Faith, which conjures religious material in my mind. The title is based on an 1854 speech by Lincoln that identified the Declaration of Independence as the source of his "ancient faith."
If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that ‘all men are created equal;’ and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of another.
This book explores what Lincoln thought about various aspects of democracy in America while also providing historical and philosophical context along the way. Perhaps some of the remedies Lincoln offered as a defense of the “American experiment” can also serve us today.

Below are my brief summaries of each chapter. The summaries are a mixture of my writing and excerpts that are edited such that I don't provide quotation marks in many cases.

1. The Cause of Human Liberty

It is important to be continually vigilant, even in a democracy, because there are too many who are only too happy to be masters and have others as slaves. Thus democratic government needs sufficient guardrails to encourage patience while the democratic process works its way through issues and conflicts.

2. Law, Reason, and Passion

Calm reasoning recognizes that respect for criminal and civil law permits citizens to live in peace. But passions caused by perceived differences in ways of life between the North and South led to the Civil War. As the war came to a close the danger of anger and malice on the part of the victors posed a threat to social and political healing. Also, passion motivated the assassin's bullet.

3. An American System

Promoters of free labor loved "the old Puritan character," not for its "theological doctrines," but for its strenuous commitment to work as a good in itself. Free labor promised mobility, movement aspiration; it was the entire opposite of a system in which one person literally owned the life and labor of another. "The hired laborer with his ability to become an employer, must have every precedence over him who labors under the inducement of force," Lincoln said. And why? because "free labor has the inspiration of hope," while "pure slavery has no hope."
4. Political Economy and the Nation

For Lincoln the fundamental rule of economics was improvement, whether in the form of canals or social mobility. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Lincoln's free-labor economy increasingly began to feel dated against the background of rapid, large-scale industrialization

5. Democratic Culture

There are cultural assumptions that help to predispose a people to democracy in the first place. These assumption underly respect for the law and are currents of something more volatile and not easily seen. It was Lincoln's ideal to master himself and to be mastered by no one else, and that expressed his idea of democratic culture, as well as democracy.

6. Democracy and Civil Liberties

One of the embarrassing truths about democracies is that they can be stampeded into states of emergency and climates of crisis which end up trampling civil liberties. Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus was a very undemocratic thing to do. The Constitution does provide for a suspension of habeas corpus in "cases of rebellion or invasion." Lincoln showed great restraint in the use of that power. Abraham Lincoln's hesitation to quash law and democratic liberties may be one of the most important gifts we inherit from him.

7. Democracy and Race

Democracy should not be about race. Democracy is based on reason, debate, persuasion, or at least reasonable self-interest, while race is a non-rational factor that thrives on ineffable intuitions of group qualities and appeals to the basest of political passions. In spite of Lincoln's reputation as the great emancipator, based on today's standards many things Lincoln said and apparently thought were racist. He was a man of his time and needed to survive in the political climate of his time.

8. Democracy and Emancipation

Unlike abolitionists of his time Lincoln manifested little energy in demanding the immediate and unconditional end of slavery. But this can be explained when his understanding of the slavery crisis and his preference for economic gradualism are taken into account. If Lincoln holds out to us anything instructive about liberal democracy, it is that liberal democracy can wear away even the irrationality of race.
James Oakes has said that Lincoln was not (as he is sometimes understood to be) an emancipator who was restrained by his limited thinking on race, but a limited thinker on race whose limitations were overthrown by his passion for emancipation.
9. Democracy's Deficits

Lincoln was aware of the deficits in a democracy, and that "popular sovereignty" could yield to unthinking passion. Both North and South, Union and Confederate, abolitionist and slaveholder had had opposing expectations and made opposing demands of God. And both were wrong. Democracy is a government for humanity, not angels, and it has to be content to be aspirational, yet to live with the pace of aspiration.

Epilogue: What If Lincoln Had Lived?

Lincoln had greater political skills than his successor Johnson, so it's possible some things would have gone smoother than the history that occurred. However, the political, economic, and social forces were such that the overall alternative history under Lincoln probably would not have been much different.
 
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2024 November 13 Wednesday 1-2:30 pmDavid Nelson, humanagenda@gmail.com
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The Sentence
by Louise Erdrich.

A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

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vc#Dec
 YOUTUBE VIDEO ABOUT VITAL CONVERSATIONS
2024 December 11 Wednesday 1-2:30 pmDavid Nelson, humanagenda@gmail.com
In person at the library and on Zoom ID: 832 3534 6541

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
by Timony Egan

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Selections are subject to change.  For Zoom link and additional information,
contact David Nelson -- humanagenda@gmail.com or (816) 453-3835.


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While I have sought substantial familiarity with the world's faiths, I have also pursued immersion in one.
 

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