Worrying about family members and friends at Thanksgiving when politics and hot issues come up? Try this welcome speech I have written for you:
“Welcome to our home. I am so thankful for you, my family and friends, who have so much in common and yet are so very diverse and different. We want our home to be a gracious place where everyone can be who he or she is. Living in an increasingly divided and polarized world, we often avoid sharing who we are and our beliefs during holiday gatherings fearing that we might cause conflict or trouble. But if we don’t share these things about ourselves, we will be further alienated from each other. Having honest conversations is not about winning an argument. It is about achieving understanding without having to agree with each other. So, when difficult topics come up, and they will, I invite you to practice these guidelines: Don't tell them they are wrong; ask them what value led them there. Don't say, "Yeah, but, what about…?”; say "Huh, interesting, tell me more . . ." Don't ask how they could ever believe something; ask when that belief first started for them. Don't interrupt people; let people finish their thought. Don't try to assume you know their motives; ask about their goals and hopes. Don't blame them for your anger or frustration; explain your frustration and take responsibility for it by using an "I" statement. Can we agree on this? Now go and have great conversations and happy Thanksgiving."
This will feel strange and unnatural, but remember you are the host and you set the ground rules in your home.
In a diverse multi-contextual world, preachers are challenged in how to connect the Word with a community of people with very different cultural experiences and backgrounds in the same sermon. For example, what does a sermon sound like when you have people from different political affirmation, racial background and economic status listening?
You are invited to join The Rev. Dr. Eric H. F. Law, the Founder and Innovator of the Kaleidoscope Institute, for a weekly Tuesday gathering of preachers in multi-contextual communities. If you are not a preacher, please consider forwarding this invitation to any preachers you know. Come spend an hour each week with Eric to reflect on a lectionary text for the upcoming Sunday and to listen and share with other preachers - ideas, stories, techniques, and processes for sharing the Word in diverse communities. We will use a combination of the multi-contextual preaching model Eric shared in his book, The Word at the Crossingand the Kaleidoscope Bible Sharing process. The gatherings will take place on Zoom at 9am Pacific/12 noon Eastern.
Try it out for February - the dates are 2/7, 2/14, 2/21, and 2/28.
One of the most important truth-discerning skills I learned as a child was counting. My earliest memory of my mother was her teaching me how to count to 10 using my fingers. That was how I knew I had 10 fingers: I counted to 10. And of course, I assumed that everyone in the world had 10 fingers until I met a friend in grade school who had 11 fingers. I knew the truth, in this case a rare exception, that not everyone has 10 fingers, by counting with my friend. Counting is the first thing we learn that would later help us do more complicated mathematics, which then was a key part of scientific exploration in learning the truth about our world. Knowing how to count correctly in order to learn the truth of the will of the people is how a democratic society move forward in settling our difference without going to war.
When the people of my beloved nation could not agree on the number of people who attended the 2016 inauguration, and then in 2020, many would not accept the final count of the votes casted at the federal election, I know we, as a nation, are deeply unwell for lack of truthcare. Perhaps an exploration on the basic understanding of counting would be helpful in healing our nation, beginning of when the children.
A while ago, I was invited to be part of the For the Know Better, Do Better Project, the mission of which is to create alternative songs to racism-embedded folk and popular songs, especially those commonly sung for and with children. The name is inspired by the Maya Angelou quote, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” I decided to write an alternative song to Ten Little Indians, which is probably one of the most popular songs used to teach children to count – counting forward to 10 and backward to 0.
Most songs that teaches children to count backward in the United States, unconsciously and consciously teaches children about scarcity – if you do something wrong or don’t follow the rules, you will be eliminated. Just like playing musical chair, which I hated as a child because I was never fast enough to get my chair and there were less and less chairs available as we counted down. In the case of Ten Little Indians, the elimination process is so violent with accidents, murders, and suicide, I can’t even repeat the original verses of the song.
The song was written in 1864 to be performed in minstrels shows. A few years later, the word Indian was replaced with the N-word and became a standard in blackface minstrel shows in England and America. Over time, the N-word was deemed insensitive, so it was changed back to Indians, then to soldiers, then teddy bears and then bunnies.
Agatha Christie made the song more famous through her million-seller murder mystery with the same title and later changed to And Then There Was None – the last line of the song. Ten Little Indians, as Christie understood it correctly, was basically a song about death, murder and genocide. I had no doubt that when it was performed in minstrel shows, the audience found it funny.
Even though most teachers don’t use the verses when teaching children how to count with this song, we should know better and do better.
The alternative song I proposed is called Counting Counts. I want a song with a lively beat so children can move and dance to it with pointing gestures. I also want a song that doesn’t teach scarcity or elimination, but about being included and counted. Finally, I want to write a song that has a long life: after the children had learned how to count, they can continue to sing it as adults and be reminded of why counting is such an essential skill for living. Counting minutes help us get to places on time, counting the days and years help us celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. Counting is what makes a democratic society great - we count the votes so we don’t need to go to war to settle our differences. We count who live in our land through the census so we can distribute our resources justly. So let’s make counting counts.
Here is the video of me singing Counting Counts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PplZHuxjnQY
I also included the lyrics and the chords (there are only four chords). Also the song can be touch without accompaniment: snap your fingers to keep the beat. Use it to teach our children to count and why counting is so important. Share it in teachers of your local schools, and Sunday schools. Teach it in children's gathering. Teach it on zoom. Tell Sesame Street that they do should do a muppet video on the song.
Just as healthcare is essential for a person’s physical wellness, we need to provide truthcare to nurture and develop our social, spiritual and economic wellness. In the internet age, when millions of people read and hear the same thing over and over again, over time, they believe that it is true. This is not healthy. When a lie was propagated that way like a virus, it had led to violence and destruction of relationships, properties, communities and institutions.
I did a quick search on hashtags that have the word “truth” in it and many of the posts and tweets were propagating misinformation inciting hate and division. Where are the truthcare providers? How do we provide truthcare in the U.S. today when over 70% of a party did not believe that the newly elected president of the U.S. is legitimate despite verified truth from all 50 States?
Some social media companies finally take truthcare seriously by disabling the accounts of those who spread untruth and incited violence on January 6, 2021. Truthcare providers now have a small window to start a truthcare wave that can flood the internet with life-giving truth-vaccines. I invite you to be a truthcare provider and take a few minutes each day this week and share a truth through your various social media accounts and invite your friends and followers to do the same. Here are some criteria for posting a life-giving and community-building truth:
- Share a truth to build wellness for individuals and communities and not to hurt or judge others.
- If it is a factual truth, cite your source and verification process.
- If it is a personal experienced truth, own it by using “I” statements.
- If it is an interpreted truth, say that it is your interpretation only and invite dialogue.
- Make sure you begin or end with #truthcare. And add as many hashtags that has the word “truth” that you can think of, such as truthwave, truthtellers, truthtelling, truthmatters, . . . etc.
When you got a negative reaction/comment, be kind and respectful in your response. Listen and feedback to let the person know you care enough to try to understand. Ask for clarifying question such as where did you get that information, or how or from whom did you learn that, . . . etc.
When a truth is verified and it is life-giving and community-building, it is worth repeating over and over again so that more and more people will come to live and believe it. For example, if 1,000 of my FB friends share a life-giving and community-building truth today and invite 10 of their friends to do the same, we will have 10,000 truthcare posts. If their friends share it with 10 friends, we will have 100,000 more. You can see who we can distribute our truth-vaccine life-giving to millions upon millions in a very short time.
If we care about the wellbeing of the people in our nation, we must provide its people truthcare: seek the truth, verify the truth, share and teach the truth.
Here are a couple of examples of truthcare posts:
- #truthcare: I have voted by mail in California for the last 4 federal elections. Last November I was able to track my vote and I got a confirmation that my voted was counted. A friend reminded me to make sure I signed it with my full name as it appears in my voter registration or it would not be counted. My experience of voting by mail is safe in preventing fraud and safe from exposing myself to Covid-19. I invite you to share a life-giving community-building truth today and be sure to include #truthcare. #truthmatters#truthtelling
#truthcare: I voted for Biden/Harris along with 63.5% of the voters in California. That’s over 11 million votes. This was verified by the California Secretary of State, Alex Padilla, in the website: https://electionresults.sos.ca.gov/returns/president. I look forward to a peaceful inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on January 20, 2021. I invite you to share a life-giving community-building truth today and be sure to include #truthcare.
As I watched the congressional impeachment debate, I heard many appealed for unity. The argument went like this – to avoid further division, lets forgive and forget. Having experienced at least 4 years of intentional divisive speeches and actions by the same people who now called for unity, it felt a bit ingenuous to me. The reason why we were divided in the first place stemmed from the lie that the election was stolen especially after all the states had certified the election results. This was why people gathered at the capital on Jan 6. This was why they invaded the capital.
Unity doesn't come about by ignoring the past for fear of punishment, losing power and further threat of violence. In our democracy, we are united by the agreement on the truth, and the rights and responsibilities laid out in the Constitution. If we really want to heal our nation and move people toward unity, I proposed the following four essential steps:
1. Truth matters: Trump and the politicians who insisted that the election was stolen have to to tell their supporters in no uncertain terms that the election was not stolen and Trump did not win by a landslide. For that matter, all lawmakers and senators should go back to their districts and states and do the same.
2. Money matters: Trump and the politicians who raised money for the purpose of overturning the election should return the money to their supporters and tell them why: there is not election to overturn.
3. Rights matter: Those who voted for Trump should take time to reflect on their fears and concerns as a result of their candidate losing the election -- concerns for selves, families, immediate communities, states and nation. Gather with others and share these concerns and find ways to made them known through nonviolent civic and community means. This is your right.
4. Responsibilities matter: Those who voted for Biden (Democrats, Republicans and Independents) should sit down (formally and informally) with people who voted for Trump (with neighbors, in community gatherings, places of worship, schools, workplaces, etc.) to listen to their concerns and have real caring and respectful conversations. The Biden voters should take the responsibility to collect what they heard and share them through civic and community channels back to the leaders of our communities, states and nation.
In a true democracy, we need caring winners and courageous losers.
For the people of the United States of America, we are in the middle of a presidential election. In fact, many have already voted. But there might be people who still have not made up their minds, or who are considering changing their mind. So, in this blog post, I am providing a way to help people decide or to be a little more sure of their decision. I admit this method is a little brainy but this is a very important decision and using our brain in addition to our emotions is not a bad idea. You may use the process to engage your friends to help them discern how they will vote.
In January, the newly elected president will make the following oath, "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." For senators and congresspersons, they also have to make a similar oath. In order to make a sound decision with our votes, we should take a look at the preamble of the constitution.
Constitution of the United States
Adopted by convention of States, September 17, 1787; Ratification completed, June 21, 1788
PREAMBLE
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The Preamble consists of well-thought-out action verbs and themes - form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty. If you study these themes carefully, you will see how they work together and support each other to create a well-balanced approach to the governance of the country.
These are the criteria I would use to measure the qualifications of any candidate running for office in the United States. I have created a chart below. Make copies of it and put the names of the candidates on them - one name per chart. You can use the same chart for all federal and local election as well. For each of constitutional criterion, rate the candidate using the scale of 1 to 5: “1” being awful at it, “5” being brilliant at it. Circle the number that represents your evaluation of the candidate for each statement. Add up the circled and that will be the score you have for this candidate. Do that for both candidates. The one with the higher score is the one for whom I would recommend for you to place your vote on election day.
Many of my friends were upset by the first so-called Presidential Debate. My response is: Don't let your upset-ness stop you from staying engaged. Instead, channel that energy toward discernment.
If you are an U.S. citizen, you have the power to choice with your vote. The question is: how do you decide? Begin with the first line of the Constitution. Appreciate how radical that is to begin such a nation-forming document with "We the People" and not "I the dictator" or "We the bullies."
Even though the "We" had evolved and changed since the beginning of the nation (see the article The myth of 'We The People' by Tereneh Idia), too become more inclusive, we are the people who will continue to define the "we" as we move forward as a nation specifically with our votes.
To help you focus, please keep "We the People" as your mantra today. Say it regularly as you go about your day - with family, seeing your neighbors, going shopping, walking on main street, in your workplace, at school, in the park and online gatherings.
As you recite this mantra, consider the questions:
Who are the "we" in "We the People?"
Does a candidate's idea of "we" different from yours? How might this difference affect the way you receive the candidate's message/ads/speeches/social media posts?
Which candidate - president, senator, congress-persons - takes "We the People" as we/you understand it today seriously?
Write your reflection and post it on social media and share it with your friends.
Initiate a conversation with at least one other person with the question: Who are the "we" in "We the People?"
In this uncertain no-touch time, I pray that this song will help people experience the up-close and personal Joe Biden - his kindness, gentle voice, caring touch. The verses are inspired by the stories of Brayden Harrington (the young man who stuttered and Jacquelyn Brittany (the elevator security guard). If you appreciate this song, please share with others and make a contribution to Joe's campaign at: https://joebiden.com/
"It began with the simple hope that love can help in community. That hope led to a social enterprise called Thistle Farms and that led to learning that we reap a hundredfold the seeds that are sown in a loving community. I became a student of herbs, teas, and trees because of my work with women. I am a farmer, not because I grow plants well, but because I love all of creation and tend to the parts of it in my own vineyard. Healing on this path is the central sacrament." Becca Stevens, Letters from the Farm.
Join us on August 7 at the Kaleidoscope Summer Online Institute and learn from the Rev. Becca Stevens, social entrepreneur, author, priest, founder of eight non-profit justice enterprises, and President of Thistle Farms. She has been featured on PBS NewsHour, The Today Show, CNN, ABC World News, named a CNN Hero, and White House Champion of Change. Drawn from 25 years of leadership in mission-driven work. Becca leads important conversations across the country with an inspiring message that love is the strongest force for change in the world.
Our conversation topic is: Creative Malcontent: Revolutionary Nature of Women's Creativity.
Music and Prayers will be provided by Conie Borchardt (she/they), a “Luth-opalian Sufi Dancer,” who is the Music Director at Edina Morningside Community Church (UCC).
The workshop theme of the day will on how to create a gracious invitation to invite diverse individuals to come to a gracious and braver space for learning, working, sharing and exploring.
Check out the other amazing spiritual leaders of our time (Greg Boyle, Michael Curry, Alexia Salvatierra, Lily Yeh and more) who will be sharing at the Summer Institute. You can register for one day or for the whole 9 days or anything in between. If you are a student, you can register for the whole event for just $40. So spread the word about this amazing event.
"So no mater how singularly focused we may be on our worthy goals of peace justice, and equality, they actually can't happen without an undergirding sense that we belong to each other. Seek first the kinship of God, then watch what happens." Fr. Greg Boyle wrote in his book, Barking to the Choir.
Join us on August 6 at the Kaleidoscope Summer Online Institute and learn from Fr. Greg Boyle, the founder of Homeboy Industries. We will have amazing and insightful conversation about the Power of Radical Kinship. Of course, we will also learn how the kinship-based social businesses sustain this life-changing ministry.
Music and prayers will be provided by Jeannine Otis, who is the director of music of St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery in New York City She has worked for years with communities labeled as "at-risk" and focuses in many settings on developing programming that addresses social justice issues.
The workshop for the day will focus on Transforming Your Ministry to be More Relational, that is, how to seek first the kinship of God.
"We stand there with those whose dignity has been denied. We locate ourselves with the poor and powerless and the voiceless. At the edges, we join the easily despised and the readily left out. We stand with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop. We situate ourselves right next to the disposable so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away." from Fr. Boyle's book, Tattoos on the Heart.
Check out the other amazing spiritual leaders of our time (Kelly Douglas Brown, Michael Curry, Alexia Salvatierra, Lily Yeh and more) who will be sharing at the Summer Institute. You can register for one day or for the whole 9 days or anything in between. If you are a student, you can register for the whole event for just $40. So spread the word about this amazing event.
"... seeing diversity as proof of new life can become a powerful tool for our emotional journey. [This] change in perspective can be so powerful that it could bring as much comfort as suddenly recognizing a street when we're lost in an unknown place." Doug Avilesbernal wrote this in his book: Welcoming Community. He is the current Executive Minister of Evergreen Association of American Baptist Churches, which is an faith organization that began with making the vision of diversity as proof of new life a reality.
"Everyone was invited to build the table, set the table, decide the menu, and share in the meal." Marcia Patton, the founding Executive Minister of Evergreen explained, from her book, Intentionally Inclusive, the process of creating truly inclusive community using the table analogy, "Everyone stayed around for the clean-up and planned for the next meal. Everyone was represented at the vision table; . . . all were expected to give their voice. As a result, we built ownership into the process.
Join us on August 5 to learn from Doug and Marcia: how Marcia nurture the birth of a radically inclusive organization and how Doug continued this journey as the next generation leader.
Our prayers and meditation will be provided by Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros, who is a Tejana, Chicana, and Mujerista writer from San Antonio, Texas. She is the 2019 recipient of the Rubem Alves Award in Theopoetics and has a chapbook of poetry titled, Becoming Coztototl, published by FlowerSong Books in McAllen, TX. Carolina is the poetry co-editor of the Journal of Latina Critical Feminism and is a proud member of Santa Fe Episcopal Church.
At our workshop that day, you will learn method called Kaleidoscope Text Sharing to build inclusive community around a common text, such as a poem, a mission statement, key documents of a nation, or the Bible.
Check out the other amazing spiritual leaders of our time (Greg Boyle, Michael Curry, Alexia Salvatierra, Lily Yeh and more) who will be sharing at the Summer Institute. You can register for one day or for the whole 9 days or anything in between. If you are a student, you can register for the whole event for just $40. So spread the word about this amazing event.
