Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on
The Spirit Rises! Through New Activist Prayer & Commitment, And "Giving Tuesday” Helps to Lift It
Today, the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving, has become “Giving Tuesday” to invest our money in American non-profit tax-exempt organizations doing high-value work. At The Shalom Center, we work to heal our society and Mother Earth from the wounds and plagues inflicted by our modern Pharaohs..
There couldn’t be a better time than right now to support the work we do! Earlier this month, elections all across our country gave many of us the joyful taste of active hope and strong determination.
Even though – or because! --we are facing the worst, The Spirit is Rising !
We face the Pharaohs of our time. Like the ancient Pharaoh, the new Carbon Pharaohs are bringing Plagues of floods and wildfires upon our land and are trying to subjugate our people.
AND -- as in the ancient Resistance to Pharaoh --- The Spirit is Rising !
There are three crucial factors in creating change: Ideas, personal and communal covenant / commitment, and money.
Money is the frozen form of human energy that makes change possible if the other two factors are present. If they are, the money can be unfrozen into active change. But without the money, even creative ideas and committed covenant are helpless.
That is why this is the perfect moment for us on the staff and Board of The Shalom Center, to especially thank those of our readers who have become supporters through their giving money as well as emotional, intellectual, and spiritual support, .
So we are writing you now to ask you to unfreeze the money that can empower you and The Shalom Center to heal our climate.
When we unfreeze our money in this way, The Spirit Rises!
For years The Shalom Center has been exploring the riches of Torah –- the life-experience of shepherds and farmers who took the Earth most seriously --to learn how we today could resonate with the Earth of which we are always a part. We know that the faithful in every religious community can change America and the world, if they are inspired to take vigorous action to heal our wounded Mother.
Our job is to supply the inspiration by drawing on old wisdom and new courage.
When we inspire each other in this way, The Spirit Rises!
We’ve sown the seeds of Eco-Judaism and they’ve begun to sprout. But still The Shalom Center is the only national Jewish organization that makes the healing of the Earth and the survival of human civilization its first priority.
What will we pursue this coming year?
With your help, we intend to strengthen our work in three dimensions.
Dimension 1: Deepening our work.
Much of the religious community’s climate activism has been joining in secular marches and lobbying. The Shalom Center keeps looking deepeer into the human spirit: creating and sharing “Prayer that Makes Sure the Earth Matters.”
Facing modern Pharaohs, our protests could lift up Passover’s matzah – the edible symbol of what Dr. King called the “fierce urgency of Now”– -- and Palm Sunday’s palm branches -– green new life in springtime. We could learn to ask the trees what they are praying. We could make our lobbying into activist pilgrimages. with a deep spiritual message and tone.
When we pray together in this way, The Spirit Rises!
Dimension 2: Time. Reaching out to the livable past, to help us shape a livable future.
It is time to reawaken the very last words of the last of the ancient Hebrew prophets: "I will send you Elijah the Prophet to turn the hearts of the parents to the children and the hearts of the children to the parents, lest YHWH the Breath of Life become a destructive wind, a Hyper-Hurricane, to utterly destroy the Earth." (Malachi 3:23-24.)
Today we must become Elijah. We must refocus our response to global scorching not only with a No to burning fossil fuels, but also with new Yeses.
That means restoring for our children and grandchildren the life-giving climate that sustained our parents and grandparents. It means going beyond even zero emissions of CO2 to get rid of huge poisonous overdoses of CO@ that are already stored up in our air.
[Just one among possible approaches to removing CO2 from the atmosphere would be a massive effort to revitalize ecosystems that have been ruined, restoring life-forms that capture CO2 from the air and keep it on the ground or in the oceans.]
At The Shalom Center, we are talking with scientists about what are the swiftest, most effective and also safest ways to restore a healthy climate. We will supply the information so you can speak about it among your family and friends, your colleagues at work, your fellow-congregants.
When we learn together in this way, The Spirit Rises!
Dimension 3. Broadening our work.
To heal Mother Earth, we must heal our country, too. We must regrow grass-roots economic and energy democracy, as well as political democracy.
This coming April 4 is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Exactly one year before his death, Dr. King spoke at Riversode Church in New York City of “deadly triplets” that threatened American society: Racism, Militarism, and Materialism.
The Carbon Pharaohs impose on us all three when for the sake of their own Hyper-profits they insist on burning our common home, our Mother Earth: bringing on the Plagues of floods of water and of desperate refugees, firestorms in forests and the fires of communal violence.
Dr. King spoke of our need to birth the “Beloved Community.” The anniversary of his death falls a few days after Easter, and in the midst of Passover. We need to make that period a time of Truth and Transformation. Confront and Create. Confront poisonous oil pipelines and Create neighborhood solar-energy co-ops. Meet immediate needs of those who suffer from climate-caused unnatural disasters, and resettle climate refugees.
[Carbon burning that poisons the Earth also poisons neighborhoods ---- with coal dust and oil-refinery fumes that multiply asthma and cancer.]
When we take action together in this way, The Spirit Rises!
Only with your help – your tax-deductible gifts of the money to empower creative ideas and activist commitment --- can we reach out to create new prayers, new sermons, and new activist pilgrimages to Congress and your City Council.
Every year, inflation increases our costs. Please click to
<https://theshalomcenter.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1>
and if you can, decide on a gift that’s larger than what you gave before.
When we share our frozen energy this way, unfreezing it, The Spirit Rises!
Thanks! and blessings of shalom, salaam, paz, peace, to all of us, to our children and the children of our children, and to our Mother Earth.
