The Human Agenda

I Choose to Lament and Imagine

“Justice and Peace
It’s Black and White”
June 20, 2020 3 pm on Facebook
David Nelson – Opening Statement

We are living during a time of grief. Grief is an overpowering emotion that can weaken your entire body and mind. It can debilitate us and keep us from performing normal life functions. Even when shared it impacts each person deep inside body, mind and spirit. Grief overwhelms the brain and the body. To watch a brother or sister brutally murdered tares at the fabric of our being. When these pictures are repeated year after year, community after community it becomes even more oppressive and overwhelming. We can lose our ability to imagine and to believe in a better world. The sin of racism hurts communities of color, fractures human relationships, and denies God’s good creation. Lament is a way for us to recognize the harm caused by racism.

But Lament is not enough. Dr. William Barbar II, one of the leaders of the Poor People’s Assembly going on as we gather right now, reminds the world “accepting death is no longer an option.” We can no longer tolerate this vicious cancer that like another virus is spreading and destroying this nation, the world and the sacred bond we have with each other.

As an Appreciative Inquiry Coach and a human being, I refuse to give up. When I see my sisters and my brothers killed and denied their human dignity, I lament AND choose to imagine a better world. I admire the persistence, the courage, and the wisdom of Black Lives Matter and those who march and demonstrate. As a person who has benefited from “white privilege”, I have a sacred responsibility to keep imagining and nurturing something better.

As a white man these days I must do lots of listening, reading, pondering, and praying. I listen and I hear you my Black brothers and sisters. I hear you and am moved. I hear you and agree that racism must be condemned, racist behaviors must change, and justice must flow like water. I will listen and when possible use my “white privilege” to support needed change.

I choose to lament and imagine a paradigm shift in policing. We do not need military warriors in our streets we need caregiving partners who use their heads and hearts more often than their clubs and guns.
I choose to lament and imagine 9-1-1 Centers to use protocols that enable emergency dispatchers to identify what service would best bring relief and hope into a crisis.
I choose to lament and imagine equity in representation in all public operations.
I choose to lament and imagine a day when every person’s root cause for success and positive core is recognized, celebrated and enlisted in building a more beloved community.
I choose to lament and imagine continued Vital Conversations where the purpose is not to win an argument, but to win a friend and advance civilization.

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”
Martin Luther King, Jr

Letters fo My Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi

– Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi
“Given our circumstances, ‘neighbor’ may be too casual a word to describe our relationship. We are intruders into each other’s dreams, violators of each other’s sense of home. We are living incarnations of each other’s worst historical nightmares. Neighbors?” In this taut and provocative book, Halevi endeavors to untangle the ideological and emotional knot that has defined the conflict for nearly a century. Using history and personal experience as his guides, he unravels the complex strands of faith, pride, anger, and anguish he feels as a Jew living in Israel.

Releasing conversation: Share your name and identify your home community.

1. “As the Qur’an so powerfully notes, despair is equivalent to disbelief in God. To doubt the possibility of reconciliation is to limit God’s power, the possibility of miracle – especially in this land. The Torah commands me, ‘Seek peace and pursue it’ ---even when peace appears impossible, perhaps especially the.” (18-19). Why is the author writing this as letters to a Palestinian neighbor?

2. “Israel exists because it never stopped existing, even if only in prayer…Need gave Zionism its urgency, but longing gave Zionism its spiritual substance.” (p. 34-35). What is Zionism? Did this book add any to your understanding of Zionism?

3. “So long as Palestinian leaders insist on defining the Jews as a religion rather than allowing us to define ourselves as we have since ancient times – as a people with a particular faith – then Israel will continue to be seen as illegitimate, its existence an open question” (52). How do you understand this distinction? Why does it make a difference?

4. “We live in such intimacy, we can almost hear each other breathing. What choice do we have but to share this land? And by that, I mean share conceptually as well as tangibly. We must learn to accommodate each other’s narratives. That is why I persist in writing to you why I am trying to reach out across the small space and vast abyss that separates your hill from mine.” (89). Can you imagine or have you experienced living in such proximity to people that so often see each other as “the enemy”? What does it mean to “accommodate each other’s narratives? How can the USA and other nations be allies to both sides?

5. “Sustaining the tension between the particular and the universal is one of the great challenges facing Jewish people today.” (61). What does this mean to you?
6. “The enemy of justice for both sides is absolute justice for either side.” (124). What does the author mean by this statement?
7. “Perhaps we can help restore each other to balance. Jews, I feel, need something of the Muslim prayer mat; my Muslim friends say that need something of the Jewish study hall. Can we inspire each other to renew our spiritual greatness? (152). How can we benefit from both the prayer mat and the study hall?

8. “I am the son not of destruction but of rebirth.” (179). What does this mean to you and why does it make a difference?

Vital Conversations 2020

2020 Vital Conversations A Program of the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council, CRES, And Mid-Continent Public Library - The Antioch Branch 6060 N. Chestnut. Gladstone, MO 64119 The Second Wednesday of each month from 1 to 2:30 p.m. VC Coffee - the Fourth Wednesday at 8 a.m. at Panera Bread, 311 NE Englewood Rd.

March 11 - – Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi “Given our circumstances, ‘neighbor’ may be too casual a word to describe our relationship. We are intruders into each other’s dreams, violators of each other’s sense of home. We are living incarnations of each other’s worst historical nightmares. Neighbors?” In this taut and provocative book, Halevi endeavors to untangle the ideological and emotional knot that has defined the conflict for nearly a century. Using history and personal experience as his guides, he unravels the complex strands of faith, pride, anger, and anguish he feels as a Jew living in Israel.

Releasing conversation: Share your name and identify your home community.

1. “As the Qur’an so powerfully notes, despair is equivalent to disbelief in God. To doubt the possibility of reconciliation is to limit God’s power, the possibility of miracle – especially in this land. The Torah commands me, ‘Seek peace and pursue it’ ---even when peace appears impossible, perhaps especially the.” (18-19). Why is the author writing this as letters to a Palestinian neighbor?

2. “Israel exists because it never stopped existing, even if only in prayer…Need gave Zionism its urgency, but longing gave Zionism its spiritual substance.” (p. 34-35). What is Zionism? Did this book add any to your understanding of Zionism?

3. “So long as Palestinian leaders insist on defining the Jews as a religion rather than allowing us to define ourselves as we have since ancient times – as a people with a particular faith – then Israel will continue to be seen as illegitimate, its existence an open question” (52). How do you understand this distinction? Why does it make a difference?

4. “We live in such intimacy, we can almost hear each other breathing. What choice do we have but to share this land? And by that, I mean share conceptually as well as tangibly. We must learn to accommodate each other’s narratives. That is why I persist in writing to you why I am trying to reach out across the small space and vast abyss that separates your hill from mine.” (89). Can you imagine or have you experienced living in such proximity to people that so often see each other as “the enemy”? What does it mean to “accommodate each other’s narratives? How can the USA and other nations be allies to both sides?

5. “Sustaining the tension between the particular and the universal is one of the great challenges facing Jewish people today.” (61). What does this mean to you?
6. “The enemy of justice for both sides is absolute justice for either side.” (124). What does the author mean by this statement?
7. “Perhaps we can help restore each other to balance. Jews, I feel, need something of the Muslim prayer mat; my Muslim friends say that need something of the Jewish study hall. Can we inspire each other to renew our spiritual greatness? (152). How can we benefit from both the prayer mat and the study hall?

8. “I am the son not of destruction but of rebirth.” (179). What does this mean to you and why does it make a difference?
April 8 – Why Won’t You Apologize? Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurst by Harriet Learner
The courage to apologize, and the wisdom to do it well, is at the heart of effective leadership, marriage, parenting, friendship, personal integrity, and what we call love. “I’m sorry” are the two most powerful words in the English language. Harriet Learner is one of our nation’s most loved and respected relationship experts, renowned for her scholarly work on the psychology of women and family relationships.

May 13 - Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro
In the Spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had whimsically submitted her DNA, Dani Shapiro received the astonishing news that her beloved deceased father was not her biological father. Over the course of a single day, her entire history ---the life she had lived ---crumbled beneath her. In just a few hours of Internet sleuthing, she was able to piece together the story of her conception ad, remarkable, fid a You Tube video of her biological father. A true story that reads like a novel.

June 10 – American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders by Jacob Needleman
Jacob Needleman has spent a lifetime studying the religious traditions of the world looks at the wisdom of the American Spirit by focusing on George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, The American Indian, Frederick Douglas, Walt Whitman and others. He shares his perspective on where we have been and his vision of what is still possible in this nation.
Sacred Citizenship by Vern Barnet
We will also read an updated version of our friend Vern Barnet’s paper of “Civil Religion” which has been part of classes on World Religions. Vern will be with us to share his insight and our vital conversation.

July 8 – Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
“From the frontline of social justice comes one of the most urgent voices of our era. Bryan Stevenson is a real-life Atticus Finch who, through his work in redeeming innocent people condemned to death, has sought to redeem the country itself. This is a book of great power and courage, It is inspiring and suspenseful. A revelation.” Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns.

August 12 – The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine Weiss
The author artfully recasts the saga of women’s quest for the vote by focusing on the campaign’s last six weeks, when it all came down to one ambivalent state. The dauntless – but divided – suffragists confront the “Antis” – women who oppose their own enfranchisement., fearing suffrage will bring about the moral collapse of the nation.
Atkins Johnson Farm and Museum “Votes for Women: The Fight for Women’s Suffrage in Kansas and Missouri” August 5 – October 3, 2020. This exhibition is made possible by the Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area traveling exhibit program, administered by the Watkins Museum of History. Museum admission is free. The creator of the exhibit will speak at the opening on August 5.Algon
Not so Minor: The Supreme Court Denies Women's Right to Vote
Wednesday, August 26 at the Gladstone Community Center 6:30 pm.

Selections are subject to change. If you would like to be reminded and have additional information, contact David Nelson at humanagenda@gmail.com or call (816) 453-3835

David E. Nelson
816.453.3835
humanagenda@gmail.com

Why Religion? Elaine Pagels

August 14 – Why Religion? by Elaine Pagels. A provocative and deeply moving memoir from one of the most compelling religious thinkers at work today. Pagels explore the spiritual dimension of human experience by sharing events from her own life journey. She revisits how these losses taught her to think more deeply about suffering and how the world’s religions have addressed it. Readers of all faiths, and none, can learn from her brilliance and courage.

Releasing Conversation: Share your name and your response to the question: “Why Religion?”

Quotes and questions selected by David Nelson.

“Am I religious?” Yes, incorrigibly, by temperament, if you mean susceptible to the music, the rituals, the daring leaps of imagination and metaphor so often found in music, poems, liturgies, rituals, and stories – not only those that are Christian, but also to the cantor’s singing at the bar mitzvah, to Hopi and Zuni dances on the mesas of the American Southwest, to the call to prayer in Indonesia. But when we say “religious,” what are we talking about?” (p.32) What do you most appreciate about religion? Are their activities you have appreciated from other religions? I began to see what fascinated him (Heinz) about investigating the natural world, from the “big bang” to elementary particles and galaxies; and he became intrigued with the secret gospels…I never felt so close to anyone.” (p. 37) Share a story of conversation with another person whose life focus and experience were vastly different from you own and yet you connected in a meaningful way.

Whatever most people mean by faith was never more remote than during times of mourning, when professions of faith in God sounded only like unintelligible noise, heard from the bottom of the sea. (p. 98) Have you experienced expressions of faith that seemed empty, meaningless, or even downright painful at times of loss or tragedy? (Example: “God needed another child in heaven.”

We found no meaning in our son’s death, or in the deaths of countless others. The most we could hope was that we might be able to create meaning. (p. 104) What is the difference between finding meaning in something and creating meaning? Can you illustrate?

“You have no choice about how you feel about this. Your only choice is whether to feel it now or later.” Although her comment helped a little at first, during the next twenty-five years I would keep discovering that how much I was able to feel, or not, and when, was not a matter of choice. (p. 121) How have you experienced and processed feelings during your life? Can you control when and how you feel?

After we sat together in silence for more than an hour, I asked about something strange that happened during the meditation. “Thomas, I felt as though waves of energy were coming toward me from various directions, like waves and ripples in an ocean, as though people were sending me energy; but I have no idea from whom they came. What – if anything – do you make of this?” Before that time, when someone said to me “I’m praying for you,” I’d assumed that this was a vague gesture, a nod to good intentions, the pious equivalent of saying “Let’s have lunch sometime.” (p. 129) What is your intention when you pray for someone? What is your expectation when you pray for someone? How do you feel about the criticism today that “thoughts and prayers” are not enough in relation to the mass shootings?

“Do you believe in life after death?” “Yes, of course – but not my life after my death.” (p. 137) What does the author mean? What does “life after death” mean to you?

I still wanted to believe that we live in a morally ordered universe, in which someone, or something – God or nature? – would keep track of what’s fair? (p. 167) Do you believe that we live in a moral universe?

Emerging from a time of unbearable grief, I felt that such sayings offered a glimpse of what I’d sensed in that vision of the net. They helped dispel isolation and turn me from despair, suggesting that every one of us is woven into the mysterious fabric of the universe, and into connection with each other, with all being, and with God. (p. 177) Do you have visions, experiences, and memories that give you such hope? Is this the authors answer to the question “Why Religion?”

While the World Watched

February 13 – While the World Watched by Carolyn Maull McKinstry. A half century has passed since the Ku Klux Klan bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963, that killed four young friends. For five decades Carolyn Maull McKinstry has tried to forget the deaths, the inhumane injustice, and the brutal assassinations of those who spoke out for change. But now she feels compelled to write down in permanent ink her eye witness account of exactly what happened. In 2018, Sheila Sonnenschein, Melanie Allmayer, and Ameneh Pazerish, who live in the Kansas City area, traveled on the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom Civil Rights and Social Justice Trip to the American South. They will be present at our book discussion. These women from various religious communities visited Birmingham and met the author.

“Hate is too great a burden to bear…I have decided to love…If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we aren’t moving wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love.” MLK Jr. (page 1) Think of times you have chosen to love and/or forgive instead of continuing to hate.

“On the day after the church bombing, a young, white Birmingham attorney, Charles Morgan Jr. publicly blamed the pillars of the city for the girls’ deaths. ‘Every person in this community who has in any way contributed during the past several years to the popularity of hatred is at least as guilty, or more so, than the demented fool who threw that bomb,’ Mr. Morgan said.” (p. 73) Do you agree with Mr. Morgan? Are you, are we, contributing to hate when we remain silent in the presence of verbal expressions of vicious hatred for ‘others’?

“After the funerals, no one mentioned again the four dead girls – my friends. Not my parents, not my teachers, not my pastor, not my Sunday school teachers, not my church members, not my friends. No one. It was like the word cancer. No one wanted to say it out loud or acknowledge it. And with the restroom ‘death chamber’ sealed off and walled up, offering no visible reminder of the bombing, it was almost as if it never happened.” (p.79) Why do you think this happened and can you think of other times this was the case?

“And then I sensed God planting in me a vision for my future. ‘Carolyn, I need you to tell people that this is not about skin color or ethnicity or religion. It is about love, it is about forgiveness, it is about reconciliation. I need you to be my messenger, my ambassador.” (p. 201) Reflect on a time in your life when you received a vision, a call, a nudge, to be a messenger.

“Bitterness hurts only the people whose hearts house it, not the offenders. By God’s grace, I choose to forgive Bobby Frank Cherry, Robert Chambliss, Thomas Blanton, Herman Cash (a suspect who had died during the time the investigation was reopened), and all the others who lived lives of hate. It’s the difficult road, yet it’s also the road to ultimate freedom.” (p. 261) When you have let go of hate, even when you have the right to feel it, have you felt relief and a new sense of self-worth?

“At its core, forgiveness is a spiritual act – it’s not something we can do in our own strength.” (p.274) What does that mean to you? Where do you get your strength to forgive? “In order to truly love our neighbors, we have to get to know them.” (p. 278) What are you doing to get to know your neighbors better?

The Birmingham Pledge
• I believe that every person has worth as an individual.
• I believe that every person is entitled to dignity and respect regardless of race or color.
• I believe that every thought and every act of racial prejudice is harmful; if it is my thought or act, then it is harmful to me as to others.
• Therefore, from this day forward I will strive daily to eliminate racial prejudice from my thoughts and actions.
• I will discourage racial prejudice by others at every opportunity.
• I will treat all people with dignity and respect; and I will strive daily to honor this pledge, knowing that the world will be a better place because of my effort.
While the World Watched (P 280)

Reading and Discussions

'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."

Vital Conversations happen the second Wednesday of every month at Mid Continent Public Library - Antioch Branch from 1-2:30 p.m. Hope you can join us.

Celestial Mechanics by William Least Heat-Moon

Celestial Mechanics By William Least Heat-Moon Quotes and Questions selected by David Nelson For Vital Conversations November 14, 2018

Releasing Conversation: Share your name. Do you prefer reading fiction or non-fiction? Give one reason for your answer.

“Much of what follows is factual, and some has been actual.” What is the difference between factual and actual? “Those lacking imagination take refuge in reality.” – Jean-Luc Godard, Goodbye to Language, 2015. Is your imagination staying active?

“Silas, while an editor, came to refer to himself as an Othertarian, a disciple of otherosophy and the study of the otherhood of humankind.” (p.30) What does that mean to you? Explain.

“Writing about Dr. Isabella Longworth…Silas cited her book Ten Sutric Questions, each beginning, CAN WE:
• Eradicate our simpleton within so that we can be remade wiser?
• Embrace religious instruction without indoctrination or inoculating?
• Practice a faith that does not tether the mind?
• Avoid curling up cozy with self-deceit?
• Recognize that consensus is not necessarily truth?
• Beware a faith requiring denials?
• Leave no gaps between belief and conscience?
• Help one who argues ‘God is dead’ toward a great definition of the divine?
• Avoid seeing our neighbor’s holy man as an infidel?
• Remember the finest practical gift of intelligent religion is tolerance?” (p. 36)
Why did these thoughts upset the readers of the Star-Observer? Which ones challenge your faith/thinking?

“A Cosmoterian doesn’t worship. Or pray. He chooses to respect and honor, and that required understanding and empathy --- endeavors considerably more challenging than worship or prayer…How could God be anything less than everything and still be God? A word carelessly used – say pantheist or atheist – can disrupt thinking and corrupt terms into hostile labels.” (p.96) “Cosmoterians are members of the Oft Reformed, Frequently Reorganized, Happily Unorthodox Church of Probability where questions superseded opinions.” (p. 172) “In Norse mythology the original human is named Ask.” (p. 110) Share some thoughts about your understanding of worship, prayer, respect, and honor. Can we avoid hostile labels?

Why did Silas decide to risk a hot air balloon ride?

Notation on a page torn free and placed inside the leather cover: “To whom it may concern: My existence is a sinkhole I cannot climb out of. I have a play I no longer believe in. I have excelled at a single thing this year – deceiving myself. If only unrequited ardor would generate abated ardor. The icehouse calls. I bequeath all I leave behind to Celeste Heppermann who did what she could, and for that I am grateful.” “It was signed and – incorrectly dated. Was it a suicide note-cum-will? (p. 270) Was it a suicide note, or could it be something else?

“Fundamentalism succeeds by making true believers thrive on intolerance. And let’s keep in mind why it’s called fundamentalism…Because it’s expelled from a horse’s fundament…I’d prefer cosmological talk to the scatological…beheading can be done with a blade or with more subtlety. Threats, repression, mockery, indoctrination, excommunication, book burning. And especially, especially, lazy thinking.” (p.323) Why is fundamentalism still such a popular religious position in our world?

“George Washington Carver said the wonderful secrets he discovered lay within each plant, but to elicit them he first had to love the plant. As gardeners, we should ask what we want of our garden. The best gardens begin in the heart, and the best gardeners are those happy to swap a few ripe strawberries today for bird song tomorrow? (p.358) What does that suggest to you?

“To fairest Celeste who has engineered a man’s return. To my celestial mechanic? (p.369)
What is a “celestial mechanic” and why did Silas and perhaps all of us need one?

“Pioneering psychologist William James called religion a ‘feeling of being at home in the universe.’…Our tendency has been to pretend that the Universe is how we wish our home would be, rather than to revise our notion of what’s homey so it embraces the Universe.
--Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994” (p.387) What is the difference?

How has this read challenged, adjusted, reinforced, altered your place in the universe?
What questions do you bring to our Vital Conversation that can add value to others and to yourself?

December 12, 2018 Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most by Marcus J. Borg
Do Christian beliefs still matter? Do they really change us or the world? Bestselling author Marcus J. Borg reflects on the convictions that he has developed over the course of his life and why they provide a part of hope for those seeking to be faithful Christs in the twenty-first century. He was among the most widely known and influential voices in progressive Christianity. As a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, Borg was a major figure in historical Jesus scholarship.

January 9, 2019 – Size Matters: Why We Love To Hate Big Food by Charlie Arnot
Despite food being safer, more affordable and more available than at any time in human history, consumers are increasingly skeptical and critical of today’s food system. Charlie Arnot provides thought provoking insight into how the food system lost consumer trust, what can be done to restore it, and the remarkable changes taking place on farms and in food companies. Charlie will be a part of our Vital Conversation.

David Nelson – humanagenda@gmail.com – 816.453.3835

Thanksgiving 2018

LEADER: God, there are days we do not feel grateful.
ALL: When we are anxious or angry.
When we are alone.
When we do not understand what is happening in the world, or with our neighbors. We struggle to feel thankful.

LEADER: But this is Thanksgiving, we choose gratitude.
WOMEN: We choose to accept life as a gift from you, from the unfolding work of all creation. We choose to be grateful for the earth from which our food comes; for the water that gives life; and for the air we all breath.

LEADER: We make the choice to see our ancestors, those who came before us, and their stories, as a continuing gift of wisdom for us today.
MEN: We choose to see our families and friends with new eyes, appreciating them for who they are, and be thankful for our homes whether humble or grand.
We will be grateful for our neighbors, no matter how they voted or how much we feel hurt by them.
We choose to see the whole planet as our shared commons, the public stage of the future of humankind and creation.

ALL: God, this Thanksgiving, we do not give thanks. We choose it.

LEADER: And we will make thanks, with strong hands and courageous hearts.
WOMEN: When we see your sacred generosity,
We become aware that we live in an infinite circle of gratitude.
That we all are guests at a hospitable table around which gifts are passed and received.
We will not let anything opposed to love take over this table.

MEN: Instead, we choose to see grace, free and unmerited love, the giftedness of life everywhere, as the tender web of all creation.
In this choosing, and in the making, we will pass gratitude onto the world.

LEADER: Thus, with you, and with all those gathered here, we pledge to make thanks.
ALL: And we ask you to strengthen us in this resolve.
Here, now, and into the future.
Around this table.
Around the table of our nation.
Around the table of the earth.
Amen.

God: A Human History

GOD: A Human History by Reza Aslan
Vital Conversations September 12, 2018
Quotes and questions selected by David Nelson.

Releasing Conversation: Share your name. Who or what is God? You can prepare for the conversation by journaling about your own history of God.
1. “It turns out that this compulsion to humanize the divine is hardwired in our brains…what the vast majority of us think about when we think about God is a divine version of ourselves; a human being but with superhuman powers.” (p. xiii) Do you agree?

2. “This belief is called ‘animism’ – the attribution of a spiritual essence, or ‘soul,’ to all objects, human or not – and it is very likely humanity’s earliest expression of anything that could be termed religion.” (p. 7) What do you think is the earliest expression of religion?

3. “We are Homo religious, not in our desire for creeds or institutions, nor in our commitments to specific god and theologies, but in our existential striving toward transcendence; toward that which lies beyond the manifest world…it must be a product of human evolution.” (p. 25) Have you had a “wow” moment? Have you experienced transcendence in some way?

4. “Freud considered religion to be a neurosis: a mental disorder that fosters belief in invisible, impossible things and leads to compulsive actions and obsessive conduct.” (p. 31) “Religion is first and foremost a neurological phenomenon…Every impulse, every impulse without exception – is generated by complex electrochemical reactions in the brain.” (p. 39) Do you agree, or do you think and feel God is more than “electrochemical reactions” in your brain? Prepare to make the case for your opinion.

5. “To get to know the gods better, we will construct entire spiritual systems based on the only thing we can truly know: ourselves…the gods need food…the gods need shelter…the gods need names… the gods need personalities…the gods need mythic histories.” (p. 57) Does this make sense to you? Why or why not?

6. “Monotheism – that is, belief in a sole, singular God – has existed for barely three thousand of those years. (p. 98) Does it surprise you that belief in just one God is so recent and almost unknow throughout most of human history?

7. “And if Israel no longer existed, then neither did its god, Yahweh.” (p. 111) Much of the historical part of The Hebrew scriptures is about the battle between various gods. “At least four different written sources that make up the bulk of the early books in the Bible…Yahwist, or J…Elohist, or E, Priestly, or P…Deuteronomist, or D.” (p. 117)

8. “This is the birth of Judaism as we know it: not in the covenant with Abraham, nor in the Exodus from Egypt, but in the smoldering ashes of a razed temple and the refusal of a defeated people to accept the possibility of a defeated god.” (p. 127) How important are the stories of The Hebrew Scriptures to your faith?

9. “The truth is that the early Church’s desire to maintain fealty to the Jewish belief in on God may have been as much for political reasons as it was for theological ones.” (p. 140) Do Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same God?

10. “The Quran expressly rejects the belief that God created human beings in his image. God has no image…Yet the Quran is replete with anthropomorphic descriptions of God.” (p. 156) Why is it so difficult to talk about god without using anthropomorphic ideas?

11. “The only way to make sense of the unity of the Creator is to accept the unity of creation. In other words, if God is one, then God must be all…God is everything that exists.” (p. 163-164) “As a believer and a pantheist, I worship God not through fear and trembling but through awe and wonder at the workings of the universe --- for the universe is God. I pray to God not to ask for things but to become one with God. I recognize that the knowledge of good and evil that the God of Genesis so feared humans might attain begins with the knowledge that good and evil are not metaphysical things but moral choices. I root my moral choices neither in fear of eternal punishment nor in hope of eternal reward. I recognize the divinity of the world and every being in it and respond to everyone and everything as though they were God --- because they are.” (p. 169) How important is the fear of eternal punishment or eternal reward in your personal faith? Can you embrace the idea that everything is God?

12. Has this book assisted in your faith development or challenged it? What issues do you want to discuss with others in our “vital conversation”?

The Promise and the Dream by David Margolick

Ann and I were living on the South Side of Chicago during 1968. Two men who inspired me to dream of a better world and to do what I could to help create and maintain that world were Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. I have read several books about these giants on whose shoulders all of us who long for a better world now stand. The grief I experience then and shared with so many others have been a part of what has shaped our world and certainly has shaped my heart and my head. I never really thought about their connection that much until I read this book. I again grieved. I again hope. I again claim the promise that the human family can work together to build a more beloved community.

“Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” RFK in South Africa. These words reappear at Robert Kennedy’s grave.

Kennedy quoting Aeschylus following King’s death, “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

“By any historical measure, King will always be the more significant of the two men, though by the time of his death, Kennedy was just coming into his own; ultimately, their accomplishments might have been more nearly equal. But to borrow a phrase from King, it doesn’t really matter to us now. Thanks to their common goals and trajectories and calendars, how they came to belong to the ages in tandem, they are linked as no other black man and white man in the history of civil rights have ever been. In the popular mind, whatever kept them apart has evaporated. They have become a team. It isn’t only in the afterlife that they are together. So, too, are they in the here and now –inspiring us still.” (page 390)