April 12, 2019

What's Happening This Week at SpiritualityandPractice.com

Editors' Pick   

By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat  

From making a list of services and benefits that governments provide for which you are grateful to writing down some things that you wish your taxes did not pay for, these ideas for a ritual can make an often dreaded day far more meaningful.  

Practices   

By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat   

Easter is more than just a day. What happens when we think of it as a verb? These 37 practices help you make rebirth and renewal a practice in everyday life. 

By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat 

Spiritual practices are the best ways we know to demonstrate kindness and courtesy toward the Earth, to express our gratitude and wonder, and to yield to the mystery and the beauty of it all.   

More Practices: Birthday of Amy Goodman, Birthday of Leonardo da Vinci, The Gifts of Good Friday, Pesach (Passover), National Parks Week, Birthday of John Muir, World Book Day, Birthday of Michael Moore, Birthday of Edward R. Murrow
E-Courses   

Fairy Tales
A new e-course by Thomas Moore
May 6 - 31, 2019 
Fairy tales give us a way to look deeply into ordinary human stresses and find some insight. Let Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Blue Light, Rumpelstiltskin, and other tales revive the child spirit in you, as well as the thoughtful older one. Read more and subscribe:

* Spiritual Literacy & Spiritual Rx *
A One-Day Retreat with Mary Ann Brussat 
Save the Date: May 4, 2019
More information soon! 
Films

Directed by Robin Bissell

Very few films have dramatized effective ways out of the quagmire of racism. How can enemies be transformed into friends? This story about the true-life friendship of an African-American community activist, Ann Atwater, and the president of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, C. P. Ellis, gives one surprising answer.

More Films: The Brink, A Dog's Way Home, Time for Ilhan, The Wild Pear Tree (Ahlat Agaci)  
DVDs

Directed by Peter H. Hedges
This drug-crisis drama revolves around the intense relationship between Ben, a teenage opioid user who has unexpectedly come home from rehab, and his mother Holly, who struggles with alternating currents of her joy in being with Ben and her inability to keep up with all his lies, tricks, and escapes. 

More DVDs:
Almost Sunrise, Capernaum, Mantra, Mirai 
Books   

Wild Mercy
By Mirabai Starr     
 
With great joy, reverence, wonder, and devotion, Starr challenges us to activate the feminine wisdom within and bring it to bear on the dangerous power plays, ethical warps, and wayward social, political, and environmental excesses of our times.
 

 
Holy Grounds: The Surprising Connection between Coffee and Faith
By Tim Schenck      
 
"Oh coffee, you dispel the worries of the great,
you point the way to those who have wandered from
the path of knowledge," wrote Sheikh Abd-al-Kadir in 1587. This spiffy paperback gives us a whiff of the rich spiritual connections between religion and coffee.


More Books:
Compassionate Christ, Compassionate People; Far Country; Hanging onto Hope; A Hard Rain; Saving Capitalism
Children's Books   

Maybe Tomorrow?
By Charlotte Agell      
 
This book about being present to a friend's sorrow shows a rare sensitivity to the time and persistent kindness it takes to allow someone to open up and begin to let go.
 

Margaret's First Holy Week
By Jon M. Sweeney       
 
When Margaret, the Pope's adopted cat, reaches Thursday of Holy Week, she starts to worry: Why is the Pope going to prison of all places? Will they be in danger in the Roman Colosseum? But at each stage of the way, the Pope reassures her.
 
More Children's Books:  The Boy Who Grew a Forest, If I Was the Sunshine, Ojiichan's Gift, The Silence Slips In, Wish, A Friend Like Iggy
Blogs   

By Patricia Campbell Carlson

Our human minds and hearts are not equipped to comprehend that 68.5 million people are currently displaced by war and violent conflict. We can, however, hear human voices one at a time and empathize with images that tap into our own experience of suffering. 

 
KidSpirit Youth Voices Blog
By Meenu Ravi
Humor is catching. When laughter is shared, it bonds people of all cultures together and happiness forms. This priceless medicine is fun, free, and easy to use.
 
Practicing Democracy Project  

By Habib Todd Boerger
A democratic approach to the Earth asserts that all humans are citizens of the Earth community, and other species also have rights that should be preserved. This guide encourages the strengthening of democratic values and virtues in our relationships to the Earth, its current inhabitants, and its future generations.
 
The Fire Next Time by James Baldin
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This month the We the People Book Club sets side-by-side two authors who might be considered a literary father and son: James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Both offer incisive commentary on white violence and complicity through the intimate reflection of writing to a loved one. Download a free Reading Guide to these books or sign up for a live discussion:
www.SpiritualityandPractice.com/JoinWethePeopleBookClub  
From Our Wisdom Archive   

By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat 
"Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind," writes Gary Snyder in The Practice of the Wild. "Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility." As the weather warms (or in some places, when the weather warms!), enjoy these books, excerpts, films, prayers, quotes, and spiritual practices about walking.
A Thought to Carry with You  

As Earth Day approaches, we remember that those who have best guarded the Earth see their care to her as a duty born not from drudgery but from gratitude, vision, and blessing. What we tell ourselves, the words we say about Earth and her climate, belong in the realm of encouragement, not despair, because words have the power to shape attitudes and actions. And so let us take hold of cultural ecologist David Abram's words at WildEthics.org and make them our own:
 
"May a good vision catch me
May a benevolent vision take hold of me, and move me
May a deep and full vision come over me, and burst open around me
May a luminous vision inform me, enfold me.
May I awaken into the story that surrounds,
May I awaken into the beautiful story.
May the wondrous story find me;
May the wildness that makes beauty arise between two lovers
arise beautifully between my body and the body of this land,
between my flesh and the flesh of this earth,
here and now,
on this day,
May I taste something sacred." 
 
Blessings, 
Your Spirituality & Practice Team 
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat 
Patricia Campbell Carlson 
Margaret Wakeley