| Anne Williamson |
It's been 9 weeks of talking about sin, folks. I don't know about you, but I'm a little sin-weary. The conversations have been important and thoughtful, the insights meaningful; but, I think it's time for a blog post on puppies, babies and rainbows.
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to write that blog post. It seems to me little beings and breathtaking skies are always infinitely better in person than on the page. Instead, I offer you something else beautiful...
Read More| Anne Williamson |
We are story-telling creatures. We tell our stories at length in books and film, and in short vignettes on Facebook and Instagram. We ask our roommates - aged 2 to 102 - to tell us the stories of their day, to listen as we share ours. We shout our stories, whisper them, sing them, photograph them, pray them. And, not just our own: we love telling the stories of others too.
All these stories we tell, we hear, they swirl around us. Are they also a part of us? Becoming so? What pieces of the stories we tell speak to the unspoken stories, beliefs, inside? What pieces of the stories we hear become the foundations of our new "unspokens"?
Because in a lifetime of telling stories, it is the unspoken ones that matter most. ...
Read More| Anne Williamson |
Bill Maher once said, "Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease." Interestingly, I don't know whether he said this in support or opposition of the shift. I assume he doesn't like the "religulous" word sin; and yet, I experience him as a strong believer - yes, believer - in personal responsibility, which "disease" diminishes.
Either way, remove "everything" from his statement - obviously Maher hasn't been to marriage counseling where absolutes are a major "no-no" - and it rings true. Liberal camps, even those of the religious persuasion, hate blaming sin on the sinner. Admittedly, I lean this direction too. Hang around me long enough and you're sure to hear me repeat Maya Angelou's famous words, "When you know better, you do better."
The thing is, Maya's words aren't meant to "let us off the hook;" they're meant to call us to better....
Read More| Anne Williamson |
I am going to let you in on my little secret: I am a "buck the system" kind of gal. Blame it on my follow-the-rules childhood, liberal arts education, or millennial-noding 1981 birth year, but once I understood many of our “truths” are in fact constructions – of culture, society, even religion – my inner rebel was unleashed.
Maybe this is why I'm fascinated by psychologist Christopher Ryan's TED Talk on the history of human sexuality. In it, he argues our standard sexual narrative – where men and women exist in an oppositional relationship of male goods and services for female reproductive potential and fidelity – was/is a construction of culture, not biology. Before agriculture, our ancestors were sexually egalitarian and inclusive. Some of us may respond to this idea with unease, worried Ryan is advocating sexually liberal relationships for all; but, his argument isn’t in support of a particular lifestyle. In fact, this is kind of the point and what makes his talk spiritually interesting to me....
Read More| ANNE WILLIAMSON |
When I hear the word greed, my body recoils. Shame is at least part of the reason. I may not be someone who perpetually wants more but I have early, hard-to-shake memories of feeling ashamed of the much more I already had. I recoil too because greed seems to be directly and indirectly responsible for so much pain: the Earth’s; the poor’s; women’s; even, when we begin to think spiritually, the pain of greed’s perpetuators.
Nick Hanauer, one of our country’s .01% ers, agrees… in a way. His concern for he and his fellow plutocrats is not spiritual; it’s practical. In his TED Talk, Hanauer explains why the inevitable consequences of greed in the form of historically high income inequality will be an unstable democracy and less profitable businesses – realities bad for all. In Hanauer's view, this alone should compel us to end gross inequality; he doesn’t mind the moral argument; he simply thinks it unnecessary.
I don’t agree....
Read More| ANNE WILLIAMSON |
This week in WAYfinding we begin discussing the Seven Deadly Sins. If your mind immediately went to the movie starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman; yes, those are the seven to which I'm referring, but no, images from our approach will not haunt you 20 years later. Bad call in letting me watch that movie, Mom and Dad; bad call.
Chilling flashbacks aside, I like the Seven Deadly Sins as our framework....
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