Refirement Musings after seven weeks

February 21, 2016

            Shabbat yesterday was the fiftieth day of my retirement, a personal Pentecost, or as we have it in Judaism, simply Shavuot, Weeks, the seven understood.  After leaving the working world, I think I have begun to thaw out enough to experience the exhaustion of the working world of our times, all of the striving after wind in a world that makes a pretense of freedom when, in fact, the fix is in.

I have sat in my small house in Portland, Maine, for the first time (really) reading novels l’shaym shamai’im, for the sake of heaven, going down to Bernie’s headquarters a couple of time a week to make calls on behalf of his candidacy, against my better judgment asking strangers (registered Democrats) to support Bernie over Hillary, really none of my business, yet easier than the “ask” for money which came with my job of the last thirty years.  I am beginning to seek out political activists and religious leaders, looking for how I can continue to be a good neighbor, and becoming ever more conscious of the silos in which so many of us seem to live.

I am particularly conscious of the silos of our religious congregations.  Without sacrificing the truth and beauty of our particular spiritual traditions, it seems to me that we who want to rid the world of human violence, or at least begin effectively to lower the level of the unnecessary infliction of pain and effectively respond to the erosion of freedom in countries which lay claim to being democracies—we need to come together, in the name of all that we hold sacred, to resist the tyranny of our times.

This kind of unity is what I was looking for with the idea of everyone coming together in Washington DC that I wrote about earlier.  I never really expected it to happen—no organizing for it ever occurred—just trying to develop consciousness of the freedom movement demanded by our times.

Senator Sanders and Vermont Clergy on Economic Inequity vtdigger.org/.../vermont-religious-leaders-join-sanders-denounce-econo..

Seventy and retired as a pulpit rabbi

Seventy years old today.  Retired as pulpit rabbi.  Returning to this blog.

Obviously we didn't all meet in Washington DC on July 5th.  Better happened:  Bernie decided to run for president.  At a press conference in his office awhile back, before this campaign, many of us "religious leaders" joined with Bernie in advocating for the changes he and so many of us seek.  There may be a link to that conference; if so I'll add it.  Suffice it to say now, Bernie is out front of us clergy and laity concerned, just as the Vermont State Supreme Court was out front of us on the issue of civil unions.  We'll see what happens with the campaign.  

For now as I turn a corner in my life, I am writing and will post my latest in a short while.  I appreciate your reading these words.

Rabbi Joshua

I better organized ideas I presented a few days ago.  In actuality a fantasy lifted up into the cloud.  If I hear a bunch of people are going to be in Washington July 5th for this purpose, I'll join them.  Otherwise, presented as an alternative way of organizing in these disintegrating times.

Much thanks to friends who offered suggestions (person to prson!) about yesterday’s blog which was the beginning of an idea.  With the help of others I have tried to better organize my presentation of the idea.


A CALL FOR

A PILGRIMAGE TO WASHINGTON, D.C. TO
DEMONSTRATE DEMOCRACY IN ACTION.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 5, 2015
WASHINGTON, D.C.
AT THE SUPREME COURT BUILDING

ORGANIZED LOCALLY, BEARING WITNESS NATIONALLY

CLERGY AND LAITY STAND IN SILENT RESISTANCE TO:

1. THE UNDERMINING OF DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP BY THE SUPREME COURT’S CONFERRING PERSONHOOD ON CORPORATIONS,
ESSENTENTIALLY ELIMINATING FAIR ELECTIONS.

2. THE TWIN FAILURES OF AMERICAN SOCIETY TO COME FULLY TO GRIPS WITH THE SIN OF SLAVERY AND THE PERSISTENCE OF RACISM.

3. THE UNCONCSIOUSNESS OF AMERICANS OF THE SIN OF THE GENOCIDE OF THE NATIVE NATIONS.

3. THE ACCUMULATION OF GREAT WEATH IN THE HANDS OF VERY FEW;
THE CREATION OF A SUSBSISTENCE ECONOMY; THE UNRAVELLING OF AMERICA’S CENTER:  THE MIDDLE CLASS

4. THE REFUSAL OF OUR LEADERS TO ABANDON WITH ALACRITY THE CARBON ECONOMY

5. THE GREED OF THE BANKING INDUSTRY IN REFUSING TO FORGIVE STUDENT DEBT




JULY 5

THUNDERING SILENCE

in the face of an immoral economy,
an unfair society,
a disintegrating democracy
& an imperiled planet.


For more information, speak with a clergy person or anyone you know who shares these concerns.  Create plans with others to get to Washington for that afternoon.

Commit today to join this
Pilgrimage For Justice.
Share your commitment with friends,
Watch democracy in action.
We will eventually reestablish just elections.
First we must create
the thundering silence of
a Silent Cry For Justice



No speakers (perhaps a recitation of the Gettysburg Address in defense of democracy)

July 5, in the wake of all the patriotic hoopla,

tens of thousands of clergy and laity concerned descend upon Washington DC for a SILENT VIGIL.  Let the silence roar our rejection of a rapacious economy and a racist society and a population which needs to wake up to the perils of climate change.

Some bring signs, some don't.  No talk (of course talk in the streets but no podium).  Truly participatory democracy.  Time enough to get better organized afterwards.

Imagine the potential of this BEARING WITNESS TO THE GREED AND INJUSTICE OF OUR TIMES AND CALLING ATTENTION TO HOW CLOSE TO AN EDGE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY HAS BEEN PUSHED.

 

---

 

An idea for your consideration.  

A SILENT VIGIL

A process of freedom awakening

What do you think the prospects for success (big turn-out) would be of a grass-roots call (not from adjudicators/religious groups or even envyronmental groups, church or otherwise) but from individual clergy and laity  (as during Vietnam)--we just pick a Sunday in July and ask clergy and lay folks concerned to come to Washington for a silent vigil, prayer for

Saving American Democracy by decrying the idea that a corporation is a person.  "Citizens United," they call it, without any sense of the irony that we they are doing is robbing Americans of their democracy.

Decrying the greed underlying the vast concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.

Joining in penitentional prayer for the outrageous persistence of the murder of black men by the police, with its clear connection to the racism of the chattel slavery upon which this country's economic engine was built.

Standing with surviving members of the Native Nations in pledging to undo the carbon economy and create an Earth friendly economy in the spirit of the ones who were here first.

All of us coming to Washington from across the land a couple of weeks before the pope speaks.

What do you think?  I think it can only work it it remans a completely free process, spontaneouss, no organizational ties other than those that would in the end be needed to work out arrangements in Washington with the police for a lot of people being there.  And perhaps organizing church-synagogue-mosque hospitality for people sleeping in those buildings for the Saturday night before.

Please let me know what you think?  Coming to the end of three decades of active leadership of synagogues, I'm a bit frustrated at how small is our resistance to the issues described above.

I do believe this is a watershed moment.  Why not clergy and laity concerned come to life?

July 5, in the wake of all the patriotic hoopla,

tens of thousands of clergy and laity concerned descend upon Washington DC for a SILENT VIGIL.  Let the silence roar our rejection of a rapacious economy and a racist society and a population which needs to wake up to the perils of climate change.

Some bring signs, some don't.  No talk (of course talk in the streets but no podium).  Truly participatory democracy.  Time enough to get better organized afterwards.

Imagine the potential of this BEARING WITNESS TO THE GREED AND INJUSTICE OF OUR TIMES AND CALLING ATTENTION TO HOW CLOSE TO AN EDGE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY HAS BEEN PUSHED.

Joshua Chasan

jchasan@comcast.net

My role in this is only to get it off the ground and perhaps help with arrangements for shelter in Washington DC.

It's now in your hands.  Spread the message by whatever means you've got.  Sunday, July 5, early afternoon, in front of the Lincoln Memorial.  Perhaps if something must be said and I would hope not, then simply a recitation of the Gettysberg Address

---

In his speech in Selma, President Obama defined the issue.  Basically it's a question of whether or not America will come true.  With the exception of his omission of the extermination of the Native Nations, he drew a rather accurate picture of who we are called to be as a people.  Some commentators said there were no policy implications which just is not true.  Clearly there is the issue of voting rights.

Just as well, and the President touched on it but did not lift it up sufficiently, America cannot come true when its democracy is on the ropes because of the concentration of wealth in very few pockets.

The twin fault lines of race and class require of us a movement that speaks to unfinished business in regard to both.  What is needed is a galvanizing issue that speaks to both.

I failed to mention previously that early in February, forty-one local religious leaders, including many religious sisters from Winooski, the city most heavily to be impacted by the F-35s, wrote again (as we had in 2012 and 2013), continuing to ask our Congressional delegation and the mayors of Burlington and Winooski, to reconsider their support for the basing of the F-35s in the most densely occupied part of Vermont, when they are relatively untested, plagued with problems, projected to be the most expensive weapon system in the history of homo sapiens.

There is no a legal case going forward, questioning whether the Air Force complied with environmental standards and asking for a new study of the situation.  What's the rush?  Well, they say that the F-16s are aging.  Yet we also read from the Air Force that they have ways of keeping them in good shape.

It's amazing to many of us, long-time supporters and workers for Senator Patrick Leahy and Senator Bernie Sanders, vocal critics of the war machine and the ways it encourages us to get involved in wars), that they will not stop, look both ways, and allow for a reconsideration.  They do such good work in so many ways.  We truly do not understand what is going on here.  There are rumors of economic interests.  Rumors are rumors, they are not the truth.  But inquiring minds want to know.