August 12, 2012

I should have gone to Oakbrook but explanations are useless.  My choices of a Sunday usually are the UUS out in Summefield, the UCCs on 200 or sometimes even the church of my patrimony downtown.
My adventure on the east side last week to welcome the new rabbi was not productive.  I really should have tried Jame M. Young Jr'.s  interfaith Abundant Life but I settled on a visit to the NAACP meeting where Jesus truly is present in the lives of those present.  Thank you Loretta.

My church is in my garden and the adoration of my animals............and in the heavens above when I retrieve my papers in the pre-dawn.

August 11, 2012 "Disturb us, Lord......."

Daddy used to say that I threw away opportunities that others would kill for.  Little did he know the full extent of my impetuousness .........not only with jobs but with my various admirers whom I would frequently dismiss in a great rage.  . ...I didn't know about PMS in those days.

When I quit the Iranian Embassy for the fifth and final time in 1976, a wise woman observed that I had allowed myself to be defeated by pygmies.  Strange that when I was a client of Dr. Tamarkin he elicited a dream in which a giant ocean liner was tangled in rope held by Lilliputians.

Today I almost threw away the company of some of the finest people in Ocala, members of a board on which I serve because of an obstinate and controlling  old woman.  Ann Sperring, before she died, warned me that I was consorting with the wrong people. ..........and not doing what I did best.   She was right. 

I know I only put some old stuff on this blog today.  I have been afraid of returning to this site because I don't think I'll ever again write with the poetry in "Maria Tatiana" which I soon plan to put online.

Meanwhile I share this beautiful poem.

Sir Francis Drake's Prayer (1577). "Disturb, us, Lord..."


Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love."

Interfaith Alliance observed tenth anniversary of 9/11 in Ocala

When the Twin  Towers fell peoples of the world  from Times Square to Tehran came together as one as they repudiated the evil of a few until that evil  was met with shock and awe upon the birthplace of  Abraham and some say of civilization itself.

Upon the tenth anniversary of that horror hundreds of residents of Marion County -.

Hindus, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Baha’i ,  humanists and others across   the spectrum of  faith and non faith traditions - came together once again   to recreate the oneness of all at a  9/11  service of remembrance, hope and healing at the First Congregational United Church of Christ. 

In an event sponsored by The Interfaith Alliance of Marion County  laity , youth and  religious leaders read from the tenets of their faiths while singers offered the balm of music  in a  liturgy of candles directed by Dr. Harold W. McSwain, pastor of the host congregation.

Homilist Dr. Scott Olsen, professor of religion and philosophy at CF, called upon us to consider  both the golden and the silver rules  - universal  variants of “ do unto others as   you would have them do to you”   found in all ethical traditions.

Those attending left the sanctuary singing euphorically “let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me” as they moved to the fellowship hall where they lingered for some time in an  expanding circle of  hope and  friendship.

The Interfaith Alliance is grateful  to all who participated in an exhilarating evening of enlightenment, tolerance and good will reflecting the basic goodness of most human beings.  This includes the Ocala Star Banner for its very generous publicity expressed through its community liaison Mary Baggs and the artist who transformed my sketch into an ad of somber  beauty and quiet  drama

Please join with us as we  continue to work locally  to  build common ground thus helping to  transform our  small part of a  torn and broken world with love, justice and respect for the inherent dignity and worth of each and every human being.

Delphine Blachowicz Herbert

The Interfaith Alliance of Marion County

TIAofMarionCountyFL@gmail.com

Imam Zaid Shakir at CFCC April 5, 2007

Imam Zaid Shakir at CFCC April 5, 2007

“Religious people collectively no longer have the luxury to hate each other, given the numbers of weapons available in the world today.  Unless we learn from history and create new visions and new institutions, this can only lead to ongoing wars in which there will be no winners” Imam Zaid Shakir told those who came to the Webber Center at  CFCC Thursday evening April 5 when the Humanities Department and the future Muslim Students Association sponsored  an “evening of enlightenment” with the outstanding Islamic  scholar

An American Black born in Berkeley and educated both in Western and Islamic intellectual traditions, Shakir now  is scholar in residence at the Zaytuna Institute in Hayward, California.   He mesmerized the largely Muslim audience by his clarity and serenity as well as his scholarship as he  discussed both Islamic spirituality and the need for world-wide systemic change rather than mere regime change as we confront the evils of current  global economic and political structures.  “We need to change the militaristic nature of society and its unending need for wars,”   he said,  repeatedly stating that “we must not lose the ability to recognize nuances.  We must not seek simplistic answers to highly complicated issues.” 

In declaring that the purpose of life is to serve God and to serve other humans,  Shakir’s description of Islamic theology did not seem  much at variance with the doctrines of other major  religions. He described his journey from a Baptist household, through  atheism and an examination of many other religions  until  he chanced upon a Christian comic book in which the author opined that the impossibility of creating something from nothing argues for the existence of God. “The human condition is wretched for he who doesn’t recognize the need for God,” said the Imam who devoted much of the evening to the need for service to humanity as a service to ourselves and inevitably  to God if done for the act itself and not in expectation of earthly recompense of any kind.

During the first hour of the evening  Imam Zafer Sabawi of the Ocala Islamic Center and Dr. Scott Olsen, CFCC professor of humanities, discussed various aspects of  Islam and responded to very active and informed  audience participation as they examined many issues such as attitudes toward violence and treatment of women  which often prove to be cultural rather than theological in nature.

In his  anthology of essays called “Scattered Pictures, Reflections of An American Muslim, ” the Imam brilliantly addresses the consequences of what happens when religion bows to political expediency and people no longer respect the sanctity of civilian life.  He debunks jihad as a non-ending war against non-Muslims and , citing  God’s words to Abraham, said that the Islamic community must be an exemplar for all humanity.          

The Imam concluded his remarks in the spirit of hope as both the Prophet and Jesus admonished us to love one another and to incline toward peace with other nations.

All the essays in the anthology  are excellent but among the most outstanding are:  “We are all collateral damage” in which he states that there will never be progress on the war on terror until” there is no they or we in this affair. . .”.  And in the essay  entitled “Not Muslim Zionists” Shakir recounts the development of Zionism and the dangers Muslims face when attempting to implement Islam, a universal religion,  within the confines of  nation-states earlier  defined by  western colonialists. 

How do we respond when government infringes on individual & religious rights?

The Interfaith Alliance forum at Joy Evangelical  Lutheran  Church January 8, 2008

Panelist Delphine Herbert, Marions for Peace:

How do we respond when government infringes on individual and religious rights?

There is only one way – with courage.  We must take a stand and act on our beliefs even if initially the whole world seems to think otherwise.  The greater numbers of our citizens prefer not to be discomforted and in fact do not see the now accelerating erosion of our constitutional rights as the current administration, with the acquiescence and complicity

 of our Congress, our economic structure and our media , presumes to monitor all aspects of our lives with  the  Orwellian Patriot Act which makes thinking for oneself a crime..

Americans not yet accessing the world wide web would be shocked to learn that US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International , in assessing 70 nations,  has ranked  the US with Russia, China and the UK as  among the worst in the world for invasion of the privacy of their citizens. The assessment is based on many criteria, including constitutional protection, the use of identity cards, data sharing between government agencies, and visual surveillance.

Right after 9/11 the author of the following words published in the New Yorker on 9/24/01 was excoriated as a traitor:“  The disconnect between last Tuesday’s monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing.  The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public.    …..Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is OK.  America is not afraid.  Our spirit is unbroken ……a robotic president assures us that America still stands tall.  A wide spectrum of public figures, in and out of office, who are strongly opposed to the policies being pursued abroad by this Administration apparently feel free to say nothing more than that they stand united behind President Bush…….the unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy. Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one:  confidence building and grief management.  Politics, the politics of a democracy which entails disagreement and promotes candor – has been replaced by psychotherapy. ”

The author was Susan Sontag, once president of American PEN, an organization devoted to the protection of freedom of expression for creative individuals. 

Truly free men cannot allow themselves to be cowed into conformity by the heavy fog of fear which clouds irrational response to danger.  The exceptional among us – the Dr. Martin Luther Kings, the Sojourner Truths, the Frederick Douglasses, the Daniel Ellsbergs, the Berrigans, rose to the call of history.  Now we have   Scott Camil, the Winter soldier who after serving as a gung ho Marine in Vietnam, had an epiphany in Detroit in 1971, transforming him into a powerful voice with Veterans for Peace. A homeless advocate, Clare Hanrahan, spent six month in Federal prison after protesting at the School of the Americas.  The Rev. Gwin Pratt, Presbyterian minister in Jacksonville, was arrested in the well of the US Senate last year for protesting against the war.  These voices defend your rights just as surely as does anyone wearing a military uniform.    But we who are more frail vessels hesitate.

Often, we simply don’t know what to do, where to start.  We mistrust our own ability to make a difference and we fear the censure of public recrimination.  We don’t want to appear ridiculous if indeed we are proven wrong.

Paul Rogat Loeb, in Soul of a Citizen, wrote “We never feel we have enough knowledge or standing.  If we do speak out, someone might challenge us, might find an error in our thinking, or an inconsistency – what they might call an hypocrisy in our lives……..we…..use the standard of perfection to justify our detachment.”   He went on to say that “social change always proceeds in the absence of absolute knowledge, as long as people are willing to follow their convictions, to act despite their doubts, and to speak even at the risk of making mistakes.”

It is hard for many of us to take a stand.  We all seek community – be it the community of family, church, tribe, interest groups or the universes of the intellect now expanding exponentially through the miracles of technology.  Thus there is a constant tension between the desire to appease our personal communities and the need for the expression of our innermost hearts and souls. 

Five years ago 150 people in Marion County joined with hundreds of thousands of others throughout the nation who lifted their voices against an unprovoked war by signing an open letter to President Bush which was published in the Ocala Star Banner on January 19, 2003.    It endorsed the words of national religious leaders of all creeds, beseeching the president to turn from the brink of war with Iraq as such action “will only sow more seeds of intense hatred, strengthening the extreme ideologies, and breed further global instability and insecurity.”  Two and a half years later when fear prevailed and patriotism brooked no challenge, only 80 would sign a similar letter.

The candlelight vigils and rallies which first attracted 75 people at the Ocala town square in January of 2003 now attract only a handful of regulars at our weekly street rallies.  Friction developed between those who wanted silent vigils and those who wished to voice their concerns about the immorality of a Pax Americana spread by the sword.    Many lost sight of the reason we came together – our rejection of an unjust and illegal war - not our personal stances on religious issues.   Mercy me,  if a street preacher said a prayer in the presence of an atheist.

In the local churches there were the perfunctory prayers for peace and the safety of our troops . But really supporting the troops by wanting them out of useless danger characterized one as a traitor. Just where were the strong voices standing publicly for the Prince of Peace? 

Many have mocked Marions for Peace for continuing our street rallies.  They don’t know that we read public repudiation of the war long before the politicians did.  Yes, it is hard to stand in 100 degree heat with the sun blazing in your eyes.  It is difficult not to respond in like manner to the rude and the uninformed.  But, while our numbers are small, the response from passersby has been at least 80% supportive right from the start.  And just before the 2006 election we were experiencing almost total and enthusiastic acknowledgement, leading us to believe that by our presence we were in fact giving courage to others by showing them that’s it’s alright to stand up against the status quo. There is a certain exhilaration gained both from standing with like-minded folk and from the grateful responses from the street. 

And yes, despite all the criticism that demonstrations large and small throughout the nation have accomplished little because of discord among the groups, peace people , through the power of the internet and the passion of personal commitment, have thus far stopped the administration from bombing Iran, an action which might indeed lead to world-wide conflagration.

Those who taunt Marions for Peace on the street do not realize that just about every man who has ever stood with us has served in the military, and many of the women have been nurses. Among our most faithful supporters have been:

The Rev.Mac White, retired Methodist minister, past president of the Marion County TIA  and lifelong champion of peace who marched in the civil rights protests in the 1960s;

George Newkirk, 89 year old elder of the Quakers, who until recently dragged himself to our rallies and vigils with his walker; Lee Wiggins, a retired VA nurse and her husband, Jerry Janiszewski, a design engineer who worked with the space program, Bob Zannelli, savant extraordinaire and nuclear engineer once associated with Admiral Rickover; Cynthia Merkey, former owner of a Gainesville bookstore; and Homer Detwiler, forest dweller, marathoner and member of the Marion County Chorale.    

But perhaps the most impassioned among us was Rex Weng, 86 year old veteran of the segregated military, whose heart broke each day as he learned of the latest casualties.  Now living with his daughter in California, Rex cannot understand why the black community does not see the need to stand with us since the war impacts minority communities so greatly.  Rex, who regularly protested alone against the Confederate flag still flying near the Marion County Commission headquarters, deems institutional racism and continuing gender discrimination as the two underlying reasons that multinational corporations for whom profit is the only god now  rule the world, crushing the good which globalization might otherwise bring to all mankind.  

Dr. Martin Luther King said that “the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” I think this means that yes, we have rights but we also have duties as citizens to defend those rights.  How are you using your first amendment right to free speech?  Is fear of what others might think causing you to acquiesce to consensus thinking?  Or are you speaking out publicly – on the internet, in the papers, on the radio, in your churches and other groups – in the realization that killing anywhere, whether of body or of spirit, is the real terrorism of our times.

Yes, the winds of change are giving breath to the audacity of hope……..and perhaps the new thinking Einstein said we need to save mankind from extinction.                 `````