[Oe List ...] A movement in the making

[mhampton@att.net]

A report will be appreciated.
Mary Hampton

-------------- Original message from KroegerD at aol.com: -------------- 


I'm going.  Maybe I'll see you there?

Dick Kroeger


Forwarded Message: 
Subj:Tikkun Spiritual Activism Conference 2006 Information for Registrants 
Date:4/11/2006 7:10:27 PM Central Daylight Time
From:Tikkun at mail.democracyinaction.org
To:dickemail at aol.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)






Below you will find: 
~Registration Confirmation and a Letter of Welcome From Rabbi Michael Lerner
~Important Logistical Information on the Spiritual Activism Conference, May 17-20 2006

Dear Friends, 
I’m so delighted that you have registered for the Conference on Spiritual Activism, at which we will be taking the next steps in creating a Network of Spiritual Progressives. 

We have an amazing opportunity to make this an historic moment. We’ve created this gathering for people who want to find a way to challenge the misuse of God and religion by the Religious Right, to challenge those aspects of the liberal and progressive world that have been unsympathetic or even hostile to spiritual and religious people, and to find a way to build a New Bottom Line in American society to challenge the dominant ethos of materialism and selfishness and replace it—by insisting that institutions be judged rational, productive and efficient not only to the extent that they maximize money and power, but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring, generosity and kindness, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation. These are our official goals in creating the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and this conference is meant for people who share these goals. It’s designed to be not only an opportunity to hear some stimu
lating ideas but also a chance to forge connections and deepen your involvement in spiritual-progressive social change work.

To prepare for the conference, it would be of great help to the success of this event if you were to read my new book, The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right. In that book, I lay out a Spiritual Covenant with America that offers a starting place for bringing about a New Bottom Line. It is that Spiritual Covenant which will be the focus of our efforts as we meet with Congressional representatives on May 18, and since the elaboration of those ideas cannot fit into a sound byte, it’s very critical that you have an understanding of the full meaning of the eight planks of the Covenant, which you’ll get by carefully reading the book.

At the conference, you’ll hear some amazing speakers and also have opportunities to get together with other people who share your interests. On Wednesday, we’ll offer trainings on all eight points of the Spiritual Covenant with America to help you prepare for meeting with your Congressional representatives on Thursday; you can choose the training on the point that most interests you. We are attempting now to set up a meeting for you with your Congressperson or U.S. Senator, or, most likely, one of his/her aides, and hope that you can bring some other people from your Congressional district with you to the conference and the Congressional meeting who share your enthusiasm for a spiritual politics and who can be part of the Wednesday training session. In addition, we’ll have small groups that will meet each day so that you can share with others some of your reactions and ideas. Throughout the week, you’ll be able to choose from workshops that will add a spiritual or meaning d
imension to many of the issues you care about; many of these workshops will give you an opportunity to network with others around these issues and get specific ideas for getting involved. If you like, you can start NOW getting to know other conference registrants who share your interests by participating in our pre-conference online forums at:
http://spaceshare.com/conference/nsp/?q=forum. 

Enter the following username and password as the page loads:
Username: camel
Password: needle

Then create your own user name and login, and choose the topic in which you would most like to meet people and make connections. Below that topic, click “Introductions” and then “Post new forum topic.” Simply describe what you’d like other people to know about you and especially:

1. What draws you to this movement or this particular subtopic of it?
2. What would you like to work on after the conference? 

As the conference gets closer, we’ll send instructions for the next steps for the forums. 

I’m sure that you have talents, experience, resources, and connections that could help build an ongoing movement of spiritual progressives. But how do we figure out how to most effectively channel all that you bring in ways that will feel fulfilling to you and be useful to building the movement? 

Truth is, we don’t yet fully know how to do this. We just don’t know enough about you and we don’t have enough funding for staff to have people who can sit down with you and hear your story and learn about your talents and what you are willing to do to help make this project grow. That’s why we’re asking you to do some thinking about what you might enjoy doing.

An easy way to get involved is to invite five or ten friends to join you in a study group around The Left Hand of God. This group might then grow into a local chapter of the Network of Spiritual Progressives through which you can plan events and activities to raise consciousness around our three goals. In fact, some of our national staff will be doing a speaking and organizing tour in the coming months, and we’d love to speak to people in your town and get to know you and your group. Contact Nichola at tikkun.org if you have a group of ten or more paid-up members who would benefit from a visit or for help in getting names of Tikkun readers in your area who might respond to your call to help create a local chapter. On the other hand, if there already is a chapter functioning in your area and it doesn’t appeal to you for some reason, you don’t have to try to change its direction or leadership—you are welcome to start another local chapter or project group (because we are attempt
ing to give chapters maximum autonomy within the guidelines set by the Q&A on our website and by the Spiritual Covenant with America, we don’t know all the local leaders nor can we testify that they are the best people to be leading a local group, so if you don’t feel comfortable with them, yet do feel excited about the basic ideas of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, please don’t use their either real or perceived weaknesses as your reason for diminishing your commitment to building the spiritual progressive consciousness in your area—just build your own independent project or chapter with at least ten other paid-up members of the national NSP). 

But what if you don’t want to do that local chapter building, but still want to give some of your talents to making this happen? Here is where I particularly need your help in figuring out how to make this happen.

In some arenas, it’s going to be relatively easy because you can begin to work without needing our prior direction or approval. Check our website regularly—because we will be putting up materials that can be useful.


Show an NSP video or DVD to friends, neighbors, work or religious community contacts: We have videos and DVDs with Rabbi Michael Lerner and others introducing people to the NSP, a project of The Tikkun Community. You do not have to have a large living room—if you can fit 8-10 people, that’s fine. Invite them over, and ask them to bring some treats to share. After watching the video, spend some time talking about what people liked about it (not just what they disagreed with). Then offer people interested in becoming members of the NSP copies of the NSP brochure. 

Media: If you have contacts with media and are ready to approach them about covering the Network of Spiritual Progressives, you can do that even now, before the conference, or right afterwards. Don’t wait for us—just do it. Or even if you don’t have those contacts, you could call your local newspaper and ask them if you could write about the conference as a volunteer correspondent. Or you could insist that they cover it themselves. Or get them primed to cover the next conference. 
Fundraising or Grantwriting: If you have contacts on foundation boards, please speak to them about helping us. If you have talent at writing grants, start researching foundations that you think might be helpful, and then write a grant using the information on our website and that you’ll get at our conference. Then send it to us so we can be the ones who approach the foundation directly.

Churches, Synagogues, Mosques, Ashrams, Professional Organizations, or Unions: If you have contacts with the national office of your denomination or religious community, your professional organization, or your union, ask them to invite the NSP to present our ideas at their next national and regional conferences and to interview NSP staff and write an article in their national magazine. Or help devise a strategy for getting our ideas presented on the local level around the country even if you can’t get the national leadership on board. Form a caucus with others who share your interest in the NSP in your church, synagogue, mosque, ashram, professional organization or union—and then start working together to push forward these ideas. 

Spiritual Democrats or Spiritual Greens: Perhaps you would like to take a first step toward bringing our ideas into the liberal and progressive world, challenging the hostility that has existed to spiritual consciousness and helping them develop an awareness of why America needs a spiritual left. Please approach your local branch of the party, or any other party you wish to work with, and write also to the national chair. Tell them you want to create a caucus for Spiritual Democrats or Spiritual Greens, (or spiritual Republicans—whatever party you feel fits you) and ask them how they can help you publicize this and get support for it on the local and national level. The goal of these caucuses is to move those parties or any other political parties (Republicans, Peace and Freedom, Libertarians, or other parties) to adopt the analysis and ideas of the NSP. The Spiritual Covenant with America that can be used by the Dems and/or the Greens in the next campaign, or by any other party 
as well, and of course there will be platform ideas emerging from our conference and the next one in 2007 that you can draw upon.

Social Change Movements: Approach local branches or national offices of the environmental movement, the women’s movement, civil liberties, civil rights and human rights organizations, the anti-war movement, disability rights movement, or any other movements with a progressive social change organization. Ask if you can make a presentation of the ideas of NSP and how they might help build a more effective and deeper movement.

Circulate a Petition Endorsing the Spiritual Covenant with America: We will supply you with petitions that you can take to your workplace, into your religious organization, or door-to-door to your neighbors. When you’ve collected a few hundred signatures, bring them to the local city council and ask for your town or city to endorse the covenant, or try to put it on the ballot as a popular initiative for the public to vote on. The resulting debate will certainly generate an interesting opportunity for public discussion about ideas that have largely been kept out of the public sphere till now.

Poets, Writers, Songwriters, Filmmakers, Artists, Television Producers, Graphic Artists, and Web Design Experts: Write poetry, songs, fiction, non-fiction, create movies and art that embody our message. Send what you’ve produced to Tikkun—some of it we may be able to use in the magazine (though no promises). Convince people to do TV and movie documentaries about our efforts. Or write magazine stories about the building of a Network of Spiritual Progressives. Design a beautiful logo for the Network of Spiritual Progressives, or a bumper sticker, or a membership pin. Come up with design elements that we could use to identify visually a politics of love and generosity.

Whenever possible, we want you to take the initiative to make something happen, rather than waiting for us to respond to an email or to come up with ideas or contacts for you. Of course, if there are pieces of information that you need, or promotional material, please do connect with us.

You might have other skills that you want to bring to us. Perhaps you have a relative who might put NSP in their charitable-giving portfolio or their last will and bequest, or perhaps you know a national leader in an important charitable giving foundation, political, religious, or social change organization, or perhaps you can bring us some brilliant new social theorist or theologian, but you need for us to make the contact. Or perhaps you have some other skills that we haven’t thought about. Or perhaps you’d be interested in coordinating one of the national projects mentioned on our website. For these, I’d like to invite you to write to me—tell me about you, your background and skills, your time availability, and your own ideas about how to implement the ideas of the NSP, and what specifically you’d like to do and how you imagine proceeding if I say “yes.” Write me at 951 Cragmont Ave., Berkeley, CA 94708 or at RabbiLerner at tikkun.org (even better if you send a pictur
e either in the letter or online—I have a notoriously bad memory for names, and the picture can remind me of who you are). If you have ideas about what we should be doing at the NSP, or a catchy formulation for some part of our ideas, or a dynamite plan for how to reach out to people who are not yet part of our network, you can send them to me on email: RabbiLerner at tikkun.org, though I have to warn you in advance that ideas that don’t come with someone willing to implement them are far less exciting to me and far less likely to elicit a response—because at this point, there is no one to actually make your ideas happen, no matter how brilliant they are, unless you are. 

I’ve put all this about what happens after the conference first in this letter because the conference is not meant to be just an opportunity to hear great ideas, but one step in a larger process to build a progressive spiritual movement. But now let’s turn to how to make this conference as successful as it can be.

The agenda is very full. Please don’t feel that you have to be inside every session that is happening. Take time for yourself to process. Beautiful Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park is just a few blocks south on 15th Street, and the weather should be great; find a place to sit outside and meditate. (We’ll also have a meditation room available inside.) Meet new people. Introduce yourself to strangers and tell them that you don’t normally do that, but as a way of supporting this venture you are going to extend yourself and want to meet them and get to know how they are. Suggest that you go for a walk, or meet for breakfast, lunch or dinner at one of the many restaurants in the neighborhood of the conference. Building personal ties is an important part of this conference—and it requires you to make the effort. (At one of our Tikkun conferences we had some people meet who then became active in local Tikkun work, and eventually they became couples who are now happily married—so let
 us know if that happens for you—we’d like to celebrate with you.) We also have created a time each day for small group discussions, so please try to attend those. (Also, let us know if you have facilitating skills and want to help one such group work smoothly for the 4 days that they will meet (email Allyson at tikkun.org). 

On the other hand, when you are in a session, please listen carefully to the speakers and help us keep the cross-talking to a minimum. If you want to connect with people, go outside of the rooms where presentations are being made. And please express your enthusiasm as visibly as possible. Our speakers have come to this event without any pay, nor even payment for travel or lodgings. They deserve our attention and our enthusiastic appreciation. And please note this: many of these are people who are famous and respected in their arenas. They normally would have an hour or more to present their ideas, and then plenty of time for feedback and audience response. Here they are mostly getting 10-15 minutes. They are modeling for us how people can cut back on ego in order to support a larger cause. So please show them how much we appreciate them for that as well!

We had one huge disappointment in our outreach for speakers. Though we asked an equal number of women as men to speak, we did not come close to creating the gender balance we had sought. Similarly, though we made a considerable effort to target both potential speakers and participants from communities of color, including offering scholarships and weekend-only options for people who couldn’t take off from work, we were not as successful in that regard as we had tried to be. We hope that when you start a local NSP chapter you can make similar efforts and demonstrate to us how to be more effective in that regard. Please understand that we’ve done everything in our power to increase the leadership from women and people of color (including outreach to every church in and around Washington, D.C.). We solicited names of women and people of color and sent them invites to speak months in advance. In some cases we were successful, in many cases not so much. We take this issue very seriou
sly, and apologize to you for not having been more successful. We also sought religious diversity and often found that those communities selected white males to represent them, and this contributed to a lack of the balance we had sought.

On the other hand, please read the Q&A about the NSP, particularly points 12-14, which emphasize our desire to not make people feel inadequate because they are white or because they are male, or to give the covert message that they aren’t “really” the people we seek. We are really delighted that you are coming. We will be discussing a broadened conception of diversity at the conference, one that includes but goes beyond issues of gender and race to also address class and religious diversity. In the final analysis, we are not a mass movement organization trying to build an organization representative of everyone in the population, but rather an organization with a particular worldview, spelled out in The Left Hand of God, and we are seeking those who agree with that perspective, whatever their gender, race, class or religious (or non-religious) background. So while we have made a supreme effort to increase diversity and remain committed to that goal, we’ve sometimes had to b
ack away from getting people who might supply us with that kind of diversity but who do not enthusiastically embrace the worldview which it is our goal to spread.

Please get involved in helping us refine the platform for the Network of Spiritual Progressives. While we intend to use the version of the Spiritual Covenant with America found in The Left Hand of God as our foundation for the next two years, we will be collecting and discussing suggestions about how to best develop and add to (or subtract from) those ideas—so we will be listening carefully to the discussions that take place in our NSP chapters, the feedback we get from the variety of religious communities we are seeking to work with, and the feedback we get from individual members. The Spiritual Covenant itself came out of that kind of process, and we intend to continue listening carefully to our members and allied groups as we prepare to issue a revised version in 2008 that best and most elegantly conveys what our New Bottom Line would look like if translated into policy terms. Write your suggestions and give them to our staff and after the conference send a copy to nichola at tik
kun.org (or a letter to NSP, 2342 Shattuck Ave. Suite 1200, Berkeley, CA, 94704). There may be areas that you imagined would be discussed at a workshop that are not being discussed, or that simply are not on the agenda. So tell us what we should be saying about that area and what language we should use to talk about it. Remember, though, that our goal is not to repeat a laundry list of progressive ideas, but specifically to show what a spiritual perspective might add to a progressive agenda that would be fundamentally different from what you would expect to hear from, say, Z Magazine or The Progressive or Mother Jones, or from the Greens, or from some of the other quite wonderful and respected voices of liberal and progressive thought. We are not seeking to duplicate them or show that we have the politically correct line on all issues, so if it’s something that you’d likely hear elsewhere it’s not what we need to be saying, because we already endorse the liberal and progressi
ve agenda. Please remind people of this point when they get up at a session and say, “Why didn’t you address point J or point S of the progressive agenda?” Always ask them: is there something we should say which is different in content than what other progressive groups say on these points, something that only would be said by people who are talking from the standpoint of a New Bottom Line? If not, we don’t need to add it to our agenda, since we are only creating a Spiritual Covenant with America as a vehicle to teach people what it would be like to think about public issues with a spiritual progressive perspective, and don’t need to duplicate what is already being done very well by others. 

Undoubtedly there will be people at our conference who get on your nerves. When we start talking about a world based on love and generosity, each of us gets a bit nervous, because we remember the moments in our own lives when we allowed ourselves to hope and made ourselves vulnerable, and then got disappointed, shot down, even betrayed. So people have a variety of coping mechanisms to handle the anxiety that arises when they start hoping again. Some become excessively negative, wanting to show that none of this is really possible and we are being so unrealistic. Others get in touch with feelings that they’ve never been adequately recognized, so they take this moment to either (a) dominate a discussion and not provide space for others, or (b) react harshly to others who are dominating. Still others attack the whole gathering.

When people get into this space, we need to be compassionate toward them, and understand the legitimate roots of their upset. But we also need you to take responsibility to gently and compassionately interrupt that kind of discourse, tell them that you are happy about this event even with all its deficiencies, and ask them to please use public space to talk more about what is good rather than what is not. Most of us have been taught how to catch attention by critiquing some idea that has been presented to us, but few of us have learned how to give praise and support when something is said or something is happening that deserves that praise. So if you hear something or witness something at the conference that is positive, spread the word. We invite you to tell others about it (both here and afterwards), and model for others what it’s like to enter public space with a positive rather than merely a critical comment. But if people continue to persist in anger or negativity, don’t g
et intimidated or feel that you have to give them support for anger or negativity. Instead, gently but firmly tell them that this conference is really not the place for them to be acting out those feelings, that we’ve come together to model what a loving community could be, and that it would be better for all of us if they left and only came back when they felt they could add to the positive energy that we are seeking to build. 

I’m sure that when you look at the agenda (a final version won’t be available on the web till May 15th, but please look at it before then at www.spiritualprogressives.org) you’ll think of dozens of ways to change the agenda to make it better (fewer speakers, perhaps—but remember that one of the reasons we have so many speakers is to attract people from a variety of different constituencies who might not have come without a speaker’s presence symbolizing to them that their interests were considered). However, it’s too late to change the agenda, so please don’t put energy into that. There are always people who approach us at the conference with the insistence that we add people to the agenda or otherwise change it. We won’t be able to accommodate those demands and it will just make us tense and feel bad because the demands we get are almost always coming from contradictory perspectives and would require unmaking commitments that we’ve already made. We can’t do the
 agenda as a response to whoever complains loudest at the last moment, so please accept this one as is, and then after the conference help us figure out how to do it better next time. 

This conference happened because people in the Tikkun Community and All Souls Church, particularly the staff of both organizations and a handful of volunteers, gave their time and energy to make it possible. so please don’t fill their time at this conference with your complaints about what isn’t working. Let them know how much you appreciate what they’ve been doing, and volunteer your time to help us make the next conference even better. 

I hope that during or after the conference you’ll decide to personally join The Network of Spiritual Progressives and pay the dues that will make it possible to continue this project. Clarification: Subscribers to Tikkun magazine are not automatically members of the Tikkun Community or the NSP—you have to pay membership dues. If you pay your dues to the Tikkun Community or to the Network of Spiritual Progressives, you will automatically get Tikkun magazine as a membership benefit. Join at www.spiritualprogressives.org)

Finally, a word of personal appreciation. This whole venture is only possible because you have decided to make it real. I so deeply appreciate your willingness to join with me on this path. The war in Iraq, the escalating environmental destruction, the erosion of civil liberties, the attempts to pass punitive legislation against immigrants—all of these and more are reasons to hope that our venture succeeds. You are making an important contribution simply by showing up with supportive and loving vibes—the first step in building a movement whose watchword must be the kindness we show to each other on this very challenging path ahead. I pray that what we do turns out to be a real service to all of humanity, the earth and God.

Love and blessings,

Rabbi Michael Lerner

P.S. It is not too late to urge friends around the country to attend this founding conference of the Network of Spiritual Progressives on the East Coast. Instead of having them read about it in a newspaper afterwards and wonder why they weren’t invited, urge them to be there with you—it’s going to be an amazing event. On the other hand, if they intend to register, tell them not to wait till the last moment. Last time we had to close registration before the conference began. 

To find the latest tentative agenda and also register, go to www.spiritualprogressives.org or call 1-510-644-1200 between 9:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. 




Important Logistical Information for the Spiritual Activism Conference
Lodging
A list of local hotels and hostels is available on our website at www.tikkun.org/community/spiritual_activism_conference/hotels-dc. All Souls Church, Unitarian, is also offering a less expensive home-stay option. Please see the website above for details, or email housing at all-souls.org. 

Roommate Matching
Roommate(s) can make staying in Washington more affordable, easier, and more fun. Check out the nifty roommate matching system designed for us by SpaceShare by going to http://spaceshare.com/nsp/. 

Carpools and Travel Networking
Traveling with other conference-goers is not only ecologically sensitive but also more fun! Check out SpaceShare’s carpool and travel networking system at http://spaceshare.com/nsp/. From this site, you can connect with others coming to the conference from your area and make plans to fly, drive, bike, walk, or take the train or bus together.

Directions and Transportation
The church is located on the corner of 16th Street NW and Harvard Street NW. Thorough directions and travel information are available on our website at: www.tikkun.org/community/spiritual_activism_conference/.

Parking Near the Conference Site
Parking in the neighborhood around the church is tight. Please be sure to read any posted signs about parking restrictions.

There is a large free public parking lot at Carter Barron city park on 16th Street and Kennedy Street, north of the church. From the parking lot, you can either walk 15-20 minutes south on 16th Street or take one of the buses (S1, S2, or S4 ) that run continuously up and down the street. Bus fare is $1.50. 

Registration
Please arrive at All Souls Church between 8 am and 9 am for registration on Wednesday, May 17th for full conference passes and at 9am each day for one day passes. Please be prompt as there are nearly 1,000 people to be registered and we want to ensure that everyone can be processed efficiently before the conference begins. All materials including final agendas, maps, restaurant information and other specifics will be provided at registration. NOTE: If someone else has purchased your conference pass for you under his or her name, please use his or her name in picking up your materials.

Activities on Capitol Hill
On Thursday, May 18, conference participants will engage in a teach-in to Congress about the ideas in the Spiritual Covenant with America. We will set up meetings with your Congressional representatives so that you can discuss with them this whole new way to think about the issues.

Pray-In for Peace
Thursday afternoon, we will host a vigil and demonstration near the White House. More details on this event will be available on our website soon.
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