On April 29, 2018 Rev. Ed Kosak and Unity of Charleston hosted a very successful interfaith event, with 15 faith paths represented. The event included a call to Jeffrey Mannaseh in Malawi Africa have a Skype call to the originator of this global event Greg Davis in Columbus Ohio. This event was held simultaneously in Madison, Wisconsin, Concorde, New Hampshire, Rockton, Illinois, Ventura County, California, Boise, Idaho, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Houston, Texas, Ames, Iowa, Grass Valley, California, Columbus, Ohio, Kasese, Uganda, Gulu Town, Uganda, Kashmir, India, Faisalabad, Pakistan as well as in Malawi in Africa. Among the partners in Africa was URI, United Religions Initiative which I believe is the organization that Jeffrey Mannaseh serves in. Click on image to view the video.

The opening speaker was to be Russell Binder, sharing his perspective on Judaism. He was unable to attend and his part was covered by Rev. Ed’s long time interfaith colleague Toreah “Cookie” Washington. Next came Victoria Smalls speaking from her Baha’i faith, she was followed by Dr. Amarjit Singh on Sikhism. Then came an artistic interlude with Dr. Peter Kfoury playing the Oud. Next to speak was Rev. Christian King on Christianity, she was followed by Shaila Shroff speaking on Hinduism, Native American spirituality was addressed by Rev. Catherine Nelson who also played beautifully on her double wooden flute. We were then presented with interpretive dance by Trudy’s School of Dance and coordinated by Erica Capdevila. Dr. Reshma Kahn spoke about Islam, and next was to be sensei Cindy Beach who was unable to attend due to logistical problems. Her time was taken to connect by Skype with the events originator Greg Davis in Ohio. The Quakers, the Religious Society of Friends were represented by Trish Bender and she was followed by another artistic interlude, native flute performed by Cerantha. Speaking for the Mormon faith was Dr. David Goltra and he was followed by Bernadette Victor from the Unitarian Universalist Church in Charleston, and she was followed by a Will Moredock who presented his secular humanist perspective. This was followed by another artistic interlude featuring Greg Guay performing an original piece on classical guitar. Perspectives on paganism were presented by IPSC’s Holli Emore and Clarissa Mickle who were followed by Simran Singh who spoke for the Oneness movement. This was followed by another artistic interlude featuring unity of Charleston’s own Brad Henty and Chris Crosby. Cookie Washington provided closing remarks.

Throughout the event people were informed of interfaith opportunities, locally this included The Coastal Interfaith Community, the Christian Jewish Council, Charleston Area Justice Ministry and the statewide organization IPSC, Interfaith Partners of South Carolina. Rev. Ed also took some time to talk about The Parliament of World Religions and encouraging people to become involved and to attend the upcoming Parliament this November in Toronto. Ed also shared that he and Greg will have a table at the Parliament promoting Religious Freedom: Malice Toward None.
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The Association for Global New Thought (AGNT) has initiated a series of online salons based on various topics. The New Thought on the News salon began in January 2018 and occurs monthly at 5:30 PM Pacific daylight Time. I have found this timely and powerfully engaging.  I have been involved in the New Thought movement for about eight years now and was initially drawn to it by articles written in the local paper by Rev. Justin Epstein, who was the minister at Unity of Hilton Head at that time. Rev. Epstein had deep connections to Hinduism and particularly to the work Paramahansa Yogananda. I had had a long-standing interest in Hinduism. I also had a decades long involvement with interfaith work. After attending his services for a little while it seemed to me that Unity was an ideal faithpath to promote interfaith understanding.

Since my early teens I’ve considered myself an activist, particularly with respect to environmental issues and indigenous rights, and have found it important to keep abreast of the news and issues that most concern me. For much of the time that I have been involved in the New Thought Movement I have encountered resistance to my activist proclivities and my interest in worldly events. A central concept of New Thought is the importance of consciousness in manifesting the world we wish to see. Many long time practitioners of new thought hold that the answer to the problems in the world is through prayer and meditation and that ultimately our task is not to change the world so much as it is to see it rightly. I do agree about the centrality of consciousness in manifested reality, but I also believe that one should stand in their belief and be present as a harbinger of positive alternatives to unsatisfactory circumstances. Only in the last several years have I witnessed stirrings of a different point of view among New Thought adherents. There are now a number of ministries that I am aware of that hold that it is important to remain conscious of what is going on in the world and that when we find ourselves in circumstances where it is appropriate we must stand up and speak out. In fact, last year I attended a marvelous event sponsored by Rev. Darlene Strickland’s Unity of the Blue Ridge with the theme of Our Love Is Power, Standup, Speak Up, Show Up. The choice of Marianne Williamson as a keynote speaker signaled the sincerity of the organizers as change agents.

This New Thought on the News salon is based on the premise that we must attend to the news, to the issues in the world, but that we must interpret them from a New Thought perspective, and not accept the slant that is presented to us by the media, which has a vested interest in exploiting fear and uncertainty in order to sell their products. The moderator of this program is Dr. Barbara Fields who serves as the executive director of AGNT, and who served as program director for the first modern Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1993.

​The inspiration and central reference for this series is a book by Jim Kenney entitled Thriving in the Crosscurrent: Clarity and Hope in a Time of Cultural Sea Change. Mr. Kenney is a longtime friend of Dr. Fields and was global director of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions up to and including the parliament which was held in Barcelona in 2004. There are some preparatory tutorials for this salon based on Mr. Kenney’s book and there are some very useful diagrams provided which clarifies the concepts, click here for links to those materials.

Mr. Kenney presents the central concept of the sea change as having four foundations: interdependence, paradigm shift, cultural evolution, and the emerging global consensus of values. His book is rich with visual intuitions and potent metaphors. Among these, in keeping with the idea of sea change, is the notion of cultural values presenting as waves, and that there are periods of transition, where the wave of old values are descending and the wave of new values are arising, and that, necessarily, this period of transition generates turbulence. One of the key understandings of what we are seeing in the news these days in the strident voices calling for a return to older ways, to fundamentalist values, and the demonization of those involved in the ascendancy of these new values, are the manifestation of this turbulence. A choice metaphor of his is that of the “eddy”, which anyone who has ever spent time in a river is familiar with and uses this apt metaphor for the counter motions observable in the general flow of change. Perhaps the overarching theme of Mr. Kenney’s work is that cultural values are inevitably moving ever upwards and outwards, evolving, as they approach the realities that human culture must face. Although he arrived at this viewpoint independently, he frequently references Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature which presents a great deal of data supporting this view.

A prime example of this evolution of cultural values is the institution of chattel slavery, which was universally accepted and defended well into the 19th century, it is now generally recognized that slavery is everywhere and always wrong. Another example is patriarchy, which since the 1960s has rapidly diminished in its scope and power. All of which is not to say that these problems have ended, but that they are rapidly moving out of the realm of issues of central concern. Another key point that Mr. Kenney presents is that although this cultural evolution continually trends upward in the history of our shared world, there are times when this evolution is greatly accelerated. He posits, and I agree, that we are living in just such a time.

Regarding the salons themselves, the general format includes an introduction by Dr. Fields of this month’s topic, introductions to guest speakers by cohost Stephen Pope, a recap of the foundational perspectives by Mr. Kenney, followed by presentations and responses by guest speakers and the hosts. The salons are presented via Zoom and those watching the live presentation have the opportunity to chime in and express themselves on the various points presented. Guest speakers have included such luminaries in the New Thought Movement as Dr. David Alexander, Rev. Temple Hayes, Rev. Kevin Ross, Dr. Kenn Gordon thus far; and scheduled for upcoming salons are Dr. David Goldberg, Dr. Roger Teal, and Dr. Michael Beckwith. Click for bios of these and other leaders in AGNT.
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I am deeply grateful for this initiative by the AGNT which is both timely, deeply engaging and very energizing. I wholeheartedly recommend this salon to readers of this post and suggest that they check out the other salons made available by the AGNT. Click to view previous sessions of the New Thought on the News solons.
 

Thank you to Rev. Lori Hlaban and her warm and engaged congregation for this wonderful opportunity to speak about the Parliament of the World's Religions. Thank you Rabbi TZiPi for the sweet and personal introduction!

Richard Tarnas is professor of philosophy and psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and is the founding director of its graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness.

"From a philosopher whose magisterial history of Western thought was praised by Joseph Campbell and Huston Smith comes a brilliant new book that traces the connection between cosmic cycles and archetypal patterns of human experience. Drawing on years of research and on thinkers from Plato to Jung, Richard Tarnas explores the planetary correlations of epochal events like the French Revolution, the two world wars, and September 11. Whether read as astrology updated for the quantum age or as a contemporary classic of spirituality, Cosmos and Psyche is a work of immense sophistication, deep learning, and lasting importance."

Professor Tarnas revealed that he wrote Passion of the Western World (the book praised by Campbell and Smith in the above quote) in order to gain street cred among academics before publishing Cosmos and Psyche! Astrology is often controversial with regards to its influence on individuals, personality and especially as a forecasting tool. History, in retrospect, provides powerful proofs for this ancient science. And in my mind no more profoundly than in his chapter on the Axial Age, that great blossoming of spiritualty in the sixth century BCE.  Click on book cover to visit the Amazon page.
 
​The following excerpts illustrate the point:

"It is now time to examine the only period in recorded history when all three of the outermost planets, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, were in a virtually exact triple conjunction...that extended from the 590s to the 550s BCE. These decades constituted the very heart of the great Axial Age that brought forth the birth of many of the world’s principal religious and spiritual traditions... This was the age of Buddha, bringing the birth of Buddhism in India; of Mahavira and the birth of Jainism in India; of Lao-Tzu and the birth of Taoism in China, which was followed a decade later by the birth of Confucius, Lao-Tzu’s younger contemporary. This same epoch coincided with that sudden wave of major prophets in ancient Israel—Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Second Isaiah...n this same era the Hebrew Scriptures were first compiled and redacted. The traditional dating for the immensely influential Zoroaster and the birth of Zoroastrianism in Persia, ...has long centered on the sixth century. In Greece, the period of the triple conjunction exactly coincided with the birth of Greek philosophy itself, as the first Greek philosophers, Thales and Anaximander, flourished during these decades of the 580s through the 560s, and Pythagoras, towering figure in the history of both Western philosophy and science, was born. In Greek religion, Orphism was emerging and the oracle of Delphi was at the height of its influence...
The great figures and events, ideas, movements, awakenings, and transformations of the collective consciousness that were brought forth during this prodigious epoch have pervaded the subsequent evolution of humankind. I found it most impressive that the era universally acknowledged as the single most significant in the entire religious and spiritual history of the world coincided with the only exact triple conjunction of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, the very planets whose cyclical alignments were associated with archetypal meanings so precisely relevant to such an extraordinary global epoch of spiritual awakening and cultural transformation."

In response to the announcement by the host of the radio quiz show "Truth or Consequences" that he would air a program from the first town that renamed itself after the show, Hot Springs, NM won the honor officially changing its name on March 31, 1950. And, to my mind ironically, the program was broadcast from there on April 1st or April Fool’s Day.

On the show, contestants received roughly two seconds to answer a trivia question correctly, generally an off-the-wall question that no one would be able to answer correctly before the buzzer went off. If the contestant could not complete the "Truth" portion, there would be "Consequences," usually a zany and embarrassing stunt. From the start, most contestants preferred to answer the question wrong in order to perform the stunt.
At this juncture of history, political theater has become a twist on this improbable theme. The President of the United States has chosen to “answer the question wrong” (even the most straightforward and earnest questions posed by respected journalists and concerned citizens) with shockingly wrong and inane answers, and following the game show format, seemingly in order to perform “zany and embarrassing” stunts in front of the widest audience imaginable. The notable twist is that we the people are the ones who are and should be embarrassed. And as for POTUS, it is well known that those with Narcissistic Personality Disorder are unable to see themselves as others do and he seems completely immune to shame.

I have been heartened to see that even among those most politically aligned Senators and members of Congress there is backlash about this violence being done to truth. Perhaps nowhere more eloquently and stridently than in Senator Jeff Flake’s scathing message to the Senate from the podium on Jan. 17, 2018. He opened his remarks saying “Mr. President, near the beginning of the document that made us free, our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident...” So, from our very beginnings, our freedom has been predicated on truth. The founders were visionary in this regard, understanding well that good faith and shared facts between the governed and the government would be the very basis of this ongoing idea of America.”  The speech was lengthy and full of salient details and I will only quote a few of his particularly pungent remarks:

   “It is for that reason that I rise today, to talk about the truth, and its relationship to democracy. For without       truth, and a principled fidelity to truth and to shared facts, Mr. President, our democracy will not last.”

    “2017 was a year which saw the truth – objective, empirical, evidence-based truth -- more battered and             abused than any other in the history of our country, at the hands of the most powerful figure in our                   government. It was a year which saw the White House enshrine “alternative facts” into the American lexicon,     as justification for what used to be known simply as good old-fashioned falsehoods.”

     “It was the year in which an unrelenting daily assault on the constitutionally-protected free press was                launched by that same White House, an assault that is as unprecedented as it is unwarranted. “The enemy        of the people,” was what the president of the United States called the free press in 2017. Mr. President, it is      a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by          Josef Stalin to describe his enemies. It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase “enemy of          the people,” that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase      had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of “annihilating such individuals” who disagreed with the            supreme leader. And, of course, the president has it precisely backward – despotism is the enemy of the            people. The free press is the despot’s enemy, which makes the free press the guardian of democracy. When      a figure in power reflexively calls any press that doesn’t suit him “fake news,” it is that person who should          be the figure of suspicion, not the press.”

     “No longer can we compound attacks on truth with our silent acquiescence. No longer can we turn a blind        eye or a deaf ear to these assaults on our institutions. And Mr. President, an American president who                cannot take criticism – who must constantly deflect and distort and distract – who must find someone else        to blame -- is charting a very dangerous path. And a Congress that fails to act as a check on the president          adds to the danger.”

      “We are a mature democracy – it is well past time that we stop excusing or ignoring – or worse, endorsing -      these attacks on the truth. For if we compromise the truth for the sake of our politics, we are lost.”

When in college I majored in Philosophy and was drawn to the field by a class I took in Ethics. A close study of ethical traditions throughout human histories and cultures inseparably links ethics to truth telling. As some of you are aware I serve as an Ambassador for the Parliament of the World’s Religions and in preparation for a talk I recently gave to a Quaker Meeting on the Parliament’s Mission, Vision and Approach I re-read the Parliament’s initial declaration at the first modern Parliament in 1993, Towards a Global Ethic. I had forgotten the great emphasis that was placed on the importance of truthfulness. This document was drafted by Hans Küng, President of the Foundation for a Global Ethic (Stiftung Weltethos), in cooperation with the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religion’s staff and Trustees and experts. Küng is a noted German Catholic Theologian who has long been willing to speak truth to power and was stripped of his authority to teach Catholic Theology in part for his stance against the dogma of Papal Infallibility, a notion that is close to the understanding that many have of the authority of the President of the United States.

Towards a Global Ethic details four major principles or directives. This document draws on many of the world's religious, spiritual, and cultural traditions, identifying the Golden Rule: “What you wish done to yourself, do to others!” as an "unconditional norm for all areas of life".  It asserts that these four principles "can be affirmed by all persons with ethical convictions, whether religiously grounded or not". The third principle is Commitment to a Culture of Tolerance and a Life of Truthfulness, which upon careful consideration are inseparable precepts. Although I encourage everyone to read this beautifully crafted, well-reasoned document in its entirety (click this link) I am quoting the entirety of this third principle as central to the issues I’m addressing in this article:

3.   Commitment to a Culture of Tolerance and a Life of Truthfulness

Numberless women and men of all regions and religions strive to lead lives of honesty and truthfulness.  Nevertheless, all over the world we find endless lies and deceit, swindling and hypocrisy, ideology and demagoguery:

• Politicians and business people who use lies as a means to success;
• Mass media which spreads ideological propaganda instead of accurate reporting, misinformation instead of information, cynical commercial interest instead of loyalty to the truth;
• Scientists and researchers who give themselves over to morally questionable ideological or political programs or to economic interest groups, or who justify research which violates fundamental ethical values;
• Representatives of religions who dismiss other religions as of little value and who preach fanaticism and intolerance instead of respect and understanding.

a) In the great ancient religious and ethical traditions of humankind we find the directive:  You shall not lie!  Or in positive terms:  Speak and act truthfully!  Let us reflect anew on the consequences of this ancient directive:  No woman or man, no institution, no state or church or religious community has the right to speak lies to other humans. 

b) This is especially true

• for those who work in the mass media, to whom we entrust the freedom to report for the sake of truth and to whom we thus grant the office of guardian.  They do not stand above morality but have the obligation to respect human dignity, human rights, and fundamental values.  They are duty-bound to objectivity, fairness, and the preservation of human dignity.  They have no right to intrude into individuals’ private spheres, to manipulate public opinion, or to distort reality;
• for artists, writers, and scientists, to whom we entrust artistic and academic freedom.  They are not exempt from general ethical standards and must serve the truth;
• for the leaders of countries, politicians, and political parties, to whom we entrust our own freedoms.  When they lie in the faces of their people, when they manipulate the truth, or when they are guilty of venality or ruthlessness in domestic or foreign affairs, they forsake their credibility and deserve to lose their offices and their voters.  Conversely, public opinion should support those politicians who dare to speak the truth to the people at all times;
• finally, for representatives of religion.  When they stir up prejudice, hatred, and enmity towards those of different belief, or even incite or legitimize religious wars, they deserve the condemnation of humankind and the loss of their adherents.
• Let no one be deceived: There is no global justice without truthfulness and humaneness!

c) Young people must learn at home and in school to think, speak, and act truthfully.  They have a right to information and education to be able to make the decisions that will form their lives.  Without an ethical formation they will hardly be able to distinguish the important from the unimportant. In the daily flood of information, ethical standards will help them discern when opinions are portrayed as facts, interests veiled, tendencies exaggerated, and facts twisted.
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d) To be authentically human in the spirit of our great religious and ethical traditions means the following:

• We must not confuse freedom with arbitrariness or pluralism with indifference to truth.
• We must cultivate truthfulness in all our relationships instead of dishonesty, dissembling, and opportunism.
• We must constantly seek truth and incorruptible sincerity instead of spreading ideological or partisan half-truths.
• We must courageously serve the truth and we must remain constant and trustworthy, instead of yielding to opportunistic accommodation to life.

 
To reiterate these points made by Küng and adopted by the Parliament of the World’s Religions, “Speak and act truthfully!  Let us reflect anew on the consequences of this ancient directive:  No woman or man, no institution, no state or church or religious community has the right to speak lies to other humans.” This imperative is noted as “especially true” for four named groups: journalists and those charged with the public trust of media; artists, writers and other creatives; political leaders and parties of all stripes; and representatives of religion. The declaration repeatedly uses strong, emotive language with words like “courage”, “sincerity”, “humaneness”; it forcefully points to consequences. And so Truth or Consequences is not just the namesake town of a defunct gameshow, rather it is the pivot point about which the ancient Greek, dual-faced mask of tragedy and comedy spins so precipitously.

Unity of Hilton Head held its second annual Interfaith Harmony service in alignment with Governor Henry McMaster's proclamation of January as South Carolina's Interfaith Harmony Month. Among the faiths celebrated were Bahá’í, Islam, Judaism, Native American, New Thought, and Taoism. Here below 21 slides each of which have a Time Stamp in upper left hand corner if you would like to quickly navigate to that segment of the video which was made from the audio and these slides. Here's the link to the video: Unity of Hilton Head Interfaith Harmony Service.

Last Sunday January 14th the Hindu Temple and Cultural Center of Charleston hosted an event in alignment with the observation of January being South Carolina’s Interfaith Harmony Month. The evening featured presentations from different faiths on Angels and Experiences. The event ran from 4 to 6 PM and offered food and drink for all, I especially enjoyed a dish prepared by our hostess Shaila Shroff’s husband Vijay.

Our Hindu hostess selected and introduced the topic. Later on she shared her considerations of the concept of angels from both a Hindu and physicist’s point of view. The first speaker was Dinesh Sarvate who is a trustee of the Temple and Cultural Center and has had priestly duties there as well. Following was Muskan Singh, a Sikh who sang a beautiful song in what I believe was Punjabi, the language in which most portions of the Guru Granth Sahib (one of their sacred texts) was written in. She was followed by her grandfather Gajindav Singh who had a career as an educator in New York. IPSC’s chair Dr. Adrian Bird spoke next, he also serves as Visiting Professor of Christian history at Union Presbyterian Seminary, Charlotte. Howie Comen a long time interfaith activist and a private detective, shared interesting material from both Judaic and Islamic perspectives. Radhika Pande chanted a lovely prayer for us, and finally Herb Silverman spoke from his perspective as an Atheist, he serves on the Mathematics faculty of College of Charleston.
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Adrian and I found the topic interesting in several ways which have resulted in an ongoing email conversation. During his presentation he expressed surprise that in his years of teaching no one had posed a question about angels in his seminary classes. Several of the speakers addressed how we commonly recognize certain kind and caring people as angels. Mr. Silverman shared that he was not expecting to find much agreement with the other speakers and although he disavows supernatural angels he was very comfortable with the notion of natural, human angels. All in all a fascinating and enjoyable evening with a generous and thoughtful group of people. Thank you Shaila.
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