"Do One Nice Thing" Stimulus Packages Bring Hope and Purpose to Unemployed

Debbie Tenzer, founder of the wildly successful charity website DoOneNiceThing.com (which has members in ninety countries and gets more than one million hits per month), has announced she is launching Heart-to-Heart Stimulus Packages, which is a unique volunteer program to help the unemployed lend a hand in their communities.

DoOneNiceThing.com promotes the idea of putting aside some time once a week to do an activity that is helpful or charitable for others. Tenzer believes that in today's world full of selfishness and bad news, helping others even just once a week is empowering for both oneself and others.

"Maybe we can't solve the big problems, but by working together we can solve a lot of smaller ones. . . By helping, we give people hope, and that makes us hopeful too. We are reaching out to the unemployed because we know that by helping other they will also help themselves."

Some of examples of volunteer activities that people have been doing are mailing tons of school supplies to U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq who give them to local children so they can study; sending books to schools, libraries and hospitals; contributing numerous gifts for foster children whose birthdays sometimes are forgotten; and donating packages of pasta, cans of food,
and other food items to food banks.

I encourage all Unity organizations and institutions (as well as others) to research this project and contribute in any and every possible way you are able. It's a wonderful way to build connections within a community while simultaneously working to give support to those who could use help. It's also a way for a community's unemployed to feel involved and hopeful in the future, affirming that all is in Divine Order and working toward their greatest good.

See the press release at RNS.

Christianity's Lost History

Recently, Peter Pham, Episcopal priest and scholar, has reviewed historian Philip Jenkins' latest book The Lost History of Christianity (HarperOne, 2008), which elucidates how Christianity has become tied to European culture in modern times but that it used to be a truly global religion that reflected the African and Asian cultures in which it existed. Not that there's no diversity in Christianity today, because there most certainly is, but the type of cultural baggage that is most often associated with Christianity is that of the West.

When Christianity spread from the earliest apostles it didn't simply follow the course only of Paul. Besides westward, it spread southward and eastward, inhabited those lands, interacted with other relgions (like Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, and Buddhism), and fused with those cultures to which it spread. The importance of this book and Pham's review of it is that it highlights the non-Western spread and diversification of Christianity from very early on in its history. That is, our Christian tradition has historically been permeated by much more cultural variety that has previously been thought in the West. This itself is an important point.

Here's a snippet from the book:

The particular shape of Christianity with which we are familiar is a radical departure from what was for well over a millennium the historical norm: another, earlier global Christianity once existed. For most of its history, Christianity was a tricontinental religion, with powerful representation in Europe, Africa, and Asia, and this was true into the fourteenth century. Christianity became predominantly European not because this continent had any obvious affinity for that faith, but by default: Europe was the continent where it was not destroyed. Matters could have easily developed differently.

Read the full book review at pbs.org's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.

Obama Plans Proclamation Not Event For National Day of Prayer

President Obama appears unlikely to hold a large event to mark the National Day of Prayer on Thursday, returning to the standard proclamations that were the common practice of presidents before George W. Bush took office in 2001.

Adelle Banks of the RNS has a write-up.

Individuality and Oneness?

Recently Dan Holloway wrote an article on Unity.org that was excerpted from the Association of Unity Churches' Contact magazine entitled "Honoring Diversity." Holloway sketches out the Unity understanding of diversity as something that is to be honored. This is affirmed in many of the official pronouncements or statements by Unity, the Association, or often both. Unity has always been a spiritual movement that starts with the individual and works outward, but also has always acknowledged the unity (hence the name) of all humanity, of all life. Holloway states,

"We seek harmony in a world of difference. It's an interesting truth that we teach: We have an individuality that separates us from any and all people in that there is no other person exactly like us. A more humorous observation might be, 'You are unique, just like everyone else.'"

He is bringing up an interesting tension that isn't extant only in Unity, for it can be found in the teachings throughout the world's religious and metaphysical systems. Philosophically it's often termed "the problem of the One and the many." There's obviously a plethora of phenomena in the world and yet many traditions affirm that there is a single underlying essence or one source from which the multiplicity has come. What exactly is the nature of the relationship of the One and the many?

Religiously, it's couched a little differently, more like Holloway has stated. There are many different people and yet all these different people are somehow the same or at least share a fundamental commonality. We can go through some semantic gymnastics, but there nonetheless exists a bit of a tension between the manyness that we are as unique individuals and the Oneness that harmoniously makes us a unity.

I like to attempt to answer this apparent problem in two ways - one rational and the other mystical. Firstly, we could use the prominent theologian David Tracy's method of similarity-in-difference. Both the plurality of people and things as well as their connectedness is upheld through the usage of analogy. We are all clearly different, but through the employment of an analogical imagination we can confidently say that there is a "likeness" that pervades all this differentiation. (See D. Tracy, The Analogical Imagination and Plurality and Ambiguity).

Secondly, I appeal to the mystical element of paradox. That is, we run into logical contradictions that defy normal reason when we say that everything is simultaneously One and many, same and different. However, I like to think that the reality of this relationship is one that transcends rationality and is a mystical truth of unity-in-diversity, where we are One yet plural simultaneously. As Unity teaches, we are each unique individuals united in Oneness, which is unity-in-diversity. In Unity, as in most religious systems, when attempting to speak of Truth our language fails and we run into tension or logical contradiction. So, I'm a firm believer in the notion of paradox pointing to mystical Truth.

See Holloway's complete essay.

Spiritual Discernment Christian Leadership Conference at George Fox University

The George Fox University Congregational Discernment Project announces two dozen Authors and Experts Workshops on various aspects of spiritual discernment as the key to effective Christian leadership. The conference will be held this May 31-June 3 at George Fox University in Newberg, OR.

"Authentic leadership is seen as a function of truth rather than power, and this conference explores the theory and practice underlying that reality. . . This conference features leading authors and experts who will be sharing how discernment-oriented leadership works." (RNS)

Check out the conference details on GFU's website.

New Unity Small-group Ministry Booklet On Spiritual Social Action

As a special curriculum release, Unity.org has announced the availability of a new booklet for small group study on spiritual social action. It looks at social action from a Unity spiritual perspective. Participants begin to connect social action with Unity's basic teachings, consider the relevance of social action in their lives, contemplate how to be peacemakers, and examine how connections among diverse religious traditions enhance the experience of serving individuals and communities.

This attention to social engagement is a burgeoning interest and concern in Unity Christianity, as it has been largely neglected on the wider, institutional level and in direct relation to Unity's basic principles and theology. This new booklet should help local Unity (as well as other) communities become inspired to get more involved in social action ministries such as outreach, justice issues, interfaith dialogue, etc.

Check out the booklet at Unity.org.

UWest Chaplaincy Program Connections

University of the West's newly initiated Buddhist Chaplaincy Program is now on Twitter, Facebook, and has its own blogsite.

This program is currently coordinated by my friend and colleague, Danny Fisher, who writes about Buddhist chaplaincy on his blogsite and many other forums.

Chaplaincy is such an important vocation in supporting individuals in their personal well-being, so I'm so pleased that Buddhism, which is a growing influential religion in the U.S., is becoming increasingly present in chaplaincy contexts. I'm blessed to know leaders from other religious traditions who are actively using chaplaincy as a means to promote healthy living and spiritual growth.