{"id":262654,"date":"2024-05-20T12:00:05","date_gmt":"2024-05-20T11:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=262654"},"modified":"2024-07-02T08:49:24","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T07:49:24","slug":"a-world-under-spiritual-construction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/05\/a-world-under-spiritual-construction\/","title":{"rendered":"A World Under Spiritual Construction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>15 May 2024 <\/em>– There\u2019s something happening here . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Consider, for instance, the recent announcement by Union Theological Seminary, which is affiliated with Columbia University, that it is divesting<\/a> from \u201ccompanies profiting from war in Palestine\/Israel\u201d \u2013 and, not only that, fully supports the student encampments (at Columbia and all across the country) and condemns the arrests and police violence wreaking havoc on the peaceful, culturally diverse protests.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the seminary released a statement that scrambles the quiet certainty of those in power \u2013 i.e., that money matters more than anything else: \u201cOver the decades, we have developed what are called \u2018socially responsible investment screens\u2019 to express our values and not financially support damaging and immoral investments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Values over profit? Over the years, the seminary has pulled its investments away from such industries as weapons manufacturers, for-profit prisons and fossil fuels. But not only that . . . apparently it understands, and values, education itself \u2013 a remarkable phenomenon indeed.<\/p>\n

Seminary president Serene Jones, in an interview with Democracy Now!<\/a>, pointed out that the school has opened up its campus \u201cto all the surrounding campuses when students were being expelled, events weren\u2019t allowed to happen. . . . Our doors are wide open, which is what a university should be in times like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also said: \u201cWe support students learning what it means to find their voices, to speak out for justice and freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those are the words that stunned me the most. This is what education is, for God\u2019s sake! It\u2019s not just a matter of attending lectures, taking notes, absorbing data. It means finding your voice \u2013 finding your deepest values and expressing them in real life, putting them forward not as abstractions but as principles to live by. Entering the world as a grown woman, a grown man, means more than simply finding your place. It means challenging that world as you enter it and, by God, creating<\/em> it \u2013 creating the future.<\/p>\n

I certainly don\u2019t mean this simplistically. I speak as an aging boomer, who entered adulthood as the civil rights movement was shaking and shattering the national norms, and as the Vietnam war was bursting into our consciousness. What an injured and deeply flawed world! Something was wrong. Growing up meant finding our voices and addressing \u2013 challenging \u2013 this flawed world.<\/p>\n

In October 1967, for instance, I boarded a bus, along with many of my friends, and participated in the first antiwar march on the Pentagon, which included pushing the edges of social and legal propriety. We did more than listen to speeches. We determined to occupy the Pentagon, thousands of us walking across the grass, coming face to face with the soldiers guarding it. At one point, out of the blue, it seemed, a contingent of soldiers came rushing toward us; I wound up getting clobbered in the head with a rifle butt. I was knocked down but wasn\u2019t hurt and stayed with the protest for several more hours, eventually leaving the Pentagon sit-in shortly before the arrests started happening.<\/p>\n

My friends and I made it back to our school \u2013 Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo \u2013 with a sense that our lives were no longer the same. We immediately took matters into our own hands. We dropped out.<\/p>\n

I wound up delaying my eventual graduation by a number of years, and no, I didn\u2019t \u201cchange the world\u201d in some idealistically imagined way, but I have no doubt whatsoever that this period of my life \u2013 full of protests, drugs, a few arrests, a lot of mistakes \u2013 was at the core of my college learning experience. At the same time as all this was going on, I was also finding myself as a writer and, eventually, a journalist. I value the support \u2013 indeed, the mentorship \u2013 of a significant number of professors at Western. Continually creating the world isn\u2019t simply a matter of us vs. them: young vs. old. It\u2019s a multigenerational effort.<\/p>\n

All of which brings me back to the present moment, and the words of Serene Jones, who has not abandoned \u2013 or grown cynical about \u2013 the values emanating from the student encampments across the country. Much of the mainstream coverage of the protests simply defines the phenomenon in us-vs.-them terms. The protests are \u201cpro-Palestine,\u201d seeming to imply there are two equal (equally brutal) sides in this war, and being pro-Palestine means being anti-Israel, which can easily morph into anti-Semitic. But the protests aren\u2019t simply pro-Palestine; they\u2019re pro-humanity (and anti-genocide).<\/p>\n

And the participants are culturally and religiously, but not spiritually, diverse. As Jones writes at Religion News Service<\/a>: \u201cFirst and foremost, these encampments are filled with students from different religious traditions \u2014 Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, unaffiliated as well as spiritual but not religious students. They are finding solace and courage among themselves. . . .<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is simply who these protesters are: a community bound by a greater common cause to stop the mass killing of besieged Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones\u2019s essay is called \u201cWhat we have to learn from students leading the charge for justice\u201d \u2013 which is itself compelling. The university system \u2013 the financial system, the political system \u2013 has something to learn<\/em> from the protesters? Love thy enemy or whatever?<\/p>\n

The world these protesters are entering is<\/p>\n

a world hardened by cynicism. In such a world, a.k.a., the real world, \u201clove\u201d and other values are appropriate to be uttered in a religious setting with pews and fancy windows, but they\u2019re hardly relevant in the day-to-day world of win-and-lose, gain-and-loss. That\u2019s why the cops are barging in, beating and arresting the protesters and tearing down the encampments.<\/p>\n

But Jones is daring to tell us that this is not the real world \u2013 simply the current one, which is still under construction.<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Robert C. Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based peace journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, <\/em>Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is still available. Contact him at <\/em>koehlercw@gmail.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 commonwonders.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

15 May 2024 – Recent announcement by Union Theological Seminary, affiliated with Columbia University, that it is divesting from \u201ccompanies profiting from war in Palestine\/Israel,\u201d fully supporting the student encampments, and condemning arrests and police violence on the peaceful, culturally diverse protests. There\u2019s something happening here . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[609,87,865,88,427,1378,107,805,3294,1025],"class_list":["post-262654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tms-peace-journalism","tag-demonstrations","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-israel","tag-palestine","tag-protests","tag-religion","tag-spirituality","tag-students-anti-genocide-gaza","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262655,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262654\/revisions\/262655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}