In February, Rabbi Michael Lerner came to Suquamish and delivered an inspiring message at our Sunday morning service. The sanctuary and adjoining hall were filled to overflowing with those yearning to hear a message of hope during our troubled times.

Michael believes America is in a spiritual crisis; the Right has named it, while the Left doesn’t speak to it.

He says "People feel a near-desperate desire to reconnect to the sacred, to find some way to unite their lives with a higher meaning and purpose and, in particular, to that aspect of the sacred that is built upon the loving, kind, and generous energy in the universe that I describe as 'The Left Hand of God.'"

A grassroots movement is now stirring across our country resulting from his Spiritual Progressives conference in Berkley, California, last summer. Networking groups are sprouting across the nation including right here on the Kitsap Peninsula!

Join the Kitsap NSP Forum...

More on the Network of Spiritual Progressives....

Study Group:  Beginning on Thursday, April 20, at 7:00 pm, a study group will meet each week for four weeks to take a closer look at the book The Left Hand of God.

An open letter from Robin Simons

Dear Chaverim:

Last night (March 29^th) the most exciting thing happened to me. I got converted. Not to a new religion (I’m still a card carrying member of Shir Hayam) (well, I would carry a card if we had cards)—but to a new progressive movement: a movement called the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP).

Here’s how it happened.

Very cautiously, I went to a discussion held at the UCC Church in Suquamish. Many of you know that a few weeks ago Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun Magazine (and the Jewish Renewal movement) came and spoke at that church.

He spoke about NSP, which he co-founded, and about his new book, The Left Hand of God, which lays out the rationale for the movement. I didn’t get to hear Lerner when he came so I went last night principally to see the video of the speech. I went cautiously because of the word “spiritual” in the group’s name. Although I have been willing to consider myself spiritual for the last few years, I spent most of my adulthood denying any association with that word or concept, and I still resist attaching myself to a spiritual organization. (I know, I know: I’m on the Coordinating Committee of Shir Hayam, but I think of my connection to Judaism and the chavurah as cultural not religious.) I went to see the video curious about what Lerner would say, expecting to find it interesting, but not expecting to like it.

Instead, I LOVED it! I was so excited by it that I came home wanting to tell you all about it—because it feels to me like the answer I have been looking for. Not a spiritual answer (although that’s part of it) but a political/societal answer: a path to enabling the Left to reshape this country.

In a nutshell, what Lerner and NSP says is this (this is my grossly simplified language, not his):

• The world as we know it is based on fear, distrust, cynicism, materialism, power, selfishness and greed. The “bottom line” of business, government, education, and most organizations is power and greed.
   

• This need not be the case. It is possible to create a world built on a new bottom line in which the operative values are love, caring, generosity, kindness, respect, peace, social justice, non-violence, joy, and awe at the wonder of creation.
   

• Many people will say that is not “realistic” or possible. But “realism” is limiting your vision to what IS, rather than having a vision of what CAN BE. Most social gains (think feminism, integration) were achieved despite the belief that such change was not realistic or possible.
   

• There is a “spiritual crisis” in America today. This has nothing to do with belief in God, per se, or with religion. It has to do with the kind of emptiness and alienation people feel in their lives, with people’s search for meaning and purpose, with people’s over-busy lives, with our society’s emphasis on material goods as a substitute for inner peace and real connection.
   

• The Right speaks to this spiritual crisis through terms such as “family values.” It has proactively named the crisis by addressing it, and has therefore come to “own” it as a political issue.
   

• The Left has deliberately avoided the spiritual crisis because of a longstanding discomfort with things spiritual. They continue to believe that by working solely on political, economic, environmental, social justice, and similar issues they can eventually win back the support of the majority of Americans by appealing to their reason. But they are missing the “spiritual” hunger that is felt by so many Americans.
   

• For decades the Left has been splintered into hundreds of interest groups (environment, poverty, homelessness, gay and lesbian rights, etc.). It has lacked the cohesive unifying vision and language that is necessary to effectively communicate with the nation and to shift the country to the left.
   

• Acknowledging and embracing this desire for spiritual connection and meaning can  be the unifying vision, the umbrella under which all the interest groups of the Left unite. Whether they/we call it “spiritual” or not, we/they all embrace the new bottom line. Whether we are about prison reform or political reform we all want to create the same kind of world: one based on love, caring and all the other attributes listed above.

I got excited about this movement for two reasons:

1. I truly believe that the Left has suffered because it lacks a unifying vision under which its disparate groups can unite. The strength of the Right has been their ability to put aside their issue-differences to come together under a few big “values” (freedom, liberty, family). I have been yearning for the Left to figure out that they have to do that too.
    

2. The idea that a movement to create political and social change talks about love and awe at creation, and recognizes our fundamental need for connection, and says that global change and inner change go hand in hand, blows me away because it echoes my own thinking. But whoever expected to see that on the national political stage? Much less have it offered as a path to creating the oh-so-desperately-needed political change?

The Kitsap chapter of the NSP is now brand new. I think we’re going to try to get the word out about this way of thinking in whatever forums we can (newspaper columns, speakers, buttonholing friends on street corners!) (There’s an event coming up at BPA on April 23; see the notice elsewhere in this newsletter.) I hope you don’t mind, or feel it inappropriate, that I took up so much room with it here. I didn’t mean to proselytize, but really just to share my excitement. There were several of us from Shir Hayam at the event last night and I think we all felt that what we heard was so in keeping with the spirit of Shir Hayam. If you would like to learn more you can go the website. Or you can contact me and I’ll put you on the email list for the budding little Kitsap branch of the network. You can also check out Michael Lerner’s book, The Left Hand of God, which spells out the principles of the network much more eloquently than I did.

I feel like I have breathed fresh air. Thank you for giving me a chance to share it.

Robin Simons