Buddhist take on the Network of Spiritual Progressives

Madelyn Blair, wise woman extraordinaire who uses appreciative inquiry, narrative and many other tools with organizations, remembered our conversation about NSP. Shambhala Sun's September issue has an article she told me, is this about your group?

Yes it is! In the September 2006 issue of Shambhala Sun, a magazine on Buddhism Culture Meditation & Life, on page 48 is an article titled "Who Does God Vote For - Seeking an Alternative to the Christian Right" by Barry Boyce. Click here to read a short excerpt.

The online article is just a teaser. In the magazine, the article is about 10 pages, and quotes extensively from NSP conference presentations by Rabbi Lerner, Sister Joan Chittester, Jim Wallis, Rev. Deborah Johnson and others. And ends with this thought: "The calls by these religious leader to look beyond right and left are based in a very sound theology: if godliness is to have any real meaning, it has to be above any version of us versus them.... This, they believe, is what many people in America are looking for: public life based on deep meaning." The author points out that NSP includes Buddhists, Hindus, Sufis and Wiccans, as well as Jews and Christians and folks of no religious persuation. Poignantly, the debate within the progressive religious movement is "a debate all Americans, believers or not, have a stake in...It's a debate about who God really is."

Go to your library or local newstand to find a copy (I found a copy at Borders, on the same section that held Tikkun).

And while you are reading the magazine, look at the article on p.56, "Return to the (Policial) World". "The messy, neurotic, imperfect world of politics, says Zen teacher John Tarrant, is exactly the palce there the bodhisattva way is practiced and our realization is put on the line." Click here to read a brief excerpt.

Are we reaching out to the Buddhists and others around us to invite them into dialogue about progressive religion and values in the public sphere?