Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

At Play on the Waves of the Lord

Rabbi Hanniel Levenson, 32, is the associate rabbi at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons. The center has long sought to integrate religion with vacation, offering Friday night Shabbat services on the beach. This summer, Rabbi Levenson went a few steps further.

When the rabbi learned that two brothers in his Hebrew class were avid surfers back home in Pacific Palisades, Calif., he approached them.

They worked out a deal. One afternoon a week, the students would diligently study Hebrew; one afternoon, they would ride waves. The surf sessions would be open to young and old, male and female — “anyone who wants to get out on the ocean and talk about God,” Rabbi Levenson said.

This is a delightful article.  It offers some hope.

 

 

Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World (Audiobook)

Brian Maurer would like to alert you to a FREE AUDIO BOOK, available until December 20.  Beyond Religion, written by the Dalai Lama and read by Martin Sheen, will be free from Audible.com until 12.20!  Is it a come-on?  Does it matter?  If you listen to books, this is a great opportunity.  Go to: Beyond Religion Audible.

Product Description from Amazon:  "A stirring call to move beyond religion for the guidance to improve human life on individual, community, and global levels—including a guided meditation practice for cultivating key human values. Beyond Religion is a blueprint for all those who yearn for a life of spiritual fulfillment as they work for a better world.

In Beyond Religion, the Dalai Lama elaborates and deepens his vision for the nonreligious way. Transcending the mere "religion wars," he outlines a system of secular ethics that gives tolerant respect to religion—those that ground ethics in a belief in God and an afterlife, and those that understand good actions as leading to better states of existence in future lives. And yet, with the highest level of spiritual and intellectual authority, the Dalai Lama makes a claim for what he calls a third way. This is a system of secular ethics that transcends religion as a way to recognize our common humanity and so contributes to a global human community based on understanding and mutual respect."

Go For It!!

On Being the Kaddish

"The Kaddish is a prayer that is recited at every Jewish service to honor the memory of those who died. I was curious about what it would mean to 'Be the Kaddish.' I wondered: How does a person become a prayer?"

This short essay is Rabbi Hannah Orden reflections on Death and Mourning.  All of us will gain valued insight.  Download Memory is a Blessing

Rabbi Hannah Orden is the spiritual leader of Temple B’Nai Israel in Laconia, New Hampshire.  You may learn more about her from her website.

Yom Keeper

Today is the holiest day of the Jewish year.  Today is for reflection;  for Awe. Most religions have a similar day.  

Today, sheer chance directed me to an amazing video.  Most of you will like it.  It's a real "keeper" -- perhaps it is a "Yom Keeper." Click on the image and wait a few seconds for it to load up.  The video is six minutes long.

For this video's credits, see:

 

 

Muslims in the Middle

In case you missed this amazing NY Times Op-Ed piece, you might want to read it.

"Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.

Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith."

"Few in the U.S. or Europe remember that a devastating Taliban attack occurred last spring at the shrine of the 17th-century poet-saint Rahman Baba, at the foot of the Khyber Pass in northwest Pakistan. For centuries, the complex has been a place for musicians and poets to gather, and Rahman Baba’s Sufi verses had long made him the national poet of the Pashtuns living on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. “I am a lover, and I deal in love,” wrote the saint. “Sow flowers,/ so your surroundings become a garden./ Don’t sow thorns; for they will prick your feet./ We are all one body./ Whoever tortures another, wounds himself.”

Click on Muslims in the Middle to read this important article. The author, William Dalrymple, is a noted historian and writer about the Middle East, India and Pakistan.

Marginal Notes: Gandhi's Glasses

 

 

Mahatma Gandhi’s steel-framed spectacles, his pair of sandals, bowl, plate and pocket watch recently brought $1.8 million at auction. Vijay Mallya, the Indian liquor and airline magnate, announced that he had purchased the items with plans to return them to India. How ironic that these few items owned by a man who had repudiated materialism commanded such an exhorbitant price!

 

Why in our quest of the spiritual do we continually put our stock in material things? It’s almost as if we believed that spirituality could be bought instead of sought....more

 

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog.  The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau:  "I love a broad margin to my life." 

The Primacy of Soul

This four minute video addresses the essence Soul.  Parker Palmer, a highly respected writer, teacher and activist, likens Soul to a wild animal --  shy, free, living independently in the wilderness.  If you have 4 quiet minutes, this will be a treat.

I learned about this from the Maine DartmouthFamily Medicine Blog. 

A Charter for Compassion

"This is a collaborative effort to build a peaceful and harmonious global community. Bringing together the voices of people from all religions, the Charter seeks to remind the world that while all faiths are not the same, they all share the core principle of compassion and the Golden Rule. The Charter strives to change the tenor of the conversation around religion and hopes to be a clarion call to the world."

Please view the video.  Three minutes and 30 seconds.  An anodyne to angst.