Taking Back Christmas + Mental Fight

Dear CCMJ Associates,
I just read this thought provoking article by Rabbi Michael Lerner – Taking Back Christmas from the Capitalist Marketplace – on Tikkun’s new website – https://www.tikkun.org/newsite/taking-back-christmas
I encourage you to read the article and have a look around their new site on Progressive Spirituality. You can read articles on a range of topics––everything from U.S. politics to emancipatory spirituality. Check it out.  http://www.tikkun.org/.

I accompany the above with thes two pages from Ben Okri’s 1999 Epic poem ‘ Mental Fight’ – an anti-spell for the 21st century……………….

Never again will we stand
On the threshold of a new age.
We that are here now are touched
In some mysterious way
With the ability to change
And make the future.
Those who wake to the wonder
Of this magic moment,
Who wake to the possibilities
Of this charged conjunction,
Are the chosen ones who have chosen
To act, to free the future, to open it up,
To consign prejudices to the past,
To open up the magic casement
Of the human spirit
Onto a more shining world.                    P56

and finally:

For, after the gospels,
After the human and divine comedies,
After the one thousand and one nights,
After crime and punishment,
War and peace, pride and prejudice,
The sound and the fury,
Between good and evil,
Being and nothingness,
After the tempest, the trial,
And the wasteland,
After things have fallen apart,
After the hundred years of solitude,
And the remembrance of things past,
In the kingdom of this world,
We can still astonish the gods in humanity
And be the stuff of future legends,
If we but dare to be real,
And have the courage to see
That this is the time to dream
The best dream of them all.  P68 End

With good wishes and encouragement for 2019
Peter

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