Seasons of American Sacred Time

WE CALL FOR A NATION-WIDE FAST ON OCTOBER 8
TO DISCOVER THE TRUE AMERICA;

TO MOVE FROM CONQUEST TO COMMUNITY,
FROM VIOLENCE TO REVERENCE

A Call from the Tent of Abraham, Hagar, & Sarah

America stands in great danger of becoming addicted to violence, at home and overseas.

Pervasive violence in American culture, society, and policy is expressed in mass murders like those at Columbine and Virginia Tech; in daily murders on the streets of our cities; in physical and sexual abuse in families and communities; in the obsession of our media with grotesque violence; in our government's decision to wage an unnecessary, morally abhorrent, and disastrous war; in its effort to make torture a legitimate instrument of policy; indeed, most lethal of all, in the ecocidal violence we are imposing on the earth itself.

Dear friends of all faiths and communities,

If you want to sign on to the Call for the Interfaith Fast, please write to Office@shalomctr.org and explain what religious congregation, organization, or community you are working with. PLEASE ALSO SIGN UP AND DESCRIBE THE EVENT YOU ARE PLANNING, BY CLICKING TO --

Http://www.INTERFAITHFAST.ORG

Shalom, salaam, peace –
Rabbi Arthur Waskow

FROM CONQUEST TO COMMUNITY,
FROM VIOLENCE TO REVERENCE:
AN INTERFAITH FAST on OCTOBER 8
TO END THE WAR IN IRAQ

We call on all Americans to join in fasting from dawn to dusk on Monday, October 8, to call for an end to the Iraq War. On this day, people of faith in local communities across our nation will act as catalysts to move America from conquest to community and from violence to reverence.

MEMORIAL DAY: GRIEVING, KILLING, OR PRAYERFUL ORGANIZING?

Dear Friends,

Memorial Day was created to mourn the dead of American wars: "That these dead shall not have died in vain; that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

The people of the United States have spoken clearly. This war is indeed "of" us – it is our young who are dying, losing eyes and legs and genitals and minds and souls. It is our schools, our firefighters, our levees, our health care, that are robbed and starved to pay its monstrous costs.

But this war is not by us, and not for us. Our soldiers are dying bravely to veil the cowardice of those who govern us. Our peoples – American and Iraqi – are suffering so those who govern us can celebrate their arrogance, their stupidity, their greed. Their idols.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, 2/9/2005

Multireligious Palm Sunday, March 20 & April 4 @ Riverside Church
Dear friends,

There has been a wonderful simmering of ideas and groups seeking to develop a prophetic witness about the war, as well as broader iss

James Carroll in the Boston Globe, 12/22/2004

(December 21, 2004)

THE SINGLE most important fact about the birth of Jesus, as recounted in the Gospels, is one that receives almost no emphasis in the American festival of Christmas. The child who was born in Bethlehem represented a drastic political challenge to the imperial power of Rome. The nativity story is told to make the point that Rome i the enemy of God, and in Jesus, Rome's day is over.

Arlo, "Alice," Thanksgiving and a Yarmulke

Dear Friends,

A few years ago, stirred by a local Thanksgiving ritual I shared with some friends, I wrote this essay on Arlo Guthrie, his Thanksgiving song about "Alice's Restaurant," my role in the trial of the "Chicago Eight" antiwar activists in 1970, and a yarmulke.

I think sharing this story each year, particularly in the midst of another war, new pressures on free speech, and new corruptions of the Department of Justice and the courts, may be a useful Thanksgiving ritual of its own.

With blessings of thankfulness and the vision to make a world even more deserving of our thanks than the one we see around us,

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, 7/28/2004

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for the peoples of the earth —
to declare our interdependence with each other and with all the life-forms of the planet,
and our independence from efforts b

1/21/2005

In Sorrow, In Hope: Let America Be America Again
January 20, 2005

Included here is a welcoming speech delivered on behalf of PAIPN in LOVE Park in Philadelphia, followed by the text of the Hughes poem, followed by some "press clipp

Philadelphia Area Interfaith Peace Network, 11/24/2004

Dear Friends,

This coming January, Martin Luther King Birthday weekend, the Re-Inauguration of our War President, and the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, marking Abrahams near-sacrifice of his

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Perek HaMelekh (Passage on the King) and the 4th July

On occasions when I have been in a position to shape celebration of the Fourth of July in a Jewish context (such as the ALEPH Kallah some summers, or Elat Chayyim retr