Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
- Viktor E. Frankl
Sunday, May 24
배우기를 좋아하지 않으면 나타나는 폐단
공자께서 자로에게 말씀하셨다.
"유야 너넌 육언육폐라는 말을 들어 본 적이 있느냐?"
자로가 대답했다.
"아직 듣지 못했습니다."
"앉거라. 내가 그 폐단에 관해 말해 주겠다. 인을 좋아한다면서 배우기를 싫어하면 어리석어지고, 지혜를 좋아한다면서 배우기를 싫어하면 허황해지며, 신의를 좋아한다면서 배우기를 싫어하면 의를 해치게 되고, 정직함을 좋아한다면서 배우기를 싫어하면 가혹해지며, 용기를 좋아한다면서 배우기를 싫어하면 난폭해지고, 굳세기를 좋아한다면서 배우기를 싫어한다면 무모해진다."
"유야 너넌 육언육폐라는 말을 들어 본 적이 있느냐?"
자로가 대답했다.
"아직 듣지 못했습니다."
"앉거라. 내가 그 폐단에 관해 말해 주겠다. 인을 좋아한다면서 배우기를 싫어하면 어리석어지고, 지혜를 좋아한다면서 배우기를 싫어하면 허황해지며, 신의를 좋아한다면서 배우기를 싫어하면 의를 해치게 되고, 정직함을 좋아한다면서 배우기를 싫어하면 가혹해지며, 용기를 좋아한다면서 배우기를 싫어하면 난폭해지고, 굳세기를 좋아한다면서 배우기를 싫어한다면 무모해진다."
Saturday, May 16
#AccordingToMyMother
When my mom disowned me for being gay, it was my freshman year of college. I remember going to the Financial Aid Office to consider my options as a suddenly-and-unxpectedly financially-independent 16-year-old, and they had me fill out some surprisingly simple paperwork and register for ten sessions of therapy. The therapist I was assigned ended up being the best to come form the Financial Aid Office -- of all places! He really helped me find a new way to approach my relationship with my mother.
He said I could be "White," "Black" or "Gray." "White" meant I could go back in the closet as my mom hoped and prayed and return to the church and fight this "sin" and have the old relationship I had my mother. "Black" meant resuming our silence, letting the rift grow larger and learning to live without a relationship with my mother because neither of us was going to change. I was always going to be gay. She was always going to believe that homosexuality was a choice and a sin. Or I could try to find the "Gray." He highlighted the fact that my mother was a single parent and I was an only child and that our relationship, while incredibly messy, was important to each of us. And perhaps we could find a gray area in which I would accept the likelihood that she was never going to change her belief system, but I would learn to have compassion in the face of her homophobia, or ignore her ignorance, and let her words that were meant to hurt just go through one ear and out the other. Love by example, even when it may never be reciprocated in the same fashion. Am I always successful at this? No. I mean, I find a weird form of catharsis by writing about it and sharing it with the world. But I think the intention is pure. And maybe if we found the gray area in our extreme points of view a little bit more, then maybe we could have a little more understanding in the world. A little more love.
-- Daniel K. Issac, The Huffington Post Interview
He said I could be "White," "Black" or "Gray." "White" meant I could go back in the closet as my mom hoped and prayed and return to the church and fight this "sin" and have the old relationship I had my mother. "Black" meant resuming our silence, letting the rift grow larger and learning to live without a relationship with my mother because neither of us was going to change. I was always going to be gay. She was always going to believe that homosexuality was a choice and a sin. Or I could try to find the "Gray." He highlighted the fact that my mother was a single parent and I was an only child and that our relationship, while incredibly messy, was important to each of us. And perhaps we could find a gray area in which I would accept the likelihood that she was never going to change her belief system, but I would learn to have compassion in the face of her homophobia, or ignore her ignorance, and let her words that were meant to hurt just go through one ear and out the other. Love by example, even when it may never be reciprocated in the same fashion. Am I always successful at this? No. I mean, I find a weird form of catharsis by writing about it and sharing it with the world. But I think the intention is pure. And maybe if we found the gray area in our extreme points of view a little bit more, then maybe we could have a little more understanding in the world. A little more love.
-- Daniel K. Issac, The Huffington Post Interview
Tuesday, May 5
"First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
"Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truths has any chance of being supplied.
"Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds."
-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859
"Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truths has any chance of being supplied.
"Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds."
-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859
Wednesday, January 14
Mourning the Parisian Journalists Yet Noticing the Hypocrisy
by Rabbi Machael Lerner
Editor, Tikkun Magazine
As the editor of a progressive Jewish and interfaith magazine that has often articulated views that have prompted condemnation from both Right and Left, I had good reason to be scared by the murders of fellow journalists in Paris. Having won the 2014 "Magazine of the Year" Award from the Religion Newswriters Association, and having been critical of Hamas' attempts to bomb Israeli cities this past summer (even while being equally critical of Israel's rampage against civilians in Gaza), I have good reason to worry if this prominence raises the chances of being a target for Islamic extremists.
But then again, I had to wonder about the way the massacre in Paris is being depicted and framed by the Western media as a horrendous threat to Western civilization, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, I wondered about the over-heated nature of this description. It didn't take me long to understand how problematic that framing really is.
When right-wing "pro-Israel" fanatics frequently sent me death threats, physically attacked y house and painted on the gates statements about me being "a Nazi" or "a self-hating Jew," and called in bomb threats to Tikkun, the magazine I edit, there was no attention given to this by the media, no cries of "our civilization depends on freedom of the press" or demands to hunt down those involved (the FBI and police received our complaints, but never reported back to us about what they were doing to protect us or find the assailants).
Nor was the mainstream or Jewish media particularly concerned about Western civilization being destroyed or freedom of thought and association undermined when various universities denied tenure to professors who had made statements critical of Israel, or when the Hillel association, which operates a chain of student-oriented "Hillel Houses" on college campuses, decided to ban from their premises any Jews who were part of Jewish Voices for Peace. Nor was the media much interested in a bomb that went off outside the NAACP's Colorado Springs headquarters the same day as they were highlighting the attack in Paris. Colorado Springs is home to some of the most extreme right-wing activists. It was a balding white man who was seen setting the bomb, some reports claim, and so the media described it as an act of a troubled "lone individual," rather than as a white right wing Christian fundamentalist terrorist. Few Americans have ever heard of this incident.
Continue reading
Editor, Tikkun Magazine
As the editor of a progressive Jewish and interfaith magazine that has often articulated views that have prompted condemnation from both Right and Left, I had good reason to be scared by the murders of fellow journalists in Paris. Having won the 2014 "Magazine of the Year" Award from the Religion Newswriters Association, and having been critical of Hamas' attempts to bomb Israeli cities this past summer (even while being equally critical of Israel's rampage against civilians in Gaza), I have good reason to worry if this prominence raises the chances of being a target for Islamic extremists.
But then again, I had to wonder about the way the massacre in Paris is being depicted and framed by the Western media as a horrendous threat to Western civilization, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, I wondered about the over-heated nature of this description. It didn't take me long to understand how problematic that framing really is.
When right-wing "pro-Israel" fanatics frequently sent me death threats, physically attacked y house and painted on the gates statements about me being "a Nazi" or "a self-hating Jew," and called in bomb threats to Tikkun, the magazine I edit, there was no attention given to this by the media, no cries of "our civilization depends on freedom of the press" or demands to hunt down those involved (the FBI and police received our complaints, but never reported back to us about what they were doing to protect us or find the assailants).
Nor was the mainstream or Jewish media particularly concerned about Western civilization being destroyed or freedom of thought and association undermined when various universities denied tenure to professors who had made statements critical of Israel, or when the Hillel association, which operates a chain of student-oriented "Hillel Houses" on college campuses, decided to ban from their premises any Jews who were part of Jewish Voices for Peace. Nor was the media much interested in a bomb that went off outside the NAACP's Colorado Springs headquarters the same day as they were highlighting the attack in Paris. Colorado Springs is home to some of the most extreme right-wing activists. It was a balding white man who was seen setting the bomb, some reports claim, and so the media described it as an act of a troubled "lone individual," rather than as a white right wing Christian fundamentalist terrorist. Few Americans have ever heard of this incident.
Continue reading