The Corner

The Frames ~ People All Get Ready

This captures how living among the massive shifts of right this moment feel to me right now:

Rewrite what's gone already
And see it through with wiser hands
And what has gone between us
Is a lot, is a lot
And who'll be there to ignore us
When you're not, when you're not

We have all the time in the world
To get it right, to get it right
And we have all the love in the world
To set alight, to set alight

People all get ready
'Cause we're coming to a stop

Here's an interview of Hansard by Steve Stockman

End of Racism ? Not So Much

from Ampersand :
Cartoon: Obama and the End of Racism

This cartoon was originally posted at Dollars & Sense, where Chris Sturr writes:

Employment at the tippy-top is looking good for Black people in the United States, as Barack Obama ascends to the presidency and Roland Burris (finally) settles into Obama’s former U.S. Senate seat (net job increase: +1). The job picture for the rest of Black America? Not so good.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a sharp decline in nonfarm payroll employment in December and an increase in the general unemployment rate from 6.8% to 7.2%. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for Black men over the age of 20 rose from 12.1% to 13.4%. The official jobless rate for Black youth (ages 16 to 19) was even bleaker; it rose from 32.2% to 33.7% in the same period, while the unemployment rate for white youth increased from 18.4% to 18.7%.

Mine, Theirs, Ours

image from Pandiyan

The Craig of Craigslist - Craig Newmark -  has a great post up about cultures of particiation:

He used the phrase "culture of participation" and this crystallized a lot of my thinking about why Wikipedia and craigslist work. There's the "culture of trust" thing, very important. That trust is generated where the people running stuff continuously engage with the people who use the stuff, where everyone can participate. Not everyone will, but it's the genuine opportunity that matters.

David Weinberger, another commentator I respect highly, once captured this more metaphorically, saying "Google feels like ours (even though it legally belongs to its shareholders)... Weblogs feel like their ours while online columns do not. The Mac feels like it's ours... Craigslist feels like ours..."

I notice this with communities I am affiliated with.  Some I think of as mine, others as theirs.  The thickest ties are with communities I experience as ours.

My buddy Patton Dodd has a powerful post over at Slate The Ted Haggard Dilemma Can a fallen pastor ever redeem himself? :

Haggard can't enter a pulpit, and he shouldn't seek to be a spiritual leader, at least not for eons. He can enter a congregation somewhere, and if he wants to do that, he should, as a fellow traveler with other seekers. And that congregation should embrace him. That's what his spiritual restoration would look like.

Gallup Poll: Importance of Religion

State of the States: Importance of Religion:

Overall, 65% of Americans say religion is an important part of their daily lives.  An analysis of more than 350,000 interviews conducted by Gallup in 2008 finds Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas to be the most religious states in the nation. Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts are the least religious states. 

The accompanying map shows religiosity by state for 2008, ranging from states that can be considered the most religious to those that are the least religious on a relative basis. (The full data for all states appear at the end of the article.)

The map demonstrates that the relative importance of religion in Americans' lives has interesting geographical differentiation. Clearly, Southern states are populated by residents with relatively high religiosity, as are several other states in the middle of the country, stretching from Texas through Oklahoma to Kansas and the two Dakotas.

At the same time, states whose residents are least likely to report that religion is important tend to be concentrated in New England and the far West (with the exception of Utah). Additionally, levels of religiosity are lower in several Mid-Atlantic states.

Over at Escaping Into The Open, Lisa posted her notes from the Rachel Naomi Remen interview - her core questions really are sensational:

1. What can be trusted?

2. What sustains me?

3. What do I really need in order to live?

In terms of the question of trust, I suppose it's not a shock to learn that public trust in corporations is down around the world over the last year, but nowhere more so than the United States:

In a NYT OpEd piece, David Brooks frames how so many of the institutions that those of us engaged in modernity invested our trust in are shifting:

Institutions do all the things that are supposed to be bad. They impede personal exploration. They enforce conformity.

But they often save us from our weaknesses and give meaning to life.

At the core of this crisis, at least for me, is returning to the living out of the reality that we're all connected to each other, that what sustains us if the web we are all a part of.  The South African Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu describes a word from African culture - Ubuntu - as a shorthand for this interconnectedness:

It is the essence of being human. It speaks of the fact that my humanity is caught up and is inextricably bound up in yours. I am human because I belong. It speaks about wholeness, it speaks about compassion. A person with Ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm and generous, willing to share. Such people are open and available to others, willing to be vulnerable, affirming of others, do not feel threatened that others are able and good, for they have a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that they belong in a greater whole. They know that they are diminished when others are humiliated, diminished when others are oppressed, diminished when others are treated as if they were less than who they are. The quality of Ubuntu gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanize them.

I recommend checking out the tate modern www.tate.org.uk/ when you're in london

More on SoF: Repossessing Virtue

In December, I posted on a great episode Parker Palmer on the Economic Crisis, Morality, and Meaning that Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett did.  They have now posted a great website:

This ongoing series explores the moral, spiritual, and practical aspects of the economic downturn.   Take a a few minutes and listen to wisdom from Shane Claiborne, Rachel Naomi Remen, Prabhu Guptara or Jessica Sundheim.  If you feel open to it, share your own story at » Your Voices, Your Stories .

 

Weinberger: Control does not scale, except at tremendous human costs

Jeff Jarvis posts Weinberger’s wisdom a summary of some comments by David Weinberger at DLD:

knowledge, as we’ve traditionally known or referred to it, is singlar, binary, simple, scarce, and settled. Those properties of knowledge are, not by accident, are also the properties of the book.

We think with our things. Knowledge, in short, was atoms. So now, we’re digitizing and connecting in an age of abundance. There’s an abundance of good and of crap but, he says, we’re much better at dealing with the abundance of crap. Yes, we filter it, kill it.

 when there’s an abundance of good, our institutions are not built for it. “Control does not scale,” he says, “except at tremendous human costs.”

Control does not scale.

Next: “The mess is essential.” The mess is the better reflection of who we are.