Today is Ella's Fitzgerald's birthday, (1915-1959). Enjoy her rendition of the classic Gershwin favorite, The Man I Love. Also, in honor of my goal this week to write about nonviolence and what individuals can do to live more in line with Jesus' teachings of living a peace oriented and purposeful life of a nonviolent nature...here is a project that my Education in Peace and Justice class is doing. We are charged each week to do a "trifling" to test Ghandi's theory that we can cultivate nonviolence in ourselves by attending to the little ways in which we are constantly tempted to participate in violence and take advantage of the opportunities life gives us to develop a regular practice of nonviolence. In this assignment you can pray in a particular way, or fast from certain kinds of habits or thoughts that contribute to violence, like gossiping or cursing at the guy or gal that cut you off in traffic. It might be to start to recycle, or take a walk to a place that's close to your home instead of driving. My trifling has been to write an anger journal. I got this idea from Ghandi's grandson, Arun Ghandi. It's not to just write down and vent about anger, but to find solution out of your anger. Where is it rooted and how can you react differently next time you are in that situation. Now, I'm not an angry person but I can be emotional at times and this has made me just pause at what are my triggers. Are my emotions giving rise to violence against myself, ugly self-talk I would say to myself and never to another person, or negative judgments and thoughts about another person? In this Tuesday of Holy Week, what can your trifling be about? Look at Ghandi's list (on Monday's post) of sins and the add-ons to the list? Any triggers or ideas come to mind?
1 comment:
I love the anger journal idea--what a useful project.
Post a Comment