Anonymous Cowgirl

Alden Penner: Odes to the House

Lev — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:23:33 +0000

Alden Penner of the Unicorns, the Clues, and the Hidden Words, has released a four song EP through Beep! Beep! Back up the truck records. In part the product of a four month journey from Bamako, Mali to Haifa, Israel, the songs on “Odes to the House” are “[expressions] of appreciation and love in response to the experiences provided by the Universal House of Justice.” Listen to “Last Shelter” on Alden Penner’s Bandcamp page, and buy the full EP. Or visit Beep! Beep! and get a handmade package for the album.

A quote from Penner: “These are liberation songs I hope, of the spiritual kind, seeking to uplift hearts to new heights of understanding and appreciation of the literature and station of the Universal House of Justice.”

This is what youtube offers for “Breezes of Confirmation”

Negin — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 02:49:39 +0000

Our Tuesday night mix:
First with some awesome junior youth!

and then with a fantastic German rap song!

Reflections for a new year

Lev — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 04:51:05 +0000

It’s been a month; let’s write a blog post! In the rhythm of community life, the time approaches for reflecting and planning. We take look back at the experiences garnered over the last few months. In the interest of brevity, here’s three of them:

Thinking in terms of process rather than events
Wedding study to action
Accompaniment and empowerment

Thinking in terms of process rather than events

Striving to expand the junior youth program in our neighborhood, I was struck by the degree to which I was trying to make events happen. I had fallen into “a mindset that derives satisfaction from the sense of expectation and excitement [events] generate.” The proper place for events or short term projects is when they occur as natural outgrowths of an ongoing process for education and transformation. So if we are regularly engaged in teaching children, and reflecting on those actions, then at a certain moment in time it may be appropriate to invite the parents together for a play performed by the children. But if we are not involved in that regular process, and attempt to make a play happen as an impetus for other actions, it may prove difficult.

Wedding study to action

We’ve had a number of occasions to explore “an approach to study of the [Baha'i] writings that is wedded to action.” For example:

Studying the text of Glimmerings of Hope with a potential animator, which yielded truly wonderful conversations, and then going to visit one of the parents to discuss some of the ideas raised in that book.
Studying the purpose of prayer, and the relationship between our existence as spiritual and material beings, and then going to visit our neighbors. One of them invited us in and it turned out she had been asking God to send someone for her to pray with.
Studying the joy inherent in walking a path of service, and then experiencing that joy by walking across the street and spending some time with a lovely couple who recently lost the husband’s grandmother.

Accompaniment and empowerment

In each of these experiences, we have learned to quiet “the urge to overinstruct.” By patiently allowing others to do things themselves, perhaps in ways we would not have done, we practice a form of generosity in which we “[delight] not so much in [our] own accomplishments but in the progress and services of others.”

Authenticity

Lev — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 04:52:34 +0000

This week I’ve been learning about authenticity. How to be transparent and straightforward with people, even when it’s a little scary. We’ve invited some potential animators of a junior youth to head out into the field with us tonight, even though the group I work with hasn’t met in months. But that’s where our group is – trying to get back off the ground and establish some consistency – so I’m going to present that to these new potential animators in a spirit of authenticity.

In that same spirit, here is a great song by Aceyalone and Bionik. Good to see some gray in Acey’s beard. Saul Williams once said that he wished more MCs would rap about what was actually going on in their lives. Rap about being a father or a mother. Rap about how weird your life is since you got signed to a record label. Whatever – just rap with some authenticity and transparency about your life. And if you can put a fresh Doo Wop beat behind it – so much the better.

Aceyalone- The Way It Was ft. Bionik
Aceyalone