OneLife Institute

Click HERE to download a full-color 6 page PDF of this issue of the newsletter.

Notes from the Director

Practice God's actions every day
of your life. Be within the justice of
God and do what is just. Be within
the compassionate eyes of God
and then look at the world...

~ M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen

In October OneLife will be five years old. This special anniversary issue of the newsletter includes my reflections on where we have been and where we may be headed. I say "may be" since most of what we have accomplished thus far has not been part of a plan that we made, but rather a moment-by-moment response to the Divine calling. Fundamental to spiritual practice is listening. Ongoing listening. Faithful listening. And trusting that, as the saying goes, God doesn’t call the equipped, God equips those who are called. I believe that each of us is called, and that as we seek to honor and serve that calling, we will be equipped – not only provided with what we need, but we will become the people that the need requires us to be.

The opening quote above is from the teacher, the sheikh, of our featured guest author for this issue. Dr. Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons is a respected colleague and a cherished friend. Her commitment to civil rights, human rights, and peace work has taken her from the Jim Crow South, to the killing fields of Cambodia, to the apartheid wall in Jerusalem. She says that social justice activism and the mystic path of Islam are the two legs on which she stands. In her article Dr. Simmons shares part of her personal journey to find this balance, and some of the wisdom she has gathered along the way.

ONELIFE ON FACEBOOK

OneLife has officially joined the world of web 2.0. First it was YouTube; now we are on Facebook. We are finding it to be an amazingly effective tool for outreach. Please visit our Facebook page and become a "fan" to receive the latest updates and extras, or to leave your own comments and insights. (Note: You have to search for OneLife Institute. It turns out there are many other groups around the world with "OneLife" as part of their name to be found on Facebook.) Click here to visit OneLife on Facebook.

SPIRIT, SOUND & SILENCE

On Saturday, October 24th we will be back at Holy Redeemer Center for our last 'Spirit, Sound & Silence' retreat of the year. Come enjoy a day of healing and renewal. In addition to our sliding scale admission policy, we now have full scholarships available for those in need. Please click HERE for retreat details.

ANNIVERSARY GATHERING

Five years ago OneLife Institute was formally launched with a consecration ceremony held at the original Linen Life Gallery. On Friday, October 16th, our anniversary date, we will gather at the new Linen Life to rededicate ourselves, as an organization and a community, to the vision and mission that forms the heart of our work – the integration of spirituality and social engagement to support personal healing and the creation of a more just and compassionate world. Please join us at 7:30PM (in person or in consciousness). Musical inspiration will include Dominion a cappella ensemble (directed by OneLife board vice chair Valerie Brown), Destiny Muhammad our beloved Harpist from the Hood, and others. Whether you are new to OneLife or have been with us since the beginning, you are welcome. Please RSVP so we can add you to the guest list. E-mail:  onelife@onelifeinstitute.org

YOUR SUPPORT IS ESSENTIAL

Thank you for five years of supporting OneLife Institute with your prayers, your volunteer hours, your creative vision, and your financial contributions. Because of you, we continue to expand our capacity to serve. Through our healing retreats, one-on-one counseling and prayer support, classes, inspirational arts events, newsletter, website, and other resources we help to lift-up our community and our world.

We ask you to please make a special fifth anniversary gift as an investment in our shared future. As a small organization, with an even smaller budget, every gift - of any amount - has a significant impact. You will have the satisfaction of knowing that you are making a difference. And since we are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit your contributions are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by law. Donations can be mailed to us at 6114 LaSalle Ave #759, Oakland, CA 94611 or made securely on-line using JustGive.

We are also in need of a laptop computer to facilitate our expanding operations. If you have one to donate or can underwrite the cost of a used (or new!) one, please let us know.

We offer our humble and heartfelt thanks for ALL your support ~ time, talent, tithes, participation and prayers. May the gifts that you share return to you magnified and multiplied.

With gratitude and in peace,

Liza

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The True Path to Peace

By Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, PhD

Most of the time, I am thankful to have been born a black female in the Jim Crow South. Of course it has taken me a while to appreciate this fact, given the persistence of racism and sexism in our world. But when I am in my best mind, I can appreciate my life story because of what I have learned from my personal experiences. It was my great fortune to have been an active participant in the momentous Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and '70s and some of the other important social movements it inspired.

I became involved in the Student Sit-In Movement in 1962 as a freshman at Spelman College in Atlanta, GA. In 1964, I journeyed to Mississippi to participate in the Mississippi Summer Project, to teach in its Freedom Schools, and to help in the organizing of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. I was active in the Black Power wing of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) as a founding member of its Atlanta Project, the organization’s first truly urban field project. My formal entry into the Peace Movement began when SNCC staff’s consciousness about the injustice and immorality of the Vietnam War led us to become the first major Civil Rights organization to issue a public statement against the war. It was during this period that I and several other members of the Atlanta Project joined the Nation of Islam, which I viewed at the time as an answer to the unrelenting racism and violence directed at black people.

Much of my knowledge regarding social action and organizing was formed through my involvement in these great efforts to right the historic wrongs of our nation and to reshape our country’s collective consciousness of its true history – the good, the bad, and the ugly of it. Some of the people it has been my privilege to know and work with include Civil Rights, human rights, and peace luminaries, as well as the largely unknown lieutenants and foot soldiers like myself. People such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, Congressman John Lewis, Miss Ella Baker, Stokely Carmichael, Howard Zinn, Staughton Lynd, Vincent Harding, Bob Moses, James Foreman, Ruby Doris Robinson, the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, and Minister Louis Farrakhan, just to name a few. The list of those who helped to shape and mold me in these crucibles of struggle is long and I am grateful to have been touched by them all.

The second great and perhaps even more important influence in my own life and thought has been my meeting and spending 17 years as a disciple and devotee of the contemporary Sufi Master, Sheikh Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen who initiated me into Sufism, the mystical path in Islam. My years with Bawa (father) radically altered my life, but in a different way than did my work in the Civil Right Movement. My social justice activism focuses on the needed external changes in the material world, whereas my work on the Sufi path is directed at the internal changes that I need to address if my life is to reach its true destiny. This is the work of becoming a true human being. Initially, I saw the two paths as being in conflict.

In 1972, several months after his arrival in the U.S. from Sri Lanka, I asked Bawa about my dilemma and told him how torn I was between my work in the Civil Rights and Peace Movements and my longing to know God; to know myself and have a direct experience of God. Bawa looked at me with his most luminous and tender expression and said: "My dear child, you are a tiny light trying to do the sun’s work. If you get what I have brought to you, you will become the sun, the 'sun' of God. It is only then that you will be able to do the work you seek to do."

What I have since discovered is that I did not have to make a choice between the two: that no matter what I am doing in my worldly life, I must be engaged in the inner struggle with my lower self or nafs (the greater jihad) at all times. This entails the polishing and faceting of the inner heart, (the qalb), until it becomes a radiant and brilliant diamond. I continue to learn that this is difficult work, even more difficult than the external work.

If we are to understand how we can build peaceful and just communities, we must examine closely the process by which persons, groups, even nations can become peaceful, harmonious, and be restored to equanimity. And we must understand how our religious and spiritual beliefs help to guide us in this process. As Dr. King once said, "Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry as dust religion."

Are we, as people of faith, promoting peace and community? Are we actively promoting fundamental social change and a re-ordering of this nation’s economic priorities as acts of reconciliation and healing?

There are millions of us in our progressive churches, synagogues, and mosques across this country. Why are our voices not heard like they were during the Civil Rights Movement? We all share in the creation of our social environment and we are therefore all collectively responsible for the illnesses of our time. A part of our struggle as people of faith is to create a world where people are judged by their deeds not by their ethnic, religious, or sexual labels - in brief, a world of justice. We need to admit that the socioeconomic system in which we are all enmeshed is irredeemably capitalist, racist, and patriarchal. What is our reaction to this? Do we simply accept it or do we work to change it, to humanize it bit by bit? Currently our new President - the first African American one - and our nation are embroiled in an effort to right one of the great wrongs of our country: the lack of affordable health care for every man, woman and child here. The forces of greed, including those in the Health Care and Pharmaceutical Industry, are doing as they have done for the last fifty years: spending billions of dollars to keep our for-profit health care system - the only one of its kind in the developed world - in place.

In Islam, there is a belief that men and women are vicegerents (deputies) of God who were given an amanah (trust) by God to care for ourselves and the entire creation. Every human and all of nature have been put into each of our trust by God to be the caretakers over this magnificent creation. As Believers, we have a responsibility, a duty to carry out this trust by caring for each and every creature as we would care for ourselves. This is how we bring justice to our world. And with justice comes reconciliation, and with reconciliation peace and the healing that we all seek.

When we change ourselves we change the world. Personal transformation is a necessary element in our ability to fundamentally change the injustices in our world. True peace begins with each of us. When we achieve the state of inner peace and are able to reconcile with our neighbors, family and friends, we are better equipped to work for peace and justice in the world. Only then are we able to begin the work of building beloved communities.

~*~

Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, PhD  is an Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Florida. Her primary academic focus is on Islamic law and its impact on Muslim women. She conducted research in Jordan, Egypt, Palestine and Syria on the law’s impact on women, and on the women’s movements in those countries to change these laws. Simmons studied Sufism for seventeen years with the contemporary Sufi Mystic, Shaykh M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. In addition to her academic and spiritual studies she has a long history of involvement in civil rights, human rights and peace work. For 23 years, she was on the staff of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker peace, justice, human rights, and international development organization.  During her early adult years, Simmons was active with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and spent seven years working full-time on voter registration and desegregation activities in Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama during the 1960s and 70s.

This article was excerpted and adapted from a keynote address given by Dr. Simmons at the Gandhi-King Conference on Peacemaking, October 2007, in Memphis TN. A video of the entire speech is available at:  www.gandhikingconference.org/pastconferences.html

Related links:

Veterans of Hope Project profile of Dr. Simmons: www.veteransofhope.org/bio.php?p=bio&vid=32

M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship: www.bmf.org

Trinity Institute: 2006 National Theological Conference Webcast: www.trinitywallstreet.org/webcasts/videos/faith-formation-education/trinity-institute-2006-reconciliation/reconciliation-gwendolyn-zoharah-simmons

PBS / This Far by Faith:  www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/witnesses/zohara_simmons.html

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OneLife is increasingly recognized in its role as healer, nurturer, encourager, and bridge – connecting people and organizations with resources, with one another, and with the Spirit (however named or conceived). In all that we do are the common threads of concern for peace and justice, interfaith and multiracial community building, a wholistic approach to healing and growth, and the integration of spirituality and the creative arts as dynamic components of compassionate social change.

Our purpose statement includes these words: "We believe that spirituality and social action are complimentary and synergistic. Contemplative and other spiritual practices can motivate and sustain activism, offering replenishment in the face of burnout and fostering integrity, compassion, vision, and hope. Activism provides a context for spiritual practice, transforming our selves as we work to transform our world. And further, as each of us is individually transformed, so too is the global collective."

Several core programs have developed over the years that give life to this statement: one-on-one counseling and prayer support; organizational consulting and facilitation; classes in community and academic settings on subjects related to engaged spirituality (with a special emphasis on the life and work of Dr. Howard Thurman); publications including this newsletter, articles for the lay and  professional press, and a couple of books that I am working on (your prayers are solicited!). The two programs for which we are probably best known, however, are Transformative Visions – our art, jazz and spoken word event – and our quarterly Spirit, Sound and Silence retreats.

Evaluations from retreat attendees speak of what they have received from their participation: "Guidance and a profound vision of my next steps in life." ...  "Reconnection to myself. Feeling more alive and connected to the aliveness of others. Love from the community and sharing." ... "A sense of nourishment. A safe place." ... "A sense of interconnectedness, oneness, community. Peaceful within myself. An appreciation and overall sense of gratitude." ... "Space to heal, gain clarity and insight." ... "How to be still. How to be present in the moment. How to pull myself back into a peace moment." ... "A greater sense of integration, gentleness, and love for self." ... "Greater opening to give and receive. Deeper rooting and grounding in Spirit."

Last November we received our first grant. This support from the Aepoch Community Healing Fund allowed a quantum shift in our capacity to serve. Their gift underwrote Transformative Visions 2009, provided scholarships for our retreats, and funded the hire of a part-time community outreach coordinator. Jeannine Etter joined us in January and has been a valuable member of the OneLife team, expanding our presence in the community and helping to develop and maintain the relationships essential to our effectiveness. Over the past year we have been present at protest rallies, music festivals, health fairs, flea markets, planning meetings, and gatherings for worship. We have sat with the servant-leaders of many community based organizations to offer ourselves as a resource and discuss possible synergies and collaborations.

In these turbulent times, times of widespread crisis and opportunity, times of both hungering and hope, resources that inspire new vision and possibilities, and support the resilience of those on the front lines of struggle and transformation are more important than ever. In these times, we must address the reality of present urgencies, and simultaneously reach beyond them to bring forth a new and possible world. This is our work. All of us; each in our unique and particular way.

In the coming year OneLife will continue to host quarterly retreats, with special outreach to folks with the greatest need and least access. We will celebrate our artist-prophets with Transformative Visions in March 2010. We will continue to offer individual counseling and prayer, and are considering the addition of a monthly drop-in support group as people navigate the stresses of grief and uncertainty. And we are excited about collaborating with some of the magnificent organizations working for peace, justice, and wholeness for Oakland and the world. We welcome your participation!

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