BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

Without a Pastor of His Own, Obama Turns to Five by Laurie Goodstein President Obama has been without a pastor or a home church ever since he cut his ties to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. in the heat of the presidential campaign. But he has quietly cultivated a handful of evangelical pastors for private prayer sessions on the telephone and for discussions on the role of religion in politics. All are men, two of them white and three black — including the Rev. Otis Moss Jr., a graying lion of the civil rights movement. Two, the entrepreneurial dynamos Bishop T. D. Jakes and the Rev. Kirbyjon H. Caldwell, also served as occasional spiritual advisers to President George W. Bush. Another, the Rev. Jim Wallis, leans left on some issues, like military intervention and poverty programs, but opposes abortion. None of these pastors are affiliated with the religious right, though several are quite conservative theologically. One of them, the Rev. Joel C. Hunter, the pastor of a conservative meg...

"Just like me, they long to be, close to you." - The Carpenters. Judaism talks a lot about closeness to God and cleaving to Torah. We spend a lot of time wondering if we are close to Him. Or judging another person's closeness to Hashem using Halachic law as a guide. But what I believe we really need to focus on is maintaining the proximity to God rather than measuring it. In this study we sought to address several limitations of previous research on attachment theory and religion God by (1) developing a multidimensional scale of attachment to God, and (2) demonstrating that these scales are predictive of measures of personality and affect after controlling for social desirability and other related dimensions of religiosity... Consistent with prior research on adult romantic attachment, two dimensions of attachment to God were identified: avoidance (vs. security) and anxiety. After statistically controlling for social desirability, intrinsic religiousness, doctrinal o...

Original at http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/communityservice/4spx . The prayer request is for… From 6/1-8/6 Watching the spectical on Sat. at the rules meeting breaks my heart. We can’t wait for HRC to see the light on her own, we need to begin praying for her and her supporters now. Please commit to praying for them daily to : stop trying to hurt the Obama’s and the Democratic party. Pray God will speak to them all and change their hearts so their only pursuit will be party unity and whole heartedly backing Sen. Obama. Wow, not too condescending is it? So what should we all be praying for today? World peace? An end to violence against children? Religious harmony? Nope. We’ should all get on our knees an pray that Hillary Clinton and Hillary Clinton supporters see the light (or the one) and stop picking on poor little Barack Obama. SOURCE

Prayer or “open letter to god?” and Presidential Orientation 1) What? Are you still outraged by someone leaking Obama’s “prayer” from the wailing wall in Israel? Be still, grasshopper, all will be well. Or not. From today’s Israel Insider : What initially seemed to be a journalistic scoop of dubious moral propriety now seems to be a case of an Israeli paper being played by the Barack Obama campaign. Maariv, the second most popular newspaper in Israel, was roundly criticized for publishing the note Obama left in the Kotel. But now a Maariv spokesperson says that publication of the note was pre-approved for international publication by the Obama campaign, leading to the conclusion that the “private” prayer was intentionally leaked for public consumption. ——————- However, it now appears that Maariv had collaborated with the Obama campaign in getting the “private” prayer, with its “modest” supplicaton to the Lord, out to the public, buffing his Christian credentials and showing his “hu...

Religion And The Brain In the new field of "Neurotheology," scientists seek the biological basis of sprituality. Is God all in our heads? by: Sharon Begley with Anne Underwood One Sunday morning in March, 19 years ago, as Dr. James Austin waited for a train in London, he glanced away from the tracks toward the river Thames. The neurologist--who was spending a sabbatical year in England--saw nothing out of the ordinary: the grimy Underground station, a few dingy buildings, some pale gray sky. He was thinking, a bit absent-mindedly, about the Zen Buddhist retreat he was headed toward. And then Austin suddenly felt a sense of enlightenment unlike anything he had ever experienced. His sense of individual existence, of separateness from the physical world around him, evaporated like morning mist in a bright dawn. He saw things "as they really are," he recalls. The sense of "I, me, mine" disappeared. "Time was not present," he says. "I had a sense...

HITBODEDUT Translated by Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum S et aside time each day to meditate and pray alone in a room or some meadow and express your innermost thoughts and feelings and personal prayers to God. Use every kind of appeal and argument. Use words that will endear you to God and win His favor. Plead with God to draw you closer and let you truly serve Him. This is Hitbodedut. You should hold these conversations in whatever language you speak best. Our set prayers are said in Hebrew, but if this is not one's native language, it is difficult to use it to give expression to all one's innermost thoughts and feelings and the heart is less drawn after the words. It is easier to pour out your heart and say everything you need in your own language. You should tell God everything you feel, be it contrition and longing to repent over the past or requests and supplications to come truly close to God from now on, each person according to his level. Be very careful to get into the habit...

By Rabbi David Aaron At first glance prayer seems to be about whining and begging G-d, "Please heal this person … please bring me my soul-mate … please help my business, etc." One could mistakenly think that G-d is holding out on us and gets pleasure watching us grovel. When we are faced with some very serious problems, it is customary to ask others to join together in our prayers. What is that all about? It seems as if we hope to move G-d through force: "G-d, if you don't respond to my prayers, then I will recruit through the e-mail thousands of others to pray." Do we think these strategies really work? What are we actually doing here? If G-d is all knowing then why am I telling Him my problems? He already knows them. If G-d is good then why am I asking for Him to change my situation? Obviously whatever happens to me is for my best and I should just trust G-d. To appreciate what we are actually doing when we pray, we have to examine what prayer really means. Fi...

Prayer of Forgiveness Working on it... Barbara (Before Bed) By Rabbi Michael Lerner YOU, my ETERNAL FRIEND, WITNESS now that I forgive anyone who hurt or upset me or who offended me-- damaging my body, my property, my reputation or people that I love; whether by accident or purposely; with words, deeds, thoughts or attitudes. I forgive every person who has hurt or upset me. May no one be punished because of me. May no one suffer from karmic consequences for hurting or upsetting me. Help me, Eternal Friend, to keep from offending You and others. Help me to be thoughtful and not commit outrage by doing what is evil in Your eyes. Whatever sins I have committed, blot out, please, in Your abundant kindness, and spare me suffering or harmfulillnesses. Help me become aware of the ways I may have unintentionally or intentionally hurt others, and please give me guidance and strength to rectify those hurts and to develop the sensitivity to not continue acting in a hurtful way. Let me forgive ot...

This is Your Brain Praying by Louise Danielle Palmer When Andrew Newberg’s book on the brain science behind religious and mystical experience turned up on the cover of Newsweek, it sparked a lively debate about God, evolution, and the meaning of life. This “neurotheologist’s” work is moving fast, so we caught up on his personal quest to understand the mysterious workings of mind and spirit, his latest research, and its profound implications for our daily lives. When Andrew Newberg, M.D., was a little kid, he had questions so pressing that they would wake him in the middle of the night, get him out of bed, and lead him into his father’s den. How do we know God exists ? he would ask. Why is there good and evil? How do I know what’s real ? “It’s embarrassing to admit, but I was five years old when I started asking these questions,” says Newberg, co-author of the acclaimed book Why God Won’t Go Away . Not the musings of an average youngster. Then again, there is nothing average about Newbe...