In the Martial Nonviolence classes I offer as part of my Peace Practices curriculum at The Renaissance School in Oakland, California, parents and staff often recommend children to me in order to work on behavioral issues. Many of these fall on the spectrum of attention issues which draw diagnoses of disorder and deficit, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The classes take place in a non-clinical setting, are directly focussed on learning to work well through conflict, and rely on principles associated with a martial "Art of Peace", called Aikido, so clinical diagnoses often end up being at best peripheral. Children are offered "metaphors in motion" which are both martial and nonviolent, so that they may deploy their energy and natural tendencies to develop ordering habits which they may use and refine to compensate for the places in life where they find disorder and fear.

 

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Great article. I can say that for my son Aikido worked wonders.

  --Michaele Dphrepaulezz.....2012-12-27 00:40:15 +0000

Michaele's son, Imad, was my student in the Aikido of Berkeley children's program, and then came back to AiBerk to be Kayla Sensei's uchi deshi as an adult.

  --Brandon WilliamsCraig.....2012-12-27 02:43:49 +0000

Additional materials which might be of interest to you are behind any of the links with which the article above begins.

  --Brandon WilliamsCraig.....2012-12-27 03:00:45 +0000

I'm working on expressing something difficult. I've participated with glee in every contemporary form of worship from returning to Latin mass and being a professional cantor for Roman Catholic churches to praise choruses, social justice demonstrations at General Conference, and liturgical dance. Lisa and I just walked out of First United Methodist Church Medford's Christmas Eve gathering.

I went there last with my mother, Paula Craig, in 2006. The service was not earth shattering but it was warm and worshipful, candlelit, and a reminder of the light that comes even to the unremarkable, like us. Since then, in the name of being  "a church for people who have given up on church", they have given up on church. The black-suited pastor with the rock star mic in his ear greets everyone, and the atmosphere is convivial, but they have installed a coffee bar where an altar used to be. Their half page glossy brochure that has taken the place of an order of service makes its first priority to draw your attention to "the coffee shop that is on the stage", and let you know of the opportunity to get your fix "during the service at our marsh-mallow break" that is the howdy session where a Passing of the Peace might once have been.

They promise that in this church you don't "have to check your brain at the door", but they have lobotomized everything within reach. Without so much as an opening prayer or invocation, All were directed to rise only to face a video screen for a canned, brief Message of Hope (?) from a slick production company who hired an African-American voice-over actor to deliver a folksy message but dared not show his person, or any other person for that matter. We sat to read and sing carol lyrics off the screen, a large bell choir rang pop arrangements of two familiar songs and, by the marsh-mellow break, we were ready to flee. We asked each other if we might ought to stay for the sermon, assuming their might be one, either out of loyalty or morbid fascination, but the allure had worn off before the questions were fully uttered.

Into the much more numinous night we went, full of disbelief, rather than the reverse, and disappointment. No sense of the special clung to this informal hob-nob, no honor for or adoration of deity, whatever that might mean to anybody, and almost no sense of participating in a religious ceremony at all existed to suggest a connection with mystery or hope in the midst of darkness. Even writing this necessary critical cry in the wilderness seems dry, dead, and unsatisfying because giving up on church leaves no sacred space for holding suffering. Does The Church, in all its mysterious experiments, in the midst of a next reformation, have no use for depth anymore now that The Screen replaces The Cross? Must all need for worship be given up in the hope that folks starving for the comfort of Love in their life will bring their tithes in exchange for a shallow, grab-and-go, cheerful, hang-out? God Become Flesh is not a marsh-mellow. Woe.

http://www.examiner.com/article/people-who-have-given-up-on-church?cid=db_articles

  --Brandon WilliamsCraig.....2012-12-25 08:41:24 +0000