On the Journey, Jun: Borders/Boundaries

The June issue of "On the Journey" has arrived! HERE

We'll be exploring BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES. Don't miss it, and don't miss your Journey Group meeting to get together to work with this issue!

Here's your preparation:

"Poems," p. 2.

• Henry Bellamann, "Edges."
• Bei Dao, "The Boundary."
• Richard Wright, "Between the World and Me."
• Tyler Knott Gregson, "From Wildly Into the Dark."
• Sophie Jewett, "Across the Border."

Do any of these speak to you? Reveal a new perspective?

"Border/Boundary Quotations," p. 3. Which quote is your favorite? Why?

Readings:

• "The Harder I Look, the Blurrier Things Get"
• "The Boundary of Identity: The 'Ship of Theseus' Problem"
• "We Are Stories and Stardust"
• "The Threshold"
• "Defying Limits: Lessons from the Edge of the Universe"
• "Letters to a Young Poet"
• "Why Boundaries are Overrated -- Even at Work"
• "Strangers in Their Own Land"
• "Lines and Boundaries: An Orange County Almanac"
• "Advent Manifesto: Does My Soul Still Sing"
• "Why Sex is Not Binary"
• "The US Border is Bigger than you Think"
• "No Old Maps Actually Say 'Here Be Dragons' -- But an Ancient Globe Does"

Questions, p. 11.

1. Do you stay away from boundaries or push them?
2. Are you afraid of or attracted to crossing boundaries?
3. Do you have a border between your personal and professional selves?
4. Does the “Ship of Theseus” conundrum reveal a disturbing challenge to our ideas about the bounds of our identity?
5. What has it done to our sense national borders to have seen, since the late 1960s, photos of Earth from outer space – where no national borders (except coasts) appear?
6. What is the importance of respecting boundaries in a marriage? (see Rilke excerpt)
7. How do we cross “the empathy wall” – and does it matter if we do? (see Hochschild piece)
8. Are efforts to eradicate an invasive species analogous to a kind of “ethnic” cleansing? (see James Brown piece)
9. Are boundaries – such as between work life and personal life – overrated, as Courtney Martin argues?
10. What do you make of the border between grief and grievance? (see Lederach piece)
11. Anne Fausto-Sterling notes, “By birth a baby has five layers of sex” – chromosomal, gonadal, hormonal, internal reproductive organs, and external genitals. Each of these “layers” is nonbinary – and the sex-direction of one layer may conflict with other layers. How does this awareness change one’s perception of the boundary between male and female?

Our Spiritual Exercise: What are the borders between people – between groups of people – that justice and compassion calls us to cross? This month, can you identify such a border that you have tacitly observed – and then cross that border?

The link to the current and all past issues of On the Journey can always be found at cucmatters.org/p/journey-groups.htm