On Sunday, July 17, I spoke at the Washington Ethical Society (WES), giving a slightly-updated version of an address I gave at NoVES in 2005. The audio version of that is available at the Washington Society's website. Here's the description as WES announced it, and following that, links to their platform address archive and to this particular audio file:

Shall We Pray?
Jone Johnson Lewis, Leader Northern Virginia Ethical Society
From the early years of the Ethical Movement, community prayer was rejected. Why was that? What has science found about the power of prayer? What needs of a community and of individuals are served by prayer in religious groups? If we reject community prayer, what serves those needs in an Ethical community?

This weekend represented the best of our NoVES community, I think.  On Saturday, we had a fun gathering for spaghetti dinner at Blueberry Hill, thanks to Amy Anderson, her crew of cooks and setup and cleanup volunteers, and everyone who attended.  I saw lots of people in pleasant conversation with each other, talking ethics, politics, life, the universe, and everything.

Then on Sunday, Julius Coles of Africare spoke to us about the project that this Society has been supporting, and the rest of the work of Africare.  I was reminded of Michael Harrington's statement: "That the poor are invisible is one of the most important things about them."  I'm grateful to Mr. Coles for letting us see the faces and the numbers -- in the movie and slides he showed, and for helping the poor of Africa become less invisible.

I'm looking forward to seeing new and old friends on September 9, 2007, for our Opening Sunday. For over 100 years, speakers have described our ethical movement as one of the head, heart, and hands -- so for this year's opening, I'll be speaking on The Heart of Ethics. See you there!

On Tuesday, June 5, I'll be speaking at the Northern Virginia Lifelong Learning Institute.

I'll talk about “Ethics in a World of Diversity.” In the 21st century, cultures that separately developed their own ethical systems are in close contact. “Cultural clashes” and religious differences are often clashes of different understandings of ethics. What is “good” in one culture is “bad” or even “evil” in another. I'll explore with the audience some thought-provoking questions, including (1) Are there common values? (2) Can we learn to live together?

10 a.m., Ernst Cultural Center, Annandale: http://lli.nova.org/

I developed the list below using principles learned in Straight Talk™ and Nonviolent Communication™ as well as "best practices" for small group work in general -- with a little common sense added in. I invite you to consider these basics as ideals -- ideals, in the sense that we all fall short of meeting these at some times, and yet we can continue to improve. One of the goals of belonging to an Ethical Society is to get support for learning to live more in accord with our ideals!