Browse hundreds of posters for sale, attend the final MLK Week commemorative event, celebrate Black History Month with a delicious dinner, practice mindful meditation, and cheer on the women's basketball and men's gymnastics teams at home.

Daily, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. January 29 February 2 | Nebraska Union, The Crib

Browse, enjoy, and purchase from hundreds and hundreds of different prints to decorate your residence hall room, apartment, chapter house, or office. Choose from a wide selection of smash-hit classic posters of famous art and images to fresh-off-the-press artist prints, and so much more.

Poster purchases can be made with cash, credit cards, and NCard.

6 to 8 p.m. January 30 | Nebraska Union, Centennial Room

Attend the final commemorative event of the annual MLK Week at UNL. This years program will feature a keynote address from Xernona Clayton and the awarding of the annual Chancellors Fulfilling the Dream Award.

7 p.m. January 30 | Pinnacle Bank Arena

Stop by PBA as the Huskers take on the Boilermakers.

Get your free student ticket.

4:30 to 8 p.m. February 1 | Willa Cather Dining Complex

Kick off Black History Month with a delicious dinner at the Cather Dining Center. The menu served on the Home Cooking line will include fried chicken dumplings, fried catfish nuggets, vegetarian red beans & rice, collard greens with ham, southern black-eyed peas, fried okra, and more.

Included with meal plan or pay guest prices.

4 to 7 p.m. February 1 | Nebraska Union, Centennial room and Ballroom

Explore and interact with a multitude of recognized student organizations (RSOs) for social, professional, and leadership interests.

RSO members and officers will be on hand to provide details about their organization and answer questions from prospective new members.

This event is free and casual in nature.

5 to 6 p.m. February 1 | Campus Recreation Center

This basic-level meditation class introduces participants to mindfulness meditation. Meditation is beneficial for reducing stress, controlling anxiety, and enhancing focus. Begin your meditation journey in this class that prioritizes the awareness of body and breath.

Register for this FREE event.

6 p.m. February 3 | Devaney Sports Center

Cheer on your Husker Mens Gymnastics team as they take on Penn State at the Devaney Center.

Get your free student ticket.

Go here to see the original:

Explore cuisine, clubs, meditation, and more at 7 events this week - Student Affairs

Movies

This documentary by Serbian-born director Marta Popivoda is a mildly psychedelic drift into the horror of one womans deportation and determined survival

Much of this Serbian documentary uses a striking, mildly psychedelic technique: a super-slow dissolve between images that morph near-imperceptibly into the next. Cracks in rendered rural walls appear to shift and Balkan forest vegetation undergoes subtle mutations, as the films subject, nonagenarian Sofia Vujanovic, recalls her past in voiceover: one of Titos partisans, her wartime activities and subsequent deportation to Auschwitz. Its as if an ineluctable force history is moving through the material world, warping and reshaping it.

These tectonics operate on human flesh too: Vujanovics Auschwitz tattoo has slipped down her forearm as the years have gone by. Purpose still weighting her words, she recounts her journey into activism: she was attracted to communism by progressive classmates in the countryside; cherrypicked as a cell leader during the second world war because being a woman allowed her to escape attention; and then sickened by taking her first life, an SS officer during a raid on a supply train. Vujanovic was then captured, tortured and shipped off into darkness in Poland, with Czechoslovak railwaymen taunting the prisoners en route: Gas, gas! She thought they were being sent to work at a gas-processing plant.

Interweaving these enigmatic shots with sequences of Vujanovic in her apartment, overlaying them with diary extracts and sigil-like illustrations, the films director, Marta Popivoda, lets history subtly press upon us. Her attempt to draw a line to present-day fascism is a little clumsy, though: Popivodas mention of moving to Berlin with her partner and co-writer Ana Vujanovic as a protest against growing Balkans homophobia and capitalism is featherweight in comparison with the pensioners life-or-death resistance. Ana Vujanovic is Sofias great-niece, so making the documentary personal is understandable but as a pre-emptive warning to heed extremism in our time, it feels half-baked.

The older womans experiences and Popivodas unflustered conveyance of them speak louder. Where our attention is drawn initially to the beguiling images, it finally settles on the constant of Vujanovics voice; testimony to the strength of idealism and human determination to transmit through the decades.

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Landscapes of Resistance review an enigmatic meditation on a life marked by Auschwitz - The Guardian

The first time I tried walking meditation, it was with a Soto Zen group, and I fell on my faceliterally. My leg had fallen asleep during zazen, and I didnt even make it one step before I hit the ground. Not great. And when I finally got my feet under me again, the other people in the room were moving so slowly that, at first, I wasnt sure if wed started or not.

The second time I tried it, I was at a Thich Nhat Hanh-style retreat in the woods. It turns out that Buddhists do walking meditation in all kinds of different ways. This time we walked outside in pairs, holding hands and pausing every so often at the sound of a mindfulness bell. (I know everyone paused because I, ever mindful, looked around each time to check.)

Then the third time was in a Rinzai Zen zendo, and when the bell rang, we practically broke into a run. I just trotted along, trying not to crash into anything. I had no idea what I was doing. And I didnt really care, because in my understanding, walking meditation was just a break from real (seated) meditationand I was always ready to take a break.

Any discussion of walking meditation starts therewith this idea that its just something we do between sessions of the thing that really matters. That its a chance to stretch our legs a little. That its a breather. That its secondary. And if thats our approach to it, then thats all it is. But what it offerswhats right beneath our feetis a path to living our lives on purpose.

Almost all approaches to walking meditation come down to two simple instructions. The first is to synchronize your breath with your steps. That could be completing a full inhalation and exhalation over the course of one half-step, or it could be something like breathing in for seven steps, then breathing out for ten. Whatever the style, the relationship between breath and step is intentional, and its consistent over the course of the session.

The second is instruction to notice that youre walking. Or, to put it another way, walk on purpose. Slow down. Feel your feet on the ground. Let walking be an activity you do with awareness, rather than simply a mode of transportation.

In my tradition, Soto Zen, we do what is called kinhinmoving in a straight line. Almost no written instructions for how to do kinhin can be found in the traditional literature. The founder of the Soto school, Dogenwho wrote detailed instructions for how to wash your face, brush your teeth, cut vegetables, open doors, and on and onwrote only that in kinhin, we take one half-step for every full breath. Not surprisingly, there are various interpretations of what that looks like on the ground, even eight hundred years later. But heres how I learned it:

First, stand up straight. Take a moment to really plant your feet on the ground and find your posture. Heels are about one fist apart, feet pointed outward at an angle. If youve just stood up from zazen, let the blood return to your legs. Wiggle your toes. As in zazen, feel the breath coming into your belly and then gently going back out.

Next, place your hands in front of your chest in shashu. To make shashu, first form a fist with your left hand, wrapped around your thumb. Place that left hand against your sternum. Then, rest the right hand on top of the leftopen, right thumb resting on the left thumb, fingers pointed to the left. Your forearms are parallel to the ground, elbows resting against your ribcage. (This placement of the hands is not unique to kinhin, by the wayits generally how one walks around in a Zen monastery.)

Similar to zazen, your eyes are opennot wide, but with a soft gaze aimed downward about six or seven feet in front of you. You want to see where youre going, but youre not taking in the landscape. Youre looking at where you are, and where youre just about to be.

If youre with a group, theres a sounda bell, or maybe a clackerthat signals its time to take that first step. If youre alone, then just start whenever you feel settled in your spot.

Inhale, and as you do, slowly lift your right foot off the ground, heel first. At the top of the in-breath, lift the ball of your foot as well. As you exhale, move your foot forward so the right heel is in line with the instep of the left, then gently ground yourself as you breathe outheel, then ball of the foot, then toes, until you reach the end of the out-breath. In this momentfor just a momentyour weight is equally distributed between both feet. Next, continue the cycle with your left foot: inhaling, lining up the left heel with the right instep, setting it all down, grounding again.

This is done slowly. Dogen said, remember, to take only a half-step in the time it takes to take a full breath. In Kinhinki, one of the only texts we have on kinhin, Menzan Zuiho (16831769) wrote that we should move forward like were standing in one place. Whatever this practice is for, its not for going anywhere.

Its easy in kinhin to lose your balancenot only because its strange to move so slowly, but because we dont ordinarily think about walking at all. Like the act of breathing, we dont have to think about walking. But when we do think about itwhen we notice this is what Im doing right nowit changes how we do it, whether thats our intention or not. We become self-conscious about it. A lot of Zen practice is like this, some version of becoming a beginner at something we already know how to do.

In most Zen communities, kinhin is practiced in a clockwise rectangle around the room. When you reach a corner, you just step and turn so that your feet are together again, and you start again with the right foot. But Ive trained at monasteries that had a kinhin hallway, where monks just practiced going back and forth. Thats closer, according to Menzan at least, to how it was practiced in the Buddhas timejust going a few steps one direction, turning, and coming straight back. Thus, moving in a straight line.

The whole session, start to finish, usually lasts ten to fifteen minutes. At the sound of another clacker or bell, everyone finishes by bringing their feet together for a moment and bowing in shashu (or not, depending on the customs of the place). From there, everyone walks at a normal pace back to where they started, bows to the group, and returns to zazen.

Kinhin practiced in this way is a very formal, very conspicuous way to do walking meditation. It has its own time, its own place, even its own instruments. But you can also do it undercoveron the side of the road, or in your backyard, or on a beach. Just inhale, and as you start to breathe out, take a step. Feel how your weight shifts to your other leg, how your entire body understands how to make that complex move. Then feel how, when your foot comes down, it pushes against the earth, how your body shifts again, how gravity keeps you right here, right in this spot. Repeat. It can take a while to find your balance in a practice like this, especially if youre going really slowly, but it doesnt take practice to just walk. Youve been doing that for a long time.

I was asked once how to do kinhin in a wheelchair. The question is importantit reveals that the practice is never really about walking. Its about harmonizing body, breath, and mind. So instead of finding the rhythm in the steps, you can find the rhythm in the slow turning of the wheels, pushing forward as you exhale and repositioning your hands as you inhale. At its heart, its just the practice of performing a simple action for its own sake, over and over.

Many times, Ive heard kinhin explained as walking zazen or zazen in motion. I get thatits an invitation to bring a certain quality of intention and awareness into this other activity. But that kind of instruction privileges zazen in a way that overlooks its literal meaning: seated meditation. Zazen is what Zen practice looks like when were sitting down. Kinhin is what it looks like when we walk. In my understanding, the point isnt to rank them, or to make one into a version of the other. Its to find what makes them the same, so that we can discover what Zen practice looks like when we drink coffee, or tie our shoes, or hug someone when theyre crying. When we choose this breath, this step, this posturewhen we do whatever we are doing on purpose, as a practicewe choose our life in this moment. The choice changes the activity. The activity changes our life.

Practice understood in this way can feel small, subtle. So subtle, in fact, that someone watching may not realize anything is happening at all. Even to us who are doing it, it can feel like were standing in one place. But then theres another breath. And another step. Moving forward, not going anywhere.

This article is from the March 2024 issue of Lions Roar magazine.

Koun Franz

Koun Franz is a Soto Zen priest. He leads practice at Thousand Harbours Zen in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Excerpt from:

Step Into Awareness - Lion's Roar

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) In this weeks episode of Run for Fun, we are exercising our minds with meditation. There are plenty of benefits for athletes of all kinds to sit still and meditate.

Meditation does not necessarily mean chanting or sitting in strange positions. It can simply be taking an extended time to limit distractions and letting your brain focus.

Leigh Spann and Coach Maria discuss ways to incorporate meditation into your daily training. They also sit down with runner Michael Wilsey, who has seen improved performance in the year hes been meditating.

More Run for Fun stories:

Meditating can be helpful for anyone to lower stress and find a sense of calm, but athletes and runners may get additional benefits. It can help restore the body and allow them to train regularly with fewer injuries.

Pushing your body can increase mental stress. Taking time to relax the body and mind can help athletes limit mental drain and re-energize the body.

Athletes can also use the benefit of regular meditation to enhance their mental focus. This focus helps keep the runner or athlete zoned in during tough races or workouts. Limiting distractions allows your body to only focus on the task at hand.

Adding designated rest to your training can help you enjoy running without it feeling like a chore. Its just one way to Run for Fun. Be sure to watch or listen to previous episodes of the show for more tips.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA.

Continued here:

Run for Fun: Benefits of meditation for athletes - Yahoo News

Rotterdam film festival

Rotterdam film festival: Jaydon Martins absorbing, poetic docufiction follows two men reflecting on work, death and religion

Australian film-maker Jaydon Martin makes an outstanding feature debut with this absorbing, moving and visually beautiful docufiction a kind of guided reportage about two mens lives in the regional town of Bundaberg in Queensland, the Australian Texas. Its shot in a luminous monochrome, switching inscrutably to colour occasionally for the digital moments of home video.

Flathead refers to the fish used in fish and chip shops in the locality. One such, the Busy Bee, is now being looked after, prior to sale to new buyers, by a young man called Andrew Wong, whose late father was a Chinese immigrant who owned the shop, built the business through 50 years of toil and paid for the education of Andrew and his sisters. Andrew, however, seems committed only to his workout programme and bodybuilding goals.

Andrews mate Cass Cumerford is the films unselfconscious star: a rangy, scrawny, liver-spotted old guy whose scenes in the hospital MRI scanner hint at illness and imminent death. One gruesome shot of him throwing up into a toilet shows us a lower set of false teeth on the bathroom floor. And yet he seems pretty tough, with an unrepentant smoking habit, a liking for getting drunk and a way of swinging his forearms when he walks that reminded me of Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino.

Perhaps in search of redemption, or salvation, or just a narrative shape to his life at its end, Cass is exploring religious options. He has evidently befriended a Christian fundamentalist preacher who tells him about how all sins including murder, robbery and child abuse can be effaced by being born again into the faith. He talks easily and good-naturedly about his early life involved in drugs, which he then (with some regret) had to leave behind when he became a husband and father, and then discloses a private tragedy that puts everything into perspective.

Meanwhile, Andrew is brooding on Buddhist faith and what meaning his hard-working fathers death has for him.

And so Martins camera ranges loosely around the landscape, often in a car whose radio is tuned to the Christian station, sometimes in the company of Cass and Andrew, sometimes with others, such as the itinerant labourers who have kept the regions ailing agricultural economy afloat or some good-old-boys who are cheerfully loosing off shot guns (shotties) and hunting rifles.

Cass gets drunk with lots of people, including a gnarled character whom he asks about his dreams and is told: Im not into this dreaming caper, mate. Cass himself sings a song of his own composition, and sounds rather like a young Dylan.

The film is dedicated to the agricultural workers of Queensland and yet some of its poignancy and irony lies in the fact that its two key figures have not, in fact, got much or any work to do although at one stage Cass helps a mate with some shovelling and muck-spreading. The films poetry resides in its thoughtful inactivity, its vernacular spirituality and its gentleness.

This article was amended on 30 January 2024, replacing documentary with docufiction to more accurately represent the nature of the material.

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Flathead review a beautiful meditation on life in rural Queensland - The Guardian

A short restorative practice can bring peace and perspective.

Anxiety disorders affect 301 million people worldwide. Anxiety is also a common component of depression. But one doesn't need to be officially diagnosed with a mental health disorder to be stressed, uneasy, and tense. We live in an anxiety-provoking world, with constant and accelerated technological change, a pandemic that sparked fears, losses, and isolation, a war in Ukraine, a volatile stock market, and horrific news of mass shootings and climate-related catastrophes. Cultivating ways to alleviate anxiety and stay calm has never been more important.

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I recommend to my patients that they incorporate meditation into their daily routine and advise my family and friends to do the same. Devoting even five minutes every day to mindfulness meditation can be a game-changer. Meditation helps slow down breathing, cultivates breath and self-awareness, and is an effective tool for regulating emotions. A recent study conducted at Georgetown University Medical Center found that a mindfulness-based stress reduction program was as effective as the use of a common antidepressant in treating anxiety disorders.

There are lots of books and apps you can research for guidance about how to meditate. But the following are the simple, bare-bone basics. Mindfulness meditation consists of four primary elements.

Find a comfortable chair in a quiet space. Sit upright, feel the floor beneath your feet, and lay your hands on your lap.

Begin to breathe. Air should fill your abdomen so that your belly begins to protude. As you take the air in, feel it rise up into your chest and broaden your ribs. Hold the breath for a second and exhale in reverse fashion, with your chest and then your abdomen releasing air. Wait a few seconds and then repeat. Try this a few times, breathing slowly and consciously.

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Start at the top of your head. Relax your forehead around your eyes, face, and mouth. Roll your neck gently, relax your shoulders, and release the tension in your arms. Stretch your fingers and relax. Come back to your back and chest. Move your focus down to your stomach, buttocks, hips, thighs, knees, and feet. Stretch and flex your ankles and toes. Survey your whole body to see if any tense spots remain. Breathe into those spots. Your breath has become a tool of relaxation.

Focus on your nose and breath as the air comes in and out at a typical pace. Don't worry if your concentration wanders. Just keep bringing your mind back to your breathing. You will notice that you will continue to get more and more relaxed. At first, try this for one minute. Gradually, with practice, work up to three and then five minutes. When you are finished, gently roll your neck and stretch your hands and the muscles of your face by making funny faces. Wait a moment, breathe deeply, and youre done.

After following these steps, you are likely to feel very relaxed, with your mind cleared, an effect that can last from a few minutes to much longer. If you do this brief exercise regularly, the relaxation effects will stay with you for longer periods. You will have trained your mind and body to live in a mindful and relaxed state. Your understanding of how to use your breath to achieve a sense of relief will empower you to stay calm, keep a positive perspective, and be more resilient.

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If you practice meditation regularly, you may achieve a moment when your attention is totally absorbed by breathing. Your breathing will become very slow and deep. A soft smile might break across your lips. You'll enter a very peaceful state known as a "meditative moment." This may only last a few moments but can be quite profound. You won't forget it. I point this out so that you'll know when you've entered a moment of "transcendental meditation." If you frequently meditate or join a group, you will probably enter this state more frequently, or for longer. But, for now, the basic steps above are an excellent beginning.

As someone who has meditated for decades, studied with renowned teachers, and seen patients incorporate meditation into treatment for anxiety, depression, ADD, and other behavioral health challenges, I firmly believe that anyone will benefit from practicing mindfulness meditation. While we can't always prevent stressful situations, we can affect how we respond to them. Taking the time to stop and focus on our breath quiets our minds and connects us to our inner selves. It allows us to see ourselves, others, and, very often, the beauty of the world with clearer, more appreciative eyes.

Originally posted here:

A short restorative practice can bring peace and perspective. - Psychology Today

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How Woodhull Wellness, a Corporate Provider of Meditation and Mindfulness Addresses the Employee Mental Health ... - USA TODAY

An undeniable fact of modern life is that it's busy. Often too busy, in fact, for us to be able to prioritise the things that really matter including our mental health and wellbeing. We all know that regular

There may, however, be a way to reap the rewards of meditation without investing so much precious time in fact, experts have found that just 12 minutes of mindfulness a day may be enough to bring down the cortisol levels that contribute to heightened stress. Plenty of wellness practitioners have endorsed this so-called magic number, and Apple has even launched an entire podcast series, 12 Minute Meditation, dedicated to the art of slimmed-down meditation, in collaboration with Mindful.

"The latest scientific research reveals that 12 minutes of meditation a day yields benefits like increased attention, focus, creativity, calm, resilience and compassion," says Apple. "With a new mindfulness meditation each week, 12 Minute Meditation invites you to bring the benefits of mindfulness to daily life." Episodes focus on everything from replenishing cognitive energy to cultivating more compassionate self-talk and all are pleasingly quick to complete.

"It's not about the length of your meditation but the regularity of your practice that truly matters," says Leah Santa Cruz, co-head of meditation at Balance, an award-winning meditation app. "Just as with exercise, consistency triumphs over occasional intensity. We've found in research labs that a lot of great benefits begin even within three minutes of meditation. The mind and body start to relax and release stored tension very quickly, and can even access states that are more restful for the body than sleep itself. The goal is to be disciplined enough to establish a habit but not to obsess over perfection."

Regular meditation however you do it can contribute enormously to your wellbeing

So how do you start a 12-minute meditation routine? There are two approaches you can adopt: 12 minutes straight once a day, or a one-minute session every hour. Yes, even 60 seconds of concentrated meditation can be enough, as long as you're making it a regular habit; popular platform Headspace (known for it's supremely relaxing, guided mediations) even offers a one-minute recording that's excellent for de-stressing.

If you opt for one session a day, try to show up at the same time, advises Jamie Greenlaw-Meek, resident psychic at The Wellness Foundry. "Consider incorporating meditation into your morning routine, ideally right after waking up," he says. "This time is ideal, as you're less prone to dozing off and, hopefully, you've had a restful night's sleep. Begin with a five-minute session, then gradually extend the duration."

Whatever method you choose, it's encouraging to know that meditation can be a useful and achievable tool for even the most time-poor among us. Like every habit, mindfulness is honed by small, incremental actions repeated regularly and it could be one of the most valuable additions you make to your routine this year.

Interested? We've compiled a short cheat sheet to help you get going along with some products that could make your meditation journey that little bit easier.

HOW TO START MEDITATING

Start small, and don't expect too much of yourself initially. Try two minutes a day, every other day, and build up your habit from there.

Find a place where there's no distraction your bedroom just after you wake up or before you go to sleep, for example.

Try heart-rhythm meditation. Place your fingers on your pulse, close your eyes and regulate your breathing to match your heartbeat.

Give 'box breathing' a go to focus your mind: breath in for four beats, hold for four beats, exhale for four beats, hold for four beats, then repeat.

A silk eye mask might help you block out the outside world when you're meditating. Try Drowsy's extra thick, strapless version, which is supremely comfortable and won't slip around.

Scent can be incredibly transporting, and this mood-boosting blend of jasmine, gardenia and rose geranium essential oils from Espa functions as an effective on-the-go pick-me-up.

If you like using podcasts or guided meditations, then a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones is invaluable. Providing 20 hours of wireless listening time, this mint-green pair from Apple delivers on sound quality, comfort and sizing.

Are you sitting comfortably? You will be with this mini bolster, which can be used as a backrest, seat cushion and more for a comfortable, supportive position essential when you're meditating.

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Why you should try a 12-minute meditation - Harper's Bazaar UK

(Adapted from an address delivered today at a joint Muslim-Jewish observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Srebrenica Memorial Center in Potoari, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Alongside the ceremony, the author and Husein ef. Kavazovi, the Grand Mufti of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also jointly issued principles for dialogue for understanding and coexistence, which can be viewed here.)

Seventy-nine years ago today, soldiers and officers of the Soviet Unions Red Army liberated approximately 7,000 prisoners, most of them Jews, who had been left behind in the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. These victims of the Nazi terror, of Hitlers Final Solution of the Jewish Question, were deemed too weak, too ill to be taken on death marches and transports to camps in Germany as the Nazi troops retreated from Poland.

It is impossible to describe in human words the meeting of the imprisoned, saved from certain death, with their liberators, recalled one of these newly freed survivors, Regina Grimberg, a French Jew. Soviet officers and soldiers in rags, exhausted, freezing cold, but victorious, cried like little children at the sight of piles of corpses in front of barracks and people in agony, resembling skeletons, stacked on bunks. The female prisoners screamed, sobbed, and lovingly touched the clothes of their liberators to find out that these people were real, and kissed their hands.

Today, we remember. Today, we mourn.

Standing here in Potoari, we remember, we mourn the millions of Jewish men, women, and children who were systematically murdered by the German SS and their multinational accomplices at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Majdanek, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, and all the other places of horror.

We remember the Serbs, Jews, and Roma who were slaughtered by the Ustae at the Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia. So, too, we remember the 11,343 Jews from Bulgarian-occupied Thrace, Macedonia, and the formerly Serbian district of Pirot who were deported to their death by Bulgarian police and military units in the winter of 1943, and all the other innocent victims of the Holocaust.

Standing here today in Potoari, we also mourn, we also remember the thousands of Bosniak men and boys the Bosnian Muslim men and boys who were murdered by Bosnian Serb chetniks in the Srebrenica genocide in July of 1995.

We remember we must never forget all the Bosniak women and girls who were raped and violated here, and the women, children, and elderly who were forcibly deported from here as part of that genocide.

Individual Memories

Standing here today in Potoari, each of us retreats into our individual memories, into our individual sanctuaries of thought.

[Leader of the Bosnian Jewish community] Ambassador Jakob Finci, who was born in a concentration camp on the island of Rab off the northern Croatian coast in 1943, is thinking of more than 50 members of his family who were brutally put to death in the Holocaust, while [Srebrenica Memorial Center Deputy Director] Amra Begi is thinking of her father, grandfather, 26 other relatives, and her best friend who were brutally put to death in the Srebrenica genocide.

[Srebrenica Memorial Center Director] Emir Suljagi remembers his friend Nehrudin Sulejmanovi, who accompanied wounded Bosniaks out of Srebrenica and disappeared into the ether of that genocide, while Vlado Andrle [president of the Jewish cultural, educational, and humanitarian society La Benevolencija in Sarajevo] thinks of his great-grandmother who was killed by the Ustae in Jasenovac.

[Srebrenica Memorial Centers Public Relations Officer] Almasa Salihovi is mourning her brother who was torn from her arms and murdered by Bosnian Serb chetniks, while I am mourning my five-and-a-half-year-old brother (my mothers son) and my grandparents who were murdered in a gas chamber upon their arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

We join together in sorrow, and our tears become prayers prayers of remembrance but also prayers of hope.

Goodness Breaking Through

We remember the evil that was done to us, but we must also not forget the rare rays of light, of goodness, that broke through the darkness of that evil.

In 1940, Dervi Korkut, the Muslim chief librarian of the National Museum of Bosnia, published an article entitled Anti-Semitism Is Foreign to the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which he argued for tolerance toward Bosnias Jews. Korkut subsequently not only rescued the historic Sarajevo Haggadah from certain destruction by the Nazis, but he and his wife Servet hid a Jewish girl, Dorkica Papo, also known as Mira, in their home, thereby saving her life. More than five decades later, when Korkuts daughter Lamija and her family fled from the ethnic carnage in Kosovo to Skopje in what is now North Macedonia, Mira Papos son Davor was among those who enabled them to settle in Israel.

Two other Bosnian Muslims, Mustafa and Zejneba Hardaga, similarly risked their lives by sheltering their Jewish friends and neighbors, Rifka and Josef Kabiljo, and their two children in the Hardagas Sarajevo home. Zejneba Hardaga went on to save other Bosnian Jews from being rounded up by the Gestapo and the Ustae, resulting in her and Mustafa being recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, Israels Holocaust remembrance authority, as were Dervi and Servet Korkut. And here again, goodness was met with goodness. In 1994, at the height of the Bosnian Serb siege of Sarajevo, after Mustafa had died, Rifka Kabiljo arranged for Zejneba and her family to be taken out of that city and brought to safety in Israel.

On Sunday, Aug. 23, 1942, as Jews were being deported from France to Nazi German death camps, Roman Catholic priests throughout the archdiocese of Toulouse publicly read out a pastoral letter from Archbishop Jules-Graud Salige in which he protested that Jewish men, women and children, fathers and mothers were being treated like cattle and dispatched to unknown destinations.

Why does the right of sanctuary no longer exist in our churches, he asked. The Jews are men, the Jews are womenThey are part of the human race. They are our brothers, like so many others. A Christian may not forget this. As a direct result of Archbishop Saliges public protest, popular sentiment in and around Toulouse turned against the Germans and many Jews were saved.

The following year, Metropolitans Stefan of Sofia and Kiril of Plovdiv of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church were largely responsible for persuading King Boris III of Bulgaria not to deport 48,000 Bulgarian Jews to Nazi German death camps, even though they did not succeed in preventing that fate from befalling the Jews of Thrace, Macedonia, and Pirot.

Dervi and Servet Korkut, Zejneba and Mustafa Hardaga, Archbishop Salige, and Metropolitans Stefan and Kiril may have been in the minority during the years of the Holocaust, but they are the role models whom we, as we approach the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, must seek to emulate.

A Joint Commitment

Today is not a time and this commemoration is not the place for politics or to express our respective views or opinions on present-day global developments. Today is a time and this commemoration is the place for remembrance, for not allowing the ghosts of our past to fade away from us.

And yet, today is also a time and this commemoration is also the place for us to jointly commit ourselves to doing everything in our power to prevent the horrors we remember here today from being repeated, and to do everything in our power to prevent or at least ease the suffering of the innocent.

Above all, we must not be we cannot be indifferent to suffering, to all suffering. Still, we also must not, we cannot ignore savagery and wanton brutality and cruelty, especially when the proclaimed goal of such savagery, brutality, and cruelty is the annihilation of men, women, children, and infants only and exclusively because of their identity.

And so let me state clearly and unambiguously here today that we must condemn and repudiate the savagery perpetrated by Hamas against Jewish men, women, and children on October 7 on the Israeli-Gaza border, the rapes and violations of Jewish women and girls, and the violent kidnapping of more than 200 hostages into Gaza, over 100 of whom remain there in horrific captivity today, more than three and a half months later.

And at the same time, let me state equally clearly and equally unambiguously here today that we must not, we cannot be indifferent to the deaths and displacements endured by Palestinian civilians in Gaza over the course of these same more than three and a half months. Anyone with a heart, anyone with a soul must have deep compassion and empathy for the suffering of Palestinian civilian men, women, and children desperately in need of humanitarian aid. Anyone with a heart, anyone with a soul cannot fail to shed tears at the sight of dead Palestinian infants in shrouds, the victims of a war for which they bore no responsibility whatsoever.

Simply put, in order for us to move toward one another rather than further and further away from one another, we must, in the words of a man attending a meeting of Standing Together, a grassroots organization of Israeli Jews and Arabs that promotes tolerance and coexistence, be able to feel pain for the other side.

We must also remember, on all sides, that while words in and of themselves do not kill, hateful words can all too easily result in violence, in killings, in atrocities, and, yes, in genocide. An essential element in the perpetration of the Holocaust, in the perpetration of the Srebrenica genocide, indeed, in the perpetration of all genocides, was the dehumanization of the other. When any one group of human beings disparages another group by depicting them as inferior to themselves, as animals or as vermin, the process of dehumanization, of demonization has begun. It is up to us, to each one of us, to insist that the other, even our perceived political or national adversary, is a human being created and existing in a divine image.

While we here today cannot change the past, we can and we must do all in our collective power to change the future, to prevent further destruction and violence, and to reject all manifestations of antisemitism, of Islamophobia, of bigotry, of xenophobia, and of hatred. And we must do so together, as Muslims, as Jews, as Christians, as human beings, all of us created by God, by Allah, by Adonai, in the image of God, of Allah, of Adonai.

antisemitism, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, genocide, Hate Speech, Holocaust, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Islamophobia, Israel-Hamas War, Rwanda, Srebrenica

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Finding Light in the Darkness: A Meditation on Remembrance - Just Security

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) In this weeks episode of Run for Fun, we are exercising our minds with meditation. There are plenty of benefits for athletes of all kinds to sit still and meditate.

Meditation does not necessarily mean chanting or sitting in strange positions. It can simply be taking an extended time to limit distractions and letting your brain focus.

Leigh Spann and Coach Maria discuss ways to incorporate meditation into your daily training. They also sit down with runner Michael Wilsey, who has seen improved performance in the year hes been meditating.

More Run for Fun stories:

Meditating can be helpful for anyone to lower stress and find a sense of calm, but athletes and runners may get additional benefits. It can help restore the body and allow them to train regularly with fewer injuries.

Pushing your body can increase mental stress. Taking time to relax the body and mind can help athletes limit mental drain and re-energize the body.

Athletes can also use the benefit of regular meditation to enhance their mental focus. This focus helps keep the runner or athlete zoned in during tough races or workouts. Limiting distractions allows your body to only focus on the task at hand.

Adding designated rest to your training can help you enjoy running without it feeling like a chore. Its just one way to Run for Fun. Be sure to watch or listen to previous episodes of the show for more tips.

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Run for Fun: Benefits of meditation for athletes - WFLA