This from ReligiousTolerance.org:

Winter Solstice celebrations: a.k.a. Christmas, Saturnalia, Yule, the Long Night, etc.

Overview

Religious folk worldwide observe many seasonal days of celebration during the month of December. Most are religious holy days, and are linked in some way to the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. On that day, due to the earth’s tilt on its axis, the daytime hours are at a minimum in the Northern hemisphere, and night time is at a maximum. (In the southern hemisphere, the summer solstice is celebrated in December, when the night time is at a minimum and the daytime is at a maximum. We will assume that the reader lives in the Northern hemisphere for the rest of this essay.)

People view other religions in various ways, and thus treat the celebrations of other faiths differently [Go to their site for the link…]

This from Thinking Ethics on an ethical Christmas:

Surfing around for tips on ethical Christmas turns up lots of gift ideas. But the best advice is from Ekklesia with five steps towards a more ethical Christmas. [Go to their site for the link…]

HOWEVER YOU THINK OF IT, WHATEVER YOUR FORM OF CELEBRATING IT — HAPPY, HAPPY DAY!

Stephanie West Allen at Idealawg and Julie Fleming Brown at Life at the Bar announced their 2d Annual Lawyers Appreciate meme yesterday, asking tagged attorney bloggers to post on professional appreciation. Stephanie tagged me and Vickie Pynchon of Settle It Now Negotiation Blog and Diane Levin of Online Guide to Mediation. I am tagging Tom Kosakowski of The Ombuds Blog, Sheryl Sisk Schelin of The Inspired Solo, and Vonda Vandaveer of the U.S. Business and Immigration Law blog.

Lawyers Appreciate Justice

Justice is formally defined and its applications debated but equally important it is personally lived (albeit in important ways unconsciously). Life keeps lawyers as busy as it keeps most people. To me, this means lawyers like most people often are not mindful of what they are doing and its impact on others. Lawyers are “people” first (lawyer jokes notwithstanding) and, as such, subject to all human blind spots and biases. Their individual actions, like those of all people, can be unjust and have unjust consequences.

But lawyers chose and worked hard to become lawyers, which means understanding and working with the law and serving their clients. I believe most lawyers appreciate justice. At any moment there are individual lawyers who are cynical and corrupt but most, I believe, are simply doing their best as they understand it.

Some say “power corrupts” but I think it more accurate to say “power reveals”. Lawyers like everyone else reveal their human blind spots and biases in their professions and their lives. Engaging Conflicts includes mindful examination of ethics and spirit to give lawyers a time away from their routine, unconscious thought and time in which to pause and consider something they appreciate, something they had in mind when they committed to practicing law, justice.

12/23 Update: here’s Sheryl’s post at The Inspired Solo, Lawyers Appreciate … Their Friends.

12/24 Update: here’s Vickie’s post at Settle It Now Negotiation Blog, Lawyers Appreciate Year-End Appreciation Memes.

12/29 Update: here’s Diane’s post at Online Guide to Mediation, Lawyers Appreciate Democracy.

            

Vickie Pynchon started a good brainstorming on ethics in mediation over at Settle It Now! She invited my comments, which I repeat below. Please read her post and compiled comments for the full context.

ETHICS: FIRST, DO NO HARM

Thank you, Vickie, for writing about this issue and inviting comments directly. This seems a really good way to get some focused brainstorming in!

I have one primary thought/concern about ethics as sometimes practiced in this field (assuming we are a field). My shorthand definition of ethics is: First, do no harm. When we look at short lists of ethics we see this with their emphases on client determination and transparency. This list should be short and it should be clear.

I distinguish ethics from professional obligations, which might be shorthanded as “then, do good.” I am concerned about the blurring of lines between the two. Do we really want it an ethicial issue whether or how one advances the field? For example, I oppose mandatory “pro bono”, whether it’s in mediation or in the practice of law. In law, at least in New Mexico, we are not ethically required to provide pro bono services, but it is our professional obligation to aspire to provide them. That leaves it to the attorney to consider what she can afford in terms of time, money and energy. Yet, I’ve sat in meetings with a combination of practicing attorneys, practicing mediators, state bar staff, court staff, and a judge where it has been stated there is a requirement that the attorney provide pro bono services. When the people who set up programs misunderstand an aspiration as an ethical obligation, they can also then more easily set up mandatory pro bono within their programs. In New Mexico, most state and city, government and judicial ADR programs require mandatory pro bono from their mediators. I understand the budgetary constraints programs work with, and that this is the primary reason they don’t want to pay for all services rendered. At the same time, I believe a confusion of a professional aspiration for pro bono with an ethical obligation helps program designers appear to justify their nonpayment for services. I believe it harms the solo practitioner who seldom can afford the same scale of pro bono that larger or richer offices can handle, and harms the field by demeaning the value of its services. (This confusion also perhaps helps fuel some of the intolerance of other forms of practice that Diane writes about!)

            

Here are my notes for the presentation I made Saturday in the ACR neurobiology series — it’s just notes; you’ll have to go to the links for more information.
October 2007 ACR/Phoenix
Science, Ethics, and Spirit In a High Conflict Practice HIGHLIGHTS
Gini Nelson, MA, JD
www.EngagingConflicts.com

Workshop emphasizes importance of responsible self-education, of gaining literacy in the areas of science, ethics, and spirit. What follows generally are some ideas, examples, and resources to assist.

Science matters, as does psychology:

• http://www.engagingconflicts.com/ (Gini Nelson’s Engaging Conflicts blog)
• http://engagingconflicts.com/index.php/archives/183 (science literacy and science writing)
• http://engagingconflicts.com/index.php/archives/137 (the difference between psychology and neuroscience and why we need psychology)
• http://engagingconflicts.com/index.php/archives/128 (example: “bad” popular science that perpetuates gender stereotypes)

Developments in science, ethics, and spirit can’t easily be presented as black and white, 1s, 2s, and 3s, especially in the context of a quick workshop. These areas are so complex that we should expect a multidisciplinary approach that is “blurry, interesting, useful, and always in beta”: Read more »

            

Welcome to a new blog, Science and Religion, at DiscoverMagazine.com. Father Holleran has, to me, an interesting background and the right approach to these discussions, some of which he states in his inaugural post :

The second caution has to do with what we mean by “religion.” As a Roman Catholic priest, I obviously come to the conversation with my formation in the wondrously rich intellectual tradition of Catholicism. I do not, however, have a formal theological degree. What I do have is Jesuit training, not only from high school (Regis) and college (Fordham), but also as a Jesuit myself for five years. Perhaps more importantly, I have over twenty years’ experience as a hermit contemplative monk in the Carthusian Order. (The life of the Grande Chartreuse, where I lived for seven years, is the subject of the recent documentary Into Great Silence [click here to see the New Yorker’s review and click here to hear Father Holleran talk about the film]. While there I was in charge of the production of our liqueur—Chartreuse—a job that surely mingles not only herbal ingredients but also art and science!) For this reason, I do not consider my stance to be either conservative or liberal but contemplative. By this I mean an attitude that shuns ideology and rests in the grateful and often scary appreciation of the real as it reveals itself in all its splendor. For this reason, too, I have an immense respect for other religions and their traditions, and look forward to having blog participants enlarge the discourse with insights from their own spiritual backgrounds. I myself have training in yoga and more especially in Zen Buddhism, and hope to be able to offer for your consideration some contributions from these venerable worldviews.

Perhaps a better way of saying this is that I have an enormous respect for the often tortuous and frequently exciting personal journey of each individual in sincerity and freedom.

            

I’m reviewing The Negotiator’s Fieldbook: The Desk Reference for the Experienced Negotiator, Christopher Honeyman & Andrea Kupfer Schneider, Editors (ABA 2006), through the rest of 2007 and into 2008 (it has 80 chapters, more than 700 pages of substantive text, and something for everyone, from novice to expert!). I’m reviewing the book because it’s hot, hot, hot. More about the book and its editors here. More about Part I: Why Even the Best Get Stuck, here.

Part II: The Big Picture, is comprised of three sections: A. How People Frame the Negotiation; B. When Is It Really A Negotiation?; and C. Is it Moral, is it Fair, is it Right? Today’s post is about two articles in C., specifically these articles (annotations are from the book):