Monday’s RNS report begins with a story about busy New Yorkers relieving stress with zen meditation. Leslie Palma Simoncek writes: It’s harder than it looks. Sitting still, counting exhalations, clearing the mind. It’s just about impossible for over-stressed, multi-tasking New Yorkers with more things on their daily to-do list than there are days in the week to do them. But those who practice Zen meditation say if you keep working at it, those lists and all the chores attached to them will float away like bubbles on a breeze. “The first step is creating some quiet, some peace in your life,” says Kenneth Byalin, who leads a Zen group that meets every Tuesday night at Mount Manresa Jesuit Retreat House. While Zen meditation is a 2,500-year-old Buddhist practice, its non-denominational character appeals to the members of the small, interfaith group. “There is no Catholic Zen, Jewish Zen or Islamic Zen,” says Byalin. “It has no theology.”
Bill Sloat reports from Cincinnati that the Bush administration has challenged Ohio’s labor contract with 36,000 public employees, arguing in federal court that the state violated religious freedoms guaranteed under the 1964 Civil Rights Act: The case could have national ramifications. It hinges on the issue of whether Ohio compels nonunion workers who oppose abortion rights and gay rights to finance organizations with which they disagree. In 1988, the Supreme Court ruled unions could not use money collected from nonunion workers for political activities those workers opposed. However, the unions could charge those workers for representation. In an unsual move, Justice Department civil rights lawyers are pushing Ohio to free state workers with religious objections from those costs, too.
