Tools and Practices

“The observance of Ramadan puts you in a mindset where you think about relationships with others, life, blessings, generosity; it settles you into appreciation,” notes our colleague and Fetzer senior program officer Mohammed Mohammed.

Through your experience of hunger and thirst, you value things that we often take for granted.

“The observance of Ramadan puts you in a mindset where you think about relationships with others, life, blessings, generosity; it settles you into appreciation,” notes our colleague and Fetzer senior program officer Mohammed Mohammed.

Through your experience of hunger and thirst, you value things that we often take for granted.

This chart is designed to show how spiritual practices uphold democratic values and cultivate democratic virtues. We invite you to use it—and add to it—as you go about practicing democracy at home, at work, online, and in other settings.

These cards are designed to spark engagement with democracy and democratic values. On your own or with family, friends, classmates, or colleagues, select a card and read its quote aloud. Turn it over for suggestions for reflection, journaling, or discussion, and ways to act on the ideas in your personal and community life.

Download this PDF, which works nicely on a phone, or request a deck, limit one per person while supplies last.

Thanks to the team at the Practicing Democracy Project (PracticingDemocracy.net) for helping develop this resource!

From the founding moments of our country, people from different faith traditions, and no faith at all, have put their deepest values into action to serve the common good. Their stories and their legacy, which is often religiously and spiritually grounded, can help bind together the various identities represented in our nation.
—Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC)

With this practice, we acknowledge and honor the efforts of young leaders and peacemakers who are endeavoring to heal cultural, religious, and political divides.

By engaging in a gratitude practice every evening, using a “gratitude bowl” to collect what we are grateful for, we have the potential to train our mind to identify and experience gratitude more fully in our lives. With practice, gratitude begins to be interwoven into our very being and starts to shape the way we see and interact with the world. This practice is designed to bring greater awareness of gratitude into everyday life which can bring a host of benefits, but above all else, a sense of interconnectedness and joy.

The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the state like a great sorrow.
—John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath

The very essence of democracy is the absolute faith that while people must cooperate, the first function of democracy, its peculiar gift, is to develop each individual into everything that [one] might be. —Edwin H. Land

This spiritual practice comes from Jane Vennard in Embracing the World: Praying for Justice and Peace.

This practice is from Habib Todd Boerger. 

Allow your mind to become quiet as you focus your awareness on your energetic heart. Cultivate an inner alignment with the Divine/sacred in the way that works for you. Allow your heart to connect to your conversation partner from the place of sacredness within you to the place of sacredness in your partner. Cultivate a sense of holding yourself and your conversation partner in a container of nonjudgment and peace. Set the intention to listen from your heart. Invite your conversation partner to share what they would like to say.