Utne visionary Alexis Pauline Gumbs offers tips for making the most out of your neighbors’ talents and your own in the latest issue of make/shift. Gumbs wrote about a massive skills-swapping session held at the Allied Media Conference last year where women came together and taught each other about herban foraging, social networking, quilting, and more.

“We have diverse, deep, and surprising skills that we have developed out of necessity, creativity, and passion,” Gumbs writes. “This truth is underpublicized on purpose. What use would capitalism be if we stopped thinking that we had to outsource…and dug with deep faith into the undervalued richness of our diverse communities?”

Why not round up a group of people in your own community and see what you can learn? We think Gumbs’ skill (the meta skill) of how to skills-share, is a great primer. Here are her suggestions:

• Decide who the audience or community is.
• Ask folks within your chosen community about the skills they have.
• Secure an accessible space that feels safe (a community center? a bookstore? someone’s backyard?).
• Invite everyone.
• Make sure there is food; we recommend a potluck.
• Think of creative ways to share the skill with other members of your local and affinity community (a blog? a zine? a section in a magazine?).
• Ask for feedback.
• Repeat with another skill!

Source: make/shift(article not available online)

make/shift is a 2010 Utne Independent Press Award nominee in the category of spiritual coverage.

In 1902 the artist Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin traveled Russia drawing and photographing decaying wooden architecture. In an article for World of Art magazine in 1904, he wrote of the churches he found,

“The state of the churches is most lamentable. In the hands of uncivilized people, they are being vandalised to the point of destruction or are ruined with 'restoration' to the point of being unrecognisable.”

More than a century later, photographer Richard Davies set out to photograph the state of these churches today. In an introduction to his series of photographs, Davies writes:

The basic simplicity of the log cabin construction and the extravagant fantasies superimposed on it are just as startling. Although the churches that remain are in varying states of decay and despite their neglect and the wrecking of their interiors, these extraordinary structures have a spiritual presence which commands respect even in the absence of their gilded icons.

Many churches have been saved by dedicated specialists and enthusiasts, whose untiring work goes on. We hope that the photographs in this exhibition will help raise public awareness of the plight of these wonderful buildings and that more restoration projects will attract the funding they deserve.

(Thanks, Coudal.)

Images courtesy of Richard Davies.

Our library contains 1,300 publications—a feast of magazines, journals, alt-weeklies, newsletters, and zines—and every year, we honor the stars in our Utne Independent Press Awards. We’ll announce this year’s winners on Sunday, April 25 at the MPA’s Independent Magazine Group conference in Washington, D.C. and post them online the following Monday. We’re crazy about these publications, and we’d love it for all of our readers to get to know them better, too. So, every weekday until the conference, we’ll be posting mini-introductions to our complete list of 2010 nominees.

Before I landed at Utne Reader, I had all but given up on magazines on the "spirituality" rack. I have seen the light! Here are eight of our favorites...

Progressive Christianity has come to and gone from American life in the 86 years Commonweal has been giving voice to it. From its pacifist declarations during World War II to the battles over sexual orientation in our time, Commonweal has been a beacon. www.commonwealmagazine.org

Magazines that celebrate Buddhism sometimes feel redundant. Too few gurus cycle through too frequently. Tricycle searches out obscure and even marginalized voices to reach beyond the mainstream to find wisdom that turns faith into a lifelong journey.
www.tricycle.com

From endemic farmer suicides in India to the “tyranny of trends,” Resurgence has made an art of pushing its writers to the uncomfortable edges of environmentalism and spirituality. Beautifully designed and richly sourced, this British magazine is unique and essential.
www.resurgence.org

There are few university magazines that, like Portland, can be described as simply profound. At its core,the University of Portland’s beautiful publication is a Catholic endeavor, but faith isn’t so much the subject matter as the fuel for essays and reportage that challenge and inspire.
www.up.edu/portland

“Holy mischief in an age of fast faith” is the mission of the radical, left-leaning Christian journal Geez. And its creators fulfill their desires in every issue, by offering up a reverent collage of irreverent stories on everything from awkwardness to “experiments with truth.”
www.geezmagazine.org

There’s no magazine quite like Lilith, whose tagline is “independent, Jewish, and frankly feminist.” Whether they’re tackling feminist funerals or domestic rituals, the editors are constantly betraying a passion that blends past and present, joy and grief, tradition and discovery.
www.lilith.org

Faith and politics are often deranged bedfellows. In the pages of Sojourners, the relationship is treated as a sacred one. In this institution of progressive Christianity, the left’s orthodoxies are rarely questioned—but rather are infused with the searching qualities of a living, breathing faith.
www.sojo.net

For 30 years, Shambhala Sun has been documenting Buddhism in America. That the magazine still inspires and feels fresh is testament to its commitment to its subject and its avoidance of the consumerism and gimmicks of the too often Westernized religion.
www.shambhalasun.com

Want more? Meet our health and wellness and science and techology nominees.

Passover Seders traditionally end with the phrase, “Next Year in Jerusalem.” On Killing the Buddha, Rachel Leven explains why she won’t be saying it this year.

Jerusalem, this Passover, is not a city of peace, but a violent mess. Jews today need to find a way to understand this, to separate a holy ideal from an unholy reality. I don’t care whether you hope for a two-state or a one state solution, or whether you think Israel should extend from Jordan to the sea. All I ask is that we remove the ritual film from our eyes, look at the facts, and see the real city for what it is.

Source: Killing the Buddha