Shopping around for Spirit

by Sylvie Shaw

Several years ago I spent time in North-east Arnhemland with the Yolngu. They taught me so many things about community, family, ritual and sprituality. When I got back to the city I wanted to know more about spirituality and set out on a quest to find a connection and explanation to what I had experienced in the Aboriginal community. So I shopped around.

It was the heady days of the new age movement and on offer was a plethora of courses, workshops, personal development processes, healing modalities, seminars covering pathways to achieving personal fulfillment, happiness and altered or enhanced states of consciousness. All these programs and activities carried a price tag. Some higher than others.

There was no way to tell whether the workshop or group leader was qualified or ethical, or whether there was any 'truth' to the information being delivered. The new age did not have a code of ethics, but instead, had many authority figures, a multiplicity of scriptures, and endless DIY guides to becoming a better, happier and more prosperous person.

New age bookstores sprang up selling self-help books, protective symbols, amulets, meditation CDs, crystals and tarot cards, and were fonts of information about workshops and courses. Within the new age, gurus emerged to lead seekers towards a finding that better life and strengthen their inner resources.

Wade Clarke Roof (1999) describes this flourishing of consumer spirituality as a 'spiritual marketplace' where the sales pitch is the dream and plan for one's 'new' life. 

An acute observer of this process of selling spirituality and religion is religious theorist Mara Einstein (2011, 2008). Einstein's observations focus on the way religion and spirituality are purveyed, marketed and branded. Religious products, religious leaders and even the religions themselves are being advertised and sold to the population at large.

Increasingly religious organisations are also using social media for self-promotion. Accompanying this move is a range of sources directed at religious leaders on the best way to sell their product with such texts as: The iChurch method: how to advance your ministry online (Caston 2012); Social media guide for ministry: what it is and how to use it (Smith 2013) and Outspoken: conversations on church communication (Shraeder and Hendricks 2011). 

Other observers of the impact of social media on religion, such as religion and pastoral ministry scholar Elizabeth Dresher (2011), outline religions' growing use of social media which, she states, are also remodelling religious practice. In particular Dresher notes the increasing role of religious organisations and religious practices on Fb, Twitter and Apps. For example, in a list of the top 20 Fb sites visited, religious sites make up more than 50%.

But, with a tough word of warning to less connected religions, Dresher warns:

'Word to religious leaders: just as the local religious building is no longer the normative site for religious practice, neither is your church, synagogue, or mosque Facebook page or Twitter feed likely to be. Click on over to where the people are if you really want to connect'.

Among the social media trends for religion, Dresher lists religious and spiritual 'holy apps' which comprise scriptures, prayers, confessionals and meditation practices, as well as the need for religions to develop ethical and practical 'guidlelines for social media'. She also provides a useful link to guidelines published by the United States Conference for Catholic Bishops which state in part:

'The Church can use social media to encourage respect, dialogue, and honest relationships—in other words, “true friendship”... To do so requires us to approach social media as powerful means of evangelization and to consider the Church’s role in providing a Christian perspective on digital literacy'.

New York Times journalist Jennifer Preston (2011) has researched the online approach to evangelizing and yet questions its effectiveness in contrast to face-to-face religious participation. She outlines the rapid popularity on Fb of religious pages like 'Jesus Daily', and cites Fb itself as saying that over 43 million people follow at least one page they classify as religious. This is affirmed by a recent PEW survey which found that 64% of Americans online used the web for religious or spiritual reasons (Helland 2013).

in the fanfare of Pope Francis 1's selection, the Vatican not only sent smoke signals to notify the world of the new pope, it also tweeted (in caps): “HABEMUS PAPAM FRANCISCUM” – or “We have Pope Francis”. Despite this initial innovation, Christopher Helland (2013) notes that the Catholic Church, compared to evangelical faiths, has been slow on the uptake of social media:

'With a “business as usual” approach, the Church (and others) has failed to recognize the radically different way people interact online. The phenomenon known as Web 2.0 means that people are both consumers and producers of information, not just passive recipients'.

Underlying the 'whether to use or not use' debate, religious institutions which have adopted social media formats are using it to enhance their religious brand, and, as Mara Einstein (2008) reminds us, to make profits. But at an individual level, Einstein also bserves how these brands shape our identity. We identify with products and celebrities who sell them.

Einstein pulls no punches: 'Remember', she says, 'religion is a commodity. Religion is personal and sold the same way as other marketed goods and services' (2008:78). 

References
Caston J. 2012. The iChurch method - How to advance your ministry online. Frisco, TX: Caston Digital Publishing.  
Dresher E. 2011. Five social media trends reshaping religion. Religion Despatches. December 15, 2011, http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/culture/5463/
http://www.religiondispatches.org/contributors/elizabethdrescher/

Einstein M. 2011. Evolution of religious branding. Social Compass 58(3): 331-338. 
Einstein M. 2008. Brands of faith. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Helland C. 2013. On a Tweet and a prayer. World Economic Forum blog, March 27, 2013. http://forumblog.org/2013/03/on-a-tweet-and-a-prayer/
Preston J. 2011. Facebook page for Jesus, with highly active fans. New York TImes, September 4, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/technology/jesus-daily-on-facebook-nurtures-highly-active-fans.htm
Roof W.C. 1999. Spiritual marketplace: baby boomers and the remaking of American religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Smith N. 2013. Social media guide for ministry: what it is and how to use it. Nils Smith and group.com.
Shraeder T. and K.D. Hendricks. 2011. Outspoken: conversations on church communication. Los Angeles: Centre for Church Communication.

Image source
http://pixabay.com/en/angel-boy-cherub-child-church-21503/

'The walls have come down' - Pop, Music, Religion

By Sylvie Shaw

The American media station, PBS, in its online Religion and Ethics Newsweekly zine, carried a story in its February 2013 edition about the growth and spread of Christian pop. The story cites the Christian reporter for Billboard magazine, Deborah Evans Price as saying:

'The walls have come down considerably over the past few years when it comes to the divide between the Christian audience, the Christian market and mainstream consumers'.

This statement shows the incorporation of Christian pop into mainline music charts, so the music not only appeals to Christ followers, but also attracts an 'audience' beyond Christian adherents. It also underlines the increasing role of the public marketplace in spreading the gospel message.

Not all of the performers crashing down the walls agree with view. In fact, Religion and Ethics Newsweekly correspondent Kim Lawton, when discussing the Christian popster TobyMac, says that 'for him, it’s not about cranking out hits and making money, but rather watching how God uses the music to touch people’s lives'.

My contention is that a pop form of Christian music is a contemporary update of the role of 'traditional' religious and spiritual music. Faith-centred music is designed to move people, to touch their lives, and to enflower their spirit. Faith-centred music is sacred. It connects people to their conception of the divine, and to beauty.

What's new, however, is the shift from the pulpit to mainline pop. When Swedish House Mafia (SHM) sing: 'Don't you worry child, See heaven's got a plan for you', does the general audience hear that their song carries a strong Christian message?

Gone but not forgotten, SHM band member Steve Angello, talked to the Huffington Post about his reasons for the band's break up (Makarechi 2012). He mentioned being 'sick of fans who assume his job is easy' and explained 'why big business will never get a grip on electronic dance music' (or EDM).

To highlight his disenchantment with the industry and its groping tallons, Angello says that every day he receives 'the weirdest calls' from mega-corporations seeking a relationship with the band. He continues:

'And I'm like "how?" They will tell me they just want to "get into the EDM space." But they'll be, like, selling trimmers. "But you have a beard!" Yeah but, what do you want me to do? Shave on camera so you can tell people all the dance acts use Phillips?'

Religion theorists Carrette and King (2012) in their article, Spirituality and the rebranding of religion, make a serious attack on what they describe as 'Corporate Capitalism'. They argue, and it's a forthright stance they seem to take, that big business involvement in religion 'strips [its] assets by plundering its material and cultural resources' (Carrette and King 2012:64). They fear that religion is experiencing a takeover and in the process, loses something of its traditions.

I would argue differently. Religion is also a business in the contemporary western market-driven world. In fact, the recently-launched cableTV History Channel's hit, The Bible, has already drawn millions of viewers; it's a ratings bonanza. Enshrined in a kind of 'swords and sandals' movie genre, this epic series is filled with over-hyped ochestration, enough to send hearts and souls a-soaring ... well, perhaps....

Sacred music is an umbrella term for myriad music genres that do more than just 'touch' us. They take us on a journey into the transcendent or self-transcendence. We travel on what Geoff Woods, the ABC broadcaster, terms 'The Rhythm Divine', a kind of lyrical magic carpet that takes us to new worlds and strange realms of enchantment, the sacred and again, to beauty.

Woods' radio show explores both 'contemporary sacred sounds and the world’s devotional music' (ABC Radio National 2013). It was on Woods' program that I first heard the Melbourne Muslim hip hop group Brothahood with their moving tale featuring Hannah Magar, We are Egyptians. It used to be viewable online, but only the sound remains to open our hearts and memories to the upswelling of Arab Spring and its outcome in Egypt.

Magar sings - 'It's a new day, a new world, a new Egypt. This is the determination of the makers of the pyramids. We had a dream, we were ready to die for defending....'

The link between the hip hop message of Magar and The Brothahood, or the Christian-inspired pop of TobyMac or EDM of Swedish House Mafia, honours their fervency for God and their profound relationship with their faith and the sacred.

Questions
- How do you envisage the argument of Carrette and King (2012)? Is it a question of diluting religion through 'Corporate Capitalism' or an enhancing of religion as the message is spread in different mediums?
- What does the term sacred music mean to you?
- Do you have a favourite band or performer who wears their religion on their sleeve or in their music message? Discuss and analyse their role in supporting their sense of what is divine, sacred or special.

References
- ABC Radio National. 2013. The Rhythm Divine.http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rhythmdivine/about/
- Carrette J. and R. King. 2012. Spirituality and the re-branding of religion. In G.Lynch, Ed., Religion, media, culture. New York: Routledge.

- Mainstream Christian music. 2013. Religion and Ethics Newsweekly. Feb 8, 2013.
- Makarechi K. 2012. Steve Angello on why Swedish House Mafia broke up, new music & what Nnew fans don't understand. Huffington Post, Sept 14, 2012.
- We are Egyptian REMIX (Hannah Magar feat. The Brothahood). 2012. http://brothahood.bandcamp.com/track/we-are-egyptian-remix-hannah-magar-feat-the-brothahood
 
Image source
http://pixabay.com/en/silhouette-people-personal-human-78407/

Images - how they lure us

Art historian David Morgan, in a number of his throught-provoking texts, especially 'Would Jesus have sat for a portrait?'...(2002) tells an intriguing story about the construction of Jesus images over time. In the 19th century and early 20th century, there emerged a division between Christian followers, with one side preferring Jesus to be represented in a softer more compassionate way. While those opposing this rendition suggested this approach highlighted Christ's effeminate qualities, whereas their preference was to portray Jesus in a more manly or masculine light, stressing his manhood, his courage, his charisma and his strength. Jesus was to be the veritable all American hero. But why not embrace both perspectives?

In many of the depictions of Jesus over since the 1800s, Jesus has blond hair and blue eyes? So let's consider the historical, social and political rationales for this 'white' construction.

In their book, The Colour of Christ:The son of God and the saga of race in America, authors Ed Blum and Paul Harvey (2012) outline the construction of the Jesus image according to the socio-political and historical eras and events in the US. In particular, they show how the Jesus image has been used both as a symbol of freedom and civil rights, as well as its total opposite - a symbol of white supremacy promulgated by white supremacist groups such as the KKK.

In an interview with one of the authors, Ed Blum stresses that showing Jesus always as white falls directly in line with white supremacy viewpoints: 'The belief, the value, that Jesus is white provides them an image in place of text, ...It gets them away from actually having to quote chapter and verse, which they can't really do to present their cause'.

When asked what 'colour' Christ would probably have been, Blum replied that it would not be white. [He would be] 'darkly complected, not pure black, more in a kind of light brownish [color]'. In fact, Blum points out that up until the 18th century, Jesus was generally shown with brown eyes.

So how did he become white and why? Blum and Harvey document the shift from Jesus as the bringer or epitome of Light to a re-rendering of light into white. For colonial Americans, light connoted power, goodness, love. White [at least in those days] was a sign of trouble' (Blum and Harvey 2012). In fact it was this 'darker' version of Jesus that sparked interest among Native Americans and African Americans, a move which may have fostered a shift from dark to light, white and right.

The rise of Protestant Christianity and the sacred values of Christ were promoted across the US through the 19th century by an organisation known as the American Tract Society. Started in 1825, it spread the Gospel message far and wide. During the 1800s, with an active slave trade and the dispossession of Native American lands, Christians distanced themselves from the earlier 'darker' Jesus image. Armed with increasing migration, the support of providence and the philosophy of manifest destiny, American was destined (it was believed) to become a Christian nation heralded by a now white Jesus representing 'civilized Christian values' (Blum and Harvey 2013).

Blum and Harvey conclude their article in The Chronicle of Higher Education with a pessimistic or perhaps it is a pragmatic vision for the future of Jesus images in America by saying:

'Jesus will probably remain white for most Americans, because Christ still serves as a symbol and symptom of racial power in society. But because of the nation's complicated histories of race and religion, Jesus will also continue to be a complicated savior—white without words, and yet made and remade in many shades'.

Arguments about the allure of Jesus images have shifted over time in relation to gender stereotypes, colour representations and political and religious expediency. Images, like words, have power, and the power to influence public perception and public opinion. A white Jesus becomes normalised, unquestioned, accepted and adopted. What would it mean if the image was not this norm? 

To find out what Jesus may have looked like, the BBC program 'Son of God' has reconstructed a possible representation of Jesus based on the skull of a first century Jew. Using forensic, historical and archeological techniques, the face that emerges from the screen is that of a man of Middle Eastern appearance. In contrast to the white 'Hollywood' Jesus, the BBC's rendering showed Jesus of Nazareth was likely to have been very different from the idealised Christian American and so-called 'civilised' version. It's fascinating viewing.

Questions
- If you were to cast a movie of Jesus in 2013, what kind of actor would represent the Saviour? 
- Could Jesus or a particular image of Jesus be deemed a kind of 'trade-marked' (TM) brand?
- If you were running an advertising campaign promoting Jesus or contemporary Christianity, how would you do it?
- How do you perceive the argument of gender qualities still relevant in 2013? Why?

References
BBC. 2001. The face of Jesus reconstructed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2-0jU2-m6I [There are several youtube clips from the series Son of God].
Blum E.J. and P. Harvey. 2012. The Colour of Christ:The son of God and the saga of race in America. University of North Carolina Press.
Blum E.J. and P. Harvey. 2013. The Contested Color of Christ: How the image of Jesus has been made and remade in American history. The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 17, http://chronicle.com/article/The-Contested-Color-of-Christ/134414/
Morgan D. 2002. 'Would Jesus have sat for a portrait?' The likeness of Christ in the popular reception if Sallman's art. In S. Brent Plate, Ed., Religion, art and visual culture: A cross-cultural reader. New York: Palgrave.

Image source:
http://pixabay.com/en/antique-art-building-cambridge-21803/

Pop Religious Movement URLs

This is the repository for the range of Pop Religious Movement sites that are being developed by students in the Writing Religion and Spirituality course at The University of Queensland.

Erosology: erosology101.blogspot.com.au (Dan and Jessica)

Writing Religion and Spirituality 2012

Here is a selection of the participating bloggers from the course in 2012

http://writingreligionspiritualityatuqbillie.blogspot.com.au/
http://writingreligionandmedia.blogspot.com.au/
http://writingreligionanna.blogspot.com.au/
http://writing-religion-the-right-way-by-cas.blogspot.com.au/
http://religionspiritualityandmediabonitap.blogspot.com.au/ 
http://nikawritingforreligionandspirituality.blogspot.com.au/
http://writingreligionmeredith.blogspot.com.au/
http://religionandspiritualityreflections.blogspot.com.au/
http://staceydiscussesreligion.blogspot.com.au/
http://astridhawkereligion.blogspot.com.au/
http://writingreligionandspiritualityfraser.blogspot.com.au/
http://ainsley-badman.blogspot.com.au/
http://writingrs.blogspot.com.au/
http://writtinginspiritualityandreligionajr.blogspot.com.au/
http://reflectingonreligionuq.blogspot.com.au/ 
http://writingreligionerinreid.blogspot.com.au/
http://writingreligionlisa.blogspot.com.au/ 
http://writingreligionsophie.blogspot.com.au/
http://religionandsong.blogspot.com.au/
http://writingreligionandspiritualityatuq.blogspot.com.au/
http://wrssharni.blogspot.com.au/ 

Image source:
http://pixabay.com/en/dandelion-flower-summer-garden-53800/  

Bravery in the sculpture: Linde Ivimey's creative spirit

by Sylvie Shaw

Religious theorist Birgit Meyer (2012) makes the point that 'religious feelings...are made possible and reproducible by certain modes of inducing experiences of the transcendental'. Such feelings and experiences, she argues, can be dispersed or induced through a range of ‘sensations’ that connect to the divine. Meyer takes issue with William James’ (1910) significant work, Varieties of religious experience, commenting that James' persuasion on religious encounters act to distance the experiential connections with the divine from ‘intellectual, rational dispositions’ (158), the doctrine, dharma and dogma which are essential elements in religious worship.

Distinguishing or splitting body from mind is not apparent in the work of sculptor Linde Ivimey currently on show at The University of Queensland's UQ Art Museum. Her work floats with transcendent feeling. It evokes profundity and provokes questions. But Linde holds us, transfixed, with her aesthetic and her craft. 

Pondering the meaning of her sculptural pieces, one is moved by the depth of the artist’s intention, her relationship with place, religion, childhood, story and myth which emerges so strongly. 

Linde Ivimey's evocative work stays with you. As I walked through the gallery, I felt an overwhelming sense of narrative, sometimes dark and painful, sometimes buoyant and playful as each piece touched me. Linde’s ideas and dreams, her reflections and passions are resplendent within each of the pieces.  

The centrepiece of the exhibition is startling. Twelve cloak-enshrouded figures parade linked together in a chain of brotherhood and feeling. I was asked what it reminded me of, and I replied, 'prisoners at Guantanamo Bay'. One of my students, a deeply religious Christian, said it was 'a prison chain gang'. When it was explained that these figures represent the 12 apostles, the explanation pointed to the dual side of humanity and religion – at once compassionate, at once despairing of Christ’s great passion and passing. 

Linde’s work expresses a profound emotionality. She takes us on a journey through her childhood curiosity and love of story into Alice’s and Rabbit’s fairy tale existence and we smile at the innocence of these figures as we too, the viewer, explore our own childhood fantasies and memories of toys, stories, animals, and games. 

Then there are the dark figures that take us somewhere else – and her work confronts us with its humanity and its pain. 

Walking through the gallery is a journey into our own souls and hearts. Her work reveals a rawness on one hand, and a tenderness on the other. These descriptions of opposites are what comes to mind when reflecting on the detail and effort-full work involved in creating her very intricate structures. I marvel too on the genius of creativity and ingenuity that recycles meat (in the form of bones) into art. 

Her figures swathed in cloth and enveloped in bone bare their exo-skeleton to the whole world. It protects them, providing a coat of armour that can’t be prised open. But, through her skillful crafting, somehow Linde does allow us in. She too bares her psyche through the work and takes us on a journey into our own souls as well. Perhaps, in that journey we could ask ourselves - what are we too covering up? 

Normally we keep our skeleton on the inside. Sometimes we try to cover up our vulnerability through self-discipline, but prise the bones apart, and there is heart and feeling. 

I watch in awe as Linde weaves the bones into a kind of fabric that tells a story and expresses a range of emotions. Uplifting and fearful at the same time. Linde digs into her childhood fantasies, her experiences growing up with a Catholic religious framework, and her recent travels to Antarctica to inspire us to go inward, to journey far into the recesses of our childhood memories, and our own travel experiences in out of the way places. 

She brings all these experiences and passions to us as a gift of extraordinary value. She makes us confront the deep recesses of our psyches that are honoured and celebrated in her passionate and very thought-provoking figures. She creates images that stay with us for a long time, long after we’ve left the gallery. She is a sculptor of tremendous breadth. 

Linde Ivimey has won several awards for her feelings-encased work. She is much renown for the risks she takes with her pieces, and the time, care and effort she takes to engage with story, myth and religion. I read that she spent around 20 years in her studio perfecting her art and that is clearly visible in the exhibition at UQ.

Linde is not content to play with her art. It is clearly intended to have emotional impact – like her works, this impact is complex and intricate. It blends the physicality of the biophysical world, animals, bones, hair, teeth, as archeological and sacred finds, with such a high degree of technical competence and beauty. Her work lives with the idea of the edge. It resonates and speaks to us in ways we are not used to. And, strangely, we love the shiver or frisson that emanates from her work, that takes us into fear and then into fantasy.

A small part of her current exhibition focuses on a group of fearless explorers in Antarctica not long after the dawn of the Australian nation, when explorers sought to reveal the secrets during what became known as the Heroic Age. The standout figure in Linde's posse of explorers is Douglas Mawson, an Australian, who spent much of his life dedicated to this great but perilous southern iced continent.

Mawson touched the bridge between life and death. He survived through his resilient demeanour and his belief in Divine Providence. His steely determination emerges in the figures Linde has created – and you can see their strength and their tough exploits moulded in their ice and snow-covered faces.

The region of Antarctica is endangered by climate change and Linde, through this homage to Mawson, carries the message to us to care for the planet. 'Leave no trace and take only photographs' is the motto of eco-travellers. Linde Ivimey’s sculpture adds a dimension to that motto. She has brought the taste and trace of the Antarctic, and the age of heroism, through her evocative re-storying of the Mawson legend. 

Her work can take our breath away but can also take us to places we least expect. 

Meyer (2012) seems to concurs. In commenting on the study of religion she states that 'we need to recognise the phenomenological reality of religious experience as grounded in bodily sensations' (164). These sensational experiences come alive in the shared engagement of religious practices, practices and rituals that are embedded in the relationship between 'self and community' (166). 

In relation to Linde Ivimey's sculpture, bodily sensations are both represented through the figures and exchanged in dialogue between the viewer, the artist and the pieces themselves. Linde invokes a spiritual world, peopled by saints, childhood fantasies and lastly by adventurers who put their life on the line in the service of exploration, science and research. Through the stories she reveals from the bowels of her life, she helps us understand the multiplicity of emotions and sensations abundant in connecting with the transcendental.

Questions
- In what way would you describe Linde Ivimey's sculptures as religious or spiritual?
- Why do you think that saints, the 'Four Horsemen' and the apostoles are significant features of Linde's work?
- How do you envision her holism, the link between the physical (bones and other earthy elements), the psychological or emotional, the intellectual and the spiritual? 
- Define what you gleaned from your excursion into her work.  

Reference
Meyer B. 2012. Religious sensations: media, aesthetics, and the study of contemporary religion. In G. Lynch, ed., Reader in religion, media, culture. London: Routledge.

Image Source:
Pixabay: http://pixabay.com/en/antarctica-km-south-pole-63056/ 

Rituals for Rain: Reflection

By Sylvie Shaw

It's pouring down with rain outside. I can hear the plants shouting with joy. It was too dry at the end of 2012.  A heady, musty, earthy aroma emerges from the land annoucing fecundity, beauty and lush growth. In the early morning, when there's a break in the rain, the local neighbourhood is out with their lawn mowers, hedgecliipers and leaf blowers, in an effort perhaps, to tame nature's heady fertility.

Going for walks in the rain is invigorating - but to avoid the damp, I need to be enveloped in raincoat, rainpants or under an umbrella. Walking around yesterday I saw several people not equipped for the annual tropical deluge. Dressed in black plastic garbage bags and a host of transparent plastic 'Little Red Riding Hood' cloaks, they huddled under shelter. Or crowed into cafes, frosting up the windows with their warm breathing.

When we were small we would don our raincoats, gumboots or just wear bare feet and run and jump in puddles, spalshing the water over each other. My greatest joy was to ride my bicycle through shallow watery ponds, making that wonderful squwooshing sound as the water splashed everywhere. To avoid getting wet, we used to place our feet up on the handle bars, and if we were brave enough, we also raised our hands in the air (but not for long).

Do you ever feel like jumping in puddles, yelling loud laughter as you run through the watery delight? Do you ever watch the rain as it drops on the puddles forming ring after spreading ring? Do you ever wish you could dance in the rain?

In an Indigenous and religious sense, tribal peoples perform rain dances to encourage the seasonal rains to come or to pray for a drought to break. The dance is a sacred ritual that sustains the intimate and intrinsic relationship between community, land and cosmos - and water. Without the rain, the people cannot survive. Their prayers for rain a sacred reminder of the turning of the wheel of life and seasonal change.

Located on the sacred texts website is the 1931 treatise on the Native American culture of the American south west - Dancing Gods by Ema Ferguson (1931). 

Fergson reminds us of the missionising morals that condemnded sacred and essential Indigenous rituals, like the rain dance, as sin, but also makes the point, that the often theatrical performance of mainline religious services, is also a kind of sacred dance.

'An Indian dance is not a dance in the sense in which we use that term. It is a ceremonial, a symbolic representation, a prayer. It is, in fact, what all dances were in the early days of the race before the dance as a social and dramatic expression grew apart from the ceremonial which gradually developed into the church service. In a sense the mass is still a stately dance, the theatrical production is descended from a prayer.'

In places where drought and fire are increasingly common - including Australia - should we develop a community ritual to pays homage to water and the need for an annual balanced rainfall - certainly not a deluge or flood with its legacy of trauma and devastation for human communities.

In Israel, another place of drought and fire, the Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu (Fendel 2010) states:

'Every Jew who recites the Kriat Shma every day knows that the Land of Israel, unlike other countries, lives according to its rainfall. This is simply G-d’s way of speaking to us; this is His language. / If we experience a drought for two months, G-d is saying something, as we read in Kriat Shma: “If you hearken to My commandments… and love G-d… I will give you rainfall… But if you stray… I will be angered… and there will not be rain…'

The Rabbi terms the rain that follows drought and fire as 'rains of blessing'.

In a similar vein, Johnny P. Flynn (2012), writing on Religion Despatches, describes how the Native American Hopi nation dance to 'welcome' the rain. Flynn was out hiking in Northern Arizona on the day of the Hopi ceremony and retells what the hikers experienced:

'One summer I was hiking with friends at the Wupatki National Park which is exactly on a line from the San Francisco Peaks to the Hopi reservation. The day was clear, cloudless, until about one o’clock in the afternoon. Clouds began to roil over the peaks to the southwest and by two o’clock thunder could be heard in the distance. By 2:30 we were soaked to the skin by a “sudden” thunderstorm headed northeast to the Hopi reservation. I remembered it was the day of the Hopi Snake dance which is most often cited as a “rain dance.”

With the rain flowing down, I take my raincoat and tevas and head for the outdoors. Getting wet, in this warm humidity, is a happy-making feeling.

As I walk the currawongs' call echoes, erie and evocative.

References
Fendel H, 2010. Rabbi Eliyahu: Drought Demands Love.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/141046#.UTKPqxmzD4g
Ferguson E. 1931. Dancing Gods. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/sw/dg/dg02.htm

Image source:
Pixabay, http://pixabay.com/en/water-drop-of-water-drip-journal-55317/