The Sound of Peace

by Sylvie Shaw

Sometimes you come across something online and want to follow the lead. Sometimes google delivers what you least expect and are looking for. I found The Sound of Peace when searching for news about religion and music. Not religious music, but how performers and artists are building bridges across cultural and religious troughs. One of those artists is violin peacester Miri Ben Ari.

Growing up in Israel, Ben Ari heard deeply traumatic family accounts of the Holocaust. Determined to raise awareness amongst non-Jews about the tragedy of the Holcaust, she founded the organisation The Gedenk Movement meaning to remember. Concerned that more than 50% of American students these days have not heard of the Holocaust, she decided to teach them. She says:

'My family story of struggle was all about racism. In my opinion, racism is ignorance; people are people, and we have all been given fantastic potential to fulfill in our lifetime. Yet, this monster has been running loose, annihilating cultures, killing people and even creating a "final solution" for my people. I sometimes wonder where people get this illusion that they were born "superior"?' (Ben-Ari 2013).

She uses her music for healing the hurt she feels for victims of the Holocaust, for promoting peace across borders, and for encouraging young performers to use their creativity and 'break their silence' about racism. Her music floats across stages with hip hop artists like Kanye West, Jay Z and Alicia Keys (amongst others). These collaborations bring different music genres together in common endeavour.

But while she is exploring the hiphop and DJ soul of popular music, her music aims to spread healing across cultures, and within oneself. One of her evocative projects involved creating a soundtrack to Martin Luther King Jnr's memorable 'I have a dream' speech - 'Symphony of Brotherhood’. She is also a 'Good Will Ambassador of Music' for the UN and has spoken at the UN about the nexus between culture and sustainable development.

Of course, Ben-Ari's is not the only peacebuilding program that uses music to cross bridges. Music has continuously been harnessed in actions against repressive governments and unjust laws, to fight fascism and celebrate peace. Music can transcend barriers and national borders as O'Connell (2010:2) in the text Music and Conflict suggests: 'Music rather than language may provide a better medium for interrogating the character of conflict and for evaluating the character of conflict resolution'.

Musical peacebuilders agree but question the extent of thinking that music can be a visceral one-fits-all universal channel towards understanding as Cross (2003, cited in Cohen 2008:28) maintains:

'Musics only makes sense as musics if we can resonate with the histories, values, conventions, institutions, and technologies that enfold them; musics can only be approached through culturally situated acts of interpretation. Such interpreted acts... unveil a multiplicity of musical ontologies, some or most of which may be musically irreconcilable...'

Both critics and supporters of cross-cultural and peacebuilding artistic, musical and theatre projects warn that the art which transmits the message of interconnection needs an inclusion of empathy and nonviolence. Peace advocate and theorist Johan Galtung (2008:60) treads softly. Noting the importance of art for peace, he dances with the idea of people being uplifted, and united. But says 'the step towards peace does not come by itself. It has to be thought, felt and worked out. And that will always be tremendously helpful in our struggle for peace'.

References
Ben-Ari M. 2013. Music and The Third Metric: The Silence of the Violin. Huff Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miri-benari/music-and-the-third-metric_b_4173197.html
Cohen C. 2008. Music: A universal language? In O Urbain, Ed, Music and conflict transformation. Harmonies and dissonances in geopolitics. 26-39. London: I.B. Taurus.
Galtung J. 2008. Peace, music and the arts. In O Urbain, Ed, Music and conflict transformation. Harmonies and dissonances in geopolitics. 53-61. London: I.B. Taurus.
O/Connell J. 2010. An ethnomusicological approach to music and conflict. In JM O'Connell and S El-Shawan Castelo-Branco, Eds, Music and conflict. University of Illinois Press.

Image source 
Pixabay, power light candle meditation tranquility peace, http://pixabay.com/en/power-light-candle-meditation-18536/

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/ 

Beauty, Media and Religion - Reflection

By Sylvie Shaw

When theorists in the past have defined religion, or developed a universal framework of the various dimensions of religious expression and experience, they have often presented a structural or functional definition that, depending on the theorist, ignores or bypasses deities (God, gods, goddesses) and the values that religion promotes.

The values of love and compassion seem to be universally applied through sacred texts, religious teachings and ritual and other practices, but, for some reason, the theorists of the past have neglected the 'feelings' components of religion. Why?

Emile Durkheim (1912) defines religion as a functional process that brings like-thinking people together in social cohesion. He also separates the sacred from the profane noting that the sacred should be set apart and forbidden. But in pop culture and postmodern shifts in society and religion, the sacred blurs (or as Colleen McDannell (2012) says 'scrambles' or are scrambled with the profane. Sacred things, objects, symbols, music that were once deemed sacred in religious and spiritual tradtions, and were set aside for special occasions or rituals, have merged or been appropriated into the mundane world, e.g. as everyday fashion items and fashion icons.

The anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1993) developed a five dimensions' definition of religion, seeing religion as a cultural system which is:

'(1) a system of symbols (2) which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men (3) by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic'.

Geetz unpacks these dimensions but like Durkheim fails to include the emotionality of religious expression.

Other writers on religion contend that defining religion is fraught as it is so complex with so many dimensions that each perspective is necessarily narrow. e.g. The Human Rights Commission report Freedom of Religion and Belief in 21st Century Australia (2011) states that:

'Religion can be taken to refer to an organised form of maintaining, promoting, celebrating and applying the consequences of engagement with what is taken to be ultimately defining, environing, totally beyond, totally other, and yet profoundly encountered within life. These activities are usually done by or in association with a group, an organisation and/or a community'.

The report adds that defining religion in relation to its metaphysical, ritualistic, experiential, social or intellectual dimension can limit the expanse of religious expression. Other writers promote religion as a set of beliefs, a panoply of doctrines, dogmas and other teachings, the performance of rituals, a set of values, or the celebration or enhancement of peace and happiness. But even in the Human Rights Commission report's terminology, the words love and compassion are missing.

Another perspective on religion focuses on religious experience rather than religion's structural or functional elements. Theorists such as William James and Rudolf Otto refer to the transcendent and self-transcendent experiences that bring practitioners closer to the divine, with the Holy and/or at one with all things. Religious practices and ritual actions can help focus experience into a Durkheimian 'collective effervescence' of shared engagement.

Religious or transcendent experiences can be garnered through performing ritual but also by spending time in nature, dancing, fasting, meditating, and taking part in other collective experiences which engage the spirit. Moore and Habel (1982) explain that there are two forms of religious experience: the immediate and the mediated.

(i) Immediate experiences refer to spontaneous or direct experiences of the sacred or the divine without the involvement of any mediating actors, actions or connections.

(ii) Mediated experiences refer to experiences of the sacred located though rituals, symbolic objects, special people (e.g. gurus, religious leaders) and places in nature (wilderness, ocean, green and blue spaces).

These religious experiences can be transformative, provide insight, and afford a sense of wellbeing, meaning and purpose.

Another way of explaining religion is to see it as a set of boundary markers and boundary makers between the different expressions and experiences of myriad religions, denominations and spiritualities. What sets one religion apart from the other, especially when both religious streams belong to the same umbrella religion, e.g. the sectarian divisions in Northern Ireland. Then there is a host of other conflicts associated with religiously-mediated violence. Where then, within a conflict framework, do the terms love and compassion apply?

Another perplexing issue emerges with the use of religious expressions such as sacrifice, passion, sacred and morality. What does religious sacrifice mean when it refers to a suicide bomber? What is the sacred when it refers to a place that is considered sacred to two or more groups who all claim 'ownership' and relationship? What is morality when a religious organisation or regime condemns homosexuality in the strongest possible way? What is passion when passions can erupt into violence? What does the commandment mean 'thou shalt not kill' in a world of religious violence.

On ABC radio this morning (Thursday Feb 28), in the Religion and Ethics Report, the granddaugter of the magnificient peacemaker Mahatma Gandhi, Ela Gandhi, spoke about her lifelong commitment to peacebuilding through the World Council of Religions for Peace. She also considered the complexity of the 'no kill' commandment's intention and what happens in practice. She took the idea of 'not to kill' further than the human and added the significant global issue - that of about violence to the planet.

These examples of religiously-mediated terms and dogmas require some reflection. Wishing to promote the ideals of religious values such as the sacred, or sacrifice, or passion can lead to the opposite intention. If one says - The congregation were very passionate - is that a positive or negative emotion or value? Context is needed.

The inspirational Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh (2011) writes that:

'The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves “inside the skin” of the other. We go “inside” their body, feelings, and mental formations, and witness for ourselves their suffering. Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to see their suffering. We must become one with the object of our observation. When we are in contact with another’s suffering, a feeling of compassion is born in us. Compassion means, literally, “to suffer with.”'

Here the essence of beauty lies in the process of engagement with what it means to offer compassion and be compassionate. To suffer with....

In a world of suffering of people, animals and nature, religions are engaged, the world over, in trying to reduce the suffering of the other. But there are religious individuals engaged in actions that create terrible suffering for others - humans, animals and natural 'green and blue' environments.

Questions:
How do we (religionists) deal with the complexity and the paradox?
Does the media (in its various forms) act to enhance differences or bring peoples together?
Can the media act or should or could the media act to bring disparate groups together?
Can the media promote an ethic of care - when it seems that some institutions and some adherents and devotees of religion promote the reverse?
What is the role of the media here in reporting religion - promoting ideology that reflects divisions and drama, or promoting a sense of compassion, care and understanding?
What kind of media would you like to see? Which kind of media do you prefer?

References:
Durkheim E. 1965 [1912]. The elementary forms of the religious life. New York: Free Press.
Geertz C. 1993 Religion as a cultural system. In: The interpretation of cultures: selected essays. Fontana Press, http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic152604.files/Week_4/Geertz_Religon_as_a_Cultural_System_.pdf
Hahn T. N. 2011. Love is compassion in action (Excerpted from Peace is every step), 
http://www.facebook.com/notes/dashama-konah/love-is-compassion-in-action-by-thich-nhat-hanh/10150398143250159?ref=nf
Human Rights Commission. 2011. Freedom of religion and belief in 21st century Australia, Sydney.
McDannel C. 2012. Scrambling the sacred and the profane. In Lynch G. and J. Mitchell with A. Strhan. Eds. Religion, media and culture: A reader. 135-146. London & New York: Routledge.Moore B. and N. Habel. 1982. When religion goes to school. Adelaide: Texts in Humanities.

Image source:
http://pixabay.com/en/rosette-rose-window-60627/

The Idea of the Holy

by Sylvie Shaw

Rudolf Otto, back in the 1920s, wrote a beautiful book called The Idea of the Holy. In it he talked about the experience of the holy or sacred, describing it as a relationship with the numinous, the unexplainable, the unknowable mysterious 'other', that is fascinating and enticing but also fearsome and fearful at the same time.


The expressions he used come from the Latin. The numinous and mysterious, he said, are both fascinans (fascinating) and tremendum (terrifying). They relate to the 'ineffable core of religion' (Durham 2011), that is the mysterium or the wholly other, that is beyond,  the more than and eternal; it eludes understanding.

Otto (1936: 13) states the mysterium tremendum 'may burst in a sudden eruption up from the depths of the soul with spasms and convulsions, or lead to the strangest excitements, to intoxicated frenzy...It has its wild and demonic forms... [or] ... it may be developed into something beautiful and pure and glorious.' Among the dimensions of this 'extraordinary' and 'unfamiliar' feeling are: Awe or 'religious dread' (14), where the mysterious 'touches the feelings' (15) and the individual trembles in its sight. From there emerges a sense of 'Overpoweringness', an experience of the majesty and power of the holy other, where the self is encompassed within the transcendent and oneness with God (20). The third element of the tremendum is an 'urgency' enacted as vitality, passion, force and excitement and felt two fold - within the wrath of God or the blazing fire of God's love (23).

Wonder and bliss are the participants'  reward. These sensations or religious experiences are felt in wilderness places, spiritual places, places of splendour and grace, where rituals guide participants towards the transcendental (beyond) and the internal (within or self-transcendence). Felt experiences - internal and external - are constantly in movement revealed as two intertwining and unravelling cords. These encounters with the numinous are edgy, captivating, enticing, but there's a sense of danger or the unexpected too. At such times, the virtues of graciousness and gratitude, beauty and aesthetics are apparent, says Otto, in the experience of solemn 'private devotion' (36) and in 'bliss or beatitude' (32).

In the outdoors, in a beautiful space - at sea, deep in a lush forest or high on a mountain top or in a religious building of grandeur - in places where the veil between worlds is thin, or where the portal to other realms is open, perhaps these places of such aesthetic sacredness, participants may be overawed, or overwhelmed by the combination of atmosphere, surroundings, and sensually-alluring beauty of place and space. Here participants can be overpowered through (or wedded within) their experience of the transcendent, where the self is subsumed, and the individual is enlivened by a connection with the mysterious, fearsome and attractive other. In these spaces of insight and wonder, participants may celebrate their deeply flowing interconnection with the holy or sacred other.

Questions:
Why are such experiences so captivating? Have you ever had that experience of oneness with all things? A kind of peak or sacred experience which could be felt in the outdoors, in a religious establishment, or in aspects of your life in connection with the transcendent? What as it about your experience that shifted your awareness or deepened your feelings of spirit or change?

References:
Durham J.C. Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy 1: Summary,
http://www.bytrentsacred.co.uk/index.php/rudolf-otto/the-idea-of-the-holy-1-summary
Otto R. 1936. The idea of the Holy: an inquiry into the non rational factor in the idea of the Divine. London: Oxford University Press, http://www.archive.org/stream/theideaoftheholy00ottouoft#page/12/mode/2up
Image source:
http://pixabay.com/en/nepal-himalayas-bird-wilderness-412/

David Lynch and Meditation

The renown film director, David Lynch, shares his perceptions and experiences on mediation in a fascinating book called Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity.

Have a look at the Amazon site where you can read an excerpt from the text. Lynch begins his book with a phrase from the Bhavagad-Gita: 'He whose happiness is within, whose contentment is within, whose light is all within, that yogi being one with Brahman, attains eternal freedom in divine consciousness' (Lynch 2006:3).

Pilgrimage and Sacred Space

by Sylvie Shaw

Over the break, did you visit any special places, or sacred spaces, that were significant or interesting for you? Did you travel and explore diverse places of worship as well as different cultures and lands? Did you visit places where you also spent childhood holidays which were important for you?

Did you go, or have you ever been on a journey that could be deemed a pilgrimage to a blessed or sacred or special place? Are there any places where you connect with the divine and holy other? What experiences did you encounter - special, sacred, ordinary? In what ways could they be described as religious or spiritual, even in broader or secular spiritual terms?