Erosology: erosology101.blogspot.com.au (Dan and Jessica)
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Pop Religious Movement URLs
Erosology: erosology101.blogspot.com.au (Dan and Jessica)
Friday, March 8, 2013
Writing Religion and Spirituality 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.
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.
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/
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/
Saturday, March 2, 2013
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/
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/
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
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 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/
Saturday, February 23, 2013
My Life With Pi
by Sylvie Shaw
Did you love Life with Pi? What was the story really about? Do you ever feel like acting up like Richard Parker - feeling snarly and a little bit wild? Or do you, like this image shows, like to ponder your life and watch the horizon?
Ang Lee's masterful movie proved a visionary treat. The dedication to the story showed, as did his love of storytelling.
The film opens in India. I was fascinated in the threads of the narrative that there was a French territory in India established in the 17th century. Called Établissements français dans l'Inde, it even lasted past the difficult separation of India and Pakistan in 1947.
Within this French territory there was a zoo and a family. The hero of the story, Pi, had to deal with school bullying and a father who believed strongly in the 'new India' following Independence and preached a rational and scientific worldview. Undeterred by his father's insistence on rationality, Pi explores religion and adopts three religious perspectives, intertwining Hinduism, Christianity and Islam into his young life.
The story moves from India when the family can no longer afford to keep their zoo. The zoo's animals are packed up and along with the family, board a cargo ship destined for Canada. But on the way tragedy befalls these human and animal migrants.
Amidst huge seas, wild winds and a wicked storm, the immigrants' boat is shipwrecked and sinks. Pi escapes in a lifeboat with four zoo companiion animals - a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a marvellous and stately Bengal Tiger called Richard Parker.
The life-boat becomes the stage for the rest of the film's action as Pi clings to life knowing he could become prey, not only to the Tiger (the other animals had already become food for one another), but to the sea and its magnificent creatures.
Pi lives by chance and ingenuity. He clevery disgorges the contents of the life-boat and builds a crafty life-raft that keeps him just out of reach of the Tiger's lifeboat haven. He manages to find food and water to keep both of them alive.
Richard Parker is beautiful, fearsome and aloof. Like Pi, he is lost at sea but not to his Tiger instincts. As the adventure unfolds, both human and Tiger arrive at some kind of impasse and understanding that each needs the other to survive. There's a stand off but love is apparent in the 'soul' of the Tiger's eyes.
The key to the film is resilience and the human-Tiger spirit of connection and reciprocity. Humans too are wild creatures - we are nature, and also part of the natural world. To live well, we need to work with and take care of nature (including Richard Parker's wild nature) to sustain our lives.
Does the story make us believe more in religion or God as the storyteller intends it to? Well maybe for some viewers. For me, the film clearly shows the spirit of invention and creativity that humans need for survival in a precarious world. It captures the sacredness of the human spirit, the essence of the wild (within ourselves and others), and relishes in the wonders and bounty of the sea.
Pi is cleverly able to adapt to the challenging conditions that the water throws up. As he gets to know the vagaries of the waves, the fish and the capricious weather, Pi learns to engage with a magical environment that delivers food, beauty and sometimes heartache.
In a world endangered by extreme weather events and climate change, where Tigers are themselves endangered by human culpability, it is the actions of Richard Parker that resonated with me. Just as human and Tiger are on the verge of death and resign themselves to their fate, the sea envelops the life-boat and sends it to the shores of Mexico. As Pi lies on the sand, spent, he watches his friend walk into the jungle without once looking back.
Pi and the Tiger live, in part through Pi's smart and rational survival skills, and in part because both have faith.
Questions
- What did you enjoy about Life of Pi?
- Did the effects detract from the story - could you ignore the animation skills or simply put the techical effects to once side and immerse yourself in the story?
- Was it simply a choice of one story or the other? Or could both stories exist in parallel?
- Do you think that rationality removes magical imagination? Why?
- How important is story to humankind?
- How important is a belief and a faith?
Image source
http://screenrant.com/life-of-pi-movie-ending-spoilers/
Did you love Life with Pi? What was the story really about? Do you ever feel like acting up like Richard Parker - feeling snarly and a little bit wild? Or do you, like this image shows, like to ponder your life and watch the horizon?
Ang Lee's masterful movie proved a visionary treat. The dedication to the story showed, as did his love of storytelling.
The film opens in India. I was fascinated in the threads of the narrative that there was a French territory in India established in the 17th century. Called Établissements français dans l'Inde, it even lasted past the difficult separation of India and Pakistan in 1947.
Within this French territory there was a zoo and a family. The hero of the story, Pi, had to deal with school bullying and a father who believed strongly in the 'new India' following Independence and preached a rational and scientific worldview. Undeterred by his father's insistence on rationality, Pi explores religion and adopts three religious perspectives, intertwining Hinduism, Christianity and Islam into his young life.
The story moves from India when the family can no longer afford to keep their zoo. The zoo's animals are packed up and along with the family, board a cargo ship destined for Canada. But on the way tragedy befalls these human and animal migrants.
Amidst huge seas, wild winds and a wicked storm, the immigrants' boat is shipwrecked and sinks. Pi escapes in a lifeboat with four zoo companiion animals - a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a marvellous and stately Bengal Tiger called Richard Parker.
The life-boat becomes the stage for the rest of the film's action as Pi clings to life knowing he could become prey, not only to the Tiger (the other animals had already become food for one another), but to the sea and its magnificent creatures.
Pi lives by chance and ingenuity. He clevery disgorges the contents of the life-boat and builds a crafty life-raft that keeps him just out of reach of the Tiger's lifeboat haven. He manages to find food and water to keep both of them alive.
Richard Parker is beautiful, fearsome and aloof. Like Pi, he is lost at sea but not to his Tiger instincts. As the adventure unfolds, both human and Tiger arrive at some kind of impasse and understanding that each needs the other to survive. There's a stand off but love is apparent in the 'soul' of the Tiger's eyes.
The key to the film is resilience and the human-Tiger spirit of connection and reciprocity. Humans too are wild creatures - we are nature, and also part of the natural world. To live well, we need to work with and take care of nature (including Richard Parker's wild nature) to sustain our lives.
Does the story make us believe more in religion or God as the storyteller intends it to? Well maybe for some viewers. For me, the film clearly shows the spirit of invention and creativity that humans need for survival in a precarious world. It captures the sacredness of the human spirit, the essence of the wild (within ourselves and others), and relishes in the wonders and bounty of the sea.
Pi is cleverly able to adapt to the challenging conditions that the water throws up. As he gets to know the vagaries of the waves, the fish and the capricious weather, Pi learns to engage with a magical environment that delivers food, beauty and sometimes heartache.
In a world endangered by extreme weather events and climate change, where Tigers are themselves endangered by human culpability, it is the actions of Richard Parker that resonated with me. Just as human and Tiger are on the verge of death and resign themselves to their fate, the sea envelops the life-boat and sends it to the shores of Mexico. As Pi lies on the sand, spent, he watches his friend walk into the jungle without once looking back.
Pi and the Tiger live, in part through Pi's smart and rational survival skills, and in part because both have faith.
Questions
- What did you enjoy about Life of Pi?
- Did the effects detract from the story - could you ignore the animation skills or simply put the techical effects to once side and immerse yourself in the story?
- Was it simply a choice of one story or the other? Or could both stories exist in parallel?
- Do you think that rationality removes magical imagination? Why?
- How important is story to humankind?
- How important is a belief and a faith?
Image source
http://screenrant.com/life-of-pi-movie-ending-spoilers/
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Senses of the Sacred
Sylvie Shaw
What is the sacred? Is this gorgeous eucalypt sacred, and to whom?
The sacred is what's special, precious, tender.
It's something to be treasured and held dear. It may be a connection to
the divine, the incomparable, to beauty. It can be compared to love, to
passion, to the utmost joy, to the ecstatic, to compassion, to taking
care of what we deem is beyond understanding, while at the same time, we
hold it in our heart.
The religious theorists Emile Durkheim and Mircea Eliade made a distinction between the sacred and the profane or mundane. But in a contemporary post-secular world, this distinction between the sacred and the profane has blurred. The sacred is no longer 'set apart' from the profane, but is embedded within it (Durkheim 1912). Religion not only makes the everyday sacred, it is sacralised in the everyday through ritual, ceremony and relationship.
According to Durkheim (1912): 'All known religious beliefs present one common characteristic: they presuppose a classification of all the things, real and ideal... into two classes or opposed groups, generally designated by two distinct terms which are translated well enough by the words profane and sacred'.
In contrast, Colleen McDannel (2012) maintains that these two concepts, the sacred and the profane, have become scrambled. Her scrambling imaginary can be seen in popular culture, in mediated 'idologies', phantasmgorical narratives on screen, clever tricks on the sporting arena, in luscious song and dance sequences from Bollywood to Cirque du Soleil, and in the sublime refrains of nature's beauty. Perhaps it is in nature's awesome glory that Durkheim's variance between the real and the ideal are made into one.
Ecopsychology writer John Swanson (2005) maintains that 'we come to know the sacred through our personal experiences'. Swanson continues:
'Nature's powers command our attention and respect. These experiences of nature can take hold of us in ways that cause us to change our ways, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. The language used to describe these changes will effect us differently based on our unique religious background'.
Connecting to sacred nature is transformative. It affords a new or different way of seeing the world and the process of our lives. Through insight, people may have a change of heart and change their behaviours, becoming more environmentally aware and responible (Roberts 1996). Their sacred nature blurs or scrambles with the sacred in the natural world - and they (or we) become one.
Questions and comments:
- Write about your own experiences of nature and the sacred.
- What is your favourite place in nature?
- How are your experiences sacred or how do they encourage or create sacred experiences?
References
Durkheim E. 1912. The elementary forms of the religious life. Excerpted in: http://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Summaries/forms.html#pgfId=6641
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.
Roberts E. 1996. Place and spirit in land management”, in B.L. Driver et al., eds. Nature and the human spirit. Toward an expanded land management ethic. State College, PA: Venture Publishing Inc.
Swanson J.L. 2005. Experiencing the sacred in nature. http://www.ecopsychology.org/journal/ezine/archive2/sacred_nature.pdf
Image source: http://pixabay.com/en/red-gum-flowers-red-gum-gum-flowers-73648/
What is the sacred? Is this gorgeous eucalypt sacred, and to whom?
The religious theorists Emile Durkheim and Mircea Eliade made a distinction between the sacred and the profane or mundane. But in a contemporary post-secular world, this distinction between the sacred and the profane has blurred. The sacred is no longer 'set apart' from the profane, but is embedded within it (Durkheim 1912). Religion not only makes the everyday sacred, it is sacralised in the everyday through ritual, ceremony and relationship.
According to Durkheim (1912): 'All known religious beliefs present one common characteristic: they presuppose a classification of all the things, real and ideal... into two classes or opposed groups, generally designated by two distinct terms which are translated well enough by the words profane and sacred'.
In contrast, Colleen McDannel (2012) maintains that these two concepts, the sacred and the profane, have become scrambled. Her scrambling imaginary can be seen in popular culture, in mediated 'idologies', phantasmgorical narratives on screen, clever tricks on the sporting arena, in luscious song and dance sequences from Bollywood to Cirque du Soleil, and in the sublime refrains of nature's beauty. Perhaps it is in nature's awesome glory that Durkheim's variance between the real and the ideal are made into one.
Ecopsychology writer John Swanson (2005) maintains that 'we come to know the sacred through our personal experiences'. Swanson continues:
'Nature's powers command our attention and respect. These experiences of nature can take hold of us in ways that cause us to change our ways, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. The language used to describe these changes will effect us differently based on our unique religious background'.
Connecting to sacred nature is transformative. It affords a new or different way of seeing the world and the process of our lives. Through insight, people may have a change of heart and change their behaviours, becoming more environmentally aware and responible (Roberts 1996). Their sacred nature blurs or scrambles with the sacred in the natural world - and they (or we) become one.
Questions and comments:
- Write about your own experiences of nature and the sacred.
- What is your favourite place in nature?
- How are your experiences sacred or how do they encourage or create sacred experiences?
References
Durkheim E. 1912. The elementary forms of the religious life. Excerpted in: http://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Summaries/forms.html#pgfId=6641
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.
Roberts E. 1996. Place and spirit in land management”, in B.L. Driver et al., eds. Nature and the human spirit. Toward an expanded land management ethic. State College, PA: Venture Publishing Inc.
Swanson J.L. 2005. Experiencing the sacred in nature. http://www.ecopsychology.org/journal/ezine/archive2/sacred_nature.pdf
Image source: http://pixabay.com/en/red-gum-flowers-red-gum-gum-flowers-73648/
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