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Religion

Large Numbers of Crumbs

Large numbers? Untold numbers of crumbs are on their way out – Passover starts tonight and the house undergoes some serious cleaning – well the kitchen does, and the shelf next to my bed that harbors my stash of cookies, candies, almonds and chocolate bars – all the things necessary to make it as a consistent blogger….

Pesach requires a house free of Hametz, leavening that makes things rise, yeast for bread etc. Many complicated rules for both food and utensils that come in contact with food are part and parcel of the Passover holiday. We don’t take it as seriously as more conservative Jews would do, but make an effort toward some mindful choices. We eat Matzoh instead of bread for the 7 day duration, flour-based cookies and cakes are out, as are soft drinks and sweets that are made with corn syrup (don’t ask.) And I clean the kitchen. Which probably is essential to our continued survival anyhow, if you know my kitchen.

Some rabbis suggest that the leaven transcends the physical world. Hametz, then, symbolizes a “puffiness of self, an inflated personality, an egocentricity that threatens to eclipse the essential personality of the individual. Ironically, it is what prevents the individual from rising spiritually and moving closer to holiness.” Well I don’t intend to rise, spiritually or otherwise, much less aspire to holiness. But it would be nice to get a grip on an inflated sense of self, occasionally, put a check on narcissistic impulses. Passover makes that possible in many ways- including the fact that it is a holiday where the history of the exodus is taught in great detail so that subsequent generations understand, cherish and practice continuity of a way to interact with the world.

And since the holiday takes place during spring and is for me associated with renewal I chose photographs of harbingers of spring for today’s comments.

Chag Sameach – (which means happy holiday and thus could just as well apply to Easter. Save some of those chocolate eggs for me…)

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From the Ground up.

The last installment of this week’s theme is dedicated to the foot soldiers of the civil rights movement. Their marches in the early 60s were the catalysts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They participated in Bloody Sunday, Turnaround Tuesday and the final Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March, at great risk to their physical well being, and ultimately lives.

In 2016 they received collectively a Congressional Gold Medal — the nation’s highest civilian award, along with the Presidential Medal of Freedom – accepted on behalf of the 3000 or so young people by Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and the Rev. F.D. Reese — two giants of the civil rights movement. These were children marching, led by men who believed that G-d would grant them justice.

Congressional Gold Medal presented to 1965 ‘foot soldiers,’ including four representatives of Ripon College

This came to mind because these weeks we see another group of children, young people, pouring their energy, courage and grief into a movement to curb the gun industry, undermine the nefarious goals of the NRA, and, most importantly, make our society safe against shooters with automatic weapons. Schools, clubs, concerts, and, yes, churches, are all places that should be sacrosanct against violence. I hope they will be as successful as the kids in Alabama, although that success has of course seen non-stop direct and indirect attacks since the signing of the law. Yet it was a beginning, a momentous victory. Let’s make sure March 24, 2018 mirrors that, with all of our feet on the ground.

Here is the last song of the week, from 1965, a hopeful note.

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Shedding Light

Yesterday I had the chance, finally, to see the Marvel movie Black Panther. I cannot recommend it highly enough, for both the way its crafted, and more importantly, for the messages it contains. Super heroes fight for the best way to preserve their African heritage – coincidentally having escaped colonialism – and share their advanced technological knowledge for peaceful purposes – or not.

The best analysis of the film was written here by Jelani Cobb : https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/black-panther-and-the-invention-of-africa

And there is some in-depth discussion of the religious background as well as the historic struggle for black liberation here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/03/07/the-surprising-religious-backstory-of-black-panthers-wakanda/?utm_term=.c6ce4bff0688

Marvel made me marvel, as simple as that, since its film spoke to the strength of women ( today is International Women’s day) just as much as the issues of division in the black community and the potential of hope for a more peaceful desegregated future.  It was also a visual feast from landscapes to costumes to theatrical make-up, my eyes were hooked. Go see it, if you have not already.

The music was written and partially performed by Kendrick Lamar, our current most brilliant (and successful) rap artist whose music I have featured before. He is a deeply spiritual as well as religious contemporary artist, who does not shy away from expressing his thoughts on, doubts about and consolation through religion, most notably on his album Damn.

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/jpzppp/kendrick-lamar-damn-spiritual-reawakening-religion

Film as well as music together provided a window to glimpse into possible worlds and towards a better understanding of culture(s) that have been artificially separated from us white folks in the pursuit of retaining the spoils of slavery.

Here are some of the tracks that speak to these issues https://www.vibe.com/2017/04/kendrick-lamar-damn-biblical-elements/ – I chose this one:

 

 

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Released from the Pews

One of the challenges and one of the joys of writing blogs about things that you find interesting but know really very little about, is finding sources that inform you and on a good day, teach you.

 

This week, while looking into the connectedness between contemporary music and religion, I lucked out. I located numerous articles, among them the smart writing of a young woman, Lauren Jackson, who is a phD candidate at the University of Chicago interested in language and the roots of pop culture.

From her I learned that “Marvin Gaye, Little Richard, Aretha Franklin, John Legend, Katy Perry, Whitney Houston, Lou Rawls, Diana Ross, Jessica Simpson, Usher, Avril Lavigne, Faith Evans, Kristin Chenoweth, Beyoncé, Ethel Merman, Tina Turner, Britney Spears, all started out in church, in choir, on keyboard, as a soloist, each in their own way.”

She also argues in a review of contemporary singers that “Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter is a Christian and a black Christian at that, which, all due respect to all other Christians, is an important distinction. Black folks with a love for God—or a fear of God—just aren’t the same.”

https://thepointmag.com/2017/criticism/touched-by-the-sacred

That sentence vividly reminded me of my first encounter with black worship – namely sitting in a movie theater in Germany watching the Blues Brothers movie, startled at what unfolded on the screen, certain it was an insane parody. Not entirely so, I was told by my American friends, who enlightened me about tent revivalism, voice-filled services, gospel choirs and the like. All quite outside my experience.

Fast forward to the last couple of years which saw videos like this:

One of the biggest stars of our time with a fan community that worships her like a goddess, presents a song about loss of a friend, mourning and salvation in church and in a cemetery. Not exactly sticking to the pews, but in keeping with her strong belief in God and adherence to Christian faith (as can be seen in this documentary about her life.) Christian media call her album Lemonade a modern book of psalms, no less.

 http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/may-web-only/bey-and-beys-god.html

 

And let’s add something for levity: a nice little conspiracy clip about how Beyonce really is on the side of the forces of darkness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEerVHe8DRc&t=201s

Here is something less funny, that analyzes the general hatred for black music, Christian or not, by certain parts of our population.

http://www.complex.com/music/2016/10/hip-hop-and-beyonce-trump-supporter-betsy-mccaughey

Enough reading and viewing material to sit in those pews for hours – bring a pillow.

 

 

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Loud and Clear.

Contrary to what I used to be taught, namely that nuns were tucked away in nunneries, never to be seen or heard from again, they played an enormous, often progressive, role in the catholic landscape of the Middle Ages. They were active land owners, managers, litigators and teachers. Urban environments, like Florence in the 15th century, saw increased numbers of them (1 in 26 citizens!) due to many factors, including the plague and its consequence for the marriage market, the rise of the Medici and papal intervention. Nuns were integral to neighborhoods as well as the market economy – in fact they were in large scale responsible for the production and weaving of metallic threads. The book linked below argues that they affected broad social change, being political in relevant ways.

https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/nuns-and-nunneries-renaissance-florence

Progressive nuns these days (starting with the Vietnam War) follow in that proud tradition, even if it has punitive consequences. Here are some of the causes they fight for (or against): immigrants, pipelines, war and missile silos.

Capitol Police arrest scores of Catholic nuns and leaders calling for immigration reform

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/10/19/at-chapel-where-nuns-protest-a-pipeline-23-arrested-including-several-in-their-70s-and-80s/?utm_term=.16801a39480a

www.nytimes.com/…/7-nuns-arrested-in-antiwar-protest-inside-st-patricks-7-nuns.html

Jackie Hudson, one of three nuns arrested in 2002 missile silo protest, dies

I think these kind of nuns would agree with the song I chose for today: church can be anywhere where love, tolerance, respect is practiced.

Photographs in honor of my sister’s upcoming birthday; she used to professionally build church organs before she switched careers.

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Beyond Steeples

Churches will be on display this week.  Whatever complex – and complicated – relationship I have with organized religion of any kind, I often stand in awe at what was built in the name of it, from cathedrals to mosques to synagogues. For some moments I can forget the issues of money, power, oppression, proselytizing, misogyny and the like, and just marvel at the mountains of stones moved by faith.

This is particularly true for medieval cathedrals where those who started the project did not live to see its completion, with sometimes three generations of stone masons from a family consecutively working on the same building. The grandeur of these churches, their overwhelming size but also their interior beauty surely helped to keep the locals in check, remind them of power relations; but it was also, I strongly believe, testament to deeply felt devotion to a God who deserved beauty and sacrifice beyond a sermon on the mount, in the minds of his followers.

It is also true that the church was a patron to the arts for centuries, certainly across the middle ages. During that era religion was integrated into every day life. Its rites, feasts and fasts, in line with the seasonal rhythms, provided the structure of the Catholic existence. Religion flourished through this integration, and ecclesiastical patronage tried to be inspirational to keep it that way  – as well as keep an eye on the artistic output being in line with what was to be taught. These days, of course, religion and life are separate for most people, and the dearth of inspirational art is one of the consequences.

 

There is an exception, though. Music is interwoven with our daily life, and it is astonishing to see how many widely distributed forms of music are inspired by religion and communicating that inspiration. For this week, then, I have picked a number of diverse contemporary, popular musicians for us to listen to, who are deeply grounded in one or another faith tradition.

My first choice is this song by Bob Dylan, since I had just read this article about the exploitation of nuns, who were historically required to serve the church males….

 

 

 

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The Album of Death

The ten days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur give people who are not completely saintlike (those latter automatically inscribed into the Book of Life) or completely wicked (who will be inscribed into the Book of Death) a chance to escape the fate of death next year: by doing a lot of things that convince the scribe to put your name in the right book.

Death, then, is a concept that comes up a lot during the High Holidays, even if well meaning friends had not sent you a -as it turns out- quite moving essay from the New Yorker, when they know you don’t particularly like to read the New Yorker….  https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/questions-for-me-about-dying   

What I like to read, wouldn’t you know it, are analyses that show how the manipulation of what we see or don’t see of death can affect our willingness to support our government’s decisions to go to war. Particularly if they are written by a smart legal scholar from Emory, who – Boston folks take notice -will talk on this topic at a Harvard International and Global History Seminar this Wednesday.

The link below is a short abstract of Mary Dudziak’s paper; the gist of which goes as follows: as long as we are prevented from paying attention to the product of war – dead human bodies – we will allow the restraints on presidential powers to shrivel. Our distance to visible death “helps to produce the profound apathy that characterizes contemporary American war politics. This apathy enables the current legal structure of war authorization: Congress fails to act, and presidents rely on new interpretations of outdated authorizations, or their own constitutional power. Ultimately, I argue, a crucial and unexamined factor in the atrophy of political restraints on presidential power to use military force is the distance between American civilians and the carnage their wars have produced.”

Her paper goes on to show how the US manipulated imagery so that war efforts were supported by the civilian population already during WW II. “Using censored and uncensored World War II casualty photographs, I show the way the very view of war death was managed by the U.S. government for the purpose of maintaining domestic mobilization. Civilians therefore engaged a curated view of death meant to enhance their support for the war effort.”

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3004292#.WXYfKGHPxhM.twitter

One of our nation’s New Year resolutions, then, should be an increased awareness of the multitude of factors that support war mongering. Only if we know the strategies used can we fight them to decrease our spreading of death across the world.

Assuming you have squeamish reactions to the chosen images for today, let’s just say they ain’t images of humans… just a lost doll and some beach jetsam.

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Pride

What a difference some centuries make. For Aristoteles pride was the crown of all virtues. Of course you had to both be and think of yourself worthy of great things (otherwise you were simply vain.) For the next millennia we see the opposite sentiment emerge: pride will be defined as a cardinal sin. I’m not going to waste my limited number of words here on quotations, but if you google Pride and Bible you’ll find 30 some citations popping out of nowhere, all dire warnings of what happens to you if you are proud, pride comes before the fall being the least of it.

We nurture pride in our children, wanting them to be proud of their accomplishments and adding our voice to the chorus of maddeningly proud parents. We relish the pride in our athletes when they pull off yet another incredible feat. We cling to national pride (until we don’t – Germany had the hardest time with Nationalstolz after 1945, not feeling it or certainly not displaying it until some recent soccer championship where all of the sudden flags hung out of every window once again.) Gay pride is the only sentiment strong enough to conquer the centuries of enforced and oppressive shame. And of course, then there are the Marines….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22b3LZIzEoE

And yet we get the Sunday sermon about the mortal sin of pride and the benefits of humility. Don’t get me wrong, I believe humility is an incredibly important characteristic to work on when trying to be a decent social being. But isn’t there something about harping about pride that keeps people lying low within their assigned social strata? A person who is proud feels strong, empowered, capable. That could lead to all kinds of uppity rebellion! Might even lead to questioning the fact that others control your life or questioning the existence of a supreme being that decided you are doomed if you twitch.

And last but not least, we also get the kind of psychology today musings of many a minister who extends the notion of pride to its mirror image: self-pity.  Well, that’s what I am walloping in right now, since I am off for a root canal after three days of despicable pain. Yet another blemish on my questionably immortal soul…..

 

Think of the butterflies as untethered as my fluttering soul will be!

 

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La Villa

The Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe can be found in the north of CDMX next to a number of other older churches and buildings (hence the name “the village.”)

It is a national shrine near the hill where the Madonna of Teypeac is believed to have appeared to a young man, Juan Diego, in December 1531. The Marian apparition was miraculously fluent in Aztec and suggested a church should be built in her honor. The youngster informed the bishop whose documented incredulity I share. So she came to the boy again, and instructed him to pick some roses in winter, which he did, carefully wrapping them in his mantle. When he showed them to the bishop,  Mary’s face and figure had magically imprinted themselves onto the cloth. That’s the gist of the story – the long version is a comedy of errors that would have made Shakespeare proud. I believe she appeared 5 or 6 times, even intercepting the boy when he had to take a detour.

That’s the past. In the presence, 2002 to be precise, Juan Diego was canonized under the name Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin. And the Basilica, replacing the older church in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe which is sinking into the ground, is something to behold. I was not surprised to hear that the world’s third most visited religious site, containing the shrine with his mantle, sees 20 million visitors annually. (The numbers I read for the capacity of the building went from 10.000 to 50.000. Don’t know which number is correct, do know the church is very, very large.)

The building was designed by the same architect who built the phenomenal Museum for Anthropology, Pedro Ramirez Vazquez. He died 4 years ago and was a complicated figure when looking at his politics (details in link below.)

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/06/entertainment/la-et-cm-architect-pedro-ramirez-vazquez-journalist-elena-poniatowska-20130506

The modern structure, almost industrial in shape, dimension and building materials, provides an interesting contrast to the baroque, gold-studded church next to it.

The interior lamps struck me as interesting abstractions of the tale of flowers.

The devotion felt inside, in both old and new church, and the authenticity of faith in the faces of the pilgrims, however, are moving.

Also moving are the walkways (!)  – all four of them – in front of the shrine. It dawned on me that they probably need these things otherwise known from airport corridors to make sure that no-one kneels in front of the tilma for a long time and everyone else is left to wait. But theoretically you could go back and forth gently propelled forward under a piece of cloth that has meaning for millions.

The harshness of the building’s outline is softened by a huge plaza through which you approach the Basilica, filled with the faithful and punctuated by many a young person traversing the extent of the space on their knees.

The space is surrounded by large stations of the cross, which I rather liked in their simple elegance.

A large edifice on the plaza has sort of a theatre where mechanical puppets rotate and play out the meeting between the peasant and the Madonna.  I found the childlike version of the play echoed in the sermons that you can hear hourly in both the old and the new church – the tape-recorded sermon sounds like someone reading a book to 5 year-olds. Voice shifts included.

A separate chapel invites families to bring their children for baptism, and if you are so inclined you can just stand in front of a blessing-distributing priest on a stage, thurible and all, on the plaza.

The old church is still open for visitors, would not want to be in there during the next earthquake, though.

And then there are the vendors –

And a (coincidental?) commentary on it all, located right at the corner of the whole compound….

Here is a link to a documentary trailer about the miracles.

 

 

 

 

 

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Letters and Treatises

The last entry for this week’s proposed reading list suggests yet another topic tied to religion.

The first items of interest are about Muslim identity. The book review below covers a compilation of letters and a treatise on Muslim as Atheist.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/books/review/kareem-abdul-jabbar-letters-to-young-muslim-atheist-muslim.html?emc=edit_bk_20170113&nl=bookreview&nlid=23546060&ref=headline

Reading James Baldwin or Ta-Nehisi Coates we have probably all shared the stirring experience of an elder transmitting their insights, beliefs and warnings to a younger generation. Ghobash’s Letters to a Young Muslim follow that tradition and I look eagerly forward to reading it.

The second of Jabbar’s recommendations, The Atheist Muslim, sounds like a contradiction in terms. Pity the person who inhabits two of the more denigrated identities in this country, Muslim and Atheist…..

Then again, any journey from religion to reason – the subtitle of the book – is worth exploring. Which reminds me of the book of a dear friend and colleague of ours, a treatise which deserves attention.

Peter Steinberger’s The Problem with God – Why Atheists, True Believers, and even Agnostics must all be wrong certainly had my head spinning when I first read it.  I leave our dinner table conversations to your imagination…..

Book

While I finish today’s writing I am, for the first time in 36 years, rueing the decision to have come to this country. The House vote on the ACA repeal has left me – literally – in tears. Maybe I need to write on issues of (a)morality next week. Or maybe on good places to move to. Or maybe I have to do something completely, utterly distracting from a politic landscape that gives me the shivers. I have the weekend to think about it……..

 

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