The Progeny of Death

Bleeding from wounds imposed in the dark,

Barely a world to last her a life,

Hippocrates vanquished by silver so stark

Now lapping and drooling ‘ere morning comes wife.

"Crypt for a crib" screams the unblemished eye,

Speaking out silence lost upon men,

Spitfire and vitriol’s imminence nigh

Fruitfulness flushed from the rosewater fen.

Where could it be,

The bare wooden tree,

If but not to deny,

Its own progeny?

Fair as the Moon - The Reveal of God's Feminitiy in Natural Beauty

What do Valentine's Day and a full moon have to do with one another?  Not much at first glance.  Sure, many abundantly amorous lovers will be basking in the moonlight tonight while looking into one another eyes, or whispering sweet-nothings into one another ears, but it simply means that that white pearl in the sky will be more the backdrop for their own stage rather than an element of the stage in which their love takes place. 

 Tonight as I gazed at the moon on this Valentine's Night, my mind dwelled little on the candy hearts, flowery smells, or the syrupy love of highschool sweethearts  - yet I felt that a different kind of love was not far away.  This love hides itself well and there is a sense that it is something like the deepest love, yet always readily imperceptible, as if it were an ocean trench but viewed from the very top, so that one has practically no grasp of its depth or secrets but intuitively knows that they are both there in plenty.  This love is in marked contrast to the "love" that is the little shell lying at the top of the trench safe, content, but fooling itself in its own sense of depth.  Instead of looking down it looks up through the mere 20 feet of water and says "look how deep I've gone!" failing to notice the trench at its side - perhaps more from fear than from ignorance.

 But if this post were to examine the shortcomings of the societal notions of "love" I would unfortunately not have the time or space to contain it all here.  Yet I feel myself still very much enthused with the idea of a Valentine's Day and all that comes with it - even with some of its flowery fakeness.  Valentine's Day may be overdone but that is because it rightly deserves to be enthusiastic, a celebration of butterflies-in-stomach's and puppy love's - at its heart a love affair with the feelings of love itself.

 However, when we go past the feelings I think we find that there is a Feeling beneath all feelings - a feeling yet not a feeling.  Perhaps a completed feeling content in and of itself without the longing that typical feelings contain.  It is in this Feeling that we can dwell and rest.

 There are many that are not a stranger to this Feeling and if we were to discuss this Feeling of feelings and all it contains we could again go on forever - so tonight I would rather muse on that Feeling in a particular way that struck me on this Valentine's Night - the beauty of the moon.

 As I gazed at the full moon, its brightness a reflection of it's cosmic companion the sun's own light I felt like I was looking down my own ocean trench.  In a way it is difficult - I wanted to jump and see the rest but I had no time or way of doing so.  And yet it is also completely satisfying even if in just a very small way.

 
Really what I was thinking as I gazed at that beauty of the night sky, her halo aura shed around her and lighting the stratus clouds as they quickly skitted in and out of her gaze, was where we find God.  Except my mind was not on Him, persay, but on Her. 

 
As a Christian I have learnt that God is both male and female. But whereas the masculinity of God's story continued, indeed dominated all I learned, I couldn't help but ask where God's femininity went to.  I am happy to say as a Catholic that it went in many ways to the Blessed Mother, but I still had to ask "where is She - God as a female?"  It is something that I have recently pondered, and think I may have cast my gaze upon it tonight as I searched the heavens.

 
When we think of God in nature we often thank God for all the beauty he has made, which is certainly well and good.  Yet if we look I think we see God peeking out at us from behind the curtain of the forest, rather than God looking down on it from above.  And I think that what looks out is a woman.

 
According to the Bible, a woman was the ultimate in God's design.  If you don't believe me go and look – she is the crown of creation, the last and final piece of God's handiwork - handiwork that arranges itself from the least to the most complex.  Although most men would not deny that we find women complex, we could perhaps better define our feelings towards women with the word "mystery."  Mystery, the call of the unknown - that is what so deeply captivates us.

 
And it is exactly what we find when we gaze out from the peak of a mountain, surrounded by the green velvet of endless forest, or when we find ourselves enveloped in the gale of the rain storm and instead of resistance to its clinging wetness we choose to exist captured and defenseless within it – that is when we discover its rapture.

The beauty of a mountain will also call a man to action – he will climb the mountain – and that is where we find masculinity in nature.  We find it in the toil and the struggle of plowing the earth on a hot summer’s day, or in the challenge of scaling a rock wall.  In the end it reveals a beauty that we long to see – just as a woman calls a man to see her own beauty, and in doing so he must rise to the challenge and accept the struggle of turning himself from a boy into a man for her, the toil in the dirt will give rise to the beauty of the fruit and flower which springs from the earth.

I love the moon, perhaps over all nature, because for me it conveys these messages with overbearing witness to the feminine beauty of nature.  It is rare the moon reveals itself in her entirety.  Rather to witness her full beauty we must patiently wait for her, as she reveals more and more of herself, although only little by little, each night.  And speaking of night, her radiance shines most brightly in it, a guide in the darkness, yet more gentle than that of the sun, which hurts to look at.  She surrounds herself with the mystery and the unknowns of the night, which makes us captivated by her.  In waiting for her to reveal her beauty we are disciplining ourselves, until the final moment when we have earned her permission to look upon her in all her glory.

When I think of the legend of the werewolf, I immediately think of a love story, albeit a love story gone wrong, between man and woman.  When the moon, the woman, finally reveals herself in her fullest beauty, the werewolf, traditionally portrayed as a man, is consumed and allows himself to be perverted, changing into a monstrous beast and overtaken by purely instinctual desire.  Unfortunately most men have an experience of falling to this beast, myself included.  But the legend of the werewolf shows what happens when men do not make themselves ready for a woman’s true beauty – they instead take advantage of the beauty by turning to lustful desires.

This is just a hunch, but I think that the lust of a man, or rather the lust of mankind as a whole, could benefit from regular trips into nature.  As we journey through nature, whether on a hike or even just contemplating nature from afar, we are gazing into God’s feminine beauty.  If we perhaps let our earthly desires be led towards Mother Earth, as God within nature, both as males and as females, we would almost certainly find that She, the one behind it all, is what we are truly looking for.

God made the whole earth to lay witness not just to His power of creation but to Herself as that which lives in it.  And so, while others were sitting down to romantic dinners and celebrating Valentine’s Day with their lover’s, I did not envy them in knowing that I was spending the night with mine – and what a beauty She is.  

Spiral Paths

It should not come as a surprise that sometimes setting out on a particular path will lead to very different results than that which was intended.  This may very well even lead someone in the direction that was the opposite of which they thought they were supposed to travel.  How many times do we set out trying to accomplish something only to encounter divergences along the way that draw our attention elsewhere?  And how many times do these lead to something more satisfying than that which we set out to obtain in the first place?

If you read the stories of two women, St. Faustina and Karen Armstrong, whose relationship and experiences may be curiously considered either as entirely contrary or stunningly complementary, you will find two people who share the joy and burden of each leading their own disparate paths.  For those not familiar, St. Maria Faustina Kowalska was a nun who is responsible for the dispensation of the teachings of Divine Mercy, due to her mystical visions of Christ in which she received various messages from Jesus on the extent of his mercy and how she should be the dispenser of his message.  She was born as Helen Kowalska on August 25th 1905 in the village of Glogowiec in Poland.  Hearing a spiritual call from the Lord within her as early as 7 years of age, it is no surprise that she later joined a convent.  However, she initially spurned the callings she felt within herself, prompting her to envision the suffering Christ and hear "How long shall I put up with you and how long shall you keep putting me off?" Eventually she announced her decision to join a convent.  However, shortly after entering, just before 20 years of age, she felt she was in the wrong place and wanted to go to a convent that focused more on prayer and contemplation.  Yet she heard Christ's call to remain where she was and ended up facing many challenges but receiving many joys, leading to her Sainthood at the turn of the century.

Karen Armstrong was likewise a nun - at least for a time (seven years to be exact).  Today she is the established author of many books, all dealing mainly with religion.  She was the initial opposite of Helen Kowalska - at approximately the age of seventeen she longed to enter a convent in order to delve into the mystery of God, yet having no prior mystical experience.  As she lived in the convent she was also educated at Oxford, and, besides her studies of theology, also studied English.  But instead of the spiritually imbued life she thought she would encounter, she instead lost her spiritual vivacity.  This was largely due to her experience of the lifestyle of the Catholic female religious and her interactions with her superiors.  She ended up leaving the convent and became an atheist, until later when she again enkindled her passion for the spiritual, this time, however, through other religions and not as a Catholic.

Why do I write about these two persons, who shared much but who ultimately were lead to different paths?  It is probably because what struck me most was how similar their initial circumstances were and yet how differently they thought about and took to what was happening around them.  And what I ultimately saw was how different people are and why it is necessary to understand these differences.  I set out reading St. Faustina's Diary looking for relatability and a naïve desire for a how-to to encounter the Divine. Initially I expected to relate well to whatever St. Faustina had to say - but in the end found myself more and more frustrated.  This was especially difficult for me since I believe that the words St. Faustina received were from Jesus himself and that therefore I could not relate to what Jesus was saying, but instead felt more spiritually divergent from him than before.

On the other side I found myself often relating well to Karen's experiences, even including her atheistic approaches at times.  In fact, I feel that her writings have helped me to understand myself better than perhaps almost any other writings I have ever read.

Unfortunately I cannot write out how this is so all here on this blog as it would take much too long.  However I can say a little.  One thing is that I did find St. Faustina relatable at times and for that I am very grateful.  This however, often came when she was discussing her feelings of rejection from God when she initially became a nun.  Other times it was her descriptions of her frustration with her superiors who did not listen to her or believe her or who belittled her.  Later, however, I felt more alienated from her.  If I am honest I can accept that this is because I am certainly no saint and therefore am not yet able to relate or am even jealous of those who I perceive as having a higher level of spirituality than I.  Therefore it is also because her actions later on, and those that lead her deeper into the Divine experience encompassed that which I have often desired but which I rarely find myself capable of.  These are also incidentally the same types of circumstances and experiences which Karen Armstrong found herself so upset with.

To give an example, often in the convent it is expected that one remain silent during certain periods, attend prayer regularly, and be completely obedient to superiors.  Although this is also the case today, before Vatican II it could be said that there were stricter standards, although this of course varied and still varies amongst different convents.  However, as a nun Karen found herself repeatedly walled by this lifestyle.  Often her mind raced during prayer and she could not find any still moments.  Her superiors belittled her and did not sincerely admonish her intelligent queries or comments.  They also ignored her fainting problems and instead scolded her for them.  St. Faustina encountered similar challenges as she lead a very similar lifestyle; yet in the end she found solace in the silence.  Both during St. Faustina's and Karen's time in the convent there was a stigma of forming close friendships or favoring one person over another.  This left Karen cold and hard while it developed St. Faustina wonderfully by focusing her attention on Christ. Despite their similar circumstances, and with Karen having had such a strong desire to be a nun that she kept with it for seven years, she ultimately left the convent exhausted, secularly awkward, and more spiritually drained than ever.  Yet with much the same conditions St. Faustina was gifted with deeper spirituality, more visions, and such intense yearnings and mystical desires for Christ that she ended up eventually being canonized by Pope John Paul II in November. 

After her period of being a nun, Armstrong had difficulties fitting into secular culture.  She continued studying at Oxford, yet became more and more disillusioned with the idea of being a professor, her previous number one objective.  She experienced "visions" of a horrible nature that lead her to see the world in an almost ghastly appearance and even had to spend a very short amount of time in an insane asylum until the true culprit was revealed; her condition of temporal lobe epilepsy.  She later joined a film crew, surveying holy spots in the Middle East and narrating documentaries designed to put a debunking spotlight on religious beliefs.  Yet as she continued to study religion she grew more empathetic to the way in which religion is practiced and demonstrated among its practitioners.  She eventually ended up finding a spiritually fulfilling devotion to the study of theology and religious texts and revitalized her feelings and compassion for others.  And she concludes that this is the real mystical reality for her and many others.  It is not in the visions she originally sought because she realizes in many ways that God cannot be contained by visions.  In fact she goes on to allude to God as a sort of Nothingness, similar to Buddhist thought, because the Divine cannot be contained in any one way.  Her mystical experience lies then in glimpses of the Divine after patiently waiting and working with a religious text. 

It is interesting to note that in at least one point in St. Faustina's Diary that Jesus responds to a question she has by telling her to let those who are wise worry about it.  Instead he tells her to remain in her simplicity because it is exactly in her simplicity that she is most beautiful and suited for him.  Compare this to the fact that although Armstrong's intelligence was one of the primary factors for leaving the convent, she finally came back to religion through it.

It seems to me that God often leads us on a spiral path as Karen Armstrong's book The Spiral Staircase: My Journey Out of Darkness often iterates throughout the major points of her life.  Because of this we are constantly turning, forced to find alternatives, and are often not suited for others' paths.  Karen makes a major point that a lot of the problems and frustrations she encountered were in desiring another person's way of living.  Likewise Christ admonishes St. Faustina and instructs her in her simplicity.  Yet he guides both of them in learning how to be themselves, although ultimately this leads in some respects to very different results.  In the end, though, it seems that if we are true to ourselves that we will end up exactly where God intended us to be in the first place.  Often the only way we can do this is through heartache and stumbling so that we can first find out who we are not.  Afterwards we can eliminate these factors and brush them away to reveal the true gem of our being beneath, which we previously had not been able to see before. 

Farm of Peace and Sufi Dhikr Circle

As-salam alaykum!  A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit the Farm of Peace, located in south-central Pennsylvania in Warfordsburg, PA.  The farm is also accompanied by a retreat center, both of which ally themselves with a Sufi religious framework.  Although having had previous encounters with Sufism this was my first time visiting a farm that had a Sufi background, or the first time visiting a farm with an Islamic background for that matter.

For those not in the know, Sufism is a branch of Islam the name of which derives itself from coarse woolen garments that early followers wore.  These seekers of God inhabit the more mystical realms of Islam, striving a more direct experience with God as a tangible reality in the here and now as opposed to merely waiting to see God after death.  This can be observed in ritual practices such as the dhikr which I will describe later.

The Farm of Peace sits in a small valley, the entrance of which is found in the navigation of a long gravel road.  This in turn leads into one's first view of the farm which consists of large sheep pastures and a holding pen where the sheep are humanely slaughtered.  I was told that the total herd consisted of around 50 and that recently a handful were prepared for the Eid al-Fitr, a fast-breaking celebration commemorating the end of the spiritually and physically challenging Ramadan season.  Sitting behind the pastures are the vegetable fields and a small cohort of young broiler chickens.  The fields, which comprised a few acres, were flourishing with a variety of different vegetables and the chickens were kept in a pen that gave them access to grass and fresh air.

 

 

 

Some photos of the Farm of Peace

 



My contact for the Farm of Peace, Halima, along with her husband Jesse, co-manage the farm which functions as Community Supported Agriculture, or a CSA, in which shares of produce are distributed among members who buy their share all at once at the beginning of the season as opposed to the purchasing of individual produce items.  Although having only worked at the farm for a few years, Halima and Jesse seemed very knowledgeable about the requirements and proper care of the farm as was evidenced by their lush fields and healthy looking animals.  Halima, however, shared her lesson of the need for patience while working in an agricultural setting, using the example of the asparagus plant which she had needed to wait from the beginning of her time at the farm until now simply to see it in its final stages of growth.

Later I was able to join in the dhikr, which functions primarily as a "remembrance" of God.  Participants join together in a circle and repeatedly chant a series of phrases that allow one to more deeply center one's self in this form of remembrance.  The idea is that one passes through the physical "world" into the spiritual and thus comes into closer contact with the Almighty.  Although many phrases are used the one that stuck in my mind and which seemed to be used the most was lā ilāha illa ʾllāh, which means “there is no god but God.” Below I have posted a video from youtube that sounds somewhat like what I heard at the dhikr that I attended.

A key difference between the dhikr that I attended and that of one I attended at a Sufi mosque a year earlier was that in my previous experience it was only the men who formed a circle while the woman stood off to the side.  However, in both genders, and in my recent experience as well, participants swayed back and forth to the chanting with the climax of each movement punctuated by a particular syllable in the chant.

 

The meditation room where the dhikr took place.

 



Overall this provides for, at the very least, a surreal experience in which the chanting and accompanying movements may imbibe themselves in one's mind, thus setting a clear focus and rhythm that becomes a replacement for stray thoughts.  This results in the meditative experience, although I admit that in regards to the immersing of my own mind, I did not seem to enter into any deeper states of consciousness or even produce a sufficiently tranquil state of mind.  Yet I did feel somewhat more centered and as if my head was cleared - the need to thus worry about other perceived concerns was not as strong afterward since those concerns had henceforth decided that they needn't worry me so much for the time being.  Part of me also felt a little awkward and uncomfortable since this was my first time in a new place and therefore those factors also weighed in upon my mental state.

One thing I always find important when dealing with other religions is deciding whether to participate in certain rituals, practices, or other religious activities or whether to simply observe.  It is not always an easy decision and during the dhikr I wondered if I may not have made a mistake when prayers to Muhammad, peace be upon him, were chanted, my own background being Christian.  When attempting to navigate interreligious terrain I feel that one must have a sound understanding of both their own and the other parties beliefs in order to make a weighted decision as to their level of engagement with the other party's beliefs and customs.  If one is not careful they may find themselves engaging in something which they do not truly believe in and thus debase their own beliefs and that of the other.  And yet I think it is important that we push our religious limits and put ourselves into uncomfortable positions in order to remove our biases and gain a greater understanding of other traditions based on an actual spiritual experience of them instead of simply theorizing, in terms of words and concepts, what our relationship to them is.  This is not easy and I feel that I am still very much in the learning process when to act in or when to be able to sit back and watch.  But perhaps if more people joined in there would be less talking and a deeper striving to understand from an inner viewpoint rather than an outer one.

A Greener Religion

Hello again!  Unfortunately I have been very busy and have had trouble attending to this blog.  However, I'd like to let it be known that I am still committed to working on it and keeping it updated.  I am currently trying to arrange a visit to the Sufi farm I discussed earlier but in the meantime I just wanted to update with a post on what it means to better integrate one's spirituality/religion with nature and why that is important.

It has been my experience that, although the green movement now seems to be in full swing - a legitimately exciting and hopeful prospect for our children and future generations - there does not seem to be a strong tie between this movement and institutional religion.  Rather, much of it is associated with those who fall under a secular or "SBNR" (spiritual but not religious) category that seems to go hand in hand an unassailable desire for social change, stronger liberal values, increased environmental awareness, and a return to increased diversity in purchasing local and fairly acquired goods.  Perhaps because of the green movement's connection with this demographic traditional religious institutions, often upholding conservative values,  have been wary of embracing or even exploring the ideas thus contained by what may appear to them as that which is supported by a young liberal agenda or "hippies."

This, I think, is a big mistake on the part of most religious organizations and one which needs to be rectified as soon as possible.  One reason being the spiritual significance of nature and what it does for us as humans; not to mention what it asks of us in return.  Often times, as a Christian, I have noticed many firm objectives to work on behalf of the poor through various church-allied volunteer services or other means offered through church.  I have also seen these types of programs offered by other religions.  These programs are great and I am by no means deriding them.  They fulfill what is often (or what should often be) a primary purpose of what many people attest to is a principle foundation of their religious beliefs, which is compassionate care of one's neighbor.  However they are often focused on contributing only a very particular set of services.   And so when I realize that this is all the church or another religious institution offers I become disappointed and can see why many find religious institutions so unfulfilling. 

By limiting their outreach to canned food drives (which, should be mentioned are, usually unhealthy processed foods that can lead to health problems), brief mission trips, and volunteer options that engage only a small part of an overall congregation, religious institutions usually miss the mark when it comes to engaging their overall communities.  Then, when people leave or when they do not contribute, they are usually labeled as "secular" or "worldly" and quickly forgotten.

But what if there were programs to engage a wide variety of people's skills and interests?  Programs that could help build community and foster relationships with people who are members of that community?  And programs which are progressive in the sense that they take the best parts of modernization and apply it to deeply held spiritual values?  Now, let's look at one of those areas - that which in the last century we have desperately tried to disconnect ourselves from - the realm of nature, of homegrown food, and of adequate nutrition.

It has been boggling to me why religious institutions have not pushed for greater reform in the area of green and local food, along with increased environmental concern.  For one thing, these areas are intimately connected with concerns of social justice.  Every part of our physical being depends upon what we give unto, and thus receive in return from, nature.    When we allow massive corporations, such as Monsanto, to take advantage of local populations by creating plants whose seed does not germinate or when we think it is okay for poor populations to live off of cheap fast food we are ignoring a vital problem of modern society and thus not living out the beliefs which we hold closest to us.  Of course, often times I will hear a call for greater awareness of the environment from clergy or religious establishments but only rarely is this truly backed up by a strategic plan of action.

What we need are religious institutions who are willing to build community gardens or greenhouses with which they can provide nutritious food for the poor.  We need religious models that can take an active role in preserving nature through education and through explaining the fact that we must serve the earth if we are to receive from it.  And we must learn to support more local ventures so that we can be more deeply connected as a community and foster awareness of each other. This will, in turn, lead to more personal relations that will prevent fear of the unknown when seen in the other and thus prevent alienation and hostility.

Of course, while saying all this, I also realize the hardships many institutions would face in trying to accomplish these goals.  There are financial concerns and logistical problems that many institutions may not be even ready to begin with, considering most are already charitable organizations in some shape or form.  Yet, I think it would not be too much to ask for them to try or become more aware of other areas in which they can meet with the modern outside world in forming new ideas that connect with people's deeply held interests, the secular and religious alike.

And yet, even while saying all this, I realize my own shortcomings in this area.  Often times I will opt for some fast food instead of bothering to take the time to prepare a full meal.  Or I will ignore someone I am working in the field with instead of working to foster a better relationship with them because I am more interested in what is going on in my own mind.  But at least what I can say for myself is that I am working toward being better and that a large part of that is realizing just how much we who are religious should be learning from the "hippies" in giving back to a Mother Earth that we believe has been given to us a divine gift and which we ought to know has only given its rewards to us ever since.

St. Ann's Byzantine Catholic Church

As I mentioned in last week's post, this weekend I was able to visit St. Ann's Byzantine Catholic Church in Harrisburg, PA in order to observe a service of the eastern Catholic church.  The first thing you recognize about the church is its difference in style from the typical Roman Catholic church.  The top of the church is adorned with golden, rounded steeples with Byzantine crosses, which are construed with two totally horizontal bars at the top and one diagonal one at the bottom.  The top bar, which is the shortest, represents the INRI label on Christ's cross while the bottom represents the footrest.  I was also told by a friend I went with who is a member of the church that the raised right side of the bottom bar indicates the good thief on Jesus' right during the crucifixion who went to Heaven.  The lowered part represents the other thief's departure into Hell due to his unbelief and criticism of Christ.  Inside there are also many more icons, or religious imagery of particular persons venerated by the church.  There were no stain glass windows, although I was told that it is common for Byzantine Catholic churches to have stain glass windows like the Roman Catholic churches.
 
At the front of the church the sanctuary is separated by a wooden icon screen or iconostasis that consists of three doors: the Royal Doors in the center, the Deacon's Door on the south side and the server's door on the north.  It is decorated with Jesus, the Theotokos, or the word used to venerate Mary as the mother of Christ, and the saints.  Although some may construe the icon screen as something designed to keep the congregation separate from the priest and from God, it can be defined more fittingly as a link between where heaven and earth meet.  Additionally, when the priest leaves the area of the altar and passes through icon screen, he often turns in the same direction of the congregation (east) in order to address God positioned within the sanctuary area (Roccasalvo, 1992: pg. 21-22).  There is also a tetrapod before the sanctuary area where an icon is placed so that it may be kissed, and which, during feast days, holds the icon of the Saint whose feast day he or she is being venerated by.

Although the Byzantine Catholics do not use musical instruments during their services, they have hymns that are sung throughout most of the Liturgy.  These vocal melodies are used for many responses and prayers and even the Gospel is chanted by the priest, a difference from the Roman Catholic church where it is simply read in a normal voice.  A few of the hymns are sung in Slavonic, which is to the Byzantine Catholic Church what the Latin language is to the Roman Catholic church, and the alphabet of which was developed by St. Cyril and St Methodius.  Another difference is the more frequent use of incense and the more continual use of body praising, which consists of bowing and the sign of the cross.  And whereas the sign of the cross in the Roman Catholic church goes from left to right across the chest, in the Byzantine Church it goes from right to left.  Overall, it seems that these additional features strive to draw the physical into the spiritual through the stimulation of our senses in order to make one become more aware of the sacredness of what is going on around them.

(Image taken from St. Ann's homepage)

Other differences include the Byzantine Catholic church's stronger history of hesychastic spirituality or hesychasm which comes from the Greek, hesychia, meaning quiet.  This form of contemplative prayer was the way of the early Christian monks who lived an ascetic lifestyle in the desert.  It consists of an aphophatic position in relation to God which derives from the Greek, apo, having a negative connotation, and phemi, to affirm.  Thus it is an "attitude of mind which refuses to form concepts of God."  In some ways this is very similar to Buddhist thought, and especially Zen Buddhism, which refuses to form conceptual images of enlightenment and instead seeks to experience it for one's self in order to affirm and understand it.  On the other hand is cataphatic spirituality which affirms God through what it finds as perfection in the created world (Roccasalvo, 1992: pg. 16-17).

I enjoyed the Byzantine Catholic Liturgy and its more rhythmic pace very much.  The whole Liturgy is very beautiful, from all the beautiful art adorning the walls and ceilings of the church to the smell of the incense and the sounds of the unanimously sung hymns.  In two weeks I will be going back to a Slavic festival held there which I can't wait for.  At that point I also hope to update with more pictures of the beautiful artwork of the church.

There was a funny story after leaving the church with the friends I had visited there to go to a local diner.  One of their daughters found a snapping turtle under their car which I and my friend's husband wrangled out from beneath of.  We threw it into my car and went to find a nice creek for it to dwell in.

Once we had stopped by our prospect creek  my friend's husband took the snapping turtle out of the back of my car and proceeded toward the water source.  At this moment a man in a red pickup came by honking his horn. He went slightly past me and on the back of his car I could see an image of a figure peeing on the letters PETA.  As you may be able to guess by now, he wanted to consume the turtle we had just hoped to save.  We ended up leaving the turtle on the other side of the guard rail near the creek and kindly told him that he could be the one to get it if he wanted to, which he promptly did after we drove off.  More irony is accrued from this experience given the fact that I was talking about eating turtles as we were driving toward the creek.

To many this may perhaps seem an unfortunate occurrence.  However, when we consider in what way this man was acquiring his food, naturally from the environment around him, and the fact that he would probably be slaughtering it himself, we should remember that for those of us who buy meat from commercial farms, we are even more to blame than we might this man.  Although we may feel pity for the snapping turtle we may not harbor the same feelings for the chickens and cows that we eat almost every day, and even though they live in even worse conditions than this turtle must have in order to provide us with food.  Furthermore, if this man was poor, this would have certainly been a valued find for him.  Perhaps that day it was more important to provide a man with a meal than to save a turtle who had regardless lived a healthy life in a natural environment.

Next week I am hoping to journey to a farm which is also associated with a Sufi Retreat Center.  I hope to learn more about the contemplative Sufi tradition and the practice of Dhikr, which I understand to be a meditative religious exercise.

Peace be with you,
Matt

Update on Future Excursions

One of my top priorities for this blog is to make it as diverse as possible with all different religions getting an equal representation.  Unfortunately this is difficult due to the small amount of religious places of worship and congregations other than Christian churches in the area that I am currently living in.  Also, some of my attempts to visit certain places has failed due to unforeseen circumstances.  However, I would like to update by saying that while next week I am visiting another Christian institution, a Byzantine Catholic church, I plan to visit an Islamic Dhikr the week after, and that I have other places in mind for after that and which I am in the process of setting up visits to.  Because of the difficulty and time required in setting these visits up and traveling there, you can expect to see a Christian visit posted about every other week and a non-Christian visit posted on the complementary weeks.  However, I will try my best to also post about other religions through other ways, as well, such as commenting on or reviewing books I have read that deal with another religious tradition.