To Be

Is to be, to be alone?
Is to feel, to feel pain?
Is to want, to want answers?
Is to know, to know doubt?

Is to be, to be together?
Is to feel, to feel love?
Is to want, to want laughter?
Is to know, to know faith?





Picture:
http://pixabay.com/en/traenendes-heart-plant-red-22334/

Religion, Media and Culture

In her article Religious Sensations: media, aesthetics, and the study of contemporary religion (2012) Birgit Meyer discusses how the aesthetics of mediated religion affect the way people experience religion. She posits that the growing trend in charismatic Pentecostalism is due to the fact that they "not only generate but also heat up and intensify religious feelings" through an immediate connection to the Holy Spirit.  She states that the "phenomenological reality of religious experience is grounded in bodily sensations" which "evoke and perpetuate shared experiences, emotions, and affects that are anchored in a taken-for-granted sense of self and community". 

This clip from the 2006 documentary Jesus Camp shows how ritual charismatic services encourage an experiential connection with the Holy Spirit. Pastor Becky Fisher talks about how 'usable' children are in Christianity because they are so open. I think her success in converting children to Pentecostal christianity is related to what Meyer talks about in her article. In her sermons Fisher makes the children feel guilty for not believing enough or for reading Harry Potter before the ritual of speaking in tongues begins. The children are so emotional by this point that many of them end up crying, prostrate on the floor, filled with the Holy Spirit. 

Sources:

Jesus Camp. Dirs. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. Loki Films. 2006.

Meyer, Birgit. "Religious Sensations: Media, aesthetics, and the study of contemporary religion." Religion, Media and Culture. Ed. Gordon Lynch and Jolyon Mitchell. New York, 2012.

Collective Poem

Nestled in the clover, sleeping, dreaming,

A tangle of bodies, sharing,

soft and gentle, resting, playing.

Friendship forever found in a brother,

dreaming, sharing, love, forever.

Reflection: "Once Upon a Time"

   In her collection of fairy tales Angela Carter says that "the content of the fairy tale may record the real lives of the anonymous poor with sometimes uncomfortable fidelity - the poverty, the hunger, the shaky family relationships, the all-pervasive cruelty and also, sometimes, the good humour, the vigour, the straightforward consolations of a warm fire and a full belly" and that "for most of human history, 'literature', both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written - heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labour created our world". Fairy tales not only connect us with the people who helped create the stories but also with times and experiences throughout our own lives, whether it be a memory of listening to a story as a small child or watching a Disney animated adaptation of famous fairy tales. The countless film and book adaptations of fairy tales surely shows that fairy tales speak to something inside us, something that connects us with people and places of many times.      

         Once upon a time there was a beautiful lake, shielded from the world by a copse of trees; and on this lake there lived two birds who were the best of friends despite being very different. One bird was very brave and dreamt of flying away from all he knew to have adventures and learn about the world outside the lake. His friend wished for nothing more than a quiet and safe life beside the lake. 
          One sunny day the brave bird said farewell to his friend and flew off into the trees that shielded the lake from the unknown. He flew for hours, searching for another lake, but all he saw were tall buildings; he looked for a friendly face, but all other animals he saw were hungry and tired. He searched for so long that by the time the sun went down he had forgotten the way home. He missed his friend and wished he had never left the lake. 
         Months passed and the brave bird became cold, tired and hungry, like those he had seen on his first day away from the lake. He spent every day searching for his lost home and lost friend; he never gave up hope of one day flying through the trees and finding the beautiful lake waiting, exactly as he remembered, to welcome him home. 






Source:

Carter, Angela. Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales. London: Virago Press, 2010.

Images: 

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1215912

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1336944

Reflection: The Idea of the Holy

Although I have never as intense an experience as Otto describes in his book I think the same kind of spiritual awareness can come from non-religious experiences and objects. Appreciating the beauty of nature, art, music and literature can awaken something inside us that cannot be explained. Having played in an orchestra for many years my idea of a shared spiritual connection is the joy that can be felt during a piece of music both within the orchestra and the audience. I was always taught that the longer an audience held off applauding the more they felt during the music, and I have always found this to be true. In the few seconds silence between the last note and the first clap the music echoes through and there seems to be a collective sigh throughout the room.  

In his novel Starbook (2007) Ben Okri gives a description of the reaction to a statue in an African tribe. I think the emotions he evokes and describes echo the sentiments Otto refers to in his book:    

         "The whole tribe was troubled by the new revelation in the square: the great wooden sculpture of three men and a woman bound together by chains at the ankles, in positions of intolerable lamentation and humiliation, and yet rendered with stoic dignity, as if gods had been made the slaves of fools...
            So profound was its effect that this sculpture seemed to come alive, seemed to appear in the midst of those who talked about it. Words seemed to make it materialise. Slowly, quickly, suddenly, the sculpture was everywhere, in the tribe's mind, in their dreams, in the work, in their play. The sculpture accompanied and haunted their every activity, like a spirit desperately trying to draw attention to its reality, or like a dream or nightmare that can't be shaken off...
            The sculpture accused, haunted, frightened, soothed, troubled, perplexed, annoyed, paralysed, trapped and engulfed them. It was like a curse, an anathema. It was stronger in the mind than in reality. To see it at first is to perceive it, to encompass it merely with the eyes. But afterwards its horror and its mystery grows, like a dreadful infection deep in the body where the hands cannot reach. It grows so in the mind, horrible and mighty, and the monstrous sublimity of it is such that those who have seen it do not know what to do with their heads afterwards... The world changes for them. They feel the need to die, or do something awful, or make a long journey, or undertake a great spiritual pilgrimage, or, better still, find the cause of the sculpture, why it came into being, understand what it is saying, and do something about it. 
            But unable to do this the elders began to whisper the unthinkable. They felt the sculpture, in its mysterious power, was becoming so powerful and obsessive and soul-sapping to the tribe that maybe it should be hidden away as a dangerous object, or destroyed, before it destroyed the psychic fabric and spiritual cohesion of the tribe." 




Reference:

Okri, Ben. Starbook. London: Random House, 2007.

Week 1 The Sacred and the Profane

McDannell's article "Scrambling the sacred and the profane" (2012) led me to question the link between religion and capitalism. I agree with McDannell when she states: "if we immediately assume that whenever money is exchanged religion is debased, then we will miss the subtle ways that people create and maintain spiritual ideals through the exchange of goods and the construction of spaces".

The emergence of evangelical and charismatic Pentecostal 'megachurches', particularly in the USA, could be an example of the creation and maintenance of spiritual ideals. People are expected to give money to the church and in some of the larger congregations they give away cars and other gifts along with spiritual gratification.

Despite the scepticism that these churches face from their critics attendees seem to genuinely find spiritual awakening and comfort from them.

Source:
McDannell, Colleen. "Scrambling the sacred and the profane." Lynch, Gordon, Jolyon Mitchell and Anna Strhan. Religion, Media and Culture: A Reader. Oxon: Routledge, 2012.

Secular Religion

I recently read Alain de Botton's latest book, "Religion for Atheists" and did not find it quite as 'inspiring' as Amazon.com assured me I would. The main tag-line for the book, "even if religion isn't true, can't we enjoy the best bits?", sums up de Botton's main argument. As an atheist he begins with the presupposition that the supernatural elements of religion are false but argues that some religious ideas and rituals would be useful in secular society.

He believes that the moral ideas and community spirit that religion offers should be adopted into secular society. Some of his ideas include Agape restaurants, a day of atonement, and the reinstatement of the Feast of Fools (an annual week of debauchery to make it easier to stay faithful to your partner).

While I think that de Botton makes some compelling arguments for adopting religious rites in secular society I feel that he is making a mistake in rejecting the supernatural from the start. The spirituality that emerges from the supernatural, being able to feel something beyond the secular world, being part of a spiritual community as well as a moral one is important for a person's well-being.

Spirituality is more than just communing with a higher power; I think it would be hard to adopt religious rituals and ideas into society without being able to feel what they mean spiritually. People are not compassionate or  forgiving or social because they have to be according to society's laws; they are because they feel something that compels them to act, a communal spirituality.

Reference:

de Botton, Alain. (2012).Religion for Atheists: A non-believers Guide to the Uses of Religion. Switzerland: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.