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Faiths
and Beliefs
a
column by Vern Barnet every Wednesday in
the FYI section of the Kansas City Star,
[printed
and Star web versions versions and versions here may vary]
copyright
The
Kansas City Star.
487. 031231 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Sacred memories can't be digitized
The hunger we have in our digitized world for the sacred is unsatisfied.
The divine feast is always ready, though petty distractions often keep
us from taking a place at the table. Yet there are moments when even a
whiff of the holy meal sustains and nourishes. Here are several that blessed
me this year.
* Actually I caught quite a few whiffs of the desire many
Kansas City Muslims and Jews have to affirm their kinship, sometimes with
the support and participation of Christian friends. Bruce Fieler, author
of Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths, came to town, and the
astonishing turnout for him was a pretty strong whiff. Young people in
an interfaith group are now exploring each other's traditions, and lay
people are taking the initiative in a variety of ways to build understanding.
* With Kansas City Hindu friends mourning the death of
Pandurang Athavale this year, I realize how well I was nourished by the
spiritual banquet of meeting him for the first time in India in 1986. (Two
years later he won the Gandhi Prize, and in 1997, he was recognized with
the million-dollar Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.) For his life's
work he took no salary, developed no formal organization, constructed no
monuments, required no rituals and claimed no authority. But he created
a movement that the United Nations has called "one of the most significant
developments in the world."
The key practice he promoted is called swadhyaya, self-study.
But his conception of the self was social; understanding ourselves springs
from understanding others; and as we understand others better, we come
to see our own true nature. He taught that "to be is to be related." This
means listening well to others is a spiritual opportunity which begets
service to them as a way of growing one's own faith. His uniting of Asian
and Western methods is itself inspiring evidence of such listening.
* The Kansas City Interfaith Council recognized Congressman
Dennis Moore (Kansas Third District) "for his leadership in the community
and Congress honoring the many paths of faith and the American tradition
of religious freedom" at its 19th annual Thanksgiving Sunday Ritual Meal.
The literal feast at St Andrew Christian Church in Olathe was mirrored
by the spiritual feast of Moore's acceptance remarks.
Ranging from the First Amendment to a poem he wrote for his grandson,
Moore reminded us how precious the right of religious liberty is and how
we as individuals and a community are nourished as we seek its fulfillment.
And you, dear reader, as this year ends, will you take
an undigitized moment to praise yourself for those public and private occasions
when you resisted secular distractions, dined at the sacred table and shared
the endless supply of spiritual food with others?
486. 031224 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Best present saves us from selfishness
Into the strife, into botched efforts at personal and international
peace-making, into the world of tragic misunderstanding and mean power,
into the pit of buying and selling and market indices, is born the Son
of God. This Christian story is often sweetened with candy-canes and other
comforts and distractions to obscure the homeless, the oppressed, the victims
of terror and the violence and injustice we ourselves perpetuate.
The ancient Romans had no difficulty in imagining a mere
mortal becoming a god. The Roman Senate voted to make Caesar a god. What
was amazing to them was the Christian claim that God would leave the realm
of perfection and take upon himself the limits of the human form to suffer
on behalf of others.
I love the silent night, the holy quiet of Christmas.
But we camouflage and cheapen the miracle if we forget Herod's slaughter
of the children of Bethlehem. It is a theme found in other faiths as well.
The Hindu god Krishna had to be hidden at birth to escape the murders of
infants by the king.
Religion is not a giddy excursion into the realm of confection;
it arises from our intimations of the sacred while we struggle with the
uncertainties of this world. The awe the shepherds felt did not relieve
them of their duties but rather placed them in the cosmic story, giving
to their lives a great meaning otherwise absent.
The birth of any child should be an occasion of wonderment.
The event is not a meteor from outer space landing in our laps, but rather
an emergence from amazing processes that govern this world and unfold its
grace. The realm of perfection is not an abode in the sky. It is the openness
of the heart.
So the Christ-child is not the injection of the Word of
God from a transcendent sphere into ours, but the revelation of the power
of love within this realm. It transforms what seems ordinary with the promise
of love's embrace, even though the integrity love demands may lead to crucifixion.
Those of many faiths have made such sacrifice. The Muslim
Sadat. The Jew Rabin. The Hindu Gandhi. The self-immolating Buddhist monks
of Saigon. The Christian Martin Luther King Jr.
And all of us are called to that end metaphorically. Unless
we give ourselves for others, the strife will continue without abatement.
It may seem at times that the path is narrow, but as we travel it, sometimes
trudging, sometimes dancing on the way, we find it widens to all the world,
the world whose every feature is like the child in the manger, a treasure
beyond measure in the most unexpected place.
The joy of Christmas is justified by the presence of the
divine awaiting to save us from our selfishness. In the language of the
tradition, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord."
485. 031217 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Let menorah bring understanding
In the darkness of December, I await this Friday evening when, with
Jewish friends, I will light the first of the candles for the eight-day
Hanukkah festival.
Hanukkah is a minor holiday that has gained disproportionate
attention outside the Jewish faith for several reasons. Christians, less
informed about Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, caught up in seasonal
good-will, want to acknowledge other faiths. Since Hanukkah is observed
around Christmas time, it becomes a convenient way for Christians to honor
Jewish friends.
Jewish families, pulled into the commercialism of the
dominant culture that overwhelm children and all of us sometimes use Hanukkah
to substitute for Christmas.
Some fear this distorts the meaning of Hanukkah.
The holiday is actually a commemoration of the triumph
of religious liberty and the faithfulness of ancient Jews. Antiochus Epiphanes
tried to force religious conformity throughout his empire which included
Israel in the 2nd Century B.C.E. The Temple in Jerusalem was desecrated
and robbed. An idol to Zeus was placed upon the altar and Jews were commanded
to worship it or die.
Judah Maccabee and his brothers of the priestly Hasmonean
family led a tiny force into guerrilla warfare against the great armies
oppressing them. After three bloody years, in 164 B.C.E. they regained
the freedom to worship according to their tradition.
The Temple was cleansed and rededicated. Enough uncontaminated
oil was found to light the temple menorah for only one day, and it would
take more than a week to prepare an additional supply.
Miraculously, according to the Talmud, the single cruse of oil lasted
eight days, until the new supply was ready.
Although Hanukkah is a Jewish tradition, all who love
religious liberty can celebrate its meaning.
Ten years ago in Billings, MT, a Jewish family was observing
Hanukkah, with an image of the menorah displayed. A brick was thrown through
5-year-old Isaac Schnitzer's bedroom window, glass shards strewn on his
bed.
Although only a few dozen Jewish families lived in Billings,
a week later, thousands of homes displayed menorahs. Such displays led
to a Catholic school, a Methodist Church, and Christian homes being vandalized,
but eventually the hate crimes ended. And interfaith understanding blossomed.
Prejudice and religious presumption persist. Whatever
lights we revere in this cold and dark time of the year, may we join together
in igniting the lamps of understanding and good will with our neighbors
of all faiths.
484. 031210 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Prayer for partisans must look to both sides
I was asked to give the invocation at a fund-raising luncheon with Senator
Pat Roberts last April. I immediately said yes because I don't turn down
requests for prayer. But in these contentious times, I didn't know how
I would be able to pray at a partisan function in a non-partisan way, especially
in the context of a war that even then divided Americans.
So I prayed about the prayer.
My job was to voice the aspirations of all those present.
The prayer needed to recognize the occasion and place it in a spiritual
context.
It would violate my spiritual role, my duty to the Sacred,
to pray for the election of any particular person, but I could pray for
alignment with the process of democracy, including subtly honoring Senator
Roberts' responsibility as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
So with a long breath, the prayer began:
"Spirit of Generations, we gather to continue the great
experiment of self-government begun by those visionaries of 1776. We
give thanks for the development of the basic and enduring values and civil
liberties which have guided us through the ending of slavery, the enfranchisement
of women, economic transformations, personal freedoms, inclusion and respect
for every faith and other challenges, and the opportunities we now have
to be a beacon throughout the world, blessed by those who transform intelligence
into wisdom."
With these words I also discharged my duty to acknowledge
the controversy then raging whether the Patriot Act unreasonably curtails
civil liberties.
While I could neither bless nor question the war, I could
pray this in April: "In the midst of tumult and devastation in Iraq, we
give thanks that losses were limited, that those who served so well have
enlarged our affirmation of your sway over all peoples and all nations."
I added references to committees dealing with agriculture,
education and labor on which Senator Roberts serves. And since he is famous
both for his sense of humor and his fanatical support of K-State, I found
a way to combine the two in a light-hearted phrase that gave some relief
to the somber topics.
Dear readers, many of you ask for guidance about how to
offer public prayer. Perhaps seeing my effort helps.
But the chief reason I write about this now is because
I am continuing to pray the last paragraph of that prayer. I hope it is
wide enough for people on both sides of the war debate: "We pray that
misunderstandings between nations and peoples will be healed, that
our own intentions and actions may be purified, and that the holy tussle
of our political struggles may be like the wind unfurling the flag of freedom
in history's march to justice and human dignity everywhere."
483. 031203 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Mystical and modern meet in artist's paintings
Spiritual ideas are everywhere you look at the Marsden Hartley show
now at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. From his early landscapes influenced
by American Transcendentalism to one of his late three portraits of Abraham
Lincoln, which can be likened to Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Hartley's
religious preoccupations unify his work through an astounding variety of
styles.
Hartley himself speculated that he was "probably the first
(painter) to contribute (the) mystical element to the modern movement."
Paintings from 1913 inspired by Kandinsky's essay "On the Spiritual in
Art," include images of the cross, the Buddha, a Hindu mudra, the American
Indian 8-pointed star and symbols suggested by Paracelsus and the Lutheran
theosophist Jakob Boehme.
Hartley had been active in the Episcopalian men's guild
and even considered the ministry. But the closed doors and shut windows
of "The Church at Head Tide, No. 2" suggests that Hartley came to see organized
religion as antiquarian. Resident curator Randall Griffey says Hartley's
rejection of institutionalized faith arose from Emersonian skepticism of
conformity and from Hartley's sense of alienation as he kept his homosexuality
secret.
While "Christ Held by Half-Naked Men," an all-male pieta,
perhaps the most astonishingly overt-even bizarre-religious painting in
the show, was not shown during his life, other paintings with similar hypermasculine
figures were welcomed by the homophobic art world of the 1940s as images
projecting American strength in the context of war, Griffey says. The eight
figures, probably fishermen, recall both Christ as a fisher of men.
The common man is an American theme Hartley explored repeatedly.
In the two paintings called "Fishermen's Last Supper," Hartley mourns the
death at sea of two adults sons of the Farncis Mason family with whom he
had lived by placing them in a biblical context. One of the paintings includes
the words ``mene mene'' from Belshazzar's feast (Daniel 5:25). Griffey
says in this case, as throughout his work, Hartley took the common and
the ordinary and shows them to us with an eternal and cosmic intent.
My favorite painting is "Eight Bells Folly, Memorial for
Hart Crane." The poet and Hartley were friends. Crane's suicide at sea
at age 33, the age at which Christ is thought to have died, is not only
recognized by a shark and the eyes of the already-dead under the sea,
but also transcended with cosmic promise hovering above.
This week-end the Nelson presents poetry, images and music
to explore the times and work of Hartley. Call 816.751.1ART for information.
482. 031126 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Thanksgiving works for all faiths
When I want to gauge my spiritual state, I count the number of times
I say or think uncharitable things about the terrible drivers I encounter
as I travel around town. People sometimes see me as some kind of serene
religious type; but when I'm in the car, it's pretty clear I'm no saint.
The best quick method I've discovered to improve my spiritual
temper is to recall how many reasons there are to be grateful.
It is a practice recommended by every faith. "Thanksgiving
is our way of life," says Kara Hawkins, a teacher of American Indian spirituality.
According to Daryoush Jahanian, Zoroastrian thanksgiving includes gratitude
for "the call to justice." Pagan Caroline Baughman's list includes "herbs,
cooking and healing." Barbara McAtee says that the Baha'i faith teaches
that better than verbal thanks is action that shows "kindness to all creatures."
Giving thanks while driving, and being a little more courteous
myself to the other creatures also behind the wheel, can be an everyday
spiritual exercise.
But the annual Thanksgiving holiday has special meaning
to me because it works for all faiths. It is a holy day owned by no one
religion.
The American Thanksgiving tradition begins with an interfaith
feast between the Indians and the Pilgrims, only half of whom survived
that first harsh winter. It is right for us to honor them.
While our ideals of religious freedom and other liberties
are part of that story, the prejudice that still persists, the slaughter
and oppression of the Indians, the slavery that took centuries to end,
the sexism that kept women from voting for most of our history and other
continuing injustices, should chasten us and renew our resolve to transform
gratitude into wider service to the American vision.
I'm not naming names, but over the past quarter century
I've come to give thanks for many religious leaders, clergy and lay, in
Kansas City. I've had the privilege of working with men and women whose
lives have made our community stronger and who urge us toward a deeper
life of the spirit. Some of these good folk are now retired but are still
engaged. Some are in full career. Some are just emerging.
Some are dead, but their contributions are still vivid.
The cynicism of our age may be often justified, but we
can be genuine in gratitude for those who professional and volunteer lives
awaken in us the sense of the sacred, a sense of what really counts.
Their sacrifices are rewarded by the joy of service we,
too, can taste.
Whether driving or feasting or falling asleep, it is a
comfort to give thanks for the joy that rises from doing our duty to the
world. Happy Thanksgiving.
481. 031119 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Extremists need to find middle ground
With increasingly frequency, readers put this question to me: Does religion
do more harm than good?
Too many wicked acts are perpetrated in the name of religion
to dismiss this question. A fresh example may be last Saturday's bombings
of two synagogues in Turkey as worshippers observed the sabbath.
With its Muslim heritage, Turkey has been developing ties with Israel,
and extremists don't like that. In Christian Europe as well, anti-Semitism
is reportedly growing.
Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally, restricts the religious practice
of American guests who happen to be Christian. Presumably secular China
has killed more than a million Tibetan Buddhists. New violence between
Hindus and Muslims in India and Kashmir could erupt at any time. Protestants
and Catholics in Northern Ireland have a terrorist history that will not
soon be healed.
In our own country, religious extremism may be growing,
often in a political environment. When ousted from his court last week,
Alabama "Ten Commandments" Judge Roy Moore said, "The battle to acknowledge
God is about to rage across the country."
Liberals can wring hands and conservatives can offer prayers,
but is there anything more we can do?
To liberal friends of wide embrace I say, You are right
to honor diversity as a blessing, but your neglect of a sense of the sacred
in public and private life has led to the fragmentation of society, to
the special interests which control our politics and to the lack of a vision
in which we all can share.
To conservative friends extolling only their own traditions
I say, You are wise to see that no arena of life can be excluded from the
demands of faith, but you fail to appreciate that the Infinite is revealed
in many colors, and the pure white light by which we can see most clearly
shines only when the colors are united together.
To both I say, Your religion is no religion at all unless
its fruits include a holy conviction that we are all kin.
I worry that the secularism of liberals and the exclusivity
of conservatives leaves too little space for the spirit. This vacuum can
pervert faith into a justification of violence.
But if liberals and conservatives can rediscover a moderate
center which honors a healthy tension between them, then religion can be
a gift rather than a curse, and the distortions and fears of the present
may be transformed into reverence and good will.
480. 031112 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Author says understanding Bible erases skepticism
Why should "skeptics, seekers and religious liberals" pay attention
to the Bible? John A. Buehrens, former president of the Unitarian Universalist
Association, explores the question with his new book,
Understanding the Bible.
Buehrens' first answer is that in order to understand
Western culture, one has to be familiar with the Scriptures.
But, in Kansas City recently, he told me that his book
is designed for more than simply aiding a person to make his way through
the museum or appreciate significant literature with the references and
allusions to stories and ideas at the heart of our civilization.
"American culture is being is being torn apart by a narrow
interpretation of our biblical heritage, and this has political as well
as cultural consequences,"
he said. He believes that the Bible has been used "to legitimize
such clear sins as economic and environmental exploitation, racism, sexism,
homophobia and more."
Skeptics and others have neglected the Bible because it
has been used in "simplistic and oppressive ways." Progressives have thus
lost sway in the cultural conversation. If you don't know the Bible, you
cede the power to interpret it to others, he says.
Buehrens thinks that the Bible is about "the ancient human
struggle for freedom and liberation" and its enduring wisdom speaks today
to ``the human quest for wisdom, justice and peace."
But the deepest reason for his book is neither cultural
competence nor asserting political ground.
Buehrens began working with the material which became
his book in a series of lectures "in the very secular city of New York"
and was surprised by the strong interest from people who had previously
ignored the Scriptures. "These people responded to the Bible" as a rich
source of spiritual sustenance for their everyday lives and their extraordinary
moments.
Buehrens wants to help skeptics grow past the "emotional
reactions," formed often in childhood, when they were told the Bible said
something that did not make sense to them.
The 200-page book is deliberately not a scholarly tome,
though it is informed by scholarship. The reader will learn how the Bible
came to be composed. But I read it primarily as a thoughtful tour of sacred
texts whose meaning unfolds by clearing away the fog of preconceptions
about what is actually there.
Like the Jewish sage Martin Buber, whose heritage he claims,
Buehrens does more than guide. He illumines.
479. 031105 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Speaker sees hope in Abrahamic bond
When Abraham died, his "sons Isaac and Ishmaiel buried him in the cave
of Machpelah" (Genesis 25:9).
For Bruce Feiler, author of Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of
Three Faiths, this union of Abraham's rival sons at their father's death
presents hope that Jews and Muslims, who trace their heritage to Abraham,
can, along with Christians, find fruitful ways of understanding their conflicts
and move toward reconciliation.
Feiler will be in Kansas City as part of the annual Jewish Book
Fair and will speak at 7 p.m. Nov. 11 at Villiage Presbyterian Church,
6641 Mission Road.
Responding to Feiler will be an interfaith panel
with Rabbi Alan Cohen of Beth Shalom Congregation, Abdalla Idris Ali of
the Center for Islamic Education in North America and Presbyterian lay
leader Bill Tammeus, columnist for The Kansas City Star.
Scholars often call the three great monotheistic
faiths "Abrahamic" because all three of the them see in Abraham the man
God chose to further divine revelation. Jews understand Abraham as
the patriarch of the Israelites through Isaac. For Christians, Abraham
is an exemplar of one save by faith, without the law. Called Ibrahim
in Arabic, Abraham is revered by Muslims for cleansing Mecca of idolatry
and restoring worship of the one God.
"Abraham may hold the key for us to communicate,"
says the Rev. Diane Quaintance, a minister at Village Presbyterian Church,
who has arranged otherinterfaith programs open to the community.
She said bringing Feiler here was "the logical next step" in the conversation.
Quaintance teaches Bible study and found that Feiler's book made
it easy to connect our daily life with biblical interests, whether one
know nothing or a great deal about the Bible.
"All of us want to belive there is hope for peace,
but we don't hear about the threads of hope in the news much," she said.
She expects that the Fieler visit's focus on Abraham will become a bridge
between faith communities working for peace.
Feiler's Web site, www.brucefeiler.com, is worth
a visit.
Note: An area Jewish leader wrote to complain that my
column last week makes readers think "that the American Jewish community
doesn't question settlements and supports (Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon
in his desire to force Muslims to leave Israel so they can take all the
land."
The column actually referred to Muslims leaving
the "Palestinian territories" rather than Israel, but I do apologize for
failing to note that many people in the Jewish community here do not support
the
expansion of Israeli settlements.
478. 031029 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Huston Smith looks for commonality
Born in 1919 in China, no teacher of world religions is regarded with
greater affection than Huston Smith. Even before the 1996 PBS series with
Bill Moyers on what Smith calls "the wisdom traditions," Smith was widely
known for his book, "The World's Religions," which has sold millions of
copies to several generations. His impeccable personal relationships with
many faiths, through family connections and travel, make his scholarship
a love affair with humanity as well as the divine.
Smith was in town last week-end to honor his 1938-39 roommate
at Central Methodist College, Elbert Cole, on Cole's retirement as director
of Shepherd's Centers of America. Cole founded the
movement in 1972 to provide seniors with new opportunities to learn
and to enrich society.
Cole asked Smith to help those at the conference to understand
commonalities among Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Smith said these faiths
were revealed by the same God but took different forms as appropriate to
the language, culture, and times of those to whom they were given.
He noted historical respect between Muslims and Jews,
but that the boundary between Christianity and Islam has often been contested,
which has led to persistent stereotypes, one of which is that Islam is
a violent religion. Smith presented a scholar's view that Islam may have
been less violent than Christianity, but recently violence has been nurtured
within Islam.
In an interview later, Smith said resentment of the West in
the Muslim world arises in part from the way the West conquered it and
chopped up it up into artificial states like Iraq and Israel, and from
the West's support for corrupt and oppressive regimes.
Smith complained that extremists get the press and those
seeking reconciliation are ignored.
As he spoke to me, Smith seemed almost overwhelmed by
sorrow over the Middle East where there is "too little land and too much
history." Where formerly the American Jewish community questioned Israeli
settlements in Palestinian territories, "now it is silent" as Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon, "by his actions, seems determined to force the Muslims
into such a desperate situation that they will leave and Israel will take
all the land.''
These "shocking, disgusting, and tragic developments"
impede interfaith relations because those concerned hesitate to speak for
fear of being called anti-Semitic, he said.
477. 031022 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Nietzsche's relevance is in being all to human
Although Friedrich Nietzsche is out of fashion in mainstream analytic
philosophy, UMKC philosophy professor Clancy Martin celebrated Nietzsche's
159th birthday last Wednesday by submitting a paper about the German philosopher
to a learned journal. Martin says Nietzsche "has important things to say
about what it is to be human."
Despite writing about a mad-man who announces that "God
is dead" and that we have killed Him, Nietzsche may be better regarded
in religious circles today than in technical philosophy because of his
assessment of the human predicament. Whether the field is ethics, cultural
diagnosis or the spiritual life -- what Nietzsche calls "the life of the
unseen" -- Nietzsche's influence on the writings of theologians today is
undiminished.
Martin thinks Nietzsche's analysis of culture is meritorious.
Like the Danish Christian existentialist Soren Kierkegaard, the atheist
Nietzsche finds society claiming to be Christian while there is little
evidence that people are practicing the teachings of Jesus. Actual Christianity
is a curse of guilt about our natural impulses that deprives people of
their capacities to experience life fully.
Saying "God is dead" is a way of bursting through the
hypocrisy, pretense and self-deception that we are religious. Nietzsche
argues that the lives of professed Christians seem no different than the
lives of those who make no such profession. Martin asks Nietzsche’s question:
Who is willing to change one's life to live as Christ said we must live?
According to Martin, Nietzsche says in killing God, we
have cut the last tether to the past and now must make decisions about
our lives on our own. Without divine guidance we may be in danger or we
may have an unprecedented opportunity. The bow of the future is tense,
and who knows how far we may shoot the arrow?
Nietzsche, who was acquainted with the early encounters
of the West with Buddhism, considers that tradition to be the closest to
an "honest religion" because it offers a spirituality without a Creator
God and rejects the notion of a unified self.
The "unified self" is a construct that disguises the many
divergent impulses we have and contradictory actions we take. This disguise
keeps us from knowing who we are.
Martin says the basic injunction of philosophy is to "Know
thyself," and Nietzsche helps keep this imperative alive in a culture that
wants us to bury it.
476. 031015 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Jewish festival recalls wandering in the desert
I asked Ken Sonnenschein, M.D., a child and adolescent psychiatrist
in private practice, about the Jewish festival which ends Saturday. He
writes:
With this month’s full moon comes the Jewish festival
of Sukkot (pronounced like sue-coat). Sukkot is the third of the three
pilgrimage festivals (Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot) and begins on the
fifteenth day after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. During the pilgrimage
festivals, Jews would go to Jerusalem to make special sacrifices at the
temple mount.
Each festival, which is still celebrated by Jews today,
has a special historical significance. Passover is associated with
the Exodus from Egypt. Shavuot is the time Jews celebrate receiving
the Ten Commandments and Torah (the first five books of the Bible) at Mt.
Sinai. Sukkot recalls the 40-year wandering in the desert. Its name,
"Feast of the Tabernacles," reminds us of the temporary shelters used then.
Each festival also had a direct link to the agricultural
calendar. Passover was connected with the early-ripening barley,
Shavuot with the later-ripening wheat, and Sukkot with the ingathering
of many species of produce. In fact, when the biblically-based pilgrims
searched for an appropriate way to give thanks for the bounty of the new
world, they looked in Exodus 23:16 which makes reference to ``the feast
of the harvest.''
This is why the American holiday of Thanksgiving shares
an uncanny resemblance to Sukkot.
I've been working with a group of dedicated volunteers
at Village Shalom in Overland Park to develop a gardening project which
helps people today connect with this rich heritage and symbolism of growth.
The garden is called the Mitzvah Garden of Greater Kansas
City. ("Mitzvah" means "commandment" but has also come to mean "a charitable
act.")
People of all ages, including residents of the Village
Shalom retirement center, plant, tend, and harvest produce from ten handicapped-accessible
beds. The produce is donated to the residents, Yachad (the Jewish food
pantry) and Harvesters.
The garden also yields spiritual produce in its ability
to provide an interactive, living experience of how the Jewish calendar
with its major festivals ties in with agriculture and its fruits.
475. 031008 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
The right to work has its religious aspect, too
"God, how can I serve you today?" asks Kansas City Mayor Pro Tem Alvin
Brooks each morning. The Heartland has many outstanding spiritual leaders,
but none more inspiring and connected across all social strata in the metro
area than Brooks. He spoke Friday at a breakfast meeting beginning the
program year of the Cathedral Center for Faith and Work.
Of a piece with his prayer is his conviction that all
of us are made in the image of God. This is the spiritual basis for the
ordinance he recently sponsored to give city employees with domestic partners
benefits such as time off when a partner dies.
I've been attending events sponsored by the Center for
several years because the speakers provide spiritual insights into community
leadership from many angles. The breakfast series this year includes president
of DST Realty Vince Dasta, metro Arts Council president Joan Israelite,
Star publisher Art Brisbane and Leawood Mayor Peggy Dunn.
The dinner series includes Helzberg Diamonds president
Jeffrey W. Comment, Muslim leader Mahnaz Shabbir, Andrews and McMeel president
Bob Duffy and yours truly quite a variety.
My talk next Wednesday at the downtown Marriott, 'The
Idea of Work in World Religions," is still being written. And quite frankly,
dear reader, I could use your help.
I will mention 'right livelihood,' the Buddhist principle
of doing honorable work, a similar a Catholic concept of vocation, and
the Shaker belief that to work is to worship. The Jewish gift of the sabbath,
the Protestant ``work ethic'' and the ancient Greek valuation of play over
work also deserve some discussion. I'll also try to weave in the Muslim
requirement to provide for the poor, the Hindu concept of duty and the
Taoist advice to let things happen, rather than over-managing.
I aim to be useful, practical and relevant, to offer several
spiritual perspectives on the social and economic situations we are actually
experiencing, locally and globally.
Whatever your tradition, dear reader, what ideas in your
faith would you suggest for my talk and perhaps for a follow-up column?
You can email your thoughts to me, vern@cres.org.
Still, even with your help, I wonder whether I will be
able to do any better than to suggest that we approach our jobs as well
as free time by offering the prayer that Al Brooks says every day.
474. 031001 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Common Meanings in Faith, Medicine
In ancient cultures, healing was a religious activity, as it remains
in primal societies today. One favorite image in the East is the Medicine
Buddha, and in the Gospels Jesus is presented as a healer. In our culture,
many faiths offer "ministries" to the sick, ranging from "faith healers"
to accredited parish nurses. Many liturgical churches practice anointing
the sick with oil.
Today our health care system is "fragmented, dysfunctional
and not compassionate,' according to Christina M. Puchalski, MD, who will
speak here as part of a conference, ``Bridging Faith and Medicine,'' Oct
10. Puchalski is a professor at the George Washington University Medical
Center and has helped some 90 medical schools to integrate spiritual care
into their curricula.
Another speaker, the Rev. Fred B. Craddock, professor
emeritus at Emory University, appreciates the historical developments which
have distinguished faith from medicine. Their separation ``helped to establish
medicine free of superstition by the increasing use of observation, reason
and diagnosis,'' he says.
But he also believes religious and health-care professionals
need a much deeper conversation over turf issues and decisions that affect
the patient, such as whether to provide relief from suffering when some
believe that suffering is a character-building gift from God.
Interest in spirituality in medicine has grown from some
studies which suggest that religious people are more likely to regain health
than others. Puchalski has reservations about this theory; people involved
in cultural activities also show high rates of responsiveness to treatment.
But her own clinical experience convinces her that sickness
can lead people to explore the meaning of their lives more deeply. She
also says that research indicates that patients who struggle to find or
create purpose in their illness or loss do in fact have improved quality
of life.
Hospitalization can be a time to ask the big questions.
Spiritual beliefs can be very important. Meaning can be found in work,
family, faith or, as atheists sometimes say, "in doing good for others."
Given a health-care system that in some important ways
is failing, she plans to address the question, 'What can be done to improve
it?"
The conference is sponsored by the Shawnee Mission Medical
Center, Central Baptist Seminary and the Nazarene Theological Seminary,
where it will be held. For information, call (913) 676.2097.
473. 030924 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Same-sex arguments addressed
Over a dozen people contacted me about my Sept. 10 column about same-sex
relationships in religious history.
Many readers wanted sources. Here are two of the best.
Yale historian John Boswell's 1994 book Same-Sex Unions
in PreModern Europe details evidence within Christianity. Boswell has attracted
a number of critics, and his ground-breaking book no doubt contains errors
as any such first study would have. However, I have not seen any substantial
refutation of his major claims.
David F Greenberg's 1988 The Construction of Homosexuality
includes a more comprehensive cultural and religious survey, ancient and
modern.
Other readers were disturbed by my failure to support
the idea of sexual orientation. Most cultures have accepted same-sex relationships
and several societies institutionalized them in marriage and other forms
of commitment. "Nevertheless," I wrote, ``same-sex unions do not prove
that people are born with a controlling sexual orientation.''
Why, then, readers asked, do so many in same-sex relationships
believe they were "born that way"?
Religious history offers no clear answer. However sexual
behavior seems to be influenced by at least four factors: genetic, imprinting,
conditioning, and situations.
* In recent times, a genetic explanation has been favored,
particularly by liberal religious groups, while conservatives have often
argued that same-sex behavior is simply a choice.
* Imprinting is an explanation derived from zoology which
suggests that at a crucial age before one can remember, one profoundly
notices someone of the same or opposite gender at the point of developing
a sense of sexual identity or attraction.
* Conditioning refers to social expectations. The universal
male participation in same-sex relationships in ancient Sparta, for example,
can be explained this way.
* Situational sex includes experimentation and behavior
by cowboys, soldiers, inmates and others temporarily deprived of opportunities
with those of the opposite sex.
With few exceptions, religious history does not weigh
these factors. It does suggest that human sexuality is more plastic than
current debates recognize.
472. 030917 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Council achieves much
For the past three years, the Kansas City Interfaith Council has gathered
on Sept. 11.
In 2001, media were invited to hear members of the council
announce "The Gifts of Pluralism" conference planned for that October.
As events unfolded on the TV monitor in the room, Council members expressed
deep commitment to one another and to the city to foster interfaith understanding,
and the Muslims pointedly condemned the hijacking of their faith.
The conference was held as planned. Over 250 people from
every faith group from A to Z -- American Indian to Zoroastrian -- participated
in the two-day assembly at Pembroke Hill School. Many relationships were
developed that have strengthened the community, and new programs have emerged.
One of them is Mosaic, which includes an interfaith book
club, a "Passport" program for visiting houses of worship of various faiths,
and a "stories project."
This project involved interviewing over 60 people, from
a now-elderly Jewish survivor of a Nazi concentration camp to a young Muslim.
The interviews have been fashioned into a play, tentatively called The
Hindu and the Cowboy and Other Kansas City Stories, with a staged reading
Nov. 2 at the Bruce Watkins Center. Understanding one another's lives in
the context of our faiths is a way to liberate ourselves from the fear
the terrorists wished to instill within us.
In 2002, the Council observed the first anniversary with
a day-long schedule to place 9/11 in a spiritual context. Members of the
Council brought waters from their individual faith communities, from water
collected from KC area fountains, and from the rivers and oceans of the
world, to honor both the tears flowing from the tragedy and the refreshment
and cleansing power of our faiths. Network CBS-TV broadcast these and other
local efforts as model interfaith approaches for the rest of the nation.
In 2003, last Thursday, the Council members met and exchanged
stories about how these two years affected them and their communities.
The reports were filled with emotion. The assessments were mixed.
Pride in the area's residents' reaching out to one another and learning
about others' faiths was offset by the corrosive impact of economic priorities
and international concerns.
Despite misunderstandings, Muslim leaders have been especially
vigorous in reaching out to Jewish, Christian and other religious communities.
Their strong allegience to American democracy and ability to correct misrepresentations
of their faith show us that we are all together as we seek a world of mutual
respect and promise.
We still have more work to do. We must live
our faith more deeply.
471. 030910 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Putting same-sex unions in historical context
Today's controversies about gay bishops and gay marriages lack historical
context. We know much about same-sex behavior, understood as a choice.
But in the history of religions, little can be found about orientation
as an inborn characteristic until the idea developed in the 19th Century.
While some faiths have condemned same-sex behavior, others
have accepted it and even given it special praise.
Most cultures have simply assumed that everyone is capable
of both same- and opposite-sex behavior. Thus Caesar, who missed few sexual
opportunities, was known as ``the husband to every wife and the wife to
every husband.''
Religions prohibiting homosexual behavior usually did
so because producing children was more important than pleasure the same
reason masturbation and coitus interruptus were condemned. The ancient
Hebrews exemplify this perspective. The Talmud condemns celibacy.
Religions favoring same-sex relationships often did so
as part of a conservative, age-structured educational process, as in the
military system of ancient Sparta. There same-sex relationships and heterosexual
marriage supplemented each other. The later Celtic warriors also engaged
in same-sex love. Some traditions expect all young men to practice same-sex
behavior as preparation for heterosexual marriage.
It is true that the Romans honored same-sex marriages
and that the Japanese samurai institutionalized same-sex unions. The Chinese
in the Ming dynasty, many Native American and African tribes, and other
European, Asian and South American cultures accepted such relationships.
It is also true that well into the modern era, same-sex
unions were blessed within Christianity in a ceremony celebrating love,
with wine, a kiss, scripture readings and joining of hands before the altar.
(Early Christian heterosexual marriages were civil, not
religious. They arranged property rights and paternity. Unlike same-sex
unions, they did not originate from affection. Thus they were held outside
the church. Heterosexual marriage was made a sacrament in 1215.)
Nevertheless, same-sex unions do not prove that people
are born with a controlling sexual orientation, any more than people who
choose to join the Chamber of Commerce do so because of their genes.
The term ``homosexual'' was not coined until 1869 as the idea of orientation
developed.
Historically, whether a religion has condemned or supported
same-sex behavior, it has generally been regarded as a choice, whether
despised or honored.
470. 030903 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Is Alabama judge 'editing' the Ten Commandments?
Dear Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore:
Your effort to display the Ten Commandments makes me wonder
if you have read them.
Please study the versions of the commandments as they
appear in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. Your monument's text is edited.
Do you have the right to alter scripture?
The children of Israel are commanded to have no other
gods before the Lord. This does not deny the common belief at the time
that other gods existed. Most scholars agree the texts mean simply that
the Israelites must worship only one particular god out of the many gods.
True monotheism may not have developed until the prophet Isaiah wrote.
Do you want to promote texts that imply there are many gods?
Since no likeness is to be made of anything in heaven
or earth, are photos, paintings and statues sinful? And should the government
prohibit Kodak moments?
You have had the monument on display two years. Was this
display effective in eliminating the taking of the Lord's name in vain?
If we honor the sabbath as instructed, to do no work,
our stores, theaters, police stations and hospitals would have to be closed.
Have you considered whether our society might be more complex than the
society to which the commandments were presented?
Sometimes our economy seems geared to encourage us to
covet what our neighbor has. Are we required to eliminate advertising which
creates desire for things others have?
As a general rule, honoring one's parents is a fine sentiment.
But what about the girl who has been repeatedly raped by her father? Should
we demand that he be honored or locked up?
While you are searching the scriptures, please note that
the phrase ``Ten Commandments'' cannot be found in the passages with the
list of commandments on your monument. If you count them in the
scripture, there are actually 12 or 13. Jews, Catholics and Presbyterians
combine them differently to come up with a total of 10.
The phrase "ten commandments" does appear in the list
in Exodus 34, where one of the commandments is not to boil a kid in its
mother's milk. Why was this commandment omitted from your monument?
469. 030827 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
An Uncommon Denomination
Last Wednesday five area Unitarian Universalist congregations sponsored
an advertising supplement in The Star to promote their faith as ''the Uncommon
Denomination.'' The 8-page supplement concluded a “campaign to raise awareness
of (the) historic, distinctive religion'' earlier this year.” The denomination
is unusual in eschewing any creed and any single scripture and in embracing
believer and atheist alike.
To support the campaign, the president of the Boston-based
denomination, William Sinkford, visited Kansas City this spring. Sinkford
is the first black president of a predominantly white denomination which
often prides itself as a leader in social change.
For example, decades ago, Unitarian Universalists welcomed gays and
lesbians into their ministry. The denomination also confronted racial,
gender and economic justice questions before most other churches dealt
with them.
In an interview, Sinkford said that 30 years ago, the
denomination understood itself as on the ``cutting edge, so far ahead our
voice was not welcome. We withdrew from engagement with other religious
groups.
``Now we have come in from the margins. The majority in
America has decided we were right on many of these issues.''
The advertising campaign was inspired in part by Sinkford's concern
that ``the religious voice in public discourse is the Religious Right,''
which he said was often ``mean-spirited.''
Sinkford noted that the promotional effort followed the
unusual experience Unitarian Universalist congregations had following 9/11.
The attendance surge most denominations had immediately after the 2001
terrorist attacks dissipated in the following months, but the ``trailing
off'' phenomenon did not affect his denomination.
This and other indicators suggest to Sinkford that people
are looking more for religious community rather than for the ``shallow
consumerism'' advocated after 9/11 to keep the country going. Instead of
the thousand or so Unitarian Universalists now in the area, ``Kansas City
has a potential for 70,000'' if people become aware of this religious option,
Sinkford said. Beyond membership growth, he believes that the conviction
and experience that Unitarian Universalists can offer to the broader culture
is that ``religious pluralism is not a curse but rather a blessing.''
468. 030820 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Building a community in remembrance of tragic day
How should the second anniversary of the 9/11 events be marked? In 2001,
the nation was shaken, lives were taken, bravery was discovered and pain
endures. lIn 2002, the Kansas City Interfaith Council offered a day-long
observance and 50-some individual congregations held services to place
remembrances and hopes in a spiritual context.
This year the Council has endorsed an interfaith program
Sept. 9 with Jewish, Christian, and Muslim speakers, featuring Imam Hassan
Qazwini of Detroit, originally from Iraq. A panel moderated by Star columnist
Bill Tammeus includes Rabbi Neal Schuster of Temple B'nai Jehudah and the
Rev Robert Lee Hill, senior pastor of the hosting congregation, Community
Christian Church.
The event was initiated by the Kansas City International
Visitors Council under the U.S. State Department and has been planned with
the aid of Harmony, the Rabbinical Association, the National Conference
for Community and Justice and the Crescent Peace Society.
Barbara Dolci, head of the Visitors Council, says that
since 9/11, ``we have seen how religion has been used to distort the goodness
of these religions and divide those who need to work together for a positive
resolution of conflicts in our communities. By focusing on that which unites
us as children of Abraham, perhaps we can learn to respect our differences
and build peace one community at a time.''
Hill is enthusiastic about hosting this event. ``We our
honored to live out the meaning of our church's name--'Community.' The
subject of this gathering is of utmost importance not only to our local
metroplex but also to the nation and the world,'' he said.
Those able to be there at 5:30 pm can join with those
of other faiths in silent prayer for peace. At 6, a light dinner is served.
Qazwini and the panel begin at 6:45, and the program ends at 8 so Muslims
can perform maghrib, evening prayer.
The fall offers other opportunities to explore our neighbors'
faiths. The Interfaith Council's Oct. 1 conference for clergy and
lay leaders is ``Introducing World Religions and the Faiths of Kansas City.''
Bruce Fieler, author of Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths,
speaks here Nov. 11, the annual Harmony Concert is Nov. 16, the annual
Interfaith Thanksgiving Sunday Ritual Meal is Nov 23.
While awaiting details, you may want to get these dates on your calendar.
467. 030813 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Sounding the alarm on divisive issues
A recent study says violence, discrimination and harassment against
Muslims in the U.S. increased 15% last year. Protestant Senators have accused
Catholic Senators of being anti-Catholic because they oppose the nomination
of a Catholic to a federal judgeship. Christian conservatives complain
about court rulings that "under God" does not belong in the Pledge of Allegiance.
In Europe, anti-Semitism seems to be growing.
Religion, which should bring us together, too often sets
us against one another. While it is easy to see someone else's religious
prejudice, it is hard to see our own.
This may be the case with Mel Gibson. His forthcoming
film about the death of Jesus has aroused Christian and Jewish concern
that relations between the two faiths will be damaged by its portrayal
of Jews.
From articles and websites, friends in Kansas City have
contacted me with alarm. The Star's movie critic, Bob Bulter, is following
the controversy.
The film, The Passion, may be released next spring on
Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent.
One may wonder whether the controversy has been created
to publicize the movie, but all the articles I have read suggest serious
problems with the film. Scholars who have seen a script are dismayed by
it.
The New York Times quoted Sister Mary C. Boys, a professor at Union
Theological Seminary in New York, as saying, "We're really concerned that
this could be one of the great crises in Christian-Jewish relations."
On the other hand, those who appear to have been predisposed
toward Gibson's efforts, including those from the White House Office of
Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, reportedly found a preview inspiring.
Perhaps identifying the problems will cause Gibson to
change the final version.
Christian history includes violent images of both Jews
and Muslims, as well as others. In the last century, Christians have worked
hard to purge their liturgies and teachings of bias. But a popular movie
which could renew the old "Christ killer" charge against Jews and reinforce
persistent stereotypes will divide us, not bring us together. National
leaders and local people of faith are right to sound an alert.
466. 030806 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Don't discount influence of faith on culture
The impact of various religions on their societies can be profound,
and the influence one religion has on subsequent civilizations can be unacknowledged
except by the scholars.
The ancient religion of Zoroastrianism is an example,
sometimes thought to be the first faith to proclaim that there is but one
God.
Other religions may have their influence overestimated,
as Christianity is sometimes cited as the basis of Constitutional government
in the United States, a judgment most scholars dismiss.
And the heritage of some faiths in some cultures may be
so pervasive that it is difficult to assess. The development of Judaism
in the last 2000 years is a fascinating story, too little known. But Jewish
themes in the West, embedded in the majority Christian faith, are so much
a part of the culture that we easily assume all faiths share a similar
orientation.
Here are some of those themes.
While God is the Creator of all things, including the
world of nature, he is revealed primarily through inspired Scripture. This
"mediated" revelation contrasts with the "immediate" revelation in primal
faiths, where the sacred is found primarily in nature, and with some Asian
faiths, where the divine must be apprehended within oneself.
The Scriptures show God acting in the realm of human relations
and the history of community. God is a power working through the social
order toward the establishment of peace and justice, often seen in the
fair distribution of wealth and special concern for the poor. While some
faiths see time as circular and the notion of progress is irrelevant, the
Jewish tradition presents a hope for the future; there is a divine purpose
to our lives.
In some faiths, recurring events like the daily rising
of the sun are the keys to finding sacred meaning. In Judaism, singular,
unrepeated events like the Exodus and the Holocaust are central occasions
which arouse the questions about God, justice and community.
Some faiths have little interest in land or national identity.
Zen Buddhists, for example, say that wherever you are is holy space. For
several reasons, modern Judaism has come to place considerable emphasis
upon Israel as a legal and geographical reality, not simply a spiritual
notion.
465. 030730 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Palestinian Christian favors two states
A Palestinian Christian, the Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel, served this past year
as moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA). He speaks next Sunday at
Village Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village.
In a telephone interview, he said that one hundred years
ago, 35% of the Palestinians were Christian. "As a result of war, occupation
and economic hardship, today less than 3% are Christian. Still, about 15
million Arabs in over a dozen countries are Christian. Yassir Arafat's
wife is Christian." He cited Acts 2:11 as evidence that Christianity began
among the Arabs as early as Pentecost.
To explain his concern about the Middle East, he said
people of faith "need to know how the word of God becomes alive locally,
nationally and globally, not just in evangelism or medical missions, but
also in issues of justice, to give credibility to the Gospel."
His perspective is shaped by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war,
when he was 4 years old, living in the Galilean village of Kuffer-Yassif.
Israeli troops drove his family from their home. For safety, his father
led him and his seven siblings to a mountain refugee camp. But his mother
refused to go. "This is our home, our land and our church. If they want
to kill me, they will need to kill me in my own home," she said.
He outlined four options for the future of the Israelis
and Palestinians. The first is a continuation of the status quo. He describes
this as the longest occupation by one people over another in recent history,
which brutalizes both the Israelis and the 3.4 million Palestinians.
A second proposal is a transfer policy, which he called
"ethnic cleansing," the removal of Palestinians from their homes to other
counties.
A third possibility is one state for all people in the
area. This would mean abandoning the religious character of Israel as a
Jewish homeland and the end of the Palestinian hope of a state of their
own. A single secular, democratic republic would not be controlled by either
religion or ethnicity.
He favors a fourth path, a two-state solution, which is
the goal of President Bush's "road map" for peace, and is envisioned by
United Nations resolutions as early as 1947. "Christians must love both
peoples. Both need to live in peace," he said.
464. 030723 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Local Jews, Muslims build bridges
Within each faith, disagreements and sometimes hostilities arise. Christianity
is divided on issues like abortion, homosexuality and the war with Iraq,
as well as by denominational loyalties. Other faiths are similarly fractured.
And sometimes the problems are between those of different
faiths. With friends and families in the Middle East, Jews and Muslims
here have to work extra hard not to associate the deaths and indignities
both sides abroad have suffered with their neighbors of the other faith
here, as many local Christians have deliberately educated themselves about
not only Arab Muslims but the other 80% of the world's Muslims who are
not Arab.
Some disagreements are not theological or political, but
primarily personal. Every faith has its troublesome members.
But relations between the faiths are too important to
let all these factors rule. That is why Kansas City can celebrate the many
and varied efforts by local Jews and Muslims to build and repair bridges
between the two communities and live together harmoniously.
Here are some examples. The leader of a medical practice
is Muslim; his staff of physicians is overwhelmingly Jewish. Jewish businessmen
have made substantial donations, and a Jewish educator has assisted Muslims
in obtaining grants, for Islamic education.
A mosque, synagogue and church formed a congregational
partnership under the auspices of Kansas City Harmony. With the services
of the National Conference for Community and Justice, young people from
Jewish, Muslim and Christian schools have learned from each other in day-long
experiences at the Kauffman Foundation.
At last year's anniversary of 9/11, Jewish and Muslim
children performed a song including both the Hebrew and Arabic terms for
peace, shalom and salam, in a community-wide observance.
When the mayor of Romle, Israel, visited Kansas City,
a Leawood Muslim hosted a reception for him. Two women, Muslim and Jewish,
Mahnaz Shabbir and Sheila Sonnenschein, have written joint articles for
several local publications.
These are just a few examples of the dozens on my list.
So when you hear about "tensions and suspicions" between Kansas City Jews
and Muslims, keep all that in perspective.
463. 030716 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Faiths share sensibility of surrender
To the casual observer, no two religions might seem more different than
Buddhism and Islam.
Buddhism is non-theistic; most Buddhist pictures of reality
contain no Creator God. Islam, on the other hand, rigorously proclaims
the majesty and mercy of single Creator God, on whom all creatures depend.
For Buddhists without God, no aspect of the universe is
more fundamental than any other because everything is intertwined, with
multiple reference points. For Muslims, God is the original and fundamental
reality. He is the sole and ultimate reference point.
Buddhists see morality as part of the impersonal nature
of the universe. The consequences of our acts are explained by karma, a
law of cause and effect which operates without any divine supervision.
For Muslims, God is the source of morality. God has provided instructions
for regulating our behavior. God will be the judge of our acts and dispense
the consequences.
The Buddha taught that the illusion of separateness causes
suffering. Buddhism denies an eternal, unchanging, individual soul. Salvation
or enlightenment comes not through any person, book or institution, but
by direct, immediate experience. Buddhism is sometimes called a psychology
because of its emphasis on meditation and internal experience over behavior.
In Islam, each of us has a separate and distinct soul.
Salvation is mediated through the Qur'an and the tradition. Islam emphasizes
social relationships and behaviors through extensive legal codes. Islam
is often considered a more external religion than Buddhism, and its ideals
of consensus suggest a public, democratic focus. If inward meditation might
characterize Buddhism, Friday prayer, which is a social configuration,
might represent Islam on this point.
And yet, underlying both of these great faiths is a common
sensibility: surrender.
In Buddhism, the surrender is an absorption into the flow
of the universe, as a drop of water unites by yielding to the ocean in
which it falls. Through acute attention focused in meditation, the Buddhist
becomes one with the flow of events rather than obstructing them.
The very word Islam means submission and the peace that
arises from submission to the will of God. The prostrations of prayer emphasize
the utter surrender in Islam, placing one's very body in God's service.
Beyond beliefs, is there a parallel sensibility in your
faith?
462. 030709 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Scouting for a path between faiths
Last month I attended an Eagle Scout Court of Honor for three remarkable
boys--one wants to say "young men." The ceremony, held at St Peter's Episcopal
Church, began with a Christian prayer by the rector. As each of the candidates
spoke, it was clear how much their families, their friends, the scouting
program and their faiths meant to them.
The featured speaker was Terry Dunn, president and CEO
of J. E. Dunn Construction, himself a nationally prominent Scout leader.
Dunn believes that more important than building buildings is "building
people."
One of the Scouts was Muslim. The event ended with a recitation
from the Qur'an.
What seemed remarkable was that no one seemed to think
this was remarkable. The Boy Scouts have long welcomed boys of most spiritual
paths as part of their Scouting experience.
Recently at Village Presbyterian Church, Jewish leader
Alan Edelman, and Muslim leader Ahmed El-Sherif hugged each other as they
greeted each other before speaking about the Abrahamic faiths, and as they
departed. Whether this was remarkable or not, such a sign of amity between
those of faiths too often portrayed as in conflict is always welcome.
Our religious liberty as Americans becomes even more precious
as we build communities of regard for differences while understanding our
human kinship. Getting to know one another as spiritual beings does far
more than even the most brilliant column in this space to create a safe,
respectful and generous Kansas City.
Former Mayor Emanuel Cleaver's "Under the Clock" program
on KCUR this Friday is billed as a "town hall public forum" on the relations
between the Jewish and Muslim communities here. The producer's announcement
says that "There is an undercurrent of suspicion and tension between some
members of each community; we hope giving voice to some of those feelings
will give us the opportunity to promote greater understanding."
All of us, regardless of our faiths, may hope that "giving
voice" to family-like squabbles on a radio program will build upon, rather
than damage, the many sincere private efforts of leaders of both
communities to build bridges between them.
May we some day soon remark on how unremarkable it is
that we enjoy one another's faiths because we are secure in our own.
461. 030702 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
The Supreme Court can decide only what is legal
The Supreme Court has affirmed the Constitution's protection of private,
non-commercial love-making by consenting adults of the same sex. This may
have changed the legal situation, but the Court cannot compel people of
faith to think any differently about sexual morality.
Homosexuality is a contentious issue among many Christians.
Some cite Biblical passages such as Lev. 18:22 and Rom. 1:27 as proof of
God's displeasure with homosexual activity. Others say ancient and modern
contexts require reinterpretation of these texts. But the government cannot
decide what is sin. It can only decide what is legal.
The role of women in Christianity also is disputed. Passages
such as 1 Cor. 14:34-5 might seem to prohibit female Sunday school teachers,
but such matters are for churches, not the Supreme Court, to interpret.
For hundreds of years, Christians believed charging interest
on loans was immoral. It has since become legal.
Laws prohibiting trade on the sabbath have been struck
down or removed, but those faithful to the commandment in Ex. 20:9-11 may
still observe it.
Ex. 20:17 may condemn our desire for what our neighbor
has, but the economic life of our nation is not inhibited by this religious
perspective, though we may voluntarily seek a spare life-style.
In Mark 10:4-12, Jesus seems to say that a divorced person
should not remarry, but our legal codes permit remarriage.
In Matt. 5:34, Jesus condemns swearing, but the President
swears an oath prescribed by the Constitution when he is inaugurated into
office. Ironically, the custom has been to swear on a Bible. Witnesses
in court are also asked to swear. However, in recognition of those who
follow the teachings of Jesus, the law also permits affirmation instead
of swearing.
Slaves were freed despite Paul's exhortation in 1 Tim.
6:1-2 that slaves should obey their Christian masters.
Government is prohibited from enforcing or prohibiting
any religious opinion. It is not always obvious how to practice our own
faith while respecting the freedom of others. Our legal system is often
in tension with expectations from citizens with religious views. Keeping
that tension creative may be a continuing challenge as we celebrate the
birth of freedom on July 4, 1776.
460. 030625 THE STAR'S HEADLINE
Best health care treats the whole person
Many Kansas City area hospital staffs are now aware of the religious
diversity of their patients. The chaplains seek to provide appropriate
and specific spiritual attention to patients who wish companionship or
guidance with the spiritual dimensions of their hospitalizations.
The Institute for Spirituality in Health at the Shawnee
Mission Medical Center brings a wholistic approach to medical care. Spirituality
may be expressed in a particular religious tradition or simply in a sense
of meaning and direction for life.
At a recent meeting of the Institute's board, Dr Andrew
Schwartz discussed a difficult case and praised the support the Institute
is providing as he seeks to give his patients and their families not only
the most skillful technical care but to be understanding of spiritual needs
as well. Here is some of what he said:
"Recently, I evaluated a patient in the office with abnormal
changes in the chest and neck thought to represent cancer that was highly
aggressive, that had already spread. Even with aggressive therapy, survival
would probably be poor."
"I was honest and forthright, which the patient wanted.
With his head half cocked to the side, he looked at me and asked: 'What
do I do now?'"
"I had not anticipated his question. I paused. Then I
said:
1. Allow family, friends and neighbors to help you, to support
you and your family.
2. Make every day, every hour, every moment count.
3. Do the things you always wanted to do.
4. You will be most remembered during this time of illness in
your life; ensure as many good memories as you can!
5. Be sure your questions and those of your family are clearly
answered by your healthcare providers.
6. Get your affairs in order: financial, end of life care decisions,
funeral arrangements.
"As the patient and family left, the daughter-in-law said
to me, 'You did good.' I realized then that the Institute for Spirituality
in Health had successfully taken root in me; the spirituality in this physician
was being harnessed to better serve. May God bless our mission."
Dr Schwartz, like an increasing number of health care
workers, recognizes that medicine is more treating the patient than just
the disease.
Like an increasing number of health care workers, Dr.
Schwartz recognizes that medicine is more than just treating a disease.
It is treating the whole patient.
Studying the three major monotheistic faiths using a psychological model
called the Karpman drama triangle may be illuminating. Each player in the
drama has one of three typical opening positions.
Christians have at times taken the aggressor role. For
example, in 1492, when King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile
united Spain under Christian rule, Jews and Muslims were forced to convert
or be expelled. That same year, the "discovery" of the New World led to
the forced conversion, subjugation or extermination of many native peoples.
Jews often see themselves as victims. Muslims frequently
understand their history as that of protector. For example, Muslim countries
welcomed Jews when they were expelled from Spain.
In the Karpman drama, a "game" is played when the players
switch positions, as when the victim becomes the aggressor. The game arises
from distorted perceptions of reality.
It is chilling to apply this theory to what has been happening
in the Middle East. Jews, recalling the Nazi Holocaust, resolve never again
to play the role of victim, and respond to what they see as an Arab threat
against their nation by switching to the attack mode while still thinking
of themselves [and portraying themselves] as victims.
Palestinians, most of whom are Muslim and who have historically
thought of themselves as welcoming Jews as cousins, now see their land
occupied rather than shared, and switch from the rescuer to the victim
position and become so confused in this new role that some become aggressive.
The United States, with many Christians repenting how
Christians have oppressed others in the past, wants to help. The danger
is that in playing rescuer, those we seek to help will see us, accurately
or not, tilting toward one side, and thus see us as persecutor.
The game continues until the players give up their roles
and see themselves and others as human beings apart from the roles in which
they are cast.
All faiths have great strengths and insights, and all
have perverted manifestations. The genius of the monotheistic traditions
is in understanding that human community is the realm in which God moves
toward justice. But this insight can be perverted into self-righteousness,
where each side projects its own evil on the other.
458. 030611 THE STAR'S HEADLINE
L'Arche has message for becoming human
In what vessel was Noah and his passengers protected from the Deluge?
What contained the Ten Commandments and eventually rested in Solomon's
Temple in Jerusalem? When Muslims depart on the hajj, the pilgrimage, to
what vessel do they refer in saying "Board; in God's name be its course
and mooring"? The architectural form of the church is sometimes thought
of as an upside-down version of what? The Torah scrolls in the modern synagogue
are contained in what?
As these questions suggest, the ark has been an instrument
and symbol for salvation in the three monotheistic faiths, Judaism, Christianity
and Islam. But the ark also appears in other traditions. The Dogon of Africa
believe that a primal spirit escaped from heaven and came to earth
on a rainbow with an ark he had stolen. The ark contained the essences
of all creatures to populate the planet. In several Mesopotamian texts,
the most famous of which is the Epic of Gilgamesh, a god instructs a human
to build an ark to save living things from an overwhelming flood. The ark
is part of a similar story in Mongolia.
When Cyprian (205-258 C.E.) insisted Salus extra ecclesiam
non est, outside the church there is no salvation, he identified the church
metaphorically with Noah's ark to say that we will perish in the flood
without the safety of the church.
So in many cultures and in many ways, the ark has been
a symbol of the holy, of how to live, of preservation and refuge, of rebirth,
of salvation.
The ark has also become a symbol of a kind of community
where "ordinary" people live with those with developmental disabilities.
It is called L'Arche, French for "the ark." Local L'Arche board founder
George Harris, who has worked with the organization twenty years, says
that in L'Arche communities, the abled and the disabled learn to be with
each other for mutual spiritual growth.
The international founder of L'Arche, Jean Vanier, ranks
with Mother Teresa as a spiritual guide, Harris says. Our community has
a chance to hear this amazing man tonight, 6:45-8 pm, when he receives
the International Peace Award at the Community of Christ Auditorium in
Independence where he speaks on "Becoming human: the weak can be a sign
of hope." The event is free.
If the human race could realize we are all in the same
boat, then the fighting might cease and we might learn from one another.
We might be saved.
457. 030604 THE STAR'S HEADLINE
Faiths can grow in America
Although Jews sailed with Columbus to the New World, and a few Jews
from Brazil began a community when they resettled in what became New York,
it was not until two hundred years later that the first synagogue in North
America was established.
After 1820, a new wave of Jewish immigration made it possible
for Jews to begin to distinguish themselves not only from Christians but
also from one another. In 1889 Reform rabbis organized themselves, and
the Conservative movement and Orthodoxy also emerged as identifiable forms
of the faith. In addition to these different expressions of Judaism in
Kansas City today, Traditionalist and Hasidic forms of Judaism are
also practiced. Judaism in America has developed as Jews from many countries
met each other in the unique setting of American toleration.
Islam is now following a similar trajectory. In 1539 a
Muslim arrived in what became the United States, and a government reference
to Muslims appears in South Carolina in 1790. Today African
Americans, Asians, Arabs, Africans, and those of European descent are
participating in a dynamic which pulls on one hand toward particular cultural
allegiances and on the other, toward a universal Islam, with America the
proving grounds for a fresh discovery of the ancient faith.
In America, Christianity has also taken new forms, from
the Black Church to Christian Science, from the Mormons to the Adventists,
from the Shakers to the Disciples. Even Catholicism has its own American
complexion.
Buddhism, which was imported in the Nineteenth Century
and became a significant religious force here after the Second World War,
now has a rich array of schools and practices.
Until the late 80s, local Buddhist groups were not even
aware of each other. But since March this year, members of ten groups have
met to form a Buddhist Council. The Council includes those with
Tibetan, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Laotian and Korean lineages.
American-formed groups are also represented.
The Council wants to raise the visibility Buddhism in
general while also promoting awareness of the choices possible within Buddhism.
It is developing a "master calendar" of Buddhist events in Kansas City
as one way of demonstrating a cooperative and supportive spirit.
America provides the environment in which faiths can stimulate
and purify each other and the larger culture.
456. 030528 THE STAR'S HEADLINE
Islamic Society seeks faiths' common ground
A plaintive letter from a reader listing charges against Islam, and
particularly the Qur'an, asks me to reassure him that his concerns are
unfounded. He is right to question material from an unreliable source,
and right to suspect the charges are inaccurate. There is a lot of bigotry
these days.
I wish the reader could have met with some 1600 Muslims
and guests at the Central Zone Conference of the Islamic Society of North
America last weekend in Overland Park. Not only would he have heard Muslims
deal straightforwardly with misrepresentations of Islam, but Jewish and
Christian leaders were there as well to make common cause and to learn
from each other.
Mary Cohen, a life-long educator and now the US Secretary
of Education's regional representative, began a panel discussion on "Shared
Values." Cohen is Jewish. Judaism values learning so much that its clergy
are called "rabbis," which means "teachers." She gave examples of how both
Judaism and Christianity are indebted to Islamic scholarship. The Rev.
Robert Lee Hill, the Protestant panelist, amplified the importance of education
by quoting Isaiah 1:18, "Come now and let us reason together," and Romans
12:2, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." George Noonan,
chancellor of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, spoke about
the schools and universities Catholics have founded.
(Other conference speakers also addressed education, including
Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, the British pop singer.)
The panelists identified many other shared values. Noonan
drew parallels between Catholic social teaching and the Islamic approach
to peace and justice. Hill focused on the ineffable nature of God,
and invited the members of the audience to turn to neighbors and say, "God
loves you and there's nothing you can do about it."
Cohen said, "We don't have to agree but we do have to
make room for all of us to stand in the light of God."
One member of the audience who recognized the divergences
among Judaism, Christianity and Islam but found the commonalities overwhelming,
proposed a shared holy day, such as a "Children of Abraham Day."
Such a holiday might not make the prejudice which troubled
the man who wrote me disappear, but it might strengthen interfaith relationships
which are yet too fragile.
455. 030521 THE STAR'S HEADLINE
Sharing Emerson's birthday is a joy
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born 200 years ago this Sunday. Sharing his
birthday has shadowed me most of my life.
We both were parish ministers in the same denomination,
made critical assessments of that faith, left parish work, wrote poetry
and essays, continued to preach and lecture when invited to do so and found
other ways to manifest an interest in the life of the spirit.
Emerson was one of the first Americans to study Asian
religions seriously. He was labeled a "Yankee Hindoo." His idea of an "Oversoul"
seems to have been derived from the Hindu conception of the Brahman, an
all-pervading divinity in which every human soul partakes. The American
movement for interfaith understanding is indebted to Emerson for
his initial explorations.
But more importantly, Emerson insisted that religion should
not be focused on the past. He criticized those who "see God in Judea
and in Egypt, in Moses and in Jesus, but not around them." He wanted "a
living religion," not a mere routine. "As the faith was alive in the hearts
of Abraham and Paul, so I would have it in mine. I want a religion not
recorded in a book, but flowing from all things. When we have broken our
God of tradition and ceased from our God of rhetoric, then may God fire
the heart with his presence."
Instead of a personal God revealed in history, Emerson's
God was the power in nature. In his vision, unity within nature was
glorious. He could not see such interdependence as clearly in society.
In our self-centered culture, Emerson is sometimes read
as an apostle of narcissism. He praised the non-conformist in his famous
essay, "Self-Reliance," and said, "Do your own thing." His mystical counsel
may have been appropriate to his stiff society. But later Emerson came
to place morality at the core of spiritual life; and thoughtful readers
today may recognize the truth that Emerson neglected, that we are all
connected, involved with one another in ways we seldom recognize.
Although Emerson did not believe in life behind the grave,
his admonition to "hitch your wagon to a star" has the ring of immortality
to it. His observation that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of
little minds" similarly invites us to think "outside the box."
Rather than regarding Emerson's birthday as a shadow,
perhaps I should think of it as a great light. Happy 200th, Waldo.
454. 030514 THE STAR'S HEADLINE
Religion has much to say about sexuality
Kansas state Sen. Susan Wagle has criticized Dennis Dailey, an award-winning
University of Kansas professor, for materials used in his popular class
on human sexuality. Wagle's efforts have been applauded by some religious
conservatives.
Religious perspectives on sexuality have varied greatly.
St Augustine taught that sex for pleasure must be avoided, while sex for
procreation, though still sinful, is pardonable. Many Christian thinkers
nowadays justify sex as a form of intimate communication. Traditional Jewish,
Muslim and Hindu perspectives have embraced responsible sex as a holy pleasure.
Here are some suggestions for further reading.
Theologian James B. Nelson's Body Theology (1992) presents
sexuality as central to the mystery of one's relationship with God. Particularly
interesting is Nelson's assessment as a heterosexual of the lessons heterosexuals
can learn from homosexuals.
Two chapters in the Rick Fields classic, Chop Wood, Carry
Water (1984), "Intimate Relationships"' and "Sex," provide excellent
guidance especially for young people. Both chapters draw upon Western and
Eastern faith traditions.
Theodore Zeldin's Intimate History of Humanity (1994)
makes religious and social contexts vivid in his chapters "How new forms
of love have been invented" and "Why there has been more progress in cooking
than in sex." The facts set forth in his chapter, "How the desire that
men feel for women has altered," might clear up some disputes about same-sex
behavior.
Georg Feuerstein's Sacred Sexuality (1992) documents why
so many in our culture cannot connect sex with spirituality, shows how
they have been united in many of the world's faiths, and envisions a world
where eroticism is sanctified.
Clifford Bishop's Sex and Spirit (1996) covers sexuality
as a spiritual matter in ancient and modern faiths. Through beautiful pictures
and concise writing, he exhibits the variety of the world's faiths as they
deal with topics from circumcision to techniques for ecstasy.
David Friedman's A Mind of Its Own (2001) is full of surprising,
even shocking, religious references as he presents a cultural history of
the penis.
Just a few pages long, Depak Chopra's essay, "Does God
Have Orgasms?" in the Nov. 1996 issue of Playboy might be especially helpful
to our lawmakers.
453. 030507 THE STAR'S HEADLINE
Let's talk about the elephant in the room
"The dark side of religion is like an elephant in the room that we can’t
talk about," says Dr. Richard Childs, clinical professor of psychiatry
at UMKC. Nonetheless, he plans to talk about this elephant at a free Friends
of Jung program Friday at 7:15 pm at Unity Temple on the Plaza, 707 W.
47th.
Childs, a Presbyterian layman, became interested in the
topic from some of the clients he saw in his psychiatric practice. He says
they "seemed burdened with unnecessary guilt and were vulnerable to depression
because of religious conflicts and uncertainties. Their religion made it
difficult for them to live a full life and use all of their intellectual
capacities. Some gave away large sums of money they could ill afford to
exploitative religious groups."
Carl Gustav Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist who developed
the discipline of Analytical Psychology, had a positive view of spirituality.
In this he differed from his older contemporary Sigmund Freud. But Jung
was not always sanguine about the current state of Western religion. In
his 1952 essay "Answer to Job," Jung argued that religion, like an
individual person, has a negative, shadow side.
Childs will show slides to illustrate both the shadow
and the persona that operate in various religions. He says these functions
must be acknowledged before a religion can be considered "safe" for its
adherents. "The shadow can be recognized in the naive acceptance of authority
and violence."
Childs says that "skepticism is a component of any healthy
faith. Skepticism is open-minded, asks questions and does not accept answers
simply because an authority said so. Skepticism differs from
cynicism, which is negative, quarrelsome and bitter."
The news media provide many examples of the dark side
of religion. Childs will show images to illustrate this. "The negative
way that some Americans view Islam is often as much a projection of the
shadow side of their own religion as it is defects in the faith they condemn,"
he says. "The lecture will describe numerous reactionary Christian groups
whose beliefs differ radically, yet each claims to have the only true faith."
Childs believes that talking about this usually-ignored
elephant in the room can promote healthier and safer religious views. Openness
can provide a truer moral compass than groups that despise those who will
not accept their dogmas. "There are many different stories and rituals
that can provide a satisfying meaning and give purpose and beauty to our
lives," he says.
When one falls in love, the whole world changes. It's a spiritual event.
Life has fresh meaning. The sacred is everywhere. Even the ordinary becomes
holy.
No one has written about such love with greater surprise
and religious fervor than Jelaluddin Rumi, the 13th Century Sufi who lived
in Konya, in what is now Turkey. His love for Shams, a man his elder by
a generation, seems to have been sparked as they met when Sham asked Rumi
a question about Muhammad and Bestami. Rumi fainted, literally falling
to the floor in love.
Rumi insists on the centrality of love in the life of
the spirit. He writes of "the spreading union of lover and beloved," and
calls it "the true religion. All others are thrown away bandages beside
it." Theological speculations are not nearly as important as the power
of love, which brings us to life: "If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the
dead, don't try to explain the miracle. Kiss me on the lips."
Rumi writes of longing for the beloved, and finding the
beloved wherever one looks, as in our search for God. The act of surrender
to God in faith is like surrendering to the uncertainties of love through
which we live a life beyond mere expectations. Like the English poet and
cleric, John Donne who asks God to "ravish" him, Rumi shocks us with sexual
allusions to awaken us to the adventure of faith: "I used to be respectable
and chaste and stable, but who can stand in this strong wind (of love)
and remember those things?"
The commonplace becomes the theater of faith. Eating,
drinking, cooking, cups, plates, bread, drink, chickpeas--Rumi reveals
from the daily need for nourishment ways we can be spiritually seasoned.
Perhaps the most popular edition of his poetry is The
Essential Rumi, translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne. The book
concludes with a feature seldom found in books of poems: recipes.
The chickpea recipe is featured at the new Rumi restaurant
at 39th and Wyoming. The owner, Bassam Helwani, says his purpose in opening
the restaurant is to provide the experience of the spirit which Rumi's
words express.
On one wall of the restaurant is a painting with Rumi's
words: "Like the ground turning green in a spring wind, like birdsong beginning
inside the egg, like this universe coming into existence, the lover wakes
and whirls in a dancing joy, then kneels down in praise."
451. 030423 THE STAR'S HEADLINE
Faith should promote understanding, not lead to mistrust, prejudice
Remarks by Franklin Graham and other Christian leaders calling Islam
an evil religion are dangerous, according to John L. Esposito, interviewed
following his recent appearance at Rockhurst University. He was especially
concerned at the Pentagon's invitation to Graham to preside over Good Friday
observances at the Pentagon.
Esposito is a professor of religion and international
affairs at Georgetown University and author of What everyone needs to know
about Islam and editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the
Modern Islamic World.
Comments by Graham and others "do disservice to the President,
to the image of America abroad and to American Muslims," he said. "President
Bush backed away from his initial use of the word 'crusade' and has tried
to make it clear that America is not fighting Islam, but rather extremists."
But comments like Graham's are confusing to Europeans and Arabs who know
that much of Bush's support comes from the Christian Right. When federal
agents conducted raids as part of Operation Green Quest, some interpreted
the color in the name as part of a Christian effort against Islam because
green is often associated with Islam.
Esposito noted that Graham offered a prayer at Bush's
inauguration ceremony, and such associations reinforce the concern that
the Religious Right influences U.S. foreign policy. They perpetuate prejudice
among us against American citizens who are Muslims.
Readers of this column have repeatedly asked me about
"Dhimmitude," a term coined by Bat Ye'or, a writer who insists that Christians
and Jews were systematically mistreated throughout history under Muslim
rule. She has appeared before Congress. Her speech last fall at Georgetown
University caused a campus uproar reported in many journals. Readers may
recall I recently asked Cornell University Jewish scholar Ross Brann about
the term, and he declined to use it because he says it distorts history.
When I put the term to Esposito, whose campus was affected
by Ye'or's visit, he noted that "she does not have a major academic record
in either teaching or research, and her conclusions go against established
scholars, including Jewish scholars."
Locally and globally, prejudice persists on many sides.
It endangers our sense of community and threatens us internationally. Rather
than mistrust, our faiths should engender understanding.
450. 030416 THE STAR'S HEADLINE
Art shows don't contradict each other
Two art shows using religious themes could hardly be more different.
Robin Bernat's American Pastoral, a video installation which just closed
at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, is personal and appropriates
her own Jewish background with Buddhist, Christian and other materials
as a therapy for dealing with the loss of her boyfriend, Daniel Zalik,
drowned in a river.
Dylan Mortimer's current installation has transformed
the Epsten Gallery at the Kansas City Jewish Museum at Village Shalom into
a fictional Museum of Faith Analysis. The signage, x-ray photographs, diagrams
and "findings" suggest an instructional science display, objective rather
than personal.
Where the Bernat show pulls us through the universal experience
of guilt and grief with the rediscovery and deepening of faith, the Mortimer
show seems to eschew such emotions and instead uses metaphors of bone,
brain, lungs and stomach to present an analysis of faith without any real
experience of faith.
Bernat shares her agonizing and messy search for redemption
through landscape, ritual, song, quotation and even fireworks.
Mortimer reveals what religion might look like to those
who had no inner acquaintance with it but who were determined to study
it. The neat categories of learning, community, worship, service, healing
and prayer reduce faith to the shallowest possible observations. The quest
for evidence ironically leads us to ask, "Where is the mystery and suffering
and wonder from which religion arises?"
Indeed, the imaginary scientists, whose interim results
are the inconclusive reports on the gallery walls and the screens of the
interactive computers, are afflicted with that peculiarly Western approach
to religion as a matter of belief, evidence and proof. The question which
opens the show "Who is right about Religion?" is utterly irrelevant to
Bernat's spiritual journey. And as local sage Ed Chasteen reminds us, "Who's
right is the wrong question."
Mortimer's work demonstrates the vacuity of those who
make religion an argument instead of a sense of the sacred, a statistic
instead of an encounter with ultimate mystery.
Though contrasting, these two shows are not contrary.
Both beckon our secularist culture beyond easy answers and convenient categories.
Faith is less calculation or a decoded message than it is simple surrender
to the infinite. Looking at a menu is not the same as the satisfaction
of a meal. It is not a proof but rather the presence of the holy which
heals and liberates the spirit.
449. 030409 THE STAR'S HEADLINE
Author collects arguments on tough topic of abortion
Abortion is one of the most difficult and divisive topics in interfaith
conversations. But in the view of Daniel C. Maguire, who teaches Moral
Theology and Ethics at Marquette University, the argument is not so much
between religions as it is within them.
After consulting with scholars within Catholic, Protestant,
Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Native American, and other traditions,
he wrote Sacred Choices: The Right to Contraception and Abortion in Ten
World Religions. He gives a free lecture on the subject Thursday at the
Folly Theater at 7:30 pm.
In a phone interview, he said that early in his study,
he contacted a Taipei Buddhist from whom he learned that many Buddhists
who believe in reincarnation regard abortion as the killing of a being
who has already existed and is ready for another life. The matter is serious,
far beyond simply ending the life of a fertilized egg.
But he learned from a Thai Buddhist that abortion can
also be regarded as the deferral of the arrival of that being's reincarnation
for more favorable circumstances. If the reasons for the abortion are serious
and unselfish, then the good karma would far outweigh the negative karma
generated by the abortion.
Maquire, who trained at Gregorian University in Rome,
is particularly familiar with his own Catholic tradition. He said that
while the Vatican II Council called abortion an "unspeakable crime," previous
theologians had various views, as do others today. St Thomas Aquinas, for
example, held that the early fetus is not "ensouled"--the early fetus is
not a person. Some identified the moment of ensoulment with "quickening."
McGuire noted that Aquinas followed Aristotle in thinking that a fetus
becomes human after 40 days in the case of a male and about three months
in the case of a female.
Within Judaism, opinions also vary. Scholars often note
Exodus 21:22, which describes a situation in which a pregnant woman is
struck as men are fighting. If the fetus is killed, a fine must be levied
against the attacker; but because the fetus is not a person, this is not
murder.
Mcguire's latest book is Sacred Rights: The Case for Contraception
and Abortion in World Religions, published in March by the Oxford University
Press and is based on interfaith research funded by the Packard and Ford
foundations. With Mcguire's introduction, the book collects in-depth papers
by scholars from many faith traditions on these difficult theological and
pastoral issues.
448. 030402 THE STAR'S HEADLINE
Learning about Western and Muslim nations
Since 9/11, many Americans have become aware of how ignorant we are
about Islamic culture. And many Americans have yet to become aware of our
ignorance about the rich Jewish history that unfolded after the Bible was
compiled. Despite the fact that Kansas City's first sister city is Seville,
most of us know little about how Jews and Muslims lived together in Spain's
golden age of Islam before the Christians expelled the Jews and Muslims
in 1492.
But we should know. And care.
Ross Brann, the Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Judeo-Islamic
Studies at Cornell University, offers insights from history to illumine
the present in a lecture this Sunday at 4 pm at the Hall Student Center
at Pembroke Hill School, 5121 State Line Road. His topic is "Religion,
Politics and Peace in the Middle East."
In a telephone interview, I asked Brann about the frequent
claim that "Jews and Muslims have been fighting for thousands of years,
and nothing can change that." Brann said that it is useful to include the
history of Christianity with Judaism and Islam in considering such views.
"The past may be more positive and tolerant--less hegemonic--than
most people think. The idea that Jews and Muslims have been fighting since
Isaac and Ishmael is false. We are not consigned to an eternal conflict.
Medieval Islam was far more tolerant than the Christianity of that era."
Under Muslim rule, a Dhimmi was a non-Muslim whose right
to practice his or her own faith was protected. Recently a derivative term,
"dhimmitude," has been used to argue that Muslims demeaned or oppressed
those with Dhimmi status. Brann is not in favor of this term because it
is used polemically to "grossly oversimplify and distort" the historical
context of the privileges and disabilities of the Dhimmi.
Brann suggests that looking at interactions from the past
might point us in fruitful directions for the future. One of his special
interests is Samuel Ha-Nagid, a Jew who rose to became vizier in Muslim-ruled
Granada. "But he is not the only such figure" to illustrate the complicated
relationships those of different faiths have had in mixed cultures, Brann
said.
Brann's talk Sunday will move from such history to look
at events of 1917 and 1967 and at current issues between the West and Muslim
nations.
The lecture is sponsored by the Cornell Club, the International
Relations Council, the Plaza Rotary Club and several other groups.
447. 030326 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Worship space reminds us of the omnipresence of God
God is often understood to be present everywhere, yet we sometimes refer
to places of worship as "God's house." If God is omnipresent, why do we
need sites specifically designated to point us to the divine?
As Bishop Raymond Boland of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas
City-St. Joseph dedicated the renovated Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
last month, he said that the cathedral's "gold dome (proclaims) the transcendency
of eternity amid the secular towers of trade and commerce." While God may
be everywhere, we need particular places to remind us of that truth.
In a later interview, Boland identified four ways of thinking
about God's presence. First, he said, there is the universal presence,
which can be sensed anywhere. Some people especially enjoy feeling God
in nature, as in walking along a river bank.
Second, God is present in people. Boland cited the conclusion
of President Kennedy's Inaugural Address in which he said, "here on earth
God's work must truly be our own." God in our hearts can make our hands
useful.
Third, God is present in special places such as temples.
The cathedral is a place of beauty, uplifting the spirit. It is also a
place of service to the entire city, not only to Catholics but to city
residents in many ways, such as through its social service programs and
its use as a facility for great music.
Of course its primary function is worship. Boland described
it as a sort of "spiritual filling station," where people can be refreshed
to take God's spirit back into their daily lives in a deepened way. The
week becomes the fulfillment of the worship experience.
Fourth, Boland identified the "real presence" of Christ
in the consecrated bread and wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist. The
Catholic doctrine that the bread and wine become the very body and blood
of Christ is called transubstantiation. Scriptural support for this teaching
can be found in John 6:50-55, which includes the statement of Jesus identifying
himself as the living bread, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man,
and drink his blood, ye have no life in you."
While Protestants typically interpret this passage differently,
most Christians recognize the Eucharistic meal as a reminder of God's sacrificial
presence in the world.
The sites, rituals and people of faith are all signs of
God's pervasive grace available everywhere, throughout the entire world.
446. 030319 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Partnership program makes friends of faiths
Can people of various faiths learn to share their perspectives and come
to love each other?
One of several Kansas City area efforts that has provided
a resounding "yes" to this question is the Congregational Partners program
run by Kansas City Harmony. Begun in 1997, the program is about to celebrate
its five years of success.
Janet Moss, who coordinates the program, last month visited
Johannesburg, South Africa, where she piloted a "faiths in harmony" institute
for people of different religious backgrounds.
While skills developed here are being shared elsewhere,
many people in our own community have yet to learn about the 33 congregations
in 16 partnerships and how they operate. Usually once a month members of
partnering congregations get together for an activity that develops mutual
apprecation and enhances their relationships.
With the oldest partnership still vibrant, Moss is eager
to assist additional congregations to form partnerships.
She says one exciting result of this program is "hearing
people of different religions being transparent to one another, authentic
with each another in their moments of joy and laughter and sadness and
vulnerablity."
And from her trip she has a deepened appreciation for
ways that enable people to express sorrow for the suffering they have caused
others, and for others to respond with forgiveness, for mutual reconcilliation.
South Africa's "Truth and Reconcilliation" commission dealt with abuses
under apartheid and provided legal amnesty.
Although the US situation is very different, we are too
often estranged from each other, or at least not knowledgeable enough to
be comfortable with one another. While the opportunities for understanding
offered by Congregational Partners are less formal than those of South
Africa, they can still be quite meaningful to the participants.
Sunday 4-6 pm you can join in celebrating the partnership
process in a free program at the Heart of America Indian Center, 600 W.
39 St. Moss says this is an opportunity to "listen in on a dialogue about
the power of authentic reconciliation, experience the healing sound of
the drum and learn how a person of faith can cross lines of ethnic, racial
and religions differences." RSVP (816) 531-6577.
445. 030312 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Fast brings duty to world into focus
In 1983, on Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Christian pre-Easter
season of Lent, I began a fast from solid food. My purpose was to purify
myself as the spiritual leader of the congregation I then served. Bellicose
statements about the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union alarmed many of
my parishioners. I wanted to know my responsibilities to them and my duties
as a citizen more clearly.
Every meal time was a reminder of the goal, a renewal
of effort to be cleansed of prejudice and predispositions so that I might
see through the haze in which I felt engulfed.
I intended to break the fast with Easter Eucharist, but
I did not feel I had learned enough to do so. I continued the fast until
Wesak in May, a festival marking the Buddha's birthday, enlightenment and
death.
I seldom talk about these ten weeks, and I've never written
about this before. But with a war apparently near, perhaps you, dear reader,
may find my surprise discovery near the end of the fast a stimulus to your
own contemplation.
The concerns I had were deepened first by the Christian
calendar which framed the fast. The story of Jesus' unmerited suffering
and death is often minimized these days, but you cannot get to Easter without
it. Then the weeks before the Buddhist observance beckoned toward universal
compassion within the question of why life so often is unfair.
I contemplated "a worst case scenario," where all human
life would be agonizingly ended in nuclear disasters. How would that affect
my faith?
Having worked with families with loved ones in the process
of dying and their deep sorrow even before death actually occurred, I learned
about "anticipatory grief." Sometimes people stopped eating.
The surprise for me near the end of the 72 days was the
realization that the discipline of the fast had become a form of anticipatory
grief--for the end of the world. That perhaps sounds grandiose, but it
was actually the opposite: a profound recognition that my powers are infinitesimal.
With that revelation came a sense of freedom. The haze disappeared.
The freedom did not mean I cared any less, but instead
of clinging to an outcome no human could manage to bring about, I could
find joy in duty to the world.
Now, our best gifts to one another may be to do our duty
joyfully as we best understand it, and to hold each other dearly through
the unfolding events in an embrace as large as possible.
444. 030305 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Dance can build a haven for the spirit
How does one live with an open heart in a world where fear, misunderstanding,
schedules, selfishness and other poisons abound? Marcus Borg, the famous
scholar visiting Village Presbyterian Church last month, named activities
that can help us, including communing with nature, regular worship and
the arts.
The question is raised also by William Whitener's dance,
"Haven," premiered in February by the Kansas City Ballet.
With images that could be interpreted as priestesses in
ceremonial garments at a temple entrance, a renewal or resurrection of
a pile of bodies and quite ordinary, everyday movements as people go about
their business, "Haven" was a testimony to centeredness in the midst of
chaos and uncertainty. The dancers were sometimes hidden or framed by scenic
elements created by Buddhist fiber artist Jason Pollen of the Kansas City
Art Institute, by the lighting of Kirk Bookman and by the musical cosmos
of the Japanese composer, Toru Takemitsu.
Perhaps Whitener is suggesting that faith more than an
MTV event. Moments when the dancers moved in silence and times when dancers
deliberated in slow, ritual modulations invite us to an awareness far deeper
than a succession of scenes so forgettable that they can hold our attention
for only a few seconds. Thus the utopian section of the piece ends in silence.
Paradoxically, the silence, the sustained, can make us vividly aware of
how transient our lives are and direct us toward that which is permanent
or renewing or healing.
It is then that the heart opens.
The heart does not open to a world without pain and struggle.
The haven is in the midst of the crammed, bustling, confusing rush all
around us and into which we are drawn. The heart opens as our numbness
to all of this is broken. The arts have the power to reawaken us to the
joy and woe of our own lives and the lives of others.
This is not the first time the ballet has presented works
which open the heart to the world of the spirit. Gloria, Carmina Burana,
Prodigal Son, Arena, Holberg Suite and Feast of Ashes are on my list from
previous seasons. The next performances, Apr. 10-13, include The Still
Point, with the title from the profoundly religious poet, T S Eliot. Another
offering, Canzone, is choreographed by Paula Weber who created Carmina
Burana.
Kansas City is fortunate to have a dance company that
can not only entertain but also inform and lift the spirit.
http://www.uua.org/world/2003/02/living.htmlliving the faith
Contents: UU World March/April 2003
March/April 2003Kansas City UU minister builds interfaith bridges
by Donald E. SkinnerIt is 6 a.m. on the last day of the year, and 250 people of different faiths have gathered at a Buddhist center in Kansas City, Missouri, for the seventeenth annual World Peace Meditation. They have come to witness and participate in Native American prayers, Tibetan Buddhist chants and meditations, Sufi dancing, and a Muslim call to prayer. And, of course, to hear the Rev. Vern Barnet speak about "The Path of Peace in World Religions."
Rev. Barnet has been a Unitarian Universalist minister since 1970. In 1984 he left his last parish, in a Kansas City suburb, to take up what had become his passion — the study of world religions and the promotion of interfaith understanding. He founded the Center for Religious Experience and Study in 1982 (www.cres.org) and since then has gone on to help create or to inspire a broad array of multifaith programs, resources, and organizations that have helped make Kansas City a national model.
When CBS went looking last summer for a city actively involved in multifaith work, it selected Kansas City in large part because of Barnet's work — and because after 9/11 Kansas City experienced little of the aggression against Muslims that other cities reported. A film crew spent a week in Kansas City filming what would become a half-hour documentary, "Open Hearts, Open Minds," which was shown in October 2002.
The intro to the film went as follows: "A growing number of people in this heartland city are trying to send a message to the rest of America — Let's celebrate our diversity, let's get to know people of different religions and different backgrounds, respect them, maybe even love them. It's a simple message, and an old one, but since 9/11, the idea of brotherhood has gained new urgency."
CBS was initially attracted by a program that one of Barnet's groups launched last year. It printed thousands of thirty-two-page passport-size booklets and distributed them to congregations to hand out. Holders of these "interfaith passports" are encouraged to visit other religious groups and in the process collect a stamp, sticker, or signature just as they would in crossing international borders. The program, and other initiatives that Barnet helped create, are helping Kansas City-area residents appreciate each other's religious diversity in several ways:
* Since 1994 Barnet has written a weekly "Faiths and Beliefs" column in the Kansas City Star about the value of diversity. The column appears to have changed people's attitudes. "In the beginning," he says, "I'd get calls and letters about how I was sending people to hell and why was I diverting people from the one true religion? But the responses I get now are more focused on trying to understand something I've written. That's one way I know we're making a difference here."
* MOSAIC, a newly formed group that Barnet helped organize, is, in addition to developing the passport project, collecting "life stories" of religious involvement and plans to dramatize them this year as a way of expanding appreciation of various faiths. It also sponsors a book club. One of the first titles discussed was Why Religion Matters, by Huston Smith. The Rev. Kathy Riegelman, a Unitarian Universalist community minister, is helping with that work.
* Hospitals and schools increasingly call Barnet for interfaith resources. Prayers at his Rotary club no longer end "in Jesus' name."
Barnet's days are a round of speaking engagements, organizational meetings, teaching, and writing. His appointments for a recent two-week period included speaking to students at Unity School of Religious Studies on "The Various Forms of Prayer," at a Roman Catholic church on "How Other Faiths Respond to the Scripture for the Day," and on "Religious Stereotypes" at a PeaceJam youth workshop at a Roman Catholic university. He also gave "A Brief History of the Christian Denominations" to an interdenominational marriage group at a Roman Catholic church, spoke on "The Heart of Every Faith" to a Baptist men's group, and discussed interfaith topics on a local National Public Radio station talk show.
Barnet had always intended to be a parish minister. And he was for fourteen years. But he noticed that whenever he talked about world religions "there was great resonance in my congregations. I got a very noticeable response." That encouraged him to learn more about world religions and to explore his own community. As he became aware of the broad array of religious groups in Kansas City he decided to take up interfaith work. "I saw this as a mission field," he says. "And it's every bit as demanding as parish work."
He lives simply, or as he says, "low to the ground." He receives no salary for his interfaith work. Last year he earned about $5,000 from teaching at local colleges. He supplements that income with early withdrawals from his pension. Friends help with living expenses, including donating clothing and an occasional automobile. "It's a quasi-monastic model," he says. "I have learned what it is like to live under the poverty level. I am very aware of economic injustice."
Barnet is often called on to give inclusive prayers at public events and he has developed a guide for that purpose. He has also developed Earth Day resources that explain the ways in which various faiths regard the Earth. Both are available on the CRES Web site.
One of the first things Barnet did when he began his interfaith work was to help organize a comprehensive metro interfaith council, giving not only Christians, Jews, and Muslims a way to talk together, but also Baha'is, Sufis, Wiccans, Zoroastrians, Native Americans, and others. A multifaith speaker's bureau has also been created, and it has been much in demand since 9/11. An annual interfaith dinner is held on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, placing Thanksgiving in a worldwide religious context and celebrating the many ways that various religions express gratitude. More than 150 were in attendance at last November's dinner.
The interfaith council was instrumental in organizing multifaith memorial services after September 11, 2001, and its one-year anniversary, and also organized Kansas City's first interfaith conference, "The Gifts of Pluralism," in October 2001. More than 250 people from fifteen faith groups attended.
One of Barnet's close associates in interfaith work is Kansas City Mayor Pro Tem Alvin Brooks. "Vern has taken interfaith work to a new level," says Brooks. "He reaches out not only to the major faiths, but to others. He helps keep them all connected, and he provides a great service for the metro area."
Barnet is heartened by the growing interest that he sees in learning about other religions. "People are hungry for knowledge about other peoples' faiths," he says. "And they end up deepening their own faith when they have encounters with other faiths. This is what has to happen if the human race is going to survive."