Bharatiya Temple

This was definitely one of the coolest experiences I've had at Ursinus. I'll start off by putting this one out there - no matter how hard we try to be "multi-cultural" or conscious of the world beyond Western culture we're still white Americans at a private liberal arts college. There's nothing wrong with this at all but I think that it's been overlooked by people wanting to 'understand' new and exciting cultures. After this weekend I've decided that there's nothing wrong with not being able to fully understand - in fact, I think it might be nearly impossible.

I had a great time at the Bharatiya Temple and I feel like I learned a lot, but I don't think I could have had such a wonderful experience if I'd been trying to understand everything going on around me and relate it to things I've been exposed to in the past. THe main thing I noticed at the temple that stands out to me now is the smell.

Most of the religious sites I've been to have no distinct smell beyond the occasional musty scent. When we went upstairs to the shrines there was a very stong perfume-y smell from the incense they burned. I think that this was so cool because the whole experience of stepping into an unfamiliar culture was a completely sensory experience. Beyond the smell there was also the sense of touch (walking around barefoot, hands getting warm over the candle in from of Vishnu), sound (the bells ringing), sight (lots of shrines, bright colors), and taste (taking the nuts from the priest). I think that having all of my senses engaged help me to feel uncomfortable enough in my surroundings (not in a bad way!) that I was able to fully experience going into an unfamiliar culture.

Go humans go (Part 2)

When we got to the meeting we were a bit late. As we walked in Nathan signaled to us to be quiet. I'm sure that people noticed us shuffling in and taking our seats, but no one seemed upset, offended, or even the slightest bit curious about who were and why we were there. The room was large - high ceilings, graduated pews that all faced inwards, a balcony with more pews. We sat a little bit away from the people who were already there so I didn't get a good chance to check out what everyone was wearing while we were coming in. What WAS noticeable was that everyone was sitting peacefully with their eyes either downcast or closed. At first I felt a little uncomfortable and anxious because I wanted to see what was going on around me before I closed my eyes or looked down, but it's better that I was able to plunge right into the experience. Yes, I was there for an observation, but I didn't feel that that meant I couldn't try out a custom while I was there.

I really enjoyed listening to what people had to say. When the first person stood up and spoke about the Nobel and how she thought Obama might have won for what he believed (rather than what he'd done) and how what we believe might be more important than we think I felt like I was connected to the service. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was strange to know what she was saying and be able to meditate on her words with all of the people around me even though I don't identify as a Quaker. I found that to be true with all of the people who spoke. I appreciated the pause between people standing up and talking because it allowed me time to consider what had been said and think about the religious implications of that particular statement before another person stood up to say what she wanted to.

Although I couldn't quite figure out why, I thought it was very important that the children were brought into the meeting when they were and that few (if any) parents made an effort to shush them. I also thought it was cool that people continued to stand up and speak once the children were in the meeting and even though it was a little noisier. I've always been of the belief that children are meant to be heard and I thought it was nice that they were accepted into the community and that no one really felt a need to take them out.

It seemed like most of the older people at the meeting were regulars and that the younger people were mostly there for the first time (I think they all had children in the preschool). I also didn't see any teenagers or college age students (beyond us). It looked like most of the people were white although there was a little diversity. When asked about interfaith projects our representative person said that the community could stand to do more of them...I think it's interesting that they don't have many right now since, according to the website, the major belief in Quakerism is to "love thy neighbor..." I'm not saying they don't love their neighbors because they don't have interfaith activities and events, it had just been something I'd expected them to be more involved in.

One more note: It looked like the pumpkin carving event had a larger turn out than the actual meeting.

Go humans go (Part 1)

I don't mean for the title of this post to be inappropriate in any way. On the contrary, I think that Quaker oatmeal's advertising campaign is something that deserves some consideration. Now that I live in Southeastern PA I know that there are a good amount of Quakers and that they have really, really good schools...but the oatmeal guy was all I knew about the religion before I got here. Quite honestly it never occured to me that Quakers still existed - in my mind they'd gone the way of the Puritans (wow, this will be embarassing if there are still Puritans around). Quakerism is very much a regional religion. I've recently learned that there is a small meeting on N. San Pedro Road in San Rafael (very close to the Jewish Community Center, actually), but I'm sure that the Quaker community out West has a different feel than the community back East. Perhaps it's just the nature of religion in the Bay Area, but I've actually noticed the same thing with Jews on the East Coast vs. the West Coast.

Anyways. When I got to UC and heard about people who went to Quaker school I was surprised to hear that Quakerism was alive and well in the US. I think that this is telling about the religion - not at all intrusive, very respectful of others, and no need to show off their customs or religion. This also really set the tone for our visit yesterday morning...

Details about the field trip in the next post. I just wanted to give a little background about my (lack of) exposure to Quakers previous to our trip.

Oh dear Lord...what the Hell...Jesus Christ...in God we trust...

Oh dear Lord...what the Hell...Jesus Christ...in God we trust...does any of this mean anything anymore? This is a tough one. I see where Brennan comes from in his statement about how "In God we trust" and all that business has become meaningless and 100% secular because of "rote repetition," but there are some people who don't find those statements (or any other religious ones) to be merely "ceremonial deism." I guess that what I really can't decide here is whether or not a term should be relegated to a secular classification if there are still some people who take them seriously. I also wonder if saying "under God" in the Pledge or printing "In God we trust" on our money counts as "taking the Lord's name in vain" if those are, in fact, empty phrases.

May the Force be with you...

Last night Casey and I watched Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (full disclosure: I'd never seen Star Wars before despite hometown ties). I'd been exposed to many different allusions and references to the saga and I understood a good amount of it, but last night's experience really contextualized all that I'd encountered previously.

One of the things that is inescapable in pop-culture is the concept of the Force. I always knew it had to do with religion but not because I'd ever thought about it. When I was in Hebrew school whenever someone did a good job with something we wished them "yasher koach" which I believe is something along the lines of just "way to go." In fourth and fifth grade my Hebrew school teacher, Rachel, would have us say "yasher koach" like always, but then she prompted us with "which means..." and, in unison, we'd all reply "may the Force be with you!" That was my first exposure to "the Force" (again, full disclosure: this is the same Rachel who is now the rabbi at the synagogue in Phoenixville).

When I watched Episode IV last night I was more interested in the concept of the Force than anything else. I'm shy about making any sort of analysis at this point since I've heard that the concept is further developed over the course of the saga, but there's definitely something going on there that deserves attention. One of the Star Wars related things that I've heard rumors about is the presence of a sort of Jedi religion that real people actually claim to be followers of. Upon first hearing this a few years ago I scoffed at the idea and wrote people off as being completely wacked out nerds who had nothing better to do. After seeing the first film, however, I've changed my tune. I'm not ready to embrace Jediism as a legitimate religion quite yet, but I'm not so quick to call all who believe in the Force complete idiots.

Now to wrap this all up...

I think it's important for this class to approach the various different theories and religions that we're going to examine only after reading about them in context and fully understanding them. I really scared myself last night when I realized that it'd be just as easy to call a major world religion or belief system stupid and irrelevant as it was for me to say the same of the Force.

So yeah. I guess what I'm saying is that I shouldn't be so judgmental.

using etic and emic to justify guilt

So I can't go on our field trip since I'm volunteering at Boo at the Zoo on the same Saturday. At first I felt incredibly guilty about this since I was very much looking forward to the class field trips and I'm a bit of an over achiever/I hate missing out on class things. After reviewing our reading packet and thinking about the purpose of the class, it dawned on me that I don't HAVE to go on the field trip! Okay Nathan, don't kill me yet...just humor me a little here.

One of my goals in this course is to expose myself to new and unfamiliar religions and beliefs. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the etic/emic business here, but I think that what I want to be (or, more accurately, what I must be) an etic observer of these religions. I want to look at them through fresh lenses and appreciate the traditions as more than just alien traditions that I read about in a text book a few semesters ago.

For me, as a Jew, it will be impossible for me to be an etic observer. How am I supposed to sit in on Shabbat services on a Saturday morning and not follow along in the Hebre prayer book or even recite some of the liturgy? No matter what, I'm an emic observer just by nature of the fact that I grew up going to Shabbat services and no matter what my feelings are now I can't separate myself from that.

I'm not saying that I'm above going on the field trip or that it's not something that I want to do, I just think that I might have more of an etic experience at the Zoo working with children from the inner city who won't be able to go trick-or-treating in their neighborhoods on Halloween. Being from the suburbs and having always been able to go out in my neighborhood whenever I wanted this will be a new and different experience for me and I will be something of a culturally neutral observer.

Of course, I've only read the article once so far so I could be totally off base here. Nathan, please don't fail me for this.

Place, object, story.

My "special" place is UC. I love it here. Anyone who has known me since I was a freshman knows that I have changed dramatically over the last three years I've spent here. I can't really pinpoint the changes I've gone through but UC has dramatically altered who I am and the way I see the world. Since I can't realistically expect that this is an appropriate answer I will instead choose to focus on the Ursinusiana Archives. I feel that the time I've spent at UC is being brought together by my honors project which, appropriately, is about the College and what has shaped its character over the past 140 years. The archives also represent the College as a whole for reasons that I don't think need to be explained.

The object I'm choosing is a paperweight with a picture of a bird on it. I hate birds, but this particular one is different. This bird picture also represents my time at Ursinus because the poster print is all. over. campus. Seriously, just take a quick walk through any building (especially Corson) and I guarantee you'll come across it. Now, I couldn't STAND that stupid print but last week when I was looking through my desk space in the office I work in I cam across a few paperweights with the bird on it. I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever seen but my boss pointed out to me that that bird would probably remind me more of Ursinus than most other things I've acquired during my time here. She's totally right and I'm totally holding on to that paper weight.

My story is about a place but it's not a place we can walk to as a class. When I was 16 I studied abroad in Israel for 4 months. One of the excursions we went on was to a small suburb/village thinger outside of Jerusalem called Abu Ghosh. It's an Arab Israeli community that sets a great precedent for co-existence. Basically, the people of the town live in perfect harmony with their Jewish Israeli neighbors. When we went there a few of my friends and I were wandering around a spot in town where the shops and stands were set up. We had gone to buy hummus (Abu Ghosh is known for its hummus) and we got a little lost. While we were trying to find our way back we came across a local woman - probably in her mid 20s - who not only helped us back but engaged us in a conversation about Arab Israeli-Jewish Israeli relations and her take on the whole business. I don't remember exactly what was said (it was in Hebrew - one of the people in our group was fluent and translated for us) but I do recall coming away from the whole experience feeling incredibly optimistic about the whole world and the possibilities that exist for those who just take a minute and engage their neighbor.

Group reading assignment - Eck article.

I got carried away with my response on the group comments page and decided to cut it down. Here's my response/summary thing in its entirety:

Eck's article covers a lot of ground, but in the end I think that her most important message is that "our new georeligious reality" means that yes, we are diverse, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee religious pluralism. America today is undeniably diverse and Eck makes sure that this point comes across loud and clear in the article, but two things can come of this diversity, this "new reality of our society." The first is hatred and violence - temples and mosques being vandalized (or completely destroyed), religious artifacts being smashed and scattered. The second product of diversity, the one that Eck strives for, is this notion of pluralism and cooperation. The church and the temple sharing a property in Fremont, the priests, rabbis, and imams who turned out to help break ground for the new Islamic Center - these things aren't just happy accidents that are products of diversity, but these are the fruits of many people's labors. I use the word labor here quite intentionally - these people have gone out of their way to work together, to engage their neighbors and their neghbor's beliefs in order to create an incredible pluralist phenomenon that moves past mere tolerance, or what Eck aptly describes as "too thin a foundation for a world of religious difference."

LDS and doxastic voluntarism.

Until about an hour ago I had completely forgotten about an experience I had this summer while I was in Salt Lake City. The entire LDS faith has always been interesting to me, but while I was on a tour of the museum/visitor's center near Temple Square my docent/missionary began speaking very casually about the missionary work around she's done around the world. Curious about it, I asked which places in the world had been assigned missionaries to, as she put it, educate people about Joseph Smith's encounter with the angel Mironi and what came of this. She replied that there were only two places in the world that they were not permitted to send missionaries - the Middle East and China. When I went on to inquire why those two places she gently informed me that there were some places in the world where people were not permitted to choose their own beliefs.

I was blown away by this. The notion that a person could freely choose their own beliefs whenever they wanted to. Now, I can understand that maybe a person can feel spiritually disconnected from the religion she was born into and find spiritual solace elsewhere, but that I might speak with a missionary of ANY religion on day and wake up the next morning and just decide that not only do I not want to be Jewish but yeah, there was a guy who was crucified almost 2,000 years ago and then was resurrected in order to pay for my sins. Maybe the next morning I'd wake up and change my mind about what I believed again.

I learned tonight that this theory that a person can change their beliefs at will is called doxastic voluntarism. I did a little bit of Googling and nothing I came up with endorsed this theory. Mostly people seemed to share my beliefs - that it's, at worst, a forced belief, or, at best, insincere.

Perhaps doxastic voluntarism has worked out for some, but I'm sure I would have to do more than just a quick Google search to find theories that could change my mind.

Reading Packet

"This Blessed House" was probably my favorite part of the reading packet we had for class today. I always enjoy reading Diana Eck and I do enjoy Li-Young Lee, but there was something about the way that the characters in the short story reacted to the religious experiences that they encountered that really struck me.

Both Sanjeev and Twinkle are Hindus - this is made very clear from the beginning of the story when Twinkle begins to find the Christian paraphernalia around the house. This interests me because the pair are from India, come from families that believe in the caste system, and are the product of an arranged marriage. Why, then, is there so much strife between the two when Twinkle begins to display the Christian stuff?

One might be inclined to lean towards the possibility of Twinkle not being quite as religious as Sanjeev who is more of a traditional Hindu and is irked by Twinkle's findings and subsequent reverence for said findings. However, I think that there is a possibility of being able to characterize Twinkle as being more religious/pious in that her superstitions revolve around more than just the religion she personally identifies with. I've not fully thought this through yet, but a religious person with pluralistic leanings - someone who is respectful of other religions (even if she is driven by superstition) - is generally more comfortable and in touch with the religion that she identifies with.

It's a big statement, I know, but here Sanjeev merely comes off as insecure and I'm not sure what else to make of it.

An encounter with religious difference.

One of my very first religious studies classes at UC was an evening course taught once a week. It was called the Muhammed Seminar and had attracted quite an interesting mix of students from various backgrounds. I didn't consider any of us to be too different and I still don't, but one of the things that came up during the class was the Muslim students' observance of Ramadan.

I've studied Islam plenty of times before so I was familiar with the festival and the practices that went a lot with it - namely the fasting from sunrise to sundown. What took me by surprise when I encountered students who were participating in the fast and quietly eating their dinners about an hour into the class was sort of strange. When I had studied Islam and the festival of Ramadan I had fallen into a sort of pattern that most people tend to when they examine religious practices other than their own. What I had done was compare the religious traditions of Islam with the religious traditions of Judaism as a way to sort of break it down and make it more relateable to me - less alien, I suppose. I had compared the fasting on Ramadan to the closest thing I could find in Judaism which was fasting for Yom Kippur or one of the other fasting holidays.

Now, obviously the two aren't that similar and the Muslims observing Ramadan have a different kind of fast in front of them (for one thing it lasts for many days). The attitudes towards it - the casualness with which it was met, the very few (if any) complaints that I heard, were startling to me. So I guess what I'm trying to say was that it wasn't really the religious tradition or the people observing it but HOW they observed it that caught me off guard. To this day I'm not sure exactly what it was that I found so unnerving and awesome (like awe inspiring, not TOTALLY GREAT) about the attitudes towards the observance, but I do know that it was just different.