Shine a Light

On December 11th I attended the presentation of Shine a Light, a performance of a group of students of Bunker Hill Community College. I had the opportunity to enjoy different forms of art which included rap, acoustic music, dance, theater and poetry. The students used them to talk about many different social issues such as AIDS, sexual harassment, poverty, human rights, and women’s rights. It was a very interesting presentation, first of all, because of the artistic forms used; second, because the messages the group was trying to communicate are issues that affect every one of us, directly or indirectly.

I think that if you combine music and messages with social content, the messages are more easily going to be absorbed by the people who are listening to you songs. And if you have something to say and write a poem about it, the mere fact of using poetry to express what you want the others to know, is going to make your words and your intention more permanent in the memory of the ones who listen to it.

This was not precisely a religious presentation; nevertheless, there was an enormous charge of spirituality in the way the performers presented their pieces. I think it had a lot to do with the intensity the performers showed when they were trying to send their ideas to the public. It was also because they are all young and idealism almost always belongs to the young people. Also, it was evident that the students invested a lot of time and effort to prepare for their presentation. They did a great job, there were no problems or distractions and they were able to deliver their message with ease.

I think this kind of performance is a great way to make ideas travel around and gives the opportunity to tell others about the issues that have to be addressed. One can enjoy the music, the dance and the acting and then reflect about why these people in the performance are putting so much effort to make us think. They may be talking about something everybody knows but they do it in a more impressive way. Images, expressions, gestures and different ways to use the voice are so much easier to remember. Their message can more easily go through.

I am glad I decided to be there last Friday. It was a great experience.

How could you make an argument either FOR or AGAINST the existence of God?

Building a good argument against the existence of God is something very easy. You just have to eliminate everything that is not visible and cannot be proven. You can mention the dangers, the cruelty inherent in nature, the heartlessness of some men, the indifference of others, and the insensible hand of fate… those and so many more things against the idea of a benevolent, omnipotent God. A cruel God who seems to have created the universe only to entertain himself watching it decay, and watching humans spend the time trying to destroy themselves and all around them.

I think that’s a very simplistic approach to the most complex of the questions.
But then again, does God exist? Does anybody really know if he is around and what the shape, the size or the intentions of God are? Should we just decide that it is impossible to know that and leave that question tucked away in the top drawer of an imaginary desk?

Well, maybe we should accept that God exists for the mere reason that we are now talking about Him, or Her, or It. That it can be anything and have as many faces and come in as many shapes as people are in this world. That God is always what we would like him to be. It is reason or a reason to do something, it is inside or all around us; or maybe it is just the great mystery by which we were created all different… or it is the mystery that made us create Him in many different places and in many different forms.

I am not even going to pretend that I know anything. This has always been too much for me. The only thing I am sure of is that nobody should use the word God to threaten, to judge or to punish or menace with a supernatural punishment at the end of or after this life. Life is too complex as it is; there shouldn’t be someone speaking words of punishment no God is supposed to have spoken. It just isn’t fair. I would like to think that after this life ends, the mystery will be over and I will finally have a nice opportunity to rest in peace.

Neo Paganism

This week we had the opportunity to learn about modern religions. There are many examples of them. I wanted to know about Neo-Paganism because I think the mere idea of rescuing ancient beliefs, rituals and pantheons or, on the hand, creating a new religious system is extremely interesting. I read a bit about the other religions before deciding which one I was going to investigate. I think the variety and differences among them quite interesting.

When I started reading about Neo Paganism, I found out the term doesn’t refer only to Wicca, but to a group of different religions that include: Asatru, Church of All Worlds, Discordianism, Druidry, Feri, Gwyddons, Hellenismos, Kemeticism, Religio Romana, Religious Witchcraft, Senistrognata, Thelema and Wicca.

We can see that Paganism or Neo-Paganism is an umbrella term that covers many religious and non-religious practice and that the variety and combinations or fusions is incredible, especially when you read that the number of practitioners of these “alternative spiritualities” or “new religious movements” is between 200,000 and 1,000,000 in the United States.

The members of these religions can adopt a great variety of Gods or chose monotheism or atheism if they want. They follow the principles of reverence for nature, sensuality, pleasure, art, creativity and the female principle. Their practices, places of cult and literature are incredible diverse.

The Wiccan Rede is a statement that provides the key moral system for some of the Neo-pagan religions. The most common for of the Rede is: An it harm none, do what ye will. (Do what you will, so long as it harms none.)

I have included two video clips. The first one shows some aspects about Wicca and the people who belongs to this religion. This video was taken in a place in England where a coven of witches is gradually accepted into the community.

The second one is an interview with Oberon Zell Ravenheart, who, according with the information in his website is “a modern Renaissance man, a transpersonal psychologist, metaphysician, naturalist, theologian, shaman, author, artist, sculptor, lecturer, teacher, and ordained Priest of the Earth-Mother, Gaia. Oberon Zell Ravenheart is one of the founders of the Church of All Worlds, the publisher of Green Egg Magazine and the Headmaster of the Grey School of Wizardry.







To complete this assignment, I used the pages recommended in the Learning Wikispaces for this class. I chose only one of them when I realized there were too many variations for this theme. I got most of the information I used here from the following page: http://www.ecauldron.net/newpagan.php . I found a large number of links and information in this page. I also used some pages from Wikipedia, and looked for multimedia in Youtube.

Judaism, Christianism and Islam.

The most important point of agreement between Judaism, Christianity and Islam is the fact that they are monotheist religions that recognize the God of Abraham as their only and true God. They are based on the same principles of obedience to God’s laws which are written in a sacred book; the Torah for Judaism, the Bible for Christians and the Qur’an for Islam . Judaism was the base for the first Christians because they were all Jews and Jesus followers believed he was the Messiah announced by the prophets. Jesus Christ was not opposing the tradition but his followers ended up separating from Judaism and becoming the first Christians after He was condemned and crucified.

On the other hand, Mohammed received the order to start reciting the messages he received from Allah by the Archangel Gabriel who is a figure that belongs also to the Judaism and Christianism. If we take all this into account, it would be easy to believe that people who belonged to these three religions would not have any problems between them. But they do have problems and these problems come from the fact that Jesus Christ and his followers believed that He was the son of God, born from a virgin. Jews have never accepted Jesus Christ as the son of God but just as a prophet. Christians believe Jesus was the Messiah announced by the prophets and Jews are still waiting for the Messiah to come. Muslims reject the idea of Jesus Christ being considered the son of God and they don’t accept God can have a human family or considering Him as the Virgin Mary’s husband. Apart from that, the rest of the problems comes from the way people understand the scriptures and many cultural differences that exist in the different places where these religions are practiced.

Sinners in the hands of an angry God

It is very difficult for me even try to "dig" into all the dark corners these two versions of the Sermon present. I truly dislike the idea of listening to one man who is telling me time and time again that I am bound to condemnation just because someone chose the right passages of a certain book just to illustrate his thesis.

I have to confess that I am a true believer in God but not on the institutionalized church. I believe in God even if my logic should be totally against my belief. I believe in God because I understand there has to be something or someone way beyond our comprehension that is the beginning of the few things we can see and the enormous number of things we can’t even perceive.

I was taught about the life and teachings of Jesuschrist. I was also taught about sin and punishment. I always thought there had to be something wrong with the message when it was moving from the book to the people listening to it. The people who were supposed to teach us about love, forgiveness and understanding; used the words to threaten us and make us feel we always had something to be sorry and ashamed about.

The only one who didn't threaten, who got along with everybody, who was happy forgiving the ones who felt they were unclean and full of guilt; the one who I decided to follow was the one who has always been (in my opinion) severely misquoted and whose message has been distorted and contaminated so many times by falsely righteous people that was converted into a weapon instead of a way to peace and understanding.

I reject the sermons built on guilt and used as a structure to put a simple man in a high place to look at the people who is listening to him as lesser, impure beings, it doesn't matter how clever or informed he may be, and how intelligently he used his words. I don't think we are sinners in the hands of an angry God. My God is not angry even if many people has worked a lot to make him look like that. I believe in the God I have seen in the eyes of Mother Teresa, the one who took Saint Francis of Assisi by the hand... the one who didn't need more than a stone to sit on and some common people to listen to him. And His teachings are the only ones I try to follow. The only thing I know is that an angry God would not teach you about forgiveness, humility, generosity, respect and caring for the others.

The Parable of the Mustard Seed.

He presented another parable to them, saying,
"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed,
which a man took and sowed in his field;
and this is smaller than all other seeds;
but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants,
and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches."
Matthew 13:31

I understand this parable is a way of saying that everything that Jesus is teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven could seem not much because it is not in this earth, but once you think about his teachings and try to apply them in your life, they start growing in your mind, taking a definite form and becoming something important for your spiritual life. This is very logical to me because this can be applied to all the religions, not only to Christianism.

The idea of the spirit and heaven and everything religions try to make you understand and accept come from inside. We may be very small when compared with the ideal of the spiritual things, but if we let the teachings grown inside us, they become something that escapes from our very limited dimension and flows out and touches everything and everybody around us.

There are references to the mustard seed in the Verse:016 of the Q'uran. A great number of bloggers on the net have references to the parable. The parable even has a page on facebook. They all share the idea of the very small seed that is tenacious and strong enough to grown and reproduce until it covers everything.

It is easy to see that all the religions have many common basis and the way they teach things may vary but they all appeal to all those things that could be so easy for us to show but are usually so difficult to find, such as the compassion, kindness, understanding and the simple common sense, the fact that you have to be humble and recognize that you are not too much until you let the ideas of enlightment and spiritualism grow in your interior.

It is also very easy to understand what this parable tries to teach us. We can not expect to receive a faith that is complete and, if I may say so, "ready to use". We have to take that little seed of an idea and make it grow, until it covers and enhances everything we do and everything we are.

Chosen and Especial?

There is part of the Torah that contains the promise the Lord made to the Jews. He is supposed to faithfully keep the covenant He has with the Jewish people “to the thousandth generation” provided that the Jewish people will observe the commandments faithfully. This promise states that “the LORD your God will maintain faithfully for you the covenant that he made on oath with your fathers. He will favor you and multiply you. He will bless the issue of your womb and the product of your soil… in the land that He swore your fathers to assign to you.”

This kind of promise is to be taken very seriously, especially because the Jewish people actually follow all the rites and all the ceremonies and prayers, and are in general very observant of the laws that rule their religion.

The Jewish people have been attacked and victimized for many centuries almost in every part of the world they have lived. They were chosen by God to be the preferred ones but they also have been chosen by many other groups and nations to persecute and torture and even to exterminate. It seems a very high price to pay for being the Chosen People.

Being for so many years subjects of so much violence, maybe their best defense was to resort to intelligence and solidarity to try to survive so numerous attacks. The only thing they could oppose to all the violence was a clear thinking and a stubborn non-violent resistance. They have their ways to live, learn and educate their children. And after many centuries of such an agitated life they are still here, following their traditions and respecting their religion. And they still believe that they are the chosen ones.

That is why the fact that there are some among the chosen ones that are not capable to live up to the expectations can be so difficult to believe. But they are there even if, as Michael Chabon says “ (Jews) have been trained, implicitly and explicitly to ignore (stupid people amongst them)” However, because in our days there is nothing that can escape being in the news, every error can be known and recorded and the rest of the world can (very clearly) see that Jewish people may be the chosen ones but not exactly very especial, because we all can see (and must accept) that they are not safe from committing as many mistakes and slip ups as the Goyim do.