All tagged Religion
Would You Eat Your Lunch in a Cathedral?
Musing at Scorhill Stone Circle, England by Elyn Aviva
We trudged up the bleak hill, brown and barren. My husband, Gary, and I were hiking with a small group in desolate, wild Dartmoor National Park to a place we’d never been, following a faint path through the moor, a track barely visible in the water-logged, peaty soil. Our guide informed us that people can easily lose their way on the moors—experienced hikers, skilled in reading maps, disappear, their bodies found years later.
Where can we find holiness?
Sometimes I feel like I am in a grand hide-and-seek game with the Creator. Just when I think I’ve found the deepest of the deep, He escapes me. Just when I’ve found the perfect light, the right sound, the special spot for a spiritual experience, a hiccup or sneeze ruins the instant.
Then again, moments in life occasionally arrange themselves to create spontaneous experiences that become life-long memories with deep teachings that touch the soul. They sneak up on you like the first warm smell of Spring that subtly tickles your nose. You have to stop to make sure they really happened. To miss these moments would be to miss the juiciest slices of life.
In 1994, I had just moved from Los Angeles to Scottsdale, Arizona. The Northridge earthquake shook up more than the foundations of my West L.A. town home. I was shaken to my very core. I wanted out. I had been blinded by too much show biz (I had been a writer on a hit show), too much disappointment (I was off the hit show and didn’t bag another staff position), and I was finally tiring of too much life in and out of the Hollywood fishbowl.
I had been struggling with my prayer life, figuring out where and how I could have some peace and quiet in the Big Apple. I tried to petition and call on God, but the words wouldn't come. I wondered, “If a city never sleeps, how does it ever dream? How do its people ever come to a solemn state of rest?” My father, a Christian of no particular denomination, suggested I visit a mosque and learn from the Muslims.
“Watch them pray,” he said, “Their discipline and devotion is admirable. Watching them pray at the exact same time every day was one of my favorite things about living in the Middle East.”
I say I am a well-traveled Filipina, but that only means I have made countless layovers on flights to and from New York. The most traveling that I have ever done is through reading books, therefore I have great expectations of places I have yet to see. I hear “India” and I think saris in vibrant colors, citrus rinds covering a plate of curry, or yogis in lotus position. I hear “Rio de Janeiro” and I think futbol, futbol, futbol!
When I hear the word “mosque,” a flipbook of ideas, images, sounds, and even smells pop into my head. I let my mind cruise through this Rolodex as I sit in the Pelham-bound 6 train. Here I am, a young Protestant raised in a Catholic country, managing all the thoughts sweeping through my head as I near the New York Mosque. I straighten my spine and fix my hair as I get off the train, forcing myself to be, or seem to be, more reverent than I usually am.
Discover the Exotic on a Road Trip
“None of your business,” she said. The short, curly, white hair bounced as she shook her head, but the brown eyes smiled in her beautiful, tanned and weathered face. Half Navajo, Suzie (not her real name) has lived in Rio Grand pueblos in New Mexico all her life. We were sitting in a rambling adobe house near the village where she lives with her husband. Grandchildren and daughters dropped in from time to time as we talked. The smell of cedarwood smoke curled around us, and tin-framed pictures of saints glinted on the walls.
by Eric Lucas
They approach a bit haltingly, these young women attired in pastel fabrics.
Eric Lucas“How long have you been saved?” they inquire.
“Saved?” I respond. I know what they’re after, but one has to let this conversation run its course.
“Well, I saw you praying, and I was so glad to see another believer here in the restaurant.” I raise my eyebrows. “What church do you go to? Baptist? Church of Christ?” They plow on earnestly.
That’s when I drop the bombshell, my own personal bazooka round aimed at American religiosity.
“I don’t go to church,” I say, pleasantly.
Silence.
“But you were praying,” they accuse me.
Yes, indeed, I was praying. These encounters invariably take place when I am on the road in America, have surrendered to expedience and stopped at a fast-food outlet for dinner. It might be Anaheim, it might be Amarillo. Wherever I am, I say a personal, silent prayer before my every meal, and have done so for 25 years. That’s a long time; my prayers were born in a search for spiritual discipline, and they have nothing to do with any religion. Not Christianity, not Judaism, not Islam. I don’t pray to Christ, or Yahweh, or Zoroaster, or Allah or even Mephistopheles. I don’t like organized religion. Doctrine annoys me. Scriptures are superstitious malarkey.
The first time I heard about Jews living in Cuba was when my parent’s friends said they were accepted/allowed to go on a mission trip to Cuba. Because they were Jewish, they could apply through a synagogue to go with a small group of Jewish Americans bearing medical supplies to travel to Cuba for a 10 day trip exploring Cuba’s Jewish culture. The idea fascinated me. I quickly did my research and decided this was going to be my next personal story to work on.
Ever since I sailed on Semester at Sea (SAS) in fall ’04, I wanted to go to Cuba. SAS is a unique study abroad trip that takes a cruise ship and transforms it into a floating university with up to 600 students from around the nation to learn and travel together for 100 days. Quite literally, a semester at sea. Cuba was scheduled as our last port until Bush nipped that in the butt. Venezuela was the replacement, a much more dangerous country than Cuba, if you ask me.