Nov 26 Insight: Is Thanksgiving THE Interfaith Holiday in America?

(The 3-Minute Weekly Insight from Spirituality U.)

I think Thanksgiving is THE Interfaith holiday in America. Here’s why. Thanksgiving incorporates two powerful elements common to all religions: shared food and expressed gratitude. Let me explain the food part first.

I like to explore what I call the “core mythology” of religions. As part of my exploration, I once told a Jewish friend that I thought the core myth of Judaism was “exile and return.” She said, “That’s almost right; it’s actually, exile and return…Let’s go eat.”

I instantly had an epiphany: shared food is a key element of ALL religions; e.g., Jesus died for our sins…let’s go eat; there is no god but God and Muhammad is his Prophet…let’s go eat. And so on and so on. Moreover, I have learned by experience that one of the most useful tools in interfaith work is a meal shared among folks from different religions.

And here are a few observations about food at the first Thanksgiving in 1621. Compared with our contemporary menu of traditional items, we might be surprised to learn that the Pilgrims and Native Americans may have munched on such exotic foods as lobster, swan and even seal meat. We might be just as surprised to learn that the first menu didn’t include such Thanksgiving staples as pumpkin pie, ham, sweet potatoes, or cranberry sauce!

These days, in addition to turkey and dressing and pumpkin pie, the menu may include Middle Eastern hummus, Indian pekoras and even Japanese sushi. Because Chanukah starts on Thanksgiving this year the table may also include potato pancakes and soufgoniot (jelly doughnuts).And the gathering for dinner in a household may include Christians and Muslims, Hindus and Jews, Buddhists and Baha’is.

It is appropriate to note that the idea of devoting a day to Thanksgiving isn’t uniquely American.  A number of countries around the world celebrate some kind of thanksgiving day or festival. Canada observes Thanksgiving in October. Among the other nations that observe some form of national gratefulness are: China, Israel, Brazil, South Korea and India.

The spirit of thanksgiving is infused with gratitude (as the name implies). A close examination of just about every religion reveals that one of their common spiritual practices is an expression of gratefulness. The monk David Steindl-Rast reminds us that gratefulness is in fact the heart of prayer. The first Thanksgiving was offered as a consumable prayer in gratitude for the community’s survival of a long and painful winter and a scorching summer. That first Thanksgiving reminds us to express gratitude even when things aren’t going well in our individual lives or the world around us.

It wasn’t until we were in the midst of our horrible Civil War that Thanksgiving Day became a national event. President Lincoln in 1863 called on Americans to observe a Thanksgiving Day in November each year. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, but during the Great Depression, President Roosevelt tried to move the observance up a week (as a way of stimulating the sputtering pre-Christmas economy). But there was such an uproar that, Thanksgiving was returned to its original place on the calendar. Score: gratefulness one; shameless consumerism zero.

For more information about the history of Thanksgiving visit:

http://www.history.com/topics/thanksgiving

Nov 19 Tip: Why do Some Religious People Fiddle with Beads?

(The 3-Minute Weekly Insight from Spirituality U.)

Actually, they’re not fiddling, they’re praying. In fact the word “bead” comes from the Old English word for prayer.

And it’s more than just some people who pray with beads. Religions comprising more than half of the planet’s population encourage their members to use prayer beads. These religions include Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism, the Christian Orthodox Faith, Islam, Sikhism, and the Baha’i Faith.

Thu use of b

eads to count prayers dates back to at least the eighth century BCE. Hindus were perhaps the first to use them.

Hindus and Buddhists use a rosary-like string called a Mala that usually contains 108 beads.  Those who use them in spiritual practice pass the beads through their fingers as they repeat mantras such as “Om Mani Padme Hum.” The 108 beads sometimes reflect a number of faults that we may need to overcome.

It is believed that through caravan trade, the use of prayer beads traveled to the Middle East in the second half of the first millennium CE where the Sibha was adopted by Muslims.  In Islamic spiritual practice, Muslims using beads usually recite the 99 names (or, more accurately, qualities) of Allah: The Merciful, the Compassionate…

It is not clear whether there is a connection between the use of prayer beads by Muslims and Christians, but Catholics in Western Europe also began to pray with beads sometime in the late first millennium CE.

Praying the Rosary involves Catholics in reciting the Apostles Creed and a number of prayers including: the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be. The Rosary ritual also includes meditation on a number of different stories from the life of Jesus. It should be noted that while Catholics—and some Anglican—pray the Rosary, mainstream Protestants generally see prayer beads and prayers to Mary as idolatrous or at the least, spiritually un-useful.

Some Baha’is use strings that have either 95 or 19 beads (19 reflecting their unique calendar) in offering prayers of praise to God five times a day.

Praying with beads can have a variety of benefits. Because we count the beads with our fingers, prayer beads bring a tactile quality to the prayer experience. Beads can help to get us “out of our heads” (out of the thinking process) and into something more experiential. They can calm us down when we are tense, anxious, or angry. Praying with beads can enable us to focus or concentrate on the spiritual activity at hand (pun intended).

Since praying with beads is often done “out loud,” it can bring verbal expression to prayers that are usually recited silently.

Praying with beads may remind us of the many beautiful qualities of God (in the case of the Muslim Sibha). It can enlist us in re-affirming our key beliefs (The Catholic Rosary)

It can remind us (gently) of the faults we must overcome in order to be happy (Buddhist Mala)

Since advanced practitioners can finger their beads while also doing other activities, the use of prayer beads can help us to pray without ceasing (as St. Paul invites us to do).

For more information about prayer beads visit:

http://anthromuseum.missouri.edu/minigalleries/prayerbeads/intro.shtml

or

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_beads

Or read the book Beads of Faith (published by Louisville’s Fons Vitae Press

https://www.fonsvitae.com/tabid/58/pid/26/item.aspx

Nov. 12 Insight: Original Sin, Original Blessing (and a wry observation from Mark Twain)

(The 3-Minute Weekly Insight from Spirituality U.)

The concept of “Original Sin” arises from the story of the tempting of Adam and as told in “The Book of Genesis” in the Bible.

In that story, God places the first humans in the Garden of Eden, and warns them that if they eat the fruit of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they will die. A serpent that dwells in the Garden tempts Eve.  She and Adam taste the fruit. God finds out, expels them from the Garden, and saddles them (and the Serpent) with curses. [NOTE: Genesis does not say that the fruit was an apple or that the serpent was a snake.]

As a result of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, all of their descendents bear a stain of sinfulness that is transmitted to them via procreation (as a sort of sexually transmitted spiritual disease). This makes all humans prone to sinfulness; even a child is in an inherited state of separation from the Divine, with a natural tendency toward sin.

In line with this belief, it is taught that only God can wipe away the stain of Original Sin through Grace, and that Jesus died on the Cross to free people who believed in Him from sins that would lead them to Hell.

Thomas Merton has a very different way of thinking about all of this. His concept is sometimes called “Original Blessing.”

The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia says, “Original sin is not so much an inherited sin passed on from one generation to the next as it is the loss of that original blessing (or innocence) in which the human person was able to see reality as it is. Original Sin, the total alienation from ‘the inmost ground of our identity’…is the accumulation of veils of illusion that cover reality and make it appear to be what it is not.

“The fall so alienates us from the Real that the true God becomes an idol, the true self becomes a false self and created nature is grasped not in the unity that expresses its true status, but in isolation and separateness.” In Merton’s view, by devoting ourselves to a lifetime of contemplative prayer and practices we can recover our Original Blessing and reconnect with God.

Finally, Mark Twain had an unusual (and amusing) take on the concept of Original Sin that put the blame squarely in the lap of God. In Twain’s view, God should have realized that if he forbade Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would immediately munch away. Twain asserted that God should have instead forbidden them to eat the serpent. They would have devoured the serpent, and there would have been no temptation, and, thus, no Original Sin. [Smile].

For more information about Original Sin visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/beliefs/originalsin_1.shtml

For more information about Thomas Merton’s concept of Original Blessing read the item about Original Sin in The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia.

For more information about Mark Twain’s view of Original Sin, read his novel, Pudd'nhead Wilson.

Nov 5 Insight: What is a Thin Place (And, no, it's not a Fat Farm)

From the name “Thin Place” one might assume it’s a place you go to lose weight. It’s not. A Thin Place is actually any one of dozens of locations scattered around the planet where the distance between Heaven and Earth (or between God and people) feels especially narrow. A Thin Place is where it may be easier for us to make connections to the Divine.

Eric Weiner, writing about Thin Places, speaks of being “…drawn to places that beguile and inspire, sedate and stir, places where for a few blissful moments I loosen my death grip on life, and can breathe again.”

You might think that the thinnest of Thin Places are famous spots like Bethlehem, or Mecca, or Jerusalem. But more often than not, Thin Places are found in out-of-the-way locations in the desert or on mountain tops or splashing in the troubled waters of seacoasts. They are often what Belden Lane calls “fierce landscapes.”

Even though Thin Places are typically beautiful, they aren’t exactly vacation resorts. They may hold dangers and difficulties and discomforts. Due to their often remote locales, getting to and from Thin Places may present another set of challenges—sometimes painful, sometimes frightening; frequently creating sustained anxiety in the pilgrims who visit them.

I am just back from a trip to one of those places: Iona. If you look up the term Thin Place in a dictionary, there’s probably a picture of Iona.

It is an island off the west coast of Scotland. It is maybe three miles long and two miles wide. The winds there blow at near gale force much of the time. The wind-driven rains seem to come and go every few hours.

My getting to Iona required hours of travel that included rides on an airplane, two buses, a train and two ferry boats. When I got to the Island I had to drag a 40 lb. suitcase, a 20 lb. book bag and a hand parcel a mile and half up a hill and through a muddy field (in darkness) to get to the hostel where I was to stay. Yet, the island was heartbreakingly beautiful.

My first two days on Iona were populated by 40-mile-an-hour winds and torrential rains. I visited the historic Abbey church and spent time wandering the volcanic beach at the north end of the Island. Unfounded fears that I might not be able to leave the island and return home never left my mind; nor did a sense of the closeness of God.

The difficulties I faced on Iona left me spiritually raw and thus open to the grace of God. That rawness may be the key to the Thin Place experience.

In fact, I believe that in Thin Places God also feels raw. At Iona, or on a mountain top or in the midst of a desert, both humans and God can weep and wail and let go of the accumulated sufferings of a lifetime. In fierce landscapes we can experience the solace of knowing that God is perhaps closer to us than at just about any other spot on earth.

For more information about Thin Places visit http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/travel/thin-places-where-we-are-jolted-out-of-old-ways-of-seeing-the-world.html?_r=0