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Religion

Christmas Eve

I crave determination, cherish stubbornness, and celebrate intent. It can find you room in a stable, convert a manger into a cradle, get you through childbirth among strangers. It drives you across oceans and deserts, where you are about as likely to drown or die from exposure as not when fleeing war and torture in your homeland. It makes you hide what little is left of detergent so the teens in your refugee camp on the Greek islands cannot use it to attempt suicide in their despair.

I have often thought of faith as a form of determination. Take Christianity, for example. If people under the most dire of circumstances sit on Christmas eve and relish a reading of Luke (1-2,) with eyes now shining from the promise in Bethlehem instead of from tears, there is determination to keep up hope. Really a sheer stubbornness to keep the belief alive that somehow, somewhere there will be justice, as implied by the birth of God’s child. Never mind the inconsistencies when that same Luke (18-16) calls for letting the little children come, unhindered, but good Christians in Germany and Europe in general refuse dry-eyed to allow the 4000 (!) minors to escape the limbus of the aegean circles of hell. I’m not even starting to talk about the cruel disgrace closer to home. (And I am not exempting other religions from hypocrisy either (just look at Palestine) – it was just an example.)

Should we stop writing about the darkness that is hovering, stop reading about the despair descending? In the public world or the private one(s) with their own forms of impending doom? No, we should NOT! We should be determined to walk upright and do the right thing and preserve our last bit of self-respect and self-determination – and then share it with others, help them to prevail as well. Faith demands it. As does a different moral compass for the faithless, structured by a different underlying tale. Let us all be stubbornly inclined towards justice, in solidarity!

Verities

By Grace Cavalieri

Maybe she had dementia,
the old lady in the woolen hat,
I don’t know, but she
stopped short in the middle of the aisle,
when her son shouted, PUT THAT BACK.
Clutching a small bag of chips –
like a newborn against her chest,
like a prayer,
like something she owned –
her face collapsed,
Please, but no sound came except,
PUT IT BACK! NOW! PUT IT BACK!
This was Christmas Eve, not that it matters;
Why even embellish a story like that.
I can only tell you I walked behind her
as she walked behind her son,
until I could no longer watch,
yet there was something about
her lopsided hat, her lowered head
that made me sure
no matter what happened next,
she would not put it back.

Grace Cavalieri is an American poet, playwright and radio host of “The Poet and the Poem” from the Library of Congress. In 2019, she was appointed the tenth Poet Laureate of Maryland. She was awarded the 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award from WASH INDEP REVIEW. She received the George Garrett Award from AWP for Service to Literature, the Allen Ginsberg, Paterson Award, Bordighera and Columbia Poetry Awards, A Pen Fiction Award,  CPB’s Silver Medal.

Photographs from yesterday’s walk near the ICE facility with its detainee holding cells on Bancroft/Macadam Ave. If you look closely below, you can also see homeless encampments dangerously close to the river.

And here is the perfect music for Notte di Natale by Corelli, cormorant giving his blessings.

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I sometimes wonder…

I sometimes wonder where people come up with language that is at once enticing and also really, really far fetched. “Bedeviled by wanderlust” is an example, which sounds really cool and makes no sense when applied to a young child running away from home or a teenager trying to prove her independence (by biking alone through Spain, in 1886, no less.) “Stricken by lust for adventure” is equally annoying, when applied to that same traveler in her late seventies.

I am talking here about comments made about Alexandra David-Neel, who was neither bedeviled nor stricken, but just an all around feisty personality drawn to exploring the world. And then some. Never heard of her? Even though she spent 101 years on this planet, born in 1868, a celebrated opera singer, a writer and expert on Tibetan culture, an anarchist and learned Buddhist, no one seems to remember her, while they are all reminiscing about Gertrude Bell….

Well, a few people do. Here is some of her story in more detail.

Born to a French journalist father and a Belgian mother, she grew up in Paris. (Thus today’s photographs of neighborhoods she might have wandered.) David-Neel spent much of her middle life in Asia, after blowing through her inheritance and some of her (distant) husband’s fortune. She almost died of starvation in the Gobi desert (it is rumored the 5 feet tall adventuress boiled and ate the leather of her boots to survive,) escaped part of WWI in Japan and Korea (only to witness the brutality of Imperial Japan two decades later during WWII in China) and later met the Dalai Lama. She became passionately involved with Sidkeong Tulku Namgyal, the spiritual leader of Sikkim, who later died of poisoning while she was traveling.

Unable to return to Europe due to the outbreak of World War I, she fled and traveled over 5,000 miles by yak, mule and horse to Japan, Korea, Mongolia, and China, together with a young Lama, Aphur Yongden, whom she adopted in 1929 and who taught her Tibetan and traveled and lived with her for the rest of his life. Arrived at Kumbum Monastery, they immersed themselves in the study of rare manuscripts for three years, painstakingly translating Prajnaparamita (Sanskrit doctrines dating from the 2nd to the 6th centuries AD), the famous Heart Sutra, into French.

Through it all she became one of the foremost early experts on Tibetan culture in the world. Her 25 books on Eastern religion, culture, and travel included several that highly influenced the Beat poets, such as, “Magic and Mystery in Tibet” and the still amazing, “My Journey to Lhasa: The Classic Story of the Only Western Woman Who Succeeded in Entering the Forbidden City.”

Here is a source where you can read a few preserved letters.

She walked through parts of China into India when she was in her late seventies before she returned to France, with enough funds from her book revenues to buy a house in Provence where she lived until age 101. It is noticeable, how the few who keep up the memory of this extraordinary woman focus on the adventure aspects of her life, or the independence shown by a woman in an era where it was rare. Here is the exception, written in Tricycle, a Buddhist Review:

“A woman who spent years in a mountain hermitage, who sat in meditation halls with thousands of lamas, who studied languages and scoured libraries for original teachings, who traveled for many years and for thousands of miles to immerse herself in a culture which few people had ever even heard of, writes with far more insight than someone who has only read about such experiences. It is her devotion to Buddhism and her willingness to trace it to its source that are finally most impressive about her life.”

David-Neel’s cutting-edge scholarship, her exploration of and dedication to the practice of Buddhism almost come as an afterthought for most of us. Do we focus on her daring rather than her spirituality because the former is newsworthy, the other old-hat with women? Or is there something similar going on to what I offered yesterday (in that case that there was a gender-based interaction between the reader or viewer and the writer or critic?) Even when learning about people outside of politics or other salient areas of controversy, we hone in on the information that suits us best, conforms to our schemas, plays to our desires or fits with our ideas of how the world should be. I’m the first to admit to it.

And what else struck me as admirable, fitting into my own preoccupations? Through all of her travels and adventures she insisted on a daily bath and a cook, the two remnants of her bourgeois upbringing that she could not, would not shed. My kind of woman! Just wondering if cook prepared the leather boots meal for her too….

Music today is from an opera about her by Zack Settel and Yan Muckle, 2 short excerpts and then a clip about the making of the opera.

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Contemplation

Animals have a great advantage over man: they never hear the clock strike, however intelligent they may be; they die without any idea of death; they have no theologians to instruct them…Their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and often objectionable ceremonies; it costs them nothing to be buried; no one starts lawsuits over their wills.

—Voltaire

Who can say what cows feel, when they surround and stare intently on a dying or dead companion?

—Charles Darwin

It was the last day before the cows would be herded to different grazing grounds. Hunting season begins October 1st, and they have to be out of the way. It was thus also the last day for a walk around this particular area of Sauvie Island. From now until April 1st hikes are severely restricted.

I have no clue what cows feel. Does the possibility of not knowing about death outweigh the burden of not knowing that pain ends, either? Be it the fleeting pain that you and I know will be gone either by passage of time or the next dose of Ibuprofen? Or the chronic pain that we know will end with the loss of our current consciousness?

I have also always wondered about the fact that cows look at you. Ever noticed? Other animals out in the open might strike you with an evaluative glance before they decide to scurry to safety. Maybe your domesticated friends look at you when they want food, a walk or are simply bored or proud to show off a trick – but that prolonged stare of interest that you get from cows who don’t expect anything from you? It is puzzling.

Of course the premise that animals don’t know about death itself – still prevalent in the early 1970s, when anthropologist Ernest Becker wrote in his Pulitzer Prize–winning book Denial of Death that nonhuman animals know nothing about dying: “The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it” – is questionable. Scientists now believe that at least some species recognize the special nature of death, elephants and chimpanzees among them. There is certainly some form of grieving in evidence, when loss occurs.

*

You might wonder why the theme of death pops up a second day in a row: it is the season in the Jewish calendar where thoughts of life and death (as well as our personal behavior and responsibility for our actions) is writ large. The days between the New Year and the Day of Atonement are meant to be days of contemplation, days of fear of punishment but also of hope that repentance and change is possible and able to avert divine retribution. The core of the message – independent of religious belief – speaks to me: annual re-assessment of our own moral compass and conscious decisions to try to do better is a valuable thing.

The poem that is recited on the High Holidays, the Un’taneh tokef, captures it aptly, with looming threats and the possibility of getting it to the point.

Here is an excerpt:

Let us now relate the power of this day’s holiness, for it is awesome and frightening. …….All mankind will pass before You like a flock of sheep. Like a shepherd pasturing his flock, making sheep pass under his staff, so shall You cause to pass, count, calculate, and consider the soul of all the living; and You shall apportion the destinies of all Your creatures and inscribe their verdict.

On Rosh Hashanah will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed – how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die; who will die at his predestined time and who before his time; who by water and who by fire, who by sword and who by beast, who by famine and who by thirst, who by upheaval and who by plague, who by strangling and who by stoning. Who will rest and who will wander, who will live in harmony and who will be harried, who will enjoy tranquility and who will suffer, who will be impoverished and who will be enriched, who will be degraded and who will be exalted. But Repentance, Prayer, and Charity annul the severe Decree.

……

Here is a traditional recitation by a Cantor.

And here is a Leonard Cohen songs that riffs of the poem:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgMaBreDuF4

Tomorrow is Yom Kippur – I will be off-line.

And thus the inevitable question if cows like music has to wait for another day.

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L’Shanah Tovah

Happy New Year to my friends and family who celebrate this new beginning – let’s hope the year 5780 allows for a re-set. In our private sphere, public life or wherever else it is needed.

Happy reading to them and everyone else of the two pieces below. In my attempt to make this year more balanced than the last, I have added something serious and something funny: one piece explains the meaning of the holiday in ways that I find affirmative and encouraging. They provide us a reminder and a space to check if we are keeping up with our resolution to lead an ethical life, and a nudge to do better…

https://theconversation.com/universal-ethical-truths-are-at-the-core-of-jewish-high-holy-days-123831

The other piece is just – well – hilarious. (Source: The ONION)

In keeping with my decades of tradition to make a Rosh Hashanah image, here is another version of apples, to sweeten the year. Note, no honey…. the other traditional ingredient. That is meant to remind all of us to step up in our engagement towards protecting the environment – otherwise we’ll have no more bees to bring us sweetness. Or pollinate plants in general to provide our food.

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Oh, just go to hell, they say

Actually it’s what I say. Every morning I say this when some fresh news pops up on my screen that confirms the sorry state of our public realm. I either say or think these words, un-specifically directed at the source of the bad news, my computer, or the world in general if I have a particularly bad morning.

Funny thing is, of course, that I believe neither in heaven nor in hell, as is Jewish custom and, in my view, required of me as a scientist. It was all the more interesting to come across a podcast that discusses a book about the origins of the concept. Hell and Damnation: A Sinner’s Guide to Eternal Torment by Marq de Villiers promises to be a fun and educational romp, should these kind of things interest you.

Here are some of the bits that I remember being discussed:

  • The majority of people in the US (60% and up) believe in hell, while not quite that many (40% or so) believe in heaven. Huh? In Canada that ratio is apparently reversed. Riddle me that….. Then again, many smart people did buy into the concept, across all of history, with Galileo, for example, trying to calculate the exact depth of hell under the surface of the earth…..
  • Almost all religions in the world (Judaism being a noted exception) have a construct of hell (some up to 44.ooo of them, one specific one for every imaginable infraction. I am hard pressed to come up with even 100 infractions. But then again, I’ve always been a good girl. Well, let’s not go into that. There is a hell for lying, I am certain.)
  • There is an incredibly interesting historic evolution of the notion of external punishment:
  • Even in the early days of mankind, when animistic notions prevailed, people needed to satisfy their hunger for causal models. Why did something go wrong that shouldn’t have? Why, some demon must have interfered! We see the first externalization onto some invisible beings.
  • With later increasing urbanization, people were better able to witness all the malevolence around them, murder, adultery, greed and embezzlement. Bad people seemed to prosper, which undermined another psychological need of all of us: the assumption that the world is just. Ok, so we just add on a next chapter, the afterlife, and that’s when things will get put right. And it will be judged by some invisible entity who can decide what fate awaits you, having clairvoyance as to what has been going on in your soul. Note that the very early cultures with this concept did not necessarily imply you would be punished – you just would not be ferried across a bridge, or down a river, or into a hole to enter the afterlife. For many African cultures it meant you would either be revered as an ancestor (good) or simply forgotten (bad=extinguished.)
  • It was the ancient Greeks who developed the notion of potential torture in that afterlife. Civilized as they were, however, punishment did not last for all eternity – you got your stretch and then were released on parole, so to speak.
  • Monotheism changed all that. You were going to fry. Undergo unimaginable pain. Forever and a day or two. The notion of hell became an instrument of control, with threatened consequences of a hellish sort shaping you into obedient subjects. The more the traditional religions (Christianity and to some extent Islam) saw themselves challenged by free thinkers or other sectarian branches, the more intense the visions of hell and damnation became. The stories fed on each other, becoming more lurid by the century, culminating in aggressive control attempts like the witch trials. Christianity in particular, was unable to solve an inherent contradiction: Here is the devil, a fallen angel, banished from heaven, the incarnation of evil and yet his function or role is that of God’s agent of cosmic justice. In other words, doing good….
  • Of interest is also that there were always sly escape routes – if you had power or money, that is. For the Egyptians, priest and kings were exempt from being judged if they were deserving of the afterlife – they got in automatically. In medieval Europe, you could buy yourself out of a pickle by donating to the collections of the Catholic church.
  • There have been multiple reports of people making it to hell and back, reporting similar stories of fire, pits, crows hacking entrails and so on. Also cross-culturally, people insist that hell is underground and different countries do pinpoint exact locations where hell can be entered through this or that cave. Some require passwords, almost all are gated. Some, like Fengdu in China, work even on the top of a mountain (the original city was destroyed when they built the dam which flooded that particular entrance to the next life….)

It all would be funny, if it weren’t so dire in its applications. When a construct of assumed external causality and balance between the now and later shifts into a systematic tool of oppression we have a hellish problem, as much of our history shows. And it is, of course, not over. Which gives me occasion to mumble, once again, oh, go to hell!

Photographs intent to show a stylish ascent/descent, should it become necessary.

Music is Danse Macabre by Saint-Saëns; the top string, E, is tuned down a semitone, a technique called scordatura, to allow the violinist to perform the tritone chord associated with the devil.

And here is another waltz with the devil:

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Supernatural Enforcement

I’ve been wondering, as is my wont. The topic: oh, something narrowly defined, like the interaction between religion, politics and societal evolution. As a result you all have a few choice reading assignments today, should you share my fascination.

Jokes aside, I HAVE been rattled by the outspokenness of the Christian Right in both peddling dominionism, a “group of Christian political ideologies that seek to institute a nation governed by Christians based on their personal understandings of biblical law,” and a longing for (and prediction of) the end times, in which they and only they will be saved. Betsy deVos certainly advocates for this mysticism and then there is John Bolton who willingly adds his biblical interpretations to the mix (Trump sent by G-d to save the Jews from the Iranian menace? As a Christian he believes it possible!)

And now, with the Mueller report completed and Barr’s decisions around it delivering a gift for Trump, my worries increase. Whether one believes it would matter that Trump (as an individual) should be felled or not, the proclaimed vindication is certainly empowering the underlying rot, comprised of people and ideas, and gives it momentum for its destructive mission. That will not be changed by whatever we’ll discover, should there ever be transparency, a full reading of the report, or dragged-out State court proceedings. They circled the wagons around their own and succeeded.

Roaring to capitalize on all this are people like Bolton, who, by the way, was a major architect of the Iraq war, a war that cost over half a million lives (beyond the 5000 American troops) if you count civilian deaths caused by violence and collapsing infrastructure. And that is only the dead. Nobody seems to count the permanently crippled, maimed, blinded, traumatized victims, or a population deprived of the kids never to be born. Source for statistics below, no need to peruse.

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001533 .

What you really should (re-)read on the 16th anniversary of the Iraq invasion is what’s attached beneath, so brilliantly written by Eliot Weinberger.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n03/eliot-weinberger/what-i-heard-about-iraq

———————————-

Back to topic: Religion affecting societies. Have you noticed how many recent editorials or articles are focussed on the link between religion and politics? Here are two typical examples.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-left-was-about-salvation-the-right-is-about-the-end-times/2019/03/18/2cd16898-49b8-11e9-9663-00ac73f49662_story.html?

https://ips-dc.org/apocalyptic-christianity-returns-u-s-foreign-policy/

Underlying all of those speculations on the end times is the concept of an angry, judging, punishment-meting G-d. Which brings me to the truly interesting, scientific reading for today, just out this week in the journal Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1043-4

The argument, provided by a research group of Oxford scientists, in a nutshell: what do we know about the appearance of “moralizing” G-ds, who, as it turns out, have not always been around even when other ones were? Harvey Whitehouse and his colleagues systematically coded records from 414 societies that span the past 10,000 years from 30 regions around the world, and used 51 measures of social complexity and 4 measures of supernatural enforcement of morality. The resulting claim: the more complex a society, the more likely the presence of supernatural agents who make sure rules are followed and who are invested with the power to identify and punish individuals who don’t, even beyond death.

The critical mass seems to be around 1.000.000 – societies with that many members develop belief systems that emphasize “supernatural reinforcement.” Big Gods (or the related concept of retributive Karma) push people in the direction of prosocial behavior to prevent asocial tendencies that might be disruptive to the community as a whole when they can no longer be controlled through tribal/neighborly supervision. It takes about 100 years after you’ve reached the one million benchmark, for a vengeful G-d to appear.

(Note, I am not singling out Christianity here, dominionists were just the trigger for my musings.)

“Moralizing gods are not a prerequisite for the evolution of social complexity, but they may help to sustain and expand complex multi-ethnic empires after they have become established.”

The argument is not without critics – some claim that the complexity of societies is associated with the (subsequently emerging) ability of people to think about questions of meaning and answer them with religious concepts.

The Whitehouse data seem to point to a different causality. Most interesting for us, though, has to be the question: when does the idea of a punitive God, thought to be a stabilizing factor for complex societies, flip into the opposite? When does that belief lead to violent acts, civil strife, oppression of people who don’t buy the concept, or pray to another moralizing G-d? Will it again be used to justify another war?

Photographs today are European spires seen across my last two trips.

Music is dedicated to all who died at the hands of believers in a reinforcing G-d. May the beauty of the music console us on this Monday.

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Purim

Yesterday afternoon was the beginning of spring, and at sundown we saw the beginning of Purim.

This Jewish festival is a celebration of the courage of one woman to do everything in her power to save her community from evil attacks of anti-Semites, with her own life under threat. For once, there was a happy ending – Queen Esther, the woman in question, was able to convince her husband, King Ahasveros, to save the Jews in the Persian empire from attacks by the King’s vizier, Haman. Not so happy an ending for the latter – he and his descendants were hanged.

It is a boisterous holiday, with the story, contained in the Megillah, being read out loud, with people making lots of appropriate noises and appearing in costume (think of it as the Jewish version of movie night for Rocky Horror Picture fans.)

The costume part is actually an interesting possibility of cultural appropriation: some academics argue that the first Purim masquerading appeared around the medieval times when Jews and Christians first lived in proximity together. Mardi Gras or the Venice Carnival were tied to the vernal equinox and all involved costumed celebrations.

Here is a link that details history and customs, including the hotly debated question if we can trust the historicity of the story.

https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-the-odd-history-of-purim-1.5332554

My favorite Purim food – cookies, what else – is served and also added to gift baskets that are generously shared among friends and family. The cookies’ name is derived from two German words: mohn (poppy seed) and taschen(pockets). Mohntaschen, or “poppy seed pockets,” were a popular German pastry dating from medieval times.

Around the late 1500s, German Jews dubbed them Hamantaschen, or “Haman’s pockets, although earlier versions of the pastry had been known as Haman’s ears – see the etymology of the pun here: http://time.com/4695901/purim-history-hamantaschen/

Beyond feasting, making merry, and remembering a time when the actions of a single model individual saved a whole population, there is the proscription to give to the needy, matanot l’evyonim.

And here is a wonderful example of that in 2019: two orthodox rabbis in NZ are asking their congregations to contribute to the victims of the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand, where 50 people were murdered last Friday.

Rabbi Ariel Tal, head of the Wellington Jewish Community Center, and Rabbi Natti Friedler, head of the Auckland Hebrew Congregation, issued a request to their respective communities, asking them to donate the traditional charity money given on the upcoming Purim holiday to support the families of the victims of the attack in addition to the Jewish poor.

https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Give-Purim-charity-to-victims-of-mosque-massacres-583933

Interfaith connection that we can all celebrate, whether we observe Purim or not!

Images today capture spring’s arrival. All photographed yesterday.

Music has an interesting genesis: https://www.classical-scene.com/2019/02/16/miryam-esther/

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Pulp, alas not Fiction

Hate to admit it, but when everyone swooned for John Travolta in Pulp Fiction I had a crush on Harvey Keitel. Riddle me that.

The memory came up when I listened to an interview by Terry Gross with the author Mattathias Schwartz covering his thoughtful and perceptive piece for the NYT on Mike Pompeo. The article is a must read, particularly in combination with his profile of Brennan from some months back.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/magazine/mike-pompeo-translates-trump.html

Keitel’s name surfaced in the context of his role as The Wolf in Pulp Fiction and parallels were drawn to our current Secretary of State. Fixers wherever we look, it seems, this week….seamlessly transitioning from fiction to reality, from the halls of congress to the hotels in Hanoi.

Here is the link to the interview.

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/28/698887851/journalist-explains-how-mike-pompeo-helps-translate-trump-to-the-world?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social

Full disclosure: I happen to know Matt, see him once every other year or so for an evening. He notes in the interview that he does not easily attribute “smarts” to people but acknowledges that Pompeo is smart. Same could be said for Matt and one should add the equally important “not boring.” The sheer diversity of topics he tackles and subjects he latches onto is mind boggling. No wonder that his work is snatched up by major news publications, from the New Yorker, the NYT, the Wall Street Journal, Bloombergs, the LRB to The Intercept, and winning prizes. His New Yorker story, “A Massacre in Jamaica,” on the Christopher Coke extradition, won the 2011 Livingston Award for international reporting.

I could not find a link to a free version of Pulp Fiction. Just as well, since the topic of The Rapture came up in the interview (das Jüngste Gericht). Apparently there have been public references in Pompeo’s speeches to this spectacle brought down from up high. His avoidance to be nailed down by Matt’s questions of how much his Christian beliefs about the end times influence his politics made me once again wonder where we have landed in 2019 in this country. Which gives me, of course, the opportunity to link to a movie of same name, seen by almost 1 000 000 people on YouTube alone (and produced by Fallen World Productions, no less!)

Maybe watching something like this offers a glimpse of the universe of those who govern us or those who want to be ruled by the current administration….

Then again, why waste our time.

Let’s watch this instead, still a trailer, but the full documentary had its premiere day before yesterday in DC by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and co-sponsored by Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL) and Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD); it can soon be ordered.

https://vimeo.com/291373548

Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook describes what happens if political operatives try to subvert the sacred American principle of “one person, one vote,” hatching and pursuing this plan for years with too few of us noticing. Rather than worry about the Rapture, maybe we should worry about the reality of the decline of democracy. If only to ensure that we’ll get rid of fixers in the next round. Here is a good suggestion for a start, written by another of these young brilliants, Jamelle Bouie. :https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/opinion/the-electoral-college.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage


Photographs are of old Dutch church murals about the Rapture.

And here is Buxtehude’s Das Juengste Gericht

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Bird Hospital

Why do I like my Leberwurst so much….. was my first inane thought about one of the most fascinating articles I read last week. I don’t know what your reaction will be to the mix of science reporting, journalistic adventure story and non-didactic teaching about an Indian religious sect that goes to extreme length to protect animals, but mine was awe mixed with apprehension. And yet another thought about trying to curb my meat consumption.

We have discussed animal cognition here before, but the description of the Jains’ reverence and a discussion of new scientific data about animal consciousness goes way beyond anything I’ve previously integrated. This is not just about eating or not eating one’s prey. It is about a pretty radical new understanding of what took place during evolution.

The article starts with a description of a bird hospital in Old Delhi run by devotees of Jainism,” an ancient religion whose highest commandment forbids violence not only against humans, but also against animals.” It’s the setting to delve into the history of that religion followed by a comparison of it’s tenets to what modern science has to say about consciousness in species other than humans.

Ross Anderson, the author, is careful: Many orthodox Jain beliefs do not stand up to scientific scrutiny. The faith does not enjoy privileged access to truth, mystical or otherwise. But as perhaps the world’s first culture to extend mercy to animals, the Jains pioneered a profound expansion of the human moral imagination. The places where they worship and tend to animals seemed, to me, like good places to contemplate the current frontier of animal-consciousness research.

You can read the list of scientific developments in the article attached below. What particularly lingers with me was this one fact: fish – like mammals of course – are conscious in the sense that they experience pain. Unlike us, they do not have the capacity to know that pain will end, either by healing or by the bliss of (permanent) unconsciousness and so are stuck in seeming eternity. Imagine. No, don’t. It’s given me nightmares.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/what-the-crow-knows/580726/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/what-the-crow-knows/580726/

Photographs today are of robins in my icy garden, photographed through the window last week.

Music from Respirghi’s The Birds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZzpcnYy1jQ

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Hanacpachap Cussicuinin

Amazed I managed to spell that. More amazed at what it actually entails. Today’s title words are the name of a four-part polyphonic piece titled Hanacpachap cussicuinin, to a text in the Quechua language, to be sung ‘in processions when entering the church’; it is the earliest example of polyphony printed in the New World. The work was either composed by Friar Pérez Bocanegra, or by an anonymous native composer in Lima, Peru, in 1631.

I learned all this when reading up on Latin American Baroque music after a splendid concert by Portland Baroque Orchestra last week. An Empire of Silver and Gold featured “Daniel Zuluaga as guest director with a  trailblazing program of works he gathered in archives of Latin American cathedrals. Five singers, two guitars, dulcian, violins, cello, cornetto, harp, and percussion blend familiar baroque sounds with distinct Latin American flavors.”

 

 

The concert was an energetic romp, and initiated me to a combination of elements that I only knew individually: classical Baroque music and South American or Mexican melodies and rhythms. What I learned in my subsequent reading was that colonizers, and in particular missionaries bent on converting indigenous souls, were no psychological slouches.

“Spanish missionaries in the New World often used music as a means for converting and indoctrinating native populations, often combining it with their knowledge of indigenous language and culture. The Hanacpachap specifically incorporates both Incan and Christian imagery, describing the harvesting of the land and praising the Virgin Mary, who is symbolized by a pale blue flower that grows in the Andes. This same flower was also the symbol of a local goddess in the Incan pantheon.”

http://brynmawrcollections.org/home/exhibits/show/bulkeley-dillingham-project/missionary-histories/ritual-formulario–1631-

 

 

In Mexico City, “the conquistadors decided to build their church on the site of the Templo Mayor of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan to consolidate Spanish power over the newly conquered domain. Hernán Cortés and the other conquistadors used the stones from the destroyed temple of the Aztec god of war Huitzilopochtli, principal deity of the Aztecs, to build the church.” (says Wikipedia)

Catedral Metropolitana de la Asunción de la Santísima Virgen María a los cielos was built across two centuries, starting in 1573. Here you have the combination of land and material that meshes the usurped with the new, in addition to a melding of music, language and other cultural entities.

 

 

Wherever you come down on the politics of this or the (in) justice, the results are often amazingly beautiful in their own right, both buildings and music. You can judge for yourself by listening to the link below.

Photographs are all from cathedrals and churches in Mexico City.

 

And here is last year’s blog on the cathedral:https://www.heuermontage.com/?p=5726

 

 

 

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