 Posted: Fri 19:17, 13 Sep 2013 Post subject: Let's Talk About Faith-spun1 |
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| When it comes to Faith
Lukas photo is really a metaphoto: a photo of other photos hanging side by side in frames on a clothesline, two of Jesus and something of Stalin. This photo seemed to me a perfect illustration of Petr Bilek lecture, My Religion, the first of the 2005 Prague Summer Program: an image from the melding of faith, art and ideology, their interchangeable and symbiotic natures; the way in which, without them, we are able to feel ourselves hung out to dry; the way that faith and ideology depend a lot on binaries, as if good and evil are always static, as quickly distinguishable as the monochrome shades of a photograph. I must admit here that I arrived at the issue of faith from a background steeped in Roman Catholic and Christian tradition. Today I am an agnostic,[url=http://woolrichdeutschlandarcticparka.albirank.net/][b]Woolrich Online Shop[/b][/url], probably an atheist and certainly a skeptic; somebody that believes that humanity probably comes with a Heart of Darkness (but that there must be a balance, in order to help but hope for a Heart of Lightness too); someone who believes that as being a believer (in any institutionalized religion) takes a surrendering in our rational minds, our free will and our individuality; that organized religion functions primarily as an oppressive, destructive and divisive force. All this is to the great chagrin and sorrow of my family, especially my devoutly Catholic mother, leader of faith-renewing retreats, pro-life activist and attendee of seminars which delineate the ways yoga may be the devil work, a channel by which spirits not of God may come to inhabit your body. I don't mean to sound flippant about my mother spiritual beliefs, though I'm able to help but take a look at them, and our subsequent inability to communicate about them, through a lens of absurdity. It come to a point this really is ridiculous, I know we can discuss it inside a reasonable way, my mother and that i (she cries, I believe she irrational), but we can and so we don And therein lies the heart of my skepticism: In my opinion that something that cannot be held underneath the lens of a critical eye is made on the foundation smoke. I would like to know how anyone can be so sure about anything; how Christian women can stomach the silencing, the compulsory subservience, the ideological relegation to second place. But whenever I ask, the same old thing happens: voices are elevated, faces redden, tears fall, names are called. While her religion drives my mother to become literary is writing a spiritual self-help book entitled Called to Serve literature drives me from her religion. Due to my life-long love of books,[url=http://rogerviviershoes.webmium.com/][b]sell 2013 discount Roger Vivier shoes outlet Roger Vivier on sale Roger Vivier shop[/b][/url], my mother attempts to meet me on a literary level, using books so that they can bring me back to the fold. She offers bribes if only To be sure to see some of Tim LaHaye apocalyptic Left out series, the books arriving in the mail with brimstone covers, immaculate fifty dollar bills tucked between their pages. I don't browse the books once they come. Dogma aside, LaHaye work is just plain poorly crafted stuff. However the more I do read the stuff essays and philosophy from cultures and religions across the globe more sure I become that there's nobody method to explain the unexplainable energy that people call "God." All this is not to say that i'm irrepressibly pessimistic, which i have all the answers, which i don think that redemption from the human spirit can be done, or that I don expect it - that I don always think it likely. I simply don know. This was no easy place to come to. When I say it loud, I am not a Christian, twelve many years of Catholic school and seventeen many years of weekly mass and Catholic practice still have alarms bells sounding off, the shouting of Matthew 10:32-33 in my head: denies Me before men, him I'll also deny before My dad who's in heaven. really tried it this time around, Erika. You now are definitely going straight to Hell. The nearest I'm able to arrived at articulating a faith would be to state that I believe with what might be called karma or even the Golden Rule, whatever name could be given to the concept that our actions have real consequences, the hurt or even the light we released in to the world operates in a cyclical way, that it'll return to us as surely as our eyes squint within the full sun and widen in the dark. I think to the Jan Lukas photo of Jesus and Stalin on the clothesline. That metaphoto leads me to think about faith when it comes to metafaith: should I have faith in faith? Must i have faith that my faith in the Golden Rule, my mother faith in Catholicism, that these things are enough to obtain us with the long days and nights in our lives? Throughout the PSP Symposium on Faith, Allison Deming asserted becoming an artist, which for me means as being a poet, requires, inherently, that we got to have faith in something. Certainly what this means is I have to have trust in my art, the art I've not produced yet, but must have faith that I can and I will. I've also got to have faith in my talent is,[url=http://rogerviviershoesshoponline.webmium.com/][b]roger vivier shoes shop online Roger Vivier shoes outlet Roger Vivier on sale[/b][/url], faith which i have some, it's adequate, that what I have to say matters, that it'll touch people, that anyone is ever going to read my work or ever care. One summer afternoon, I sat with friends on the patio of a sunny caf in Brno, drinking beer, feeling very cosmopolitan and worldly and good about life. In regards to a block down the street, a woman stumbled into view, swigging from a green bottle,[url=http://parajumpersoutletjackets.webmium.com/][b]parajumpers vest outlet[/b][/url], drunk within the afternoon. She sang and howled and laughed to herself,[url=http://peutereyjacketsuppliers.webmium.com/][b]Peuterey Jacket Peuterey Jacket Manufacturers Peuterey Jacket[/b][/url], and that i watching her, laughed too. As she came closer, I saw that her face bore the remains of a beating, bruises about her eyes yellow as tobacco-stained teeth, her lips swollen as furiously kneaded bread. Her skirt was split all the way in the back, exposing a scraped rear end, and she wore a child's pink backpack over an ill-fitting top and bright red brassiere. I saw her rummage within the garbage for additional unempty beer bottles, drink from them and throw them down, singing and howling even while. She looked homeless, drunk and many certainly, mentally ill. The closer she found our table at the cafe, chattering at us in unintelligible Czech, the quieter my buddies and that i grew until no one at our table was talking, drinking silently and determinedly, taking a look at only the glasses within our hands. A waiter, lean like a fork, known as the drunk woman towards the patio railing and spoke to her in Czech, declaring that presumedly, disappear. He smiled at her, his cheekbones like blades. It seemed she was likely local and maybe he was used to seeing her, drunk every Sunday afternoon. Suddenly he reached within the railing from the patio and smashed her twice in the face using the underside of his tray. She mimed with help, her hand cupped to her ear, "Hallo, Policie! Policie, Hallo!" The worst part wasn't he hit her, but this: throughout me, not my buddies, but everybody else for the reason that cafe, all the local people, the tourists and also the staff, laughed and kept laughing. People laughed so difficult they stopped eating, french fries quivering near their mouths, arrested in mid-bite. I been attempting to write a poem relating to this scene, but there a lot pathos inside it, I can appear to understand it properly. Each blow to that woman face was a blow to my hope that humanity might have a Heart of Lightness in the end. Since then, I gazed at grand Gothic churches all over the Czech Republic, gold- plated cupolas, finely wrought relics, gracefully curving stone, spires commanding my eyes to heaven. All around me were these beautiful things created within the name of God, which claim that there has to be a reciprocal relationship; that art is an integral facet of faith, faith an integral facet of art. Could Kutna Hora Cathedral of St. Barbara have been built-in all its daunting majesty had the builders not believed in something? Last weekend, when i stood with a friend in St. Barbara the largest and most ornate cathedral I've ever seen, dwarfed by its soaring arches and gazing up, crick during my neck, at its brilliant stained glass windows, a techno remix of "Hey Baby!" threatened to drown the traditional organ music pouring from the speakers placed strategically through the church. It was a cacophonous competition, the louder dance music, "Hey Baby! I want to know-oh-oh, won't you be my girl." blaring with the iron-clad door, The background music, we knew, was from a stage flanking the church on the other side of this door. Happens featured a man airbrushing fake bicycle shorts on the woman inside a thong and high heel shoes, painting a shirt having a faux zipper between her large bare breasts. We laughed in the situation, and my pal remarked how odd it had been be inside such a place, this cathedral built being an awe-inspiring symbol of faith, yet so devoid of faith. It seemed like an anomaly at the time, the hard-hitting manufactured techno pumping through the stately cathedral. However in retrospect, it points as to the, for me, may be the inherent problem at the heart of Christianity: the external beauty, the internal rot; the Church a late-season orange dropped from a tree and gutted by gluttonous ants. Sudan. Afganist Bosnia. Armenia. Etc. But perhaps what is more insidious may be the quiet violence that doesn make the news. The waiter in Brno hitting that woman hard together with his tray. The family of my pal, Jehovah's Witnesses, refusing to acknowledge him or his newly born son while he chose to tattoo his body and also to marry a lady outside the Church. The way in which, during my Catholic high school, my locker was broken into, a photo of me and my black boyfriend defaced,[url=http://peutereyjacketsuppliers.webmium.com/][b]Peuterey sale[/b][/url], him withdrawn from the image along with a white boy picture place in his place, as if only white everyone was produced in the look of God. In college, my fundamentalist Christian boyfriend ripping the inner door handle off of his Chevrolet, locking the doors and so i couldn get out of the car, slamming his fist into the windshield, driving me again and again out in to the lonely backwoods of Bloomington, Indiana, to stay all night or so long as it took, by God, as they repeated Ephesians 5:22-24 over and over in my experience right up until I would accept agree: yes, as a woman, it had been my place to submit. I understand which i in no way the first one to say this, nor will I function as the last, the loudest or even the most eloquent, however i absolutely, desperately and despondently fail to observe how we as a people, we as humanity, fail over and over to recognize this painful pattern, the way in which we use religion to hurt each other. This, finally,[url=http://giuseppezanottisneakerssale.webmium.com/][b]http://giuseppezanottisneakerssale.webmium.com/[/b][/url], is why I rejected Christianity; why I have no faith in the institution of faith. Despite all of this, and maybe correctly, my faith in art, particularly poetry, literature, music and dance,[url=http://rogerviviershoesshoponline.webmium.com/][b]http://rogerviviershoesshoponline.webmium.com/[/b][/url], is the stronger. Religion and art, both of these are the shapes we share with our fears, hopes, dreams and unknowns. I have never been a beautiful landscape artist. I like poetry about addiction, music about loss. I believe there beauty in urban decay, triumph and human connection in shouting everything aloud. It brings me back to the total amount of humanity two hearts, light, dark: Stalin and Jesus hanging side by side on a clothesline. I think, finally, this is what it comes to: faith is an artform. I asserted the nearest I could arrived at articulating a religion is a faith in the Golden Rule, but that does not exactly true. I realized that I often state that is my religion" or which i fit in with the Church of House, meaning house music, that type of electronica which combines elements of jazz, gospel, disco, funk,[url=http://woolrichdeutschlandarcticparka.albirank.net/][b]woolrich deutschland women online shop Woolrich Parka Günstig outlet[/b][/url], and blues the technical definition is not what important here. I mean , that the most important thing this is actually the way that art in most its many forms music, my response to it, dancing, poetry, literature done immediately and tangibly during my life what religion hasn't done, and that's bring me nearer to strangers, help me to think within the chance of their Hearts of Lightness, enable me to communicate, feel a feeling of community, help me to learn to accept my body, myself yet others. In succinct fashion, Adrienne Rich covers what for me is life, humanity, art, poetry, and the hope I must ultimately admit I've in them all: I found explore the wreck. The words are purposes. What are maps. I came to begin to see the damage which was done and also the treasures that prevail. --from Into the Wreck 1. Ephesians 5:22. Wives, undergo your husbands as to the Lord. 23. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ may be the head of the church, his body,[url=http://parajumersoutletdeutschland.albirank.net/][b]parajumpers jacken outlet sale parajumpers online shop deutschland 60% Rabatt[/b][/url], of which he's the Savior. 24. 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