October 2007 Archives

Tonight's the Village Halloween Parade, a marvelous night of craft and transformation. Leading the festivities: Donna Henes, Urban Shaman. Click here for an interview, which is well worth reading, not least of all for wonderful anecdotes such as this:

Please share your strangest "only in New York" story.

About 12 years ago while I was walking in the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, a beautiful cockatiel flew right to me. I picked it up, but then I didn’t know what to do, so I just carried it around with me. Everyone who saw me stopped to offer a blessing in the vocabulary of their own spiritual tradition. “Oh, honey, God’s talkin’ to you!” “The ancestors send us birds as messengers from Heaven!” “The elders say, that when a bird flies to you, it brings good luck!” On and on it went with Caribbean, Chinese, Guatemalan, African American, Russian, Puerto Rican, and Korean folks offering blessings and bird advice. Because of their unanimous enthusiasm, I ended up bringing the bird home where she lived on my head for 9 years and laid 33 eggs!


Can you tell us about the Eggs on End event you used to hold at the WTC?

I am now in the 33rd annual cycle of holding public celebrations for the official beginning of each season. 18 of the Spring Equinox Celebrations called, “Eggs on Eng: Standing on Ceremony” were held in the plaza of the World Trade Center. Since the destruction of the Towers, the event has been held at Battery Park, The South Street Seaport, and the Museum of the American Indian.

The event itself is astonishingly simple. The site, The Twin Towers, was a landmark megalith like an urban Stonehenge, which I decorated with day-glo orange ribbons, thus transforming a secular public place into a sacred space. I handed out scientific and mythological information sheets along with jelly eggs to the crowds. I lit flares to denote the number of days, weeks, months in a year. An orange laundry basket containing 360 eggs is passed among those in attendance. We all hold them up in the air together, pledging to walk on the earth as if we were walking on eggs. Promising anew, in honor of the season, to protect our fragile yet resilient planet home. We count down the minutes to the equinox. And when the time is right, we stand our eggs in unison in salute to spring. No matter how many people attend, the real event is always each single person‘s private experience of what gravity and balance and equilibrium might mean. . . .

"just in case", originally uploaded by steakhammer.

An actor friend of mine wears a necklace with a cross, a Star of David and a gun--as he says, covering all the bases. Pictured above: a DIY version of a "just in case" necklace, except instead of mobster's gun it sports a snake to appease Satan!

And speaking of Satan, be sure to check out this oddball story of claims that satanists sabotaged Christian rosaries with tiny imprints of pentagrams and upside-down crosses.

Hat tip: AltReligion.

Religious mythology abounds with tales of gods and heroes in disguise. Pictured above: one of the organizers of the recent Myanmar uprising, after he escaped by coloring his hair blond and wearing a cross.

Click here for the full story, which also includes excerpts from a lengthy email explaining the organizational infrastructure of the September protest.

Shaolin monks have decided not to perform their zen-based kung fu at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, where wushu martial arts will be on display:

"Chinese wushu belongs to competitive sports, whereas Shaolin wushu belongs to traditional martial arts," said Qian Daliang, general manager of the Henan Shaolin Temple Development Company.

"The two have different natures, standards and connotations. Performance in Chinese martial arts can be quantified, but Shaolin wushu cannot be measured in that way, as it contains Buddhist elements and showcases a harmonious combination of Buddhism and kung fu."

Below:  Shaolin monks display their discipline's sublime spirituality in the window of the London Planet Hollywood, promoting their current dinner theatre show Shaolin Monks Kung Fu Master at the PizzaExpress Covent Garden.

One of my favorite quotes from Marshall McLuhan is "We become what we behold.  We shape our tools and then our tools shape us."

So here we go. 

Yesterday I wrote about censorship; today, I censor.  If you have no inhibitions about pictures that are not safe for work--really NSFW--click here for pictures of tattoos strategically placed over male and female genitalia. 

A couple of the images:  devils.  There's also one of Willie Nelson, who besides being an outlaw is a religious troubadour.

Is this statue a hate crime?

Police in the UK are investigating that very question.  The rationale:  this statue, a depiction of the Buddha with banana-and-egg genitalia that is part of artist Colin Self's intentionally provocative The Trilogy: The Iconoclasts, violates the U.K.'s Racial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006.  While the investigation continues, the gallery has agreed to display the piece with its back to the window.

This police inquiry provides additional evidence that the West is moving toward an age of enforced Religious Realism.  By realism here I don't mean accuracy, but rather an idealized depiction, akin to the stirring portraits of Soviet dictators and robust peasants in the Socialist Realism of Stalinist art.  Whether the motivation is regard for diversity or fear of offense the effect is the same.  The only permitted visual depiction of religion is one that portrays its subject as noble and pure.

What do we lose?  A world without profane religious art is a world that has lost touch with its own religious history.  The originators of our enduring religious traditions weren't afraid of a sacred sphere rife with blasphemy and body parts--they reveled in the contradictions, and if we acknowledged their legacy as it was and not as we would like to be, laws such as the one described above would not exist.

Case in point:  the palad khik, traditional religious amulets from Thailand.  Although palad khik may sound exotically new age, the name actually refers to a surrogate penis.  The amulets--crafted by monks in the shape of a penis and adorned with sacred invocations and spiritual imagery--make the so-called iconoclasm of postmodern art seem rather tame.  

Yes, we could legislate a world where the only sacred penis is one that we revere, but c'mon, that would just be silly. 

HT:  the always fun and informative Alt Religion!   

"Conscious living," "Divine Energy," Feng Shui and inspirational gifts await the visitor to the new online experience, Our Inner Source. Women's jewelry includes Circle of Happiness Earrings and an equally round Eternity Necklace. The site also has a lively blog in which its founder answers such questions as "Who or what is God?" (Spoiler: the answer is found in his dog, thereby confirming the intuitions of millions of internet punsters.

The featured picture of the Nazi SS ring got me to watch the video below. At first I thought the vid was nonsense--I mean, is the UN really this organized and efficient?--but then I remembered that Barbie is a knockoff of the German Bild Lilli doll and suddenly everything made sense.

The Doctor Who series 3 finale airs this week in the United States. I won't spoil it for those of you who have yet to see it, but suffice it to say that once again the show is BofG appropriate.

The show's compelling blend faith and science fiction has not gone unnoticed by the UK's Christians, where pastors have been using it as inspiration for their sermons. Show writer Paul Cornell has this to say about a church that did a series of sermons on the show:

And finally, if you’re in the Chorleywood area next Sunday, June 17th, that is, Father’s Day, at 7pm, you might like to pop along to St. Andrew’s Church, where Mark Stibbe will be delivering the latest in a series of ‘Lessons from Doctor Who’, in this case ‘Father’s Day: Healing the Wounds of Time’. I’m greatly honoured that my work should be the subject of a sermon. I think that’s the first time that’s happened. At least, the first time in a positive way.

The show he mentions--Father's Day--is a classic exploration of faith, memory and sacrifice, in which chaos ensues when a daughter goes back in time to save her late from his premature demise. Most of the episode actually takes place in a church--St. Paul's in Cardiff--which also garnered international attention this summer with its own Who-inspired sermonizing. Quoth the priest, Father Ben Andrews:

“I love the series and it has such a great following that we couldn’t resist doing something for young people on a Dr Who theme.

“We will be looking at the idea of Jesus as a Lord of time and showing who Jesus was and the different images of him throughout time.

“We will try and get some Dr Who props in to try and make it as lively as possible.”

Many thanks to avatar of cool Alex Sandifer for the news tip and post idea!

Bonus book: UK Christians have also written on the spiritual lessons of Doctor Who, but this is the ultimate: Caroline Symcox, Paul Cornell's wife, wrote a Doctor Who audioplay in which the Fifth Doctor goes to The Council of Nicaea.

hong ying tao, originally uploaded by *trigger hippie*.

From the photo description:

Inspired by the movie, which is based on the true story of Chuchu and Luo Xiaoman, a Chinese boy and girl . . . in 1940. Chuchu and several other students are sent by Gen. Von Dietrich to work as servants at Nazi headquarters in the Yakovliv Monastery. The general was also a medical doctor who did tattooing as a hobby. He decided to use Chuchu for his greatest "masterpiece". This saved her life because when the general learned that the Third Reich was doomed instead of having her executed with the rest of the prisoners he had her dumped in a field so that his masterpiece with live on. But the large tattoo on her back was a matter of shame to her the rest of her life.940.