This Baccarat Buddha--now being featured in Bloomingdale's holiday ads--can be yours for $600, a price designed to help devotees achieve un-attachment to money.
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This Baccarat Buddha--now being featured in Bloomingdale's holiday ads--can be yours for $600, a price designed to help devotees achieve un-attachment to money.
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Here's another adorned New York sidewalk, this time from 1996, created in memory of homeless Lower East Side fixture Paul "Merlin" Hogan:
A wake and vigil of considerable moment, lasting for the better part of 2 weeks, was held in the neighborhood at Merlin's corner. Some nights the sidewalk and street around the memorial were so densely packed with people that it seemed that everyone in the neighborhood and the surrounding communities was attending, crowded together, all kinds of folks, from all professions and callings, from high and low paying their respects to Merlin.
More photos and reflections at the timeless civic shrine, Jeremiah's Vanishing New York.
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The sidewalk in front of the Park51 Islamic community center--subject of protests from those who say it is too close to the "hallowed ground" of the World Trade Center site--has become a design space for tolerance, mutual love and a cosmopolitan vision of spiritual community . Via Gawker.
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Concrete removers in New York evoke the Rock of Ages by adorning the front window of their truck with an homage to Our Lady of Fatima.
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To their credit, the Chuck Wagon Gang's style has modernized a bit over the past 74 years.
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The Weekender is an arts & entertainment weekly for northeastern Pennsylvania--published about 50 miles from where I grew up, actually. Its latest style section features a reflection by a member of its staff regarding spiritual jewelry. Particularly noteworthy: the author's broad concept of spiritual jewelry, the recurring tension between superficiality and personal meaning, and the author's intuitive attachment to a piece of jewelry that she freely recognizes was a commodity sold for the less than transcendent purpose of winning its seller a praise in a fundraiser:
Call me spiritual. Call me religious. Heck, call me corny if you really want to, but it was a moment that was special to me. The necklace remains as one of my cherished pieces of jewelry and it feels good to wear it close to my heart. And that’s what works for me.
Brought to you by Lilipily Spirit from her Alchemy & Hermetica collection.
According to her profile, you can not wear this jewelry in the physical world--all items are created for the virtual world Second Life.
Which, come to think of it, I didn't realize was still in use. I tried to attend a friend's nonprofit gathering once years ago but never made it past clumsily stumbling around the training area. That said, a friendly naked golem did offer to help ...
From Lilipily's profile, an explanation of why people continue to find designing for Second Life so fulfilling:
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This site displays images of products I create for the virtual world of Second Life. It also shows images of the places I have created there - my gardens, temples, galleries, and shops.
I use Second Life to express my creative spirit, which naturally instills my essence into all things I create there, just as it is instilled in my alter ego's Real Life artworks and creations.
I am an active self-styled neo-pagan with an eclectic spirituality inclusive of druidism and buddhism. My metaphysical skills are inherent in all my selves, and in all my lives.
My Second Life self mirrors my Real Life self, except that I am always in my prime in Second Life, whereas my Real Life self has aged. My spirit, of course, is ageless. Meet me on that level!
Over at Jezebel, a jeremiad against the commodification of spirit & community in Bali in the wake of spiritual tourists inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love:
According to the locals who met her, Gilbert was a rather quiet woman, not abnormal or larger than life. It's something to consider when almost every conversation in Ubud will somehow return to The Book, which is prominently displayed around town, framed and in multiple languages. Expats (many of whom are ponytailed men who once lived in Northern California) mostly hate it. One restaurant has a t-shirt for sale, the design of which urges people to Eat, Pay, Leave.
According to a post in the Bali Expat Forum, the restaurant where you can find these t-shirts for sale is Naughty Nuri's Warung.
In my work as a professor of social entrepreneurship, I often hear do-gooders express exasperation over the failure of government regulators and private companies to adopt measures embodying basic social values. The problem, of course, is that choosing among moral principles is a rather tricky business.
Consider the Modesty Survey, part of what is ostensibly a teen "rebelution" against poor social values. As publicized recently over at Sociological Images, the poll offers a revealing inventory of what Christian men deem to be immodest, from short skirts to prints on tights, decorated jeans pockets and a purse strap across the chest. Particularly noteworthy, given recent hostility toward Muslims expressed in opposition to the recent decision to allow a mosque to locate in the vicinity of the World Trade Center: The Rebulution's using an image of a woman under the veil to symbolize Christian moral virtue. (thanks Michelle!)
Meanwhile, the application of sharia law in Sudan has resulted in a court sentencing men caught in women's clothing and cosmetics to thirty lashes and a fine, while al Qaeda has called women themselves to become "holy warriors" in the "most important battlefield" -- namely, opposing the controversial proposal in France to ban the hijab and niqab.
Differing notions as to what constitutes social responsibility and fundamental values helped give rise to the secular state, and moral complexity has similarly shaped the limited moral rhetoric of commercial business. As Judge Vaughn Walker indicated in his landmark ruling on the definition of marriage, whatever the authority cited for one's particular worldview, there are clear pragmatic reasons why courts do not recognize "moral disapproval, without any other asserted state interest," as a rational basis for law.
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Many moons ago, before geek chic had become a world religion, Star Trek's true believers had to hide their faith from their mainstream persecutors through coded communications. Above: the iconic symbol etched on many a fan's cubicle is now a ThinkGeek car ornament: the Trek Fish.
And here's another Hollywood blast from the past: How the Jesus Fish Helped Create the Matrix.
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It's been an interesting few months--more about which later--and as I was catching up email tonight & thinking about when to get back posting, I noticed a sponsored ad for spiritual Healing Bling.
The designer of this trademarked jewelry line offers work designed for both aesthetic and restorative ends:
]]>Allyson Rice is an energy healer, and works with each piece of jewelry in ceremony and prayer to instill a particular healing intent for the wearer of the jewelry, corresponding to the healing properties of the gemstones and the unique name and description given to the piece. The price includes the additional energy work that is done after the jewelry piece is initially completed, and again when Allyson knows who has bought the piece.
Newsweek may have found a way for magazines to be relevant in the digital age: publish a cover with Sarah Palin in religious garb. Above: the latest Newsweek cover. Below: Rabbi Sarah and Sarah Pagan, a couple of the parodies created by Vanity Fair.
HijabSkirt.info is a website dedicated to overcoming "rooted prejudices about women in the hijab as well as women in skirts." Founded by three journalists and supported by the UN, Hijabskirt notes that the split between hijab and skirt is stronger than the Berlin Wall, splitting the planet between East and West, but the site hopes to use communication, education and collaboration to help overcome the divide.
The latest entry on the site provides a fascinating reflection on how Benazir Bhutto embodied this cultural tension. The author: Sherry Rehman, Pakistan's former Minister of Information and a personal friend of the Prime Minister. As Rehman observes, a woman's choice of dress can be a profound moral act:
Whether a woman dons the hijab or miniskirt, that personal choice should be an absolutely free choice. It would be an injustice of monumental proportions if half of humanity is deprived of this right by subjecting them to fears, of being judged upon their appearances.
Unfortunately, both east and west are guilty of this.
How the western media howls when Angela Merkel appeared at the Oslo Opera in a Victorian designer dress or when Michelle Obama decides to dress a bit more casually. How the online Pakistani forums shot a fuse when Benazir was revealed to wear skirts and western clothing of her choice privately. What is common in all of those hyperventilating media reactions, is the self arrogated custodians of culture, religion and morals, who think they have the right to pass judgment on women, who have done nothing but exercised their personal choices.
Benazir Bhutto was my close friend. My beloved Bibi. She used to say that the best hijab is in the eyes of the beholder. . . .
For an inside look at Benazir Bhutto's perspective on the hijab and Western dress, read the whole thing.
(Thanks to Chankia Abitkar for the link!)
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To complement your Jesus is a Yankees Fan t-shirt, here's a Yankees devotional copper icon featured in the fun new book version of Regretsy--Where DIY meets WTF.
Regretsy, as the title suggests, heaps a generous dollop of snark on the goofiest items from Etsy. But the site's about a lot more than having a laugh at others' expense--besides bringing to light some of the more offbeat expressions of human creativity, Regretsy has also raised thousands of dollars for charity--"profits from Regretsy merchandise are used to hire Etsy artists to create handmade products for various charities, or to directly benefit Etsy sellers in need."
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The gospel according to Red Sux Nation.
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