Stonehenge a Center for Healing
This is from BBC News: Nature, and you can read the entire article by clicking on the blue type, but I wanted you to know about the upcoming BBC Special on Stonehenge, September 27th.
Archaeologists have pinpointed the construction of Stonehenge to 2300BC – a key step to discovering how and why the mysterious edifice was built.
The radiocarbon date is said to be the most accurate yet and means the ring’s original bluestones were put up 300 years later than previously thought.
The dating is the major finding from an excavation inside the henge by Profs Tim Darvill and Geoff Wainwright.
The duo found evidence suggesting Stonehenge was a centre of healing.
Others have argued that the monument was a shrine to worship ancestors, or a calendar to mark the solstices.
A documentary following the progress of the recent dig has been recorded by the BBC Timewatch series. It will be broadcast on Saturday 27 September.
The mystery of Stonehenge, it’s origins, is purpose, has fascinated people for centuries. How amazing that one twelve day dig has discovered so much information – new pieces for a hugely complicated puzzle with lots of work left to be done.
As I write this post, I am also reminded of one of the all time funniest movies I have ever seen – This is Spinal Tap, one of those mocumentaries, this one about a rock group. Not a very bright rock group. It is a very funny movie.
They ask a set designer to create a magnificent recreation of Stonehenge, and give her a napkin with how they want it to look. The result is . . . hysterical:
Hildegard of Bingen
I don’t often do this, reprint an entire article. I usually leave it to you to click on the blue type and read it for yourself. I am guessing very few people would make any effort to read this article, so for the few who have the interest, I am making it easy for you.
The article is written by James Kiefer, who writes many of the articles on saints in The Lectionary. He makes them human; his articles are so readable.
I like Hildegard of Bingen because she was a woman ahead of her time. She followed the yearnings of her soul to become a religious person, a nun, but rather than escaping from life, she engaged in it fully, as an administrator and as a musician. She engaged fully – and capably. She would probably be a remarkable woman in any age.
(This photo is from Geocities where there is another extensive article on Hildegard von Bingen and her life and times, with additonal information.)
“Listen: there was once a king sitting on his throne. Around him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honor. Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground, and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along. Thus am I, a feather on the breath of God.”
Hildegard of Bingen has been called by her admirers “one of the most important figures in the history of the Middle Ages,” and “the greatest woman of her time.” Her time was the 1100’s (she was born in 1098), the century of Eleanor of Aquitaine, of Peter Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux, of the rise of the great universities and the building of Chartres cathedral. She was the daughter of a knight, and when she was eight years old she went to the Benedictine monastery at Mount St Disibode to be educated.
The monastery was in the Celtic tradition, and housed both men and women (in separate quarters). When Hildegard was eighteen, she became a nun. Twenty years later, she was made the head of the female community at the monastery. Within the next four years, she had a series of visions, and devoted the ten years from 1140 to 1150 to writing them down, describing them (this included drawing pictures of what she had seen), and commenting on their interpretation and significance. During this period, Pope Eugenius III sent a commission to inquire into her work. The commission found her teaching orthodox and her insights authentic, and reported so to the Pope, who sent her a letter of approval. (He was probably encouraged to do so by his friend and former teacher, Bernard of Clairvaux.) She wrote back urging the Pope to work harder for reform of the Church.
The community of nuns at Mount St. Disibode was growing rapidly, and they did not have adequate room. Hildegard accordingly moved her nuns to a location near Bingen, and founded a monastery for them completely independent of the double monastery they had left. She oversaw its construction, which included such features (not routine in her day) as water pumped in through pipes. The abbot they had left opposed their departure, and the resulting tensions took a long time to heal.
Hildegard travelled throughout southern Germany and into Switzerland and as far as Paris, preaching. Her sermons deeply moved the hearers, and she was asked to provide written copies. In the last year of her life, she was briefly in trouble because she provided Christian burial for a young man who had been excommunicated. Her defense was that he had repented on his deathbed, and received the sacraments. Her convent was subjected to an interdict, but she protested eloquently, and the interdict was revoked. She died on 17 September 1179. Her surviving works include more than a hundred letters to emperors and popes, bishops, nuns, and nobility.
(Many persons of all classes wrote to her, asking for advice, and one biographer calls her “the Dear Abby of the twelfth century.”)
She wrote 72 songs including a play set to music. Musical notation had only shortly before developed to the point where her music was recorded in a way that we can read today. Accordingly, some of her work is now available on compact disk, and presumably sounds the way she intended. My former room-mate, a non-Christian and a professional musician, is an enthusiastic admirer of her work and considers her a musical genius. Certainly her compositional style is like nothing else we have from the twelfth century. The play set to music is called the Ordo Virtutum and show us a human soul who listens to the Virtues, turns aside to follow the Devil, and finally returns to the Virtues, having found that following the Devil does not make one happy.
She left us about seventy poems and nine books. Two of them are books of medical and pharmaceutical advice, dealing with the workings of the human body and the properties of various herbs. (These books are based on her observations and those of others, not on her visions.) I am told that some modern researchers are now checking her statements in the hope of finding some medicinal properties of some plant that has been overlooked till now by modern medicine.
She also wrote a commentary on the Gospels and another on the Athanasian Creed. Much of her work has recently been translated into English, part in series like Classics of Western Spirituality, and part in other collections or separately. If your university library or bookstore cannot help you, try a Christian bookstore. If they do not have it, try a trendy (feminist, New Age, ecology) bookstore.
But her major works are three books on theology: Scivias (“Know the paths!”), Liber Vitae Meritorum (on ethics), and De Operatione Dei. They deal (or at least the first and third do) with the material of her visions. The visions, as she describes them, are often enigmatic but deeply moving, and many who have studied them believe that they have learned something from the visions that is not easily put into words.
On the other hand, we have the recent best-seller, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, by Oliver Sacks, Professor of Clinical Neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and author of Migraine and various other books. Professor Sacks is concerned with the relation of the brain to the mind, and ways in which the phsical state of the nervous system can affect our ways of perceiving reality. He views the pictures in Hildegard’s books of what she saw in her visions, and says, “The style of the pictures is a clear indication that the seer suffered regularly from migraine attacks. Migraine sufferers tend to see things in this manner.” And indeed, it is true that Hildegard suffered throughout her life from painful attacks of what may have been migraine. Professor Sacks hastens to add that this has nothing to do with whether her visions are authentic insights into the nature of God and His relation to the Universe.
Hildegard has undergone a remarkable rise in popularity in the last thirty years, since many readers have found in her visions, or read into them, themes that seem to speak to many modern concerns.
For example:
Although she would have rejected much of the rhetoric of women’s liberation, she never hesitated to say what she thought needed to be said, or to do what she thought needed to be done, simply because she was a woman. When Pope or Emperor needed a rebuke, she rebuked them.
Her writings bring science, art, and religion together. She is deeply involved in all three, and looks to each for insights that will enrich her understanding of the others.
Her use of parable and metaphor, of symbols, visual imagery, and non-verbal means to communicate makes her work reach out to many who are totally deaf to more standard approaches.
In particular, non-Western peoples are often accustomed to expressing their views of the world in visionary language, and find that Hildegard’s use of similar language to express a Christian view of reality produces instant rapport, if not necessarily instant agreement.
Hildegard wrote and spoke extensively about social justice, about freeing the downtrodden, about the duty of seeing to it that every human being, made in the image of God, has the opportunity to develop and use the talents that God has given him, and to realize his God-given potential. This strikes a chord today.
Hildegard wrote explicitly about the natural world as God’s creation, charged through and through with His beauty and His energy; entrusted to our care, to be used by us for our benefit, but not to be mangled or destroyed.
You can listen to some of her extraordinary and ethereal music of worship by clicking on the YouTube video below:
Job and Islamic Tradition
One of the things I learned later in life, like when I lived in Doha, is that you (my Gulf and Moslem readers) have many of the same characters and stories in the Qur’an that we have in the Bible. Interesting, to me, the stories are not always exactly the same. Today’s reading in our lectionary (Old Testament) is from Job (you call him Ayoub, I think.)
First – if you read this, will you tell me if the story in Islam is similar to our story – that Satan is allowed to torment Job, because God believes him to be a faithful servant who will not turn away from him in times of hardship? Satan believes he can demonstrate that Job will be faithless?
Second – why is Satan called “the accuser?” I know Arabic is very close to the old Aramaic; is Satan always called Sheitan? Do you have other names for Satan? (These are not rhetorical questions; these are things I really don’t know) For example, Satan, in our tradition, is called The Father of Lies, The Great Deceiver, etc. But I don’t understand him being called The Accuser.
Third, toward the end of this reading his wife says essentially, give it up, Job, curse God and die. But the little asterisk says “bless”. This is a great puzzlement to me – a curse is the absolute 180° opposite of a blessing, I think. And then again, sometimes what appears to be a curse can be a blessing, and what appears to be a blessing can end up really being a curse. I just don’t understand why, in this context, the word curse could also mean bless? Do you?
Job 2:1-13
2 One day the heavenly beings* came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan (*Heb the accuser) also came among them to present himself before the Lord. 2 The Lord said to Satan,* ‘Where have you come from?’ Satan* answered the Lord, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.’ 3 The Lord said to Satan,* ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.’ 4 Then Satan* answered the Lord, ‘Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives.* 5But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.’ 6 The Lord said to Satan,* ‘Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life.’
7 So Satan* went out from the presence of the Lord, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. 8Job* took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.
9 Then his wife said to him, ‘Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse* (bless) God, and die.’ 10 But he said to her, ‘You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?’ In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
11 Now when Job’s three friends heard of all these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to go and console and comfort him. 12 When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. 13 They sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.
Colors and Localities
One of the things we joke about, AdventureMan and I, when we come back to the Seattle area, is that all the houses are grey. Some might look brown, but it is a very grey brown. Some might look green, but it is a very grey kind of green. Some houses are purely grey – maybe they have white trim, but they are very very grey. An occasional truly brown house sticks out, anything not toned down by grey sticks out. And oh! now and then someone with a Mediterranean soul will build a pink or terra cotta house with a red tile roof and people will say “Oh! Look at that! They must not be from around here!”
Yesterday, I was in one of my most favorite places, Home Depot, wandering around looking at what the contracters are putting in the newest houses.
“High rise toilets!” I exclaimed to AdventureMan, who was on the phone with me. “For people who are older, and don’t have the strength in their legs to lower themselves too far!”
I was looking to see what was available in small bathtubs, because I love a hot bath on a cold day, and I want a deeper, smaller tub in which I can lean back with a good book, not one of these huge tubs that take all day to fill. I was looking at shower apparatus; I am thinking one day I want to go the European way with those wall flash-heaters that give you hot water when you need it and don’t keep heating it all day when you don’t.
And then I saw the carpet samples. I just had to laugh. When we lived in Florida, I loved walking into the model homes, with their seafoam green carpets, or even a mellow shade of tropical pink. Everything looked so welcoming and laid back.
In the Pacific Northwest, people choose from shades of sand. I never knew there could be so much variation on beige, which is somewhere between white and brown:
To those of you who say that sand isn’t as dark as the darkest brown swatches of carpet, I can only say you have never walked along a Pacific Northwest Beach on a dark and stormy day. Believe me, sand can be very very dark.
Mary Nell’s Secret
“I’m coming in tonight,” says AdventureMan, “but not on my original flight. My flight from Denver to Chicago was cancelled, so I missed that flight. I’ll be on the flight coming in at around 10.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you called; I would have been waiting at the airport!” I replied.
“There’s an e-mail waiting for you – I had (our son) send you an e-mail to let you know,” AdventureMan continues, “I was lucky to get a flight at all – they had re-booked me for tomorrow night! I used Mary Nell’s technique, and they found me a seat on another flight.”
I laughed in delight.
If we are very very lucky, we learn from our friends. I have several friends who are flowers of the South, but Mary Nell takes the crown as the Queen of the South. Mary Nell and I would be on the road to France in a heartbeat, any excuse would do. We had our favorite stores, we introduced one another to new favorites, new villages, new restaurants. Even better, our husbands liked each other, too, so now and then we would hit a very lovely restaurant, the four of us.
Mary Nell is polite and well-mannered. Always. Polite and well-mannered, and she always gets her way. When someone gives her information she doesn’t like, she pauses, gathers her forces, looks them directly in the eye and says the magic words: “That won’t do.” She shakes her head sadly as she delivers the words.
She follows up firmly, “No, that won’t do at all. We have a problem here. (Names what she wants, like the shoes she likes in a color not available in that shop) What are we going to do?” and she looks deeply into the other person’s eyes.
She uses the same techniques on the bullies she counsels in the guidance office, the out-of-control parents, the crazy teacher. They all back down in the face of Mary Nell’s relentlessly polite confrontation.
AdventureMan and I could only watch in absolute astonishment as Mary Nell worked her magic. After a while, we tried it, too. It took a few tries, but – it really does work!
Again, at the airport, as the ticketing guy explains that with the downsized plane, they have had to put my husband on a later flight. “No! That won’t do!” says Adventure Man. “People are counting on me! We have to fix this problem!”
The ticketing guy thought he had it fixed, but this technique forces him to search out new possibilities. Once again, Mary Nell’s technique prevails.
She never gets aggressive. She never raises her voice. And whoever is working with her knows, with utter conviction, that she is not going to go away until this problem is solved to her satisfaction. Woooo Hoooooo, Mary Nell.
Three Cups of Tea
My best-friend-from-college and I were chatting the other day and I asked her “what are you reading?” because we have always exchanged book recommendations back and forth.
“I’m reading a biography of Teddy Roosevelt,” she started, and I groaned, because most of the time biographies don’t interest me that much. “And I am reading Three Cups of Tea . . . “ and I interrupted her (rudely) to exclaim “so am I!”
Three Cups of Tea is a must-read in the US. It was actually published in 2006, and has sold more and more books every month, and has been on the New York Times best seller list almost since it was published.
The book begins with a failure. A mountaineer, attempting a climb on K2 runs into problems, including evacuating two severely injured fellow climbers from the mountain. Exhausted, and devastated by his failure to capture the summit, he gets lost on his way back to the base camp, and ends up in a village where the people are very kind to him. He is treated as an honored guest, he regains his strength, and on his last day in the village, learns the children have no school. He rashly promises to come back and build a school for them.
One of the great redeeming features in this book is Greg Mortenson’s endless humility. He has a co-author, to whom he gave a long list of people he could talk with, including all his enemies and people who thought he was crazy. He’s that kind of guy. He talks about his life’s personal failures and his toughest moments, and he moves on.
He doesn’t take credit for the dogged persistence with which he keeps his promise, in spite of daunting obstacles. He doesn’t take any credit for the good will he builds.
Several years ago, I read another book which has changed my life, The Purpose Driven Life (which, by the way, the hardcover is $9.99 and the paperback is $10.19, go figure) in which the basic premise of the book is that we are each created uniquely, individually, by a loving creator, for a purpose. As I read Three Cups of Tea, I thought this man is greatly blessed; he discovered his purpose and nothing kept him from fulfilling it!
The book deserves every single one of it’s Amazon Five Star ratings.
I had a hard time putting the book down. Even though my life is full of other demands, once I had the chance, I spent an entire afternoon finishing this great book.
Greg Mortenson isn’t discouraged that his first school takes three years, and first he has to build a bridge. His second, third and fourth schools take just . . . three months! He has a gift for inspiring others, and people give what they can. The villagers give their time and their efforts, and western supporters donate funds.
By the end of the book, 24 school have been built, in the very poorest mountain villages in Pakistan, where money from the government for education doesn’t trickle at all, until near the end of the book. He doesn’t build the schools himself – he meets with the villagers, they donate a plot. He buys the materials, and together, they all build a school. These villagers are hungry for their children to become educated, to have a chance for a better life. Mortenson learns to focus on the girls.
He learns that as the boys become educated, they leave the villages for the city, but as the girls become educated, they come back, and like yeast, they raise the standard of living for the entire village, providing health care services and information, providing education for the newest crop of children, learning new skills, bringing them back and sharing them.
One of Mortenson’s gifts is that he isn’t interested in changing these mountain people into westerners. He likes them, and he learns from them, just the way they are. He dresses like them, he prays with them, he learns their language, and he has no western agenda for the curriculum in these schools. He also helps the government schools – building an additional room here for an overflowing school, paying a teacher’s salary there – his goal is to educate children. That’s it. No political agenda. The people of the villages love him for it, and give him their full support.
You cannot undertake a project like this without a lot of help. Mortenson had some extraordinary experiences, experiences that to me look like the grace of God, that drew together teams of people to help build and supply his schools.
“I looked at a sign in front of the school and saw that it had been donated by Jean Hoerni, my cousin Jennifer’s husband,” Bergman says. “Jennifer told me Jean had been trying to build a school somewhere in the Himalaya, but to land in that exact spot in a range that stretches thousands of miles felt like more than coincidence. I’m not a religious person,” Bergman says, “but I felt I’d been brought there for a reason and I couldn’t stop crying.”
A few months later, at Hoerni’s memorial service, Bergman introduced herself to Mortenson. “I was there!” she said, wrapping the startled man she’d just met in a bruising hug. “I saw the school!”
“You’re the blonde in the helicopter,” Mortenson said, shaking his head in amazement. “I heard a foreign woman had been in the village, but I didn’t believe it.”
“There’s a message here. This is meant to be,” Julia Bergman said. “I want to help. Is there anything I can do?”
“Well, I want to collect books and create a library for the Korphe School,” Mortenson said.
Bergman felt the same sense of predestination she’d encountered that day at the school. “I’m a librarian,” she said.
After struggling for many years, seeking donors who would help to build a school, Mortenson now has a foundation eagerly supported by many Americans, and especially the mountaineers, who continue to build schools. At the end of the book, the foundation is moving into the poorest sectors in Afghanistan, and building schools there. They have children’s programs in many of the schools in the United States, where children donate pennies to help pay for books for the schools, and for the teacher’s monthly salaries, where salaries are not reaching the teachers. You can donate to the school building fund, teacher’s salaries and books using your credit card, online, at the website Three Cups of Tea. You can order this book there, too, as well as music CD/s and learn more about the work being done.
Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Presidency
Hilarious video from The Onion.
Wrong, So Wrong
I was wrong, so wrong, and I admit it. I had scanned the news online. When I finally got my hands on a hard copy paper, I discover there IS news, news you don’t find online, and so much of it. Because I can’t copy it online, you will have to bear with my hand-typed-in renditions of the page 2 “In the News” section from the Kuwait Times.
1. Rehab Centers
Kuwait: Dr Haya al Metairi called for establishing a specialized health center to treat and rehabilitate homosexurals. She urged the authorities to impart moral guidance and offer psychological counseling to affected people (sic) instead of incriminating the phenomenon of homosexuality. She said she has already submitted a demand of establishing the center to the parliamentary committee for curbing negative invluences. She also called for the implementation of a draft law to evaluate the degree that the patient is psychologically affected. (sic)
Once diagnosed, appropriate psychological treatments should then be administered accordingly after referring those ailing from sexual deviation to the relevant health centers. She also called for subjecting them to periodic checkups as well as conducting awareness campaigns to expedite their rehabilitation.
Al Metairi urged the Ministry of Health to subject local pharmacies to strict surveillance, reported Al Watan. She said most pharmacies sell banned female hormone inducting drugs over the counter that could fatally endanger the lives of consumers. She said such pills activate female hormones, leading to weakening the male sexual organs. Prolonged use of such drugs transforms a man’s physical appearance to resemble that of a woman and also negatively reduced the power of their sexual organs.
2. Diplomatic Appointments
Kuwait: Undersecretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Khalid Al-Jarallah denied the involvement of wasta in admission tests held for inducting diplomats. He refuted reports that the ministry resorts to wasta, saying “The ministry never subjects itself to pressure from anyone, nor does it accept wasta in any form.”
He said appointing diplomats is a very sensitive issue as this select group represents the country abroad. Speaking on qualifications required to qualify for the posts, he said the maximum age required to qualify for the examinations is 24. No applicant under 24 has ever qualified for the written tests, he added. All candidates then have to mandatorily undergo a series of other appraisals and examinations before being finally accepted as diplomats, reported Al-Wasat. Written exams, which are graded by an expert panel of officials from the ministry are then followed by personal interviews and stringent brain storming sessions while grading the applicants on their personal capabilities.
3. No Blackouts
Kuwait: Fears of impeding electricity outages this summer dominated the Cabinet’s recent weekly meeting, officials said. The Ministry of Electricity and Water Mohammed Al-Olaim briefed the Cabinet with a detailed report on the current situation as well as details of the expected consumption as compared with the actual production.
He assured the Cabinet that he does not expect any electricity outage; scheduled or otherwise. He said the overall situation was under control with production exceeding the state’s consumption. “We are safely within the parameters of the green consumption line.” he added. He however slammed some local dailies of sparking unconfirmed reports of a power crisis, reported Al-Wasat. He said the reason electricity in some areas, was disrupted recently was due to technical snags leading to an overload, resulting from an excessive increase in day temperatures.
He said residents do not have to worry as technicians are on standby around the clock to deal with any contingency that might arise at any given time or place.
4. Donkey Ordered Out
Kuwait: The Minister of State for Municipa Affairs Dr. Fadel Safar saw a donkey grazing on a green patch while travelling through the capital recently. He called municipal officials and snstructed them to clear the mule off, reported Al-Watan. The officials in turn called capital police who arrived and took the animal to the Capital Security Directorate.
Laugh? Or cry?
The Wire, Season 4
This show, The Wire, is one of our all time favorites, all the more so because our son also loves this show and passes along the entire season when he has finished watching.
Season 4 is the very best so far. The major theme is a subject near and dear to my heart – the schools, keeping kids in school, and trying to find ways to help them learn. Two former policemen end up in Tilghman Middle School, working with the poorest kids in the Baltimore school system.
First, you need to know that teaching middle school is the stuff of heroes. At very best, middle school kids are dealing with those raging hormones of adolescence. They can’t sit still. They are so full of energy, and sitting and reading is the last thing they want to do.
New teacher “Prez” suffers total loss of control over his class on his first day, but slowly finds ways to engage their attention – such as teaching them to use math to figure odds rolling dice. Once they understand the value of the new information, they are enthusiastic learners . . . or at least, they co-operate with the boring stuff because he finds ways to reward them with interesting information, relevant to helping them cope with their lives. The teachers learn from the students – to keep it real, keep it relevant.
The teachers in Tilghman Middle School are HEROES. Most of the children they deal with have huge problems outside the school, poverty being the smallest of the problems. For many, their parents are their worst problems, literally stealing the food out of their mouths for another fix. The kids bring their baggage into the schools every day, their anger, their acting out. The teachers have to be a mix of tough, compassionate and flexible. They know they are going to lose some of them, and they have to keep on, hoping a few will make it. It is truly a war zone, and the teachers are the stand-up soldiers in this season.
We follow a tough race for the Mayor’s office, the rise of a drug lord, two stone-cold killers who figure out how to “disappear” their victims, and one very clever schemer who manages to pull off a major drug heist, and then sells the product back to his victims. It’s an amazing show.
If you follow this season via DVD, choose to use the subtitles. A lot of the language is slang, much of it is street talk, mumbled, garbled – real speech. It helps to use the subtitles.
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Early Voting in Florida
