KELVINGROVE: TAU-RAPA WAKA-TAUA

Many exhibits in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum can't be squeezed into some narrow definition of culture, faith, religion or spirituality, but they still have much to show us and tell us about all those things. Certainly, Kelvingrove’s exhibits are not limited to those traditions or lifesyles which can be found in conspicuous numbers in Glasgow - as is demonstrated by this piece.

This elaborate wooden carving once decorated the back of a Maori war canoe. The details are symbols of the Maori creation story.

Stem of war canoe – Tau-rapa waka-taua – Maori, New Zealand

STUDY SHOWS FAITH IS AN INNATE HUMAN QUALITY

Picked up from Twitter today ...

According to a poll conducted by Oxford University, faith and religion are an innate trait for human beings. Entitled the “Cognition, Religion, and Theology Project,” the initiative took three years to complete and includes over 40 different studies in 20 countries around the world.

The study began in 2008, when the Associated Press reported:

University of Oxford researches will spend nearly $4 million to study why mankind embraces God. The grant to the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion will bring anthropologists, theologians, philosophers, and other academics together for three years to study whether belief in a divine being is a basic part of mankind’s makeup.

Read this article (along with reader comments and the opportunity to make your own) on the website of The New American.

TOP PERFORMANCES AT POPULAR FESTIVAL

This article appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Top performances at popular festival

The Vaisakhi sports festival at St Margaret's Pastures proved a big hit.

Organised by former Olympic hockey player Ajaib Singh Matharu, sports included athletics, badminton, hockey and table tennis.

The hockey attracted huge interest, with teams from Coventry, Derby, Birmingham and Leamington competing alongside Leicester sides.

Soar Valley College beat South Leicester in the under-14 final, but it was roles reversed in the under-16 final.

In the veterans final, Coventry beat Leeds after a close contest.

In athletics, Satvir Singh was the star of the day in the junior section, winning two under-seven races and finishing second in a third. The outstanding girl was Raveen Kaur.

In the under-14 age groups, the best performances came from Raj Singh and Amandeep Kaur.

The Vaisakhi (birth of Khalsa) festival is celebrated by Sikhs all over the world.

KELVINGROVE: THE STORY OF VIDHURA-PANDITA

Now here's the sort of display item that might not be acquired today, no matter its cultural worth. Few people would see past the fact that this is made of ivory.



The carvings on this Burmese elephant tusk tell a story of the triumph of good over evil.

Vidhura-Pandita is the Buddha in the form of a wise man. He is chief adviser to King

Dhananjaya. King Dhananjaya is the good ruler of the city of Indapatta.

Other prominent characters from the story represented on the tusk include: the naga spirit king (all nagas wear a pointed snake headdress); Princess Irandati (the naga king’s daughter); Punnaka, a demon (he’s wearing a demon mask on top of his head).

KELVINGROVE: THE LION AND THE GAZELLE

The first blog entry from the treasure trove that is Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is for an Islamic shield, 1750-1850, Indian or Iranian, metal inlaid with silver and brass. Here’s the copy on the card with the shield itself:

The animals on this shield are made of words. The four lions are symbols of courage and are protecting the gentle gazelles in the middle. A soldier carried the shield into battle as a symbol of his Islamic faith.

Alongside the shield is an interactive electronic book, which tells the story of the shield in eight pages or so. The following text is found on the last few pages of the interactive book:

To fully appreciate the cultural value of this Islamic shield, and after careful consideration, we have chosen to tell this shield’s story in a visual way by illustrating the lives of the characters represented on it, those of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him and his cousin Imam Ali.

 To aid us with this task we have selected a number of historical miniature paintings that have appeared in Islamic manuscript  books such as “Jami’ al-Tawarikh” by Rashid Al-Din, Tabiriz AD 1306; “Siyar-i-Nabi”, Istanbul, AD 1595; the “Khavarnama” by Ibn Husam, Punjab, AD 1686; and “Maktel-i-Ali Resul” by Lami’l Celebi, Turkey, early 17^th century AD.

We are very aware of the tension that exists within Islamic cultures today with regards to figurative art in general, and the depiction of Prophet Muhammad and of his family in particular.

Some of this concern stems from theological arguments, but some stems from concern for misrepresentation and disrespectful depictions.

We would like to assure Muslims that in this interactive  we are following in the footsteps of respectable Medieval artists and their patrons who set precedence for the Islamic artistic tradition of illustrating the stories of the lives of Prophet Muhammad and his followers.

We have adhered to veiling the face of the Prophet and flames to emphasise his special position in his community.

The aim of this interactive is purely educational to introduce and explain the story of the gazelle and the lion in an accessible way to people who may not know of it.

None of the images that are meant to be a true likeness of any of the characters. They are merely illustrations to inspire and educate their audience.

KELVINGROVE ART GALLERY & MUSEUM

In my hometown of Glasgow for a few days, I have the pleasure of visiting Kelvingrove Art Gallery andMuseum, just a short step from the hotel in which I’m staying. There’s plenty in Kelvingrove that would merit inclusion in this blog, for all kinds of reasons. I’ve written about Kelvingrove before, especially in connection with the Salvador Dali painting, Christ of St John of the Cross, that is arguably its most famous exhibit.

Like many an art gallery or museum, of course, there’s a lot of stuff that takes religion or spirituality as its topic or in which religion can be identified as an underlying theme. It would be a difficult task to present any kind of historical or thematic survey of art (western or eastern) that didn’t engage with religion. 

I’m being rather unsubtle here in only highlighting those exhibits or displays that could be said explicitly to foreground the kind of themes and topics that often feature here. If I were not so choosy, I’d have to reproduce, describe and discuss just about everything there is to be seen there!

Text indented and in italic comes direct from the display cards that accompany these exhibits. There’s a lot more of that than there is of my own writing here. When it comes to describing a visit to Kelvingrove, that’s the way it should be, faithful reader.

The entries are in no particular order. I’ve tried to gather together different entries that relate to one religion or faith community, although that’s not always been possible. And there are going to be more pictures than usual.

Watch this space over the next few days for what I hope you'll consider some lovely stuff!

SACRE AT CHARNWOOD PRIMARY

I'm attending the regular meeting of Leicester SACRE (Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education), held this time at Charnwood Primary School, Nedham Street.

I've brought two guests with me today: Sam Newton, Editor of the Leicester Wave, is here at my recommendation to make some contacts, gain interest and drum up support from teachers and govenors at this meeting for an article about young Muslim women in Leicester and the burka. I've also brought Rosemarie Fitton, who's shadowing me as part of her MA course in Inter-Religious Relations at St Philip's Centre for Study and Engagement in a Multi-Faith Society. The photo above shows (left to right) Sam, Rosemarie and Jill Carr (Secretary of Leicester SACRE). They're standing before one of the displays created by pupils of Charnwood Primary in the school's "Walk of Faith".

At today's meeting we bid farewell to Rev Dr Alan Race, Vicar at St Philip's Church and Director of Studies at St Philip's Centre. To describe Alan as a mainstay of SACRE would be an understatement to put it mildly. He's a mainstay of everything inter-faith in Leicester and farther afield. He'll definitely be missed around here.

RED TAPE CHALLENGE TO ENVIRONMENT - AND EQUALITY

In today's edition of The Guardian, George Monbiot writes about the impact and implications of the Coalition placing environmental legislation on its Red Tape Challenge website. I've mentioned the Red Tape Challenge before in this blog - the shock of finding the Equality Act 2010 there, the barely controlled panic I heard in the voice of practitioners who thought that the government was wasting no time in disposing of what had been so hard won. What struck me about the section of Monbiot's article that I've reproduced below is how "environment" can fairly be replaced by "equality" and the piece not only still makes sense, but still works, for another discipline. Here's an extract from George Monbiot's piece:

But this is just the beginning of the coalition's assault on the environment. The government's Red Tape Challenge presents, on paper at last, the widest-ranging threat to environmental protection since the enclosure acts. suddenly it is asking whether environmental legislation - yes, all of it - should be "scrapped altogether". Listed as negotiable are [...] all the regulations, grand and petty, that protect us from other people's greed and selfishness.

It's a breathtaking, astonishing initiative, and the little protest it has generated testifies how punchdrunk this country has become as the government pummels every protection our forebears worked so hard to win, everything that defends us from a feral, unregulated market.

The point of the Red Tape challenge is not to scrap all this legislation but to shake the bolts looser. The government is in the process of resetting the political boundaries so that the outrageous propositions it makes in future seem unexceptional.

MY SISTER WANTED A GODLESS FUNERAL. BUT STILL INVITED GOD

Bereavement services - burial and cremation - is a topic that takes a lot of our attention at Leicester Council of Faiths. With that in mind, I was very interested to read this distinctive take on the subject in today's Guardian.

My sister wanted a godless funeral. But still invited God

A royal wedding in a register office – that's the sort of validation those of us who want to live and die as non-believers need

By Jon Canter

My sister Rosemary died of cancer in March, aged 61. As her next-of-kin, it fell to me to organise her funeral. The undertaker's office, I soon discovered, is no place for the bereaved. You can't afford to be dazed or vulnerable, otherwise you will weakly agree to all the standard things, which was not what my sister wanted.

I fought against a wooden coffin and a hearse – securing, after some negotiation, a final journey in a cardboard coffin in the back of a Volvo estate. (Don't worry. It was black.) Then the undertaker asked what religion my sister was. "Atheist," I replied. That, of course, was a nonsense. Atheism is – doh! – not a religion. In that case, he asked, who was going to conduct the funeral? If the Volvo was the unconventional substitute for the hearse, who was the unconventional substitute for the vicar?

Happily – I insist on that word – it was me. Told before Christmas that she had months to live, my sister had the inclination and the courage to prescribe the kind of service she wanted and ask me to conduct it. What she wanted, in a word, was a godless funeral. How easy was that to achieve?

In many ways, the planning of a godless funeral was a liberation. For our mother's cremation we had, via that secular miracle the internet, procured the services of a rabbi. (Oh yes, my sister's non-religion was, in fact, "Jewish atheist".) He recited the prayers with commendable gusto. But he was much like the vicar so familiar from Church of England funerals – he didn't know the deceased; he couldn't eulogise her, except to say he'd heard nice things about her from her family. How many times have you shifted in your pew with embarrassment, as a vicar tries to celebrate a member of his flock who, it's soon apparent, is a bit of a mystery sheep? I knew my elder sister for all but the first four years of her life. In celebrating her, I had infinitely more knowledge and authority than a religious intermediary only doing his or her job.

So. I would talk about her, as would two old friends she nominated.

Then what? How, in the name of godless, would we fill our allotted span? Rosemary wanted a silence, to allow everyone to think their own thoughts. To that – without telling her, for fear of embarrassment – I added a coda, derived from those football matches in which the crowd observes a minute's silence for a dead former player or manager: that silence is followed by rousing applause, which somehow conveys: "Thank you for everything. But now we have to get on with the game."

So that is what we did at my sister's funeral: I announced there would be a silence, at the end of which everyone should applaud, long and loudly, to give thanks for Rosemary's life. It worked wonderfully, though I say it myself. Others might call it gimmicky and new-fangled. At a religious funeral you draw on rituals and prayers with the gravitas only centuries of usage can bring. You take from The Book of Common Prayer, the liturgy, the Qur'an, the Torah; but there we were, at my sister's funeral, paying homage to Match of the Day.

Eulogies and silence, Rosemary felt, should be punctuated by music. ("Do you think I'm being too controlling?" she asked, as she sat on her sofa, scribbling notes about her own funeral. "Of course not," I said, making a mental note to tell the congregation of her question. For that is another benefit of a godless funeral: humour can be encouraged.)

Without hesitation, she specified the opening song. Nothing, she said, more evoked her early childhood than We Plough the Fields and Scatter. Brilliant. Now I could stand up and say, as I duly did: "By the power invested in me by my sister and Richard Dawkins, please stand and sing We Plough the Fields and Scatter." To return to Match of the Day, it certainly felt like an early away goal for God. More such goals were to follow. She wanted Milton's On His Blindness, about a man who, in losing his sight, finds that his soul is "more bent / To serve therewith my Maker". I could go on. And I will.

She craved the Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem Mass: "Huic ergo parce, Deus, pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem." Yes indeed. Amen to that.

She may not have wanted Him at her funeral, but she needed Him. My sister, born in England in 1949, a singer of hymns in her primary school, grew up with Him. She knew that He elevates. God is the man for the big occasion. So, this is what I hope will happen before my own funeral: there'll be a great state occasion that is godless, to give hope and a kind of validation to all of us who want to live and die as non-believers.

Imagine it: a state funeral or a service of remembrance for those killed in war, in a crematorium, built by Zaha Hadid, as awesome as St Paul's Cathedral. Now imagine this: a royal wedding in Westminster register office, with a registrar standing in the archbishop of Canterbury's God-fearing shoes, as the unbelieving bride enters to the sound of an ancient and venerated secular love song, of the order of the Beatles' Here, There and Everywhere..

Unthinkable, isn't it? Treasonable, probably. Socially embarrassing, certainly. We are not a religiously observant nation – except when it really counts.

Illustration by Otto Detmer

PAGANS VOICE CONCERNS ABOUT THOR

Here's a nice piece I picked up from USA Today's Faith & Reason column, which describes itself as "A Conversation About Religion, Spirituality and Ethics".

Pagans voice concerns about Thor

By Sarah Pullium Bailey for USA TODAY

Thor offers the unexpected start to the Hollywood blockbuster season, as most people may not be familiar with the 49-year-old Marvel Comics hero. Fewer people are probably aware of the Norse god Thor, who is still followed in some pagan traditions.

Reviews have been fairly positive so far, but some pagans have been posting concerns about the movie popularized in the comic book instead of in the tradition they follow. Thor is described as a great warrior of enormous strength.

Leading up to the film, some pagans voiced concerns over the film's depiction of Thor as a deity. Eric Scott wrote a post at Killing the Buddha that set off a chain of reactions on "What happens when Hollywood gets a hold of your gods."

The truth is, I looked at the toys in my hands and I saw the result of millions of dollars of development and thousands of hours of manpower, put into something bearing the name of a god, my god, and it had nothing to do with me. Their Thor was a god forgotten by all except the few quiet geeks who read his adventures in Journey into Mystery and The Mighty Thor for forty years. It wasn't that they meant to upset or unsettle me; they simply realized that people like me were too few to matter. It's impossible to think of a story about Jesus like this, not written to pander to or irritate Christians, but simply not considering them at all.

Hollywood uses Christian characters as well, Alexandra Erin argues, assuming people will be familiar with the names and symbols.

While it must be remembered that Christianity enjoys a very privileged position in our culture and thus can't claim to be injured by off-target pop culture depictions, the fact remains that the Christian religion *is* treated as mythology by Hollywood to be pillaged wholesale for stories and characters. Consider the move Legion, which has a gun-toting archangel action hero facing off against the legions of heaven and/or hell to save a come-again Baby Jesus from the wrath of a petulant God.

Perhaps the film is an opportunity to introduce people to Paganism, Star Foster of Patheos' Pantheon blog says:

Thor is an opportunity. People will seek out Pagans due to this film, silly as that may sound. When they come we should greet them with answers and hospitality, especially if we weren't received that way. Thor can mark a change not only for seekers, but for how our communities interact with them.

Are you planning to see Thor? Have you felt like Hollywood has misrepresented or taken advantage of your beliefs?

I have to declare a special kind of interest in this story. While I wouldn't exactly say I'm a worshipper of Thor, I've certainly been a fan since I was very young. I first encountered The Mighty Thor (to give him his full title - sadly, the movie versions tend to drop the great adjectives, so we don't get the Amazing Spider-Man or The Uncanny X-Men - it's a wonder that they didn't give us just "The Four" as a movie) in the pages of Fantastic comic, which was launched in 1967, when I was an impressionable eight year old (as distinct from the impressionable 51 year old I am today). This featured short black and white instalments of the adventures of several Marvel superheroes, the Mighty Thor amongst them. I used to colour in the pages myself. When I eventually discovered that they were available in colour, between glossy covers and had stories it didn't take months to follow to their conclusion, it was like entering a new world. It's one that still holds its attractions for me, as a cursory glance of my bookshelves, bedside reading or Amazon wish list would confirm.

 

 

For ages, I implored my dad, who was a skilled wood-machinist at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, to make me a wooden version of Mjolnir, Thor's hammer (translated from the Icelandic, the name means "that which smashes"). He gave it to me when I was 10 or thereabouts; it was about half as tall as I was.

In my first year at Allan Glen's, aged 11 or 12, I illustrated a project in history class about the Vikings by cutting out scenes from some of my Thor comics (an unprecedented sacrifice by itself) and pasting them into my jotter. I got 0/10 for the project and my history teacher wrote in angry red script that I should remove every trace of these from my book and do the project over again - properly this time.

In keeping with my own devotion to the god of thunder then, I've used an image from the comic, rather than the movie at the top of this blog post.