System of Symbols

sign = symbol
I thought the conversation about symbols/signs during the last 10 minutes of class was really interesting. It's cool because signs always stand for something... whether it is as literal as a deer crossing sign signifying to slow down and look for deer (not such if this is as global but anywhere deer are possibly crossing roads), an animal’s footprints means an animal is nearby or seeing smoke and thinking fire... it's pretty cool that that is a global system. There are so many languages in the world that it is hard at times to cross culturally communicate.

(I’m not sure how well this links but I thought it was an interesting connection)Even as we discussed in my social psychology class, even our nonverbal communication can be misinterpreted between cultures. For example, giving the okay hand gesture in Italy is like giving the finger to someone here... very different sign. Another example is somewhere else in the world (don't remember where Professor Ansfield said) where us nodding our head "yes" means no to them and us shaking our head "no" means "yes... These types of signs can lead to horribly misconceived information.

As explained on page 54, not only do different cultures speak differently – all have their own system of codes. For instance, the way they dress, the way the look, their gender social roles, etc. The great thing with the use of signs and symbols is that there is an opportunity to make them globally explicable. The challenge is to make all sign systems coexist to make them neutral and understood by all no matter what language you speak or where in the world you are.

Interpreting the Psalms with help from St. Aug's Christian Teaching

Alright, so no offense to anyone who is very into the psalms but truthfully, I am already liking Saint Augustine better. It’s not that I didn’t like the psalms… I thought they were interesting and everything but they were just unbelievably hard for me to understand. Saint Augustine’s teachings are very common language and intriguing for me. I like page 36 when he explains all of the important scriptures, which of course include David’s book of psalms that should be read. Even St. Augustine himself said that some written text fails to be understood because of unknown signs that can hinder the reader’s ability to comprehend. I think this was the problem for me; to some, these psalms probably make complete sense because they’ve grown up with them and understand their meanings hidden by “unknown signs or ambiguous signs.”

But I like his line on pg: 37 saying that “…to know these books; not necessarily understand them but to read them so as to commit them to memory or at least make them not totally unfamiliar.” This line explains exactly what I did; I read the psalms and even though I definitely didn’t completely understand them, they are no longer totally new to me.

It is important to keep in mind the six stages when reading such book as the psalms:

Stage 1: Fear of God: what exactly he instructs us to seek or avoid.
Stage 2: Through Holiness: to become passive and not contradict holy scripture even if it is not completely understood.
Stage 3: Seek Knowledge: love God for himself and one’s neighbor for God’s sake with a whole heart, soul and mind.
Stage 4: Fortitude: turn to the love of external things, that being the unchangeable Trinity
Stage 5: Resolve of Compassion and purify one’s mind: confused and in conflict with self because impurity gathers by the want of what is lesser.
Stage 6: Purification of heart so that no one is given a higher priority than the truth.

With the use of these six stages, a person can more easily come to interpret, understand, accept and appreciate such scriptures as the Psalms.

"You're a Uni-what!?!?"

Soooo many times, when I tell people I am a Unitarian Universalist they just say … “A Uni-what!?!?” And then they asked me what we believe in and I say that we are “people of faith with open minds, loving hearts, and helping hands.” Even though we don’t all believe in the same higher being, whether it is a God, a Goddess, or no God at all, we are all searching for what is true in the world. We treat all living beings with kindness and we are striving to make the world a better place to live.

Wikipedia defines Unitarian Universalism (UUism) as a theologically liberal (bet everyone sees how I got my blog name now lol) religion characterized by its support for a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning." Unitarian Universalists do not share a creed; rather, they are unified by their shared search for spiritual growth. Unitarian Universalists draw on many different theological sources and have a wide range of beliefs and practices.

Alright, so since some of this explanation probably didn’t settle many, I decided I would You Tube Unitarian Universalism to see what would come up. This video entitled “What Unitarian Universalists believe" is a puppet show done by two Sunday school kids in their U.U. church. I just thought it was cute and gave a fairly broad look at what we believe… Take a look and enjoy :) !!

The Systematic Power of Psalm 18

The intensity of this poem stimulates me … absolutely amazing the strength of the words and poetic rhythm of it. I think one of the main reasons I enjoyed this poem is because it is very easy to follow and understand unlike some of them. 18:4 is an example of this, “Praise I called the Lord and from my enemies I was rescued… Easy to follow and straight forward. This line defines the entire psalm and its basic meaning.

The psalm goes into great detail of the journey the Lord takes to save David. The Lord is described as such a powerful warrior figure in this psalm that it is almost frightening the absolute control he possesses. I feel like anyone who is a strong believer in the psalms and the Lord probably just loves this psalm because it explains the all mighty supremacy of their Lord. The line (18:18) “He saved me from my daunting enemy and from my foes who were stronger than I.” I think this probably speaks strong because all people at times worry about their stronger foes, whether it is mentally or physically, and this seems to say they that the Lord is here to help overcome such unavoidable challenges. From then the psalm goes on to describe how wonderful the Lord is for helping in times of need and how accepting he is.

My favorite part begins at line 34 when the descriptions of different body parts come into the scene. A couple of snippets are “make my legs like a gazelle’s and stands me on the heights, trains my hands for combat, makes my arms bend a bow of bronze….you lengthened my strides beneath me and my feet did not trip.” What beautiful language is used to describe such relatively simple body parts; drawing out parts of the body that the Lord taught to be stronger and poss greater powers is wonderfully phrased.

The line that shocked me the first time I read it was “The God who grants vengeance to me and crushes peoples beneath me (18:48).” This jumped out at me because it was so direct in its actions; talking about revenge and crushing people below you sounds kind of harsh, to me at least. This is the only part where I really found the image of God as an aid in battle as scary and unsympathetic.

I think that borrowing of the elements of God from other religious traditions is a great combination to show the strength and overall blending between separate traditions …. I don’t see it as problematic, but then again... I have little to no background to say.

continuing with the psalms ...

The psalms are extremely difficult for me to understand. Never have read them before makes this week of class very confusing but interesting. I’ve learned so much that I didn’t know before, such as Monday’s class when we learned the time line of the old testament; I knew all of the people, I just had never known the order of them (Plus the entire class I had tons of old high school choir songs jumping into my head about each person).

I did really enjoy talking about psalm 37 though. I liked when people read parts out loud because it seemed easier to understand than when I just read them to myself. It took me a couple of times through to understand this psalm but the overall statement that was decided was that God rewards those who do good and punishes those who do evil. I found myself thinking like Woody Allen in this because he would be considered “outside the religion lines” while I see Billy Joel (I’m guessing from the Youtube video) as being a very strict believed in the psalms and in staying within the religious boundaries.

To me, this psalm seems kind of harsh… I like the whole ‘God rewards all that do good’ but the psalm also seems to describe a lot of people who need to be cut off. It’s like the psalm is saying don’t help those who are poor for they have obviously done something evil to get there. It a huge misfortune to be brought down to that level and be told it was because that person did something against God’s will. It also seems like this psalm is describing a lot of “wicked” people that should be “cut off” and that seems a little weird to me; in my opinion, everyone makes mistakes… a couple of mistakes shouldn’t determine your status as evil over good. I do like the line “Do not envy those who do wrong (37:1).” I find this to speak very true because karma always seems to find those people no matter how they try to hide it.

[I’m sorry if my interpretation of this psalm is totally off from its meaning … this is very new to me and this is just how I read it]

Attempting to understand the psalms...

[Image above is Psalm II in Hebrew]

Psalm II in the book was already confusing to me when we were assigned the reading for the weekend. Once we re-read it in class and broke it down slowing, I started to understand what it was saying. Being given this extremely old version of it made it even more confusing. The meaning from what we know today may have changed slightly from how American’s first read it.

To the people in America first being given the opportunity to read the psalms, this was probably very powerful. To us, today, this version is just very confusing. If I would have just started reading this psalm without first reading the version by Alter, I would have had no idea what was going on what so ever.

Many of the words from this first version aren’t really even used today in the English language such as, in the fifth line “vex them fuddenlie.” Until I found out that the f’s means s… I was totally lost. It’s interesting that words like vex, yee, begot, etc. are rarely if ever seen in the English language currently. How intriguing it is to think about how so many words become unnecessary in today’s ever expanding language.

Today, we know that when the psalm speaks of the King, we understand that to mean the actual King on earth that rules over a particular area. A large difference I noticed was that the ‘lord’ referred to in the old version of the psalm corresponds to the ‘LORD’ in Alter’s book. This version of LORD is much more powerful and noticeable than the lord written in the first version. The word ‘lord’ can also be mistaken for a lord (king) of the earth, since a lord is another word for king; the LORD is unmistakable. Also, the name God is written in the old version while (I don’t believe) God is at all written in the edition today.

As seen through out the beginning of Alter’s book, today lord or God is now written either LORD or YHWN. This is very interesting to me since YHWN is not actually pronounced. I never knew that when YHWN is written, instead you say Adonai. What an amazing learning for me in class to try and understand that that single word means you say something completely different; hard concept to have my brain comprehend at 10 a.m. on a Monday morning. :/

The difference between this first version and the version we are reading in class in astounding. To see how far these psalms have come to make them interpretable for people of today’s standards. Though it took me quite awhile to understand what in the hell I was supposed to be understanding and writing about for today’s post, trying to read this old edition out loud to myself so I could attempt to fully comprehend it was actually kind of fun.

Ever think about taking a Religion quiz?!?! Try it out!

Hey everyone! My roommates and I decided to take a break from homework tonight and take stupid online quizzes for an addictingly long time. We came across some religious ones that I thought would be interesting to take and then I decided, why not blog about them as well!?! (It is our "free-blog" entry)

So anyways, here is the website: http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Quizzes/index.aspx

and here are two quizzes that I found rather fitting to our class in particular :)

What's your spiritual type?

http://www.beliefnet.com/section/quiz/index.asp?surveyID=27

and

What's your faith?

http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Quizzes/BeliefOMatic.aspx

These quizzes are actually pretty cool and I suggest anyone who is interested should take one or both.

Taking the spirituality test I found out that I am:
60 - 69
Old-fashioned Seeker -- Happy with my religion but searching for the right expression of it

And taking the faith test, it comes up with rating after a 20 question personality test. Here are my top 5
1.
Neo-Pagan (100%)

2.
New Age (91%)
3.
Unitarian Universalism (89%) !!!
4.
Mahayana Buddhism (85%)
5.
Liberal Quakers (81%)

(( I am a UU (#3) so I thought it was pretty interesting!! ))

So personally, I found this to be really fun and fascinating and if you have any spiritual or faith questioning, this might be really helpful/intriguing to you too!

:)

The Symbolic Basis of Effigy Mounds

A system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing there conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

Clifford Geertz’s definition is a uniquely realistic handle on the world. He looks at the “system of symbols” as ultimately what a religion is. Moods (feelings) and motivations (actions) are what drive an individual to see their beliefs as fact.

As R. Clark Mallam explains, effigy mound ceremonialism represents ancient “ideology from the earth.” He also believes the mounds to be replicating the three natural classes – air, earth, and water. This was the Native American’s way of ritually maintaining balance and harmony with the natural world with the perspective of ceremonialism to renew the world. As examined below, these groups are extraordinarily symbolic.

The effigy shape depended on the area it was being constructed in. For instance, The Lowerworld: earth, contained mostly buffalo and bear shaped effigies. “Long tailed animals,” such a panthers, turtles, and lizards, represented the Lowerworld: water. Almost all of these mounds are found near water, particularly springs, because sources of water symbolized rebirth and renewal. Bird forms are found in the sky or Upperworld. They were made on high places such as cliffs, bluffs, and ridges (which is self explanatory as to why). This symbol makes sense because the Native American’s attachment to animals was very strong due to dependence on them. Human effigies were also created. Many are united with some type of animal part such as buffalo horns on its head, wings in place of arms, or a birds head in place of the humans (a.k.a “bird man”). This connection identifies how close Native American wanted to be with animals. In these mounds, they combined these two mammals to symbolize this desire.

Effigies on occasion also contained burial sites. These burials were characteristically placed in either the head or the heart or the depicted mound representing the link between that particular effigy form and the deceased. The Native Americans focused strongly on reinforcement and renewal. They believed in some sort of afterlife and thus engaged in ceremonies for the deceased. Actual burials were not carried out until symbolic occasion came about so the body at times had two burials to hold the body until the true symbolic burial could be brought about. Building these mounds reflected the embellishment of rituals surrounding death and the desire to create both visual and symbolic ties among human beings, the land, and the supernatural world.

Stories and Symbols of Religion

In Wednesday’s class, we discussed all of the elements of religion and how they applied to our reading and present day religion. The most intriguing element we discussed, in my opinion was

stories --->arts/symbols --->history.

Stories are a huge part of religion. Every current religion uses stories to tell their past. There are stories such as: Moses splitting the red sea, Jonah and the Whale, David and Goliath, Isra, and the list goes on and on. All of these stories are put forth to teach lessons and learn about the past of a specific religion. These stories all help to corroborate a person’s faith in their desired beliefs.

Art and symbols also play a large role as an element of religion. As seen from our reading, Upper Paleolithic artists depicted mostly animals and geometric ‘signs’ in their cave drawings. The placement of the drawings can determine the different rites and ceremonies within a religion.

Today, different religions or churches can be noticed solely by their symbol. For example, when a person sees the Star of David, they see Judaism; when a crescent moon and star symbol is seen, most people will think of Islam, and when most people see a cross they see some form of Christianity. I am a Unitarian Universalist and our symbol is a flaming chalice (as seen below). As seen, there are numerous symbols that bring to mind a direct connection with particular religions.

Developing Religion

I've never blogged before and all of this is new to me so I’m not entirely sure how my first post should go. I'll start by defining religion (courtesy of Wikipedia.com) --

By definition, a religion is an organized approach to human spirituality which usually encompasses a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural or transcendent quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power or truth.

The Upper Paleolithic religion used cave drawings to express their beliefs and to tell stories as well. These drawings were done deep within the caves. They were very strong worshipers of the earth; this devotion could be looked at as equivalent with today’s worship of Gob, Allah, etc. Today, this kind of worship could be looked at as pagan or some other non Christian, Jewish, nor Muslim religion, but to them this was what they believed in.

The way people see religion can be looked at as either psychological or social through nature. Humans are naturally social animals. To me, religion is all about community. I admire the way Durkheim, a great sociologist of religion, defined religion in our reading Paleolithic art and religion. Durkheim says that “Religion is a system of ideas and rituals that represents to people the society to which they belong." Having a group come together under their specified "house of worship" is very important to healthily express their given beliefs. No matter how a person decides to express their beliefs, whether it is through the idea of divine intervention or by practices centered on teachings of a spiritual leader, it is very important to have a strong, supportive community behind you.