The Child Goddess

Did you know that the hindus choose a child from a poor village and she gets to be a goddess until she hits puberty. I certainly didn't! To have a god that is so tangible and alive when most religions Gods are so unfathomable.

I love the juxtaposition between her being a goddess and playing with barbies.

I wonder if all of the Kumaris ever get together and hang out.

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/09/hindu-festivals/100154/

My friend Matt sent me these AMAZING pictures of hindu festivals. 

I'm really hooked on Hinduism right now. Really need to start calling some people.

This Week and Next Week.

This week I edited some of the video interviews, started watching the Frontline God in America series and did a bit of writing.
Also I found several websites that have the basic beliefs of many religions. Belief.net is very helpful as well as religioustolerance.org.
Next week I would like to continue watching God in America, Read the chapter on Mysticism in Religion in the Harvey Cox book, read a bit of the Tibetan book of the dead, edit more videos, do some more interviews and do even more writing.
None of the professors that I emailed have emailed me back yet, but Seattle U just started last week so they might be really busy with school.
I'm stil trying to narrow my subject and finding things that I want to include. My main focus is What Happens when we die, but I'm also very interested in what people will sacrifice for their religion. There's that footage of the monk lighting himself on fire. It all just happens so fast. He doesn't fight death and then within about 30 seconds, He falls over and you know he's gone. Just watching that is chilling. To see a man go from living to dead so willingly. I wonder where he is now?

I'm finding that one of my biggest challenges with this project is to not think so much. Of course I will continue thinking, but I need to put my thoughts into actions. That is where progress occurs. Instead of staring at a picture for an hour I need to write how I feel about it or research the religion to try and explain why certain people do things certain ways. 

Preliminary Source List For Now

I'll print this too for class on Monday...it might change a bit by then too

Interviews:

Seattle U Professors:

Asian religions - Dr. Stephen Chan

Catholicism - Fr. Patrick Kelly

Christianity - His name is Dr. Jeff Staley

Buddhism -  Dr. Sharon Suh

Judaism and Islam - Dr. Matthew Whitlock

Cornish Students:

Matt Aguayo

Mike Blalock

Tyler Miller

Danielle Mitchell

Kaitlin Zier

(others)

Books:

Campanini, Massimo, and Oliver Leaman. The Qurʼan: the Basics. London: Routledge, 2007. Print.

Cox, Harvey Gallagher. The Feast of Fools; a Theological Essay on Festivity and Fantasy,. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1969. Print.

Hitchens, Christopher. God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Twelve, 2007. Print.

Kelly, Thomas L., and Glenn H. Mullin. The Tibetan Book of the Dead: an Illustrated Edition. [New Delhi]: Lustree, 2009. Print.

Tzu, Lao. Tao Te Ching. Hong Kong: Chinese UP, 2001. Print.

Waley, Arthur. Three Ways of Ancient Thought in China. Garden City: Doubleday and, 1939. Print.

Websites:

Belief.net

Religionfacts.com

Religioustolerance.org

One sentence-ish about what happens when we die

Buddhism: Interconnected world and reincarnation.

http://buddhismbeliefs.org/

Hinduism: Reincarnation. eventually looking to break the cycle of rebirth and be in the presence of god. Nirvana.

Judaism: Tend to focus more on life than on death, but vague afterlife is decribed in the torah.

http://www.religionfacts.com/judaism/beliefs/afterlife.htm

Christianity: If one accepts Jesus as their savior they will go to heaven, if not they will go to hell.

http://www.deathanddyingonline.com/?p=25

Islam: human existence continues after the death of the human body in the form of spiritual and physical resurrection. 

http://www.islamreligion.com/articles/38/

Mormanism: “Mormons believe that all humans who die will live eternally. Their spirits will go to the spirit world, where they will undergo instruction and preparation. Then, "after a time," there will be the Resurrection, at which time the spirits will be reunited with their bodies forever.”

http://www.religionfacts.com/mormonism/beliefs/afterlife.htm

Unitarian: tend to not believe in hell. Draws from many different religions. No set path.

http://www.religionfacts.com/a-z-religion-index/unitarian_universalism.htm

Quakers: focus on life rather than death.

http://www.indiana.edu/~famlygrf/culture/lewis_culture.html

Atheism: “We simply decompose and become part of the matter that helps many other forms of life survive.”

http://death.findyourfate.com/life-after-death/atheism.html

Now I'm getting excited.

I want to learn this

Hebrew is a very pretty language.

"The theme of Kaddish is, rather, the Greatness of G-d, Who conducts the entire universe, and especially his most favored creature, each individual human being, with careful supervision. In this prayer, we also pray for peace--from apparently the only One Who can guarantee it--peace between nations, peace between individuals, and peace of mind."

Read more: http://www.beliefnet.com/Health/Health-Support/Grief-and-Loss/2000/10/Mourners-Kaddish-English-Translation.aspx#ixzz1YihIn3sT

"A soul is comparable to an object which was given to us--to each individual, to his or her parents and loved ones, to guard and watch over for a limited time. When the time comes for the object to be returned to its rightful owner, should we not be willing to return it? With regard to our sons, let us therefore consider the matter as 'The L-rd gave, and the L-rd took back, may the Name of the L-rd be Blessed!'
"

It's very strange to me that so many funerals are happening at the same time and that people do not seem to be as openly emotional about the death of a loved one. It's so odd that the bodies being burned don't actually look like people anymore. The belief of reincarnation probably has something to do with their seemingly easy going acceptance of death...maybe? I would love to be reincarnated. A tree would be nice. Like in that myth about the old people that opened their door to Jupitar. I was just talking to my boyfriend about reincarnation and he said this

"You and I would be reincarnated stuck together in a tree as we open our door to Jupiter"

that sounds really beautiful.

One of the things I'm struggling with is whether or not I should just focus on the religions of the people I've interviewed or include other religions as well. It would be easier if I just focused on a few, but I keep falling in love with rituals from other religions.

Like this one.

Start at 9:18

It's amazing that they do this for a stranger.

I've started reading the information on beliefnet.com and it's really helpful. It gives the basic information and helps me find the next step I need to take in research. It was what led me to the hindu death ceremony and the kaddish. 

Alright I need to stop for today otherwise I won't get any of my other work done.

A few more video links

Andre
Stacy

Choose your own adventure!

I'm feeling a bit accomplished since yesterday. I emailed 5  professors from seattle u asking them to meet with me or if they were too busy to direct me to some helpful research. I had a break through in how I actually want to organize the piece. It will go something like video, me making a comment on the video and leads into another video. I don't know if that makes sense but I wrote something and it felt good. I had an assignment in playwriting to create the poster for my play. I made this:

It definitely helped me focus in on my topic. I realized that while ritual and what god looks like is very important I really want to focus on the afterlife and what happens.
Also! I was able to download several videos onto youtube and I will post them riiiiight here:
Lucie
Quinn
Kelsey
More to come!

Yay I got Youtube to Work!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RN71i8weXc

Many many more to come!

Here we go.

I haven't got as much tangible work done as I'd like this week. It was all kind of a whirl wind. I did write a few pages and started to transcribe some of the interviews. I started editing the videos I have. I did not email the SU professors yet but I intend to on Tuesday. I'm totally exhausted right now because I stayed up until 3 in the morning interviewing my friend and then I went to work at 8:30 and now here we are. It was a wild and beautiful discussion and I got some really good footage. There's this post secret that I found the other day. It really strikes a chord for me within this project


It's just so chilling. That man had to make a choice.

You could burn. You could be buried alive. Or you could fly. Even if it was just a few seconds. 

This process is very different from what I'm used to. Things are disjointed. They come to me in all these tiny pieces instead of big chunks. I sit down to really work and end up just sitting and thinking for two hours. 

Anyway this week I really want to focus on my research and really get some solid information. I will email the SU professors on Tuesday and look for some more articles on JStor tomorrow.

Oh and I really would like to post some video clips but for some reason they're not loading. I need to find someone that could make that happen.