Did Swedish artist Hilma af Klint invent abstract art in 1906?

No, but thats the myth that has been taking hold ever since a major exhibition of her remarkable paintings took the international artworld by storm seven years ago.

Klints absorbing abstractions do predate those of the male artists often tagged with the claim. But in reality, those assertions about the marvelous paintings of Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Frantiek Kupka and Kasimir Malevich dont hold up to scrutiny either. In addition to the aboriginal societies that have employed abstraction for centuries, little-known European painters like Georgiana Houghton in England and Victor Hugo in France were dabbling in pure abstraction in the mid-19th century.

A new German documentary film, Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint, brushes up against the erroneous claim but fortunately doesnt gather it up into a full embrace. Director Halina Dyrschkas movie, her feature documentary debut, was set for release in U.S. theaters at the end of the month until the novel coronavirus pandemic scuttled the plan. Beginning Friday, it will be available on Kino Marquee, the so-called virtual movie theater streaming service for art-house fare.

Hilma af Klint was born into an aristocratic Stockholm family in 1862.

(Zeitgeist Films)

Its more than worth a look not only for its careful illumination of the artists biography, plus an abundant representation of her luminous paintings, but for the way in which it exposes the obstacles af Klint and her legacy faced.

The reputation of af Klint (1862-1944) has come a far distance since her paintings were rescued from almost total obscurity more than 30 years ago. The Spiritual in Art was a sprawling 1986 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, organized to celebrate the opening of a brand new building ironically, an edifice now being torn down. The little-known Swede was put side-by-side with her famous German, Dutch, Czech and Russian contemporaries, who put abstract painting at the forefront of Modern art in the early 20th century.

What all these artists shared was an attraction to spiritual and sometimes mystical philosophies. They included the extreme occultist theosophy of Russian writer Helena Blavatsky and the more sober version found in the anthroposophy of Austrian social reformer Rudolf Steiner.

In 1915, Hilma af Klint made three Altarpiece paintings for a temple to spiritual enlightenment that was never built.

(Zetigeist Films)

Dyrschka interweaves af Klints intense spiritual interests with the radical theory of special relativity being advanced at the same time by physicist Albert Einstein and others. Spirituality collides with science in a visual exploration of invisible wonders.

On occasion the film feels like its advocating for rather than simply documenting spiritual philosophy as the arts driver, as if Raphaels greatness requires faith in a classical vision of Roman Catholicism or a belief in Buddhist principles is essential to reverence for the paintings of Guanxiu. Nonetheless, it manages an illuminating articulation of the eras social and cultural complexities.

The filmed interviews with curator Iris Mller-Westermann, who organized the revealing 2013 retrospective at Stockholms Museum of Modern Art, and gifted American artist Josiah McElheny, who is a longtime enthusiast of af Klints work, are two reasons why. The curator knows her subject as deeply as anyone, while the artist provides a working understanding of cultural forces in play. Both deftly walk the tightrope of being at once intimately enthralled and broadly eloquent.

Together with insights from a number of other historians of art and science, plus a few of the painters descendants, af Klints unusual story takes shape. Born into an aristocratic family of naval officers, and upon adulthood choosing not to marry, she first studied art as a means to support herself, with an eye to becoming a commercial illustrator.

As the alert recording of surface reality gave way to a speculative search for what lay beyond the visible, af Klint developed distinctive theories of color, line and shape. She composed them into elaborate, often large cosmic diagrams.

The largest are 10 feet tall big, radiant canvases whose color glows through the use of pure pigments mixed with egg yolk. A traditional technique largely replaced by oil paint during the Renaissance, egg tempera in af Klints hands leaves a thin veil of smooth paint that captures light within a membrane of clear, vivid color. The addition of metallic leaf adds shine.

To give a sense of the artists process, Dyrschka filmed a surrogate painting full-scale copies of af Klints work. That might not have been the best idea. Although the film includes no documentation of af Klints actual working process, the surrogate is shown painting on large sheets of paper unfurled across the floor.

An actress portrays one way af Klint might have worked on her paintings

(Zeitgeist Films)

The inevitable reference is to the innovative, even iconic abstract painting methods later employed by Americans Jackson Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler in the 1940s and 1950s, which may or may not have been the actual case for af Klint. The device comes across as an unnecessary crutch to establish avant-garde credentials.

Perhaps the intention was to compensate for one of the films most straightforward and compelling theses for af Klints obscurity, despite the self-evident brilliance of her bracing, monumental art. Although her abstract paintings were shown in a 1928 London exhibition, af Klint sold no paintings during her lifetime. She further decreed in her estate that none should be sold after her death.

Af Klints demise in 1944 and rediscovery in 1986 coincide with the birth and subsequent explosion of an international modern art market, from which her work was summarily excluded. New Yorks Museum of Modern Art, which wrote the pioneering history of abstract painting through the twin engines of exhibitions and collecting, owns not a single af Klint painting, and probably never will. The enormous, 2012 MoMA exhibition Inventing Abstraction included nothing by the Swede.

Af Klints lifes work is a direct challenge to the markets power in shaping how we tell stories about art. That shes an international sensation today makes af Klint more distinctive than any shaky claim to being the first abstract artist ever could.

'Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint'

Not Rated

Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes

Playing: Available April 17 on KinoNow; virtual theatrical release, Laemmle Monica Film Center

Art handlers crate af Klints paintings after her landmark 2013 retrospective.

(Zeitgeist Films)

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Review: 'Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint,' obscurity to art world star - Los Angeles Times

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish?

I want to talk about trying to make sense when things are breaking down.

This April weve seen some conspiracy theories blooming out of the dead land.

Sports-presenter turned conspiracy-theorist David Icke took centre-stage a week ago, appearing in a video for London Real, in which he claimed COVID19 was caused by 5G, as part of a global plot run by a secret order of alien lizards. The video was watched millions of times on YouTube and on LondonLive before YouTube and Ofcom stepped in to get it taken down.

Four days ago, a documentary appeared called Out of Shadows, recycling the 2016 Pizzagate conspiracy theory that a secret order of Democrats and Hollywood celebrities run a paedophile ring centred on two Washington pizza restaurants. The documentary got two million views in a day.

Weve also seen a conspiracy theory that COVID19 is part of a plot led by Bill Gates and the World Health Organisation to get the world to take his vaccine and implant his chip surveillance. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones of Infowars have claimed for over a decade that Gates huge funding for vaccines is actually a eugenicist plot to reduce the worlds population. This theory was taken up and enthusiastically spread this week by an anti-vaccine entrepreneur called Dr Shiva, who claims he invented email. A TV interview with him has been watched six million times this week.

Now in some ways this is predictable. The pandemic has led to a breakdown in knowledge and certainty. We dont know much about the virus or the best way of dealing with it, but we know its killing a lot of us and were afraid. This is happening to the entire human race at the same time, and were all connected on the internet.

This is creating a unique opportunity for fringe beliefs and fringe thinkers to take centre stage. Some might be interesting Universal Basic Income, say but some really belong back on the fringe.

I have been disheartened to see leading influencers in my community thats to say, western spirituality spreading the conspiracy theories I mention above. I want my community to be of service to humanity during this crisis, rather than actively spreading bad ideas (particularly anti-vaccine conspiracies finding a vaccine seems our best hope for getting out of this without 1% of the population, 75 million people, dying of the virus).

It makes me question the worth of my culture. Is spirituality particularly prone to conspiracy thinking?

On the term conspiracy theory

As various New Age influencers have said this week, conspiracy theory is a charged term. It can be a way of simply dismissing a topic without considering it.

Some things dismissed as conspiracy theories might really have something behind them. UFOs and extra-terrestrials, for example, are dismissed as conspiracy theories, but to me it seems probable there is life on other planets and that some of it is more intelligent than us.

The idea there was a plot behind JFKs assassination is another conspiracy theory which I think may be more than a theory. Child abuse in the Catholic church is another scandal that could have been dismissed as a conspiracy theory when it really was a conspiracy ie an epidemic of abuse covered up by the Vatican.

Still, one needs a powerful torch of critical discrimination in these murky and liminal swamp-lands. When you get to Pizzagate, we seem to be very much in the subconscious realm of archetypal, magical thinking secret symbols and codes, hidden orders of powerful and evil perverts. We are in Dan Brown territory here.

The personality traits behind spirituality and conspiracy thinking

I wondered this week, why should there be an overlap between my community western spirituality and conspiracy theories?

My first thought was, there are certain personality traits that make one prone to being spiritual but not religious free thinking, distrust of authority and institutions, a tendency to unusual beliefs or experiences, a tendency to detect hidden patterns and correspondences, and an attraction to alternative paradigms, particularly in alternative health which would all make one more prone to conspiracy theories.

There seems to be some evidence for this. This 2018 study by Hart and Graether, from the Journal of Individual Differences, found, in two surveys of 1200 people, that the strongest predictor of conspiracy thinking was schizotypy, which is a personality trait that makes one prone to unusual beliefs and experiences, such as belief in telepathy, mind-control, spirit-channelling, hidden personal meanings in events etc. People who are spiritual but not religious have been found to score more highly in schizoptypal personality traits than both the religious and the non-religious.

We have to be a little careful here, as there is a risk of tautology. The scientific definition of schizotypal basically includes having spiritual beliefs, so its not surprising spiritual people score highly in schizotypy. So this paper is not really telling us anything other than the sort of people who have spiritual beliefs and experiences are often also into conspiracies. It doesnt mean theyre wrong or mentally ill. But it may mean they dont score highly in belief-testing and critical thinking.

This article found that being into spirituality and alternative medicine correlated with being anti-vaccines, while this article found both anti-vaxx attitudes and pro-alternative medicine beliefs were connected to magical thinking. You can be pro-vaxx and into spiritual thinking as well, by the way Larry Brilliant, the epidemiologist who helped eradicate polio, was given his mission by Ram Dass guru, Neem Karoli Baba, as he recounts here.

a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fuelled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldviews. It has international celebrities, bestsellers, radio and TV stations. It offers a broad politico-spiritual philosophy based on two core convictions, the first traditional to conspiracy theory, the second rooted in the New Age: 1) a secret group covertly controls, or is trying to control, the political and social order, and 2) humanity is undergoing a paradigm shift in consciousness. Proponents believe that the best strategy for dealing with the threat of a totalitarian new world order is to act in accordance with an awakened new paradigm worldview.

This 2015 article, by Egil Apsrem and Asbjorn Dyrendal, responds to Ward and Voas article by suggesting conspirituality is not a new or surprising phenomenon, but instead emerges from the historical context of the 19th and 20th century occult. They write:

The cultic milieu is flooded with all deviant belief systems and their attendant practices. Moreover, the communication channels within the milieu tend to be as open and fluid as the content that flows through them. The resulting lack of an overarching institutionalized orthodoxy enables individuals to travel rapidly through a variety of movements and beliefs, thus bridging with ease what may appear on the surface as distinct discourses and practices. Political, spiritual, and (pseudo)scientific discourses all have a home here, and they easily mix. Joined by a common opposition to Establishment discourses rather than by positively shared doctrinal content, conspiracy theory affords a common language binding the discourses together.

In other words, the Occult is a Petri dish for the breeding of all sorts of mutant hybrid memes, some of them helpful, some of them toxic (depending on your worldview).

Ecstatic globalism versus paranoid conspiracy

Let me add to this emerging discourse by suggesting that conspirituality theories are a form of mystical or ecstatic experience. I want to compare two forms of mystical experience.

The first is a sort of extroverted euphoric mystical experience: Everything is connected. I am synchronicitously drawn to helpers and allies, the universe is carrying us forward to a wonderful climactic transformation (the Rapture, the Omega Point, the Paradigm Shift) , and we are the heroic warriors of light appointed by God / the Universe to manifest this glorious new phase shift in human history.

The second is a paranoid bad trip version of the euphoric good trip. Everything is connected, there is a secret order being revealed to me, but I am not part of it. It is an evil demonic order, and it is trying to control me and everyone else. They have a Grand Plan and it is taking shape now. But perhaps I, and one or two others, can wake up to this Grand Plan, and expose it, and at least hide from it.

The first trip is a euphoric ego-expansion (I am the Universe!) and the second is paranoid ego-persecution (The Universe is controlled by Evil Demons who are against me!)

In both, the individual awakens to this hidden reality. But in the first, they are a superpowered initiate in the hidden order and a catalyst for a Millennarian transformation, in the second they are a vulnerable and disempowered exposer of the powerful hidden order. (Millennarian, by the way, means that, like Robbie Williams, you believe in a coming Millennium, or Age of Love).

These are two sides of the same coin, two sides in the same game. Both are examples of schizotypal magical / dream thinking. In both, the ego is part of a grand cosmic drama in the first, they are the divine appointed catalyst for Phase Shift / humanitys rebirth, in the second, they are the heroic exposer of the Hidden Order.

If we look at the history of the occult (I recommend Gary Lachmanns Secret Teachers of the Western World as a popular intro), ever since the Reformation there have been secret orders of spiritual-political enthusiasts dedicated to a Millennarian project of global transformation. Thats what Rosicrucians were into, and the Masons, and the Illuminati the foot-soldiers of the Enlightenment were conspiracy theorists. So was HG Wells and his Open Conspiracy he was supposedly a rationalist, but really he was preaching a sort of occult-scientific polyamorous universalist new religion. So were Theosophists like Annie Besant. So were New Age pioneers in the 1960s like Marilyn Ferguson (author of The Aquarian Conspiracy, one of the best-selling books of the 1980s) and Barbara Marx Hubbard, champion of a globalist evolutionary spirituality. You can probably think of people into this sort of scene today spiritual-political enthusiasts waiting for a golden New Age of justice, perennial philosophy and polyamorous love.

Globalist Millennarians tend to be quite optimistic and quite well-connected they connect together with fellow globalist Millennarians through think tanks, associations, conferences, networks and festivals. Barbara Marx Hubbard, the indefatigable champion of evolutionary spirituality, is an example. She thought homo sapiens was about to phase shift into homo universalis, on December 12 2012 to be precise, and she thought she and her friends were the divinely-appointed catalysts for this Millennarian transformation. She was extremely well connected and spread her ideas through all kinds of organisations and networks like the Committee for the Future and the Centre for Integral Wisdom. Indeed, networking was part of her spirituality (she called it supra-sexing.)

On the other hand, you have conspiracy thinkers who are anti-globalists, like Infowars Alex Jones or evangelical Lee Keith (his book cover is below), who may see Millennarian globalists as an evil and demonic hidden order pulling the strings of global events. Anti-globalist paranoid conspiracy thinkers trace the very networks that ecstatic networkers like Barbara Marx Hubbard work through. See!, they say. They all know each other through these think-tanks and informal organisations.

Where one group are ecstatic, optimistic, super-empowered, insider (and entitled) conspirators, the other are pessimistic, paranoid, disempowered conspirators.

But their thinking styles are in some ways quite similar schizotypal, magical, prone to seeing secret influences, hidden connections, and Grand Plans. Above all, both over-estimate the competence of elites to control the world . They under-estimate the dumbness of elites and the chaotic cluster-f*ck of actual politics. Both think the elite are superhuman either divinely-inspired or demonically-controlled.

I think it is possible to be prone to both these forms of magical thinking, to switch between ecstatic, optimistic Millennarianism and paranoid persecutory conspiracy thinking. From everything is connected and Im a central part of this wonderful cosmic transformation! to everything is connected and Im at risk from this awful global plot! I think someone like Robert Anton Wilson, perhaps, was prone to both sorts of thinking.

The value of the two forms of conspirituality

Now we can dismiss this sort of thinking as simply bullshit religious enthusiasm. Both forms of it. And I feel a strong tendency at the moment to do that, to simply call bullshit on both ecstatic phase-shifters and paranoid conspiracy theorists, and instead try to be as rationalist, sober and un-enthusiastic as possible.

However, this is probably not a very helpful attitude. There is, in fact, a value to both these forms of mystical thinking.

The value in mystical globalism is it can lead to positive things HG Wells ecstatic globalism helped to inspire forms of global governance like the UN Declaration of Human Rights, for example.

However, ecstatic globalism can lead to self-entitlement, to an inflated sense that you are the appointed vanguard of humanity, and that history and the Universe is definitely on your side. Thats dangerous. There can be a dangerous over-concentration of privilege and power, working mainly through informal or undemocratic channels.

The value of conspiracy thinking, meanwhile, can be that it holds power to account. Power can be over-concentrated the World Health Organisation is excessively reliant on funding by Bill Gates, and the Gates Foundation should be more transparent and accountable, considering the massive influence it has over global public health.

Scientific authority can be awfully, horribly wrong sometimes many ecstatic globalists in the 20th century supported eugenics ( including HG Wells, Annie Besant, Julian Huxley and Teillard de Chardin). They thought the world should be run by an elite of spiritually enlightened scientists who would decide who was enlightened and who was unfit and therefore deserved to be sterilized, locked up, or exterminated. There was no secret conspiracy about this they proudly declared their opinions. So you can see why paranoid anti-globalists might have their suspicions of secret eugenic plots today.

Balancing the Socratic and the Ecstatic

In general (and in conclusion), there is a value in non-rational forms of knowing, such as dreams, intuitions, inspiration and mystical experiences. These can be important sources of wisdom and healing. Many great scientific discoveries and cultural creations have come from ecstatic or schizotypal inspiration, from Newtons discovery of gravity to Miltons Paradise Lost.

I am prone to this sort of benign schizotypy myself, and on the whole it enriches my life and work. There is a reason schizotypal thinking has survived for millennia sometimes it is highly adaptive. It has played an important role in our cultural evolution.

However, it is crucial to balance the capacity for ecstatic / magical / mythical thinking with the capacity for critical thinking. Thats what Ive tried to do in my books: balance the Socratic and the ecstatic, or the left and right brain, if youre into that sort of thing.

Too much Socratic thinking without any ecstasy, and you end up with a rather dry and uninspiring worldview. Too much ecstasy without critical thinking, and you may be prone to unhealthy delusions, which you then spread, harming others. You may be so sure youre right, so hyped in your heroic crusade, you may block things that are really helpful and spread things that are really harmful.

One should be free to believe whatever you want, but in this instance a global pandemic in the internet age our beliefs and behaviours profoundly impact others. We need to try and be extra careful in what we believe and what we share, so as to practice mental hygiene.

There is so much fake news out there I was taken in yesterday by a story that the IMF had cancelled almost all its developing country debt. The story was on a website called IMF2020.org (since taken down). It looked totally reliable. And I so wanted it to be true! I so wanted to share some good news. But alas, it was fake.

We can do a basic test, equivalent to washing our hands.

1) Whats the source? Is it a reliable media organisation? Is it backed up by other reliable sources?

2) How likely is the fact? The less likely, the greater the burden of evidence.

3) Is there anything out there suggesting its fake? Rather than looking for evidence to support our beliefs, can we search for evidence against our beliefs?

4) Can we emotionally accept our belief might be wrong?

We can try to practice that sort of mental hygiene on ourselves, but how does one practice effective public communication to counter-act conspiracy thinking? It seems very hard. Ones instinct can be, like Skeptics and New Atheists, simply to call the other side names: idiot, moron, woo-woo, bullshit and so on. That sort of shaming probably doesnt work.

The introduction to the European Journal of Social Psychologys special conspiracy theory issue suggests conspiracy theories are emotionally grounded and socially supported so an outsider calling you names wont have much impact. Instead, like de-radicalization or de-culting programmes, perhaps it takes a trusted friend from inside your network to challenge the beliefs in a sympathetic and non-threatening way. That is slow work when one in three Americans believe COVID-19 was made in a laboratory, and one in five Brits say they might not take a COVID-19 vaccine. Our herd immunity to bullshit may be breaking down.

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'Conspirituality' the overlap between the New Age and conspiracy beliefs - Elemental

As I was sayingCould we say that the Almighty Creator created us human beings without a purpose? Can purposelessness arise from Perfection which everyone who believes in God attributes to Him? Can we say the pursuit of material endowment and raising of families is the whole purport of our existence on earth? Or are we to regard acquisition of position, power, fame as well as being overwhelmed by public acknowledgement and applause as all there is to life? We acquire influence and make merry. Yes and so? The need to find answers to these intriguing questions are what assails our minds from time to time. Yet, as I did state last week, the revelation in the unique higher knowledge spreading on earth in these times states that there is nothing in this Creation without a task! What then is the purpose of man on this planet earth?

Where to begin ought to be in asking ourselves who we are. Who are we human beings? Who are we men? When it is said, ye men in the scriptures, to whom is this addressed? And who is addressing us? Whose voice is it? It is questions and questions galore that arise in the course of contemplation by people who feel some stirring within them from time to time.

According to the new and higher knowledge, man is spirit and that part of him that is visible to our physical eyes, the part we encounter is only the body, the cover, the shell, the cloak which we discard at death. The spirit is the animating entity in us, the only really living part in man. It is an independent consistency which has come from the spiritual world. We learn that the spiritual world forms the upper and lighter part of Creation. For ages, mankind has come to the awareness that when a man is said to have passed away, it is not the end of the fellows life. He continues to live elsewhere. Until the coming of the new enlightenment, humanity has been unable to say precisely where a person goes. With the new knowledge which comes with it the revelation of the structure of Creation, from the highest heights and to this lowest plane that our earth is we can see what the journey of man is, and what his ultimate goal is and the distance he must cover and what must be done so that his journey is not hampered.

In nearly all cultures the knowledge abounds that when a man dies it does not mark the end of his life. On this part, yes, he is no more, but he is born into another life elsewhere. So is it that we see in obituaries that Papa, our beloved one, has gone home. Which home? Some sing about New Jerusalem, our home Above. Doctors say, after determined, skillful but fruitless efforts to save a mans life, We have lost him. Whom have they lost? The person the doctors have lost is the real man, the animating core of man which alone bears what we recognise as life. When it goes out of a man, he becomes motionless, the body gets cold and he is declared to be no more, for in no time, the physical body he has discarded is buried in the ground where it goes back to dust from which it was formed. At the graveside, the priest says of him: Dust thou art, and to dust thou shall return. It is even more enlightening when it is rendered in Yoruba, the language of the people of South-Western part of Nigeria.

If man is spirit, it should follow that his life must be spiritual, and the purpose of his existence whether it is on earth or in the Beyond, must of essence be spiritual. The fulfillment of life must therefore lie in that which is spiritual, and that which suits and nourishes the spirit. It cannot but be revealing when the higher knowledge states that true life takes place in the spiritual! The body we spend all our time and energy to nourish, an indispensable though it is, is no more than a tool to help the real man achieve the purpose of his existence. Whatever achievement can be said to benefit only the body is of little or no use to the spirit. Thus the attainment of that which gives pleasure and joy to the body is not necessarily of benefit to the man. Consequently we have men of means, immeasurably endowed materially, men of influence and power who do not know joy, for these do not benefit the spirit especially when they have been misapplied. That which is of benefit to the spirit always brings joy and happiness. A life lacking in spiritual goal, therefore, cannot engender enduring joy and happiness because it contains no furthering values.

There are two principal reasons therefore for mans sojourn on earth. The first is in search of development which entails recognition of the Will of God and living in it. This Will is expressed in lawfulness which governs the entire Creation and life in general. Man is required to adjust himself to this lawfulness. With the adjustment to the Will of the Creator, man gains in maturity and spiritual consciousness, this brings in its trail the unfolding of abilities and talents which are inherent in all human beings. Man is to be more of an intuitively perceptive human being. We have been created and endowed with the faculty of the intuition so that the human being on earth would form a link connecting with the beyond so that both the earth and the beyond are welded into one. Through mans special nature, the currents from the Source of Light and Life are to flow through mankind. This brings me to the second reason. Using his unique nature, man is to employ the pure power pulsating from On High through him and around him to build a replica of Paradise on earth. To consciously tap this power to do so is possible only when we swing in the Will of the Creator. The vow to build the replica of Paradise on earth is contained in the Lords Prayer we say every morning, the vow that we would hallow His Name, and we would cause His Kingdom to come to this earth which would be through doing His Will. Hence, the pledge: Thy His Will be done on earth as it is done in Heaven.

It is imperative that we know for certainty that if man is spirit, what then is the origin of the spirit itself? This should take us to having an idea of the structure of Creation itself and the place of the human spirit in it. In the structure, there are two Divisionsthe spiritual and the material: One a home, the other a school, where we train to recognise peace, joy, harmony and nobleness which are driven by the Will of the Creator. The principal purpose of life on earth is to recognise the Will of the Creator, the lawfulness in it, and learning to adjust to the said lawfulness. It is the cultivation of the nobility of spirit, its maturity and spiritual personality that constitute the qualification and therefore the pass to enter and live in the Realm of Peace which is the spiritual part, Paradise, the longed-for home for those who take their sojourn in the material, the earth seriously. In other words, man journeyed out of the Spiritual Realm, more referred to as Paradise in search of development in the World of Matter. It is the destination we long to return when development is completed and we graduate from the school. We existed in the spiritual realm as spiritual germs, unconscious of our surroundings, the splendor and beauty of paradise. It should bear explaining that unconsciousness is not tantamount to absence of life. A child newly born is alive, for example, but is unconscious of its mother, father, nurses, doctors, sisters or brothers. It will take a few days before the baby begins to sense the presence of its mother, and gradually recognise her, her father and siblings and the environment.

To gain that consciousness, which every living being longs for, the spirit germ must journey out, leaving Paradise where luminousity occasioned by the vicinity of the Light does not permit consciousness of undeveloped spirits. This can be likened to a young plant subjected to untrammeled intensity of the sun. Such a plant will be scorched. When we reach a certain degree of consciousness, the urge to be self-conscious reaches a crescendo. This urge is picked as tantamount to a supplication to be permitted a self-conscious existence. It is the attainment of this self-consciousness that makes a human spirit a truly human being with abilities and talents unfolded and the spirit fully taking on a well-rounded human form, inexplicably beautiful. In answer to the solemn supplication, the spirit germ is ejected from the Spiritual Realm. Are we not told that the Sower went out to sow? From there it descends, traversing the intervening realms and planes until it reaches the earth. On every plane, it wraps itself with the substances of the plane in order to be able to manifest thereon. On earth it wraps itself with the material of the earth, dust which it leaves behind at the point of departure from earthly life which we call death.

There is the need to distinguish between the human spirits created in the Image of God and the spirits that needed to come to the earth for their development. Those created in the Image of God were the ones that issued directly from the Hands of the Most High. They did not need to come to this earth in search of development. They were created perfect from the beginning, royal in carriage, beautiful and huge. The prominent one among them is John the Baptist. This was why the Lord said that of all born of women, there is none as high as John the Baptist; but in His Fathers Kingdom, he is the least. John the Baptist came from the Primordial Spiritual Realm, what the Yoruba following their recognition, call Akokoda Aiye. The human beings of the earth do not belong there, and no matter their level of purity and perfection after their wandering, cannot be admitted into the Primordial Realm. The earth is in Subsequent Creation that is Post Creation, which the Yoruba call Aseinda Aiye.

To teach and help mankind to develop and fulfill the purpose of their existence on earth, Prophets and TeachersTeachers of Mankind were sent down to this earth by God. So was it that we had Krishna, Moses in Israel;, Buddha in India; Zoroaster in Persia today known as Iran; Lao-Tse in China; Mohammed in Arabia: Isaiah; Elijah; Elisha; Jeremiah and Micah to list just a few. Prophet Mohammed was sent by God in 571 AD after Christ. Many of the Prophets and Teachers came as Forerunners to the Light between 500BC; 550BC; and 800BC. Lao-Tse came in 600BC; Buddha 550 BC; Zoroaster 600BC; Jeremiah in Palestine in 630BC and Elijah 800BC. Following the unimaginable failure of man, the Lord, the Son of God Himself had to come. And what did mankind do to Him, they murdered Him! Being Love that He is and will ever be, He still found the incomprehensible heart and compassion to supplicate to His Father: Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. There were protests in all spheres and Realms of Creation. The elements could not believe it, and they reacted. The curtain shielding the Holy of Holies was rent in twain, the sun refused to appear and there was darkness at high noon!

Today, the examination result sheet is nothing to write home about. We learn through higher knowledge that the situation is worse in these times than the time of the Lord on earth. Could the emergence of Coronavirus not be proof that mankind have followed only their own path into the wilderness, hence emergence of Mr. COVID-19 as a signal, a trumpeter of what is in the offing in the Judgment, and a cane for the obstinate human beings who have put their wisdom far above the Wisdom of their Creator, the Most High, our Lord and God?

Felix Adenaike is 80Have you heard? Felix Adenaike, a foremost icon of the Nigerian Press was 80 two days ago. The editor of editors, hardly matched in editorial writing, what with clarity of thoughts and lucidity of language; piercing leaders he wrote. Informed and courageous. He was a prominent member of the three musketeers at Ibadan who symbolized the unsparing Lagos-Ibadan axis of the Nigerian Press.****My editor says my time is up; the piece is to be concluded next week.

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The purpose of life on earthOpinion - Guardian

In a world quarantined during a global pandemic, April 20th (4/20 for you rubes) is the perfect time for Netflix's to launch The Midnight Gospel. The series, from co-creator Duncan Trussell (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Drunk History), is set in a virtually simulated universe using interview clips from Duncan's mind-bending podcast The Duncan Trussell Family Hour as it centers on Clancy (voiced by Trussell) a "space caster" dealing with a malfunctioning multiverse simulator. Seeking adventure and enlightenment Clancy leaves the comfort of his home to interview simulated beings surviving in dying worlds. Co-created with Pendleton Ward (Adventure Time), The Midnight Gospel feels to me like Fritz the Cat convinced Jake the Dog to drop some acid. And I loved it. Just after the nation was locked down due to the COVID 19 Pandemic, Trussell took some time to share his thoughts on the animated series, what he considers his incredible luck and his thoughts on the afterlife.

Duncan's podcast The Duncan Trussell Family Hour, featuring his fellow comedians, outsiders, spiritual healers, discussing topics like spirituality, consciousness, psychedelics, fringe theories, existentialism, and comedy is the foundation for the animated series, The Midnight Gospel. To create a cohesive story around the handpicked recordings Ducan called on some comic friends, a witch, an occult theorist, and even Weird Al came in for a writer summit held at an undisclosed location. The team was then challenged to come up with various ways that the world might end, and broke down apocalyptic scenarios into beats that Clancy, and the person that he is chatting with, could move through while they are talking. Following that, a storyboard artist would hang the dialog on top of that for the animation.

"Every day we would come up with a new, sort of "What would happen in a zombie apocalypse if the president was having to deal with that, or what would happen in a dystopian reality where a city was fueled by meat, and suddenly the meat stopped flowing. Or what would happen in a medieval world that was beginning to collapse because of some sort of connection to evil?"

Very quickly the summit realized that people aren't necessarily going to be sitting around talking about the apocalypse, they would be having normal conversations. So, to differ from apocalyptic and movies about the collapse of civilization, they steered away from what everybody might be talking about- Zombies, water, weapons, vaccines- and focused on some interpersonal relationship stuff that would be going down.

"People are going to just have regular conversations no matter what, and so that's what we realized. At the end of the world, people are going to be talking about other things besides the end of the world. Like this, or like whatever. you find yourself in a conversation with your family, with your wife, about? At some point how much we are going to talk about COVID and the rate of transmission, and how does it spread? At some point, you're going to start playing Uno."

Duncan's mother, Deneen Fendig, peacefully passed on April 3, 2013. Incredibly, three weeks earlier she had the idea to sit and record a podcast with Duncan that would end up being the final and most powerful, perspective-altering episode of The Midnight Gospel. Since recording Duncan only listened to it once, just before his wedding. Without his mother existing in the physical realm, he was able to introduce her to his wife.

"I cannot watch that without crying and being sort of spellbound and awestruck by my mom sort of prescient when she decided that she wanted to do that because when she was dying it was kind of like I didn't want to have that conversation. Not because I didn't want to have the conversation I just didn't want to deal with the fact that this is probably going to be one of the last times I talked to my mom. So to me, it's just amazing. She was dying and she said "Why don't we do it? Let's do this, let's record a podcast. so we recorded it and, of course, then I had no idea that it would end up being an animated show on Netflix and go out to lots and lots of people. So for me, there is something very powerful that my mom became something of a dandelion and she's being scattered in the winds."

With such a loving and thoughtful influence and such a powerful message, she inspired his perspective not only of life but death as well. Duncan explains what he thinks happens after we pass on: "Ask yourself "If you're alive right now?" Are you biologically alive? Sure, but I think that a lot of people have, as a sort of necessity, projected an identity that's based on the existence of a past and the potential of a future. The past, it's gone. And of course the future, unless you're Nostradamus, you have no idea this was coming outside of a so approximation of things that tend to happen, so you don't know what's coming up. So there you are sort of stranded, so to speak, in the present moment, inventing a past and imagining the future, and so in that place, every single breath is a kind of death and I think we're going to figure out what happens after we die.

Duncan continued, "The best way to do it would be to start right here and look at what happens with every exhalation, and inhalation, and you'll find that it's just like this. For me, the way that I understand what happens after you die is when I wake up from a dream. I really don't think too much about that dream. I don't know about you if you ever had a significant dream where you were hanging out with someone very important to you and you wake up. I imagine it's more than likely this entire existence seems like that, like a kind of sweet dream that you had while you were laying in some field in infinity, staring up at the clouds, and that's pretty much it. (You) probably don't think about it too much after that."

L.A. composer Joe Wong (Russian Doll, Superjail!) provides most of the soundtrack but Duncan, who describes music as "a fantastic way to plumb the depths of your own psyche," composed some of the music for the show, notably the end credit music. The reasons are obvious. Clancy is a reflection of, and to some degree is, Duncan. Clancy likes to make music, and synthesizers, messing around with gadgets and making sounds. So he would do that on Midnight Gospel, just like he did on The Duncan Trussell Family Hour: "I'm clearly not a professional musician but for me making music is a form of meditation, it's like a Rorschach inkblot test for wherever I happen to be on any given day. If my mind is scattered, or if I'm consumed by some worry, then the music seems to reflect that."

Like Thor charging Iron Man's suit, Trussell's infectious energy pulses thru the phone while he explains his connection to music: "Earlier we were talking about language, and like stream-of-consciousness articulation of wherever we happen to be but holy s*** isn't that a limited way of expressing ourselves to some degree? You have to smash your entire experience as a human being on the planet into guttural grunts, clicks, and whistles out of the thing you make you make hamburgers with. It's (language) like limiting, whereas with music, you know, it's universal. Anyone who can hear has the ability to understand even if it can't hear you can feel the vibrations of it, and so it's a transcendent mode of communication."

Trussell got his start in comedy answering phones at the Comedy Store, where he quickly moved up the ranks from answering the phones to comedy matriarch Mitzi Shore's delivery person/chauffeur. It wasn't the best job, picking up cow tongue sandwiches and driving around his comedy guru, but spending extra time with Mitzi would prove invaluable: "As you're driving her around, sure as shit, she would start telling me things, you know, and give you little lessons about comedy, about life. She would teach you and teach you in these crazy ways. I don't know I feel really lucky I got to hang out with her in that way." Duncan continues, "I've never met anyone who loved comedy the way she did. She loves comedy as though it were, she considered it to be the highest art form. She wasn't flippant about that at all. I remember she had on her wall, someone had crocheted for her, something that said 'Dying Is easy, Comedy is hard.' That was her thinking. She was one of a kind."

Trussell continued to work his way up the ranks but ended up as a talent coordinator, which he tells me is a glorified assistant to Mitzi. Despite the warnings of his friends and other comedians that the job would ruin his chances at a career, he stuck with it. As the universe would have it Duncan began a phone relationship with Joe Rogan having the same conversations they have on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast now. Aliens, DMT, deprivation tanks, conspiracy theories, mushrooms, all convinced Joe to stick around on a Sunday night and watch Trussell's six-minute employee spot: "He saw me have a good set and then he started taking me on the road with him and that we're one thing led to another that's where I got my start. It all happened because I was the talent coordinator."

Rogen is known to be a mentor to a lot of comics and as we all know now, everything Rogan touches turns to gold: "He took me on the roadway before I ever should have been going on the road and didn't care what I did on stage as long as he saw that I was progressing, developing, taking it seriously, not fucking up the stage time or squandering it. Yeah, he helped a lot of it." Fortune favors the prepared, but Duncan is practically religious about his good luck and how it brought about The Midnight Gospel. He recalls after receiving an email from Ward, Duncan couldn't wrap his mind around the possibility that the creator of Adventure Time had listened to his podcast, and he was sure it was a troll: "So when I think of that, Wow, podcasting is like throwing messages, putting messages in a bottle and just throwing it out in the sea. And you'd never know who's going to write back or what bottles are going to wash up on shore or not only that which one of them. so yeah it's luck. it's gotta be. What else would you call it, grace? Divine intervention? I don't know, a simulator maybe? I don't know. When I was sitting in a writers room with Weird Al coming up with apocalypses it was really hard for me not to believe I was in a simulation."

Duncan further elaborated: "Yeah! (like) Dandelions in the wind. that's right you've got to put it out there, and realize that anything that comes after that is icing on the cake. The thing itself, the action itself is the real joy. For me, the podcast is just getting to sit down with people for an hour or two, and we have a conversation uninterrupted, like this, is really delightful and transformative. And so the fact the podcast actually made its way on to Netflix is astoundingly beautiful to me. where the rubber hits the road, so to speak, is the moment every week or I get to meet somebody that maybe I never met before, to end up teaching me something I never heard before. That's the real psychedelic, that's the real trip."

As for Duncan's hopes for what the viewers might take away from Midnight Gospel? "My hope would be that folks if you're going through stuff, and I think we're all going through something right now, you should get a little bit of, get a little bit of light. A little bit of good news. That's what gospel is." Duncan explains that sometimes through tragedy, a window to happiness can open, "Even though the apocalypse and disaster and catastrophe can be the loudest thing out there if you just listen a little closer you can tune into something that is so beautiful, and so untouched by the chaos it can really bring a lot of comfort to be quiet. so in some way it does that for people."

What better way to end our interview then with an essential quote from Deneen Fendig, with The Midnight Gospelcurrently streaming on Netflix: "I may leave this plane of existence sooner rather than later, but the love isn't going anywhere. / I am as certain of that as I am of anything. / I want to say that I will be with you in ways that neither you nor I can comprehend. / I'm spread out throughout the world. / Not by anything I'm doing, but I'm with you. / Just pay attention, listen for me. / I'm here. / I'm there."

Jimmy Leszczynski has been blurring the line between comics and reality at SDCC every year since 1994, and was a nerd long before Lewis, Gilbert, and the Tri Lamdas made it cool. Middle aged father of 2 that REFUSES to grow up, lifelong Bat-Fan, and he thinks he's pretty funny.

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Duncan Trussell Discusses His Personal Journey to The Midnight Gospel - Bleeding Cool News

South KoreaSouth Korea reported just eight more cases of coronavirus on Sunday, the first time a daily increase has dropped to single digits in two months.

The Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said this raised the countrys total to 10,661 cases, including 234 deaths. It said 8,042 people had recovered and been released from quarantine and 12,243 others were undergoing tests to determine whether they had contracted the virus.

We must not loosen our guard until the last confirmed patient is recovered. President Moon said.

Health workers wait for cars to arrive at a drive-through testing centre at Jamsil Sports Complex in Seoul

EPA

Despite the recent downward trend, South Korean officials are concerned about the possibility of a broader quiet spread with people easing up on social distancing.

President Moon urged South Koreans to support his government in saving

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As coronavirus cases fall, South Koreans warned not to lift their guard - The Times

Publish Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2020 09:54 AM IST

New Delhi | Jagran Lifestyle Desk: Ramzan or Ramadan is a holy Muslim festival celebrated by Muslims across the world during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. The holy month is observed by observing fast and prayers. Ramadan is regarded as one of the five pillars of Islam and lasts for up to 30 days after sighting of the crescent moon.

During this period, Muslim refrain from consuming food, alcohol, tobacco products, sinful behaviour, and sexual relations from sunrise to sunset and devote themselves to prayer. It is believed that observing fast multiplies spiritual rewards. The worshippers seek blessings of Allah and try to implement the message of the Quran in their lives.

On this occasion, we bring you some messages, quotes, and wishes to share with family and friends:

May the divine Allah bless you with peaceful and prosperous life throughout the year. Happy Ramadan 2020!

After the sight of the crescent moon, may you find the utmost source of bliss and gaiety! Enjoy each and every enlightenment moment of Ramadan! Be Blessed!

I hope success and wealth come to you this month, and bring you good fortune and prosperity. Happy Ramadan 2020!

May this Ramadan bring endless moments of joy and happiness in your life. Ramadan Mubarak.

May you always be blessed with the love and protection of Allah. Wish you a happy Ramadan.

May this blessed night keep coming in your life ever and ever after. Chaand Raat Mubarak to you and your family may Allah bless you all.

The motivation of Ramadan gives us the ability to do more good works. May you have the happiest Ramadan.

May Allah bless you and your family. Happy Ramadan Kareem!

Wishing you a blessed and Happy Ramadan 2020!

Ramadan Mubarak. I wish you a blessed and prosperous Ramadan.

Also Read: Ramadan 2020 Date in India: When is Ramzan? All you need to know about month-long festival

Ramadan Shayari

Ae Chand Unko Mera Paigaam Kehna Khushi ka Din aur Pyar ki SHam kehna Jab wo Dekhein Bahaar Aake Unko meri taraf se Mubarak ho Ramadan kehna.

Zindagi ko Ramadan Jaisi Banao Taki Maut Eid Jaisi Aae! Ramadan Mubarak Doosto!

Chand se roshan ho Ramzan tumhara, ibadath se bhar jaye roza tumhara, har namaz ho kubool aapki, bus yehi dua hai qoda se humara, Ramzan Mubarak.

Ramzan Ki Amad Hai, Rehmatein Barasane Wala Mahina Hai, Ao Aaj Sub Khataon Ki Maafi Maang Lein, Dar-e-taurba Khula Hai Is Mahine Mein..

Ramzaan mein ho jae sabki muraad puri, Mile sabko dhero khusiya aur na rahe koi ichcha adhuri...

Posted By: James Kuanal

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Happy Ramadan 2020: Wishes, quotes, SMS, messages, Shayari, Facebook and WhatsApp status to share with family and friends - Jagran English

A lot of people face one common problem of not being able to sit at one place while meditating and that is lack of concentration. It often leads to not being able to meditate. Recently, holistic wellness coach Luke Coutinho was posted a video where he was having a talk with spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravishankar.

During their conversation, Sri Sri Ravishankar gave some meditation tips to those who have difficulty meditating. He also gave some useful tips on how to manage restlessness.

Also Read |Meditation Tips While Travelling, Whether You're On A Flight Or A Bus

Luke Coutinho said that people think meditation is all about stopping the thoughts. He further added that people close their eyes and try to find enlightenment and peace. Talking about how to manage restlessness, he said that when people do not get it in a couple of minutes they just giveup.

During their conversation, Sri Sri Ravishankar said that meditation is not just about the concentration. He said that many people think of meditation as an exercise of concentration and as a result face difficulty meditating. For all the people who face difficulty meditating, here are some of the meditation tips for them in how to manage restlessness.

Also Read |Meditation Tips: A Simple Guide To Practice Meditation At Home

In the beginning, if one feels restless, it is advised to start with light exercises. The light exercises that can be done are shaking and moving of hands for a minute or two. Other light exercises like jogging also help to relax the body and mind.

Also Read |Disha Patani Talks About How She Entered The Bollywood Industry; Read Here

Before meditating, starting by doing some Yoga asanas might prove beneficial in managing restlessness. Simple Yoga asanas like Pranayam are also helpful. The breathing exercise helps in relaxing and reduces restlessness.

Also Read |Beat The Coronavirus Lockdown Blues And Do A Virtual Tour Of The Picturesque City Prague

Apart from the above hacks, one can also start meditating by taking 10-15 deep breaths. This helps calm down from the restless circuit. If one follows these steps managing restlessness wont be a problem while meditating.

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Having difficulty meditating? Here are meditation tips to manage restlessness - Republic World - Republic World

The faade of the Ges, a major sixteenth-century church, and its piazza, a major 21st-century traffic node, almost empty (all images courtesy the author for Hyperallergic unless otherwise noted)

ROME At 6 pm on March 27 Pope Francis made an extraordinary appearance in the locked-down and rain-soaked St. Peters Square. He was being broadcast live across the world, giving a rare speech, Urbi et Orbi, to the city and the world, a form of address that is traditionally only used at Christmas, Easter, and upon the election of a new pope. Behind him, lit up dramatically against the faade of St Peters, were two sacred images that had been brought out especially for this event. One was the icon of the Virgin called the Salus Populi Romani, the Salvation of the Roman People, from the 13th century, and the other was a wooden crucifix from the following century which had miraculously survived a church fire when the rest of the building had been reduced to ash, and which was carried in procession in 1522 through the city when it was devastated by a bout of the plague. Both images have been venerated for centuries, along with a host of other religious imagery in the city, for their special protection against pestilence.

This was a particularly harsh day for Italy. Deaths from the coronavirus outbreak had reached 969 in the previous 24 hours a new high and total deaths since the beginning of the outbreak in the country numbered 9134. Everyone in Italy was scared. Two of the three state television networks broadcast the popes speech. He repeated a verse from Matthew 4:40, Why are you afraid? Have you no faith? He spoke humanely of our common need for comfort, and after he had finished, he went to pray silently in front of the two sacred images. The piazza was spectral. He and a few attendants were alone in the vast space.

Just 19 days earlier, as a severe quarantine was imposed on areas of northern Italy afflicted by the coronavirus epidemic, Pope Francis did not give his customary Sunday speech from the window of the Apostolic Palace. The crowd in St. Peters Square watched him on the four papal jumbotrons as he delivered his blessing along with a short homily. I wondered why he allowed the crowd to gather there at all. They were putting themselves in danger of infection from each other, while he was safe in his palace above. In the end, as if to unite himself with the faithful from which he had initially separated himself, he opened the traditional window and waved to those gathered below.

Both the pope and the faithful who gathered below his windows were following a powerful impulse far older than they knew. A long and fascinating history of conflict interweaves disease, faith, and recovery. The Church is a community, a body of the faithful, and when the individual believers body is suffering, the believer has historically been drawn both to the faith, for solace and healing, and to the community, for comfort and nursing. What happens when an epidemic strikes and that profoundly human urge becomes part of the problem? Rome, as always a laboratory for the great human experiment of civilization, tells this contradictory story eloquently.

Last time I was in St. Peters, I was fascinated by a 13th-century statue of the apostle (with a contested and unsettled provenance). Pilgrims and tourists lined up to stand before it. Everyone kept a discreet distance from each other. One by one they approached. Then they stretched out their hands and caressed its worn bronze foot. Some kissed their hand and then touched the foot, while others put their hand to the foot and then to their faces. As I stood watching them, I couldnt help but be struck, once more, by the fearless physicality of Catholicism, as if faith alone were sufficient to overcome the threat of bacterial transmission, as if objects held sacred were exempt from the laws that govern the rest of the physical universe. This was three months ago, before Id ever heard of the coronavirus.

All over Rome there are traces of the same need for physical contact with the holy. In the church of SantAgostino there is a 16th-century statue of the Virgin of Child Birth, whose marble foot had to be replaced with silver because it was so worn from the touch of supplicants usually anxious fathers expecting a difficult delivery. Now the metal foot is also worn smooth. Two small marble crosses were inserted into opposite piers of the Colosseum, which was thought to be a site of Christian martyrdom. An inscription below each cross states the number of years and days you would be spared Purgatory if you kissed it. Theoretically you could go back and forth between these crosses and kiss your way out of Purgatory. If this all sounds like a recipe for disease transmission, it probably is.

The curative power of prayer has been a mainstay of Catholic faith from Gregory the Great at the end of the sixth century to Mother Teresa in the 20th. Prayers to specific saints, like St. Roch and St. Sebastian, patrons of plague victims, were thought to be particularly effective. People gather at churches and chapels dedicated to doctor/saints such as the brothers Cosmas and Damian, not only in the hope of a miraculous cure, but also for the comfort of the community. In the eighth century, the sick could sleep in the chapels of the anargyroi (in Greek, those who heal without payment) and hope for a curative dream. In some hospice churches, like that of S. Maria in Cappella, there were beds placed in the side aisles even in the 19th century. Religious orders administered cures and ran hospitals, and indeed still do. But there were always situations in which herbal remedies and prayer were desperately insufficient.

The Black Death of the mid-1300s, which wiped out from between a third and a half of Europes population, was one such situation. In Venice, a major trading center, ships arriving were required to wait for 40 days before debarking passengers, because that was sufficient time for the bubonic plague to show its signs and take its casualties. The translation of 40 days is una quarantina di giorni in Italian, and we get our word quarantine from it. But quarantine, enforced isolation, clashed with the medieval and early modern idea of the ecclesia, the church as a community, united in good and in bad times.

The struggle between ecclesia and quarantine had lasted in Rome for more than three hundred years when a plague originating in the port of Naples began to push outward in spring of 1656. It spurred a tiny revolution that marked a turning point in the difficult relationship between worship and epidemic.

In Rome, the most renowned protectress against the plague was the Madonna del Portico, a tiny precious icon of the Virgin and Child. A mere 25 centimeters tall, it is made of silver and champlev enamel, and dates from the late 1200s. It was venerated in the church of S. Maria in Portico, in a low-lying area of the city. Nearby was the bridge to the Tiber Island, whose buildings had frequently been used as a lazzaretto or plague hospital. The church, run down and poor, was already the center of a neighborhood prone to illness, but in May 1656 the bubonic plague arrived in Rome from Naples. Pope Alexander VII activated a special health commission headed by a priest, Girolamo Gastaldi, who was put in charge of the lazzaretti in the Papal States.

Gastaldi took strict measures immediately. He closed all but eight of the city gates, and subjected everyone entering to a quarantine which he imposed on the entire city, closing up whole houses if even one inhabitant was ill, using a highly visible wax seal of contagion that, if broken, would act as a silent informant to the police. The residents would have to wait out the 40 days, with food raised up to the windows in baskets with twine. Holy water was no longer used in the churches. The terminally ill were isolated on the Tiber Island, the lazzaretto brutto or terrible plague-house. The gates of the Jewish Ghetto were closed. The furniture of a room in which a victim died would be burned in the street. In an unpopular gesture, Alexander VII ordered the church of S. Maria in Portico closed. But crowds continued to gather in the nearby streets until dispersed by the police and nobles had themselves smuggled into the presence of the holy image via the back door. In December 1656, the city government announced a public vow to move the holy image to a more dignified church, and from that day the plague seemed to abate. In reality, of course, it was Gastaldis policy of isolation that had started to work.

By August 1657 the plague had run its course. Of the population of Rome, which was approximately 120,000 people, 15,000 deaths were registered between May 1656 and August 1657, an astonishingly low number given that Naples lost half its population of 300,000, and Genoa also had a 50% death rate. In fulfilment of the public vow, the Madonna del Portico was upgraded to a better church, S. Maria in Campitelli, in 1662 in the dead of night so as to prevent rioting.

In 1684, when he was governor of Bologna, Girolamo Gastaldi published the first formal manual of quarantine: the Tractatus de avertenda et profliganda peste politico-legalis. The Tractatus became the principal manual for plague response. While thoroughly Catholic in its form and outlook, it concerned itself more with the physical rather than the spiritual health of the faithful. Its counsel seems very familiar in todays Rome: Protect the gates; maintain quarantine; keep watch over your people. Also, close sites of popular aggregation, from taverns to churches with plague-preventing icons to St. Peters Square itself. Dont gather at icons or touch the feet of statues.

On March 9, 2020, a state decree extended the quarantine of Lombardy and 14 northern provinces to all Italy, effectively locking down 60 million people, including me. The government suspended all public gatherings, sports and cultural events, and even religious ceremonies, including Mass, weddings, and funerals. The following day, Pope Francis ordered the closure of St. Peters Basilica, the square, and the Vatican Museums. On March 11 another decree closed most businesses. All these actions stem indirectly from Cardinal GastaldisTractatus. Whether or not quarantine will save us remains to be seen. But the empty streets of todays Rome are infinitely safer for us, its residents, than the 1656 streets teeming with the faithful in front of a locked church, kneeling in the mud to pray for the Virgins intercession while the epidemic passed silently from person to person like an invisible sword.

With the advent of the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Catholic tendency to defer to Church authority in all things weakened and medicine entered the sphere of science, where it remains. But the role of prayer in fighting epidemics has never disappeared. On Sunday, March 15, Pope Francis left the Vatican to make a solitary pilgrimage through the deserted streets of Rome to visit those important holy images against the plague: the Salus Populi Romani and the miraculous crucifix in the church of San Marcello. Both these images were closed to the public, during the plague of 165657 and are now in the present crisis. The pope, in making his journey on foot like a penitent, was standing in for all the faithful, to carry out the prayers of his flock, who could watch him remotely on television. The line between the spiritual and the practical had been drawn in 1656 when Gastaldi closed the churches, but the popes visit to the two healing icons reasserted the spiritual and miraculous nature of healing, building a tiny bridge between the need for social distancing and the need for social solidarity.

Even as a non-believer I think this bridge has value. The existence of a spiritual component in healing is a human constant, which expresses something inside us that reaches upward in search of a hand reaching downward. And this same something extends outward, to other people, in search of connection. Human contact of some kind is widely acknowledged to be an influence on healing. We are social animals and feeling the love and care of our communities helps us heal. In the person of the pope there is a meeting point between the believers longing for the divine and his or her longing for human contact. Father Bernard Healy, of Romes Irish College, explained to me why the pope made his solitary appearance in St. Peters Square under the rain.

The Pope is there on behalf of everyone else. Its not that he as Pope has more right to be heard than anyone else, but rather that he has a responsibility for everyone, and so part of his responsibility is to lead the whole world in prayer. Hes there representing us in that hes praying what we all want to pray; hes also leading us in that his words are shaping the prayer that were all making.

The direct efficacy of prayer on disease is debatable. But prayer as an act of reaching out is both a solitary and a social act, joining people with each other and with something larger than themselves. As I watched Pope Francis, a white figure against the background of the piazza at dusk, I felt both skepticism and a certain reluctant awe. I could understand why believers might take solace from his prayers in front of the holy images that had comforted centuries of worshippers. And I also thought of Cardinal Gastaldi, long forgotten, who codified the quarantine process that had led us to this scene, with the vast darkness of the empty square representing the isolation that protects us and, paradoxically, joins us together.

The rest is here:

A History of Disease, Faith, and Recovery in Rome - Hyperallergic

Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, which was held on April 22, 1970. This significant anniversary is an invitation to pause and consider some of what led to the creation of Earth Day in the first place, what has happened in the years since, and how that might inform where and how we go from here.

Lets start with a brief glance backward at two contributing factors to the first Earth Day. The first major influence that comes to mind is that in 1962, eight years before the first Earth Day, the biologist Rachel Carson (1907-1964) published her book Silent Spring, which sounded an alarm about human-created pesticides harming the environment.

A second major factor is that on December 24 (Christmas Eve) 1968, a little more than a year before the first Earth Day, an astronaut on the Apollo 8 mission took a color photograph of our planet from space. This photo, titled Earthrise, has been called the most influential environmental photograph ever taken (Galen Rowell). Our planet can seem so massive from here on Earths surface, but suddenly we were seeing our home world from space for the first time: as a tiny, beautiful blue marble floating in the infinite inky blackness of space.

Sixteen months after that photo of Earthrise was published, the first Earth Day was held. Less than three months later President Richard Nixon (a Republican), proposed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which he personally put into operation later that year through an executive order (The Origins of EPA). There was a time when a greater percentage of political conservatives supported conservation of the environment.

This brief recap of history around the time of the first Earth Day shows that there was reason to hope that things might have turned out differently than they have so far in the struggle for climate justice. As Nathaniel Rich has traced in his important book Losing Earth: A Recent History (MCD, 2019), long before the 2016 Paris Climate Accords, we can see that, as far back as 1979, at the first World Climate Conference held in Geneva,

scientists from fifty nations agreed unanimously that it was urgently necessary to act. Four months later, at the Group of Seven meeting in Tokyo, the leaders of the worlds wealthiest nations signed a statement to rescue carbon emissions (8).

Tragically, the opposite came to pass. We can even fast-forward a decade to another major climate conference (this time in Noordwijk, the Netherlands) and see today, in retrospect, that, More carbon has been released into the atmosphere since 1989, the final day of the Noordwijk Climate Conference, than in the entire history of civilization up to that point (180).

So why are we moving in the wrong direction, when we have known better for decades? One reason is what the Buddhist tradition calls the three poisons: greed, delusion, and ill will. Consider that, Between 2000 and 2016, the fossil fuel industry spent more than $2 billion, or ten times as much as was spent by environmental groups, to defeat climate change legislation (6). As Bill McKibben highlights in Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? (Henry Holt and Co, 2019), the reason that almost 90 percent of Americans dont know that there is a scientific consensus on global warming is that there has been a well-funded disinformation campaign to create precisely that result (77).

So how do we better fund the movement for climate justice? How do we fund a Green New Deal? One significant starting point would be targeting the fossil fuel companies who have thrown fuel on the fire of greed, delusion, and ill will. As social activist Naomi Klein writes in On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal (Simon & Schuster, 2019):

The top five oil companies made $900 billion in profits in the past decade. For years these companies have pledged to use their profits to invest in a shift to renewable energy (BPs Beyond Petroleum rebranding being the highest profile example). But[only a small percentage of profits have gone to] alternative energy ventures. Instead, they continue to pour their profits into shareholder pockets, outrageous executive pay, and new technologies designed to extract even dirtier and more dangerous fossil fuels. Plenty of money has also gone to paying lobbyists to beat back every piece of climate legislationand to fund the denier movement.

Just as tobacco companies have been obliged to pay the costs of helping people quit smoking, and BP has had to pay for a large portion of the cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico, it is high time for the polluter pays principle to be applied to climate change. (88-89)

A Green New Deal done right would be both a massive job creator (to make all the changes necessary to shift to a greener economy) and paying for it can help decrease the wealth gap, particularly if methods include a global minimum corporate tax rate (281-283).

I should perhaps hasten to be clear that in criticizing our current wealth gap, I am by no means advocating a strict egalitarianism in which everyone has exactly the same amount of money. But I am criticizing our current toleration of a tiny few having way too many resources and many more people not even having the bare minimum needed to live with dignity. I am also saying that it is unconscionable to allow a tiny percentage of people to horde enormous wealth when that money could help save this one, beautiful, irreplaceable planet we call home.

As a proverb from the indigenous Cree tradition says about storing up wealth at the expense of the environment, When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money (Loy 33). Or to flip the perspective, as the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano (1940 2015) once said, If nature was a bank, they would have already rescued it (16).

That being said, were seeing some interesting glimpses of what can happenand in fairly short orderwhen our human activity is changed. Smog has plagued Los Angeles for years, but in the wake of Californias stay-at-home order, LA is currently experiencing the longest stretch of clean air since 1980, when the EPA first started keeping regular track of LAs air pollution.

This experience reminds me of a poem titled Lockdown, written by a Franciscan friar in Ireland that made the rounds on the Internet a few weeks ago. The whole poem is worth reading in full, but one of the most arresting lines is that, They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise /You can hear the birds again. To follow the words of this poem, are we awake to the choices we have to make as to how to live now? If so, how will we choose to live?

The cultural commentator Steve Bhaerman has put it this way: Theres good news and theres bad news. The bad news: civilization, as we know it, is about to end. Now the good news: civilization, as we know it, is about to end (vii). There is always opportunity in a crisis.

For discerning a potential path forward, I would like to begin to work my way toward my conclusion by saying a little more about what I mentioned earlierthat one explanation for why we have been moving in the wrong direction for decades regarding climate changedespite knowing betteris what the Buddhist tradition calls the three poisons:

In the Buddhist tradition, these three poisons are understood to be the root causes of dukkha, our experience of suffering or unsatisfactoriness.

In Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis (Wisdom Publications, 2019), David Loy invites us to consider the three poisons not only individually, but also institutionally and systemically. From an ecological perspective, institutionalized dukkah or systemic suffering looks like:

So what might we do differently? From a Buddhist perspective, the way to create the world we dream about is through the three antidotes (or wholesome mental factors):

These practices are essential for individual and collective awakening/liberation/enlightenment (71).

And since the eight-day festival of passover recently ended, allow me to also weave in a related piece of wisdom from the Jewish tradition. One of the most famous passages from Mishah (a collection of the Jewish oral tradition) advises that whenever we are feeling daunted by the enormity of the worlds griefwhich climate change can certainly cause us to feelthe suggested remedy is to focus on the next right action within our spheres of influence: to Act justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. It is not your responsibility to finish the work of healing the world, but neither are you free to desist from it (Lay 173).

You do not have to solve this global, systemic problem alone. We are stronger together. Specifically, when you feeling discouraged about the movement for climate justice, I recommend that you take some time to check in with what the Sunrise Movement is doing (sunrisemovement.org). This youth-led movement for climate justice is a consistent source of inspiration, fierce advocacy, and persistent hope.

An increasing number of young people are awakening to the fact that they cant yet vote, but will nevertheless be stuck with the consequences of current adult inaction (Klein 4). At last years first ever global School Strike for Climate, protest signs read:

To quote the seventeen-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg (2003 ), I dont want your hope. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is (12).

As we turn toward our planets climate emergency, may we bring wisdom to the work of climate justice as we seek to encourage spiritual growth, loving-kindness for building a beloved community, and generosity in our actions for peace and justiceactions that seek to benefit not merely ourselves and those closest to us, but this planet as a wholeand all sentient beings.

The Rev. Dr. Carl Gregg is a certified spiritual director, a D.Min. graduate of San Francisco Theological Seminary,and the minister of theUnitarian Universalist Congregation of Frederick, Maryland.Follow him onFacebook(facebook.com/carlgregg) andTwitter(@carlgregg).

Learn more about Unitarian Universalism: http://www.uua.org/beliefs/principles

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If the Climate Was a Bank, They Would Have Already Rescued It: 50th Anniversary of #EarthDay - Patheos

April 19, 2020

WILKES-BARRE March 15 was a quiet Sunday afternoon.

I was home getting ready to drive up to Moosic, where I had plans to meet some longtime friends and their little girl for lunch.

Just as I was preparing to leave the house, news broke of Luzerne Countys first confirmed COVID-19 case.

County Manager C. David Pedri had called a press conference for mid-afternoon at the EMA Building.

Calls were made, plans set in motion, and a short time later found me and colleague Bill OBoyle at the press conference among the other media, exchanging nervous pleasantries with each other and community leaders gathered in the room.

Needless to say, I never made it to lunch in Moosic. (Well do it one of these days, Dana.)

We listened as Pedri calmly explained what we knew, what we didnt know, and what was expected to come next, including a state of emergency for the county.

He explained that future briefings would likely be conducted online, so as to protect the media and county staff from unnecessary interaction.

And he sought to reassure the community.

We are all in this together. Each of us together can truly make a difference in this crisis, Pedri said. We are asking you to stop unnecessary travel. To maintain good hygiene. To stay home if required.

I know some people are saying, this doesnt really affect me, Im not a person at risk. But we still dont know the full interaction of this virus yet, Pedri said.

I am the son of at-risk parents, and I am the father of young children, he added. We will do what we need to do to make sure Luzerne County is safe.

Was there a slight quiver in Pedris voice as he spoke those last words? I thought so. God knows I almost teared up when I heard them.

The panic that had mostly been the subject of headlines from other places had hit home, with the worst yet to come. It was real, and it was about to affect people we all know and love. We just didnt know how hard, but stories out of Italy, in particular, brought no solace.

On that sunny March Sunday there were 63 positive cases in Pennsylvania, including one in Luzerne County.

As of Sunday, April 19 just over a month later There were 1,741 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Luzerne County and 34 people have died. Statewide, there were 32,284 cases and 1,112 deaths.

As businesses shut down to comply with Gov. Tom Wolfs stay-at-home orders to slow the outbreaks spread, unemployment skyrocketed, with more than 1.3 million Pennsylvanians filing for unemployment in the month that ended last week, state statistics show.

Lives have been changed, upended, ended. And its not over.

My colleagues and I reached out to a number of people in the community to ask how their lives have changed in the past month.

Here are the stories we have collected. We thank everyone who took the time to participate.

* * *

Cathy Alaimo, of Dallas, who is retired from Circles on the Square in downtown Wilkes-Barre, said she has been cooking and baking more now that the coronavirus is keeping her at home.

I just made apple turnovers the other day, she said, adding that she also is enjoying having time to watch birds.

Theres a hawks nest near my house and I can watch them through the window, she said, adding she hung a suet treat outside a window to attract more feathered friends.

There would be yardwork to keep her busy, too, Alaimo admitted. But my new motto is, I can do that tomorrow.

Mary Therese Biebel

Lindsay Bezick, well known for her role with the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Commerce, has been reflecting on keeping connections strong and what comes next.

For each of us, the pandemic has changed the dynamic of our lives. Seeing each day how this had impacted our community and the world has all been extremely challenging, Bezick said. Those challenges have truly prompted me to be helpful in any way I can personally and also with my team at the Chamber, as we work each day to demonstrate the hope and strong sense of togetherness during this time.

I have also focused my energy on staying informed yet positive, connecting and re-connecting with family and friends virtually and taking the time to realize what is truly important in life, she said.

Now, more than ever, I have the utmost respect and am so grateful for those on the front lines and all they are doing, Bezick added.

I know from this many things have changed and will continue to change moving forward, and with those changes, there will also come a sense of appreciation for all we do have as we all continue to work together. I will be ready and grateful to be able to help in any way I can towards that future, she said.

Mike Murray

Wilkes-Barre Mayor George Brown spoke as a proud member of a team working daily to protect the residents, employees and visitors and during the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has totally disrupted our city for both our residents way of life, and the livelihood of small businesses and restaurants throughout the city.

I am confident that we will succeed in addressing the Coronavirus, because of the remarkable teamwork displayed throughout this crisis.

There is a feeling of teamwork between our city and local hospitals. The Health Department is keeping our residents safe and informed. Wilkes-Barre Police, Fire/EMS, and DPW crews have worked beyond the call of duty. Staff at City Hall has worked together as a team, to continue to provide resident services, since the onslaught of the virus.

We will get though this. We will make sure that what weve learned will be beneficial in our response to future disruptions and disasters.

I again urge residents to follow social distancing, and all of the CDCs and Pennsylvania Health Departments recommendations. Please stay home, stay safe, and stay well.

Jerry Lynott

Barbara DiGiovanni of Jackson Township said since everything has slowed down there is more time to do the things she didnt have time to do before.

She said she has been cleaning her floors with her new steamer, cooking and delivering more meals and trying to enjoy her new freedom and view of a much more simple life often not appreciated.

I do miss going to church, going out to dinner, shopping and spending time with my friends and family, DiGiovanni said. The least obvious and most important is my inability to go anywhere without much thought behind it. Hopefully when this is over (it never will really be over) we will be living in a better world.

Bill OBoyle

Mimi McGowan of Hanover Township, laid it out clearly.

Hey, I dont like being home either, but I would not like to be around a bunch of people who have no regard/respect for this illness, she said.

It really wont be safe to be out in public for a while. China reopened and they have a surge, McGowan added.

I want things to be normal. I cant wait to go back to my classes for the dog and the gym. I want to walk through the Christmas Tree Store and buy stuff. I want to go out for dinner. I want to not run through the grocery store like Im on a game show just grabbing things.

Im not sure how long it will be before I feel comfortable, she added. Heck, I want to see my son.

Bill OBoyle

Mike Harper, of Kingston, said the big issue for many is the uncertainty about what comes next.

Whats our lives going to be like in the future? How will I survive financially, physically, socially, spiritually, morally? Many things in our daily routines are out of our control. Is there light at the end of the tunnel, he said.

The politics of the situation increases the overall stress. I am a positive, glass half full type of person, Harper added.

The only remedy, in my opinion is to let common sense prevail, let this beast run its course and lets get back to a normal life, he said.

The word on the street is that there is not much common sense out there. I dont buy that, especially when its a matter of life and death.

Bill OBoyle

Linda Joseph, of Wilkes-Barre, reflected on contrasting aspects of living through the past month.

Since the coronavirus was diagnosed in our area, my life has changed in both disheartening ways but in positive ways as well, Joseph said.

I strongly miss my volunteer community involvement in so many different groups and organizations, especially interacting with others in residents associations, on many committees, in meetings and socializing. This became a large part of my life since retiring two years ago, she said.

I miss my family, my church and church family and spending time with friends, Joseph added.

But, I also have come to appreciate what we take for granted in our everyday lives. A hug, a smile. Lenten and Easter Seasons were especially uplifting, now having the time to truly experience this spiritual time without distractions.

Roger DuPuis

Deidre Miller Kaminski, of Edwardsville, offered these thoughts.

This has made me realize whats really most important in my life, she said.

I have started praying more. We should all be on our knees praying they find a vaccine sooner than later.

This has slowed me down from being an extrovert to an introvert. Im all about fellowship, gathering family and friends together, making memories, taking pictures. Im a hugger hugging everyone. My house was always open to everyone, whether it was meetings, or get-togethers, birthday parties, 4th of July celebrations.

Its really hard to adjust to this isolation. I havent even been out anywhere, not even to the store at all because my daughter was going to have a baby.

At times, this has been very difficult to deal with, extreme anxiety and fear about contracting the virus because I am prone to respiratory infections and bronchitis constant worrying about family and now my two-week-old granddaughter contracting it.

Im deeply saddened thinking of all that passed away with no family there to comfort them.

Im so used to doing community service projects with General Federation of Womens Clubs-West Side and now feeling helpless that I cant do anything.

It gives you a feeling of helplessness, that all I can do right now is just let everyone know Im thinking of them and praying we all stay safe.

I never thought I would be quarantined for my 70th birthday. I thought I would be dancing the night away with my family and friends.

Bill OBoyle

Michele Lane, of Kingston, is grateful to have paid time off, but that hasnt completely kept her calm.

Im afraid of the panic, but also I fear the government is under-reacting. Its hard to get the facts anymore, she said.

She is also worried about continuing her dance classes after the fog lifts.

Im also worried about local businesses, even my dance studio. How long can they go without daily sales?

Toni Pennello

Sophia Loeber, who recently moved to Kingston from Philadelphia, is unemployed due to the pandemic.

The panic has spread just as quickly as the virus, and its just as terrifying, she said, citing precautions in grocery stores meant to help patrons maintain social distancing.

Also, its so hard to motivate myself to do stuff because every day is kind of the same.

Toni Pennello

Susan Magnotta reflected on the abrupt change of pace.

When the noise and constant busyness of everyday life suddenly stopped I found myself with unstructured time on my hands, she said. It gave me the opportunity to consider if the areas where I had been directing my time and attention were aligned with the things I value most in life and make changes going forward.

So far, our family has merely been inconvenienced by the pandemic which is humbling because I know so many people are hurting, Magnotta added. It has given me great appreciation for those who cant stay home at this time and I hope to be in a position to give back to the community when all this is over.

Mike Murray

Shivaun ODonnell, of Wilkes-Barre, talked about changes of routine and what she would like to accomplish.

I am working from home a few days a week, doing diabetes education for individual Geisinger patients, and other groups over the phone and/or on video with much success.

For the last several years Ive been developing a list of things to do when I get time and my status of said things. Well, the stay-at-home order has given me the time, for sure. Heres my status report of my list of things to do:

1. Clean out back room of basement not done, not started.

2. Get family video call reunion DONE!!!! This is pretty remarkable because I have family all over the world, Japan, Ireland, Costa Rica, San Diego, New Hampshire, Vermont.

3. Re-hang curtains in bedroom Not done, not started.

4. Clean out email inbox Not done, 5,072 in gmail, 12,694 in AOL. I deleted about 200 the other day, and I think there are now even more.

5. Learn how to tap dance Started, tap shoes dusted off. Tap board located. Online resource located.

6. Exercise every day achieving about 67.6% success rate.

7. Read a new book Started Trinity by Leon Uris. My new goal on this one is to finish it by 12/21/2020.

8. Organize of my loose pictures. Not done, not started

9. Get my blog started again Not done, however I did happen to renew the domain name this year, visit shootingtheshiv.com.

10. Cook new exciting recipes Not done. But, my cousin Nora started me on a recipe chain mail, so Im hoping to get a few new recipes to try out on the fam now, and on my friends later this year.

So my quarantine enlightenment is this most of to-dos are not ever going to get to-done no matter how much time I have.

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Protesters rally in Harrisburg to demand Wolf reopen economy - Wilkes Barre Times-Leader