Alfred Waugh is designing buildings he never had access to in university.

Waugh grew up in Yellowknife, so moving to Lethbridge, Alta. and then Vancouver for post-secondary education was a huge culture shock. He arrived feeling divorced from his culture and the land he grew up on.

Today the Chipewyan architect is the president and founder of Formline Architecture. His projects include First People's House at the University of Victoria, the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre at the University of British Columbia.

Waugh's latest project is the Indigenous House at the University of Toronto, Scarborough campus a building designed not just for students, but for Indigenous peoples in Toronto-at-large.

Waugh spoke with Tapestry's Mary Hynes about what it takes to design buildings that reflect Indigenous peoples and their histories.

Tell me about Indigenous House at U of T Scarborough. What are the goals for what you're creating?

It's an interesting project. Some universities across Canada are developing First Nations facilities to retain Indigenous students, share culture, and address the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to provide equal opportunity for Indigenous students.

When I was a student I came from Yellowknife to study at university, and there weren't any facilities like this.

Did you have to contend with many stereotypes at the time being an Indigenous student from the north?

Oh my goodness, yes! When I started architecture school they had us do a two-week camping trip as part of an urban design project. We were camping on a beach in this little resort community on Vancouver Island. We had visiting professors, and every night there would be a theme dinner.

One night they had an Indigenous-themed dinner. People were like "woo"-ing and hitting their pots and doing all kinds of weird stuff. And I didn't feel comfortable, right? So I didn't participate in the dinner. At that time, I was quite young, and something inside me said, "this isn't right."

The next morning, the professor from Jerusalem gets up and says, "I understand we insulted someone," you know, "we didn't mean anything," and so forth.

Then I found myself standing in front of 45 people I didn't know anybody, and I was nervous and shy. My voice was shaking. And I said, "It's just not right. You're stereotyping Indigenous people. There are all different kinds of Indigenous people across this country." So I made my statement. And then after that I gained, I guess, a bit of respect from everybody.

It was not something I planned. But it helped mold my journey as an architect. It helped me consider how my work can establish a sense of identity for Indigenous people. That was one of those moments that gave me some passion to keep going and finish this and prove myself.

You now design buildings for campuses across the country do you feel a bit vindicated?

I feel proud. It's an interesting feeling to go to UBC where, from the architecture studio where I used to study, you can now see the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Center that I designed. So that gives me a good feeling, a sense of pride that I've actually accomplished something. Because my mom's life ended tragically in 1999 and she's the one who forced me to go to university. I was working on an oil rig in the 80s. I was making lots of money, and I had a girlfriend and all those kinds of things. But my mom said, "You got to go to university, and you got to do something for your people."

Those were your mom's words?

Yeah, she'd say, "You're too smart to waste your life away up here." I guess that stuck in my head. So when our project was under construction at UBC, I was thinking, "I'm actually doing something for my people on a national scale." And yeah, that's a good feeling.

Your project at UBC was the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Center. Why was it important to have so much natural light?

UBC is on unceded territory of the Musqueam people. We had some engagement sessions with the Musqueam nation. I asked them, "What's one of the most important things this building should achieve?" And they said because it's a conduit to the Truth and Reconciliation records photos, writings, and testimonials from residential school survivors the building may spur an emotional response for some people. So it's really important to us that no matter where you are in this building, you're able to turn and see the landscape and experience its calming effects.

I'm so interested in how a constructed space can convey things that are maybe intangible qualities, like resilience, or a sense of freedom, and you do that through physical objects like wood, copper or glass. How do you do that?

For the UBC project we were told: the building has to feel Indigenous, but it can't represent any one nation. So the connection to the landscape is one thing, blurring the boundaries between inside and out. The materiality comes into focus. I was looking at Salish longhouses. In the past, to keep the draft out, they would weave bullrush mats and put them in the back of the longhouse. So as you descend down the wall at the UBC, you're walking past woven cedar, and it turned out really nice. That's where the seeds of inspiration came.

And the other aspect is out on the West Coast here with the Musqueam, the Salish, the Tsleil-Waututh, and a lot of the other Salish-speaking nations, cedar was used for everything basket weaving, canoes, all kinds of things. An elder told me, "cedar's the blood of our culture." And there's a Japanese form of treating wood that makes it more inert, more resilient. So we treated the cedar to make it resilient too.

And the roof of the building it had to sit low, it had to have a green roof. But I warned that it could look buried, which is how people had felt over history. So I suggested we use copper because it's a symbol of dignity for many people in the north. So we used copper and glass, and created a glass waterfall on the roof for rainwater to flow down. I saw that as a symbol of the tears of people who'd been in residential schools.

What would it have meant to you if there had been a building on campus like the Indigenous House?

I think it would have maintained my cultural connections more. One of my favourite buildings is the First Peoples House I designed at the University of Victoria. We designed an Elders' Lounge so elders can come in and see how the kids are doing in school, have a cup of tea, and maybe do some counselling of students so that they have someone to talk to. That would have been really cool if that were around when I was going to school because it maintains those cultural ties.

This interview has been edited and condensed. Written by Kate Adach. Produced by Arman Aghbali.

More here:

How this Indigenous architect designs buildings with Indigenous history and spirituality in mind - CBC.ca

23 October 2020, 14:34 | Updated: 27 October 2020, 16:55

High school choir harmonises on a beloved spiritual, in one soul-shaking hotel acoustic...

A viral video of high school students singing the folk hymn Down to the River to Pray on hotel balconies has just resurfaced, and its a beautiful reminder of the power of group singing.

The impromptu performance took place at a Colorado hotel, where the treble ensemble of the Colorado All State Choir were staying that night.

Young students from across the US state sang a hair-raising a cappella arrangement of the traditional spiritual, arranged by Jace Wittig.

Have a listen below to the musical magic and if, like us, youre waiting for the moment the harmony comes in, skip to around the 0:35 mark

Read more: Church organ playing Hans Zimmer Interstellar makes our world feel tiny >

After it was posted, one of the choir members who was singing on the 4th to top floor, they say came across the clip and commented: Ive never been more proud to be in a YouTube video. [sic]

One of the coolest things that ever happened. This video barely describes how magnificent the experience was.

Read more: A cappella choir on tilting cylinders sounds out of a horror movie >

Its not the first time the hotel has been used by a massed choir.

In fact, if youre up for tumbling down the best YouTube rabbit hole ever, have a listen to these choral moments below, all recorded on hotel balconies.

Above anything, its a wonderful reminder of the togetherness of music-making.

Read the original:

Amazing high school choir sings spiritual Down to the River to Pray from hotel balconies - Classic FM

Sometimes glimpses of some unusual forms, moments of depth, rhythmic lines come to my mind. But they seem like some fragments...they have to be united with something more solid, something difficult to fathom. Some way has to be found out.

Written by the artist Ram Kumar, who died in 2018, these words are a beguiling precis of the challenges posed by abstract painting. Kumar, like many of his peers, mapped that journey from fragment to whole through a committed drawing practice. Now, in a solo presentation in Art Basels Online Viewing Rooms, the New Delhi-based Vadehra Gallery will open a window on to Kumars approach with a selection of works on paper from the 1960s and 70s.

The display promises to whet the appetites of international collectors for whom Kumar may be a less familiar name than peers such as M.F. Husain and F.N. Souza. Although one of his paintings, Vagabond (1956), was sold for $1.1m at Christies in New York in 2008, the Simla-born painter is still the quiet man of the Progressive Artists Group. Founded in Mumbai (then Bombay) in 1947 by artists including Husain and Souza, the group aimed to fuse styles from Indian art traditions and the European avant-garde.

For Kumar, born in 1924, the experience of European art was deepened when he visited Paris in the late 1940s and studied under Andr Lhote and Fernand Lger. A member of the French communist party, the young artist immersed himself in the existentialist fervour that gripped the citys intellectual and creative elites. (His brother, the writer Nirmal Verma, has recalled that during his French sojourn, Kumar sent him poetry by Paul luard and Louis Aragon, with whom he was good friends, and later took him to the Left Bank cafs where Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus once gathered.)

Yet Kumars art is also steeped in the genius loci of India. After a period of concentration on melancholy human figures in the 1950s Roberto Rossellini once told Kumar that his paintings reminded him of Kafkas short stories a visit to Varanasi in 1960 proved revelatory for the artist. Situated on the banks of the sacred Ganges, Varanasi is a holy city; a point of pilgrimage for millions who flock there to wash away their sins, cremate their loved ones, or die themselves so that their ashes may float away in the sanctified waters.

For Kumar, the city was an architectural embodiment of his existential impulse. Paintings from the 1960s show how he rendered it, not in the vibrant colours traditional to Indian painting, but in silvery greys, bleached sands and earthy browns. Evoking Varanasis crooked alleys, crumbling buildings and sloping ghats as laconic, teetering, liminal huddles that float precariously between water and sky, they are the work of a painter whose first thoughts were that the city was only inhabited by the dead and their lifeless souls. It seemed like a haunted place to me and still remains the same.

Sketches digitally on show at Art Basel show Kumar developing those ghostly intuitions through the intimate vocabulary of pen and ink. Intensifying their private character is the drawings location in one of the personal ledgers known as bahis or bahi-khatas that were designed for keeping accounts. Bound in faded red cloth with thick stitches on cream paper, the books humble aspect is a tantalising counterpoint to the artistic heft of the works within. (Although its likely that Kumar used account books for reasons of financial economy, its interesting to note that before he became an artist he worked in a bank.)

Tight, inward conglomerations of line, shape and void, the drawings employ line and cross-hatching to weave knots of clotted darkness through airy, luminous lattices; the results are patchworks of gossamer-fine nets which rupture and collapse into diaphanous white holes. Clearly, Kumars Varanasi is an abstract metropolis, a city of the mind as much as the eye, although here and there a window or a ghat is faintly discernible. Virtuoso balances of line and space, light and darkness, the images are Kumars visual translation of that metaphysical threshold on which the city is poised.

According to Roshini Vadehra, for Kumar blacks and greys were a way of tuning deeper into his existentialism. As a result, he often returned to drawings as a way of continuing the meditative and spiritual process of painting.

That Kumars flame was stoked in a spiritual crucible is not in doubt. Vadehra speaks of him as an artist possessed of a unique sadhana, the Sanskrit term for methodical discipline that is rewarded by a desired knowledge or goal. Yet he also observed the terrestrial world with intensity and curiosity, she continues. As a young man, he wrote short stories that pare down both people and landscape to their vulnerable, undiluted essence; his descriptions of Varanasi are sublime in their economy.

By the late 1960s, Kumar had relinquished both figure and city as evident inspirations. The drawings on show from the 1970s show him evolving towards the phase in his career when he turned, in the words of distinguished poet and art critic Ranjit Hoskote, to paintingabstractionist hymns to nature. Perhaps nostalgic for his childhood in Simlas hills, Kumar would make regular retreats to a village in Kangra valley, once writing in his diary: When I sit facing the Dhauladhar range, with the thick forests of the Shivaliks at my back, I start probing within myself, my mind full of memories and lost images.

In the works on paper, what we see is an artist still conjuring a world through contrasts: sharp dashes clash with longer lines, awkward angles with athletic curves; there are sudden dips into whiteness, and upward swoops towards empty plateaux. Our eye topples into black crevasses, follows paths that vanish in a mist of whiteness, traverses obedient terraces. Could those tiny hyphens be birds? Or twigs swept up by a storm?

Kumar kept mum. Described by his brother, the writer Nirmal Verma, as a concerned introvert, his reticence and sensitivity to others as well as to himself are witnessed by all who knew him. Although he withdrew from the market-fuelled carnival of the contemporary art world, by his death in 2018 there was no question that Kumar was regarded as one of the visionaries of Indian modernism, with exhibitions across the world including Pakistan, New York and Venice (where he participated in the Biennale of 1958).

This small cache of drawings offers just a glimpse of his gift. But in their fidelity to the line a cornerstone of Kumars painting practice which he once said had an independent life of its own they shed more light than their diminutive size and number might suggest. As for their meaning, it is best not to dwell. Kumar, after all, was an artist who once said that when one is young ones work is dominated by content, by ideas, but as one grows older, one turns to the language of painting itself.

This is a welcome opportunity to listen to his song.

vadehraart.com

Read more:

A window on to Ram Kumars visionary and spiritual world - Financial Times

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One of the most fruitful franchises that has flourished during the pandemic, apart from food-delivery by bicycle, is video-messianism. Even Netflix released its miniseries about the Massiach.

The competition is brutal, from respectable rabbis to rogue Caba-rascals (Manny Vias dixit), to ex-drug addicted evangelical pastors, not excluding very decent newly enlightened housewives, with the addition of cute and daring aspiring influencers-healers girls who offer Healing courses payable in currencies or cryptocurrencies, until culminating in the plethora of conspiracy theory YouTubers, who, according to them, have always warned us that all this was going to happen.

I believe that, just as Kabbalah has opened up and globalized from Philip Berg with the Kabbalah Centre and from Michael Laitman with Bnei Baruch, one step further in this curious evolutionary-messianic process is that the pandemic has generalized the Jerusalem Syndrome, and the inevitable possibility (call it a window of opportunity if you prefer) of monetarizing it among those who are able to see virtue in calamity.

All this without travelling to Jerusalem, which is expensive and complicated, but employing a Chinese virus not as lethal as Ebola but very jumping, and the existence of the Internet, of course.

Of most of the approaches that I have reviewed, the one that amuses me the most is the one that states that from the virus the 7 billion humans that inhabit the planet are going to undergo a spiritual mutation, which will lead us through a natural-catastrophic path not to a simple new normal, but to a new world that is, avoiding us the work of building the utopias of Moro and Campanella with blood, sweat and tears, rather from a fortunate collateral damage generated by the virus.

The reasoning is impeccable: if avian flu viruses mutate so rapidly from one season to another, why shouldnt the human soul do so from this confinement, this fear and this stress, which have unleashed so many neurochemical, spiritual and perhaps astral processes, all of them unexpected?

It would be a kind of biological messianism.

In theory, the Divine Plan can act through miracles, lets say, that a Messiah like Isaiahs one appears, after a series of fulfilled omens.

And maybe miracles are happening, even if we dont see them or they are disqualified as fake news.

But in the absence of miracles, it is possible to realize in science and technology signs of a divine plan that inevitably and in another way also lead us to the same result: the era of the Messiah.

In this regard, Arieh Kaplan is unavoidable. In his text The Real Messiah, he warns us that:

the past hundred years or so have brought about an increase in knowledge unsurpassed in all human history. Whether we use it wisely or not, these accomplishments are truly amazing.

He then points out that:

Why this sudden global change of conscience that seems to be shaking the very roots of our civilization? Why are more and more people coming to the conclusion that the evils of society are not merely the natural consequences of civilization, but are diseases that call for a cure?

Another pearl:

If one looks with an unprejudiced eye at the world today, he will see that we are living in an age where almost all the Jewish prophecies regarding the prelude to the Messianic Age are coming to pass. Even the most doubtful skeptic cannot help wondering how this could be mere coincidence.

And concludes with:

One of the basic points of contradiction is whether or not the onset of the Messianic age will come through miracles. Many teachings seem to support the view of the miraculous, such as (Dan.7:13), Behold, one like the son of man came with the clouds of heaven. On the other hand, others seem to support a more prosaic view, such as (Zech.9:9), Behold, your king comes to you lowly, and riding on a donkey.

The Talmud was aware of this contradiction, and answered it by stating that there are two basic ways that the Messianic age can commence. If we are worthy of miracles, it will indeed be miraculous. If we are not, the Messianic Age will arrive in a natural manner.

So when the Son of Man does not appear riding clouds, it turns out that we are not worthy of contemplating miracles.

This is a plausible indignity if we analyze geopolitics, our daily violence, new wars, the distribution of wealth and poverty, ecological deterioration, drug addiction and alcoholism, mass depression, the generalization of psychopaths in all kinds of positions of power, or the destruction (without the essential sustainable substitutes) of traditional family models.

From this point of view, the Messianic Era has no other way than to arrive naturally. Or by catastrophes, as Michael Laitman would say, picking up the long Kabbalistic tradition that warns us that we learn in two ways; through study or through suffering.

One of the essential prophecies of the Messianic Era is that human beings are going to love one another, that we are going to awaken to solidarity, and that the knowledge of the divine will be available even to children.

Of course, in the absence of miracles of which we are not worthy, this can occur from a virus that locks us up in our homes, can occur from fear, from the collapse of a part of the economic system, of the systems of values and beliefs, from the collapse of health systems and the fracture of national and geopolitical political relations.

In this way, the virus can be resemantized, and mutate from being a biological catastrophe (random or manufactured in a Chinese laboratory) to being a miracle, or a natural messianic catalyst, or both at the same time.

Note that the deeper the collapse, the more credibility the prophecies and promises of the video messiahs have. That is why I see in a funny way the competition between the innumerable apocalypses that are sold to us on the networks to attract depressed and terrified clients and patients to the new spiritual clinics: the dollar is going to collapse globally, the aliens will finally will be contacted openly, food production will end, the vaccine will not work lasciate ogni speranza, voi chintrate, Dante warned.

Fear can be a good business. Although it serves not only the video-messiahs, but also to the WHO, and to more than one Ur-fascist government (Eco dixit).

Mendelian mutations are sudden evolutionary leaps, caused by seemingly random agents, such as a meteor that falls on the earth or due to a mistake in the replication of the information of a DNA chain.

In that sense, mutatis mutandis, a virus like the current one can be the trigger for a sudden change in the transmission of information from our social or spiritual DNA chain, so to speak.

We can accept, prima facie, that a change in the human spiritual situation may occur due to the psychological, emotional, social, economic and political consequences generated by the pandemic.

What I find difficult to predict is the character of such a mutation. It could be that it awakened in us atavistic feelings, a desire to re-connect us with other beings and with the cosmos, an Abraham-type mutation, lets say.

It could be that such a mutation makes us even more selfish, more locked in our environments and small groups of interests, out of fear.

It could be that it does not affect us thoroughly in this life, and that we simply want to return to the old normality, as one sees when restrictions are lifted and people run desperately to bars, squares, beaches and malls, trying to recover their old condition of beings made for consumerism.

Perhaps the next generation would be born with mutated spirit genes, with many more indigo children, or azure blue, like the characters in Avatar, and with much more connectedness and solidarity, as predicted by the prophets who have spoken for so many centuries on the subject of the Massiach.

In either of the two scenarios, the dire or the hopeful, the dilemma pointed out by the Kabbalists continues to be repeated; you learn through study and if not, through suffering.

The true mutation would be for Humanity as a whole to emerge from a kind of long childhood, reaching 13 years of age, not only to do their Bar Mitzvah, but also to understand that each one must relate in the best possible way with the others, including neighbours, animals, nature, unless you want to pay painful consequences, as warned not only by Kabbalists, but even by Freud in Civilization and its Discontents.

Yes, in theory we can try to remain as little psychopaths forever (every child is partially a little psychopath up to 13 years old) incapable of feeling empathy, and continue to look at others as simple objects of pleasure at our disposal, as simple means to achieve what we please.

But the result will always be devastating, because others, even if they love us at first, will end up treating us the same way. And even Nature will rebel and send us a virus from time to time so that we can let her rest, so that we can lock ourselves up, and let her breathe in peace even for a year.

I hear many Kabbalists say that we should approach the wisdom of Kabbalah as children. I insist that children are partially little psychopaths, which is why they must be educated so that they can mature.

I prefer Mario Sabans approach, when he tells us that a good goal for those who study Kabbalah is to mature, to become a responsible and full adult. This implies inner harmony, harmony with other beings and, if it is given to us from above, harmony, contact and equivalence of form with higher energies.

Will a hypothetical spiritual mutation unleashed by the virus allow us to massively access that level? Will even 1% of the population reach it?

As always, its up to us, the spiritual gene for responsibility and free will has been always inside us. Another thing is if we use it or not, and that will always be our choice.

See the original post here:

Are we experiencing a pandemic spiritual mutation? An approach from Kabbalah - The Times of Israel

ZION NATIONAL PARK, Utah (ABC4 News, ABC News) The sister of the missing hiker who survived 12 days in Zion National Park without any food or water said her survival is nothing short of a miracle.

38-year old Holly Courtier, the Woodland Hills mom who went missing inside the Zion National Park on Oct. 6, has checked herself into a mental health facility to process some trauma she has not dealt with for several years, her family told ABC News.

41-year-old Jaime Strong, one of Hollys sisters, said that Courtier had likely suffered a mental breakdown and had planned to go on a spiritual journey while eating no food or water for a couple of days inside the national park.

I think she went in there mentally wanting to be there, and then I think she was stuck in there physically, Strong said. She was in over her head and had no way to get out.

Strong said that she doesnt feel the incident was a cry for help, but rather a series of bad choices that just went horribly wrong. The sister confirmed that Holly had left the park in the middle of the night and did not tell her family where was going, planning to disconnect from technology, pray and read the Bible, and fast.

She wanted to go on a spiritual journey and had planned it out and decided to do it, Strong said.

Her family said that Holly was in the middle of a dry fast and had not eaten for several days prior to her arriving at the park. After over-exerting herself on the first day while going on a hike, the family said she suffered a concussion while setting up her hammock along the Virgin River and could not call for help.

When she was setting up her hammock between two trees, I guess there was a stump behind with a very sharp tree edge on it, Strong said. I guess when she sat into her hammock and kind of swung back, she hit her head very hard on the sharp edge of the tree.

She was very disoriented and very dizzy, Strong added. I think she bit off more than she could chew. She definitely thought she could fast longer than she could.

Courtier was allegedly unaware that there were search parties looking for her and signs posted throughout the park because she was disoriented, the family said. Courtier kept track of the number of days she was lost by writing them in black marker on a tree, per a photo provided to ABC News.

Strong said the family took Courtier to the emergency room and a doctor allegedly diagnosed her with a concussion, although the family said Holly had decided to forgo a MRI or CAT scan.The family said Courtier had lost approximately 18 pounds while out in the wilderness.

The familys statement comes after Sgt. Darrell Cashin, the liaison of the Washington County Sheriffs Search and Rescue for the past nine years and an advanced EMT, spoke out Tuesday about several discrepancies he says he sees between Zion National Parks and the familys statements.

Cashin says its a high possibility Courtier would have died if she was drinking the river water for 12 days amid a toxic algal bloom detected in the north fork of the Virgin River in early July. Without any water, she would have died within two to three days, he says.

If she had been drinking that water, unless she had some really high immune system, she wouldve been very, very ill and probably unable to come out on her own, Cashin said. She either took a lot of water with her or had another clean water source that was near here, but the Virgin River is not that source.

Strong told ABC News her sister was unable to call for help because she was so dehydrated she couldnt open her mouth and did not drink the river water. The family did not specify how Courtier was able to survive for 12 days without water.

Cashin also raised questions regarding Courtiers head injury as Zion National Park officials reported Courtier was able to leave on her own with minimal assistance and was released directly to her family.

If we had found somebody in that condition with that kind of severe head injury, we would have at minimum called for a transport agency to check her out, Cashin says. The fact that that didnt happen tells me that they did not find any significant injury to her that wouldve prompted them to do that.

Physically, she seemed to be in a condition that did not warrant an ambulance and they felt was comfortable to release her to her family to address, Cashin added.

Amanda Rowland, chief of interpretation atZionNational Park,told ABC4 News the final investigative report on the Courtier Search and Rescue (SAR) will be made public, although its unclear exactly when it will be released. ABC4 News requested a copy of the final investigative report from the U.S. Department of the Interior through the Freedom of Information Act.

Read more here:

Holly Courtier planned to go on spiritual journey, fast inside Zion National Park, family says - ABC 4

BALTIMORE Diabetes, heart disease and other ailments had been disproportionately cutting lives short in the disadvantaged neighborhoods of West Baltimore for decades when the coronavirus pandemic emerged and piled on.

A group of Episcopal Church members found that to be something of a last straw.

Buoyed by the recent social justice movement, three Black women from the church with backgrounds in health care are launching a program to train peer coaches who can guide, motivate and otherwise help the largely minority populations in some hard-hit neighborhoods figure out how to live healthier.

We need people in the community who are not talking at us but talking with us. said Carol Scott, an emergency room physician and one of the co-directors of the program called Kindred Coaches. We need people who can provide facts and information and can inspire.

She said people who are healthier have a better chance of weathering the coronavirus or avoiding it altogether as well as other diseases that the Baltimore Health Department has said produces a 20-year gap in life expectancy between the citys most well-off and worse-off neighborhoods.

Scott said her faith led her to help organize the program that begins training coaches this week, though the coaches and those they coach do not have to be Episcopalian or any religion.

Peer coaching isnt a new idea, she and others in the program say. This program follows others in Baltimore that have had some success tackling the intractable health problems of violence and overdose deaths.

And public health officials have turned increasingly to the faith community, with deep connections in Baltimore neighborhoods, to get residents such things as regular blood pressure checks, fresh food or health insurance.

Scott said she saw her church, Memorial Episcopal Church in Bolton Hill, as a natural place to launch the program. The church brought in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland and the Union of Black Episcopalians to broaden the impact.

Story continues

In Maryland, Blacks make up a disproportionate 41% of the deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Baltimore City and Prince Georges County, with large Black populations, have some of the states highest rates of infection.

A recent study from Johns Hopkins University researchers offers further evidence that socioeconomic factors and geography have played a role during the pandemic. The researchers compared data from socioeconomically challenged ZIP codes in seven states including Maryland to data from less burdened ZIP codes and found the risk was far higher in challenged areas nearly across the board.

The study, published in Frontiers of Public Health, surmised that communities comprised largely of racial minorities and economically challenged households were more likely to be exposed to the coronavirus because they have low-wage essential jobs, including in health care. The workers also are more likely to live in overcrowded housing where its harder to keep a distance.

Such results do not surprise Scott, who co-authored a 2003 article in Academic Emergency Medicine about how minorities tap medical care differently due to such factors as lack of access to care or insurance or strong relationships with doctors.

Its a reason she became a coach herself through Wellcoaches, a health and wellness coach training business. She tapped her own relationship with Margaret Moore, the company founder and CEO, who agreed to provide trainers at no cost to Kindred Coaches.

Moore had been moved by the social justice efforts around the country and already had been thinking about how she could help. She reached out to Wellcoaches Black coaches across the country to recruit for the Baltimore program.

We trained 1,000 coaches a year, Moore said. We can scale. Baltimore will be the pilot, but we want to take this around the country.

She said the coaches know how to facilitate conversation where people chose their own way; figure out what motivates them.

Moore considers obesity the biggest scourge, leading to diabetes, high blood pressure and other conditions. Coaches would work on changing peoples mindsets and behaviors by helping them figure out why its important to make a change.

For some, its not wanting to end up a burden on their kids, others want to be a role model or feel less lousy. Others just want to look better in their jeans, she said.

Then, Moore said, the coaches will continue to use that motivation to keep people on track, working with individuals or groups for months or longer.

Rev. Grey Maggiano, rector of Memorial Episcopal Church, said hes struck by the disparities that exist just blocks apart near his church. He believes a spiritual-based coaching team could make a big impact in the West Baltimore neighborhood where he lives and works beyond the pandemic.

Whenever grant money is released around a crisis, often the money disappears when the crisis goes away, he said. Here were trying to build a network of peer coaches who can continue to provide resources and support that can be activated when something else happens but also has continuing resources.

Much of the program is being done on a volunteer basis, with Maggiano looking for small grants to pay some additional speakers during training and produce public service announcements.

Wellcoaches also said it is working generally on getting coaches paid by establishing official billing codes for coaching and getting insurers to provide reimbursements. Then coaching can be a full-time career rather than volunteer work, cementing the availability of the service.

Kindred Coaches first cohort of about 20 coaches is beginning a series of twice-weekly online sessions this week to learn how to direct small groups or individuals to take charge of their own health.

Linda Johnson-Harvey was among those signing on to become a coach.

Shes already been doing work as apostle at Fragrance of Faith Ministry. She has worked to provide care to those suffering trauma and provide fresh food where access is limited. Training with Kindred Coaches will expand my toolbox, she said.

Since the social justice movement took off after the death in May of George Floyd, a Minneapolis Black man in police custody, shes felt a clarion call to address racial inequities. With the pandemic, she said that must include addressing health care inequities.

She views coaching as a means to build trust in disenfranchised communities who have not felt welcomed or comfortable seeking medical care. Many have felt they couldnt afford or access care.

Well look you in the eye and say Im here and how can I help you walk out and take the next step to the doctors office or whatever you need to do, Johnson-Harvey said.

Well help people feel safe, valued and helped, she said. This at a time when were dealing with two major health things, health disparities and inequities both heavy hitters. Its time.

2020 The Baltimore Sun

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Spiritual coaches aim to ease COVID-19, other health disparities in West Baltimore - Yahoo News

By the special mandate of His Holiness Pope Francis, the Apostolic Penitentiary released on Friday some changes to the normal practice for obtaining indulgences in the month of November. The Decree containing these modifications was signed October 22, the liturgical memorial of Pope St John Paul II.Plenary Indulgence during month of November

Due to the coronavirus pandemic and the need to avoid large groups from forming, the Plenary Indulgence applicable to the deceased by those who visit a cemetery has been extended beyond the normal dates of November 1-8. This year, the indulgence can be obtained by anyone who visits a cemetery, even if only mentally, on any day in November, and devoutly prays for the faithful departed.

Regarding the Plenary Indulgence attached to All Souls Day, November 2, this year, it can be obtained not only on the preceding or succeeding Sunday, or on the actual Feast day, but on any other day of the month chosen by each member of the faithful.

In this case, the indulgence is obtained by devoutly visiting a church or an oratory, along with the recitation of the Our Father and the Creed, and the other requirements associated with a Plenary Indulgence.

For anyone who cannot leave their home for various reasons, including anti-Covid restrictions, they too can obtain the Plenary Indulgence by uniting themselves spiritually to other members of the faithful.

In this case, the condition of being completely detached from sin and the intention of completing the other requirements for obtaining a Plenary Indulgence remain. These conditions are Sacramental Confession, reception of Holy Communion and prayer for the Holy Fathers intentions.

The Decree suggests that such prayer take place before an image of Jesus or the Blessed Virgin Mary. Among the various prayers that are recommended are prayers for the deceased, Morning or Evening Prayer from the Office of the Dead, the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, meditating on various Gospel passages proposed for the liturgy of the Dead, or completing a work of mercy by offering to God the suffering and discomforts of ones own life.

Directing a word to priests, the Decree asks that they make the Sacrament of Confession generously available and that they make Holy Communion available to the sick. In addition, as customary, all priests are invited to offer three Masses on All Souls Day.

See the article here:

Indulgence for cemetery visits extended to spiritual visits and whole month of November - Aleteia EN

In Russia, where hospitals complain about the lack of places to store the bodies of those who died from coronavirus infection, a book with prayers against COVID-19 was launched on sale.

As writes Sign, author of the book Coronavirus. Prayers to help the sick and those who are at risk - Vladimir Zobern. He is an associate of Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov, who is called Putins confessor.

The price of the book is about 300 rubles (more than 100 hryvnia).

We will remind that in the spring of this year Shevkunov declared that God is not a humanist, but a philanthropist. They say that is why he allowed the coronavirus epidemic so that people learn to love their neighbors and through this they know God himself.

By the way, the French actor Gerard Depardieu, who recently converted to Orthodoxy, his spiritual father named Tikhon Shevkunov.

Image by Orna Wachman from Pixabay.

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Russia is fighting coronavirus with prayers: a companion of Putins spiritual father has published a special book - Pledge Times