CNA Staff, Jul 31, 2020 / 10:00 am MT (CNA).- Since 2014, Fr. Roger Dawson has run a retreat house in the idyllic countryside of north Wales. When the U.K. went into lockdown in March, he was forced to cancel retreats. But he was determined to find a new way of offering spiritual direction.

After talking to other priests at St. Beunos Jesuit Spirituality Centre, he launched a telephone service for those struggling to cope with the pressures of the coronavirus crisis.

He said the service was extremely well received, with around 150 people taking part in one-to-one conversations with clergy.

Dawson, who served in the British Army for nine years before training as a clinical psychologist, told CNA that the phone conversations revealed common problems. He also discussed how the Catholic faith can alleviate them.

The most common experience was fear. Dawson said this was to be expected because of the deadly nature of COVID-19, which has claimed the lives of more than 46,000 people in the U.K. -- the third highest recorded death toll in the world.

But he suggested that the official response to the crisis could have a long-lasting psychological impact.

In order to get people to comply, the government frightened people. That may well have been necessary, but the difficulty is that once you frighten people, its really quite difficult to unfrighten them. People havent necessarily got all the knowledge or skills to identify what the risks are, he said.

He recommended meditating on the Gospels as a way of combating fear, highlighting Matthew 5, in which Jesus proclaims the Beatitudes.

He also encouraged people to reflect on Jesus instruction to his disciples to Be not afraid. This didnt mean that nothing bad would ever happen to followers of Jesus, he said, but rather that Not even death can destroy the love of God.

The psychology of crisis

Dawson said that one helpful way of looking at the pandemic was through personal constructive theory, a concept pioneered by the American psychologist George Kelly in the 1950s.

What personal construct theory is saying is that were basically meaning-makers, he said. As a result of our experience, and what weve learnt and been told, we build mental maps that help us to navigate our way around the world, and to understand ourselves, our situation and other people. And wise people are people who have very sophisticated and detailed maps.

He continued: What happens in a crisis is that something happens, new information comes in, that simply does not fit this map, and one of the things thats so destabilizing for people is not just the event itself, but I cant make sense of this. I thought I was safe and Ive discovered I live in a highly dangerous world.

All your expectations about what the future would hold, or how these relationships work, or how people relate to you or treat you, totally changes and it needs a different map in order for the person to navigate the experience. At the beginning of the crisis, they havent got a map that works for this experience.

Dawson said this process could be seen in the biblical story of the road to Emmaus, where Jesus presents the disciples with a new map to understand the events in Jerusalem.

But accepting a new map required a lot of psychological energy, he explained, and often people experience anger or despair before they do so.

In some ways, thats what were having to do spiritually all the time, he said. Any Catholic who simply resolutely holds on to the map that they were given when they were catechized for their First Holy Communion isnt going to get very far in their spiritual lives and grow and deepen in their knowledge and understanding of God, because those maps are for young children, not for adults whove got to cope with the world and life experience.

So a lot of what were doing at St. Beunos is helping people to deepen their understanding of God and be changed, and think about things differently, and live differently and live more deeply, with a better map.

What we need to thrive

Dawson noted that another common experience during the pandemic was depression. He said that a concept known as self-determination theory could help to explain why.

Self-determination theory is a theory about human flourishing and conditions needed for people to thrive, he explained. The theory quite simply states that we have basic psychological needs, in the same way that we have basic physical needs.

These are: the need for a sense of autonomy -- to have some sense of control and agency in your life and environment; the need for a sense of relatedness -- to be connected with people who care about us, love us and who will talk to us and show interest in us; and a need for a sense of competence -- that is, to be doing the things were good at or, if were asked to do things were not good at, were getting the support and help from other people to get the scaffolding so that we can achieve.

If these needs are met, people thrive, reliably and predictably. The crisis has deprived people of their sense of autonomy. Its deprived people of a lot of their relationships or, in many cases, put things under severe strain. And its deprived people of doing things theyre good at.

Dawson cited a University College London study which found that both depression and anxiety levels have fallen as the lockdown has eased.

You probably would expect peoples reaction to fear to settle down. Part of its biologically driven because the adrenaline and cortisol which fires up the system just calms down after a while. So you would expect people to get used to the anxiety and for it to settle. But the absence of depression and the absence of anxiety doesnt equal flourishing, he said.

Dawson described his own experience during the crisis as one of attrition. He compared it to a four-and-a-half month tour of duty he undertook in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and a five-month stint in the Falkland Islands shortly after the war between Argentina and the U.K. in 1982.

Since he arrived at St. Beunos (pronounced St. Bye-nos), he has regularly climbed Snowdonia, the highest mountain in England and Wales.

He said: For the months of April and May, which were beautiful here, Ive been able to see those mountains but not go there. So theres that sense of attrition, of being cut off from things that refill the tanks.

Missing the sacraments

Dawson said that Catholics faced a specific challenge during the lockdown: the absence of the sacraments. He suggested that for many people this was a traumatic experience.

The thing that I think is so powerful about our sacramental system is that it makes our faith physical and flesh and blood, he said.

All of our sacraments are to do with flesh and blood, not just in terms of the Eucharist. Its another flesh-and-blood person who anoints you. Its a flesh-and-blood person who speaks the words of absolution. This is the way that our faith is made incarnate. For the faith to be made disincarnate like that I think for many will have been traumatic.

Yet, he said, this period of deprivation could be an opportunity for spiritual growth.

The thing about a crisis is that it forces us to rethink things. Any crisis has the potential to reveal deeper truths -- I mean that both spiritually and psychologically. So the challenge is to trust that God is in this with us and to hold on until whatever the graces are that God is going bring out of this are revealed. Its a long Good Friday and Holy Saturday, though, he explained.

The impact on children

Dawson said that the lockdown could have an especially detrimental impact on children. A report from the Childhood Trust last month concluded that the pandemic put children at risk of developing serious mental health problems, including post-traumatic stress, with acute challenges for those living in poverty.

Most of a childs world is taken up with school and family -- thats usually 80-90% of most childrens world, Dawson said.

Now, when school is taken out of the equation and when you lose access to all of your friends, thats extraordinarily difficult. I think we can expect this to have both emotional impact and cognitive impact. By that I mean an impact on both cognitive development and in terms of education, and social and emotional consequences. Six months is a long time for a child.

He said that the crisis had exposed the chasm between the comfortable and the uncomfortable, and that Catholics should be inspired by Catholic social teaching to challenge the status quo.

Hard consolation

Dawson suggested that the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola could also shed light on what people have experienced during the coronavirus crisis. In particular, he highlighted the saints teaching about consolation and desolation.

He said: Consolation is, classically, marked by increases in faith, hope and love. Typically, theres energy and joy and life that go with that. Desolation is the reverse: heart-sinking despair, closing in on ourselves, often focusing on ourselves, and decreases of faith, hope and love, feeling less trusting and confident.

Now, the thing about consolation is that it normally sounds like a nice feeling, and it often is. But it isnt always. Theres what Ignatius calls hard consolation, which is the consolation of being in the right place at the right time doing the right thing even though it might be really, really tough.

So someone could be at the bedside of a friend whos dying painfully of cancer, but theyre aware that Gods with them, and theyre aware that theyre in the right place at the right time doing the right thing.

He gave the example of Mary standing at the foot of the cross.

She didnt know what the future was, didnt know what God was up to, but she was with her Son, with God, trusting, faithful, and waiting for the future to reveal itself. Because as Christians we believe that that future will be good and hopeful. Thats the ground for our hope, he said.

For those who had mainly experienced desolation during the crisis, he said it was important not to blame oneself for it, but rather to learn from it.

The temptation in desolation is to give up all the other things, so to stop praying, stop your normal religious practices. But you keep faithful to those, trusting that it will pass.

He also recommended returning to previous sources of consolation, such as friends, family, and nature.

He said he had found consolation in the nature surrounding St. Beunos, where the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins lived and studied in 1874-7.

Im in an incredibly beautiful environment here at St. Beunos, and just simply going out and looking closely at some of the plants in the gardens: it grounds me. These are small instances of consolation which might not radically change my psychological or spiritual state, but it does remind me of the beauty and wonder of creation, he said.

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Coronavirus, mental health, and the spiritual life: A priest psychologist offers tips from St. Ignatius - Catholic News Agency

To know love, become we. Mevlana

Four years ago, as a journalist, I wrote a profile of the Black Lives Matter chapter in Louisville, Kentucky and the parallel movement of white advocates that had emerged to support it. I took on the assignment because I wanted to understand BLM as a new civil rights movement. But reporting the article took me into unexpected emotional and spiritual territory. I had not felt how terrifying it can be to live as a Black person in America. And I did not fully grasp the part I as a white person play in supporting that racist system.

At the time, it seemed like enough to write the story and see it published. But now, as I have been watching the police brutality protests unfold over the past few weeks around the world, but especially in Louisville, where many of the people I met during my reporting as well as other friends are involved, it feels important to share what I see as the spiritual opportunity of addressing the unconscious racism in oneself.

Race has to be one of the most difficult subjects to talk about, if not the top taboo for white people (at least for Americans). Part of what makes it so vexing is that it is a collective belief, one which underpins our social operating system, and yet it is experienced individually. If you havent experienced yourself as a systematically racialized other, you might imagine that racism is a personal problem rather than a collective one.

I have only felt hints of what it is like myself. Mostly this has taken the form of one question I have gotten over and over in my life: Where are you from? No I mean your ethnic background. This question is more commonly aimed at people of color and/or Muslims, and can be a subtle way of communicating I dont think you belong here. In my case, I think the question has mostly been motivated by idle curiosity it has never gotten me pulled aside for extra security screening or cost me a job interview but it has given me some sense of how much it can damage your sense of yourself as a whole person when others only perceive you as a set of physical features: your hair, your cheekbones, your skin.

I will also say that I have a small experience of what it means to pass, albeit through the structures of class rather than race. My grandparents, aunts and uncles were all working people: cleaning ladies, garbage men, gas station attendants, truck drivers. My parents both worked in factories but put all of their resources towards giving my sister and me an education.

College was the family dream as well as my own idea of making it. But when I finally went off to the liberal-arts college on the other side of the country that I had chosen so carefully, it was a shock to discover that I did not fit in. Of course my clothes and hair were all wrong, but it was more than that it was like I spoke a different language. I didnt get the references the other students made in conversation. They also made fun of my accent, sometimes to the point of saying they couldnt understand me.

I felt ashamed of who I was and where I had come from. I resolved to better myself by becoming like my middle-class peers in every surface way. I imitated their clothes, their hobbies, how they talked and what they talked about until they took me as one of their own: no more curious looks or semi-insulting questions. That first kind of passing allowed me to later make a career out of seeing how far I could pass in the various clubs of the middle-class professional world: corporate America, the art world, high tech.

Yet I still felt other on the inside. And I believe this feeling of being outside of the mainstream, of thinking and believing differently, in part because of the experience of being treated differently, helped guide me to the spiritual path. I was especially drawn to Sufism for its emphasis on inner qualities over outer forms, and for its teachings on love as a discipline rather than a sentimental indulgence.

All of this came together when I recently read Layla Saads blog post I need to talk to spiritual white women about white supremacy. I realized that despite the experiences which have helped me imagine how painful and maddening it must be to live as a person of color in our society, I have been perpetuating that system through my own white silence. I have let comments or situations pass without saying at the very least that the comment made me feel uncomfortable. I let the situations pass for the usual reason: going along to get along, out of the fear that I would upset another white person or that it would create some kind of scene I wouldnt know how to manage or get out of. And when it comes to those I am close to, the fear has been that I probably wouldnt change their mind but I could end up damaging our relationship.

But in Sufism we are told that a dervish must not fear. The way I understand that injunction is that we must set aside our egos fears for its own comfort and security, as these are the main causes of separation from the Divine Reality and an authentic relationship with other people (and what could be a more concise definition of racism)?

If I want to know true love and wholeness for myself then I need to do the work of reconciliation and wholeness, as the Quran reminds us in Surah Maryam*.

Two points in Saads piece in particular resonated for me with our Path. For white people who say they want to be allies to people of color, she writes, Saying Yes to doing this work is only the first step. Your Yes means:

YES to seeing my spirituality as a way to engage deeper into this work rather than as a way to bypass this work, and to recognizing that being devoted to Spirit means being devoted to social justice.

YES to doing this work every day, even when I get it wrong, even when its hard, even when it feels like Im not good enough at it because its not about me.

My dear sister Saimma Dyers blog post on sacred activism explains the connection between social justice and Sufism far better than I can. What I can say out of my own observation is that, unlike the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which was led by spiritual leaders such as Dr King and Malcolm X, it does not seem that todays leaders are holding a prophetic vision of a just society. Perhaps it is up to us as everyday spiritual activists to hold that vision ourselves.

Speaking out for, and living in service of a larger ideal, is another way of saying its not about me. So much of our work as dervishes is already about escaping the prison of me to come into the rose garden of friendship. Whiteness is just another layer of the false self to be shed. By embracing the work of undoing our own racial conditioning, there is a spiritual opportunity to embrace humanity not as a lofty ideal but in the day-to-day messiness of real relationships.

In a Hadith Qudsi, the Divine tells us, When I love my faithful servant, I am the hearing by which she or he hears, the eye by which she or he sees and the foot by which she or he walks. That is a promise which can also be read in the other direction, as an invitation to step into the Divine perspective. In other words: if Haqq were the lens through which we perceived the world, we would not experience ourselves as a lone being separate from others on the basis of race, gender, nationality, religion, class, or a myriad other identifications. We would experience ourselves instead as an individuated aspect of the Divine Reality: a ray of light refracted into a variety of hues, all emanating from the same Source. Our challenge now as spiritual activists is to speak out for the truth of that perspective and do the work of living it.

*VERILY, those who attain to faith and do righteous deeds will the Most Gracious endow with love; Quran 19:96, Muhammad Asad translation

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The Spiritual Opportunity of Working on Your Own Racism - Patheos

The original PlayStation is renowned for its diverse library of games, but no genre is as synonymous with the system as JRPGs. In its five-year lifespan, the console produced a staggering number of instant classics, including three beloved Final Fantasy games, Chrono Cross, Vagrant Story, and Suikoden II, among others. Yoshitaka Murayama, the original creator behind the latter, is hoping to recapture that golden era of JRPGs with his next venture, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes.

Earlier this year, Murayama and a handful of other industry veterans founded Rabbit & Bear Studios, an independent development studio based in Tokyo, Japan. The company's first project, Eiyuden Chronicle, is a classical turn-based RPG forged in the mold of Suikoden II.

"The first thing we decided when our members came together was, 'It's about time we made a really interesting game that we ourselves want to make,'" Murayama said in a press release. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Eiyuden Chronicle revisits the themes and aesthetic that defined his PlayStation-era work.

The visuals in particular evoke the feel of Murayama's PS One classic. The game features a striking 2.5D graphical style that's reminiscent of Octopath Traveler, Square Enix's own consciously retro RPG. This likeness isn't coincidental. "From a graphical perspective, Octopath Traveler has inspired us and given us hope that there is a mid-point between new and old that a wide audience can appreciate," Murayama tells GameSpot over email.

Working alongside Murayama on the project are other Suikoden veterans Junko Kawano (Suikoden, Suikoden IV) and Osamu Komuta (Suikoden Tactics, Suikoden Tierkreis), as well as Junichi Murakami (Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow). For Murayama and Kawano, Eiyuden Chronicle marks the first time in 25 years that the two have collaborated on a project, but that long gap has not been a hurdle. "I wish I could say we've all grown and changed in many ways but it feels like nothing has changed in the last 25 years!" Kawano says. "But it definitely feels like you are seeing long lost friends from your hometown that you have missed dearly. I'm sure it feels like some strange time-warp."

Like its spiritual predecessors, Eiyuden Chronicle's story is told against the backdrop of war. The game follows a young warrior named Nowa and his friend, Seign Kesling. Nowa hails from a small village in a remote corner of the League of Nations, while Seign is an imperial officer for the Galdean Empire, a militarily advanced nation that has discovered how to amplify the magical powers of an artifact called "rune-lens." With this power, the empire is marching into the other territories around the continent of Allraan in search of more artifacts that can be used to bolster its hold over the land.

As fate would have it, Nowa also happens upon a rune-lens while out on a mission, and the discovery will ultimately ignite a confrontation between the League of Nations and the Galdean Empire--and test his friendship with Seign. This is a theme that has long intrigued Murayama. "One of the main themes I like to focus on is 'What is a hero,' but also, how do friendships and relationships affect the course of history?," Murayama says. "A single choice to stand up for a friend or alliance can be the spark that starts a world-altering war. I find that terribly interesting."

Suikoden's signature hallmark is its expansive cast; every entry features more than 100 unique recruitable characters, each of whom plays a role in the overarching story, and it's clear from the subtitle that Eiyuden Chronicle will continue that tradition. Much like Suikoden, the game will have 100 heroes to recruit, and as these characters join your ranks, you'll gradually build up a fortress base. Naturally, coming up with backstories and unique personalities for such an extensive cast is a challenge.

"Of course it's a major hassle," Murayama says. "You not only have to create 100 characters and their backstories but additionally how they all relate and the role they will serve. It's an incredibly complicated web. And even from the beginning, as the subtitle states, this is a tale about heroes. So our hope is to work with the community to build out these very heroes very much as the community also organically grows."

For Kawano, who serves as Eiyuden Chronicle's lead artist and character designer, this expansive cast list presents a different sort of challenge. "It's not hard to create new characters," Kawano says. "In a title like this where you have to create a huge amount, it's more about endurance. Especially towards the end of development you are cramming so many things in last- minute. However, the hard part is after you are done and out of 'runway' you invariably feel like you missed the opportunity to add this character or that character. So that regret is the worst part."

Although Eiyuden Chronicle deliberately harkens back to Suikoden and other classic JRPGs in many ways, Murayama hopes the game will be viewed on its own merits. "I don't want to be defined by my past," he says. "This game represents an extension of some of the gameplay and systems that I have honed over my many years as a game developer, but it is a new title and needs to stand on its own.

"Eiyuden represents a major challenge for us. At the core of that challenge is for us to make a game that is intensely satisfying and just flat-out fun. While many people have doubts and issues with crowdfunding and Kickstarter, it still remains the best chance an old creator like myself has to own IP and to interact with a serious group of fans who are investing in the project from the ground up. Something that takes serious commitment. It may sound cheesy but it's easy to doubt and be negative. It takes a true hero to believe in something."

Rabbit & Bear is raising funds to develop Eiyuden Chronicle through Kickstarter. The crowdfunding campaign runs until August 28, although it has already proven to be an overwhelming success; donations blew past the studio's original $500,000 goal in only two hours and hit the $1 million stretch goal to bring the game to consoles in less than a day. The team is humbled by the positive response from fans, writing on Twitter: "I can't believe it was funded so quickly! Many people have no hope in Kickstarter so I was so afraid. Thank you so much my heroes!!!! I will make a great game for you!"

Eiyuden Chronicle is tentatively planned to launch in Fall 2022.

Read more:

Suikoden Creators On Making A Spiritual Successor To The Classic JRPG - GameSpot

Stevie Nicks shared a recent journal entry that basically encapsulates how many of us are feeling during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has taken more than 660,000 lives worldwide, with more than 150,000 dead in the U.S. to date, and cases continue to surge. As scientists and other health experts have been stressing to help stem the deadly tide, Nicks implores everyone to wear a mask and stay in and also addresses the emotional ups and downs that many music and concert lovers who are adhering to health guidelines can relate to in these isolated, insomnia-inducing times.

In her July 17th journal entry, which she shared Wednesday via Twitter, Nicks references Crosby, Stills, Nash and Youngs Our House and the Rolling Stones Wild Horses. She writes the entry when shes still awake at 6:50 a.m. and is listening to music, which makes her happy. Feeling slightly euphoric and inspired to be alive and still be able to feel young and safe here, she writes. However, the goodness she is experiencing is fleeting as she explains that her early-morning hope dissipates once she reads the news of the day.

If everyone could just wear a mask and stay in as much as possible you might be able to find this magical place I have found, in the early morning when everyone sleeps, she continues.

In order for us all to get back to our former lives we must all change into spiritual warriors. We must make it our mission to fight the virus; otherwise there is nothing left, she adds, noting that there is no way to rewind and emphasizes the necessity to take preventative measures immediately for a promising future. I want to go back on the road. I want to sing for you again. I want to put on those high black suede platform boots and dance for you again. I want you to forget the world and sing with me.

Please dont throw this world away, she implores. Please dont give up on humanity and let this virus win this war. It is up to us now.

Read more:

Stevie Nicks Is the Spiritual-Warrior Leader We Need: Wear a Mask and Stay In - Rolling Stone

Yajurveda (700-300 BC) has been dealt with in a treatise called Hindu World where it is described as the second Veda, compiled mainly from Rig-vedic hymns, but showing considerable deviation from the original Rig-vedic text. It also has prose passages of a later date. The Yajur-veda, like the Sama-veda samhita (collection), introduces a geographical milieu different from that of the Rig-veda. It is not so much the Indus and its tributaries any more, but the areas of the Satlej, Jamna and Ganges rivers.

The Yajur-veda represents a transition between the spontaneous, free-worshipping period of the Rig-veda and the later brahmanical period when ritualism had become firmly established. It is a priestly handbook, arranged in liturgical form for the performance of sacrifices (yaja), as its name implies. It embodies the sacrificial formulas in their entirety, prescribes rules for the construction of altars, for the new and full-moon sacrifices, the rajasuya, the asvamedha, and the soma sacrifices. Strict observance of the ceremonial in every detail was insisted upon, and deviations led to the formation of new schools, there being over one hundred Yajur-vedic schools at the time of Patanjali (200 BC). Much of the sakha literature grew up out of variants of the Yajur-vedic texts.

In the Yajur-veda the sacrifice becomes so important that even the gods are compelled to do the will of the brahimns. Religion becomes a mechanical ritual in which crowds of priests conduct vast and complicated ceremonies whose effects are believed to be felt in the farthermost heavens. Its under-lying principles were so ridden with superstition and belief in the power of the priests to do and undo the cosmic order itself that critics have likened their formulas to the ravings of mental delirium. The priest especially associated with the Yajur-vedic ceremonial was the adhvaryu.

The Yajur-veda now consists of two samhitas, which once existed in one hundred and one recensions. Both the samhitas contain almost the same subject matter but differently arranged. The Taittiriya Samhita, commonly called the Black Yajur-veda for its obscurity of meaning, was known in the third century BC, and is the older of the two. It has been described as an undigested jumble of different pieces, and as having a motley character. In this samhita the distinction between the Mantra and the Brahmana portions is not as clear as in the other Vedas.

The Vajasaneyi Samhita, or the White Yajur-veda, was communicated to the sage Yajasaneti Samhita by the Sun God in his equine form. It has a much more methodical arrangement and brings order and light, as opposed to the confusion and darkness of the Black Yajur-veda. In the book titled Sacred Scriptures of India it says that Yajurveda inspires humans to walk on the path of Karma and that is why it is also referred to as Karma-Veda. The essence of the Yajurveda lies in those mantras (incantations) that inspire people to initiate action. It further says that there are many branches of Yajurveda but two branches, namely, Krishna and Shukla Yajurveda have gained relatively more prominence, i.e., Krishna Yajurveda and Shukla Yajurveda. Besides it, it says that Yajurveda was later on named as Taitareya Samhita.

Sama-veda (c. 700-300 BC) (saman, melody), the third Veda. Its samhita or principal part is wholly metrical, consisting of 1549 verses, of which only 75 are not traceable to the Rig-veda. The stanzas are arranged in two books or collections of verses. The Sama-veda embodies the knowledge of melodies and chants. The samhita of this Veda served as a textbook for the priests who officiated at the Soma sacrifices. It indicates the tunes to which the sacred hymns are to be sung, by showing the prolongation, the repetition and interpolation of syllables required in the singing. The Sama-veda also contains a detailed account of the soma rites. The hierophants associated with the Sama-veda are known as the udgatri.

Many of the invocations in the Sama-veda are addressed to Soma, some to Agni and some to Indra. The mantra part of the Sama-veda is poor in literary quality and historical interest, but the Brahmanas belonging to it are important. Of the once numerous samhitas of the Samaveda (the Puranas speak of a thousand) only one has reached us, in three recensions, namely: the Kauthama, current in Gujarat, the Ranayaniya which survives in Maharashtra, and the Jaiminiya in the Karnatic.

In the Sacred Scriptures of India it is described that the compilation of Richas (Shlokas) is known as Sama. Sama is dependent on the Richas. The beauty of speech lied in the Richas. The beauty of Richas lie in the sama and the beauty of the same lies in the style of pronunciation and singing. The knowledge of sama, therefore, is Samaveda. This refers to Geeta-10/22 where Shri Krishna has stated the importance of Samaveda in the following manner: Vedamana Samavedo Asmi meaning I am samaveda myself amongst the Vedas.

There are two parts of the Samaveda (1) Purvarchik (2) Uttararchik. In between both of them is Mahanamnayarchik which comprises of 10 incantations. There are four parts of Purvarchika Aagneya, Aendra, Paavmaan and Aasanya.

Atharvaveda is considered in Hindu World as the fourth Veda, of whose origin there has been much contentious speculation. It is also referred to as the Brahma-veda because it served as the manual of the chief sacrificial priests, the brahmins. A great deal is said in the Atharva-veda hymns about the brahmins and the honours due to them. One-sixth of the work is not metrical, and about one-six of the hymns are also found among the hymns of the Rig-veda, mostly in the first, eight and tenth books. The rest of the subject matter is peculiar to the Atharva-veda, This Veda was once current in nine different redactions, of which only two, the Pippalada and Sunaka recensions are extant, the former in a single unpublished Tubingen manuscript discovered by Roth.

The Atharva-veda embodies the magical formulary of ancient India, and much of it is devoted to spells, incantations, chants and charms. In general the charms and spells are divided into two classes; they are either bheshajani, which are of medicinal, healing and peaceful nature, dealing with cures and herbs for treating fever, leprosy, jaundice, dropsy and other diseases; this class includes prayers for successful childbirth, love spells, charms for fecundity, for the recovery of virility, hymns for the birth of sons, and a quaint chant to put the household to sleep while the lover steals into the girls home at night. Or else they belong to the abhichara class, which are of a bewitching and malevolent nature; these include spells for producing diseases and bringing ill-luck to enemies. Among them is a spell that a woman may use against her rival to make her remain a spinster; another spell is meant to destroy a mans virility, and so forth. There are hymns to serpents and demons, and incantations replete with witchcraft, sorcery and black magic.

One of the reputed authors of the Atharva-veda was the Rishi Atharvan, of Maga of Persian ancestry. But certain parts, especially the verses dealing with the rites of sorcerers and wizards were attributed to the Rishi Angiras, of pre-Aryan, probably Dravidian stock. The hymns were said to have been collected by Sumantu, a Rishi of great antiquity who bequeathed the material to Rishi Vyasa for arranging.

The Atharva-veda is the most interesting of the sruti, for it has preserved to a great extent a solid core of pre-Aryan and non-Aryan tradition. It is unique among the texts of Vedic period and an important source of information regarding popular religious belief, not so far modified by priestly religion. It reveals in fact a vast substratum of indigenous doctrine that is not only non-Vedic but at times contra-Vedic.

Scholars trace Mesopotamian influences in the Atharva-veda, among them Dr. Bhandarkar, who discerns in it the magical lore of the Asuras. Others see evidence of Vratya and Maga Doctrines. The Vishnu Purana and the Bhavishya Purana speak of the Angiras as one of the four Vedas of the Magas. The foreign words occurring in the Atharva-veda, which Tilak traced to Chaldea, may have been only strange to Sanskrit, and may well have formed part of the regular vocabulary of the Maga priests.

For long the Atharva-veda was not included among the other three Vedas. Although the Vedas are now said to be four in number this was not the originally recognized number of the compilations. The oldest records refer to only three Vedas, namely, the Rig, Sama and Yajur. Manu speaks of these as the trayi (triad) milked out from the fire, air, and sun, and the Atharva-veda was not even acknowledged in his time. There is no reference to it in the Chhandogya Upanishad; the Brahmana texts mention only three Vedas; the Jatakas know of only three.

This would seem to indicate not that the Atharvaveda was non-existent at the time the other Vedas were composed, but that it did not for several centuries form part of the sacred scriptures of the Aryans. Of its canonical status today it has been said that influential scholars of South India still deny the genuineness of the Atharva-veda. While discussing this Veda in the treatise titled the Sacred Scriptures of India, this Veda is described as devoid of movement or concentration. The word Tharva means fickleness or movement and accordingly the word Atharva means that which is unwavering, concentrated or unchanging. That is why it is said: Tharva Gati Karma Na Tharva Eti Atharva.

The philosophy of Yoga speaks that: Yogash Chitta Vritti Nirodhah, which means controlling the different impulses of the mind and senses in Yoga. The Gita re-iterates that when the mind is free from impulses and flaws, the mind becomes stable and the person becomes neutral when the impulses of the mind and the other senses are in control, then only the mind is freed from instability and perturbances. The word Atharva therefore refers to neutrality of personality. The Atharvaveda speaks more about Yoga, the human physiology, different ailments, social structure, spirituality, appreciation of natural beauty, national religion, etc. This knowledge is practical and is worth bringing in use. This Veda is a fusion of prose and poetry together. Ayurveda is considered to be the Upaveda (Sub-Veda) of this Veda. This write up highlights the spiritual aspects of Vedas only. The other little known aspects shall be discussed later.

Next issue: Puranas, the eternal trouble shooters

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Understanding Hinduism: 4 Vedas the fountain heads of spirituality - Tehelka

As galleries and art institutions around the world begin to reopen, we are spotlighting individual showsonline and IRLthat are worth your attention.

What the gallery says: Jessica Silverman presents a two-part summer series, Conversational Spirits, exploring animismthe belief that animals, plants, places, and objects can be enlivened by spirits or imminent powers.

Associated with the worship of nature and the rise of subordinate souls, animism is a theme broadly relevant to a time in which equal rights, ecology, and biochemistry are serious concerns. Animism has long been germane to art insofar as the most compelling objects are imbued with such intention, intensity, and energy that they feel alive.

Why its worth a look:Are humans the only creatures gifted with what can be called a spirit? Belief in the spiritual realm has had a resurgence lately in art (and elsewhere), with interest in the thought gaining momentum beyond niche circles.

From Judy Chicagos tree branches, which pulsate with life, to Luke Butlers paintings of bald eagles clutching paint brushes, and on throughTammy Rae Carlands depictions of books, which seem to speak almost audibly,the plants, animals, and objects in these artworks are practically thinking, breathing beingsand by seemingly questioning their surroundings, they inspire viewers to do the same.

What it looks like:

Installation view of Conversational Spirits I. Courtesy of Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

Rose B. Simpson, Conjure (2020) [detail]. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

Dashiell Manley, Those Seeing Flowers We Cannot See (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

Judy Chicago, Trees Twisting with Joy (1996). Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman Gallery.

Hayal Pozanti, Their Own Internal Time 102 (Rim Kona Kona) (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman San Francisco.

Installation view of Tammy Rae Carlands work in Conversational Spirits. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman San Francisco.

Tammy Rae Carland, Peeling Performativity, (2019). Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman San Francisco.

Tammy Rae Carland, Lean on me, (2019). Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman San Francisco.

Hernan Bas, Feeding time at the Little Shop of Horrors, (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman San Francisco.

Installation view of Conversational Spirits II at Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

Hernan Bas, Feeding time at the Little Shop of Horrors, [detail] (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

Margo Wolowiec, Seed Surge (2020) [detail]. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

Margo Wolowiec, Seed Surge (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

Claudia Wieser, Untitled (2019) left and right. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

Julian Hoeber, When the Meat Stops Thinking the Flies Arrive, For Better or Worse, (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

Installation view of Conversational Spirits II. Courtesy of Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

Martha Friedman, Nerve Language 1, (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

Martha Friedman, Nerve Language 3, (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

David Huffman, Ideology, (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

Installation view of Conversational Spirits II. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

Daisy Youngblood, Leaping I (2010). Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

Installation view of Conversational Spirits I. Courtesy of Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

Andrea Bowers, If We Do Not Do the Impossible We Shall Be Faced With the Unthinkable (2020) [detail]. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

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A Transporting New Exhibition Explores the Possibility That All Things Are Imbued With Spiritual LifeSee Artworks Here - artnet News

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Each term provides authorities different powers to manage crises.

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3 things to watch this weekend: Reese Witherspoon's spiritual sequel to Big Little Lies - News Lagoon

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Published July 26th, 2020 at 6:00 AM

Dr. Nancy Tilson-Mallett is a rare combination shes both a physician and an artist. Its hard to imagine a dual career that requires more left brain/right brain balance than that.

As a doctor, however, shes aware that many people get trained as physicians without paying enough attention to the spiritual side of life. Thus, they are prone to think of patients simply as an interesting pile of body organs, not as beings with minds and spirits, too.

So for the last several years shes been teaching a class at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine called Medicine and Art.

And shes thrilled to discover that most of her students even the ones who didnt especially want to take the class but needed the credit hours have found it stretching them in unexpected ways that will almost certainly make their practice of medicine more humane and more attuned to all three aspects of humanity: body, mind and spirit.

I usually have one person per class who just didnt get it, she says. But mostly I get rave reviews. She says that not to boast but, rather, simply to report a result that she didnt really expect when she started the class in 2018.

In science classes, she says, students are taught that theres got to be a right answer. In art class, I teach them that sometimes there are right answers but there are also shades of gray and ambiguity.

This interest in holistic medicine started early for Tilson-Mallett, a graduate of Washburn University and the University of Kansas School of Medicine. She decided to be a doctor at age 14 when she was trying to navigate a home with an alcoholic father and a codependent mother, she says.

Her mother eventually became attached to Unity, the spiritualist tradition founded in Kansas City in the 1880s. Although Tilson-Mallett grew up in a Disciples of Christ church and later attended a Presbyterian church, her mothers engagement with Unity introduced the future physician to the idea that your thoughts affect your health, she says. So she began to combine her interest in medicine with her passion for art, earning a masters degree that focused on textile art.

In recent years that focus has led her to produce silk screen art depicting various cells in the body. (Disclosure: I own a silk tie made of her art that subtly includes the portrayal of a series of sperm cells, though no one who has seen me wear the tie in public has ever recognized the cells as that, even when I wear it on Fathers Day.)

In addition to having her students draw, paint and sculpt, Tilson-Mallett, who recently retired from full-time work as a hospitalist, asks them to keep a journal.

They hate it the first week, she says. But by the last week most of my evaluations say things like, Wow. I really got into my head. And It was really good to write things down. And Im so different now than at the beginning.

One of the subjects she asked the last class to write about was how the coronavirus pandemic has affected them. On an evaluation sheet afterward, one student noted this: My journal absolutely made me more self-aware and observant. I learned a lot about myself.

Art, she says, teaches observation skills. It teaches you how to look. But for the class its look, see, observe and heal. Theres so much more than just looking.

And shes convinced this will make these students better physicians because theyll be more likely to try to take care of the whole person, not just someones pneumonia or broken arm.

The readings in Tilson-Malletts classes can be unusual. For instance, she has had students read a book about clinical oddities, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, by Oliver Sacks. Then she asked them to illustrate one of the stories Sacks tells. The students produced a series of colorful human heads depicting what they imagined was going on in the brains of their characters they were depicting.

Tilson-Mallets course is uncommon, though other medical schools also have begun to offer cross-disciplinary classes to get physicians to tune into the spirituality of their patients.

The Kansas City University College of Osteopathic Medicine, for instance, partners with the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., on a course called Art, Observation and Medicine, which the school describes as an interactive course that utilizes visual arts in a museum setting to enhance a students critical thinking, communications and observation skills.

And one of the medical schools most noted as a leader in this medicine-art effort is Penn State University. Beyond that, Columbia University has been using writing and other literary approaches to train physicians in an approach called narrative medicine.

Tilson-Mallett now is working to create a new class in what she calls complementary medicine, which she says means, medical approaches that are outside of allopathic, Western medicine. Since the 1970s a lot of these approaches have become mainstream.

Those methods include such spiritual and physical practices as meditation, yoga, tai chi, chiropractic, massage and aromatherapy.

As Tilson-Mallett explains, I give students exercises for empathy and trying to see the patient, walking in their shoes.

And wouldnt it be nice to have a physician who sees us as more than a pile of tissue that needs fixing?

Bill Tammeus, a Presbyterian elder and former award-winning Faith columnist forThe Kansas City Star, writes the Faith Matters blog forThe Starswebsite and columns forThe Presbyterian Outlook and formerly for The National Catholic Reporter. His latest book isThe Value of Doubt: Why Unanswered Questions, Not Unquestioned Answers, Build Faith. Email him atwtammeus@gmail.com.

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Bringing An Artist's Spirituality to the Practice of Medicine - Flatland

My mother used to have a phrase when she was alive. Usually referring to me and my attitude when I thought I had done something particularly noteworthy. She used it when describing somebody who started acting like they were better than someone else or, basically felt their No. 2 didnt stink. She would say that person was simply, smelling him or herself. I came to see it as fishing for a compliment. The bible says unless your deeds are done to glorify God rather than yourself, you smellin yoself. Im here to tell you its at these times that one ought to be very careful because spiritually, youre entering deep water.

Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward in heaven. Matthew 6:1.

It appears that intent and motivation are the true indicators of a persons real character and ultimately how he or she is viewed by God. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons gets you nothing, zilch, nada. I mean, supposedly, if you are trying to impress friends and family, or trying to receive honors from your fellow man for doing good deeds, youre smelling yourself and sorely in need of some Right Guard. Doing what you know is right, from forgiving your enemies, turning the other cheek, helping the less fortunate, speaking truth to power, these are the things that are supposed to be done so that others might see the deed(s) as glorifying the Almighty; not, so that people will be impressed with you. Even in prayer, the bible says, But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. your Father will reward you. Matthew 6:6.

Havent we all been unimpressed with someone who appears to sincerely help us or help another person out of what appears to be the goodness of their heart, only to find them with their hands out to get theirs, or their backs turned so the world can pat them on it? God tells us in His own ways that if you do that, talk to the Hand because the ears aint listening. You dont give to receive and you dont love to be loved. Thats blackmail. Thats extortion. Its impure and spiritually unacceptable. Give because you want to and love because its who you are. Anything else is a fraud and an affront to Jesus who gave His all and loved unconditionally, so that we all might live.

In the same way let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise the father in heaven. Matthew 5:16.

Granted, walking around with that level of purity in ones heart might be a bit much for most of us, present company included. However, its pretty easy to know, acknowledge and understand that the real reason we reach out to someone else is to be seen as a good person by others. We all want to be highly thought of by our peers, our parents and those closest to us.

But in reality, only God counts when it comes to appreciating who we really are. Anything else is show. The rest is ego. Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 186:18.

All of this points to being true to ones self, then talking the talk and walking the walk. The echo of mother wit resonates in my mind as I try to remember exactly what mom was trying to teach me about myself. Before I get too full of me, the real test just might be a good whiff of the fragrance underneath my arm. Nobody can pour anything into a full vessel.

How you smellin today? May God bless and keep you always.

Continued here:

Spiritually Speaking: Beware those seeking a pat on the back! Disaster Ahead - Dallasweekly

NEW YORK I cant breathe! the crowd chanted, invoking the dying words spoken by George Floyd as a white police officer pressed a knee into his neck.

Kianna Ruff yelled it over and over along with hundreds of fellow protesters as they marched for hours through New York City, a kind of collective mantra that touched someplace deep inside those present.

I just started choking and I broke down, the 28-year-old activist and minister said. And I do feel like that that was also a spiritual experience that Ive never experienced before.

The demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism that have raged in the wake of Floyds killing are often led by young people who find a sense of purpose, ritual and community on the streets. Many involved say the protests deepen spiritual connections and embody familiar elements of traditional faith.

The demonstrators kneel. They observe mournful moments of silence. They break into call-and-response: What do we want? and Justice! From Los Angeles to New York, Milwaukee to Minneapolis, they stand shoulder-to-shoulder and find common cause in their shared fervor.

I can say this is liturgy in the street, said the Rev. Jacqueline Lewis, pastor of the Middle Collegiate Church in New Yorks East Village. This is church in the street, it is song in the street, it is lament in the street. The tears are in the street.

When the kids say, Black Lives Matter! Lewis continued, thats a prayer.

Americans are becoming less religious in the formal, traditional sense, and the trend is more marked among young adults, according to Pew Research Center surveys from recent years. Young people, who make up a core part of the protesters, are less likely to pray daily, attend religious services or believe in God.

Still, surveys show younger Americans are just as spiritual as their older counterparts, and many have found other expressions of faith outside formal religion.

In its How We Gather study, Harvard Divinity School researchers documented wide-ranging spiritual communities for the young ranging from Afro Flow Yoga and dinner churches to public meditation groups.

Fears about the future have also led many to activism. Tens of thousands walked out of schools in 2018 to demand action on gun violence in one of the biggest student protests since the Vietnam era. Inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, hundreds of thousands marched worldwide in 2019 demanding urgent action on climate change.

This year that has manifested in the struggle against police brutality and racism.

All of these issues intersect because they all disproportionately impact Black people, said 19-year-old Aalayah Eastmond, who survived the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, became a gun-control activist and is now organizing protests against racial injustice with the group Concerned Citizens of D.C.

Her group begins demonstrations with a collective prayer thats inclusive of nonbelievers, she said the point is closeness and togetherness.

We stand in a circle and one person just prays for us to one, be safe in the middle of these protests, because they can get very violent. ... And for folks to really feel empowered and moved while theyre protesting, Eastmond said.

Nationwide, the demonstrations have tended to be diverse in terms of markers like generation, ethnicity and gender, but Ruff, a graduate of the divinity school at Union Theological Seminary in New York, said community thrives despite such differences.

Its about being in those groups and feeling that energy, you know, that God wants you there, Ruff said.

And theres so many people, she added. Whether they believe what you believe or not, thats not whats important. Whats important is the common goal.

During a recent Buddhists For Black Lives Matter march in Los Angeles, Tahil Sharma walked with others in a slow, wordless procession whose silence had a similarly powerful effect as the chanting of other demonstrations.

That march was so different. ... The emotional swelling that we felt of every second passing as we were breathing and praying was a reminder of the seconds of air that George Floyd was gasping for, said Sharma, a 28-year-old interfaith activist born to a Hindu father and a Sikh mother.

Many demonstrations have seen protesters honoring the dead by reciting their names in what resembles a litany.

Another common element is the creation of spaces explicitly or implicitly spiritual in nature and symbolism: In Minneapolis, protesters set up a floral altar memorial at the site where Floyd died, while in Houston, a newly painted mural depicts him with an angelic halo and wings.

People bring in pictures, flowers, theyre burning candles, incense, making music and really kind of creating a physical space where theyre holding the spirit of a loved one, said Casper ter Kuile, author of The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities Into Soulful Practices.

Theres a really interesting kind of lived religion, as sociologists would call it, on the streets within these protests, ter Kuile said.

In Milwaukee, a Muslim artists collective recently spent hours painting a mural depicting a family on a sofa under the words: Our Kids Will Not Be Next, as passing drivers honked horns in solidarity.

Art is a perfect middle ground for people to unite, said Amal Azzam, the 27-year-old co-founder of Fanana Banana, which organized the event. Milwaukee is a very segregated city. ... These are the things that help connect the communities.

Thats a sentiment shared by Sharma, in Los Angeles, who became involved in interfaith literacy and social justice following the 2012 deadly shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.

When I see that entire world marching with me to fight for the rights of others, I feel I am in prayer, he said. When we shut down systems of oppression together, acknowledging our differences for a common cause, thats when I know my prayers are being answered.

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Faith in protest as young people find fervor on the street - La Grande Observer

Some of the key creators behind the beloved Suikoden franchise are attempting to crowdfund a spiritual successor. Today, a new team called Rabbit & Bear Studios announced an upcoming Kickstarter campaign to fund Eiyuden Chronicle, a roleplaying game designed to evoke PlayStation-era nostalgia. The campaign will debut on July 27th, and the team is led by Yoshitaka Murayama, director and writer on the first two Suikoden titles. This is a new title for me, Murayama tells The Verge. Or rather is a combination of all my experiences as a creator and trying to expand on that base.

Aside from Murayama, Rabbit & Bear features an impressive list of talent. That includes: Junko Kawano, the lead artist on Suikoden 1 and 4; Junichi Murakami, art director on Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow; Suikoden Tactics director Osamu Komuta; and composers Motoi Sakuraba and Michiko Naruke.

Over the past years the core creators have met up at different events, and of course you talk about the glory days as well as regrets, Murayama says. One common thing that always came up was Isnt it about time we make a game for ourselves? Something we really want to make? Something we can make for the fans? And that dream provided the spark for this current project.

For fans of the Suikoden franchise which debuted in 1995 but has been dormant for many years the new game will sound very familiar. Eiyuden Chronicle is described as an ode to the classic JRPG genre from the PlayStation era that will feature classic JRPG exploration and battles in high-resolution 2.5D graphics with a story of war and friendship and a diverse cast of 100 unique heroes. If the crowdfunding campaign is successful, Eiyuden Chronicle is expected to launch in the fall of 2022 on PC, with other platforms possible depending on stretch goals.

Heres the basic premise, according to the studio:

Our story begins in one corner of Allraan, a tapestry of nations with diverse cultures and values. By dint of sword, and by way of magical objects known as rune-lenses, the lands history has been shaped by the alliances and aggressions of the humans, beastmen, elves, and desert people who live there. The Galdean Empire has edged out other nations and discovered a technology that amplifies the rune-lenses magic. Now, the Empire is scouring the continent for an artifact that will expand their power even further. It is on one such expedition that Seign Kesling, a young and gifted imperial officer, and Nowa, a boy from a remote village, meet each other and become friends. However, a twist of fate will soon drag them into the fires of war, and force them both to reexamine everything they believe to be right and true.

Of course, even with established creators at the helm, crowdfunded video game projects can go awry. Back in 2017, the creator of PaRappa the Rapper failed to crowdfund a spiritual successor due in part to the extremely early state of the game. Other projects have run into issues around funding and delays. Even with these concerns, Murayama believes a platform like Kickstarter is the best option for this type of game.

While people have their valid complaints about crowdfunding, it still provides one of the only ways to connect to your core fans, he says. Anyone who is passionate enough to invest in a project 2-3 years in advance and have that hope and belief in something is the type of fan that you want to collaborate with. They in turn motive you and can help us get to our dream of making that game we really want to make. Its hard to say whether people will choose to believe or to just doubt in this day and age, but every person who chooses to have faith in this project, I see as a hero. They are certainly the hero of my personal story.

That said, it doesnt sound like the studio has a backup plan in case crowdfunding falls through. When asked what would happen if the Kickstarter campaign failed, Murayama said Hopefully some rich benefactor will take me in and let me live in their house.

The Kickstarter campaign will kick off on July 27th and run through August 28th.

See more here:

Suikodens creators are crowdfunding a spiritual successor - The Verge

Khawla Ali (Dubai)

The consequences of the Corona pandemic affected the atmosphere and rituals of the feast, and made us express our joy with its minimalistic solutions, committed to wearing the new, and willing to draw the features of this day, which looks different from the image we used to. We have come to realize the value of compassion and the importance of visiting, at a time when we are responsible towards ourselves and our community for adhering to preventive measures, to the extent that guarantees us and others safety. It remains for the feast, the glory and spirituality that we feel with the enlargements that the minarets shout in the morning, and our tongues rage behind it, cheering and arrogant, for it is the holiday that refuses to give up his spirituality in all circumstances.

In this context, Sheikha Al-Hajri (housewife) explains: We did not accustom the holiday to be from a distance, but we insist that we live in an atmosphere by adhering to showing rituals, and communicating even if it is electronic, so that we can bring joy to our children and our families, draw the joy of the feast, and create a beautiful atmosphere At home, away from the daily routine.

Our authentic customsAs Al-Yazia Al-Hosani (educational) says: The borders that we are forced to sometimes compel us to look around, instead of far away. And with the pandemic, we realized the importance of estimating things that we considered simple. Such as communication and its beautiful effect on souls, such as handshaking, kissing the heads of the elderly, family sharing dishes, and other behaviors that bring joy and joy and express the concept of the feast. On the other hand, we realized the huge amount of extravagance that we used to follow during the holidays, took simplicity, went back to our original customs, and wore the traditional dress (mkhawir), and we spent time with the most important people in our lives, whether through visual contact, or limited visits Among the first-class family, what emptied our minds of preoccupation with luxuries, and life became simpler than we imagined, and we became more concerned with moral matters, what was reflected on our souls, which became more light, and who knows? Maybe we will spend the holidays after the pandemic in new ways.

Self-discoveryJamila Al-Watani (lawyer) says: Eid, in any case, I returned, Eid What happened to a mother with an order in which you have renewal This house for the Mutanabbi in the Abbasid era, and with different times, this house stops us with the coming of Eid in light of the existential, psychological and physical spacing Imposed by the Corona pandemic, by its ability to set joys aside, including sticks, and some religious rituals, and forced us to meet by wearing gloves and avoiding handshaking, without deep embrace and spiritual smiles that appear behind the gags. And she explains: The passage of the two feasts in this case, perpetuates isolation, and steals the joy of attending the feast, but the conscious and productive man added a third feast to his life, which is the feast of challenge, when he comes out of forced isolation with important results, the first of which is creating an optimistic life model, and the second is transforming the laziness of isolation into a workshop Work, and expand the size of human and moral relations, and the third is self-discovery and self-confidence .

Positive thinkingHoda Al-Taher (housewife) confirms: The feast of 2020 will keep their memory alive. How can we forget holidays that coincided with the epidemic of the heart of the world upside down overnight, because the feeling and joy of the feast is not consistent with the word epidemic? The solution of Eid Al-Adha and the world is still Im walking the atmosphere of Covid 19, but we thank God, we lived the previous Eid Al-Fitr in the same circumstances, but we learned a lot from him, yes the Tarawih prayer did not take place in the mosques, but I will not forget my children rotating their Imam daily at home, and its conclusion with Eid prayer at home for the first time in My life, yes, it is an epidemic, we ask God to remove it from us, but it taught us to define the priorities of life: family, health and education. For her part, Maryam Fakhro (plastic artist) says: things differ from one person to another in how to deal with the events around him, the global epidemic imposed isolation on us, so that we remain safe, but in return, he charted for us a more positive way in our life, we looked at Aspects we were ignorant of, or we were not aware of its value, such as getting to know the neighbors, because the fast pace of life put us in a whirlpool, but the time of Corona was a real pause with the soul, during which we practiced a lot of sports activities, and interaction increased with the family, and we became delighted with the beauty of nature, And we realized the value of things around us. Live the moment and enjoy the positive energy in your bodies, minds and hearts, and fill life with love and generosity, she adds.

Half of the cup is fullIsraa al-Samarrai (university professor) says: These events that happen to us, make us recall the hadith of the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him: Whoever of you becomes safe in his swarm, recovering in his body, has the strength of his day, as if the world has attained it with its fountains. Praise be to God for That is, if we program our thoughts in this way, we will be happy with what God has given us, and look at the full half of the cup, then we will feel the pleasure of what we are in, and forget what else is, so our awareness is what makes us happy, or unhappy. It is true that a feast has passed and a holiday is feast, and the world is still suffering due to the spread of the Coronavirus, but we are still alive and enjoying our health, and if we were not with pilgrims on a regular basis, we can be proud and satisfied while we are in our homes, and we feel the pleasure of that, To draw closer to God through various obedience, which in turn brings satisfaction, tranquility and calm to ourselves, and this is the height of happiness. She added: To adapt to our current circumstance, by taking the precautionary precautions and the obligation to protect ourselves and our families from the threat of the virus, explaining: This epidemic will go, and we will return to our normal life, which we did not feel its pleasure previously.

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The spirituality of the vacations is agency regardless of Corona - Pledge Times

An unidentified character from Halo Infinite. (Microsoft Xbox / 343 Industries Image)

Microsofts 343 Industries revealed more information Friday about its next game in the Halo franchise, the forthcoming Halo Infinite. In a series of closed Q&A sessions with journalists, held via Discord, 343s Chris Lee and Paul Crocker provided additional context and commentary for the campaign footage from Infinite that made its debut on Thursday mornings Xbox Games Showcase.

They described Infinite as not simply a sequel, but as a spiritual reboot to the series, and a platform that 343 can use to keep building on the Halo universe.

Microsoft is banking on Halo Infinite as a killer app for the new Xbox Series X, debuting later this year. Halo has been a tentpole franchise for the Xbox line of consoles for almost 20 years, dating back to the original game in 2001.

As part of the reboot, Infinites story campaign takes players back to basics. The high stakes and galactic scale of the last two games are, at least for now, gone. Youre once again playing as Master Chief, fighting your way across one of the Halo rings that named the franchise, up against a familiar array of Covenant aliens.

Specifically, youre fighting the Banished, a power-hungry splinter faction within the Covenant that was previously introduced in 2017s Halo Wars 2. The larger Covenant War is still over, but the Banished are still a going concern, and at the start of Infinite, have just captured a human research facility on a Halo construct. The Master Chief ends up stuck in the middle of Banished territory, under circumstances that have yet to be revealed, and is forced to shoot his way back out.

Infinite is still 100% a sequel to Halo 5, according to Crocker, but is also an attempt to distill much of the seriess traditional appeal into a single experience. The critical pillar of their design, as per Lee, is to draw on the entirety of the Halo franchise to date, to take all the things that worked and put them into Infinite at the point at which they were at their best.

When I first stepped out onto the ring in Halo: Combat Evolved all those years ago, Lee writes for Halo Waypoint, I was transported and immersed in a mysterious, awe-inspiring alien world extending into the sky With Halo Infinite, were now able to give players more freedom than ever before to explore a sprawling Halo ring.

Its a strange choice, but it explains the retro feel of the footage from the Showcase. The general idea behind Infinites design seems to be starting over, to try to recapture some of the original games impact and its difficult to overstate just how impactful the original Halo was, back in 2001 and use that as a basis for continuing to build out the Halo universe. They arent pushing the envelope here; theyre reinventing the wheel.

Lee and Crocker said that the map for Infinites campaign mode is several times bigger than that of Halo 4 and 5 put together, with more ways to explore it and rewards for doing so. Lee calls Infinite the most open, expansive campaign weve created, with the ability to reach and explore any area that you can see as you make your way across the ring.

While youll still have access to many of the traditional travel methods in Halo games, such as the seriess traditional human and alien vehicles, the big new addition introduced in the Showcase footage is the grapple shot. This is a retractable line built into the Chiefs gauntlet that lets you scale cliffs, rappel towards distant ledges, and pull both enemies and items over to yourself. The grapple shot lets you find new ways around the battlefield, to find your way to distant locations or spring sudden ambushes on enemy positions.

Youll also have access to a personal cover item that 343 calls a Drop Wall, a portable energy shield that you can use to deflect gunfire or even grenades. Both the grapple shot and the Drop Wall will be accessible in the games multiplayer modes, but as item pickups rather than standard character equipment.

Infinite runs on a new engine called Slipspace, named after the warp drives that power the Halo universes spaceships, which offers a previously-impossible degree of visual fidelity. This is a big reason why so much of the Showcase footage of Infinite was focused on the games new antagonist, the Banished warlord Escharum. His face by itself represents more fine detail in its character model than past Halo games were capable of, which opens up a lot of options for a virtual actor.

That in itself is significant. In a franchise thats traditionally known for high spectacle and pitched firefights, the big trailer moment for Infinite so far is a scene where an alien trash-talks you for a solid 90 seconds. Its a well-rendered, expressive alien, in a scene that wouldnt have been as colorful or detailed on the Xbox One, but its a strange choice for a trailer that was expected to showcase the technical might of the new Xboxs flagship title.

In fact, Infinite so far is a rough collection of strange choices. Microsoft has spent the better part of the last year hyping up the Xbox Series X as the most powerful video game console ever released, but its hotly-anticipated flagship title is a deliberate throwback to a 19-year-old game that, in the most extensively curated clip they could put together, still looks borderline retro.

However, the strategy behind Infinite also seems to mirror that of Microsoft with the Games Showcase itself. Both the Series X and Halo Infinite are foundation stones, seemingly built as something that Microsoft and 343 can build upon rather than as traditional products. The general thrust of the games shown at Thursdays Showcase was primarily towards their variety and accessibility, while Infinite is being specifically built as an easy jumping-on point that 343 can proceed to iterate upon.

Halo Infinite is still scheduled to release as a launch title for the Xbox Series X, the release date for which is still an unspecific point in the 2020 holiday season.

Infinite is the sixth mainline game in the Halo franchise, which began in 2001 with Halo: Combat Evolved. Set in the 26th century, the games initially tell the story of an interplanetary conflict between Earths United Nations Space Command and an alien coalition called the Covenant. While the Human-Covenant War ended with 2007s Halo 3, later games and related material have dealt with the events that followed the war. The franchises name comes from the Halo rings, a series of alien-built habitats that have provided the settings for several of the games, and which turned out to be the firing elements in an ancient super-weapon.

Originally developed by the Bellevue, Wash.-based studio Bungie, Halo was regarded as the killer app for the original Xbox, and the games in the franchise are a significant driver of the Xboxs overall success as a platform.

In addition to the previous core games in the series, Halo also includes a line of best-selling novels, comics, and animated films, in addition to spin-offs like the strategy-based Halo Wars. Halo is currently developed by the Microsoft-owned 343 Industries, based in Redmond, Wash.

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Preview: Halo Infinite is a spiritual reboot of the linchpin Xbox series - GeekWire

In the 1990s Harold Caballeros was minister of a church of 350 members in Guatemala City. It was growing and going well, and they had found valuable real estate at an affordable price on one of the main avenues of the city. Caballeros exulted that it was an absolute miracle.

Then everything went wrong. As he prayed one day in his office, leaning on a stool in front of a bureau, the stool began to elevate and then disappeared. In its place lay an enormous coiled white snake. As it came alive, furious and menacing, its eyes stared red, profound, and charged with hate. Caballeros began to tremble with fear. It is true that in my work as a pastor I had participated in deliverances, he reported. He had seen demonic manifestations, but nothing compared with this moment.

Then, he said, the Lord Jesus Christ intervened. From within his own chest came a voice with power and authority. Isnt My name enough? Is the authority of My name not enough for you? Caballeros realized, I wasnt alone. He was with me.

Filled with hope and resolve, Caballeros approached the ten-meter-long snake. Though it betrayed no fear, the pastor rebuked it in the name of Jesus Christ. I could see that what the serpent was losing in confidence, I was gaining. Unexpectedly I could feel that fear had disappeared from me, and the serpent started to uncoil. The fight was tougher by the moment, and I soon saw fear it its eyes. I was obtaining victory. . . The serpent backed away and suddenly, traversing the wall, it went into the street.

Surprising even himself, Caballeros took chase, following the snake into the middle of Sixth Avenue. Continuing to rebuke it for several blocks, he finally ordered the serpent with all the authority he could muster, to flee. The intervention worked. He reported that the snake moved with greater speed by the moment, fleeing, afraid.

This spiritual experience fortified Caballeros for what came next. After El Shaddai Church began to build, the governments Institute of Institute of Anthropology and History put a halt to construction. The church stood on a pre-Columbian archaeological site: The Great Mound of the Snake of the Valley of Guatemala, which had been discovered only thirty years before.

Stuck, Caballeros began doing his own research which he said was guided by the Holy Spirit. He discovered that the Mound of the Snake was made by indigenous hands about two hundred years before Christ. Built in the form of an elongated pyramid, the mound was thirty meters wide, fifteen meters high, and twenty-two kilometers long. It was used ceremonially to honor Quetzalcoatl, the flying serpent.

Caballeros agreed with anthropologists that the Mound was significant. He disagreed with them about exactly how. To this Pentecostal pastor, the Mound signified a corruption of gospel truth. He explained:

Each year, during the spring solstice, this serpent undergoes a particular process. Its skin becomes opaque and dry, all its body acquires a gray-like color, a veil falls over its eyes, as would a cataract, and abruptly the viper breaks its covering, abandons it and emerges with a new skin, alive and fresh. The it adds a new rattle. This phenomenon is called caput zijil, which means, To be born again. If we add to this that the number four is the number of the sun and of Quetzalcoatlof whom is said that he died for his people and came back to life on the fourth daywe will see that we are facing a falsification of Christ

Caballeros further reported that for the Mayas, the cult of the serpent took on such importance that they went to the extreme of taking two tablets to pressure the skull of their children and, in the process, deform them. They would file down their childrens teeth and voluntarily make them cross-eyed, in an effort to make them physically similar to the serpent.

The most important moment in Caballeross research came when he and other church leaders spotted Quetzalcoatl in Hebrew scriptures. We could barely believe our eyes. Through the book of Isaiah, God was confirming our findings. The specific passage was Isaiah 14:29: Do not rejoice, all you of Philistia, because the rod that struck you is broken; for out of the serpents root will come forth a viper, and its offspring will be a fiery flying serpent. They also found Quetzalcoatl in Isaiah 30:6: The burden against the beasts of the South. Through a land of trouble and anguish, from which come the lioness and lion, the viper and fiery flying serpent, they will carry their riches on the backs of young donkeys and their treasures on the humps of camels, to a people who shall not benefit them.

Caballeros determined that this prophecy had become terrifyingly true for the countries of Meso America. They had been handed over to, dedicated to, or given over to this evil spirit. The cultures of pre-Hispanic America had been given an inheritance of curse, darkness, and pain to the next generations. Instead of worshipping the true God, the Maya, Aztec, and Inca worshiped birds (the quetzal), animals (the jaguar), and reptiles (the rattlesnake). And they sacrificed humans. Caballeros explained, During all of the research process, our attention was powerfully drawn to the bloodthirstiness of that cultthe human sacrificesand the unique way in which the sacrifices were conducted.

What did this inheritance look like in Caballeross twentieth-century Guatemala? The equivalent to ancient human sacrifices, he maintained, was the radical politics of socialist guerrillas, who had destabilized society and caused economic problems. Significantly, Caballeros pointed out, the quetzal was the national bird and name of the currency. He wrote, The number of crotalic or serpentine symbols in them increased in direct proportion to the devaluation of the currency.

The bottom line: political virtue requires spiritual integrity. We understood, said Caballeros, that the intervention of the church is necessary to settle those ancestral problems spiritually if we want to see the freedom of our nations. . . . God was speaking to us, letting us know that the situation of our nation was due to spiritual circumstancesto the direct action of forces that were hidden to the human eyebut that are absolutely real.

Feeling a sense of urgency, Cabelleros conceived of a project called Jesus is Lord of Guatemala. He recruited a great army of intercessors who would redeem the nation from the hands of the enemy, and together they read the book Prayer, the Key to Revival by Korean pastor David Yonggi Cho. Based on this template, Caballeros held an exorcism in which he sought to expel Mayan spirits from strategic zones around the city. At one site, he killed an actual snake that stared hatefully at him from an aqueduct linked to ancient Mayan ruins.

It seemed to work. El Shaddai successfully built on the site, and attendance multiplied by seven in only two years. The church, said Caballeros, also grew in quality. It became a praying church, a warring church. When a member of the church, Jorge Serrano Elas, became a candidate for the presidency of Guatemala in 1991, the church prayed for his victory. Teams from El Shaddai fanned out to strategic cardinal points across the nation to clear the way of strongmen who might overtake Serrano in the polls.

When he won the election, Serrano called for a national exorcism. Members of El Shaddaialong with 75,000 other evangelicalsparaded through the streets of Guatemala City to declare to the principalities and powers that Jesus, not Maximn or any other false god, is Lord over Guatemala. This event represented an evangelical surge in a nation that was already the most evangelical in all Latin America after its Protestant population had risen from 2 percent to 40 percent in less than four decades.

This basic narrative comes from a chapter in a 2001 book published by Thomas Nelson called Victorious Warfare: Discovering Your Rightful Place in Gods Kingdom. Written matter-of-factly by Caballeros himself, How I Learned That Spiritual Warfare Exists is an exemplary articulation of Guatemalan Pentecostalism. It is impossible, says the chapter, to disentangle the material from the immaterial. Spiritual warfare can be found in everyday life. Prayer has material consequences. As Caballeros put it, Spiritual warfare really constitutes the normal way of life for the believers that have been redeemed by Christ from the slavery of the devil. Pentecostals believe that there is a spirit world populated by angels and demons warring over poverty, substance abuse, domestic violence, and the soul of every human being.

Critics, noting that the story did not end with the election, do not agree. Serrano was exiled to Panama in disgrace after he illegally suspended the Constitution, imposed censorship, and dissolved Congress and the Supreme Court. Indeed, evangelicals have remained silent about the violence inflicted by their own. As scholar Maren Christensen Bjune has contended, Pentecostal participation in politics has not transformed politics as much as preserved the status quo. Others say that spiritual warfare eradicates the nations own heritage by blaming Mayan culture for negative, superstitious, and violent characteristics of Guatemalan culture.

Whatever the case, Guatemalan Pentecostalism enjoys far greater range than just Guatemala. El Shaddai now boasts 12,000 members in Guatemala Citybut also more than eighty branch churches in several countries in America and Europe. It enjoys close ties with the New Apostolic Reformation, a Pentecostal network with ties to Michele Bachmann, Sam Brownback, Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, and Ted Cruz. The Spiritual Warfare Network, which Caballeros helped develop, covers the globe, and one of its meetingsthe 2006 World Congress on Intercession, Spiritual Warfare, and Evangelismwas hosted by El Shaddai and included representatives from twenty-four nations.

Indeed, what is most striking to me is how transnational the spiritual warfare movement is. This story alone involves a Korean prophet, an American vice-presidential candidate, an Argentinian pastor, and a Guatemalan president. The global circulation of religious ideas and practices, on overdrive since the Immigration Act of 1965, continues even during 2020 pandemic. In the last few months Caballeross podcasts and Youtube sermons on a range of issues related to spiritual warfare have been getting a lot of play in Guatemala, the United States (check out the books on his desk in this video), and around the world.

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Exorcising Quetzalcoatl: Spiritual Warfare in Guatemalaand Beyond - Patheos

On Tuesday 28 July, the Australian National Council of The Catenian Association and the Sisters of St Joseph announced that St Mary of The Cross MacKillop will become The Catenians Patron Saint for Australia on 8 August 2020, the Solemnity of the Saint.

The Catenian Association is an international fraternity of Catholic laymen. Founded in Manchester in 1908, it was established in Australia in 1971 and now has approximately 900 Australian members.

Speaking from the Mary MacKillop Chapel North Sydney following a Mass to celebrate St. Mary MacKillops feast day, the Associations Australian National President, George Kazs, said that following the beatification of Mary MacKillop in 1995, Australian Catenians have adopted the practice of seeking her intercession at the commencement of meetings and when new members join the fraternity.

Since then, Sisters of the Congregation through their generous support have enriched the spiritual life of Catenians through encountering the charism of St Mary MacKillopher faith in a loving and provident God, her uniquely Australian response to Gods call to provide for those in need, her respect for the dignity of all and her affection for her Sisters and for those she served.

These encounters have opened Catenians to the possibility that life as a Catenian can be lived with a uniquely Australian spirituality within an international context. That, like St Mary MacKillop, a Catenian can be truly Australian and strive to be genuinely holy, he said.

Through her example of prayerful and attentively listening for the movement of the Holy Spirit, Australian Catenians have discerned that an Australian expression of Catenian spirituality is a spirituality of interdependence, one lived through faith, friendship, respect and service. A spirituality that reflects the charism of St Mary MacKillop.

The Association wished to acknowledge that the Australian expression of Catenian spirituality reflects the charism of St Mary MacKillop by adopting her as its Patron Saint for Australia and requested the Congregation to support it in making this acknowledgment.

The Congregation has agreed to support the Association in acknowledging its adoption of St Mary of The Cross MacKillop as its patron Saint for Australia by its representatives joining with members of the Association in a ritual of adoption held at the Saints tomb during the celebration of a Mass of her Solemnity on 27 July 2020 and by joining with the Association in announcing its adoption of the Saint as its Patron Saint for Australia.

Speaking after the Mass Sister Monica Cavanagh RSJ, the Congregational Leader of the Sisters of St Joseph, said that the Sisters are delighted to share this occasion with the Catenians. She went on to observe that from the earliest days of the Institute Mary MacKillop recognised the importance of establishing partnerships with people who supported her work and mission. Mary MacKillops way of living the gospel in our Australian context aligns closely with values at the heart of what it means to be a Catenian. Her practical down to earth spirituality has much to offer the work of the Catenians in Australia today.

With thanks to the Australian National Council of The Catenian Association.

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St Mary of The Cross MacKillop the Patron Saint for Australian Catenians - Catholic Outlook

Cosmic Health is your day-by-day source of celestial advicewith a wellness twist. Astrologer Jennifer Racioppi looks to the stars to find out whats in store for your week when it comes to food, fitness, sleep, sex, and more. See All

With the sun zooming through the early degrees of Leo, and the last week of July upon us, its time to make the most of the summer, pandemic in tow. With just a few weeks of peak-season sun left, its essential to find joy where ever you can and to savor those moments. Thankfully, astrologically speaking, the next few days allow for an enhanced experience of spiritual well-being. Even with a cardinal square brewing between Mercury in Cancer, Mars in Aries, and the ongoing stellium in Capricorn, there are uplifting aspects, like Mercury square Mars, that are worthy of highlighting and leaning into.

For starters, on Monday, Neptune, the planet of dreams, makes a sextile to Jupiter in Capricorn. When Neptune sextiles the biggest and most expansive planet in the sky, you can quite possibly catch a wave of spiritual growth. Neptune in Pisces offers a sense of transcendence, and as he approaches this harmonious angle to Jupiter, which perfects on Monday at 12:06 p.m., ET, your intuition, emotional awareness, and ability to visualize amplifies.

On the same day, Venus in Gemini makes a square to Neptune. While a square often indicates a challenge or challenges, in this situation, it amplifies the mystical. Venus is now making her third square to Neptune, with previous squares having occurred on May 3rd and May 20th. Since this is the third in the sequence (due to her retrograde in Gemini), we can potentially experience a deep spiritual knowing akin to awakening.

Venus squaring Neptune invites in the dream. After months spent refining and coming to a deeper understanding of the personal values that guide your life, its essential to now claim the essence of what youve refined since early Maya perfect activity for the waxing moon. Take a moment and reflect on what youve learned. Pay attention to what you are releasing, and connect to the new dream emerging from within.

To tap into the essence of Jupiters sextile to Neptune and the planet of dreams square to Venus, check out Taylor Swifts latest album, Folklore,which she surprise released last week, right after the sun moved into Leo. Its lyrically, sonically, and thematically on point with these transits, serving both as a therapeutic source and artistic inspiration. Like the week ahead, it embodies a whimsical, soft but deep and true to self essence of magic. The highest calling under these transits is to animate the soul voice within, possibly even unleashing your inner artist. No matter what inspires youSwift or notseek art that uplifts your soul.

As you do, you might find connection to the most pure impulse within to unlock your own mystical healingeven more so, with Mercury square Mars. Mercury represents analytical and communicative capacities, and is in Cancer, which rules the moon and represents cardinal water, which connects with emotions and the ability to self-nurture.

Mercury square Mars asks you to articulate the highest expression of your soul. In doing so, sadness may arise, as you recognize what needs to change or has already changed, as well as any losses you are still reconciling.

Mars represents dynamic action and accelerates opportunities for growth. Mercury square Mars asks you to articulate the highest expression of your soul. In doing so, sadness may arise, as you recognize what needs to change or has already changed, as well as any losses you are still reconciling. Remember, grief and pain are an important part of life. They are essential and a part of any spiritual awakening. While Marss position on Monday and throughout the entire week ahead is antagonistic, its important to lean into his antagonism. Let Mars provoke your yearnings, your drive, your determination, your feelings, and, most importantly, your passion.

As the week goes on, Mercury opposes Jupiter and Pluto, bringing more unseen and/or unintegrated emotions to the surface. Should insecurities arise, trust they are leading you to make choices that advance your healing. At the same time, Mercury will trine Neptune, bringing even more mystical vibes, unlocking your access to your own healing magic. Again, art, self-expression, and tuning into the voice of your soul are essential.

Come Friday, the sun in Leo trines Chiron in Aries. This is a very special moment. The sun in Leo asks you to tune into where you are meant to shine. Chiron in Aries asks you to look at the wounding that holds you back from self-expression. This combination of Mercury opposing Jupiter and Pluto while squaring Mars (forming a cardinal square), while trining Neptune, at the time of the sun in Leo trining Chiron in Aries, is particularly potent.

It invites you to reconcile the pain that keeps you from healing. It serves as a key to leveraging your own experiences to become more compassionate, kind, and capable of assisting others on their healing journey. Ultimately though, its about liberation. Its about forgiving the past, and finding new ways to be with the present moment. Its about accessing the courage within to self-express, stay compassionate towards others, and use your pain as an access point into your power.

The theme of the week ahead is awakening. As the sun shines, and the heat encourages growth, joy, and pleasure, let yourself feel, play and create. In doing so, you may just find yourself attuned to new heights of spiritual awareness.

Jennifer Racioppiis the creator of Lunar Logica philosophy that integrates the deep wisdom of both science and spirituality, and blends her expertise in astrology, positive psychology, and womens healthwhich she uses to coach high-achieving female entrepreneurs to reach their next level of success. Pre-order her book,Cosmic Health(January 2021), here.

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The Spiritual Theme Of the Week Ahead Is AwakeningHeres Exactly What To Expect - Well+Good

During the Rite of Ordination of Priests, the bishop asks the candidates a number of questions about their resolve to carry out the office of Presbyter (Priest) in accord with the mind of Christ and the Church, under the direction of the Bishop. Notice the resolve or the commitment of a priest is three pronged 1) it reflects Christ, 2) is in union with the Church, and 3) is directed by the bishop. For the final question each candidate kneels before the bishop and places his joined hands between those of the bishop who asks, Do you promise respect and obedience to me and my successors?

Both gestures, kneeling and the hands of the candidate in the hands of the bishop, signal a connection between the priest and the bishop whomever the bishop is (my successors) throughout all the years of the priests ministry. It is a spiritual connection based on respect and obedience. Respect means the priest recognizes the bishop as a father in Christ; obedience means the priest cooperates with and assists in the ministry of the bishop. Respect and obedience are priestly virtues which enable the bishop to do his ministry of oversight of the diocese and enable the priest to share in the ministry of the bishop.

Having recently transferred 18 pastors and five associate pastors, the issue of respect and obedience is very much on my mind. A transfer is never easy for a priest. I vividly remember my own transfers and the personal emotions that surfaced as I changed each assignment at the request of my bishop. At the same time, the transfer can be challenging, even upsetting for the faithful who lose their priest and have to get accustomed to a new priest.

Some people express their disappointment about a priests transfer by writing to the bishop words of praise about the ministry of the priest. I enjoy those letters. It is always good news to receive a favorable report from the faithful explaining how the ministry of a particular priest positively impacted their lives.

Then there are a very few who write and tell me that I cannot do what I did; that I must reverse the decision; that I am insensitive to the culture of that parish; that they will leave the church if Father X is transferred and never again contribute to the church. I appreciate their passion, but those sentiments indicate that they do not understand the relationship of a bishop in the life and ministry of a priest, nor do they understand the role of the bishop as the overseer of the entire diocesan church, not just one parish. Further, they have no knowledge of the commandment to support the church.

In the case of the transfer of a pastor there is a process that is carefully followed in our diocese; this process is guided by the universal law of the church. The particular law of the church in the United States since 1984 grants a pastor a six-year term of office which is renewable once for six more years. Our priests in Camden are notified when a pastorate is opened and if interested in a particular parish he writes to the Vicar for Clergy stating his reasons to be considered for that pastorate. His letter is shared with the members of the Priest Personnel Board who review the reasons proposed by the priest. The majority of the priests on the board are elected by their peers. I attend those meetings and listen to the reports that are presented about the parish and the opinions of the Board members about the appointment of a priest to a particular parish. Then, I prayerfully consider the deliberations of the Personnel Board, along with my own knowledge of the parish and the priest in order to arrive at an informed decision.

As the bishop, I have a responsibility to consider the needs of the entire diocese, not just one particular parish, and to evaluate the competency of a particular priest for that particular parish. I depend on the counsel of my brother priests on the Priest Personnel Board. After I have reached my decision, I speak individually, face to face, with each priest to propose the transfer and the reasons for it. If they wish, I give them time to pray about my request.

I am so pleased to report that our priests were generous in their positive responses despite the personal hardships the transfer involved for them. Thats where the respect and obedience come into play. Your Camden priests, my brothers, demonstrated profound respect and obedience first, to me their bishop, but also to the people of God, to you, by accepting the transfer in obedience to the needs of the diocese. I am so very proud of them, as you should be.

I have previously written but again repeat that the BIGGEST and most URGENT problem facing the Diocese of Camden is the need for more priests to staff our parishes. Please, HELP. If you know a young man in your parish, or in your family, whom you think would be a fine priest, mention it to him. Contemporary culture makes it extremely difficult for young men to hear and respond to the call of God to the priesthood. There are too many noisy distractions out there which block a young man from hearing the call of the Lord to the priesthood of Jesus Christ. Sometimes a word of encouragement from another gets him to seriously consider the priesthood. Pray also for an increase of vocations to the diocesan priesthood and for our seminarians.

Tell your parish priest of your gratitude for his ministry and for his life. Priests need to hear from the faithful your appreciation of them. There is a lot of negativity against priests out there which affects priests who can use and benefit from your words of affirmation. Pray for priests and, while you are at it, for your bishop too.

Finally, on July 15th, seven priests retired from active ministry. I call these men, veterans of the vineyard. They have faithfully run the course, kept the faith and served the church for many years in variety of ministries. Hats off to these brothers of mine, your priests who deserve to retire. They are still priests and they maintain a certain level of ministry. With gratitude from me, their bishop, and from the thousands and thousands of women and men who over the years have benefitted from their priestly service, well done, good and faithful servants.

Father Mark R. Cavagnaro

Msgr. Michael J. Doyle

Father John A. OLeary

Father Michael P. Orsi

Father Joseph A. Perreault

Father Michael P. Rush

Father John J. Vignone

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The spiritual connection between priest and bishop - Catholic Star Herald

By PTI

LUCKNOW: BSP president Mayawati on Friday favouredthat an invitation be extended to Dalit Mahamandelshwar Kanhaiya Prabhunandan Giri for the 'bhoomi pujan' ceremony of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, saying it would have some impact on the Constitutional intention of setting a casteless society.

This comes after reports in the media that Giri was unhappy over not being invited to the event.

The groundbreaking ceremony for the temple is slated for August 5.

In a tweet, the BSP supremo said, "In view of the complaint of Dalit Mahamandelshwar Swami Kanhaiya Prabhunanadan Giri, it would have been better if he was also invited to the bhoomi pujan ceremony in Ayodhya on August 5 along with 200 other saints.

"This could have had some impact on the Constitutional intention of establishing a casteless society in the country."

However, she went on the say that, "Instead of getting into all this,the Dalit samaj, which has been suffering neglect, contempt and injustice, should focus more on their labour and deeds for their salvation and in this case too they need to follow the path shown by Bhimrao Ambedkar."

After a protracted legal tussle, the Supreme Court had on November 9 last year paved the way for the construction of a Ram temple by a Trust at the disputed site in Ayodhya, and directed the Centre to allot an alternative 5-acre plot to the Sunni Waqf Board for building a new mosque at a "prominent" place in the holy town in Uttar Pradesh.

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Ram temple ceremony: Mayawati bats for invitation to Dalit spiritual leader - The New Indian Express

Today is the Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, co-founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and deviser of the Ignatian Exercises.

Ignatian spirituality, particularly the Exercises, and their ability to take us deeper into Scripture and into our relationship with God, and with our own true selves, is a topic I think beneficial for any Christian.

Ignatius, like many saints, started his life in the secular pursuit of fame and fortune, in his case as a soldier. But, it was the pain and suffering of recovery, after a cannon ball smashed his leg, in which Ignatius found the peace of Christ. He became devout, but soon again, as is the case with many saints entered a period of dryness, when the initial passion of faith had worn off, and the true work of the cross began. St. John of the Cross wrote extensively of this spiritual dryness in his 16th century classic, Dark Night of the Soul, and Saint (Mother) Teresa of Calcutta suffered more than four decades of this dryness in the middle of her ministry.

In the midst of that spiritual suffering, in which prayer, the Sacraments and penance no longer brought peace to Ignatius, he devised his Exercises.

I first learned of the Ignatian Exercises during a study of Gary Neal Hansens survey of prayer methods, Kneeling With Giants (highly recommended). The Exercises are a daily practice of lectio divina of divine reading in which you read, reread and meditate over a short passage of Scripture. The point is to go beyond an academic understanding of the text, and spiritually enter into it to delve into the emotions and the deeper truth of the Word, and thus draw closer to Christ.

St. Paul points to the purpose of the Ignatian Exercises in 2 Corinthians 4: Christ lives in us earthen vessels as a precious treasure, revealing to us the glory of God from within. Christ lives within us, and it is our purpose in the Exercises to go within, to silence the outside world for a period, to draw closer to Christ and to unmask that within us that would separate us from Christ.

Christian author Annie Dillard, in a preface to the Exercises, beautifully explains in the need to go in and down into the deep within ourselves.

Why must we go in and down? she asks. Because as we do so, we will meet the darkness that we carry within ourselves the ultimate source of the shadows that we project onto other people. If we do not understand that the enemy is within, we will find a thousand ways of making someone out there into the enemy and we will oppress rather than liberate others.

Getting to the bottom of what we hide within ourselves, or as Dillard puts it, riding the monsters all the way down, is essential to de-cluttering our inner space, and making more room for the light and love of Christ, who dwells within us. And, while Ignatian spirituality is generally viewed as a Catholic pursuit, I think that is a noble and necessary goal for any in the Body of Christ.

Authoritative instructions on undertaking the Exercises are available from Loyola Press at IgnatianSpirituality.com. To gain the full benefit of the Exercises, which originally were spread over 30 days of solitude and prayer, you will want a spiritual director familiar with Ignatian spirituality, but you also can gain a great deal by following along with one of the many online programs.

Detailed daily instructions and readings are available at the Sacred Space website, https://www.sacredspace.ie. Readings for the Exercises can come from any of the provided daily reading lists, from the Catholic lectionary, the Revised Common Lectionary or any other daily lectionary or the YouVersion Bible app.

The Exercises may not lead you to life in a monastery, but if they lead you to a deeper love and understanding of Scripture, and a more intimate relationship with Christ, they will be well worth the time invested. God bless you all.

Neal is a News & Eagle columnist and staff writer. He can be reached at jneal@enidnews.com and online at emmauspath.church.

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COLUMN: Get ready to exercise with St. Ignatius - Enid News & Eagle

The Revd Professor Alister McGrath writes:

J. I. (JIM) PACKER was one of the most significant Evangelical theologians of the late 20th century, with a passion both for theological education and the importance of a theologically informed spirituality. Packer spent most of his career teaching at Regent College, Vancouver, an institution that he joined in 1979, shortly after its founding, and which he helped propel to international recognition. He is best known for his Knowing God (1973), which became an international bestseller on its publication, and is widely regarded as a landmark work of Evangelical spirituality.

Yet, although Packer achieved fame in North America, his intellectual and spiritual passions were nourished in England. Packer was born in 1926 in Gloucester, the son of a Great Western Railway administrator. He won a scholarship to study classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1944. During his first term, Packer was converted through hearing an evangelistic address at St Aldates Church. As a student, he developed a love for Puritan writers, finding their spirituality to be both realistic and effective. This led him to establish, with Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the Puritan Studies Conference, which over time became of strategic importance for many Evangelicals in the Church of England and the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches.

After training for ministry in the Church of England at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, Packer secured funding for doctoral research on the Puritan theologian Richard Baxter, before taking up parish ministry at St Johns, Harborne, in the diocese of Birmingham. He married Kit Mullett, a nurse, in 1954.

Packer then entered the world of theological education, initially at Tyndale Hall, Bristol. While his students at Tyndale appreciated his teaching, Packers concise and perspicuous prose, evident in his early publications such as Fundamentalism and the Word of God (1958), secured him a growing international readership. After a period spent as Warden of Latimer House, an Evangelical Anglican think tank in Oxford, Packer returned to Bristol as Principal of Tyndale Hall. He played a significant part in the merger of three institutions of theological education (including Tyndale Hall) to create Trinity College, Bristol.

Along with John R. Stott, Rector of All Souls, Langham Place, Packer played a leading part in convening the National Evangelical Anglican Congress at the University of Keele in 1967. This event, now seen as a landmark in the history of Evangelicalism in the Church of England, led to many Evangelicals moving away from their more traditional isolationism, and becoming more active in and committed to the structures and ethos of the Church of England. This realignment was not without its difficulties, creating some ambiguity about what it meant to be Anglican and be Evangelical. At a more personal level, it led to a painful alienation between Packer and Lloyd-Jones.

Packers signature work, Knowing God (1973), was written during his Bristol period, and originally took the form of a series of magazine articles. Knowing God displayed the explicit interfolding of theology and spirituality which became a hallmark of Packers teaching at Regent College, Vancouver. There is an emerging consensus that Packers chief legacy lies in this book, and the style of spirituality which it commends and embodies.

Knowing God catalysed Packers rise to fame in North America, and led to multiple speaking invitations at seminaries, churches, and conventions. Packers popularity as a speaker reflected many factors including his emphasis on the biblical grounding of theology, his explicit agenda of fostering a theologically informed spirituality, his tendency to personal self-effacement, and his soft Gloucestershire accent.

Although many realised that Packers future now lay in theological education in North America, his decision to accept a chair of theology at Regent College in 1979 surprised many. Packer, however, believed that it was the right place for him, partly because of the new colleges focus on providing theological education for the laity, with a strong emphasis on the importance of spirituality. He regularly returned to England, speaking at large churches and conventions.

During the 1990s, Packer became involved in the Evangelicals and Catholics Together movement, which campaigned for closer collaboration between Catholics and Evangelicals, without demanding resolution of their outstanding theological differences. This led to some controversy, and some considered that Packer had reneged on his Evangelical commitments. Yet it also led to his forging some new friendships, especially with Cardinal Avery Dulles.

Packer became a member of the large Anglican congregation of St Johns, Shaughnessy, in Vancouver, where he preached regularly, seeing this as his spiritual home. Packer remained a member of this congregation for the rest of his life, and shared in its pain as tensions grew with the Anglican diocese of New Westminster, and eventually led the 700-strong congregation to leave their original building and enter into a shared-use arrangement with Oakridge Adventist Church near by.

Packer finally retired as Regent Colleges first Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology in the summer of 1996. His retirement did not end his relationship with Regent College. He was appointed to a Board of Governors Professorship of Theology, and continued to be involved in the colleges teaching ministry for two further decades, particularly through its summer schools. In his retirement, Packer served as general editor of the English Standard Version, a new translation of the Bible published in 2001, and developed a new interest in catechesis. Regent College honoured Packer in 2006 by establishing the J. I. Packer Chair in Theology, with the aim of continuing his legacy.

Packers health began to deteriorate in 2016, when macular degeneration made him unable to read, write, or travel. He died peacefully in UBC Hospital, Vancouver, across the street from Regent College, on 17 July 2020, aged 93. Kit was with him at his death, on their 66th wedding anniversary. When seen alongside the deaths of John Stott in 2011 and Michael Green in 2019, Packers may well mark the end of an important era in Evangelical Anglicanism. It remains to be seen where it goes next.

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Obituary: The Revd Professor JI Packer - Church Times