Tri-religious Panel

Last Thursday, The Muslim Student Association hosted a panel composed of religious leaders from the three Judaic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Texas State was blessed with the presence of Rabbi David Komerofsky, former Minister for Chi Alpha Kampala, Richard Skinner, and Sheik Islam Amonousad. The three sat down and took questions and addressed concerns of students about the similarities and differences of the religions.
The discussion started off with the panelists telling about their respected faiths. The Rabbi began with “We’re a religion of Deeds rather than Creeds.” This meant that since they believe we should “Focus on the here and now,” your actions are what are important to Judaism. The deeds would be the 614 commandments listed in the Torah. “The most important figure in Judaism is Moses; which is not Hebrew but Egyptian.” Said the Rabbi
According to the Minister, “Being Christians means, we accept Christ into our souls, and our lives.” He told listeners that in Christianity it is this and neither church attendance nor just doing good deeds that makes someone a good Christian. “It’s more than that,” He said.
The most recent of the religions, Islam, had the most basic tenets. The Sheik listed “the five pillars of faith” as ”submitting to god, praying five times a day, fasting during the month of Ramadan, giving a percentage of your pay to help the poor, and lastly make at least one trip to Mecca.”
After the introductions, the three men took questions on issues. When they talked about marriage and relationships, the Rabbi said that “in Jewish law it is the man that should be the head of the house, but he must provide for the wife’s every need. If she is not sexually satisfied, then even that is grounds for divorce.” On a related topic of domestic violence, Sheik stated that when it comes to spousal abuse, “I believe the number of cases in any Islamic state is equal to if not lower than in the US.”
When asked about the nature of evil, Christianity proved to be very different from its brother faiths. “There is no Yin Yang,” said Skinner. “Evil is a person, or a spirit named Lucifer.” The other two religions believe that there may be an external form of evil, but most is internal.
The major topic that got a lot of laughs was on the process of converting to a religion. The Rabbi said “that a Rabbi must turn you away three times” before considering trying to convert you. “There is no real process to become a Christian,” said the minister. It begins with “Letting yourself fully trust in Christ.” The funny part came when the Sheik told about a story that happened in Iraq. “A pilot was about to crash and he was screaming at the Kuwaiti air control who said, ‘Sir, repeat after me.’” The pilot was converted before crashing his plane. Perhaps Allah smiled upon him and let him survive the crash to tell the tale.
Each of these religions shows the connection between faith and philosophy. Each one of them makes a normative claim about what they feel the world and individuals should be like. I believe that if religions focused more on their philosophies then their history of interrelations with people of other religions, then people would see the massive similarities between all faiths. And then, after having seen that the differences were mostly imaginary, almost all major conflicts about religion would come to a halt, or at least they would need to find a different reason for violence.
The MSA said that they hope to hold an event like this next semester, along with the Ramadan Fast Fest. Next time it may be possible for members of the Hindu, Buddhist, and other religious communities to take part in this coming together to understand each other. “God made us different so that we could get to know one another,” said Sheik Amonousad, which was added to by Rabbi Komerofsky “Viva la Differance! No, that’s not Hebrew…”

Celtic Pride in San Marcos

People at the San Marcos activity center donned their kilts and shouldered their bagpipes for the city’s first Celtic Spirit Worldwide cultural event on this past Saturday. The San Marcos Area Arts Council, along with several others, sponsored the event, showing off many displays of fantastic Highland art. Many performances were done by well known, local entertainers.

Thomas “Doc” Grauser performed at 1:00pm on a harp that stood around five feet tall. His music was of a calm, beautiful mood setting that really did a fine job transporting the audience back to the old country. Listening to his performance, makes you feel as if you have literally gone back in time and are sitting in a castle courtyard or perhaps a quiet tavern on a midsummer’s day.

Next up were the Austin Scottish Country Dancers. The pipes were played loud and strong as this six person group (2 men and 4 women) took to the stage. The dances they performed were not all exclusively from Scotland. Some were Irish, and others were more of a modern variety. For the last song the performers snagged up volunteers from the audience and taught them the basic steps to Highland pairs dancing.

Of course no Highland event can go without their heritage’s staple food, haggis. If you don’t know how they make haggis it might be best to wait until you have tried it first. It is made from leftover parts of the animal (not unlike hotdogs) and boiled in the stomach of a cow. But despite this disgusting process, it is actually quite delicious.

After this short break in performances, the show went straight back to the music. An unnamed performer at one point was asked to get up on stage and play. His instrument of choice was a reed flute and without a word he went right into a slow Irish folk song. This one song in my opinion was easily the most beautiful piece played that day.

As the event moved on into the afternoon, we turned from music to stories of the old country, told by Celtic story teller David Thompson. Thompson told many tales and sang several songs about great Highland warriors and of course the mythical fairy folk that is so typically Celtic. His stories made the audience smile with joy as well as slump with sadness. Thompson, in one hour, reminded the audience of the power of stories and storytelling.

Apart from the main attraction was the art gallery. At the exhibition, many paintings, sculptures, and other forms of art considered to be the traditional forms, stood side by side with their modern counterparts. Nature was prevalent all of the art displayed there, with pictures of animals in spiritual forms. Snakes and elk were seen by the Celts to have healing properties since they have the ability to shed their antlers or skins and grow new ones. Owls were also seen on much of the art as they were very important to the Celtic faith. “Sometimes owls won’t be shown in the art itself, but many patterns are based on the movements of owls” says Elantu Veovode, an artist whose work was one of the ones in the show. “The spiral for example, is actually based on the hunting patterns of an owl, since owls circle their prey in a spiral shaped flight path.”

Of course there were classic Celtic crosses made of stone on display. The Celtic equinox combined with the Christian cross gives a look at how the Celts preserved their religion even while being converted to Catholicism. Harold Thiele, an expert on Celtic traditions, tells the meaning behind the four point of the equinox. “The top point represents Winter Solstice, the bottom point is Summer Solstice, and the two side points represent the two days in the year where the daytime is equal to the night.” But the most interesting symbol he showed me was the Triscalene. “This symbol is present in every culture from the Celts to the Japanese and even the Australian Aborigines.” It means different things in different cultures of course. To the Celts though, it represents the past, present, and future. The Triscalene appears in cave paintings as old as 35,000 years, according to Thiele. There were many present in almost every piece of art in the exhibit. One can only hope that the Triscalene continues to appear in San Marcos’s future, especially if it is accompanied with a series Celtic Spirit Events, intertwining the this ancient culture with our own modern life.

My trip to Japan

If any one event in my life has shaped who I have become, it would definitely be my trip to the far said of the world, my journey to Japan. Nothing before or after has had as profound an effect on my dreams and goals for myself. It was then and there that I decided that I would become a world traveler for the rest of my life, come hell or high water.

The trip itself was even of a special nature. I was 16, and the year was 2005. I had signed up for a 4H foreign exchange program. I was going to spend a summer with two host families in Japan. The first month was in Tokyo. I met my host family of three and they welcomed me into their tiny, but cozy apartment. My host brother, Hiroaki, went to school as their schools go year round, while I went to a intensive language school for exchange students at the same time. I had to learn how to navigate the subways and bus routes of the most populated city in the world. I didn’t do so without getting lost a few times; the people there are the most helpful and polite in the world though. I would go to restaurants and karaoke bars in the evening and then big historical sights on the weekends. I got a real taste of what it is like to be a Japanese teenager for the first month.

The second month I lived in a small farming community called Iida. The family, the Suganumas, was a huge family all living under one house. There were four daughters, one son, the parents, the two grandmothers, and one Great grandmother who was 101 years old. That family was quite rural and had a very traditional style house. There was even a small garden one would look for in a movie like The Last Samurai. My host brother took me to school with him for his last week of classes before the short break he’d get. I couldn’t keep up in any of the classes except his English class of course. I quickly became a small celebrity at Iida High. My host brother, Kento, even brought me to his school’s daily Karate team practice where I fell in love with the martial arts. We climbed mountains together, Kento and I, visited huge temples and even joined in a Shinto religious holiday parade by lifting a massive wooden god (with the help of about two dozen other men) and chanting as we walked through the town streets.

The last major event on the trip was the observance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki days. It was by far the most humbling feeling I’ve ever known. Reading about it in text books is nothing like seeing the memorial itself as an American surrounded by Japanese. My host grandmothers and especially the great grandmother were alive when the bombs really dropped. I think had it happened to any other nation I’m not sure if there would have been the same level of accepting and even should I say forgiveness to be an American in the house of people who lost family members and friends in those attacks.

After coming home, I already felt the need to travel again, to have a new experience like that again with new people and places. That is why I’ve chosen my major and minor of journalism and cultural anthropology. I want to explore the whole world, meet every people and then come back home and tell everyone about it through my writings, like I am right now. I believe that I’m already on this path. The question is, “Where shall the winds blow me next?”