Source Of Solace Research Articles

Alerts and Provocations Moving American Mores: From Women’s Education to Torture

In the spring of 2006,1 was asked to give the convocation address at Bryn Mawr College (BMC), from which I graduated in 1972. Upon accepting the honor, I did what I had been taught to do there-research. The college provided me with the texts of more than one hundred speeches dating from 1889 when Paul Shorey, a professor of Greek and Latin, addressed the first group of twenty-four graduating students. He told them that BMC was no mere high school for girls but a potent force in the intellectual life of America.1 Speaking in 1919, Bryn Mawr's own president, M. Carey Thomas argued that the inseparable corollaries of rights were suffrage, equal educational opportunity and equal pay for equal work. Not all speakers agreed. Senator George Hoar of Massachusetts advised the graduates of 1898 that every American woman had to understand that it was only her function to be the companion, helper, comfort and nurse of her husband and son and brother in misfortune and sickness and sorrow, but that it is her special function to be his stimulant to heroism and his shield against dishonor. Yet William Howard Taft, giving a commencement speech in 1910 when he was president of the United States, had a very different view. Taft told his audience that actual experiment has shown the claim that there is any difference in favor of man in the quickness of learning, or the thoroughness of acquisition of knowledge, to be entirely unfounded. Indeed . . . the averages of women are higher than that of men. Moreover, as Virginia Woolf advised in her book, A Room of One's Own, President Taft stressed women's economic independence; he urged graduates to enter professions and the business world so that they could be financially independent. Jump forward to 1979 to capture both the speed and the slowness of change. Jeannette Ridion Piccard, described on the roster of speakers as a balloonist, titled her talk Caution. Piccard had entered Bryn Mawr in 1914 and she reported that in 1920, when women got the vote, she expected many doors to open. But Piccard's own efforts to gain ordination as an Episcopal priest proved otherwise; she was not able to take her orders until the 1970s. Like Virginia Woolf, Piccard focused on doors, but for her, they were not a source of solace but a barrier. Piccard counseled that the only way to move forward was by each door being cracked, forced, or unlocked and opened. Issues of nationality, ethnicity, religion, and race enter the archive of speeches during World War II. The first speaker from abroad, coming in 1940, was the Chinese ambassador Dr. Hu Shih, who remarked on Mr. Hitler and his armies, as he told the students that they had to take moral responsibility for the consequences of the decisions they made.2 In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. joined President Robert Goheen of Princeton to speak at graduation and, in the decades thereafter, stellar women and men of all colors can be found as regulars in the ranks of invitees. This set of historical materials provided a window both into changing attitudes and norms about women and race in the United States and into a particular literary genre-the convocation address. Such materials are in need of more scholarly attention as they are an under-mined source of women's histories. Some were wonderful to read and, as a lawyer and a person interested in, if not always loyal to, social customs, I also regarded them as precedents. I wondered about whether-in light of the joy of the occasion-I should raise the subject of torture, intellectually apropos as it, like attitudes toward women, was an example of changing American mores. As justification for mentioning this awful subject when addressing a commencement audience, I could have cited previous speakers who had taken up the topics of war, terrorism, poverty, and hunger. But that was not why I decided to talk about torture in the spring of 2006 or why I have done so on many other occasions since. …

Essay: Noma

Essay: Noma

Thanks for the Memories: On the Translation of Phil 1.3

According to the natural sense of the Greek, Phil 1.3 should be translated something like, ‘I give thanks to my God for every remembrance of you’. Scholars have rejected this interpretation without explanation, presumably because the thought of Paul thanking God for pleasant memories seems too odd even to be considered. Philippians, however, is a letter of consolation, and pleasant memories were a common source of consolation in Hellenistic–Roman antiquity. Read in the context of ancient consolation, from which there compelling parallels, the natural sense of 1.3 makes excellent sense. Accepting this interpretation solves other outstanding exegetical problems in Phil 1.3–11.

The influence of religion-based workplace spirituality on business leaders' decision-making: An inter-faith study

ABSTRACTThe paper reports the findings of thirteen interviews with prominent Sri Lankan business leaders drawn from Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, and Muslim religious traditions. The in-depth interviews with the leaders were supplemented by documentary sources. When the leaders were asked why they engaged in religion-based workplace spirituality, their responses were often associated with decision-making. Although they had an array of management tools with which to deal with day-to-day management situations, they all indicated that, in ‘difficult’ moments, these tools needed to be complemented by processes by which they connected with the ultimate – variously identified as the transcendent reality, god, or truth that is more powerful, better, and good. The outcomes of decisions, both good and bad, were usually attributed to that connecting experience. The findings suggest that religion plays a significant role in influencing the judgment, emotional and motivational qualities of Sri Lankan leaders' decision-making – in that a frame of reference based on a connection with a transcendent and ultimate reality is likely to be a source of solace, guidance, and inspiration to leaders' critical decision-making.

The influence of religion-based workplace spirituality on business leaders' decision-making: An inter-faith study

ABSTRACTThe paper reports the findings of thirteen interviews with prominent Sri Lankan business leaders drawn from Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, and Muslim religious traditions. The in-depth interviews with the leaders were supplemented by documentary sources. When the leaders were asked why they engaged in religion-based workplace spirituality, their responses were often associated with decision-making. Although they had an array of management tools with which to deal with day-to-day management situations, they all indicated that, in ‘difficult’ moments, these tools needed to be complemented by processes by which they connected with the ultimate – variously identified as the transcendent reality, god, or truth that is more powerful, better, and good. The outcomes of decisions, both good and bad, were usually attributed to that connecting experience. The findings suggest that religion plays a significant role in influencing the judgment, emotional and motivational qualities of Sri Lankan leaders' decision-making – in that a frame of reference based on a connection with a transcendent and ultimate reality is likely to be a source of solace, guidance, and inspiration to leaders' critical decision-making.

Philosophy and the care of the self: A literature survey

This article reviews a number of recent books and practices that address a renewed interest in the role that philosophy might play in the living of a rich and fulfilling life. The review looks at books addressed to the general public as well as books which discuss such classical and Hellenistic philosophers as took their task to be helping people achieve happiness in life. It then turns to contemporary studies of the self and of wisdom and turns finally to some newly emerging philosophical practices such as philosophical counselling and philosophical discussion groups of various kinds in order to explore whether philosophy can still be a source of consolation or guidance in contemporary life.

Reproducing elder male power through ritual performance in Japan.

Most research by gerontologists into the relationship between religion and aging has focused upon the potential health benefits of religious participation among Americans who follow Judeo-Christian oriented forms of worship and belief. This research has shown that both as a social institution and source of existential meaning, religion provides an important resource for older people in terms of fellowship and as a means of coping and adapting to social change and personal loss. Other religious traditions and other aspects of salience of religious participation for older people have been less thoroughly considered. This article investigates a religious ritual in Japan, that, rather than being a source of consolation, is an expression of symbolic capital associated with elder status and, thus, gerontocratic power. The ritual contributes to representing and reproducing the power of older residents in a rural Japanese community, partly due to its being administratively situated within an age-grade system that is a part of neighborhood political organization. Through its performance, the ritual visually reproduces and represents stratified social structures that concentrate power in the hands of male members of the senior age grade.

The Grief of Sids Parents and their Understanding of Each Other's Responses

This article reports on a survey of sixty-one parents (including 27 couples) who had recently experienced the loss of an infant to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Data were collected on parents' reactions to the death, things which helped with grief, sources of solace, and attitudes to another pregnancy. Some sets of questions were presented twice: in the first instance the respondent reported his/her own situation and in the second instance the respondent estimated his/her partner's situation. In some areas, respondents tended to over- or under-estimate their partner's situation. Reported grief reactions and solace seeking were similar for both parents although women generally scored higher on these measures than men. More women than men wanted another pregnancy soon, while men worried more about another pregnancy than did women. It is suggested that an understanding of areas of difference may be important for SIDS parents and for practitioners who work to facilitate the grieving process.

SPIRITUAL ASPECTS OF LOSS AT THE TIME OF A PARTNER'S DEATH FROM AIDS

Spiritual phenomena were spontaneously reported in interviews of 68 of 125 recently bereaved HIV-positive and HIV-negative partners of men who died from AIDS. Spiritual schemas involving beliefs, experiences, rituals, social support, and roles were used to help assimilate the fact of death and were appraised as sources of solace and meaning. The relationship between spirituality and coping, mood, and physical health was examined. Those reporting spiritual phenomena showed higher levels of depression and anxiety and lower levels of positive states of mind, used more adaptive coping strategies, and reported more physical health symptoms than those who did not report spiritual phenomena. It doesn't matter, for scientific purposes, it doesn't matter at all whether it's true. It doesn't matter whether I'm projecting the events, it doesn't matter whether I'm projecting my own concerns. It was a process, and it functioned, and it's my experience of Michael. I happen to believe that Michael's spirit was there, and that it spoke to me.- Recently bereaved partner of a man who died of AIDS

Self-help: concepts and applications

Passing by an urban playground one may see knots ofyoung mothers on park benches absorbed in conversations about when to start feeding orange juice and where to find a babysitter for the return to work. Other new mothers become a source of solace, friendship, and information, and of outgrown baby clothes. Self-help groups are probably as old as the human race, from hunting parties to barn raisings, but in the 1980s organized self-help groups becamemore open and legitimated in US culture. As indicated in a recent New York Times article (O.K. on the Self-Realization;What About the Economy? by Maureen Dowd, July 27, 1992, p Al), the Democratic party convention brought a whole

Self-Help: Concepts and Applications

Passing by an urban playground one may see knots of young mothers on park benches absorbed in conversations about when to start feeding orange juice and where to find a babysitter for the return to work. Other new mothers become a source of solace, friendship, and information, and of outgrown baby clothes. Self-help groups are probably as old as the human race, from hunting parties to barn raisings, but in the 1980s organized self-help groups became more open and legitimated in US culture. As indicated in a recent<i>New York Times</i>article ("O.K. on the Self-Realization; What About the Economy?" by Maureen Dowd, July 27, 1992, p Al), the Democratic party convention brought a whole new self-help flavor to political discourse, in sharp contrast to 1972 when Senator Thomas Eagleton was deemed unfit for vice-presidential candidacy when it was revealed that he had once been treated with electroconvulsive therapy for

Tolstoy’s Lost Childhood

Tolstov's mother died when he was one and a half years old. That Tolsto~ consciouslv considered this an enormous loss is attested to by a r~ference he 'made to her in his last years -and which was preserved even though it was recorded only on a scrap of loose paper. It read: ~~Felt dull and sad all day. Toward evening the mood changed into a desire for caresses, for tenderness. I wanted. as when I was a child. to nestle against some tender and compassionate being and weep with love and be consoled ... become a tiny boy. close to my mother. the way I imagine her. Yes, yes. my Maman, whom I was never able to call that because I did not then know how to talk. She is my highest image of pure love but not cold, divine love. warm, earthly love. maternal ... Maman, hold me, caress me! ... All this is madness. but it is true. (Tolstoy Complete Works, Moscow 1937, vol. 55. p.574) Nevertheless, the significant separation from his mother had already taken place, psychologically speaking, even before the hazily remembered physical loss and must, moreover. have been a necessary and positive preliminary step in a maturation process that would produce not only Lev Tolstoy the adult, but also L.N. Tolstoy the creative writer. The theory explaining the connection the development of identity and creativity has been most visibly put forward by D. W. Winnicott, in his book PlayinK and Realily, (London. Tavistock, 1971) which expands the concepts of the 1953 paper. Objects and Transitional Phenomena. Concerned with the idea oj' how an infant adjusts to the realization that the mother's breast is not forever auto~atically available. that longer and longer periods of separation from the mother must occur. Winnicott suggests that the infant has access to two sources of consolation. One is the infant's own thumb. which he has used ever since he was born~ the other is the special object. usually something soft and cuddly, such as a teddy-bear that the mother later offers the child. and indeed expects him to become addicted to. The intermediate period between the thumb and the teddy-bear' is one characterised by transitional objects and phenomena. for example a corner of a sheet or blanket which is sucked or stroked. or the first babblings which are to lead on the songs and tunes an older child will lull itself to sleep with. The infant does not at this

Intimates as agents of social support: Sources of consolation or despair?

We proposed that people's intimates may insulate them against self-discrepant feedback. Individuals who possessed low or high self-esteem (targets) reported to the laboratory accompanied by persons with whom they were involved in intimate relationships (intimates). Some intimates perceived targets in a manner that was congruent with targets' self-conceptions; others perceived targets in a manner that was incongruent with targets' self-conceptions. Targets received bogus feedback that was discrepant with their self-esteem and interacted with either their intimate or a stranger. Targets then completed a measure of self-esteem. As expected, targets changed their self-ratings in the direction of the discrepant feedback when they interacted with either an incongruent intimate or a stranger but not when they interacted with a congruent intimate. Moreover, congruent intimates were just as effective in insulating low self-esteem targets against positive feedback as they were in insulating high self-esteem individuals against negative feedback. Finally, the more targets discussed the feedback, the less self-rating change they experienced. Implications for social support processes and attempts to cope with traumatic events are discussed.

Intimates as agents of social support: sources of consolation or despair?

We proposed that people's intimates may insulate them against self-discrepant feedback. Individuals who possessed low or high self-esteem (targets) reported to the laboratory accompanied by persons with whom they were involved in intimate relationships (intimates). Some intimates perceived targets in a manner that was congruent with targets' self-conceptions; others perceived targets in a manner that was incongruent with targets' self-conceptions. Targets received bogus feedback that was discrepant with their self-esteem and interacted with either their intimate or a stranger. Targets then completed a measure of self-esteem. As expected, targets changed their self-ratings in the direction of the discrepant feedback when they interacted with either an incongruent intimate or a stranger but not when they interacted with a congruent intimate. Moreover, congruent intimates were just as effective in insulating low self-esteem targets against positive feedback as they were in insulating high self-esteem individuals against negative feedback. Finally, the more targets discussed the feedback, the less self-rating change they experienced. Implications for social support processes and attempts to cope with traumatic events are discussed.

Book Review: The Sources of Consolation in Human Life.

Book Review: The Sources of Consolation in Human Life.