Spiritual Landscape Research Articles

Structures of Perception in the Similes of Paradise Lost

This essay argues that the similes of Paradise Lost undermine the construction of a visually and temporally solid experience and thus reform habits of perception and interpretation. Miltonic similes are preoccupied with illusory and unstable sights and with scenes of observation in which figures watch objects of mutable shapes and dimensions. These similes unsettle visual paradigms, expose discrepancies between perceived image and inferred mental reality, and detach the reader from cognitive schemes that carry a risk of moral fallacy. Perceived as a sequence, the similes codify an inward journey toward a spiritual landscape in which visual sight is superseded by a heightened moral perceptivity.

The Amen Corner by James Baldwin, and: Are You Now or Have You Ever Been . . . by Carlyle Brown (review)

Reviewed by: The Amen Corner by James Baldwin, and: Are You Now or Have You Ever Been . . . by Carlyle Brown Carra Martinez The Amen Corner. By James Baldwin. Directed by Lou Bellamy. Penumbra Theatre, Guthrie Wurtele Thrust Stage, Minneapolis. 5 May 2012. Are You Now or Have You Ever Been... By Carlyle Brown. Directed by Noël Raymond. Carlyle Brown and Company, Guthrie Dowling Studio, Minneapolis. 12 May 2012. Upon announcing its upcoming season this past spring, the Guthrie Theatre received a barrage of criticism for its show selections: a group of plays overwhelmingly white and male, in terms of both playwrights and directors. In particular, theatregoers from scholars like Jill Dolan to leading voices in the development of new work like Polly Carl critiqued the Guthrie’s selections as lacking the diversity necessary for the continual growth and development of American theatre. However, just as the Guthrie found itself at the center of this diversity debate, the theatre produced new work by two Twin Cities companies dedicated to broadening and enriching the scope of American theatre through the lens of the African American experience. In May, the Guthrie presented a Penumbra Theatre production of James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner (1954), while a smaller studio theatre hosted Carlyle Brown and Company’s new work Are You Now or Have You Ever Been . . . (2012), which explores Langston Hughes’s McCarthy hearing. Although vastly different in scale and style, the Penumbra and Carlyle Brown productions both portrayed American experiences indelibly molded by the forces of bigotry. In particular, The Amen Corner offered a story of not only black spiritual life, but also a narrative that specifically spoke to the intersection of black spirituality and female leadership within the church. Thus while the Guthrie’s next season will largely exclude reflections of America beyond mainstream white culture, this past spring the theatre center challenged its audience to engage with culturally specific theatre-making that spoke to often-silenced histories, as well as to the more expansive thinking of smaller theatre companies in the Twin Cities. The Amen Corner, Baldwin’s first play, crafts a complex landscape of black spirituality. Baldwin interweaves the day-to-day political machinations of a Harlem church with the secular materiality of neighborhood life surrounding the church, and in doing so contrasts the dogmatic power structures that allowed church leaders to develop incontestable voices with the spiritual and familial love very much alive in these same spaces. Given that Baldwin himself served as a Pentecostal youth pastor in Harlem, threads of autobiography undeniably run through the play. With this production, Penumbra [End Page 113] Click for larger view View full resolution Greta Oglesby (Sister Margaret Alexander) and Crystal Fox (Odessa) in The Amen Corner. (Photo: Michael Brosilow.) [End Page 114] artistic director Lou Bellamy presented his audience with a black spiritual celebration accompanied by the multifaceted, interpersonal dynamics that underscored such practices. Bellamy took the work of an inexperienced playwright and grounded it in the cultural specificity of mid-twentieth-century Harlem, creating a world full of spiritual, cultural, and familial tensions. Upon entering the expansive Wurtele Thrust Stage, The Amen Corner’s audience was presented with a moving and breathing slice of Harlem street life. Scenic designer Vicki Smith structured a three-tiered set anchored in back center stage with a storefront church, complete with long painted-glass windows and a red velvet chair awaiting its pastor. Below the heights of the church sat Pastor Margaret Alexander’s minimal kitchen—signaled by linoleum floors and a shiny new Frigidaire. Further downstage, Margaret’s son’s bedroom featured basic furniture and a record player. Smith ensconced these spaces with Harlem itself. Sidewalks book-ended stages left and right, and each led to a fully developed city streetscape that encircled the entire back wall of the space. In the street behind the church the audience could glimpse liquor stores, billiard halls, and the edges of rundown apartments. These spaces were filled with the life of the community: sailors, grifters, choir members, young girls in pigtails, boys in high-top converse sneakers, church ladies, cops, and drunkards. Even as the houselights slowly dimmed, Bellamy allowed this unscripted, everyday action to...

"One Indian and a Negroe, the first thes Ilands ever had": Imagining the Archive in Early Bermuda

The early generations of enslaved and bonded Africans and Indians in Bermuda were essential to the functioning of the colony. But beyond their contributions to the colonial enterprise, they continued to practice the skills that connected them to spiritual entities whose power enabled them not only to comprehend their environment but also to affect it directly. In their initial approach to Bermudian shores, in fishing, processing manioc, thatching and weaving with parts of the palmetto tree, as well as making cords with cotton and palmetto fibers, they altered the spiritual landscape in ways that are perhaps less tangible toWestern scholarly inquiry but no less significant to investigating these individuals' influence on the tiny archipelago in which they found themselves. Uncovering these multiple layers of meaning requires imagining the archive in an expansive, speculative way that moves beyond certain narratives of the documentary record to a fuller consideration of the process of making place in an early modern Atlantic colony.

Writers Writing Dying by C. K. Williams

Patrick Roth Starlite Terrace Krishna Winston, tr. Seagull Books Four residents of a shabby apartment complex in Los Angeles tell the stories of their complicated existence. Encounters with iconic actors and musicians provide a recognizable historical framework as the narrators reveal details of their often bizarre lives. Patrick Roth, originally from Germany, has worked as a film journalist in LA for over thirty years. march–april 2013 • 153 Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp The Russian Folktale Sibelan Forrester, ed. & tr. Wayne State University Press Based on a series of lectures delivered by Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp at Leningrad State University, The Russian Folktale ranges from the history of folklore studies to heroes’ motivations in what the author terms “Russian wonder tales.” Whether focusing on folklore or Russian culture in general, this translation proves to be enlightening and authoritative. Nota Bene writing.” Shi Zhi’s tragic self-identification takes the form of furious social criticism that exposes the incurable wounds inflicted by the crimes of a chaotic and tyrannical age. Shi Zhi’s postscript reviews both historical and psychological conditions of his poetic writing during five periods of his life: the early years of the Cultural Revolution (1965–68), his first sojourn at a mental hospital in 1973, the first dozen or so years after the Cultural Revolution (1976– 89), his second and longest stay at an insane asylum (1990–2002), and the period following his release from mental institutions (2002–present). Jonathan Stalling’s acknowledgments explain the strategies that he has adopted in translating Shi Zhi’s poems into lyrically charged free verse with minimal punctuation. Stalling’s rendition provides readers of English with a window through which to observe Shi Zhi’s unusual life story and spiritual landscapes. Winter Sun is a long-overdue collection of one of the leading figures in contemporary Chinese poetry. I will close with an excerpt from one of Shi Zhi’s notable poems, “Oh, Nietzsche”: “Through so many sleepless nights he endured the torture of disease / Yet nurtured the poetic longing of solitude and indifference / An infant thought undergoes the trauma of birth / To finally cry out in an earthshattering voice.” Hua Li Montana State University C. K. Williams. Writers Writing Dying. New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2012. isbn 9780374293321 Despite his many accomplishments, including a Pulitzer and a National Book Award, C. K. Williams begins this book humbly, avowing in “Whacked” that “one never is, really, a poet. Or I’m not.” Happily, the remainder of Writers Writing Dying proves him wrong. Ample evidence can be found in Williams’s use of his famously long line. Such lines are derived from Whitman, but whereas they are usually written to evoke breathlessly the ecstatic or prophetic tone, as in most of Allen Ginsberg’s poems, Williams has fashioned the long line into a surprisingly versatile poetic instrument . Often he uses it to suggest a line of thought worked out by a consciousness in time, as in “Mask”: “Didn’t Yeats have his file of fake Willies ? His Anti-Self, his Cuchulain, his Michael Robartes? / Why couldn’t I then? Why was I stranded like the insole of a shoe in this face glued on so tightly?” At other times, he uses the length to suggest persistence, for instance the persistence of sexual desire in “Bianca Burning,” in which he says, “The sexual terror lions are roaring into my ears as I make my way between their cages / at the Bertram Mills Circus in England in nineteen fifty-seven when I’m twenty,” or the persistence of literary engagement in “Prose,” in which we read, “So maybe the novelists do save me, maybe Lawrence and Mann, Dickens and Melville and Greene, / even the landslides of Thomas Wolfe that go through me like castor oil release 154 World Literature Today reviews me from myself.” In both cases, the length of the line is more than a stylistic tic; it is thematically essential to most of Williams’s poems. Matching length of line to length of life, Williams writes with humor and poignancy about aging, as in the moving and bold “Salt,” in which he admits to finding it “Abashingly eerie that just because I’m here on the long...

Everyday spirituality: social and spatial worlds of enchantment

Spirituality is re-embracing the magical and otherworldly, and in this timely investigation Sara MacKian makes an important contribution to our understanding of the social science of contemporary spiritual evolution. Putting 'spirit' at the heart of spirituality, the author takes seriously the otherworldly experiences of everyday spiritual seekers, and through extensive fieldwork, establishes an exceptional view of the contemporary spiritual landscape. By exploring the everyday impacts of alternative spiritual beliefs and practices the book gets to the heart of what an enchanted spirituality looks like and how critical social science can map and understand it. Everyday Spirituality is an essential read for anyone with an interest in developing a deeper understanding of spiritual evolution in modern Western societies.

Roving Nuns and Cistercian Realities: The Cloistering of Religious Women in the Thirteenth Century

This article uses evidence from Cistercian abbeys in Flanders and Hainaut during the thirteenth century to reconsider the role of enclosure policies in shaping the experience of religious women. The frequency with which nuns appear in the charters outside of their cloisters, when combined with the developments in medieval spirituality that produced an array of lay religious groups during this period, suggests that Cistercian policy considered enclosure to be important symbolically more than pragmatically. Unlike Periculoso, the aim was never unilaterally to confine women to their cloisters. Revising our understanding of this legislation results in repositioning monastic women within the spiritual landscape of medieval Europe, and indicates that nuns in the high Middle Ages were not nearly as disadvantaged by gender expectations as previously believed. Further, it encourages us to question the presumed relationship between enclosure and the decline and eventual dissolution of so many nunneries in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Spreading the Gospel of Good Health: Assessing Mass Women's Magazines as Communication Vehicles to Combat Health Disparities Among African Americans

A burgeoning interest and curiosity in spirituality and religion among the general and minority populations in the United States has led many health communication scholars to consider the implications these factors have on communicating health risk. Mass magazines, a popular source of health information among women and minorities, are well positioned to reach these targeted audiences and assist health communicators achieve their communication objectives. However, results from this pilot study suggest these vehicles are largely untapped channels to disseminate this type of culturally targeted health information. Content analyses of consumer mass magazines reveal Essence, an ethnic magazine, does incorporate some spiritual and religious factors; however, general readership magazines do not. Given the current spiritual landscape, health communicators can utilize not only ethnic magazines but also other women's mass magazines as health promotion channels to communicate health risk among African American women.

Gods of the Golden Coast

Review essay on The Visionary State: A Journey Through California’s Spiritual Landscapes; Religion at the Corner of Bliss and Nirvana: Politics, Identity, and Faith in New Migrant Communities; Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion; From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism; and Hollywood Faith: Holiness, Prosperity and Ambition in a Los Angeles Church.

Imagination, Sensation and the Education of Attention Among Cuban Spirit Mediums

This article attempts to come to terms with the phenomenology of learning in the popular Cuban spirit mediumship practice of espiritismo. Espiritistas' talents derive from the unique relationships they construct with their muertos (the protective dead), allowing them to receive, discern, and interpret valuable information for others. Learning here does not result from explicit knowledge transmission but from a guided expansion of consciousness, where the neophyte learns to attend to the particulars of the spirit world through his or her imagination and sensation. I associate this process with what Ingold has described as the ‘education of attention’, and use his concept of ‘entanglement’ to propose that learning mediumship be conceptualized as implying the development of a particular kind of person. I have further used Latour's definition of ‘acquiring a body’ as ‘learning to be affected’ to better understand the mutual constitution of the spiritual landscape and the self.

Rites of Enclosure: The EnglishOrdinesfor the Enclosing of Anchorites, S. XII–S. XVI

The enclosed solitary life, like other forms of (broadly speaking) monastic vocation, can trace its origins to the eastern deserts of the third and fourth centuries. But its development as a distinct and separately regulated form of living belongs to the central Middle Ages. By the twelfth century, the anchoritic vocation was an established part of a spiritual landscape that also included regular cenobites (monks, canons, nuns) and the still comparatively unregulated, freely wandering hermits. Anchorites usually lived alone (or at least without any spiritual companion: the life was impossible without servants or some other way of attending to the practitioner's domestic needs), in a cell attached (in most cases) to a parish church, often in an urban location; if men, they were usually priests, though more often seculars than regulars; in England, female anchorites, of whom very few appear to have been nuns prior to their enclosure, outnumbered males throughout the period.

Gender Concerns: Monks, Nuns, and Patronage of the Cistercian Order in Thirteenth-Century Flanders and Hainaut

The Cistercian order, which had its origins in the late eleventh century, transformed the spiritual landscape of western Europe. The order's insistence on a return to the austerity and simplicity that had originally informed Benedictine life reenergized monasticism, spawning hundreds of new abbeys within decades. By the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Cistercians dominated monastic life, surpassing their black-robed predecessors in terms of popularity and replacing them among patrons as favored recipients of donations. Yet, while a sizable body of historiography exists concerning the ability of men's houses to translate this appeal into spiritual and material success, questions remain regarding the order's female members. In particular, some scholars have constructed a narrative of financial difficulties and eventual decline for Cistercian nunneries, one that began in the thirteenth century and accelerated throughout the late Middle Ages. According to this narrative, such difficulties, by-product...

Rites of Enclosure: The English Ordines for the Enclosing of Anchorites, S. XII – S. XVI

The enclosed solitary life, like other forms of (broadly speaking) monastic vocation, can trace its origins to the eastern deserts of the third and fourth centuries. But its development as a distinct and separately regulated form of living belongs to the central Middle Ages. By the twelfth century, the anchoritic vocation was an established part of a spiritual landscape that also included regular cenobites (monks, canons, nuns) and the still comparatively unregulated, freely wandering hermits. Anchorites usually lived alone (or at least without any spiritual companion: the life was impossible without servants or some other way of attending to the practitioner's domestic needs), in a cell attached (in most cases) to a parish church, often in an urban location; if men, they were usually priests, though more often seculars than regulars; in England, female anchorites, of whom very few appear to have been nuns prior to their enclosure, outnumbered males throughout the period.

Waning pilgrimage paths and modern roadscapes: moving through landscape in northern Guerrero, Mexico

Most of the terrain under discussion is in the Mexican state of Guerrero, in the vicinity of the city of Taxco. This paper offers data on pilgrimage paths (Ostotempan, Chalma) and describes how spaces are made into places along the road between Ixcateopan and Taxco. Two levels of a spiritual landscape are identified and the veneration of several types of natural places and trees is highlighted.

Reorienting the religion curriculum in Catholic schools to address the needs of contemporary youth spirituality

In the light of the changed landscape of contemporary spirituality explored in the previous issue of this journal (Rossiter, G.M. 2010. International Studies in Catholic Education 2, no. 2, 129–47), this follow-up article considers implications for Catholic school religion curricula in Australia, with the likelihood that this would also be relevant to Catholic schooling in other countries. A reorientation of the religion curriculum is proposed, giving more prominence to the critical interpretation and evaluation of cultural meanings. If many of the pupils in Catholic schools will not become actively involved in parishes, then religious education needs to offer more than familiarising them with Catholic theology and religious practice; it also needs to skill them in addressing the spiritual and moral issues they will encounter in life. Attention is given to what this entails in both content and pedagogy.

"A Starving Belly Doesn’t Listen to Explanations": Agricultural Evangelism in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1900 to 1962

Abstract Both missionaries and government policymakers in colonial Zimbabwe consciously identified agriculture as an important avenue in establishing broader paradigms of explanation. Missionary promotion of new farming practices inevitably challenged the existing spiritual landscape by insisting that rationalized individual labor could overcome powerful natural forces. This article examines various facets of the American-based Methodist Episcopal Church’s agricultural evangelism in a period of growing state intervention. Despite careful missionary attempts to manage the outcomes, individuals with their own agendas absorbed and transformed these policies. Local farmers utilized imported agricultural knowledge for their own purposes and did not conform to the experiences or expectations of American-trained agricultural missionaries. Within these mission communities, converts successfully blended new forms of worship with existing social priorities and also adapted aspects of imported farming techniques to actively create innovative strategies for negotiating life under colonial rule.

"A Starving Belly Doesn't Listen to Explanations": Agricultural Evangelism in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1900 to 1962

Both missionaries and government policymakers in colonial Zimbabwe consciously identified agriculture as an important avenue in establishing broader paradigms of explanation. Missionary promotion of new farming practices inevitably challenged the existing spiritual landscape by insisting that rationalized individual labor could overcome powerful natural forces. This article examines various facets of the American-based Methodist Episcopal Church's agricultural evangelism in a period of growing state intervention. Despite careful missionary attempts to manage the outcomes, individuals with their own agendas absorbed and transformed these policies. Local farmers utilized imported agricultural knowledge for their own purposes and did not conform to the experiences or expectations of American-trained agricultural missionaries. Within these mission communities, converts successfully blended new forms of worship with existing social priorities and also adapted aspects of imported farming techniques to actively create innovative strategies for negotiating life under colonial rule.

The Spiritual Landscape of Mark – By Bonnie B. Thurston

The Spiritual Landscape of Mark – By Bonnie B. Thurston

Living Spirituality and Sexuality: A Comparison of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Christians in France and Britain

Drawing upon two conceptually and methodologically related projects in France and Britain, the authors illuminate lesbian, gay and bisexual Christians’ religious orientations, beliefs and practices. The samples demonstrated striking similarities and differences. Participants generally strongly disagreed with the Church’s censorious teachings on non-heterosexuality, but the British sample appeared more critical. The French sample also experienced a greater degree of psychological and social dissociation. Nevertheless, some participants across samples stayed within homophobic religious structures because of their commitment to integrating their sexuality and spirituality, and to making religious communities more inclusive. This commitment was buttressed by: (1) their conceptualization of the all-loving God and of Jesus Christ as a transgressive champion of social justice; (2) positive personal experiences; (3) the marginalization of church authority in their moral universe; and (4) increasing theological, social and political capital. Theoretically, the authors contribute to debates on contemporary religious and spiritual landscape and identity.

Review: The Visionary State: A Journey through California's Spiritual Landscape, by Erik Davis and Michael Rauner

Book Review| February 01 2010 Review: The Visionary State: A Journey through California's Spiritual Landscape, by Erik Davis and Michael Rauner The Visionary State: A Journey through California's Spiritual Landscape. By Erik Davis. Photographs by Michael Rauner. Chronicle Books, 2006. 272 pages. $40.00 cloth. Robert Ellwood Robert Ellwood University of Southern California Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nova Religio (2010) 13 (3): 112–113. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2010.13.3.112 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Robert Ellwood; Review: The Visionary State: A Journey through California's Spiritual Landscape, by Erik Davis and Michael Rauner. Nova Religio 1 February 2010; 13 (3): 112–113. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2010.13.3.112 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentNova Religio Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2010 by The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The Written World: Past and Place in the Work of Orderic Vitalis (review)

Reviewed by: The Written World: Past and Place in the Work of Orderic Vitalis Judith Collard Hingst, Amanda Jane, The Written World: Past and Place in the Work of Orderic Vitalis, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame, 2009, paperback; pp. 296; 2 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$40.00; ISBN 9780268030865. Using the twelfth-century chronicle of the Anglo-Norman monk, Orderic Vitalis, as her base, Amanda Hingst has constructed an elegantly written, engaging text that explores medieval understandings of place and time. This ambitious work takes the unusual approach of grounding the historian's understanding of his wider world by locating him within his physical environment. As those who study Britain and France during the eleventh and twelfth centuries would be well aware, Orderic Vitalis was an important observer of his society whose world chronicle is now available in excellent modern editions. This makes him an ideal subject for such a study. [End Page 218] The book is divided into six chapters that each act as a case study that explores different aspects of the physical world addressed in the chronicle. The first locates the site of authorship within the region of the Pay d'Ouche in Normandy where the monastery that Orderic Vitalis entered at the age of 10 was situated. Here, Hingst recounts the history of the monastery, a community established on the site of a previous foundation founded by St Evroul some four centuries before. This allows Hingst to discuss the relic-cult of St Evroul, including the theft and recovery of the saint's relics, and the significance of locality for such cults. It also provides her with an opportunity to briefly explore the legacy of the desert and the eremetical life in monastic intellectual culture. In her next three chapters Hingst discusses the broader geopolitical landscape, beginning with her second chapter, 'Classical geography and the Gens Normannorum', where she examines not only Orderic's sources and his knowledge of models such as Bede's Historia Anglorum, which he had personally copied, but also their impact on the shaping of his history. Ironically, given the focus of this book, Orderic had rejected the geographical introduction, so much a feature of these histories. Instead his world is one 'driven by change', with less focus on a static physical world such descriptions provided. Orderic's world is one reflecting the complicated concept of the gens Normannorum, a group defined less by ethnicity than by ethos, by their conquest of a new homeland, an identity that was not diminished as their territorial control extended into Apulia and Britain. In the third chapter Hingst argues that the Norman concept of the world differed from earlier western imaginings because of the importance of the sea. For example, Britain, which for the Mediterranean Isidore of Seville was an island cut off from the world by the ocean, becomes for the Normans united with the mainland in a community where the sea is at the centre, ringed by land. While this is an engaging insight, one of my frustrations with this chapter is the lack of evidence drawn from Orderic Vitalis's own writings. More detail is needed to explore this idea further and to examine whether this was an attitude associated specifically with him or one generally held by Norman writers. At the heart of this understanding of the world was the conquest of Britain. In her chapter on Britain, Hingst takes up Orderic's use of the noun 'Albion' to present a unification of both pre and post-Conquest British history as well as a conceptualization of the British Isles as a single geographical and, [End Page 219] potentially, political unit, that includes Scots, Irish, English, Welsh, Danes and Normans. This chapter rounds out and completes the ideas embodied in gens Normannorum. The final three chapters concern, to a certain extent, a more spiritual landscape, although they lack the coherence of the preceding three. In the first, Hingst examines the idea of Jerusalem, not just geographically, but also metaphorically, finding a new Jerusalem in the altar of Orderic's own monastic church, as well as temporally. She also discusses the diagrammatic construction of the world as found in...