Spiritual Nourishment Research Articles

Balancing material prosperity with spiritual growth for effective Christian citizenship: The case of women of Full Gospel Mission Cameroon

It has generally been realized by churches in Cameroon that their role in the public sphere could no longer be narrowly defined by spiritual nourishment of their members. This is especially so in a local and national context of growing poverty and social exclusion, especially of women. This essay seeks to understand why and how women of the Full Gospel Mission Cameroon have recently mobilized local resources and resourcefulness to enhance their socioeconomic welfare. The contribution also explores why broader ideals of the gospel of prosperity embraced by Pentecostal churches in Cameroon have been appropriated and domesticated by women of the church through self-help socioeconomic activities. By getting involved in these activities, not only are women struggling to mitigate the effects of poverty, but also signals an implicit embrace of the ideals of liberation theology that recently emerged in Africa.Key words: Cameroon, Material Prosperity, Christian Identity, Spiritual Growth, Full Gospel Mission

Women, Food Exchange, and Governance in Early Modern England by Madeline Bassnett

Reviewed by: Women, Food Exchange, and Governance in Early Modern England by Madeline Bassnett Elisa Tersigni WOMEN, FOOD EXCHANGE, AND GOVERNANCE IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND, by Madeline Bassnett. Early Modern Literature in History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 248 pp. $109.99 cloth; $109.99 paper; $84.99 ebook. While still relatively overlooked, food studies is a field that has blossomed over the last decade. To this field, Madeline Bassnett’s Women, Food Exchange, and Governance in Early Modern England is a welcome and fascinating addition, interrogating the relationship that early modern English gentlewomen had to food practices in their households and communities and, by extension, the relationship that these women had to politics and the governance of the nation. Bassnett’s central argument is that “women’s writings about food practices are crucial to the work of estate hospitality, personal and political alliance, and relations of private and public authority” (p. 5). To support her argument, she examines the works of four Protestant women estate holders who wrote from the end of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth: Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke’s Psalmes (completed by 1599); Elizabeth Clinton, Dowager Countess of Lincoln’s The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie (a maternal nursing pamphlet, published 1622); Margaret, Lady [End Page 448] Hoby’s diary (written 1599–1605); and Mary Sidney, Lady Wroth’s Urania (published 1621, manuscript continued until c. 1630). Bassnett offers new and nuanced readings of texts that were composed by only Protestant gentlewomen in a narrow temporal range but are otherwise incredibly varied and rich. Together, the texts paint a vivid picture of the ways in which English gentlewomen understood and articulated their (and others’) responsibilities in regard to food practices. Crucially, Bassnett argues that not only does women’s writing reflect a politicized agriculture but also that these women actively “establish the domestic site of food exchange as . . . political, as they extend, comment on, and advise others about the virtues of manifesting God’s good governance on earth” (p. 7). According to early modern English medical, religious, and intellectual movements, the food one consumed affected physical, spiritual, and moral health, so elite women—who often controlled their estates’ food production and consumption—wielded power over the people with whom they exchanged food. The women Bassnett discusses understood their writing as an opportunity to communicate and establish political power, even as far as influencing the health of the nation, in part by encouraging monarchs to practice good governance through appropriate food management. After the introduction, the second and third chapters examine famine and scarcity. Written during the “dearth-ridden 1590s,” Sidney Herbert’s translation of the Psalmes includes agricultural metaphors that “establish God’s gifts of food as dependent on his approval of the monarch’s rule, and more worryingly, the absence of crop growth as God’s disapproval, a punishment for country and ruler alike” (pp. 65, 25). The translation thus identifies Queen Elizabeth as directly responsible for England’s famines and encourages her to adopt “policies that might return England to God’s favour” to end the national famine (p. 55). Clinton’s The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie, also written in a time of dearth, discourages the common practice of wet-nursing and encourages maternal breastfeeding, praising it as an example of a woman’s being graced by God’s bounty, made all the more significant during famine. Just as crop failure reflected the loss of God’s favor through poor governance, a woman’s ability to feed her child expressed her retention of God’s favor, a reflection of the nursing woman’s spiritual virtue. The act of nursing also allowed virtuous women to give their child physical and spiritual nourishment, produced “through divine intervention” (p. 83). The fourth chapter focuses on Margaret Hoby’s diary in which she records her meals and prayers—complementary spiritual practices, according to Hoby. As the middle case study and the only private (not circulated) work considered by Bassnett—Hoby’s diary was not printed until the twentieth century—this manuscript is an interesting departure from the argument that early modern women were actively establishing their political power through writing about food practices...

Inner Voice of Pregnant Women: A Qualitative Study.

Background:Spirituality becomes more significant and evident during crises like pregnancy; therefore, it is crucial for healthcare providers to be supportive during pregnancy through exploring and understanding the meaning of spirituality for pregnant women. This study aimed to discover the experiences of Iranian pregnant women regarding spirituality.Materials and Methods:This qualitative, inductive, content analysis study was performed in 11 pregnant women (28–36 weeks' gestation) who attended the healthcare centers of Karaj, Iran. The subjects were selected by purposive sampling and invited to participate in the study. The data were collected through semi-structured, face-to-face, and in-depth interviews and were analyzed using the inductive content analysis approach.Results:Three major themes emerged during data analysis: “permeable transcendence,” including “spiritual awareness of mother,” “spiritual light of baby,” and “personal transformation and improvement.” “Doubled responsibility” comprised two subthemes of “spiritual nourishment for mother” and “spiritual nourishment for child,” and “spiritual circumstance” consisted of two subthemes of “religious background” and “spirituality of healthcare provider.”Conclusions:Considering the importance of spirituality and religion in gestational health promotion, the results of this study can assist healthcare providers in recognizing the women's spiritual needs and valuing the protective role of religious/spiritual well-being during pregnancy.

Raised on Christian Milk: Food and the Formation of the Soul in Early Christianity by John David Penniman

Reviewed by: Raised on Christian Milk: Food and the Formation of the Soul in Early Christianity by John David Penniman R. Alan Streett john david penniman, Raised on Christian Milk: Food and the Formation of the Soul in Early Christianity (Synkrisis; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017). Pp. xvii + 328. $85. Raised on Christian Milk is a revision of Penniman's doctoral dissertation (Fordham University, 2015, supervised by Benjamin Dunning) and, as such, is aimed at a scholarly audience. Comprising an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion, the book examines how early Christians received, interpreted, and appropriated the apostle Paul's admonition in 1 Cor 3:1-3, particularly his words, "I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food" (NRSV). Penniman limits his conversation partners to Philo, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus of Lyon, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine of Hippo. His interaction with each is full and rich, if not exhaustive. The introduction lays the foundation of the book. Starting with Feuerbach's dictum "Man is what he eats" (p. 1), P. explores how eating well is the basis for human formation and group identity. For instance, eating kosher/clean foods was an identity marker of God's people. Likewise, in the Roman Empire, what one ate and where one sat at a formal meal (deipnon) determined one's status. Hence, humans become what they eat. By using the language of food, the apostle Paul likewise draws a relationship between nourishment and identity formation. But for Paul "food" is more than a mere metaphor; it is a symbol of reality (p. 19). He believes church members feed on actual food, albeit spiritual in nature. To use Tertullian's description of Emperor Severus's son Caracalla: he was "raised on Christian milk" (p. 9). In chap. 1, P. examines the complex history of food within the ancient and early Greco-Roman context, interacting primarily with Hippocrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Since human consumption takes place in a cultural setting, both biology and sociology play a significant role in human development. In the Roman imperial era, breast milk was considered a crucial part of locating one's place in the Roman Imperium (p. 50). The breast from which one ate—elite, slave, citizen, poor—determined one's status. A mother's breast and her milk were deemed the source and means of a child's initial nourishment and potential development—physical, sociological, intellectual, and psychological. Chapter 2 finds P. in conversation with his interlocutors in order to gain insight into how early Jewish and Christian communities viewed spiritual food as a source of strength. He moves from Philo, a hellenized Jew, whose life spanned the late Republic and early empire to the apostle Paul, the Pharisee turned Christ-follower, who spoke of milk as a dynamic symbol of spiritual immaturity. But P. is not concerned with the meaning of Paul's words in the text, as much as he is with how they were received by the early church. In chap. 3, P. interacts with Irenaeus and Clement. The former used breast-feeding as symbolic of spiritual nourishment for believers while living in the world. The milk of the Word sustained them in their journey through life. Clement, on the other hand, believed a child born into the world grew into manhood through acts of disobedience and had to be born again, that is, to revert to infancy and innocence. Then the newborn Christian looked to the milk of the Word to sustain him throughout his Christian life (p. 94). Clement also saw spiritual "breast-feeding" as a means of combating Gnosticism. [End Page 140] In chap. 4, the reader discovers that Origen divided Christian food into three categories—milk, vegetables, and meat—representing three stages of maturity. These tiers were fixed, and believers within each category remained there. Origen designed curriculum to support those within each respective group. Hence, food was apportioned to the capacity of the soul. For Origen, breast-feeding was nourishment for infants only, a stark contrast with Irenaeus and Clement. In chap. 5, P. discusses Gregory of Nyssa's treatise on Saint Basil, which he used to show that...

Managing the invasion of guava trees to enhance carbon storage in tropical forests

Tropical forests account for a substantial percentage of the world’s carbon stocks, but the consequences to carbon storage of the rapid invasiveness of the guava tree in these forests is not known. Two different forest management strategies are practiced in a tropical forest in western Kenya: (1) a protection strategy where human entry is prohibited except for minimalistic human presence (e.g., research activities); and (2) a conservation strategy where human access to the forest and its resources are permitted. We assessed the effects of these management strategies and different levels of disturbance caused by the legacy effects of legal logging activities and the contemporary effects of unauthorized harvesting of forest products on the abundance of guava and non-guava trees and carbon storage in both plant biomass and soil in this forest. We found that guava trees were less likely to thrive and carbon storage in plants and soils was similar in sites with minimal disturbance under both the protection and conservation strategies. However, as disturbance increased, whether by the historical or contemporary effects of human activities, guava trees were more likely to thrive and carbon storage in plants shifted from non-guava trees to guava trees, but without an effect on more stable soil carbon. We conclude that regulations should be strictly enforced to prevent all logging activity, but the conservation strategy would provide similar effects on both forest plant and soil carbon to the protection strategy, while providing benefits to the surrounding community who rely on the forest for cultural and spiritual nourishment.

A Faith Built on Awe

Abstract Reframing atheism as a set of positive beliefs, I describe a way of living in the world in which atheism requires faith, defined as a commitment to beliefs that are both logically and empirically not subject to proof. Faithful atheists have faith in and take spiritual nourishment from being in the presence of a world which is awesome and wonderful both in that it is immediately available and that it is and will always remain at least partly opaque to understanding. They do so without positing a God or inflating the reach of reason. Their way of living is characterized by “sensational presence” (full attention to and staying with a present moment) and the courage to accept that their access and understanding whether in relation to other people, other animals, and nature more generally, is always limited. This inherent residual opacity grounds their respect and sense of mystery in each of these realms.

The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem: History and Perspectives

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Writing against neocolonial necropolitics: literary responses by Iraqi/Arab writers to the US ‘War on Terror’

This essay demonstrates that texts by Iraqi/Arab writers conceive the US invasion and occupation of Iraq as an assault on both biological and cultural life. It argues that in occupied Iraq, the very act of writing constitutes a performative survival of neocolonial necropolitics. Thus, Philip Metres’ abu ghraib arias employs visual poetry to bear witness to the suffering of Iraqi civilians subjected to torture at Abu Ghraib prison, by rendering visible what was repressed owing to trauma or silenced in the official investigation. Meanwhile, other literary works express distress about the destruction of Iraq’s cultural archive, since the arts have constituted a precious repository of Iraqi self-knowledge and spiritual nourishment throughout the country’s history of foreign domination and political tyranny. Reflecting on the bomb attack on Baghdad’s ‘Street of the Booksellers’ in 2007, poet Dunya Mikhail delivers a powerful invocation of literature’s longevity even after its material manifestations have been erased. Sinan Antoon’s novel The Corpse Washer (2013) highlights the ubiquity of death in post-2003 Iraq and its paralysing effect on the creative faculties as it tells the story of Jawad, an aspiring sculptor who gives up his artistic ambitions to follow in his father’s footsteps as a corpse washer.

On Being Unfinished: Collected Writings by Anne E. Patrick

Reviewed by: On Being Unfinished: Collected Writings by Anne E. Patrick Brianne A. B. Jacobs On Being Unfinished: Collected Writings. By Anne E. Patrick, edited by Susan Perry. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2017. 310 pp. $32.00. On Being Unfinished, a wide-ranging collection of lectures and essays by feminist and moral theologian Anne Patrick, reveals a rigorous and even beautiful framework for what it means to live an ethical life, with what she calls an “ethical spirituality.” At the core of this spirituality is an exhortation toward “creative responsibility,” born, in my view, of a compelling marriage between the influences of Vatican II and H. Richard Niebuhr (223). In her 2009 Madeleva Lecture, “Conscience as the Creatively Responsible Self,” Patrick defines this idea. She writes that there are two ways to be responsible, passive and creative. Passive responsibility is the compliant fulfillment of one’s duties. Creative responsibility “looks beyond the immediate obligations and commandments and social roles and seeks to contribute in new ways to the contexts of one’s life, striving to accomplish good on a wider scale” (193). For Patrick, our lives are pieces of art, tapestries woven day in and day out, in response to the loving call of God. In one essay she asks, “To what new paths, I wonder, is [God’s] eye of love inviting us?” (202). In another, invoking Gerard Manly Hopkins, she asks, “What in God’s eye [S]he is?” (264). Do we respond to this call with literal and static obedience? Patrick exhorts us with ethical spirituality to create and live new solutions to religious and secular challenges. Ethics must be lived with the moral courage of the artist. As the title of the collection suggests, this project, our response, is never complete. The beauty and joy of living is in the process, always unfinished, of creatively expressing God’s love, justice, peace, and truth on earth. Patrick weaves her own creative response most explicitly to the problems of sexism, androcentrism, and patriarchy, which oppress women broadly in society and specifically in the Roman Catholic Church. Patrick’s creative responses include life-giving resources for women, and suggestions for change in the Catholic Church. In one of my favorite essays, “Getting Ready for Voice Lessons,” Patrick suggests [End Page 82] qualities of character for a feminist ethics of spirituality: self-care and solidarity, courage and humility. Patrick also offers imaginative solutions to issues for Catholics, suggesting in “A Conservative Case for the Ordination of Women” that the ordination of women be based on the significance of the sacraments. She offers a feminist mode of virtue for analyzing abortion in “Virtue, Providence, and the Endangered Self: Religious Dimensions of the Abortion Debate.” As she has exhorted her reader to do, these essays seek creative new paths in living God’s love and justice in contemporary contexts. Patrick repeatedly engages indepth with her peers, M. Shawn Copeland, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Margaret Farley, and Barbara Andolsen, to name a few. She also engages literary figures like George Eliot and Graham Greene. Many of these essays were originally lectures and read with the spiritual force, rhetorical sweep, and welcoming candor of a good homily. I recommend this collection to any reader interested in Patrick’s engagement with this range of literary and theological thinkers, and who are looking for intellectual and spiritual nourishment on the topics of morality and feminism in the Roman Catholic context. To teachers, I particularly recommend her essay, “Feminist Theology,” reprinted from the New Catholic Encyclopedia, which offers a detailed and accessible review of feminist theology from 1960 to 2000. Anne Patrick, a Sister of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, and professor of theology, taught for decades at Carleton College, where she was William H. Laird Professor of Religion and the Liberal Arts. She served as the third woman president, and first self-proclaimed feminist, of the Catholic Theological Society of America in 1990. In 2013, she was presented its highest honor, the John Courtney Murray Award. What becomes clear through reading On Being Unfinished is that these markers of academic excellence and prestige are undergirded by a deep and compelling faith. As...

Пища духовная и пища телесная: еда и различные аспекты отношения к ней в «чудесах св. Бенедикта» и «жизни св. Аббона» (Франция, нач. XI века)

Пища духовная и пища телесная: еда и различные аспекты отношения к ней в «чудесах св. Бенедикта» и «жизни св. Аббона» (Франция, нач. XI века)

Making Sense of Religion and Food

When looking at eating beyond physical nourishment, British anthropologist Mary Douglas (1921-2007) defined food as a cultural system, or code that communicates not only biological information, but social structure and meaning. What can a study of food and faith teach us, as scholars of religion, that we might not otherwise know? This article outlines thematic and pedagogical approaches to teaching food and religion through the lens of five semesters of teaching this course to undergraduate and graduate students. In it, I explore the topics of Food memory and community; Food and scripture; Food, gender and race; and Stewardship and Charity, thinking about spiritual and physical nourishment in the world's major religious traditions.

The deeper self: an expanded view of consciousness.

As science continues to explore the mysteries of the unconscious, two critical questions remain. First, can unconscious impulses, desires, and feelings be willfully raised to the level of the conscious self?, and, if so, would the unveiling of unconscious mechanisms lead to genuine self-knowledge or empowerment? Second, can we methodically tap into the unconscious to gear ourselves along more creative lines? If the unconscious is a source of intuitive and creative inspiration, how might a more expansive understanding of consciousness help us to flourish? How can we harness the intuitive parts of ourselves to think "outside the box," transcending the limitations of preconceived categories? And along those same lines, how would an expanded view of the unconscious frame our spiritual experiences or offer spiritual nourishment? Writer Siri Hustvedt, historian of psychology Sonu Shamdasani, and neuropsychologist Mark Solms will tackle everything from noetic experiences and the role of intuition to the phenomenon of peak experience and Jung's "collective unconscious."

The Ability of Eating Behaviors to Predict Obesity and Cardiovascular Hyperactivity

The Ability of Eating Behaviors to Predict Obesity and Cardiovascular Hyperactivity The present study examined the ability of eating behaviors to predict obesity and cardiovascular reactivity to stress. Obesity was operationally defined by Body Mass Index (BMI) which was calculated from the participant’s height and weight. According to Scherwitz and Kesten, unhealthy eating behaviors were defined as food fretting, emotional eating, preference for fast food, task snacking, lack of food appreciation, and the tendency to eat in an active and stressful eating environment. Ninety eight African American college students (21 men, 77 women) between the ages of 18-43 participated in this study. A Hypertension Diagnostic Pulsewave CR 2000 cardiovascular profiling instrument was used to measure heart rate, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, mean arterial pressure, stroke volume, and cardiac output. The Your Eating Style Profile questionnaire was used to measure eating behaviors. A Multiple Regression and Correlation analyses revealed that Food Fretting, Emotional Eating, and Sensory, Spiritual Nourishment were negatively associated with cardiovascular reactivity to stress. In addition, Eating Atmosphere and Task Snacking were positively associated with blood pressure responses to stress. A Multiple regression also revealed that Food Fretting significantly predicted BMI, indicating that those participants who worried about the food they ate had greater levels of obesity than their counterparts. The first major finding showed that as hypothesized participants with healthier eating behaviors (low levels of; food fretting, emotional eating, and sensory, spiritual nourishment) were less emotionally aroused by the emotional arousing stimulus. The second major finding revealed that participants who eat in a tense and hectic eating environment and those who snack while performing daily tasks had lower blood pressure responses to the emotional arousing stimulus. The third major finding revealed that although Fast food/Fresh food did not predict any of the cardiovascular measures, it was significantly correlated with all three measures of blood pressure. The correlations revealed that unexpectedly, individuals with a preference for fresh food had higher blood pressures than those with a preference for fast food.

Spirituality is Not a Four-Letter Word

Back to table of contents Previous article Resident’s ForumFull AccessSpirituality is Not a Four-Letter WordHannah Roggenkamp,M.D.Hannah Roggenkamp,Search for more papers by this authorM.D.Published Online:7 Oct 2016https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2016.10a20AbstractIn our climate of strong religious convictions and polarizing public fights over doctrine, breaching the topic of religion and spirituality as a young physician can seem like the shakiest of shaky ground. For the inexperienced psychiatrist, the struggle is real. We are scared of offending people with any of the intimate questions we ask, and religion feels no less private than sexual history. Religion and spirituality, when approached correctly, can provide a beautiful window into the psyche of our patients. It’s also unavoidable—religious topics are an ACGME-required part of our psychiatric training.My father was a Lutheran pastor, and my mother was raised a born-again Christian; I grew up in a progressive but religious household. My father loved ministering to sick people in hospitals, and he handled parishioners’ deaths with fearless compassion. I believe I mirror some of my dedication to patient care based on his example. In times of severe illness, however, even the strongest faith can be questioned. When my mother was diagnosed with ALS, she spoke of wondering what she had done, spiritually, to deserve her fate. I think she struggled with the issue until her life ended.Despite knowing this, I don’t always ask my patients about spirituality. Why not? Too often, as trainees, we feel the need to narrow our exam to what is necessary for an assessment; we give a treatment recommendation and then move on. But religion and spirituality are at the core of most patients’ lives: a 2014 Gallup poll revealed that 86 percent of the general population is religious or spiritual. And our colleagues are, too: 76 percent of psychiatrists, according to one survey. More science: high intrinsic religiousness can predict more rapid remission of depression, especially in patients with poor physical functioning. Religious and spiritual involvement appears to buffer patients from stress, and offering therapies augmented with a spiritual component to religiously or spiritually oriented patients is associated with increased efficacy of treatment. Nonetheless, the potentially negative effects of religion should not be overlooked; we’ve all encountered the gay or lesbian patient who feels deep shame due to a prohibitive religious upbringing.So how do we incorporate religion into our training and our care? A fan of checklists, I have used the following four questions (which were developed by a consensus panel of the American College of Physicians) as a basic approach to the spiritual history:Is faith (religion, spirituality) important to you?Has faith been important to you at other times in your life?Do you have someone to talk to about religious matters?Would you like to explore religious or spiritual matters with someone?Here are some additional tips gleaned during residency:Engage hospital chaplains in your inpatient psychiatric and consult-liaison work, utilizing them for patient interviews and family meetings, when appropriate.With permission, collaborate with your patient’s pastor or spiritual guide for context and coordination. When doing cognitive-behavioral therapy for psychosis, for example, a patient with religious delusions may be able to question the delusional content more safely with his or her pastor.If a patient asks you about your religious beliefs or spirituality, deal with it like any other personal question, responding with, for example: “I’m wondering why this question came up. What do you imagine?” Once the motivation has been explored, it becomes a judgment call. Less experienced practitioners may want to avoid disclosure as a rule; however, in the right setting, it could deepen the therapeutic alliance. For example, a patient struggling with feeling internal religious judgment could have a corrective emotional experience when the therapist reports that he or she does not share that same religious judgment of the patient. In the end, every psychiatrists needs to be prepared to tackle this issue, so careful self-reflection is highly suggested.Listen to spiritual or religious concerns carefully, but avoid giving an opinion. (I have found that aligning myself religiously has the potential to disrupt the therapeutic alliance.)As residents, we are so intently focused on keeping patients alive and learning psychiatry that we sometimes miss the intangible parts of our work. Regardless of our religious beliefs, or lack thereof, patient care can be a way to serve a higher power and receive spiritual nourishment. Evidence-based treatment and spiritually informed care are compatible. As we help patients share their spiritual beliefs with us, our work becomes deeper and more meaningful and can lead us to the core of the human experience. ■Hannah Roggenkamp, M.D., is an advanced research fellow in the Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Centers (MIRECC) at the Puget Sound VA Healthcare System in Seattle. ISSUES NewArchived

A Reanalysis of Social - Cultural Impacts and Functions of Worship: A Case Study on Salah (Namaz)

The sacred religion of Islam has imposed certain religious duties on its followers of which some are obligatory and some are just recommended, this is done for the sake of spiritual nourishment and growth of Islam followers. Salah (namaz) is an important obligatory type of worship that is crucial for self growth and getting closer to God. That is why we have chosen to analyze the quality, levels and orders of Salah (Namaz) in order to rediscover Islamic teachings, and contribute to spiritual growth of society. Descriptive- analytic methods were applied in this study. The study tends to answer questions such as: what are the social and cultural functions of Salah (namaz) and what we can do to optimize those functions? Salah, apart from its content helps people and societies to better themselves, based on its conditions and rules. This study had identified items such as: crime rate reduction, charitable attitude, kindness, discipline, justice seeking, social equality seeking and respecting other’s rights to be the cultural and social impacts of Salah. Thus this act of worship might help optimize the mentioned qualities in a society. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n4S1p249

Spiritual Nourishment for the People of Certainty: Commentary by Ismāʿīl al-Anqarawī on the Preface to Book I of the Mathnawī by Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī

Spiritual Nourishment for the People of Certainty: Commentary by Ismāʿīl al-Anqarawī on the Preface to Book I of the Mathnawī by Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī

Wpływ duchowości Pustelni Optyńskiej na twórczość rosyjskich filozofów i pisarzy XIX w.

Monasteries in nineteenth century Russia had a major influence on the nation. One such example was the Monastery of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple in Kozelsk, which is also known as the Optina Monastery. The pilgrims who travelled to this spiritual centre were not only common people. Russian philosophers and writers were also guests at the monastery on several occasions. The spiritual nourishment which they received from the monks influenced their creativity and life aspirations. The Elders of the Optina Monastery became for them spiritual guides and moral authorities, and even creative inspiration. The creators of Russian culture at that time, who were in contact with the Optina Monastery include, Ivan Kireyevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Konstantin Leontyev. Personal contact with the Elders of the Optina Monastery contributed to the these philosophers’ deeply spiritual views, which sustained their strength for the moral transformation not only of their own person, but also of the whole of society.

Decadence and progress: The boundaries of official Hungarian art in 1968

While the new art of a new generation was emphatically present from the mid-Sixties, today thanks to the canonisation of the Iparterv exhibitions, the year of 1968 appears as the primary turning point in Hungarian art. The change was signified by the concentrated and programmatic appearance of the ‘new strivings’ of the avant-garde that publically went against the officially accepted guiding principles and artistic thinking in relatively greater numbers. The border between the official art of the time, and the overstepping of that border by unofficial art, appeared as an important problem. The state (party) principles and preferences of power that were applied in the area of art were most systematically communicated to the professional audience and a broader public through the art journal Művészet. Based on the examination of the published articles and images in the issues of Művészet from 1968, the study highlights the frame provided by official art theory. It makes the ideological boundary lines visible, so that the criteria of preferences appear more systematically, and from this it is possible to convey the way in which the official system related to artists who partly defined themselves outside of these frames. From the beginning of the Sixties through the changing viewpoint of the journal it was possible to observe both the gradual deflation of a socialist realist tendency that asserted its dominance and was strongly anti-abstraction, as well as fluctuations: short episodes of ideological loosening were often followed by stricter, more hard-line periods. In the contemporary criticism and exhibition accounts of Művészet the officially specified values, above all the intelligibility of art had to be defended. Művészet saw a guarantee of this, amongst other factors, in the maintenance of the characteristics of Hungarian painting as intelligible to everyone and the continued focus on socialist themes. In the second place, the audience had to be protected since ‘without an audience there is no viable cultural revolution.’ In the third place, ethical commitment had to be defended: ‘humanity’ believes in socialism, and therefore socialist artists have to be prepared to cater to the spiritual nourishment of the masses. Characteristic of 1968 was the adoptive strategy, which attempted to bring the young artists closer to the categories of the system. In this category sensitivity towards social problems, the illumination of the problems of the present, or an affinity for humanism was enough for a young artist to go from being a representative of progressive art to being tolerated or even temporarily supported. Over the course of 1968 numerous young artists appeared in Művészet who at the December Iparterv exhibition turned directly against the ideals of official art. In 1968 from the official side, the broadening of the picture seemed possible by situating the young in the field between decadence and progress.

Родовата памет в българската култура – традиция и съвременност

The topic chosen for the article concerns the aspect of ancestral memory and its function in traditional and modern Bulgarian culture. The aim of the article is to define the role of ancestral memory in the life of contemporary Bulgarian society. The author tries to answer this question by analysing the source material such as ethnographic research focused on the traditional model of family and ancestral memory. To achieve a larger overview of the topic, some well-known literature texts have been taken into account, such as ‘The Gerak Family’ (1911) by Elin Pelin, which shows the process of modernization of the Bulgarian society and the disappearance of the patriarchal family model, and ‘The Iron Oil Lamp’ by Dimitar Talev (1952). These texts form the basis of the research on the modern approach to ancestral memory. To find out what proportion of contemporary Bulgarian society has ancestral memory, the author has been looking at Internet forums and TV programmes. Due to the fact that ancestral memory is a broad concept, the starting point for all sources was traditional family, which is treated as a fortress with exceptionally deep and strong roots. It is a place where people care about and protect moral and spiritual values as well as transmit them to the future generation. The information about the creation of a village or even the history of Bulgaria are often included in these stories. The analysis of the sources shows that ancestral memory is very important for modern Bulgarian citizens and the history and tradition connects them regardless of where they live. The preservation of the memory of ancestors is a kind of spiritual nourishment and this knowledge can be a starting point for the search of identity and self-discovery.

Speaking to the Eye: Sight and Insight through Text and Image (1150–1650) ed. by Thérèse de Hemptinne, Veerle Fraeters, and María Eugenia Góngora (review)

Reviewed by: Speaking to the Eye: Sight and Insight through Text and Image (1150–1650) ed. by Thérèse de Hemptinne, Veerle Fraeters, and María Eugenia Góngora Judith Collard (bio) Hemptinne, Thérèse de, Veerle Fraeters, and María Eugenia Góngora, eds, Speaking to the Eye: Sight and Insight through Text and Image (1150–1650) (Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces, 2), Turnhout, Brepols, 2013; hardback; pp. xx, 311; 8 colour, 37 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €90.00; ISBN 9782503534206. This collection is the result of a Flemish–Chilean bilateral project, ‘Speaking to the Eye: Text, Image, and Gender in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times’. It is interdisciplinary in approach, but does emphasise literary, art historical, philosophical, and theological approaches. Each of the writers highlights the complex cultural meanings found in the texts and images being studied. The book is divided into three sections – Spiritual Vision, Text and Image Interactions, and Agency of Pictures – and is bookended by two essays that set the chronological boundaries of the work, and bring to the fore its central theme of exploring ‘the tension between iconophilic and iconoclastic reflections on the nature and function of images’ in the medieval and early modern periods. Ineke van ‘t Spijker’s chapter on Hugh of St-Victor and Richard of St-Victor looks at the important role given to the visual and the visible in their understandings of knowledge and thought. Both used images not only as explanatory diagrams but also as vehicles for thinking in their discussions of the thinking process. In their writings, where they reflect the influence of the writings of St Augustine, they provide a more nuanced role for imagery. While this chapter looks at how the Victorine brothers included roles for images and the imagination in their quest for spiritual perfection through contemplation and meditation, the next three deal with visionary texts from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, examining works by Hildegard of Bingen, Hadewijck of Brabant, and Simon of Aulne. In their studies of the first two, María Eugenia Góngora and Veerle Fraeters take specific visionary texts for focused analysis, while Jeroen Deploige looks at the use of spiritual clairvoyance in an account of the life of a Cistercian lay brother. This was recorded in an illustrated revision of his life from the seventeenth century. Henry Suso also features in this collection. Suso’s use of images in his spiritual mentoring of nuns marked a shift in Dominican teaching, transforming Andachtsbilder into a central part of spiritual life. The imagery found in his texts also provides a fascinating insight into ideas about prayer and visionary experiences. Youri Desplenter examines Middle Dutch psalters, showing the use of these books by women, especially tertiaries, who adapted liturgical ritual into a quieter form of private prayer. The third chapter in this [End Page 240] second section looks at a fifteenth-century Middle French rhyming chronicle from the Premonstratensian monastery of Florette. The chronicle’s author defended the writing of history through allegorical writings combined with unusual illustrations, some of which transform and complement the meanings found in the text. The final section looks at paintings from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. These include the extraordinary Beato Chiarito tabernacle in Florence, the central panel of which shows an image of the Apostles drinking the blood of Christ via tubes. The image highlights both Christ’s suffering and the spiritual nourishment it provides. The second chapter, by Stijn Bussels, looks at the ‘Diptych of the Lentulus Letter’, which juxtaposes a profile image of Christ with a purportedly contemporaneous description of his appearance. Caroline van Eck’s final chapter on Bellini’s Pieta combines Alfred Gell’s ideas about agency in art with classical rhetoric and Renaissance responses to art, to explore early modern ideas about visual persuasion. The epilogue of the collection is a discussion of Huygen’s poem written to console a friend whose eyesight was diminishing, which draws together both Augustinian understandings of spiritual insight, with ideas drawn from texts like that of Thomas à Kempis. This is a fascinating and varied collection that tracks shifting understandings of the uses of images from the medieval...