Spiritual Presence Research Articles

Desert Dwellers’ Meaning and Existence of Spirituality: A Gendered Case Study of Cholistan, Pakistan

Cholistan is the second largest desert of Pakistan, which is locally known as, Rohi (Mughal, 1994). This paper is an ethnographic endeavour that sketches living in the desert and is about the traditional way in which they handle desolateness and powerlessness in that severely parched earth. Men and women seem to appear primordially linked to and in agreement with their environment. Their contentment is heartfelt, an aspect that seems to emerge from their belief that there is a spiritual solution for every problem. This indication forms the crux of this paper and as authors, we make a humble attempt to collate their narrative and how they make meaning of components of their living, and the importance they accord to spirituality in their lives. Deeply ingrained human and ecological values in life include contentment and presence of spirituality within their life surrounds which allow them to sing an ode of gratification to nature. This article presents evidence of adoption of spirituality as resilience and its effect on the emotional wellbeing of the desert dwellers. In our discussion, we present the evidence to suggest that spirituality has strengthened and enhanced resilience of the people for coping with the adversities of the lifecycle in a rather hostile environment of Cholistan.

(Un)Holy Alliances

This article examines the tenor of Islamic spirituality in Leila Aboulela’s The Translator (1999). By contrasting my analysis with those studies that lay excessive emphasis on the novel as symbolic of an East versus West theory, as well as a conflict between colonial and postcolonial societies, religions, and cultures, I argue that the novel is equally, if not more, about the spiritual faith of an ordinary Muslim woman grappling with emotional and psychological grief. Using several recent theories on Islamic feminism, including Saba Mahmood’s conceptualization of feminism beyond the predictable rubric of politics and activism, this paper emphasizes an appreciation of those aspects of Islam that translate into a Muslim’s daily life on a spiritual level. Typically divested of political activism or cultural conflicts, these aspects facilitate a genuine acknowledgement of the religion as a spiritual yet usable presence in the organization of quotidian issues, as seen in Aboulela’s novel.

Divinely guided: the California work of the Women's National Indian Association

Founded in Philadelphia in 1879, the WNIA devoted seventy years to working among Native women. Bucking society s narrow sense of women s appropriate sphere, WNIA members across the U.S. built homes, missionary cottages, schools, and chapels, and sponsored teachers and physicians all with a strong dose of Christianity. Though goals of forced assimilation were as unrealistic as they were unsuccessful, WNIA s contributions to the welfare of Native women were hardly insignificant, especially in California. In the north, they worked at the Round Valley and Hoopa Reservations and realized their most unusual undertaking the funding of the Greenville Indian Industrial School. In the south they worked with the Native mission populations, where cultural similarities and greater proximity fostered unprecedented cooperation among WNIA workers. Amelia Stone Quinton, longtime WNIA president and editor of The Indian s Friend, provides a consistent narrative thread, as does Helen Hunt Jackson in the chapters on Southern California. Even after Jackson s death, her spiritual presence and the impact of her novel Ramona guided WNIA membership. Mathes s recovery of WNIA history, supported by a wealth of documentation, reveals much about an era s sense of sphere, service, and sisterhood.

Companions in the Spirit – Companions in Mission

Companions in the Spirit – Companions in Mission

Mediating Absence—: Effecting Spiritual Presence Pictures and the Christian Imagination

The power of pictures cannot be understood by a sole focus on pictures, but needs to be based on a relational and contextual approach that probes into the constitution of human-picture relations through broader politics of representation, modes of governance, and practices of animation at specific times and places. Pleading for a broadened approach of visual culture that acknowledges the role of Christianity in spreading a Christian imaginary and organizing pictorial practices throughout the globe, this essay analyzes pictorial practices around the Sacred Heart of Jesus and other Jesus pictures in everyday life in Ghana. Such pictures are at the center of religious practices of mediation through which spiritual presence is effected.

Sacred Healing Stories Told at the End of Life

Cancer is a challenging disease to diagnose and treat, and oftentimes even with the best medical intervention, it spreads and is deemed incurable, requiring a shift from cure to end-of-life care. This study used a spirituality measure and the PATS© storytelling intervention developed by the principal investigator to better understand the experience of being diagnosed with cancer and being told no further curative treatments are warranted. The purpose of this exploratory study was to implement a storytelling approach to explore the experience of living with terminal cancer. Second, the study documented the presence of spirituality and healing in the narratives. The qualitative data were analyzed by narrative analysis developed by Riessman. Seven synoptic stories were written and later sorted into healing categories. The narrative analysis yielded three themes. There were instances of religion and spirituality found in the transcribed stories. The participants' scores on the Spiritual Health Inventory indicated the presence of spirituality. Storytelling allowed the seven study participants to share personal experiences and achieve a sense of connectedness and intimacy. The use of the PATS© intervention is a way to facilitate physical, emotional, and spiritual healing and provide holistic end-of-life care.

From the Editors’ Desk: Religion, Health and Cucumbers

For 2 days each July, there is an annual ceremony organized by the monks at the Gochizan Renge-ji Temple, located in the northwest hills of Kyoto, Japan. Known as the Cucumber Purification Ceremony, this odd and fascinating event has taken place, virtually unchanged, for hundreds of years. The monks at Gochizan Renge-ji Temple are followers of Shingon (“True Word”) Buddhism, one of the main schools of Japanese Buddhism, brought to Japan from China by the renowned Buddhist monk Kukai in the year 806 AD. Shingon is one of the Esoteric Buddhism lineages; its rituals have never been written down. Instead, its practices have been passed down by word of mouth for centuries. In the past, Shingon monks were called upon to perform mystical rituals such as summoning the rain, warding off invading armies and healing the sick. Which brings me back to the Cucumber Purification Ceremony. On a humid day in late July, my wife and I visited the Gochizan Renge-ji temple to take part in this ancient ceremony, the goal of which is to heal one’s body of whatever ailment is troubling it. We were instructed by a young, friendly monk to write our name, age and ailment on a thin sheet of paper. This paper, along with a cucumber that must be purchased at the temple for 1,000 yen (about $13 US dollars), was then brought to another monk performing ritual chanting inside the ornate temple (Figure 1). The now blessed cucumber was then returned to us along with instructions to rub it on the part of the body that hurt or was ill, two times daily (morning and evening) for 3 days. The belief is that the cucumber will absorb the pain or sickness and remove it from the body. The young monk instructed us to bury the cucumber in the ground at the end of three days. He assured us that our ailments would be buried along with it. Figure 1 Cucumbers awaiting purification at the Gochizan Renge-ji Temple, Kyoto, Japan. (Photograph by Jane Kramer). Why a cucumber? Nobody seemed to know the answer to this fundamental question, but on a typically hot summer day in Kyoto, the cool, smooth skin of a cucumber feels good on an aching back. And to the worshippers at Gochizan Renge-ji Temple, it is surely the belief that the cucumber will alleviate their suffering that imbues it with magical powers. Lest we believe that the Cucumber Purification Ceremony is simply a quaint holdover from an era prior to the advent of modern medicine, this issue of JGIM features two papers that deal with the ongoing nexus of religion, spirituality and health. Williams et al. report on a study that examined medical inpatients’ religious and spiritual concerns. They found that while many patients expressed a desire to have their religious or spiritual concerns addressed while in the hospital, only about half reported having had such a conversation. Patients experiencing pain were both more likely to want and more likely to have had these issues addressed. Interestingly, patients who reported that they had had religious/spiritual discussions were more satisfied with their care, even if they had not expressed much interest in religion or spirituality initially. To conduct research such as the study by Williams et al., validated instruments are needed to measure the presence and extent of spirituality and religiosity. Stefanie Monod of the University of Lausanne Medical Center and her US-based collaborators report on results of a systemic review of instruments used to measure spirituality in clinical research. They conclude that there is a paucity of good instruments and limited data on the psychometric properties of these instruments. In spite of these limitations, they point out that over the past 2 decades there has been a tremendous increase in research on the relationship between religion and spirituality in health, much of which has found that patients with low spiritual well-being often have worse outcomes. Clearly, more research is needed, both to develop new and better measures and to use these instruments to more clearly elucidate the connection between spiritual beliefs and health. In the Cucumber Purification Ceremony, we were asked to take it on faith that the ordinary-looking cucumber that moments before had been residing in a crate with dozens of others of almost identical shape and size could somehow cure whatever ailed us in 3 days. Respectfully, I asked the monk how could I know that it would help. He replied: “It has been helping people for 1,000 years. Just be sure to follow my instructions and bury the cucumber in your yard at the end of the 3 days.” He should have said: “If you have to ask, it probably won't.”

Provincialising God: Anglicanism, Place, and the Colonisation of Australian Land

This article investigates the importance of Anglican religion and the physical structures of faith to how some believers understood their surrounds in a British settler colony. Its central figure, William Grant Broughton, was head of the Church of England in Australia during the 1830s and 1840s. At the time when the position of the Church was changing both at home and abroad, it was his responsibility to establish the physical and spiritual presence of Anglicanism throughout the colony. He faced the particular challenges of negotiating the Church's formal relationship to the land and Anglicanism's cultural contribution to settler notions of local place and community. In meeting these challenges, Broughton “provincialised God” by articulating the Anglican faith with consequences specific to his Australian context and particularly to the British colonisation of Aboriginal territory.

An interpretive mixed-methods analysis of ethics, spirituality and aesthetics in the Australian services sector

The aim of this article is to examine the usefulness of spirituality and aesthetics for generating new perspectives and understandings with regard to business ethics. Using an interpretive mixed-methods approach, data were collected through an online survey of 223 respondents and focus group interviews with 20 participants. Analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data suggests that the presence of aesthetic spirituality and religious spirituality, along with the factors of optimism, contentment, making a difference and interconnectedness, are significantly associated with ethical practice in the workplace. These factors may be focused upon when considering the ethical climate of organizations. Although this research does not support universal conclusions, the relationship between ethics, spirituality and aesthetics identified in the Australian services sector might be replicated elsewhere.

Listening to Bones That Sing: Orality, Spirituality, and Female Kinship in Louise Halfe's <em>Blue Marrow</em>

Listening to Bones That SingOrality, Spirituality, and Female Kinship in Louise Halfe’s Blue Marrow Azalea Barrieses (bio) and Susan Gingell (bio) Cree poet Louise Bernice Halfe/Sky Dancer informs readers of her book-length poem Blue Marrow that the writing was guided by powerful spectral presences: “The prairie is full of bones. The bones stand and sing and I feel the weight of them as they guide my fingers on this page”. For Halfe’s persona, however, the haunting is doubled, reciprocal, because she both invokes the kôhkomak, the Grandmothers, whose bones sing to her, urging, “Haunt us / with your cries” (2, 73), and indicates her spirit is preoccupied with the Grandmothers’ narratives:1 ê-pêcimakik. I haunt them. My wailing stories. (52) The resultant voice dancing of what, in an interview with Esta Spalding, Halfe calls “ancestral memory,” works at the oral-written interface to reconstitute fur-trade history from Cree women’s perspectives.2 Halfe challenges the authority of the written colonial narrative by using oral forms and stories to evoke a tradition of oral history that has its own conventions and has always paralleled settler-centered written history. She does so, however, by hybridizing the oral and the written while exemplifying the way in which oral stories can serve as the basis of what Cree scholar Neal McLeod calls “the anti-colonial political imagination that struggles to preserve the Indigenous political system and identity” (78). Invader-settler culture is further challenged by Halfe’s subversive [End Page 69] appropriations of Roman Catholic liturgy in a countermovement to the ghosting of Indigenous spirituality: “Our songs [were] taxed, / silenced by tongues that speak damnation and burning” (98). Moreover, Blue Marrow makes clear that the ghosting of Indigenous peoples has been a gendered process. The cover of the second edition (2004) features Halfe’s kôhkomak, or grandmothers, in and above a band of Northern Lights, or Sky Dancers, which represents Halfe’s continuity with her female forebears and the Eternal Woman spirit. Both this cover and the dedication to one kôhkom and Halfe’s mother point to an even stronger revaluing of older Cree women, of nôtokwêsiwak (“female Elders”), in the revised version of the book-length poem than was evidenced in the first edition (1998). The latter’s cover reprinted a picture of Halfe’s great-grandparents, and its dedications, while headed with an honoring of “all iskwêwak [Cree women]—the beautiful browns” and singling out her daughter, Omeasoo, conclude with mention of both male and female members of her “Rainbow Family” and “all children born into the Rainbow.” In both editions, however, the centering on female kin animates the retrieval of female stories from the colonially imposed silence, thus recuperating Cree women’s power as the life-giving force acknowledged in her people’s oral creation stories and other forms of oral history (98), and as important guardians and transmitters of Cree culture.3 Halfe honors her female relatives, then, in ways analogous to those nêhiyaw-Métis-nahkawè critic Janice Acoose enacts in her essay for the Native Critics Collective, “Honoring Ni’Wahkomakanak,” asserting of these relations that their “spiritual presence continues to influence my life and work” (219; emphasis added). Halfe’s Blue Marrow thus corrects multiple biases in its representation of repressed Cree orality, spirituality, and gender balance, working to strengthen Cree nations, particularly their women, for the future. In cracking ancestral bones to feed on their marrow (78), Halfe’s book lays bare historic Indigenous experiences still haunting contemporary lives and producing hybrids neither wholly positive nor wholly negative. But the partially autobiographical persona is deeply nourished by that marrow so that in retelling this history, [End Page 70] she asserts revived possibilities for the Cree, or nêhiyawak, especially Cree women. At the same time, she gives voice to the Grandmothers, making clear that they cannot pass on their teachings unless they, too, are nourished: We do not talk until we are fed.You’ve wanted us yet you ignore us.Dream us. Feed us. (54) Halfe thus manifests an understanding of her specters as communicating the kind of “something-to-be-done” that...

Feathered footsteps: mythologizing and ritualizing Black Indian processions in New Orleans

This essay explores intersections between the ritual veneration of stereotypified Native American spirit figures by American Spiritualists and the performative traditions of ‘Masking Indian’ practised by urban African Americans in New Orleans' Mardi Gras processions. The author examines the ways in which communities in New Orleans, of both sacred and secular identity, employ images of Native Americans as icons of spiritual power and presence. This essay suggests some ways in which this process constitutes an instance of co-narration, in which clergy and congregants of Spiritualist/Spiritual churches – whose narratives of the Indian spirits find expression through interlacing oral and ritual performances – have helped to establish a sacred dimension for Indian processions in New Orleans, adding an overtly spiritual note to otherwise secular ‘rites of territory repossessed’. Through an examination of the community response to the death of Big Chief Allison ‘Tootie’ Montana, and the first post-Katrina Mardi Gras in 2006, the article explores the ways in which Indian icons and imagery still stand for many New Orleanians as powerful signs of something in the soul that, to paraphrase a popular Mardi Gras Indian song, won't kneel and won't bow down.

Missions vaticanes et missions de rapatriement (France-Allemagne, 17 janvier 1944 - 28 août 1947)

Dated July 7, 1946 and without a signature on the report, can there be any argument? There might well be. One year later, August 28, 1947 to be exact, the mission of the Vatican, the origins and actions of which he describes, will be cut short. The idea came to the Chaplain General of prisoners of war in France in September/October 1944. Its establishment was difficult, but, with the approval of the provisional government and in the wake of the Allied armies crossing the Rhine, the first group of trucks under the papal flag left Paris on April 12, 1945. The point here is that the Vatican's missionary activity was divided into three groups based on the zones occupied by the French, the English and the Americans in Germany. In order to justify the activity of chaplains and to demonstrate their utilitybased on the history of these missions, it must be noted that every effort is being made to recall the spiritual presence of the Church in the lost territories of the Reich in German prisons and camps. Although this sounds a bit like a 'swan song', such is the purpose of this report.

“Altered Observation of Modern Eyes”: Mina Loy's Collages, and Multisensual Aesthetics

ABSTRACTThis article traces the emergence of a multisensual aesthetic in the works of modernist avant-garde artist and poet Mina Loy. Loy's creative efforts were heterogeneous, spanning multiple media: a poet and painter, she was also a designer, actor and inventor. Seeking to instantiate herself in a cultural climate which tended to objectify the female body, Loy's multisensual art aimed to make the viewer/listener/reader sense as she did, and, in so doing, made important advances in the cultural configuration of women as whole, complex beings worthy of intellectual, physical, artistic and spiritual presence in the world.Loy's assemblage art of the 1950s is shown to be a radical attempt to push the medium of collage into a more complex dimensionality in an effort to represent emerging understandings of perception and consciousness, positioning her as a major contributor to a defining art form of modernism. Bolstered by an appreciation of her own body as sensually charged and relational, Loy ascertained the simultaneity of present absence, connectivity and juxtaposition characterizing collage. This article articulates how, by troubling normative conceptions of dimensionality Loy's assemblages underscore the material and textual aspects of language explored in her collage-inflected poetry.

Baptism, Conversion, and Grace: Reflections on the "Underlying Realities" Between Pentecostals, Methodists, and Catholics

AbstractThe past four decades of dialogue between Methodists and Catholics as well as Pentecostals and Catholics reveal a shared soteriological substructure between each communion that is grounded in pneumatology. This article explores the shared substructure in order to point out the inherent tensions it raises with respect to baptism and conversion and then offer a possible solution as a way to advance the dialogues. The initial claim being made is that a tension exists in each communion between their commitment to the prevenient activity of the Spirit and their commitment to the sanctifying activity of the Spirit. This tension points toward a need for greater clarity on the modalities of the Spirit's presence in conversion. By reflecting on these modalities, a second claim is made that Pentecostals, Catholics, and Methodists may find agreement on the bestowal of the Spirit in infant baptism or infant dedication as part of the conversion process for those whose physical birth places them within the family of believers. The specific point of agreement would center on the Spirit's bestowal of the "will for faith" as a particular manifestation of sanctifying grace that serves to separate infants within the church from those outside the church who, nevertheless, still benefit from the Spirit's prevenient activity.

O espírito da oração ou como carismáticos entram em contato com Deus

Trata-se de um artigo sobre algumas orações e práticas religiosas desenvolvidas pelos membros da Renovação Carismática Católica, destacadamente na comunidade Canção Nova. Considerando a perspectiva nativa a respeito das situações e acontecimentos que envolvem o Espírito Santo, analiso a oração enquanto fenômeno social e reflito sobre as relações que se produziriam entre humanos e Deus através de eventos como a glossolalia, a profecia e o repouso no Espírito. Nessas relações, linguagem, corporalidade e sentimento operam como dispositivos de atualização e confirmação da presença e ação do Espírito neste mundo.

The Acoustic Body: <i>Rumba Guarapachanguera</i> and Abakuá Sociality in Central Park

Since the late 1960s, summer rumbas in New York City's Central Park have been a center for Puerto Rican music elaboration. However, since the mid-1990s, the arrival of Cuban rumberos has reshaped the practice. In this essay I analyze this transformation and suggest that Central Park rumba has the capacity to generate multiple sociopolitical, historical, and spiritual presences through sound and gesture. Centering on the interaction between the Cuban Marielitos and the balseros, I show how their encounter in Central Park rumba produces a transnational space of cross-generational negotiation through spiritual and secular performances. I argue that while the rumba guarapachanguera became a style performed primarily by the rumberos from Cuba's Special Period, Abakuá spiritual bonding functioned across the Mariel and balsero generations because of the deep history embodied in their performance of the Abakuá Íremes. I theorize how the performance of rumba constitutes an aural community that, once in the Diaspora, articulates what I call the "acoustic body," a body that echoes an internalized spiritual sound via gesture.

Concepts of Spirituality within Traditional Management and Organisation Discourse

Over the last decade or so, we have witnessed a growing interest in the role of spirituality within traditional management and organisation discourse and research – a move beyond focusing on rational and non-rational issues, including those of emotion and intuition, to something perhaps more encompassing and holistic, maybe best popularised initially by Zohar andMarshall’s monograph on Spiritual Intelligence (2000). Yet, the questioning of the legitimacy of the construct of spirituality and its appropriateness in organisation discourse continues. In light of this ongoing debate, we offer an evolutionary-frame perspective on the development of the construct of spirituality, to demonstrate that while the ideas of organisational spirituality became quite popular in the twenty first century, the origins of this construct are present in the longer evolution of organisation and management thought. The paper forms part of a broader study of spirituality within contemporary organisations, investigating the relationship between employees and organisations from a spiritual perspective. The question addressed here is how did interest about and an increased presence of spirituality in organisational life evolve, the answers to which should assist comprehension of the phenomenon and contextualise further research in the field. In answering within the scope of a paper, we have combined the work of Bolman and Deal (2008) who provide a frame (multi-perspective) model that summarises traditional management and organisation literature, and that of Wilber (1996, 2000), whose meta-framework offers an integrated, non-dual perspective on reality, where external and internal, collective and individual are part and parcel of each other. We focus on how organisational thought developing within broader societal development, scientific discoveries, and achievements in philosophy, spurred the evolution of the concept of spirituality as connected and opposed to religion. This crucial dimension in answering our question is explored by outlining the main trends in conceptualising spirituality and religion, and making our case for defining both in the context of organisation discourse.

Workplace Spirituality and Employee Attitudes within the Lodging Environment

This research examined the workplace spirituality concept and its relationship with employee variables, including intrinsic work satisfaction, job involvement, intention to quit, organizational based self-esteem, and organizational commitment, within the lodging setting. Workplace spirituality is a growing trend not only in the research community, but also in the corporate environment. Researchers sampled employees from two hotel management groups, one that actively promoted workplace spirituality within its organization and one that did not. The results of this study found a significant relationship between the presence of workplace spirituality and the employee variables being examined. There was also a significant difference examined between the two organizations as related to the presence of workplace spirituality.

What if the Spirit Does Not Move Me? A Personal Reconnaissance and Reconciliation

The burgeoning recognition of the influence of religion and spirituality in personal, cultural, and political affairs has spurred discussions regarding the need for social work practice to be sensitive and responsive to the presence of spirituality in the lives of clients. However, though attending properly to clients' coping styles involving religion or spirituality is indeed crucial, discourse on spirituality and practice too often involves unclear definitions and problematic assumptions about the prevalence and relevance of spirituality in the lives of clients. This article considers spirituality from the perspective of a nonspiritual social worker who is nevertheless committed to practice that recognizes the importance of spirituality in the lives of many clients. This article discusses some problematic aspects of dominant discourse on spirituality and offers recommendations, pedagogy, and assessment for spirituality in clients' lives that should work well for all social workers, no matter their personal views on the subject.

Through the Glass Darkly: New Paradigms for Counselors, Courage, and Spirituality in Contemporary Education

This article proposes a paradigm shift in the view of the school counselor role. Evolving from the dualistic mind/body split of traditional physics, counseling has largely focused on problem identification and attempting to fix what is wrong. The new sciences of chaos and complexity invite a more holistic view, with the psychospiritual development of all students seen as an appropriate part of a comprehensive education. School counselors are well placed to mentor the psychospiritual development of all students and to facilitate the presence of spirituality on school sites. Two complementary models, Courage to Teach/Lead and the Ignatian model of Spiritual Discernment are presented with discussion of how their principles and practices might be applied by counselors engaged in this role shift.