Spiritual Way Research Articles

Invited Commentary: Fostering Resilience Among Native American Youth Through Therapeutic Intervention

This article offers a comprehensive overview and understanding of the needs of Native American Youth for researchers, educators, and practitioners based on current research and practice. Strengths and protective factors are discussed in terms of Native strengths in context, the strengths and resilience of Native ways, Indigenous ways of knowing, the relationship between cultural identity and the tribal nation, the importance of family, the roles of the wisdom keepers, spiritual ways, and communication styles. Contextual influences are explored in terms of the relationship between history and healing from intergenerational grief and trauma, the influence of acculturation, as well as current social, economic, and political issues that affect Native youth. Implications for research and therapeutic intervention are explored in terms of healing from historical trauma and oppression. The authors offer an overview of common presenting issues and recommendations, practical tribally-specific interventions, and reflections on what it means to work from a social justice and client/community advocacy perspective with a focus on providing effective therapeutic, culturally-based interventions with Native children and adolescents that promote resilience and foster positive development with this population.

A Spiritual Way of Seeing

A Spiritual Way of Seeing

Ardhanareeshwara concept: Brain and psychiatry

Ardhanareeshvara is a combination of three words “Ardha,” “Nari,” and “Ishwara” means “half,” “woman,” and “lord,” respectively, which when combined means the lord whose half is a woman. It is believed that the God is Lord Shiva and the woman part is his consort Goddess Parvati or Shakti. The Ardhanareeshvara represents a constructive and generative power. Ardhanareeshvara symbolizes male and female principles cannot be separated. It conveys the unity of opposites in the universe. The male half stands for Purusha and female half is Prakriti. Ardhanareeshvara harmonizes the two conflicting ways of life: The spiritual way of the ascetic as represented by Shiva, and the materialistic way of the householder symbolized by Parvati. It conveys that Shiva and Shakti are one and the same. A human being is not a pure unisexual organism. Each human organism bears the potentiality of both male and female sex. Neurohormonal mechanisms have been found to be greatly influencing the sexual behavior. The modern world has come to understand the concept of “Ardhanareeshwara” as it aspires to resolve the paradox of opposites into a unity, not by negation, but through positive experiences of life. The matching of opposites produces the true rhythm of life.

Salmon and the Adaptive Capacity of Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) Culture to Cope with Change

Salmon and the Adaptive Capacity of Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) Culture to Cope with Change Benedict J. Colombi (bio) Change due to natural disturbances and disasters, population growth and decline, economic crises, and environmental and climate change creates significant cultural challenges.1 Rapid change and the transformation it brings also involve complex relationships between sovereign tribes, resources, and the global system. This article explores how salmon and the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) people who depend upon them survive given invasion and treaty making, population decline and growth, destruction of salmon habitat and damming of streams, and impending climate change.2 Salmon and Nimiipuu survival are interdependent, and without salmon the Nimiipuu say their culture will die. The Nimiipuu revere salmon as a cultural keystone species, which, for the Nimiipuu, are those species that they rely upon “most extensively to meet their needs[,] . . . are the species that become embedded in cultural traditions and narratives[,] . . . and [are] the ones on which they focus in their immediate activities and conversations.”3 As cultural keystones, Nimiipuu and salmon have forged long-standing economic and spiritual relationship and have coped with continuing change since at least the last Ice Age and perhaps even before that time. Horace Axtell, a Nez Perce elder, commented in September 2008 on the relationship between water and salmon and Nimiipuu culture: “According to our spiritual way of life, everything is based on nature. Anything that grows or lives is part of our spiritual life. The most important element we have in way of life is water. The next most important element is the fish because the fish comes from water.”4 This emphasis on the interdependency of salmon and Nimiipuu culture [End Page 75] requires some clarification. The research presented here draws from more than a decade of my ongoing collaborations as an anthropologist working with the Nimiipuu and tribal programs and before that with a lifetime of dedicating myself to the understanding of rivers, including serving as a professional fly-fishing guide for more than ten years in the Nimiipuu watersheds of the Snake and Columbia Rivers. I also draw insight from a careful reading of the published literature in Native American and Indigenous studies and related cognate fields of anthropology, history, geography, and ecology. Thus, the centrality of salmon to Nimiipuu culture demonstrates that human-animal relationships of this magnitude are not overly simplistic or static, nor are they, as some say, a last-ditch effort to gain hold of salmon with tribal sovereignty in some linear, political-cultural context. Rather, the Nimiipuu have adapted in the face of change for more than four hundred generations and twenty-five hundred salmon generations. In short, the central assertion of this article is twofold: (1) nothing is forever, and change is constant; and (2) the Nimiipuu have retained their adaptive capacity through many substantial changes, and Nimiipuu culture is the strength from which adaptive capacity emerges. Nimiipuu survival is not about trying to sustain some condition from a changing state; rather, Nimiipuu survival is about constant adaptation to the changing needs of Nimiipuu society and culture as a dynamic system. Moreover, the main interest in adaptive capacity is that neither resilience nor sustainability necessarily provides adaptive capacity, while culture does. Resilience and sustainability connote returning to or maintaining some previous state. The Nimiipuu have adapted to dramatic population, environmental, and sociopolitical changes. Thus, what are the features of Nimiipuu culture that make it adaptive? Nimiipuu Culture as Adaptive A long and diverse history provides many insights into Nimiipuu adaptive strategies. First, the Nimiipuu have maintained an Indigenous knowledge system of water and migrating salmon that has been told in tribal narratives since the people have lived in the drainages of the Snake and Columbia Rivers. This realization focuses on Nimiipuu and salmon responding to periods of great change and how they reorganize themselves to cope with that change. Moreover, the Nimiipuu and [End Page 76] salmon migrate across many jurisdictions and scales and swim through many cultures and environments, linking together complex social, political, and economic relationships. Second, the Nimiipuu’s encounters with salmon suggest that “local knowledge, environmental values, place attachments, and cultural landscapes are all functionally interdependent,” so sovereignty in...

Indigenous Religious Environmentalism in Africa

For centuries, the Westernisation of Ghana has lead to the devaluation of indigenous ways of life, thought and spirituality or ‘Indigenous Knowledge Systems’ (I.K.S.). It is argued that in general Western thought has also decoupled nature from humankind, which has led to the environmental crisis. Due to the limitations of modern technological and scientific solutions— which originate from the same cultural mindset that caused the destruction to our planet in the first place—it is argued that indigenous religious environmentalism could provide effective solutions. Exploring the case of the Asante Sekyere people of Southern Ghana, this paper shows that I.K.S. still preserved in their native culture is a source of environmental ethics that is inspired by their spiritual cosmology, values and traditional ways of life. The paper outlines how their ‘ecocentric’, environmentally orientated culture is informed by their multifarious spiritual beliefs, encompassing: belief in a transcendent God or Gods; the veneration of ancestors; nature spirits that animate the natural environment (animism); and totemic beliefs based around a sacred identification with an animal, plant or natural phenomenon. These beliefs inform the Sekyere’s core environmental values— respect, cooperation, communalism, care and reciprocity— that manifest in regulatory taboos that conserve natural resources. The paper concludes that alternative ways to solve environmental degradation can be sought in the cultural resources of indigenous people like the Sekyere.

La espada de la sabiduría: reflexiones en torno a la filosofía y espiritualidad del ken jutsu y del iaido

<p><em>Iaido</em> (fast drawing of the sword) and <em>Ken Jutsu</em> (saber fencing) are two Japanese martial arts that have overcome their pragmatic character to become spiritual ways of self-cultivation. In this essay, the author presents some of the keys and fundamental ideas that support this concept. From this perspective, the mysticism of both disciplines already starts at the very forging process of the sword and spreads to the last performance of the techniques, when the player is released from all that binds him to the world through the cutting gesture.</p>

Keynote 4: Spirituality and Health

In a fragmented world, which lacks coherent and integrated ways of understanding spirituality and health, there is nonetheless a growing research evidence base which supports the importance of spirituality and religion as variables of interest in the aetiology and treatment of a wide range of health-related conditions and disorders. Controversies concerning the interpretation and application of this evidence base easily polarize around immanent and transcendent concerns. Spirituality, which is itself a fragmented concept, has been understood in a crude way as being concerned with the transcendent pole of this debate. An approach to research and practice is needed within which both immanent and transcendent concerns are addressed and which serves to reduce rather than increase the fragmentation of the concepts which govern our shared understanding of spirituality and wellbeing.

Fawa'Id Al-Fu'Ad of Khawaja Nizamuddin Auliya (Rahmatullah 'Alayh), Vol - I (Sessions 1 to 34) English Translation

In the Indo-Pak subcontinent the Muslim era began with the blessed personalities of the Auliya’ Kiram. Through those self less and pure hearted human beings Allah Almighty revived the fields of the dead hearts and selves and granted health to the spiritual patients. Through these sincere men of God and the persons disciplined by them Islam was vastly propagated in the far off areas and corners of the sub-Continent and millions of mankind were favoured with guidance. By their training such men of action came to the scene that in their respective periods blew the spirit of faith, certitude, and good action and played a leading role in the field of struggle. The usefulness of this group of the puritans, its services, and its impacts upon the society are preserved in the chronicles of the history of Islam.Among these selfless, pure hearted darwayshes (fuqara’ salihin) and the men of truthfulness there was a saint Sultan al-Masha’ikh Mahbub-i-Ilahi Hadrat Khawajah Nizamuddin Auliya’ (رحمۃ اللہ علیہ), who was born in the year 636 AH and died in the year 725 AH. He was of the highest rank of the perfect saints. The Chishtiyah Mystic Order was founded by Hadrat Khawajah Mu`inuddin Chishti Ajmeri (رحمۃ اللہ علیہ) but its real popularity is on account of Hadrat Khawajah Nizamuddin Auliya’ (رحمۃ اللہ علیہ). He was the murid-i-khass and Khalifah of Hadrat Baba Fariduddin Ganj Shakar (رحمۃ اللہ علیہ). He appointed many of his khulafa’ in various areas of the country whereby the propagation of Islam was made throughout the country. Undoubtedly, Khawajah Sahib has the pivotal role in the matter of spread of Islam and tasawwuf in India.Among those who were spiritually disciplined under the direct attention of Hadrat Khawajah Nizamuddin Auliya’ (رحمۃ اللہ علیہ) and later accepted by the people as the big saints were the personalities like Hadrat Amir Khusro, Shaykh Nasiruddin Chiragh Dehlawi, and Amir Hasan `Ula Sanjari (رحمۃ اللہ علیہم اجمعین) .To get awareness of the teachings of Hadrat Khawajah Nizamuddin Auliya’ (رحمۃ اللہ علیہ) his malfuzat are available in the following collections, namely:1. Fawa’idul-Fuwad compiled by Amir Hasan `Ula Sanjari (رحمۃ اللہ علیہ) ;2. Afdalul-Fawa’id, attributed to Amir Khusro,3. Halat Hadrat Chishtiyyah, though most of its contents are only malfuzat and aqwal. 4. Khayr-ul-Majalis compiled by Hayder Qalandar, it also contains a huge quantity of the malfuzat of Khawajah Sahib.The collection before us is Urdu translation of the FAWA’IDUL-FUWAD (Persian) written by Amir Hasan `Ula Sanjarani (رحمۃ اللہ علیہ). This is the most famous book and Amir Khusro (رحمۃ اللہ علیہ) used to envy its compilation. These malfuzat consist of 188 Sessions/Assemblies w.e.f. 3 Sha`ban 2007 H to 20 Sha`ban 722 AH which shows that Hadrat Khawajah Nizamuddin Auliya’ (رحمۃ اللہ علیہ) was a spiritual healer, a guide of the spiritual way, and a salik of the path of haqiqat and was on a high pedestal in those faculties. His history speaks of the depth of his knowledge and thought. According to him a Sufi must be a scholar. He stressed upon the significance of the reason and planning. He gave the lesson of love and affection towards the people at large. He taught sacrifice for and service to the people. He was moderate in the matter of the world and seclusion. There was special arrangement to abide by the Shari `ah and following the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (صلی اللہ علیہ وآلہ وسلم). He declared the company of the Sheikh necessary to get spiritual benefit. According to him six things were essential for a salik, namely:

Empowerment of Women and Children Through Performance of Indian Classical Art Form – A Case Study with Special Reference to Mohiniyattam of Kerala

Empowerment means such level of cognitive, affective and behavioural growth and development within the individual, which will enable one to do more self depending and self sustaining activities. Observation reads that traditional Indian classical art forms, especially, Mohiniyattom of Kerala brings positive, affective, behaviour and cognitive changes in women, especially in girls. These positive changes are empowering, in nature. Thus an attempt is made to study the concept of empowerment of women through learning traditional classical art forms which is of great significance in the present scenario.The aim and object of the study was to explore a distinct idion for Mohiniyattom. That is, to develop a method of using Mohiniyattom, as a process that will permit them to utilize their own relative potential within the medium of Mohiniyattom, using traditional dance resources. Thus the study was conducted with the objective of finding out the relationship between empowerment of women and children and performance of classical art forms - especially Mohiniyattom of Kerala. The study reveals that dance for the youth can be an affective medium to make a qualitative transformation in their lives. It has also been seen that learning Mohiniyattom has improved their total personality in all aspects.It also revealed that the learning and practice of Mohiniyattom is having a positive impact on the psycho neuro immunological system of women. By involving age old women in small groups with the slogan ‘CATCH them Old”, even provides cure for certain physical ailments in old age such as high blood pressure, mental depression, arthritis, astama etc. Learning of art forms can have even positive effect on memory, intelligence and emotional status. Art forms can revitalize the enthusiasm and physical fitness of women above forty, years which will give a therapic effect to ‘NATYA SASTRAH’. By performing Mohiniyattom we can brings down even the anxiety and depression level of people.The study will throw light on Indian art forms and its impact on women empowerment and will boost the self concept of women in a traditional and spiritual way. It can ensure improved performance on all components like general health, academic performance, general mental status, social adjustments and personal adjustments.India, now facing a lot of family disputes and increased rate of divorce, is evident from cases pending and ever increasing in family courts. An empowered women may be able to adjust to the condition and shape it in favour of them. Monetary empowerment alone will not make the women empowered. There is a proverb that if six to nine is okay, then nine to six will be okay. It means that if family life is okay, work life is better. Both are related. Only empowered women can make a harmonious family life and which is turn will benefits the society as a whole. Thus women empowerment is an unavoidable element. We should develop a method of using traditional classical art forms. Mohiniyattom for improving cognitive, affective and behavioural empowerment of women, which will permit them to utilize their own unique potential to the limit of the excellence.

Uno strano modo di pregare. I passalorinchiti alle origini dell'esicasmo ?

Important issues of Sinaitic and Byzantine hesychasm suggest the hypothesis of ancient derivations from the movement of the Passalorynchites or theTascodrugites, which has connections with the Montanist world. This religious experience, still alive in the fourth century, had peculiar modalities of prayer connected with breathing discipline, similar to respiration techniques present in hesychasm during the first centuries of second millennium. The article emphasizes spiritual ways that demonstrate an underground continuity between ancient uses and noteworthy aspects of Byzantine monasticism and its developments, especially in Slavic traditions.

The Built Environment and the Architecture of a Performance: Arcosanti, Chicago, and the Making of Theoretical Isolation: A Post-Atomic Experiment

The Built Environment and the Architecture of a Performance:Arcosanti, Chicago, and the Making of Theoretical Isolation: A Post-Atomic Experiment Chloe Johnston (bio) and Ira S. Murfin (bio) "Imagine, if you will, a kind of . . . shipwreckA big weather patternColliding with another weather patternAlso there's a wooden structure thrown in there for good measureWhat do you get?You get a disaster.Get it? We're colliding stories and it's going to be disastrous.See?" —Theoretical Isolation: A Post-Atomic Experiment "The Urban Effect is that fundamental phenomenon in which two or more particles of physical matter begin to interact in ways other than statistical and fatal. That is to say, in ways which are organic or living, and eventually the instinctive, self-conscious, mental, cultural, and spiritual ways. It is this Urban Effect around which the whole of life is clustering itself." —Paolo Soleri1 Introduction The arrival at Arcosanti—an experimental architectural project in the high desert of Arizona—is a long one. You turn off Interstate 17, travel on a gravel road for two-and-a-half miles, your tires kick up dust all the way, and if you pass another car, you wave, because you have this space in common. The drive down the road gives you time to think about this. You try to catch a glimpse of the place itself. It bobs in the distance as your car goes over hills, like a boat approaching the shore through choppy waters. When you finally pass the rusted sign, you might get excited, because you think you know something about where you are, or because you know nothing, and you are the kind of person who likes that (Fig. 1). In March 2009, the Laboratory for the Development of Substitute Materials (LDSM) marooned itself for ten days on a mesa in Arizona.2 We had, for the previous several months, been preparing a template for a structured response to that environment upon arrival. The collaboratively devised performance produced from this experiment, Theoretical Isolation: A Post-Atomic Experiment, integrated Shakespeare's The Tempest; research on the development of the atomic bomb by the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico; and the work of Italian architect Paolo Soleri, the founder of Arcosanti.3 We had deliberately marooned ourselves there and, like the shipwrecked Neapolitan nobility in The Tempest or the physicists arriving by train in New Mexico to work on the [End Page 133] Manhattan Project, we sought to create a process that would address this question: Why do certain individuals recede from civilization in order to re-imagine it? Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Arcosanti, Arizona. (Photo: Chris Ohlinger, reprinted by permission of the Cosanti Foundation.) The project was inspired by a historical anecdote. In The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes recounts an event at a cocktail party at Los Alamos: "(Edward) Condon pulled from a bookshelf a copy of Shakespeare's The Tempest and skimmed it for speeches meant for Prospero's enchanted island that might play contrapuntally against Oppenheimer's high and dry and secret mesa" (468). By exploring this connection at Arcosanti, the project unfolded against a landscape similar to the desert mesa where the first atomic bomb was built. In this article, we analyze the process of creating Theoretical Isolation: A Post-Atomic Experiment as a performance that is architecturally determined in both form and content in order to expand the practical understanding of site-specificity to include theoretical context and to argue for architecture as a collaborative presence in devised work. We took both the physical architecture and the ideological content of the site—a prototype for arcology, Paolo Soleri's urban-design concept for compact and environmentally friendly cities—as collaborator in structuring the content with which we arrived. Once written onto one specific site, Arcosanti, the performance was re-imagined and grafted onto an entirely different performance space, The Neo-Futurists' theatre, The Neo-Futurarium, in Chicago. At Arcosanti, we worked within the unusual structure of this architectural experiment, creating a promenade performance that moved the audience around the small community, culminating in an outdoor amphitheatre where we...

Socijalizacija u budućnosti koja je počela

The starting hypothesis in this work is that human freedom can be recognized in the extent of the ability for free motion. From the historical perspective, human conquers freedom through motion. The plant is fixed to the soil and moves only as carried by wind, swinging or rolling. Animals move in own domicile environment, while man conquered entire earth and launched into space but still contains "plantlike features" as Oswald Sprengler noticed. Human moves not only in physical but in spiritual way as well. By conquering the space/time dimension, human lives faster and faster. The persistent acceleration of live reached everyday existence, so that the loss of freedom is constantly felt, causing confusion, frustration, increase of violence and distortion of system of values. Prediction of future is a great challenge for every science, especially sociology. It seems that future arrives in everyday life faster than sociology can predict. Socialism left the world scene, while capitalism is falling apart, runs it last circle while sociologists are sophisticating over the wise sayings of Plato, Aristotle, Fromm, Sartre and postmodernism. They do not deal with the futurology striving to preserve scientific "dignity" and honor, hiding within traditional methodology. In this work, author opens the "forbidden" door of sociological futurology, and draws the reader's attention to the future, and at the end critically reflects the domestic situation pointing out the phenomenon of "losers' production".

Comparative study of core values of excellence models vis‐à‐vis human values

PurposeThis paper sets out to present a comparative study of the core values of 16 excellence models vis‐à‐vis human values enshrined in ancient religious philosophies and identified by social scientists as a spiritual way of working.Design/methodology/approachContemporary excellence models (EMs) are considered as role models to attain success, and thus it is appropriate to review the effectiveness of their core values. The core values of 16 EMs are identified through a literature review and are studied comparatively. Further, common human values enshrined in various religious philosophies and also advocated by research as success strategies are identified for the comparative study.FindingsThe paper identifies and compares the core values of 16 contemporary excellence models. By and large, the focus of core values in EMs is similar. However, the Deming Prize has a uniqueness and different focus in comparison with other models. Some of the common values are customer focus, continuous learning, innovation and improvement, employee involvement and development, partnership development, systems, process‐based management, agility, and social responsibility. Human values emphasise the purity of the means and their adoption enhances stakeholders' loyalty. Core values will become more effective if they emanate from human values.Research limitations/implicationsThe comparative study provides a new perspective for the integration of business values of EMs with human values. It may be useful for the custodians, the GEM council, researchers and practitioners to enhance their understanding of values and their impact in enhancing sustainable growth and prosperity.Practical implicationsThe study is expected to help in a review of national business excellence strategies worldwide. The integration of excellence models with human values by model custodians and corporate leadership will lead to an exponential growth in business and prosperity for all stakeholders.Originality/valueThe study is a part of original research work at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India by the author after long experience in the implementation of excellence initiatives in industry. The paper is one of the few comprehensive studies of excellence models and focuses on the integration of learning to attain sustainable growth and prosperity in a competitive environment.

Spirituality As a Strength of Afican‐American Women Affected by Welfare Reform

Spirituality, including religious community participation, is commonly an important aspect of life and a significant strength in African‐American communities, especially for women dealing with issues of poverty. In order to deepen knowledge about how this works in people's daily lives, this qualitative study explored how a group of 44 African‐American women in a job readiness program located in a Midwestern urban area utilized spirituality as a strength in response to challenges of poverty and welfare reform. Findings reveal participants' views about the following themes: spirituality as a source of strength; definitions of spirituality; spirituality expressed in religious practices; spirituality infused in daily life; spiritual dreams and visions for life direction; spiritual ways of coping with poverty, welfare, and welfare reform; and spiritual qualities of the job readiness program. One vignette is presented to illustrate the all‐pervading influence of spirituality in a participant's life. Finally, implications and lessons learned for social work practice and education are suggested.

Individual belief and practice in neopagan spirituality

This article deals with Neopaganism, which is one of the fastest growing spiritual practices today. Neopagans are often placed in the field of new religions and new religious movements. When focussing on the world-view shared by these groups, this classification is correct, but no neopagan practitioner believes and practices like another. Neopagan spirituality is flexible and personal, which is often expressed in the art of poetry. Practitioners of this way of spirituality, where there are no texts or other sources telling them what to believe and how, turn to producing art for their personal spiritual development. While dogma is strictly rejected in postmodern spirituality, art obviously has become a very important element on the individual’s way to find her or his place in life and in the world.

Reflexiones sobre el proceso ritual en comunidades mexicanas de Alcohólicos Anónimos

The author conveys his reflections on the symbolic aspects and ritual character of the therapeutic communities of rehabilitation of alcoholics, known as “Alcoholic Anonymous” (AA). He did ethnographic fieldwork among AA communities of Ciudad Victoria, in Tamaulipas, northern Mexico. These communities, facing a problem often neglected by both government and society in Mexico, yet holding a position of subalternity and marginality in the country, offer a spiritual way out to those alcoholics who approach them. Their activities are of interest for a discussion of ritual in current contexts. In addition, the communities are illuminating for many of the key aspects of the comparative ethnographic analysis of ritual.

Authoring a Multiplicity of Selves and No-Self

Authoring a Multiplicity of Selves and No-Self Wonhee Anne Joh (bio) I deeply appreciate this opportunity to read Mary Engel's provocative, evocative, and honest essay. I hope I can respond in kind: honestly with a mixture of personal and intellectual self-reflexivity. The education I received in North America privileged individuality and the virtue of progress of the individual—constantly becoming something better. For me, this emphasis on the progress of the individual's interior life, while seemingly virtuous to my Methodist upbringing, verges dangerously at times on becoming not too different from Western capitalist consumption. It can even consume and "colonize" ways and practices of others in the unconscious bid for constant renewal and self-improvement of the interior life. The work of decolonizing the Western imaginary, in this case theological and spiritual, is something that I grew up with and has shaped the ways I navigate my feminist critique of the separate but relational self and of the dominant ethos of the Korean American immigrant church, which tends to be strongly committed to what Engel refers to as the "no-self," which comes from a mixture of Daoism and Mahayana Buddhism. Growing up in a religiously pluralistic context, I was well aware of the practice of no-self making its way and hybridizing with the Christian understanding of kenosis. As postcolonial thinkers have often noted, colonization dynamics leave their marks upon both colonizers and colonized, leaving nothing untouched. The interstitial site of the colonial divide is fraught with imprints of conflicting and colliding ways of being in and relating to the world and with one another. Saying that this is merely the "clash of civilizations" is too simplistic. Rather, colonization is also marked with what Homi Bhabha has termed practices of spectacular resistance.1 Such practices emerge through a refusal to foreclose ways of being in the world that colonizers disavow but also through openness to excavating and reclaiming already foreclosed practices. As a Christian growing up in North America, I learned that this self-improvement or "sanctification" followed a linear progression, whereby one improved the self more and more as time went on. This theological simplicity was allowed to make its dent in my consciousness. Along with this was also a significant but simple caricatured form of Calvinism. In reading Engel's journey of the self into no-self, I found many shared [End Page 169] experiences but also aspects that were probably very different. She refers to her up-bringing in the Dutch Calvinist immigrant church. The differences in our experiences become much more crystallized for me in this regard. I was nurtured in a Korean American immigrant church. My church context, and by default my education, was almost always multivalent and assumed a multiplicity of spiritual practices due to the presence of both cultural and religious plurality. I felt during my youth that the Korean American immigrant church had its own theological interpretations and practices. These practices were always very much like the white "Methodist" practices but there were also aspects that were at the same time "not quite" like those of white Methodist churches. Of course, we shared in the larger denomination's theological heritage but I always understood that there were nuanced theological differences present shaped not only by our immigrant experiences but also by our experiences as the other. My observations and questions regarding Engel's essay emerge out of my own particular spiritual journey as a Korean American feminist theologian, one deeply committed to the project of decolonization of the Western imaginary of religious and spiritual practices. In no way do I assume any position of "purity" or "authenticity," but through my reading of Engel's essay, I want to suggest that perhaps we must be attuned, open, and awakened to a multiplicity of spiritual ways of being in the world that the colonization project might previously have foreclosed through its matrices of power shaped by patriarchy, heteronormativity, imperialism, or racism. Below, I offer some general observations and questions that my mind generated in response to Engel's essay that I believe warrant further conversation. In her journey of finding a way of "being and living with God," Engel...

REGIONAL MODELS OF URBANIZATION AND NATIONAL IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT (CASE STUDY OF BELARUS)

The article discusses the influence of the process of urbanization on the Belarusian nationality. Due to some historical conditions the Western cities‐communes have not formed in Belarus. At the beginning of the New Ages the Belarusian city has had Magdeburgian law and the trading relations, it has been the centre of the political life, the residence of the State officials and the provinces. Through the social‐economical backwardness of the Russian empire the peasants of Belarus could not move into the towns from the country. The towns and the cities in Belarus were not Belarusian but Jewish and Polish ones. Due to the World War II there have emerged the Polish Holocaust, repatriation and the Soviet industrialization which have made some auspicious conditions for the overtaking modernization in Belarus. During only one generation the peasant Belarusian nation has become the urban one. Such overtaking process of the urbanization has been preventing the formation of the standards and the traditions of the Belarusian city. The basis of the social and cultural life of Belarusians has been forming the traditions of the Soviet culture. That is why we can come to the conclusion that the overtaking modernization is closely related to the radical changes of the national identity. The more overtaking is modernization of the cities and the whole State, the more dangerous is the deprivation of the national peculiarity. The nation whose spiritual life is not utterly formed can hardly successfully adapt itself to the social and economical changes, which are determined by the overtaking modernization. These alterations do absolutely not correspond to its spiritual way of life.

Quêtes utopiques, chemins allégoriques : Le genre de l'itinéraire spirituel en Russie et ses transformations (XIIe-XXe siècle)

Utopian searches, allegorical ways : the genre of the pilgrimage of life in Russia and its transformations (XII-XX century). This paper points the motifs (difficulties, obstacles, guides and auxiliaries) which characterize the genre of spiritual way, represented in old Russia by apocrypha on travels in the hereafter (Skazanie otca nashego Agapija, Zhitie Makarija, Xozhdenie Zosimy k Raxmanam) and then follows the transformations of the genre through the legends of Kitezh and Belovod'e, the aesthetic and existential quests of Silver age («ways of the poet »), bolshevik eschatologism mixed with popular utopism (Esenin, Platonov). All these travels are the translations in space terms of spiritual searches [podvig] or searches of happiness from homo viator.

Ken Donald and Muscular Christianity

?MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY? was a system which relied upon sport to allow people to grow in a moral and spiritual way along with their physical development. It was thought that . . . in the playing field boys acquire virtues which no books can give them; not merely daring and endurance, but, better still temper, self restraint, fairness, honor, unenvious approbation of another?s success, and all that ?give and take? of life which stand a man in good stead when he goes forth into the world, and without which, indeed, his success is always maimed and partial [Kingsley cited from Haley, in Watson et al].1 This system of thought held that a man?s body is given him to be trained and brought into subjection and then used for the protection of the weak, the advancement of all righteous causes [Hughes, cited in Watson et al].1 The body . . . [is] . . . a vehicle by which through gesture the soul could speak [Blooomfield, cited in Watson et al].1 In the 1800s there was a strong alignment of Muscular Christianity and the game of Rugby: If the Muscular Christians and their disciples in the public schools, given sufficient wit, had been asked to invent a game that exhausted boys before they could fall victims to vice and idleness, which at the same time instilled the manly virtues of absorbing and inflicting pain in about equal proportions, which elevated the team above the individual, which bred courage, loyalty and discipline, which as yet had no taint of professionalism and which, as an added bonus, occupied 30 boys at a time instead of a mere twenty two, it is probably something like rugby that they would have devised. [Dobbs, cited in Watson et al]1 The idea of Muscular Christianity came from the Greek ideals of athleticism that comprise the development of an excellent mind contained within an excellent body. Plato stated that one must avoid exercising either the mind or body without the other to preserve an equal and healthy balance between the two.