A Deeper Look - Issue #15 | July 18 2021
Hello Everyone,
I do feel rather embarrassed at having assured you of a bimonthly issue and then promptly disappearing for several weeks.
I think I have learnt the lesson of over promising and under-delivering. However, better late than never. I am still here and at it. I really do hope you still continue to read and stay subscribed.
Reflection: Lego and the Taj Mahal
Questions for Religious Communities in A Post-COVID World
Five Reads for the Summer
with best regards,
Farhan
Reflection:
Over the last few weeks my family and I have been absorbed by a small project. It was my father’s birthday a few days ago and as a small gift to him we purchased a lego model of the Taj Mahal that we would build together. This we thought would suit both his admiration for all things art and architecture, but also provide a nice way for us to spend some time together in the evening.
As we worked through this model, our conversation steered through several topics…
The first was the question of how Lego actually designed these models. Did Lego have a team of expert “Lego” engineers and architects who designed Lego models? A quick Google search revealed that yes this was indeed the case.
The second was our collective disappointment at how utterly useless we were at recalling the basics of Mughal history (not that we are Mughal historians or Mughal descendants) - but in having South Asian heritage I suppose there was some mysterious and nagging sense of collective responsibility.
Who was Shah-Mumtaz we wondered and what was his relationship to the luminous Akbar? Again a quick Google search revealed that there was no such Shah-Mumtaz, but it was in fact Ustad Ahmed Lahori who was the Taj Mahal’s chief architect, and the building itself was commissioned by then emperor Shah-Jahan in memory of his wife Mumtaz. As for the relationship to Akbar, Shah-Jahan was his grandson. With that Shah-Mumtaz confusion out of the way our conversation quickly found third home.
This was the parallels and differences between Lego and life. We were both struck by the intricacy of the Lego model and of the instruction booklet which accompanied it. We soon realised that the booklet itself was a work of art. Life rarely provides us with clear instructions. In building this Lego model there was the comfort of certainty, we knew what step was next and what we had just completed. We knew that if we followed all the instructions we would end up with a model that resembled the picture on the box. We knew too, that if we made an error we could flip back the pages, break apart the pieces and start all over again.
Life however is not Lego. Rarely do the choices and decisions we make in life fit together together with the precision of Lego blocks. In Lego, we are the architects. We are the ones doing the assembling. In life, I strongly suspect we are the ones being assembled. And while we might believe we are in control of our decisions and choices, the nature of the decisions we make, and the situations that provide us our choices, are whittled by winds that blow beyond our control. We do not know how the pieces of our life will eventually fit together nor what the end result will look like - yet we proceed as we must - following each of life’s little steps, trusting in the process and hoping that the end result is one we will be at peace with.
And in all this there is a lesson, that despite a clear set of instructions, despite the comfort of certainty, we must learn to trust - in both the process and the architect.
Questions for Religious Communities in a Post-COVID World
As we here in North America transition or settle into a “post-COVID-19 world” we are surrounded by information and articles that comment on the future of work, work life, and office life. (I use the term “post-COVID” hesitantly, I know that this crisis is far from over.)
There has, however, been little in the way of reflection for what the transition to a post-pandemic environment means for the future of community and particularly for the future of religious communities. How will faith communities navigate the post-COVID environment?
In an interview Dr. Sabina Magliocco, Chair of the Program in the Study of Religion, and Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, explained that religious leaders have had to adapt to physical distancing regulations and have had to modify rites and ceremonies for an online environment. This however, only does so much. As Magliocco observes:
The sensory elements of religious services – the smell of the incense, the sound of musical accompaniment, the feeling of being in a sacred building surrounded by community members – are lost when services are broadcast over the Internet or television.
I would suggest that religious communities stand to loose more than just the sensory experiences - these are not trivial elements. Rituals rites and ceremonies create a sense of connection, they bind a community together and are spaces in time in which followers are able to connect with the spiritual world. A change in ritual is to change the means and ways through which faith is lived, practiced.
The danger for religious communities is not the idea of change - rituals must be changed and reinvigorated. The real danger is in the loss of value and place for ritual in everyday life. To loose a sense of place, respect and need for ritual is to unravel the sacred threads which bind members of religious communities to both each other and their place in the world.
Discussions around the future of work have focused on convenience and productivity, with firms allowing employees the flexibility to work from home, or providing a hybrid option. Other companies have mandated a return to the office environment. Is reverting to religious life as it was before the pandemic a mistake - or are there opportunities for religious communities to change how they have traditionally operated.
Heidi Campbell is a professor of communication at Texas A&M University and her research focuses on religious communities and the online world. In a a small publication entitled What Should Post-Pandemic Religion Look Like? She points out 10 trends that religious groups will need to understand to survive in the next decade. I have highlighted three here:
How Much of Religious Practice Needs to Be Embodied? Given the move by many religious communities to online forms of religious gathering or practice Campbell asks that “if the essence of religion is based on embodied gathering, the very definition of what is or can be is held to questions.” The question for communities here is how important is congregational gathering, and the embodied performance of rites, rituals and ceremonies to religious practice? What does this mean for the future of religious practice, and if they have have set an online precedent how will religious communities navigate a move back to in-person practices?
The Pandemic has Forced Faith Communities Groups to Distill Core beliefs and Defining Practices: Campbell asks “do a religious group’s core beliefs only get expressed when they are tied to a building, programs, or an event? Where else was time invested during the pandemic to keep the business of the community up and running?” During COVID-19 we have seen a paring down of religious practices, this of course means making decisions on what practices can be discarded or halted, and what must continue. These are decisions made necessary by the circumstances - but there is a fine line between circumstantial necessity and convenience.
The COVID-19 Crisis has Called for a Re-Examination on What Makes Something a Faith Community. Campbell also explains that the "pandemic forced religious leaders to wrestle with [the] idea, of what is a church when people cannot physically gather together or be place-based.” Faith communities now must re-examine the role and function of places of worship. These are often not just places of worship, but places in which community is built, through food, laughter, social exchange, dialogue, education and support. These functions will become more important than ever before.
It seems to me that faith communities across the world have been presented with an opportunity. I am reminded of the words of historian and philosopher Aziz Esmail who in his thinking on the trajectory of institutions and community has commented:
“From time to time, therefore, in the life of an institution, or an organised venture or community, one must take a fresh look at the convictions, the hopes and aspirations which lie at its origins and its foundations. Only thus, can one ensure the growth (as opposed to mere survival) of the body in question, injecting it regularly with the life-blood of new ideas, checking the tendency, common to all human endeavour towards fossilisation, inertia, and a hardening of the arteries of the mind, spirit, and imagination.”
Five Reads for Summer
Five reads that are on my to-read list for the summer!
Monarchy of Fear by Martha Nussbaum:
“Although today’s atmosphere is marked by partisanship, divisive rhetoric, and the inability of two halves of the country to communicate with one another, Nussbaum focuses on what so many pollsters and pundits have overlooked. She sees a simple truth at the heart of the problem: the political is always emotional. Globalisation has produced feelings of powerlessness in millions of people in the West. That sense of powerlessness bubbles into resentment and blame. Blame of immigrants. Blame of Muslims. Blame of other races. Blame of cultural elites. While this politics of blame is exemplified by the election of Donald Trump and the vote for Brexit, Nussbaum argues it can be found on all sides of the political spectrum, left or right.”
The Idiot by Elif Batuman:
“The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings. At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan’s friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin’s summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer.”
Why Trust Science by Naomi Oreskes:
“Tracing the history and philosophy of science from the late nineteenth century to today, Oreskes explains that, contrary to popular belief, there is no single scientific method. Rather, the trustworthiness of scientific claims derives from the social process by which they are rigorously vetted. This process is not perfect—nothing ever is when humans are involved—but she draws vital lessons from cases where scientists got it wrong. Oreskes shows how consensus is a crucial indicator of when a scientific matter has been settled, and when the knowledge produced is likely to be trustworthy. Based on the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Princeton University, this timely and provocative book features critical responses by climate experts Ottmar Edenhofer and Martin Kowarsch, political scientist Jon Krosnick, philosopher of science Marc Lange, and science historian Susan Lindee, as well as a foreword by political theorist Stephen Macedo.”
What You Are by M.G. Vassanji:
“Weaving between wistful memories of youthful ambition and the compromises and comforts of age, travelling between the streets of Dar es Salaam and Toronto, the characters in these stories must negotiate distance--between here and there; between lives imagined and lives lived; between expectation and disappointment; between inclusion and exclusion.”
Thank you for reading,
FK