The Broken Tree Branch
Tucker Frye
While we were wandering the Noland Trail, I noticed a fallen tree branch that was lying in the water. The branch was around seven feet long. It was bent at a twenty or thirty degree angle and it looked as if the outside of the bend was tearing apart. It seemed as if the log had been dead and soaking for a long while. Clearly there was no stretch of life within the dark, moist wood. At first glance, it looked like nothing more than a rotting branch soaking in it's own death. Then I noticed the moss. Lush green lay across the branch. Not only that, but I could make out a few small fish that were lingering beneath the shadows provided from the wood. The branch seemed to provide them with a place to hide from predators. They could weave in and out of the smaller branches, or hide in the darkness that fell beneath the branch. What did I see when I first observed the branch? Death. However, when I looked more closely, I observed life abundant. Isn't it interesting how something so utterly dead, with no hope of being revived, can continue to provide life? I view death in the same way often. When something dies or is dying, I see no hope in it and no good from it. Whether it is a person, or maybe just a bad paper. Reflecting on the broken branch, however, gives me a new way to look at death. There is not just death and the end, there is also life that comes from death. It is important that we must search for life in death but it is there none the less.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Tucker Frye- Mystery, Tremendum, and Fascinans 4/8
Mystery, Tremendum, Fascinans
Tucker Frye
Rudolf Otto came up with a few terms that express what it is like to experience the sacred. He describes it using these words: Mystery, Tremendum, and Fascinans. There is a great mystery about the sacred that draws us in. We can experience the sacred but we never truly know what it is made up of or how to recreate it. We are drawn to it because of it's power and it is this power that terrifies us. The sacred can be so great and terrible that we are forced to turn away, even though we cannot help but move closer. There is a tree in Richmond that stands by the James River. It has footholds up it's trunk and a long branch extending over the water nearly twenty-five from the ground. Climbing the tree is the easy part. The hard part comes as you stare out over the branch and see a long stretch of air and then a dark green sheet. The sight is terrifying, and yet you know there is only one way down that will fulfill your desires: jumping out into thin air, then plunging into the water below. While the experience is not always sacred (though sometimes it is), the experience reflects the ideas of Otto. You are terrified of the height and magnitude of what you are about to do, but you cannot turn and climb back down the tree because of your overwhelming desire to be free.
Tucker Frye
Rudolf Otto came up with a few terms that express what it is like to experience the sacred. He describes it using these words: Mystery, Tremendum, and Fascinans. There is a great mystery about the sacred that draws us in. We can experience the sacred but we never truly know what it is made up of or how to recreate it. We are drawn to it because of it's power and it is this power that terrifies us. The sacred can be so great and terrible that we are forced to turn away, even though we cannot help but move closer. There is a tree in Richmond that stands by the James River. It has footholds up it's trunk and a long branch extending over the water nearly twenty-five from the ground. Climbing the tree is the easy part. The hard part comes as you stare out over the branch and see a long stretch of air and then a dark green sheet. The sight is terrifying, and yet you know there is only one way down that will fulfill your desires: jumping out into thin air, then plunging into the water below. While the experience is not always sacred (though sometimes it is), the experience reflects the ideas of Otto. You are terrified of the height and magnitude of what you are about to do, but you cannot turn and climb back down the tree because of your overwhelming desire to be free.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Dan Matarazzo Lane, Giving Voice to Place
When experiencing a sacred place, there is a more profound reasoning for the impact it leaves on you. The chthonic power, miraculous encounters, or spiritual powers might not be prevalent at the moment you experience the place. However, there is a greater power that is remembered from these experiences, as Lane describes about his student’s experiences, “yet they often do suggest that their experience was not simply inside their heads but was somehow shared in a particular moment by everything around them.” The action was not a regular occurrence, but rather the entire environment and moment plays its characteristic on the experience, and has a deeper meaning. I see this when you have a fond memory of a place, it’s the small details that matter the most.
Tylor LangIt's 5 o'clock in the Morning
Today I woke up to the sound of rain hitting my window. It was like waking up in a lucid dream; I moved around in my bed, but felt distant from myself at the same time. The sound of water smacking my window continued. “Wake up,” it said to me. Despite the fact that I was inside, safe from the touch of nature, the rain resonated in my room different than any time before. The hour was early, about 5 o’clock. I had only been asleep for 45 minutes, but this rain… this rain woke me up and communicated to me. It told me everything I needed to hear, even if just for that moment.
I recalled the rain storms in Panama, and how no matter how thick the walls, you could never escape the sound the rain. I remembered the renewal of myself under the raindrops; the voice of the thunder beating around me. Maybe this was a gentle reminder that no matter where I go, home will always be with me. That on any one day, one hour, one minute, I will find myself back where I truly feel in touch.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Tucker Frye- Communitas 4/8
Communitas
Tucker Frye
Turner talks about the term of Communitas. The idea is that a group of people, all in a state of liminality, naturally create a type of community in which everyone is equal. There is some sort of underlying structure, but over all, there are no set rules. Only a silently agreed upon code of ethics exists. While we have talked about Communitas mostly as it applies to the Appalachian Trail, I have seen it in my own experience. In 2010, my family took a trip to Hohoe, Ghana. We stayed in an orphanage here for twelve days. The area was extremely primitive. The orphanage was by far the nicest part of the village. Literally, people had huts for houses and ate what they found for the day. The kids in the orphanage were wild. We combined our efforts during the morning and early afternoon with a few other volunteers who were staying at a hotel and taught each grade level. The harder part for my family however was that we never left the orphanage. So after a full day of teaching and keeping kids under control, we would just continue taking care of kids. Soon we had developed our own form of Communitas. The little amount of alone time each volunteer had often was spent sleeping in our room. When others would come in, there was a full understanding of how the other person felt and a non-verbal set of rules was put in place. No waking up sleepers, eat peanut butter sparingly, never force kids upon another volunteer: these ere some of our non-verbal rules set into place. Each volunteer understood what the others were going through because none of us had experienced anything like it. So, we had a natural community form around our inexperience.
Tucker Frye
Turner talks about the term of Communitas. The idea is that a group of people, all in a state of liminality, naturally create a type of community in which everyone is equal. There is some sort of underlying structure, but over all, there are no set rules. Only a silently agreed upon code of ethics exists. While we have talked about Communitas mostly as it applies to the Appalachian Trail, I have seen it in my own experience. In 2010, my family took a trip to Hohoe, Ghana. We stayed in an orphanage here for twelve days. The area was extremely primitive. The orphanage was by far the nicest part of the village. Literally, people had huts for houses and ate what they found for the day. The kids in the orphanage were wild. We combined our efforts during the morning and early afternoon with a few other volunteers who were staying at a hotel and taught each grade level. The harder part for my family however was that we never left the orphanage. So after a full day of teaching and keeping kids under control, we would just continue taking care of kids. Soon we had developed our own form of Communitas. The little amount of alone time each volunteer had often was spent sleeping in our room. When others would come in, there was a full understanding of how the other person felt and a non-verbal set of rules was put in place. No waking up sleepers, eat peanut butter sparingly, never force kids upon another volunteer: these ere some of our non-verbal rules set into place. Each volunteer understood what the others were going through because none of us had experienced anything like it. So, we had a natural community form around our inexperience.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Jem Kamran- Reflection on “Mask of God”
Lane claims that God is encountered in the mask of his creation yet they “form only a ‘dark glass’ at best. Lane is alluding to 1 Corinthians 13:12 here where the apostle, Paul, says “that now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror” claiming that these are only glimpses of God’s majesty. In Hebrews 8 it says that these places are a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. These shadowy places direct attention towards God. Such places invite us to stretch our limited understanding of God. Through images and metaphors rooted in the world’s ordinary places. These ordinary places guide us to an enlarged vision of the magnitude of God while still concealing the profoundness of God. Christian theology claims that only when the kingdom of Christ is fulfilled only then we will see God “face to face” and have perfect communion with our creator.
Reflection on Facinans and Mysterium Tremendus by Jem Kamran 4/2/2011
Few weeks ago in class we talked about the Rudolf Otto’s idea of “mysterium tremendus of a holy place and how a place can embody an attractive quality, “facinans” while being terrifying at the same time. Couple weeks ago I came across the same reference to Rudolf Otto in a book that was suggested to me by a friend called Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin’s Path to God by Brennan Manning. In the chapter titled “Thinking Big” it Manning talks about the importance of understanding God’s mysterium tremendous in order to truly trusting him.
Manning explains that once one truly understands the “bigness” of God then only do they begin to trust Him. The psalmist claims that that “the fear of God is beginning of wisdom.” I have always wondered how can one fear and trust the same being? Doesn’t that contradict the point of trust? My natural instinct has always been to run away from such thing. However for some reason I am struck by the glory of God, the transcendent brightness, wisdom, ingenuity, and power. In the face of over whelming fear of the unknown I find comfort. Manning claims that facinans and mysterium tremendous is fundamental in authentic spiritual experience that leads one into total forgetfulness and a further awareness of human condition. It broadens the gap between God and profane self, making one feel tiny in comparison to Great and Mighty one.
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