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Hajj Journal: Tawaf: How I Fell in Love…

By Amina Wadud

…ure to get your glimpse. You might see that mosque, Masjid al-Haram, but only after you have approached it by some distance. Especially the minarets, which are so high they shoot up taller than many of the buildings surrounding it. The hotels built around it, and a few administrative buildings, block the view at street level. However, when you do see it, you will be required to complete the ritual performance: tawaf, followed as closely as possibl…

Ramadan: Third Day is the Charm

By Amina Wadud

…ate each day of Ramadan, and then left for home and a nap several hours early. Obviously, you can’t have it both ways: up and about all night and then up and about all day. Something has to give. I guess they reason that since the fast prevents full force in the day, the night becomes full force. The offices are not open in the night though, just the markets. Then I moved to Southeast Asia. This was more to my standard. The work day started at 7:3…

Water Water Everywhere

By Amina Wadud

…o be on the safe side. The greater ablution, known as the ghusl, which really only means a bath. This one is needed after sexual intercourse, nocturnal emissions, or any major bleeding, like menstruation. This involves a full body wash from head to toe, and the sunnah wudu’ somewhere in the process. After years of this ritual it becomes second nature, and I always shower and end with the wudu’, washing my feet last and then stepping out of the tub…

The Plague of Energy Drinks: A Labor Day Lament

By Peter Laarman

…topers didn’t bother to hide their reliance on joy juice, either. It was a bit of a comment on your own life, but it was also a bit of a comment on the depressing state of the world in general. I’m thinking of this in part because I’ve been reading theological and other essays on the pointlessness and dishonesty of hiding from brokenness and pain. In my Christian tradition, the real theologia crucis is not about the cross as a magic stick that wip…

Aliens, Nanobots, & Microbes: The Science of Secular Apocalypse

By Michael Schulson

…e was not designed for thinking about probably most of science, and certainly really big phenomena like global warming. Beyond just sort of encouraging big-picture thinking, I don’t know. I really struggled in the last chapter—I was trying not to make policy recommendations that are too specific. Just like we’ve got the IAEA to monitor nuclear weapons, we should set up a similar entity to monitor biological weapons. Or some sort of catastrophic ri…

Humiliation and ‘Success’ in the Great Recession

By Peter Laarman

…process I helped to initiate at the church I attend. Gatherings don’t simply supply pastoral support for the unemployed and underemployed; nor are they simply resume-writing “reinvention” groups; nor is the process mainly about vocational discernment or organizing for change. Although participants can and do get all of these things, the group’s most valuable gift is the direct connection to others who also experience humiliating rejection, acute…

With the Death of One of the Last Three Shakers, an American Religious Tradition Takes a Step Closer to Extinction

By Ed Simon

…cience, or the “Inner Light” as Quakers called it, that was the ultimate arbiter of God’s voice. Officially known as “The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing,” the Shakers have never had membership numbers on their side. At their height there were dozens of communities throughout New England, the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest. Despite always being relatively small (as the rigors of their religious vocation, not to mention the i…

David Bowie’s “Heroes,” the Soundtrack of a Spiritual Libertine

By Ed Simon

…ess, magical art, and maybe even a little decadence.” Bowie was paradoxically completely liminal and somehow also at the center of things. His music and many personas were proof of Rimbaud’s assertion that “I is an Other,” or Bob Dylan’s claim that “I wake up and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain that I’m someone else.” If the self is a tapestry of influences, a bit from here and a bit from there, ever changing, mutable, me…

Mitt, Moochers, and Mormonism’s “Other” Legacy

By Mary Barker

…rchal blessings” prophesied that they would never taste of death. That fairly clearly set the limit on time. The rebellious Sixties just confirmed what the Cold War had already shown us—that we were in a final showdown with evil that would only get worse until the second coming of Jesus which is now. Mormons have a smidgen of the survivalist in them. They expect total political and economic collapse, and are instructed to store what has come to be…

God Dissolves into the Occupy Movement

By Nathan Schneider

…ded. But, like those others, traditional religious institutions will probably only be able to go so far in joining the bandwagon of a movement that is self-consciously non-hierarchical, revolutionary, and disruptive. Unless they succeed in co-opting it. Nathan brings up the trappings of ordinary religion, the rituals, ceremonies, and structure that he argues are now needed in the Occupy movement. I was interested that he brings up the idea of reli…