...Monika Hellwig’s Sacred Quest In this paper I will be analyzing Hellwig’s sacred quest through Cunningham and Kelsay’s four varieties of media. Cunningham and Kelsey define religion in two elements. The first one is that, “a religious person is one who affirms that there is a dimension of reality beyond the world of immediate experience…” (Cunningham and Kelsay [CK], pg. 55). This means that a person believes in something bigger than what they can see and feel. Hellwig states, “…the vision of the reign of God among men seems to be quite realistic and functional” (pg. 136). This shows that Hellwig believed in God; a dimension beyond immediate experience. After her father’s death, Hellwig states, “…my father had passed through a veil but…we were still in communion with him” (pg. 123). To me, this shows Hellwig had a sense that although her father had passed on, he was still with them in a spiritual way, showing she had a belief in a dimension beyond the immediate world. The second part of their definition, “…yet with which human beings can have contact” (CK, pg. 55), means along with believing in this greater power, you can also have some type of connection with it. While Hellwig was teaching at Georgetown University, she says, “…[I] tried to tune in to the Spirit to hear what else there might be to do in my spare time” (pg. 144). She also says, “Prayer has always seemed to me the most natural and spontaneous human activity…” (Hellwig, pg.124). Both of these show...
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...various religious traditions will allow individuals further insight on the elements of religion. The basic components of religious traditions will explain how religions organize, what they do, and say. Basic Components of Religious Traditions The religions of the world give insight into traditions, what religions share, insight of people, tolerance/appreciation of differences, intellectual questioning, insight into daily life, appreciation of the arts, an enjoyment of travel, family traditions, and personal religious quests (Molloy, 2010). To believe in a higher power, a deity, spiritual being, creator, divine, God, group of gods, or have a faithful following of an eternal world is to be religious. A tradition is a repetitive behavior with a significant reasoning or meaning that continues over time. Therefore, religious traditions are passed down through generations by use basic components. These basic components of religious traditions are seen in various sacred items, myths, stories, scriptures, dances, art, and rituals among the different religions. Tradition Says There are eight basic characteristics to religion. These are a belief system, community, central myths, rituals, ethics,...
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...The Importance of the Indigenous Vision Quest as a Rite-of-Passage Vision Quest is a term formed by 19th-century anthropologists synonymous with terms such as “vision fast”, “dream vision”, and “dream fast”. It is used to describe the Rite of Passage young males in Indigenous communities - such as the Ojibwa peoples - take to transition into adulthood. The vision quest is a very spiritual journey where partakers are said to receive communication from the spirit world or the Creator in the form of visions that provide sacred knowledge and strength (Robinson, 2018). This is done through a tremendously intense journey where participants are left in the wilderness alone with their thoughts for multiple days. They forego food and sleep in the...
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...o Describes these basic components of religious traditions and their relationship to the sacred: • What a religious tradition says—its teachings, texts, doctrine, stories, myths, and others • What a religious tradition does—worship, prayer, pilgrimage, ritual, and so forth • How a religious tradition organizes—leadership, relationships among members, and so forth o Identifies key critical issues in the study of religion. o Includes specific examples from the various religious traditions described in the Week One readings that honor the sacred—such as rituals of the Igbo to mark life events, the vision quest as a common ritual in many Native American societies, or the influence of the shaman as a leader. You may also include examples from your own religious tradition or another religious tradition with which you are familiar. 1. There are a couple of critical issues when it comes to the study of what a religious tradition says. The first is to make a distinction between the oral tradition and the written tradition. Many well-developed, world religions have an established canon of sacred texts, as well as an oral tradition. In some cases, this also has come to be written down. For instance, in Judaism, there is the tradition of the Oral Torah and the written Torah. The written Torah has become the Tanakh or the Hebrew Bible as we know it. The Oral Torah has also been written down in established commentaries in the Talmud. However, many indigenous...
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...Elements of Religious Traditions REL/134 November 28, 2011 Page Brooks Elements of Religious Traditions Religion is an understanding that there is someone, or something greater than us guiding our lives, it is a belief that we have come from a divine being and that by following the laws of our religious belief that spiritual being will guide us and protect us in life. Religion is thought to serve as a meaning system for people, by which people interpret their experience and their existence Steger, M. F., Pickering, N. K., Adams, E., Burnett, J., Shin, J., Dik, B. J., & Stauner, N. (2010).Religious traditions are considered to provide us with a way to incorporate our experiences into a logical whole. Despite the differences in religious cultures and practices certain fundamentals in religion remain the same. How do religious traditions describe and encourage relationships with the divine, scared time, scared space, or the natural world and with each other? What are key critical issues in the study of religion? For many, the standpoint of our religion or personal faith will provide a starting point for thinking about these questions. Divinity or divine is the power, being, or realm understood by religious persons to be at the core of existence and to have a transformative effect on their lives and destinies (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008). Early man believed in divinity to help explain away natural...
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...and harmony and searching for what will give them that sentiment and understanding. People bring thoughts from the religion they are brought up or predisposed too. under or from the principal religion of their circle. For example they may think that all religion has a sacred book, worships a heavenly being, or that it has a set of commandments (Molloy & Hilgers, 2010). Religion has eight elements, belief system, community, central myths, rituals, ethics, characteristics emotional experiences, material expressions, and sacredness (Molloy & Hilgers, 2010). Each religion has its own belief system and thoughts. It is no surprise that each religion characterizes in a different way the nature of sacred reality, the cosmos, the natural world, time and human purpose. Religions also vary in their way of thinking toward the role of words in conveying the sacred in their connections to other customs. Some religions speak of the sacred as transcendent, existing primarily in a space further than the everyday world. In other religions whereas sacred reality is spoken of as being immanent that is, it is within nature and human beings and can be encountered as energy or holiness. Occasionally the sacred is looked at as possessing personal qualities, while elsewhere it is seen as an unfriendly entity (Molloy & Hilgers, 2010). A number of religions see the earth as being started by an intellectual, personal Creator who keeps on guiding the world according to a cosmic...
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...Elements of Religious Traditions There are countless religions and belief systems covering every corner of our planet. Some are extremely large, such as Christianity, with over two billion followers and some faiths with as few as dozen followers. One thing, regardless of size, that all religions have is varying elements of tradition in which they follow. What these traditions say, do, and how they organize their leadership are essential to the relationship of the sacred. Traditions of a religion preserve the foundation and structure of the religion’s survival and expansion. A key element of these traditions includes religious rituals, leadership structure, and the establishing of membership. What a religious tradition says is the backbone of what each and every religion is based on. The belief system, or worldview, is what unites the people and forms the cohesion of a congregation. The ethical teachings form how the followers should behave and carry themselves in order to properly represent who their faith and their identity within their faith. Every religion has myths and stories that are held as truths and are fundamental to their beliefs. These truths are key traditional aspects to which the followers base their faiths on. Without these elements to support the religion, the backbone of the religion would crumble. A supporting element of religious traditions that help support these truths is rituals. Rituals are the way the followers worship and interpret their...
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...The Language of the Sacred After reading Chapter 4 titled: “The Language of the Sacred, I was instantly reminded of my grandmother. I was reminded of her because she is a very religious person, she goes to church every Sunday, reads the bible, and shares stories from her past about how she was raised. She was raised in a Ukrainian Catholic family and went to church and Sunday school every week. She’s shared stories with us grandchildren of how at school they were taught stories about God and the proper way to speak about him. She often would tell us how she thinks people misuse the language and would even say that it is “sacred” and or “special” and we shouldn’t use it incorrectly. For example, if one of us were to say “oh my God” she would...
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...April Agresti Humanities – World Religion 03/24/2016 Understanding Primal, Antiquity, and India Religions There are many different types of religions around the world. Some of them are monotheistic, meaning that they only believe in one God, and some are polytheistic, meaning that they believe in more than one God, or nondualist, meaning that sacred reality cannot be numbered at all. Some examples of these religions are Australian Aboriginal groups, Native American Indians, African religions, Mesopotamian, Zoroastrianism, Greek, Celtics, Germanic, Hinduism, Jains, and Sikhs. Most of these religions have been practiced for centuries and are still practiced today. There are many similarities and many different ways of these religions. However, within these religions, we are able to compare and contrast some of their religious beliefs, their overall ideas, and how they try to satisfy their human needs. Primal definition is, “original,” the Australian Aborigines, Native American Indians, and African religions are primal religions. “Aborginigine,” means from the beginning. Aboriginal religion is best understood for a vision of the nature and how they are linked and connected with nature and everything around it. Aboriginal spiritually entails a close relationship between humans and the lands. They call the beginning of the world the “Dreaming” or “Dreamtime.” In the “Dreamtime,” aboriginal “Ancestors” rose from below the...
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...Elements of Religious Traditions Deborah C. Washington REL/133 January 2, 2013 Professor John Wadhams Elements of Religious Traditions In the original version of the movie Car Wash, Richard Pryor played a preacher. He said, “you’ve gotta believe in something, why not believe in me”, then the Pointer Sister began to sing a song called “You’ve Gotta Believe”. Believing in some type god is practiced in eastern and western cultures. There are several basic components of religious traditions and their relationship to the sacred. The three basic components are sacramental, prophetic, and mystic orientation. The sacramental orientation highlights resonating rituals and ceremonies regularly and correctly as the path to salvation; in Christianity (Baptist), the first Sunday of every month is set aside for the Lord’s Supper. Prophetic orientation stresses that contact with the sacred is ensured by proper belief and by adherence to moral rules (Molly, 2010). Catholics confess their sins for attending Mass. The priest speaks on behalf of the sinner to God. The mystical orientation seeks union with a reality greater than oneself, such as with God, the process of nature, the universe, or reality as a whole (Molly, 2010). In the Baptist Church there is a worship and praise usually in the beginning of the service. People who are Buddhist chant. Some Christianity denominations fast, depriving themselves of food in order to get closer to their god. Muslims pray five times...
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...Star Ann Smith English 101 A Truth of the Human Spirit The fantasy of escape is something that has excited and interested people in uncomfortable situations for thousands of years. Uncontrollable forces like family, the church and politics can make you feel like you are trapped within a place where growing intellectually, spirtually and emotionally may seem smootherd or unattainable. The human spirit, however, still craves greater knowledge and spirtual awareness. In James Joyce's collection of short storys known as the Dubliners, one of which is called "Araby", we are witnesses to a boys fall from grace. The boys efforts were to no avail but, through the failure of his journey, we recognize through this allegory, that the human spirit's loss of hope comes the loss of ambition tward the pursuit of enlightenment. Our first allegory comes from his surroundings being used a description for that trapped feeling he's having. " being blind, it was a quiet street except at the hour the Christian brothers school set the boys free." (430) North Richmond street is described as a wasteland of the spirit. A wasteland that the boy feels trapped in, but not yet hopeless to escape. Joyce uses words like blind and uninhabited to illustrate Dublin and refers to the people of Dublin as shadows. As discouraging as his surroundings are we are reminded of the boys innocence and naiveness with joyce's use of the words to describe the children's skin as "glowing". In comparison to the...
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...The Aborigine Walkabout vs. The Native American Vision Quest Curtis Shane ANT101 Instructor Kathryn Cohan May 12, 2014 The Aborigine Walkabout vs. The Native American Vision Quest There are many different tribes all around the world that have their own individual types of rituals they perform for a rite of passage. This paper will discuss the differences and the similarities between an Austalian Aborigine walkabout versus a Native American vision quest, and how and why the differences may exist. The ancestors of today's Aboriginal people arrived in Australia about 50,000 years ago. Scientists believe that these first people came by boat from the Southeastern part of Asia which was the closest land that was inhabited by human beings at that time. This consisted from the tropical rain forests to the central deserts. There were probably from 500,000 to 1 million Aboriginal people living in Australia when European settlers first reached the island continent in 1788 (Rose, D 2014). So it’s safe to say these type practices have been around for a very long time. The aborigine were the first people of Australia. “The word aborigine comes from the Latin phrase ab origine, meaning from the beginning. When spelled with a small a, the word aborigines refers to any people whose ancestors were the first people to live in a country” (Rose, D, 2014). Also, the world was not evolved like it is today, so this type of scenario would seem more common and accepted because life was...
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...Sioux Indians The Sioux Indians first came to North America from Asia. Sioux means, “little snake” and was given to the tribe by the Chippewa Indians. The Sioux Indians were nomadic, meaning they didn’t stay in a particular place for very long. They would follow the pattern of the buffalo, and hunt them for food and clothing. The Sioux Indians migrated from Minnesota to the South Dakota area in the 1700’s. For more than 160 years, the Sioux Indians had a great deal of land in the plains to support the bison herds, during the time there were over 60 million bison in the Great Plains, and the Sioux Indians held a massive piece of land in the plains to support the bison herds which they hunted on these lands. In those times, there were over 60 million bison on the Great Plains and the Sioux Indians reigned over 80 million acres of land on the plains. The tribe had chiefs that were in charge of various parts of organizational aspects of the tribe, to include war, civil rules, and of course, medicine men. The Lakota tribes were divided into family groups called tiyospaye. These family groups had the responsibility for hunting bison, and processing the meat, hide and bones. They also built what were called earthen loges for the winters, and bison hide tipis for the summer hunting season. Because they had no written language, their heritage was entrusted to storytellers and drawings on bison hides. A single hide may represent up to over 50 years of Lakota history. The Sioux...
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...characteristics of the religion vary widely. Some of these elements include a belief system, community, ritual, ethics, emotional experiences, material expression, and sacredness. This paper discusses how some of the elements encourage relationships with the divine, with sacred time, sacred space or the natural world, and the relationships with each other. The paper will also outline critical issues when studying religion (Molloy, 2010). A religion may have a clear interpretation of the universe and what humans’ place is in it. These belief systems may see human beings’ roles are to take care of nature, and hold it sacred, whereas other religions view humans’ role is to conquer nature. Human purpose is also a part of the worldview in religion. Even though the purpose of a human beings life varies among religion, it is a common characteristic of religion to help identify that purpose (Molloy, 2010). Rituals are beliefs enacted and made real through ceremony. Many religious traditions are rich in ritual reenactments. These reenactments may use sacred materials. Other rituals are used to give homage to their divine. A ritual may be a small act of lighting a candle and praying, to dancing and chanting, reenacting past sacred events. Going to church on Sunday could be considered a ritual, and is done to bring people closer to God. It also develops a sense of community amongst members of the church (Molloy, 2010). Ethics are rules or guidelines, thought to have come from a supernatural...
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...I would like to write this essay paper about the Writing-on-Stone Park. Became a provincial park in January 1957, Writing-on-Stone Park is set in Southern Alberta and extremely rich in histories, stories and dreams. (Barry, 2011) It contains one of the most important collections of ancient rock art found anywhere in North America. It is a sacred landscape to First Nation. Some part of this is located near the Milk River where there is some evidence that native people were inhabited here long time ago. Once getting through in the park, it is clearly seen that there are many figured stones surrounded the park. In addition to recreation during the nice weather, it is the place where the histories of First Nation tribes can be told. For example, some people believe that the rocks are created by spirits, while some people believe that the rocks could help us to discover the future. It is probably also the place where native tribes such as Blackfoot are likely to create rock craving and painting or the Rock Art. These rock cravings are kind of the message to convey and imply what was happened in the past by those First Nation people. Sacred...
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