Friday, January 24, 2014

Making Connections and Choices

A young woman I met in a widow’s support grabbed a corner of my heart when she wrote about her story of meeting a man online. Emails led to a meeting of the North American man and Russian woman in Prague, where they fell in love. They returned home. He could not forget her. She was afraid to believe in his love. Four times he flew to Russia before bringing her home as his wife. She lived with her love for but a brief time, went on vacation to the platform overlooking the Grand Canyon where they embraced. He dropped dead of a heart attack in her arms.
Love changed everything in her life. When he died she was left alone in a foreign landscape, exactly how I feel. So I've never met this lady from Russia, but her well being has become important to me because I identify with her.
On a completely different note, I’m taking another online course from coursera.org a web site I recommend. I waited anxiously for the Soul Beliefs course. I had visions of Joseph Campbell type comparisons on the chalk board. During the lecture entitled Intro to Religion, when I heard the professor talking about initiations into street gangs committing murder to get in the gang and comparing this to baptism, I was disheartened to say the least.
When the same scholar belittled the identifiers people use with each other such as, place, or religion, I felt sorry for him; he doesn't understand that these little identifiers provide a foundation for empathy. Yes, it is tribal.  His brutal diatribe made students ashamed that they asked each other where they came from.
Those identifiers the professor thought to be so embarrassingly silly are why we choose one person out of a crowd, whether it’s right or wrong only an arrogant college professor will say.
It was those identifiers that caused me to befriend the young woman, who lost her husband a few months after I lost my husband of more years than most of you have been alive. We’re holding each other’s hand across the globe because we have souls.  
Knowing which chemicals are released in order to make it so doesn't give the answer to what inspired it. Afraid it doesn't tell what’s running the ship, any more than dissecting a ship tells what pushed the start button.
Maybe next time coursera will rerun Joseph Campbell’s magnificent lectures. I’m sorry if your feelings are hurt, but I’m very disappointed in some choices you've made.
  


4 comments:

  1. http://www.ted.com/playlists/14/are_you_there_god.html

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    1. That was funny, Thanks for sharing. I was tempted just to toss it because it's from anonymous, which is candy a__.

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    2. I'm not familiar how to operate this thing.
      Cheryl

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  2. “During the lecture entitled Intro to Religion, when I heard the professor talking about initiations into street gangs committing murder to get in the gang and comparing this to baptism, I was disheartened to say the least.”
    Though on opposite sides of the spectrum, I'd say he is correct in his analogy if he is referring to “baptism” not in the general sense, but baptism into a particular denomination, splinter group or Christian cult. Of course they are not asking you to commit murder, but they do not want you to associate with others outside the group; question their dogma or attend services at any other denomination.
    Here's a couple of examples. Lutheran MO Synod members are not to attend any other church or ecumenical gathering for prayer. They fried the head honcho of the MO Synod that participated in 911 prayer service. If you start questioning church teachings and/or change church affiliation, you lose your died-in-the-wool church friends. Amish, for one, take that to a whole different level.
    He seems to have extracted the same type of behavior from members that the two opposite groups, gang and church, need to survive in this statement “His brutal diatribe made students ashamed that they asked each other where they came from.”
    My thoughts are only based on the above statements.
    Cheryl

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