Religion & the Marketplace

I've been thinking lately about religion and business, and a question came to mind:

What if the Buddha, Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad could have a dialogue about the relationship between commerce and the spiritual life?

That would be a pretty amazing conversation. I think the chips would really start flying over the issue of caravan trading.

The Buddha taught that there were certain professions that would not be suitable for a person genuinely seeking Enlightenment. One of those, he argued, was caravan trading.


Caravan traders, Egypt

If you know anything about the life of the Prophet Muhammad, he got his start -- thanks to his wife, Khadija -- in the carvan trading business. It allowed him to make important connections that he would later rely on in his spiritual ministry and political expansion, and allowed him to earn the title, "el-Amin," or, the one who is trustworthy. How would he react to the Buddha's condemnation of the profession?

Jesus's angriest moment occured in a marketplace, where he went on a destructive rampage against merchants who set up shop in the Temple in Jerusalem. He argued that making the Temple into a market desecrated the holy place:

"He found in the temple those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, and the changers of money sitting. He made a whip of cords, and threw all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen; and he poured out the changers' money, and overthrew their tables. To those who sold the doves, he said, "Take these things out of here! Don't make my Father's house a marketplace!" (John 2: 14-16)

While Jesus may not have been against marketplaces in general, he was clearly against mixing business with the sacred.

In Hinduism, a more favorable approach to commerce is shown in the dharma literature (dharma means the order of things, or the 'proper' duties and obligations of individuals according to caste and gender), such as in the Laws of Manu. For the Vaishya, the merchant caste, buying and selling is a religious obligation. Included in that obligation is cutting deals in order to turn favorable profits. For this caste, there is no conflict in the duties to study the Vedas (sacred texts) and to lend money:

The Vaisya to tend cattle, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study (the Veda), to trade, to lend money, and to cultivate land. (Chapter 1)

Vaishyas are also expected to derive benefit from other people:

Three suffer for the sake of others, witnesses, a surety, and judges; but four enrich themselves (through others), a Brahmana, a money-lender, a merchant, and a king. (Chapter 8)

I think it is really interesting to examine these examples beside each other, if possible. This kind of comparative activity could be between just a couple of examples initially, and then can be revisited later in the course as time and coverage permit.

Between worlds

And he said to himself

in a sunken morning moon

between two pines,

between lost gold and lingering green:

I believe I will count up my worlds.

-from, "Between Worlds," by Carl Sandburg


Transitional times in our lives -- sunken morning moons -- what can we make of them?

As times of loss and leaving, they have the potential to bring deep pain, as well as new growth. They are also times in which we can take stock of what we do have, and ask ourselves if that is enough.

I'm reminded of a song at the Passover seder called "Dayeinu," a holiday event every Spring marking the exodus from Egypt. Pesach, the Hebrew word for Passover, means "crossing over." The purpose of the song is to affirm that had the transition of the Jewish people from slavery to freedom been harder with fewer blessings, it would have been enough.

The truth is that wandering for 40 years in the desert was often "not enough" for those wanting to reach the Promised Land. The subtext to the song is that "Dayeinu" is an ideal rather than a reality.

In ancient Egypt and Palestine, liminal places like doorways were considered spiritually powerful -- and were often inscribed with magical spells in order to protect the person walking through them. That might be the origin of the tradition of hanging the mezuzah, which is a parchment with verses from the book of Deuteronomy encased in a decorative covering and nailed to the doorposts of Jewish homes, synagogues and other buildings. For observant Jews, it is common to touch a mezuzah when walking into a house and then kiss the fingers that touched it as a way of increasing one's awareness of God's love.

Mezuzah at the Google office in Tel Aviv

A ritual verbal counting takes place on each of the 49 days between the holidays of Passover and Shavuot (the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai). Symbolically it is a time for self-reflection as well as semi-mourning to remember the plague that killed the students of Rabbi Akiva. As a transitional time in the calendar leading up to the monumental event of the giving of the Torah, it has an air of solemnity.

There may be an ancient anxiety in the tradition of counting the omer. It is as if to say... OK, we will count, but can we really count on anything?

Not confined to Judaism, in-between times like solstices, births and deaths are heavy with ritual and prayer in religious traditions because they are reminders of our vulnerability and that, as the Buddha said, "Everything is impermanent."  

Zen Buddhist masters try to get their students to become aware that there is nothing in this existence that one can rely on -- not even language, meaning or sanity. In such a context, with everything stripped away, what is enough?

Walt Whitman had an answer:

"That you are here." 

That may not satisfy a Zen Buddhist master, but I'll take it... for now. :)

El Sagrado Corazon

"Your heart is greater than your wounds." 

-Henri Nouwen

How religious traditions deal with suffering is a question that always leads interesting places. While suffering is commonly depicted as a journey, it also can be a place with its own geography. Babylon, for example, is a place synonymous with suffering in the Hebrew Bible:

"By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion." (Psalm 137:1)

In Buddhism and Hinduism, the geography of suffering is internal, located in the human mind.

In Christianity, suffering is in the drama of Christ's passion before and during his crucifixion on the cross at Golgotha. As Miguel Rojas Mix (1987) has argued, in the Baroque art of the Counter-Reformation, blood-drenched Christs were "sacred actors in a human tragedy."

This week, while teaching about art in colonial Latin America, I came upon this painting of the Sacred Heart (El Sagrado Corazon de Jesus) from 18th century Mexico: 

Alegorías del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús y la Santísima Trinidad, 1747

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary dates to the life of 17th century French nun Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, who succeeded in establishing it in her convent after years of religious visions. The heart represents Christ's compassion and suffering for humanity. Notice in the painting that it bears a marking of the crucified body of Christ (on left, below the crown of thorns).

As a symbol of intense feeling and pulsating energy, the heart of Christ is a baroque element that resonated with Nahuatl-speaking Mexicans whose indigenous religious practices centered around heart sacrifice as necessary means for keeping the universe in motion.  While those practices had long ceased by the 1700s, Nahuatl poetry preserved the importance of the heart as the seat of life and of the spirit:

"I sing so that I may rejoice the Cause of All, 

as the dawn approaches in the house of thy heart."

I am interested in how the Sacred Heart is an external representation of suffering using something so interior and vital to the human body. No longer hidden inside of the chest, the heart of Christ bleeds openly for humanity. It is raw, lacerated, and often covered in throbbing veins. Christ stretches out his arms to anyone who will come close to it.

Town of El Morro, Baja California, Mexico

The late Catholic priest Henri Nouwen argues in his book, The Inner Voice of Love, that we cannot deal with our suffering intellectually -- we must feel it deeply in our hearts. For him, the journey out of suffering begins with becoming aware of one's wounds and then opening oneself to feeling their intense pain.

Because suffering is central to the human experience, it is a great theme to deal with when examining religious traditions, comparatively or not.

However you may be dealing with suffering, much heart to you in your journey.

Karma Couture

The Zohar is a Jewish mystical text from 13th century Spain in which rabbis discuss the sod, or esoteric knowledge of the Torah. It is part of a larger literature known as the Kabbalah. I found a passage that I like very much, and wanted to share:

Come and see:

Abraham, who was pure, what is written of him?

'He came into days.' (Genesis 24:1)

When he left this world

he entered into his very own days and put them on to wear.

Nothing was missing from that radiant garment:

'He came into days.'

The metaphor of the garment reminds me of the Hindu concept of karma, or the fruits of one's actions. According to the Zohar, the righteous will be "privileged to wear a radiant garment of their days" in the afterlife, but those who have been wicked will not. Karma could also be conceived as a patchwork garment that is stitched together in one's lifetime, and as both burial shroud and swaddling, it is what one wears into the next life -- for better or worse.

Mary Ann Pettaway, "Housetop quilt"

It is interesting to think about one's life as an outfit, and I could get really distracted with considering all of the design possibilities. :) Thanks to Jewish mysticism for helping me procrastinate today!

Strange were my travels

Speaking of religious journeys (previous topic), I was reminded tonight of this quote I read a few years ago by Chinese philosopher Lin Yutang:

I tried to house my spirit within my body, but suddenly it disappeared outside; I tried to nourish my virtue by mildness, but suddenly it shifted to intensity of feeling; and I tried to wander in ether by keeping in the void, but suddenly there sprang up in me a desire. And so, being unable to find peace within myself, I made use of the external surroundings to calm my spirit, and being unable to find delight within my heart, I borrowed a landscape to please it. Therefore, strange were my travels.

- from The Importance of Living (1937)

If these walls could sing...

In my previous post, I discussed the game of Go. The maze-like iterations of a game-in-progress (below) reminded me of a question I have been thinking about:

When you get to the place you are going, what then?

This is a very human question.

There are a number of writers who have remarked that the journey is the most valuable part of going from points A to B, not the arriving.

There is a problem then, posed to the architects of sacred spaces, which are arrival points in religious life: how do you make them valuable? How do you make them places where meaning can be found?

Is there merit in making a sacred space that is more like a journey than a destination?

Glazed and painted ceramic on plaster in the Imami Madrasa, Isafan, Iran 

In Islamic architecture, geometric shapes and mazes abound. They are symbolic of the eternal and of the position of the Muslim (one who submits) as one who is lost (read: held) in the endless, unfathomable eternity of the One who created the universe, by that merciful One (Ar-Rahman). In the picture above, you have to stop and look up to see it -- staring at the ceiling of your destination, the mosque, you are reminded that your journey of faith continues.

Examples of Islamic calligraphy throughout the Muslim world -- found on walls, entryways, ceilings, etc -- serve as signposts on the road to the divine, beacons pointing the soul toward God via the sacred text of the Qur'an, considered to be God's own speech. These are not only signs along the journey, but also listening posts. The calligraphy of the Qur'an in its multidimensional form is also a beautiful chant when recited by a human voice. It's neat to think of these as walls that are meant to be sung.  

Qutb Minar, Dehli, India

In Christian architecture, labyrinths in Gothic churches offered medieval devotees the opportunity to undergo a spiritual journey in miniature. Divided into four quadrants symbolic of the universe and/or the cross, labyrinths have serpentine paths leading toward a center point representing God, faith, and/or forgiveness. The devotee could spend as much time wandering in the labyrinth as desired until reaching the arrival point in the center. This labyrinth has been in Chartres Cathedral since around 1200CE: 

What seems to be the message from these examples is that within these traditions, discovering that one is lost in the maze of this universe is the exact moment when one is no longer irretrievably lost, but is on the correct path toward the divine. According to the Tao Te Ching, the divine is the path, the Tao, the way of things. 

I'm interested in finding additional examples of "journeys" inside of sacred spaces, so if you have one, please share.

Stones

I've just started studying the game of Go, a 4000-year old Chinese game using black and white stones on a 19x19 grid. It is a strategy game in which two players work to surround and capture territory, but must do so with patience and a willingness to preserve harmony with the opposing side.

The game has been argued as having its origins in ancient Chinese shamanism, and the board representing the universe and the natural balance of yin and yang as echoed in the Tao Te Ching:

"The board must be square, for it signifies the Earth, and its right angles signify uprightness. The pieces of the two sides are yellow and black; this difference signifies the yin and the yang -- scattered in groups all over the board, they represent the heavenly bodies. Following what the rules permit, both opponents are subject to them -- this is the rigor of the Tao." 

-- Pan Ku, 1st century historian 

There are on the Go board 360 intersections plus one. The number one is supreme and gives rise to the other numbers because it occupies the ultimate position and governs the four quarters. 360 represents the number of days in the [lunar] year. The four quarters symbolize the four seasons. The 72 points around the edge represent the [five-day] weeks of the [Chinese lunar] calendar. The balance of yin and yang is the model for the equal division of the 360 stones into black and white.
-- from The Classic of Go , by Chang Nui (Published between 1049 and 1054)  

I like the beauty of the stones and the various patterns that emerge on the board as it is being played. I also like thinking of the game as the creative act of dueling artists laying a mosaic on top of the universe. The materials of the game, in the spirit of the Tao, come from nature -- a wooden board, and stones made out of slate and clamshell.

The relationship between the players is one of opposition, but they are holding each other in the balance -- mindful that they are building something together. According to Yasunari Kawabata, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature,

"A masterpiece of a game can be ruined by insensitivity to the feelings of an adversary."

That the game requires attention to balance and a natural give-and-take sort of dance between players makes it appropriate for discussion in lots of classroom settings -- and I especially like how it bridges mathematics with philosophy and religion. Students might like this clip from Hikaru no Go (a teen manga series based on the game of Go), which depicts the potentially serious psychological drama involved in figuring out one's opponent: 

Lacking my own board (hoping to get one soon), I have found a way to play online, and would welcome the opportunity to discuss and play this game with real people.:)

"There is a pair of shoes love wears and the coming
is a mystery."
-Carl Sandburg

Religions, at their cores, are love stories. This is such a simple thing to say that I will lose some scholarly street cred for saying it. After all, religions are so complicated, internally diverse, impossible to essentialize, embedded in cultures, connected to political, social and economic spheres, etc.... right? In fact, what we can't really nail down about any particular religion is endless.

But what I keep returning to the more I study and teach about religion, is that within each major religious tradition, you will find an opportunity to grapple intensely with the concept of love. Devotion, in whatever form, is to participate in a love unfolding.

I am really interested in the eternal/ephemeral duality that the divine is portrayed as having in multiple traditions, and will take up this topic more in-depth in a future post. Mystics are especially attuned to this duality and experiencing and seeking the love of the divine, often at great peril to their own psychological and emotional stability. Some traditions, such as Jewish mysticism, hold that getting too near to this esoteric dimension of Divine love can be dangerous.

Love language abounds in the orthodox liturgical traditions of Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Sikhism in expressing the relationship between humans and the divine. Like ancient Egyptian love poetry, the Song of Solomon reflects an oral love poetry tradition in ancient Israel that has been interpreted by both Jewish and Christian theologians as symbolic of the relationship between God and His people, steadfast, but also full of longing:

"All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves; I looked for him but did not find him."

"I slept but my heart was awake. Listen! My lover is knocking: "Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night."

Hindus experience the love of the divine gaze while standing in the presence of murtis and performing puja, and have a rich sacred history in which deities are capable of ardent, sexual love. The loving, peaceful gazes of the Buddha and Jainist Tirthamkaras -- not deities, but still arguably dimensions of the sacred -- imbue the spaces of Buddhist and Jain temples with a sense of divine love.

The Qur'an, unlike the Hebrew Bible, is stylistically more like a collection of fervent utterances of the heart, although I am not intending to personify the Muslim concept of Allah, without form and indivisible. Throughout the Muslim world, the Qur'ran (click here to listen) has been thought by many as having a beauty in Arabic that eclipses even the most beautiful of love poems.

Where I want to go with this is that religion in the public sphere and media is most often cast as something that fuels hatred and the ongoing culture wars, between liberals and conservatives in the United States and between the West and the Islamic world. Teachers of religion have an opportunity to present religions, (in all of their complexity, granted), as approachable, despite how alien to a student's own experience -- not to challenge a student's own beliefs, but to promote mutual respect and understanding.

Who doesn't understand the human need for love? When we can approach a topic from something a student understands, rather than just filling them with information, we have a better chance of creating a meaningful learning experience. And when it comes to religion, the world is definitely in need of us doing this work.

Palace in time

Keeping with the theme of Zen but circling back a bit to architectural motifs in religion as well...

In his beautiful work, The Sabbath, A.J. Heschel imagines Jewish sacred time in palatial terms:

"The seventh day is a palace in time in which we build."

If you have been reading my earlier posts, you'd see the likeness of this metaphor to that of St. Theresa of Avila's castle of the soul. I like architectural metaphors in conveying religious ideas...clearly! BUT that's not the connection I am interested in making here.

Heschel argues that the Sabbath, a palace in time, is built by non-action. This is a palace that you can only build by non-being/non-doing. Building by not-building sounds a little paradoxical, no? And this is why it becomes a very interesting idea. He writes,

"Indeed, the splendor of the day is expressed in terms of abstentions, just as the mystery of God is conveyed via negationis, in the categories of negative theology which claims that we can never say what He is, we can only say what He is not."

Those familiar with observing Shabbat according to Jewish law know well all the things that are prohibited on that day, including kindling a fire or electrical spark, driving, carrying bags or children out of the house (unless there is a ritually kosher eruv in place), etc. Given how we depend so much on electricity, the internet, riding in vehicles or mass transit in our daily lives, Shabbat is essentially an anti-day. It is the emptiness in time where no other emptiness exists.

What really attracts me to Heschel's discussion of Shabbat as a time for non-action is that it resonates with the Chinese concept of wu-wei, non-action, expressed in Taoism and in Zen Buddhism. Heschel's paradox of how to build a building would be well received in these contexts.

Consider these passages from the Tao te Ching:

"Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place."

*

"We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable."

Heschel would agree that Shabbat is very much like the hole in the middle of the wagon, or the emptiness inside of the pot -- it is the part of the week that makes the rest of the week useful.

Like Taoists and Zen Buddhists, Heschel advocates that it is in the abstaining from performing rituals and other outward displays of worship that leads one to the doors of the most glorious time-place in Jewish life: Shabbat, a place in which the egotistical self and attachment to worldly concerns no longer exists, and one finds renewal and love. He writes,

"Six days a week we try to dominate the world; on the seventh day, we try to dominate the self."

He also writes,

"Much of its spirit can only be understood as an example of love carried to the extreme."

The goal of zazen, seated meditation in Zen Buddhism, is just to sit -- and deeply be, without "doing" anything, achieving a state of total awareness of the present moment with a calm mind. In such a meditation, the self no longer exists and one is able to glimpse with loving eyes at the interconnectedness of all things.

Re: my previous post on Zen poems - I would like to cite another poem that illustrates Heschel's palace in time:

Stillness

十方同聚會 The ten directions converging, 

個個學無爲 Each learning to do nothing,

此是選佛場 This is the hall of Buddha's training

心空及第歸 Mind's empty, all's finished.

Pretty cool connection, huh? Shabbat shalom!

Zen Punk

Is there room in religion for rebelliousness, sarcasm and pessimism?

What about blasphemy and breaking taboos? Scatological humor??

Zen poems are confounding because they break conventional expectations of what religious devotion looks like.

Here's a poem that beginner students might expect to be Zen, because it is about serenity and is reverent toward nature: (poems source)

Contentment 

As the pines grew old and the clouds idled 

He found boundless contentment within himself. 

And here are some poems that students might not expect at all to be Zen:

This is Our World

We eat, excrete, sleep, and get up; 

This is our world. 

All we have to do after that–

Is to die.

Angsty poem? Well, not really, but that is how students will probably read it...I'm thinking that this poem is probably going to irk some Millennial generation kids because they will think it is very depressing. :) 

Free Spirit

Every day I'm either in a wine shop or a brothel, 

A free-spirited monk who is hard to fathom; 

My surplice always appears torn and dirty, 

But when I patch it, it smells so sweet. 

A surplice is an outer garment made of cotton or linen. Discussing its odor is a little scandalous in this context, no? :)

A Death Verse

I rebuke the wind and revile the rain,  
I do not know the Buddhas and patriarchs;  
My single activity turns in the twinkling of an eye,  
Swifter even than a lightning flash.  
Death verse of Zen master Nanpo Jõmyõ (titled Daiõ Kokushi 大應國師, 1235-1308) (Zen Buddhism: A History, Japan, 40)

This poem shows a dying Zen master rebuking what is generally sacred in Buddhism: nature and the buddhas, or awakened ones.

Chang Chiu-ch'en's Poem of Enlightenment

In a moonlit night on a spring day, 

The croak of a frog 

Pierces through the whole cosmos and turns it into 

a single family!
The Upasaka Chang Chiu-ch'en (張九成) was pondering a koan when he was in the toilet. Suddenly he heard the croak of a frog, and he was awakened, as evidenced by the following lines:" (The Golden Age of Zen 284)

The last poem takes on a new connotation when you read the liner notes -- that Chang Chiu-ch'en reached enlightenment on the toilet hearing a 'frog croak'...I wonder if the frog croak is supposed to be taken figuratively? :)

So how do we reconcile the punk-rock-ishness of the latter poems with the much more reverent earlier one (and the many others like it)? This contradiction gets to the very heart of Zen -- and is a wonderful problem for students to wrestle with.

Castles Made of Sand

I am interested in religious architecture, and especially in the concept of God's house, or the dwelling place of the divine, in various religious traditions. In my previous post, I explored the metaphor of the castle in St. Theresa of Avila's writing as representative of both the soul's journey to faith and God's dwelling place in the human soul.

As I was writing that post, I was reminded of the mandala in the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition -- itself a symbol of the cosmic dwelling place of God. Mandalas are intricate, colorful geometric creations made primarily of sand. Here's my favorite video (soundtrack by Radiohead) of a sand mandala being created and destroyed:

Unlike the Moorish castle in St. Theresa's writing, a bastion of strength and permanence, a mandala is intended to be an ephemeral creation and literally something that is blown away with the winds. As soon as it is created, it is destroyed, reminding those who create it of the impermanence of all things.

The intense focus and time required to create a mandala is supposed to be meditative for the monks performing the work, who are tasked with focusing on nothing but what they are doing in that very moment.

The mandala is a visualization of the dwelling place of Vajrayana Buddhist deities, which rather than being actual gods worshipped, are archetypes of buddhas, or awakened beings. Here is an excerpt from one of the Vajrayana sutras invoking those beings:

Inviting the Eight Vajra Spirits
We respectfully invite the Green Vajra Who Banishes Disasters.
We respectfully invite the Vajra Who Banishes Toxins
We respectfully invite the Yellow Vajra Who Grant Wishes
We respectfully invite the White Vajra Who Purifies Water
We respectfully invite the Red Vajra Whose Sound Brings Fire
We respectfully invite the Vajra Who Pacifies Disasters
We respectfully invite the Vajra Purple Worthy
We respectfully invite the Vajra Great Spirit.

Like the interior walls of the Moorish castle covered in arabesques, the mandala is characterized by interweaving geometric designs that evoke a sense of eternity. When you stand in front of one, your body and mind are drawn into the solemn and beautiful presence of the divine.

What I like most about mandalas is they attach a sense of impermanence to the divine. Creating mandalas means that the buddhas inhabiting them will be passing by for awhile, and then will leave. Both the preparation for their stay and the destruction of their abodes are blessings. I am reminded of this "passing by" quality of the presence of God in the Hebrew Bible, in 1 Kings 19:11-12 (NIV translation), when God appears in a whisper after Elisha has emerged from a cave:

The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.

Whispers and sand offer an interesting contrast to more enduring religious symbols, like the Kotel (Western Wall) in Jerusalem, or the Cathedral/Mezquita of Cordoba in Spain. That the divine is also depicted within these and other religious traditions as inhabiting ephemeral spaces (and potentially having ephemeral qualities of being) is a beautiful problem to consider that would likely make for a rich classroom discussion.

God is on the journey, too.

I am lately interested in the confluence of architecture and religion (see earlier post). I want to explore how architecture can be used symbolically in constructing visual images of the journey to faith, or awakening. In this post, I will focus on the imagery of the castle in the mystical writings of St. Theresa of Avila.

St. Theresa of Avila, one of the pre-eminent religious figures of the 16th century, whose religious reforms forever altered the Christian monastic world, symbolized the soul and its journey to faith as a castle, with seven mansion-sized rooms. In the seventh room dwells the loving God. Her most famous work, The Interior Castle (1577), was intended to bring Christians closer to ultimate communion with God, and as St. Theresa described it, in His secret chamber. She writes,

"Let us imagine, as I said, that there are many rooms in this castle, of which some are above, some below, others at the side; in the centre, in the very midst of them all, is the principal chamber in which God and the soul hold their most secret intercourse."

Her metaphor of the castle was arguably borrowed from Islamic and Jewish mystics writing in Spain during the "Convivencia" period a couple of centuries earlier -- when Islamic, Jewish and Christian artists informed culture and people lived in relative stability and conviviality. Here's a picture of a Moorish castle on the Costa del Sol in Southern Spain:

As a metaphor for both the soul and its journey, a stationary castle seems a little awkward, clunky even -- St. Theresa addresses this directly:

"Now let us return to our beautiful and charming castle and discover how to enter it. This appears incongruous: if this castle is the soul, clearly no one can have to enter it, for it is the person himself: one might as well tell some one to go into a room he is already in! There are, however, very different ways of being in this castle; many souls live in the courtyard of the building where the sentinels stand, neither caring to enter farther, nor to know who dwells in that most delightful place, what is in it and what rooms it contains."

The architecture of the castle, while accessible to any lover of God who enters its doors, makes only a private union possible. Unlike a cathedral with expansive nave to comfort and hold a mass of devotees, the castle walls and interior labyrinth of rooms make the process of seeking God a lonely one, and finding Him the most intimate experience ever. This intimacy is echoed in the words of 8th century female Sufi Islamic mystic poet Rabia al Basri,

"With my Beloved I alone have been,
When secrets tenderer than evening airs"

The Ineffable in His intimate dwelling place--an interior room of the castle of the soul--unlike the Biblical Ark of the Covenant, is accessible to those who have the courage to walk inside. It takes effort, though, to find him.

The elusive nature of God, for Saint Theresa, creates a delightful suffering for the soul on its journey. This "delicious pain," as she describes, causes her to be ever more fervent in finding that ultimate, lasting intimacy.  But it is there -- if not to be experienced in this lifetime, then in the eternal life.

From His castle, the human soul, God beckons as a lover to the one who journeys. According to St. Theresa, God isn't stationary in that castle, but also on His own journey. She writes, "The feeling remains that God is on the journey too." This reminds me of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself",

"Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you."

I am sure that I would have hated to live in one of St. Theresa's reformed convents, having to go shoeless and perform strict austerities in order to meet her demands for getting closer to God. There is something, though, about her passion for seeking the love of the divine that is attractive to me. And, I love her for her willingness to walk through those castle doors.

A lot can be said about a water fountain.

There are some incredibly beautiful drinking fountains and reflection pools in Islamic architecture. But what I like to ask students is..... so what??

Water is not just water in the Islamic world, it connects humans to the primordial beginnings of mankind, and brings humans into an intimate relationship with God. Sure, water is important in most belief systems for ritual, but water in abundance and active is characteristically Islamic. Water is de-ritualized in a sense in these spaces because it is a feature of the architectural environment. For example, no religious professional guards the rights to the water, and unlike "holy water" in other faith traditions, it doesn't have supernatural powers. According to Muslim sacred history,

Innallaha ta'ala khalaqa kulla shay’im minal-ma’.

“Allah created everything from water.” (Related by Ibn Hibban.)

The Prophet Muhammad, through his revelation, said that water, not light, was the first thing God created. And why did God start with water? Because it was necessary for all living things? To refresh? Interesting question for discussion. Water was important in central Arabia during the time of the Prophet (and still today), being a desert land where water is scarce. That God would be so closely associated with water tells us something about Islam's view of God -- as providing rest, comfort, rejuvenation... as does the oasis for the bedouins in the desert.

But there is also something symbolic about the eternal in water. I should clarify: in Islam, water isn't eternal; only God is eternal. But that water was created first makes it the closest to eternity of anything in creation. In its liquid and gaseous states, water doesn't really have a beginning or end. This quality of water reminds me of the poem by Jewish poet Yehuda Amichai, "The waters cannot return in repentance"

The waters cannot return in repentance

To where would they return?

To the faucet, the sources, the ground, the roots,

the cloud, the sea, into my mouth?

The waters cannot return in repentance,

every place is their seas/days of old, their waters of old,

every place a beginning and end, and a beginning.

On the social level, drinking fountains also symbolize egalitarianism -- they are communal places where anyone can come to drink, regardless of age, gender, class, etc., again calling to mind the unity, or oneness of God.

It's neat how something so mundane as a water fountain can be imbued with the sacred -- but in Islam, that is exactly the point. :)