Tag: Religion
-
THE WOODEN BELL
If you travel a lot … or if you live a long time … you acquire a lot of trinkets. Souvenirs of travels. Memories of events. I bought a little polar bear when I was in the Arctic. It sits in our living room now. It brings back nice memories of my trip to Norway last month. But most of the trinkets I’ve collected now reside in cardboard boxes in the garage. They’ll probably never get a chance to collect dust in the limited trinket display areas of our home. My…
-
UNDERSTANDING MERCY
During my travels, I have learned about the world’s religions and have met and have befriended people of many faiths. I struggle with the parts of their faiths which deal with creation stories and pantheons of gods, but I do accept a common thread: acts of mercy. In one way or another all religions encourage their followers to go beyond self-interest and to foster a compassionate community and address suffering. As a teenager, I learned about Christianity when I attended weekly confirmation lessons. I think I have a pretty good understanding…
-
THE CITY OF ISLAM
‘Islamabad’ means “City of Islam” or “City of Peace” in Urdu. So, I thought it would remiss of me if I didn’t visit the Faisal Mosque while visiting the City of Islam. The Faisal Mosque was built in 1988 and named after King Faisal of Saudi Arabia who inaugurated it. It was designed by a Turkish architect who aimed for a more contemporary structure in a triangular design reminiscent of a Bedouin tent. The foothills of the Margalla Hills give it a picturesque backdrop. With a 100,000-person capacity it ranks as…
-
AN APPARITION IN LOURDES
In 1858, 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous and her sister and friend were out collecting firewood outside the village of Lourdes in the French Pyrenees. They wandered into a grotto where they claim a “a tiny maiden” wearing a flowing white robe spoke to them. The tiny maiden appeared 18 times that year in the area and during one visit declared to Bernadette “que soy era immaculada concepciou” – I am the Immaculate Conception. In 1862, the local bishop endorsed the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lourdes and in February 1876,…
-
ON THE TRAIL OF MARTIN LUTHER
Padma and I look at a different kind of map these days when planning our travel destinations. Instead of maps with tourist attractions we look at the map showing the incidence of COVID. And after studying the map we could tell that the former East German states of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt had very low rates of COVID infections. So we packed the car and embarked on a roadtrip. But we did have a mission in mind. We wanted to explore the old stomping grounds of arguably the most famous German –…
-
MY FRIEND LEVI
This is my friend Levi. He is perhaps the most outstanding young man I have ever met. He’s been visiting me once a month for more than two years now. He comes during the day with a colleague and knows I am busy at work so he never stays for long. Levi is soft spoken and humble yet very worldly and knowledgeable about life for a man of his age. He brings me some literature and we have a very nice discussion. No matter how busy I am I always find…
-
MASSACRE AT MYSTIC
Now that Thanksgiving is over and today is Native American Heritage Day let’s look at what happened after that peaceful gathering in Plymouth in 1621. During my early years of schooling in Wisconsin, I learned of how Native Americans welcomed new immigrants and taught them to plant corn and catch eel and thus survive in the New World. Relations between the Native Americans and the Puritans appeared to be good and the two co-existed. Fast forward a few chapters in my history book and I learned that Native Americans were being…
-
LAS LAJAS
Santuario de Nuestra Senora de Las Lajas is located seven kilometres from Ipiales in southwest Colombia. Built between 1916 and 1948 in a valley on the Guaitara River, it attracts pilgrims from all over Colombia and abroad – one of most visited religious sanctuaries in the Americas. One shrine is to an Amerindian named “Maria Mueces” and her deaf-mute daughter “Rosa”. Rosa saw the Virgin Mary in a cave here in 1754 and suddenly spoke a few words.
-
FROM ALEPPO IN A VW
In May of 1993, Padma and I and our VW camper van left Syria with the hopes of spending a few months exploring Turkey. That didn’t quite work out the way we had planned. Our VW wasn’t was licensed in Syria and the Turks didn’t accept our international registration. It’s all complicated but in the end we had to pay a USD5000 bond and were given five days to pass through Turkey. Amazingly we got our $5K back at the Greek border but our plans of a few months photographing the…
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.