Dry Wall Nightmare: The Demons in Our Nation

         “DEMONS DESTROY AMERICA” is the ostentatious writing on a wall in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Sheepshead Bay is a neighborhood of Brooklyn mostly known for its high Russian population and multitudes of people who share in the belief that the United States is a country that is going nowhere fast, according to a friend who resides in Sheepshead Bay. In a sense, it is plausible for me to see how someone would have the means to write something like that on a public space. Flipping through news channels and reading internet articles about what is going on in the world does not help support the case that the United States, or the world for that matter, is a place of full love. In a way, I agree with the author. Demons do destroy America. Although it not so much the people as individual “demons” that destroy our nation, but the demons that exist within evil and violent actions. This quote makes me think of the pre-millennialist notion about the second coming of Jesus.  Before any glimmer of hope or salvation can be found,  human beings put themselves through suffering.

        The pre-millenialists are a group of fundamentalists who believe in Jesus’ second coming arriving before the end of the millennium. In the time prior to Jesus’ much awaited arrival, the world would be crumbling. Several bouts of extreme violence, irreparable relationships and the lust for power will become all too familiar to a race of beings that have been damned from the beginning they started to doubt the power of Christ. Unlike the post-millennialists who believe in creating a world of God on Earth through understanding and compromise, pre-millennialists are the anxious bodies of the religious world. Viewing the actions of many evil and conniving people have convinced many pre-millennialists that the end is nearing. Instead of attempting to create a utopia where everyone has a chance to redeem him or herself to the Lord, pre-millennialists offer a way of helping as trying to convince people to become one of them.

           The emotion of disdain, disgust and distrust this quote highlights is a frightening concept to grapple with despite me not sharing the religious beliefs many pre-millennials have. It is frightening because it is the world and society that one grows in. A threat to safety, although it may seem farfetched, can impose many limitations on how a person grows spiritually.  

Marichi

Every individual goes through a phase in their life where they try to escape the identity that they’re born into. When I went through that phase, I discovered Buddhism. Not only did I see many of my own morals be reflected onto Buddhism, but I saw myself agreeing with all of their traditions. What in Buddhism, there are gods, goddesses and deities that all represent a moral aspect. To me, there was no way one God could be controlling it all, especially for so many people. At a recent visit to the museum, I found this Buddhist statue.

This is Marichi. Marichi is known as the Buddhist Goddess of Dawn. It is said that she drives away all of the evil in the night, especially those that derive from ignorance and fear. Just like many other Buddhist gods, goddesses, and deities, Marichi is depicted with many hands and faces. Each hand holds something that is meaningful to her character while each face depicts a personality. Many statues of Marichi have different depictions. However, in this statue, Marichi has three faces with eight arms. The two hands that are on top on either side each hold a sun. It represents the light that forces the darkness away. I guess since the dawn is her symbol, she holds two of them to seem more empowering whereas she only holds one of everything else. Of the arms that are stretching out, the middle ones hold nothing but a pose of prayer. Of the arms that are stretching out, the lower left holds what seems to be a stamp while the lower right holds a bell. On the front, Marichi has a calm face while on the right is the face of a boar and the left holds a face that looks more aggressive. I think these faces represent the idea that Marichi can be gentle, destructive and defiant when need be.

I really love these deities because as said earlier, one God can’t handle everything for every single individual on this Earth. The responsibilities need to be split up. I really think that religion needs to be more thought of in this light--one individual, person, thing, cannot handle it all. I think having different gods and deities to look forward to helps the individual with their life in general because then the individual would have to focus on one problem at a time. In general, we worry too much. It’s kind of like when Liebman says we are suffering from ulcers because of our extreme worrying about everything and anything.

I think it’s also significant to note that name of the statue is the Buddhist Goddess of Dawn. The statue is claimed to a religion, which means that there must be interpretations of this statute in other religions that are similar but must represent different ideals that reflect their own respective religions. I think it makes this piece much bigger than I thought at first because of how influential it is across all religions. There must be something quite impressive about this if other cultures and especially if other religions want to adopt their own form of Marichi.

Listen, Corona!

(Statue located in front of my house, 37th Ave and 102nd St.)

All semester long I tried to look for the perfect artifact to write about and the one that I eventually found was literally right in front of my home. I live in a two family, brick house. The front of the house is gated and in the garden that consists of two small bushes stands a glass covered statue of Jesus Christ. Everyone who passes by is forced to see the chipping statue. Those who are religious stick their hands through the fence to tap the glass, others bow their heads and say a quick prayer. The street I live in is predominantly Catholic. Many of the houses have similar statues hidden in their small gardens, which are kept private.

I have lived in this home for nine years and always wondered why our home is the only one with a statue placed in the very front, instead of being kept private like the others. I also wondered why homeowners would decide to display such a prominent religious symbol. In light of this class, I finally got my answers from me asking my landlord, Marina. She explained that she and her brother, Juan, bought the house in the early 80s (Crime Report). The house had been abandoned and only bums and drug addicts would be found living in the space. Marina and Juan put their money together and remodeled the house top to bottom. While remodeling the front, she explained how they argued about what to do with the space. They both wanted something that stated the house was now free from all the terrible things it once was, but the siblings had different ideas in expressing this. Marina wanted a delicate garden with flowers that would symbolize the blossoming of a new life within the home. Meanwhile, her brother wanted the statue, which would be permanent and was indestructible.

Looking ashamed, Marina shared with me her opposition to the statue. She was against it because their house would be the only one with a statue standing out like a sore thumb. She also felt as if the statue would not prove anything. Meanwhile, her brother thought the ability to put a figure, such as Jesus, would give them an opportunity to save their neighborhood that was doing so horrible at the time.

Marina went on to explain the dangerous conditions of Corona during the 80s. I think she did a good job in reflecting the hardships of the time period in America as a whole. As many of us know, the 80s were a hard time in America with the crack epidemic and high crime rates. The apartment mirrored the problems at the time and like the house, the country needed some fixing up. Juan’s insistence on placing the statue in the front of the house reminded me of Falwell’s persistence on America trying to better itself. His urgency, like Juan’s, was to make a change for the better using religion and hoping that those around would make the change as soon as possible. I would not call Juan a Fundamentalist who thought the world was going to crap, but maybe he thought that by putting up this statue would inspire some change for a neighborhood that was falling apart.(Maybe Juan should have created a plaque underneath the statue that said: Listen, Corona!)  

The last question I asked Marina was, why wouldn’t Juan just place the statue off to the side if he wanted it so badly? She explained that he was proud of his faith and wanted to bring some comfort to everyone that would see it, unlike the other homes that kept their statues private. I’m glad that this project forced me to ask these questions about something that I’ve been living with for the past nine years. It was interesting to learn how the time period and conditions of my neighborhood affected the way my home looks today.


Falwell, Jerry. Listen, America! Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980. Print.

Fuchs, Erin. "It's Incredible How Much Safer America Has Become Since The 1980s." Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 27 Jan. 2015. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.

Forces in Religion

   

I pass by this monument every single day on my way home and on my way to the train, but not once have I noticed it until recently. It’s astounding how much I can miss while I’m power walking around everywhere I go. Being completely induced in my electronics makes all of my surroundings seize to disappear. On my mission to finding a religious object in New York City, I have come to realize how much I have been missing out. I have gradually grown conscious of things around me that I have never noticed previously despite them being right in front of my eyes.  To be truthful, the first thing that I noticed wasn’t the monument, but that lonely yellow flower that lies among the green grass. To me it is very similar to the monument itself because it’s one of the only religious symbols on this street of Astoria, so it stands out just like the flower. The monument is placed individually in the garden outside the Immaculate Conception Parish and School. What is really compelling about this monument is that it isn’t placed up front and center, on the contrary it is placed very subtly on the side; it’s placed only for those who take in their surroundings carefully and thoroughly. Even though its public and anyone can see it, only those who care enough will see it. Not even the children who attend this school can see it unless they go on the other side, for it’s fairly distant from the school’s entrance.

In How Things Matter, I came to learn that physical/material objects aren’t just signs of beliefs, but that they are actually very powerful forces themselves.  This monument which reads, “In memory of Gods babies the aborted the miscarried the stillborn”, is a very strong force that displays very important messages that influence how we comprehend religion. So although we inheritingly believe that religion is something in the mind only, we can see now that is not true. Imagery can affect our thoughts and opinions more than we can think. This religious object also reminds me of Falwell’s argument in Listen America! where he argues that America is becoming less and less religious. Monuments like the one in this image are verifications that Falwell’s argument is completely invalid.

The image of Virgin Mary holding a child can manage to touch anyone’s heart regardless of whether they are religious or not. Children, which are known for their innocence, manage to melt the heart of everyone, even those whom are naturally cold hearted. Abortion, which is considered a sin in Christianity and in many other major religions, is a topic that is very prevalent in Dorothy Day’s memoir, The Long Loneliness. Before converting to Catholicism, Dorothy Day has experienced one of the most typical abortion stories. Day becomes pregnant by the man whom she loves, but whom insisted that she carry out an abortion after being informed that she’s pregnant. After aborting the baby and becoming a Catholic, Day deeply regretted doing so. The word “innocent” which is written on the monument regarding the babies makes the passerby wonder, if the babies are innocent, then who is guilty especially in regards to miscarriages and stillborn, in which the parents/mother are completely powerless? I think that Day would say that no one is guilty, for she would believe that God forgives all sins once a person has repented.

Many religious images, sculptures, and objects tend to be made using colorful tools in order to portray significance and divinity, but that is not the case here. Here the font is very ordinary, the color is white and the background is black, yet the power behind this object is unlimited. Text and imagery can have as much potential and strength in the American world, precisely New York just like thoughts and beliefs could and I am here to give small evidence in support of that.

The Paradox and the Time Traveling of Virgin Mary and Her Truck

The Paradox and the Time Traveling of Virgin Mary and Her Truck

Pamela Uribe

During my venture out to the unknown land of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I came across this peculiar pick-up truck. The first thing that stroked me about this car was how old, outdated and out of place the truck seemed in relation to its environment. The next thing I noticed was what decorated this already spectacular car, I found inside the back part of the pick up truck, plants. In fact, it even has a garland wrapped around the front part of the car. Inside the car, there was a portrait of the Virgin Mary facing the plants in the back of the outdated pickup truck. She looked as if she was overseeing the plant’s progress. In the front of the truck, there were prayer candles displayed and some were even lit.

            Now, the reason why I chose this truck as a religious artifact worthy enough to be showcased in the blog is because I saw it as a huge paradox, a paradox that seemed so large to me in the moment, that it seemed to have existed in its own world. After all, here I was in one of the “hippest,” fastest-growing commercial meccas of the New York City area and I come across a truck that is not what everyone necessarily defines as “hip” or “cool.” I then began to think of the truck not only as a rebuttal against modernity in a technological sense, but then as a rebuttal against modernity in a religious sense.

            The Catholic notion of the Virgin Mary is that she is the Mother of God. It is through her Immaculate Conception that the Holy One was brought to this earth. Her entire life has been devoted to God and He repaid her with the ability to deliver a child without staining her with the sin of sex. It is because of Immaculate Conception that the Virgin Mary is seen as someone who embodies a pure soul, a soul who has not been tainted by the destruction of original sin. Seeing her in the peculiar truck, over-watching the plants made me equate her and her abode to the Bases of Modernity that we learned about in class.

            The Bases of Modernity are a set of ideals that grounds itself in tradition in order to shield itself from the neutralization of the Acids of Modernity. The Acids of Modernity are a set of ideals that challenges certain parts of religion or beliefs in order to keep up with progression of reason and tolerance for the different possibilities available to answer life’s questions. The Virgin Mary in this scenario stands as a base of modernity towards the fleetingness of religious appreciation or the appreciation of a life that can be inherently good. In respect to Niebuhr and his belief on original sin, the Virgin Mary is an exact paradox of how Niebuhr categorizes people. Niebuhr suggests that justice and love are the most important characteristics that a society must learn to withhold above all else. Yet, he finds impossibility in society ever attaining perfect love or perfect justice because human beings have been tainted by the curse of original sin. It is because of original sin that human beings are greedy and self-interested. The Virgin Mary, in thinking and viewing her in the perspective of Catholicism, fits very well with the out of place, moment in time truck and its collection of plants and candles. Together it symbolizes a stand against shifting sentiments about religion, shifting presuppositions about humanity and shifting acknowledgments about the most important facets of life. 

St. John Mary Vianney Shrine

St. John Mary Vianney Shrine

Cemeteries, although somber grounds for many, are nonetheless sacred spaces where religion is carved out in every prayer, tear, and flower left for a loved one who has passed away.

Last Sunday, I visited St. John Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, and was shocked by the amount of people I found there. Admittedly, I have only ever gone to a cemetery one time in the past, but for some reason I had a particular conception of them as being grounds one visited only once in a while, perhaps on the anniversary of the passing of a loved one or on holy days. Yet, cars were lining up to get inside and everywhere individuals were making their way to graves with flowers in their hands.

Toward the back of the cemetery, in section 54, is a shrine commemorating St. John Vianney, Cure of Ars (1786-1859). A number of graves of priests circle the shrine, which lies at the center of the shape. It’s easy to see the reason why St. Vianney would be commemorated in the priests’ section of the cemetery upon reading about his life and humble priesthood. He spent his youth desiring to become a priest and, after much private tutoring, was finally ordained. He was a pastor at Ars and had visions that would lead him to fast and lose sleep to engage in praying for his community. Along with Catherine Lassagne and Benedicta Lardet, he established a home for girls named La Providence where the spiritual and material needs of all those who came would be taken care of. Vianney was a selfless man and in the winter months would spend 11 to 12 hours reconciling people with God. It seemed that instead of growing tired of his service to the community and God, he grew stronger and more determined. He spent countless hours in the service of others (“American Catholic”).

St. John Vianney is portrayed quite simplistically in the shrine. He wears a robe and is holding a chalice in one hand and the Eucharist in the other. This seems to be an appropriate representation of him, given his description of living a selfless life, constantly giving to others and God. Examining the form of the shrine reminds me of the aesthetics of holiness that we explored when discussing how saints were portrayed in Dorothy Day’s The Catholic Worker. Specifically, we looked at the 13^th century Catholic saint Elizabeth of Hungary. While her depiction in the stained glass at St. Bonaventure Church in Philadelphia is lavish and ornate and the early 20^th century sculpture very detailed, the drawing for The Catholic Worker is in black and white and lifts up an image of holiness as simple and ordinary. Every day work can be a site for grace, and work itself a spiritual good. While clearly not as simple as the drawing, the shrine of St. John Vianney is not elaborate, and I think that was done intentionally. The focus is on the service that exemplified his life and that is best depicted through the sacrament of Communion that the saint holds over his heart. He is an exemplar of what a priest should be, the kind of holy man that those buried around his shrine must have been or aspired to be throughout their lives.

Not only can a connection to Dorothy Day be found in St. John Vianney’s embracement of the Eucharist, which Day looked to for spiritual sustenance, but also in his style of life. Vianney’s selflessness is reminiscent of the selflessness of Peter Maurin, who admired the saints and led Day with his example of voluntary poverty. Maurin had “stripped himself throughout life; he had put off the old man in order to put on the new. He had done all that he could do to denude himself to the world, and I mean the world in the evil sense—that world we pledge ourselves to combat, with the flesh and the devil…” (Day, 274-75). Vianney would spend all of his free time consumed in serving God’s people. He also spoke of being awakened in his sleep by the devil, having to cast him out through prayer (“American Catholic”). It is ironic that this is the type of figure Day aspired to be, yet the same figure she hoped not to be made into so as to no be dismissed easily.

It’s impossible to visit a cemetery and not notice death all around you. However, it is something that must be faced constantly. In fact, it is something that several of the protagonists of the novels we have read for the course have had to deal with. Maurin himself in The Long Loneliness and the tragic suicides of Rosie in Dharma Bums and Aunt Aida in A Border Passage are examples of some who have met this fate. Those left to deal with the death of their loved ones were very much like the people I saw leaving flowers on graves. In Peace of Mind, Joshua Liebman’s third law for governing grief states that when death destroys an important relationship, “it is essential that someone be found partially capable of replacing that relationship” (Liebman, 115). Cemeteries are special places that allow one to come to terms with the universe and move on. New relationships can be formed while knowing that the memory of one’s loved one can always be visited if necessary. It is a respectful zone that allows for emotions to be expressed and for closure to be found.

Life may be sad, but it is always beautiful.    

Works Cited

American Catholic. Franciscan Media. Web. 30 April 2015.

Day, Dorothy. The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist. New York: Harper Collins, 1997. Print.

Liebman, Joshua L. Peace of Mind. New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1994. Print.

Subway Prayer (a message in a bottle)

        The New York City public transportation system is one of the prime spots for advertisement. No matter what the product is, my eyes will always go to the banners of ads above the seats, the posters mounted by the doors and on either side of the train’s connecting paths. Even the large posters in the station catch my eye as they zoom by from stop to stop. Familiarizing yourself with the Metro ads is one of the more time consuming things to do during your commute. In our discussion of these posts, we’ve highlighted the placement of the object we’ve found, and how a location with high traffic is often the site of interesting objects - they are likely to have an audience. 

        The subway system is, of course, also full of other texts, often times vandalism, that are made publicly available for commuters. Often times, these are devil faces drawn onto the star of the latest hit TV show, blacked out teeth on commercial posters, foul language bubbles coming out of characters mouths, etc. Rarely do you see the plea for peace, the writing that stops and makes you consider who wrote it. New Yorkers are beautiful contradictions as citizens, for we are built to dismiss the concrete and grueling city around us, and yet have been proven to have the largest capacity for love and selflessness.

        I am reminded of seeing a New York man help a woman with a suitcase through the subway turnstile. She got through the other side easily, and the man said to her: “See, we’re kind.” She responded, “I know we’re kind. I live here.” 

While riding the train a few months ago, I spotted this penned on one of the train placards. 

        The sign was a voiceless, hopeful “call to action.” I took this picture earlier in the semester, when protests in Ferguson were really beginning to flare up. There are similar circumstances happening now in Baltimore. The person who wrote “Pray” on the sign may have not been directly responding to these events, although it was read in relation to the climate of our country. At any rate, it is interesting to me that the author is unknown, this isn’t a specific request of one person from another - there is more of a plea to the world at large, a larger desire for change of behavior, rather than the specific change of behavior in one or two people. With the plea for hope is an inherent sense of sadness. The author is calling out to the void, the darkness, the unknown. Who knows who will see this sign - it’s a message in a bottle...

        The sign makes me think of Dorothy Day’s revelation of praying with her eyes open, of “being able to see the world around her, and the Godliness that is inherent in her surroundings.” Have we stopped praying all together? The call for prayer on this sign is clearly asking for prayer beyond the self - probably for the goodness of the world, for those who are hurt and suffering. However, Day’s prayer seems more active - praying with your eyes open is re-positioning your vision of the world, while this sign seems more passive (see Liebman contradiction below). While the sign doesn’t imply the sense of suffering Day thought necessary to achieve selflessness, it does appeal to something beyond the self. It also is somewhat in line with what Joshua Liebman calls the harmonious tradition - the ability to live in a world where all religions can exist, respecting the others, with man as a “collaborator” with God. This is moving away from the inactive, submissive man who waits for God’s action. While prayer is certainly religious, it is not unique to one singular religion. Thus, the sign is somewhat inline with harmonious tradition. However, Liebman would argue that prayer is not enough. We cannot wait for God, but must work with him. As Gandhi said “be the change you want to see in the world.” We must pray, but be active along with our prayer. We must pray for change that comes from ourselves, not from the “fatherly” divine.