TruthBook Religious News Blog

RACHEL ZOLL
September 10, 2009

NEW YORK (AP) — There is the dread of leaving the house that morning. People might stare, or worse, yell insults.

Prayers are more intense, visits with family longer. Mosques become a refuge.

Eight years after 9/11, many U.S. Muslims still struggle through the anniversary of the attacks. Yes, the sting has lessened. For the younger generation of Muslims, the tragedy can even seem like a distant memory. "Time marches on," said Souha Azmeh Al-Samkari, a 22-year-old student at the University of Dayton in Ohio.

Yet, many American Muslims say Sept. 11 will never be routine, no matter how many anniversaries have passed.

"I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach every year," said Nancy Rokayak of Charlotte, N.C., who covers her hair in public. "I feel on 9/11 others look at me and blame me for the events that took place."

Rokayak, a U.S.-born convert, has four children with her husband, who is from Egypt, and works as an ultrasound technologist. She makes sure she is wearing a red, white and blue flag pin every Sept. 11 and feels safer staying close to home.

Sarah Sayeed, who lives in the Bronx, said that for a long time, she hesitated before going out on the anniversary. The morning the World Trade Center crumbled, she rushed to her son's Islamic day school so they could both return home. The other women there warned that she should take off her headscarf, or hijab, for her own safety. She now attends an interfaith prayer event each Sept. 11, keeping her hair covered as always.

"There's still a sense of 'Should I go anywhere? Should I say anything?' There's kind of that anxiety," said Sayeed, who was born in India and came to the U.S. at age 8. "I force myself to go out."

The anniversary brings a mix of emotions: sorrow over the huge loss of life, anguish over the wars that followed, but also resentment over how the hijackings so completely transformed the place of Muslims in the U.S. and beyond.

A poll released this week by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 38 percent of Americans believe Islam is more likely than other faiths to encourage violence. That is down from 45 percent two years earlier.

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Labels: 9/11, emotion, fear, interfaith, Islam, Muslims, Pew forum on Religion, Rachel Zoll

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Saturday, August 29, 2009

TEXAS FAITH: Do we put too great a premium on our biological lives?

Tue, Aug 25, 2009
William McKenzie/Editorial Columnist

Despite the cries at town-hall meetings, the House's health care bill contains no "death panels" that would force end-of-life decisions upon elderly Americans. But the protests certainly have revealed a deep anxiety among some voters about the end of their lives.

Part of that is natural. No one wants someone else making decisions for them about how their days come to a close. Yet it also speaks to a heightened fear that many of us have about our mortality.

Texas Faith moderator Rod Dreher explored this subject in a paper he did for his Templeton Cambridge journalism fellowship this summer. He drew upon the writings of Orthodox theologian Jean-Claude Larchet, author of "The Theology of Illness." Here's an excerpt from Rod's work:

Larchet laments the way today's patient has become entirely dependent on physicians for deliverance from physical illness and related maladies. Paradoxically, despite the great advances medical science has made in treating illness, Larchet says patients today have fewer spiritual and psychological resources with which to cope with illness than their ancestors did. He identifies five factors in modern life in the West that put the patient at the mercy of physicians:

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Labels: death, faith, fear, illness, mortality, Texas Faith, William McKenzie

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Friday, January 02, 2009

Wealth advisers filling a new counseling role in tough times

The erosion of personal wealth, along with local and national stories about massive financial fraud, are causing people to re-examine everything from their grocery bills to how they valuate themselves as human beings. And that creates some intense and revealing conversations with the ones who know them as intimately as anyone: their financial advisers.

“Instead of a five- to 10-minute talk about the markets, we’re talking about faith and values, and right and wrong,” said Suzann Brown, a partner with Virchow Krause & Co. Wealth Management in Minneapolis. “The big question is, ‘How did we get here?’ and it’s a much more emotional conversation. And you have to be willing to have the conversation. That’s how we can create calm and peace of mind without being able to fix what’s happening on CNBC.”

Besides fear and grief, the intense introspection that follows a dramatic drop in personal wealth can unearth a sense of guilt in some people, said Kathy Kuehl, a principal with Minneapolis wealth-management firm Lowry Hill. Kuehl recently had a meeting with a client who had given some money to her grandchildren and then watched as their accounts shriveled because of the recent market turmoil.

While the questions Kuehl has been asking her clients have become more introspective and abstract in the wake of recent financial fraud cases, her clients also are asking some fundamental questions about the role of trust in the adviser-client relationship.

“If you look at everything that’s happened with [disgraced Wall Street financier Bernie] Madoff, people are re-evaluating their relationships with their advisers,” Kuehl said. “Who can I trust? Am I getting good advice? Am I not getting taken? No matter how much money you have, everybody has to be cautious about their adviser relationship.”

That kind of conversation can ultimately lead to a deeper, more intimate relationship, said Brown, who recounted a recent conversation she’d had with a widowed client in her 70s. The woman asked Brown if she was going to be OK, and Brown reassured her that, with some lifestyle adjustments, she would be OK. Brown, who had never talked about spiritual matters with a client, even after 9/11, recommended that the client turn her television off and reflect on the things in her life for which she was grateful.

“Once we get into this conversation about hopefulness and gratitude, that’s where the spirituality of the conversation takes on a little meaning.”

Labels: faith, fear, financial advisors, grief, the economy, values

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Friday, May 30, 2008

To promote an upturn in the global economy

A Christian Science perspective on daily life.
from the May 30, 2008 edition

Last month, asahi.com, an online Japanese/English newspaper, posted an editorial titled "Economic pessimism." It began with the old saying, "Worry is often the cause of illness," and added, "The perceived weakening of the economy, too, may have its beginnings in the mind" (April 3). The editorial went on to discuss the importance of reversing feelings of despair and confusion that could have a deleterious impact on the Japanese economy.

It's a keen observation that thought has a direct impact on individual experience and that it can influence collective experience, too. But it's also important to realize that this mental influence doesn't have to be negative. In fact, the individual conviction that divine Principle governs all can have a collective, positive effect on the world economy.

Mary Baker Eddy used strong words when she told readers of her book "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" how to respond to any error of thought: "When the illusion of sickness or sin tempts you, cling steadfastly to God and His idea.... Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious – as Life eternally is – can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not" (p. 495).

These statements provide a plan not just for restoring health to the body but also for renovating national economies and international relations – because thought does indeed influence the body and its environment. So when the illusion of a sick economy, or one riddled by greed, forecasts disaster, we can cling more steadfastly to the spiritual fact that everything concerning God's idea – the man and woman of His creating – is as perfect as God is. Also, we can allow only divine Love to speak to us about the health of the economy.

Essential to our confidence is that "recognition of life harmonious." To recognize the true harmony of human affairs is to realize not just that it rests on a spiritual platform, but also that it isn't separate from divine Principle, whose laws define the nature of Life.

News reports such as the one on asahi.com show how international economies are affected not just by actual financial downturns but even just by the thought of a challenge to a major business or weakness in the financial markets. Holding firm with the truth is an important step toward making and keeping them strong. Neither fear nor doubt can hold back divine progress, and our prayers can do much to make it so.

Adapted from an editorial in the Christian Science Sentinel.

Labels: Christian Science, economics, fear, Mary Baker Eddy, pessimism, positive thinking