Identificación de impactos ambientales

Festivals are held to celebrate specific events in the religious calendar and are an outward form of worship which often involves the whole community. Christmas is not only observed by devout Christians but has

become an annual celebration for many. In multi-religious, multicultural lands the year is punctuated by the different festivals for the different reli-gions. In Singapore, for example, there is never a time of year when some festival is not either being planned or celebrated, from Chinese New Year to the Hindu Thaipusam (when bodies are pierced and structures called kavadis are carried in honour of Lord Murugan, son of Shiva and Par-vati), Muslim Hari Raya Puasa (Eid-al-Fitr, the end of the month of the Ramadan fast), Buddhist Vesak Day (celebrating the Buddha’s birth, Enlightenment and death) and ending with Christmas (marking the birth of Christ). Whether members of the traditions or not, all can enjoy the festivities, and also learn about the religion involved.

Jews celebrate many festivals within the family at home. Shabbat (the Sabbath) is kept holy in Jewish families. Preparations are made the day before so that no work is done on the Saturday in remembrance that after the Creation, God rested on the seventh day. As a Jewish woman explains,

On the Shabbat I feel a different person. I feel more alive, more bright, more cheerful, the house seems to be a different place. In fact when one keeps the laws according to the Shabbat, it is like being in a different world. . . . On Shabbat we sing, on Shabbat we dance, on Shabbat we have time to study without any interruption. We have time to pray.⁴⁷

At times of national importance leaders of different faiths join in worship, reflecting different approaches to the divine in mutual respect.

Many festivals these days may be shared by members of different faiths.

Here a Christian, enjoying a Shinto Waterfall ceremony in Japan in 1993 had a wonderful experience,

We were celebrating the Year of Interreligious Understanding and came to Japan from Bangalore before going on to Chicago. We visited the Tsubaki Grand Shrine and joined in some Shinto ceremonies. We took part in the Purification by Waterfall ceremony (misogi)

It was late at night and we dressed all in white in kimonos and headbands, and prepared ourselves with prayers, mine were more Christian than Shinto. We also clapped and shook ourselves to become more aware of the presence of the soul. Under the cold waterfall I experienced a complete oneness with nature and could not tell the difference between me and the waterfall. It was a peaceful, exhilarating feeling of complete peace and joy with the universe. [005437]

All over the world, different ceremonies take place, often to mark rites of passage, birth, marriage and death.

Prayer

Communication with God, the divine or ultimate reality is at the heart of religious practice. Prayer may be formal, regular or an ongoing, informal communication. Some prayer is specific, involving gratitude, penitence or petition, while for some takes place in silence, as listening to God is as important as speaking. Just how far God might intervene in the day-to-day affairs of people remains a matter for debate, as does the question of just how right it might be to pray for selfish ends. But there is no doubt that for many people, prayer is at the heart of religious practice, it is what underpins a life of faith. This account is of an unusually powerful time of prayer.

My experience happened some years ago . . . it happened during a period of prayer that I found myself going through a tense physical struggle somewhat similar to childbirth. I became suddenly aware of light rays about me. It frightened me, thinking that I had entered a forbidden realm by mistake. But what happened to me was most wonderful.

I actually felt that I was in tune with the entire universe. I became imbued with a feeling of unity toward all mankind. That feeling to a certain extent has stayed with me. It was a startling experience and I honestly felt that I had made a new discovery . . . there is no doubt in my mind that God is a reality. [0673]

Here is an account of answered prayer.

I suffer from endogenous depression which occasionally is so acute as to make me suicidally inclined. One of these attacks occurred in 1964 when I was in New Zealand. Being a Londoner and a newcomer, with very few friends in Wellington, I wrote for help to the vicar of my for-mer parish in England. The feeling of despair left me suddenly some days later. When his reply arrived, I learned that as soon as he received my letter he had gone into his church to pray for me, and he mentioned the date and the time. Calculations, allowance for the time difference and so on, showed that this was the moment of my release. I am quite convinced that the prayers of this good man were in some way instru-mental in bringing the power of God to bear on my desperate situa-tion. . . . The Christian faith is important to me and were it not for the

support and comfort I derive from it I should probably have put my head in the gas oven long ago! [000642]

Some times of prayer are taken up with formal prayers and require dedication, even when the mind seems to wander. Such set prayers can often be helpful, particularly for people new to a faith. However, many people do find it quite easy to pray in a completely natural, informal way,

I talk to God like I’m talking to you. I can be struggling on the car in an awkward position doing a job, and I get a bit frustrated at times, and I’ll just say, ‘Come on, God, you can see me struggling, get your finger out, you can see what I’m trying to do – come on.’ Just like that.

I find it very easy to talk to God. I really do believe that God is listen-ing to me any time I wish to talk to him.⁴⁸

Although such communication is easy for some, others find it difficult, so for them petitionary prayer is a way of bringing the person prayed for and their need into one’s deepest awareness, as a Quaker put it,

It is impossible to write about religious experience without saying something about prayer and the way in which the life of the spirit is sustained. Prayer is such a personal activity that I can only write about it from my own experience. . . . I know many Friends who are able to engage in a kind of dialogue with God, and who are sustained by a sense of spiritual presence in their regular quiet times. While I respect their sincerity, and recognise the validity of their experience, I have come to realise that this way is not for me.

The writer and his wife then had a visit from a friend in trouble, and after she had left, they continued to discuss her predicament, empathizing with her.

We began to see life through her eyes and, to this extent, were sharing her burden, so that she was no longer alone with it. We knew we had experienced part of what people mean when they say they are praying for someone.⁴⁹

If prayer is the act of aligning one’s will with that of the higher power, God, Allah or whatever name one might use, then there will be comfort for the believer whatever the outcome of the matter in hand. Some people feel that handing their fate over to God, whether in the short or longer

term, results in guidance and help. They feel that things happen which would not have been possible had they not taken this step.

Some people live their lives constantly aware of a divine presence, so examples cannot be given in isolated incidents, but should be considered in the context of a lifetime. Prayer changes over time as one matures and may evolve from set prayers into wordless meditation. In 1989 The Friends’

Quarterly published A Journey in Prayer, by Anita Billington, who recounted her life in the perspective of prayer and spiritual exploration.

When I was a child the language of prayer came easily to me. My father was a Methodist minister, and during my happy childhood the day often started with family prayers. Loving my father as I did, it was easy for me to imagine a Heavenly Father who not only created the natural world to which I felt so close, but also cared for me. . . .

As I grew up, prayer became a duty, and I felt guilty if I forgot. . . . When I was twenty-two, I went to the Bahama Islands . . . I was given a little anthology of prayers. It is worn with use. I treasure it still as I remember the comfort and strength I found within its pages.

It was when I was thirty-three that I found myself in a situation where I did not know what to pray. After a long struggle against ill health, my husband was dying of a tumour in the gland beneath his brain and was rushed to hospital in Bristol. . . . At the hospital, the specialist could offer me little hope. There would first be an operation to put tubes through his brain. If he survived he might be paralysed and blind . . .. I walked out into the dark November night, not know-ing what to do, and followed a sign that said ‘Chapel’. . ..

[I] went up to the communion rail, kneeling to pray. What could I say? My husband had suffered so much. How could I ask for him to live if it would mean more suffering? How could I know what would be best for him? I thought of our little family and our deep love for each other. Then I put us one by one into the palm of my hand and, lifting us high, handed us over to God.

Words are inadequate to truly share what I experienced as I waited alone in the chapel that night. It was my Whitsuntide. Light surrounded me. Joy and peace filled my heart. The figure of Jesus was with me, looking at me with such love and calling me little sister. I touched a deep level of understanding and all was made clear to me. I knew, with-out any doubt at all, that whether my husband lived or died did not really matter to him. It would just be another step on his journey.

Nothing could really separate us. If he died, it would, in truth, be just a little while before we were together again. When I finally left the

chapel, it was as though my feet hardly touched the ground. As I sat beside him, in the weeks that followed, I could feel a powerful stream of energy flowing from me to him. For days after his first operation, his mind was affected and everything he said was nonsense. I thought we would never communicate again. Then one day he turned to me and said, ‘I can feel a power bringing me back to life’. . ..

The experience I had in the chapel at Bristol totally changed my perception of God and my attitude to prayer. No longer could I cope with church services to a God outside me. I had found my treasure, my pearl of great price. I had found it at the time of my greatest need.

I had found it as I sat in silence, and I had found it within me. . . . In the years that followed I made a conscious effort to bring all of my life into the presence of God. I would ask for guidance in every area of my life and this was very painful, for it meant honestly facing up to myself as I was. Amongst Quakers I found real Friends . . .

My life became an exploration of ways of keeping in touch with my God centre, the true source of my being. I discovered that I had reached the state of Living in the Presence. No longer did I have to offer up my needs and deep concerns. My needs were known. . . .

If the presence of God is within me, it is within everyone – within every single human being. If I reject anyone I cut myself off from the Presence. I can have no enemies. If I live in the thought of love towards all, my life will become one continuous prayer – a constant going forth from God the father of all, to all.

Dwell in the place of love and you are one with God. You are part of God’s expression on earth.

This is the true reality.

This is true prayer.⁵⁰

Experiments have been undertaken to establish whether prayers for healing are effective, and the results, reported in various medical journals, seem to indicate that such prayer is indeed effective. To the astonishment of many scientists, the results seem to indicate that people like Dr. Deepak Chopra may be correct in saying that there are healing forces in nature, which science is only just beginning to understand. In How to Know God he reported the results of the Duke project, formally known as the Monitoring and Actualization of Noetic Training, which presented its findings in 1998 to the American Heart Association.

The researchers took into account all manner of variables, including heart rate, blood pressure and clinical outcomes; 150 patients who had

undergone invasive cardiac procedures were studied, but none of them knew they were being prayed for. Seven religious groups around the world were asked to pray. These included Buddhists in Nepal, Carmelite nuns in Baltimore, and Virtual Jerusalem, an organization that grants E-mail requests for prayers to be written down and inserted into the Wailing Wall. Researchers found that surgical patients’ recovery could be from 50 to 100 percent better if someone prayed for them.⁵¹

Chopra explains that although the researchers found the results ‘highly intriguing’, what is really in evidence is a journey in consciousness, join-ing the persons prayjoin-ing and prayed for beyond time and space in what is in fact ‘a quantum event carried out in the brain’.

There are rituals involved in prayer, with different religions having dif-ferent requirements. Some religions require regular, formal prayer and many faiths have prayer beads to aid concentration. It is quite usual to kneel or prostrate as a sign of humility. Here just three traditions are considered in more detail.

Jewish practice requires a devout Jew to pray three times a day, often wearing the tallit, or prayer shawl, and perhaps two phylacteries, known as tefillin, which are little black boxes containing verses of the Torah, worn on the arm, near the heart and forehead, close to the mind.

For Jews, prayer was established by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and is viewed as a continuation of the tradition of temple sacrifice, in that it establishes communication between earth and heaven. An emptying of the mind should precede prayer, enabling concentration on the Divine.

The prayers include avowals of God’s unity and the relationship to his followers and also the hope of the advent of the Messiah who will unite God and man.

The Shema, meaning ‘hear’ refers to the first prayer Jews learn:

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you shall be upon your heart.

Muslims are required to pray five times a day in the direction of the Ka’aba in Makkah (qibla) and in hotel rooms all over the world the cor-rect dicor-rection is indicated for the faithful. Prayer rooms are becoming more widespread in public places to enable Muslims to obey the tenets of their faith in this way. The mosque (from Arabic masjid, meaning to pros-trate) is of course the primary location for prayer. After removing their shoes and performing the correct washing procedures and covering their

heads, male and female Muslims separate but perform the same ritual prayers. The majority of women pray regularly but at home.

Here is an extraordinary experience recounted to Prof. Dr. Cafer Yaran of Istanbul University, when he undertook a survey of religious experi-ence in Turkey,

When I was fifteen I wanted to learn the Qur’an very much but my father did not allow me to go and learn. We lived in a village and my father thought that my age is too old to do this as a girl and it would be better for our family if I spent the time with helping village busi-nesses rather than learning the Qur’an. However, my desire has never ended and I strived to learn it insistently. My father hit me several times for this. At the end I lost my hope and started to pray only. One night after everybody went to sleep, I saw a light like a signboard on the wall. It was something framed luminously. There was nothing hanged there in normal case. When I looked carefully I saw letters on it . . . . That is, I saw the Qur’anic alfabet. My Lord had heard me and gifted me with such an extra-ordinary way to learn the Qur’an.

Every night I waited everybody go to bed as early as possible. When the lights off, the signboard appeared, the luminous letters came out and I read them surprisingly. After 14 days, I thought ‘I wonder if I read them right or wrong’ and finding an old Qur’an I tried to read.

I read for a while and that night I could not see the signboard at all.

That is to say, I had learnt to read the Qur’an and there was not the signboard anymore.⁵²

Christian church services include prayers of penitence, intercession for others and ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ taught to his disciples by Jesus. Different denominations have different ways of praying, some with more formal prayers, some with none. Private prayer also varies in the same way.

Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) writes of different types of prayer, such as recollective prayer, in which God, and only God, is sought, but nothing else asked for. Teresa sees contemplative prayer as mystical, for it can only be initiated by God. In The Interior Castle, where the soul is likened to a castle with different mansions or rooms, she describes different levels of prayer. There is the Prayer of Quiet, in which thought is stilled, which ultimately leads on to the Prayer of Union in the seventh mansion. This is ecstatic prayer or rapture when the individual is no longer aware of indi-viduality, but is caught up into a spiritual union with the divine.

Contemplatives and meditators try to quieten their minds, shutting out the everyday world and in that inner silence, they may touch a greater

Contemplatives and meditators try to quieten their minds, shutting out the everyday world and in that inner silence, they may touch a greater