Pebbles

Three stones came home with me. The largest is from Kailash - perhaps the same kind of stone, though I picked it up on the final day of the k, when you no longer see the mount. The others picked me up. The smooth round stone comes from the shore of Manasarovar, not right by the water. Others in our group were bathing in the lake so sacred to Hindus, reaching down to pick up a stone as they did so, like believers. 

I thought it would be frivolous for me to take part, so I sat at some remove from the shore (and from the others). There this little rock found its way into my hand. And the jagged brown one smiled up at me as I was waiting, not without trepidation, for the helicopter at Hilsa, the barren border town where the rolling horizontality of the Tibetan Plateau meets the sublime but forbidding verticality of the Himalaya.

Ready, set

Back to Lang, after what feels like a lot more than four weeks. Everything's set for the new academic year, which starts in a fortnight. I'll be ready soon, too. Somehow!

Why Kailas?

Perhaps a little narrative would be in order too, to explain what I was doing in those far-flung places! New School's India China Institute Sacred Himalaya Initiative has been sending parties of scholars, artists and policy-makers to various parts of ICIMOD's Kailash Sacred Landscape,

which stretches across parts of India, Nepal and China (Tibet). I was part of an exploratory party which circumambulated Mount Kailash three years ago, but we drove along the new Chinese-built road from Lhasa (joining it from eastern Nepal). Since then folks have been spending time in the areas where pilgrims (almost all Saivites from India) historically passed through on their way to the Abode of Shiva. Last Fall a postdoc accompanied an Indian government-sponsored pilgrim group starting in Delhi. In January a party walked part of the way pilgrims walk from India up to the border of Tibet, and in the Spring teams of local scholars explored some parts of Southwestern Nepal, where alternate and substitute Kailashes abound.

This time, it was back to Kailas itself by way of Humla, a remote area of northwest Nepal, where pilgrims once followed the Humla-Karnali (a Ganges tributary) to its source just south of Kailas and its lakes. This part of Nepal is so rugged that there are only two ways to cover the 65 kilometers from Simikot (which has an airport) to the border town of Humla - by foot or by helicopter. I did both - the first on the way up (July 22-25), the second on the way back (Aug 4). (Most of our group, many of whom had walked up from Simikot by a different route, walked back along the Karnali.) In between, a group of about twenty Nepalis, Indians, Americans and Tibetans spent a little time in the trading center of Taklakot, capital of the Tibetan prefecture where Kailas is, drove around Lake Manasarovar (more sacred to many pilgrims than the mountain), took a turn around the sacred mount itself (July 29-Aug 1), spent a little time at other pilgrimage sites a little to the west (Tirthapuri and Gurugyam). We'd planned also to visit the ancient capital of the Guge Kingdom at Tsaparang but permission was withdrawn, perhaps because it's too close to the Indian border, so we had a little more time in Katmandu at the end to collect our thoughts.

Reflections are still trickling in, but our very interdisciplinary group seems to have gleaned a wide range of things from the adventure. Religion wasn't high on most participants' lists, though a few had a "spiritual" interest in Kailas, and a few others became obsessed with the fact that the shamans of Humla, known as dhamis, are denied permission by the Chinese authorities to bathe in Lake Manasarovar, from which they claim to get their clairvoyant powers. (One of our Indian fellows drily observed that there haven't been dhamis on the Indian side since the arrival of science and good governance.) Everyone's moved by the Tibetan circumambulators (most from the neighboring region), whether the more prominent Buddhists, who walk with Hindus clockwise, or the counterclockwise-processing Bönpos. Nobody's much impressed by the Hindus who are carried most of the kora by horseback, by the rather gaudy new monastery someone has decided to build at Dirapuk, or by the adventure-tourists who combine Kailas with visits to Everest or cycling across Tibet.

I was probably the only one intrigued by the way in which Kailas - hardly the world religious center its promoters claim but still, for several centuries now an object of devotion for two kinds of Tibetans and one kind of Hindu - is understood to be home not just of a single power but of a paired power (Demchhog/Tara, Shiva/Parvati), with a considerable retinue, all in turn symbolized by nearby lakes and other mountains, and object not just of lay circumambulation but of elaborate Tantric rituals. I'm not sure what I think about all this, but I'm feeling my way to an account of a local pluralism quite different from that presupposed (and celebrated) by the pablum about a "mountain sacred to four religions." 

More Kailas pics

I can't be bothered to dejumble my memories, choose "representative" scenes, etc., but these photos are at least in chronological order.

The planes flying tom Nepalganj to Simikot, and what the flight attendant hands out at the start of each flight; first rock pile on our walk from Simikot to Hilsa; kids on a roof in the Karnali valley; mystic mountains; view over Nama-la Pass; struggling trees along a Chinese road; Nepali-Indian mart in Taklakot; Rakshas-tal, the demon lake, and detritus of past pilgrims; newly carved mane stones from the Horse Year, along blessed lake Manosarovar; me at the Darchen visitors center; Nepali pal Nabraj tying one of many lines of prayer flags friends had given him to take to Kailash; materials for the expanded Kagyu monastery being built at Dirapuk, looking at Kailash' north face; neuron-like prayer flags at Dolma-la pass; a view back from the final day of the kora with Tibet's amazing blue sky; multi-color Tirthapuri; a team of painters working on murals at Gurugyam Bön temple; a view of the Simikot to Hilsa trail, taken from a helicopter (yes, I choppered back!); and, back in the Kathmandu Valley, interreligious harmony on a taxi dashboard, and Bhaktapur Durbar Square a year after the earthquake.

Baa!

Oops, somehow I forgot to include the coolest thing! We shared the Simikot to Hilsa trail with everyone and everything else moving across the landscape, including caravans of sheep and goats, the remains of a nearly obsolete trade of Himalayan salt for Nepali grains. Above is one of three caravans which we encountered our second day out of Simikot; below are sheep coming up the far side of Nama-la above Hilsa.

Yatri returns

First, nearly random, selection of my 1800 pics from Humla-Kailash!

Slightly out of sequence... the path along the Karnali River, a dhami (shaman) who traveled with us for a time, panorama halfway to Tibet, the border at Hilsa, birds of Lake Manasarovar, base of a chorten and Kailash view near Dirapuk, panorama of Gurugyam Bön monastery, terra cotta devotional at Tirthapuri, view over Simikot.

Kailas, 2nd edition!

The trek begins! In a few hours I'll be off for a second trip to Mount Kailash, this time mit Gefühl! Whereas the first trip involved a large detour and many hours driving in a minibus, with just the three-day circumambulation on foot, this time we're doing as pilgrims of old did it,

well, part of it. We leave tomorrow for JFK, fly from there to Boston, fly from there to Dubai, fly from there to Kathmandu. The next morning (Thursday) we catch a small plane to a place called Nepalgunj, from which another small plane takes us to Simikot, from which point ...

it's our legs doing the work for four days, following the Karnali river up to the Nepal/China border at Hilsa, where there will again be a driveable road. The scenery should be spectacular, the sense of treading the path of centuries of Hindu seekers and saints sublime... but it's also a lot of walking, at high altitude. I will probably just be concentrating on putting one foot before the other! I'll be able to take in the sights when we return, two weeks later, seasoned ... and going downstream!

During all this time I will be incommunicado. No blog, no e-mail, no phone. (No laptop!) Like once upon a time when travel meant severing one's connections with home. It spooks me a little, but we're in good hands with a professional tour company. And Kailash's an old friend...

Still, I could use your thoughts and good wishes. I should be back on the blog by August 13th, perhaps already a few days before that. Til then...

A riot of lilies at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, as the world falls apart...

Yatra prep

Got the likely itinerary for my trip, and thought I'd do a little Google Maps diagram of it. Not so easy to do, it turns out. Here's a start:Weather permitting we'll fly into Simikot (2910m) the morning of July 21st, and take three days to trek along the historic yatra (pilgrimage) route following the Karnali river to the Nepali-Chinese border at Hilsa (3640m), which is to the left of Muchu where the valley starts to look broad and sandy - above the treeline, I guess, on the Tibetan Plateau.

There we'll rendezvous with a more intrepid group, which embarked on a tough trek through the Limi Valley a few days ago, and drive through Burang/Taklakot (4755m), where the yellow road starts, and between the lakes to Darchen (4575m), where the Kailas yatra commences!

There goes the neighborhood

My unexpected staycatation is allowing me to explore Prospect Heights. A new coffee shop with an un- pronounceable name has opened up a few blocks away. Though I recently scored a "Shakes- peariean!" 30135 on an internet quiz claiming to estimate the size of your vocabulary, I can't see more than... betwixted? Too clever by half. Besides, my haunt is the Joyce.

En français!

My presentation at the Michel de Certeau shindig in March has been translated into French by the redoubtable convener. It sounds most impressive if you recite it through your nose. Here's a soupçon:

    Il y a d’intrigantes affinités entre la voie de la religion vécue et les idées de Michel de Certeau, mais avec une différence. Quand Certeau décrit des pratiques ostensiblement séculières triomphant d’écritures et de structures séculières (je dis « ostensiblement », car l’électricité de la vie des tactiques me semble spirituelle, même dans les Arts de faire), le courant américain de la religion vécue décrit et dans une certaine mesure célèbre les manières dont des tactiques religieuses triomphent de stratégies religieuses. Il serait facile de donner des exemples de tactiques religieuses sur la manière d’habiter, de se déplacer, de parler, de lire, de faire ses achats, de cuisiner.
    Ces ruses, ces surprises, ces bons tours en matière religieuse dépassent les « stratégies » religieuses à trois niveaux : d’abord dans leurs propres traditions religieuses, puis sur le terrain d’un paysage religieux où même leur propre tradition est étrangère, et spécialement dans les villes où la créativité religieuse a été mise à l’épreuve aux États-Unis, enfin dans les rencontres avec des fidèles venant d’autres religions tout aussi dépourvus d’un « propre ». Le quotidien de la ville est hétérologique en religion.
    Cela ne veut pas dire que ces tacticiens spirituels ne sont pas aussi à la manœuvre dans un paysage sécularisé, mais cela conduirait à des débats sur la nature religieuse – encore protestante – du sécularisme américain . En tout cas ces entrelacs de tactiques nous mènent au point de rupture d’une distinction stable entre « tactiques » et « stratégies ». L’image est plus complexe, spécialement quand des tactiques s’agglomèrent en stratégies, mais la distinction entre les deux demeure éclairante. La spiritualité soulignée par la religion vécue semble profondément liée aux moments tactiques dans cette complexité.

A selection of the presentations, including mine, are being shown to publishers... Thanks to China, where I encountered the international certalian network, I may one day have a fracophone item in my resumé!

Creepy Carpaccio

Always discovering new things in the reception of Job! Here's a second painting by Vittore Carpaccio - I was aware of a predecessor, now residing at the Metropolitan Museum, but not this one, in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, dated 1505, a weird, chilling scene of the dead Christ before his burial. Job sits near the center of the picture, the musicians often associated with him play atop a hill in the distance.

Swallowed the sun

I'm finishing up a chapter on the reception history of the Book of Job for a book on Wisdom Literature. I've been vacillating more than is prudent or sane: I feel it should be like what's in my book but not the same (in fairness to both projects and publishers). The 8000 words I've been given is enough to do some things new, so I've got a paragraph (nothing gets more than a paragraph) on Job in Islam (where he's known as Ayyub) and quotations from Milton and Ernst Bloch. The section on liturgy and art skips between genres, and talks more about paintings than in my book. And then there's this, that I'd love to use as my final paragraph but don't have the space for. It's something I learned about from one of the teaching assistant's for last semester's ULEC.

Zimbabwean gospel group Vabati VeVangheri sings a song called "Jobho" with a catchy dance. Linked with health warnings for HIV, it appears in NoViolet Bulawayo's 2013 novel We Need New Names, as some children come, uninvited, on a man dying of AIDS, and one starts the song. The narrator is the man's daughter.

When Godknows starts singing Jobho, Sbho joins in and we listen to them sing it for a while and then we’re all scratching our bodies and singing it because Jobho is a song that leaves you with no choice but to scratch your body the way that sick man Job did in the Bible, lying there scratching his itching wounds when God was busy torturing him just to play with him to see if he had faith. Jobho makes you call out to heaven even though you know God is occupied with better things and will not even look your way. Jobho makes you point your forefinger to the sky and sing at the top of your voice. We itch and we scratch and we point and we itch again and we fill the shack with song.

They reach for the dying man's hand and move it to the song. Soon all the children are touching the man, including his daughter, who has not touched him since he returned from a fruitless effort to find work in South Africa, mortally ill.

He feels like dry wood in my hands, but there is a strange light in his sunken eyes, like he has swallowed the sun.

In fact, this is so exquisite I have to find a way to make room for it!

NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names
(New York: Little Brown & Co., 2015), 105

End of the world

The unexpected gift of ten more days before I head Himalayaward means I can perhaps write up something from the Future of the Philosophy of Religion symposium after all. Have I more to say about the Anthropocene and our incapacity to make sense of it than I did back in February? I'm not sure. Let's see.

But it's hard to think so big, indeed of anything at all, knowing Philando Castile (and... and... and... ) won't be there to see it.

108 story mountain

My departure for Nepal, and onward to Kailas, has been delayed a little. Some of the acclimating trekking prep I was planning to do in Simikot will have to be simulated here in Brooklyn. Just completed enough trips up and down the stairs of our building to climb a 108-story building!

Job well done!

Here's a nice surprise! Our book is the first to have been reviewed in the LGBTQ category of the American Academy of Religion's new book review site Reading Religion! It's rather a nice review, too, if I say so myself. It's not our first review, and not the first positive one. I'm gratified that, as in last year's JRC review, a careful reader found in the book exactly the transgressive tensions we structured the book to generate!

Despite (or, perhaps, because of) the intrinsic anxiety over what counts as “queer” or as “Christian” emanating from every page of the volume, Queer Christianities will make a fine teaching tool for colleges and seminaries. I can imagine structuring an entire course in religion and sexuality around the themes and problems that the book examines. And if the language, definitional imprecision, or the subject matter of the essays disturb the readers’ sense of certainty on the subject, then we will know that Queer Christianities has, indeed, done its job.

It's also really nice to have someone appreciate the work we put into making our volume teachable. Can you build a whole course around it? Be our guest!!

Overcoming illiteracy

I've been curious about MOOCs for a while, and have found an opportunity to try one. HarvardX recently unleashed a set of courses on "World Religions through Scripture" with segments on several traditions by impressive scholars. The anchor is a section taught by Dianne L. Moore, whose work on "religious literacy" in public education I've been aware of and impressed by for years. The premise of the project is that "religious illiteracy" produces ignorance and antagonism inimical to peace and social progress, which is surely right. Her examples of illiteracy trace, in reverse, a "non-sectarian religious studies" approach which I find congenial. Religions are multiple, change over time, deeply enmeshed in culture, not private - yes! And although the contrast of religious studies with "devotional expression" is too simple, Moore makes a compelling case that religious studies makes an indispensable contribution - and one nobody else is likely to make. People within religious traditions are as liable to overlook or deny the multiplicity, change and cultural implications of these traditions as those outside!

But can religious studies make that necessary contribution through a MOOC? I've completed the first of the course's eight days, and have worked through brief modules in a number of media - video lecturettes, excerpts from a video documentary on Islam involving women in Turkey and Malaysia, readings from academic and press sources on the multiple tellings of the Ramayana, an archive of changing Southern Baptist resolutions concerning abortion from the 1970s and 1980s, and a lovely Ted talk by a Nigerian writer about the danger of having only a "single story" about a people. I've been invited to contribute a self-introduction, reactions to the approach and to several of the segments (at each stage able to see and comment on the reactions of the 4000+ other participants), and examples of religious holidays and monuments in public calendars and spaces where I live. A most promising start!

I might note that most participants' comments on each other's comments have been of the "lovely!" "well put!" type - what you might expect from people signing up for something like this, and just finding their bearings in it - and that my initial reaction is like that too. I've not stopped being a religious studies specialist of my own, with particular reservations about categories like, well, "world religions" and suspicions about scripture-centered understandings of religion. But still: so far so good.

Fourth of July

Prospect Park is full of celebrations!

Pocket meadow

Today's trek-prep took me from the Church of the Holy Apostles (which welcomed a new Interim Pastor today) along the beautifully landscaped walk/cycleway on the Hudson. This charming field - not a lot bigger than what's shown in this picture - was at about 30th St.

Nature!

To get a little more in shape for the upcoming trek, I've been exploring Prospect Park with a pair of Exerstrider walking poles. It's quite the workout, though I notice it only after I get home, bone weary. 

While in the park I'm busy exploring new trails and - well, and getting lost. I stumbled on this magical body of water covered with yellow flowers yesterday, and spent over an hour trying to find it again today.

Lily season