Boing Boing » faith http://boingboing.net Brain candy for Happy Mutants Sat, 25 May 2013 03:26:20 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.1 Cancer and the High Holy Days: Rethinking Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die http://boingboing.net/2012/09/27/cancer-and-the-high-holy-days.html http://boingboing.net/2012/09/27/cancer-and-the-high-holy-days.html#comments Thu, 27 Sep 2012 13:11:05 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=183893 Cancer survivor Lani Horn, who helped me through some painful times during my cancer treatment, writes in a piece for kveller.com about anger, justice, and the search for deeper meaning in the Jewish holy days. She talks about a …

]]> Cancer survivor Lani Horn, who helped me through some painful times during my cancer treatment, writes in a piece for kveller.com about anger, justice, and the search for deeper meaning in the Jewish holy days. She talks about a moment of clarity during a workshop for survivors, where she witnessed much talk about "making meaning out of the cancer experience, deepening our gratitude for the ordinary, becoming more compassionate." Snip:

After losing my brother, two breasts, and almost three years of my life to illness and hospitals, I was over these platitudes. I stood up to speak. “This is all fine. I get it. But my problem is that I am mad at God.” I even talked about the Unetanah Tokef, which had been a grueling part of the High Holiday liturgy since Jeremy died. Who shall live and who shall die?

A surge went through the room. I had uttered the unspeakable. Afterwards people came up to thank me for my honesty. One was a hospice chaplain, himself a cancer survivor.

“Remember,” he said, “there is a such thing as holy anger. Think of the prophets. Anger can be a spiritual feeling.”

For the first time, I did not feel like my anger separated me from God. It was an honest description of my relationship.

Yes, I was angry. Who shall live and who shall die? Why him and not me? And why him at all?

Read the rest: Rethinking Who Shall Live & Who Shall Die (Raising Kvell)

(Image: Dad's Grave's Broken Headstone at the Jewish Cemetery in Mumbai, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from Avi Solomon's photostream.)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/09/27/cancer-and-the-high-holy-days.html/feed 42 A moveable mosque: One young Muslim woman's daily photoblog (video) http://boingboing.net/2012/08/09/a-movable-mosque-one-young-mu.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/09/a-movable-mosque-one-young-mu.html#comments Thu, 09 Aug 2012 16:41:41 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=175681

The "30 Mosques" guys are producing some wonderful "30 Days Ramadan" videos this year that really give you a sense of what it's like to be a Muslim person in America. I enjoyed this one, featuring a young woman …

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The "30 Mosques" guys are producing some wonderful "30 Days Ramadan" videos this year that really give you a sense of what it's like to be a Muslim person in America. I enjoyed this one, featuring a young woman named Deena who loses her job, then decides chronicle her life through a photoblog. More about the project here. Subscribe to their video channel here. Deena's photoblog is here, and full of beautiful things. (thanks, Bassam Tariq!)

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