The Via Crucis, or Way of the Cross, meditations for Good Friday this year have been prepared by prisoners, volunteers, family members and others, associated with a corrections facility in Northern Italy.

By Francesca Merlo

Each meditation represents a life and a story. Each one is associated with the fourteen stations of this years Via Crucis, or Way of the Cross. The meditations have been written by people whose lives are in some way connected to the Due Palazzi correctional facility in Padua, Northern Italy. They were collected by the prison chaplain, Fr. Marco Pozza, and journalist, Tatiana Mario.

Lockdown to prevent the spread of coronavirus in Italy began on 8 March. Prison riots around the country followed when prisoners were told they could no longer receive visitors. Two days after the riots, Pope Francis offered Mass for prisoners: I would like to pray for those who are in prison, he said. They are suffering, and we must be near to them in prayer, asking that the Lord might help them and console them in this difficult moment.

The author of the first meditation is serving a life sentence. My crucifixion began as a child, he says, explaining that his stutter made him an outcast. He says he feels more like Barabbas than Jesus. Sometimes he weeps. After 29 years in prison I have not yet lost the ability to cry, to feel ashamed of my past, and the evil I have done. In the non-life he lived previously, he always sought something that was life, he says. Today, strange as it may seem, prison has become my salvation, he adds.

If, for some, I am still Barabbas, that does not make me angry: I know in my heart that the Innocent One, condemned like me, came to find me in prison to teach me about life.

The parents of a girl who was brutally murdered recount how theirs was a life of sacrifices based on work and family. They used to ask themselves: Why has this evil overwhelmed us?. They could find no peace. "At the moment when despair seems to take over, the Lord comes to meet us in different ways, they say. He gives us the grace to love each other like newlyweds, supporting each other, even with difficulty". Today, they continue to open their doors to all those in need.

The commandment to perform acts of charity to us is a kind of salvation: we do not want to surrender to evil. Gods love is truly capable of renewing life because, before us, his Son Jesus underwent human suffering so as to experience true compassion.

It was the first time I fell. But for me that fall was death. The third meditation is written by a prisoner. He did not know about the evil growing inside him, he says. After a difficult life, one evening like an avalanche. anger killed my kindness I took someones life. After considering committing suicide in prison, he found people who gave him back the faith he had lost, he says.

My first fall was failing to realize that goodness exists in this world. My second, the murder, was really its consequence, for I was already dead inside.

The author of the fourth meditation is a mother whose son is in prison. She says she was not tempted even for a second to abandon her son in the face of his sentence. That day, she says, the whole family went to prison with him. She describes people pointing fingers like knives, and wounds that grow with every passing day. She has entrusted her only son to Mary and says she feels her closeness. I confide my fears to Mary alone, because she herself felt them on her way to Calvary.

In her heart she knew that her Son would not escape human evil, yet she did not abandon Him. She stood there sharing in His suffering, keeping Him company by her presence. I think of Jesus looking up, seeing those eyes so full of love, and not feeling alone. I would like to do the same.

The author of the fifth meditation is a prisoner. He says he hopes to bring joy to someone someday. Everyone knows a Simon of Cyrene, he explains. It is the nickname of those who help others carry their cross up their own Mount Calvary. He describes his cellmate as another Simon of Cyrene: someone who lived on a bench, without a home or possessions.

His only wealth was a box of candies. He has a sweet tooth, but he insisted that I bring it to my wife the first time she visited me: she burst into tears at that unexpected and thoughtful gesture.

The catechist and author of the sixth meditation wipes away many tears, just like Veronica. They flood uncontrollably from hearts that are broken, he says. In the dark reality of prison, he describes meeting desperate souls, trying to understand why evil exists. Finding an answer is hard, he says. He asks how Jesus would wipe away their tears if He were in that position. How would Jesus ease the anguish of these men, he asks. So, he tries to do what he believes Jesus would do.

In the same way that Christ looks at our own weaknesses and limitations with eyes full of love. Everyone, including those in prison, has an opportunity each day to become a new person, thanks to Christs look which does not judge, but gives life and hope.

The prisoner responsible for the seventh meditation says he often walked past prisons, thinking to himself he would never end up in there. Then he was convicted of drug dealing, and found himself in what he calls the cemetery of the living dead. Now, he says, he did not know what he was doing.

I am trying to rebuild my life with the help of God. I owe it to my parents... I owe it above all to myself: the idea that evil can continue to guide my life is intolerable. This is what has become my way of the cross.

The author of the eighth meditation describes how her whole life was shattered when her father was sentenced to life in prison. She has been travelling around Italy for twenty-eight years, following her father as he is moved from prison to prison. Deprived of her fathers love, and his presence on her wedding day, she has had to cope with her mothers depression as well.

Its true: there are parents who, out of love, learn to wait for their children to grow up. In my own case, for love, I wait for my Dads return. For people like us, hope is a duty.

The author of the ninth meditation recognizes the many times he has fallen. And the many times he has risen. Like Peter, he has sought and found a thousand excuses to justify his mistakes, he says.

It is true that my life was shattered into a thousand pieces, but the wonderful thing is that those pieces can still be put together. It is not easy, but it is the only thing that still makes sense here.

The author of the tenth meditation is a teacher. Just as Jesus was stripped of His garments, so he has seen many of his students stripped of all dignity and respect for themselves and others in prison. They are helpless, frustrated by their weakness, often unable to understand the wrong they have done. Yet, at times they are like newborn babies who can still be taught, he says.

Even though I love this job, I sometimes struggle to find the strength to carry on. In so sensitive a service, we need to feel that we are not abandoned, in order to be able to support the many lives entrusted to us, lives that each day run the risk of ruin.

The author of the eleventh meditation is a priest who was falsely accused, and later acquitted. His own Way of the Cross lasted ten years, he says, during which he had to face suspicion, accusations and insults. Fortunately, he also encountered his own versions of Simon of Cyrene who helped him carry the weight of his cross. Together with me, many of them prayed for the young man who accused me, he says.

The day on which I was fully acquitted, I found myself happier than I had been ten years before: I experienced first-hand God working in my life. Hanging on the cross, I discovered the meaning of my priesthood.

The author of the twelfth meditation is a judge. No magistrate, he says, can crucify a man to the sentence he is serving. True justice is only possible through mercy, he adds. Mercy helps you find the goodness that is never completely extinguished, despite all the wrongs committed. To do this, one must learn how to recognize the person hidden behind the crime committed, he says.

In this process, it sometimes becomes possible to glimpse a horizon that can instill hope in that person and once his sentence has been served, to return to society and hope that people will welcome him back after having rejected him. For all of us, even those convicted of a crime, are children of the same human family.

Prisoners have always been my teachers, writes the religious Brother, author of the thirteenth meditation. He has volunteered in prisons for sixty years. We Christians often delude ourselves that we are better than others, he says. In His life, Christ willingly chose to stand on the side of the least. Passing by one cell after another, I see the death that lives within, he says. But Christ tells him to keep going, to take them in His arms again. So he stops, and listens.

This is the only way I know to accept that person, and avert my gaze from the mistake he made. Only in this way will he be able to trust and regain the strength to surrender to Gods goodness, and see himself differently.

A corrections officer has written the concluding meditation for this years Way of the Cross. Every day he witnesses first-hand the suffering of those who live in prison. A good person can become cruel, and a bad person can become better, he says. It depends on that person. But prison changes you, he adds. Personally, he is committed to giving another chance to those who have chosen what is wrong.

I work hard to keep hope alive in people left to themselves, frightened at the thought of one day leaving and possibly being rejected yet again by society. In prison, I remind them that, with God, no sin will ever have the last word.

See more here:

Way of the Cross: Meditations from a corrections facility - Vatican News

On five Saturdays - March 28, April 4, 11, 18, and 25 (newly added!), 2020 at 5pm EDT - Music on the Rebound and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) present The World Wide Tuning Meditation. IONE, Claire Chase, and Raquel Acevedo Klein lead a global performance of the late Pauline Oliveros' The World Wide Tuning Meditation, a sonic gathering with a legacy of bringing communities together through meditative singing.

Anyone from anywhere in the world is invited to join in via Zoom to sing together from their personal phone or computer. No music experience is necessary. The last performance on Saturday, April 25 will also be included in Basilica Hudson's 24-HOUR DRONE Sound and Music Festival, moved completely online with web-based programming in place of its previously scheduled weekend.

Oliveros' The Tuning Meditation consists of four steps:

1. Begin by taking a deep breath and letting it all the way out with air sound. Listen with your mind's ear for a tone.

2. On the next breath using any vowel sound, sing the tone that you have silently perceived on one comfortable breath. Listen to the whole field of sound the group is making.

3. Select a voice distant from you and tune as exactly as possible to the tone you are hearing from that voice. Listen again to the whole field of sound the group is making.

4. Contribute by singing a new tone that no one else is singing. Continue by listening then singing a tone of your own or tuning to the tone of another voice alternately.

The first three iterations of The World Wide Tuning Meditation on March 28, April 4, and April 11 welcomed participants from more than 30 countries, with 824 RSVPs for the first meditation and sold out virtual crowds of 950 attendees for the two April sessions.

Music on the Rebound founder Raquel Acevedo Klein explains her inspiration behind the project, "Music is an expression of our irrepressible voices and serves as a tangible means through which we can connect in times of isolation. In response to Hurricane Mara after it devastated my family and friends in Puerto Rico, music helped me tell the story of communities coming together to share scarce resources and to illustrate regrowth. The Tuning Meditation creates a space where people all across the world can come together and share our irrepressible voices, create a new story for our time, and heal together."

Music on the Rebound is an online, interactive music festival designed to bring people together and support performing artists affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Viewers are invited to participate in live events and stream digital curations. On Mondays starting April 20, at 7pm EDT, Music on the Rebound presents Connecting ACO Community, a weekly series of online world premieres commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra. Performances will feature esteemed artists such as Anthony Roth Costanzo, Jennifer Koh, Shara Nova, Jeffrey Zeigler, Miranda Cuckson, and more.

Program Information The World Wide Tuning Meditation Saturday, March 28, 2020 at 5pm EDT Saturday, April 4, 2020 at 5pm EDT Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 5pm EDT Saturday, April 18, 2020 at 5pm EDT Saturday, April 25, 2020 at 5pm EDT - Newly Added! Tickets: Free. RSVP Here to receive Zoom call-in information. Information Link: https://www.musicrebound.com/pauline-oliveros-tuning-meditation

Performers and Administration: Raquel Acevedo Klein - Founder & Producer, Music on the Rebound Ione - Co-Organizer, Tuning Meditation Bridgid Bergin - Co-Organizer, Tuning Meditation Larry Blumenfeld - Advisor, interviewer Claire Chase - Co-Organizer, Tuning Meditation Boo Froebel - Producing Advisor Ross Karre - Co-Organizer, Tuning Meditation Erica Zielinski - Producing Advisor International Contemporary Ensemble - Host, Tuning Meditation

Read the rest here:

Music On The Rebound And ICE Present The World Wide Tuning Meditation - Broadway World

Text Size: A- A+

New Delhi: The Department of Science and Technology (DST) has invited researchers to study the benefits of yoga and meditation in fighting Covid-19 and similar viruses.

In a notification issued 8 April, the DST has asked scientists, clinicians and yoga/meditation practitioners with a proven track record in the field of yoga and meditation research to submit proposals for projects that can benefit a larger section of society. The last date for submissions is 30 April and selected researchers will get up to Rs 15 lakh to pursue their proposals.

The DST, which falls under the Union Ministry of Science & Technology, is not looking for a cure to coronavirus through yoga and meditation. The projects, it says, should instead focus on boosting immunity, improving the respiratory system (since Covid-19 causes respiratory illness) and alleviating stress, depression and anxiety.

The invitation is a special call under the DSTs Science and Technology of Yoga and Meditation (SATYAM) programme, which funds three-year-long projects that aim to scientifically validate the benefits of yoga and meditation in dealing with different diseases.

The aim of this special call is to provide assistance to our society in todays critical condition arises (sic) due to pandemic Covid-19, the DST notification states.

Also Read: Govt prescribes Yoga with Modi for foreign envoys battling stress of Covid-19 lockdown

While yoga and meditation are known to be beneficial for holistic health, there is no proof so far that they help gear up the human body to fight coronavirus, which has infected over 7,000 people in India so far.

Speaking to ThePrint about the special call, DST secretary Ashutosh Sharma said projects in the SATYAM programme, as the name implies, investigate the effects of yoga and meditation holistically through teams of clinicians, scientists and practitioners by using the modern tools of science such as MRI etc.

In the context of Covid-19, shoring of immune system, respiratory function and also addressing stress, anxiety, etc are of relevance and importance, he added. The projects are to investigate these aspects through scientifically designed protocols and experiments to determine the outcomes and efficacy of yoga and meditation practices under different conditions.

According to the notification, the proposed work should be completed within six to 12 months.

Researchers have been invited to submit proposals under three categories. The first is to compile existing knowledge, protocols and best practices in boosting immunity, respiratory system and mental health and make a critical assessment of the same.

The second category is for proposals to develop specific protocols and modules of yoga and meditation based strictly on scientific approach with proper documentation. Under this section, existing protocols can also be refined or reframed in view of Covid-19.

The last category is for short-duration pilot studies based on experience in the abovementioned areas by a team of scientists, clinicians and yoga/meditation practitioners. The studies will need to be scientifically designed, documented, open to scrutiny and employ scientific tools for validation or falsification, the notification states.

This report has been revised to correct an error in the number of Covid-19 cases in India

Also Read: Yogi Adityanath goes viral on Chinese social media for yoga cures coronavirus speech

ThePrint is now on Telegram. For the best reports & opinion on politics, governance and more, subscribe to ThePrint on Telegram.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

More here:

Think you can prove yoga, meditation ward off Covid-19? Modi govt has an offer for you - ThePrint

Ad sales staples, such as lunch-and-learn meetings and product giveaways, have had to adapt to the quarantine. In lieu of catered meals inside company meetings rooms, streaming services like Xumo and ad tech firms such as Innovid are demoing their products over Zoom with meals delivered via Uber Eats. And instead of SoulCycle classes, TV networks are offering agency executives subscriptions to meditation apps.

Considering how many advertisers have canceled or paused campaigns as they deal with pandemic, these not-so-subtle sales pitches may seem particularly superfluous at the moment. However, in an industry that likes to describe itself as a relationship business, agency executives on the receiving end of these offerings said they have become valuable for managing relationships at a time when there isnt much business to be done so long as they are handled properly.

Everyone wants to do a webinar, and it feels very opportunistic and salesy, said one agency executive. The tone matters more than anything else.

As an example of how companies approaches can differ, this agency executive said they have received food delivery gift cards from two different ad tech companies. In one case, the company sent it seemingly at random with no communication from the sales representative at the company. In the other case, the companys sales rep sent an email asking for ideas of shows to stream during quarantine. Its the difference between Hey, heres a coupon and Hey, how can I engage with you from a relationship perspective? this executive said.

To their credit, those on the sales side largely are skewing more toward the interpersonal versus the nakedly transactional, according to agency executives.

[TV] networks are coming back to advertisers and agencies and saying, How can we help you in any way? said a second agency executive. This executive, who has been in the industry for more than three decades and worked through multiple economic downturns, said the extent of these current relationship management efforts are something novel. I havent seen this before.

What would normally be considered gifts are being received as care packages by agency executives. In some cases, the items, such as gift cards to food delivery apps, are being offered in exchange for agency executives participating in virtual lunch-and-learn meetings. But in others, they are being provided with no strings attached, such as the $7 gift cards for Amazon Prime Video movie rentals that Innovid has sent streaming video ad buyers.

The gestures have gone beyond such gifts to be more open-ended offers of aid, be that creative services assistance or Sudoku strategy advice, according to agency executives. Its not really a sales conversation anymore, said Clair Bergman, associate media director at The Media Kitchen.

While ad sellers are asking if theres any data they can provide to help agencies and advertisers navigate the present uncertainties and implicitly steer any available ad dollars in the media companies direction they are more often checking in to see how people are coping and sharing puzzle ideas and other ways they are passing the time in quarantine. Its been a breath of fresh air, said Bergman.

Seamless gift cards, care packages and meditation app subscriptions: How ad sellers are adapting their sales tactics

See the rest here:

Seamless gift cards, care packages and meditation app subscriptions: How ad sellers are adapting their sales tactics - Digiday

As usual today also Hima was travelling back home after a long day at office. She stepped inside and soon found a comfortable seat.She was quite and just observing the people who were boarding the bus. During these hours there were hardly any smiles on the faces of the boarders. She could see tired, weary and given up looks on the faces around.

Hima is talkative but during the journey her face is blank as she is preparing herself secretly for an impossible mission.

The rotation of the wheels announced the start of journey. She closed her eyes and within a fraction of second reached her pre-planned destination. Nature started showering all its bounties generously on her. Here everything seems to be dancing in trance of youth and happiness and her romance attains its zenith. Tender grass allows her to throw her worn out physicality on its soft blades and she starts rejuvenating.

The big fruit acts as a lap and she rests her head on it. The sweet pulpy heart of the fruit calms every swirl of thoughts inside her nuttier brain. The exotic leafy hands caress her cheeks and she sinks her face in those careful hands. Meanwhile the soothing windy eye-lids give her plenty of butterfly kisses. Soft flower buds gently press against her lips and after few moments leave her dizzy and drunk.

Fully bloomed arms with scented fragrance of a beautiful creeper wraps her body and she surrenders completely to them to treat her with lovely tickles on her back. Later the watery feet of a slow-moving cascade when washes her feet and legs, she starts shrinking with the heavenly pleasure of them. She then embraces, squeezes, cuddles and nestles with her serene romance and goes in deep slumber.

Time intervenes. The wheels are decreasing their rotations and are ready for the halt. She realises the situation and gently opens the eyes of her brain, stands, adjusts her scarf and with very light steps, gets down the vehicle and walks towards her home. This is her routine practice. She visits heavenly bodies, hill- tops, sea- beds, skies and what not. There are no rules or logics in there.She can stroll on the moon without an oxygen supplying mask and can catch the comets, talk to them and even sway them to some other direction.

She can dance with the colourful fish under the crystal clear waters of oceans, and can fly without wings up in the sky without her skirt being fluttered by the naughty wind.

No rules!! No logics!!! Wow!!

Though nothing applies in the virtual world yet time plays its role in the same manner. So now its high time to start her journey towards her home, or say the real world. Her brain automatically starts winding up her visit to the virtual land with the logic of approaching her home station.

The moment she steps down from the vehicle, she unties herself from all the strings attached to the virtual world and comes back in one whole identity to face her very real and not so sweet but logical living world.

But why does she enter that beautiful virtual world?

What is she gaining from that?

The sweetness and softness of the lovable virtual world may have an adverse effect on her view point. She may get stuck in there. She may refuse to come back. She may get confused between the logical and illogical worlds.

But thankfully it never happened, rather the impact of the short lived virtual world was beyond imagination.

You can call this whole process as a me-timetherapy. A weird way of meditation which surprisingly results in showing up peace and contentment on her face. That everydays journey time is her only me-time and she is never ever sharing that time with anyone. Not even in her thoughts. None of her social relations pops up in her mind while having her me-time therapy. This meditation therapy fades away all her whys, whos, wheres, dos and donts. It turns the fierce waves of emotions into a clean,deep but silent lake.

This one wild thing prepares her to accomplish all her duties at home and also for the successful completion of job tasks before the deadline. Just an hour in virtual world and she is all set to manage rest 23 hours.

Give a thought

Move to a place where you are the only one to guide the universe to work according to your own sweet will and where you are not scared of being caught lying carelessly anywhere.You can spoil your clothes, change them and can restart.

Not a bad deal!!

Good luck !!!

[emailprotected]

Read the rest here:

Meditation in virtual worldme time therapy - Tehelka

Turn off your worries and tune in to a guided meditation class, as these wellness centres and yoga studios across the UAE are offering soothing online and live-streamed sessions almost every night of the week amid the coronavirus crisis.

Every Tuesday at 9pm, Fitness First Middle East uploads a new meditation class to its YouTube, Instagram and Facebook pages. The 15 to 30-minute sessions incorporate a soothing narration of breathing techniques that are designed to alleviate stress, improve focus and encourage self-kindness. Check out the YouTube channel here.

This alternative therapy centre in Dubai is running a range of online meditation sessions at the moment, from morning gratitude to mindfulness and even past life regression. Theyre run by qualified instructors and last about an hour each. Prices start from Dh30. View the schedule here.

This newly launched Facebook group offers daily live sessions on all sorts of topics, from nutrition and childrens fitness to meditation. For example, Kate Sheikh, the co-founder of Soul Space, is running a 20-minute meditation session on Thursday. Join the group, which already has almost 500 members, and get access to all the latest content.

The popular Dubai wellness and yoga hub, formerly known as Life n One, is gearing up its virtual platform to host a whole range of yoga and meditation sessions. In particular, various instructors are offering a range of sound healing meditations using Tibetan singing bowls, crystal bowls and gongs. Keep an eye on the website for more details.

Illuminations well-being centre, which has branches in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, has all sorts of free and paid-for classes on offer. For example, there are complimentary meditation sessions designed to boost your immunity, delve into past lives and generally find the calm within. These take place throughout the week, alongside practitioner workshops and training courses. Check out the online schedule here.

Every week, this Dubai yoga studio uploads a new schedule and it tends to include at least a couple of meditation sessions led by instructor Neesha. These take place in the afternoon or evenings via Zoom and last for an hour. Theyre open to all levels, from beginners to advanced, and the studio is offering its online classes for Dh45 per session. Packages of five (Dh210) and 10 (Dh400) are also available. Check out the schedule here.

Jivamukti yoga instructor Dina Ghandour, who is based in Dubai, offers a weekly 30-minute meditation session on Tuesday for $6 (Dh22). These are done live via Zoom and can be booked on her scheduling website.

There are a couple of different types of meditation sessions on offer at this Dubai yoga studios online portal. Firstly, Neesha Radia leads a relaxing breathing and meditation session that promises to introduce us to a calmer mind. This one lasts an hour. Alternatively, Zeid Bataineh hosts a 90-minute moving meditation session that incorporates traditional tantra yoga. These are done via Zoom and cost Dh40 for a single session. There are five and 10-class packages available, too, for Dh35 and Dh30 per class respectively. Check out the online schedule here.

Abu Dhabis The Studio is also offering online sessions live via Zoom, with prices starting from Dh35. You could opt for a meditation class with a gentle Yin Yoga sequence incorporated into it, or try a session that also promises to facilitate detox. The class schedule is posted here every week.

The Dubai studio is currently offering only about one meditation session a week online, but there are different options to tune in to. This week, Fatima Garcia is hosting a one-hour sound meditation on Wednesday from 5pm to 6pm, whereas next Wednesday theres a Yoga Nidra session by Benedicte Alice Kapur. The latter is also referred to as yogic sleep and aims to aid emotional and physical healing as you fall into a state somewhere between sleep and consciousness. Check out the online schedule here.

_________________

Read more:

Now is a good time to start your own meditation practice here's expert advice on how to begin

#Namastayathome: 11 online yoga classes led by UAE instructors

11 simple mood boosters: techniques to improve your mental health when staying indoors

_________________

Updated: April 14, 2020 09:18 PM

Read the rest here:

Say 'om': 10 UAE wellness centres offering online meditation classes - The National

Back in the day when life was carefree and movement unrestricted, Glenn McCrory and myself used to host a Ten Club once a month.

It was a get-together of like-minded folk all resplendent in black tie who broke bread, quaffed a little wine, and indulged in yarns of great derring-do.

We would invite a mixture of sporting celebs and top business people. Among those of fame were the likes of Jack Charlton, former Newcastle skipper Mick Martin, Olympic athlete Mike McLeod, Steve Black who coached the Falcons, Wales, and the British Lions, world champion boxer Johnny Nelson and Lennox Lewis's manager Frank Maloney who later became Kelley.

We once even went over to the south of France during the Cannes Film Festival to put on our monthly extravaganza. All challenges were accepted!

Well, being under current house arrest made me wonder and yearn for those good old days. So I thought about a couple of dinners involving just Newcastle United as our dose of soccer excitement is non-existent - one with those of yesteryear and one of personalities still very much with us.

I thought I would restrict my guests to six instead of 10 as a gesture towards social distancing and, having wiled away many a fanciful moment drawing up my guest lists, here they are with Gibbo explanation attached.

Hughie Gallacher, Bobby Robson, Stan Seymour, Colin Veitch, Jackie Milburn, and Len Shackleton.

Why this particular Super Six I hear you say?

Well let us start with wee Hughie. I've always been attracted to, well, colourful characters because I find them more interesting than one dimensional Mr Straight Laced. There are so many layers to peel away.

I know how great a goalscorer Gallacher was from the record books which would be worth delving into itself but it would also be intriguing to get close to a tortured soul apparently bent on self-destruction yet always capable of doing so many outrageous things on the field as well as elsewhere.

I met Hughie on a few occasions late in his life when I was but a teenager. He was a courteous little fella who called everyone 'sir' . . . until he had a drink. Then he became a demon.

I also got to know his son Hughie Jnr when McCrory and I made a TV documentary on United's original No 9 legend and I found him both loyal and proud of what his father had achieved.

Others? Well Colin Veitch was obviously a rare individual. An original.

During United's Edwardian heyday of glorious success Veitch was hugely prominent as they won three Football League Championships (1905, 1907, and 1909), their first FA Cup in 1910, and were FA Cup finalists an incredible five further times between 1905 and 1912.

A unique figure in the history of the game, Veitch was a versatile tactical innovator whose life off the pitch was every bit as fascinating as his successful football career.

He was a great lover of the arts and co-founded the People's Theatre in 1911. An accomplished playwright, composer, conductor and producer, he counted George Bernard Shaw among his circle of friends, was a prominent member of the Professional Footballers Association, and served in France during the First World War as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery.

Oh and upon returning to Tyneside after his football days were long gone Veitch became a journalist with the Evening Chronicle. In 1929 he was banned from the St James' Park Press box for his outspoken views.

Who wouldn't want to meet a guy with such varied depth? Imagine his conversation round a dinner table. He wouldn't be short of a few words.

The four others I not only met but knew well. It's just that I miss Stan Seymour, Bobby Robson, Jackie Milburn and Len Shack and would love one more evening chewing the fat with them about the grand old days.

All four were outstanding players while SS and Sir were top managers too.

The foursome have a very special place in United's history but Wor Jackie in some ways more than all others. Never meet your heroes, they say, but I did and he didn't let me down one little bit. In fact he increased his sky-high standing if that was possible.

We wrote a couple of Newcastle United books together. A kinder man, a gentler soul, a more modest superstar I have never met.

Shack, who uniquely scored six goals on his United debut, was my room-mate on all our Fairs Cup trips and was terrific company. He wrote a chapter in his autobiography entitled What The Average Director Knows About Football and left the page blank!

I was to become a director with Gateshead but as Shack told me directors used to come up to him, nudge him in the ribs, and tell him he was right.

"They all thought I was talking about the other guys," laughed Len.

Mike Ashley, Alan Shearer, Joelinton, Ian La Frenais, Chris Hughton, and Mike Mahoney.

Oh I can see a few eyebrows raised at these dinner guests!

Why Ashley? I'll tell you why - because he won't answer a solitary single question from the media and here he would be locked in a room for several hours and would be bombarded with difficult, searching questions not little lobbed balls for him to smash to the boundary. Why? Why? Why? he would be asked.

As for Joelinton I would like to ask him one question. Why when you have the No 9 on your back are you terrified to penetrate deep into the penalty box searching for chances even if hurt is almost inevitable?

Shearer would simply provide an air of greatness . . . and the ability to tell Joelinton exactly what is required of someone doing his job at a club where centre-forwards are revered.

Chris Hughton, an absolute gentleman, would I suspect resist pointing out anything unpleasant to Ashley about his shocking treatment at SJP where he did an unbelievable job amid chaos. Never mind, he would have the chance.

I had strongly considered SuperMac of course, a very special mate, but I sit next to him at every United home match and therefore we hardly need an opportunity to talk whereas it would be a fascinating catch up with an old Whickham neighbour Mike Mahoney who has spent the bulk of his years since playing here either in America or Bristol.

Mind you, I would be taking a risk with the Big 'Un - he got me back on the fags after a year's abstinence when he kipped on my hotel floor in LA before the 1994 World Cup final and, having not indulged the wicked weed since shortly after returning from the Sydney Olympics, I have no wish to relapse again.

As for Ian La Frenais, he would be my Geordie superfan. Someone from the terraces who cares with a passion like so many of us and could tell the likes of Ashley what it is really like to be stripped of ambition and hope. Perhaps Ashley would listen more to him than me.

La Frenais is the writer of such epics as The Likely Lads, Auf Wiedersehen Pet, Porridge and Lovejoy who travelled all over England the Europe with me when I was exclusively on the Newcastle beat. He took the players' wives out to see Billy (based on the novel Billy Liar), starring Michael Crawford at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane the night before the 1974 FA Cup final and also put on the after match party.

There you are. You know my two lots of Newcastle Super Sixes. I wonder who you would invite to your imaginary house party!

Continued here:
Just imagine Ashley, Shearer and Hughton around the dinner table - my NUFC dinner guests - Chronicle Live

APRIL 2020 Issue 970 x 90 Books

Shokoofeh Azar Translator anonymous The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree (Europa Editions, 2020)

The first pages pull off an impressive act, juggling the stuff of dreams with the all too real. In a few horrifying lines, Shokoofeh Azar describes a young man hanged without trial, one of the thousands executed in the fall of 88, around Tehran. Their only crime had beenreading banned pamphlets, or distributing flyers, and their murderers enjoyed a career boost, becoming Revolutionary Guards, even mayors. Yet alongside such documentary materialIrans Islamic Republic at its worstThe Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree explicates its surreal title image. On the day of the boys state-sanctioned murder, his mother leaves her rural home to climb to the top of the tallest greengage tree (the fruit of which is better known as a green plum). There she sits mesmerized, for three days and three nights, perched on stardust, gazing down at an Earth no bigger than a tiny speckcarrying in its womb the past and future.

The woman flies off to Tralfamadore, in other words, and with much the same prompting as Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five. Indeed, a firebombing haunts the mother. Years before her son was killed, during the Islamic Revolution of 79, the familys Tehran home was ransacked. In thefight against the vice of pleasure, the mob set fire to the fathers luthier shopwhere the older daughter Bahar was trying to hide. Instantly, she was immolated.

But then, Bahar too inhabits a magical space. She serves as the novels ghostly narrator, making free with mortal chronology. Only over time does the story emerge as a decades-long tragedy, in which the opening execution is just another chapter. Under the Ayatollahs, Bahars family suffers till it shatters. Yet as its devastation comes to light, our undead narrator provides otherworldly relief. Herself a fantasy, she summons up many others of her kind:

Such passages risk being congenial to flat repetition and hand-me-down phrasing (in the blink of an eye), and a few times I fretted about the translation. Yet by and large the fabulist business proves delightful. I especially enjoyed the metamorphosis of Bahars sister, who ends up a mermaid. Better still, such materials always reveal their roots in the loam built up over millennia of Persian storytelling with all its grandeur and creativity. The way this heritage has collapsed mirrors the familys going to bits, and those dual pistons drive Greengage Tree. Thus while the opening recalls Vonnegut, the structure overall owes more to One Hundred Years of Solitude. The Colombian text is cited a couple timesmost poignantly, when the Revolutionary Guards toss it into a bonfireand the Iranian likewise yokes a doomed family to a destructive culture, while decorating the gloom with a phantasmagoria. Azar might not have moves as breathtaking as Garca Mrquez, but she belongs on the same stage.

Sorting out the novels chronology also entails escaping to an older Iran, a largely illiterate village in the hills. Here Bahars remaining relations seek peace amid ancient forests central to Persian traditiona natural setting for the sort of tales you might hear from Scheherazade. Once or twice those tales stretch the narrative almost to breaking, meandering a long way from the core drama. Still, the familys five-hectare grove cant protect them from the book-burners. Soon enough, what remains of the family library is destroyed, in a scene that raises the hackles despite rhetoric as overripe as some of the fairytale scenes. Before long, the son Sohrab languishes in prison, soon to be hanged. Small wonder Mom climbs up into the stars and Sis swims off into the Caspian Sea. Or, to put it another way, the assorted mystical developments might actually represent more mundane disorders. A psychiatrist might call them PTSD, if in a form you wont find in the Merck Manual. Just such a diagnosis turns up, in fact, on the closing pages of Greengage Tree.

At that point, years after the sons execution, the grieving father has fallen into the hands of the State. Hes made his lonesome way back to Tehran, and there he cant resist picking up a few bootleg CDs of protest music. To hear such songs, to know at least some artists were still alive and reacting, left him overjoyed. But when the Basji patrols discover the contraband, they label the man a Corrupter on Earth. Jailed, beaten, he must write a confession. Dad however takes that last step out of bounds. He wrote for days, and the result sounds a lot like the novel weve been reading, with children either murdered or turning to mythical beasts. But then, under still more pressure, the old man delivers something a doctor would recognize, with grief-induced psychosis and withdrawal.

Which version counts as the truth? That dangerous term? Plainly, Azar would answer both, arguing that the Old Gods still hold value, still alive and reacting, even as she recognizes how mysticism didnt offer any simple solutions to murder, plunder, poverty, or human injustice. An ambitious claim, this tempts her at times into overreach. Nevertheless, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree overwhelms any reservations. My quibbles about syntax or vocabulary, for instance, matter little when one considers that the translator had to remain anonymous. The current regime would never brook such critique, and likewise Azars acknowledgments end with thanks to the free country of Australia, to which she fled ten years ago. Ultimately, her work stands as another of the terrific fictions, a number of them by women, out of this tormented region and moment. It affirms again the adaptability, the veracity, the sheer power of the novel form.

John Dominis fourth novel, The Color Inside a Melon, appeared last summer.

Link:
Shokoofeh Azar's The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree - Brooklyn Rail

Author Christopher Miller writes 'The Small Scroll' to share the eternal truths of Christianity

VICTORIA, British Columbia, April 13, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ --In the Bible, the life of Jesus Christ is depicted through the eyes of various prophets. Author Christopher Miller wrote the reflective, jewel of a book, "The Small Scroll: The Enlightenment of Jesus," that follows the life of Jesus Christ from His perspective and unveils the simple, but eternal, truths of faith.

Written as a descriptive narrative, Miller weaves scripture and Jesus' stream of consciousness as he navigates the world as a human and fulfills his destiny. "The Small Scroll" portrays Jesus' human experience by demonstrating how He consistently faced hardship, and through meditation and internal knowledge that He was the Son of God, was able to rise above as the Savior.

"In a world that is riddled with disagreement, there are eternal truths presented in the Bible," Miller said. "With 'The Small Scroll,' I want to spread the word of these truths and allow readers to discover what a spiritual life is."

"The Small Scroll" features timeless lessons from Jesus that transcend past Biblical times and into modern day. Readers, who may be questioning their own destiny, will be able to relate to Jesus' journey of accepting that he is the Savior. Because this book illustrates the life of Jesus from a first-person perspective, readers can feel a one-on-one connection with this character and, in turn, with Jesus Christ.

"The Small Scroll" has received both the Editor's Choice and Rising Star awards from iUniverse. Also, it was recommended by US Review:

"The descriptions of the resurrection from the dead and ascending to heaven may provoke thoughts of what it might be like at one's own demise," said The US Review of Books. "Miller has produced a masterful tale as well as an argument for Christianity."

"The Small Scroll: The Enlightenment of Jesus" By Christopher Miller ISBN: 978-1-5320-6119-6 (softcover); 978-1-5320-9167-4 (hardcover); 978-1-5320-6120-2 (electronic) Available at the iUniverse Online Bookstore, Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

About the author Christian author Christopher Miller found his faith with he was 35 years old. In the Christian faith, he found the logical, intellectually based religion he was looking for. He previously worked as a bank manager and operated a mortgage company before retiring in 1996. Currently, he resides in Victoria, British Columbia with his wife. To learn more about Miller and his book, please visit http://thesmallscroll.com/.

For Interview Requests & Review Copies, Please Contact: LAVIDGE Phoenix Krista Tillman 480-648-7560 ktillman@lavidge.com

###

SOURCE LAVIDGE

See original here:
New Book Shares the Life of Jesus Christ From a First-Person Perspective - Yahoo Finance

BEFORE THERE WAS a self, there was the tribe.

True, tribe is a troublesome word, bearing the weight of decades of anthropological study that privileged Western civilization over all other traditions. But let us rescue it here, pare it down to its simplest meaning, as a name for the first human communities that formed beyond the primal bonds of kinship the beginnings of the great experiment we call society, which taught us to be human.

Before there was a self, there was the tribe.

Our earliest ancestors did not stand alone; they banded together to survive. For vast stretches of history, our consciousness was shaped by our connections to the people in closest proximity to us. Identity was like a complicated address, at the intersection of birthplace and blood, the things we chose to worship and the ways we kept ourselves alive, in a finite landscape we knew as both home and world. We were defined not by our hidden interior life but by our outward gestures, the rituals and markings we shared, the tributes we paid to common ideals of goodness and beauty not by what made us different but by what made us the same.

Ernest C. Witherss I Am a Man, Sanitation Strike (1968). Dr. Ernest C. Withers Sr., courtesy of the Withers Family Trust

But how do we square this with the ethos of individualism that has dominated Western life for the past four centuries? The very idea of the individual (from the Latin for indivisible: that which cannot be separated from itself) is a late construct, specific to time and place. While some historians trace its origins as far back as 12th-century Europe, it was not fully embraced until the 17th century, at the start of the Age of Enlightenment, coinciding with the rise of the nation-state, which superseded and subsumed tribal allegiances into a single destiny. Becoming a citizen, part of an amorphous, disparate, geographically wide-ranging group many of whose members you would likely never meet was inextricably linked to becoming an individual, no longer beholden to the tribe that once claimed you, and free (at least theoretically) to decide for yourself who you are or want to be.

The primacy of the individual is still resisted by many cultures, particularly in much of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. For if you enshrine the self above all, theres the danger of dead-ending in solipsism, disavowing the responsibilities of public life in pursuit of a perfected solitude, as if being in the world and being true to oneself are at odds. The early 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger thought otherwise: that to be human is to be in the world. We come alive in the presence of others. The self is not a fixed goal but a flux, ever in progress, generated and modified by each encounter, in the space and sometimes the tension between what is expected of us by family, society, cosmology and what we might actually want. Even before we thought of ourselves as individuals, we had private desires, arising in response to the dictates of our context; as the American-Canadian historian Natalie Zemon Davis has written of the premodern era, being embedded in a circumscribed social sphere did not preclude self-discovery, but rather prompted it.

ITS WHEN THAT context grows too large, beyond the human capacity to grasp, that we may become unmoored: Our confidence in who we are starts to fray. In this age of globalization and corporate homogenization, when it appears that the generic is triumphing over the particular, there is a hunger to stand out, to resist the broader narrative. At the same time, the erosion of local institutions and neighborhood life has left a void: Some of us fear we no longer have a place to call home, in the deepest sense of the word, a place that is ours and can never be taken from us. In Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change (1975), the American political scientist Harold R. Isaacs likened this alienation to the literal and spiritual displacement of immigrants transported across great physical and cultural distances; group identity is the ark they carry with them, the temple of whatever rules ones forebears lived by whatever form of creed or belief in a given set of answers to the unanswerables. To be part of a tribe is at once a refuge and a declaration of faith. It is to be anchored, to be certain that we have a role in the world.

Renee Coxs The Signing (2018). Pigment inkjet print

But is tribe the best way to describe the loose alliances of today, groups that transcend the old ties of kinship and language, united instead by ideology or aesthetic (itself often a manifestation of ideology)? The English language fails us. A clan is related by blood, a generation by age, a faction by politics, a sect by religion, a cabal by conspiracy. A clique doesnt scale beyond the intimacy of friends (and enemies), and a gang has come to be deployed almost exclusively in matters of youth and crime. To call a group a subculture presumptively shunts it to the margins. There is no English correlative to the Chinese suffix zu, which applies to both clan, zongzu, and ethnic group, minzu, and has been recently adapted as latter-day ethnographic slang, delineating the likes of yi zu, the ant tribe, college graduates from the provinces who move to the cities and wind up toiling at poverty level, and ken lao zu, the bite-the-old-folks cohort, young people who do no work and leech off their parents. Still, these are nicknames imposed by observers, not voluntarily chosen identities or loyalties.

Etymologically, tribe is fairly neutral, from the Latin tribus, an administrative category designating a voting unit: that is, a body of people endowed with a degree of political power. It does not presuppose an opposition, like the Japanese dichotomy of uchi-soto, which marks inside and outside, the familiar and the unknown, us and them each group explicitly defined by what it is not.

But after Europeans began to explore other regions in the 15th century, the word tribe took on the shadow of colonialism, as a label reserved for non-Western peoples who were seen to represent an earlier and implicitly inferior state of social evolution. The American anthropologist Marshall Sahlins has criticized the distinction long drawn between tribes and civilization as opposing cultures of war and peace, arguing that tribes are not innately fierce or predisposed to violence, and since the last half of the 20th century, the term has largely vanished from anthropological texts only to shift back into popular parlance. Today, American pundits speak in worried tones about the fragmentation of the country and an increase in tribalism, as if acknowledging a group identity were a retreat to a more savage time.

Dutch and Flemish authors photographed with personnel of the Dutch publishing house De Bezige Bij in the library of the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam, on the publishers 25th anniversary, in 1969 (left); its 60th anniversary, in 2004 (center); and its 75th anniversary, in 2019 (right). 1969 Paul Huf/De Bezige Bij; 2004 Thom Hoffman/De Bezige Bij; 2019 Stephan Vanfleteren/De Bezige Bij

YET NO OTHER word in English carries the same promise of a family beyond family. Its a newly urgent notion in the West today, and to focus only on the clashes between partisans in the political sphere is to ignore both the multiplicity of tribes and how they bring vigor to public life. The strength of a culture lies not in its promotion of a single way of being but in its ability to sustain a diversity of viewpoints. How else are ideas generated but through exchange and debate, polyphony rather than a single voice? Among the groups celebrated in the pages that follow, borders are fluid; these are not hermetic bubbles but ever-expanding spheres. For some, membership is testament to a crucible of experience. The cooks who have passed through the kitchens of the seminal Mexican chef Enrique Olvera bear their scars and burns along with the banner of Mexican cuisine, staking its rightful place among the great culinary traditions of the world; the bond between the activists of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, founded in 1987 to denounce the fatal passivity of the medical-industrial complex in failing to confront the H.I.V. crisis, is sustained in part by the memory of their comrades who died too early. Others find their associates in the realms of art or fashion, like the black filmmakers championing the work of the formative American photographer and director Gordon Parks as they build legacies of their own, and the coterie of Guccis iconoclastic designer Alessandro Michele, including acolytes, muses and those who are both at once, in a give-and-take of inspiration. Sometimes connections are accidental rather than sought out, occurring by pull of gravity, as with the polymathic luminaries who over the past three decades have come to haunt humble Omen, a small country-style Japanese restaurant on a less-trafficked block of SoHo in Manhattan, whose indifference to chic paradoxically draws those most in thrall to it.

What these groups share is an experience of collective effervescence, in the phrase of the 19th-century French sociologist mile Durkheim. The catharsis and exaltation historically invoked in religious worship find a modern analogue in the electricity that snaps through a crowd gathered in common cause. There exists a source of religious life as old as humanity and which can never run dry: It is the one which results from the fusion of consciences, Durkheim declared in a 1914 speech. Transcendence can be achieved by the mere fact of coming together, thinking together, feeling together, acting together.

Tseng Kwong Chis Art After Midnight (1985). C Print Muna Tseng Dance Projects, Inc.

The 20th-century Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan attributed the decay of tribal culture to the overriding of oral tradition by a codified, written language, a process accelerated by the 15th-century invention of the printing press. He saw this as a corruption of our original unmediated sensual relationship to the world of things and to each other. Once we no longer needed to communicate face-to-face, to connect the message to the messenger, we grew estranged. McLuhan also predicted in a 1969 interview, before the dawn of the internet that electronic media would revive tribalism by creating a simultaneity of experience, bringing back the prelapsarian immediacy of a long-lost village. In this ceaseless flow of data, theres a risk of a tribe becoming no more than a brand, its members identities reduced to the products they buy swirly-hued bath bombs, say, or catchphrases memorialized in neon scribble signs choices that can easily be monetized and exploited as part of a capitalist system. Marketers speak of consumer tribes and corporate leaders are exhorted to instill in their employees a tribal culture, leveraging loyalty and a sense of mission for greater production and profits.

But true tribes shuck off labels, resist easy slotting within an index. Theyre instinctual, constantly shape-shifting, drafters of their own fates. Whether rabble-rousers or quiet meditators, crusaders on a mission or proclaimers of unexpected beauty, they are family: individuals who choose to become one, and make of that communion the beginnings of a new world.

Ligaya Mishan is a writer at large for T Magazine.

Read this article:
What Is a Tribe? - The New York Times