OT - Thunderbird House

[nestork]

In the middle of what would be considered "Indian Territory" in Winnipeg is a building called "Thunderbird House".

Thunderbird House is basically a cultural center for the native people living in Winnipeg. It really epitimizes the best of the Native people living and working in Winnipeg. It's a place where native people try to keep their culture alive.

I was showing an empty apartment today to a young couple, both of which were obviously native. The guy had a jean jacket on, and on the back of it it was embroidered in black, white, yellow and red yarn:

"You do not have a soul. Your are a soul. You have a body."

Black, white, red and yellow are the traditional colours of native peoples. It's the colours they could make with the materials that were available in nature, and you'll find that most native art is done predominantly in these four colours.

I asked him where he got that, and he said that it's on a plaque in Thunderbird House, and I realized that those three simple lines fully explain the difference between traditional native "religion" and Judeo-Christian religion. The former teaches that everything has a spirit/soul, but those souls may inhabit bodies of different types. Birds and animals have spirits, and so it is necessary to pay your respects to the spirit of an animal you kill to eat because it's spirit is no less important than your own. Judeo-Christian religion teaches that we are basically bodies, and deep inside us is a soul which rises to heaven or descends to he11 upon our passing. Two concepts that are diametrically opposed, but both still provide a sound framework for spirituality.

That Indian impressed me and I thought I'd share it with the others in here.

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, Our 2nd last store we sold is near a Indian reserve(T'su T'si Na Nation, very well to do reserve operating Casino, Hotel on their land). We had many native folks coming to our store. Never met bad man or woman, all very gentle and honest hard working folks. Not all are lazy drunk bums.

[Doug Miller]

nestork wrote in news: [e-mail]:

"Judeo-Christian religion" teaches no such thing. Rather,

"The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the 'form' of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature." [The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Article 365]

[Mayayana]

| The former teaches that everything has a | spirit/soul, but those souls may inhabit bodies of different types. | Birds and animals have spirits, and so it is necessary to pay your | respects to the spirit of an animal you kill to eat because it's spirit | is no less important than your own. Judeo-Christian religion teaches | that we are basically bodies, and deep inside us is a soul which rises | to heaven or descends to he11 upon our passing. Two concepts that are | diametrically opposed, but both still provide a sound framework for | spirituality. |

They're not opposed at all. Both are saying that "the real you" is that which knows beyond physicality. You are not the physical vehicle. Why would Christianity posit a soul if "the real you" were the body? In that case the soul would be analogous to a tapeworm, merely living in you, and what happened to that soul after death would be of no concern to you. That's the scientific materialist view that your being and consciousness are nothing more than an accidental, complex chemical reaction. To posit a soul-as-tapeworm is, at best, a band-aid attempt to resolve J/C teachings with the current hyper-materialistic view of reality that's resulted from an inappropriate exalting of science.

I don't think Hinduism and Buddhism teach differently, either. The various religions vary in the basics. Even Judaism and Christianity are profoundly different in their views, despite sharing many of the same writings. But all teach that there's a truer vision veiled by the worldly life of the body. Thus all teach some kind of spiritual path that involves a general divesting of worldly interests.

Though Judaism seems to be primarily a tribal religion that was adapted. It's monotheistic god started out as a local tribal god, in a time when the Middle East was apparently populated by various competing tribes. ["Thou shalt have no other gods but me."] And the story of Moses' leadership, to me, reads like a history of a culture being built out of barbarism. Moses is mainly teaching basic tribal citizenship rather than spiritual path. (An eye for an eye. Usury is a sin for Christians but for Jews it's only a sin when practiced against fellow Jews. Those are legalistic guidelines for worldly life.) As can be seen in Israel now, Judaism tends to engender not spiritual feeling but rather tribal dedication. It's also different in that it's connected with a people who identify tribally, while Christianity is a faith practiced by people who are "landed", generally identifying with their land or nation: An American might be Christian. A Jew might live in the US. Those are fundamentally different forms of personal identity. When I question Jewish friends about the apparent lack of Jewish spirituality I'm often told that the Jewish mystical teachings are in the Cabala. But I've never met anyone who actually knows anything about the Cabala.

[Tony Hwang]

Religion can be any form, belief is the matter.

[Mayayana]

| Religion can be any form, belief is the matter.

Religion for you is a practice of belief? I'm not sure a lot of religious people would agree with that. But I suppose if you think religion is merely blind belief then you don't much care what religious people think their religion is. You're already comfortably settled in with your own belief system. I'm guessing that you believe you're not religious. That's quite a pickle, given your own definitions. :)

[RobertMacy]

Very glad you shared.

uh, ...my Christian teaching says EXACTLY that phrase. Teachers used to actually muse that people become too concerned with what is NOT real [life and bodies] and forget what is real [their soul] Bsically reminding us that we MUST always remember we are ORIGINALLY souls and only transitorily in body.

My father said it slightly differently by asking, "Why do people get so upset about life? Nobody gets through it alive."

[Tekkie®]

nestork posted for all of us...

And I know how to SNIP

So did you pre-qualify them and are they the successful renters?