persona opening sequence

Filed under: cinema, culture, philosophy, religion

Church of Old Bewick

Church of Old Bewick, originally uploaded by tigerweet.

to keep track of unusual and interesting words; #1: poustinia

yesterday I visited Holy Trinity Church at Old Bewick in Northumberland

there is a poustinia there

Filed under: culture, religion, russia

Exhibition of photographs (by Walter Schels and Beate Lakotta) of people before and after dying, at the Wellcome Collection in London, and online at guardian/society:

Life Before Death

Death is a test of one’s maturity. Everyone has got to get through it on their own. I want very much to die. I want to become part of that vast extraordinary light. But dying is hard work. Death is in control of the process, I cannot influence its course. All I can do is wait. I was given my life, I had to live it, and now I am giving it back. Edelgard Clavey, 67

Filed under: culture, death, photography, prejudices, religion, zen

Gaelic Psalm Singing | MetaFilter

Gaelic Psalm Singing | MetaFilter:
Gaelic Psalm Singing
January 11, 2008 6:08 AM

THE church elder’s reaction was one of utter disbelief. Shaking his head emphatically, he couldn’t take in what the distinguished professor from Yale University was telling him. ‘No,’ insisted Jim McRae, an elder of the small congregation of Clearwater in Florida. ‘This way of worshipping comes from our slave past. It grew out of the slave experience, when we came from Africa.’ But Willie Ruff, an Afro-American professor of music at Yale, was adamant – he had traced the origins of gospel music to Scotland.

The distinctive psalm singing had not been brought to America’s Deep South by African slaves but by Scottish émigrés who worked as their masters and overseers, according…

(Via .)

Please accept this invitation to listen to the example psalms—very beautiful, haunting, and moving, and providing one very good reason for preserving Gaelic culture.

Filed under: culture, music, religion, scotland