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Aug. 27th, 2011 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarflameI am completely and totally in love with my Survey of World Religions class. I took it for the first time today and let me tell you, nothing about getting up at 7 am on a Saturday to go half an hour north made me feel particularly enthusiastic. But, WOW! This is, like...exactly what I need.
First, the teacher. She's an older Nicaraguan woman and beautiful, I mean, ravishingly beautiful. You can see exactly what she looked like when she was younger, and you can see how old she is, and you can see the new beauty she has now. She has long, thick, dyed dark-red hair, and flawless minimalist makeup, and is so thin and curving in these flowy clothes, with the biggest darkest kindest eyes - it will be no hardship staring at this woman for the next few months.
She has the most peaceful energy, and is so warmly engaging of everyone she talks to. Her voice is deep and soft, and she teaches our class (of 12) in a circle of desks. It came out over the course of our class that she teaches "On Death and Dying" at FIU and is a grief counselor as her fulltime job. Her openness about her own fascination with all of these things is irresistable.
She's a Catholic with an extremely open mind, an appreciation of faith and rituals around the world, and an obsession with India. For her thesis years ago she did a study of 125 Nicaraguan women (back in her homeland) and their devotion to the Virgin Mary.
Second, the class itself. Throughout the semester I'm supposed to be keeping weekly journal entries on my own observations of and responses to religion in the world - this can be based on things from class, things in the news, or things in my own personal life. We turn the journal in at the end. I absolutely love this. How is it classwork?!
Our term paper and big presentation is supposed to be based on our own personal field trips to a place of worship outside of our own beliefs. She encourages Power Point for this. I am highly intrigued. THIS IS CLASSWORK?!
We have to do a group project that involves inventing and presenting a new religion based on the 8 key characteristics of religions.
There's also a 50 question final exam based on the (very interesting, gorgeous, easy to read) textbook, and we're going to have a Muslim and a Buddhist come in to talk with us and give a lecture on their own faiths, and watch some really interesting looking films, including one on Hinduism that I was interested in awhile back - and JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR.
I MEAN WE ARE COVERING SANTERIA WUT.
Third, my classmates. There is a Malaysian woman who is listening and speaking haltingly with a paper and an electronic translator on her desk. She is a Buddhist. The two other people in my group, for our group project, are a fully bearded Indian guy with his long hair in a spandex wrap on his head, who practices Sikhism along with his family with a temple in his house, and a woman struggling with her beliefs on medical intervention as a Jehova's Witness because she is an oncology nurse.
Everyone in this class is so incredibly non judgmental, eager to learn, and curious about what others have to say. There's one man who's never been in any kind of place of worship or been exposed to anyone with strong beliefs of any sort, who is acting like a kid in a candy store and said it's a great opportunity to be able to openly ask questions without disrepect and not offend anyone. I realized myself, by the end (it's 2.5 hours long since it's only once a week) that a knot had loosened inside of me where I am normally always projecting judgement (from other Christians, from atheists, from other-faithed people), defending myself, feeling protective of others I care about who have beliefs outside the local norm, keeping things to myself because it's inappropriate conversation to so many, and so on. We talked about the subjectivity of meanings of rituals, today, and about differences between spirituality and religion, and about creating sacred space in one's own home!
It's basically my dream come true. I am in Heaven (<- pun not intended).
And I laughed, when the teacher winked at me on my way out, saying she loves my email address.
First, the teacher. She's an older Nicaraguan woman and beautiful, I mean, ravishingly beautiful. You can see exactly what she looked like when she was younger, and you can see how old she is, and you can see the new beauty she has now. She has long, thick, dyed dark-red hair, and flawless minimalist makeup, and is so thin and curving in these flowy clothes, with the biggest darkest kindest eyes - it will be no hardship staring at this woman for the next few months.
She has the most peaceful energy, and is so warmly engaging of everyone she talks to. Her voice is deep and soft, and she teaches our class (of 12) in a circle of desks. It came out over the course of our class that she teaches "On Death and Dying" at FIU and is a grief counselor as her fulltime job. Her openness about her own fascination with all of these things is irresistable.
She's a Catholic with an extremely open mind, an appreciation of faith and rituals around the world, and an obsession with India. For her thesis years ago she did a study of 125 Nicaraguan women (back in her homeland) and their devotion to the Virgin Mary.
Second, the class itself. Throughout the semester I'm supposed to be keeping weekly journal entries on my own observations of and responses to religion in the world - this can be based on things from class, things in the news, or things in my own personal life. We turn the journal in at the end. I absolutely love this. How is it classwork?!
Our term paper and big presentation is supposed to be based on our own personal field trips to a place of worship outside of our own beliefs. She encourages Power Point for this. I am highly intrigued. THIS IS CLASSWORK?!
We have to do a group project that involves inventing and presenting a new religion based on the 8 key characteristics of religions.
There's also a 50 question final exam based on the (very interesting, gorgeous, easy to read) textbook, and we're going to have a Muslim and a Buddhist come in to talk with us and give a lecture on their own faiths, and watch some really interesting looking films, including one on Hinduism that I was interested in awhile back - and JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR.
I MEAN WE ARE COVERING SANTERIA WUT.
Third, my classmates. There is a Malaysian woman who is listening and speaking haltingly with a paper and an electronic translator on her desk. She is a Buddhist. The two other people in my group, for our group project, are a fully bearded Indian guy with his long hair in a spandex wrap on his head, who practices Sikhism along with his family with a temple in his house, and a woman struggling with her beliefs on medical intervention as a Jehova's Witness because she is an oncology nurse.
Everyone in this class is so incredibly non judgmental, eager to learn, and curious about what others have to say. There's one man who's never been in any kind of place of worship or been exposed to anyone with strong beliefs of any sort, who is acting like a kid in a candy store and said it's a great opportunity to be able to openly ask questions without disrepect and not offend anyone. I realized myself, by the end (it's 2.5 hours long since it's only once a week) that a knot had loosened inside of me where I am normally always projecting judgement (from other Christians, from atheists, from other-faithed people), defending myself, feeling protective of others I care about who have beliefs outside the local norm, keeping things to myself because it's inappropriate conversation to so many, and so on. We talked about the subjectivity of meanings of rituals, today, and about differences between spirituality and religion, and about creating sacred space in one's own home!
It's basically my dream come true. I am in Heaven (<- pun not intended).
And I laughed, when the teacher winked at me on my way out, saying she loves my email address.
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no subject
Date: 2011-08-28 02:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-28 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-28 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-28 11:12 pm (UTC)We have another oncology nurse (they were both sent over for continuing education by the same hospital) who is an atheist and expressed major frustration over having to leave a corpse in a badly needed bed with miserable family all around for hours anytime someone Jewish dies and they have to wait for a Rabbi before anyone can touch the body...It's a really interesting lot of perspectives.
As for why she (the first one mentioned) would personally choose nursing...I don't know, but down here health care is really one of the only reliable ways to make decent money with job security. Grant's last three IT jobs have been in health care, and the teacher's fulltime job (grief counselor) is at a hospital, and so on. Obviously there are other paths to pursue but I mean my sister and a good local friend are both transitioning back into the workforce and when they look at amount of school needed, money earned, hireability, etc, everything screams "nurse" at both of them.
When the kids you're working with are JW and the parents are against life saving treatment, is that completely within their rights, or is there a possibility of being charged with medical neglect?
no subject
Date: 2011-08-29 12:10 am (UTC)And yes, parents refusing blood products would be at risk for being charged with medical neglect. In the 6+ years that I've worked in the field I think there was only one instance where they almost went to court with a parent, but she ended up changing her mind and allowing the transfusion. It depends on the age of the kid too. A four-year-old obviously has no opinion on the matter. But we had a 16-year-old once who was JW and she didn't want transfusions and they honored that.
With my new job on the bone marrow transplant team it's part of the consent before transplant. We would never transplant a kid who's parents wouldn't consent to transfusions. There's no way they could survive the transplant process without them.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-29 04:45 pm (UTC)It is very strange that she would take study to be an oncology nurse, but what I find more strange is that she would take a class like the one you describe. She must not be practicing at all as a JW for that to be okay with her conscience. It sounds like what she struggling with is the idea of faith, and how some people can have such strong faith. Faith to a JW is a strange thing - it actually means doing more busy work for the cult. They constantly talk about how "faith without works is dead" and they then emphasize the works as if that equals faith. She may also miss the comfort of the cult, and perhaps her family and old friends now that she has children of her own. The JW's practice shunning, so she may have been cut off from everyone in her life completely. Even if she isn't being shunned outright, she probably has a very different relationship with the people who were once her main support system than she used to.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-30 03:12 pm (UTC)I don't know a lot abou Jehovah's W, but I've always been very "REALLY? SERIOUSLY?" about the whole no birthdays, no Christmas, no parties, etc stuff o_O
I didn't know they differentiate between different parts of blood...