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Show RELIGION EDITOR: GAYLON GARBETT AG SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1999 THE DAILY HERALD 344-25- Time to relocate Noah's Flood? Geologists offer new theory expended great energy searching for the remains of Noah's ark. However, before they break out the nonalcoholic champagne to celebrate, they should know that the two scientists see no evidence for a worldwide deluge in line with a strictly literal reading of Genesis 7. But geological research does find reason to believe there was indeed a vast, sudden and deadly flood around 5,600 B.C., close enough to the possible time of Noah to fascinate biblical liter-alist- s and liberals alike. By RICHARD N. OSTLING AP Religion Writer NEW YORK ic proof BinClark I fc Marden Deep sensitivity to God, universe a blessing of some When our daughter Krista called Sunday night from North Carolina, we had a long visit. She described in some detail what we can only call a mystical efperience she'd had on her way home fpm work one recent evening. She was simply driving along, and all at once she fait a strange and powerful sense of being connected to all that was around her, of being related to, being a part of the totality of the universe. It was a feeling that Emerson or Thoreau or Whitman would easily have understood. ! But it's not a common feeling in con- temporary America. The most persistent sense of the experience as she described it had to be her sense of peoof everyone being a part of everyple one else, across racial and ethnic and social and economic lines. We are all involved in each other. AND YET she defined the experience in retrospect far more by lamentation than by celebration. That is, she was feeling it all more by its absence in our contemporary world than by its presence. We are all related as children of the earth and of our Father. But we do not feel the love for one another that that relationship ought to generate. The problem, she believes, is that, we no longer love ourselves. We can't really feel what we should feel as his children. We feel alienated from him and his earth and hence from each other and even from ourselves. We feel separate from the divine, yet we feel or know that there is no way to b fealty separate. Such a distressing di$emma may be the core of what was pqjDularly called angst earlier in our c(ptury. I regret that I have never experienced that sense of oneness, not with anything like the force that Krista dtjScribes. I'm afraid mine has been far mjjre an intellectual assent. I read Thoreau and Whitman with joy and appreciation. But I remain much more a passenger than a real participant. But I continue to be drawn to them. Not as intensely as I'm drawn to Krista's experience, though. She is my daughter. I feel much of myself in what she is feeling. And I want to feel more. My religious convictions tell me I should feel much the same identity with God and his universe that Krista felt. Also, the evidence I've explored earlier from contemporary physics, especially relativity physics, of the of all things, all atoms, even down to photons, should tell me how right she is to feel that mystical identity with the wholeness of the universe. PERHAPS MY problem is that for me God and Jesus simply have too much of the human in them. Supremely human, even transcendently human, but still recognizably human. I pray to beings that I can picture in vital ways as somehow like myself, infinitely beyond me or beyond anyone I know. But still somehow knowable, if not now then in some distant eternity. I can't help envying my daughter her spiritual sensitivity. And loving her all the more intensely for it. And I have no question that somewhere in the distant eternity our disparate visions of Deity will come together in a most sublime sublime experience of that divinity for both of us, and, I trust, participating in both the transcendence she feels and the immediately personal that I feel. Wj&en that happens, surely our visions will become wholly complementary and wholly profound. ilio matter the form it will take, that viiton will surely include the fact that wtruly are all related, as sons and daughters of God and hence as brothers and sisters. Some fortunate ones may bf blessed with deeper sensitivity to God and his universe than others of us. Bjut the reality of him at the center of and somehow available that universe tcj; us this is the reality that I always wjfjnt to testify of. con-trjjwti- Marden Clark is a professor emeritus ojf English at Brigham Young University. What?! New scientif- demonstrating that the great biblical Flood really did occur thousands of years ago? Such is the sensational but speculative implication in the new book "Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History" (Simon & Schuster, $25) by William Ryan and Walter Pitman. The authors are adjunct geology professors at Columbia University and senior scientists at the Lamont-DohertEarth Observatory. Some biblical fundamentalists have scenario was first The television docuin British a publicized 1996. The following in late mentary year they laid out the technical data in Ryan-Pitma- y Pops invited n So Si the journal "Marine Geology," but that scientific report avoided the links with the biblical Flood that are central to the current book. Till now the best stab at modern scientific corroboration of the Flood was the work of British archaeologist Charles Leonard Woolley, who caused a sensation with his 1929 book "Ur of the Chaldees," said to be the most widely read archaeology book ever published. Digging in present-daIraq at the site of ancient Ur, birthplace of the first patriarch Abraham, the Woolley found an ancient blanket of waterborne silt without human remains. It was evidence of a deadly flood that appeared to substantiate y Bible-believin- g But Ryan, and Pitman say later scholars learned that this silt layer coy ered only a few square miles. Thus,itTt was no more significant than many other localized floods in the region o- the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. candidate for the :? The Ryan-Pitma- n great Flood locale is what we know as the Black Sea, bordering Turkey to the north. In 1993, Ryan and Pitman joined a Russian expedition on the Black Sea and used the latest technology to exanvu3 ine evidence of geological patterns, soillO layers and forms of aquatic life thatl" 71 existed in ancient times. j One telltale clue: Freshwater mollusks with smashed shells gave-i- Genesis. See NOAH, A1 Louis by ami old friend Vatican's Congregation which screens bishop i: nominations for much of the world. He was elevated to archbishop in 1985. By ED SCHAFER Associated Press Writer ST. LOUIS Pope John Paul II, slowed but far from stopped by illness and his 78 years, apparently didn't have to think twice before accepting Archbishop Justin Rigali's invitation to visit St. Louis. The fact that the two men are old friends, Rigali acknowledged, may have had something to do with it. Out of the spotlight, Rigali toiled for many years as one of the most influential Americans at the church." Vatican 1993. "I did work very closely '$ with him from the time he was elected (20 years ago) until I was named archbishop of St. Louis" in 1994, Rigali said. ' m , , ' f '!jW'fi,iK'. f . i - I ! - tight-lipped;1,- "' hard-workin- with ecumenical and intet"" faith leaders at nearly every stop. And the same will be tnld 'r' in St. Louis. Leaders of othej;., religions have been invited W" an ecumenical prayer service Wednesday at the St. Loius, Cathedral Basilica. "Seeing us is a very impor,, tant part of what he considers,, a pastoral visit, having persoo v al contact with the local church and at same time wittu,, the larger community," Rigaluji , y renewed the invitation once more, and the pope graciously accepted it," said Rigali, noting that St. Louis has not had a previous papal visit. And why not the city by the Mississippi River that calls itself the gateway to the West? "The St. Louis area is rich in Catholic history and has had a splendid role to carry in the history of the United States," Rigali said. John Paul was here in 1969, r .. said. The pope's primary mesrlJ. sage, Rigali believes, will beu familiar: "Emphasis on humanr." " dignity and life has been the hallmark of his preaching." John Paul II, history's most traveled pope, typically draws-- " enormous audiences in his trips to many corners of the world. Between 500,000 and' I"' million attended1 ' people Masses he celebrated in New"1 .York's Central Park in 1996.""" Estimates of at least 1. million people for the St. Louis"1 visit may be on the mark or" even low, said Monsignor"' Richard Stika, coordinator for the papal visit. A crowd f but at that time he was Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, arch- After graduate studies in Rome, he entered the diplomatic service of the Holy See. While at the Vatican, he worked in the English section calFi " "When I was appointed here, I expressed the hope that he could come to St. Louis. Over the years I renewed the invitation." Then, Rigali. said, when the pope decided to conclude the Americas synod by delivering his report on the debate in Mexico City, it all came together. The pontiff was arriving in the Mexican capital Friday, St. Louis visit with his two-daset to begin Tuesday. bishop of Krakow, Poland. Rigali was born in Los where he was Angeles, ordained a priest at age 25 after studying at a Los Angeles diocesan seminary. observers Rigali a close collaborator of the pope and view him as being on the fast track to"" become a cardinal. His prede cessor in St. Louis, the late John May, was pointedly bypassed for that honor, but the three preceding St. Louijr archbishops all received tfle red ha,t. The first St. Louis car-- " dinal was John Glennon, ele-'- r vated in 1946 as the first U.: of west cardinal the . Mississippi. Those who know him"'" describe Rigali as intelligent antf'" genuinely pious. Rigali recalls that on previ-"- '' ous US. visits the pope nfet?" Vatican. He also accompanied John Paul II on his U.S. trips in 1979 and 1987 and joined him at World Youth Day in Denver in "I "3 Paul has praised Rigali's "ready availability," great industriousness (and1 unceasing solicitude for thiej John JAMES A. FINLEYThe Holy Mend: St. Louis Archbishop Justin Rigali gestures during a conference Associated Press 1998 while in January. The in responding to questions about the visit to St. Louis by Pope John Paul II pope, slowed but far from stopped by illness, apparently didn't have to think twice before accepting Rigali's invitation. The fact that the two men are old friends may have had something to do with it. . 104,000 is expected to fill theoM of the Secretariat of State, the super-agenc- all that oversees y Vatican departments, under Pope Paul VI. He was appointed head the section in 1970. ' Trans World Dome fQr Tuesday's scheduled papgTu Mass, he said. And he held an even more powerful post from 1989 to 1994 as secretary of the Easter tops off 12 great feasts of Eastern Christiani Most religions have sacred or liturgical calendars designating special ceremonies and celebrations on holy days. Generally, such days commemorate great events in a faith's history, the lives of its leaders, and the mighty acts of God. Such calendars are designed to celebrate and ritu-all- y recreate a community's sacred history on a cyclical basis. In Christianity, holy days are often called 'Yeasts" (from Latin festus, "holy day"). Among eastern Christians, there are twelve Great Feasts, with Easter, the "Feast of Feasts," making a thirteenth. Most fall on specific dates, but "movable feasts" the HIGHER THINGS I M A William Hamblin & Daniel Peterson first are linked to Easter-thSunday following the full moon after March 21, (though calculated differently in the and therefore change East) e each year. In Jerusalem and throughout the East (where, following the ancient Byzantine civil calendar, the liturgical year begins on 1 September), these celebrations create a sacred rhythm in the life of traditional Christian communities. By following a schedule of liturgical scriptural readings associated with them, eastern Christians review Christ's life annually. The new year is thus not a time for parties and feeble resolutions, but for ritually renewing one's commitment to Christ by partici- pating in the sacred yearly cycle. FIVE OF THE twelve Great. Feasts focus on the life of Mary, demonstrating her importance in eastern Christian worship since at least the sixth century. Interestingly, the Marian feasts often parallel similar feasts related to the life of Christ. The first feast of the eastern calendar, celebrated since the eighth century, is the Nativity of Mary (Sept. 8). The Exaltation of the Cross, or Holy Cross Day (Sept. 14), celebrates both the discovery of the True Cross by Helena, Constantine's mother, and its recovery from the Persians in 629 by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius. The Presentation of Mary in the Temple (Nov. 21) recalls a story about Mary's childhood from the apocryphal books of James. It too arose m eastern Christianity in the .ouiIj eighth century, spreading among Catholics by the four-,;- ! teenth.. utfl Christmas (Dec. 25), with Easter the most important j holy day for Protestants, celebrates die Savior's birth. ;; Epiphany (Jan. 6), "the mani- - festation," is among the most , ancient and sacred Christianta iesavais. in me louixn centU; ry, it commemorated the bap; tiam nf Oiriot. (Mt 5M .1 7 ' but its proximity to Christmas eventually linked it to the vitf.JJ itation of the Magi as well (MF 2: As such, it is often 3 bl" called the Twelfth Night" '.00Q1 nfW Oiriatmna J . ec EASTER, A7 POOH |
