Category: CULTURE

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A Fine Man, a Wattwil Native Son

       An especially favorite uncle passed today; he was a tremendous brother to my mother, a great friend to my father, a wonderful husband and father to his family.  I want to especially honor him today by reflecting  on how he brought his heimat – the love and attachment to a homeland –  to me, a nephew with whom he struggled to share a language, but with whom he communicated perfectly the importance of loving one’s family, one’s roots, one’s country and land.  He never lost the projection of wonder he felt for the shared experience with his family and the connection of the family to the physical surroundings.  I want to share these places with you , and in some small way, thank him, for making it all come real for me.

     He was born and raised in Wattwil, a textile town founded in the middle Ages in the valley of the Toggenberg in the canton St. Gallen in the country of Switzerland, framed by the mountains he loved and first presented to me, the majestic Santis to the north and the Churfirsten to the south.  He introduced me  to mountains as venerated places and as wonderful windows on the bigger world that dwarfs us all.

      A religious man, he introduced me to the soaring accomplishments of spiritual builders of hundreds of years before, in the spectacular facades and cornices of the Benedictine monastery at Einsiedeln.

      A physically fit and active man, he introduced me to skiing at Hoch -Ybrig and Engelberg and the wonders of hiking at Grindelwald and the End Of The World at Engelberg.


     A family man, he introduced me to my wonderful cousins, who have brought me into their lives and successes and cemented in me forever the awareness of the connection of people overwhelming any obstacle of time or distance.

     For all he brought all of us, I will miss him dearly,  remember him always, and wish him so very well on his new journey.

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A Painful Juxtaposition

     Two stories occurring thousands of miles apart this past week point out some painful realities in the ongoing clash of western and islamic culture.   The first is the harrowing story of the murder of ten healthcare workers by the Taliban in a remote part of Afghanistan last week, the second the controversy of building an Islamic mosque within sight of the World Trade Center site in New York City.  The battle lines are formed tightly around the the concept in western culture of religious tolerance, and in islamic culture, the apparent lack thereof.

     In Northern Afghanistan, 10 aid workers providing essential medical services to locals were ambushed by the Taliban who accused them of proselytizing Christianity and summarily executed them for the crime.  The aid group was comprised of veterans of many years in Afghanistan, and  regional aid services denied that the group , though containing some Christians, were performing any other services other than medical care to the needful population.  The apparent presence of bibles in their possession apparently sealed their fate.   Putting aside  the incredibly risky actions of the workers in attempting to provide basic humanitarian services in a war zone, the unique cultural insecurity reflected again and again by Taliban actions against the basic human rights of their own population and understanding of other cultural representations of religious truth is a telling character flaw in the islamic psyche.  

     At a site several hundred feet from the World Trade Center ruins , an islamic group hopes to build a 100 million dollar 13 story tall islamic cultural center and mosque called Cordoba House celebrating Islamic expression and community outreach.  The cleric responsible for the project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, has refused to indicate the source of funding for such a significant structure in a city with a minimal islamic population, and has been previously quoted as saying that United States policies were responsible for the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.  The issue of a potentially triumphal structure so close to the scene of tragedy in the clash of civilizations has left many New Yorkers divided in what is the appropriate course of action.  Would the allowance of the mosque structure be a healing process and a sign of  appropriate religious tolerance guaranteed in our own Bill of Rights, or simply a lack of understanding of Islam’s need for triumphalist structures to signify the superiority of the Islamic truth over all other cultural visions.  How the argument turns out is bound to reflect on both cultures and provide definition for future attempts to interpret the events of 9/11.

     The telling juxtaposition is the religious home of Islam, Saudi Arabia, forbidding Jews to visit, and Christians to build churches to practice their faith.  A Reformation in in 1517 allowed Christianity to diversify and re-orient its faith along many interpretative traditions that eventually strengthened the religion through its own tolerance of the diversity of expressions of faith.  The Islamic faith will never survive long term its own intolerance as long as the insecurity it finds in its own faith message results in the destructive actions it continues to promote.  A  muslim Luther is long over due.