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Magazine Editor:
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Deputy Editor:
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Design Editor:
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Luna Anna Archey
Illustrator:
Megan Mulholland
Maggie Miller
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Lev Facher
Editor in Chief:
Jennifer Calfas
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Hannah Bates
Laura Schinagle
Emma Sutherland
THE
statement
COVER BY JAKE WELLINS
IN COMMAND: READ ON PAGE 5
Wednesday, January 14, 2015 // The Statement
M
y older sister lost one of her
best friends in a fatal car crash
eight months ago. Grief in large
and consuming proximity was not
something I had much experience
with until this year. The powerful
denting it has done to someone who
I am so close with is vexing. My own
grief has become disoriented in my
heartbreak for her struggle and has
brought me piles of questions for
the world beyond on our own world:
heaven.
My reasons, driven by what
Sunday
school
teachers
had
plastered in my brain as common
sense, were what I first turned
to for answers. God needs her in
heaven. She was better than human,
immortal, meant for the life of an
angel. We will be reunited with her
one day.
Though
these
reasons
are
beautiful, they never fully settled
with me. She was many things in
this
world
that
were
grand
and
admirable,
but
deeming
her
a
better
human
—
as
heaven
and
an
angelic
life
appeared to do —
seemed
belittling
of individual’s life
here on Earth.
According
to a recent Pew
Research
Center
survey, one-fifth of
Americans
today
do
not
identify
with any religion,
some
of
the
highest percentages ever recorded.
However, of these 46 million
unaffiliated adults, two-thirds say
they believe in God, more than half
say they have a connection with
nature, a third of them classify
themselves as “spiritual,” and one in
five say they pray every day.
Perennial philosophy offers a
path of philosophy for those who are
spiritually independent. According
to the book “Perennial Wisdom
for the Spiritually Independent”
by Rami Shapiro, an author and
Jewish
Rabbi,
the
philosophy
includes there is one reality and
that reality can be called ‘God,’
individuals
identify
with
“our
culturally conditioned individual
ego,” and that this identification
leads to peace replacing anxiety
and suffering. Humans should
realize that their true nature is this
manifestation of the single reality,
God, and place responsibility and
reason in themselves.
Perennial
wisdom
and
my
struggles with my original answer
to death collided when I read
Shapiro stressed “to know God is to
know yourself; to know yourself is
to know God” and “knowing you are
God is knowing everything else is
God.” For individuals to truly know
themselves they must recognize
themselves as grand as God, and
each person next to them, equally
grand.
Some
find
inspiration
and
guidance in God’s grace or heaven’s
refuge, but after swimming through
the ideas of perennial wisdom I find
inspiration in the individual. We
are each grand and living our most
moral lives because of the humanity
and goodness of the person sitting
to the right and left of you. We are
each capable of being what God
is to each other, of providing that
comfort. We are every part of our
reality on Earth.
Though final answers might
take a lifetime to find me, for this
moment, honoring her best rests
in honoring that we are worthy of
each other, and that we are worthy
of the world we are a part of,
nothing more.
From the Pews: An answer for Death
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MEGAN MULHOLLAND
B Y C L A I R E B R YA N
AROUND THE
GLOBE(S)
ON THE
RECORD
“George Clooney married Amal Alamuddin
this year. Amal is a human rights lawyer who
worked on the Enron case, was an advisor to
Kofi Annan regarding Syria, and was selected for
a three-person commission investigating rules
of war violation in the Gaza Strip. So tonight,
her husband is getting a lifetime achievement
award.”
– Golden Globes host TINA FEY, in her and AMY
POEHLER’S opening monologue Sunday January
11th
PHOTO BY LUNA ANNA ARCHEY
NBC