Journal 4: Reflection on Spirituality
Spirituality in its broad sense should be understood as something that goes beyond the human’s desires and connects to something bigger and more valuable. From the perspective of the read articles, I may say that some events in life of a person being spiritually important may unravel some bigger purposes of the existence related to the social activism and movements for change.
A person’s spirituality driving for change may be related to either the religious matter or occupation, family history, healthcare problems. What it means is that all people have their own purposes for any social activism that definitely touch upon some significant sides of their life and thus have their own understanding of their life purpose and as a consequence have very personal feeling of spirituality. For instance, E. M. Broner found her purpose in development of the female presence in the Jewish religion that in her opinion was highly underestimated and completely forgotten (Author Kindle loc. 13162). In her article she wrote that “if we do not remember our womanly origins, then we lose our images, our language and our cave for self” meaning that she found her spirituality in restoring the already forgotten ancient remnants of the female presence in the Jewish history and religion, and even created new practices.
Even though religion and spirituality are directly connected, impact of the spirituality on some other spheres of people’s lives may also induce some of the actions directed to the change for better for all such as social movements against nuclear testing in the state of Utah by one of the families having suffered from pernicious disease. Due to the far-reaching nuclear weapons’ tests conducted in the state of Utah in the period of the Cold War large amounts of people were subject to excess effect of radiation contaminating their bodies and causing successive development of cancer. Pain of loss and standstill that was long-endured and transferred with genes from generation to generation could not but last more and Terry Tempest Williams turned this feelings into the socially active position and shared with the whole world. Undoubtedly, her family was among hundreds of those having felt the detrimental effects the radiation could have on the human’s body and also experience the indifference to the cause of public health the government of the USA used to have. “Public health was secondary to the state’s national security” and that is where people come into action, their initiatives start working, and authorities have nothing left but to take their opinion in the consideration (Author Kindle loc. 13734).
There is one more significant connection between the spirituality and change laying in the way cultural minorities and their importance may be neglected in the modern slightly Americanized societies and in the way some people do care about these issues and try to embrace them through everyday working practice. In the article “Life out of Balance” the significance of the spiritual connection between …
