LOVE ANGELES

More Americans 'Mix and Match' Religious Beliefs, Poll Finds

Source: LA Times - "Many people attend services outside of their own religion, and blend Christianity with Eastern and New Age beliefs, according to a nationwide survey.

America is a melting pot not only of culture but also religion, according to a survey released Wednesday. Many Americans attend services outside of their own religion, and blend Christianity with Eastern and New Age beliefs, the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life said.

The nationwide poll of 4,013 adults found that a third regularly or occasionally attended religious services at more than one location -- and 24% of the public overall worshiped outside their faith.

Three in 10 Protestants surveyed said they sometimes attended services representing other faiths, as did about 20% of Roman Catholics.

S. Scott Bartchy, a professor of the history of religion at UCLA, said the results were not surprising given the increasing cultural diversity of the United States.

"Once people become acquainted with various religions, it's easy to mix and match," he said.

Bartchy also said technology, such as the Internet, played a role in observing multiple religions.

"The great thing is, as an individual you can go online and get all kinds of ideas. You can go online and put it together yourself."

About a quarter of those surveyed expressed beliefs in New Age or Eastern religious principles such as reincarnation and the presence of spiritual energy in physical objects.

"People have talked about many Americans in the mainstream seeing themselves as being on a spiritual journey," said Paul Lichterman, a professor of sociology and religion at USC.

He said that over a lifetime, more Americans will try out different religions than will stay true to one faith. The number of Americans who said they had interacted with a ghost had doubled over the last 13 years, from 9% to 18%, the survey found. About 65% of those surveyed also expressed belief in or report having an experience with a variety of supernatural phenomena, such as believing in astrology, being in touch with the dead or consulting a psychic.

Regardless, Lichterman said, Americans have the idea that religion and spirituality are a matter of choice.

"That kind of religious individualism," he said, "is the American religion."

Image on Iron Assures Woman That 'Life is Going to be Good' - Oh Why Not?

METHUEN, Mass.—A Massachusetts woman who recently separated from her husband and had her hours cut at work says an image of Jesus Christ she sees on her iron has reassured her that "life is going to be good."

Mary Jo Coady first noticed the image Sunday when she walked into her daughter's room. The brownish residue on the bottom of the iron looks like the face of a man with long hair.

The 44-year-old Coady was raised Catholic. She and her two college-age daughters agree that the image looks like Jesus and is proof that "he's listening."

Coady tells The Eagle-Tribune she hopes her story will inspire others during the holidays. She says she plans to keep the iron in a closet and buy a new one.

MEND: Meet Each Need with Dignity

LAtimes - "At MEND (Meet Each Need with Dignity) in Pacoima, the Valley's largest poverty center and food bank, 86 percent of the 30,000 hungry people served each month are children.

In October, MEND broke its all-time record of food distribution, according to Marianne Haver Hill, president and CEO of MEND. More than 2,500 boxes of food were given out to clients, in addition to providing food for up to 20,000 people through other pantries and programs, Haver Hill said.

"There are just so many people out of work and not finding work, and we're definitely feeling the need that's out there," said Haver Hill.

City Councilman Richard Alarc n, whose district includes MEND and the Children's Hunger Fund Pantry in Pacoima, said he welcomed the Jewish Federation's campaign.

"The issue of hunger among children is right here in our own neighborhood," said Alarc n, who also chairs the city council's Ad Hoc Committee on Ending Poverty in Los Angeles.

On Saturday, the several dozen high school-age members of Alarc n's Young Senator program were doing community service at the Children's Hunger Fund pantry, which the councilman said underscores the huge volunteer commitment already at work trying to eradicate hunger in the city.

"People are beyond the notion that we don't have hunger in America," he said, "and we literally have thousands of people in the San Fernando Valley trying to do something about it."

Other local food pantries are seeing a 50 percent increase in clients, officials said. Half of L.A. County seniors do not have enough money to buy adequate food, according to officials, and a fourth of children in the county are food insecure. More than 50 percent of the people who are eligible for entitlement programs such as food stamps do not receive them, officials said, and only 10 percent of people who go hungry every day in the city are part of the homeless population. In addition to calling for greater government and nongovernment agencies' involvement on the issue, the Fed Up With Hunger blueprint outlined a series of proposals for improving food pantry distributions and contributions, as well as increasing access to nutritious food.

"We are committed to the eradication of hunger in the Los Angeles area," John Fishel, president of the Jewish Federation said at a news conference. "We believe that through working together with can indeed make a difference." Rabbi Denise Eger, president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, said that the hunger issue offers government and nongovernmental agencies an opportunity to create a model that can be used in other cities.

"We want all of our governmental agencies and leaders to declare a goal of making Los Angeles a hunger-free community," said Eger. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, City Councilman Paul Koretz and school board member Steve Zimmer said they are introducing motions before their respective bodies endorsing the anti-hunger campaign and pledging their participation.

"This is a major issue that has not sufficiently been on this community's radar screen," said Yaroslavsky. "We don't see the hungry as readily as we see the homeless. The number of people going hungry every night or who are not fed every day is growing significantly, and it's not sufficiently on our radar screen. "The greatest value of the Fed Up With Hunger campaign is going to be is putting this issue on every single man and woman's radar screen in this county and beyond."

Yaroslavsky also called on people and groups hosting banquets, bar mitzvahs and other life celebration events to use the money they spend for expensive floral arrangements and table centerpieces on food baskets that can later be given to the needy.

"When hunger becomes an issue in the most affluent parts of Los Angeles ... then you know that it's a deeper and more compelling issue in the rest of the county," Yaroslavsky said.

"Today we state affirmatively that we are fed up with hunger, but we're not just fed up, we're going to do something about it."

The Fed Up With Hunger campaign comes on a heels of a new government reporting that the number of Americans who lack adequate, consistent access to food rose to a new high of 49 million last year.

President Obama promised during his campaign to eliminate childhood hunger in America by 2015.

Faint Writing Seen On Shroud of Turin

ROME (AP) – "A Vatican researcher has rekindled the age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin, saying that faint writing on the linen proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus. Experts say the historian may be reading too much into the markings, and they stand by carbon-dating that points to the shroud being a medieval forgery.

Barbara Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, says in a new book that she used computer-enhanced images of the shroud to decipher faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic scattered across the cloth. She asserts that the words include the name "(J)esu(s) Nazarene" — or Jesus of Nazareth — in Greek. That, she said, proves the text could not be of medieval origin because no Christian at the time, even a forger, would have mentioned Jesus without referring to his divinity. Failing to do so would risk being branded a heretic.

"Even someone intent on forging a relic would have had all the reasons to place the signs of divinity on this object," Frale said Friday. "Had we found 'Christ' or the 'Son of God' we could have considered it a hoax, or a devotional inscription."

The shroud bears the figure of a crucified man, complete with blood seeping from his hands and feet, and believers say Christ's image was recorded on the linen's fibers at the time of his resurrection. The fragile artifact, owned by the Vatican, is kept locked in a protective chamber in a Turin cathedral and is rarely shown. Measuring 13 feet (four meters) long and three feet (one meter) wide, the shroud has suffered severe damage through the centuries, including from fire. The Catholic Church makes no claims about the cloth's authenticity, but says it is a powerful symbol of Christ's suffering.

There has been strong debate about it in the scientific community. Skeptics point out that radiocarbon dating conducted on the cloth in 1988 determined it was made in the 13th or 14th century. But Raymond Rogers of Los Alamos National Laboratory said in 2005 that the tested threads came from patches used to repair the shroud after a fire. Rogers, who died shortly after publishing his findings, calculated it is 1,300 to 3,000 years old and could easily date from Jesus' era.

Another study, by the Hebrew University, concluded that pollen and plant images on the shroud showed it originated in the area around Jerusalem sometime before the eighth century. While faint letters scattered around the face on the shroud were seen decades ago, serious researchers dismissed them, due to the results of the radiocarbon dating test, Frale told The Associated Press.

But when she cut out the words from enhanced photos of the shroud and showed them to experts, they concurred the writing style was typical of the Middle East in the first century — Jesus' time.

She believes the text was written on a document by a clerk and glued to the shroud over the face so the body could be identified by relatives and buried properly. Metals in the ink used at the time may have allowed the writing to transfer to the linen, Frale said.

She said she counted at least 11 words in her study of enhanced images produced by French scientists in a 1994 study. The words are fragmented and scattered on and around the image's head, crisscrossing the cloth vertically and horizontally.

One short sequence of Aramaic letters has not been fully translated. Another fragment in Greek — "iber" — may refer to Emperor Tiberius, who reigned at the time of Jesus' crucifixion, Frale said.

She said the text also partially confirms the Gospels' account of Jesus' final moments. A fragment in Greek that can be read as "removed at the ninth hour" may refer to Christ's time of death reported in the holy texts, she said.

In her book "The Shroud of Jesus Nazarene," published in Italian, Frale reconstructs from the lettering on the shroud what she believes Jesus' death certificate said: "Jesus Nazarene. Found (guilty of inciting the people to revolt). Put to death in the year 16 of Tiberius. Taken down at the ninth hour."

She said the text then stipulates the body will returned to relatives after a year. Frale said her research was done without the support of the Vatican. "I tried to be objective and leave religious issues aside," Frale told the AP. "What I studied was an ancient document that certifies the execution of a man, in a specific time and place."

Frale's work usually focuses on medieval documents. She is noted for research on the order of the Knights Templar and her discovery of unpublished documents on the group in the Vatican's archives. Continue reading here...

The Energy of Mother Mary in all Mothers and Children

Something was trying to get my attention this morning regarding the beauty of mothers and the sacredness of the relationship between mothers and children. In fact, it started last week in San Diego when I found myself standing in a kitchen with my sister, mom and both of my grandmothers. I remember thinking, man I'm not use to all this female energy, I'm used to being around Papa and his burly 24-hour caregiver next door to me in LA.

In line at Whole Foods this morning I had a powerful, life-filled conversation with a mother who was accompanied by her beautiful daughter, being aware of the love flowing between the two. Minutes later my soul-brother Jerry Lee Davis emailed me the second clip below of singer/songwriter Patty Griffin's Mary. While I was watching the clip, I could feel my joy expand and no sooner than that there was a knock on my door. A beautiful and inspired young girl who has been going door to door in my area spreading the love of God and her church community for some time, happened to be accompanied by her beloved mother. I looked in her eyes and thanked her for being so open to the Spirit of Love within her and sharing it with me and other people in the world. I also thanked her mom for doing a great job creating the foundation for her daughter to simply follow her heart. How could I not feel the magic?