Kirje Lapselle, joka pelkäsi

30.8.2015 kultinjälkeistä aikaa aikuiskodissa

 

 

Kirjoitan sinulle maailmanlopun pelosta. Sinä elät kulttiaikaa noin vuonna 1979.

Aika on erikoinen juttu. Sinä olet siellä, minä täällä, ja meidän välillämme valtava kuilu.

Sinä et voi tulla tänne enkä minä sinne.

Mutta jännällä tavalla kuitenkin elät sisälläni ja mieleni aikakoneella voin lähettää sinulle tämän näkymättömän kirjeen, jonka voit huomaamattomalla tavalla lukea.

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Kiinan Yutu lähti tänään Kuuhun

Kiinan kuuluotain Chang’e 3 lähti onnistuneesti matkaan tänään kello 19.30 Suomen aikaa. Laukaisu tehtiin Long March 3B -kantoraketilla Xichangin ava-ruuskeskuksesta Kiinan eteläosista. Kantoraketti toimi täydellisesti ja luotaimen oma moottorikin käynnistyi suunnitellusti. Kiinalaisen insinööritaidon ja tieteen voitto.

Chang’e 3 -laskeutuja laukaistiin matkaan Kiinan tehokkaimmalla kantoraketilla, Long March 3B:lla, kello 19.30 Suomen aikaa ja kello 1.30 paikallista aikaa. – Kuva People’s Daily / Zhao Zhuqing.

Kiinan avaruuslento on historiallinen. Tavoitteenahan on ensimmäinen laskeutu-minen Kuun pinnalle 37 vuoteen.

Luotaimen määränpäänä Kuussa on Sateenkaarten lahti, Bay of Rainbows, joka sijaitsee Maaasta nähtynä Kuun luoteislaidalla.

Lestadiolainenkin pääsi taivaaseen

Lestadiolainen  kuoli ja meni pyrkimään taivaaseen.

Pyhä Pietari otti hänet taivaan portilla vastaan.

I was brainwashed into raging Laestadian beliefs

– Never give up to think critically about every ideology. Know that you are worth it.- Anonymous.

A Finnish young woman wrote touching description about her current life situation considering how to deal with the dilemma she is facing with the Laestadian beliefs which her family and friends are believing.

”I’m a 17-year-old female high school student in Finland. When it comes to religion, I’d say that out of all the young finnish people most are atheists (myself included).

However, I was born to a very strict and raging religion called

Matka Kauas-Maahan

Aikamatka Himalajalta Aurinkokuntamme ulkopuolelle, läpi Linnunradan galaksin muihin galakseihin ja takaisin.

Lähde: American Museum of Natural History, New York.

Nojatuolimatka riittää minulle. Tässä samassa laajenevassa kaikkeudessahan sitä joka tapauksessa lennetään.

Elämää Linnunradalla

Aurinko on yksi kotigalaksimme Linnunradan miljardeista

Uskovainen taivaan portilla

 (Klikkaa kuvaa suuremmaksi.)

Myykää, mitä teillä on, ja antakaa köyhille. (Luuk. 12: 33.)

– Älä liioittele

Pojan pääsiäinen

”Jumala on rakastanut maailmaa niin paljon, että antoi ainoan Poikansa, jottei yksikään, joka häneen uskoo, joutuisi kadotukseen, vaan saisi iankaikkisen elämän.”

Iankaikkinen elämä, taivaassa. Paratiisissa, jumalan luona, mekin.

Oman pojan tapattaminen pelastaa meidät?

Conservative Laestadians in Oulu

Dr. Edward Dutton, a British anthropologist and journalist, lives in Oulu in northern Finland and is married to a Finnish Lutheran priest. He has met Conservative Laestadians and spoken with them about their faith and rules. He visited Oulun rauhanyhdistys and published his sightings and experiences in the magazine 65 Degrees North.

*    *    *

Conservative Laestadians: Separate or not Separate?

Every expatriate in Oulu has heard of ”the Laestadians”. Many locals seem to describe them as a sinister religious sect whose members have enormous families, are against television, alcohol and woman priests and in which women – who don’t wear make-up or ear-rings – fulfil traditional home-making roles. But what are Oulu’s Laestadians really like?

I went to their regular Wednesday night meeting to find out.

Ten Child Families

The first thing that hits you at the ”Peace Society House’” on Professorintie near Oulu Polytechnic is how young everybody is and how many people there are. There must have been around three hundred people arriving for the 7pm at meeting of Oulu’s ”Conservative Laestadians” (which is what Finns mean when they say ”Laestadians”). Almost nobody appeared to be over the age of thirty and there were numerous teenagers. There were then a few who appeared to be in their sixties.

According to one Laestadian man I spoke to, ”This is because, as you probably know, we are against contraception because of what the Bible says so we tend to have very large families.”

This is certainly true. According to sociologist Leena Pesalä, the average Laestadian family has ten children with the most she came across in her research being a brood of twenty-one. Laestadians often marry as young as eighteen and, with the large families, presumably most who are married with children were at home looking after them.

Stylish without Makeup

Many of the stereo-types about Laestadians appeared to be true. None of the numerous young woman wore make-up or ear-rings and, most obviously, none of them had dyed hair which meant that there were a lot of girls with the supposedly typical western Finnish hair colour which one former member of a Laestadian splinter group Rauhansana referred to as ”the colour of the road”.

One young, female Laestadian I spoke to said that she did not wear make-up ”because I want to be like the other believers. It’s just a personal thing. But there is a way in which we have our own culture and beliefs and we want to be separate . . . but also not separate.”

One of the most striking things about this young woman – and everybody else there – was how well and how fashionably they dressed. Almost all the Laestadians seemed to have the latest fashions, hair-cuts straight from Hollywood movie stars, hair they’d obviously put a lot of time and effort into and the woman often wore lots of necklaces, perhaps because ear-rings are forbidden by the group.

There can’t be that many highly conservative religious meetings in which young, male ”believers” – as they termed themselves – walk in dressed like gangster rappers or the woman look like they’ve been to a beauty salon . . . without the make-up.

Often, conservative Christians tend not to smoke, citing verses in the Bible where it says, ”Your body is a temple of the Lord” but not so with the Laestadians. Many smoked outside before the meeting and went back outside to smoke after it had finished.

One male Laestadian summed this up saying, ”The Bible says that alcohol is not allowed. But it is says nothing about smoking. And maybe you know that we don’t drink alcohol, so maybe that’s why we smoke”. They stubbed out as the meeting started.

Largest Revival Group

Laestadians are the largest revival group within the Finnish Lutheran Church. They were founded by Swedish priest Lars Laestadius (1800 – 1861). While he was inspecting congregations in Lapland in 1844 he met a Sami woman called Milla Clementsdottir and through his relationship with her he experienced a kind of religious awakening. He began to preach and his views influenced first the Samis in Sweden and then spread to Finland and Norway. His was a highly conservative interpretation of Lutheranism, returning to traditional belief and rejecting liberal strains of thought.

The group draws a strong distinction between themselves and others whom they mostly expect to go to Hell. Laestadius also encouraged people to stop drinking in order to commit themselves to Christ and Conservative Lestadians argue that, ”In many localities, the revival movement caused complete changes in ways of life, drunks repented, the tavern keepers closed their bars . . .”

The movement also spread due to popularity of Temperance Movements and by the end of Laestadius’ life it was as far south as Oulu.

This group split into three main movements at the end of the nineteenth century – Conservative Laestadians are by far the largest group, then there is the First Born and finally Rauhan Sana. The Laestadians have about 110,000 members worldwide of which about 100,000 are in Finland, with the rest in Norway Sweden and the USA. Of these Finnish Laestadians, seventy-five percent are ”Conservative Lestadians”. The Conservative Lestadians are highly conservative in theological terms believing in Biblical inerrancy and that the Bible can only be revealed through a learned mediator.

One becomes a member by confessing ones sins to another Laestadian. Members I spoke to referred to themselves as ”Laestadians” or ”believers” in contrast to the other Laestadian groups. The other groups are more liberal. However, the debate over women priests in Oulu has been particularly fierce because of the refusal of a Rauhan Sana priest to work with his female colleague.

English Problems

The meeting itself was, basically, a half hour sermon by a Conservative Laestadian priest after which almost everybody left to go and have coffee while a few remained to sing Bible verses. It was after the meeting that I got talking to some Laestadians. The group is known to be quite educated but it was hard to find anybody that spoke English. This was because, according to those I spoke to, ”We don’t have television so I suppose we don’t learn English. There can be sex and violence on television.”

Despite their conservatism, the Laestadians seemed to be very friendly and willing to talk to me. Finnish friends had predicted that they would ”stare’” and ignore me as an ”unbeliever”. This did not happen at all.

Heaven for the Finns

Another idea about Laestadians is that they believe that all non-Laestadians go to Hell which would make Heaven a primarily Finnish-speaking domain.

Members I spoke to denied this saying ”only God can know who is a Christian” and ”people are saved if they have confessed their sins to a believer”. But ”believer’” did seem to mean ”Laestadian”.

Also, one young woman felt that Laestadianism was successful because, ”It is the work of God that there are so many Laestadians. The Bible says that in the End Times ’God’s hand will be over the Nordic Lands’.”

One Conservative Laestadian, originally from Jakobstad, said that sone of the stereotypes about them are plain wrong, ”Of course we are allowed to use washing machines!” he said, ”But it is true, I think, that we were told to shop at Prisma rather than the other supermarkets.”

Negative Ideas

However, many very negative ideas about Laestadians persist amongst Oulu people.

One teacher told me about a mother who forbade her children to play with non-Laestadians ”or you won’t be welcome home for dinner”. In general, Laestadians are seen as ”separate” not having much to do with non-members.

Almost all the Laestadians were slim with one Oulu resident commenting that, ”that’s because they don’t get enough food at home!” Many Oulu people were also convinced that the Laestadians were popular because, ”they stop Finns from drinking and Finns have a problem with alcohol” as one elderly man put it.

There are also numerous blogs by ex-Laestadians accusing the group of brainwashing and psychological abuse, including threats of being shunned by family friends if you disobey Laestadian rules.

But Oulu’s Conservative Laestadians certainly weren’t the unfriendly cult I’d be led to expect they’d be.

65 Degrees on North; 22 August 2007.

*    *    *

Please be free to give your comments here or by e-mail: verkosto@luukku.com.

*   *    *

Dr. Edward Dutton on tullut tunnetuksi  Suomessakin antropologina hänen julkaistuaan analyysin suomalaisuudesta: The Finnuit – Finnish Culture and the Religion of Uniqueness. Hän vertaa teoksessa suomalaisia ja arvomaailmaamme grönlantilaisten kultuuriin. Molemmilla kansoilla on Duttonin mukaan ollut vaikeuksia sopeutua moderniin elämäntapaan. Tämä ilmenee muun muassa uskonnollisuutena, nostalgisena menneisyyden haikailuna, runsaana alkoholinkäyttönä ja suurina itsemurhalukuina.

Uskonnollisuus näkyy Duttonin mukaan siinä, että sekä Suomessa että Grönlannissa on vahvoja kristillisiä herätysliikkeitä. Yhtäältä herätysliikkeet heijastavat luterilaisen synnintunnon ja häpeän nostattamaa vertaisryhmän tarvetta, toisaalta ne ilmentävät vastareaktiota perinteistä identiteettiä uhkaaviin yhteiskunnallisiin muutoksiin. Hänen käsityksensä mukaan sekä Suomessa että Grönlannissa kristinuskoon on sekoittunut myös pakanallista mystiikkaa, jossa on šamanistisia piirteitä.

Lue lisää:

Edward Dutton 2007:  A Shared Pre-Christian Past? Contemporary Finnish Baptism in Light of Greenlandic Naming Rituals.

Halla: I was brainwashed into raging Laestadian beliefs

Tutkija: Suomi on kuin laimennettu Grönlanti. Helsingin Sanomat  15.9.2009.

Tutkimus: Luonnontieteilijät ovat yhteiskuntatieteilijöitä älykkäämpiä. Kotimaa24 1.3.2014.

Nuoret jättävät vanhoillislestadiolaisuuden

Mitä tiedämme maailmankaikkeudesta

Alla jotain mielenkiintoista kaikille meille, jotka ihmettelemme ja ihailemme Aurinkokunnan, Linnunradan ja koko maailmankaikkeuden ihmeitä, kauneutta ja käsittämättömiä mittasuhteita. Ja vuosimiljardien kehityshistoriaa sekä tutkijoiden saavutuksia. Tiede on kuitenkin vasta aivan alussa. Näin  asiantuntijat arvelevat. Voi olla että tiede ei ratkaise koskaan aivan kaikkia kysymyksiä… Todellisuus on aina suurempi ja arvaamattomampi kuin pystymme ajattelemaan.

Kuka sitten pitää alun alkuna Jumalan sanalla luomisen hetkeä, kuka uskoo alun  olevan 13,7 miljardin vuoden päässä alkuräjähdyksessä…  tai ehkä kolmas vaihtoehto universumin kosmologiasta on jotain sellaista, mistä meillä ei ole vielä aavistustakaan. Mysteerit odottavat tutkijoita vielä kauan.

Itse harrastan sekä tähtitiedettä että scifiä. Ne ruokkivat toisiaan. Suosittelen asiasta kiinnostuneille esimerkiksi Stanislaw Lemin kirjoja  (kuten Futurologinen kongressi , Eeden ja Solaris). Ne saavat ihmisen ajattelemaan erilaisia mahdollisuuksia nähdä maailmankaikkeus, Jumala ja ihminen…

Mutta se mikä seuraaavassa esityksessä kerrotaan, ei ole scifiä vaan tieteellisten tutkimusten tuloksia.

American Museum of Natural History, AMNH (New York) on tuottanut uusimapaan tutkimukseen perustuvan suurelle yleisölle suunnatun esittelyn siitä, mitä maailmankaikkeuden rakenteesta ja laajuudesta nyt tiedetään.
* * *
”After hovering over Mount Everest and the gorges that plunge to the Ganges, you are pulled through the Earth’s atmosphere to glimpse the inky black of space over Tibet’s high desert. So begins The Known Universe, a new film produced by the American Museum of Natural History that is part of a new exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City.

The magic of this film, though, happens as the inky black expands. Pulling farther and farther from Earth, you see the deep blue of the Pacific give way to night as the Sun comes into focus, the orbits of the solar system shrink smaller and smaller, the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpio stretch and distort, and, as the Milky Way receeds, the spidery structure of millions of other galaxies come into view. Then, you reach the limit of the observable universe, the afterglow of the Big Bang. This light has taken more than 13.7 billion years to reach our planet, and you return, back to Earth, to two lakes that are nestled between Mount Kailash and Mount Gurla Mandhata in the Himalayas.

The structure of The Known Universe is based on precise, scientifically-accurate observations and research. The Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History maintains the Digital Universe Atlas, the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe. The Digital Universe started nearly a decade ago. It is continually updated and is the primary resource for production of the Museum’s Space Shows such as the current Journey to the Stars, and is used in live, real-time renderings for Virtual Tours of the Universe, a public program held on the first Tuesday of every month. Last year, some 30,000 people downloaded the Digital Universe to their personal computers, and the Digital Universe will soon be updated with a more accurate and user-friendly software interface. Digital Universe is licensed to many other planetariums and theaters world-wide.

“I liken the Digital Universe to the invention of the globe,” says Curator Ben R. Oppenheimer, an astrophysicist at the Museum. “When Mercator invented the globe, everyone wanted one. He had back orders for years. It gave everyone a new perspective on where they live in relation to others, and we hope that the Digital Universe does the same on a grander, cosmic scale.”

The new film was produced by Michael Hoffman, and directed by Carter Emmart. Brian Abbot manages and Ben R. Oppenheimer curates the Digital Universe Atlas. The exhibition at the Rubin, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, opened on December 11 and continues through May 10.”

(Kokosi ”Eris”)*

*) Eris on ns. kymmenes planeetta, joka löydettiin 2005.

Lue lisää:

Esko Valtaoja: Esitelmä maailmankaikkeudesta

* Valtaoja, Esko: Kotona maailmankaikkeudessa. 2001. (10. painos 2007) |

* Pihkala, Juha & Valtaoja, Esko: Nurkkaan ajettu Jumala? Keskustelukirjeitä uskosta ja tiedosta. 2004.

* Valtaoja, Esko: Avoin tie: Kurkistuksia tulevaisuuteen. 2007.

* Valtaoja, Esko: Ihmeitä: Kävelyretkiä kaikkeuteen. 2007

* Enqvist, Kari: Olemisen porteilla. 1998.

* Enqvist, Kari: Kuoleman ja unohtamisen aikakirjat.  2009. (HS-esittely 24.12.2009.)

* Ursa ry:n esitelmät maailmankaikkeudesta, järj. Kirkkonummen Komeetta ry.

The only way to get into heaven / Ainoa tie taivaaseen…

A Laestadian dies and goes to heaven. Of course, St. Peter meets him at the pearly gates.
St. Peter says, ”Here’s how it works. You need 100 points to make it into heaven. You tell me all the good things you’ve done, and I give you a certain number of points for each item, depending on how good it was. When you reach 100 points, you get in.”

”Okay,” the Laestadian says, ”I married the only woman I ever kissed and we had 13 children and 60 grandchildren, all still in the church.”

”That’s wonderful,” says St. Peter, ”that’s worth three points!”

”Three points?” he says. ”Well, I went to June meetings every year, repented every Sunday, never drank a drop of whiskey and never watched TV.”

”Terrific!” says St. Peter, ”that’s certainly worth a point.”

”One point? Golly. How about this: I never turned on the radio in my car, even when I was alone, and have never used the internets.”

”Fantastic, that’s good for two points,” he says.

”TWO POINTS!!” the man cries, ”At this rate the only way I get into heaven is by the grace of God!”

”Come on in!

More laestadian / former laestadian’s humor…