I never envisioned exploring the realm of Christian mystery, yet my investigations into the All Pacific Arise religious movement in the Solomon Islands dictated this piece: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00141844.2023.2298953?src=exp-la. To be honest it was also inspired by Jan van Baal's ponderings on the mystery. Throughout his research on religion, Van Baal struggled with the question of the mystery, the mystical or esoteric meaning. Towards the end of his career and just a few years before he passed away, Van Baal published Boodschap uit de stilte / Mysterie als openbaring (‘Message from the silence / Mystery as revelation’ (1991). In this essay, he expresses regret about excluding the mystery from the study of religion. Although he had thoroughly studied and described religions, this profound aspect that truly concern believers continued to trouble him. Following a long discussion on anthropology and theology, Van Baal moves to his own experience of the mystery during his time in a Japanese camp in occupied Dutch East Indies (ibid.: 105). Reflecting on this experience Van Baal departs from his earlier argument in his influential work, Man’s Quest for Partnership (1981) which posited that religion is rooted in humanity’s quest for reciprocal relationships with both fellow humans and the unseen forces governing the universe. ‘With the acceptance of the Mystery as the ground of life, all the problems of theodicy resolve themselves. It answers our Quest for Partnership. We ourselves share - mysteriously, that is - in the mystery that makes up all things. ... Humanity is part of the Mystery’ (Van Baal 1991: 147, my translation). Van Baal describes the mystery as not being able to capture in neat theories (ibid.: 105, 124) as in essence, it remains elusive, and much of what people claim to understand about it often boils down to descriptions of God’s absent presence. Consequently, it is more of speculation than genuine knowledge (ibid.: 96). Nevertheless, as Van Baal maintains, knowledge about the mystery is possible. It would then be knowledge that acknowledges the holy and the numinous as nonmanipulable facts (ibid.: 95). Importantly, humans can search for the holy and the numinous, but it is up to the mystery to reveal them. The mystery, then, has a presence that comes to the fore once it reveals itself. The mystery reveals itself as independent, as an agent, an agent outside the human (ibid.: 84, 108). So, the mystery acts and its first act is that it allows itself to be encountered but on its own terms and in its own time and it does not allow to be possessed (ibid.: 108) – the mystery addresses humans and is impressive (ibid.: 121). How, then, should we approach the mystery in anthropology? #mystery #anthropology #christianity #theology #pacific #solomonislands

‘The inscrutability of the universe is quite enough for us to think about; to want to actually understand it is to be less than human, since to be human is to realise it can’t be understood.’ Fernando Pessoa

PRIME Minister, Manasseh Sogavare, has described the journey taken by the country’s nationhood pioneers to be granted sovereign statehood as a journey of faith. https://www.solomonstarnews.com/journey-of-faith/ #bodyofchrist

@sverremolland Welcome! I am hardly here but when I am, I enjoy it. Looking forward to reading your posts!

Wantok Music has just released a wonderful album with Salvesen songs that emerged from the years of South Sea Islanders' indentured labor in the cane fields of Queensland from the 1860s to the turn of the century. This release highlights the exuberant a cappella singing of Pacific Islanders and offers a glimpse into the surprising reach of African American spirituals in the late nineteenth century. Digital download includes a PDF version of the 80-page richly illustrated and researched companion book. Hardcover copies of the book are also available for purchase: https://wantokmusik.bandcamp.com/album/ol-sing-blong-plantesen