#IEX

1. I was walking in the woods yesterday and I had an epiphany. It wasn’t one I wanted to have. I was thinking about today’s class, where we are reading Kimmerer’s ‘Gathering Moss’. I’ve taught Braiding Sweetgrass in multiple classes every year since 2016. It’s eminently teachable

2. Both books are beautifully written. Students uniformly enjoy them as assigned reading. They do a great job communicating to non-Indigenous folks the contours of basic Indigenous relationships to more-than-human beings. They’re wildly popular with white readers.

3. I’ve found Braiding Sweetgrass to be a great entry point for non-Indigenous folks to Indigenous scholarship. But this is where yesterday’s epiphany comes in. Neither Braiding Sweetgrass or Gathering Moss tends to the deep deep lineages of Indigenous scholarship in Canada or US

4. As the popularity of ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ has soared, I’ve seen more and more white folks wax on about ‘braiding knowledge’. But they often don’t know any of the lineages of these concepts beyond what is presented in this one book. They confidently run with this.

5. Kimmerer does a commendable job of weaving in her own experiences, her family stories+nods to some very important knowledge keepers who deserve to be celebrated for their work. But Braiding Sweetgrass does not tend to the citational politics Sara Ahmed & others teach us about

SRI KANTESH HANUMANTHA, KADARAMANDALAGI (KAR)
#bharatmandir

KANTESHA means Prabhu full of brightness.
Here, Sri Hanuman appears with a front face and sparkling eyes. Earlier, the village was also called KANTESHPURI on the name of Kantesha Hanuman.

Several thousands of years ago, Hanuman lived in this village. He once saw the Sun and mistaking it to be a fruit, began flying towards it. Since then, this village came to be known as Kadara Man Dalagi. (Kadar means rays, mandala is cluster of rays).

It is believed that King Janmejaya had set up the shrine to get rid of his difficulties.
There is a small pond on the right side of the kshetram where Teppotsava (Float festival) is celebrated.

Kanaka Dasa has praised Sri Kantesha in his various poetic compositions.

Kanaka Dasa was the first devotee to popularize the power of Kantesha. It is said that once Kanaka Dasa was deeply wounded in a battle. To seek blessings, he visited Tirupati but Sri Venkatesha appeared in his dream and advised him to see Kantesha first before seeing him.

THREAD: Meditations on marriage metaphors in Ruth

The book of Ruth is, of course, a story about a beautiful marriage. But even before the courtship and the wedding and the important genealogy at the end, we find interesting language that is strikingly reminiscent of Genesis 2:24

That important verse reads:

'Therefore a man shall leave [יַֽעֲזָב] his father and his mother and hold fast [וְדָבַ֣ק] to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.'

The verb עזב can be quite strong in force. For example, Joseph leaves behind [וַיַּעֲזֹ֤ב] his garment as he flees from Pharaoh's wife's sexual advances. Countless times, Israel is depicted abandoning the LORD, for example in Judg 2:12 [וַיַּעַזְב֞וּ], and going after other gods.

Likewise, the verb דבק is rather striking. Lot is mortified of disaster overtaking him [תִּדְבָּקַ֥נִי] as he flees from Sodom. Israel is commanded in Deut 10:20 to cling fast [תִדְבָּ֔ק] to the LORD and serve him and swear by his name.

Together they illustrate how radical God designed marriage to be. Marriage is a real severing of family relations in order to form a new, permanent bond with another human being.

Something very similar to this takes places in Ruth's life.