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Below are current event articles that relate to events, topics, and people found in Journey of Radiance.
The Baby and the Buddha
www.bbc.co.uk
5/18/2009
Nati Baratz's documentary chronicles a former disciple's search for his reincarnated Tibetan master. After 26 years of isolated meditation in a mountain cave, Lama Konchog became one of the greatest Tibetan masters of our time. When he passed away in 2001 at 84, the Dalai Lama instructed his shy, devoted disciple Tenzin Zopa to search for his master's reincarnation. This 'unmistaken child' must be found within four years, before it becomes too difficult to remove him from his parents' care.
Arab Christians: The Forgotten Faithful
www.nationalgeographic.com
5/18/2009
Easter in Jerusalem is not for the faint of heart. The Old City, livid and chaotic in the calmest of times, seems to come completely unhinged in the days leading up to the holiday. By the tens of thousands, Christians from all over the world pour in like a conquering horde, surging down the Via Dolorosa's narrow streets and ancient alleyways, seeking communion in the cold stones or some glimmer, perhaps, of the agonies Jesus endured in his final hours.
Faith Diary: Consuming God
News.bbc.uk
5/11/2009
Changing religion is widespread in the US, according to new research, but why? The BBC's Religious Affairs correspondent Robert Pigott investigates. Also this week - nuns surfing on the wave of eco-sustainability, and why you CAN find some atheists in (Afghan) foxholes.
China's Great Wall Far Longer Than Thought
Discovery.com
4/20/2009
The most comprehensive and technologically advanced survey of China's Great Wall has discovered the ancient monument is much longer than previously estimated, state media reported Monday.
Newly-found tomb mural depicts ancient Chinese medication
Archaeology.org
4/15/2009
A mural unearthed from an ancient tomb in the northwestern Chinese province of Shaanxi last week depicted how traditional Chinese medication was practiced 1,000 years ago, archaeologists said Wednesday.
China's Sleeping Beauty
Archaeology.org
4/14/2009
The early 1970s excavation of three Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 8) tombs at Mawangdui, in China's southern Hunan Province, yielded some the country's greatest archaeological discoveries ("Entombed in Style," May/June 2009). The family members buried there included Li Cang, the marquis of Dai; his wife, Xin Zhui, known today as "Lady Dai"; and a man in his 30s, thought to be either the couple's son or Li's brother. The rich and powerful family led a luxurious life, which they wanted to maintain in the afterlife. The burials, therefore, contained a wealth of exquisite items, such as lacquerware, embroidered silk, musical instruments, and depictions of the household's servants--more than 3,000 objects in all.
Who was the historical Jesus?
MSNBC.com
4/3/2009
Biblical scholar Rachel Havrelock is a MythBuster in her own right, dispelling popular beliefs about Christianity. The University of Illinois at Chicago professor traveled to the Holy Land to co-host the Discovery Channel documentary "Who Was Jesus?" which premiers April 5, Palm Sunday.
Brick kilns for Great Wall found in Hebei
Archaeology.org
4/2/2009
600-year old site in North China's Hebei province has yielded more clues about the Great Wall. Archeologists have determined kilns there were dedicated to producing bricks for the Great Wall. The site is the closest brick production base to the Wall discovered so far.
Samarra Rises
Smithsonian.com
1/17/2009
I'm standing on a street corner in the center of Samarra—a strife-scarred Sunni city of 120,000 people on the Tigris River in Iraq—surrounded by a squad of American troops. The crackle of two-way radios and boots crunching shards of glass are the only sounds in this deserted neighborhood, once the center of public life, now a rubble-filled wasteland. I pass the ruins of police headquarters, blown up by an Al Qaeda in Iraq suicide truck bomber in May 2007, and enter a corridor lined by eight-foot-high slabs of concrete—"Texas barriers" or "T-walls," in U.S. military parlance.
A Yankee in China
Smithsonian.com
8/1/2008
In 1990, William Lindesay, a British authority on the Great Wall, Beijing, happened upon a copy of The Great Wall of China, a travelogue by William Edgar Geil—very likely the first individual, Chinese included—to traverse the entire Great Wall of China, at the turn of the century . Lindesay himself is the author of Alone on the Great Wall, an account of on his own 1,500-mile excursion in 1987. Lindesay thumbed through the book, transfixed by the photographs, particularly one showing Geil near a tower on a remote section of the wall.