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beccaelizabethI was thinking about a design for a place of worship on a spaceship.
As you do.
Or possibly on a colony planet.
Either way I found myself starting with (a) Accessability; the teachings must not be withheld, especially not by poorly placed steps or narrow aisles, and (b) Disaster preparedness; because any hall large enough to hold a congregation is large enough to hold them while the world falls down outside.
When church/temple/sanctuary design has its religious purpose come third on the list I'm not sure I'm doing it right. But it's a bit difficult to do religion with people who can't get on or, er, survive.
I saw a TV thingy about a Sikh festival and it showed a sort of normal day at a Sikh temple, or gurdwara. They have four doors, that should always remain open to all. They serve food, for everyone, regardless of age, sex, caste, or creed. Everyone is supposed to be treated as equal. Apparently caste was the big deal when they started, but I don't know much about caste at all. But it made it a big deal for everyone to sit down together and eat the same food. So it's a very practical kind of equality right there. I don't know much about Sikhs - I think I just wrote down everything I remember to be honest - but a big hall where everyone is welcome and can get something to eat sounds like a good foundation.
Also if you have lots of doors its safer in a fire. I don't know how that would work out in a spaceship. Airlock doors and panic bars aren't likely to be mixy.
I went to meditation classes at the Buddhist place. Only twice so far because getting to Norwich at lunch time has proven harder than I expected. Shall try again once it is holiday. I liked it there because it was clean and smelled good and there was sun but not too much, there were blinds up, and there were cushions and floor pads for everyone, and it was nice and calm. And then there was tea and biscuits. I'm not a tea drinker but I appreciate the social function of tea. Also walking out of meditation with your head all emptied out makes crossing the road sort of dodgy, in my experience. The grounding function of shared food and drink is a useful transition back to everyday mind.
I don't think I've actually participated in Christian stuff as an adult. I'm vaguely aware of things to do with flowers and things to do with cake and things to do with singing, but how being Christian functions as a community thing rather than a book full of stories I would have to look up and learn. Which is weird to realise. But in school it's like school assemblies only with a fancier building, it's not quite the same experience as voluntary participation with your peers and multi generations. Christian buildings often have big signs up talking about people being welcome, but they also often have big signs up about that dude who died and got up again and probably some about sin, and I always feel like I'm wandering into someone's house after breaking up with them. I've gone in a few places to look at architecture and its a bit uncomfortable. I prefer the old stones or big trees.
It would be difficult to have big trees on a spaceship, but I think I would want to bring some good stones. Maybe not much by weight, but something solid to stand on and touch, where I knew where it had come from. Collecting a good stone that wanted to go with you would be a Quest. And you could have little trees. I can see bonsai trees being big on spaceships. ... er, in a tiny sized way.
Candles on spaceships would be tricky too, and also incense. Incense is worrying enough when I can nip outside if it makes me sneezy. Making a whole spaceship sneezy would be a really big problem. But smell is such a trigger to memory and state of mind you'd want to bring some of that with you. I imagine spaceships smelling sort of like my kitchen after the cleaner has been, a bit citrus maybe. If the air from the sanctuary went all the way around the ship the whole ship would smell of whatever you had there, which wouldn't work so well at evoking a specific mood. If the sanctuary had its own air loop then it could survive disasters better too.
I'm trying to figure out what are the essential things, if you're going a long way away and not having a chance to change it. There aren't really many essentials. A way of marking out a space and a time is all. You can do that with a bell and a social convention.
I imagine on the Enterprise I could set up a sanctuary in a cargo area. There would be benches that could hold emergency rations and blankets and things. There would be speakers and a projector so I could make one blank wall into a stain glass window or a bunch of trees or an assortment of symbols, depending who wanted to use the space. It would maybe be better to have individual chairs, so sometimes there would be rows facing forwards and sometimes there could be circles facing in. Probably though it would be another function for the communal space in the mess hall, like movie night, cause the cargo bays are busy being full of cargo and the food place already has lots of chairs. It's kind of weird T'Pol is the only one on the ship who so much as meditates. There's a lot of thought gone in to discussing morals, what is good and what is correct and what is necessary behaviour, and it bands together partly as religions. I guess being Starfleet provides all their answers instead. ... I'd still like to have a lot of argues with Starfleet.
I was thinking about clothes, religious uniforms, and how people Doing Religion get marked out from everyday life. Religions where there's one person appointed to have the knowing of things and a whole bunch of people apparently content to leave them to it seem to mark out their wardrobe pretty sharply. Do ones where everybody is supposed to do their own figuring and their own talking to god? I was thinking religious clothes seem to get stuck, sometimes, like with monks robes or whatever. Like, when they decided to dress that way, that was just clothes. Probably really cheap clothes. Ordinary. I was reading up on buddhist monk robes and how they collected scraps that everyone else threw out and dyed them with the cheapest local plants to be boring ordinary browns and just patched them together. Only now it's like everything has acquired symbolic significance and there's a specific way of patching and the colors all mean something and the rags sort of collected up all the good bits so they've turned into rich stuff. I don't know, I only read. But it seems to me that all that significance, that was just people looking at the things that were commonly around them, plain ordinary things, and they saw in them either inspiration or a way of explaining a thing they'd realised. To keep things frozen takes them ever further away from everyday life, when the idea is to bring the understanding into it, to find the understanding in the most ordinary things. Like realising the daisy is the daisiest daisy, but not because it's some far away mountain flower quest object, just because it's what is behind your house in the mud on a really bad day. So if you started making monk clothes now, they would probably be t-shirts and stuff like you find in charity shops, and you could still see all sorts of meaning in them, because the true things are true everywhere.
But it do help sometimes to have a Doing Religion flag, or a special collar, or a big ribbon round your neck, or something. Because then when you're wearing it you remember to behave right. And when you're not wearing it you can, I don't know, pick your nose and burp and go down the cinema and just do regular people things. Otherwise it's like when Tom Baker reckoned he had to stop smoking because The Doctor can't smoke, kids shouldn't see him smoking. Granted, it's probably a good idea to behave right all the time anyway, but it's difficult to be all ritual and ceremony while at the chemists. ... I was going to make a right/rite pun there but it's 0316 and it didn't quite work.
I like the idea of a Doing Religion thing you can roll up and keep in your pocket for emergencies or quiet moments. Also I like rainbows. I looked for rainbow ribbon but have convinced myself for the moment I do not need to actually make such a thing.
I think even/especially in a spaceship very far away from Earth people would need someone they could go to to talk over the basic question 'am I doing the right thing'. Someone would need to have that job, or people would have the role sort of informally. Also people tend to do a bit of ceremony for major life changes, like beginnings and endings, and often there's one person who has the job of knowing the words for such things. On the Enterprise it seems to be the Captain. But the talking things over person is someone else.
If I was running a sanctuary place there would be meditating sitting down, and also tai chi and yoga and stuff where you move. I like martial arts and the mind focusing effects thereof, but in a sanctuary there should be no single use weapons. No swords, that means, even though I really like swords. Sticks can have many uses but swords are only for weapons. Knives are multi functional though. And the kind of martial arts classes we saw on Enterprise were mostly about knocking people down and not much about the mental focus, so they would not be suitable for the sanctuary space. Possibly I mean the ones that are kind of like dance are okay and the ones that involve actually thumping people are not quite what the place is about. I like dance and also singing, though they get really cultural and people get particular about them, they both have the potential for unifying a group and also for altered mental states.
If I was making religion clothes they would be modest and comfy and easily available. ... and probably also involve one set of really snazzy robes, because it's all very well saying about letting go material things and focusing on ideas and helping people, but sometimes you just really want to dress up, you know?
... also I have this idea for a cloth collar that looks kind of egyptian with being wide and round and lots of colors, and it could have shiny beads, and fit lots of symbols on it, and be very pretty.
Clothes can alter mental states too. I know good outfits for inducing migraines or for, er, parties mind, but I'm sure there's lots of mileage in group unity and set aside time in the right clothes.
... yeah, mostly I just like playing dress up. *shrugs* I has a red robe with a star on it that glows under UV. And lots of long swoopy dresses. Is more fun that way.
Okay, if I made a sanctuary that was going far away and not coming back, I would make sure everyone could get in, everyone had the survival basics while they were in there, including toilets and places to wash and some blankets and maybe basic spare clothes, and there would be teachings from lots of different places available in there. There would be an easy clean floor and some mats for kneeling and bowing and stuff. Also cushions. Also chairs, some of them with arms, for people that don't get down and up so easy. There would be someone to listen and talk things over with. There would be times set aside for the kind of altered mind that goes with meditation or prayer, and there would be tea or juice and biscuits afterwards for getting back up to speed and saying hello to each other. The actual religious specifics would be quite variable, but those functions seem to be basic. Probably I am missing a few though, 3D community not being a regular part of my religious life.
There are probably more practical things to do than design temples in my mind. But some of them are very pretty by now.
Also, I may now be able to get to sleep. Win.
As you do.
Or possibly on a colony planet.
Either way I found myself starting with (a) Accessability; the teachings must not be withheld, especially not by poorly placed steps or narrow aisles, and (b) Disaster preparedness; because any hall large enough to hold a congregation is large enough to hold them while the world falls down outside.
When church/temple/sanctuary design has its religious purpose come third on the list I'm not sure I'm doing it right. But it's a bit difficult to do religion with people who can't get on or, er, survive.
I saw a TV thingy about a Sikh festival and it showed a sort of normal day at a Sikh temple, or gurdwara. They have four doors, that should always remain open to all. They serve food, for everyone, regardless of age, sex, caste, or creed. Everyone is supposed to be treated as equal. Apparently caste was the big deal when they started, but I don't know much about caste at all. But it made it a big deal for everyone to sit down together and eat the same food. So it's a very practical kind of equality right there. I don't know much about Sikhs - I think I just wrote down everything I remember to be honest - but a big hall where everyone is welcome and can get something to eat sounds like a good foundation.
Also if you have lots of doors its safer in a fire. I don't know how that would work out in a spaceship. Airlock doors and panic bars aren't likely to be mixy.
I went to meditation classes at the Buddhist place. Only twice so far because getting to Norwich at lunch time has proven harder than I expected. Shall try again once it is holiday. I liked it there because it was clean and smelled good and there was sun but not too much, there were blinds up, and there were cushions and floor pads for everyone, and it was nice and calm. And then there was tea and biscuits. I'm not a tea drinker but I appreciate the social function of tea. Also walking out of meditation with your head all emptied out makes crossing the road sort of dodgy, in my experience. The grounding function of shared food and drink is a useful transition back to everyday mind.
I don't think I've actually participated in Christian stuff as an adult. I'm vaguely aware of things to do with flowers and things to do with cake and things to do with singing, but how being Christian functions as a community thing rather than a book full of stories I would have to look up and learn. Which is weird to realise. But in school it's like school assemblies only with a fancier building, it's not quite the same experience as voluntary participation with your peers and multi generations. Christian buildings often have big signs up talking about people being welcome, but they also often have big signs up about that dude who died and got up again and probably some about sin, and I always feel like I'm wandering into someone's house after breaking up with them. I've gone in a few places to look at architecture and its a bit uncomfortable. I prefer the old stones or big trees.
It would be difficult to have big trees on a spaceship, but I think I would want to bring some good stones. Maybe not much by weight, but something solid to stand on and touch, where I knew where it had come from. Collecting a good stone that wanted to go with you would be a Quest. And you could have little trees. I can see bonsai trees being big on spaceships. ... er, in a tiny sized way.
Candles on spaceships would be tricky too, and also incense. Incense is worrying enough when I can nip outside if it makes me sneezy. Making a whole spaceship sneezy would be a really big problem. But smell is such a trigger to memory and state of mind you'd want to bring some of that with you. I imagine spaceships smelling sort of like my kitchen after the cleaner has been, a bit citrus maybe. If the air from the sanctuary went all the way around the ship the whole ship would smell of whatever you had there, which wouldn't work so well at evoking a specific mood. If the sanctuary had its own air loop then it could survive disasters better too.
I'm trying to figure out what are the essential things, if you're going a long way away and not having a chance to change it. There aren't really many essentials. A way of marking out a space and a time is all. You can do that with a bell and a social convention.
I imagine on the Enterprise I could set up a sanctuary in a cargo area. There would be benches that could hold emergency rations and blankets and things. There would be speakers and a projector so I could make one blank wall into a stain glass window or a bunch of trees or an assortment of symbols, depending who wanted to use the space. It would maybe be better to have individual chairs, so sometimes there would be rows facing forwards and sometimes there could be circles facing in. Probably though it would be another function for the communal space in the mess hall, like movie night, cause the cargo bays are busy being full of cargo and the food place already has lots of chairs. It's kind of weird T'Pol is the only one on the ship who so much as meditates. There's a lot of thought gone in to discussing morals, what is good and what is correct and what is necessary behaviour, and it bands together partly as religions. I guess being Starfleet provides all their answers instead. ... I'd still like to have a lot of argues with Starfleet.
I was thinking about clothes, religious uniforms, and how people Doing Religion get marked out from everyday life. Religions where there's one person appointed to have the knowing of things and a whole bunch of people apparently content to leave them to it seem to mark out their wardrobe pretty sharply. Do ones where everybody is supposed to do their own figuring and their own talking to god? I was thinking religious clothes seem to get stuck, sometimes, like with monks robes or whatever. Like, when they decided to dress that way, that was just clothes. Probably really cheap clothes. Ordinary. I was reading up on buddhist monk robes and how they collected scraps that everyone else threw out and dyed them with the cheapest local plants to be boring ordinary browns and just patched them together. Only now it's like everything has acquired symbolic significance and there's a specific way of patching and the colors all mean something and the rags sort of collected up all the good bits so they've turned into rich stuff. I don't know, I only read. But it seems to me that all that significance, that was just people looking at the things that were commonly around them, plain ordinary things, and they saw in them either inspiration or a way of explaining a thing they'd realised. To keep things frozen takes them ever further away from everyday life, when the idea is to bring the understanding into it, to find the understanding in the most ordinary things. Like realising the daisy is the daisiest daisy, but not because it's some far away mountain flower quest object, just because it's what is behind your house in the mud on a really bad day. So if you started making monk clothes now, they would probably be t-shirts and stuff like you find in charity shops, and you could still see all sorts of meaning in them, because the true things are true everywhere.
But it do help sometimes to have a Doing Religion flag, or a special collar, or a big ribbon round your neck, or something. Because then when you're wearing it you remember to behave right. And when you're not wearing it you can, I don't know, pick your nose and burp and go down the cinema and just do regular people things. Otherwise it's like when Tom Baker reckoned he had to stop smoking because The Doctor can't smoke, kids shouldn't see him smoking. Granted, it's probably a good idea to behave right all the time anyway, but it's difficult to be all ritual and ceremony while at the chemists. ... I was going to make a right/rite pun there but it's 0316 and it didn't quite work.
I like the idea of a Doing Religion thing you can roll up and keep in your pocket for emergencies or quiet moments. Also I like rainbows. I looked for rainbow ribbon but have convinced myself for the moment I do not need to actually make such a thing.
I think even/especially in a spaceship very far away from Earth people would need someone they could go to to talk over the basic question 'am I doing the right thing'. Someone would need to have that job, or people would have the role sort of informally. Also people tend to do a bit of ceremony for major life changes, like beginnings and endings, and often there's one person who has the job of knowing the words for such things. On the Enterprise it seems to be the Captain. But the talking things over person is someone else.
If I was running a sanctuary place there would be meditating sitting down, and also tai chi and yoga and stuff where you move. I like martial arts and the mind focusing effects thereof, but in a sanctuary there should be no single use weapons. No swords, that means, even though I really like swords. Sticks can have many uses but swords are only for weapons. Knives are multi functional though. And the kind of martial arts classes we saw on Enterprise were mostly about knocking people down and not much about the mental focus, so they would not be suitable for the sanctuary space. Possibly I mean the ones that are kind of like dance are okay and the ones that involve actually thumping people are not quite what the place is about. I like dance and also singing, though they get really cultural and people get particular about them, they both have the potential for unifying a group and also for altered mental states.
If I was making religion clothes they would be modest and comfy and easily available. ... and probably also involve one set of really snazzy robes, because it's all very well saying about letting go material things and focusing on ideas and helping people, but sometimes you just really want to dress up, you know?
... also I have this idea for a cloth collar that looks kind of egyptian with being wide and round and lots of colors, and it could have shiny beads, and fit lots of symbols on it, and be very pretty.
Clothes can alter mental states too. I know good outfits for inducing migraines or for, er, parties mind, but I'm sure there's lots of mileage in group unity and set aside time in the right clothes.
... yeah, mostly I just like playing dress up. *shrugs* I has a red robe with a star on it that glows under UV. And lots of long swoopy dresses. Is more fun that way.
Okay, if I made a sanctuary that was going far away and not coming back, I would make sure everyone could get in, everyone had the survival basics while they were in there, including toilets and places to wash and some blankets and maybe basic spare clothes, and there would be teachings from lots of different places available in there. There would be an easy clean floor and some mats for kneeling and bowing and stuff. Also cushions. Also chairs, some of them with arms, for people that don't get down and up so easy. There would be someone to listen and talk things over with. There would be times set aside for the kind of altered mind that goes with meditation or prayer, and there would be tea or juice and biscuits afterwards for getting back up to speed and saying hello to each other. The actual religious specifics would be quite variable, but those functions seem to be basic. Probably I am missing a few though, 3D community not being a regular part of my religious life.
There are probably more practical things to do than design temples in my mind. But some of them are very pretty by now.
Also, I may now be able to get to sleep. Win.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-29 09:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-29 05:02 pm (UTC)I think a lotlotlot about this sort of thing, because my church is in the process of negotiating the purchase of a 40'x90' storefront space to make in a church, having sold our 40,000 sq.ft. neogothic cathedral last summer. I'm head of the general church governance committee as well as the trustees, which has responsibility for the building, so I'm primarily responsible for - ugh, a lot of stuff. Also, I've been involved in the logistical part of other churches. I've also spent over half a year at sea on scientific research cruises, which I think is as close to going into space as one can get.
So.... In no particular order:
(1) I'd decouple the safety-sanctuary aspect from the spiritual sanctuary stuff. For most disasters, large places aren't where you want to be necessarily - especially large places maintained by volunteers. OTOH, people *do* run to churches sometimes (though I tend to expect it's mostly people who don't know how the sausage of church is actually made).
(2) Your observation about how clerical clothing is stuck in time matches what I've always thought. The same holds true for religious buildings. (And, um, golf courses - all over the world, people try to recreate Scotland, because that's what a golf course is supposed to look like.) There's also Making A Statement; and the individual taste of the loudest/most dysfunctional person on the committee at the project's inception, like with anything that involves humans.
Curiously, it's people NOT part of the religious community that want to keep builds Just The Same For Forever, and not the people who have to heat/maintain/get their children in and out of the place.
(3) This feeds into accessibility. Community standards, done the cheapest way possible, in effect at the time of construction determine this. Changing anything is a PITA, though worth fighting for.
(4) Nobody installs pews anymore, AFAICT. If you can have a designated worship space, it's stadium-style seating, just like in movie theaters and sports arenas. But mostly people use movable chairs, the comfiest/cheapest possible (that the loudest, most dysfunctional person on the relevant committee can find, or that her son-in-law happens to sell). Individual variances meet the needs of the people involved at the beginning and their friends/parents/children.
(5) Things worship spaces need/generally have, besides a sanctuary, are (a) a kitchen area, (b) some sort of other function space, (c) space for child care.
(6) Religious trappings - this is *so* individual! We're currently renting space, so we've got a church-in-a-box, with a cross, dishes for communion (cup and plate), offering plates, cloths to cover things as needed, maybe a vase or three, and a coffee pot. (We have an office elsewhere, where other necessities are kept, but they aren't necessarily taken to services.) Back when we owned the large building, we had tenant congregations, including a Sathya Sai Baba congregation, and they all managed to fit what they needed into a box or two as well; well, and the SSB congregation had rugs.
Artwork was much more important before most people could handle text; now it's there because it's pretty or because the church next door has it or the church next door doesn't have it or the loudest, most dysfunctional person on the design committee paints/likes stained glass.
(7) The role of a chaplain - you might want to poke into what militaries do, particularly in multi-religious countries like the UK and US. I've heard the term "religious goods and services", and while it's somewhat sneered at IME I think it's important.
(8) When I've gone to sea, there was no service, or religious person, of any type. (Nor a doctor or nurse, though it was rumored that the captain could be talked through an emergency.) I didn't miss it; a Wiccan roommate did her thing on deck in private, she was the only person I knew who did.
(9) In church this morning, our pastor wore khakis and a botton-down shirt, no tie. This upsets some of our little old ladies; one 90-year-old told me and him that this was mostly because most ministers have what might be called a non-athletic build, and a robe makes this less obvious. To which we really had no answer. Ministers have told me that a clerical collar is nothing but trouble in most situations.
(10) For some people, church is about sorting out the hard questions; for others, it's a place to be told that there *are* no hard questions. For others, it's comfort and theatre and music.
(11) Re: incense, etc.: Just ban anything perfumed of any sort; it's your world :-) (Yeah, I have major issues with perfumes and such.)
no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 03:22 am (UTC)10) I guess all three ways help with hard moments, like you can either question, or have an answer ready, or have something shiny and a cookie.
9) heh, I don't think the slimming effect of robes is the primary thing in mind when the design started. also robes on women are not so slimming, cause they make a big tube.
I can understand someone wanting things to stay All The Same Always, but is not so helpful telling people be staying the same.
Clerical collars seem to mean something really specific and yet a different really specific thing to different people. I can see that going wrong.
8) I was thinking that ship size would matter, and size of religious community. Like, if there's 81 people on NX01, maybe there's no people who want a regular religion event, but when there's a thousand on NCC1701D that seems really unlikely. And length of time spent away would factor in, like if it's a five year mission that doesn't expect to get back at all. Also there's a more stress = more people with job of deal with stress. But a lot of people go a long time without church even if they keep thinking about church.
7) I am poking for the role of military chaplains. I have discovered that the UK is multi religious, but in the whole UK military there are 220 Buddhists, so there's only the one Buddhist chaplain. Is interesting. I'm at least finding the links that will lead to more information on those topics.
6) I tend to get distracted by shiny things, so websites that sell, for instance, communion chalices, or things like the Alchemy Gothic ranges that start with bits of chalice design and play, I just go all *oooh, shiny!* And I can get very distracted by cloth art, specially highly symbolic pretty colorful cloth art. But I can see how it's not absolutely necessary to have every shiny thing. Essentials in a box would be portable. ... now I'm seeing a spaceship chapel with a wall of such boxes, neatly labelled, so you pull out a drawer for instant religion...
5) Child care! Knew I'd forgot something. Which is kind of ironic given that last time I spent significant time in churchlike buildings I was the one in the childcare.
4) stadium seating implies that there's one focal person that needs to be seen, and that sight, specifically, is the important bit, and also puts some people higher than others. I've seen programs about architecture around the time of Tudors etc and what the design of churches did had to do with how people felt about class (designated boxes for the rich or something), and if they had one dude stand at the front and talk god or if it was something everyone got a turn at. Putting some people physically above others was kind of an architectural argument. Is interesting.
comfy chairs meet design committee... I had not thought about committee design on a spaceship. I can totally see Drama happening from that...
3) *nods*
2) *nods nods* for the buildings. It's bad enough in an only vaguely listed building nobody pays much attention to - they keep having to fix the front steps because they have to use the same materials every time to stay In Keeping and the things never did work very well. Fancy heritage buildings that get tangled up with religion arguments? *blinks* I guess I can see good reason why the church at the end of the building has a ordinary hall.
Also a coffee and chocolate bit with a sofa, which is quite win.
1) Large spaces maybe not where you want, but I was thinking sort of the other way up, like, a colony or spaceship would have designated emergency areas, what could they be when there was no emergency?
church sausage? :-)
science cruise as spaceship = cool
luck with the church moving.