Entering the dressing room of a Turkish bath in Istanbul this past August, I was interested to see dignified hijab-wearing ladies unveiling in preparation for their baths. It had seemed to me that the scarves were permanently affixed to these Muslim women’s heads, and yet here they were, nonchalantly removing them.

This morning at the gym, a modestly-dressed hijabi whom I had spotted earlier working out with the hand weights came up next to me at the sinks as I was blow-drying my hair and slowly unwrapped her veil. In Istanbul this sort of sighting was part of the exotic local color, right up there with the calls to prayer and the mosques on every street corner. Seeing the exact same thing this morning in Boston was a bit more surprising.

I am doing a directed study on Islam in America this semester, and my Istanbul flashback this morning really drove home for me one of the key themes we’ve been talking about: It is a fact that Muslims are no longer exotic and distant, only to be found abroad; they are a part of our American religious landscape. The Muslim population in America is growing and we women should probably get used to seeing un-veilings in the locker room.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints lost a great leader on Monday. President Gordon B. Hinckley has led the church for the majority of my life. It’s hard to describe what it’s like to be LDS and have the prophet pass away. Being so young, I’m new at this.

Hinckley led the church through a time of great change. The church membership rolls grew significantly, and a record number of temples were dedicated under his leadership. Hinckley led the charge on building more but smaller temples. This allowed additional members of the church to have access to temples more often, reducing unnecessary travel and financial hardship. Although I disagree with what I would argue as subtle political action regarding the Proclamation to the World, Hinckley did a lot to lead the church into the 21st century.

When I heard President Hinckley had passed away, I was shocked but quickly found peace. This man was 97. He has been mentioning at General Conference for years now that he might not be at the pulpit the next time around. His frankness regarding his coming death is ironically inspirational. Hinckley was a man of such strong faith he didn’t fear death for an instant. His patience with growing old and weak was spiritually inspirational as well. His ability to sit back and wait for the Lord to be ready to bring him back to the heavens was touching. One thing is for sure, this man wasn’t afraid of passing on and seeing his Heavenly Father.

The LDS Church is entering a new era. Thomas S. Monson will no doubt be named the new prophet, seer, and revelator sometime next week. I encourage all of you to try and catch Hinckley’s funeral this Saturday (11:00 AM Mountain Standard Time). I think there is a way to stream it over the church website. You will see a memorial of a great leader of my church, and I’m sure most of you will find it interesting.

And today, another chapter in the endless saga between advocates of “Peace through Strength” and proponents of “Strength through Peace . . .”

"World’s Most Powerful Rail Gun Delivered to Navy” reads the headline from Popular Mechanics. The article is rife with jargon but conveys one can't-miss-it point: This is one big, bad-ass weapon.

Here's the first paragraph:

“For true sci-fi fans, any mention of a real-world rail gun with draw an instant, slightly audible gasp. Instead of relying on chemical propellants –such as gunpowder –a rail gun uses magnetic ‘rails’ to launch a solid, non-explosive projectile at incredible speed. Theoretically, rail guns would be able to precisely strike targets at extreme ranges, and would negate the risks associated with carrying around tons of explosive ammo. More to the point, they’re cool-sounding, just like lasers.”

A director for the rail gun project “compared the force [of the projectile] to hitting a target with a Ford Taurus at 380 mph.”

The future of warfare is here. Do you like what you see?

As I mulled over the implications of this technology, one question struck me:

Can efficiency in warfare be a Christian mandate?

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Just in time for -7 degree temperatures and unrelenting snow, I have begun to commute into the heart of Chicago to report from Medill’s downtown newsroom. I survive the hour train ride into the city by shoving my headphones into my ears and, in a polite nod to the Lord God of all creation, listen to ‘Pray as you Go,’ a brief daily podcast from Jesuit Media Initiates. In 10 minutes, the gospel is read – in a British accent, as it sounds more authoritative and refined this way – brief reflections are offered, and the narrator invites the listener to quiet reflection.

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Towering in the city skyline, the white LDS Church Office Building is almost always visible in Salt Lake City. I think I’ve made it clear that my faith is very personal. With my spiritual activities kept mostly to myself, sometimes I forget I live right in the center of the LDS church’s headquarters.

The church office building itself is a little disquieting. Its bureaucratic symbolism doesn’t help me feel the spirit. Driving by the building, seeing all the white shirts and ties, I feel irked by some of the church’s views on conformity.

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I have a particular affinity for time travel movies. And I don’t mean the ones where adventurers go 10,000 years into the future or back to the time of the dinosaurs. I specifically love the ones involving a trip backwards in time where people change their destinies and learn about themselves and their families.

My favorite movies of all time are those of the "Back to the Future" trilogy. The first time I saw Part I on TV when I was nine, I immediately made my mom go to the video store to rent the other two; since then I have seen each movie a crazy amount of times, and my sixteenth birthday part was BTTF themed. Last night I watched "Peggy Sue Got Married" again with my roommate, partially inspired by a recent re-viewing of BTTF, and fell in love with it. Another notable mention in this category is the time-travel part of season 4 of Felicity.

I think that my fascination with these sorts of stories comes from the poignancy of seeing how the nature of people’s entire lives can be traced back to specific moments or actions. It addresses the unpredictability of life – you never know when that definitive moment is going to come or what its consequences will be. That’s where faith helps me out. It’s the belief that in those moments of great decision-making and importance, there is something greater and all-knowing guiding me and making sure that everything will work out.

In "Back to the Future Part I," (in which the definitive moment is George and Lorraine kissing at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance) Marty McFly’s time travel and interference with his young parents results in a better life for his whole family when he returns to 1985. In both "Peggy Sue Got Married" (key moment = getting it on with her boyfriend on her 18th birthday) and Felicity (key moment: choosing Ben over Noel), the protagonists learn that their original decisions, wrong as they may have seemed in retrospect amidst pain and confusion, actually were preferable to the alternative. These stories tap into universal fears and concerns, and to me they convey a valuable lesson: Faith means not having to travel back in time to figure out that where you are is where you are meant to be.

Standing in line at the Mugamma, Egypt’s towering, Soviet-era, unholy office behemoth of bureaucratic nightmares, while my girlfriend was attempting to get the right forms/stamps/signatures for her visa, I had ample time to ponder the wonders of the American system. Ah, to live again in a place where things ran smoothly, when if you read a sign that said “Tourist Visas Here” it really meant “Tourist Visas Here” and not “Refugee Status Inquiries.” For someone on the political left, the entire experience of yearning for America is not one that I often indulge in. I most certainly love my country but since the beginning of my political “activation,” so to speak, in 12th grade, I have had to consume a slew of nasty developments.

So fast-forward to last Thursday, with new and America-loving David sitting snugly in Political Science 3754, American Political Theory, looking at all the folks in ROTC uniforms and ready for one big hug-fest when the professor asked, “What is America?”

Here is a list of the words that followed, chronologically as best as I could write them down:

Democratic
Exaggerated
Fortunate
Opportunistic
Proud
Status Quo

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For a while here, I’ve been on radio silence. It’s been frustrating, to say the least. It wasn’t writer’s block: I’ve been churning out a great storm of work for academic pursuits. But going from the jostling, bruising, frenetic life in Cairo to the bucolic, ivory-tower pursuits of Blacksburg, Va., has left me groping for the same sort of obvious writing inspiration I had become used to, the sorts of things that would grab my deeper awareness and shake me firmly.

Ah, but like a bad travel writer I was trying to figure out what was “different” about my “new” surroundings in order to play up the point as something worthwhile to talk about. And when nothing “new” came along, I sat, frustrated, hands folded, wondering when something would fall from the sky and set me to thinking.

To fill the time and let off some steam, I’ve been wearing my friend’s ears out with yakity-yak about this or that minute cultural point or piece of obscure trivia or semi-humorous story about life away from home. I felt like I had to fill my yawning internal silence with a lot of talk.

But after the blabbing, the silence inside my head had become deafening… until I realized it was the silence that I needed. After all the sound and the fury that was my life for half a year, it was time to, as Mike and Mike say, just shut up.

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I did it again. This Sunday I once more ventured out into the Christian megachurch world of my southern hometown, this time hitting up the local Methodist church. After awkwardly noting when people greeted me that there is no Christian equivalent to “Good Shabbos,” and taking note that it was less okay to wear jeans among the Methodists than it was with the Baptists (oops!) I sat down in a pew near the back and thumbed through the program. Sometime during the sermon, after the baby baptism and before the hand holding, as the preacher decried the “demonic” influences in our culture and noted that one didn’t need to travel to Africa to do missionary work, but could do it in my subdivision (yikes!), I started thinking about my last post on Jewish identity. I looked down at the Church announcements, which listed activities from “Quilting for Christ” to youth sports to a women’s professional group, and heard the preacher talk about the different ministries that people could join.

It occurred to me that these ministries are similar to the wide array of Jewish organizations with which people affiliate. These megachurches get the concept of being around coreligionists. In the Jewish world, though, the different “ministries” are not contained within the synagogue. Because Judaism is not only a religion, the synagogue is one ministry among many. Recently I was reading in Jonathan Sarna’s "American Judaism: A History" about the synagogue-center concept, which earlier in American Jewish history was popular; referred to as “shuls with pools” (“shul” is Yiddish for synagogue), these were like early Jewish megachurches. Eventually, though, more secular Jewish Community Centers beat them out, and so now the synagogue doesn’t encompass all of Jewish life, but is one manifestation of it. This makes me wonder: is this set up more naturally suited to Judaism? Or if the synagogue-center had become the predominant model, would Jewish mega-synagogues have created a more vibrant Jewish religious life, akin to the success of evangelical Christianity today?

On Faith asks:

“Starting this week PBS will air a series on ‘The Jewish Americans.’ We know what ‘Jewish identity’ has meant in the past. What will it mean in the future? How does a minority religion retain its roots and embrace change?”

For me this is not just a question. It is THE question. And while I have no crystal ball, for me Jewish identity depends and will continue to depend on maintaining ties to other Jews.

It’s important to remember that Judaism is not just a religion or a cultural inclination. Jews originally constituted a tribe. There is a reason that there must be 10 people (or men, if you’re orthodox) present in order to pray. And for much of our history we lived separated from non-Jews. Our religion is intended for a physical community.

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Twelve drummers drumming: The twelve points of belief in the Apostles' Creed

The creed is a statement of beliefs that Christians hold in common and publicly affirm. But there is also a lived mystery in Christian life, an acknowledgment that the holy is not only experienced in sacred tradition, but in witnessing life’s depth, monotony, joy and pain.

Some may think that believers who struggle to process life’s complexity and heartache contradict themselves. Those believers may simply be honoring the truth they have experienced.

NPR had a story this weekend on Douglas Fenton, a Presbyterian Minister who served in Iraq and is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his service there.

“Exhausted and grief-stricken, the soldiers would come back to the base long enough for showers and too often, memorials, and then go out and fight all over again. As brigade chaplain, Fenton was the one who flew to see the wounded and dead. By the time he left last August, he had prayed over 88 dead soldiers.”

“Chaplains are not allowed to have problems,” Fenton said. “Chaplains have to focus on other people’s problems. And if you get to that point, God help you. God help you.”

I haven’t spent a lot of time at home since I went away to college. One week here, a few days there; I never stay for too long. I don’t have any high school friends left here, and so being home is always a relaxed affair. The one organizing event for my stays is synagogue. Although I never go to Saturday morning services at school, and I love sleeping in, every Sabbath that I am home I wake up early and walk to synagogue.

When I get there, I see my former fellow youth group members, also home from college for winter break; the children of congregants now running around and talking whom I remember as babies; my parent’s friends, eager to know what I’ve been up to; the Rabbis, welcoming me home and asking if I’m planning on taking any Jewish studies classes; the older gentleman who likes to show off his metals from the Israeli War of Independence, coming over to ask me how I’m doing in Hebrew. Yeah, praying happens, but there is also a heavy dose of schmoozing.

For the most part, things haven’t changed that much since I lived here. There is still a mass exodus to the bathroom during the bar mitzvah boy’s speech; the lunch afterward features the same bagels, tuna salad and black and white cookies; the synagogue president is still a bit long-winded during weekly announcements. It is comfortably and wonderfully constant.

In the vast Starbucks-sprinkled, strip-malled expanse of suburbia, synagogue is where I go to see familiar faces and catch up with old friends. It is like a little village conveniently housed in one building. Yes, we are there as a common group of Jews who gather to pray, but we are more than that. We are people who have seen each other every week for years and have become a true community.

Eleven pipers piping: The eleven faithful Apostles

Tradition holds that after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the apostles went out to the corners of the earth to spread the good news.

Nearly 700 Sisters of Notre Dame have taken a new approach to spreading good news in life and after death. For more than 20 years, the sisters have been the subjects of a study of “Alzheimer's disease and other age-related brain disorders “with Dr. David Snowdon of the University of Kentucky. As a final gift to science, after each woman’s death her brain will be donated for examination. The research Snowdon has already compiled has contributed significantly to the understanding of Alzheimer’s disease. According to the AP article on the study:

One reason the nuns are such a valuable research tool is that as members of the same religious order, they all had decades of similar medical treatment, diets, reproductive histories and preventive care. Almost nine out of 10 had been teachers.

In the general population, finding such a uniform pool of test subjects is difficult.

Sister Treanor, a 93-year-old former school principal who is one of the last of the volunteers at a Wilton convent, looks at her participation as service, not sacrifice.

"I've tried to do good while I'm alive, and I liked the idea that I could do something good after death," she said.

From their faith in their God and in science, we will all benefit.

Musa, my tour guide in Egypt.

Ten lords a-leaping: The Ten Commandments

I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

This summer during my trip to Egypt I made a climb up Moses Mountain, which many revere as the site on which Moses received the Ten Commandments. The pilgrimage itself is an interfaith act as Muslim Bedouin guides take mostly Christian pilgrims to a place of importance for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. The hike begins in the dark at midnight and winds its way around camels and over uneven rock until it reaches the top of the mountain in time for sunrise. By the time the sun had come up and sleep deprivation had set in, I realized that no groundbreaking revelation would come to me during my time on the mountain. But now I recognize that I may have found something more sublime.

As I followed our 19-year-old guide Musa back down, he loosened up and began to tell stories about his life in Sinai, his girlfriend and his dreams for his future. He asked questions about America and appeared dazzled by the answers.

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Nine ladies dancing: The nine choirs of angels

My mother raised her three children on an eclectic musical amalgamation of Sister Act, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration and Annie Lennox. I was rapping Sr. Mary Clarence’s (played by Whoopi Goldberg) Salve Regina before I knew how to translate those words.

My family, hardly a choir of angels, became one eager cadre of Church Singers. Unlike the Church Yeller, the lady who seems to think that shouting the Our Father and Creed louder than any other church goer will get her prayers heard more effectively, Church Singers aim not to be particularly noisy. Rather, we strive for melodic consistency, quickly thumbing the thin pages of our Gather hymnal each time the cantor announces the song. As we sing, we fill ourselves with the lyrics and send them outward. We create something beautiful that was not present before, and will soon pass.

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Eight maids a-milking: The eight Beatitudes

What is a peacemaker?

A Colt Peacemaker?

A member of the U.N. Peacekeeping force?

An American soldier in Iraq hoping to bring security to Iraqis?

A Peace Corp volunteer?

A child standing up to a bully?

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Seven swans a-swimming: The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord

For the first time in my life, I was not under the long umbrella of Eastern Standard Time when the ball dropped in New York City. Spending New Year's on the West coast, in Seattle, was rather disorienting for this East Coast girl. That geographic vertigo is my excuse for my lack a resolution as of this morning.

Half of Americans say that they have resolutions to change in 2008. According Franklin Covey’s New Year’s Resolution Survey, the top three resolutions are getting out of debt or saving money, losing weight and developing a healthy habit.

To which all I can say is student loans, cream cheese and internet addiction.

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