A dictionary* defines religion as a bond, commitment, and integrated system, and reverence. It goes on to say that religion is spiritual and is also connected with "a belief in a superhuman God who created the universe and all life in it"

Reverence is defined as awe or respect. Spiritual is defined as an "animating (moving or vitalizing, life -giving) force, or vital principle " It is a will that is unseen and intangible.

Putting all these together, the definitions speak of the basic religious attitude as respect, amazement (awe), and commitment. What is respected is intangible and it gives life to everything. Because it is unseen and mysteriously life -giving, it is known with the spirit more than with any of the other senses.

Another attempt to define religion led one individual to describe why religions exist for all human beings. He listed four reasons:

Religions explain. They answer questions [about existence]: how the world came to be, how humans are related to natural species and forces, why human beings die, and why their efforts succeed and fail....

Religions validate. Religions [say that there are] controlling forces in the universe that sustain the moral and social order of a people. Ancestors, spirits, or gods reinforce rules and give validity and meaning to human acts ....

Religions reinforce human ability to cope with the fragility of human life-with death, illness, famine, flood, failure ... religions give security and a meaning in a world which ... is unpredictable....

And religion also heightens the intensity of shared experience, of social communion. (Keesing, 1976:386-387)

Alfonso Ortiz, a Tewa man and anthropologist from San Juan Pueblo, has also defined the term world view, a term used in the academic subjects that study different cultures. In Anthropology for instance, this term is used to describe the way a person "sees" his or her world and his or her place in it. Ortiz defines the term world view by saying:

The notion "world view" denotes a distinctive vision of reality which not only interprets and orders the places and events in the experience of a people, but lends form, direction, and continuity to life as well. World Viewprovides people with a distinctive set of values, an identity, a feeling of rootedness, of belonging to a time and a place, and a felt sense of continuity with a tradition which transcends the experience of a single lifetime, a tradition which may be said to transcend even time. (Ortiz, 1973:91)

He goes on to explain how the word religion differs from the term world view.

A world view-provides a people with a structure of reality; it defines, classifies, and orders the "really real" in the universe, in their world, and in their society. . ."a world view embodies man's most general conceptions of order." If this is accepted as a working definition, then religion provides a people with their fundamental orientation toward that reality If world viewprovides an intellectually satisfying picture of reality, religion provides both an intellectually and emotionally satisfyingpicture of, and orientation toward, that reality ... religion, as here defined, carries the added burden of [making] endurable such unpleasant facts of the human condition as evil, suffering, meaninglessness, and death.... (Ortiz, 1971:136)

Definitions of Sacred Ways

What makes a religious experience different from an "ordinary" experience is its spiritual, intangible, or unseen aspects. A person or a people may have a guiding vision in common. Those times when they actually experience a hidden meaning in that vision are sacred moments. Religions are, at their core, made up of sacred moments and sacred knowledge.

Sometimes organized religions lose sight of the emotions and sacred moments that are their guiding vision. Most Native American sacred ways allow for constant individual and collective revitalization of the sacred experiences that make up the core of their guiding vision. For example Navajo people pray each morning to walk in beauty. This sense of what Navajo call Hozho or beauty is tied to the harmonious creation of all humankind and is part of their daily life and is to be incorporated into everything they do. This makes religion a part of their life at all times.

Sacred can be defined as made or declared holy; dedicated or devoted exclusively to a single use, purpose, or person; worthy of reverence or respect. Sacred means something special, something out of the ordinary, and often it concerns a very personal part of each one of us because it describes our dreams, our changing, and our personal way of seeing the world. The sacred is also something that is shared, and this sharing or collective experience is necessary in order to keep the oral traditions and sacred ways vital. In discussing the sacred, it might be said there are two sides to it: the personal, ecstatic side that individuals find hard to describe and the part of the sacred that is shared and defined year after year through oral histories, ritual, and other ceremonies and customs.

Having a guiding vision in common as a people and maintaining it with renewals, ceremonials, rituals and prayers, is what is called religious worship and practice.

One of the ideas that is expressed over and over again in different cultures is that sacred ways are felt to be inseparable from the "ordinary." These people feel that knowledge should be searched for along with something else. Science, anthropology, psychology, and similar disciplines should not be tasks separate from that of living and of worshipping. Knowledge comes during those moments when one experiences a hidden meaning-sacred moments.Sacred means something special, something out of the ordinary, and often it concerns a very personal part of each one of us because it describes our dreams, our changing, and our personal way of seeing the world. The sacred is also something that is shared, and this sharing or collective experience is necessary in order to keep the oral traditions and sacred ways vital. In discussing the sacred, it might be said there are two sides to it: the personal, ecstatic side that individuals find hard to describe ' andthe part of the sacred that is shared and defined year after year through oral histories, ritual, and other ceremonies and customs.

Having a guiding vision in common as a people and maintaining it with renewals, ceremonials, rituals and prayers, is what is called religious worship and practice.

One of the ideas that is expressed over and over again by different people throughout this book is that sacred ways are felt to be inseparable from the "ordinary!' These people feel that knowledge should be searched for along with something else. Science, psychology, and similar disciplines should not be tasks separate from that of living and of worshipping. Knowledge comes during those moments when one experiences a hidden meaning-sacred moments.

Wisdom and Divinity: Daily Awareness

An Anthropologist and Native American, Alfonso Ortiz, suggests that life, from the Tewa point of view and perhaps from the point of view of all sacred traditions, is a double quest (or search) for wisdom and divinity. To live, he says, is to seek knowledge and fulfillment on the one hand and to also have touched at the heart of life and death through experiences of the sacred. A person will have problems in life, he suggests, only when a person forgets that these two quests must be kept in balance and harmony. A person will have problems when he/she sacrifices the quest for divinity, or the sacred, for knowledge only.

Explore Hopi "Religion"

Perhaps another way of saying this same thing is by listening to a dialogue about life and beliefs between Knud Rasmussen, the late Danish ethnographer, and Najagneq, an Eskimo man of knowledge and shaman.

Rasmussen asked the intense old man, "What do you think of the way men live?" and Naiagneq answered:

They live brokenly, mingling all things together: weakly, because they cannot do one thing at a time. A great hunter must not be a great lover of women. But no one can help it. Animals are mysterious in their nature; and [we] who must live on them [must] act with care. But men [strengthen] themselves up with amulets and become solitary in their lack of power. In a village there must be as many amulets as possible....

"How did you learn all this?"

Ihave searched in the darkness, being silent in the great lonely stillness of the dark. So I became a shaman, through visions and dreams and encounters with flying spirits. In our forefathers'day, the shamans were solitary men, but now they are all priests or doctors, weatherprophets or conjurers producing game or clever merchants, selling their skill for pay. The ancients devoted their lives to maintaining the balance of the universe: to great things, immense, [mysterious] things.

"Do you believe in any of these powers yourself?"

Yes, a power that we call Sila, which is not to be explained in simple words. A great spirit, supporting the world and the weather and all life on earth, a spirit so mighty that [what he says] to mankind is not through common words, but by storm and snow and rain and the fury of the sea; all the forces of nature that men fear.

But he has also another way of [communicating]; by sunlight and calm of the sea, and little children innocently at play, themselves understanding nothing. Children hear a soft and gentle voice, almost like that of a woman. It comes to them in a mysterious way, but so gently that they are not afraid; they only hear that some danger threatens. And the children mention it [casually] when they come home, and it is then the business of the [shaman] to take such measures as shall guard against the danger. When all is well, Sila sends no message to mankind, but withdraws into his own endless nothingness, apart. So he remains as long as men do not abuse life, but act with reverence towards their daily food.

No one has seen Sila; his place of being is a mystery, in that he is at once among us and unspeakably far away. (Rasmussen, 1927:383-386)

The responsibility of these Baffin Bay people in their relationship with "the world, the weather, and all life on earth" is to devote their lives towards "maintaining the balance of the universe; to great things, immense, [mysterious] things" Insight into life's meaning was not given Najagneq-he had to go out and search for this insight. In solitude he put himself at the mercy of Sila and in this way held communion with the world around him.

Case Study: Navajo

Explore the nature of Navajo view of the world and how they look for harmony within themselves. The Blessingway ceremony is crucial in restoring inner balance - or what Navajo term Hozho - in one's life. You live each day with a sense of walking in harmony with the world - to walk in beauty that starts with the break of the sun on the eastern horizon.