{"id":2159,"date":"2016-06-30T11:45:59","date_gmt":"2016-06-30T11:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/?p=2159"},"modified":"2016-07-11T00:04:52","modified_gmt":"2016-07-11T00:04:52","slug":"burning-man-in-pictures-xxvii-spirituality-and-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/2016\/06\/30\/burning-man-in-pictures-xxvii-spirituality-and-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Burning Man in Pictures XXVII: Spirituality and Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

In our last post<\/a>, our intrepid heroes had been exploring their inner 8-year-old amongst the dinosaurs and stars. Today, they go on a more spiritual quest.<\/p>\n

Their first indication that this quest would be a more spiritual one was this scene that they came across<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A cross-cultural three-dimensional religious experience?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We then stumbled across what purported to be the truth:<\/p>\n

\"But<\/a>
But what is inside?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But what was inside?:<\/p>\n

\"Oh!<\/a>
Oh! It’s me! I’m the truth? Selfies are the truth?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Me? I’m the truth? Selfies? The sky? Tell me! Wait…Uh oh…:<\/p>\n

\"Uh<\/a>
Uh oh…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A WILD S APPEARS!:<\/p>\n

\"SHE<\/a>
SHE COMES!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

AUGH! [incoherent noises]:<\/p>\n

\"AUGH!<\/a>
AUGH! [incoherent noises]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our monstering[1] finished for the day, we headed towards our original goal, the Burning Man Temple<\/a>. It’s a special place, for people to express their grief, to help them come to terms with things, a deeply personal place for each person. In the words of one of the builders:<\/p>\n

”
\n\u201cI went down and talked to [a large computer company] and they call their place a campus. They have a barber shop, you can get a haircut. There were three different restaurants, at their campus. I forget how many people are there, 2,000, 3,000 people. If you feed that information into a computer, for 2,000 people, at least three of them are going to have lost a family member. And they don\u2019t have any place in their campus to address [that] and they want to profess that they\u2019re building a family yet they don\u2019t have a place to address the loss of a family member.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like, when Burning Man built up that population, we all of the sudden needed that. It was just an obvious absence. There was a void that no one really noticed. They got the porta potties, they\u2019ve got the police station, they\u2019ve got the medical and they\u2019ve got the Man. They just didn\u2019t have a place for grief. And the Man kind of did grief for a while, but it was a mixture of so much celebration that it was hard to really have a quiet place.\u201d
\n”<\/p>\n

It’s another one of those places where it feels wrong to take pictures inside, so I only have a few pictures, all of the outside, from a distance. Here, you can see S on her way towards the back of the temple:<\/p>\n

\"Heading<\/a>
Heading towards a place of spiritual contemplation.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 2015 temple<\/a>[2], ‘The Temple of Promise<\/a>‘, to us felt like a welcoming entrance, squeezing out the emotions you wanted to express, and almost rebirthing you into a treed garden. Here is the temple:<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Temple.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The imposing yet welcoming entrance, leading through the tighter and tighter squeeze of all of the memorials:<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Temple Entrance.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Until you emerge into the peaceful garden (on the left):<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Temple garden to the left, after you exit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The temple is always[3] so full of emotions, people grieving, memorials, it’s difficult to put words to it. All I can say is that each time I have gone, I have experienced something. A catharsis for sure, but also something else difficult to quantify, or even qualify.<\/p>\n

Next time, our intrepid heroes experience a type of comically large quotidian object, along with a poignant procession. Stay tuned!<\/p>\n

[1]And photobombing.<\/p>\n

[2]Interestingly, googling ‘2015 temple<\/a>‘ (at least for me) returns pictures of the temple, and a bunch of irrelevant (to me) text results.<\/p>\n

[3]Well, both times we’ve been there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In our last post, our intrepid heroes had been exploring their inner 8-year-old amongst the dinosaurs and stars. Today, they go on a more spiritual quest. Their first indication that this quest would be a more spiritual one was this scene that they came across: We then stumbled across what purported to be the truth: … Continue reading Burning Man in Pictures XXVII: Spirituality and Truth<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[32,15,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2159"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2159"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2309,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2159\/revisions\/2309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nayrb.org\/~blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}