Coping with stress and work

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• There are times when we look around ourselves and we recognize that various parts of our character have different personalities. We can do goodness, or we can choose to cause harm to others. It is a choice we make in our day-to-day communications or transaction. This transaction occurs when two or more people encounter each other…sooner or later one person will speak, or give some other indication of acknowledging the presence of the others. The person will then say something or do something which is in some way related to the original speaker. This form of transactional analysis suggests “I do something to you and you do something back,” it also determines which part of the personality the first speaker is using and how it can influence others for good or bad. For example, you are on a new job and your new supervisor tells you that there are certain things expected of you, and if you don’t follow the rules you are fired. The next day a colleague of the supervisor keeps watching you as you work without offering an explanation. Although you arrive bright and early for work, your supervisor accuses you of being late because you were not seen by him. The third day you’re told by the supervisor’s friend you are no longer required for work.
• In the form of Transactional Analysis we can organize the information derived from such behaviour and see the good or negative results the person projects. As you watch and listen to people you can see them change. There are simultaneous changes in facial expression, vocabulary, gestures, posture, and body functions, which may cause the face to flush, the heart to pound, or the breathing to become rapid. Changes from one state to another are apparent in manner, appearance, words, and gestures. In the case of the supervisor there were there were three different and distinct personalities in one person; one dominated by feelings like a child, one of self-righteousness and one of perceived reasoning and logical. The cause of such passive-aggressive behaviour in this cause requires further investigation, although the three states of thought exist in all people.
• Most of our energy day after day is used in decision making, and often are expressed in frustration and indecisiveness. In solving either of these difficulties we must recognize that in each decision there are three sets of data to be processed. The first set of data is dominated by feelings, the second self-righteousness, and the third is the feeling of perceived reasoning and logic. Feelings are based on past experiences and represent an external reality as it exists in the present, with a wide range of information accumulated in the past. Thus, we judge and expect rather than deal with the present. These recordings, reinforced through the years of negative experience are a powerful force bearing on a person’s decision. The power of this incoming data lies in its ability to reproduce fear.
• The second set of data is feelings of self-rightfulness and fear. What will happen if he won’t listen to me? You can’t trust these new workers to do what I tell them.” There are realistic difficulties here, but the intensity of the feelings are based on past difficulties stemming from a few years ago. With that assumption of past  experiences and fear it produces the churning stomach and the sweaty hands. The conflict becomes so painful the man becomes withdrawn. The third set of data comes from reality with no concept of reasoning. He simply gives in to whatever situation, thinking the old ways are the best ways. It is human nature for people to not listen. History repeats itself. Let someone else deal with this problem.
• What makes people want to change?
• Three things make people want to change. One is that they had enough pain. They have beat their heads against the same wall so long that they decide they have had enough. They are drug addicts, their ulcers bleed. They have hit the bottom. They bag for relief. They want to change.
• Another thing that make people change is a slow type of despair or boredom until he realizes something must be done and willing to make a change.
• The third thing that makes people want to change is the sudden discovery that they can.
• A simple, and yet, difficult formula.
• Often when a person faces a difficult challenge, they respond by saying “I can’t. “ What they are really saying is I “choose” not to deal with it. The first step is whenever you feel your palms sweating, heart beating fast, head feeling like its spinning, and your thoughts are racing “oh no, what can I do?”  “Why is this person bothering me. ” –
• (a)    Stop for a second long enough to ask yourself why you are giving your power away to something else, and take a little time out for yourself. Step away from the problem that controls you, or if you can’t, take a deep breath and slowly try to relax your muscles.
• (b)   Evaluate. Ask yourself what in the past causes you to act this way and why you are allowing it to control you now when you are supposed to have control over yourself.
• (c)    Be brave, believe in yourself, act with courage and take charge of your own life. There are many organizations who are there to help you, but only if you truly want help.

Civilization before Adam and Eve

Civilization is far more complex that the story told in Genesis. There is much debate about the location of the Garden of Eden. It was believed that Paradise is located somewhere near Tigris and Euphrates River. Earlier reports suggest the Garden of Eden might have been located in Mongolia, India and Ethiopia. In all cases there was silence in regards to other cultures who flourished outside Eden, such as North American native tribes, various African and European tribes, Indian cultures, Asian, and others. Nor is there mention of the culture that existed east of Eden where Cain settled, married a foreign woman, and created his own family.

Data surviving from prehistory shows no evidence of the existence of Eden but relates to the quest for food and history of subsistence. As humans evolved they became skilled in hunting, fishing, and foraging. Isolated families  living in remote places eventually became aware of other groups outside their own territory. In time, with the increase in population and travel,. neighbors joined together forming communities.  

According to the Wolfson College Lectures 1978, The Origins of Civilization, in regards to hunting and socialization,  he suggests that the hunting of large mammals depended on social as well as technological factors. It involved an organized system of co-operation among hunters who were exclusively men that involved travel of long duration. ( this might be due to locating and/or following migrating herds certain periods of the year). The women would remain behind guarding the home base, bringing up the young, foraging for plant food and small animals. The mothers would also initiate the young children in gathering food and other activities.

The earliest human economies are likely to have been  based on a subdivision of functions between the men who concerned themselves with hunting, operating a distance from home, and the women who watched over the young, cooked, maintain the home surroundings, and engaged in foraging in the near neighbourhood. Hunting large animals probably involved active co-operation between the males. This was a social bond that held complete bands together, just as the division between hunting and foraging cemented individual family units."The system by which the earliest communities lived was thus based throughout on co-operation and sharing rather than struggle. Once communities were established, it was self-regulating. Which may explain why the earliest cultural patterns were slow to change.

Archaeological evidence recovered from a site dating back to 1 million years ago continued to reflect the importance of hunting and prowess of the men who pursued their prey. Some sites showed the use of fire for the first time. The evidence of fossil pollen pointing to forest clearance and the expansion of open vegetation in England, as well as the aborigines of  Australia show the use of fire.

Findings from 35,000 years ago in Europe, south Russia, north Africa, and Asia, show the practice of careful burial and a personal awareness of death. There was also expansion of the geographical territories. New lands were colonized in northern Europe, Far East and south-east Asia. The Japanese islands were occupied, and the Yukon on the Asian side of North American glacier zone was already occupied. Slowly but surely there emerged a new economy that changed the face of hunting and gathering. The new economy and its' complexity consisted of new words; crop, harvest, and husbandry.
 

Modesty, not nudity,responsible for sexual inappropriateness

In order to understand why modesty might be a contributing factor to unwanted sexual acts, we may find the answer in some earlier sex research papers. Most of us think we have a reasonably clear insight into the sexual behaviour of those we love, and some notion of the sexuality of our friends and neighbors. From this assumption we formulate an opinion of what is normal and what is abnormal.
One of the first and most influential sexologists to investigate this egocentric perspective was Henry Havelock Ellis (1859 - 1939). He contributed more than any other individual to the overthrow of old ideas in the study of human sexuality, and he presented concepts of individual and cultural relativism which underlie almost all significant sex research today.
Ellis devoted many decades of his life to mastering most of what had been learned about human sexuality since the days of the ancient Greeks.  As a counselor and healer, he studied the sex lives of his contemporaries directly and recorded his findings in a series of volumes,Studies in the Psychology of Sex, which he published and periodically revised between 1896 and 1928. What he discovered was that: everybody is not like you, you loved ones, and your friends and neighbors.
Ellis was an English Victorian. He accordingly opened his essay on modesty with the generally accepted Victorian belief that virtue consists essentially in keeping the human body , and especially the human female body, adequately clothed. To illustrate this relationship between modesty and clothing, he recounted a visit paid by Jacques (Giacomo Girolamo) Casanova to the public baths near Berne, Switzerland, late in the nineteenth century.
According to the custom of the time and place, Ellis explained, Casanova at arriving at the baths selected a young girl of eighteen from the cluster of attendants awaiting patrons. She undressed him, undressed herself, entered the bath with him, and proceeded to massage him thoroughly all over, "in the most serious manner and without a word being spoken." When the message was completed , Casanova perceived that the girl expected him to make sexual advances. He felt-strangely enough for a world renowned womanizer - no desire to do so. This seducer of scores of women, now near the peak of his career as an international philanderer, felt embarrassed even to examine her nudity below the waist. "Though without gazing at the girl's figure," Casanova had written in his Memoirs, I had seen enough to recognize that she had all that a man can desire to find in a woman: a beautiful face, lively and well formed eyes, a beautiful mouth, with good teeth, a healthy complexion, well-developed breasts, and everything in harmony...Yet I remained extremely cold. What was the cause of this? That was the question that I asked myself."
Casanova thereupon ventured to answer his own question. Perhaps modesty in a woman was one of the factors arousing a man's sexual desire.  Perhaps, lacking modesty, the Berne bath attendant lacked sexual appeal. But Ellis was not so sure. He went on to demonstrate, from a review of the literature of anthropology, that the relation of the clothing to modesty, and of modesty to sexual desire, is in fact, far more complex that Casanova had supposed. In Tierra del Fuego, South America, for example, women once wore only a minute triangle of animal skin suspended between their thighs; yet they were so modest, they never removed it. Even during sexual intercourse they merely raised it. Among natives of the Amazon Valley, the men went naked while the women wore a short skirt. Among another tribe in the area, the men always wore a loincloth while the women went naked. According to an article written in an 1892 issue of the American Journal Of Obstetrics, almost every woman in one tribe of North American Indians were sexually free, yet they were modest when one of them , near death during childbirth, refused to let any man attend her. At length consented to be examined by a physician only if her whole body was covered with only the vaginal opening remaining visible. Ellis also recorded another tribe in Africa where it was a punishable offense for a man to expose any part of his leg above the knee, "the wives of the King would attend his Court naked." One African tribe considered it shameful for a man to conceal his penis.According to E. Brecher (1969),  in his book The Sex Researchers, when a British anthropologist remarked on the nudity of the women in the Congo, a chief replied that "concealment is food for the inquisitive." Another British anthropologist commented with respect to Central Africa: It has been my experience that the more naked the people, and the more to us obscene and shameless their manners and customs, the more moral and strict they are in the matter of sexual intercourse."

Coercive sex (rape)

Rape is an emotionally-laden subject surrounded by myths and misunderstandings. While it is defined as a sexual act, it is primarily an expression of violence, anger, or power. Its victims can be male or female, very young, very old, rich, poor, mentally challenged, physically disabled, or able-bodied.  Those who rape are also a diverse group that defies classification.

The word rape comes from a Latin term (rapere) that means to steal, seize, or carry away. In ancient times, rape was one way to procure a wife: a man simply overpowered a desirable woman and then brought her into his tribe. The man then had to protect his property and his honor by preventing others from seizing or raping his wife. This appears to have provided the origins for the first laws against rape in which rape was viewed as crime against property or honour but not against women.

According to the Code of Hammurabi, a set of laws established in Babylonia about 4000 years ago, a man who raped a betrothed virgin was to be put to death. If a man raped a married woman, both the rapist and his victim were regarded as guilty and were executed by drowning. A similar distinction with a slightly different twist was found in biblical injunctions about rape (Deuteronomy 22:22-28): A married woman who was raped was seen as a willing accomplice, so she and her rapist were killed; a virgin was considered guilty only if she was raped in the city, since it was assumed that her screams would have led to her rescue. In contrast, a virgin who was raped in a field outside the city walls was spared, since no one could hear her screaming. If she was betrothed to someone, her rapist was stoned to death – if not, he had to marry her (whether or not she liked this arrangement didn’t seem to matter).

Later laws against rape continued to specify varying circumstances by which rape was judged as more or less serious. Penalties were higher if the woman was a virgin or high social class. Under William the Conqueror (1035-1087), a man who raped a virgin of high social standing was punished by castration and blinding. Guilt, however, was determined by trial by combat, or unless the victim had a champion willing to risk his life by fighting the accused rapist, she had no way of establishing her case.

By the twelfth century, jury trails replaced combat, as a means of determining guilt or innocence.  Yet all were not equal in the eyes of the law: A nobleman or knight could easily blame a rape he committed on one of his men and save his vision and chances for fatherhood. At the end of thirteenth century, two additional changes appeared in English Law concerning rape: the distinction between raping a virgin or a married woman was dropped, and the old custom of penitence through marriage was permanently banned.

Despite the legal system, rape has not always been regarded as bad. In wartime, from thousands of years ago until today, victorious soldiers have raped enemy- women. In literature, rape has sometimes been presented in heroic terms, as Ayn Rand did in The Fountain Head. In society, rape has often been practically defined in terms of the social positions of victim and victimizer: In the 1940s and 1950s for example, a white male was rarely charged with raping a black woman in the south, but a black man charged with raping a white woman was dealt with swiftly and harshly. Even today, in most jurisdictions, a man is unlikely to be charged with raping a prostitute, and forced intercourse between husband and wife does not “count” as rape in many countries.  The last few decades saw a great increase in public awareness of rape. The women’s movement played a major role in this process, raising issues and demanding improvements in services to rape victims.

Forcible rape is far and away the most common form of rape but, there are also several subcategories of forcible rape that can be distinguished, although most of these are not legally defined terms.  The solo rape is carried out by one man acting alone and often occurs in forcible date rape and mate rate. Gang rape is a terrifying form of rape involving two or a group of men, sometimes with a female accomplice, who take turns raping the victim. A rear form of gang rape involves several women raping a man. A more common version of gang rape is a group of men who rape another man rectally. The rape of men by men is infrequent among gay men and usually involves heterosexual men in prison.  There are also women who rape men although it is less reported.

Secularism and the nature of religion

The Nature of religion

One way to approach the question about religion is to observe the words we use in our talk about the subject. People seem to have an idea about the meaning of 'religion'. Some derive it from historical concepts and others share religious characteristics that are agreed upon as religion. Still others define the idea of religion by contrasting it with what it does not include. In short, we need to consider all the different approaches to religion in order to understand its' nature.

Western Religion

The Euro-American West created the term "religion" with reference to Christianity. During the European Middle Ages, the word religio in Latin and its derivatives in the other languages in Christian Europe had a meaning of piety; or the faith and action resting on a practicing member of the community. 'A religious' continues to mean a member of a religious order.

Early Christians were aware of their rivals and major challengers. They were the Jews and Muslims to the south and east of Europe. In the classical Mediterranean and in pre-Christian northern Europe it was the pagans. The term 'religions' were not used for these other traditions until after the fifteenth century. 

From the 1490s onward, ideas were enlarged through voyages of discovery and trade. With the invention of the printing press numerous books catalogued the ceremonies and customs of Asia and the Western hemisphere. The teachings of China and India were described as models of political and metaphysical wisdom, with an eye to reforming this or that position in Europe. 

When the Christian world of the West viewed other traditions, it sought to define them in terms of its own preferences on what it described. The desire was to pin things down as affirmations of belief. One identified oneself as a Christian by declaring such-and-such about God, Jesus, or the world. So the Christian observer expected the adherent of another tradition to have a corresponding set of beliefs. The Christian self-understanding imposed three of its own predilections on what it described.

Some of Asia’s great traditions, such as Buddhism, present substantial sophisticated, and challenging doctrines, but in the case of Shinto, for instance, statements of doctrine are difficult to find.

The first Christian predilection is  to expect every religion to have a systematic doctrine. It excludes a vast important range of humanity’s religious activity.

A second Christian predilection is to impose on all religion Christianity’s institutional distinction between the sacred and the secular. Christianity started with three centuries of minority status before receiving state patronage. As a consequence they became accustomed to the idea that some things belong to God   and other things to Caesar. One of the chief characteristics of modern times in the Euro-American West is the secular lifestyle that puts both intellectual and institutional limit on the range allocated to religion.

This however, is not helpful for understanding classical Islam. Islam did not have the Christianity developmental stage which took over 300 years of experience as a minority. Islam was launched in Arabia as a total value system for society, including its laws and commerce and warfare.  With Islam virtually any aspect of culture and civilization is relevant to religion.

Chinese thought dates back more than 2,500 years. The principal contribution of Confucius and his early successors was a humane social ethic what we might consider moral philosophy. Confucius made rhetorical references to Heaven but was agnostic about much of traditional religion and ritual in his day.

Confucius is closely parallel to the Greek philosopher Socrates. The tradition stemming from Confucius teachings became religious in the course of later centuries, when Neo-Confucians cultivated an inner personal spirituality and speculated on the ultimate nature of things.

A third Christian expectation concerning ‘religion’ is the notion of exclusive membership. That God should demand loyalty and tolerate no rivals is part of the faith of Judaism and was passed on to Christianity and Islam. Each of these three expectations has tried hard to separate the boundaries of its communities. The notion that if you follow one tradition, you cannot follow another is not always applied across southern and eastern Asia. For example, the early Sikhs were disciples of a teacher who saw God as transcending all forms, including the boundaries of human communities of worshippers. Sikhism was founded during the 15^th century by Guru Nanak and continued to progress through the ten successive Sikh gurus.

Three centuries after the 1490s the classification of religions remained fourfold in Christianity, Judaism, Islam and paganism. Over time , the category of ‘pagan’ expanded as new discovers in Asia, Africa, and the Americas were added to the literary record of the ancient Mediterranean world and folklore of pre-Christian Europe. By the same token, the initial descriptions, which were limited to rituals and ceremonies, expanded to include philosophically sophisticated doctrines which are included in some texts of Asian languages.

The category of ‘pagan’ was stretched to the extreme because of the increase of information about doctrines and other textual sources that precipitated the drawing of a new religious picture. One of the first books written in English devoted a chapter each of a half dozen major traditions that was written in 1846 by a Anglican theological scholar, Frederick Denison Maurice (1805 -72).

In the 1800s, the idea of the ‘great’ or ‘living’ or ‘world’ religions was launched; an idea that has continued to the present. The consensus has centered on a set of traditions that have been historically influential and that are still alive today. These are the three great missionary religions of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. It has often included the national religious heritages of Israel (Judaism), Iran before Islam (Zoroastrianism), India (Hinduism), and Japan (Shinto). It can also include two distinct communities in India (the Sikhs and the Jains) and two distinct teachings in China (the Confucian and the Taoist).  

There are three kinds of omitted traditions. One type is the religious life of tribal populations. It is fragmented and diverse, and its traditions are oral rather than textual. A second type includes the traditions that, no matter how sophisticated their doctrine or rich their mythology have died out. These include Manichaeism, the religions of ancient Greece and Rome, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, Mexico and Peru. The third type includes recent developments such as new emerging religions in Japan, introduction of Scientology, and the Baha’I faith.

Religion cannot be defined per se because each nation has their individual values and beliefs. They create their own doctrines and belief systems based on ideology and cultural myth.

How do you define sexuality?

There is no simple answer to the question of sexuality. Generally, the word sexuality has a broad meaning since it refers to all aspects of being sexual. It means a dimension of personality instead of referring to a person’s capacity for erotic response alone.

Our language for talking about sex and sexuality is limited. We may distinguish between sex acts (such as masturbation, kissing, and sexual intercourse) and sexual behavior (which includes not only specific sex acts but being flirtatious, dressing in certain ways, reading and watching pornographic material) without having scratched the surface of understanding sexuality. We may describe different types of sex as procreative (for having children), recreational (for having fun, with no other goal), or relational (for sharing with a cared-for person) and find our categories are still too few.

Research shows there are five dimensions to human sexuality; Biological, psychosocial, behavioural, clinical, and cultural.

Biological Dimension

Biological factors largely control sexual development from conception until birth and our ability to reproduce after puberty. The biological side of sexuality also affects our sexual desire, our sexual functioning, and (indirectly) our sexual satisfaction. Biological factors are also thought to influence certain sex differences in behavior, such as the tendency of males to act more aggressively than females. Biological forces are also responsible for sexual turn-ons, no matter what their source, produce specific biological events: the pulse quickens, the sexual organs respond, and sensations of warmth or tingling spread through our bodies.

Psychosocial Dimension

The psychosocial side of sexuality is important because it sheds light not only on many sexual problems but also how we develop as sexual beings. From infancy, a person’s gender identity (the personal sense of feeling male or female) is primarily shaped by psychosocial forces. Our early sexual attitudes –which often stay with us into adulthood-are based largely on what parents, peers, and teachers tell us or show us about the meanings and purposes of sex. Our sexuality is also social in that it is regulated by society through laws, taboos, family, and peer group pressures that seek to persuade us to follow certain paths of sexual behavior.

Behavioural Dimension

The behavioural perspective of sexual behavior allows us to learn not only what people do but to understand more about how and why they do it.

In discussing this topic, it’s important to avoid judging other peoples’ sexual behavior by our own values and experiences. Too often people have a tendency to think about sexuality in terms of “normal” versus “abnormal.”  “Normal” is frequently defined as what we ourselves do and feel comfortable about, while the “abnormal” is what others do that seems different or odd to us. Trying to decide what is normal for others is not only a thankless task but one ordinarily doomed to failure because our objectivity is clouded by our values and experiences.

Clinical Dimension

Although sex is a natural function, many types of obstacles can lessen the pleasure or spontaneity of our sexual encounters. Physical problems such as illness, injury, or drugs can alter our sexual response patterns or knock them out completely. Feelings such as anxiety, guilt, embarrassment, or depression, and conflicts in our personal relationships can also hamper our sexuality.  The clinical perspective of sexuality examines the solutions to these and other problems that prevent people from reaching a state of sexual health and happiness.

Two key changes have contributed to better understanding the multidimensional nature of sexuality; the training of professionals in developing knowledge of the multidimensional approach, and the development of a new discipline called sexology.

Cultural Dimension

Sexual topics are often controversial and value-laden, but the controversy is often relative to time, place and circumstance. What is labeled as “moral” or “right” varies from culture to culture, from century to century. Many of the moral issues pertaining to sex relate  to certain religious traditions, but religion has no monopoly on morality. People who have no closely held religious creed are just as likely to be moral as those whose values are tied to a religious position. There is no comprehensive sexual value system that is right for everyone and no single moral code that is indisputably correct and universally applicable.

It is a mistake to think that cultural viewpoints are ever frozen in place. Currently, there is some evidence that alarm over increasing rates of sexually transmitted diseases coupled with a growing trend toward political and religious conservatism, and celibacy may cause a shift away from the sexual permissiveness that prevailed in the 60s and 70s which also influenced modern attitudes to a degree. Many observers now believe that the so-called sexual revolution is over with a new era dawning that will emphasize commitment and fidelity in intimate relations instead of experimentation, instant gratification, and sexual variety.  But cultural trends are notoriously changeable, so there is no certainty how this new direction will evolve.  

Origin of penance

Penance is the voluntary self-punishment inflected as an outward expression of repentance for having done wrong. It is also a Christian sacrament in which a member of the church confesses sins to a priest and is given absolution. The old world form of penance is still practiced in some remote places, but it is slowly passing away with other ancient religious practices.

A strange and curious cult once practiced their rituals in the back country of the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) mountains during the forty days of Lent. The Sangre de Cristo is a sub-range of the Rocky Mountains located in Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico.

In the old days the penitents were devoted to the belief that “without physical suffering there can be no salvation.”  They believed that because most sins are flesh inspired they must be exorcized by way of the flesh.  For that reason they used whips to make themselves suffer, bleed, and sometimes to die. There were also other devices of torture, some of which were mechanical. For example, there was the Caretta del Muerto, the cart of death. It was a heavy plank and timber carrier set on wooden axles and equipped with wobbly, wooden wheels.  Representing death, it was built low and close to the ground. It carried an effigy serving as a black shrouded skeleton with a mask on its face, and bony hands that gripped a bow and arrow that was aimed toward its willing victim who was one of the penitents.  It was believed that God will honor the suffering and understand the heartfelt sorrow for the sins. The pain administered by the cart of death with its arrow is symbolic of every human who must die. The torture is inflicted by a rope affixed to the cart and which passes around the bare chest of the penitent. The cart loaded with stones, is the burden the seeker drags behind him as he trudges barefooted through the hills.  With bruised feet and bleeding breast he constantly laments and pleads “Penitencial! Penitencial!”  

It is a cry echoing back through time and vibrating to the same ancient key found in most of the world’s religions. In 13^th century Europe, Christianity had its men and women who scourged themselves for real or imagined misdeeds.

There were public processions in those days, particularly in Italy, in which the marchers furiously whipped one another as they proceeded to a church or a shrine. The practice later developed into a religious order, a brotherhood of masochistic sufferers called Flagellants, whose symbol was the whip and whose rite was self-castigation.

They did penance for the sins of the world, which in their minds, were replicas of Christ.  The members of the Roman Catholic Church frowned on such actions and sought to put an end to such practices by Papal decree. While penance could be understood and the infusion of a grace was recommended, the idea that ordinary men should torture themselves was beyond the purview of common sense. The action may be condoned in a saint, but such self-torture was never recommended to the laity by church, or state.

The Flagellants believed that tragic visitations were the acts of God. Natural disasters such as earthquakes and storms were manifestations of heaven’s wrath which demanded penitence.  At no time was this clearly demonstrated than during the 14^th century when the Black Death ravaged Europe and parts of Asia. In England the plague ran its course for more than a year. The plague was, to the Flagellants, either a judgment of God or a momentary triumph of the devil. But in either case, it was an indication the humanity needed to appease the One or shame the other.

Penance was one of the sacraments believed needed to be involved with the suffering of Christ.  Physical torture for repentance was practiced in some lay orders in Catholicism, called tertiaries, which consisted of people who, although living in the world, were seeking to be as devout as priests or monks or nuns. The Third Order of Saint Francis was such a group, and it was this Order that brought flagellation into the American southwest in1598, when the conquistador Don Juan de Onate, with his soldiers and friars, protected with the sword and cross, marched up from Old Mexico. In the wake of considerable slaughter of the natives, Don Juan built the first Christian churches in New Mexico. He blessed rivers, and christened villages with the names of saints. As he subjugated the heathen, he gave God the credit for overcoming the enemy who were equipped only with spears. His friars recited their rosaries amid the plundered villages and augmented the kingdom of heaven by great numbers of war-stunned prisoners and tortured slaves.

It was on a night during Holy Week, at the height on conquest, that Don Juan proclaimed a period of fasting and prayer to show the Lord that he was indebted to Him for past victories and to invoke His aid for future conquests. It was near Good Friday, when the wages of sin were usually expected to be paid that Don felt forced to set his own conscience free.

While the soldiers and Franciscan friars knew of Onate’s valor, only he knew his sins. Even in the midst of his conquests, Don Juan longed for the scourge, even when his spirit was being lifted up, he vowed to discipline the flesh. Remarkably, he went out from the camp with only his captain, Gaspar de Villagra, into the moonlit dessert where he fashioned a whip from the cactus and the fiber of the aloe and stripped his body to the waist. Clutching the flagellum in both hands , he struck himself first over his right shoulder and then over his left, whipping and weeping and crying out to God for mercy as he shed his own blood for the remission of his sins.

The Franciscans, when they heard his moaning supplications and cries, went to where he was. They made crowns of cactus and pressed them down on their heads so that they, also, might show their leader how greatly they sympathized with him. They threw off their mantles and bagged for the lash as they chanted and wept.  Then the soldiers came and lacerated themselves. It was said that the women and children walked barefoot over the cactus-covered ground and Captain de Villagra after observing the others, fiercely laid the whip upon his own back. All their cries, mingling in a single word, “Penitencia!” rose as an offering of their pain.

The last of the flagellentes traced their history back to the Third Order and Don Juan who were known as Los Hermanos Penitentes (the Brothers Penitent). They were found in towns along the Rio Grande between Santa Fe and Taos.

It’s been recorded that “the Penitentes are good Catholics, but they have their own peculiar emphasis on worship during lent.”