The shrine is an institution which has no exact parallel in the west, dedicated not to a supernatural deity or an unworldly saint, but to that most secular of things, an administrator.
Hence religious objects, like the spectacular Antioch chalice, which depicts Jesus and the Apostles seated among coiling, grape-laden vines, are contrasted with things secular: cheaply produced, suavely sgraffitoed ceramic plates (think Picasso); griffin-shaped copper-alloy lamps; cast-iron steelyard weights in the forms of Athena and a Byzantine empress.
Whether this is a cyclical recession or a secular downturn where things are changing going forward, it's not the end of the world.
But the guys we're with, from East Balochistan, are Marxist-oriented and secular, of all things.
Here is the one thing the secular State, by definition, cannot do -- and the one thing that could make all the difference in the world.
Also, there's plenty of room for debate: In this part of the world, the term "secular" means very different things to different people.
Indeed, there was no grail and no sacrament; at the end, Kundry, no dumb servant, led the way to an enlightened future, one in which sexual love would presumably have a place in a balanced, secular, rational scheme of things.
But that does not mean that Jews cannot live there; and he concedes, when pushed, that if the Palestinians chose to make a gift (hebeh) of part of it for a Jewish state, that would be their affair.Open to the worldQom or at least the idea of Qom sums up many of the things the secular mind finds frightening about Iran's revolution.
It might be tempting to dismiss all of this as a new-age hippy fantasy, but the fact remains that the globalization of yoga is doing some very good things that secular skeptics in India might not be aware of.
