"God has not placed two hearts in the breast of any man."
Quran 33:4
This very short, but profound, passage is drawn from the 33rd surah, al-Ahzab, here rendered as "The Parties." This coming semester I'll be teaching a section of Sacred & Secular at Champlain, which is one of the choices in our second year, sometimes referred to as the "western year." The descriptor itself is an oversimplification because there's always room to sneak non-western stuff in, and some people went rogue really early and gave their versions a more global theme (it could be anyone, really, just folks who struggle with rules). Our decade-old Core curriculum, which is in the process of being disassembled, had a certain inherent logic: self to community to west to global. The second year courses focused on things that made the west, well, the west, which is why the course Sacred & Secular was designed. In many cultures/religions there is not, at least philosophically, a clear distinction between the sacred and secular worlds (Nasr makes that point between those two worlds in Islam in his brilliant book The Heart of Islam). However, it's always been an essential part of the western experience, which we often attribute to the Enlightenment or the Renaissance but maybe it truly goes back to that moment when Jesus drew a distinction between the worlds of Caesar and God. Above, the point is made that, "God has not placed two hearts in the breast of any man." As Nasr reminds us the related commentary in the Study Quran: "That one cannot have two hearts is also understood as a reminder that a heart preoccupied with one thing is distracted from anything other than that; so a heart preoccupied with this world is separated from the next." (p. 1019) Is this why faith is often so hard in the west? There are two clearly defined worlds that on the surface seem equal, although the world of faith doesn't seem as entertaining, of course. However, I guess theoretically, the challenge of choosing between the two worlds, or even just balancing them, would make the "right" choice more meaningful.
Quran 33:4
This very short, but profound, passage is drawn from the 33rd surah, al-Ahzab, here rendered as "The Parties." This coming semester I'll be teaching a section of Sacred & Secular at Champlain, which is one of the choices in our second year, sometimes referred to as the "western year." The descriptor itself is an oversimplification because there's always room to sneak non-western stuff in, and some people went rogue really early and gave their versions a more global theme (it could be anyone, really, just folks who struggle with rules). Our decade-old Core curriculum, which is in the process of being disassembled, had a certain inherent logic: self to community to west to global. The second year courses focused on things that made the west, well, the west, which is why the course Sacred & Secular was designed. In many cultures/religions there is not, at least philosophically, a clear distinction between the sacred and secular worlds (Nasr makes that point between those two worlds in Islam in his brilliant book The Heart of Islam). However, it's always been an essential part of the western experience, which we often attribute to the Enlightenment or the Renaissance but maybe it truly goes back to that moment when Jesus drew a distinction between the worlds of Caesar and God. Above, the point is made that, "God has not placed two hearts in the breast of any man." As Nasr reminds us the related commentary in the Study Quran: "That one cannot have two hearts is also understood as a reminder that a heart preoccupied with one thing is distracted from anything other than that; so a heart preoccupied with this world is separated from the next." (p. 1019) Is this why faith is often so hard in the west? There are two clearly defined worlds that on the surface seem equal, although the world of faith doesn't seem as entertaining, of course. However, I guess theoretically, the challenge of choosing between the two worlds, or even just balancing them, would make the "right" choice more meaningful.
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