Combating Inner Terrorism

[Guest guest]

, "NMadasamy" <nmadasamy wrote:

> [....]

> Combating Inner Terrorism:

> Strategies of the Goddess from the Devi Mahatmyam

>

> See link to get to the book store :

> http://www.shaktisadhana.org/Newhomepage/Resource.html

>

An interesting profile of the book and its author:

 

Hindu devotee to talk about book on forms of the Goddess

 

By Anna Kaplan

Record Staff Writer

Stockton, California [uSA]

January 06, 2007

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070106/A_LIFE/701060303

or

http://preview.tinyurl.com/yztvdo

 

When Rick Nafzinger was 14, some Hare Krishnas in the

Denver airport handed him a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, an

essential book of the Hindu faith. During the next two

weeks of family vacation, he read the book over and over.

 

That was the start of a lifelong spiritual quest for the 51-

year-old Stockton [California, USA] man, who recently

published a book of Hinduism-inspired daily meditations.

He will read and discuss the philosophy and religion behind

"Combating Inner Terrorism: Strategies of the Goddess from

the 'Devi Mahatmyam' " next Saturday at Borders Books in Stockton.

 

The center of his religious outlook - which draws from

Eastern and Western traditions, mainstream and alternative

alike - is an emphasis on Goddess or "the other half of the

divine."

 

Nafzinger leads the Circle of the Feminine Divine, a

Stockton group that takes an interfaith approach to revering

the feminine side of deities ranging from the Virgin Mary

to the Hindu Goddess Radharani to the Wiccan Earth

Goddess.

 

"Ninety-nine percent of the people who have spiritual

inclinations are going to congregations with a male deity,"

Nafzinger said, adding that he wants to change that.

 

Circle member Jim Buik, 76, used to be one of those

people. He had always been interested in religions that "see

the Earth itself as a mother" though he was raised Catholic,

the retired Stocktonian said. Buik spent a long time

unaffiliated with any specific religion, and now attends

Unitarian Universalist services in addition to Circle

meetings, where Nafzinger's ideas for the new book began.

 

"Combating Inner Terrorism" is a collection of daily

meditations inspired by verses from the Hindu scripture

Devi Mahatmyam. Nafzinger wrote these reflections in

temples and other inspirational sites around the world every

day for a year, and they are meant to be read at the same

pace.

 

Nafzinger's introduction to the female deities of India

might have started in that Denver airport, but his

willingness to accept God as a woman came much earlier.

 

He recalls once in his childhood overhearing his parents

arguing. He went to his room to pray and found himself

praying to a Goddess rather than a God.

 

"I knew that God the father wasn't fixing the problem, so

maybe the mother would," he said.

 

At 15, a year after the fateful encounter in Denver,

Nafzinger ran away from home and joined a Krishna

temple.

 

"It was just so different," he said about Hinduism. "I grew

up on a farm in Colorado. We had two different kinds of

people: Christian and Catholic."

 

It wasn't until a year and a half ago that Nafzinger finally

became ordained in Hinduism. In the meantime, he's also

been ordained in Christianity and Wicca, went to school in

South Carolina, ran a church in Denver, had five children

and worked his way up to finance manager at United States

Food Service in Livermore.

 

Nafzinger is currently the chairman of the Interfaith

Council of San Joaquin County, where he uses his

experience with these different faiths to bring people in the

community together.

 

"Rick brings a spiritual awareness that I don't think many

people have," said Gloria Morisaki, 49, Stockton Buddhist

Temple member and the vice-chair of the Interfaith

Council. "He has respect and understanding of all traditions

and faiths."