Cultivating Charismatic Power by Tiffany Cone

Author:Tiffany Cone
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783319747637
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

21st—9 am—six people to go to Zhoujiazhuang (small village)

22nd—11 am—eight people to go to Jinsui Garden Community

Usually after the midday prayer, the dangjiaren would make these visits out in the community (often at the invite of a family to commemorate the deceased or read and explain scripture). During such time he would often take chujiaren and some students with him if he needed any assistance. If guests arrived at the gongbei, one or two students would usually be asked to assist Ma Yufang in preparing cups of tea and dishes for them, and they would often stand quietly in his meeting room while they chatted. Some students also assisted in preparing the meals and running errands during the day to collect food and drink.

Afternoon classes continued from 3 pm until 4 pm with an hour of Persian language drills. Sometimes the dangjiaren would come into the class near the start or the end to make announcements about upcoming tests or just to observe students in their work. Between 4 and 4.30 pm, they broke for afternoon prayer (buli). The day’s classes finished with a discussion from 4.30 pm until 5 pm, concerning a variety of questions often related to religion and ethics. At 5 pm the students would chat with younger chujiaren in the meeting room, or together in their classroom, before taking a short break in their dorms.

Around 5.45 pm, the dangjiaren would usually come into the kitchen and chat briefly with any students or chujiaren present. After sharing dinner together, he would remind the students to attend to their ablutions in preparation for prayer at 6.30 pm. Everyone would then attend the early evening prayer (hunli) in the worship hall. Emerging from this prayer, some of the students would sit together in the meeting room for about half an hour, keeping warm and discussing plans for the following day. At 7.25 pm they would return to the worship hall to perform the final night prayer (xiaoli). This would conclude about 7.40 pm, and the students would usually return to their dorms to rest.

While students were not seeking charismatic power in the same sense as the dangjiaren and chujiaren of the gongbei, they were partaking in their own pathways of charismatic distinction. Students were very explicit to me in their desire for self-cultivation and the ways in which the dangjiaren inspired them. They also recalled to me stories of miracles performed by deceased saints. Ma Yong was a 23-year-old student who had family connections with the gongbei and had studied there for several years. With the support of the current dangjiaren, he was now studying at the Lanzhou Islamic College. After he had finished college, he wanted to study again in the gongbei and then overseas if possible—but knew that this ‘wasn’t guaranteed or easy to do’.2 His daily routine was very similar to those of the students at the gongbei, but his classes focused mainly on Arabic language, not Persian: ‘Here (at the Islamic college), every morning I

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.