What a pleasure it was to read your November 2005 issue. I salute the Urbanite staff in putting together such a wonderfully diverse and open issue about spirituality.

In my seven years of research in the Baltimore area that led to my book, If I Gave You God's Phone Number, I too found a rich tapestry of voices and beliefs that spoke to the God experience. One learning that I arrived at was that all of us do indeed have our own unique relationship with God.

What surprised me when I did the interviews and when I led discussions while promoting the book was not only how spiritually hungry so many people are, but how many people hunger to talk about their spiritual experiences in a safe venue. Time and time again, in bookstore discussions, total strangers opened up and talked about their personal awakenings or experiences, but they also stated that they usually never talked about these because they did not feel safe doing so.

When I read in Lea Gilmore's guest editor essay, "I love the joy and freedom of knowing that what I believe is what I believe, what you believe is what you believe, and that is what makes us so darn wonderful," I wanted to especially honor and thank Urbanite for such openness.

—Mare Cromwell is a writer and environmental consultant who lives in Dickeyville.


Another Way to Worship

I found your November 2005 issue, specifically the two articles "The Topography of Faith" by Tom Waldron and "Portraits of Belief" by Jason Tinney, very interesting. I would like to make you aware that there is a growing number of people in Baltimore, in particular African Americans, who embrace and practice the religious/spiritual path of their cultural heritage. Here in the states it is known as Orisha worship, Ifa, or Lucumi. The tradition has also survived in Brazil, Haiti, Cuba, and Trinidad, and there are practitioners in Germany and China. It continues to spread all over the world.

More often than not, this African-centered belief system is overlooked, denounced as pagan, or simply dismissed. I am not saying that the authors of the articles attempted to do this, but it always seems that only mainstream religions or spiritual paths are recognized and given attention, while African-centered spirituality remains overlooked. This is something that I would like to change. If diversity and tolerance are to be effective, there should be an effort made to include what may not be mainstream, but is certainly no less valid.

The spiritual path that I am describing is at the core of the Yoruba people of southwest Nigeria and eastern Benin who speak Yoruba, a Niger-Congo language. As the executive director/founder of OYO Traditions Cultural Arts Institute in Baltimore, I have worked for years researching, preserving, and presenting to others the culture and tradition of Africa and the diaspora. We have conducted several sacred rites and celebrating ceremonies for the greater public so as to inform them of what our religion is and what it is not. I respectfully ask that for any future articles on religion/spirituality you would also include this religious practice that has been around since the beginning of time.

—Iyaolorisha Ogunronke is the executive director and founder of OYO Traditions Cultural Arts Institute and a priest of Ile Ogun.


Meditating on Change

In response to the article "The Pathology of Murder: Is Homicide a Health Problem?" by Bill Mesler (November 2005), I wanted to write to you regarding a solution to this problem that has already been documented to work.

The Crime Vaccine: How to End the Crime Epidemic , Jay B. Marcus's 1996 book, explains how developing consciousness and systematically reducing the impact of stress can effectively end this health problem.

Perhaps there would be room in future issues to present some of this exciting work that has so much potential to help eradicate this huge problem we face in Baltimore.

—Janet Smith is the director of the Maharishi Enlightenment Center of Baltimore. She lives in Lutherville.

For more information, visit the websites for Institute of Science, Technology, and Public Policy (www.istpp.org) and the Transcendental Meditation Program (www.TM.org).


Corrections

Map, please! In the November " Home " department, we mistakenly placed Hamilton in northwest Baltimore. It is located in northeast Baltimore.

The December "Editor's Note" stated that the text that would become the Archimedes palimpsest was written by the mathematician in the tenth century. It should have read that the text of Archimedes was copied in the tenth century.

In the December "Have You Heard" department, we misspelled the name of Shananigans Specialty Toy Shop owner David Stelzer.