Diversity Calendar -- April 2008

From Ed Horvat, chaplain at Mon General Hospital, and member of MCMA...

Anyone without a soul friend is a body without a head. –Old Celtic saying

In terms of our discussion, sin occurs when self-image and personal willfulness become so important that one forgets, represses, or denies one’s true nature, one’s absolute connectedness and grounding in the divine power that creates and sustains the cosmos.
–Gerald G. May in Will & Spirit, p233.



HINDUISM – April 6. New Year’s Day. Bikarami Samvat 2065 begins.

MORMON – April 6. Anniversary of the official organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in 1830 CE.

NATIVE AMERICAN (Local) – April 7. Public lecture and book-signing with reception for renowned Native author Leslie Marmon Silko. Gold Ballroom of the Mountainlair. The reception starts at 6:30 p.m., the lecture and book-signing will start at 7:30. Free and open to the public. Hosted by the WVU Native American Studies Program and co-sponsored by The Carolyn Reyer Endowment for Native American Studies, the Department of English, and the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. www.wvu.edu/~nas

BUDDHISM – April 13-14. The Saka calendar’s New Year’s Day is a religious and cultural celebration for Sinhalese, Indian, Burmese, Kampuchean, Laotian and Thai-Americans.

HINDUISM –April 13. Ramanavami celebrates the birthday of Rama, the seventh incarnation of the God Vishnu. Hindus read the Ramayana, a Hindu epic, which tells the story of Rama, during the previous eight days.

HINDUISM – April 13. Vaisakhi, first day of the solar year, is an agricultural festival celebrating the harvest.

JAINISM – April 18. Mahavira-jayanti celebrates the birthday of Lord Mahavira (Great Hero), the religious seer of the 6th century BCE, whose teachings of compassion and renunciation have formed the basis of the Jain Tradition.

CHRISTIANITY – April 20 - 26. Holy Week (Eastern Orthodox Churches following the Julian calendar) begins after Palm Sunday, which celebrates the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Holy Thursday celebrates the institution of the Lord’s Supper by Jesus. Holy Friday commemorates the Passion of Jesus Christ and his submission to death by crucifixion.

JUDAISM – April 20 – 27. Pesah, or Passover, commemorates the departure of the Israelites from Egypt. Celebrated for eight days, the first two and the last two days are holidays (the first and the last days are holidays among Reform Jews). Pesah begins at dusk (before sundown) on the previous day, April 19.


BAHA’I FAITH – April 21 to May 2. Ridvan commemorates 12 days that Baha’u’llah spent in the garden of Ridvan during his exile in Baghdad and also when he proclaimed himself as the one announced by the Bab. The annual elections of the local spiritual assemblies in each Baha’i community also occur at this time. On the first, ninth and twelfth days of Ridvan, work is suspended.

NATIVE AMERICAN (Local) – April 24. Joint presentation and book-signing with two WVU Native American Studies faculty, Dr. Cari Carpenter, author of Seeing Red: Anger, Sentimentality and American Indians; and Dr. Carol Markstrom, author of Empowerment of North American Indian Girls: Ritual Expressions at Puberty. 5 PM in the Robinson Reading Room at the downtown WVU library www.wvu.edu/~nas.

CHRISTIANITY – April 27. Pascha [Easter] (Eastern Orthodox Churches following the Julian calendar) celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ as a message of hope and victory over death. The oldest and most important Christian festival, it initiates the fifty-day period culminating in Pentecost.

ZOROASTRIANISM – April 30 to May 4. Ghambar Maidyozarem celebrates the creation of sky and the harvesting of the winter crop.

NOTE The above is not a complete calendar and is intended only as an example of some of the kinds of festivals, holy days, and religious observances of America's many religious communities. It is composed from sites for interfaith calendars on the web and the Multifaith Calendar 2008, published by the Multifaith Action Society of Port Moody, British Columbia, Canada.