Category: Religion

Jun 17

Learning How Little I Know

study_5932cWhen I decided to register for the Religious Studies program at WKU, I was looking for classes on other religions.  In my somewhat arrogant opinion, I knew all I needed to about Christianity.  I did register for a class called Christianity last semester, thinking it would be an easy A.  When the main subject matter turned out to be about the writings of the early church and the format mostly group discussion, I dropped it.  The readings were difficult and time consuming.  I have a strong dislike for group projects.  I decided I wasn’t going to get enough new or important information from it to be worth the time it was taking.  I am 70 years old.  I’ve attended church all my life.  As a child, our family didn’t just offer thanks at the dinner table.  We had a daily devotional time before we ate every evening.  When my children were growing up, I taught Sunday School and Bible School.  I haven’t memorized the Book.  I cannot quote chapter and verse for random scriptures, but I know what Christianity is all about.  Do you see where this is going?  

Recently I decided that I wanted to make this blog about my spiritual journey.  Not exactly a theological thing.   Not a preachy thing or a missionary thing….more like a witness to the world kind of thing.  I feel I have something to say.  You can agree or disagree, I won’t get upset.  I don’t think it’s necessary for everyone else to see God the same way I do.  I do feel called to try and explain my own experience and where it has led me.  

As a part of the process, I had begun reading Bishop Spong’s, Sins of Scripture, but I got sidetracked.  I began to research the differences between the mainline denominations.  As a result, I have come to the humbling conclusion that I know very little about Christianity.  I know about my own denomination, the church where I grew up.  I know what I’ve come to believe over the years through various study groups and my own personal Bible study, but I know very little about other churches and what they preach.  I know a little bit of the history of the church.  Maybe more than the average person, but not all that I should.  

So, this summer, I am doing independent research and study.  I have purchased several books and I’ve been doing a lot of reading.  At the moment, I’m working on The Dovekeepers, a fictional story about Masada that I borrowed from the library.  I had heard about the refugees from Jerusalem who barricaded themselves into Herod’s stronghold and held off the Roman Army for three years.  Who chose, at the end, to die rather than surrender.  It’s usually thought of as a Jewish story.  The thing is, in 70 BC, Christianity was considered a minor Jewish sect.  So some of the people at Masada were probably Christians, they just weren’t answering to that name yet.   In any case, those early Christians definitely lived through the destruction of Jerusalem and fled as refugees into the surrounding deserts.  To understand ourselves, we need to understand the founding fathers.  Understanding them, requires learning about their history. ( Read more )

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Posted in Church, Creativity, Inspiration, Meditations, Religion

Apr 28

Sins of Scripture

imagesBishop Spong is giving me much food for thought.  I really don’t believe that God wants us to simply accept everything we are told about Him at face value.  I feel “called” to dig deeper, to study, and also to use the brain He gave me to think about what I find and use the logic He also gave me to decide what is “True.”   I can accept the idea that the men who wrote the books of the Bible were God inspired.  Even the men who chose which books to include may have been God inspired.  However, they were still men, subject to error in spite of that inspiration.  They viewed the revelations they were given through the lens of their own experience.  If you are exposed to an idea or vision outside your experience and knowledge, you must relate it to something familiar in order to understand it.

An ordinary man in 900 BCE could not conceive of a mechanical device that flew.  He would translate such a thing as a giant bird, a dragon, or perhaps a wheel.  The instruction to “have dominion over the earth” was seen as having power over all, not a responsibility to take care of it.  Woman as a “helpmate” became servant instead of partner.  But we, as modern people, with a wider, more scientific, understanding have a responsibility to look at the scriptures and re-vision them in the light of present day knowledge.

The result may drastically alter our religious viewpoint, but it doesn’t have to cancel it out.  Instead it can help us to see through the glass more clearly.  We’ll still be a long way from understanding the Almighty or His/Her plan, but we can come much closer than “scholars” of the ancient world because we begin with a better understanding of the world God made.

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Posted in Inspiration, Meditations, Random Thoughts, Religion

Apr 21

40 Days of Meditation

ascensionI had never thought of the day of Jesus’ Ascension as a holiday until this year.  I’m not all that familiar with Catholic holidays, but I don’t think very many Protestant churches in the United States celebrate the Ascension.  Oh, the minister preaches about it.  We know it happened between Easter and Pentecost, and we don’t deny its importance, but it just kind of gets lost somehow.

This year, probably because of my Religious Studies courses, I feel the need to spend some time meditating on our Christian rituals and holidays.  Several people of my acquaintance have annoyed me with their attitudes about Easter.  They have suddenly discovered that most major Christian holidays match up time wise with pagan festivals and also share many rituals.   Because of this fact, they think the Christian worship is being degraded.  They are re-enforced by the reaction of many conservative Christians who are horrified by this “news.”

Christians who delve more deeply into their faith than childhood Sunday School lessons already know this, have always known this and see it for the irrelevancy that it is.  We know that Easter has nothing to do with any pagan god or goddess anymore.  The word may have come from there originally, but that “god” died with its last believer.

As pagan people were converted to Christianity, they brought their traditional ways of celebration with them.  The people and the new focus of their worship were the important feature, not the origin of the activities.  Christians today, know they are not worshiping Ishtar and the timing of Easter is tied to the Jewish Passover season, not some pagan fertility rite.

As I dug into research to prove my thoughts on this, it occurred to me that we seem to be missing a very important day in our holiday lineup.  The day that Jesus ascended into heaven should be more important to us.  We should be paying more attention to it.  What it represents is a major part of our faith.  Without his Ascension, our hope of an afterlife would be a very different proposition.

There is no way for us to know for sure, at this point, what the actual date is, but tradition tells us it was 40 days after Resurrection Day.  So our Easter season should extend from Ash Wednesday, through the 40 days of Lent, to Easter and then another 40 days to Ascension Day, which is supposed to be on a Thursday.  This year that will be May the 29th.  Like Easter, it will move every year along with Passover.

During the 40 days between Resurrection and Ascension, Jesus did not go into the city or countryside to make new converts.  He spent his time in meetings with his Disciples instructing them on how they were to carry out His teachings.  On the 40th day, they watched Him ascend into Heaven.  Ten days later the Holy Spirit descended on them at Pentecost.

So, I am making a new commitment.  A promise to spend this time studying and meditating on my religion and what it means.  I recently bought a book by Bishop Spong titled The Sins of Scripture.  It seems like a good place to start.  I also have many other religious books that I and my mother before me have collected over the years.  I am sure I will have no problem finding material.  I’ll keep you posted.

 

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Posted in Church, Inspiration, Meditations, Random Thoughts, Rants, Religion

Apr 16

Digging Deeper

coexist-1_7aeaOne of the things I am getting from the classes I’m taking is a wider perspective on religion as a whole.  The book we are using for my current class is God is Not One by Stephen Prothero.  The text is broken into chapters that each cover a different major religion.  Most of them are the mainline organizations we are all familiar with, but it concludes with a strange outlook.

Prothero defines religion, itself, differently than I had ever perceived it.  He says religions aren’t, necessarily, about worshiping a god.  That, in fact, some religions deny there is a god.  I, personally, have trouble with that statement.  For me, if it doesn’t recognize a deity, even one I don’t believe in, we cannot call it a religion.

Prothero defines Atheism as a religion.   I am pretty sure most atheists would disagree, violently, with that definition.  According to this way of looking at religion, all that is required to make a religion is for there to exist four things:

  1. Creed – a statement of beliefs and values.
  2. Cultus – ritual activities.
  3. Codes – standards for ethical conduct.
  4. Community – a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

If we are going to accept these as all that is required to form a religion, then most corporations could be listed.  People who are employed by Apple, Microsoft, or Google would be members of those religions.  They share beliefs (that their company is better than its competitors), engage in ritual activities (attending work services on a daily basis), have a code of conduct, and share community with their fellow employees.

I think before we can define an organization as a religion, it must accept the concept of a “higher power,” a god.  It may not be the “all-powerful One” that Christians share with Jews and Muslims, but there must be some sort of supernatural deity involved.  Something that is worshiped, even if it is only Mother Nature or the Universal Mind.

A religion requires there to be something greater than the individual man or woman.  It may be closely defined in appearance with statues to represent it or as diffuse as the idea of a “higher power,” the Source, but without that Something, we do not have religion.  Without worship, there is only a political or social organization.

God is Not One is well written and provides interesting views on the various major religions.  I have enjoyed most of it, but I find the final solution problematic.  I understand that there are many ways of looking for god.  It is accepted that mankind has been searching for that “god” since history began.   That search is the purpose of all religions.  To define ‘religion’ as anything else is to lose sight of the search.

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Posted in For Your Consideration, Inspiration, Religion

Apr 07

Plotting a Path

This is my oldest website.  I say website instead of blog because it wasn’t a blog in the beginning.  It was a place for our family to post photos and keep in touch with far-flung members.  As time passed, we all grew more busy and the grandchildren grew up.  Posting here became sporadic.  Then it became nonexistent.  In the meantime, we had set up a company website for the part-time business my brother Jim and I engage in.  I finished my Creative Writing/Journalism degree and set up a writing blog.  Jim set up a website for his photography and, finally, we started a travel blog to allow family and friends to follow us on our journeys.   I had pretty much forgotten about this one.

Then something called me back to it.  At first, it made me sad.  It seemed that our family had drifted apart.  But, I realized that wasn’t true.  We were just using other methods of communication.  Hardly a day passes without texts being sent from one state to another.  Cell phone calls for support, instruction, or planning purposes are common.  Facebook pulls us all into its starving maw.  It warms my soul when I find something shared by one of my loved ones and my comment leads to someone else joining in.  We frequently engage in multi-state conversations that may include friends as well as family members.

So, it seemed time to re-purpose Mamaw’s Homeplace.  Instead of a family visiting center, that “something” urged me to make it a personal thing.  It began as a kind of memoir effort.  Talking about my life past and present.  As time passed, Something said it should have a more focused purpose.  That it should be inspirational.  The posts should be essays.  A place to publish non-fiction writing.  I argued that I already had Reading to Write for that.  That inner voice said, “But that’s mostly fiction.  This one should be about your faith journey.”  My immediate response was, “No, that’s too personal.”  The second excuse was, “I’m not qualified to discuss religion in a public forum.”

38.0201_449That “Something” then led me to the Religious Studies program at Western Kentucky University.   So, it’s been more than a year now.  I feel as though I have barely scratched the surface of what I need to know.  Still, Something is telling me it is time to begin.  I still feel that it is too personal and I am not qualified to tell anyone else what to think about religion.  So, I am trying to figure out where to begin and what direction to go in.  It feels like the most dangerous endeavor I have ever embarked upon.  I am not ready.   I may never be ready.

As I am re-visioning my school plans and trying to jump-start my stalled writing engine, I have filled out my editorial calendar once again.  I have scheduled a post on each of my four blogs once a week.  I have even chosen topics for the remainder of the month.  Mondays are for this one.  This week’s topic is supposed to be Disciples beliefs.  I was raised in the Disciples church, specifically the First Christian Church of Madisonville, KY.  I specify because Disciples churches are eclectic.  Our basic tenet is “Where the Bible speaks, we speak.  Where the Bible is silent, we are silent.”  The problem starts when we try to define what the Bible says and what it means for today’s world.  So, I must first state that my opinions, my view of things, do not, necessarily, represent the Disciples Church Per Se.

It’s kind of like the disclaimer we are familiar with on TV.  The opinions of this speaker do not represent the station that she comes from.  Because our church professes to be “a servant church welcoming all persons to the journey of knowing and experiencing God’s love and grace” it does not tell us what we must believe, but expects us to study the Bible, pray for guidance, and explore the writings of a variety of religious leaders from all corners of the world.  My church gave me my foundation.    I have used that foundation to build my own inner place of worship and prayer.  It may not always be comfortable for my fellow travelers.  It’s not always comfortable for me either.  Still, I hope to be part of the “movement for wholeness in a fragmented world,” that most Disciples churches endeavor to create.

Some weeks, this may still be more about memoir than religion.  Sometimes it may descend into a rant against things in our  society that frustrate, irritate, or infuriate me.  If so, please have patience and I promise to recover my self control.  But, woven into the mix, there will be a thread of Faith.  I may not succeed.  I don’t promise to please.  I can’t swear to always be correct or even consistent.  I do swear to try and be as honest as I can.  This is as much a journey for me as for anyone else.  I still feel uncomfortable when I consider exposing my inner thoughts about my faith to a world that can be cruel and judgmental.

In spite of that trepidation, I plead for your comments.  Because I come from a Christian background, my attitude and opinions will be colored by that.  However, as I study all forms of religion, I am interested in other viewpoints and discussions as well.  I promise to listen to any reasonable disagreements and respond in a like manner.  I am still learning.  I hope to learn from others as I attempt to impart my own thoughts and meditations.  I am looking to engage in conversation, not preach sermons.  Let us seek a peaceful way of coming together.

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Posted in Church, Creativity, Current Events, Inspiration, Meditations, Religion

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