Something To Think About
Here were are about a week from Christmas and yours truly - Ms. Ultra-Organized - has not finished shopping, has not put up the tree and has barely decorated. What decorations I did put up were torn up by the high winds of a week ago. Hopefully tomorrow I can repair the damage.
Despite the insanity, I have had time to ponder.
Thanks to a conversation at book club last night, I have been pondering religion, faith and spirituality. These are not all synonyms you know. Religion is an organized belief system, it has traditions and structure. Faith is highly personal and hard to define - something you have or you don't. Something you can find and lose several times in the course of your life.
Spirituality is more of a sense of being, a connection to something greater than the self, those rare moments of awe... this is where the soul lives. A person could be highly spiritual and yet not participate in an organized religion. Could be a profound and "deep" person of great compassion with a spiritual outlook but not have "faith" the way the believers of the world think of it. Consider the Dalai Lama, unarguably a spiritual person but not what many (in the West at least) would consider a person of faith - compassion is his religion he says. A Buddhist leader, his faith isn't in God per se so can it be called "faith"? He is a wise and compassionate human being and maybe that's enough.
The book we read was The Language of God and I do recommend it. It will get you thinking if nothing else. It looks at how science and religion do not have to be at odds. Written by the lead scientist on the Human Genome Project it is one man's journey (one scientist's journey) from an agnostic view to that of a man of faith. I enjoyed it and our discussion was very thought-provoking.
So at this time of year when we are surrounded by both commercialism and hymns, pulled from one event to another and searching for meaning perhaps the best place to find it is deep inside our own hearts. Where it has been all along.
Something to think about...
Despite the insanity, I have had time to ponder.
Thanks to a conversation at book club last night, I have been pondering religion, faith and spirituality. These are not all synonyms you know. Religion is an organized belief system, it has traditions and structure. Faith is highly personal and hard to define - something you have or you don't. Something you can find and lose several times in the course of your life.
Spirituality is more of a sense of being, a connection to something greater than the self, those rare moments of awe... this is where the soul lives. A person could be highly spiritual and yet not participate in an organized religion. Could be a profound and "deep" person of great compassion with a spiritual outlook but not have "faith" the way the believers of the world think of it. Consider the Dalai Lama, unarguably a spiritual person but not what many (in the West at least) would consider a person of faith - compassion is his religion he says. A Buddhist leader, his faith isn't in God per se so can it be called "faith"? He is a wise and compassionate human being and maybe that's enough.
The book we read was The Language of God and I do recommend it. It will get you thinking if nothing else. It looks at how science and religion do not have to be at odds. Written by the lead scientist on the Human Genome Project it is one man's journey (one scientist's journey) from an agnostic view to that of a man of faith. I enjoyed it and our discussion was very thought-provoking.
So at this time of year when we are surrounded by both commercialism and hymns, pulled from one event to another and searching for meaning perhaps the best place to find it is deep inside our own hearts. Where it has been all along.
Something to think about...
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