At 17 I refused to become confirmed as a Roman Catholic. The decision depressed me, but at the same time I remember being unable to commit to a belief in something I was so unsure of. The whole “faith is a journey” and I will grow and mature into it seemed like such bullshit to me. I was well underway on a different journey; the journey of the ( Read more... )

One of the greatest weaknesses of organized religion is that it is often devoid of true religion - that being a well ordered practice - and only a collection of opinions, called doctrine, and scheming political agendas. Organized religion is filled with zealous true believers who divide the world into the elect and the doomed and half-hearted ( Read more... )

 
One of the great gifts of Quaker spirituality is the art of listening. The insistence on creating a space for silence in one’s life allows a space to be created where deep listening can occur. It has been my personal experience that so much of the conflict in my life has been created because I was not listening to the other person in any ( Read more... )

This is a follow-up post to yesterday's "A Question of Faith." I have it cross posted at www.freedomfriends.org, a small Quaker meeting that I attended while living in Salem Oregon. Aliva, in addition to being my friend, is also the meeting clerk and a muscian. I always look forward to her thoughtful and insightful responses. Her response which ( Read more... )

I have a question for everyone. What is faith? How does one come by it? Okay, that is two questions…I have a friend who frequently asks me “How do you get faith?” She is an intelligent skeptic or agnostic who is desperately seeking answers to some very deep questions and she longs to have something to believe in.

If your friend came to you and ( Read more... )

Grace trumps karma! Maybe it’s the sign of my entering middle age or perhaps indicative of the fact that I am rather lazy but I am coming to appreciate the idea of divine grace. When I was younger I made the mistake of rejecting it because my understanding of God was of this whimsical, stern despot who demanded servile obedience and punished those ( Read more... )

Tomorrow I turn 40 years old. Actually I will make that turn sometime shortly after midnight this evening. I was really expecting to have a difficult time with this. But in the fresh light of a new day it isn't so bad...turning 40. Every year around my birthday I fall into a grand and dismal depression that lasts for a couple of days. By all rights ( Read more... )