Religious ramblings
(Yes, I do actually think and write on occasion about something other than work, school, and the Potterverse.)
My inbox is making me think this morning. One email is from the Chuang Yen Monastery, giving their schedule for April, when they reopen to the public. (They close to the public Jan-March every year for safety reasons.) The very next email is from my mother, with a link to a book review or something she's just done in a very conservative Catholic magazine. A few emails above, there's one from The Hellenic Temple of Apollon, Zeus, and Pan with info on their events. Other than the uber-conservative part, that kind of sums me up.
It's been almost a year since I decided that I was no longer finding what I needed at UUCN and couldn't cope with the politics and infighting if I wasn't actually getting anything in return, and I have yet to exactly figure out what I want in a spiritual community. I know I need one. A large chunk of my practice will always be solitary, but without a spiritual community apparently I drop off from having a spiritual practice at all.
I wish CYM were closer. I'm too much of a theist, polytheist at that, to make a good Buddhist. But if there were someplace I could go regularly for structured meditation sits and yoga that is more focused on the spiritual aspects than the physical fitness aspects, I think it would do me a world of good. I may not know exactly what I want in a spiritual community, but I do know that I need the positive peer pressure that a good spiritual community provides, and it needs to be one I can participate in physically/geographically.
I also need one where I can be on the fringes and not get instantly drafted to do a million things. That's a good bit of what went wrong at UUCN. Join, end up on worship committee in less than a year, end up chairing worship committee soon after, deal with minister leaving, hiring new one, firing new one, dealing without one, throw up hands and give up because if I can't get my spiritual needs met when I'm the bloody worship chair then obviously I can't get them met here at all. Ironic that a CUUPs group has finally been established, and now the one who's been "resident witch" since 1999 leaves, but I actually seem to fit in less well with CUUPs than the larger congregation.
I've almost decided that I'll go for their "Intro to Buddhism" day on April 28. Not because I'm planning to become any more Buddhist in my outlook than I already am, but because I could use a day of going over the basics, many of which do inform my spiritual path, and could definitely use being sat down to meditate, which I am apparently incapable of doing when left to my own devices.
My inbox is making me think this morning. One email is from the Chuang Yen Monastery, giving their schedule for April, when they reopen to the public. (They close to the public Jan-March every year for safety reasons.) The very next email is from my mother, with a link to a book review or something she's just done in a very conservative Catholic magazine. A few emails above, there's one from The Hellenic Temple of Apollon, Zeus, and Pan with info on their events. Other than the uber-conservative part, that kind of sums me up.
It's been almost a year since I decided that I was no longer finding what I needed at UUCN and couldn't cope with the politics and infighting if I wasn't actually getting anything in return, and I have yet to exactly figure out what I want in a spiritual community. I know I need one. A large chunk of my practice will always be solitary, but without a spiritual community apparently I drop off from having a spiritual practice at all.
I wish CYM were closer. I'm too much of a theist, polytheist at that, to make a good Buddhist. But if there were someplace I could go regularly for structured meditation sits and yoga that is more focused on the spiritual aspects than the physical fitness aspects, I think it would do me a world of good. I may not know exactly what I want in a spiritual community, but I do know that I need the positive peer pressure that a good spiritual community provides, and it needs to be one I can participate in physically/geographically.
I also need one where I can be on the fringes and not get instantly drafted to do a million things. That's a good bit of what went wrong at UUCN. Join, end up on worship committee in less than a year, end up chairing worship committee soon after, deal with minister leaving, hiring new one, firing new one, dealing without one, throw up hands and give up because if I can't get my spiritual needs met when I'm the bloody worship chair then obviously I can't get them met here at all. Ironic that a CUUPs group has finally been established, and now the one who's been "resident witch" since 1999 leaves, but I actually seem to fit in less well with CUUPs than the larger congregation.
I've almost decided that I'll go for their "Intro to Buddhism" day on April 28. Not because I'm planning to become any more Buddhist in my outlook than I already am, but because I could use a day of going over the basics, many of which do inform my spiritual path, and could definitely use being sat down to meditate, which I am apparently incapable of doing when left to my own devices.