Find Religion

I write for a number of blogs and online newsletters, but rarely do they overlap in subject matter. However, today on my Bravo blog, I just had to take a minute to talk about last night’s episode of Kathy Griffin: My Life of the D-List and her hosting the Gay Porn Awards. How does this relate to religion? Well, the man pictured above said the following in his speech:

“As far as I am concerned, everyone one of you in the gay porn industry is doing God’s work.”

Huh?

Ok, seriously, that was so funny at the time, that it made me laugh out loud. God’s work is gay porn. Only in America.

But really, what the heck did that guy mean? I’m not bashing the gay community…it’s not gay porn in particular that had me wondering how it can be related to God. No, it’s just porn.

Now, we didn’t get the whole clip of the speech–we only got that little sentence. So, I don’t know. Maybe the man was talking about how gay porn is promoting tolerance. Or maybe he was talking about how gay porn is empowering for homosexuals. In any case, aren’t there better ways to do those things than watching porn?

Gay porn is not God’s work. If you enjoy to use this media in your home, that’s your private business. However, I think that we justify a lot of things we do in our everyday lives as “good,” just because they have a few good results (such as gay porn empowering homosexuals, etc). That doesn’t mean that these things are good! If you steal office supplies at work to donate to your church’s Sunday school, it doesn’t mean that stealing is God’s work. It means that you’ve not looked at all your options. Instead, why not spend time approaching businesses for paint and paper donations? Instead of promoting pornography, why not attend a gay pride rally or parade to show your support of this community?

I mean…c’mon people.

gay, gay porn, gay pride, homosexual, homosexuality, Kathy Griffin, My life on the d-list, Bravo

Last week, I took a week-long vacation (the first in a long while). I went to the beach with one of my best friends, my boyfriend, and my boyfriend’s two brothers. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that the beach is hard to leave. Staring out at the waves or relaxing in the sun while reading a good book are some of the most calming things I can imagine doing.

The beach allows me to understand why so many people follow nature religions rather than subscribing to more traditional Western religions (ie, Christianity, Islam, etc). If God isn’t one and the same as nature…than what is God? Isn’t nature the basis of religion in general?

My challenge for you today (or sometime this week if the weather isn’t cooperating where you live today) is to go out into nature and just reconnect with yourself. Leave the cell phone and ipod at home, and just take a walk. Read a book, think about your day, spend time with your family, or talk to God. Love nature and let it help to de-stress your life.

I’m back from soaking up the sun at the beach for a week (booooo), and before I return tomorrow, here’s the last post from a number of posts done by my bloggin’ friends! Today’s guest poster is Gillian Polack from Food Past. Enjoy, and thanks to all the wonderful guests this past week that allowed me to enjoy my vacation!

Explaining what being Jewish is can be quite difficult, especially in spiritual terms. Most people think of religion in terms of faith. When they find their spirituality, they often think in Christian terms. Christian terms are the ones we all share in the English-speaking world – they give us the outlines we can confront or accept or learn to deal with. Except that I’m Jewish, and from an Orthodox Jewish family. My spirituality is quite, quite different.

I’m not just from a family with a bunch of spirituality and a high level of observance, I’m Australian. I don’t even fit the outline of Judaism we mostly carry with us. It tends to be informed by US pop views. Don’t think Chaim Potok or Woody Allen. Don’t think American Jewish at all. The religion is the same, fundamentally, and the synagogue services are almost identical, but the everyday stuff and the spirituality we carry with us isn’t at all similar. If you translate religion into politics, my religion is leftwing compared with US Judaism being right wing, perhaps. (And I don’t speak for all Australians here – Australian Judaism is a lovely multicoloured and multicultured thing, with many, many facets.)

I discovered the difference between US images of Judaism and my own experience of it when I was a child and saw Fiddler on the Roof. It was a terrific stage play and movie, but it didn’t express much about who I was. I asked if it was about my ancestors. And I was given a ‘probably.’ This ‘probably’ turned out to be quite wrong. My ancestors are almost all city people, who were literate and spoke several languages. No rabbis in my ancestral heritage (though we might just get one the next generation down), but an awful lot of teachers and writers and musicians and business people. Placing my family in Sholom Aleichem’s stories, one of my cousins could be the left wing reformer who gets into trouble with the state and another could be the tailor and a third could be in the army: only one of the three had a Jewish identity in Fiddler, but all three are very Jewish in my family. Women and men alike in my family make active career choices and we do a vast range of things with our lives. We all share a need for service, however, which links to our spirituality – the idea of not doing community service or being political, or doing military service is the one that elicits surprise.

Our Judaism is an Anglo-Judaism, where the Jewish need to leave the world better than it was when we came into it is expressed through committee work and occupations like teaching and medicine and childcare. Where education counts and learning counts even more. Think ‘secular humanistic’ in US terms, and you have our values system, except we’re not secular. We live in the world and with the world and we’re quite, quite Jewish.

Jew, Jewish, Judaism, Australian, Australian Jew, Fiddler on the Roof

I’m out soaking up the sun at the beach for a week, so a number of my bloggin’ friends are guest posting for me! Today’s guest poster is Jean Lockwood from Parenting and Religion. Enjoy!

My personal belief of anyone looking for religion, is that they can find what they are really looking for only through relationship with God.

Relationship is a two way street. You can’t have a relationship with someone unless they participate. I am a Christian, and believe that God participates through communicating with us in many ways-Nature, other people, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is our way to God, He is the one who opens the door for us to have fellowship (communication) with the Father (God). Good relationship requires 2 who are willing to do their part. God has already done His part- sending a way to meet with Him through Jesus. We need to do our part- accepting the way He has made through Jesus, and fellowshipping with Him.

Some people think you have to use certain words or prayers to talk to God, but you don’t. You can talk to Him like you would talk to your best friend; open, honest, and from the heart. He knows everything going on inside you anyhow, so why not be honest? Relationship is about loving; offering and accepting forgiveness; giving encouragement; talking; offering and accepting forgiveness; and living in a way that honors the other.

How is your relationship/religion? I would encourage you to seek God, talk to Him, ask Him to show you how to find relationship with Him. He will you know.

religion, relationships, relationship advice, religious advice, relationship with god, god, Jesus

I’m out soaking up the sun at the beach for a week, so a number of my bloggin’ friends are guest posting for me! Today’s guest poster is DaveP from PopBuzzUK. Enjoy!

I was brought up vaguely Christian. By that I mean my family were Christian, and I went to a Church of England school, but I never really attended church. In Religious education, we were taught about the world’s major religions, although we were always brought back to believing Jesus was the Son of God, and that if you didn’t follow him, then you’d go to hell.

All the way through school, I had two problems with this. One was that straight after R.E. class, I’d walk in to a science laboratory and be taught about atoms, molecules, and the nature and origins of the universe. Hang on I thought, how could both of these theories I’m being told as gospel be true? I personally have as many problems believing in the big bang theory as I do believing that God made the world in seven days. There was clearly a man named Jesus around at that time, but are the stories attributed to him true, or legends passed down wrongly through many generations? I had a questioning mind at that age, and pondered these things often.

The other problem I had was the fact I saw religious conflicts happening on a daily basis around the world. During the day, I was being taught that Judaism, Christianity and Islam were all peaceful religions, and that harming other people was a major sin. Then I’d go home and watch the evening news where images of religious zealots were killing innocent people whose only crime was being different. Why has believing something different from someone else become a reason to hate and a need to wipe people off the face of the planet?

So my schooling had a big impact on me, and I now have my own beliefs that don’t really fit in to any particular mould. I believe in the evolution of our species, as discovered and explained by Charles Darwin. But I still don’t know how it all began, and I don’t even think we’re meant to know. I don’t believe in heaven and hell, but I do believe in an afterlife. If this is it, then it all seems a bit pointless, and my instincts tell me there is something far better on the other side of death. Or is that just hope? I don’t blindly follow any religion, but I do respect everyone’s right and ability to believe what they want to, so long as it doesn’t inflict on my life.

And the point to all this? I’m grateful that I received a rounded education, which gave me the knowledge and capacity to make my own mind up about these things. Surely that is the very meaning of educating children? And I’m fearful that with the rise of faith schools, kids will be indoctrinated in to one way of believing, without being taught there is even an alternative.

religion, religion in education, religion in schools, public education, god, evolution, creationism, creative, big bang

I’m out soaking up the sun at the beach for a week, so a number of my bloggin’ friends are guest posting for me! Today’s guest poster is April Gilford from Life as a Christian Woman. Enjoy!

When Allison asked for guest bloggers, I jumped on the chance and decided to talk about religious tolerance. Although in my own blog I concentrate on issues relating to Christian women, I believe that tolerance of others is a vital attitude for moving toward a more cohesive earth. Finding religion in everyday life is a spiritual journey, no matter where that journey begins or the name of the god[s] one believes is at the end. In order to practice acceptance and cohesion, we must first learn what it is we are tolerating.

The United States is at war with Islamic radicals. The Jewish nation of Israel exchanges fire with Palestine. Christians are arrested in China for religious practices. In the midst of all of these conflicts, the United Nations pushes for more global economies, trade agreements are signed between countries, and contact with nearly any person in the world is only a click away on the Internet. How do we reconcile functioning in today’s world-wide information age with conflicts raging over basic cultural and spiritual beliefs?

Peace will only come through understanding. Understanding other peoples will not excuse genocide and atrocities against women and children, or explain starvation, disease, and governmental dictatorships. But it is essential to opening the doors on these issues. If you take into account the thousands of religions and belief systems throughout the world, one element becomes clear in all of them: those beliefs shape the way in which that culture, family unit, or single person lives life. Whether subtle or blatant, beliefs contribute to actions. 6,000,000 Jews were killed for their religion during World War II. By the latter-1900’s, the Bororo Indians of South America drove themselves to extinction by their own fascination and obsession with death. For both cultures, in acting or being acted upon, they believed.

The purpose of my post today is to challenge you. Choose at least one religion other than your own or the one you grew up in and learn about it. What are the major tenets of that religion? In which geographical areas is that religion represented? What are three major events that happened in the history of that religion? How is that religion practiced outwardly by its followers? How is that religion similar to and different from your own? Find the writings or teachings of a leader of that religion and read them. To get you started, visit www.religionfacts.com, a website dedicated to archiving the major facts on religions of the world. As you learn a little about it, you can search for other sources on the web. Then come back here and let us know what your search revealed in understanding other people and their actions.

Allison challenges you everyday to find religion in your everyday life. Today, I am challenging you to find another religion and understand the everyday life of someone else.

religious tolerance, tolerance, religion, find religion, learning about religion

I’m out soaking up the sun at the beach for a week, so a number of my bloggin’ friends are guest posting for me! Today’s guest poster is Elisa Collacott from The Book Stacks. Enjoy!

It’s strange. Normally you think of God’s hand being evident in the big things of your life. You know, like when you finally meet the right guy or get accepted into that perfect, first choice college. When some major tragedy strikes, you rely on your faith to get you through it. You pray for guidance when making those big decisions in your life. All of these seem obvious parts of your walk with God, evidence of God’s presence in your life.

But sometimes we forget that if God is faithful in the big things, he can be faithful in the little things, too. Like that parking spot in the terminally crowded parking lot on the day that finds you at your wits end. The traffic light that turns green just when you need it to, because you know that the idiot coming up behind you isn’t going to stop in time. Even finding that thing that you put in a *really* safe place when you desperately need to locate it again. These everyday events are just as much examples of God watching over us as the more obvious things.

I see God’s presence in my life every day. The last two major car problems we had occurred right before a vacation. Seriously. We had to buy two new cars in the last year. My husband’s engine melted while he was on the freeway, but no one hit him and he made it all of the way home with an engine that really shouldn’t have been running at all. We got a new car that we could afford at the first place that we stopped to look, and we didn’t have to delay our Disneyland trip one day. My car got hit by a piece of large road debris halfway through my hour and a half commute. But I made it the rest of the way to work, and I managed to find a cheap enough version of the car I really wanted the following week during my first big vacation in an age. Obviously, these are some of the big things. But there are also days that I’ve forgotten my lunch and someone decides to bring food into work and the times I can’t find something (like my cell phone) only to find it where I needed it to be after I had already searched there.

Before you ask, no, I don’t think that I am experiencing favoritism (I wish.) I certainly don’t get everything I want when I want it. I’ve just noticed that things tend to happen when I need them to happen, even if I don’t understand at the time why they happened when they did. I am God’s wayward child. I may not understand his timing or why he loves me when I can be spectacularly stupid at times. God takes good care of me. If you think about it, I expect that you’ll find that he takes good care of you too.

God, car problems, rely on God, God takes care of us, God takes care of me, understanding God

Welcome to the July Religion in Everyday Life blog carnival. I’ve received quite a large number of great submission, and reading all of these various views on how we can find religion in every aspect of life is really interesting. Thanks to all who have submitted, and feel free to submit again for August!

Heather Flanagan presents Congratulations! It’s a God! posted at Visualize Possibilities. This post looks at how God can be born though us in every new moment. It is a playful article and definitely on topic.

Sundance presents Faith posted at A Girl Named Sundance.

Does the “abolition” of Limbo by the Pope mean all will eventually go to Heaven? Simon presents Does Pope Benedict XVI endorse apokatastasis? posted at Apokatastasis. He also presents The Hesychast and the Ten Commandments at the same site.

The Junky’s Wife presents The Junky’s Wife: A God I Can Embrace posted at The Junky’s Wife.

Brandon Peele presents Male v. Female Spirituality posted at Generative Transformation.

Ungraspable presents Top Three Writing Lessons From the Bible posted at Savvy Writer. This was one of my favorite submissions!!!

We are caught up working for security and stability. Hiyasmin R. Linatoc presents The Story We Live and Celebrate, Part I posted at Mind, Heart, and Mysteries.

Travis presents It’s a Party! Let’s get dressed!! posted at traviseneix.

Hakim Abdullah presents How Do Jews Pray? posted at Hakim Abdullah.

Sheppard Salter presents Reminiscing On Hiking posted at salterblog.com.

ChristianPF presents What is the ROOT of all evil? posted at Money in the Bible | Christian Personal Finance Blog. A discussion about one of the most mis-quoted verses in the bible.

Trust requires the ability to get outside oneself. Why do I find that so hard to do? Charles H. Green presents Trust, Freedom and Resentment posted at Trust Matters.

John Hill presents What Is Spirituality? posted at Universe Of Success.

Leslie Williams presents Do You Weary in Well Doing?: The Battle Belongs to the Lord posted at Do You Weary in Well Doing?. The battle is the Lord’s.

Ched presents Reminding the Redeemed of their Rescue: A Confession posted at Says Simpleton.

Why is it appropriate in American culture to harshly criticize Mormons & what is it like being LDS today? Kate presents I´m a Mormon & it´s ok posted at Kate’s Blog.

JHS Esq. presents Rediscovering What I Believe posted at Colloquium. Guest Author Robert W. Mattheis, Bishop Emeritus of the Sierra Pacific Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, discusses the way in which his faith and belief is evolving over time and raises thought-provoking questions about the manner in which faith is conceptualized.

Hopeful Spirit explains why we must practice tolerance toward each other in order to live peacefully and in harmony, and because it is a decidedly Christian trait. Monday Candle Moment: Tolerance posted at On the Horizon.

Diversity is part of the magic of Life. We all have our own paths in life, we need to practice non-judgment. Karen Lynch presents Freedom of Thought posted at LivethePower.

Tupelo Kenyon presents How to Keep Your Word posted at Tupelo Kenyon. Celebrate life through the creative power of your word.

Mark30 presents The Bible Can Help Your Marriage posted at Business Blog.

:: Suzanne :: presents he was listening after all posted at :: adventures in daily living ::.

Anmol Mehta presents My Baby Is Silencing My Mind posted at Mastery of Meditation, Enlightenment & Kundalini Yoga.

As always, the views expressed above are not necessarily the views I hold, but it is important to learn about various ideas when on a lifetime spiritual journey, and healthy discussion is always a plus, so feel free to leave comments either here or directly on the sites of the posts!