Colors
The Destroyer
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2007
- Messages
- 1,276
- MBTI Type
- ISTP
- Enneagram
- 5w4
- Instinctual Variant
- so/sx
I performed some extra credit for my Psych class (the only class I'm not in danger of completely flaking out on aka concocting an escape plan from)- extra credit in the form of attending and participating in a women's interfaith dialogue. DOOM- but the alternative was reading The Last Lecture. A book that I guess is supposed to be a love letter of life lessons from terminal-cancer-guy to his kids. That sickeningly starts off by telling them how perfect his parents made his childhood. Misery loves company. And company loves it. This exalted effusiveness can stay alone.
I dragged along my best friend so I wouldn't be the only "young" person in the room and at least one person wouldn't dismiss me as a god-rejector. I guess I have a bit of a complex. It can be hard not to feel like you're being condemned or pitied for being as you were born. Or does magic Jew mitochondria make you repulse the taste of pork? De-methylation of the gene that believes in demons when you get exposed to the holy Catholic wafer?
The room was small and the participants consisted of some Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Buddhists (and me the atheist raised Buddhist). The topic was prayer (and meditation) to be discussed at the smaller table groups of 4-6 people. The people there seemed to want to create this sort of "oh wow, within different traditions we all are people and want to feel the spirit of the world within ourselves" environment. Which is all well and good (and obvious that we are very similar cause we all are humans) but is it meaningful? Does the shared spirit of faith change the clashes that arise when the individual content of the religious belief is applied in the shared world?
My friend said what she missed most was the joy and the fun of group singing prayer in school when she was a child in Israel. So much of what ties us is culture. In more heterogenous societies, where more culture is built outside of religion, does it force it to change more of out of the traditions and into the philosophic?
I dragged along my best friend so I wouldn't be the only "young" person in the room and at least one person wouldn't dismiss me as a god-rejector. I guess I have a bit of a complex. It can be hard not to feel like you're being condemned or pitied for being as you were born. Or does magic Jew mitochondria make you repulse the taste of pork? De-methylation of the gene that believes in demons when you get exposed to the holy Catholic wafer?
The room was small and the participants consisted of some Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Buddhists (and me the atheist raised Buddhist). The topic was prayer (and meditation) to be discussed at the smaller table groups of 4-6 people. The people there seemed to want to create this sort of "oh wow, within different traditions we all are people and want to feel the spirit of the world within ourselves" environment. Which is all well and good (and obvious that we are very similar cause we all are humans) but is it meaningful? Does the shared spirit of faith change the clashes that arise when the individual content of the religious belief is applied in the shared world?
My friend said what she missed most was the joy and the fun of group singing prayer in school when she was a child in Israel. So much of what ties us is culture. In more heterogenous societies, where more culture is built outside of religion, does it force it to change more of out of the traditions and into the philosophic?
