Quote of the Day: On Faith

Faith dares the soul to go further than we can see.
– William Clarke

Tags: Quote of the Day, Faith

No Freedom Of Religion In Death For American Hero

Apparently our military is feeling a bit uncomfortable with the Wiccan Pentacle and has been a bit slow to approve it for placement on military grave markers (9 years and still counting). It’s o.k. to serve and die as a Wiccan but don’t expect the same respect as Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and atheists in death.

At the Veterans Memorial Cemetery in the small town of Fernley, Nev., there is a wall of brass plaques for local heroes. But one space is blank. There is no memorial for Sgt. Patrick D. Stewart.

That’s because Stewart was a Wiccan, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has refused to allow a symbol of the Wicca religion — a five-pointed star within a circle, called a pentacle — to be inscribed on U.S. military memorials or grave markers.

The department has approved the symbols of 38 other faiths; about half of are versions of the Christian cross. It also allows the Jewish Star of David, the Muslim crescent, the Buddhist wheel, the Mormon angel, the nine-pointed star of Bahai and something that looks like an atomic symbol for atheists.

Stewart, 34, is believed to be the first Wiccan killed in combat. He was serving in the Nevada National Guard when the helicopter in which he was riding was shot down in Afghanistan last September. He previously had served in the Army in Korea and Operation Desert Storm. He was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.

[…]

Wicca is one of the fastest-growing faiths in the country. Its adherents have increased almost 17-fold from 8,000 in 1990 to 134,000 in 2001, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. The Pentagon says that more than 1,800 Wiccans are on active duty in the armed forces.

Wiccans still suffer, however, from the misconception that they are devil worshipers. Some Wiccans call themselves witches, pagans or neopagans. Most of their rituals revolve around the cycles of nature, such as equinoxes and phases of the moon. Wiccans often pick and choose among religious traditions, blending belief in reincarnation and feminine gods with ritual dancing, chanting and herbal medicine.

Federal courts have recognized Wicca as a religion since 1986. Prisons across the country treat it as a legitimate faith, as do the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. military, which allows Wiccan ceremonies on its bases.

“My husband’s dog tags said ‘Wiccan’ on them,” Stewart noted.

But applications from Wiccan groups and individuals to VA for use of the pentacle on grave markers have been pending for nine years, during which time the symbols of 11 other faiths have been approved.[“Fallen Soldier Gets a Bronze Star but No Pagan Star” (WashingtonPost.com)]

Hat tip: Thudfactor.

Tags: Faith, Wiccan, Freedom of Religion

Blogthing: What’s Your Religious Philosophy

Hmmmm… I took this blogthing that I wandered to from James’ blog.
The strange thing is that the first time I took it I got:

You are Agnostic

You’re not sure if God exists, and you don’t care. For you, there’s no true way to figure out the divine. You rather focus on what you can control - your own life. And you tend to resent when others “sell” religion to you.

But by changing my answer on #3 from “There are simple scientific explanations for the universe” to “our soul will survive death”, I got: More

Tags: Faith, blogthings

How I Refused To Take A Commitment Pledge

When I was 18 years old, my whole life was pretty much centered around my little Southern Baptist church.  I know some of you might find that hard to believe.  It’s true though.

I’m not saying that I wasn’t pushing the envelop back then.  I was, but I was pretty secure in my Faith.  I just thought a lot of the “rules” the Church had were on the ridiculous side.  I thought the Church was a bit close-minded and uptight and I kind of thought that the Pastor and his wife were a bit choosy about which Bible verses they thought were important to pass on.

Now, when I say that my whole life pretty much centered around my little church, I’m not kidding.  I lived in New Orleans East, which wasn’t quite the city proper but wasn’t quite a suburb, and we had a mixture of types that came to our church from the projects to upper middle class — o.k. that was pretty much my parents. ;)  Most of my friends I was still speaking to after high school went to church there and we were all pretty much involved in whatever summer activities were going on from teaching or helping run the Vacation Bible School to participating in the Youth Choir to being active in the Youth Group — which was weird because my prom date was the Youth Leader — pushing that envelop, you know.

Looking back, I remember that summer rather fondly though it was the summer that my last by-blood grandfather died (complications from years of cancer from alcholoism and smoking).  Despite that one great sadness, I remember a lot of great friends who’ve since gone on with their lives, on to great things I’m sure.  I remember picnics and trips to the zoo and getting sent home from Vacation Bible School for wearing shorts (apparently teachers weren’t supposed to) and even getting ant bites while playing with the kids every day.  I remember loving choir and corrupting the missionary’s daughter by showing her rated “R” movies — she’d only had Star Wars to watch in the desert.  I remember semi-dating my ex-boyfriend’s little brother and I remember going to Astro-World.  I remember attending an all-African-American Baptist Church in Texas one Sunday and been amazed by their energy.  I remember being the center of attention and the Queen Bee and all of that too, I guess.

But I guess I also remember one Sunday that sticks out in my mind that just makes me angry.  You see, I didn’t always see eye to eye with the Pastor.  (In fact, there’s another story that about the choir going all boy after I left because I “danced” during our performance…they had to have an actual emergency meeting…it really was more of a sway…they shouldn’t have taken me to that all-African-American Church…but I digress)  It was no secret that the Pastor and I disagreed on a number of details in the Bible.  For many of his nitpicky things where he would find scriptures that would supposedly claim something was a sin, I would find something that would conflict with what he said.  Pastors apparently don’t like that.  He really should have talked to his Sunday School teachers because they taught me to do that.

Anyway, it wasn’t really like I was trying to fight him on everything so much as I just refuse to believe something “just because”.  Yes, I understand there’s a certain amount of Faith required in the God and salvation thing and I get that, but that doesn’t mean that I have to believe all the little things are true.  There’s nothing anywhere that says that I have to believe every word that comes out of my Pastor’s mouth, especially if I can find a scripture that disagrees.  It particularly annoys me if they use Old Testament scripture to tell me I’m a sinner when New Testament scripture tells me I’m not.

So, anyway, the Summer was ending and I guess he realized that his influence over some of us would be ending as some of us would be leaving for college and for some of us, he’d have a chance to gain influence because (and I know this sounds conceited but it’s true) I would be going to college and my influence over them would be gone — as I said I was Queen Bee, like a female Peter Pan with the Lost Boys.

Anyway, I remember that he started that sermon by pulling out this nasty jar of water that he said came from the canal outside (you know, those canals that overflowed into the city?) and he asked us who would drink it.  Anyway, the sermon was about poisoning your body and it was mostly about drinking and drugs and smoking and a little about premarital sex.  At the end of it he said he wanted to ask the youth to “volunteer” to come up to the front and make a commitment, a pledge, not to drink or do drugs or smoke or have premarital sex.  Mind you that he did this during the Sunday service, in front of everyone, in front of everyone’s parents and grandparents and school teachers and blah blah blah, and I didn’t really care because I was leaving.

My mother was sitting next to me and she turned to me as the music started playing for young people to wander up and she told me that I didn’t have to go up there because she thought that was just stupid.
My mother knew the person I was, the envelop pusher, the non-smoking anti-drug virgin who had a little wine cooler with her parents on special occassions.  My mom wanted me to protest by staying in my pew.

*sigh*

I’d like to say that’s what I did.

In the end.  My mother and I both bent to peer pressure.  I was the last person to walk down that aisle to the front, but I was the only one who didn’t open my mouth to recite anything at the front when the Pastor made the Youth recite the commitment pledge.

Mind you, I’m probably the only one who didn’t succumb in excess at some point to one of those four deadly sins that Pastor was so afraid of as here I am at 35 and I neither smoke nor drink and I’ve never done any illegal drugs and I’m the world’s oldest virgin but I know at least a few of those on that stage that Sunday who’ve had shotgun weddings, one has come out of the closet, and two have lived in sin before marrying different girls…Maybe those commitment pledge things put too much pressure on young folks?  Maybe it puts ideas in their heads?
Anyway, I think from that day forward that Pastor thought he was fighting the Devil for my soul.  Every Sunday I came home from college, he changed his sermon to something about the evils of alcohol.  Even my mom noticed.  If he’d only asked, I would have told him that alcoholism runs in my family, which is why I have no real interest in pursuing a lifestyle of clubhopping and blackouts.  *shrug*  I don’t need a pledge for that.

Tags: Faith

Why Is Jesus’ Virginity So Important To The Christian Church?

With all the hoopla over The Da Vinci Code movie coming out this month and the mainstream media and blogosphere reporting on the Teen “Virginity Pledges”, I have to admit I’ve been pondering the big questions about religion and faith and “The Christian Church”.

Mostly, I’ve been wondering what the big deal about virginity is. (As the World’s Oldest Virgin, I have the right to wonder.)

O.K. I get that Jesus’ birth was a miracle virgin birth signifying that only God himself could have actually impregnated Mary. I see where that is significant.

But what I don’t get is this big hang up by the Christian Church on Jesus’ virginity. Why is it so vital to their Faith that he be virginally chaste for 30+ years?

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Tags: Christian Church, Virginity Pledges, Jesus, Da Vinci Code, virgin, Faith, religion

Believing Absolutely Is A Dangerous Thing

Glenn Greenwald, author of the new book How Would A Patriot Act? Defending American Values From a President Run Amok, has written an excellent post on the anatomy of the thought process of Bush defenders today.  I often find myself reading message boards, comments and blogs with my jaw agape when confronted by the particular creature of Bush defender Greenwald describes, which is why I found myself relieved to know I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed that there seems to be a whole species of humankind out there (and mind you, I’ve noticed some liberal “moonbats” out there with similar traits) that seem to live in a world without facts or a world where the facts that conflict with their version of reality seem to bounce off of the fantasy-based rose-colored invisible field auras.

As much as anything else, Bush defenders are characterized by an increasingly absolutist refusal to recognize any facts which conflict with their political desires, and conversely, by a borderline-religious embrace of any assertions which bolster those desires. It’s a world-view which conflates desire with reality, disregards all facts and evidence that conflict with the decreed beliefs, and faithfully embraces any assertions and fantasies, no matter how baseless and flagrantly false, provided that they bolster the mythology.

Thus, things are going really great in Iraq - just as we predicted they would. When we invaded, Saddam had WMD’s and he was funding Al Qaeda. Oil revenues will pay for the whole thing, we will be welcomed as liberators, the whole war will be won quickly and easily. A large military presence is unnecessary because there is no insurgency. Bush is a popular and beloved President. All but a handful of radical fringe subversives in America support the war and believe terrorism is the overarching problem. Americans want to militarily confront Iran, want illegal warrantless eavesdropping, and are happy with how the country is being governed.

It never matters how much evidence arises demonstrating the falsity of these beliefs. They are not susceptible to challenge or reconsideration because they are the by-product of faith and desire and not a critical or rational assessment. They believe these things because they want to believe them, they have to believe them, because the whole world-view on which their identity and purpose has come to be based — the brave, heroic President leading the great conservative nation in glorious, epic war-triumph over the evil Muslim enemy — depends upon believing these myths. No facts can shake these beliefs because they aren’t grounded in facts and aren’t the by-product of rationality.

[…]

Doesn’t that pretty much capture the whole sickness? “There are facts that suggest that what I am saying is not actually true. What is my response do that? ‘What-ev-eh.’” As in: “Some people claim there are facts that show that things in Iraq are not going really great. Something about civil war, sectarian hatred, anarchy, widespread violence, a total lack of security. What-ev-eh.”

Don’t they have somewhere lurking in their brain any critical faculties at all? For the sake of one’s own integrity and reputation if nothing else, who would read an undocumented assertion on Drudge — no matter how much of an emotional need they feel for it to be true — and then run around reflexively reciting it as truth, writing whole posts celebrating it and analyzing it, without bothering to spend a second of time or a molecule of mental energy trying to figure out if it’s really true?

This intellectually corrupt syndrome goes back a long way and has been festering for a long time. Nuggets of deceitful, fact-free fantasy get planted in some cesspool like Drudge and then mindless followers who want to believe it start repeating it as fact, and then it gets ossified forever as conventional wisdom and can never be dislodged from their minds. That’s how Al Gore came to “claim that he invented the Internet,” how Howard Dean became a far left radical pacifist, how Jessica Lynch had a heroic shoot-out with Al Qaeda and was then rescued by gun-blazing Marines, how Moveon.org produced commercials saying that Bush was Hitler, how Saddam funded Al Qaeda and personally participated in the planning of 9/11. It’s even how the lesbian, Hillary, killed Vince Foster in order to ensure that their affair (or whitewater crimes or drug-running landing strip) would be kept quiet and, to this day, it’s how Bill Clinton was a wildly unpopular president.

Soon after 9/11, the Bush movement became driven by much more than a set of political beliefs. It provides its adherents with much more than just a vehicle for political activism. It gives them purpose and a feeling of strength and power that they otherwise lack. In that sense, it is not dissimilar to a religion, and it is therefore unsurprising — but nontheless ugly and destructive — that their beliefs and convictions are not grounded in facts and reality but in a resolute faith that cannot be shaken by facts. Every event is interpreted so as to bolster the faith, facts are disregarded which undermine the faith and fact-free assertions are embraced which confirm the faith. [“The anatomy of the ‘thought’ process of a Bush defender” (unclaimed Territory)]

I’ve often thought the last few years that politics is the new religion or the new racism.  Certainly I think that on either side of the political fence, it’s feeding into a need to believe absolutely in something or someone.  This is definitely a very dangerous thing for those of us in the middle, particularly those of us smart enough not to believe in anything whole-heartedly and to take everything with a grain of salt.  We may just get crushed or pulled apart in the resulting tug-of-war.

Tags: blogs, George W. Bush, moonbats, rightwingers, Faith, Glenn Greenwald

Quote of the Day: On God

“If there were no God, there would be no Atheists.”
– G. K. Chesterton

Tags: Quote of the Day, God, atheisism, Faith

Afghan Could Die For Christianity

Imagine living in a country where you cannot choose what god you want to worship or how you wish to worship or even if you wish to worship. Imagine living in a country where making that very choice could mean life or death. Imagine a country where owning a Bible or a Koran or a Torah could be a crime in itself. Imagine living in a country where you are considered a traitor or mentally ill if you convert to another system of belief.

KABUL, Afghanistan, March 20, 2006 — Despite the overthrow of the fundamentalist Taliban government and the presence of 22,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, a man who converted to Christianity is being prosecuted in Kabul, and a judge said Sunday that if convicted, he faces the death penalty.

Abdul Rahman, who is in his 40s, says he converted to Christianity 16 years ago while working as an aid worker helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

Relatives denounced him as a convert during a custody battle over his children, and he was arrested last month. The prosecutor says Rahman was found with a Bible.

[…]

Presiding judge Ansarullah Mawlazezadah tells ABC News a medical team was checking the defendant, since the team suspects insanity caused Rahman to reject Islam.

“We want to know that the doctors have given him a green light on his mental state, because he is not normal when he talks,” says the judge.

The post-Taliban constitution recognizes Islam as Afghanistan’s religion, and decrees that Islam’s Sharia law applies when a case is not covered by specific legislation. The prosecutor says under Sharia law, Abdul Rahman must die.

The judge, however, holds hopes for a solution.

“We will ask him if he has changed his mind about being a Christian,” Mawlazezadah says. “If he has, we will forgive him, because Islam is a religion of tolerance.”[“Afghan Faces Death Penalty For Converting To Christianity” (ABC News)]

When I look at my bookshelf with it’s dusty copies of a a variety of Bibles, including the Morman version, a book on Wiccan philosophies, several books of Eastern philosophers recommended by my late step-grandmother, and a growing interest in spiritualism, I wonder how I’d be preceived if I lived in such a country. After all, I certainly have questions about the church, about all churches, really.

I’m grateful I live in a country where I’m still free to explore my spirituality and hope it stays that way despite the religious-right’s recent attempts to take over.

However, I’m saddened that all these years after liberating Afghanistan, they really aren’t all that free. We’ve just changed the names of the people in charge.

Tags: Faith, God, Christian Zealots, Islam, Afghanistan

The Trouble With Hell

I believe there is a God, a benevolent Creator even.

And, yes, I believe in the Big Bang Theory and evolution too.

I believe in an afterlife too, but I start to have trouble when I think about the concepts of Heaven and Hell.

I just find it hard to believe that a benevolent God would sentence anyone to an eternity of pain for some infraction committed in such a short lifespan.

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Tags: Hell, religion, Christianity, God, Heaven, Faith

I Am Alive & Going To England

I appologize for seemingly abandoning this blog. The truth is that I’ve been distracted by more than a few things in my life:

• My grandmother’s death, as you know, took me somewhat by surprise and has caused me to do a lot of self-inspecting. Plus, I want to be there for my mother who I think took it a lot harder than me. Plus, the planning for the memorial service the weekend before Valentine’s Day in Florida.
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  Tags: Faith, God, Spirituality, migraine, wedding, England, paranoia, Samuel Alito, discombobulated, fibromyalgia

  2 comments See also in My Life, Politics & Causes, Friends & Family, Wellness, Discombobulated, The World, Faith, Migraine, Anxiety/Depression, Fibromyalgia

My Quest of Faith

My step-grandmother was Buddhist though she never flaunted it in front of my very Protestant family. One night in the hospital while my grandfather laid on his deathbed, the hospital chaplin chatted with my Vietnese step-grandmother about her faith. She told him that she believed that there is one God but that we all have and need different ways to worship him. Outside of her long lost eggroll recipe, this was perhaps the most important thing I could have ever learned from my quirky, sometimes mysterious step-grandmother.

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Tags: Faith

The Guilt of Compassionate Prayer For Death

My grandmother is in her mid-eighties and has been on a steady decline in health since the death of my step-grandfather four years ago. I suspect that the decline is at least a bit in part to a conscious or unconscious lack of desire to live without him. I have some resentful thoughts that she allowed herself to fall into this condition by refusing to take care of herself, a condition I suspect she was in before my step-grandfather’s death.

The nursing home she is in sent her to the hospital on Sunday as they were concerned she may have had a stroke. My mother also feels she is behaving as if she had a stroke but the hospital says the tests do not show this. However, she is now wasting away, barely eating, unable to speak in anything more than monosyllables, unable to sit up in a chair, unable to care for herself. She’s miserable.

In fact, she did not look all that well at Christmas when I visited her. She couldn’t keep herself from slumping. She complained about her back hurting her. She barely ate. She just stared at the world with blue eyes glazed over and mouth hanging open. She was skin and bones.

And I feel guitly that I have prayed to God that he ease her suffering and not prolong her life unnecessarily. Society doesn’t seem to encourage a person to wish for anyone’s death despite their quality of life. The Terry Schaivo Media Circus last year was clearly evident of that. We are supposed to demand that our loved ones hang on to every last drop of life, no matter how bitter.

And so I’m torn between wanting her pain and misery ended and the feeling that it is a horrible thing to wish anyone dead and mean it.

All I can think about is her laying in bed, trapped in her body, with nothing to do for hours and days on end but stare at the world going by. She’s in pain, she’s unhappy, and none of that is likely to improve. I know in my heart of hearts that this is one of my personal nightmarish fears for myself and that this must be torture to her. I just can’t bare to think of her spending weeks, months and years like this.

And I feel miserable thinking that the best thing for her would be to pass on.

Tags: Faith, dysfunctional family

Apparently I’m a Humanist

Well, the results of this quiz surprised me a little. I do believe in an afterlife and believe I am a Christian and I think I have a lot of faith in the spiritual; however, I do believe in working to make the world a better place…very, very interesting…

You fit in with: Humanism

Your ideals mostly resemble that of a Humanist. Although you do not have a lot of faith, you are devoted to making this world better, in the short time that you have to live. Humanists do not generally believe in an afterlife, and therefore, are committed to making the world a better place for themselves and future generations.0% scientific.
40% reason-oriented.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Tags: Faith

The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways

Last night I got to thinking about “what-ifs”.

For example, what if my parents hadn’t moved from New Orleans and what if I hadn’t moved from New Orleans.

The truth is that I would never have left New Orleans if I hadn’t lost my job in December of 2003. I would have stayed in New Orleans and I would have even stayed in the city for the hurricane. Yep. I would have been one of the stupid ones. I admit it. It’s a psychological control issue of mine that I like to know the status of my stuff, apartment included. If I survived Katrina — I have received conflicting data on my old neighborhood, but likely I would have weathered the storm fine but would have needed rescuing once the water rose — I would never have been able to mentally cope with the aftermath first hand. Between the General Anxiety Disorder and the OCD of needing to know what’s going to happen to me next, I would not have been able to cope at all.

Heck, I’m having some problems coping now and it’s not my apartment or my stuff that’s possibly lost or looted or damaged. I worry about my friends who’s lives are going to be on hold for months. I wonder about their future employment status, their reactions to the loss of their homes and things, their coping mechanisms. I have been anxiously reading through information on disaster recovery and asking my mother questions about what will happen next and I’m not in it.

I seriously think that this would have been too much for me to handle. Remember the old saying that God never heaps on you what he doesn’t think you can handle? I honestly believe that he moved my parents and then me out of the city because of this.

Don’t try to confuse me as to why he didn’t stop this. That’s another angle of philosophy I’m not ready to contemplate. I’ll just rest assured that God led me to safety so I wouldn’t have to try to deal with this on the front lines.

Tags: Hurricane Katrina, Me, Faith