Saturday, September 03, 2005

Me and The Church Lady

The neighborhood Church Lady asked today if I intended on going to church to pray for the victims of Katrina. The lady got upset with me when I told her that I did not attend church, and that I pray in my home everyday, I pray on the subway on the way to school. I pray before I go to sleep or sometimes while star gazing. She seemed to feel that because my prayers were not church sanctioned with Holy Communion and hymn singing that my prayers were worth less than hers. I went on to explain to her that God and I have an understanding we don’t have a set schedule. My prayers to God are like e-mail he’ll be going about his business and all of a sudden he’ll hear “ You got prayer” and he knows it’s me. We’re cool like that he and I.

I am not a religious person but I am a spiritual person. The two I believe don’t necessarily go hand in hand. I am not a follower of organized religion. I find it hard to find comfort in institutions that claim we were all created in God’s image and then in the next breath say that certain members of the population are an abomination. You have a right to your views, but don’t start quoting the Bible. Throughout history the Bible has been used by the self-righteous to support their views...it was used to support slavery, as well as discrimination towards women. The Bible was written by mortal men and as such their personal opinions, prejudices crept in and yeah I really do believe Eve was framed.

I do believe in a higher power. I just don’t feel the need to be inside of a building staring at icons as I listen to a sermon in order to prove my faith.. My church is where ever I sit or stand and choose to thank God for what he has given me and the gift of life. I don’t believe that confessing my sins to a man who still has Altar Boy on his breath will keep me in good with God. What if God’s pissed at him and I don’t get forgiven due to guilt by association? How I prove my devotion is between the head cheese and me.


My parents were raised Catholics, they attended parochial schools. My dad a practicing Catholic was even an altar boy until the age of 18, and no he wasn’t molested. My mother until the age of 14 wanted to be a nun but she left the church over irreconcilable differences. I was taught the Bible, and the commandments and all that good stuff. I have always found comfort in God it’s just that organized religion as it exists today is not for me. By no means am I a scholar but I’ve studied various religions and from each of them I’ve been able to gleam something and apply to it my life, make it part of who I am. From each of them I learned empathy and forgiveness. I life my life by a simple a simple credo;Do unto others... treat them with the same love, respect, tolerance,and compassion as I would wish for myself. She said that my feelings would cause me to be judged and sent to hell . I told her I doubted very much if when the day comes that God would judge me based on the number of times my knees graced the pews of the church. Somehow I feel that I will be judged by how I lived my life and how I was able to affect others. God created us with free will and as such he understood my aversion to organized religion and seemed to be having no problem with the way I was living it after all there once came a time when I was close to death and he chose to let me live. I believe in evolution and that we each were born to fulfill a purpose on this planet.
I am slowly discovering mine and working towards it. The lady went on to tell me that I had neither ethics nor morality because of my views. I watched her get hot under the collar as we spoke and I told her, “You insult me and my upbringing and I turn the other cheek and forgive you and that seems to make you angrier. Let me ask you this, of the two of us based on this conversation which one of us is actually honoring God’s teachings? She looked at me angrily and walked away calling me a heathen. Somehow I think The Church Lady isn't too happy with me at the moment.

Labels: religion

Posted by @ 1:57 AM
4 comment from:  programmer craig,  ritzy,  programmer craig,  ritzy,