Belief and Society

I grew up a catholic girl going to catholic school, and singing in the church choir, I had a precious moment’s bible, and my mom collected precious moment’s status.  My grandmother worked at the church that we went to and I looked forward to running through the pews scraping the candle wax off of the wood.  I never questioned my faith as a young child. 

I got older and hit my pre-teen years, my nana and papa passed away, and then my mom and dad separated.  I started to think twice about this faith I had.  Then I was sent away to a different family when my mother was ill, after she died, I didn’t believe in anything specific.  I knew that since I had been involved in things that should have killed me, there were trauma’s that I shouldn’t have survived, so I was in effect agnostic.  I believed that there was something more out there but I no longer associated with any religion. 

One day as a teenage girl, I met a woman who introduced me to mythology, and older faiths.  I started to study them; at 17 I had studied Celtic beliefs, Wicca, Shamanism, Witchcraft, and Buddhism.  I looked into meditation and a variety of martial arts.  A close friend of mine practiced a spiritual belief centered around Quan Yin, so I was thirsty to know more.  I had studied Reiki and Tai Chi, and I was curious about their application of energy, it was so similar to Celtic magic, and even shamanism. 

The more I learned the more I saw the similarities between all of the beliefs.  I finally found faith again, only it wasn’t in one particular system, it was in all of them.  I went into college and I started to study sciences and I was afraid they would take away from the magic that I was experiencing, form the faith I had found.  Instead I found science enhanced it, it was very nice to have scientific explanations, but the knowledge is limited, and the mystery is still so overwhelming and I found that my faith was still intact.  

  

Someone recently told me that superstition and beliefs should have no place in society and indicated that anyone who thinks otherwise is moronic.  This was a backlash statement, its origin was from the fox News cause that went around, demanding an apology from Fox News (See the Response to Fox News in this blog).  I certainly give people a lot of room for their belief’s regardless of what they happen to be.  I myself occasionally go to a Baptist church and study a variety of other energy based belief systems.  I know people that are atheist, agnostic, wiccan, catholic, unorthodox Jews, Christians, and so on, and I would never try to steer them from their faith.  I believe that whatever faith feels right to you, and whatever speaks to your heart, is the right belief for you.  After all, the one thing all beliefs have in common is faith, and all of them seem to have some focus or another on energy, they just call things by different names.  So for someone to condescendingly indicate to me that I am less intelligent than they are because I have faith in something they do not is absurd.  Further, it is not the belief itself that causes issues in society, it is the person that insists that everyone else is wrong, or that their belief (or lack thereof)is the only one.  This is another issue of accountability, it is not the religion or belief system that is responsible for violence it is the people who conduct the violence, and the society that would rather blame a religion than hold an individual accountable.  It is the fault of society for not promoting education before judgment, for not promoting peace, for not facilitating good behavior.  Instead society breeds violence, and encourages ignorance.  So no, I don’t agree that belief’s should have no place in society, because belief’s help people get through things, they explain the unexplainable, and they offer a code of conduct and honor to abide by, a code of conduct and honor that is deteriorated in society.     

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