Religious Intolerance

Respect is something I strive for in other people’s belief systems: if they’re different than my own or even within my own faith. I try to respect those of different faiths, as well as those who seem to have no faith, whether they be atheist or agnostic (it seems a growing number of people are).

Lately I’ve been bombarded by postings where people seem to degrade those who have faith in a religion or belief system. The underlying tone is people of faith are stupid (paraphrasing the inference). I have trouble with this. To me stupidity comes in degrading someone else’s beliefs, not from a person who believes something you don’t.

I understand there is a tremendous movement going on in backlash to the religious [often Christian] right (at least in the images being thrown at me). Maybe you find these belief systems oppressive to women, the poor, the lower classes. Maybe you think mankind has been fooled into belief systems through man-made power structures or in some way taking advantage of a human need to believe or belong to something. Maybe you believe in nothing but science.

Denigrating others however is not the way to live a life.

Haunted by Ghosts

I’m not telling a ghost story, not that I don’t have them. It’s true that there were ghosts that frequented the rooms and halls of my college dormitory, but that will have to wait for another time.

There are times I feel haunted by ghosts. Not the kind that go clink in the night, the spirits of the departed, I have a working relationship with them. The ghosts I speak of are my own. They are not external entities, but internal to myself. This is about the ghosts that we carry around with us, the memories that haunt.

When I was growing up, times were different, our nation was different. I would hear jokes, often with racial epithets in them. As the world and I changed, I would grow more and more uncomfortable with what was being said, eventually telling people I didn’t want to hear the jokes. They were offensive. This is one of my ghosts.