Guru Purnima

Sadly, this is one of the longest running ideas in my blog drafts folders. It’s sat there through two Guru Purnima holidays. At one time there was even a few paragraphs written.

My intention was to write about the beautiful spiritual traditions of the Himalayas and pay homage to my guru. I spent a beautiful Guru Purnima with the family this year at the Meditation Center in Minneapolis, complete with puja and all. This year once again I found this post staring at me from my drafts folder. I just couldn’t seem to write it. This month of August found me with two other failed posts, half or mostly written that just weren’t going where I wanted them to. I have something that needs saying that has been pushing all other creative juices aside.

Who Has the Right to Judge Another’s Religion?

I’ve been spending a lot of time keeping up with things I’m interested in like Haiti earthquake relief, New Orleans Hurricane Katrina relief (yes, it’s still going on) and others. I have friends in both of these places, so it’s a bit personal for me.

The news media is often silent, misinformed or disrespectful. The stories on Vodou are rare indeed, even though many people practice it. When they are published, naming the religion without capitol letters is not just disrespectful, but shows how uneducated some journalists and editors are. To make things worse, they sometimes are inconsistent with whatever standards they’re following. I have a hard time believing the AP stylebooks says to capitalize the name of a religion 25% of the time in your article, but not the other 75%. I understand the spelling is a difficult point without universal consensus. Some people of the faith like it spelled Vodou, while others have variations on how they spell it (Voodou, Vodun, Vodoun), but almost everyone who follows this religion does not call it Voodoo. Voodoo has generally been relegated to Hollywood mythology.

I can’t tell you how sick it makes me feel that people are being denied food by faith-based charities because their religion isn’t yours. Doesn’t seem very charitable. Further, people stoning priests and priestesses surely isn’t an act of compassion. And they have the gall to say that Vodou is evil. Some people need to look in the mirror.