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.

Spirituality in the North Woods

I had the pleasure of going to a new friend’s cabin in the boundary waters canoe area, the north woods of Minnesota last weekend. This in and of itself is a grand adventure, a vacation complete with lake, canoe, sauna, fire and good friends. But the friends weren’t common, they were quite unique. This excursion was a meeting of the minds and the sharing of souls. Drew Jacob, a Celtic Polytheist priest, B. T. Newberg a Humanist Pagan (is priest or shaman a better description) and myself, Oungan of Vodou.

We not just spoke to one another around the campfire, we recorded it for all to hear. Come experience the north woods, the crackling of the fire, the canopy of stars and the three of us, talking religion and spirituality, man to man. All within the framework of what it is to experience, what our encounters of nature are.