I've been able to see and experience a world of religion and culture through my family.  While most of our heritage has been from Euro-Christian ancestry, we have evolved to include many diverse cultures and religions.  I have both Jewish and Islamic cousins.  My family includes people who came from not only Germany, Hungry, and America (native), but Ireland, Scotland, China, Iran, Lebanon, South Africa, Spain, and Australia.

I am very fortunate to have these people in my life.  They have taught me a great deal about their religions and the places they came from.  Weddings and funerals have been filled with joy, sorrow and learning, so have holidays, picnics, and family gettogethers.

Maybe it was the way I was raised, or maybe it is from living in a plural society, but we always accepted and loved everyone that was brought into the family.  If someone we loved found joy and beauty in another, we were happy for them and wanted to share the joy they had found.  The only thing I would consider foreign about my family is the idea that one would want to do harm to another simply because of what one believes or where they came from.  That would be truly foreign.

My experiences with religion are through the bits and pieces of learning I gained through my family.  I also had the good fortune of living in a diverse community.  I also, spent eight years studying karate, which was probably the closest thing in my life to organized religion, even though it is not a religion.  Through all my experiences with religion, there was an aspect common to them all.   They all taught how to conduct ourselves in mind and amongst the rest of the world.  Peace and balance.  Peace and balance within ourselves.  Peace and balance amongst each other.

This is why I don't spend much of my time and energy on things like anger and hatred.  Again, maybe it's just me, but I find that these negative types of emotion, and actions born of them, go against the teachings of any of the religions I've had contact with.  Sure I feel anger, I've even known hatred, but it is more toward situations and actions than it is toward another being.  Experience and teaching have steered me toward acceptable ways of dealing with negative feelings.  This is why I will never understand or accept the views that people and nations are exhibiting toward each other in this world that we have to share.  And I thoroughly reject any leader, especially religious leaders, who advocate hatred and death toward another in the name of god.  This is a perversion of what any religions' true purpose is.  Life and the living of it.

tags: family  diversity  religion  peace  the revolution begins  

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