Music by Daughter
Aha! I’ve finally done it. I said ‘this is what I’ll do for
the month,’ and actually followed through… at least for the first week. Maybe I
just find researching religions and spirituality interesting.
This week, my focus was on Islam, as it’s the second largest
organized religion practiced throughout the world. I was interested in it also
because this religion is at the heart of many controversies in the states and
the Middle East. It was fascinating reading up on it; I was ignorant, as it
turns out. Many things about the Islamic faith have been blown up in the media,
such as the extremist side of it. But at its core, it’s a simple monotheistic
belief in a God who had prophets on the planet to guide us. That’s just the
base line, as I came to understand. A lot of things branch out from there,
separating Islam from other major religions. One thing I looked into a bit more
is the Sunni and Shi’a situation. Turns out that started all because Muslims at
the time couldn’t agree on which religious leader to follow after the ‘last
prophet’ Muhammad. From there, it only escalated.
Interesting, for sure, but I won’t go into details. I’m no
expert.
If anyone’s interested in getting into the nitty gritty of
it all, you can go here
and explore.
Something I want to explore more myself is the idea of
spirituality vs. religion. As I mentioned in the last note, I thought they were
kind of the same thing. If you start researching online, many articles pop up
on the subject, but they’re all so biased. The Christian websites all say
spirituality is the part of Christianity that enhances your relationship with
God. Those on the other side of the fence say everything positive about
spirituality- like being kind to other humans, having inner peace, etc.- while
saying everything negative about organized religion- i.e. being forced into it,
being asleep throughout life, being stifled, etc. This is going to be something
I’ll have to figure out on my own, instead of looking for an answer somewhere else,
or from someone else.
Innnteresting.
-Jamie
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