|| YOUNG & FOOLISH ||

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Fancy Hotel Bathrobes and Faith

Wowness. I am in utter shock.
I was going to write to you all out there about the return of Gary and Chlamydia - but no, when I went to go check the "Ben Lee Blog" this morning, i nearly fell off my chair.

The other day, Ben Lee wrote... "i always chuckle to myself over the way people argue about religion and spirituality. were all praying to the same god. its a bit like drinking from different rivers that all are connected to the same ocean - they all have the same source."
And I commented back saying something about different gods in a single religion...

AND THEN!!! today I do my daily ritual of checking emails/blogs/ben lee-ness and I see he has written this...

FAITH
after my sweeping statement about the essential unity of all spiritual/religious beliefs, em raised an interesting point:
"But what about the religions that don't particually prey to a specific "god" or one at all?"
here is how i see it.
in ancient india, people worshipped a myriad of different gods. often these would be represented physically by an image or idol. some people would even see divinity in a stone, and dedicate their whole lives to that "stone". to them, that was god. yet there was a general harmony between people of the "hindu" faith - you wouldnt have in-fighting about which god, image or stone was a better representation of the divine! the point was, that it wasnt the particular "god" that was important, it was the faith evoked in the believer's devotion. it was the intensity of that faith that created peace in the life of the devotee.
i think we can learn a lot from this. in my opinion, no one in this world is a true atheist (not believing in anything). everybody believes in something. it can be god, money, surfing, music, relationships, knitting, thai food....whatever it is, everyone knows the feeling of faith and devotion. its this faith that will bring us peace. so even though one particular religion or practise might not acknowledge "god" in a literal sense, they still have an idea, or a ethical structure that they believe will bring them joy. this is their faith.
i dont sweat the details. when i meet somebody, the part of them that i really want to connect with is their faith. if they are an obsessive toy-train collector - thats what i want to hear them talk about! i want to witness the depth of their passion. i try to focus less on the object and more on the experience. every spiritual text is essentially a story of faith (and then surrender - but thats another blog entry), and the great spiritual minds of history all teach the same thing - that through finding your faith, you can move mountains.
on that note, im going to find some breakfast.
big love
bl

Insightful stuff eh! BUT DID YOU SEE THE FIRST PARAGRAPH!?!?! Let me refresh your memory... "em raised an interesting point" - YEY!!! (that's ME!!!)

Heh. excitement. Apparently I am also the proof that Ben Lee reads the comments people leave. Because there has been much argument about whether or not he reads them. And well, HE DOES!!! YEY!!!

Good point about being an athiest though. I mean, if you put love and passion into one single thing then pretty much in general you are putting your entire soul into it. Whether it being music, romance, or even just life and surviving. Something that has been in the news a fair bit recently is Poverty. People in extreme poverty wouldn't have anything like "money, surfing, music, relationships, knitting, thai food" and in some cases i would assume they would have given up on "god" and religion, so what else to they have to put their entire soul and love into, but life - and living, and trying to survive on the little they have. (not that I'd call life little, but compared to fat old us in middle class suburban melbourne - but hey.)

- Em and her stone xoxoxo

p.s and i think Ben Lee has been to this blog. how embarrassing! (although it could have been someone else in america that looked at his blog like 20 mins before he posted that post.)