The Church & Religion

This could be such a huge subject so I will try to keep my focus fairly narrow so this blog entry dosn't turn into a book.

I talked about spirituality in my last post and what it means to me from a non-religious point of view. This time I would like to talk about spirituality from a religious point of view. I am by no means an expert on this so I will just stick to relating through my own experiences.

In my childhood, I was brought up to believe in God. That has been something that has stayed with me all my life. I have had doubts of course. There have been times when things have gone bad and I wondered how this could be allowed to happen. But as I have grown up and my understanding of things has matured, I have come to believe that what we do and what happens is ultimately up to us.


When I was still quite young, my grandmother passed away. At the time, my mother was pregnant. There was a lot of talk about  whether the baby would be a boy or a girl. To me, a 9-year old at the time, I didn't understand why people were even questioning this. The baby would be a girl of course. Grandma had just passed away so it only made sense to me that the baby would be a girl. And, no surprise to me, I have a sister.


Tonight I attended an early Christmas Eve service. When I looked around me, I saw a church that was about half full. There were no more than 10 children and most people there were a fair bit older than me. What does this say about the future of this church and many others? Where does religion fit in our lives these days?


What I heard at the seravice was someone reading from a book that had been read aloud so many times that the words seemed to be robotic and no longer held any feeling or meaning. When I go to church, I want to understand what is going on and I want to feel something about being there - something in my heart. I didn't feel that. I felt very little. The people around me looked like they were there because they felt obligated to be there.


A little over 20 years ago I was fortunate enough to be involved in a church that was like none other I had ever come across. The congregation of this church were giving beyond belief, caring and supportive. There seemed to be no preconceptions about anyone or even any other religion.

Upon joining this congregation, my family and I were welcomed with open arms. Over the course of a few years I became quite involved in the life of the church. I started out as an adult server. I then became responsible for training the student servers. After a few months of doing this, I was asked if I would lead the youth group. A year later, I was honoured to be asked to join the church council and become a chalice bearer.

As I got more and more involved, these people continually amazed me with their caring and giving attitude. Here was a group of people whose primary concern was what they could do to help through outreach to the community and through charitable organizations that were in involved in places like Africa. It seemed to me that as we took care of the things that really mattered, everyday things like building maintenance fell into place with just a bit of extra organization. My time with this church was one of the best experiences of my life.

When I moved to another town quite some distance away, one of the first things I did was to find a church and present a letter from my old church council and offer my services to do whatever I could to help. It seemed at first that this was going to be appreciated. Sadly, it didn't take long before I discovered that the main focus of this church seemed to be the building itself. I also quickly found that new ideas were not welcome - there was a way things had been done for years and there was no good reason to change them now. To top this all off, it was in this church that I first came across the syndrome, "THIS IS THE WAY AND THE ONLY WAY". It was not long after this that I left this church and did not go back.



The one thing that has always bothered me the most has been those people who say that THIS is the way. My question for them has always been, Who told you?? The answers I have gotten when I have gotten any at all have been things like, "How can it be any other way?" or my favourite, "I just know." I would like to know where they get their information from. Again I have to say, "Who told you?"
 
For myself, I have decided that the best policy is to keep an open mind. Over the last few years, through reading, from other people and from personal experience, I have come to believe in a bit of a mixed bag of things. I don't believe that I am one of those people that say, THIS IS THE WAY.


Is this what is happening to religion today? Is relegion dying out? What can be done to draw people back to the church? Maybe people are finding their way in a different way these days rather than the old traditional religions. Maybe people are finding their spirituality in other ways. Maybe they are finding it from within their own hearts. Maybe this is where we should start from in the first place.
 
I guess you can take the topic of religion in just about any direction. I am quite comfortable with where my belief system is right now but I think that I have an open mind about things. I will alway be revisiting this subject many times in my own mind and thinking about what religion means to me.

A Good Foundation

I have been working on my health improvement for just about 2 years now. For the last year of this little journey, I have been taking Karate.

Initially I was looking at this as nothing more that a way to improve my fitness. I have noticed that as the last year has gone by, I have been working harder and harder at Karate. I have also been doing a fair bit of reading. Not just about karate, but the martial arts in general.

There are many references to the SPIRITUAL side of this art form. When I say spiritual, I don’t mean religious. I have always believed that the Martial Arts did involve the body and mind but did not really understand just what that meant or how deep the meaning could be.

For the last couple of weeks I have noticed or more like felt a change in my thought processes involved when I am working out or practicing. I knew it was there but I really didn’t know what IT was until this week.

In the past Sensei has asked me to lead the class through warm-up. I was honoured and happy to do this but I felt very self contous and awkward doing it. I think Sensei noticed this. It has been a while but this past Monday Sensei again asked me to lead the class through warm-ups. This time was very different.

I felt no anxiety or self contousness at all. I led the class through a routine that is very familiar to me because it was basically what I do at home almost every day. I shared some of my thoughts and reasons for certain exercises with the class as we went. It felt, I don’t know just how to put it, I would say comfortable and good. I enjoyed sharing this with my classmates and it charged me up even more.

Following the warm-up routine Sensei continued with kata practice. This time I contusly noticed that I was able to apply more of the correction I have been given and also able to make my movements feel a little smoother.

I have been thinking about this rather unexpected process or feeling for the past couple of days and I believe I know what it is. It is the SPIRITUAL side of things. I have noticed that my workouts have become a form of meditation for me. I just let my mind grow calm and my body stretch and work. Kata is becoming the same way. I still concentrate very hard on it as I work on improvements, but sometimes, I just do it. I let it happen and flow through me. Thinking about it now, I realize that when I am doing this with my regular workout or my katas I seem to have almost found a trance like state of mind. It also seems that the harder I work, the deeper this state becomes.

I have also noticed that in my day to day life, things have changed. I had suffered a number of disappointments at work and it was getting me. I was at the point where I was having trouble getting myself into work and getting through the day. I have always been a bit closed minded about some things and I have always had trouble walking away, even if for just a moment, something that I was engaged in because I know if I allowed myself to be distracted, I would have trouble getting re-engaged.

Now, a lot of this has just gone away. I look forward to the challenges of everyday life these days. This includes work. My wife has also told me that she has noticed a considerable change in my general attitude. I think I am no to something.

I only now started my journey. I have built my foundation. The cement is still wet but it will be a good strong foundation. There is many years of building ahead of me but now I can see with my whole self that one day my structure will be ready. I will open the door and step through into a whole new world of learning and discoveries.

Computers

My computer failed on me last week. It was at least 6 years old and finally decided that it was time to quit. Because of this, I am a bit later than planned publishing this post. I have a new machine now and am doing battle with it trying to get everything running the way I want it to. This has been a long and tedious struggle but I think I am winning.

This has made me think about our dependence on computers these days. Think of it for a minute. A typical working day, a computer chip in my alarm clock tells me when to get up, the computer chip in the microwave cooks my breakfast, the computer in my car tells it to start, when I get to work, I log in on the computer to check to see what the computer has for me to do that day, I head out to the production line to find the operators sitting in chairs in the control room. I ask them why the line isn’t running and they tell me it is because the computer is down. At the end of the day, I check the computer to set up for my next day’s work… Then we all go around the circle again.

Last week, when I found myself sitting in front of my home computer staring at a frozen screen, I was lost. My hard drive was shot. I was desperate to get it running again. My wife walked into the room to find me leaning back in my desk chair, holding my computer (notebook) over my head, shaking it and tapping on the bottom. It was returning my treatment of it by making some wild vibrating noise every once in a while, as if to tease me. Here I am, but you can’t have me and I am not going to work for you. As it turns out, I was fairly well prepared for this and had most of my stuff backed up on an external hard drive. After leaving the notebook to sit for a few days, it did start up and I managed to get the rest of my files off of it before it made one last rasping noise of distress and gave up.

At work, I am often the go-to guy in our department when someone has computer issues. I am fairly familiar with computers. Totally self-taught. I have this need to figure out how things work. Along with this, I have a real problem with things I can’t get to work. More than once I have found myself looking into the blank screen of a computer, holding a long flat-head screwdriver in my hand and threatening it (in my own mind) with inserting that screwdriver into its SD slot as far as I can and twisting it!

We have come to depend so much on computers. We sometimes come close to giving them a human persona. We talk to them, we threaten them, we talk about them like they are another person. We even depend on them. This reminds me of a set of books called Dune. In this story, there is an ultimate struggle of man against computer. The computers become so powerful that they take over from humankind and eventually treat them (us) as little more than pets. I don’t think we are anywhere near this dilemma, at least I hope not.

I have to admit that I don’t know what I would do without the computer. It has allowed me time to be able to do things like write this blog and to work with the photos I have taken on my digital camera. The list goes on and on. But there is a trap here that I have seen people (including myself) fall into.

I need to be able to push away from the machine and exert my own muscles, get up and walk around. Spend time with my wife (if she remembers who I am when I  come crawling out of my office with blood shot eyes and that big screwdriver).

Don’t get lost in the machine. It will take hold of you hang on as hard as it can, if you let it.

 

 

Christmas

I sometimes have to wonder what has happened to this holiday. I am sitting here on a November weeknight, it is getting late and I should be in bed. Instead, here I sit writing this post because, once again, I am dreading the approach of the holiday.

It isn't like that all the time and I remember when it was the best time of  the year. So much fun, so much food, and yes, so many toys. Now, I sometimes think, so much running around, so many people, SO much food and of course, so much money to be spent.

It is not my intention at all to sound like a Scrooge but I have to say, do we really know what the whole thing is about any more? We spend so much time and money running around trying to guess what someone might like or who would want what to eat. And then there is the malls!! Sometimes I can't believe what a madhouse they can be.

People are scurrying off in one direction or another with their heads down just trying to make it through the crowds and get back home. Young children are stressed and anxious because of all the hustle and bustle around them and they react to the stress their parents are showing. The whole thing seems to be building to some kind of catastrophic crescendo of Christmas craziness.

Then, after all that, you may find yourself scurrying along with the rest of the crowd, head down, lost in your own purpose, just trying to getting done and out of  there, when you accidentally bump into a stranger. With a bit of a shock you look up and say, excuse me, to be greeted by a smiling face. This smiling face replies, "Of course, no problem at all and Merry Christmas." For a moment you pause. What are you supposed to say to that??

Those people are out there. Someone who still remembers what it is all about. They are still out there with the rest of us. Running around trying to finish things up for the holidays, but they have this different, almost aura about them. They are moving just as quickly as you and I are, but they have a smile!

I think that sometimes we don't see too many of these people because they do have it figured out. They know that the holidays are meant to be about people and families,  including the extended ones. The gifts they have bought may be simple, such as a small book of poems or a short story or even a hand-made card with a message from the heart inside of it for someone very special.

Doesn't it sound a bit ironic? A simple hand-made card. How could this be for someone special? But it is. It something that someone has put real thought and love into. Something personal that truly says, I am thinking about you.

This is not a concept that would go over with too many children these days. We are just as guilty as the commercial world is in preparing them to expect to have money spent on them for the latest and greatest game, or doll, or toy. We have jumped in with both feet and welcomed the mall Santa Claus, with the teenager dressed as an elf standing beside Santa looking bored and embarrassed, hoping none of their friends see them in green tights. So maybe we deserve what we get when it comes to Christmas.

Maybe not this year and maybe not even next year, but think about that simple Christmas when you get together with friends and family and enjoy their company. Share strories of the good old days and maybe exchange a couple of hand-made cards.

As for me, I keep suggesting that we grab a flight to a warm and sunny place called Cane Garden Bay where we could dangle our toes in the surf and sip on the world's best margarita, watch the fishing boats head out and just leave the rest behind. Of course my daughter quickly pipes up and says I'M IN!!

So maybe as a start, the next time someone bumps into you in the mall with that blank look on their face that says get me out of here, smile and wish them a merry Christmas. Believe me, it will make you feel just as good. Who knows, it could catch on.

Merry Christmas!