Did you ever see Stigmata? (ohhh, if you haven't, go rent it! It's soooo good.) Anyway remember the message from that movie... "The kingdom of God is within you" they said, not in the wood or stone used to build the church. "Split a piece of wood and you will find me. Lift up any stone and you will find me." (Incidentally, that's a passage from The Gospel of St. Thomas, which to this day the Catholic Church is trying to hide from us.) God is not inside a church delivering secret messages through clergymen which they can disclose to you at their discretion. He is all around... within us, within the world around us.
I don't believe in a guy sitting in a kingdom in the clouds, but if someone asked me if I believe in God I'd say yes. EVERYTHING in the universe is made of energy and emits an energy field. Everything and everyone are made up of the same energy, so you are part of God, God is part of you, and we are all a part of each other and the world around us. I believe that God is the greatest energy within the mass of energy. I consider myself a liberal Christian. I don't go around preaching the Bible, don't worry. And hey, the Pride flags waving on the other pages in my site should tell you I'm not an Evangelical :-) I don't personally believe that Jesus was the Son of God sent to wash away the sins of Humankind, although who am I to know! I do however believe that Jesus was a truly wonderful person, a great philosopher, who did have extraordinary healing powers and did eminate an aura of love and peace. And although I enjoy studying and learning from The Bible, I don't believe it is the book of God's Rules for All Of Humankind. Personally I think the people who go around saying you should only do what the Bible says are clinically insane. I consider the Bible to be glorified mythology. Certainly the people who wrote it may have had divine inspiration, but I believe that God has his own plan for each one of us, and that we have to learn to look inside ourselves and follow our intuition to live out God's will. I truly believe in the powers of meditation and prayer. Prayer is a way of learning to manipulate the energies around you, not a way to strike a bargain with the bigshots in Heaven.
I experimented
with Wicca for a long time, and continue to draw inspiration from Pagan
and Wiccan teachings. I follow the three-fold law, out of common sense
if nothing else, which basically says that whatever you do, whether it's
good or bad, will be returned to you threefold. I also follow the Wiccan
Rede, which is "An' it harm none, do what ye will" (An' simply means "provided
that" or "as long as"). I am very into herbalism and would love to have
a large herb and flower garden when I get my own place.
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I've studied a lot of different religions that originated all over the world. I've tried to learn as much as I can about each different religion, and then pick and choose from it what feels right to me. Another religion besides Paganism that has been very inspirational for me, is Tibetan Buddhism. For about a year I attended a Tibetan Buddhist monastery every other week for prayer and meditation. I'm planning to start going back to the monestary as soon as possible. Even though I don't follow their religion, worshipping Buddha and their other deities and observing their holidays and rituals, I've found the Buddhist beliefs to be extremely inspirational and something to definitely be explored. The Tibetans are a race of people who have been persecuted and singled out and tortured and abused for many generations, yet they continue to demonstrate peace and love even to their persecutors.
Another religion I've studied is Taoism. An excellent pair of books to study if you want to learn more about Taoism are "The Tao of Pooh" and "The Te of Piglet", both by Benjamin Hoff.
Check under "what's
new" from time to time because I'm sure I'll be adding more thoughts to
this section.