On Faith in Ameria

Good Afternoon Everyone,

Rarely do I post twice in one day. Today, however, I was cruising headlines and ran across Mitt Romney's speech on Faith in America. Since faith is my life's work, I was eager to hear what he had to say.

Before I go into that, I want to comment on how sad it is that he even has to stand up an give a speech about his religion. Personally, I think you can find God in tree bark, if that is your intention and you way to It. My objection has been and continues to be religion.

Religion is what confuses the issues of Faith. Religion is all man man doctrine. All of it, with the Truth deeply buried in small tiny segments. Can one find God through religion. Yes. If that is your clear and focused intention. Your Godchip will navigate that course, naturally. But you will probably find yourSelf at odds with many of the "teachings" while the Truth you feel will resonate with yourSelf.

God did not establish any religion. God is present in all of them somewhere.

But there is a movement in America away from religion, not away from God; in fact this movement moves closer to God on a personal level without the intermediary of religion and its doctrines.

Mr. Romney talks about secularist being wrong. So I had to look up the word secularism to understand its meaning. According to Wikipedia:

This article is about the condition of not being specifically religious. For other usages, see the Secularity (disambiguation) page.

Secularity (adjective form secular) is the state of being separate from religion........

........One approximate synonym for secular is worldly; another could be phrased as neutral in religious matters. Approximate antonyms for secular are religious and devout.

Despite occasional confusion, secularity is not synonymous with atheism

Many over the past 40 years have embarked upon personal, spiritual journeys which have led us into and through the personal and deep exploration of many disciplines, philosophies, histories and practices in a seriously focused personal pursuit of Truth. The quintessential of "religious freedom" in practice.

I have come to a place after all these years of this singular pursuit of a new synthesis of my understanding of God and Truth. I am not a religious person. Although I give all credit to my platform of growing up in the Serbian Orthodox Church as my launch point for more. The credit lies in that the services were in Serbian, which I did not understand; in the beautiful 2 hour liturgy every Sunday with the candles, incense and choir that set a vibrational countenance for knowing God aright...personally; the credit goes to the fact that the sermons and readings were all in Serbian, to which I never heard one single word of human dogma. By the time I was 16 years old I had a very personal and intimate connection with Source, God, It. And it was my own. Religion - "their" interpretation of God was not involved.

I was in my twenties when I first heard that "we were born in sin". I was astonished that anyone would or could even convey that as a truth.

Religionists assume God is unchanging, but the corollary to this is that religion doesn't change either, which is to say, they assume that what they were taught is true...from hundreds of years ago to even the beginning. What if what was laid out by the "founding fathers" of a certain religion was only partially true or not true at all? The religion doesn't allow for any updating or "evolution" or expansion as we come to know more. It is assumed they knew the absolute truth from day one and there was no more to know, ever. I question that premise in everything.

This is an expanding Universe, and there is always more to know. It is infinite and eternal. What hubris to think that what we know and believe now is all there is or ever was. If that were the case we wouldn't be using the wheel and would never have found electricity or the atom.

We are dynamic beings, constantly growing and changing if we would allow. This clinging to old dogma and doctrines as absolute truth is what has caused most wars in the years since Jesus walked the planet and delivered his message of LOVE. Yet we still fight about "my God" and yours. Religion is at the heart of this and its intractability.

Faith is not owned by religionists. Faith belongs to God and spirituality, which are intimate and personal. Religion is public and a group activity. People who move away from the group activity to find their own Truth are not wrong. Martin Luther, Brigham Young, were amongst those who moved away from the "group think" to find a higher truth. And their movements were not the end of finding the higher truth, it continues and will continue forever, amen.

Mr. Romney talks about the beautiful churches in Europe that are relatively unattended, that people don't stop in to pray. It's because we have learned that we can pray anywhere, and don't need an audience or a group to validate this communion. Even I love to stop into a church now and then. On a recent Good Friday I very much wanted to be in church. So I stopped at the local Catholic Church service on my way home. I was sorely disappointed. Long gone was the Latin mass, the mystery, the sacred feeling. Instead it was cold and matter of fact, without Life. I left.

Religion has lost sight of what it was intended to be: a place holder for the individual to find their own personal way to God; not a proscribed set of beliefs and behaviors for living. That comes with an intimate communion singularly and personally with Source.

Some of the most moral and Real people I know do not step food in an organized religious church.

I acknowledge that it is a step on the path, but it is not the destination. I acknowledge that it can be a place on the journey, but it is not the place in my heart.

Faith is the domain of all people, not just religionists'. Do I think we should have prayer in public schools? We should provide a time for silent introspection, meditation, or prayer for everyone to do with as is real to them. Should we have "In God We Trust" on our coins? Of course. Because the word God belongs to all of us, not any singular religion. We all agree about the word God in some form. Should we have it in the pledge of allegiance? Absolutely. This Nation is all about God....not religion. And it is all about my own interpretation of God, personally.

As to the politics of religion. There's the worst possible combination of ideologies. Politics cannot be trusted with the word God and religion cannot be trusted with politics. These two are human-mind constructs. But a man's faith, his personal intimate connection with Source, the Creator, unimpeded by either politics or religion, inform and reflect profoundly his life and his works.

Under the "tent", Mr. Romney, is a pole for us "secularists" and we are a growing number, who have no faith in religion, but infinite and limitless Faith in God.

Indeed this country was founded on the tenet that "all men are created equal". And that equality is in one way, and one way only - spiritually. We are each born with that Godchip of Source that is Who We Really Are. That is what levels the playing field everywhere. Each of us is God having the physical experience here on planet earth. We love Earth; we love Life; we love America. We have Faith...in us.

That is Applied Spirituality.

Thanks for reading!

Kath

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/us/politics/06text-romney.html?pagewanted=2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular