The Prize is the Journey

Caroline Kennedy recently said that an event like 911 made her want to get more involved and have a more active part in the whole fabric of American life. Good for her.

Myself, looking back, I see how 911 poked a hole in my political view of the world. I also had to stand back and decide what I believed in terms of religion. The other side was using, misusing religion as an arm of some political agenda.

This blog, with its readers, has been an education. In terms of my spiritual progress, I have figured out at where I might be at this present time on the road of life.

Perhaps I am more a nineteenth century Unitarian in my private belief systems on more things than anything else. I elect to change my opinions and beliefs as I go along if I so choose. Nothing, like beliefs, in this modern age should be set in stone.

Heaven and hell are here upon this earth. Some of us are lucky enough or blessed to have a choice to seek the former.

I am not a religionist. I do not addicted to religion. I do recognize that religion has been part of the social glue for thousands of years. Secular functions have replaced many previous sacred functions in society. Where religion stands in the rest of the world is entirely different than the way it is going along in the United States.

I am a secularist. I believe in the separation of church and state. I am saddened that so few in America have a rich appreciation or knowledge of true or good religion practice. While I know the average evangelical is probably a good intentioned Christian, I also know that the road to an imagined hell is often paved with good intentions.

That to burn books, symbolically, or in reality, of science is the worst kind of fascism. That this wanting to return to an early nineteenth century mentality whereby the only book in town is a bible is a path that leads to the disasters and misused emotions that turn to anger, hate and days like 911.

I recently got some feedback that said that religion is very, very dead in Europe or at least the organized Christian form is quite dead. We in America do not know or taste and feel our European brothers’ and sisters’ culture unless we travel and experience from those travels. I have to travel more.

That the only energy in religion in Europe these days may ironically be Islam and of the faith of so many immigrants to that social political economic state.

Where religion goes I do not know. I am an anti-religionist. I have my private beliefs but think that in out global mindset, which is the future, the secular side of the equation blots out any or all religious calculations.

Luckily. I have enriched myself and I hope you too the reader by what I have said in writing this year. It has been an interesting year.

The journey is the prize. The prize is the journey. For those of you lucky enough to enjoy thinking, march on.