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user-inactivated  ·  2335 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: That one awesome priest

I don't go to my local Baha'i feasts very often, mostly because they conflict with my work schedule. I like my local community, at least the members that I know that are active, but the feasts themselves often feel dull and uninspiring. It's a few worship songs, a few writings, the business portion, and then the social portion. It's pleasant, I enjoy the company, and I very much enjoy the conversations during the social portion, but spiritually, I think I get more out of reading religious texts on my own or taking a long drive or walk and running things through my head. But I go, whenever I can, because community is important and I'm not going just for myself but also because by being there, I'm supporting others.

(I asked Dala if I could talk about this before making the post, she gave me the go ahead). My wife is an atheist. We don't talk religion much because she's not too concerned with the concept but she's supportive of me trying to lead a spiritual life and she knows that if she ever has questions or concerns I'll have an open, frank conversation with her. Good, bad, pretty, and ugly. Recently one of her family members became the head pastor at a local church. Even though she doesn't believe in God, every single Sunday she can be found there, in the pew, because being there is about supporting a family member she loves, but just as important, it's about being active in part of a community that she loves. She's said it before on here a few times, she's not a social person in the slightest and wouldn't mind being a home body her whole life. The fact that she, an atheist homebody, can find the will to go to church on the regular? That's pretty fucking cool.

I shared this article the other week . . .

And I'm trying to not editorialize in my Hubski contributions any more. I think it's important to post something that interests me and/or I think will interest members on here, and then see what conversations evolve organically from the post. That said, there's an underlying element to that whole article that has been sitting with me the entire time since I've read it. I honestly think that everybody who is making a fuss is so worried about what's right or wrong, moral or immoral, theologically sound or potentially blasphemous, that they lost sight of the idea that above all else, it's important to keep the church together. I think the article said the international Catholic community numbers close to a billion. The sounds like a stretch, but even if the community is only a fraction of that size, that's a shit ton of lives that can be thrown for a disruptive loop if ideological schisms start to cause real world fractures.

    The minister mostly snarked at the congregation's history, pointing out shit like it was the only congregation on the West Coast that didn't protest the Vietnam War'n'shit. Services were effectively sitting in a pew, being hectored for things we had nothing to do with,

I'll say until the day I die that I think the worse approach to religion is focusing on what people are doing wrong and where people are failing and driving at that point again and again. People in general have pretty good compasses. We know when we're fucking up. We know when we're falling short. The best conversations I have had, the best sermons I have gone to, they always contain elements of how we can inspire ourselves, empower ourselves, to do good and help each other out.