Personal Letter to My Readers
This blog is about religion, about belief and about spirituality. I believe in the power of religion, the importance of knowing how we got here, and where we are going next, what we believe, what gives meaning to our lives. I believe in the importance of something to hold on to in times of strife and someone to rejoice with when times are good. I believe in the importance of being able to share the mystery of our existence in the company of those who can appreciate it in ways similar to ours – and in the importance of allowing others to do the same.
I am writing this blog to try to show the common ground among us – to see if there are similarities in the beliefs of those different from us that might allow us to understand them better, accept them and most of all recognize our common humanity, rather than constantly hurling weapons of derision at anyone who challenges our neat little organization of the world. I plan to use real life stories to show the human interest side of how people decide what they believe, hoping readers will find ways to understand and accept people with differing belief systems.
This is a challenging time to be alive if you look at the religious factors. One the one hand, we have fundamentalists insisting everyone else will be subjected to eternal damnation. We have spiritualists insisting yet we all are one. And in between we have several best-sellers written by confirmed atheists insisting there is no god. Who is right?
My answer is all of them! Hang with me for a while and I think you will see my point. There simply can’t be so many people, with such differing convictions, all insisting they have access to the absolute truth, and all so convinced they are right - unless there is something else going on here – something bigger than all of them, a way to connect the dots.
I make no claims to being a theologian, nor is my training in the academic fields of psychological or sociological research. I am merely a life-long seeker of the truth. I am basing everything I have written here on the research of others. All I am doing is trying to connect the dots in such a way as to bring a possible perspective to topics that concern a lot of us. No one is more surprised than me to find myself in a position of doing this. Just over time, certain points all fell together for me in a way that I now find myself being pushed from some unknown place to share.
The points I am making here are not about winning arguments about who is right in the battle of the religions. It is about human beings, striving to understand. It is about finding our commonalities as opposed to enhancing our differences. It matters less that we are Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or Jew. It matters even less that we are Democrat, Republican, American or Zulu. It is our most basic strivings that can unite us – if only we can understand what those commonalities are. My writings here propose just one way of doing so.
Sincerely,
Margaret P. Johnston