Category: – Organised Religion

Marketing Religion

It’s 1000 BCE and the tribe living across the mountains is considering its future. It was a simple village that lived in harmony with the seasons and each other. Everyone in the village took responsibility for themselves but was also generous in their support of others. They knew that life had meaning when it was lived in connection to the ‘all.’ An onlooker would have called this balance between the practical and energetic elements a ‘religious way of life.’

But change was afoot… Continue reading “Marketing Religion” →

Breaking up with Organised Religion 

Weekly church, regular confession, fasting at lent, praying for forgiveness and generally trying to be a good person dominated my religious life from when I was old enough to understand it until organised religion and I broke up when I was 35. The break-up wasn’t long and drawn out; in fact it was short, fast and relatively painless for me.

If you had asked me when I was in the thick of my regular organised religious practices if I would let it go, I wouldn’t have believed you, as I have always known there was God and I was taught throughout my childhood that God equated to religion and church.  Continue reading “Breaking up with Organised Religion “ →

Why do we put God in a Box? 

I recall that as a little girl I used to feel a great sense of wonder, joy and magic in nature – in the sound of dry leaves under foot, the sound of the waves, the perfume of flowers, the beauty of a butterfly, the birds singing in the morning, the feeling of a gentle breeze on my skin and much more. In nature I could feel a connection to a grandness, to something more than just the physical world and more than just me. What I also recall as a little girl was that no one else, or at least the adults around me, seemed to experience the same level of wonder or sense of magic – or this was not expressed. Continue reading “Why do we put God in a Box? “ →

From Religious Confusion to Religious Truth 

My confusion about religion and God began at a very early age, probably from day one. My father didn’t believe there was a God but that there was a logical explanation for everything in the Universe.

His own father had been raised in the Catholic faith and from very early on was expected to be the priest in the family, but at 17 this pressure turned him away from the Catholic religion and he ran away to sea. He later discovered Rationalism and when he became a father himself he brought his own children up, including my father, in this belief. Continue reading “From Religious Confusion to Religious Truth “ →

Am I Religious?

I remember around the age of 16/17 being asked by a friend at school whether or not I believed in God. I responded by saying that it would be crazy not to, but I did not believe in God in the way we are taught through the varying religions. So at one level I was saying yes to God but at another level I was denouncing all of the organised religions that I knew. I grew up having been to schools heavily influenced by the Catholic religion and whilst I liked some parts of the teachings, there were far too many discrepancies that I did not agree with and which did not make any sense to me. Continue reading “Am I Religious?” →