Any path towards love is true & appropriate.

Life calls to life, we are connected unbreakably.

Growing up pillar to post, I was inundated with a variety of different religious customs & rituals. Each relative we lived with attended yet another house of worship, each following a slightly altered set of rules...  I have been in churches, synagogue, temple, meditation gardens, chapel, cathedral, etc. As far as I could tell, they all said "There is only one"  & then started a new list of regulations to live by. Some rules I found quite punitive, restricting the joy of life while emphasizing what seemed to be a rather masochistic road to heaven.  Preachers spoke of god's magnificent, forgiving love & the eternal pains of hellfire almost in the same breath, yet could not see the contradiction. The first time I realized that perhaps I could not follow conventional christian  beliefs was at my first communion.  To qualify for communion I had to attend catechism classes & have a first confession. Catechism emphasized Eve's role in the downfall of humans from the Garden, hence all women were less then men in god's eyes. At the tender age of 10 I found this unacceptable. Where was Adam's responsibility, he knew the consequences as well as Eve, he could have said, "No." ... The next qualification, first confession, was a joke. What sins could a 10 year old have?  "I argued with  my sister over who got the larger slice of cake..." The priest in attendance was so obviously having such a boring day at the office that I questioned why I needed an intermediary with god. Then to top it all off I was required to eat the body & blood of christ. GROSS!!!! Now don't get me wrong, Jesus gave the world a great new philosophy, love your neighbor we are all children of god. Basically his words refute the old testament  offering a kinder gentler way... (that does not stop the greedy one way hate mongers who justify their pillaging in the cause of their god)  I can not accept human sacrifice as an expiation of my sins. I am solely responsible for my actions & need no blood to wash away my guilt. Ursula LeGuin wrote a story about a utopia where all people, except one child, lived absolutely wonderful,  perfect happy lives. All knew of the one miserable sacrifice kept for the good of every one. The last line has always stayed with me, "What kind of city did they build, the ones who walked away from utopia?"  

I briefly tried life as an atheist, it is too difficult to walk through life without a crutch... The function of a deity is to be mommy & daddy when the world is too difficult to handle. They explain how it all began, the good & bad parts in the middle, the rules that make society function, what the rewards & punishments are for good & bad behavior & where it will all end up. These guidelines help make sense out of a senseless universe, boundaries to keep us safe from the unknown.   

Prayers are wishes for a better life & a way to express thankfulness when life is obviously good.   I believe in the power of prayer & that it does not matter to what deity the prayers are directed. 

It seems each culture has received its' own messiah or prophet. Each with some very good messages. One of the finest universal messages is 'Help each other'.