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| Celtic Radio Community > The Grove > Mixed Beliefs... |
| Posted by: ShadowDarkFyre 20-Mar-2006, 10:11 AM |
| How many of you have them...? Do you turn your nose up at them...? How are you treated if you have them...? Just thought I'd get everyone's opinions... FM, if this isn't the place for this, let me know and I'll move it along... |
| Posted by: gaberlunzie 20-Mar-2006, 03:44 PM |
| How would you define "Mixed Beliefs", SDF? Sorry to sound stupid but I'm just not sure what you mean exactly... |
| Posted by: ShadowDarkFyre 20-Mar-2006, 04:59 PM |
| Christian with pagan leanings... pagan with christian leaning... muslim with druidic leanings... wiccan with Buddhist leanings... Something like that... |
| Posted by: sisterknight 20-Mar-2006, 05:04 PM |
| like white magic and the white christ?? |
| Posted by: Shadows 20-Mar-2006, 05:17 PM |
| If you hold any belief in a diety either christian, muslim, jewish, what have you ; you hold mixed beliefs. All religions have things in common that go back to man's beginings and the dawn of inteligent thought and question... As for your question SDF.... I hold no ones beliefs against them and hold no malice if one customizes one's beliefs to fit the world as they see it as long as they believe that is what the truth is and they do not try to make me believe as they do... I am a firm believer that faith., religion, beliefs are between a person and their god or gods and no person can say they are wrong. |
| Posted by: Aaediwen 20-Mar-2006, 05:21 PM |
I believe in it, and the closest description or label for my beliefs, I believe would be "Pagan Christian". Typically I'll stick with Spiritual, but not religous. But if you really want a name for it, there you go  |
| Posted by: CelticCoalition 20-Mar-2006, 09:28 PM |
| I would say that my beliefs are mixed in that I believe all religions are just as likely in the grand scheme of things. I also believe that all religions are just different ways of describing the same phenomenon, and are all probably correct in some way. For example, demons exist in many different religions, and yet are described in different ways based on cultural. I believe that demons in japan, or europe, or africa might either be different demons or are simply described different based on culture. I also take a lot of ideas from different beliefs, religions...etc that I have studied over the years. A lot of times I've been treated as a fool by those who have dedicated themselves to a certain religion. Either that or as a naive child who needs to be taught the true path. |
| Posted by: gaberlunzie 21-Mar-2006, 05:57 AM |
| Mixed beliefs exist and whether they admit or notice it or not, most of the people I know have them, maybe except of some true "hardliners" (sounds more nicely than fanatics, I think). Not a surprising fact to me if you consider how many things religions, as different as they might be, have in common, too. Like Shadows and CelticCoalltion have said before, and I agree with them at this point. Religions need a name. Belief/Faith doesn't. So this is where the criteriums of "mixed" probably don't count any more. Simply because of the fact that to my mind and experience, our Creator, no matter by which name you call him or even if you have no name at all, wants us to believe in the way we are able to and EXPERIENCE spirituality. This makes it an absolutely personal and individual subject, no? I have no problem with anyone else's belief as long as it is zheir true, heartfelt and honest one. Tolerance is the magic word and one of the basics to live along. I rarely experience the same tolerance if it comes to my own belief. I have been called or labelled a lot. I haven't been taken for serious, as someone who had lost the "right" path and has to be leaded back to it. Oh well, if they only knew ... |
| Posted by: Elspeth 21-Mar-2006, 08:22 AM |
| I've been curious. Do any spiritual beliefs believe in Christ as the Son of God and Saviour or is that belief a watershed, the division between spirituality and religion? |
| Posted by: stoirmeil 21-Mar-2006, 09:57 AM | ||
 Yeah. Or those people who smile tolerantly say "Oh, you're a SEEKER." I'm glad this conversation opened up. I wasn't sure what ShadowDarkFyre meant at first either. I think I meet the description. I was raised Anglican, but not with much family enthusiam, although I got most of my very good early musical training from years of junior and then adult church choir participation, usually without the family there at all. The theology is right out there in all the liturgy and music, and it did not ever move me spiritually, though I understood it in theory very well: not Trinity, not transubstantiation, not any of it. Too overworked and overintellectualized. I "seeked" around quite a bit, including a long and somewhat harrowing adventure with extremely orthodox Judaism. Some years back, I finally noticed what was always there: I'm a natural pantheist, and the problem I was always having was tying my strong urge toward prayer, which wants to be spontaneous and is close to an altered state in its purest form (always in the face of natural splendor), to any kind of traditional liturgy. What I wanted without knowing it for the longest time was the surge in the solar plexus of the first hominid that walked out of his cave with enough neocortex to see the sunrise and say "AHHHHHHH!!!!", in wonder, a bit of fear, and an intense attraction to the mystery and the power of it. (As high-verbal as I am -- ironically or maybe because of it -- language only gets in the way for me. It's too limiting.) It's hard to get back there to that whole-cloth simplicity. On those occasions when I do get close to that, it's the purest praise I know of to offer. Now that I know that, I understand myself much better. It's a relief, I must say. I still have close emotional ties to certain aspects of the church of my youth, especially around high musical seasons (and most of all Christmas) -- I never fail to hear lessons and carols on Christmas Eve. (If you've ever been a child in a good church choir, you know the sense of intensive preparation and excitement that special Christmas services with lots of different music can bring.) I have the deepest respect for those whose faith sustains them, no matter what it is -- I've seen people bear things I don't think I could, with only that between them and despair. I'm in awe of that in its own right, frankly. I think it may be as much a natural wonder as anything else. |
| Posted by: ShadowDarkFyre 21-Mar-2006, 10:11 AM | ||
<chuckles> Like whatever you believe in... |
| Posted by: ShadowDarkFyre 21-Mar-2006, 10:12 AM | ||
<smiles, shaking his head> I know all that... That in itself is common knowledge... Just asked if you had any... |
| Posted by: ShadowDarkFyre 21-Mar-2006, 10:13 AM | ||
<smiles> I'm pretty much along those lines, myself... Me and many in my family... |
| Posted by: ShadowDarkFyre 21-Mar-2006, 10:15 AM | ||
That pretty much describes me... The way I see it, all religions are but a facet of the whole truth... Sort of like the six blind men and the elephant... |
| Posted by: ShadowDarkFyre 21-Mar-2006, 10:20 AM | ||
Depends on what you mean by watershed... You've sort of lost me there... Otherwise, I'm a Christian who has no problem practicing magick, communicating with the Fae and other spirits in the world, and even holding a conversation or three with the likes of Gaia, Bast, the Morrigan, and even Jack-O'-The-Green on occasion. I serve Jesus. But last I checked, talking with the others wasnae' a crime. Hope that's a nutshell enough for everyone. |
| Posted by: Aaediwen 21-Mar-2006, 07:04 PM | ||
The belief in Christ as son of God, and as savior is not a mark of religon vs. spirituality. That, is a mark of a Christian. Now one can be Christian and not be religous. I hesitate to say that one can be truely Christian and not be spiritual. The way I see it, Spirituality is your connection with God. How familiar you are with the world beyond and those of it. Religon, I see as what I've heard described as 'Works'. Things like ritual, sermons, symbolism and all the other physical aspects representing a belief system. I'll give myself as an example here. I consider myself as spiritual, because there are so many things that I am convinced are truely beyond this physical world. Every time I write I feel like it's from a world that can only be recognised as spiritual. I have seen, felt, and experienced way too many things that not only convince me of the fact that God exists, but have given me a feeling for myself as a spiritual being. I've not attained self-realization, But I believe that any being in existance can transcend any physical form. That anyone can reach outside and beyond their body and traverse space and time via a spiritual connection. That said, I do not have many religous symbols in my life, beyond a crusifix hanging on the wall. I rarely go to church, and the closest I've come to practicing a communal pagan ritual of any kind was an attempt at crossing the veil and contacting Shadows last Samhain. To sum up. I rarely do anything that might be openly recognised as practicing any religon, yet I feel a deep, personal connection with the spiritual realm, and with God, including frequent conversations. I hope this helps in understanding, at least what I see as the difference between religon and spirituality. Religon can help spirituality, just that one must be careful not to get too lost in it. |
| Posted by: ShadowDarkFyre 22-Mar-2006, 10:25 AM |
| Well said and well put... I feel the same way... I used to get lost in religion, myself, as I was raised pentecostal... slowly but surely, though, I learned to grow beyond that bound and add other aspects to my beliefs... Glad to say I'm still growing...  |
| Posted by: Nightchild 23-Mar-2006, 05:51 AM |
| I myself think of mine as a mixed belief. But then again, I think there is rarely anyone who has not a mixed belief in some kind, since there are only very few truely original beliefs left on earth. Christianity was developed from other beliefs. Some kinds of natural spiritualities are unmixed, I guess. But that should be about all. |
| Posted by: sisterknight 23-Mar-2006, 08:27 AM |
| you know the funny part about christianity is that some of the holy days are the same as the "pagan" ones they just changed the name!!!!i guess they thought that they could recruit people that way and take the fun out of things!!!aaawwkk.i mean what is wrong with the equinox, or say beltane?? |
| Posted by: marti64 23-Mar-2006, 07:35 PM |
| I agree with Aaediwan, when he said that Spirituality is your connectin with God(or whatever you choose). Symbols, such as Crucifixes define belief, and kind of put people in a category, per say, of beliefs. Let me tell a quick story....I went to a small women's Catholic college in New England, and before that I had no idea what Catholicism was. I was raised in a small Protestant church. My Mom asked the President of the college, who was a nun how the college in general felt about non-Catholics...her response was basically to say that it doesn't matter, as long as the school was giving the person( meaning me) a good education(and paying the bill!) My philosophy after that was "We all believe in the same God, although we may be on a different channel!!!! Whatever we believe in, we all live in the same world, and have similar experiences. It is how we choose to participate in the world, and act on the chances that we are given that shapes our experiences with the world!1 Marti |
| Posted by: Nightchild 24-Mar-2006, 05:43 AM | ||
Personally I don't find that funny at all. I'd even go as far as say each pagan holiday has a christian holiday around the same time, it's just that most of them are only regionally celebrated or almost forgotten completely. But I think it's not only for recuiting people but also that when they realised that people celebrated their holidays and wouldn't stop, christians just invented their own holidays with some similar background, saying "if they must celebrate they shall at least celebrate our holiday". I mean, beside the well known holidays such as christmas=yul, samhain=all hallows, easter= ostara, there's a feast called somewhat with johannes, where they have a big fire and dace around it, sing and jump over it, if it's not too big for that. sounds like litha, doesn't it? I believe imbolc also has some kind of christian holiday connected I just can't name at the moment. and isn't it the same with beltane? Then there's mabon, that should be around thanksgiving (at least the german thanksgiving). Then there's only lugnasad left for that I don't know any christian holiday. But there's one for sure. *believe* |
| Posted by: stoirmeil 24-Mar-2006, 08:42 AM | ||
Lughnasa is aso called Lammas: A quarter day in Scotland (Christian holy day when certain tithes are due); also commemorates St. Peter's miraculous deliverance from prison. It's a "first fruits" or early harvest celebration in churches all over the british isles, so I'd say its origins are pre-Christian, and Christian events in the calendar might have been selected to "paste" over the earlier pagan ones by missionaries. |
| Posted by: Aaediwen 26-Mar-2006, 08:31 AM | ||
Most people around here call Imbolic Groundhog Day, and Beltaine May Day. Perhaps not Christian by definition, but definately accepted by the Christian community. |
| Posted by: Nightchild 26-Mar-2006, 03:00 PM | ||
*sigh* I do call it Lammas. I just thought this was not so common in english. At least, you know, what I meant
Groundhog Day? Like the movie with Bill Murray? COOL!  |
| Posted by: sisterknight 27-Mar-2006, 10:57 AM | ||
i didn't mean it as in hahaha, i meant it as in odd/strange that these things happened. that christian belief was built on the older beliefs of others. |
| Posted by: Senara 27-Mar-2006, 11:05 AM | ||
it's not that paganism was the basis of christianity. Pagan holidays were re-named by the catholic churches in those new areas so that the "heathens" would have an easier way to relate to the christian church and likely by doing so would be easier to convert because the "church" thought that it would be easier to explain it to the uneducated and easily convertable. The two religions would then supposedly appear that they weren't that different from each other. At least that's what they thought they were doing by creating the christian holidays so close to the pagan holidays. Big difference than it being one of the building blocks. |
| Posted by: ShadowDarkFyre 06-Apr-2006, 09:19 PM |
| The Catholic Church - believe me, one type of christian does not fit all christians - did it as an assimilation tactic, in my opinion. Bring everything under the purvue of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Back then, they thought they were doing God's will. |
| Posted by: stoirmeil 10-Apr-2006, 10:09 AM |
| There are these underlying phenomena in nature -- world's nature and human nature -- that bring up the same impulses and needs or longings, and they come out dressed in culturally specific ways, but the bedrock longing is the same. Probably the most striking is the winter solstice, at least I feel it so -- inexorably getting colder, getting darker, symbolically and even literally death aproaching -- and then it stops, wavers there a few days while all nature holds it breath, and turns around. Nobody escapes seeing that. If you want to express it as spiritual life ebbing and a savior, identified as much with helpless man (as a baby in poverty) as with immortal god, born in the moment the sun turns around and validates the redemption with a powerful natural phenomenon, it's very compelling. It's another very rich layer added to an intuitive structure that already had countless layers -- and since these myths arose in all kinds of places independently, I believe "which came first" often isn't important. They all point to the same primitive human perceptions, fears and hopes. The odd thing would be if there were humans who had no myth about the solstice at all, even right at the equator. Just an example. |
| Posted by: ShadowDarkFyre 10-Apr-2006, 02:14 PM |
| Very profound of you... >nods< |