Other religions accepted while Christianity scoffed at

Because it deals with 'truth' and 'life' and 'spirituality,' it is a religion."

I continued pondering how some religions are accepted when my Christian beliefs are often scoffed at.

One of the last assignments my son had in literature was analyzing a poem. I like to know what he's studying, so I went online to read the poem. In an effort to understand what I was reading, I Googled the author's name to learn about her. The author was influenced by Zen Buddhism, so I did some research on that as well. I found a classroom lesson from a school in New Jersey with these interesting words: "The end product will be a multimedia presentation showcasing these materials and displaying the students' knowledge of Zen principles."

Wow! I remember when my son wrote a poem in first grade about his friend, Jesus, and was admonished by his teacher.



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Pop Culture: Finding Meaning and Purpose in the Neighborhood

Pascal Boyer suggests that humans are created to have a spirituality, so whether we're religionists or atheists, we all strive toward the transcendent. Religionists tend to seek their source for meaning in a Transcendent reality (God), while atheists tend to find purpose in a Humanistic trajectory. (Admittedly, this is grossly simplistic, so my apologies to both groups.)

However, these differences are meaningless when it comes to pop culture. When Yael Naim's "New Soul" introduces the new MacBook Air, I hear a deeply religious message and my thoughts bounce back and forth from Martin Buber to Paul Tillich to Teilhard de Chardin—theologians who looked at life from a faith perspective. Others could be thinking of humanity in the cosmic scope of things, and recall the writings of Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov or Robert Heinlein—authors who looked at the world from a humanistic perspective.


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Amy Winehouse's Father: 'Blake Fielder-Civil Can Be Positive

Mitch Winehouse, the father of Amy Winehouse, says his daughter's husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, can still have a "positive influence" on the singer. Fielder-Civil was sentenced to 27 months behind bars earlier this week for assaulting a pub landlord and attempting to pervert the course of justice. Winehouse's husband has already served nine months of his sentence on remand and could be free in the next five months. Speaking this morning at the unveiling of his daughter's waxwork, Mr Winehouse said: "If Blake comes out of prison and proves to be a positive influence on Amy, then they will have a fantastic life, and he will make his parents very proud. "The other option is just not tenable. I don't know if the extra five or six months he has to spend in prison will make a difference, I just don't know." Mr Winehouse also said that his daughter was "doing really well" on a drug replacement program and admitted that she was keen to have children.



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My Love: Pre-Release Reviews

Much like The Song of Solomon, My Love is the perfect blend of love, vulnerability and spirituality. I honestly didn't think I would enjoy reading a book like this, but I did. Now I view this book as a guide for my role as a man of God, a husband and a father.
- Darryl Wilson, New York, NY

My Love: Love Proverbs, Love Psalms, and Love Poems on Loving a Woman, Being A Man, and Seeking God, by Nathan A. Chowilawu-Eshe is a work of genius that reaches men and women and transcends race and culture.
- Author & Poet Dr. Candace Allen-Staten

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Faith and the Democratic Party

The paper states that Herbert Daughtry's ministry has combined black liberation theology with spirituality, and in the fellowship hall a banner touting reparations for slavery said "They Owe Us." Daughtry says she and her siblings were raised “to believe that we would only experience success — success in the sense of contentment, peace — to the extent that we were faithful to the covenant made between our great-great-grandfather and God." The covenant, her father told me, is “to struggle with and for the people, to make life better for the human family."

One paragraph from the article says:

In her positions as Dean's top aid and the convention's top official, Daughtry, who is 44 years old, is leading the Democratic Party's new mission to make religious believers — particularly ardent Christian believers — view the party and its candidates as receptive to, and often impelled by, the dictates of faith.


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Stay positive and beat the credit crunch

And I think for us all as leaders what we need to be doing is to be confident and positive and enthusiastic about the future.

That doesn't mean that we're being dishonest or unrealistic, but recognising that yes, the economy is in a downturn but that what we have to do is learn from it and recognise that when you go through difficult times, that you can grow from adversity and we can become more efficient as a result of adversity.

What companies typically do in a recession is cut out unnecessary costs and they become more efficient.

So one of the things that's going to happen is that we are going to become more efficient and more effective and that's something to be pleased about, to be confident about. the concerns is that because of this financial downturn, that ordinary families are going to suffer and of course everybody suffers in a recession, but what we need to do is limit the scope of that recession by not talking ourselves into a worse and worse state.


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‘Theology in Life’

Majors will go on to take upper-level courses in areas including sacramental theology, the New Testament, and Catholic spirituality. The capstone for the major program, Fletcher explained, will be a seminar relating theology to an area of life. “Someone who's doing science education and theology for example would do a project on, say, the theology of stewardship and environmental science," she said. A student double-majoring in math and theology, she continued, could study the problem of knowledge.

“You start with the questions people have about life, and then, ‘What are the answers? Why would you take a Catholic position?’" said Fletcher.

This generation of undergraduates is, both by empirical and anecdotal accounts, acutely interested in the so-called “big questions." A survey of 112,000 freshmen conducted by University of California at Los Angeles researchers in 2004 found, for instance, that 74 percent of first-year students discuss the meaning of life with friends, and 76 percent search for life's purpose.


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