Love reading about a spiritual journey. I’m over 45 years into mine and it continues.

I have found that religions tend to favor a hierarchy — a deity at the top acting much like a monarch, with everyone else falling into place somewhere below. The three primary religions out there — Christianity, Judaism and Islam, follow this pattern. Their books (Bible, Torah and Qur’an) lay out the rituals to be followed and fairly strict obedience is the order of the day.

Having been born into a Catholic family (Italian) it was this rigid structure and assumed obeisance that chased me from this religion. But I still love churches and loved the mass … in Latin. Soon after it was translated into English, I left. I later realized that it was this mystery within the mass, this sense that the rituals were actually connected to God that kept me inside. As soon as I understood what was actually being said, I found it all rather silly and very nonspiritual in nature.

For me, Spirituality is literally about the spirit … who we really are. What our connection is to the universe, and to each other. I’m rather fond of Woo-Woo, if for no other reason than that it takes us out of the fixed rituals of the past; shakes our world a little and rather nicely insists that we pay attention.

There’s a saying that expresses rather succinctly how I feel about religions but in its own way.

I love mankind, it’s people I can’t stand. (From a Peanuts comic strip. Gotta love it.)

I like the basic/original concepts of religions, but it’s the people and their dogma that keeps me away. Religions originally tried to find answers to questions about the world around them. They were anxious and often afraid. This hunt for certainty is very real to me. Very much so today.

Anyway, thanks for this. Good luck on your journey, Woo-Woo and all. 😉