Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Reaching out ...
Recently we have noticed that when conversing with atheist about matters of spirit and soul, either their eyes glaze over or more often than not, they simply bristle. When we attempt to steer the conversation to matters of faith, simply bristling becomes hackles raised. So in the spirit of love and kindness, we in the monastery are attempting to reach out to atheist, especially those dedicated to the sciences, and this week the brothers are practicing the art of 'bristling' as many atheist seemed to have mastered. So this morning at break fast, instead of our usual spiritual cheerfulness, steeped in wittiness and sprinkled with sidesplitting laughter, we all attempted to furrow our brows, purse our lips, and hurl snappy retorts at one another. So far the experiment has gone exceedingly well, Bro. Cecil (in the kitchen this week with baking duties) ran out of biscuits and had to hurriedly bake a new batch, these being somewhat under baked, so many of the brothers left break fast with sticky biscuits still clinging to their robes. In our previous spiritual humor a brother with a clinging biscuit on his robe would produce much laughter, but a curious thing happened this morning, in our newfound 'bristling' it appears that these clinging biscuits are a sort of medal, or badge if you will, and Bro. Sedwick who had the most sticky biscuits clinging to his robe, seemed to bristle with delight, however paradoxical that may sound.
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3 comments:
Ahhh! The joys of living in community! ;o)
The faith that most atheists have a problem with is holding a belief in something, typically God, without evidence. Many atheists, especially those who also identify as humanists, think that is morally wrong, a denial of our human ability to reason.
Many of us also see this faith used to manipulate people. Some of us think that the denial of reason in this field justifies to many of the faithful the denials of reason in other matters . We see these unreasoning people tearing apart our world - they're certainly not ethically superior.
Being a minority, we are constantly asked to justify our lack of belief, while the religious of this world justify the savagery we should leave to the past. We're tired, we're exasperated, sometimes we're very discouraged. Is it any wonder our hackles are sometimes raised?
A wise old man once told me that he had no faith in groups, any collection of folks, yet he had faith in individuals, for in his long life he had met and befriend some individuals that were all those things that Jesus calls us to be. As for groups, organizations, collectives, no matter political, religious, or otherwise, he only experienced disappointment.
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