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In Reply to: I see it that way too posted by Acheick on April 17, 2002 at 08:00:08:
Yes, Cecilia was one of the most intelligent and knowledgeable women I ever met. She is also one of the least judging and preaching. :) It seems the more you know, the LESS you "preach?"
One of the things that I have observed for a long time is the fact that labels and words do not necessarily reflect the content. You have to listen carefully and then take notes for a long time to know people and see if they are indeed what you see is what you get.
Most of the time what is marketed in allegedly great packages does not reflect the true content. There is a lot of car salesmanship in 'religion.'
I have met people of different faiths and it seems to me that there are some people with personal integrity and great moral sense in various walks of life. Spirituality is not the monopoly of only ONE group of people, and shoving that self-centered conviction/assumption of religious copyright down others' throat does not seem 'spiritual' in itself. Quite the contrary. What a paradox.
If you consider all the messes that religious dogmatic fundamentalism (at any level and ecumenically) creates in the life of so many, you really wonder why people preach so much and do so little. I don't mean 'good works,' I mean do not tend to their own personal garden in their personal life.
I prefer seeing samples of personal lives that subliminally communicate the presence of a greater power, and whatever that may be called is a strictly personal thing between each person and God. The power of God may be more effective in silence, in empathy, in real understanding than in Bible thumping. I got enough of that to last me a lifetime. And from what I notice on reading what many zealous people write, they do not even know their own Bibles, and use them cafeteria style...after all you can pick a verse just about to prove/justify anything.
I keep quiet about Scriptures, but I was one of the people who studied them the most. I don't think I need to prove anything. :)
On top of this, I think our own history of the last 20-30 years is on the record to show how wrong people can be when thinking they are right. And there are plenty of people like that around, in fact they seem to be a majority. So my point is again:
-there is no such thing as absolute monopoly on spirituality because if God knows the heart of people he has a database nobody else can look at
-the spiritual connection is a strictly personal one. We may be able to notice the effects of that in somebody's life, but almost all the time truly spiritual people LIVE their spirituality and communicate it through sample, with great humility, humanness and lack of discriminating dogma, instead of insisting on telling others how to live their life, pretending to have the ultimate unique truth of THE answer is.
