I'd like to share this excellent blog post from Trees of the Mind as a follow-up to A Letter From God . . . .
If you follow the link, the comments are also worth a read.
About Religion On Christmas Eve
by Jodi Kasten
Religiously, I'm a rare bird. I don't talk about religion much because there's no way to satisfy anyone and there's nothing to prove by doing so. But today, I'll peek into that Pandora's box. As I became educated and read my way through the world, I realized that all religion was the same story, told in a different way. The creation of the world, what happens to us after we die, the preciousness of each soul and the divinity of each of us ran through every religion I learned about.
It seemed to me that the subjugation of women, the distribution of guilt for the exploitation of the masses and the judgment of others was something that was inserted into religion by churches, not by anything - or anyone - holy. When I began to look at the world in that way, it became clear to me that I didn't have to reject the God of my fathers, but rather accept the Goddess of my mothers - and everything else that people believe.
Religion has a lot of power over people. People exploit that power. That doesn't mean religion is evil. That means people use the weapons they can find for evil.
The divinity that is within us all tells the story - over and over - from the cave wall to the virtual drum circle. On Christmas, not accidentally about the times of our Solstice, we remember the story of the baby who came to be the Son of God, but also The Son of Man. He is the God, the Son, the Brother, the Husband. His Mother is the Goddess, the Blessed Virgin who cares for all of us.
He came to preach love and peace, brotherhood and light. He was stamped out in the prime of his life for speaking about the corruption of the church and the exploitation of believers for the profit of the leaders. His message rang true and pure, but was corrupted by the very same pirates of the soul.
Like so many of my generation, I do not seek a personal savior. I wish to be responsible for my own soul. I don't believe that any creator would throw away most people because they ate bacon or said the wrong words. What would the point of that be?
I want to believe that God has a sense of humor. When I die, I want to be led to a room full of books with a cute coffee shop waiter and a lady who looks suspiciously like Alanis Morrisette, just in from a game of Skee-Ball. She'd laugh and say, "Well done." That's not real, but it's Jodism - and there's not a damn thing wrong with that.
Until then, I simply, quietly seek the story of the baby - the man who would be the Son of God, that came to tell us that we, too, are the sons and daughters of each other, and thus, God. Some of us, myself included, often forget that the baggage the world has attached to that man was not his - it is from the attics of banks and churches.
I don't believe in what someone in a building tells me to believe. Anyone with a bible in one hand and a collection plate in the other is not to be trusted. Divinity lies within us all. I am choosing to be everything, rather than nothing - Christian, Buddist, Wiccan, Pagan, Agnostic, Catholic, Jewish, Methodist, Unitarian. I believe the terrible judgment comes, not from a bearded old man in the sky, but from others and from ourselves. It's about what we do to make the world better that really matters - not words, not guilt, not pain but action.
For me, Christmas is about the same thing that the Winter Solstice is - the darkest night lit by a star that exists only within our minds. It is the search for the source of who we are, so we might give ourselves the gift of beginning again.
What a peaceful world it would be if we could only stop trying to make everyone think alike.
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open.salon.com/blog/jodi_kasten/2009/12/24/about_religion_on_christmas_eve