Religion: A Month Of Learning!

Religion. Faith. God. If you are anything like me, you might have some history, judgement, or fear surrounding these words. For the most part, I consider myself spiritual, open minded, and accepting of all faiths. However, I’ve never actively tried to find out more information on organized religions. I’ll also have to admit that with some religions, I still have judgments based on what I’ve heard about them. So for this month, I chose to go to different religious services. My intention was not to gain a faith, but to experience them first hand and explore the judgments that came up for me. Boy is it hard to fit all of them in during 1 month! Especially when a lot of them have worship on Sunday. Overall, I did pretty well as I was able to get to 7 different services!

Throughout this month, people from all different cultures, beliefs, races, and backgrounds were accepting me just as I was. Literally every single one of these services exuded unconditional love. With what’s going on in the world right now, this was completely refreshing. By the end of this month, my faith in humanity, selflessness, and religion had been restored.

Beyond the immense amount of love I felt, there was the other side of things that I had to walk through – judgement. Throughout this process, I found myself asking, how can one be truly non-judgmental? The conclusion that I’ve come to is progress not perfection. As long as you are willing to look at your behavior/thinking, be honest, and stay aware of when you might be experiencing judgement, you are already ahead of the game. We are human after all. We are shaped by society, family, and experiences. It’s natural for things to come up. The important thing is to want to remove them.

With this being said, I thought it would be fun to layout my experience with each service I attended. Please note that it is not my intention to offend anyone, but to speak my truth and layout my introspective thought process. I had quite a fun time analyzing myself! Also, I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies in the religious terms! I did my best, but I understand that attending 1 service by no means makes me an expert.

Alright… here we go…

Christianity

I have a rough history with Christianity. There are definitely some past wounds I have from a church that guilt-tripped me for not being willing to pray in a school hallway. Because of this, I was taking extra action to walk into this service with an open mind. I was so blessed that I had 2 friends who were part of the church and offered to take me. I was welcomed with open arms by literally everyone in the church. You could feel what a great community they had!

The service started off with a lot of singing. I learned very quickly that most services involved lots of singing. I feel bad for whoever sat next to me… my voice is that of a screeching chicken. After that, we jumped right into the sermon. Funny enough, the sermon was about conversion – my eyes immediately began to roll. Right away, I had to stop myself. I hadn’t even heard the speech yet and I was shutting down. Of course, it turned out to be a beautiful message. It was about looking at your own faith, how to take responsibility for your actions, and how you can be the best, most loving person in your daily life. I wonder how many times we miss out on a beautiful message because we have already shut ourselves off due to judgments?

After the service was over, all the hugs were had and then I took off with my friends. Anyone who knows me knows that I am an extremely inquisitive person, so I’m really grateful that my friends let me ask them a ton of questions. We talked about Jesus, heaven, hell, sex, marriage, homosexuality, and more. One of my biggest judgments of religion, specifically Christianity, is that people get very defensive and the answer is always  “it’s that way because the bible says so!” This open conversation with my friends completely helped breakthrough that old perception for me. They answered all of my questions thoroughly and with no defensive tone at all. It was invigorating and stimulating. This willingness to answer questions was proven throughout every service I went to.

Catholic

Now talk about judgement…. this was probably the hardest service for me to walk into and try to remove my old stereotypes on the religion. This experience gave me the opportunity to look into these thoughts and honestly, I didn’t really have a good excuse to have any type of judgement. My only exposure to Catholicism has been through books and media. How interesting when you truly look at where a belief comes from, you can find it might be as flimsy as a straw house.

I decided to go to the famous Mission church for my service. The inside was absolutely beautiful. I was alone this time, so I just sat towards the front. The service was much more official and beautiful. There were dudes in robes, lots of candles, communion, and of course singing. There were times that they read excerpts and not knowing too much of the bible, I was quite confused and couldn’t really follow. It made me wonder… if someone was truly trying to learn about the religion and convert, how could they do that through the service?

After this, we were then told to turn to your neighbors and say “peace be with you”. This straight up made me look around like “holy shit, I’m about to become a handmaiden”. If you haven’t seen the show “The Handmaid’s Tales” on Hulu, do yourself a favor, leave this blog to go watch it now! It was interesting how this judgement came up from 4 little words. It made me question how many other parts of my life this happens with. At the end of the service, the lady next to me must of notice I looked quite out of place and started talking with me. She welcomed me and said she would love to see me at a future service. This was also a common trend for every place I went.

Spiritualist 

I went into this one thinking, “This is going to be my jam! We are gonna meditate, talk about how to be good people, read each others auras, and hone our intuition”. Boy did I have no clue what this religion was about! The main belief of a Spiritualist revolves around spirits and mediumship. When I heard this, my mind flashed to the show “Ghost Whisperer” and for sure my face read WTF. It was at this moment that I realized two of my judgments had stemmed from a TV show. I took a mental note of this and brought myself back the present moment to learn more.

After the introduction, we broke into song (of course!) and I really liked the lyrics. They were all about empowerment and self love. They also had a cute service where 7-8 community members shared a message about the weeks topic. We then went into a 30min reading session where 2 mediums would feel the room and then relay a message. It was hard for me to keep an open mind while this was happening. I was not given a reading and honestly, I don’t blame them. The energy that was emanating off of me was pure skepticism. I’m not sure why I have so much resistance in believing that spirits can communicate with us…

The community was fantastic. You could really tell that they felt at home here. I realized how much joy it gives me to see someone who feels truly safe or at home somewhere. I think it might be because I’ve felt so lost at one point in my life.

Orthodox Judaism

This service was extremely interesting while being profoundly confusing due to it being all in Hebrew! I’ll be honest, I had no clue that there are multiple “levels” of Jewish. This synagogue turned out to be Orthodox Jewish. Orthodox Jewish is one of the more “strict” options. The reason why it’s considered more “strict” is because of the segregation of women. However, as was the case with every service, I never felt unwelcome.

When I walked into the synagogue, there were 2 older gentlemen there. They could see I was very nervous and had no clue what to do. They immediately came over to help me. They let me know that since this was an Orthodox Temple, I would have to sit in a certain area for women. This was interesting for me because I’ve never really been told I have to do something just because of my gender. They then explained that the 2.5 hours of service would be in Hebrew….. luckily they had a book that had the writing in English so I tried to follow along best I could.

There was a moment during the service that we couldn’t move forward until their was 10 men. Even if there were women there, they couldn’t be counted towards the number. In a reformed Jewish temple, this would be different. It’s important to note here that just because the religion had gender segregation involved, I personally never felt less than the men. The main Rabbi was always walking over to me, explaining what was happening, and yelling out page #’s so that I could try to keep following along. At the end, the women started to show up and we had a potluck. There was one woman and her son who talked with me a long time. They allowed me to ask them all my questions about the religion and the gender segregation. She even got my number and asked me to come have dinner at their house some time. I walked out of there feeling very loved and accepted.

Islam

I was most excited to go to this service! This faith is frequently in the media right now, so I was excited to learn for myself what it was all about. I was also quite nervous because I didn’t want to disrespect their culture. I brought a scarf to cover my head just in case.

The first man who saw me could see I was lost and directed me to the women’s area. All of the women immediately came over to me and welcomed me, letting me know where to sit so I could see the speaker easily. I asked them if I needed to put anything over my hair and one woman said, “You are perfectly fine honey! You are welcome here and we are glad you are here”. Since it was Ramadan for them, they had a special speaker in from the UK. He spoke on stories from the bible and specifically the message of love for thy neighbor, no matter their faith. They then went directly into praying. I didn’t partake as I wasn’t sure of the exact movements, a lot of standing and bowing. Afterwords, all the women invited me to come to their big Ramadan feast that night and encouraged me to come back next time.

I had 2 big realizations that came out of this service. First, that in addition to the Koran, they believe in the bible and that Jesus was a prophet. Second, I realized that I’m much quicker to empathize with a group that is widely stereotyped than I am to empathize with another group, such as Catholicism. I’m not sure where that stems from, but I found it very intriguing.

Tibetan Buddhist 

This one was closest to what my current spiritual belief is. This temple was specifically Tibetan Buddhist. They have the cutest little family temple. It actually might have been directly in the family’s backyard. Luckily, this month they were celebrating the Buddha’s enlightenment, so I was able to go to a Fire Puja. This service involved cleansing ourselves and submitting ourselves to the communal fire.

The people had a lovely serene energy about them. I will say though, this was the only service I went to that nobody really came up to introduce themselves to me. I still felt welcome and I’m sure if I approached them, they would have immediately engaged with me, but when you are new, this can feel a bit intimidating. The majority of the ceremony was chanting. It was truly a beautiful sound, producing a lovely, uplifting energy. I tried the best I could to chant, but I definitely was a little all over the place. I left here feeling refreshed, excited, and serene.

Jehovah’s Witness

I had no clue what to expect going into this service! I have heard the name before, but never been exposed to the religion much. I have a friend who is a Jehovah’s Witness and she brought me along to her congregation. This place oozed love and curiosity. Being the new person, I could definitely feel everyone’s eyes on me. Every single person would come up to me and welcome me. I would probably say that this place took the cake on being put at ease.

The service was actually one that I meshed with most as well. They did an in-depth bible study. All the other services I went to were quite hard to follow. In this one, they had specific bible verses we read through and discussed. They also encouraged engagement. The elders would ask questions and then people would raise their hand and answer. I felt like I was able to learn a lot about their faith.

Another thing that was unique was the app they used. It included a “workbook” for the weeks lesson. I learned that this is global, so if I went to a different meeting place, even if it was Zimbabwe, they would use the exact same workbook. What an easy way to have everyone stay on the same page! After the service, 4 people stayed with me and they let me ask as many questions I wanted about the religion. They believe in encouraging questions vs just blind faith. I respect this mindset a lot. They were also extremely knowledgeable not only about their religions but others as well!

Wow… that was long… and it was only the tip of the iceberg! I’m grateful that you’ve stuck around to let me share my experience with you. I greatly encourage you to go out into your community and experience at least one new religion. You will be amazed at how full you feel when you leave. This past month has taught me that each religion, if taught correctly, ultimately only wants us to express unconditional love to all. So, as they say, peace be with you 😉