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What does it mean to be religious? A thread.
There are a lot of bad religious actors in the world. You know who I’m talking about: The violent homophobic 48 year old preachers who are “friends” with the pool boy. The white preachers who cozy up to Trump
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There are a lot of bad religious actors in the world. You know who I’m talking about: The violent homophobic 48 year old preachers who are “friends” with the pool boy. The white preachers who cozy up to Trump
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and defile the Bible with their hatred of immigrants.
The cheap elected peddlers of Biblical porn who push out texts to show their religious bona fides while voting against the widow, orphan, stranger, and poor.
Yeah. Those folks.
Feh.
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The cheap elected peddlers of Biblical porn who push out texts to show their religious bona fides while voting against the widow, orphan, stranger, and poor.
Yeah. Those folks.
Feh.
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So it’s easy to see why folks would be suspicious of anyone who claims to be religious; I’m somewhat skeptical myself. And yet, as a spiritual progressive, I find myself growing more religious each year, more called to demand radical love and equity and acceptance.
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Here’s what I mean when I say that I’m religious. I’d love to be in conversation with you. As a wise teacher once told me, “The conversation is the relationship.”
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I believe that Judaism is a human dignity project—that our purpose on earth is to work with the Divine to ensure that every single barrier to human dignity is removed and that every person and community can thrive.
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I believe that our 3,000+ year old tradition has much to say about the human condition: about love and yearning, hope and despair, life and death, resilience and fortitude, family and friendship and community.
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Many religious traditions seek to answer life’s most persistent questions; I love to discuss the answers! But for me-an authentic religious expression of belief-is to spend a lifetime cultivating, curating, and committing to the questions themselves.
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I believe that an authentic religious experience cultivates awe and wonder and what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (z”l) called, “Radical Amazement!”
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To be religious means to call out blasphemy whenever we see it: Racism. Sexism. The idolization of guns. The worship of the military. The desecration of the earth. The wanton violence against immigrants, the poor, transpeople, and Muslims and Jews.
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To be religious is to value every living creature and to celebrate and appreciate all of creation.
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To be religious is to immerse myself in the sacred texts of my people in the quest for knowledge, for an ethic of lived justice, for a prayer life that is spiritually enriching and morally demanding.
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To live as a religious person means that we are commanded to ameliorate suffering whenever and wherever possible; and in the moments where we cannot, to make the suffering sufferable.
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To be religious is to not place one’s piety on display for others, to not perform theatrical righteousness, but to rush to every place on earth where human beings cry out for justice, equity, and dignity,
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to thrown one’s self into the mud of life, and work together to build a world of compassion and love.
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To be religious is to demand moral courage of self and leaders, to practice forgiveness in deed, to work for a society that builds itself upon a foundation of redemption, not retribution.
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To be religious is to listen for the Divine voice not in the towers of capitalism but in the gentle, bold, courageous acts of generosity, mutual respect, and kindness.
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To be religious means holding and telling a story that we are part of a human family, all connected, all blessed, all beautiful creatures.
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To be religious means we show up for each other, even when we’ve been knocked down, and we keep rising up again and again and again.
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To be religious means there is no forgiveness without accountability and restitution, and that we must organize ourselves and our society around an ethic and practice of justice and dignity, not retribution and imprisonment.
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To be religious means that I must cultivate a commitment to hope every day: A hope that cries out for freedom for the oppressed and compassion for the suffering; a hope that believes in our power to change and to redeem our world;
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a hope that demands we must always be more humane with each other and the earth.
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To be religious means that my life and your life has inherent worth and value and that I better damn well act accordingly.
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To be religious means to humbly submit I could very possibly be wrong about it all.
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To be religious means we must love each other, fiercely.
24/END. For now.
24/END. For now.
