Dont you like Annie Lennox? I do. I love her music and Eurythmics, not just the music, but the lyrics are usually very good I think. Right now I listen to "Put A Little Love In Your Heart". My favorites are probably "Love Song For A Vampire", "Why" and "No More I Love You's".
Anyway, this is my answered questions from Friday Five. It's not Friday today, but it could have been, so who cares. I liked the questions and I wanted to put it here. I generally like to fill out these kinds of things.
1. Were you raised in a particular religious faith?
Answer: I was raised with a very open minded form of Evangelical Lutheran Christianity by my mother. I've never felt that my dad have been very interested in the spiritual sides of religion, or religion in it itself. My mum didn't study the Bible and I believe she more or less formed her religion after her own personality. I was shocked later on when I discovered the aggressiveness in the religion I was raised with. My mum would always take out the soft sides in Christianity and turn it into something caring and good. Now I feel I like my mum more, than I like the religion she stands for. Because if it wasn't for people like her there wouldn't really be much good to these things in themselfs. I would say that my mum gave me something genuinely good with her belief and I wouldn't want to have had a different upbringing.
2. Do you still practice that faith? Why or why not?
Answer: I'm no longer a member of the church and I'm no longer a Christian. I decided to not be a member anymore around that time when you are fourteen years old and are supposed to go trough the Confirmation. I felt most people were doing it for the gifts and money, I felt disappointed in all of it and I decided I didn't want to be a part of it. I felt I was too young to know what I belived in. I said that religion and Confirmation would have to wait until I was more sure of what I wanted. I knew with myself that the church and the Bible had never really meant anything to me either, as my mum always talked about the importance of feelings and not about rules or places. Today I dont like the ways of the Church and that many members of it seem to care less of the belief than they care of it's rules. I decided when I was fourteen that I wanted to stand for something else. If I was going to be a Christian, I wanted to be one with my heart and not necessarily have to belong to a Church.
3. What do you think happens after death?
Answer: Well, I can only speculate. I believe that everything that lives are more than it's body. I think we have an energy, or soul that dont die. I am very open to Incarnations and the possibility of different dimensions. I consider that life is a lesson, and that we are supposed to move onto a different stage after death. I believe everyone are on different stages. I think there are things we cannot prove or understand in our physical state of being. I believe we are a part of something bigger. I believe God is something we will be a part of after death, but it may just be that God is a state of the soul, a place or something we will go trough. I dont think that heaven or hell are places, but they are maybe a part of our personal human or cosmic ways. I presume what we do in life, will have an affect on us in the afterlife, but I dont believe in a punishing God or a terrible hell. I think we should be our own gods and stand for our good and evil. I believe in the ultimate truth, cosmic order, the absolute bliss and the Universal Soul. In what form of way these things manifest is something I'm not sure of.
4. What is your favorite religious ritual (participating in or just observing)?
Answer: I really dont enjoy or credit rituals, especially not religious ones. Life is very much about rituals though, as we all belong to different cultures. Personally I'm more interested in the reasons behind rituals. I want to know what they mean and what they will produce. I do because rituals are usually a group activity or a very personal expression. I think the people behind these things are more interesting, than what they do trough the rituals. When Hitler spoke to the people, he used to make a theatrical scene in front of people as he spoke. It was all very ritualistic and the people would cheer, imitate him and call it fantastic. I dont think it's interesting at all. I mean isn't the motive lost, when we dont ask what the reasons are? What he or people like him say behind all the fancy rituals is more important to me. I always think that people like this want to hide something, or have lost their reasons for their acts when they turn to rituals. I dont get the spiritual feeling to the glittery rituals of the Pope. I want something simple, something I can understand. If the Pope doesn't want to say anything "human", then I dont want to know what he is about. I dont want to say that I'm right, but basically I think rituals are old nonsense. If you care about spirituality or people, you dont need rituals to show it. I say this because I've never had a good feeling in me when I've seen rituals being performed and I guess that's the motive with it. You are supposed to feel something. I do like the good feeling that I've gotten when I have been inside a religious place though, the warm calm feeling, but I dont need rituals to feel that. I think people are different that way.
5. Do you believe people are basically good?
Answer: Yes. As they say; there is something bad in the best of us and there are something good in the worst of us. I dont believe in good and evil, no one are only positive or negative. In my opinion there are some things that are healthy and some things that are sick, but I wouldn't call them good or evil. I dont belive in the things that are done without concern, but I dont think that humanity is an evil race. There is a reason behind everything and maybe we all were good on the bottom, as we have all been children once. The lions get their babies and they grow up to become hunters, the world is cruel, I wouldn't blame it on the lions in themselfs. I think evil is something we need to understand in order to change it. There is something evil in the goodness, that dont want to understand evil and that makes us all both evil and good.
