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SpecialEd
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a question about spirituality
#2364825 - 02/21/04 05:42 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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I was watching the 700 club and they had a segment about Congressman Rick Santorum and his family. His wife had written a book to teach children manners and a correspondent was interviewing the couple.
They spoke about their spirituality and Christianity in depth. Something I didn't quite get was that these people didn't seem spiritual.
When I think of someone being spiritual, I conjure up images about Native Americans (Granted everything I know about them is from a high school text book). The reason being I have images about great buffalo hunts and rites of passage. Fit people struggling for survival.
What I don't think about is rich, overweight Americans who are almost sickenly polite and docile.
So my question is, do you consider the Christian Experience to be spiritual and why. I guess the heart of this issue is the definition of spiritual.
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Alan Stone
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Re: a question about spirituality [Re: SpecialEd]
#2364853 - 02/21/04 05:47 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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What Christian Experience? There are about as many different Christian Experiences as there are Christians, and it's much the same for every other religion.
-------------------- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. - Aristotle
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SpecialEd
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Re: a question about spirituality [Re: Alan Stone]
#2364855 - 02/21/04 05:48 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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In specific, going to church on sunday. I always hear spiritual and uplifting accounts of going to church, and I just don't get it.
-------------------- "Plus one upvote +1..." --- // -- /l_l\/ --\-/----
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Alan Stone
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Re: a question about spirituality [Re: SpecialEd]
#2364907 - 02/21/04 05:57 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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There's a lot in a church that can be viewed as spiritual: mass chants (continuously reciting certain prayers en masse), prisms on chandeliers, tinted windows changing the atmosphere, the choir singing, the organ playing, etc. It's a matter of atmosphere. I wouldn't call myself Christian (though I was raised to be one), but I can see the transporting power of churches, their interior decoration and the activities performed within them. This transporting power first appealed to me after I had read Huxley's "Heaven and Hell", hearing a rosary (or whatever you call the act of reciting one prayer for each bead on the necklace) in a commemorative service. I was struck by the tens of voices all chanting the same prayer, over and over again, seeming to me to transport the partaker in the same way a musician can loose him- or herself in the music, a berserker can loose himself in frenzy, or a stoner can loose himself in viewing the countless hues of clouds during a sunset.
-------------------- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. - Aristotle
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Frog
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Re: a question about spirituality [Re: SpecialEd]
#2365218 - 02/21/04 07:24 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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I'm not spiritual in the usual way, in which you hear of "speaking in tongues" and things like that. I believe that it happens, but it's not my thing.
I've never had a spiritual experience with groups of people. I usually experience a spiritual experience when I'm alone, thinking, and I suddenly get an epiphone.
One time, I went on a 3 day weekend with Christian women from this church. One evening, they were having a prayer meeting and people started having "spiritual experiences". There were a few of us who didn't appear to be having the same type of experiences, like me.
So some of them decided that this just wouldn't do. I "must" have a spiritual experience. They prayed over me, and prayed, and prayed. I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing or feeling.
Finally, I just closed my eyes and pretended to be having a spiritual experience. I felt like such a disappointment that I wasn't having a spiritual experience.
-------------------- The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. -Teilard
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Atomisk
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Re: a question about spirituality [Re: Frog]
#2365311 - 02/21/04 08:02 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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hehe, it sounds like it was a contest and noone wanted to be left out...of course maybe they really did have something, but i doubt it, plus you shouldnt try to force(by prayer) a spiritual experience on anyone...i think the real ones can happen only when your ready, and no amount of prayer or meditation will bring it on
-------------------- o house-builder! thou art seen. thou shalt build no house again. all thy rafters are broken. thy ridge-pole is shattered.
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Squatting_Otter
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Re: a question about spirituality [Re: SpecialEd]
#2365375 - 02/21/04 08:24 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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hurumrumph
there's nothing spiritual about eating mushrooms either.
hallucinating and pissing your pants at a dance club cause you ate too many mushrooms doesn't seem very "spiritual" to me.
You can see the point I'm making...
but the truth is I'd probably find pissing myself in a dance club on mushrooms pretty spiritual, but that's just me.
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Swami
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Re: a question about spirituality [Re: Frog]
#2365435 - 02/21/04 08:40 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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I usually experience a spiritual experience when I'm alone, thinking, and I suddenly get an epiphone.
When someone calls you on your cell phone?
-------------------- The proof is in the pudding.
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Frog
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Re: a question about spirituality [Re: Swami]
#2365450 - 02/21/04 08:42 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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I know. I think I spelled that wrong. Ah, well, ferget abowt it.
-------------------- The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. -Teilard
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fireworks_god
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Quote:
Squatting_Otter said: You can see the point I'm making...
but the truth is I'd probably find pissing myself in a dance club on mushrooms pretty spiritual, but that's just me.
See, I wouldn't find it spiritual, because I would never eat mushrooms and go dancing in the first place. Peace.
-------------------- If I should die this very moment I wouldn't fear For I've never known completeness Like being here Wrapped in the warmth of you Loving every breath of you
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SpecialEd
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Re: a question about spirituality [Re: fireworks_god]
#2368000 - 02/22/04 01:16 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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^^^what he said
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peleg
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Re: a question about spirituality [Re: SpecialEd]
#2373541 - 02/23/04 08:30 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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check out amightywind.com, and remember you will know a tree by it's fruits,
-------------------- "Well the first days are the hardest days." When life looks like easy street there is danger at your door.....
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