Conference lgp30::christian-perspective

    {She chuckles to herself}

    Richard!  You ask the darndest questions!

    I'll bet you were smiling to yourself on this.  Religious indeed!  What
    a hot button.

    "Religious?"  What does it mean?  My cat is religious about meals, his
    favorite spot in the sun and waking me up at 4:00 am.  Most religious
    person -- cats are people too :-)   -- in my house is Donut.

    {What a card that Richard is! she thinks to herself as she finishes the
    reply.}

    Ruth

 
I live by myself and am religious about getting up early even on weekends.  
Everyother weekend I have my kids and they like to sleep late which drives me
nuts, because they are religious about sleeping late.  And since I get up 
early, I eat breakfast early..they sleep late and eat breakfast late..So,
when they're ready for breakfast I'm just about ready for lunch!




Jim

    Tough question.....really don't know the answer.
    
    Marc H.

    >	Are you the most religious person in your family or household?

    	No. We're all about even in my household. But in my family we're
    considered quite "liberal" in some respects. Notably our irregular
    church attendance. Of course when one is part of a family with large
    numbers of ordained clergy it's hard to me "most religious."

>Does it ever bother you?

    	Sometimes I feel that I am not as involved in organized church
    activity as I should be. 

    			Alfred

    It depends on how you define "religious".  If we're talking
    "religious"="spiritual" then I'd say we're all about the same.  If
    we're talking about "religious" as in going to an established church
    regularly and living by those precepts I'd say that my sister and I are
    in a dead heat.  My mother tends to contribute a lot in terms of church
    administration and financial help but little of herself.  My brother is
    a church goer and a believer in his heart but isn't really involved in
    the church community.  My sister and I both tend to be very involved
    and contribute time and energy and those God-given-gifts to our
    respective churches.  I guess this says a lot about how I define
    "religious" vs "spiritual".
    
    Nanci 

I am presently the only one in my household who is active in a church.  My
wife considers me to be active in several churches.

I am presently the only one in my household who reads the Bible, and other
books and periodicals of a spiritual nature.

My father was active in a church a number of years ago, but he got burned
somewhere along the line.  He left the church and never returned.  My mother
is deceased.  My brother has never felt drawn to anything religious.

My wife feels burned out from her heavy involvement in the church in the
past and is less than eager to engage the institutional church again.

My son finds worship boring.  I'm worried about him because his best friend
at the moment is a fundamentalist and every so often I hear my son repeating
fundamentalist dogma.

Richard

    Interesting question, Richard. I have only talked about this to a
    few people ever before. I am nearly always the person with the most
    spiritual interests, wherever I am. Part of the reason for that is
    that I go to a Unitarian church. This is the only church I feel
    comfortable in, yet there are very few people who are as interested
    in things  of the spirit as I am. I met another one recently, a
    totally unexpected person, so I have hope now. I really enjoy
    the UU church at the same time.
    
    This new person and I both read the book "Care of the Soul," which
    had been recommended by one of our ministers, and neither of us
    liked it. This book constitutes a topic in itself, I realize. The
    author, a former Catholic priest and psychologist, basicly knocks
    psychotherapy throughout and does not give much advice on caring
    for the soul. I don't think the two are exclusive; in fact, I think
    they are necessary to each other. He kept saying "it's not what
    happened to you when you were a child." But some things are, and
    he had a terrible thing happen to him as a child (his parents sent
    him away to seminary at about 12 years old), and I think he does
    not realize the effect it had on him. The whole book strikes me
    as an exercise in his personal denial. Why does the study of the 
    psyche have to be worthless for spiritual things to have any value?
    
    Sorry if I ratholed this, but it did seem related.
    
    Eileen