Intro to Religion Blog

If you really think about it we have numerous pilgrimages daily. Sitting in class today I realized that every time we go to class, or to work, or anywhere really, we come back with a new sense of self. After class today for instance I saw everyone else’s projects and felt like mine was going in the complete wrong direction. I cam back and looked over it and tried to figure out if I should start all over and make my project closer to the ones I saw, or if I should stay with my project and just hope it was right. Every class we learn a new amount of information, and we form new opinions and new life outlooks. Then we go about the rest of our day, and end up in bed or at home (our sacred space) a new person with renewed looks on life. So would that not make every trip to anywhere a pilgrimage? And if that is the case, then would every part of our daily routine make up a religion? A unique religion to every single person.

I think that everything the pastor had to say was really helpful to me in my life. It opened my eyes to a lot of new ideas and beliefs that churches are adopting. To see the rise in the number of people going on pilgrimages was crazy. It makes me wonder if religion is ever changing like some theorists think. The rise in the number of people going on pilgrimages and the decline on the number of people who attend church could be the sign that religion is moving into a new era. An era where it is more important to have that relationship one on one, and not so much of the need to congregate and do the weekly rituals that so many people feel need to be done. At the beginning of class when we were asked to define religion I feel like my definition has changed just in these few weeks. I do not think there is really a set definition of religion, therefore it can only be defined as ever-changing.

My pilgrimage is my time here at Morningside College. I can feel myself becoming a new person, and I am definitely in a new and unfamiliar place. My time here could be cut short, but as is planned right now, my pilgrimage will be a four year pilgrimage to get me to my eventual point of growing as an adult, and as a person. This is already in effect, I have become a much better multi-tasker while I have been here. It is very easy for me to focus on many things at once. For instance, soccer and school can be done together. While at practice I do all of my brainstorming and focusing before I get back to my room and then I am ready to write my paper or study my reading. Many people have noticed a change in me maturity wise as well. So my pilgrimage is working. In four years we will see where this pilgrimage leads me to, and who I become.

The sacred center of many religious people may be their churches and what is closest to heaven. For me my sacred center is something much different. A sacred center is a place of piece, far away from chaos. My place of peace and ease of mind is anywhere on a soccer field. No matter where it is when I step on the grass or the turf, I am at piece. I am focused and happy, and it is like everything else that is going on in my life disappears as soon as I step inside 120×80 yard box. Those white lines bring me a comfort that I get nowhere else. When I step in to the center circle at the start of every game my mind goes at ease and I am a new person. I can think and process clearly, and I have thought of some of my most life changing decisions in the middle of a soccer game. One game I was playing this summer actually helped lead me to Morningside College, which had I chosen to go to one of my other schools I would been more likely to start, but it would have been for a bad team and I never would have improved as a player. On top of that the education level at the other schools was nowhere close to the quality of education I am receiving here at Morningside. If I was unable to step on to a soccer field and feel the calm I get I never would have found time to be stress free enough to make that decision. When I was contemplating what I should write about for this blog post nothing really struck me as thrilling, or would have given me enough of a thought to write a great in depth blog post. When I stepped on to the field with my friend I realized how much the sacred center, or axis mundi related to my life. It was never in the form of a church or my bed (the first thing I did when moving in was not make my bed (that was indeed my last task), my real comfort zone is in the middle of a soccer field. It could be an unfamiliar field, one I have never set foot on, or one I will never set foot on again; when I step on that field I am home. So my axis mundi is not closest to heaven, does that show that I have more interest in soccer then I do in God? Or is this one of those things that he has placed in my life so that I may feel calm and in this calm I can know that he is in my life?

Marx’s theory interests me because of his complete rejection in the belief that there is a God. If you think about it every day in the world around us there are examples of things happening that are bigger than just the people we interact with and the environment around us. It is easy to just write off things like natural disasters and storms to nature, but when it comes down to it how could everything on this earth and beyond exist without some higher power or control? If there is no God, then how do we explain the miraculous happenings in the world around us? Why is it that the Christians and believers who follow their practices seem to have life come easier to them when the non-believers who live their lives without the same moral guidelines and rules seem to struggle more than most? Those people who have the life threatening diseases miraculously are healed, without even an explanation from the doctors treating them. How would Marx explain this? It is a little hard to wrap my mind around God, or even there being a higher power but in my life I have learned that it is even harder to try to explain how everything exists and happens without God. I feel like my life has been a big plan and everything has happened to me for a reason, when I look back I see that if some of the struggles I went through never would have happened to me I would not be here where I am, and I would not be the person that I am now.  I did not make that plan for my life, and if I were in control of what happened I never would have went through the things that I did, but because (to me) there is God above me who had that control and that plan set for me, and had the events occur to get me here I ended up where I am supposed to be. How would that have happened without a God?

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