RELIGION GUILT-FREE

Impossible? Perhaps.

On this holiest of days, Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), I wish my fellow Jews a good fast, a day of peace, and that they may be inscribed in the Book of Life for another year. (Minus the fasting, I wish the same for all my non-Jewish friends as well.)

I still am trying to find my way to a spirituality I can live with on a permanent daily basis. I DO in fact believe in a power greater than ourselves, and that there is some sort of purpose out there, even if it only seems random to us because we are not capable (speak for yourself, Judd) of fathoming the larger picture. I am proud of my Jewish heritage and rituals but not in love with organized religion (as I've written before). So on a day like today--a unexpectedly rainy one--I'm at a loss, torn between a desire to spiritually reflect and a sense of guilt that I am not being "traditional," even though I'm not a traditional person in almost any sense of the word.

Religion, in my opinion, is a wedding of morality/ethics and faith. The morals and ethics of a religion (those tenants that make us good human beings) are a set of guidelines that we try to subscribe to and hopefully succeed in following. (Of course, all practicing religions would be out of business if we even had a 20 percent success rate--the idea that we are all "sinners" seems to be the key selling point.) And then there's faith--a belief that beyond clear and apparent evidence, the things we hope and pray for will ultimately come true--peace, love, prosperity, health, etc.

But doesn't the only hope for this combination (which I suspect most people really do need) lie in our defining for ourselves what is ethical, what is moral, and what is likely? Should we let others define these for us? Ultimately, since we are personally responsible for our actions and behavior, should we not first make sure we agree with what we practice? I feel we SHOULD believe in something--it is part of human nature. But why do we feel the need to have others define that belief? This is not to knock any organized system, but they are theologies with track records, certainly to be considered but never likely to be as perfectly tailored as a system that we personally adopt as our code of belief and behavior. Like any man-made structure, religions suffer from human failings. And history has shown repeatedly that blind adherence to any one belief system, particularly to a fundamentalist degree, has led to atrocities of the worst kind--all perpetrated when we knew that God "was on our side."

By all means, celebrate holidays and rituals. The fact that a Day is set aside for atonement and reflection is laudatory. ANYTHING that makes us take pause, to think about our lives and how we treat our fellows, is valuable to the quality of life for sentient beings. And guilt is certainly a good motivator in exploring how we treat our brothers and sisters. But the guilt should remain where it belongs, in the strange behaviors we have perpetrated--not in the process of how and why we explore our spiritual side. Any belief draws credibility when we take personal responsibility and act accordingly, so it perhaps it is best that it comes directly from our own design.

But as I say, who am I to tell anyone else what to believe? I'm still figuring it out for myself.