Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Thursday, October 04, 2007
Religions of the world, uncorked
What I like about religion is that you can’t cork it.
This was evident last Saturday.
After listening to a lecture on Franciscan spirituality in the morning, I rode with a friend to the Aquarian Gardens in New Lisbon, Wis., for a New Age festival.
I admit what I’ve encountered in the New Age movement doesn’t speak deeply to me. But still, I wanted to see a place where someone would offer to paint my soul and another to photograph my aura.
While both turned out to be too expensive for me, I enjoyed listening to a woman speak about connecting people to their angel guides. We sat across tables from each other. She kept calling me a skeptic, but we smiled at each other anyway.
On our way home, my atheist friend and I discussed the value of the day. He talked about his spirituality. I talked about the atheist in me, which I find in many people of faith.
That evening in Winona, Minn., an interfaith group gathered at a mosque to break fast with Muslims who were fasting for Ramadan.
“Extend your hand to your neighbor,” said one of the hosts. “Get to know them as your friend, not as numbers in the newspaper.”
This all happened on Yom Kippur.
Now I know most of us have strong opinions about these different religious expressions. But I can’t help feeling patriotic to be able to encounter them all on the same day on the same slab of the Midwest.
We are curious people, and it’s good to be able to seek God freely.
But where does that seeking lead? How does it cause us to act?
We have freedom, along with any religion we can dream up. But does that freedom transform us? Does it make us courageous or just leave us smiling across a table?
On Friday morning I walked into a coffee shop and a friend showed me a newspaper photograph of bloody sandals.
The article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel read: “Yangon, Myanmar — Soldiers with automatic rifles fired into crowds of anti-government demonstrators Thursday, killing at least nine people in the bloodiest day in more than a month of protests demanding an end to military rule.
“Bloody sandals lay scattered on streets as protesters fled, shouting ‘Give us freedom, give us freedom!’”
The instigators of the protest have been Buddhist monks who refuse to be corked.
“Nonviolence is gonna win. Nonviolence is gonna win,” said my friend. “These thugs, they just don’t have the moral authority on their side.”
A man sitting next to him looked up, said “compassion,” then returned to his reading.
I wondered how the picture described God, and what would cause me to go get my shoes bloodied.
Joe Orso can be reached at (608) 791-8429 or jorso@lacrossetribune.com.
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