I took another quiz this one was titled What's Your Path to Peace? I scored a 25. This is what it told me about myself. I thought it ineresting.

You take the non-violent path. Like famed Indian pacifist, Mahatma Gandhi, you believe that peaceful civil disobedience is the best route to social change. There are rare moments when violent resistance may be considered as a better option. Nonviolence, you emphatically believe, is not to be confused with cowardice, but rather the highest expression of bravery.

I was given a choice to see prayers for peace and when i looked at them there where all these choices for which denomination to chose from. I placed them below it is neat to see how each denomination says the same prayer.

Christian
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.He makes me lie down in green pastures;he leads me beside still waters…
Click here to read rest of prayer »

Catholic
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.He makes me lie down in green pastures;he leads me beside still waters…
Click here to read rest of prayer »

Eastern Orthodox
Steer the ship of my life, good Lord, to your quiet harbour, where I can be safe from the storms of sin and conflict...
Click here to read rest of prayer »

Protestant
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.He makes me lie down in green pastures;he leads me beside still waters…
Click here to read rest of prayer »

Judaism
HaShem is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters...
Click here to read rest of prayer »

Buddhism
I take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha Until I attain Enlightenment…
Click here to read rest of prayer »

Hinduism
May all the beings in all the worlds be happy.May all the beings in all the worlds be happy.May all the beings in all the worlds be happy…
Click here to read rest of prayer »

Islam
Oh God,You are Peace.From You comes Peace…
Click here to read rest of prayer »

Pagan
Surround us with calm, let us rest in the glow of peace…
Click here to read rest of prayer »

Native American
O Great Spirit of our Ancestors, I raise my pipe to you. To your messengers the four winds, and to Mother Earth…
Click here to read rest of prayer »

Other Faiths
Send Thy peace O Lord, which isperfect and everlasting,that our souls may radiate peace…
Click here to read rest of prayer »

New Age
May you trust your highest power that you are exactly where you are meant to be...
Click here to read rest of prayer »

Multifaith
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love, Where there is injury, pardon…

In hounor of us celebrating the Chinese New Year today. I love dragons.

What is an Orthodox Quaker

When i took the Belief-o-Matic quiz it said that i was a Orthodox Quaker. I wanted to know more about this religion since i have always simply said i am a Christian when asked what religion i am. I do this partly because i went to a youth group at a Baptist Church but i know that my grandparents were not raised Baptist. I went to the site on Orthodox Quakers and these are the parts that i thought were important to being one.

Belief in DeityThere is a Trinity of the Father (God), the Son (Christ), and the Holy Spirit that comprises one God Almighty.
•
Incarnations Jesus Christ is God's only incarnation. God is manifest within all as the light.
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Origin of Universe and Life The most orthodox Quakers hold that God created all in less than seven days and less that 10,000 years ago. But many would maintain that a biblical "day" is not a literal 24 hours.
•
After DeathMost orthodox Quakers believe in direct reward and punishment, heaven and hell, the second coming of Christ, and resurrection of the dead

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SalvationSome Friends (the formal name of the group) churches include rites of baptism and communion, but sacraments to God are most often considered to arise from inward experiences, a personal encounter with God, rather than church ritual. Salvation is found internally through union with Christ, the divine Light within all. Many Quaker churches, e.g. evangelical, believe similarly to Conservative Protestant, that salvation is a free gift from God, with faith, independent of good works. Yet moral behavior and good works are viewed as essential to showing faith and obedience to God. Good works, such as humanitarian service, social justice, and peace efforts, are an expression of Christian love. Simplicity and humility are viewed as essential to living a Christian life.

How many defintions of religion are there?

Doing the presentations in class made me wander how many defintions i could find about religion so i began to search on the internet for definitions and these are a few i found.

Definitions:
1. beliefs and worship: people's beliefs and opinions concerning the existence, nature, and worship of a deity or deities, and divine involvement in the universe and human life
2. system: an institutionalized or personal system of beliefs and practices relating to the divine
3. personal beliefs or values: a set of strongly-held beliefs, values, and attitudes that somebody lives by
4. obsession: an object, practice, cause, or activity that somebody is completely devoted to or obsessed byThe danger is that you start to make fitness a religion.
5. christianity monk's or nun's life: life as a monk or a nun, especially in the Roman Catholic Church
This is from encarta.com
These definitions are ineresting and relate to many of the ones that are being descussed in class presentations. I still believe that religion is what a person makes it. It is how one person or many believe things happen. How they make up for what is going on around them. This is also one way to reflect what maters to them as far as hopes and dreams. It gives them the ability to believe in something that will help them have or achieve these hopes and dreams.

Cave paintings

The cave paintings are in France and are called Lascaux. This is a picture of the Great hall of the Bulls. This may not be the one we talked about in class. I have included the website so any one who wants can see the art work.
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/

Enlightenment

Today we talked about the science of religion dealing with enlightenment. I found it interesting in the respect that in art you would refer to the Rococo period if you talked about the Enlightenment time. In religion the enlightenment was seeking the truth about all things. In Rococo it was the time of fantasy. It was stunning the two viewpoints of enlightenment. To me enlightenment is being informed or educated about something new and unknown.

Mystical Experience what is it.

When the topic of mystical experience was mentioned in class today I wanted to know more. I went on the internet and did a simple search for information and found a list of many cites. I chose one and this is what information I found on the cite. (www.bodysoulandspirit.net This is the cite.)

Mysticism is usually defined in dictionaries and encyclopedias as a spiritual discipline used to make contact with the divine.

It also gives the following as a guide to help you know if you are having or have had a mystical experience.

General Characteristics of Mystical Experience

Mystical experiences are marked by all or some of the following feelings/insights.
A sense of unity or totality
A sense of timelessness
A sense of having encountered ultimate reality
A sense of sacredness
A sense that one can not adequately describe the richness of this experience

Most experiences can last as short as a few seconds or up to a few days.

I can see that this information would help some one but it did not help me to completely understand how you would tell if you had a mystical experience.

I think though that the quote below from Albert Einstein says it best. That in truth a mystical experience is an event that in a since startles the human mind, and acknowledges the existence of other forces may they be God or spirits or mother earth.
"The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religion." - Albert Einstein

This cite also has some stories of other peoples mystical experiences.

Belief-o-Matic quiz results

Your Results:
The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.

1.
Orthodox Quaker (100%)
2.
Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (86%)
3.
Liberal Quakers (79%)
4.
Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (78%)
5.
Seventh Day Adventist (75%)
6.
Unitarian Universalism (74%)
7.
Bahá'í Faith (66%)
8.
Eastern Orthodox (65%)
9.
Roman Catholic (65%)
10.
Hinduism (62%)
11.
Orthodox Judaism (62%)
12.
Reform Judaism (61%)
13.
Mahayana Buddhism (60%)
14.
Neo-Pagan (59%)
15.
Theravada Buddhism (59%)
16.
New Age (58%)
17.
Sikhism (57%)
18.
Islam (54%)
19.
Jainism (52%)
20.
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (50%)
21.
New Thought (49%)
22.
Scientology (48%)
23.
Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (46%)
24.
Secular Humanism (42%)
25.
Jehovah's Witness (40%)
26.
Taoism (38%)
27.
Nontheist (27%)


This quiz was indeed very interesting to take. I am now wandering what kind of results my family would get as well as some of my friends. I am going to send them the quiz to take so we can all compare.