explore my spirituality

Your Top Strength
Spirituality, sense of purpose, and faith
You have strong and coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of the universe. You know where you fit in the larger scheme. Your beliefs shape your actions and are a source of comfort to you.

Your Second Strength
Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness
Thinking things through and examining them from all sides are important aspects of who you are. You do not jump to conclusions, and you rely only on solid evidence to make your decisions. You are able to change your mind.

Your Third Strength
Bravery and valor
You are a courageous person who does not shrink from threat, challenge, difficulty, or pain. You speak up for what is right even if there is opposition. You act on your convictions.

Your Fourth Strength
Forgiveness and mercy
You forgive those who have done you wrong. You always give people a second chance. Your guiding principle is mercy and not revenge.

Your Fifth Strength
Love of learning
You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.

Strength#6
Perspective (wisdom)
Although you may not think of yourself as wise, your friends hold this view of you. They value your perspective on matters and turn to you for advice. You have a way of looking at the world that makes sense to others and to yourself.

Strength#7
Fairness, equity, and justice
Treating all people fairly is one of your abiding principles. You do not let your personal feelings bias your decisions about other people. You give everyone a chance.

Strength#8
Honesty, authenticity, and genuineness
You are an honest person, not only by speaking the truth but by living your life in a genuine and authentic way. You are down to earth and without pretense; you are a “real” person.

Strength#9
Industry, diligence, and perseverance
You work hard to finish what you start. No matter the project, you “get it out the door” in timely fashion. You do not get distracted when you work, and you take satisfaction in completing tasks.

Strength#10
Gratitude
You are aware of the good things that happen to you, and you never take them for granted. Your friends and family members know that you are a grateful person because you always take the time to express your thanks.

Strength#11
Social intelligence
You are aware of the motives and feelings of other people. You know what to do to fit in to different social situations, and you know what to do to put others at ease.

Strength#12
Creativity, ingenuity, and originality
Thinking of new ways to do things is a crucial part of who you are. You are never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible.

Strength#13
Kindness and generosity
You are kind and generous to others, and you are never too busy to do a favor. You enjoy doing good deeds for others, even if you do not know them well.

Strength#14
Leadership
You excel at the tasks of leadership: encouraging a group to get things done and preserving harmony within the group by making everyone feel included. You do a good job organizing activities and seeing that they happen.

Strength#15
Self-control and self-regulation
You self-consciously regulate what you feel and what you do. You are a disciplined person. You are in control of your appetites and your emotions, not vice versa.

Strength#16
Curiosity and interest in the world
You are curious about everything. You are always asking questions, and you find all subjects and topics fascinating. You like exploration and discovery.

Strength#17
Capacity to love and be loved
You value close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated. The people to whom you feel most close are the same people who feel most close to you.

Strength#18
Citizenship, teamwork, and loyalty
You excel as a member of a group. You are a loyal and dedicated teammate, you always do your share, and you work hard for the success of your group.

Strength#19
Hope, optimism, and future-mindedness
You expect the best in the future, and you work to achieve it. You believe that the future is something that you can control.

Strength#20
Appreciation of beauty and excellence
You notice and appreciate beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in all domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience.

Strength#21
Humor and playfulness
You like to laugh and tease. Bringing smiles to other people is important to you. You try to see the light side of all situations.

Strength#22
Zest, enthusiasm, and energy
Regardless of what you do, you approach it with excitement and energy. You never do anything halfway or halfheartedly. For you, life is an adventure.

Strength#23
Caution, prudence, and discretion
You are a careful person, and your choices are consistently prudent ones. You do not say or do things that you might later regret.

Strength#24
Modesty and humility
You do not seek the spotlight, preferring to let your accomplishments speak for themselves. You do not regard yourself as special, and others recognize and value your modesty.

for me. I’ve been consuming books—besides the Bible, I’ve been reading Tom Wright’s Simple Christian, which makes more sense to me than anything I’ve read for a long time. And I enjoyed The Case for Christ a few weeks ago, which dear flutter sent me. I’m going to ordere a bunch of these online for my brother, the one who is struggling with alcoholism. He is attending church for the first time, and I’m hoping he will find some relief there. Unfortunately, he hasn’t contacted me at all since he went on that alcoholic binge while we were in Ireland. He has told my other brother that he is clean and working a program, but I’m surprised that AA hasn’t gotten him to contact me to make reparations, if at all possible. I need to tell him some hard things, hoping he will accept how this has affected my life and those of my children. Then I think I can resume our relationship with a clear heart. So this is what I pray for these days.

M and her mom, both. They are so tired. There must come a time when God will take M’s mom home.

this book a friend here lent me—The Case for Christ. I’m mesmerized by it.

more and more towards deciding that yeah, even as an adult I’d choose to be a christian over any of the other religions I know about.
Only the “kind” of christian I am is definately not the right wing American evangelical fundamental christian. I don’t want to attend a church where I go and sit on my butt and listen to someone else talk AT me. I want a christianity that is more inclusive and more interactive.
For me, it’s the kind of christians I see in the “emerging church” and those in the social action groups that make sense to me. There’s got to be some sense of action and creativity in order for christianity to make sense to me.

I don’t want a spirtituality that is only about using my brain and being a “student” of God. I want something that is more relational but with God and with people.

Still going to be learning about God through the Bible and other writings, but that’s not going to be all in the future.

Feeling pretty good about this goal and this decision so far.

Meditate.
Read.
Study.
Write.
Shine!

I read about this book from another persons entry into their spirtuality I just wanted to jot it down as a note of somethign to check into.

I set up a meeting with a 7th day adventist me met at starbucks and had a nice conversation. The gentlman name was Ed. He appeared to be a good man and answered my questions both honestly and informatively. What I appreciated the most was that he did not give me an indoctrination spill as the Mormons did several days later. His answers were from his heart and from his studies.

In my future encounters I think I am going to have to prepare a similar set of questions for each faith as to compare them properly. I know I can go read a book and learn all about this but part of my goal is to view and to see how each persons spituality is manifested within his or her own life.

I wish I could remember a little bit more about the conversation but here is what I learned or my perception from the conversation.

7th day adventists are true to the word of god in the sense of the bible. They not only believe in the new covenant of the new testamnet but they also believe in following the old covneant as closely as possible. Hence their name sake “7th day” which is a representation of the sabbath. They follow the belief that man must honor the sabbath and keep it holy and they keep the sabbath similar to the Jews. From friday sunset to saturday sundown. This is a view that I can relate to as it is one of the ten commandments and goes directly against the pagan sunday worship. I currently do not honor the sabbath in this manner, as I was raised with sunday services as much of the christian world currently observes. This has alwasy been an important point for me becasue of the commandment. Also in my mind i was never really one to follow blindly I believe that one has the right and ability to worship God as he pleases, which to me menas that worshipping god can be done on any day of the week and does not nessesarily mean you must worship God in a church per say. This is a major stumbling block for me at this time as I search for truth and resist attending organized religious services until I can purify my thoguhts on organized religion as a whole. For me the ten commandments clearly states to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy So I believe at some pointin the future I may begin to adhere to this belief a little bit more. As I write I begin to think about the originations of the Pagan sunday worship and wonder if it is all part of satans deception. The more I think the more it becomes clear that Sunday worship has it’s foundations in Pagan beliefs which opens up the world to a monday – friday work week. off on saturday and church on sunday. Well what does most of the world do on friday nights which is technically the begginning of the sabbath.? They party, they go out, they do everything except worship the lord. So in essence it may be possible that Satan has single handedly caused much of the world to sin by breaking the sabbath commandment.

The next things I learned were all consistant with my current beliefs, Barptism, Being saved by grace. We also spoke briefly about spititual gifts, The lords supper and the holy trinity. I was introduced to a few new idea that I had not heard before such as the holy trinity is three seperate entitys compared to what I have alwasy been taught as the three being one and the same. We also spoke of the creation and the end times and this is where it got really weird for me with the introduction of a few other beliefs. They believe there is no hell and if you are not saved you simply cease to exist. They also believe that Jesus was not the result of a virgin Birth but through Intercoarse with God. He spoke quite a bit about prophesy and their beliefs in prophesy and placed a lot of fatih in their prophet Ellen White who was one of the founders of this religeon. When we spoke of creation he was of the belief that although god created the earth in 7 days it was not meant to be taken literally stating that in the bible a day is approximate to 1000 years. I have heard this theory before and my perceptions while we talked were that the church was trying to integrate Common sense and knowledge of science in order to make sense of God. This became more evident as we talked about the end times and I learned that it only made sense for him to have a belief in Alien Lifeforms. He also believes that there were many Gods and other Alien races were watching God and how he handled earth to decide whether he was fit to rule or not. He also believed that anyone could ascend to a position of God and possibly have their own little universe going on. From a logical perspective it seems possible that there could be other Lifeforms but my stance on this is one that there is not enough information available to prove or disprove this. However the thoughts of multiple Gods, the Non-virgin birth, No hell, Aliens and a few other beliefs are a little hard for me to swallow.

Overall I was envigorated by a growth in my new found knowledge and to me he appeared to be what I would call a good christian but I wonder if some of what I consider strange beliefs are actually Part of satans deception.

Another thing I learned or noticed as I begin studying is that some say this is a cult religion and to a degree I can identify with that belief. It seems a little strange that many of these so called cults have come about in the last 100 or so years. I would think that if some of these teachings were solid then they would have been introduced by Jesus Himself in the early church and I can find no justification in that. However to their defense they are using biblical passages but I feel as if they are stretching the meaning of those passages. I also see that many differant religions have the same fundamental basis but end up splitting into differant factions based on someones theories or ideas. Usually these People are the founders of that particular sect, case in point being with the 7th dayers and their Prophet Ellen White as well as the MOrmons and their Prophet Joeseph Smith. I find some very interesting Sililarites between the two sects that in both, one of their main beliefs is in prophesy and the recognition of their sects founder as being a prophet or self proclaimed Prophet of God. This alone tends to make me realize that these founders are propably some of the false Prophets mentioned in the Bible.

Wow this is getting really long but on a final note I wonder if their fundamental beliefs in God and salvation by grace enables them to enter the kingdom of heaven or if possibly their faith in a false prophet and that persons teachings actually hinder their spirituality. I think I will have to meet with this gentleman again for a deeper conversation and actually do some more research into the origins and biblical references they are using to reinforce these beliefs. I do not think I will be converting to 7th day adventists but in my search for wisdom, understanding and greater spirtuality I feel that I must understand those beliefs better for it may all be part of Gods plan for my life.

Thinking that maybe the thing for me isn’t about giving up being a christian, but rather to change the way I think about what it means to be a christian.

not quite sure what that means yet, except that it’s not about trying to follow all the “right” rules.

i have a lot of “baggage” from my past involvement in churches and in dealing with religious people. maybe my goal is more about exploring that and getting rid of the crap in my life about religion.

not quite sure just yet…

Since I’ve decided to explore my spituality I have been praying for god to open my heart and show me the truths as well as for him to give me the wisdom to see through the deceptions. Although this is just the begginning of my journey my heart and soul can feel the presence of the lord filling my life again.

I called approx 20 differant, I’ll call them churches, to set up appointments with a member of their clergy. The interesting thing about calling was that I left about 18 messages with only 2 return phone calls. More about that in a minute. I also spoke with two, I’ll call them pastors. The first was from the church of the Brethern or menonites, the second from the universal church both suggestted that I first visit thier services then they would be more than happy to speak with me.

I made appointments with the two return calls. The first I didn’t know what religeon until the meeting the second was with the Mormons. To keep this as short as possible I think I will make a new entry for each of those meetings.