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Posted by josef on 11/12/2008, 12:56 pm, in reply to "Re: Obama's spirituality"
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This reminded me of my Great-Aunt Sybil. She was a Bible-belt southern Baptist minister, in Oklahoma. No smoking, drinking, dancing, cards, etc. Fundamentalist. When my great-great-grandfather died we all flew to Okla. for the funeral and stayed with her. I'd heard about her but had never met her. She was warm and wonderful. In the kitchen after the funeral, to everyone's surprise, she gave a bottle of wine to my mother to open, saying she didn't drink, but she knew Mother and her sisters enjoyed it. I was 14 at the time, knew of her beliefs, and was so impressed!
Many years later on a trip across the country, my now-husband and I, who had been living together without-benefit-of-clergy, stopped to visit her. Knowing her beliefs, we were prepared to take separate rooms, but without a word she put our things in one room.
It's a tricky thing to judge people by their labels, even the Southern Baptist fundamentalist one. There are good-hearted people in every faith, I've learned, who live the spirit of their beliefs, and there are the other ones, the rigid and often nasty ones, who make the most noise.
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"The Tao is basically utterly open. Utter openeness has no substance. It ends in endlessness, begins in beginninglessnes".
-Li Daoqun
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