God Within

Description

Our Faith, In Our Words

What does it mean to be young and spiritual today—when the New Age isn’t exactly new, when female rabbis and ministers are no longer unusual, and when Eastern religion’s ideas and practices are no longer considered exotic? Who are the faces behind today’s fresh approaches to faith, approaches that are destined to shape the future of spiritual life in America?

"Religion is not a crutch for the weak-minded. It is merely spirituality in its simplest, most rudimentary form. We have witnessed the hypocrisy, the moral and spiritual mediocrity of succumbing to tradition for tradition’s sake. In an age when there are books on everything for dummies, my generation has opted to find out for themselves. I am a new adult, with decisions to make about my identity and my future. I am not about to surrender this newfound privilege. I am content with discovering my spiritual self through my own avenues. I am not in need of a crossing guard."
—from God Within

God Withinrepresents citizens of the twenty-first century who are faced with a dizzying array of spiritualities: believer, seeker, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Wiccan, to name just a very few. The result of a nationwide challenge extended to young adults born after 1974, in this book they share their experiences with all of these beliefs—some confident, some questioning—and introduce us to many shades in between.

Sometimes irreverent—but more importantly, always relevant—this thought-provoking collection of writings, poetry, and art showcases the voices that are defining the future of religion, faith, and belief as we know it.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian theology
• Wiccan views of divinity
• Hardkiss
• ?stika and n?stika
• Jewish philosophy
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 22 août 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781594735523
• Langue: English

Extrait

GOD WITHIN
Our Spiritual Future-As Told by
Today s New Adults

EDITED BY
J ON M. S WEENEY ,
E DITOR - IN -C HIEF , S KY L IGHT P ATHS P UBLISHING
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Contents



Introduction

1. Love and Strategy, by Eboo Patel
2. Simply Complicated, by Lindsay Keipper
3. Two Stars, by Elizabeth Ochs
4. Nestled in the Lap of the Goddess, by Pamela Dawn deForest
Oil on Canvas (Untitled), by Gwyneth Tripp
5. Spirituality vs. Religion, or Why the Atheist Crossed the Road, by Ian Giatti
Oil on Canvas (Untitled), by Gwyneth Tripp
6. A Spiritual Orphan, by Arlene Helderman
7. An Unauthorized Autobiography, by Sumi Loundon.
Drawing ( At Ease with the Buddha ), by Sumi Loundon
8. Jesus H. Christ, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Church, by Emlyn Bean.
9. Oy, Estherla, by Jodi Werner
10. Letting Our Spirits Free, by Jennifer A. Johnson
Drawing ( Cat Sit ), by Sumi Loundon
11. Moving from Judaism toward Christ, and the Christians Who Tried to Stop Me, by Lauren Winner
12. The Journey to the Alligator Juniper, by Shana Lanzetta
13. Living at the Crossroads, by Eboo Patel.
The Anti-Conclusion
About the Editor
Copyright
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Introduction
J ON M. S WEENEY ,
E DITOR-IN -C HIEF , S KYLIGHT P ATHS
T ODAY S N EW A DULTS
L ike an old Twilight Zone flashback, imagine the world when you were eighteen. Were your teenage years marked by around the clock/around the globe instant media coverage? Did you watch or participate in extreme sports? (For that matter, could you see virtually any sporting event on the planet the same day that it was played?) In this time warp, imagine that attention-span-whittling real-life television, Playstation, and MTV are on the tube. You carry instant global communication and information in your pants pocket. When you need an answer to a question-How many Italian lira will it take to buy one euro? Is there a decent hotel room in midtown Manhattan available this weekend for less than $200? Does Christmas fall on a Monday or Friday this year?-you know in less than two minutes. You think less about where you are going than you do about what you are going to do on the way there. Your parents-who lived the excesses of the 1980s-and then started to sock it away in the 90s-are unsure of how to raise you. Why? Because their parents made a lot of mistakes in the late 60s and 70s when the old paradigms collapsed. The old adage-When in doubt of how to parent, do what your parents did; after all, you turned out okay-has worn out. This is a new day. If you can easily imagine yourself in these scenes then you just might be a New Adult.
Young adults are kids-sort of an amalgous term that we have often used in the past for post-pubescent boys and girls. New adults are men and women facing adult problems and questions at increasingly younger ages. Today s new adults can be as young as middle-teenagers; what makes them new-rather than young-is the speed with which they come of age.
God Within is a collection of singular voices representing thirteen different young women and men ages 17-25-new adults. At least five religious traditions are here, including Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Wicca, and Judaism, plus a lot of spiritual searching completely outside of organized religion. There are two painters, one Rhodes Scholar, an agnostic, more than a few grassroots organizers, an on-line magazine editor, a divinity school student, a Ph.D., a witch-poet, a screenwriter and actor, a couple of retreat leaders, and much more.
It all began as a writing contest, a challenge. The editors at SkyLight Paths Publishing asked people across America under the age of twenty-five: Tell us about your spiritual or religious life. Tell us how you see our spiritual present and future. We sent press releases to almost every college and university newspaper in the country. We asked hundreds of religion and literature professors to post announcements on departmental bulletin boards. We chatted the contest up on the Web. We even spammed a little. More than one hundred submissions eventually came in from twenty-nine different states over the course of six months, each earnest and smart. Our editors read them over and over again and finally decided on the pieces and authors that were best expressed and, as a whole, showed the widest range of spiritual and religious experience.
The results are remarkable. In memoir, story, poetry, and paintings, the contributors to God Within offer us a spiritual feast that is brutally honest and searing in insight. This is an early glimpse of what today s new adults-the so-called Generations X and Y-will bring to our spiritual expressions in the future. Remember their names, because we expect that in at least a few cases, you will be hearing from these authors again.
G ENERATION W HAT ?
Generations are slippery categories. Marketers, demographers, sociologists and media speak of the Great generation-the one that lived and thrived through the second world war; the Lost generation-either the bohemian expatriate American writers of the 1910s 20s, or a derogative term for so-called Generation X, the confused children of baby boomers; the Baby Boomer generation-the richest and still the largest in recent history; the Echo generation- today s youngest people, also called Generation Y, and on and on. But rarely do the experts tell us why generation identity is supposed to build solidarity. Maybe it doesn t. Are generations really categories that their members take hold of?
Does proximity of birth year really make us more alike? How often do you hear someone say in everyday conversation, As a member of Generation [fill in the blank], I think . Or, You obviously don t understand my generation ? Talk like that is less common than talk like this: A certain amount of life-experience is necessary to understand what I m talking about or He s too old to get it. Too often, generations become ghettos for our own assumptions.
Maturity has always been measured in time and space. The substance of one s character and the range of one s understanding were determined, in large part, by age and exposure-the older you were, and the more you encountered, the more mature you became. These time and space continuums are becoming much shorter for today s new adults. They are challenging many of our assumptions, and for good reasons.
But there is very little in God Within by way of sign-posts of generation identity. If you have come to this book for answers to sociological questions- Why do those teenagers do what they do? -you had better look elsewhere. The message from our contributors is that you cannot understand an abstract called a generation, but if you listen to one of these new adults for a time you may come to understand more about yourself-because theirs is the vision of the future.
W E A RE A LL C HILDREN OF O UR P ARENTS
There are socio-political-economic facts that distinguish today s generation under twenty-five from their parents. Most significantly, today s new adults have grown up with less organized religion than has any American generation before them. Even though previous generations have had the same spiritual impulses-for seeking, wandering, faithfulness, and rebellion-today s new adults can freely become spiritual explorers in ways that their parents could not.
But the collapse of organized religion as the dominant, normative spiritual force in people s lives is not the sole reason why we have such a variety of spiritual expression today. As you read this book, you will discover that to come to such a conclusion gives religion both too much, and too little, credit. For today s new adults, organized religion is simply one treatment for the same sickness we all have shared from time to time throughout the ages. The spiritual emptiness that ails each of us (some of us more often than others) does not find a simple cure in organized religion today any more than it did yesterday. The difference is: Today, we are more free to admit it and find alternatives, correctives, and additives. For this reason, the contributors to God Within often express the antithesis of spiritual emptiness-almost a spiritual overflow.
If there is a trend to be found in the following pages, it is in the confident responses of today s 17-25 year olds to the spiritual confusion of their parents. The contributors to God Within show impatience in dealing with leaders of any kind who are continually unsure, unreflective, and do not understand the impact their decisions have on the broader world around them. We can even see this in simple brands and marketing. Powerful names like Levi s and Nike have taken nose-dives in the past several years as today s emerging consumers are unimpressed by what they perceive to be their unenlightened appeals to style and power to sell their product. Today s new adults want what s real, necessary, and what makes a difference. Lindsay Keipper, one of the contributors to God Within , says We hunger for honesty. The world is a liar and a cheat, and we rebel against that because we believe in something better. We want the truth, but the world is a liar and a cheat, and she will