I grew up as a Christian. We celebrate Christmas, Easter and when I am with my parents we pray before we eat.  I was very involved in Sunday School and Youth group growing up which was a choice that I made. I spent my late teens years my early 20’s trying to walk the path of a good Christian and figuring out who I was and what being a Christian meant to me. I spent a lot of time praying and repeating the saying “God’s love is enough”. I have been blessed with the heart and the ability to travel and the more I do the less I feel like I know. I decided make 2019 a year of trying to understand religions and different points of view. I felt like 2018 was a tear full of disconnects in our world and misunderstanding. This is my way of trying to change just a bit of that.  

This Year of Religion project is in no way to take away from my chosen religion but to understand others, to listen, to reflect, to bring new ideas and ways of thinking into my life.

My husband will be joining me along on this journey along with friends and I am guessing new ones I am going to make.  You will be hearing from him and them as they join on in these blog posts. I know there are many things that I can’t control but I can control my actions and what I bring into this word. So here we go…

January 2^nd and I finished my first book on Buddhism.  Having a long flight, travelling for work, helped make time for me to read. I read “No-nonsense Buddhism for Beginners” by Noah Rasheta. The last time I remember reading anything on Buddhism was in high school during a world history class. I was surprised about how much I felt like I could relate to Buddhism and the amount of questions that I have about the practice.

As a social worker I found that Buddhism has some parallels with some of the concepts I learned getting my Masters in Social Work. Don’t know why I did not think of this before, but the focus on the present and mindfulness I found through this book really struck a chord with me and how I can integrate these things in my daily life. I work with youth and many of them deal with trauma and many would say they have been dealt an unfair hand in life. What I enjoyed about this book and trying to understand Buddhism in 100 pages was that life is suffering. The faster we understand things are going to suck, and can accept it, and move on the better life will be.  How we approach the challenges, understand the feelings and move past them, the simpler we make our lives. So many times, when things happen I think “of course!” You go to leave the house and you forgot your keys, someone cuts you off driving when you are already late, you spill on yourself right before an important meeting. So many times, I think “this only happens to me” I know that these types of things happen to everyone, they are a piece of life. Changing from the ‘poor me’ mentality and flipping it, as these things are a natural part of life, and only you can control your response. I want to be better at controlling my response and I think Buddhism is going to help with that. We will see…