This Love

After Friday, I have been thinking about what each person chose to do his or her altar on. For me, what I am majoring in is not what I believe in the most. Although I wish it were something important to me, I could not picture the media as something that I want to feel extremely a part of. For me, it is my friends and family that mean the most. They shape who I am and who I want to be above all things. With them, I am apart of something bigger than myself. I cannot just stick within my own bubble; I give back and receive comfort in the fact that I can find something tangible in the belief of the people that surround me. I realized that I am not the only person that has this “abstract religion” in the presentation of the altars. While sitting and listening to each person present, they explained a large variety of things that they held on a pedestal such as accounting, snowboarding, and certain aspects of culture. These beliefs may be classified into material things such as material goods that are spoken of in Colleen McDannell's, Material Christianity. Someone could possibly find belief in an icon or a piece of jewelry that may make them feel closer to a loved one. These certain pieces of their lives, they turned to as what they found belief in. People even did actual religion as what they felt the most apart of, which is interesting to me because it is not the first thing I turn to.

What we traditionally see as religion is the set beliefs within Catholicism or Judaism where the followers must go by certain written beliefs and rituals. How can we define religion in today’s society? In such an obscure and new time period, can we redefine religion as set beliefs within what we hold the most true.

Seeing what people did for their altars sparked a conversation between a friend from home and I. He is extremely inspired by music and expresses to me how music is his outlet and almost a religion to him. Him and my other friend are coming out with a new album and their newest song is a song attributed to music’s uplifting motion in their lives. He told me that when his mom and sister first heard it they thought it was about a new girl in his life because it brings forth so much passion for one aspect of his life. In the song titled “This Love”, he talks about his love affair and learning for this thing that brought life to him during the hardships. His hip-hop and art was this thing. It accompanied him through tough times almost similar to what spirituality or an actual person could do.

As my friend and I continued our discussion, we talked about how people can look to what their passionate about as their belief system and their religion. What creates purpose for us in this life is almost what gives us our spirituality. Our belief in one thing, makes this life real and worth living.

On a related topic to last semesters Scientific Revolutions class, I found an article on Darwin the other day on the New York Times website called "Darwin, Ahead of His Time, Is Still Influential". The article summarized that although Darwin may not be necessarily looked at as correct, biologists are reexamining his studies. In their reexamination, they see what an amazing man he really was. What they were most amazed by how deep and broad his ideas were. He went from animal breeding to continuity between humans and animals. My point of bringing up Darwin is not necessarily bringing up the scientific aspect, but the dedication to his passion.

This dedication brought upon new ideas that had never been looked at or understood even today. Darwin's science was his religion. In this world where our passion is our religion, could religion and science not constantly be debated? Would a shift ever be made from traditional religion to this abstract? Could religion ever become modernized and simplified?