I was reading a poem, "Everywoman Her Own Theology," for a Women's Studies class and it is the personal story of a woman creating her own spiritual journey. One line in the poem is that her new theology will have "no concept of infidels." What a beautiful theory.
And not as though it is unheard of. My entire life I have been raised in a religion that denounces the idea of "infidel" and yet that line struck me as something I had never noticed before. But mostly it struck me because the line was not that there would be know infidels but rather that the concept of being a traitor to belief does not even exist because, admittedly, even though I was raised thinking that no one was an infidel to my religion, I certainly knew what they were and acknowledged that, to many, I was one. It seems as though it should be a lot easier to forget about heretics if once you were a heretic and then I realize that at sometime, somewhere, everyone has been. Yet we still fall dangerously into the whirlpool of hate. Its an odd world out there, and, as far as I'm concerned, lends itself much more to pessimism, like it or not.
And not as though it is unheard of. My entire life I have been raised in a religion that denounces the idea of "infidel" and yet that line struck me as something I had never noticed before. But mostly it struck me because the line was not that there would be know infidels but rather that the concept of being a traitor to belief does not even exist because, admittedly, even though I was raised thinking that no one was an infidel to my religion, I certainly knew what they were and acknowledged that, to many, I was one. It seems as though it should be a lot easier to forget about heretics if once you were a heretic and then I realize that at sometime, somewhere, everyone has been. Yet we still fall dangerously into the whirlpool of hate. Its an odd world out there, and, as far as I'm concerned, lends itself much more to pessimism, like it or not.
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