KidSpirit writers and artists are characteristically undaunted as they plunge into this proverbial mother of all themes. A variety of perspectives from religious, non-religious, and soul-searching teens illuminate the often intangible nature of the divine.

1. In the Big Question, Elly Goetz describes how conceptions of God vary among people during different periods of time and in diverse cultures. Pick a culture that is unknown to you and research its conception of God. Is God forgiving, helpful, punishing or protective? How does that culture worship the divine? How does the divine play a role in their everyday lives?

2. We are all born into certain religious (or non-religious) traditions and, as Caie Kelley and Lina M. describe in their Interfaith Connections article, we very often grow up accepting the culture our parents lay out for us. Caie and Lina spent a few hours together learning about each other’s religious backgrounds and found many commonalities in their decision making and ethical stances. Find someone from a different religious background and get to know that person. Ask him or her about how they make decisions based on the framework of their religious heritage, and share your own experience. How has that framework developed for each of you over the years?

3. In his PerSpectives article, Samir Selmanovic likens spirituality to a journey that does not have to involve religion. “It is a way of traveling freely and intimately through the journey of human life, engaging with what’s to be found there.” Selmanovic also asserts that community is important — sharing that journey with others can be as integral to us as the individual experience itself. What do you think about spiritual inquiry? Is it important to your life? What kind of inquiry is important to you? Do you prefer an individual experience, or would you rather share that experience with others? Is it important to understand the experience, or is it enough to simply feel it?

The God Issue Group Guide

I grew up in a not-so-religious Muslim family, in an atheist country in the former Yugoslavia. In terms of history, stories, and religion, the Balkans were flammable. So, when at 17 I became a Christian, all hell broke loose.

My devastated parents recruited one of Europe’s best psychiatrists and 50 relatives to take their best shot at helping me get over my infatuation with religion. The ordeal went on from dawn to dusk, every day for two months. Religion was a crutch for the weak, they reminded me, the opiate of the masses. Even my former girlfriends were summoned to try to evoke sweet memories of my religiously unconstrained days and prevail over my heart.

They tried love, they tried threats. Eventually they resorted to isolation and I was expelled to the street and I did not see my mother and father for two years. I applied myself to my studies, returned to the tenuous atmosphere of my home, and after completing a structural engineering degree, I went to the United States to study psychology, theology, and then education. Eventually, I become a pastor in New York City and later moved to California where I co-founded a large young adult congregation. On this journey, I had access to high places and behind the curtain. It took me 15 years to find out that religion is as bad as my parents told me.

I found myself thoroughly disenchanted with Christianity. Religions, I realized, are God management systems that have compromised themselves in every way imaginable.

I hate religion. But I need it so that I can live deeply. Let me explain.

If you identify with the statement, “I am spiritual, but not religious,” you are not alone. If you circle “none of the above” when surveyed about your religious identity, you are part of a growing demographic. Even many of us religious people don’t exactly know how we got to this place of repudiating religion, but we have to honor where our hearts have gone.

Religion is difficult. It has history — and every history has its dark ages or, at the very least, dark moments. And the entire world is the judge. Spirituality, on the other hand, is personal. It starts and ends with me. I am the judge.

As humans we know there is more to life than what we can see and touch. Every answer we find, in science or philosophy gives birth to new questions. We don’t know. That’s what makes us different from other living organisms. We can sense that our existence is mystical. Scientists, like Sufis, twirl in their white robes in their labs transgressing the boundaries of what is known.

We are all made of this “spiritual stuff,” a dust that remembers its cosmic origins. As none of us is spared from being human, so none of us is spared from being spiritual. Spirituality is the subjective experience of our common lot of living “in between” — between dust and stardust, glory and gore, known and unknown, matter and spirit. Spirituality is our individual experience of the interior world we all have.

Spirituality does not have to involve religion. It is a way of traveling freely and intimately through the journey of human life, engaging with what’s to be found there. But, the moment two people begin conversing about the meaning of their experience, the moment they begin naming their thoughts, concepts, practices, convictions — anything at all — is the moment their religion germinates. We want to communicate about and pursue together what we think matters, strive for what is good, struggle against what is bad, cling to what is real and admire what is beautiful. And the moment a large number of people begin to want the same things and decide to help each other on their journeys, we have a major religion.

Religion comes from the Latin root word religio, meaning “to bind back.” We bind ourselves to what we hold as valuable and to others who value the same thing. To thrive and make a difference, spirituality needs a community, maybe not a church, a mosque, or a synagogue as we know them, but a community nonetheless.

In this sense, everyone has religion. Religion will never go away, for we will always want to make our spirituality function in more than our own isolated selves. We fight over our religions because it is in religion that we fully articulate our differences. Without religion, we would be left to drift with our own meanings isolated from each other. Without religion, nothing about our inner life would be passed from generation to generation. Imagine the invention of the wheel, fire and writing, and every new generation taking up the task of inventing them again.

Spirituality, on the other hand, can be frighteningly undemanding. It can serve some kind of generic god that submits himself (or herself) to our own egos. Such a god or universe never cuts across our will, never confronts, never frustrates, never leads us through dark places. But the world often is a dark place and, more importantly, each of us participates in making it the way it is. To change the world, one must be changed within, and a god, or a community that is not allowed to disagree with us cannot change us. Spirituality without religion has been as much a source of suffering as religion without spirituality.

Eventually I realized that my religion — any religion — is broken and beautiful (and at times beautifully broken), like me.

Now I try to turn my anger at religion into compassion, compassion for others and compassion for myself. I am being re-enchanted. I hate religion less, and I cry about it more. And I laugh.

Laughter is one of the ways we cope with the discrepancies of our lives. There is a dream we all have for this world, and then there is, well, the world. There are expectations we have of our religions, and then there are our religions.

I came to believe that our capacity to love God, ourselves, people, and all of life grows with our capacity to laugh. We are ridiculous, and not to laugh at our religions, our worldviews, and our philosophies (that is, ourselves) would be to bear false witness to life. We constantly bumble between our dreams and dignity on the one hand and human realities on the other. The ability to laugh in the midst of our imperfections, in the presence of God, is what those of us from the Christian tradition call “grace.”

Twenty years after I became a Christian, my parents. along with my older sister, finally entered a church for the first time. They came to hear me give a lecture (they could not utter the word “sermon”). I entitled my talk “Love.” I projected an old black-and-white picture of my mom and dad on two large screens in the auditorium. I showed pictures from their honeymoon, including some they took in a photo booth, kissing, caressing, laughing, feeding their hearts by looking into each other’s eyes.

“That’s love,” I said. “Because my mom and dad loved each other, I exist.”

“When I became a Christian, my mom, my dad, and my older sister were hurt beyond what I can describe with words or perhaps will ever be able to understand, but they loved me through it. After two years of difficult separation they lovingly brought me back home.

“And they are here today, in what to them is a very, very strange place. They have stepped into a church for the first time in their lives and in my 20 years as a Christian. And this might be the only time they will ever be in a church.

“There are people who must endure our conversions and the best intentions of our religions. There are millions of unsung heroes of God like my parents. So, please do me a favor, all of you, and give them a standing ovation for the love they have shown me despite the fact I became something they could not understand.”

Everyone stood up — about 700 people — and offered a heartfelt thank you: long, loud, sincere. I relished every second of it. Then I said, “Mom, Dad, Sister, thank you for your love. Everything good that I am, and everything good that I have, is because of you and your love for me.”

My mom, dad, and sister embraced me afterwards, freely and wholeheartedly, as I had not been embraced by them for almost a quarter of a century. At that moment, for the first time, I belonged to my family and to my religion.

We never belong to our beliefs anyway, no matter how personal or spiritual they may seem to us. We always belong to people. Even our belonging to God is experienced through people.

Religion is a journey of many generations that provides us with a starting point from which we can dig down to find the depths of our soul. Religious traditions — with their accumulated wisdom, practices, and an extensive chart of wrong paths taken in the past — can help us dig until we touch the bottom, or learn to fly. Religion is here to stay, simply because human beings will always put their efforts together in making good, or evil, happen. But it is here in a religious community where a robust personal spirituality can develop and where it actually matters most. In community, our personal spiritualities cross-pollinate with one another and interact with the wisdom and strength handed down to us from our particular religious traditions. In turn, our present contributions can be shared with others and passed into the future. When our personal spiritualities are bound together, we can help each other transform, and heal the world.

In a KidSpirit PerSpectives article, pastor and author Samir Selmanovic calls on us to lovingly reconcile the demands of our religious communities and our individual spiritualities.

More Than Spirituality

The first time I wanted to go to church, I was about six or seven.

I had always been a weird little kid, tall with kind of thick “nerd glasses,” the girl who played “orphans” instead of “family.” My mom was very supportive; she gave me a little purple Bible. I was really excited and loved the idea of going to church ever since my friend talked about singing in her Catholic church during show-and-tell. We decided to try a Congregational church near our house. When I got there, I was elated to find out I would be able to go to Sunday school. Oh, the mythical Sunday school, where all the cool kids went! There was only one other child in my Sunday school, though, a boy a little older than me. We read a book about Noah’s Ark, and then cut out pictures of sheep.

It was hardly a spiritually satisfying experience. I craved more than that; I wanted to know why and how, I wanted someone to explain what God is. My parents stopped taking me after a while, but they got me plenty of books. I read all the child-friendly, non-judgmental things I could get my hands on. There was one book called A Faith Like Mine, which is a compendium about different religions that teaches tolerance and respect. It had sections about all the major religions and their holidays and kids who belonged to them. At the end were short sections on religions with fewer followers. I read one on the Baha’i Faith and it explained that Baha’is believe that God was manifested in many prophets, like the Buddha and Jesus, and all religions brought a message for their age. The Baha’i Faith was the message of today. In my third-grade mind this translated as “God is known by many different names, but He is the same God,” a concept I believed strongly even then.

As it turned out, there was a Baha’i school right in my town. It is called Green Acre, and my mother’s cousin went there. I started to go with her to meetings and got all kinds of books. Soon, I became totally obsessed with it all, even being on a first-name basis with the owner of the bookstore. I even went to the youth group and the summer camps, the whole shebang. I loved it; especially the little shrine where Abdul’baha, an important man to the Baha’is, stayed in the early 1900s. I would read prayers there with my friends. When I got older, though, I started to understand that the world was imperfect, and not everyone thought exactly the same way.

One day we were in a group at a camp. We were talking about the importance of fasting when a girl wearing all black with blue hair raised her hand. She said her mother didn’t fast and she didn’t plan to either. Did that make them somehow “less” than the counselor?

The counselor said that people who fasted were closer to God, and the girl retorted that her mother was loved by God. Her mother also divorced without doing the “Year of Patience” the Baha’i writings dictate for people planning to get a divorce. After the session, I saw her angrily telling her friend that she didn’t want to talk about why she was upset. All religions have imperfect message bearers, and who knows what this girl’s mother had been through, but I stopped feeling happy in my religion after that.

I was more than unsatisfied with my experience with organized religion, and I desired something else, a religion that would entirely fill me with joy. I drifted on the edge of Atheism for a while. I started getting into Wicca, then Catholicism. I’m not sure where I belong right now.

I was trying to stifle my urge to pray and worship. Instead of having more friends, however, it felt like I had fewer because there was a part of myself I wasn’t sharing with them. After a while, I discovered my friends were not hiding their religion, in fact one girl said grace over her lunch every day. Her faith is strong and that inspired me to be strong in my faith that there is a God, and to remember that every person is different and should be able to worship freely. Instead of being ashamed of my interests, I can now view them in a more positive light.

I’m starting to learn to not look at the missionaries of a religion, not to look at the televangelists, not read the hate mail, not to listen to those who try to change who I am. I have to learn to ignore the kids who tell me how to act, and I have to be myself. Instead, I have to listen to God, whomever that is, and let Him drown out the background noise. I have to let the loudness of God take me away to wherever I need to be. I’ll still go to seven different churches and read through the piles of religious of books I’ve hoarded in my room, but they can’t tell me anything compared to what God can tell me.

Everyone should get to hear the beautiful, indescribable loudness of God.

In a KidSpirit Interfaith Connections article, teen writer Maria searches diligently for a faith that suits her — and feels the sting of disillusionment when she finds one that doesn't.

The Loudness of God

I was born into a spiritual family. My parents practiced Vaishnavism, a monotheistic sect of Hinduism based on worship of Krishna, the Supreme. As a result, I’ve grown up immersed in this rich and ancient tradition.

I have woken up every morning to the sound of ringing bells and fragrant billows of incense. I’ve learned how to sing Sanskrit prayers to Krishna, a Sanskrit name for “God,” and I love it. They’re fun to sing, have beautiful meanings, and allow me to express myself. Over these years, I’ve learned a lot about the philosophy of Vaishnavism by reading and studying books like the Bhagavad-Gita, Srimad Bhagavatam, and Sri Isopanishad. At the age of eight I started listening to lectures about the Ramayana and Krishna. I enjoyed them tremendously and was enthralled by the beauty and humanity in these ancient tales about God. Soon I was listening for hours upon end, finding a deep sense of peace and relaxation in them. It is something I still love doing. In conjunction with my readings of Vedic books and conversations with my parents, these lectures became my primary source of spiritual knowledge and inspiration.

Even though I was immersed in learning so much about God, at some level I felt disconnected from my tradition. Reflecting back I realize I never had to search for God myself as this knowledge was handed to me. My knowledge of God remained very theoretical. My view of God was very specific, but it was merely an idea for me. It didn’t seem real. For a long time God stayed this way for me — an ideal person and no more.

This semester I’ve started taking classes at Friends Meeting School, a local Quaker school. This is my first year in high school or any kind of school. I was homeschooled until now. It’s also my first time stepping out of the sheltered environment that homeschooling offered me. I’m having a lot of fun. I’m studying Physics in school and love it. Gravity fascinates me very much — the fact that planets are revolving around each other and that all objects in this world attract each other? Pretty mind-blowing stuff.

Seeing science explain things in such a logical manner has made me want to explore the things I’d learned about God in a similar way. It makes me question what I already know. My scriptures told me that God made the planets revolve around each other but science tells me that gravity is the source. I debate between the two. Science shows me a perfect machine and nothing more. But could the source of gravity be God? I realize that that the logic of God’s existence is indisputable. Being born into a religious family has many advantages, but I’ve never been challenged to think about the existence of God. I have always taken it for granted.

Thinking about these topics has not only strengthened my faith in God, but has also helped me find connections between science and religion, whose seeming opposition was an obstacle to my spirituality. Science could explain to me how some of the things worked the way they did. But why? I look to my scriptures for that and feel that the two, science and religion, come together in a cohesive harmony.

My art teacher always tells me that taking a step back and looking at a painting with fresh eyes leads to amazing revelations. I started an online course offered by Stanford this year called “Textual Analysis and Argumentation.” I studied several American writings from colonial times, many of which had dominant spiritual themes. It was a beautiful experience to see the world through the eyes of different faiths. I read writings such as Paradise Lost and The Pilgrim’s Progress. Not only is this course helping me become a better writer, it is helping me look at my faith through a different lens. It is like looking at a painting with a fresh vision and seeing nuances I’d never noticed before. I was reading “A Model of Christian Charity,” a Puritan sermon from the 17th century by John Winthrop, and he talks about loving and respecting fellow humans and Christians. In his writing he uses a striking example; he describes how the mouth does the work to nourish the rest of the body but, in the act of giving, the mouth itself is nourished. In fact, the mouth gets the greatest pleasure. Similarly, in giving we gain the greatest gratification. This example reminded me of something similar I had read in the Srimad Bhagavatam, bringing out a deeper meaning in that familiar text. This revisiting and re-exploring of old concepts, through new eyes, has helped me go deeper into my understanding.

As I grow and learn about other faiths and fields of knowledge, I’m learning to reflect and rationalize everything I know. Challenging my faith with science is helping it become stronger and I can see my view of God change from something dry and conceptual, to something real and personal. I used to view God as being mechanical, cold, and oblivious to emotions; but now I see God as being a person with feelings — a person who wants to know and love us. God has always been described as a person in Vaishnavism, but when I read his wondrous activities, it felt like a fantasy novel. Revisiting those stories with logic has made them come alive and I’ve realized their reality and immensity. As a result, my attraction for him as a person has increased. The widening of my horizons, and learning about things that may seem separate from religion, is helping me develop a deeper understanding of my faith and knowledge of God.

In a KidSpirit Interfaith Connections article, teen writer Nimai discovers that science and his Vaishnavist faith don't have to contradict — they can support and reinforce one another instead.

A Fresh Look

What is right and wrong? What do we, as teenagers, base our decisions upon?

Lina and I are both 16-year-old high school students. We live in a predominantly white, suburban bubble just outside of San Francisco. As we’ve grown older, questions about faith, God, and internal standards have arisen and been challenged by our increasing independence and studies in school.

When we were younger, our parents’ beliefs shaped our own. As we become adults, will our actions rise from the traditions we were raised in or will they change as we form our own unique opinions? Lina and I share an interest in this subject. Though we come from different cultural backgrounds, our goal in talking about our respective traditions is the same: how do you measure morals and how do they evolve? With these questions in mind, we met to discuss our religious and cultural roots, and how they shape our own moral codes.

My name is Caie, and I am a nonreligious half-Asian. My parents have never mentioned much about faith: their religion is science. My father is a biology professor and my mom is a financial analyst, so my lessons about morals have come in the form of stories and real-life experiences. My mother is Chinese, and has always been a strong believer in holding high standards and dispensing punishment when we haven’t followed through. One particular example of this stands out.

Like many siblings, my sister and I always used to fight. When my parents had had enough, my mother sent me to the front of our house and my little sister to the backyard. There, in the lonely light of day, we were forced to think about our disagreement. I’ll always remember my mother’s face before my 20-minute exile, saying, “Listen to me! If you cannot get along with your sibling, then you will be alone. If you don’t want to share, you don’t have to. You don’t have to spend any time with anybody at all.” I discovered then the dangers of unnecessary conflict. It was harsh, but it was effective. With these punishments, along with fairy tales and fables, my parents taught me right from wrong. As I became a teenager, their lessons evolved into lectures about drugs and alcohol that were fact-ridden and scientifically based. I learned, in other words, in a rational, straightforward way.

Such rationality plays a role in many aspects of life, including my values of hard work and academic honesty. Growing up, my mother constantly reminded my sister and me that nothing worth having ever came from being lazy. As a result, she enrolled us in Saturday morning Chinese school, music lessons, and swim team, and would not let us quit. Through such activities, I learned that success did not come easily, but rather rose after many hours on the piano or in the pool. When I had put time and effort into a task, that eventual triumph — whether it was nailing a trill for a classical piece or improving my time at a swim meet — was even sweeter. In school, I draw on these experiences with the understanding that academic success comes after long hours with my AP US textbook or repetitive calculus problems. Experience has reinforced the idea: if I spend the night before a test relaxing in front of a television instead of a textbook, my grade will reflect my effort level.

"Such rationality plays a role in many aspects of life, including my values of hard work and academic honesty."

Similarly, the bedtime stories from my childhood introduced the importance of honesty, and I stay by that value because of my own experiences. Many of my classmates have cheated on tests or papers, and often their wrongdoing is not caught. Just because they do it does not mean I should, though. I take classes because I enjoy the material, and so not learning what is required would undermine the reason I signed up for coursework in the first place. For many, God is what keeps us on a moral route, but for me that compass is a little more internal.

My name is Lina, I am an American Palestinian Arab, and my parents are both Muslims. I have been learning about Islam since I was born. In my eyes, Islam is a beautiful religion and I too consider myself a Muslim. I’ve heard the word “terrorist” in conjunction with “Muslim” many times, and so I know how inaccurate these generalizations can be. Caie will point to a newspaper article or childhood anecdote to prove that kindness is beneficial. I look to Islam. My religion is peaceful, and we are taught to welcome differences, above all else. My religiously-based upbringing, I am sure, will continue to aid me in making the right decisions.

Islam has taught me morality, including the idea of jihad. The way I have been taught, jihad means “striving in the way of God.” In the media, jihad is a term often used to describe radical Islamic fundamentalism. But for something to be jihad, it needs to have a dignified and righteous intention as well as a sacred connotation. It’s like an inner moral compass — the knowledge that something is bad, and the strength one must have to stay away from it. When I was younger that meant respecting my elder’s teachings or studying the Qur’an.

Today, jihad means that if I’m at a party, and people are drinking, I say no. I understand that such decisions are based on the rich culture I was raised in, and I know not to put myself in situations where such actions would affect me. It’s hard to say what exactly makes me realize the difference between wrong and right. I was raised by two strong Muslim parents who I trust and respect. As a result, I value the decisions and lessons they have taught me, and I have no reason to question those morals. Having faith allows for direction and clarity. In high school, I’ve seen firsthand what alcohol or drugs can do to a classmate, and I am glad for the upbringing I’ve had. I, too, value honesty, hard work, and respect. My experience at school, and success in public speaking or other activities have certainly reinforced that hard work pays off. Respect is a moral so ingrained through faith and through my upbringing that it is hard to imagine living without it. When I was in kindergarten, I had a group of friends over at my house. We were up in my room playing games and having fun. At one point, my mother was going to open my door to check on us and see if we needed anything. Right before my mother opened the door, she overheard my friends and me talking about people at our school. Later that night, when my friends went home, my mother came to talk to me, saying, “I overheard you and your friends saying bad things about people at your school, in other words, gossiping. Lina, gossiping is never a good thing to do. In our holy book the Qur’an, God has told us that gossiping is forbidden. Try not to do it again.” After that conversation, my mother took out our holy book the Qur’an and began reading me the part where it says not to gossip. I was taught a crucial lesson and to this day, I try to never gossip due to Islam and my mother’s words. As I grew older and studied Islam more, I have learned to show kindness to everyone, no matter what, and to uphold values that are very similar to Caie’s.

While our outlooks reflect different cultures and customs, Caie and I both value strong morals. For me, acceptance of others stems both from having experienced racial insensitivity and from the teachings of the Qur’an.

So today, how do we judge the moral standards we’ve been taught? Neither of us would change the way we were raised. We’ve come to similar conclusions about how to act despite different moral systems. By following the lessons from others, we’ve grown into successful, satisfied students. When we seek understanding instead of judgment about classmates’ cultures, we’ve found ourselves more open-minded towards beliefs that are different from ours. We aren’t exactly the same: we dress differently, celebrate different holidays, and eat different foods, but these are superficial qualities. The stronger, underlying core values of tolerance and morality are what determine how we truly view each other, and these inner beliefs reach across our faiths and cultures. While it’s an overstatement to say that we live in total harmony with others — we are teenagers, after all — we do feel like we understand our place in this world. Islam has taught Lina how to determine right from wrong. My mother’s endless “don’t do this” lessons and facts showed me the correct path. These teachings just come from separate sources of wisdom. As a result, while the workings of the world for Lina are signs of God, for me, they are explained through science or the effects of our own decisions. We’ve both come to understand our parents’ warnings, which are surprisingly similar. While Lina knows not to drink from her faith, I don’t because I believe that my actions will have consequences and because I was taught it wasn’t right. Though her beliefs are rooted in religion, they aren’t different from my own beliefs. In the end, our actions are the same.

Like all teenagers, Lina and I argue with our parents from time to time. During these fights my mother wonders if her lessons have had any effect on me. Well, as far as we are concerned, yes, Mom and Dad, we have been listening to you.

In a KidSpirit Interfaith Connections article, teen writers Caie and Lina share some of the deep similarities in their morals despite growing up in totally different cultural environments.

Reaching Across Different Faiths and Cultures

When they come, they come in boxes.
They’re do-it-yourself kits, packaged with batteries and styrofoam,
Goody bags the siblings get at birthday parties, perhaps,
Or the dog the family eagerly promises to love and take care of forever—
Go fetch, they say, the red rubber ball a blur against the blue background.

First, he is gazed at,
lovingly, amazedly,
silently. a few, long,
never-to-be-forgotten seconds—

And then it’s snatched by the nurses in bloody white coats who have babies waiting at home
Snipping first then plopping it down, putting a diaper round it with gloved hands,
Sticking things in its ears and mouth, wrapping measuring tapes round its flailing limbs,
Poking and prodding, weighing and—is she picking its nose?—yellow tubes,
Pressing its feet with a foul black gunk and then imprinting them in the outlined box on the paper,
Now swaddling it in heavy blankets, and finally, depositing it into weak, waitful arms.

Throughout the entire process, his eyes stay firmly shut.
He wails whenever he feels particularly irritated by the nurses’ antics,
Absentminded, abrupt sobs, tiny and tearless,
Just being, responding, experiencing and

Later, they’ll coo, then yell, then scream, and crawl and walk and fall and talk and fight,
Sucking their thumbs and drinking milk, liking Frosted Flakes more than Cap’n Crunch,
They’re growing taller and learning, trying out swear words and books, realizing that they exist,
And soon they’re doing their homework and learning to ride their bikes and smiling at babies,
Now they stop doing their homework and they remove the training wheels and
Make babies cry because they’re big kids and jealousy and hate and ego and greed and malice,
And the ones who live in the suburbs will know their mailmen by name.

One day, he’ll come to the front of a classroom and tell the whole world,
Loudly, clearly,
“I am here, and I am ready to be judged.
I am ready to be categorized, I am ready to be labeled,
And I am ready for you to accept me.
And I will allow you, because I have no choice, to measure me,
To poke and prod me, to gauge my reactions,
To swaddle me, to choke me with your waitful, weak arms.”

And he’ll dance on a sea of pacifiers to the sound of plastic crunching underfoot.

Not long after all that, they get bored, and not long after that, they get boring.
And because mailmen don’t like to give or tell you boring things,
(Though sometimes we have to, and you can call 1-917-613-6375 with any complaints),
I’ll leave you with this, until next time,
And it makes me laugh, or cry, if it’s that kind of day:
When they go, they go in boxes.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen writer Akash narrates a human life from the wry, jaded perspective of a mailman — who may be more metaphysical or allegorical than real.

Mailman

Gather in the twilight dusk
A collection of trampled leaves and grass underfoot
The crisp scent of pine hanging in the air.

Follow the iridescent blue jay
Whose wings are a majestic cape
Of star-studded sapphire
Weaving through a canopy of green.

Discover the meadow of broken dreams
Where dreamers lay down their heads to rest
In a sea of shattered sea glass
That glints and cries in the moonlight
Forming an ocean of melancholy tears.
Beneath the roaring canvas of night
Imagination comes to die
Fading stars and hibiscus flowers
Chasing each other in the moonlight.

III.

As the world around you shatters
Close your eyes
in an eternal slumber
With only the wind in the willows
To mend your broken heart.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen writer Caroline transports us to a meadow of broken dreams — and one last hope that they may yet be mended.

The Fallen Paradise

Looking through God’s lenses
Seeing the tiniest suffering or relief
A silvery tear my cheek senses
Watery drops the outcome of joy and grief

Laughter of people together
Infinitely many joyful hearts
Sorrow, too, like rainy weather
Beholding each other’s corners and hidden parts

Mankind determined with big dreams
Praying to fulfill a good life
I can see them all, their frowns and beams
It’s crystal clear that His vision is far and wide

The experience of having the Lord’s vision
Indeed reformed my viewpoint in a great way
That it’s not only about me, my ambition
That He has to look after each day

It’s about everyone, every creature
Who’s being watched by the Almighty
He cares no less for Mother Nature
He cares for you, for me and removes anxiety

It seems as if his unbiased vision has no bound
Godly visualization enables me to see diversity
Truths of life, truths of humanity can be found
Faith in the healer shall remove adversity

In a KidSpirit poem, teen writer Tanmaya describes the joy and insight we can attain by trying to look at the world from God's caring, inclusive point of view.

The Divine Vision

The lightsome little toddler
across the waiting room
was fixated on
his lofty structure
composed of bold,
slightly used,
plastic building blocks.
He grabbed another piece
from the modest bin
in the corner that
lacked exciting gadgets
and gizmos
to keep an ingenious
young mind
entertained.
Yet the child
was still able to see
the potential that lies
in those objects.

He grasped
the cherry red
2 by 4
lego brick
between his chubby fingers
as he secured it
at the top
of the sturdy,
growing tower
making sure
the raised bumps lined up
to comply with
lego building codes
known by children
that specify no space
between two blocks
should be visible
when snapping
them together
to avoid the risk
of the crashing end
to a technicolor
masterpiece.

I briefly look up
to the doctor
who just entered the room,
scanning for a family
to present them good news
or bad.
But once I saw
his grave face
and heard
his formal tone
as he asked the family
to come with him
I instantly knew
what was to come.
I looked away
from the scene
finding comfort in
the lightsome little toddler
across the waiting room.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen writer Isabel finds solace in an otherwise somber waiting room by observing a young child playing with blocks.

The Waiting Room

In a KidSpirit poem, teen writer Zeeshan reflects on the power of faith both to inspire hope and to kindle terrible conflict.

I view Him from out of every lens I look
He sees me from every corner and nook
I see Him in trees and flowers
While He gracefully blooms blessing showers
I see Him in the cotton candy cloud
I see Him in hearts that cry aloud
I breathe Him as I welcome a new day
I embrace Him as my dreary eyelids lay
I feel His presence while I write
I see Him supplying some might
I cry everyday
As I ask for forgiveness and a new ray
No negativity will I ever portray
Towards the Almighty whom I love each day

When negativity whizzes around his name
I tear out my heart and throw it in flames
Disturbances break on through
But I will never send negativity to YOU
Oh, dear God, show me the light
Show me your vision, your delight
Oh, my Lord, make me your home
In my heart lies thy earthly dome
With your hand entwined in mine
There is no limit or line
As we pursue this world oh so divine

In a KidSpirit poem, teen writer Niti revels in the presence of God in everyday life — and pushes back against any urge to dismiss or disparage the sacred.

We Pursue the World Oh So Divine

And away to the hospital my mommy had to rush.

But it seemed to me that my heart would not last very long.

In the hospital I heard people rushing about,

Through the tunnel I went towards the light,

Hoping that mommy will one day hold me tight.

After my mother was in labor for many hours

God finally decided to give me my halo of flowers.

When Mommy had heard about me all she did was cry.

It wasn’t a miracle because I had just died.

So she always asked, “Why God? Why me? What for?”

Why did you have to take my life from me?

Even though I am dead my heart is still with my mother.

But since I am in heaven I am looking after my little sister and little brothers.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen writer Cheyenne narrates the heartbreaking experiences of an infant who dies shortly after childbirth.

Letizia

It wasn’t the usual sort of thing to actually experience, she mused, a flock of butterflies swaying upwards like an exhale, darting here and there before finally settling back on the branches of the bush. She stood in their midst and held her body still, her breath quiet, eyes soft. They flickered around her like bits of tiny tattered color in the intense blue of endless sky.

The first word that came to her mind was “miracle.” Because she believed in miracles, large and small, set out like presents wrapped in colorful paper. Just for her. A hint of summer on the wind. A glimpse of kindness in someone’s eyes. A moment in which she loved every single thing around her, because all of them together meant that she was gloriously, blissfully alive.

Alive! That was the second word. To be alive to glimpse the sky that reminded her of pale pottery cracked with wisps of cloud. Alive to have her hair lifted by the silver breath of wind. Alive alongside every single blade of grass that thrust itself upwards — and yes, every butterfly on the limber branches of the sun-flecked bush. All were alive with a power that stunned her.

And the last word, careful whispered quiet, maybe not meant to be heard by ears at all. She whispered it to the skinny stalks of grass and murmured it to the tiny beating wings that flooded the air around her. And response. In every flap of butterfly-wings she heard it, in every millimeter with which the grass grew in the clear blue air. In every breath of wind, every rustle of hair, clothing. In every footstep. Every split second with which the world turned. It was at this moment, thought the girl, that human language failed. Failed eternally. Because it could never actually, tangibly touch this grass and this bush and these butterflies and this endless … sky. Could never brush this source of soul and dream and the immense, shivering aliveness that sang flutelike through the delicate tremor of the air and the soft, solid ground.

Sometimes it was almost there. Silversweet on her tongue. She could taste the salt of the syllables, the soft, bittersweet clarity of the words. Only sometimes. Only long enough to blink, and think back again, search for it in the shimmer of memory. At such times she could feel it trickle away, flick itself into the air and take flight. Music. Soul. Magic. One beat of a butterfly wing.

Alone she stood in the grass, beside the bush, beneath the sky. The butterflies around her. The heartbeat of the earth. God.
In her moment of stillness, the world moved. Shifted. Breathed again.

In a KidSpirit Awesome Moments piece, teen writer Ella Lombard describes one miraculous, mystical, transcendent moment of communion with nature. 

Single Word

It wasn’t extremely special, just a run-of-the mill Sunday, where life goes on as usual. This particular Sunday, I was providing the music for the postlude at the end of the church service. Since I help with music during church services quite often, I didn’t view my performance as something out of the ordinary; it was just a normal occasion.

I was playing “Meditation” from Thaïs by Jules Massenet, one of the more famous works for violin. The preparation of the piece wasn’t that unusual either. I experienced the moments when I was in love with the piece and how I was interpreting it, and the moments when I was very frustrated, when all I wanted to do was put the piece in a drawer and never look at it again. I had also been studying the piece for a while with my teacher. I had spent the week prior to that Sunday practicing “Meditation,” and I was about ready to play it once more, in church, then not look at it for a good long time.

One of the things my teacher emphasized in practice was putting character into the music I was playing. It may seem ironic at first to people who don’t play music, but to convey your emotions, you have to have a distant and detached, unemotional relationship with your music. You put your character into the piece by the way you phrase the melodies, and contour the dynamics (how loud or soft you play). Once you have that unemotional relationship with the piece, you can play it without getting too involved because you’re not working too hard trying to play what you want to hear. Adding a bit of your soul into your playing once you have that unemotional relationship makes it seem like you are putting everything you have into your piece, while you remain calm and levelheaded. In performance, then, you are able to be quite detached from the music, and can add your spur of the moment personality that makes the performance what it is.

When I watch the recording of that performance, I see the many places I can still improve, but all flaws aside, that Sunday morning, I had finally achieved the unemotional relationship with the piece, and was able to put just a little bit of myself into it. I had prepared so well that I didn’t have to think about every little detail. I could relax and make sure I was making the music that my heart wanted to make all along. It felt like I was “in” the music, but at the same time it was like I was watching myself perform. I experienced a feeling that came from somewhere bigger than myself. It wasn’t just me putting myself into the piece; it was everything that I could have wanted at that exact moment in time. Since music is very spiritual for me, the experience was one of great joy, because I was able to create something that not only affected me spiritually, but it was something I could share with a community of people that I enjoy spending time with. My experience may have been a “religious” experience, or it may have been a “Godly” experience, but I like to think of it as an experience that was created by the power of music.

In a KidSpirit Awesome Moments article, teen writer Anna finally connects deeply with a piece of music after practicing it from a detached and dispassionate standpoint.

The Power of Music

Ang Lee’s filmic interpretation of Yann Martel’s wildly successful book Life of Pi is unapologetically fanciful, visually stunning, intellectually valuable, and it is undeniably a great work of art.

The movie opens with a series of tableaus of a beautiful Indian zoo, these opening images already give us a sense of the aesthetic playfulness and skillful cinematography that are characteristic of the film. The wonderful impression that this movie’s visuals left me with is practically unmatched by any other movie I have seen. This partnered with computer generated imaging and visual effects that are worthy of an award makes for a visual masterpiece.

Life of Pi presents the protagonist, Pi, as a middle-aged man telling his story to an intrigued Canadian novelist looking for a subject, and he indeed finds a fascinating story in Pi’s life. Pi begins by explaining his childhood in India, providing a charming backdrop to his life. He continues to tell us of “his greatest journey” in which he is shipwrecked and trapped on a small lifeboat with only a fierce Bengal tiger for company. Pi’s story is truly an emotional, intellectual, and spiritual journey for the viewer, and possesses value even without its captivating presentation.

The acting throughout the movie is impeccable. Middle-aged Pi is played simply yet engagingly by Irrfan Khan, and teenaged Pi played by Suraj Sharma is also wonderfully cast, showing Pi’s emotional development very well.

One of the most important themes, as well as one of the things that gives the story it’s intellectual intrigue is Pi’s take on religion. As a young boy, Pi was fascinated with religion. He was raised Hindu by his mother, however his father was not very religious at all. At a young age Pi adopted Christianity, while also continuing his belief in Hinduism; he continued to study the kabbalah as well as practicing Islam. Pi’s all-inclusive, unprejudiced approach to religion is summed up in his mantra that “faith is a house of many rooms.” When the Canadian man to whom Pi tells this confronts him, asking him if there is “no room for doubt,” Pi responds by saying that there is one on every floor. However, Pi’s approach to the concept of faith is sometimes frustrating in its unquestioning idealism. From what we see it sometimes seems that Pi is not attempting to collect his personal beliefs and discover the best of what religion has to offer but that he is trying on different religions like different outfits, not approaching them with enough thought or doing so seriously enough. Despite this, the way Pi approaches faith does something amazing: it offers a valuable lesson, one that is taught often, in a fresh new way. It tells us to be open-minded. This concept is particularly valuable in this day and age when religion is so often a barrier and source of conflict between people. Pi offers a model that we should all seek to follow, that of a personal and accepting approach to not only one’s own beliefs, but also to those of others.

Life of Pi offers valuable lessons as well as emotional and spiritual complexity while also wowing us visually through action, tension, and suspense-packed scenes at every turn. This is a balance that is very hard to hit and is something that can rarely be attributed to a movie, which makes the film indeed worthy of very high praise. Altogether Life of Pi is an amazing achievement of acting, direction, and cinematography that touches on, in a relatively short two hours, such complex issues as faith, friendship, and fantasy.

In a KidSpirit Media review, teen writer Zach examines some of the big themes in Ang Lee's film "Life of Pi," based on the novel by Yann Martel.

Belief and the Beast: A Review of Life of Pi

The genius of Paulo Coelho’s novel, The Alchemist, lies in its deceptive simplicity. At first glance, the reader might assume that it is merely a fable: the story of the shepherd boy Santiago and his quest for treasure.

And it is, to a degree. But when one looks closer, The Alchemist is filled with metaphors and beautiful imagery about life, love, and God’s plan for us. The story of Santiago’s journey is intriguing. However, the lessons he learns about life are what make the book meaningful.

The Alchemist begins in the Andalusian region of Spain, where Santiago is a shepherd who dreams of traveling beyond the confines of his life. However, he is content with his routine and takes comfort in caring for his sheep. Santiago is not prepared to abandon his entire life just to travel, until he meets a mysterious and magical man who changes his outlook. The man tells Santiago that each individual has a Personal Legend, something that they truly desire, which is their purpose in life to accomplish: “There is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth.”

Before Santiago sets off on his journey, the man tells him a story about a boy who seeks the secret of happiness from a wise old man. From the story, Santiago learns that while he should never lose sight of his destination, he should also enjoy the experience of getting there. Santiago embarks on a quest to fulfill his Personal Legend, and Coelho gives us a beginning that immediately captivates the reader, transporting us into Santiago’s world.

While the book has many subtle philosophical messages, perhaps the most noteworthy is about religion. Through Santiago’s experiences, Coelho infers that there is only one God, but men interpret him differently. Although some men allow their interpretation of God and the rules of their religion to define them, there is an unwritten universal language with which we all can communicate. When Santiago is able to relate to those he meets during his travels, Coelho shows that humanity has commonalities that run deeper than cultural differences. God brings people together. Santiago holds a unique view of God in that his beliefs are nebulous rather than codified. His religion is based on personal experience instead of an institutional proscription. As a result, Santiago is able to take multiple religious views into perspective.

However, Coelho does follow traditional religious beliefs in that he does not feel that women deserve unique Personal Legends. Fatima, the main female character, does not receive a quest of her own. Instead, her Personal Legend is to wait for Santiago while he pursues his treasure. Furthermore, as Fatima is the only woman specifically mentioned in the book, it can be inferred that women are considered a deterrent to the Personal Legends of men. Fatima is viewed as a momentary distraction. I think this aspect of the book is sexist and unnecessary. Particularly because the book incorporates such positive ideas of religious acceptance and equality, and it would have been easy for Coelho to extend this equality to women. Despite this, women can learn the same lessons from the book as men, whether or not it was Coelho’s intent.

Despite the fact that I found the book sexist, I was still able to draw inspiration from it. There are a lot of things in my life right now that are complete variables. I have no idea where I will go to college, what I’ll be doing in two years, or even next year. I think part of this is because I’m still not sure who I am, or what I want. This used to be a cause of concern for me. However, The Alchemist made me appreciate that life is as much about the experience as it is the search of wisdom and happiness.

Overall, Coelho’s writing is excellent. His simple manner of storytelling allows the reader to discern deeper meaning from what he is saying, and make interpretations based on specific life experiences. The book is timeless. It can be read again and again, and hold a different meaning each time you read it. I don’t think it is intended for one particular age group. The Alchemist is an excellent read, and I highly recommend it.

In a KidSpirit Media review, teen writer Rachel explores the ideas in Paul Coelho's novel, "The Alchemist," about a boy who seeks treasure after experiencing a prophetic dream.

The Alchemist: Spirituality, Religion, and Life Experience

The idea of God is different for everyone and is possibly many things even to one person. We all have different ideas of what and who God is.

Some people do not believe in God at all, while others believe in many gods. Others believe that God infinitely shapes their lives and their afterlives. Others look to themselves to be shaped. There are a variety of different religions, and as many as 22 major religions in the world today.

Christians, as well as other monotheistic religions, such as Judaism and Islam, view God as an all-knowing ruler. The followers of these religions study religious texts, such as the Bible, to guide their lives. They also believe that God is the creator of everything. Polytheistic religions have many gods, such as a god of water, that rule over part of the world. Buddhists do not believe in a god but search for a way to end suffering by ending all self-desires. Through the teachings of these religions many ideas of God materialize. How we view God privately is personal and varied. Our personal concept of God is ever-changing because we change and the world we live in changes.

The belief in a higher power became possible when primitive humans developed the ability to distinguish their thoughts and selves from others. Some early peoples believed that souls exist in everything and there is no separation between spirits and the physical world. When early civilizations developed, deities were used to explain the mysteries of the physical world, such as having a god for thunder, rain, death, and creation. Changes in secular circumstances, religious power, and cultural diffusion changed how early peoples saw God. As people’s concept of God changed, old ideas were either incorporated into new religions or dropped completely.

Gods have been viewed in a fearsome way at times in history. For example, the Aztecs believed that in order to keep peace with the gods, they must give offerings including human sacrifices. In early Mesopotamia, people believed in a dark afterlife, always living in fear of the gods. In early monotheistic religions God was feared. God in the Old Testament of the Bible was angrier and less forgiving than when portrayed later in the New Testament. Jesus changed this idea, explaining that we should not fear God and that God is forgiving. This allowed Christians to live less in fear and more in gratitude.

Generally we might say that contemporary humans live less in fear of deities because the need for God has diminished. We know more about the world we live in. We have less to fear and science explains the unknown. Death is not looming around every corner. Our lives are longer and many live to see our grandchildren and great grandchildren. In our modern world we are free to think and contemplate our conception of God.

"In our modern world we are free to think and contemplate our conception of God."

In our modern world extreme experiences, whether they are good or bad, often cause believers to look to God for answers, comfort, or to share joy or give thanks. My friend Liz says, “Without a belief in God, I would have a hole in my life.” In extremely bad situations such as war, death, or illness, we can rely on a concept of God to guide and comfort us. God is something that we can look to and have faith in to carry us through bad times. Therefore, if we become sick we are likely to develop a deeper relationship with God because we need faith and hope to get through this experience. Near-death experiences also become a way to validate one’s faith in God as people report meeting their God and visiting heaven or a heaven-like place. This can strengthen an individual’s faith and news of it can strengthen other’s faith. When I asked my great aunt what experiences shaped her concept of God, she explained that she had been in a car crash and her friends got out of the car miraculously alive, claiming that angels had helped.

But she says, “It’s not just one experience [that shapes our understanding of God], it’s a combination of things from when you are born to when you die.”

I consider myself a Catholic because that is how I have been brought up. My beliefs have been shaped mostly by my family and also influenced by modern culture and my peers. My formal beliefs about God were found at Catechism. My view of God changed when I visited a Jesuit retreat center on Staten Island. Before that I thought of God as being distant and religion as being very disciplined but after talking with one of the priests I now believe that God is all around us, not just in heaven. This made me feel that God has been near me all my life.

My little brother appeared to have been born with a belief in God and acquired some knowledge of God through questions of his own. At an early age he had strong convictions about God’s hand in death. When he was three, his guinea pig died and he was very angry at God. As he ranted in his car seat, he asked, “Why does God put us on this Earth for a short time, then make us die and go to heaven?” This anger at God continued for a year or two and as a result, he refused to set foot in a church. God was the force that made death happen. Later, when he was six, he left his beloved (and therapeutic) glasses on a beach in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The tide was coming in as we were leaving the beach. When we got back to the house he noticed his glasses were missing and we raced back to the beach to find that the tide had come in. We ran over to the spot where we had been sitting and it was covered with water and a feeling of hopelessness settled in. My mother saw something in the waves and reached down and picked up the glasses. On the ride back in the car, my brother said, “I prayed to God that we would find my glasses and we did.” And he thought that whatever he prayed for came to be. God had become the magic force that made the impossible happen.

In the future the concept of God will continue to change as humanity changes, just as it has in the past. These changes will shape the collective understanding of God. Perhaps in the future, different religious ideologies that clash today will form a peaceful clump with a new way to look at God. Or children will read about today’s Gods in books similar to those we read about ancient Greek deities. Or perhaps our concepts of God will completely die out and be replaced with new ideas. But only God knows for sure.

In a KidSpirit Big Question response, teen writer Eleanor contemplates the ways in which our changing world and changing selves affect how we think about God.

Does Experience Shape Our Understanding of God?

“Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”

Einstein’s quote on science and religion is one of the most famous proverbs in history. But what does Einstein’s tantalizing quote actually imply? Einstein argues that science and religion are inseparable, yet even today, scientists argue over whether God is necessary to explain the mechanisms of the universe. Science uses reason to explain the world, whereas religion attributes the creation of reality to a supernatural force: God. Many scientists are not religious, simply because they believe that every physical phenomenon is explainable to the ordinary human senses. However, a handful of scientists are religious but only because they don’t interpret religion as a fact or absolute truth. Science provides a reason for everything, whereas religion claims God as the “creator” of the universe. Is science more reliable than religion? Or vice versa? Science might be capable of explaining the universe, but religion isn’t something that should be sacrificed for “reason.” Perhaps, as Einstein reasoned, science and religion are both necessary to maintain an advanced society throughout the 21st century.

The creation of science began with the Greeks, when astronomers were interested in tracking the movement of the planets, or “planetes” (wanderers), as the Greeks called them. Ancient astronomers often used mathematics to calculate distances between celestial objects. From this, the Ptolemaic, or geocentric, model of the universe was born. The Ptolemaic model is named after the Greek astronomer Ptolemy, who created a model of the Earth with the Sun and other planets orbiting it. His theory stated that the planets and the Sun revolved around the Earth, and beyond them lay the “realm of God.” This was the first incorporation of science and religion.

The merging of science and God continued even through the Enlightenment. One of the greatest physicists, Isaac Newton, once stated in his Principia Mathematica that God must be the explanation for the stability of the solar system. This was the first time, since Ptolemy, where a prominent scientist invoked God in order to explain the inexplicable natural phenomena. Does this mean that invoking God is a method of explaining what we can’t understand about the universe? In other words, if someone could not understand a complicated theory of science, would he or she be hiding ignorance by attesting that God was responsible for creating a phenomenon based on that bizarre theory? Most people don’t believe so, but the historical interactions between science and God shows that God often “substitutes” for inexplicable physical phenomena. In the late 1600s, the Dutch scientist Christian Huygens invoked God when he couldn’t explain why living organisms functioned in a certain way. Several other major scientists used God as a way to explain observations of reality that didn’t fit logically.

Religion has a long history, at least dating back to the Mesopotamians and Egyptians. Unlike science, religion has not only brought about discussions, but wars that have threatened humanity multiple times. One such example is the European Thirty Years’ War, which lasted from 1618 to 1648. This war was fought mainly because of the ongoing political and religious strife between the Protestants and Catholics. Prior to the war the Protestant Reformation had begun, and several philosophers of the time gravitated from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism. The Thirty Years’ War not only spurred conflict across Europe, but also divided the Holy Roman Empire (modern Germany and Austria), ultimately displacing millions of inhabitants who had originally lived there. This is a perfect example of the consequences of religious wars.

One major feud between science and religion manifested itself in Islam, in the period from 800 to 1100 CE. During this period, mathematics and science were of the utmost importance in the Muslim community; in fact, Baghdad, the capital of the Islamic Empire, was a host to several philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists who exchanged their thoughts and ideas. This 300-year period was the zenith of Islam’s history; science was at the forefront of their society. Once the religious imam (an Islamic priest) Hamid al-Ghazali entered the picture, Islam switched from a scientific to a purely religious empire. This is one of the few examples in history where religion “silently” rammed heads with science. Al-Ghazali argued that mathematics was the “work of the devil,” and that science should be deemed inappropriate for the members of the Islamic community. This deceptively innocent argument changed Islam forever.

A similar situation occurred during the late 1600s in Galileo’s famous recantation (confession). Several years after Galileo had published his discoveries about Jupiter’s four giant natural satellites or moons and Saturn’s rings, the Catholic Church immediately wanted to put a stop to his scientific career. Accordingly, the Church forced Galileo to confess that the Earth was the center of the universe, and that no such moons of Jupiter, or rings of Saturn, existed at all. Galileo was subsequently put under house arrest and was forbidden to publish any of his works related to science.

Despite the confrontations that religion and science have shared, not all historical cultures have shunned science. Several ancient peoples, such as the Egyptians and the Mayans, viewed science as an essential part of their cultures. The Egyptians built the Great Pyramids of Giza, not only for religious reasons, but also for a far more subtle scientific reason. If one could look at the Pyramids from bottom to top, he or she would observe a strange phenomenon. In one season out of the year the Orion Constellation lies directly overhead in the Egyptian skies. The person looking at the Pyramids from the bottom up would see, in effect, that the apices of the Pyramids exactly line up with the three stars of the Orion belt. This not only illustrates the Egyptians’ curiosity in the stars, but also their extremely advanced mathematics and measurement techniques. A similar situation also occurred with the Mayans in Mesoamerica. The Mayans constructed hundreds of temples, not only with religious significance, but also to track the movements of the Moon and Venus. These temples are another perfect example of religion and science working in harmony.

Can science and God coexist? Perhaps they can. If one is willing to believe in a personal God, and not allow their personal God to “intervene” in the progress and advances of the scientific frontier, they can not only consider themselves religious, but also scientifically “literate.” I am a Hindu, yet I don’t observe any apparent conflict between my religion and science. The Vedic Scriptures, the oldest texts pertaining to Hinduism, are a collection of manuscripts describing the creation of the universe to the creation of mankind. It is, in many aspects, analogous to the Bible. However, although they do owe the creation of the universe to Lord Vishnu, “king” of the gods, they do not in any way contribute or hinder my understanding of science, specifically regarding how the universe was created. I feel that my religious beliefs and my scientific knowledge are separate, and I don’t allow Hinduism to intervene in my acceptance of science. Part of the willingness to accept religion and science is the ability to interpret religious texts metaphorically, whereas scientific literature is factual and real. I am able to accept both religion and science by interpreting the Vedic scriptures as lessons of life, while accepting the scientific theory of the Big Bang as true.

The coexistence of science and religion, therefore, is dependent on a person’s willingness to accept both. This isn’t the case with everyone, as many people feel they must either choose science or religion. There are others in the world, however, who maintain a personal religious practice or belief in God and still pursue scientific progress. If people weren’t willing to believe both, science and religion would be like two bulls ramming their heads over and over. I believe that if individuals can accept both science and religion, they both can peacefully coexist without any conflict at all.

In a KidSpirit Feature article, teen writer Sidarth charts the intertwined (and sometimes strained) histories of religion and science.

Science and Religion: A Love-Hate Relationship?

What does it mean to live a good human life?

There, in a sentence, is perhaps the most important question a human can ask. Without an adequate answer to it, life is meaningless; we have been struggling to come up with one since our very inception. It is the question that has given rise to the entire field of philosophical ethics, the question each one of us must ask ourselves and try to answer in order to live a human life at all.

The most common and natural way to answer this question is to subscribe to a personal code of ethics, and then aspire to lead your life by this code. From the ancient warrior fighting for his country for whom devotion to his king and honor in battle are the ultimate duties, to the corn farmer in Kansas who truly believes he was put on this earth to support his family and to give his kids the opportunities they deserve, everyone has a picture of what he or she “should” be doing with their life. Of course, most of us don’t always live up to that ideal; the soldier’s fear might overcome his sense of honor, and he might run away at the moment of battle. Nevertheless, he still knows what he’d like to be brave enough to do. He has a sense of how he should live, how he would want someone else in his position to live.

Having a personal code of ethics is rarely enough — next, he will try to make others live by it. Whether this means raising his children with certain values, trying to convince others through conversation and debate to live in a certain way, forcing a group of people to do as he wants them to, or simply setting an example that will show others that his way of life bears positive results, he will likely influence and help create others’ ethical codes, both actively and passively. And then they, in turn, will influence the ethics of those around them. So spreads culture, ethics, and religion.

A religion is a system of ethics, reinforced and justified by a set of beliefs. For example, many religions use the idea of an afterlife to promote a certain way of living in this life. Many religions use ancient texts to convey morals, or interpret the world around them in a way that shows others how to live. Ways of living life that aren’t called “religious,” such as atheism, are generally also systems of ethics, only with a different set of beliefs, which are often more heavily founded on observation and reason.

Each one of us has an agenda, which is largely determined by our ethical codes. One of the most common elements of worldwide ethical codes is the desire to do service to others — to make others happy. It is almost impossible to find a religious or cultural group that doesn’t include service as a core value, whether this group is a Christian church, home to a soup kitchen; a Muslim community with a strong tradition of Zakat (one of the Five Pillars of Islam, meaning alms-giving); or a school whose graduation requirements include a number of community service hours. Making the world a better place, whatever that means to us individually, tends to rank high on our agendas.

Now, for the sake of ease, effectiveness, and enjoyment, if we want to make the world a better place, we prefer to do it with others than by ourselves. But how do we work with others when we have a different ethical code than they do?

To answer this question, I decided to take a step away from the abstract. The effort to make the world a better place, together with adherents of different faiths working in tandem, is called the Interfaith movement. For this article, I spoke to two figures prominent in this movement: Eboo Patel and Greg Epstein.

Dr. Patel is the founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC). An Ismaili Muslim from Illinois and author of several books on Interfaith engagement, Dr. Patel is a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships, and has a PhD in the sociology of religion from Oxford. Mr. Epstein is the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University and author of Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. Growing up in New York City, he was an “assimilated and disinterested Reform Jew.” He studied Buddhism and Taoism, and even went to Taiwan for a semester in college to learn more about Zen Buddhism. He holds a BA (Religion and Chinese) and an MA (Judaic Studies) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Masters of Theological Studies from the Harvard Divinity School. Before he began his career as the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard, he was, briefly, a professional rock musician.

Dr. Patel, in an email correspondence, said, “Religions can either be a barrier of division or a bridge of cooperation… Just like no two people are the same, no two faith traditions are the same, but people and faiths do have many things in common. We believe conversations should focus on what people and their backgrounds have in common instead of their differences. When we engage in conversation about these shared values, our religious traditions are serving as a bridge, bringing us closer together and strengthening our efforts for change.”

In essence, Dr. Patel emphasizes that we must concentrate on the similarities in our ethical codes, so that we are able to bring about positive change and become closer to one another. The work the IFYC does is a testament to the merits of this idea: the organization sends college students into their communities to do interfaith service work, which not only helps those served, but also helps the students themselves. As Dr. Patel puts it, “Our students come back with a broader view of the world, a greater appreciation for the traditions of those they served with, and a deeper connection to their own tradition.”

Dr. Patel said that as a child, he didn’t talk about his religion much, even though his closest friends were a Mormon, a Hindu, and a Cuban Jew. “We talked about everything — school, sports, our futures — everything except our religions. I learned many years after high school about the important role each of their religious traditions played in their lives and wondered why that was not something we were ever able to talk about as friends.” And he doesn’t exclude atheists when he talks about the interfaith movement and morality. He said, “Just like those who adhere to a religious tradition, the non-religious also value kindness, love, service, and community,” and that some of the most ethical people he knew were non-religious.

When I spoke to him on the phone, Greg Epstein echoed a lot of what Dr. Patel had said. I asked him what he thought should be done when the differences between various religions become a source of conflict between people in the Interfaith movement, and how to get past these conflicts. Chaplain Epstein said that exposure to people with different beliefs itself can help solve some of the problem. When people with conflicting views get to know each other, talk to each other about their differences, and start to see the similarities in each other, more often than not understanding will be built. For instance, he referenced the fact that if you don’t know a gay person, you are far more likely to be against same-sex marriage. This approach to differences draws upon the flexibility of our ethical systems, how they adapt to changing circumstances.

But Epstein made it clear that he didn’t think it was his job to bridge every ideological gap and he has a very clear agenda on certain issues; he mentioned gun control and the environment as two. He is willing to work with anyone who agrees with him that America needs tighter gun control and wants to do something about it, or who wants to help protect the environment. And he is willing to work against those who disagree with him on these issues. Interfaith work, he seemed to be saying, is not necessarily non-confrontational, but a key part of it lies in getting past certain disagreements that impede working for the greater good.

These two figures have completely different backgrounds and yet they agree on so much. This fact in and of itself makes us wonder how different we are from one another, really? If we all agree on the basics — that everyone has a certain set of rights, and that it is our responsibility to help those rights be acknowledged — should we really let any other disagreements get in the way of making the world a better place? Differences in ethics, in religion, in culture have created so many horrible tragedies — wars, genocides, mass discrimination — but I say, let’s counteract these evils by focusing on our similarities instead, so that we can create a better, more united, and more meaningful world together.

In a KidSpirit Feature article, teen writer Akash discusses our duty to make the world a better place with two prominent figures in the Interfaith movement.

The Ethics of the Interfaith Movement

Unitarian Universalism (UU), the modern-day American version of Unitarianism — a religious tradition with a nearly 500-year history — is an open, multi-denominational religious tradition.

It lacks scripture and centralized authority, focusing rather on the individual spirituality of each believer. Although Unitarian Universalism emphasizes freedom, it does have several integral principles of belief. Perhaps the most basic of such notions is the idea of the absolute oneness of God. From this conception of fundamental unity, which is believed to exist both in God and humanity, comes the name “Unitarianism.” Overall, the notion of oneness defines Unitarian theology and thought. This religious tradition exemplifies a strand of uniquely American thought and belief.

The Unitarian church combined with the Universalist church in 1961 to create the Unitarian Universalism we know today. Though its roots are Christian, today’s UU churches lack structural authority — one of the most striking differences between Unitarian Universalism and other religious traditions. Besides the absence of a clergy class, no UU scripture exists. UU thought is unaffected by the codified prescriptions of religious texts. It is virtually unlimited. For the most part, divine authority is also absent from its doctrine. Because of the extreme focus on individualism and its myriad connotations, many Unitarian Universalists avoid the term “God” altogether, choosing rather to regard the divine as a spiritual force, perhaps akin to Christianity’s Holy Spirit. The structure of Unitarian Universalism allows for freedom not only religiously, but socially as well. Their vision for society is utterly un-dogmatic. As long as liberty and reason are protected, almost all is acceptable. This emphasis on independence is in stark contrast to the patterns that have established themselves across the arc of history.

Traditionally, there has been an inextricable connection between religious hierarchy and sociopolitical authority in monarchical governments. Unitarian Universalism bucks these historical trends, supporting a secular society whose governing structure is separate from religion. Throughout the course of history, religion has been the defining force in societies across the globe. Kings have claimed sovereignty under the auspices of God, Popes have waged wars and governed states, monarchs have served dually as religious and secular leaders. Religion imposed universal laws with powers derived from the intensity and pervasiveness of religious belief. In addition, the social power of many religions shares an underlying structure with politics. In Catholicism, the relationship between the pope, clergy, and lay people mirrors that of a king, nobles, and commoners. In fact, most religions with a clergy share this structure. Unitarian Universalism, however, is egalitarian, emphasizing individuality and the power of reason. In many ways, Unitarian Universalism is a rejection not only of traditional religious hierarchy, but of established sociopolitical roles as well.

Unitarianism’s rejection of traditional sources of authority mirrors that of the United States, one of the countries where it has had the most impact. The American struggle for independence was a rejection of the power of the British Monarchy and a move to a democratic state. Although the Revolutionary War and did not abolish social or political hierarchies, it allowed for the creation of an alternative structure based on equality. Our founding documents, although seemingly unrelated to Unitarianism, preach a doctrine of equality mirroring Unitarianism’s.

The most profound instance of Unitarian influence in American culture is in Transcendentalism, an influential American spiritual, philosophical, and literary movement of the early nineteenth century. Prominent Transcendentalists include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. American Unitarians of the early nineteenth century regarded reason as the foundation of their religious tradition. Transcendentalism sprang from this tradition and then broke from it, emphasizing instead the individual’s immediate, intuitive spiritual relationship with the divine at any time and place, a concept we see later incorporated into Unitarian Universalism.

In a KidSpirit Feature article, teen writer Naomi draws connections between Unitarian Universalist values and some of the most enduring, positive aspects of American culture.

Unitarianism: Universalism Unlimited

In plunging into a theme about what we call the “Ultimate Reality,” the “Almighty,” or, somewhat more whimsically, the “Great Pumpkin,” KidSpirit’s undaunted contributors from all corners of the globe share their voices and their vision.

The God Issue Group Guide

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