Something Holding Me Up, Something Holding Me Down

I decided this morning to turn on the iTunes radio and listen to that instead of my own CDs. The first song that came on was called Jesus and Gravity. No, I wasn't listening to Christian music although I'm not a stranger to that. I was listening to a country station and this song is by Dolly Parton. The title of the blog is a line from the song and it talks about how she's got all she'll ever need. I'm not so sure how true that is. There's plenty of people out there who don't believe in Jesus but they still have something holding them up.

I met someone on my last rotation in pharmacy school who I now refer to as my long lost cousin (that's a funny story, maybe I'll share it someday). She's Jewish. Coming from the middle of nowhere Iowa, I'd never really had the chance to sit down and get to know someone who did not believe in Jesus. I'd met plenty of atheists and agnostics but most of them had at some point been Christian. But that's not to say I didn't ever have the opportunity to learn about the Jewish faith. I went to my church's college and I took a few religion classes while I was there. Believe it or not, I think "Music and the Church" was the class I learned the most about religions that were either Orthodox Christian or something other than Christian. I've always found it fascinating to learn about people and their faiths. They may not realize it but if they were raised in any sort of religion it has influenced much of their personality, even if it's spending the rest of their life trying to keep that upbringing from influencing their life.

It's also interesting to see how my generation, raised in Christian faiths, have tried to make sense of all the contradictions. I guess I see this more because so many of my friends are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. It puts a whole new spin on "love thy neighbor." Some have had their families, Christian families mind you, turn them away. Now exactly what kind of love did their God teach them? As I've made friends out here in New England, most of them being GLBT, I've also seen my definition of family expand. I have brothers that are not blood brothers but they watch out for me as if they were always there. It's almost like GLBT people are better Christians than the hardcore Christians. They don't judge you by how you love. They'd rather love and be loved than hate and be hated. I'm not saying that we're all angels in any way. Between my friends and I, we've broken pretty much all but one of the 10 Commandments. Being that I'm not writing this from jail and none of my friends are in jail, I'll give you a hint: no one has killed anyone. But we love the best we can. We tend to tolerate other people and their quirks much more. And we're not about to push our beliefs onto someone else. Maybe we've got a more open mind. Maybe we've been pushed around so much of our life that we've learned to see the big picture more clearly just in the effort to protect us from the hate.

Anyway, there was a point at the beginning of this and it may or may not have gotten lost in translation. Basically, I'm not sure there will ever be one right religion. Christian, Jewish, etc. all have the same foundation: love. Whether we believe in God, Jesus, Buddha, or Wankan Tanka, we all have learned to love, to hate and to live as best as we can. Which religion, if any, we pick to call our own is a personal decision. I don't hold it against anyone what they believe until they cross that line where their religious beliefs have started hurting others. If we could just funnel it all down to that simple core belief--Love--we'd all figure out just what it is that holds us up everyday.