K.Mark.Demma

REL 111
31 Aug 96

How I define religion.

Religion can be a rather tricky thing to define. I believe that no matter what religious label one tries to apply, that every person basically invents their own religion, that God is created in one's own image and not the other way around. So, for the purposes of this essay, I will discuss my own personal definition of religion.
In class, we talked about how religious experience could be either esoteric or exoteric. The Wiccan author Starhawk describes religions as being based on estrangement or immanence. Religions based on estrangement predominate our world today. Whether it is a Christian praying to God above or a Buddhist seeking detachment from this world, most religious philosophies see us as separate from the Devine, which is on some higher level. Earth centered religions, however, see deity as immanent or within us and all things. Starhawk describes it as follows:
Immanence means that the Goddess, the Gods, are embodied, that we are each a manifestation of the living being of earth, that nature, culture and life in all their diversity are sacred. Immanence calls us to live our spirituality here in the world, to take action to preserve the life of earth, to live with integrity and responsibility. (Starhawk, Spiral Dance, 10)
In a religion based on immanence, rather than being dictated how to perceive the All That Is, each person in called to experience the Devine for themselves. It assumes the Devine lives in each of us and in everything around us and that we experience the Devine in everything we do. In this religious framework, the mere act of living is a religious experience unto itself.

For me, then, what I would define as religion is an attempt to attune myself to deity as it is made manifest in ourselves and the world around us. I do this by paying attention to the natural world. I observe the seasons and try to relate them to the cycles in my own life. I seek the Devine in other people. For me, this means trying to understand people better. I understand though observing nature that nothing is ever truly created or destroyed, merely changed into a new form. I understand that life feeds on death. I understand that what you put out into the universe sooner or later comes back to you. These are not things that have been dictated to me, they aren't something you can just read in a book. Rather Wiccan would call them a 'mystery', not because they are somehow very difficult to understand or are secrets that someone must tell you. Much the opposite, "mysteries" are things that cannot be told to you, rather they must be experienced. To be sure, someone can point us in the right general direction to best experience these things or describe what their own experience was like. But it is up to the individual to experience the "mysteries" for themselves.

For me, this process of seeking and exploring is my personal definition of "religion". I realize that it may not be in sync with the "standard" views on the subject. But then again, I rarely am in sync with standard views.