Value found in conversions
{Throughout history individuals, religions, and one's spiritual beliefs, have experienced criticism, conflict, and verbal attacks; in an effort to contain, control, and convert or influence populations within communities or regions of existence. This article is written in direct response to a contemporary and recent affront and somewhat defines a personal and objective view of human value.}
Within various segments of an individual’s life lies answers, confusion, entanglements, fulfillment, incomplete sentences, and haphazardly scattered among so much more, questions. One chooses pathways leading in multiple directions, in and through varying degrees of enlightenment, understanding, and quite literally, conflict and chaos. One comes to know forms of loneliness, even if amidst a crowded life. A search for grace-filled moments compellingly reaches deep into an individuals psyche.
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What compounds life leading beyond oneself may be found in conversations, isolation, observations, meditative renderings, and an array of encounters. Spiritual development may settle in one’s soul in a complex, yet perpetually consecrated manner.
Behavioral patterns might be linked to family heritage, heredity, and lessons learned in life to retain, ignore, or mistakenly and regrettably follow. Each day everyone faces a series of conversions and choices, assembled in an array of experiences. Converting something special from one form to another is beyond astronomical measurements of neurons expanding and contracting in one’s brain.
In a religious realm, you may convert or “be saved” from eternal damnation. If one is not a Catholic and wishes to participate in Mass as a member of the Catholic Family, there is a process focused on conversion. In 1980 at St. Louis Cathedral on Lindell Boulevard, God blessed me with an opportunity to begin a journey into Catholicism or a Rite of Christian Initiation.
A desire to unite with God in a mystical spiritual steppingstone to salvation is what I hoped for, learning that is what the Catholic Church embodies and Catholicism identifies. Salvation is not earned, but freely emanating from God as a gift. A life filled with love and sharing blessings with those less fortunate is what my faith inspires, hopefully across steppingstones to eternity.
Spreading “Good Tidings” of joy through compassionate, loving acts of kindness is what my faith encourages, but does not demand. “Spreading the Good News” and “truth” as a Christian is the universal appeal of the Catholic Church. Human mistakes do not diminish God’s intended goodness.
Some bear false witness or invoke hatred toward Christian believers, though Christians commanded to love one another sometimes fail. Whether written in contempt or direct actions, those converting observations into an affinity for criticism shall one day face a greater source of judgment, beyond earthly ties. Catholics seek forgiveness while striving to forgive those who trespass against them.
Spirituality is an internal strength identified, dwelling and nurtured within the tranquility of God, yet connecting one to another to another to another, etc. One’s soul finds solace within itself, refinement within the divinity of God. Catholics choose to listen to spiritual directors and leaders inside their faith, whom they call “father” instead of the reverend, pastor, rabbi, preacher, imam, or mullah.
Praying “with” saints allows a soul to prepare and persevere through efforts to find a serene peacefulness; a spiritual journey with an ultimate desire for sharing in God’s holiness. Misconstrued limited human interpretations never succeed in defining the essence of another’s soul. Social networks, society, individual skeptics, are incapable of placing value on one’s faith, sustainability, religious beliefs, or journey into an eternal existence.
Opinions expressed in this section are solely those of the individual authors and do not represent the views of RiverBender.com or its affiliates. We provide a platform for community voices, but the responsibility for opinions rests with their authors.
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