Once upon a time I studied religion with scholars who lived in ivory towers and ate dinner in magnificent halls. Professors dressed in the fine regalia of their college gowns sat at the high tables while the rest of us sat below them at the long tables. (Just like in Harry Potter! Yes, there are such places in the world.)

Now in that magical of magical places where the oxen cross the ford, we heartily and heatedly debated the definition of religion. Some scholars wanted one definition of religion to rule them all. You should’ve seen the brawls that broke out between the historians, the psychologists, the sociologists, the theologians, and the linguists. And don’t even get me started on the philosophers. It was like Quidditch! And trying to pin religion down to a single definition was harder than trying to capture the golden snitch blindfolded and without a flying broom.

Initially I jumped into the fray and tried my hand at seeking this one ultimate definition. I traveled far and crossed many mountains and valleys, but I still didn’t find what I was looking for. The longer this went on, the less fun it got. I found that all these scholars were less interested in knowledge and far more interested in winning that quite popular “I’m right and you suck” game. Ever play one of those?

So I stopped playing, turned in my uniform, slipped into Diagone Alley for some refreshment, and started making a few…observations. Instead of searching for ultimate definitions, I thought why not just sit almost child-like and just observe how religion presents itself to me.

When I stopped chasing religion, it stopped running away from me, quickly turned around, and came to sit right beside me. My burdensome and competitive search for ultimate definitions turned into a far more enjoyable exercise in observation and conversation.

Observations and Conversations

The first observation is that religion, first and foremost, has to do with a family of core questions that live inside a family of core conversations.

What are the core questions?

• Who am I?
• Where did I come from?
• Why am I here?
• How should I live?
• Where am I going?
• What will happen to me after I die?

You may say, “I’m not particularly religious, but I think about those questions sometimes myself.”

And I say, “Exactly.”

You can walk away from the answers that other people have offered, but you can’t walk away from the questions themselves. That’s why those questions are called core questions. They are part of the human mind & heart. Even when we’re not particularly religious, we’re still having a conversation with those questions. We’re all asking those questions, in one way or another.

It just so happens that religion has been raising and answering those core questions the longest and so it holds the most information about how those questions have been raised and answered. And that is a valuable source of information we would do well not to ignore.

As you look over the core questions above, have your own conversation with them right now and ask yourself:

• Which one makes you just stop and think?
• Which one do you skip over because you don’t want to think about it right now?
• Which one would you introduce first to your children or to a young person who looks up to you?
• Which one are you struggling with right now?
• Which one are you at peace with right now?

In the meantime, I am happy to announce that the Religion 2.0 podcast is now on iTunes!

How do you locate us there?

1. If you have iTunes on your PC or Mac, you can click on this link

Take me to iTunes

and it will take you to our page under the “Religion & Spirituality” category.

2. You can also search iTunes for keywords like “Religion 2.0″ or “Rahim Taliesin Snow” or “Ivory Bakery” and find us that way.

Enjoy!

Recently I’ve started thinking that this way of doing things isn’t serving my readers. Some readers have told me that they don’t have time to listen to the podcast just yet for various reasons but will do so when they have some more time. Well, that time may never come and so they may not get the opportunity to hear the content.

So I started asking myself: instead of having to wait for a chunk of time to open up in their lives to listen to the podcast, why am I not providing them self-contained pastries of information right in a blog post? Why am I saving all the content for the podcast? Why don’t I start sharing the content in bite-sized blog posts as well? Wouldn’t it be valuable to read a few sentences or a few paragraphs during our busy day and enjoy a moment of reflection and learning? Wouldn’t that be worthwhile?

So I’ve decided to post more of the content inside the blog posts themselves so that the podcasts won’t be the only source for that information. Does that mean I’m going to repeat myself? You bet. Repetition is a key to learning. When was the last time you learned something by doing it just once?

Yes, the ideas I share with you in the blog posts will mirror the ideas I talk about on the podcasts and vice versa. But sometimes I may go into more detail in a blog post and sometimes I may do it in the podcast. My goal is to have the blog and the podcast reinforce and cross-fertilize each other. That way you get exposed multiple times to the same content and then you have a better chance of learning it: by reading it *and* listening to it.

Some people like to listen, so for them I have podcasts. Some people like to read blogs, so for them I’ll have the blog posts. Some like a book in their hand, so for them I’m working on a couple of books. Some people like to be taught in person, so for them I’m preparing some talks and workshops. This has all been a reminder to me that no matter how useful the content might be, it must be delivered to people in multiple ways so that they can take full advantage of it based on their moods and styles of learning.

But ultimately your learning will take place when you take these ideas and use them in your own life and adapt them to your own unique needs, far beyond anything I might have imagined about them initially. One of the greatest joys in my life is to help spark that process in you.

Are there other ways I can serve you better?

I’m all ears.

Duration: 32 min 21 sec

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Excerpt
“Many of us remember quite well how our religious upbringing failed us. The memory of those failures is vivid. If words like God, scripture, heaven, faith, church, prayer leave a bad taste in your mouth or just make you want to tune out—that’s a strong sign that your relationship to religion carries unhappy memories.

And the effects of those memories not only burden us throughout our lives but also block our ability to talk about religion gracefully, to see any meaning or value in it, and especially to work creatively with it.

So when I talk about religion in a positive light or try to share some ideas on how religion can be upgraded with some new words and new ideas and new perspectives, since your teacup is already full of those painful unhappy memories, some of the ideas I’ll be sharing won’t have a chance of getting into your teacup. You’ll block those new ideas or you’ll tune out because on some level you have a deep belief that religion is just out to hurt you and nothing good can come of it.

From my perspective, that I shared with you in the first episode, it doesn’t have to be that way. Religion can become a force for good, but it needs our help. When we remain unforgiving, religion remains unforgiving. When we become forgiving, religion becomes forgiving. We’re linked, you see. So that’s why we want to look at our religious upbringing and start to identify those things that disappointed us or hurt us and we want to start to forgive them. And one way to start the process of forgiving is with an apology.”

Duration: 29 min 48 sec

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Excerpt
“Can I come up with a way to creatively and critically engage religion? Can I come up with a way to participate wholeheartedly in the religious life so that it feeds my body and mind and heart and everything?

Can it be emotionally satisfying as well as intellectually honest? Can I enrich myself even further by bringing even more intelligence, compassion, and creativity into the mix?

Can I bring in science, art, philosophy, psychology, all areas of research and study under the sun? In other words, does my religious life flourish when I add deep honest heartfelt questioning into the mix?

Can it help me come closer to understanding myself, all the people around me, and the world? Can my heart, like Ibn Arabi said in the poem I recited at the beginning, become capable of all forms and become inclusive of all things, all beliefs, all perspectives?

Finally, can I create new words, new perspectives, new models, new images of understanding that will help other people in their own lives?”

If you want to be important—wonderful.
If you want to be recognized—wonderful.
If you want to be great—wonderful.
But recognize that he who is greatest
among you shall be your servant.

That’s a new definition of greatness.
And this morning, the thing that I like about it:
by giving that definition of greatness,
it means that everybody can be great,
because everybody can serve.

You don’t have to have a college degree to serve.
You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve.
You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve.
You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve.
You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.
You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.

And you can be that servant.

(excerpt from his last sermon, “The Drum Major Instinct,” delivered on February 4, 1968. Text copyright © The King Center)

I celebrate with all people today the memory, work, and spirit of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968).

We are today the benefactors of his immense courage and vision: he made us all look within and reach in to that higher love, that deeper love, that radical love. In the face of injustice and brutality, he asked for justice and civility. In the face of violence and death, he asked the survivors and the victims’ families—in the heat of their anguish—to not hate their oppressors.

He said out loud what we all want to say, but often don’t. He did out loud what we all want to do, but often won’t.

And if his bodhisattva spirit were to hover near you today and whisper in your ear some words of inspiration, what do you think he would say? Can you hear him? Lean forward and listen close now: what do you hear?

My dear Family,

Once again time finds us on the brink of a new year. Though I have stumbled and fumbled in finding hope in the past few years, I am once again refreshed and renewed at the prospect of what lies ahead.

Our capacity to build a more humane way of life has never shone more clearly than in these shadowy times when the world is so at odds with itself. I am not speaking of grand gestures that we believe will sweep the soot and soil off the face of civilizations. I am speaking of far more modest moments. I am speaking of people, individuals, you and me. I am speaking of the decisions we make.

The decision to live in courage or to die slowly in fear is one we make everyday. The decision to awaken to creativity or to sleep in complacency is one we make every hour. The decision to grow in faith or to decay in doubt is one we make every minute. The decision to be happy or to be miserable is one we make every second.

Experience has shown us no less than that we must not wait to receive courage before we can be courageous. We must not wait to receive creativity before we can be creative. We must not wait to receive faith before we can be faithful. We must not wait to receive happiness before we can be happy.

Simply decide. And decide again. And decide once again. And keep deciding without end. And you will find, in the moment-by-moment practice of your deciding, that courage, creativity, faith, and happiness have been residing at the core of your being ever since time was just a toddler. And yet how can we taste the nectar of our deepest being and not give to others to taste the nectar of their deepest being?

There are those out there in the world, near and afar, who have not the slightest intimation that such treasures lie buried in their own hearts.They are unaware of their own worth. The cruel voices of self-deprecation pierce their minds and bodies like shards of broken glass. Their hearts ache to fulfill a desire they have yet to name. Seek them out in the morning and evening and you will find them reciting verses from the gospel of victimhood.

How brittle they see their lives, as brittle as the finest calligraphy paper? How they regard every moment as a threat to the delicacy of that paper? How they guard it? How they hide themselves in guarding it? Every new day is for them a trauma to be survived or a disaster waiting to destroy them. They do not even know how to dream of anything better. They have forgotten who they are and how much they are capable of.

Now, I ask you, can our hearts ever find rest until theirs do? Is it enough to simply be moved for a moment of sentimentality, perhaps even shed a tear or two for the sufferings of humanity, and then return to the comfort of our own far more mellow dramas? And if this is truly enough for us, if this is all that we have to offer, is it not also true that we have forgotten who we are and how much we are capable of?

As we enter the new year, I make a pledge to take down these walls between “me” and “them”. I make a pledge to recognize that we all share a common heritage and a common destiny. I make a pledge to gather the brightest rays of my intelligence and summon the fiercest flames of my compassion and direct them to this blue marble of a planet we all call home. I make a pledge to take off my dramas because they are like the clothes I once wore as a child and they simply no longer fit. I make a pledge to outgrow my past.

I make a pledge to use my remaining days, hours, minutes, and seconds to increase the pool of humanity’s shared knowledge and joy and drain the pool of humanity’s shared ignorance and suffering. Where do I begin, one might ask? I make a pledge to start with every person in my addressbook.

Such is my path for the new year! Perhaps it will be yours too. Will you not make the decision to acknowledge that your well-being is intertwined with the well-being of everyone else? Will you not drink from the nectar of your own being and share with others how they may slake their thirst as well? Will you not join me in this pledge?

May the new year be for you the most impactful year of your lives thus far. May the new year be abundant with bold decisions, with compassionate decisions, with illuminated decisions. May those decisions bear not just fruit, but gardens and vineyards. May you say of the new year, looking back upon it twelve months from now, “That’s when it all changed for me.” “That’s when it all came together.” “That’s when I entered a new phase of my life.” “Never before have I felt so strong and fulfilled.” “I would not trade where I am right now for anything I thought I had before.” “That’s when my heart just opened up and the entire universe fell right in and fit so snugly and warm.” “That was a milestone for me.” “I came home.”

Give yourself that gift. You deserve it. Not only do you deserve it, it is your birthright…for do you know who you are? You are a spirit in the material world. You are an angel on earth. You are a jewel in the lotus. You are a wish-fulfilling gem. Fierce and caring, open and aware, mercurial and full of delight, you are that nakedly wondrous being that both language and form have failed to clothe for untold eternities…

And I love you.

Rahim

I dedicate the Religion 2.0 blog and podcast to the upliftment of all beings.

May all beings be happy.
May all beings know who they really are.
May all beings take up the courage to create their life.
May all beings carry gratitude to enjoy the life they create.
May all beings practice lovingkindness above all other practices.
May all beings celebrate friendship with the Source of their being.
May all beings share their bliss with one and all.

It is my pleasure and privilege to be here with you,
here at the beginning of all things.

Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.