The bulk of this blog is provided by one of the world's most famous and most historic actors, Sir Sidney Poitier.
It is a segment on religion and spirituality from his book written in 2007, Life Beyond Measure, sub-titled Letters to My Great- Granddaughter. He was 80 then; she was not yet 2.The timing was right because it is Thanksgiving week, and the Christmas season is here for the next month. And obviously, I like what Sir Sidney write and -- in our case, through audio book -- what he said.
In a previous blog or two, I have written -- and people close to me know this -- I am not the religious type. Proud to be Jewish, would not have it any other way, but have not been observant in decades.
Even my parents, Holocaust survivors whose family were terribly thinned because of religion (and hatred), were not that deeply observant. My younger sister has stayed with it.
But my parents believed in their God. I believe. Certainly support anyone who practices their faith and religion.
To be honest, though, I am not comfortable in how religion so often divides us. I am not comfortable with people -- yes, friends -- who "wear their religion on their sleeve," who push it (my opinion) at every opportunity in every conversation.
(An example, going back to my previous blog about the Robertsons and Duck Dynasty: Duck hunting did not interest me, nor did Phil and the family's very religious theme.)
Sorry if these thoughts offend you. When I hear that sports and politics shouldn't mix, I also think that sports and religion shouldn't mix. If so, only at a minimum.
Houston Astros fans' prayers were answered. Mine weren't. OK, that's a joke.
Really, though, I don't think God favors a team or players over another. And I don't think God directs free-agent players to a team -- yeah, I've heard that said -- but money sure does.
Enough already. On to the segment from Sir Sidney Poitier because he puts religion in terms with which I agree.
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"Dear Ayele,
As you will learn in time, there are many religions, many sects, many images of God. ... Each culture has its images. While I have mine, which differs in some measure from images held by others, my image of God permits me to question it, and myself. Why else would we have been given a curiosity, an imagination, a network of instincts and perceptive capabilities. I believe these gifts were and are survival tools, without which we could not have survived as a species. Gifts given to us, I believe, by the image of the God that I embrace.
That brings me again to my own position, which is I believe there is an intelligence, and it is limitless, it is alive, it is conscious, and this is just a part of what it is. I don't think it's interested in one religion over another religion, held by two different cultures.
But I feel this about my life, I feel that I am constantly in the presence of God, by that I mean, I am constantly going about my life conscious that the universe is aware of me and I am aware of it. I go about my life feeling that the all-encompassing God has a relationship with me, and I with it. I have to then accept, or rather insist, on embracing the God that I think looks after me. I couldn't have survived as I have under my own direction, my determinations or my own choices. I made all of my choices and I stand by them all, even the ones that turned out in one fashion or another to have been incorrect, to have been unworthy of the me I perceived myself to be. I don't lay it all to the fact that I believe myself to be imperfect and finite, which I am. And it is our mistakes and fears, our imperfections that damage some of the people we care about, that damage our environment.
So I come back to the belief that I am not here without its concurrence. I may not want to believe that, but I do not know which of its designs require me to function in a certain way. Not independently as an entity as I may think, but as a part of other things, as part of another kind of objective. I am interrelated as a coming together of all kinds of energies, and these energies come together in order to produce a result that is necessary for the functioning of the universe.
There is more to say about the questions, answers and mysteries related to God and the nature of the universe and I have contemplated them in my time. ..."
(He then describes his return to the Bahamas for the first time in eight years to see his parents, and how he was able to provide money -- from his film-career beginnings -- for them to live in a home with electricity, indoor plumbing and a porch for the rest of their lives.)
They talked of "the unlimited prospects of the life upon which I was embarking, a life beyond measure, without barriers to where I could go and who I could become.
"And, as we sat there late into the early hours of the morning, no one said it per se, but I know that deep down in the center of the joyous occasion, we were all thinking the same thing: 'There is a God.' "
