A Crazy Summer

Interestingly enough, I found myself in a philosophy of religion class in the local community college.  I have a Bachelor's Degree, but in order to get an education bonus at work it had to be an Associate's Degree in my professional field.  I transferred a lot of classes to the Junior College, but in order to graduate I needed to take one additional class to satisfy the residency requirements.  I almost got into a PE class, but found the philosophy of religion class that was entirely online.  So with everything going on in my life, I felt like the online class was the best bet.

The class was very interesting.  We learned about everything from paganism and native religions, to the major religions of today Hindu, Jain, Buddhism, Confucius, Daoist, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.
Now, even after getting an A in the class, I by no means am an expert on any of these religions.  I do, however,  feel like I had the privilege of taking a journey and discovered some interesting things about human nature.  Mainly, that everyone who has ever walked this earth has asked themselves a couple of very important questions.  These questions would be the driving force of religions emerging in an effort to find an answer.

Who are we?
Why are we here?
What is our purpose?
What else is out there?

These questions still perplex us today.  Religions of all kinds do their best to answer these questions.  As part of our class, two field trips were required.  The first was to an Eastern Religious Site.  I chose a large Buddhist temple that is in the area.  It was a very good experience walking through a religious site that I was so unfamiliar with.  I took an audio tour which was very enlightening.  The serenity of the Temple was stunning.  I will post my field trip report in a separate blog post so you can view it if you are interested.

The second field trip report was to a Western Religious Site.  The caveat here was that it could not be our own religion (Protestant).  So somewhat reluctantly one day, I headed off to the local Roman Catholic Church for the Sunday Mass.  What I found there was not what I expected.