Beyond Belief
…
We received a letter first thing this morning regarding Nathan‘s new article in the Boston Globe.
To Nathan Schneider:
Your commentary, “Beyond Belief” in today’s Boston Sunday Globe caught my attention. I read it with interest.
Seminary was a late-in-life experience for me, my responding to a profound and undeniable spiritual “Call”.
Ordained as a priest, I continue to “earn my keep” in the private business sector running a small, successful company here in Boston as its General Manager and Chief Operating Officer.
The term “religion” has been put-offish to me for years. I refer to myself as a spiritualist, not a religionist. Religion has killed more people than all the other wars in history, so I am told. I am not surprised.
I often wonder why the God of the Christians is better than the God of Islam and the God of the Jews is better than both of those, when in fact we all presume to be worshiping the same God!
In fact, there appears to be MORE violence in societies that claim strong religious principles and values than there is in societies with relaxed religious underpinnings.
The website “Killing the Buddha” caught my immediate attention.
Some scholars believe that Jesus of Nazareth traveled East to study with Buddha, when Jesus was a young lad. This suggests why there is no known “history” of Jesus during his adolescence.
Buddha has been studied by many of our most respected Jesuits. My mentor and confidant is an Episcopal priest who studied Buddha. He also ordained me. I have studied only a small portion about Buddha, but learned long ago that I have a powerful Zen and Chi. That discovery preceded my call to seminary by a solid decade.
Today I subscribed to “Killing the Buddha” website, wanting to learn more about it. I believe firmly that much of what ails and troubles the United States today has been created by too many false Christians, those who lift up the name of Jesus while playing by a very different set of rules.
With best regards,
The Reverend M. Vincent Turner
BOSTON MA
Meera Subramanian is an editor of Killing the Buddha and writes about the environment and culture for Nature, InsideClimate News, Virginia Quarterly Review, Orion, and others. Her first book is A River Runs Again: A Natural History of India from the Barren Cliffs of Rajasthan to the Farmlands of Karnataka (PublicAffairs, 2015). Visit her at meerasub.org.