Some Progress 1

This is actually a bit late. I've pretty much made about six steps on my goal towards not hating everything about wife's choice of religeon but I had to get through those steps before I could be comfortable enough writing about them. Truth is I'm making a much bigger deal of it than she is. But I knew that would be the case. I'm the one with the problem not her.

Well I've been doing a bunch of reading. Read 'Living Buddha, Living Christ." by Thich Nhat Hanh. I'll be seeing him sept 19th. He's doing some speaking. Funny part is while my wife was searching for God she brought home "Jesus and Buddha as brothers" by him. I read about three paragraphs and said "Looks like it's just some attempt to make Christianity palatable for Buddhists. I have no interest in understanding and accepting them." Man, what a dick.

I knew subconciously it was her attempt to help me be comfortable with it but it didn't sink in that she'd already made her choice to be Christian. The ironic part is that she doesn't remember that book, apparently she didn't read it and now I'm the one getting the books and giving them to her. I'm not pushing the Buddhism on her but she's trying to understand it as much as I'm trying to understand hers. There's a bunch of concepts in Buddhism that are, to be honest, kind of odd and very difficult for most western minds to wrap around. I'm not really sure why I don't have a problem with it. I'm exploring that, more on that in a later post.

I'm a lot more comfortable than I used to be with the wife's choice. It helps that she's Catholic. Much to my surprise Catholosism is one of the most flexible. Supporting science and such things. hell the vatican is becoming solar powered. The most important part is the importance they place on helping people. The teachings of Catholosism and buddhism are actually very close. Jesus said go help people. My wife made a comment once. "There are two ways to view what Jesus said. You can focus on helping people here on this earth and pray as well. Or you can Pray constantly and focus on helping them in the after life. You can guess from the number of Hospitals with names that start with 'St. ...' which one the catholic church focuses on.' it really helps.