{"id":4269,"date":"2012-05-28T12:44:37","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T12:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/prayables\/?p=4269"},"modified":"2012-05-28T20:10:13","modified_gmt":"2012-05-28T20:10:13","slug":"high-on-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayables\/2012\/05\/high-on-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"High on Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In our culture, places of worship\u2014churches or synagogues or temples or mosques\u2014are the locations where religions are learned and practiced. Within those walls, people are building a relationship with God\u2014or, at least, that\u2019s what we\u2019re led to believe. These are the storehouses of spiritual wisdom handed down through generations. But I did not attend worship services growing up, so I know almost nothing about the insight they offer.<\/p>\n

We live in communities dotted with these sites, but most of us hurry past with the excuse that we are busy and our lives full when the truth may be that we are too intimidated to find out for ourselves, to ask: What are you doing in there? What do you believe? It\u2019s as if those walls are specifically designed to keep us out, instead of draw us in, to shroud religion in mystery, to keep us away from God. How are we to move forward when we\u2019re so many of us are thoroughly alienated from what exists? I\u2019ve told myself that it\u2019s my rational mind that prevents such spiritual explorations, like somehow I\u2019m \u201ctoo worldly\u201d or \u201ctoo educated\u201d to sit in a pew or kneel and pray, when the truth is I\u2019m just ignorant and terrified.<\/p>\n

Then I had this thought: What if I conquered my fear and walked into those places of worship and attended the services and maybe even communed with believers? It was an interesting daydream: this special place where I felt a certain kinship with others, kind of like the bar Cheers, only with God instead of beers. It\u2019s been said that religion is the \u201copiate of the masses\u201d like it\u2019s a bad thing\u2026but I\u2019m not so sure. If religion is drugs without the drugs, I\u2019d like a hit please\u2014if just to see what I\u2019m missing out on.<\/p>\n

~\u00a0Corinna Nicolaou<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In our culture, places of worship\u2014churches or synagogues or temples or mosques\u2014are the locations where religions are learned and practiced. Within those walls, people are building a relationship with God\u2014or, at least, that\u2019s what we\u2019re led to believe. These are the storehouses of spiritual wisdom handed down through generations. But I did not attend worship…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":463,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3083,3102,3103,156,3101,3100],"class_list":["post-4269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspirational-stories","tag-corinna-nicolaou","tag-curiosity","tag-places-of-worship","tag-prayables","tag-religion","tag-spiritual-exploration"],"yoast_head":"\nHigh on Religion - Prayables<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayables\/2012\/05\/high-on-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"High on Religion - Prayables\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In our culture, places of worship\u2014churches or synagogues or temples or mosques\u2014are the locations where religions are learned and practiced. 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