Carrie Link

SUPPLEMENTAL RELIGION

Today is Good Friday. As a child I could never understood it's name, what was good about it? "It should be called Bad Friday," I remember telling my mom. "Someday you'll understand why it is good," she said.

Now I am the mom, and I do indeed understand the goodness of this day. I am a Christian, and always have been. I am blown away by Good Friday and the resurrection on Easter. Nothing and nobody can take away my deeply instilled beliefs and source of faith. However, and I know this is really going to bother some of you, it is not enough for me. Christianity does not fully encompass all that I have come to embrace and hold dear. I need more. For me it has been Buddhism. And yet there is so much Christian guilt bred into me, I feel blasphemous to even be thinking this, let alone "publishing" it. Am I a bad Christian because I need supplemental religion, much the way my mother needs supplemental health insurance?

I'm sure many disagree with me, but I have come to see Buddhism and Christianity as complementary, not opposing. They, in my opinion have much in common, and many of the practices in Catholicism, in particular, are so similar to Buddhism, it is impossible for me to consider them in conflict with one another.

We have become a country that is increasingly bi-racial and multi-racial. Is it too much to ask that we allow bi-religion and multi-religion? When people ask me what am I, I usually say, "Everything." Nothing is not the right anwer, that is far from what I feel, but "everything" makes people squeamish, too.

As a young girl in Sunday School I made a banner that said, "God is love". It hung in our home for years. What did that mean, exactly? I looked at that banner and tossed those words around in my head, and long after it was removed, the confusion lingered.

I now think all that you need to know is in those three words. God is love. To know God is to know love. To know love, is to know God. God may have many different names and ways of practicing, but in the end, to know love is to know All, and that makes every day of the week "Good".