She had been studying religion for her whole life really. Her dad was a confirmed agnostic although he used to joke to his friends that he was a pagan. Her great grandmother studied Christian Science. She used to go to church with her and then come home to her dad bad mouthing it. He encouraged her to go to church with friends at a very young age and then would talk to her about what she had heard or learned as a result. She attended Baptist, Catholic, Jewish, Lutheran, Christian Science, Quaker, Buddhist, Methodist, and Black Baptist church services.
She took the anthropology of religious experience in college. They did all sorts of experiments on each other: sleep deprivation, prayer, meditation, drug induced state, etc. They were hooked up to electronic equipment to read breathing, heart rate, and brain waves. The students put all the information together and came up with the conclusion that perhaps it is the feeling humans get when praying or meditating that they are after and not the pedagogy per se.
She was the perfect person to teach comparative religion and she did so for many years. The study of religion excited her, led her to larger questions. She decides that she cannot believe fully in any of it, but she believes in some of all of it.
After 9/11, she began collecting artifacts from every religion and made an alter to honor all beliefs. She has
- a picture of Buddha in a gold frame
- an American flag
- a mezuzah
- a statue of Kwan Yin
- a pentagram necklace
- a miniature Statue of Liberty
- a Sacred Heart candle
- a Celtic cross
- a small dish of rocks and shells
- a stone carving of the mother goddess
- a picture of Krishna
- a Japanese bowl gong sitting on a silk pillow
- a green crystal hanging in the window
- a mirror
- a small Japanese sword
- an African gourd drum
- a poster of Pele
- a rain stick
- brass finger cymbals
- incense
- stone carvings of various totem animals
- an abalone shell with a smudge stick
- five Chinese coins on a red ribbon
- a snake incense burner
- origami cranes….
There must be at least another two dozen religious objects around her. So, even though she doesn’t adhere to any one belief, she respect them all. “There is god in every room,” she likes to say.
Some extremists of any religion take things too far and try to make themselves right and everyone else wrong. They try to make rules and laws to govern all of us based on their beliefs. Every individual needs to figure it out for themselves.
A close friend recently died and his daughter was having trouble understanding what had happened to him. She kept saying through her sobbing, “Yes, but I wish I knew what happened to him. Where is he?”
“Think of where you want him to be and be at peace with that within yourself,” Ms. Lu told her. “Religion exists to comfort us. Take what you will from it in any of its forms.”
God Bless
Hare Krishna
Happy Hanukkah
Blessed Be
Merry Christmas
(First published 12/24/11)
