Every Wednesday evening, the little church community at AUI gets together at the chaplain's house for pizza and salad (the latter of which is rare in M'co!), fellowship, and a bit of bible study. It's always a lovely mid-week gathering.
For the past two weeks, we've discussed something I found very interesting, the three Abrahamic tradition holidays - Ashura (Islamic), Yom Kippur (Jewish) and Day of Atonement (Christian). It was really interesting to discuss the similiarities and differences between the stories and traditions, and also just to discuss the differences between our own traditions in the various Catholic/Protestant/Orthodox backgrounds.
But what I found most interesting, was the common thread that in all three religions its important for believers to take a day to try to atone, or to take a peace from my "Making Things Right" class last semester...become at one with God.
And it was also cool, because after thinking about the profoundness of the tradition of Yom Kippur and the importance of the biblical sacrifices to atone on behalf of the Jewish people, it really reminded me of the controversial nature of the Christian claim that Jesus' death atoned for our sins and made it possible to receive God's forgiveness once and for all. Also made some parts of Hebrews seem pretty cool!
So, that was my cool interesting bit for the day. This week's been pretty good. Resettling into the academic scheme of things and surprising myself by getting excited about some of the information again...i thought last semester had beat up my inner academic to the point of needing a long hiatus, but we'll see. I'm trying to take it easy and just let the learning happen without getting stressed or overly into it. That's the plan at least!
Signing off for now...
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