Religiosity Vs. Spirituality

I used to think that religiosity and spirituality went hand in hand. While I did not necessarily think they were synonymous with each other, I did believe they were tied to one another. However, I've been seeing trends that tell me otherwise. At least, that tell me that other people do not believe that religiosity and spiritually are tied together. Both anecdotally and empirically it seems that many people believe that you can be religious without be spiritual and spiritual without being religious, and for many people spirituality is more appealing than religiosity. I think it is because people see many appealing things in a variety of religions, so rather than choosing one, they choose none, or rather all. Bits and pieces of each it seems like. While that might not be religion according to some people, it seems like religion to me. However, not everyone does that. I think more and more people, at least those my age that I have the most interaction with, are turning away from religion more and more and doing their own thing, and calling it spirituality. I don't mean to insult them or make it sound unfounded, it is just that I do not understand what they are doing that is so "spiritual". They are just separating out religious practices. Instead of following a strict religion (strict in the sense that it is layed out and formatted, not that you must obey certain rules) they choose not to follow any religion. I find it fascinating and a bit confusing at times. On one hand I can see how you can be religious without being spiritual; many people go through the motions of a religion but deep down don't "feel" it or don't really care about it that much, but it is something they have always done and continue to do. There are other examples, but that seems like a recurring one. However, it is harder for me to see how you can be spiritual without some kind of religion. What do you do to express your spirituality? What do you do that is so spiritual anyway? While I do not understand, it is a definite trend.

I have been looking at data for my project (at the same time both mind-numbing and thrilling) and so many people claim to have a high level of spirituality, but less people have a high level of religiosity. And, (and mind you this is one of the few statistics I will probably share until my project is completed and even then I don't know if I want to post them up here) it appears as though higher levels of religiosity affect one's sexual practices and attitudes, but spirituality does not have the same effect. In fact, spirituality does not seem to play a role at all in one's sexual practices and attitudes. That is so fascinating to me. There are so many reasons that I can speculate for that, and so many directions to go with this one area. Is it due to religious teachings and doctrine? Or something else? I have no idea, but I think cross-referencing with some of my other data might provide some insight. I hope so anyway. Otherwise I will just have some very interesting speculation in my results section. Don't worry though; I have plenty of solid data to talk about as well.

The more I work on my project, the more I love what I am doing. It is stressful and hard and often confusing and I have to stretch my mind and learn a lot of new things since I decided not to major in psychology but somehow end up doing it without having very much background, but it is thrilling and fascinating and I wish I could just do more. I would love to do this on a larger scale, which I may have mentioned before. Plus, I feel like I'm doing something important, and meaningful. That's important to me. I want to be able to do something with my life that I like, but also that's important. At least important to me. With my project, I feel like I'm doing that. My professors are even encouraging me to publish-not only is it flattering, I feel like I can do it, like I should do it. That might give me just what I need to be able to do this more extensively in the future. And of course, it might help me get in to graduate school-it won't be published by then obviously, but just the fact that it could be in the process definitely says something. Speaking of grad school, I take the GRE tomorrow morning so everyone should wish me good luck!


You've got no faith in Johnny, have you, Julia? His little dream may fall flat, you think. Well, so it may, what if it should? There'll be another. Oh, I've got all the faith in the world in Johnny. Whatever he does is all right with me. If he wants to dream for a while, he can dream for a while, and if he wants to come back and sell peanuts, oh, how I'll believe in those peanuts!

Other Blogs

I just wanted to put a link in here for Eric's blog and my mom's blog. I think these are not very well read blogs because generally, the past few months (almost a year for mom's) they have not had many posts. However, both have started posting again recently and hopefully will continue to do so. I, despite being tremendously busy lately, am also not very exciting so when I'm not doing school work I am on the computer. That means I check blogs frequently, so I know when people post. It is very exciting for me when people post, and I hope they continue to do so. I know everyone is really busy and it can be hard to find time to blog, but it is a nice way for me (and I hope others) to keep track of what is going on in people's lives. And to maybe let people know what is going on in my own life, even though generally only school is.

Since that is the main thing in my life right now, that is what I will talk about. School started 2 weeks ago and even though I only have 3 real classes I am crazy busy. Mostly with my senior honors project. We have a draft due Friday, but I finished as much as I was able to and turned it in today. Without the bibliography. Smooth move on my part. I'm going to email her and ask if she wants it. I already turned in a preliminary bibliography last semester so it might not be that big of a deal. I only turned in the Catholic teaching on sexual ethics part of, with the intro to my study. I'm still working on data analysis so I couldn't really turn in any results. Despite that fact, I turned in 30 pages. It is one long paper, and even though the draft is turned in, I obviously have a lot left to write. Plus, I have to present everything so I have to take care of that, and finish writing my paper, get it critiqued, and then re-write the whole thing so I can turn it in by April 1st. On the bright side, one of my committee members is already encouraging me to get it published. It's very exciting work and the results I'm seeing are really interesting. Like I said, I'm still working on analysis so I can't really write about anything final yet but it looks like Catholic and non-Catholics are similar in their sexual behavior but less similar in their attitudes. Interesting...If anyone wants to, I would love to have more people at my presentation on March 13th. It's at noon on my campus. Just let me know if you want to come and I will get you more information. Like I said, it would be great to have people there to hear my results and to support me. Plus it should be very interesting.

The three classes that I do have this semester (although technically it's 4 if you count my gym class) are hard. They are a ton of work and on some difficult topics. I'm taking Quest for God in Contemporary Experience, Studies in World Religions, and Contemporary Ethical Theory. The theology classes are really looking at different ideas and versions and perspectives of God, and really questioning how we look at God and how God can fit in our world. They are very complex and thought-provoking, and like I said, a lot of work. All my classes are writing intensive too, which also means reading intensive. But they are all higher level classes in my majors, which means not only do I find them really interesting but they are taught at a high level of though and really in-depth, and the students in the class are expected to be at a certain level. I really like that, and I think it's going to make my last semester at St. Kate's really enjoyable and meaningful. Now my gym class, on the other hand, is just to fulfill the stupid requirement. I'm taking Aerobics with Soul: The African Experience, which is a new kind of aerobics based on African culture and dance, so it's really different and sometimes a little strange. It is a good workout though, which I was worried about at first, so I don't really care how weird it is. I just wanted to be in a class that I would get good exercise in, since I'm paying a lot for it.

Like I said, that's what's going on in my life right now. Not very exciting (except for the honors project, but even that is mostly just a lot of work at this point) but it's my life!


My Morty becomes this big shot on T.V... He was selling electronics, right? On our 20th wedding anniversary it hits midlife crisis major. He starts working out, he, he grows a moustache, he gets an earring. I said, "Morty, Morty, what are you? A pirate? what's next? A parrot?" And all of a sudden I'm a big drag. I'm holding him back because I won't go rollerblading.

Risky Business

Saw that movie for the first time today. And the last. It was not a good movie. At all. That's all I wanted to blog about-how disappointed I was in it. I was expecting more.

My name is Joel Goodson. I deal in human fulfillment. I grossed over eight thousand dollars in one night. Time of your life, huh kid?

My Awesome Husband

I wanted to blog tonight but I don't have much to blog about, and Eric said to write about how awesome he is so I guess I will. Soon you can all look forward to a blog about my senior honors project because some exciting things are going on with that, but for now you get to hear about Eric and married life.

Which is great, by the way. I love being married, and Eric and I have a fantastic relationship. We appreciate each other and take each other for granted very minimally. We've both been really busy lately, what with the new semester starting not that long ago and the first draft for my project due in less than a week (and my data not completely analyzed yet) and work and whatnot, but despite that we are trying our best to make time for each other. And Eric is really great-between my job and my paper, I work at the computer for the majority of most days, and it takes a toll on the shoulders, so Eric has been rubbing my back which is always nice. He also does the dishes a lot when I'm at work, so that's a relief. I don't really like doing the dishes that much (neither does he) but they obviously have to get done and I really appreciate when he does them, especially since he also has things going on in his life, like school and work. Unfortunately Kohl's is not scheduling him as much; on second thought it's not so bad because then we get to spend more time together.

Valentine's Day is coming up, and even though we're not doing anything super special I'm looking forward to it. It's actually on a day that we don't have anything going on, so we can spend it doing what we love most-just being together. I have 2 night classes again this semester, but luckily neither of them is on a Thursday. We have a nice, quiet night at home planned-we're going to get a Netflix movie and drink champagne and have some sort of nice dinner and just relax. And my birthday is only a few days after that, so we're going to go out to a fancier dinner at a nice restaurant sortof as a combination V-Day and birthday celebration (but mostly my birthday). We're going to Forepaugh's, which is probably my favorite restaurant. It is classy, atmospheric, and delicious. Everything about it just adds to the experience. I'm so excited to go-we haven't been in awhile because it's fairly expensive so I'm really looking forward to it. Plus, my draft will be turned in and I won't be stressed next weekend like I am this weekend (well, not as stressed-you wouldn't believe what this kind of project does to a person) and I will get to do what I love doing most-spending quality time with the person I love the most!

Sonny, true love is the greatest thing, in the world-except for a nice MLT - mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe, they're so perky, I love that.

Up and Running

They finally got our email fixed again. I checked my email this morning for the first time in 5 days. Wow. So if anyone needs to send me an email, go ahead, it will go through now.

Now you wouldn't believe me if I told you, but I could run like the wind blows. From that day on, if I was ever going somewhere, I was running!

Broken Down

The St. Kate's email is broken. And today isn't the first day. In fact, it's been down since Friday! They have been in the process of fixing it now for 4 days. How can a school email system take that long to fix? How can the people fixing it not be able to fix it in that amount of time? I think my school sucks. At least in this area. Seriously, 4 days without email? The whole campus? That is just not right. Really, it's wrong-students and staff alike rely on email to communicate with one another, especially over the weekend when there aren't even any classes going on. You would think that the email would be a priority, and that it would get fixed as soon as possible. And if this is as soon as possible, then don't you think the school should have realized that something was wrong with the email system before a problem of this size occurred? It doesn't make sense to me, and it seriously frustrates me. In fact, I was relying on our email system to send my cleaned up data to my professor so she could run it through this other program that would enable us to analyze my data this afternoon. Instead, I had to bring it with me and we had to waste most of our time together doing that. Now we have to meet again tomorrow. (We actually probably would have had to meet tomorrow anyway, but still, it caused problems) It is so annoying not to be able to use email for 4 days, since even though I have 2 other email accounts, my St. Kate's one is really the only one I seriously use, and pretty much everything, especially things of importance, and things from professors, and whatnot, all goes to that account. I bet I'm going to have a gajillion emails when they finally get it fixed. Or maybe not, if the senders are all St. Kate's people, because that means they wouldn't have been able to send them. Seriously though, I really hope it is fixed by tomorrow.

Zero Cool? Crashed fifteen hundred and seven computers in one day? Biggest crash in history, front page New York Times August 10th, 1988. I thought you was black man. YO THIS IS ZERO COOL!