“Religiousness”

As I was sitting with the director of Emerson Funeral Home in Jonesboro, Arkansas making plans for my body’s cremation, he asked my religion. After a pause to give the question careful consideration, I answered, “I am religiousness”.

By religiousness I mean that the human being as he is is not enough.  We can be enormously more.  Whatever a human being is is only a seed. We do not know what potential we are carrying in ourselves.  Religiousness is simply a challenge to grow, a challenge for the seed to come to the ultimate peak of expression, to burst forth in thousands of flowers and release the fragrance that was hidden in it.  That fragrance I call religiousness.  It has nothing to do with our so called religions; it has nothing to do with churchman.  It has something to do with you and your possibilities of growth.  Religions can disappear but religiousness is something interwoven into existence itself.  It is the beauty of the sunrise.  It is the beauty of a bird on the wing.  It is the beauty of an opening lotus.  It is all that is thoughtful, all that is sincere and authentic, all that is truthful, loving and compassionate.  It includes everything that pulls you upwards and keeps reminding you that you have yet far to go.  Every place that you stop for a rest is only a restful night and in the morning we go again on the pilgrimage – the eternal pilgrimage.