A day of protests
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” — Blaise Pascal
Today seems to be a day for protesting. As many of you know, today was “A day without immigrants”, and while I won’t go into to my thoughts on the matter. For that would be a long and tedious subject, I want to send my acknowledgement to those who took a stand today, no matter how they said it.
However, its been brought to my attention, a less than warranted protest took place today. One that received no media coverage, yet discouraged many people. I received a letter from one of my pagan friends, and she told me how local churches came to protest their ritual of Beltane.
Now without boring you with the details of what exactly Beltane is, I would just like to say it is a very intense religious ritual and deserves the utmost respect.
Yet, that was disrupted by people who are closed minded to the possibilities that there are other paths to the Divine. I find this totally uncalled for! I am outraged by the rudeness that this church displayed. That would be like that same group of pagans protesting a Christmas or Easter Service.
While, I support free speech and protesting this went beyond the limits. To actively seek out this group, to shout obscenities at them, and to belittle them?? That’s just plain malice. It really breaks my heart, because I thought such strides had been made in religious tolerance. I suppose that no matter how much a minority (be it religious or otherwise) is accepted, there will still be those who seek to discount, belittle, or persecute them.
Until next time, when hopefully compassion with our neighbors has grown,
autumn