My father’s parents were born in a small village in the Peloponnese. They were kind and humble people that eventually made their way to Athens. My mother’s parents were born in Kafkaso, a town in Minor Asia, which at that time belonged to Greece. With the war of 1921, the Turks forced my mother’s parents to flee to Athens. They were wealthy and proud, as were many Pontian Greeks at that time. Both of my parents were born in Athens in the fifties. My mother left Athens in 1969, America bound and my father followed soon after.…
Catholicism has always been the central religion in my family heritage. Each of my family members, originating back to my great grandmother have been raised Roman Catholic. Both on my mother and father’s sides of the family they practice Catholicism. My entire life has been centralized around faith and believing in one God. I attended Catholic School from 2nd to 12th grade and I gained a large amount from the faith filled environment. However, it was not until I was 15 years old that I became fully involved with my relationship with God and practiced Catholicism properly. The reason I became so involved with my relationship with God was because I attended a Catholic Youth Conference in Atlanta, Georgia called, “Steubenville Catholic Youth…
Galatians 2:20” I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” Knowing Jesus on a personal level is the greatest thing in the world. When we come to know Jesus all the angels in Heaven rejoice. Having a relationship with the Lord can change your life forever. I love knowing that There is a God up in Heaven that I can go to when things get out of hand. Glorifying God for the rest of my life will be something I will always cherish.…
My collage is Freedom of Religion, why I chose this freedom is because everyone has a religion, even though some people don’t choose to have a religion, it is important to them. ¨With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.¨ by Steven Weinberg. I chose this quote because anyone can have a religion it does not matter what kind of race they are, gender, or how they look. They choose what to believe in not what others believe in. Not everyone will believe in God, others may believe in something else and they cannot change that.…
I was raised up in a catholic family, going to church at least twice a month. My mom and dad both raised catholic always pushed me to be apart of my community and being a part of my community also meant being a part of my church. I attend Saint Mary’s in Iowa City and am currently attending Regina Catholic Education Center.…
Starting from the beginning, my parents both grew up in “religious” families, but were never believers. They were very legalistic, they believed that if you went to church on sunday and were kind to other people, you would be good with God. They continued to live like this until I was about three, when they gradually just quit going to church. Then the summer I turned four, a family, the Sistars, moved into the house next to ours. They had a daughter, Breanna, who was my age. We hit it off right away, from that day on we were inseparable, we did everything together. Like I said, at that time my family had stopped attending church on Sundays, our new neighbors on the other hand were strong believers. I became curious as to why Breanna couldn’t play on Sunday mornings and Monday evenings, she always said she had Sunday school, and Awana...I had no idea what either of those meant. Toward the end of that summer, Breanna, and her mom Melissa, invited my little sister and me to go to Vacation Bible School at their church, Summit Community Church. My mom had to work, so my oldest sister Chelsey, took us to VBS every night that week. We all loved it. Chelsey began to think maybe we should try going to church again, there at Summit, she could see something was different about the people. She talked to my parents who agreed to try it out. We began going to church at Summit with the Sistars. Within a year, my mom, dad, and two older sisters accepted Christ and were baptized. The Sistars and my family became very…
As a young child, I was always aware of books and the difference between books for children and books for adults. I would not say that I grew up in a family of devout readers, but I did grow up in a family of individuals who appreciated the value of books. Although my parents never seemed to have time to simply sit and read frequently, my mother had engaged with college-level texts in her adulthood, and both of my parents saw the benefit of exposing my sister and me to books at an early age. There was always a bookshelf in my house packed full of textbooks and enormous tomes with dusty, creased spines. We also had a full set of the Encyclopedia Britannica (which I recently found out is going out of print). It would be an exaggeration to say that these books intrigued me because they represented knowledge. However, they intrigued me because although they sat there and collected dust for years, my mother refused to throw them away. It was impressed upon me very early on that books were important, and that throwing them away was wrong. I did not get it completely at that point, especially because those books were incomprehensible to a four or five year old, but I understood that it was something that would be important when I was older.…
I am a catholic and very proud of it. Catholic to me means to practice the New Commandment and it means to follow in Jesus’ footstep as well as his holy ways. I myself: have three theological virtues: faith, hope, and love. Being Catholic above all means to love God completely. I have received Baptism, Reconciliation, Communion, and Confirmation. After receiving every one of these sacraments I felt even closer to God then before. I feel so empowered and happy to be a part of my Catholic community. The importance of religious freedom is very important and helps us to be able to learn about our beliefs. Religions are society made and the group of followers called religious people. To achieve spiritual growth you don’t need any religion and to understand the spirituality and to grow yourself truly. You should look into all religion with an open mind that will help you understand about your religious freedom and its importance. People have an inherent right to think and believe what they choose to believe in. Religious freedom and importance is part of our human rights and what we are allowed to do and will do. Religious freedom is a fundamental human right. Religious freedom benefits everyone- it creates conditions for peace, democratization, development, and other human…
Junior year of high school I was diagnosed as having an eating disorder; I was anorexic which can be defined as "a serious, potentially life-threatening eating disorder characterized by self-starvation and excessive weight-loss" (http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org). This definition does not mention that the effects of this can range anywhere from death to the inability to have children. This medical definition is broad and does not really encompass any of the mental side of the disease. In my struggle with anorexia I was faced with both the moral issues that anorexia inevitably brings about such as lying, self destruction, and societal pressure and the distorted body image that the disease causes. Anorexia itself is not the moral situation I plan to discuss; I will explain how throughout my illness how I was challenged morally and after I came to terms with my illness how I had to examine my beliefs and morals. I can not be one hundred percent sure that I will be able to because of the damage I did to my body. What I will discuss in this moral autobiography is the journey through my illness and I will connect this to my own moral character and how it changed and progressed.…
I am far from religious, yet I attend church every Sunday morning. I started when my school choir teacher recruited me to assist his church choir comprised mostly of inexperienced senior citizens. However, it quickly evolved into my integration into a community that was unexpectedly happy to have me. Every rehearsal, I sit between Ruth and Barb, who are five times my age, and we chat about everything from the weather to my future. Then, we sing numerous hymns and the ladies beside me are always complimenting my ability to sing for hours with no complaints. I don't truly understand the hymns, or religion in general for that matter, but I do respect and appreciate the value of music in any and all communities.…
When I was younger, my Grandma would take me to church every week, but being so young I didn’t understand the meaning behind it or the weight of the message I was receiving. In a way I was “blindly religious," I was only following the Christian faith because my grandma, someone who I loved and looked up to, was leading me down that path. The spring of my sophomore year my grandma became very ill and later that year passed away. One of the last things she said to me was “I want to go home.” I didn’t understand this at all because she was sitting in her home she had been in for most of her life. After camp, I was overwhelmed by the endless love Jesus had for me, it was also when my grandmother’s words finally made sense to me. I realized that…
At the age of 14 my world came crashing down on me. My Dad called me Tuesday afternoon around 4:00 while I was my picture made for softball, he seemed as if he were scared. I was standing with my used to be bestfriend, everything was fine until he broke the news to me. I dropped my phone and sat down wondering why this had to happen, my life was going as well as i wanted it to go. I didn’t want this to even be true. I was speechless and so was my dad, he couldn’t even hardly tell me what was going on but, I understood what he was trying to tell me. I ran outside screaming at the top of my lungs asking why this had to happen, I dropped to my knees to pray and ask for God to watch over her and to heal her as fast as he could. I then asked why my mom why not me? I didn’t understand why this…
My faith has enabled me to handle life challenges from my past and present. Some of these challenges have been series of events that I could hardly believe were happening, while others came with great joy. At five years old, my younger brother, Chandler, died unexpectedly. This was a tough challenge for my whole family to face. This challenge could have easily torn my family apart but together, as a team with God, we worked hard at picking up the pieces and moving forward even when there were days that seemed to be impossible. In the fifth grade, I was diagnosed with a common learning disability known as Attention Deficit Disorder. I am faced with this challenge on a daily basis. I have learned to cope with this disorder over the years by making prayer and patience priorities in helping me conquer this challenge. This challenge was especially difficult during my SAT and ACT tests. Certain scores on these tests were required to get into college and play NCAA football. The stress and pressure of taking these tests felt unbearable at times. While studying and before and during each test, I would remind myself that, through God, all things are possible. With God by my side, I was able to achieve the scores needed to reach my college and athletic goals.…
As a young child, I was simply told that God created us with no explanation of how or why. My parents would tell me that He created all humans, animals, plants, and even the Earth. Well of course this had to be true because Mom and Dad were telling me so and they know best. I began to ask more questions like, “how did he do it, when did he do it” and so on. These were questions that they could not answer. They did not brush off my questions; instead, they sent me to a Lutheran church with my aunt. Sure, going to church was nice to have companionship with such welcoming people but my questions were still not answered in the weekly lectures (yes, I say lectures because I did not enjoy it). I found it strange that my parents pushed me to believe in God, yet they were not churchgoers themselves. Eventually I figured it out and I decided to quit going to church as well. My parents were okay with my decision but still told me God was real and if I did not believe, there really would be no meaning to life. We were not the type of people to believe in what someone tells us to believe in, we wanted to believe in whatever we wanted to believe in and we are not willing to devote our lives to something or someone we are never going to see. Our lives are here for us to live instead of worrying if He is real or not.…
I Petal King, was born in Tobago on the twenty seventh of July nineteen eighty eight. I am presently living at the nurses hostel in Port-Of-Spain and attend COSTAATT(College Of Applied Arts Of Trinidad and Tobago).…