BEST of PONDER on THIS for Thursday, September 25th, 2008 by Marianne Williamson in ILLUMINATA

“Religious institutions are not the only arbiters of religious experience. They do not own the Truth, for Truth cannot be owned. Nor should they think they hold some franchise on our spiritual life. They are consultants and frameworks, but they are not God Itself. We should not confuse the path with the destination.

It’s simplistic to think that many Americans turned away from organized religion and now we’re back, as though that’s the whole story. We turned away from religion, found that life without conscious awareness of God is difficult, and we’re now back to religion because that is, theoretically, where to find God. But we do not go back as the spiritually half-interested, complacent congregants that many of our parents were when we were growing up. We go back with an interest in actually HAVING a religious experience.

Organized religion will not be the same; it will step up to bat, religiously, or it will wither away. Organized religious institutions are in for a huge transformation, for the simple reason that people have become genuinely religious in spite of them.”

Marianne Williamson, in “Illuminata” 

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Jeff MJeff Maziarek, author of Spirituality Simplified and Codi’s Journey, launched Pondercentral.com in April 2007 as a Web-based forum for “PONDER on THIS,” a series of weekday inspirational email messages he began sending to subscribers in March 1999. A FREE service since its inception, “PONDER on THIS” provides subscribers with meaningful content to assist them on their individual paths of spiritual growth. In addition, it benefits subscribers, authors, and publishers by including links to Amazon.com where subscribers can learn more about the book being quoted, and also purchase it.

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