If we respect the desires of others to maintain their spiritual traditions, we enhance our own lives. For those who won't make an effort for whatever reason, or who attack others for being raised in a different culture of traditions, you make us all losers. We are a more homogenized world today than history has ever known; are we any better for it? Rather, we need to learn respect and admiration for those who practice a different spirituality than we do, and encourage the differences. A little grace might be produced in the world if we could all follow those practices, difficult as they may be to some.
Most Christians on the interwebs and in America/other English speaking countries/on livejournal aren't Catholic and would stare at you blankly if you told them about Lent.
But, dude. This is livejournal. There's a huge non-Christian population on here who would totally rip to shreds any question Christian-specific.
Lastly, I did an experiment to prove a point to a friend who held a similar belief about Ramadan vs Lent and people's reaction to it. We went to the Mall in DC and asked 50 people what Ramadan was and then what Lent was. 36 knew what Ramadan was, 22 knew what Lent was (and 19 of those also knew what Ramadan was), and the rest didn't know either. A lot of people learn about Ramadan in school because many public schools are required to make special plans for Muslim students. Not so with Lent.
If the public schools made plans for Lent (school lunches on Friday, etc.) there would be a huge uproar. As it stands I have my daughter take a home lunch to school every Friday during Lent.
I definitely agree that anything Christian related would be torn apart and complained about until it was taken off. Intolerance sucks. Personally, even as a practicing Catholic, I enjoy learning about other religions and non-religions-- and I find Ramadan very fascinating.
But wouldn't it depend on where you live? For example, living down here in Texas, I know more about Lent than Ramadan because many of my friends practice Lent. I only have one close Muslim friend and she doesn't talk about her religion much.
You are one of the few real voices of reason and I respect you more than you know, but Muslim jokes are just too amusing to give up. Maybe next year for Lent.
I'd like to try fasting sometime. How long did you do it for?
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But, dude. This is livejournal. There's a huge non-Christian population on here who would totally rip to shreds any question Christian-specific.
Lastly, I did an experiment to prove a point to a friend who held a similar belief about Ramadan vs Lent and people's reaction to it. We went to the Mall in DC and asked 50 people what Ramadan was and then what Lent was. 36 knew what Ramadan was, 22 knew what Lent was (and 19 of those also knew what Ramadan was), and the rest didn't know either. A lot of people learn about Ramadan in school because many public schools are required to make special plans for Muslim students. Not so with Lent.
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I definitely agree that anything Christian related would be torn apart and complained about until it was taken off. Intolerance sucks. Personally, even as a practicing Catholic, I enjoy learning about other religions and non-religions-- and I find Ramadan very fascinating.
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I'd like to try fasting sometime. How long did you do it for?
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I only did it for three days, because I'm a total coward. I can only imagine that the longer you do it for, the better it gets.
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