My Religion Matters

Written by Deborah Jordaan

Good day, beautiful souls of this universe. Today I will write about how we are divided regarding religion. We all live on this planet, yet wars have started through faith – from the dark ages to now.

As we all know, I hug trees. I embrace Mother Nature and am grateful for the abundance she blesses me with every day. Yes, we are all entitled to our diverse religions but why do we feel we need to defend ourselves for our belief system.

The Christians can wear a cross and a fish in honour of their religion, but behold a pagan person walks around with a pentagram – Satan has arrived. Why is that?

Just like any religion are we not entitled to wear what signifies our belief and not get judged for it?

For instance, we must judge all catholic priests because a few have done injustices to children. No, we should not judge all. You will find rotten apples in every religion. When you are perfect and full of grace not even then can you judge another human?

Religion does not teach respect, moral values and kindness to the human race, those traits are human and should be instilled from birth if the parents are good humans.

You do not need religion to define you for who you are.

A good human stays a good human no matter what your religion.

You go sit in the church and for that period of time, you are so holy but when you come out those doors do you practice what you hear?

We all have a bit of each of the religions in our own religion, as from the time of the early religions there were only a few and from there stemmed the religions we see today.

I was watching an interesting program last night on youtube and it was all about religious symbols and how all religions have adopted these symbols. All religions are linked, even though closed-minded people might not agree with the statement. We should all just stand together and save our beautiful planet instead of proclaiming how significant our religious paths are.

At the end of the day, Mother Nature does not care who is what religion, when she destroys parts of the planet she does not ask questions of who is the holiest. She takes and gives lives and all the human has to do in turn is take care of what she has gifted us with.

In my parting words, I just want to say that I respect people for who they are and not for the religion they follow.

Spirit Has an Answer

Written by Elsabe Smit

Recently an old friend died – not that he was so old. He went before retirement age, and we have not had contact for over four decades. But he was a friend. Until religion interfered.

His passing scratched open wounds from my teenage years that I thought I had made peace with.

This man was a lovely, intelligent boy with a good nature and a kind heart. He was also from a different religion – and a different language and culture. He was keen on me, and the feeling was mutual. We were teenagers, exploring relationships and being adults.

When I realised that this was more than a passing interest, I was happy and concerned – so concerned that I went to see the minister. I had many questions about the ethical and moral rights and wrongs of having a relationship with someone from a different religious group. I am not talking about anything extreme. He was a Methodist, and I was in the Dutch Reformed Church, which made us both Protestants. The point was that he was not a member of the Dutch Reformed Church.

Today this sounds like a laughable exaggeration, but at the time my world was wobbly because of the magnitude of the decision I had to make about the relationship. The easy way out was to stop seeing him, which is what I did. I knew I had hurt him, and I was hurt, but the blinkers were solidly in place.

Now, four decades later, I know how incredibly childish and immature that decision was, and how different my life would have been if I bit the bullet and broke away from that restrictive cult. In my defence, I was a teenager who grew up in a God-fearing home and I only discovered in years that God is in fact a God of love.

During that same period, when I was already a young adult, my best friend got married. I did not attend her wedding. Why on earth not? Because she was a member of the Apostolic Faith Mission – where people actually enjoy going to church, and they show it with music and singing and praising God. My fear and indoctrination were such that I could not even see my way open to attend her wedding. That was cruel, but at the time it was the only option that I could see.

The friendship remained strong, and she actually attended my wedding.

That memory represented another big loss to me, and to this day I can remember being at home on that day, wishing with all my heart that I could share my friend’s big day and her joy, but at the same time knowing that the ostracism following the decision to attend would have been unbearable.

Little did I know that about a decade later, I would experience that same ostracism at full blast anyway when I got divorced.

Over the years I had more experiences that confirmed for me how vicious religious people can be. I worked in Ireland, a country still in the grip of a smothering Catholic Church, and saw the worst side of religious judgment – where a mass grave of babies and orphans was discovered at a convent, and where children, in general, were not safe from any men or the cloth. I lived in England, where it is totally acceptable to remain married and have several relationships after leaving the marital home, because of the social and religious judgment of the Church of England if you actually go through with a divorce. I am not sitting in moral judgment. Spirituality has taught me the importance of finishing unfinished business, and the church does not allow that.

Does this mean everything about religious is bad? On the contrary. If you read the holy scriptures of many religious, you will find the gems and the beauty in each one of them. And of course, there are many good people for whom religion and their religious practices form a resting place for their feet.

For me spirituality is my home and my comfort. There is nothing that cannot be resolved by Spirit, and there is no greater solace than what I get form communing with Spirit.

I was a qualified psychologist for many years and gave up that title because I encountered situations where no amount of psychological training could help me.

As a psychologist and a Christian, I was never taught in which box to put the person who came to me, desperate for help halfway during a sex change and feeling suicidal. Spirit had an answer.

As a psychologist and a Christian, I was never taught what is the best way to council a prisoner who called me from death row in the US two days before his execution, for a psychic reading. Spirit had an answer.

I have since been through experiences in my own life that got me close to breaking point, and I was able to learn and see patterns and get explanations that do not appear in any religious scripture or academic textbook. I now help people who go through similar experiences.

Spirit had an answer.

Living life as a ‘votarist’

Written by Chris De Flamingh

I lived my life for approx. 20 years as a ‘votarist’

You can find the description / definition of a ‘votarist’ on the link below but will place the info in this blog as well should you not opt to look it up.

Definition / Description:

_{In the Christian tradition, such public vows are made by the religious – cenobitic and eremitic – of the Catholic Church, Anglican Communion, and Eastern Orthodox Churches, whereby they confirm their public profession of the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience or Benedictine equivalent. The vows are regarded as the individual’s free response to a call by God to follow Jesus Christ more closely under the action of the Holy Spirit in a particular form of religious living. A person who lives a religious life according to vows they have made is called a votary or a votarist. The religious vow, being a public vow, is binding in Church law. One of its effects is that the person making it ceases to be free to marry. In the Catholic Church, by joining the consecrated life, one does not become a member of the hierarchy but becomes a member of a state of life which is neither clerical nor lay, the consecrated state.}

To my personal belief (not blessed or approved/ordained by God in reality), made certain vows to God to sort of ‘police’ or limit myself from doing anything against God’s law at the time.

Little knowing that I was pursuing God’s law in a non-biblical form and I suffered great emotional trauma because of it and thus lived a very secret and painful lifestyle which I never told any of my family or friends because I felt it was a personal agreement between me and God and no one would ever understand but in actual fact, I had caused more pain for myself and was living a life of sin instead of a God-like lifestyle.

I realised this, the day after my mom passed away on the 28 April 2019 and when I awoke the next morning realising my mom was now gone to be with the Lord, I had reaffirmed my life and commitment to God in the proper manner and so life seemed more real and more clearer to me.

Since then I have taken on a new persona in the true sense of the word and now follow a completely different path to serving God every day of my life. I have been through so much emotional trauma since then as well for various different reasons. But I have learnt from those mistakes as it mostly had been my own doing.

The lesson I learnt from this was that you cannot or should not misunderstand or live a misguided life which God had not meant for you to live or to follow instead follow God’s word according to the Holy Bible.

My whole aim for my blog and family history and telling my story is to leave behind a legacy which I want people to learn from and not make the same mistakes in life as I did.

I pray that everyone experiences peace and love all over the world, especially during this difficult time of the (COVID-19) pandemic and consider and help each other where we can possible so we could all join hands and live in unity. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen!

Tribute to My Mom & Dad

Written by Chris DeFlamingh

My dad was born Adolf Jakobus DeFlamingh on 23 December 1928 and passed away on April 7th, 1995 at the age of 66 (I had just turned 24 at the end of that month 29 April 1995). He was buried on 12 April 1995.

My mom was born Christina Jacoba Hitchcock in Tanzania on 18 February 1940 and passed away at the age of 79, on 28 April 2019 and I turned 48 just the following day. My mom was buried on 9 May 2019.

It was my calling to be here on earth to look after my parents should they become ill, frail or reach their “golden years” to be there until God called them home to His kingdom to be in the safety of His care.

I love my parents and I will never stop loving them as if they were still living here on earth and I being by their side but instead, they are now by my side and guarding me while they are up in Heaven, in the Kingdom of God.

One day out of the blue I told my mom “you know that I love you, hey” and she was taken back for a second as she didn’t expect me to ever say something like that.

She realised what I had told her, her face lit up like a diamond sparkling like a clean dish that had just been washed spotlessly clean. She couldn’t believe her ears and I felt great and very proud that I had told her as I had never ever told her that before; about a month later she had gone to be with the Lord.

So I will always feel some form of guilt that I never expressed anything like that to my mom & dad more often.

As I commemorate the passing of my mom on this day 28 April 2020, it is with great sadness but also with some kind of inspiration that I was called by God to take on this task and that was so clear to me from a very young age.

To stand by my parents no matter what. It’s with great pride and satisfaction that I could fulfil that task in Gods glory & stood by my mom until it was her time to leave this earthly place and be with the Lord as my mom was a very devoted Christian and stood by her beliefs and many nights she would read out loud and held bible study before we went to bed.

If I could go back and face the same tasks again, (some people would call it challenges), I would do it all over again without a doubt. For me it was an honour. So today I celebrate my mom’s life as opposed to mourning her passing.

Rest in peace mom & dad until we meet again ….

Mother Nature by Debbie Jordaan

Good day to all our readers. Regular readers and new readers. Without you our thoughts would be exactly just what they are.

With the world being on lockdown we all try to stay sane by practicing our religions and try fill the time with things we never get the chance to do. We all have different religious views and values but I think we can all agree on the fact that Mother Nature has found a way to regenerate herself as the world is over populated and the damage done to her by humans is reprehensible. Mother Nature doesn’t ask to be praised – She asks to be respected.

Every day we are destroying Earth and not noticing the extremities of our actions. Looking back at history one wonders how civilizations just got destroyed? I don’t think we need to wonder much – Mother Nature took control. Look at the damage being done to oceans, over fishing and pollution. That’s just the oceans not even to speak about the land. There are people trying to restore the Earth but it’s a drop in the bucket because as they are try to fix things the other people are destroying vegetation. Some people need to be educated on over population worldwide as their cultures say that the more children they have the more blessed they will be. This over population is causing famine and droughts leaving countries in extreme poverty. If they were properly educated on the levels of poverty caused by their cultures and think logically maybe they would opt for contraception as many don’t believe in that.

Education is key to conservation of this beautiful Earth of ours. If every human did their part even the simple things like not littering Mother Nature would reward us with more abundance. We as humans are here to look after Earth so our children have a future but at the rate it’s going there will be no future as greed and uneducated humans destroy our beautiful planet. Nature doesn’t care. As civilizations die out vegetation keeps on growing, animals take over from where they came. Respect is earned and we as Humans has disappointed Mother Nature. She is showing us, her children – that we have failed her by natural disasters and disease.

Let’s become more respectful of one another and of Earth then there might just be a future for our next generations.

PEACE AND WELL – BEING TO ALL.