Easter Day

Easter Day is an important religious celebration in Christianity. This celebration is also called Easter Sunday, Resurrection Day or Resurrection Sunday. Christians believe that Jesus Christ rose from the death on the third day after his crucifixion. Christians celebrate this resurrection on Easter Sunday. The date of the celebration is not fixed in relation to the civil calendar. It is a moveable feast.

Origin of the Easter Day

Strange enough the name of celebration has its origin in two pagan traditions namely Ostara and Ishtar. Ostara was the Saxon goddess of dawn and spring. It is wothwile mentioning that the word for the "female hormone" estrogen derives from her name. Ishtar, however, was a Babylonian and Assyrian goddess of love and war.

Symbols

Ostara was a goddess of fertility who brought the end of winter, with the days brighter and growing longer after the vernal equinox. She had a passion for new life. The presence of Ostara was felt in the flowering of plants and the birth of animal and human babies. Because of all this , rabbits and eggs were used as symbols for rebirth and the resurection of Jesus by Christians.

The legend

There is a famous Anglo-Saxon legend associated with the goddess Ostara. The legend says that the goddess turned her pet bird, whom she saved when its wings had been frozen by the snow, into a rabbit (and a lover in some versions of the story). She also made the rabbit able to lay colorful eggs in order to entertain the children.

Easter Bunny and Egg Hunt

Because eggs and rabitts symobolize fertility, they xere used by Christians to celebrate Easter day. Two customs emerged from thse two symbols: Easter Bunny and Easter hunt.

• Esater Bunny is depicted as a creature who brings a basket full of colored eggs on the night before Easter and hides it somewhere in the house or garden for the children to find when they wake up in the morning.
• Egg Hunt is another custom associated with Easter Day. It is a game during which decorated eggs, real hard-boiled ones or artificial, filled with or made of chocolate candies, of various sizes, are hidden in various places for children to find. The game may be both indoors and outdoors.

The customs in the church

According to the traditions, Easter Sunday is celebrated by:

• Taking part in an Easter vigil, 
• Lighting a new fire outside the church early on Sunday morning, 
• Lighting the Paschal candle and decorating it with studs to celebrate Christ's wounds, 
• Chanting of the easter proclamation, 
• Reading the old testament, 
• Singing hymns and wishing happy Easter Day.

Judaism

What is Judaism?

Judaism refers to the religion, philosophy, and way of life of the Jewish people. Judaism derives its principles  from the Hebrew Bible (also known as the Tanakh) and explored in later texts such as the Talmud.

Jews consider Judaism as the expression of  the covenantal relationship God developed with the Children of Israel.Judaism is one of the oldest monotheistic religions. According to the religion God revealed His laws and commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of both the Written and Oral Torah.

The texts, traditions and values of Judaism have many things in common with later Abrahamic religions, including Christianity, Islam and the Baha'i Faith.

In 2007, the world Jewish population including those born jewish and those converted to Judaism was estimated at 13 million, of whom about 40% reside in Israel and 40% in the United States.


Judaism and its movements

There are three major movements within Judaism:

• Orthodox Judaism, 
• Conservative Judaism 
• and Reform Judaism.

The major difference between them is their approach to Jewish law. Orthodox and Conservative Judaism maintain that Jewish law should be followed, with Conservative Judaism promoting a more "modern" interpretation of its requirements than Orthodox Judaism. Reform Judaism is generally more liberal than these other two movements, and its typical position is that Jewish law should be viewed as a set of general guidelines rather than as a list of restrictions whose literal observance is required of all Jews.

See more on Judaism in Wikipedia

Mansur al-Hallaj (Sufi and Poet)

I am the truth

Mansur al-Hallaj  who is one of the most famous Sufis,  is onsidered to be a great poet-saint. Al-Hallaj was born in the province of Fars, Persia (Iran). He later moved to what is now Iraq, where he took up religious studies, particularly the Sufi way.

Al-Hallaj was executed for blasphemy in his poetry particularly in a line in which he says:

"Ana 'l-Haqq," meaning I am the Truth 

Al-Hallaj reached  the mystical realization of unity with the Eternal in his Sufism. He was condemned by a council of theologians, imprisoned for nine years, and eventually put to death.

Nowadays, Al-Hallaj is considered as a martyr for truth by many Sufis and mystics.

Examples of his poetry

To Reach God

" For your sake, I hurry over land and water:

For your sake, I cross the desert and split the mountain in two,

And turn my face from all things,

Until the time I reach the place

Where I am alone with You."

Kill Me, My Faithful Friends

Kill me, my faithful friends,
For in my being killed is my life.

Love is that you remain standing
In front of your Beloved
When you are stripped of all your attributes;
Then His attributes become your qualities.

Between me and You, there is only me.
Take away the me, so only You remain

I am the One Whom I Love

I am the One whom I love, and the One whom I love is myself.
We are two souls incarnated in one body;
if you see me, you see Him,
if you see Him, you see us.

To believe or not to believe that is the question!

Religion is a failure

Some people think that religion is a natural human way to comprehend what they didn't understand, filling in the gaps of their knowledge until the discovered a rational scientific explanations for things. According to these people, in the developed world, religion is running out of gaps to fill and more and more peoiple are becoming atheist or agnostic.

Religion is the last resort

Other people, however, contend that one cannot study the universe and possibly conclude that there is no God. It is far too precise, interwoven, complex. Yet, men in their pride exalt their thinking to conclude that there is no God. Yet, God formed the mind of men. To think that mankind just "happened" shows no logical reasoning at all that there was not a divine order and creation to our universe.

Where I stand?

Between the two views there is an abyss that no one can account for. Religion relies more on faith while science relies more on observable facts. I think that the two views may coexist in a mutual respect and an everlasting quest for the ultimate truth.

The main religions of the world

Principal religions of the world
This is the top eight religions of the world arranged according to the numbers of followers.

Religion	Cultural tradition	Number of followers in millions	Regions
Christianity	Abrahamic religions	2,000 – 2,200	Predominant in the Western world (Europe, the Americas, Oceania), Sub-Saharan Africa, the Philippines, and South Korea. Minorities worldwide.
Islam	Abrahamic religions	1,570–1,650	Middle East, Northern Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, Western Africa, Malay Archipelago with large population centers existing in Eastern Africa, Balkan Peninsula, Russia and China.
Hinduism	Indian religions	828–1,000	South Asia, Bali, Mauritius, Fiji, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, and among the overseas Indian communities
Buddhism	Indian religions	400–1,500	South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and some regions of Russia.
Folk religions	Folk religions	600?	Africa, Asia, Americas
Chinese folk religions(including Taoism andConfucianism)	Chinese Religions	400?	East Asia, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia.
Shinto	Japanese Religions	27–65	Japan
Sikhism	Indian religions	24–28	Indian subcontinent, Australasia, Northern America, Southeast Asia, the United Kingdom and Western Europe.
Judaism	Abrahamic religions	14–18	srael and the worldwide Jewish diaspora (mostly North America, South America, Europe, and Asia).

Countries losing religion

Religion Extinction

Nine countries are predicted to lose religion according to a study using census data. The study claims that the extinction of religion will be a result of a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation. The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

What about other countries?

Professor Lineham says the study would have very different results if the study looked at other countries.

"If they took any countries beyond the western countries they've named, they would actually have the opposite phenomenon of religion getting larger."

Which would be true for many middle eatern countries (and other countries) where religion is very deeply rooted among educated as well as uneducated people.

In addition, the same claim that religions would die out was announced in the 60s. Nothing has happened. People may give their back to religious beliefs at one time in their lives, but they may also turn back to their faith when they need it.

God in Christianity

Definition of God in Christianity

God in the Christian religion refers to

• an eternal being.
• This eternal being created and preserves the universe
• It is never refered to in an impersonal sense in the bilble.
• It os however referd to in a personal sense: the who is, who speaks, who sees, hears, acts, and loves...

One primordial feaure of God as believed by Christians and which is common in othetr religions too, is the fact that God has

• a will and personality 
• is an all powerful, divine 
• benevolent being. 
• primarily concerned with people and their salvation.

Characteristics of God

God is believed by most Christians to be :

• immanent (meaning that he is with and within all things), 
• transcendent (meaning that he is outside space and time, and therefore eternal and unable to be changed by forces within the universe), though God the Son was on earth during the Ministry of Jesus and will return to earth in the Second Coming of Christ.
• having the properties of holiness (separate from sin and incorruptible), justice (fair, right, and true in all his judgments), 
• omnipotence (all powerful), 
• omniscience (all-knowing), 
• omnibenevolence (all-loving), 
• omnipresence (everywhere present) 
• and immortality (eternal and everlasting).

Trinitarians

In Christianity, the doctrine of the Trinity states that God is one being who exists, simultaneously and eternally, as a mutual indwelling of three persons: the Father, the Son (incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth), and the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost).