“Do not raise your voice. Improve your argument” Bishop Desmond Tutu.

A person’s relationship with a higher power should be deeply personal; a sacred bond between each person and his or her chosen spirit guide. If your faith dictates that you commune with the spirit by sitting quietly in the forest and contemplating your origins, your actions, your mortality and your eternity; then so be it. If your faith dictates that you put on your best clothing and sit in a building alongside other people in their nice clothes, then so be it. As long as we are learning to live the ways of peace and tolerance, as long as we hold the message of the spirit above the motives and agendas of those who deem themselves the messenger, as long as we are willing to accept those who think, act, and believe differently that we do – only then, are we walking in the divine light. But when this faith spills into the streets and preaches division and intolerance; when it condemns and persecutes those who hold different views, then we destroy the bonds that hold humankind together. Fear and division are the enemies of strength and unity. If we, as people of this community called earth, are to survive, we must do so with solidarity. Those who seek to divide us, seek to destroy us. When the messenger becomes more important than the message; the doctrine becomes toxic.