Master of Religion

Master of Religion

Universal Life Church Seminary - Rev. Amy

Master of Religion Completion Essay

In the first few lessons I was reminded easily of how the Bible came about and how, even though, it may have gone through several interpretations by many individuals and having so many contributors, it still can be believed in as “God’s” word.  I was reminded of the many sections I had long since read and needed to touch again to re-enforce the strong Faith I already have, making it stronger.  I had known of several of the sections being missing and was reminded of those and still know in my heart they are the true word.  I can remind those that still doubt the words from other religious factions that one faith has taken the bible and reworded or paraphrased sections to meet their needs and cannot be taken seriously, many religions have done this and all are still accurate and true to their belief systems.  

As I progressed through the lesson I was given some good tips on ways to study the bible, many I had not even considered, since the readings in the many versions is at times very intense with the translations, paraphrasing and lengthy wording.  I now have a confidence that I can review and renew my faith at any time and assist others in doing son also.  I now have many sections I had not referred people to reminding them “God” does exist.  I can now take these sections to further my educational efforts and use them to teach others and ask various questions to help in establishing or re-establishing their faith.  The true meaning of the :”Trinity” has been elaborated in a fashion very meaning full and truthful.       

The middle chapters remind me of the true and ongoing duties of the Priesthood, Missionary duties and why I was called on to help spread his word and depend on “God” to lead me in the right direction to help those who need the help and not condemn those who may not believe completely, but help to become believers and still lead them to a path as Jesus would have done.  The many titles religions of the world have for their leadership, with one intention.  The Sacraments and Baptism section reinforced my understanding and teachings of what I had been told as a young man.  I am now more confident in being able to properly teach about the Sacraments and it’s many portions it encompasses, from Baptism, the Eucharist, Anointing of the sick and the Holy Orders. 

The section on Marriage and Tithing reminded me of my true and binding relationship with my beloved wife for whom I truly love and cherish in the true meaning of “Marriage” with the understanding we are equals and our children are gifts of this marriage and we have taught them the words and the meaning of “God” hoping they will carry it with them through life and learn from us.  It is not necessarily the church that confirms your marriage and the meaning of it, but it is the words in themselves and the thoughts that go beyond them. 

In the later sections of this course I have been given a plethora of information to re-enforce my stances on Homosexuality, Abortion, Drug and Alcohol Abuse, Prostitution and Divorce.  I received a lot of good information about Counseling with good information I can use to help people who turn to me for my assistance no matter what the issue may be.  I can them have re-assurance I have done the right thing and said the right thing to get them back on track and focus on their goodness and faith to lead them further into life and with the understanding coming to me for help is part of my duties as a Minister and Hopefully a Chaplain. 

The last sections of the course reinforced my understandings of the Church with its’ vast history, the many Denominations and directions they take and concluding with further education on the governance of the Church.  I would recommend this course for everyone, no matter what level of Christianity you wish to take.  It was very educational and gave me a better understanding of the faith that has been instilled in me since birth to the meaning of my calling and the reasons I need to continue to help my fellow man.  I would also like to Thank Rev. Amy for all her hard work at putting this and the many programs of the Seminary together for us and sending them so timely and helping us to accomplish our goals as Graduates of the Seminary and Chaplains.  I would lastly and not leastly like to Thank Bishop Pat and the many other contributors to this course for the opportunity to indulge in their readings. 

Rev. Charles (Chuck) Callahan, DD

 . 

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The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive online seminary where we have classes in Christianity, Wicca, Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more. I have been a proud member of the ULC for many years and the Seminary since its inception.

The Universal Life Church offers handfasting ceremonies, funeral ceremonies and free minister training. 
 

As a long time member of ULC, Rev. Long created the seminary site to help train our ministers. We also have a huge selection of Universal Life Church  minister supplies. Since being ordained with the Universal Life Church for so many years and it's Seminary since the beginning, I've watch the huge change and growth that has continued to happen.

Try our new free toolbar at: ULC Toolbar

Spirit Quest Course

Final Essay for the Spirit Quest Course

By Travis Richardson

This was indeed a very interesting course to take; each lesson brought forth different and at times puzzling concepts to understand.  But it is in this journey of attempting to understand the differences of the paths another person walks along that greater appreciation and greater understanding is gifted onto me.  I see that there are many shared concepts that I have also explored to further my own growth and evolution. The gracious addition of you sharing how these concepts were applied to your individual life added to the enjoyment of the lessons at hand.

The concept of Baby Beings I have not heard of before and it took me some time to become accepting of this concept as a possibility, over that of merely an overactive imagination in the respect of it being not merely being someone applying a farfetched imagination based idea to a life event. Then I thought to myself who am I to comment on what another individual uses to explain things that happen in their lives when I am not living their life. If a person finds answers or solace in what I perceive as an imagination based concept and it helps them grow as an individual then is there really any harm in this.

There are many forms of intelligence and many great things come from those various intelligences, just because I am lacking in fully understanding a particular thought or concept of one aspect of one particular type of intelligence does not make that thought or the concept wrong. The concept of Spirituality is an individual path a person walks; it is not easily grouped or applicable to a structured environment simply because individuals are distinctly different from each other. Granted there are many similarities that individual human beings share in, but the mind and consciousness is distinct to the individual.

My own growth and evolution is a hard one to grasp by many people. There is a notable perceive lack of acceptance sprung forth by a lack of understanding of traumatic brain injuries. My injury was the result of a motor vehicle accident where my head struck the driver’s door pillar as well as shattering the driver’s door window. The double impact to the left side of my brain in two areas was also felt on the right side of my brain when the recoil of the impact slammed my brain up against the right side of my skull.  In my particular situation the temporal and the frontal lobes were affected.

The temporal lobe is a region of the cerebral cortex that is located beneath the Sylvian fissure on both the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

The temporal lobe is involved in auditory processing and is home to the primary auditory cortex. It is also important for the processing of semantics in both speech and vision. The temporal lobe contains the hippocampus and plays a key role in the formation of long-term memory.

Temporal Lobes: side of head above ears

·       Difficulty in recognizing faces.

·       Difficulty in understanding spoken words.

·       Disturbance with selective attention to what we see and hear.

·       Difficulty with identification of, and verbalization about objects.

·       Short term memory loss.

·       Interference with long term memory.

·       Increased and decreased interest in sexual behaviour.

·       Inability to categorize objects.

·       Right lobe damage can cause persistent talking.

·       Increased aggressive behaviour.

Frontal Lobe: Forehead

·       Loss of simple movement of various body parts.

·       Inability to plan a sequence of complex movements needed to complete multi-stepped tasks, such as making coffee.

·       Loss of spontaneity in interacting with others.

·       Loss of flexibility in thinking.

·       Persistence of a single thought.

·       Inability to focus on task.

·       Mood changes.

·       Changes in social behaviour.

·       Changes in personality.

·       Difficulty with problem solving.

·       Inability to express language.

Exploring this information gave me a great starting point. It also confirmed to me that I was not actually nuts or crazy. My cognitive functions were just simply altered and I had to discover new ways of making the pieces fit. To this day there are aspects that I am working on and will more than likely struggle with for the rest of my life.

I have what is called "Acquired Expressive Language Disorder". This is a situation to where I am challenged in putting sentences together coherently, using proper grammar, recalling the appropriate word to use in what is considered "Acceptable” by societal standards. The only way to overcome this situation is by actually engaging in conversations and rebuilding the ability to effectively communicate. But this is where yet another difficulty lies, we live in a society and a culture that wants instant answers, instant replies and instant gratifications. Finding someone to communicate with who understands and is patient is a huge challenge. I am often dismissed or outright ignored when it comes to chatting or communicating verbally. 

All because one individual choose to not obey traffic laws and stop for a red light. However, if it were not for that individual, this essay would have never been written, and I would not be having this honour of opening your eyes just a little bit more.

Getting back to the essay at hand many of the concepts shared in this course I have also explored, Karma being one of them, Self Awareness, meditation, and so forth. All of which are tools an individual can use to further understand not only themselves but those in their life. If the goal is to become the best possible person one can be, then what does it truly matter which path a person takes to achieve this goal. What works for one person may just not work for another.

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The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive online seminary where we have classes in Christianity, Wicca, Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more. I have been a proud member of the ULC for many years and the Seminary since its inception.

The Universal Life Church offers handfasting ceremonies, funeral ceremonies and free minister training.

As a long time member of ULC, Rev. Long created the seminary site to help train our ministers. We also have a huge selection of Universal Life Church  minister supplies. Since being ordained with the Universal Life Church for so many years and it's Seminary since the beginning, I've watch the huge change and growth that has continued to happen.

Try our new free toolbar at: ULC Toolbar

Spiritual Development Course

Noosphere (pronounced /ˈnoʊ.ɵsfɪər/; sometimes noösphere), according to the thought of Vladimir Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin, denotes the "sphere of human thought". The word is derived from the Greek νοῦς (nous "mind") + σφαῖρα (sphaira "sphere"), in lexical analogy to "atmosphere" and "biosphere. Introduced by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 1922  in his Cosmogenesis". Another possibility is the first use of the term by Édouard Le Roy, who together with Chardin was listening to lectures of Vladimir Vernadsky at Sorbonne. 1936 Vernadsky accepted the idea of the Noosphere in a letter to Boris Leonidovich Lichkov (though, he states that the concept derives from Le Roy).

In the original theory of Vernadsky, the noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere. In contrast to the conceptions of the Gaia theorists, or the promoters of cyberspace, Vernadsky's noosphere emerges at the point where humankind, through the mastery of nuclear processes, begins to create resources through the transmutation of elements. It is also currently being researched as part of the Princeton Global Consciousness Project.

For Teilhard, the noosphere emerges through and is constituted by the interaction of human minds. The noosphere has grown in step with the organization of the human mass in relation to itself as it populates the earth. As mankind organizes itself in more complex social networks, the higher the noosphere will grow in awareness. This concept is an extension of Teilhard's Law of Complexity/Consciousness, the law describing the nature of evolution in the universe. Teilhard argued the noosphere is growing towards an even greater integration and unification, culminating in the Omega Point, which he saw as the goal of history. The goal of history, then, is an apex of thought/consciousness.

One of the original aspects of the noosphere concept deals with evolution. Henri Bergson, with his L'évolution créatrice (1907), was one of the first to propose evolution is 'creative' and cannot necessarily be explained solely by Darwinian natural selection. L'évolution créatrice is upheld, according to Bergson, by a constant vital force which animates life and fundamentally connects mind and body, an idea opposing the dualism of René Descartes. In 1923, C. Lloyd Morgan took this work further, elaborating on an 'emergent evolution' which could explain increasing complexity (including the evolution of mind). Morgan found many of the most interesting changes in living things have been largely discontinuous with past evolution, and therefore did not necessarily take place through a gradual process of natural selection. Rather, evolution experiences jumps in complexity (such as the emergence of a self-reflective universe, or noosphere). Finally, the complexification of human cultures, particularly language, facilitated a quickening of evolution in which cultural evolution occurs more rapidly than biological evolution. Recent understanding of human ecosystems and of human impact on the biosphere have led to a link between the notion of sustainability with the "co-evolution" [Norgaard, 1994] and harmonization of cultural and biological evolution.

The resulting political system has been referred to as a noocracy.

American integral theorist Ken Wilber deals with this third evolution of the noosphere. In his work, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995), he builds many of his arguments on the emergence of the noosphere and the continued emergence of further evolutionary structures.

The term Noöcene epoch refers to "how we manage and adapt to the immense amount of knowledge we’ve created." 

The noosphere concept of 'unification' was elaborated in popular science fiction by Julian May in the Galactic Milieu Series. It is also the reason Teilhard is often called the patron saint of the Internet

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The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive online seminary where we have classes in Christianity, Wicca, Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more. I have been a proud member of the ULC for many years and the Seminary since its inception.

The Universal Life Church offers handfasting ceremonies, funeral ceremonies and free minister training.

As a long time member of ULC, Rev. Long created the seminary site to help train our ministers. We also have a huge selection of Universal Life Church  minister supplies. Since being ordained with the Universal Life Church for so many years and it's Seminary since the beginning, I've watch the huge change and growth that has continued to happen.

Try our new free toolbar at: ULC Toolbar

Miracle of Prayer

The Miracle of Prayer Final Essay
By
Reverend George Parsons

As with all of the discourses offered at the Universal Life Church Seminary, in order to receive the degree for learning the topic offered, one must submit a final essay of several hundred words relating what a person likes or dislikes from the course, what they learned, what they agreed with or disagreed with, how this course has affected them.  I would also like it known that I write my essays from my heart.  I do write about people of the past and how I may have disagreed with their philosophies.  I do not try to prove to everyone else how smart I am or where my knowledge level is.  I do not try to throw in words that most don’t know what they are.  I write about how this course actually affects me and, by affecting me, how I can affect and help others.  Here is my final essay for you to read, discern and offer comments upon.

The first thing I want to talk about is the key word I stated in the first paragraph.  This word being Learning.  I will be the first to admit it that while I was taking this course, I was distracted numerous times during reading each week’s discourse.  I read the material offered, but, I didn’t read it.  It was all just words jumbled together each week.  I let distractions like a tv show interrupt my time, or the cat distract me cause she wanted some affection.  I would start reading and taking notes when a nature call would severely hit me.  Needless to say, I really did not get a lot out of this course until I printed it out and set aside time, without distractions, to finally read the material offered and let it permeate my mind.  I selected a place in the woods behind my home, set up a chair, and would dedicate time to myself (selfish I know) to read and discern this course.

The material offered by Reverend Loretta Siani was rather enlightening.  She related the importance of prayer in our daily lives.  This was something that I started doing prior to sitting down and studying this course.  When I walked out to my “quiet place” in the woods, I would start off with a prayer asking God to allow me to be distraction-free until He felt I had filled my mind with enough information for that setting.  He would not let me fill up the glass, so to speak, and have it overflow.  In fact, He would fill my mind with the material offered but stop short of a full glass to leave me questioning and desiring more.  And it worked.  I learned more out of this course then I would have without Him.

Although Rev. Siani related her thoughts and experiences throughout the course, I especially liked her concluding course, Lesson 20.  Reading the prayers she uses to get through the day helped me find the prayers I needed to get through my day.  There are too many times where I let the selfish me take over instead of letting my Free and Great me rule my life.  Through prayer, I am taking control back over my life.  Through prayer, my thirst for knowledge grows.  Through prayer my life has gotten slightly better.  The more I study, the more I pray, the better my life gets. 

Now, I am not going to say that my life has done a complete 180 degree turn around.  Hardly.  But it seems to be getting better.  Through my research and studies, I have learned that my views on religion have become Gnostic than the traditional views.  I have opened myself up to the message that God sent Jesus to deliver.  That message being Love.  That message being showing love to your enemies as well as friends and family.  Like Rev. Siani says, there is no telling how much hate, war, disease love can cure and conquer.

There are still a few demons that I am attempting to conquer in my life but with God by my side, and talking to Him through prayers, I know I will be the victor!

I thank Reverend Loretta Siani for offering this course.  And I conclude with the words of Jesus from Rev. Loretta Siani’s Lesson 20:

I thank You, Father, for these holy ones who are my brothers as they are Your Sons. My faith in them is Yours. I am as sure that they will come to me as You are sure of what they are, and will forever be. They will accept the gift I offer them, because You gave it me on their behalf. And as I would but do Your holy Will, so will they choose. And I give thanks for them. Salvation’s song will echo through the world with every choice they make. For we are one in purpose, and the end of hell is near.

In joyous welcome is my hand outstretched to every brother who would join with me in reaching past temptation, and who looks with fixed determination toward the light that shines beyond in perfect constancy. Give me my own, for they belong to You. And can You fail in what is but Your Will? I give You thanks for what my brothers are. And as each one elects to join with me, the song of thanks from earth to Heaven grows from tiny scattered threads of melody to one inclusive chorus from a world redeemed from hell, and giving thanks to You.

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The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive online seminary where we have classes in Christianity, Wicca, Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more. I have been a proud member of the ULC for many years and the Seminary since its inception.

The Universal Life Church offers handfasting ceremonies, funeral ceremonies and free minister training. 
 

As a long time member of ULC, Rev. Long created the seminary site to help train our ministers. We also have a huge selection of Universal Life Church  minister supplies. Since being ordained with the Universal Life Church for so many years and it's Seminary since the beginning, I've watch the huge change and growth that has continued to happen.
 

Try our new free toolbar at: ULC Toolbar

Christian Ethics Course

Christian Ethics Essay.
 

I have taken a few courses from ULC seminary now and this one is probably the most interesting and relevant to me as a Christian.

Reading through the material after printing it off it is safe to say I almost ran my hi-lighter dry.

We as Christians do share a lot of values that the world does.

For example. Where the Bible says not to kill, the non-believers would agree killing is just un-acceptable. This goes for stealing, lying and pretty much any other sin that affects others as much as it does us.

But what about the other commandments?

Adultery. Most people agree they want to live in a monogamous relationship. Christian or not. But then again there are some who have open relationships. Coveting is something people view as being innocent but do not realise the further implications it can have on a persons life. This sin eventually leads to stealing as well as an un-healthy obsession with what one does not have.

As Christians we have left a world of sub-standard and have entered into a world of Gods standard.

Where the world says, “life a good life.” The Bible says, “…do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
(Romans 12:2)

I found two good web definitions for the word ETHICS.
• ethical motive: motivation based on ideas of right and wrong
• the philosophical study of moral values and rules

What motivates a person to have ethics and what maintains them even in the worst case scenario?

For the Christian it must be the scarlet thread that is weaved through the words of the Bible and is summed up in the words of Matthew 22:37-40

“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and foremost commandment. The second is just like it, You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets.”

It was just this morning that I prayed that in the heat of the moment I would do the will of God and love, even at gun point. Under the most brutal circumstances we as Christians have an obligation to lay down our own lives and our own desires and follow the commandment of love.

Picture the worst case scenario in your mind.
Put yourself in that scenario. How do you imagine yourself handling it? Whether it be at work compromising your beliefs or dealing with your lifelong friends who are about to take part in questionable activity for a friends bachelor party. As cheesy as it sounds but I must quote it, “What would Jesus do?”

Psalm 101 is an excellent view of integrity when it comes to his personal ethics which he has obtained through belief in God Almighty. To anyone who is reading this essay, write this Psalm out and memorize it. Make it your prayer.

I will walk within my house in the integrity of my heart. I will set no worthless thing before my eyes; I hate the work of those who fall away; It shall not fasten its grip on me. A perverse heart shall depart from me; I will know no evil.

This Psalmist is saying that even behind closed doors he will keep in mind his values and the fact God is watching him. It is easy to behave yourself when people are watching, but when do you “let your gut hang out?” I am a truck driver. I spend a lot of time alone in a workspace driving around the city I live in driving a really big truck doing deliveries in tight places. Sometimes I get cut off by a car and they hit their brakes and I will vent and have sworn, and for that moment in my heart I let their actions (which by no means depict their overall character) control my emotions and how I view them as a person.

This on my part is a total lack of integrity. In the privacy of the moment I fail to keep in my mind that God is ever present and I have to maintain in my heart to love my neighbour as myself.

I would like to turn the attention of this essay over to the book of Colossians.

The reason I want to take a brief look at this book is because this is what happens when the body becomes disconnected from the head, which in this book the body is the church and the head is Christ.

If we become disconnected we lose contact from the source of our strength and understanding of what is right and wrong. So many Christians think that when they sign on to the Christian life they have an obligation to a list of rules they can somehow keep under their own power and their own will.

This is the furthest thing from the truth. As James 4:7 puts it we are called to a life of submitting to God and resisting the devil through folded hands in prayer.

Not by our strength, not by our might but by Gods spirit. (Zech 3; Psalm 20:7)

What happens when we lose connection with Christ is we are left to our own devices and ideas.
We come up with strange doctrines and ceremonies which are us trying to make physical manifestations of God when he has all along made Himself known by His word through His Son.

When we come up with ceremonies and our own standards of right and wrong we have what Paul called in
Col 2:23 as being “self made religion; self abasement; severe treatment of the body.”

Now that we have been infected with the leaven of the Pharisees (Mark 8:14) we have now become legalists because we are functioning apart from the headship of Christ. Now we are becoming Judge-mentalists.
We are holding others to our un-godly standards of “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (Col 2:21)
Now according to Colossians 2:16 “No one is to act as our judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day.”

I realise I have failed to summarize what I learned entirely throughout the Christian Ethics course but I lack the ability to do so in a short essay. All I can do as a fellow pilgrim tripping over his own feet at time, and I often catch myself sinning against God and man who was made in His likeness I can say who the source of our ethics is and the best advice I can give as a fellow Christian is feed upon the word of God.

I cannot read your bible for you; I cannot say your prayers for you. So many of us are malnourished when it comes to the word of the living God.

A one hour sermon once a week is just not enough to keep us on track. We need bible studies at home with other believers, we need prayer groups and we need our private time alone with God to be jealously guarded against the pressures of work; television and even sometimes our families. We might need to sacrifice an hour of sleep to get into the word of God.

True ethics and a true standard of right and wrong comes from a relationship with Jesus Christ. A lot of people do good deeds and leave moral live. But without the actual power of the Holy Spirit which Jesus brings we will not be able to withstand the pressures the world throws at our values.

Besides. What good is virtue if it is not done in the name of the one God?

Remember that whatever good we do does not from any effort on our part but Christ living in us. If you try to live the Christian life you will become so tired and frustrated that you will give up and be of no use to anyone, but rather be heavenly minded, constantly submitting your thoughts and your time to God. Open your heart daily to God through prayer.

A good moral decision begins with your thoughts because your thoughts become your action; your action becomes your habit and your habit becomes your character.

Psalm 119:9 in the amplified Bible puts it as "How shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed and keeping watch [on himself] according to Your word [conforming his life to it]."
The way we behave is an outward sign of God working in us to the rest of the world. If we participate in the crude joking at work and if we are a part of the gossip; or whatever type of unethical behavior that the world is known by we will not be the light God has called us to be. Some religions are known by the way they dress or do their hair. How about we as Christians are known by our love and devotion to Christ!?

I used to be in the army and I was as part of the crudeness and ill-behavior as anyone else. One day I said that I was a Christian and people actually laughed at me. That was an indication to me that I was not conforming my life to the word of God and was not living according to the Ethics that Jesus came and taught. His social code really is far and above any other that I have seen in this world.

When we pray for Gods kingdom to come we pray that his righteous rule and reign would be evident in our hearts and lives. Within ourselves as a Christian sub-culture in this world we need to separate ourselves and be a theocracy and show the world that Gods way is the only way to life and peace. A true utopian society that functions in the world, yet we are not of it.

Colin Burgess (justpray@hotmail.ca)

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The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive online seminary where we have classes in Christianity, Wicca, Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more. I have been a proud member of the ULC for many years and the Seminary since its inception.

The Universal Life Church offers handfasting ceremonies, funeral ceremonies and free minister training.

As a long time member of ULC, Rev. Long created the seminary site to help train our ministers. We also have a huge selection of Universal Life Church  minister supplies. Since being ordained with the Universal Life Church for so many years and it's Seminary since the beginning, I've watch the huge change and growth that has continued to happen.

Try our new free toolbar at: ULC Toolbar