temple in the sunroom

We're not religious. Well, not particularly practicing anyway.

We do celebrate Christmas and Easter - but more in terms of family together time, and the swapping of beautiful, thoughtful and amazingly wrapped gifts. Or yummy organic, Fair Trade chocolate from the Easter Bilby. But we are not Christians. 

We have many statues of Buddha in our home, and Ganesha - the elephant headed God. Our Buddha statues are from India, Thailand and Tibet. We have temple bells - that I brought home many moons ago from my overseas adventures. We burn incense and candles. But we are not Buddhists.

We talk to the Goddess. And ask for help. Sometimes we {i} silently pray to the Earth Mother - Gaia.

I suppose while I do not follow or practice one religion more than another, I do have a belief of something. Just don't ask me to tell you what that something is. 

Anyway, this week we've had a temple in our sunroom. Ari has collected all the Buddha statues, and lit incense, and kept the room very tidy. He's rung the temple bells. He even had a young 3yr-old temple guard. An ancient language is spoken in our temple. And music is played. We searched through my CD collection, discarding chanting Monks, for Dona nobis pacem. We've had this on repeat for days now - which has been a lovely interlude to the regular kid music (which I love, but do get slightly over after weeks and weeks of constantness).

So, I think I do quite like the religion that we are making up. The ideals and ideas that we talk. The soft and quiet. The tidy room. The incense burning high to reach the Gods. The peaceful words and contented thoughts. The ancient language, the guarding of the temple from dragons and other such creatures. The temple artwork. The leaving it all, and packing away the icons and statues and turning off the music when life shifts to another gear for a moment or so.

I think, perhaps, this is as good as any other religion.