The Passion of Anything.

“Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion”

- Georg Wilheim Friedrich

My topic for today? you guessed it, passion. Although, today I think that I’ve widened my view on what passion is and what it can do.

Earlier I got a camping drop from some people who were preaching to the prisoners. On their camping permit they had written bible verses and at first I thought they were sorta crazy, but after talking with some people I work with I have decided that these people weren’t crazy. They had a whole lot of passion. And here’s the thing, I’ve always seen passion as something you care about. I’ve never really considered religion a passion…. until I started thinking about it today. Passion is something that drives you forward, right? For me it’s success. What I live for is to be even better the next day. But really, passion can be anything. To say you’re not passionate about something is a lie.

I guess the reason why I’ve never really considered religion or God a passion is because I’m more for relationship… I don’t buy into the church scene and the weekly youthgroup gatherings. BUT if that’s what gets you out of bed and that’s the reason why you live your life, then so be it. Sing to God as loud as you want to.

I do think that this Friedrich quotation is off though. I think it should read “without GREAT passion” because everybody is living for something, but without great passion you won’t accomplish anything. These campers had a lot of passion for God, obviously. They wouldn’t be preaching to federal criminals without it.

Upon the visit of these campers a coworker and I started talking about religion and he asked me why I wear my Gandhi necklace…

I said I didn’t really have a reason except that I thought he was a cool guy. I mean I enjoy quoting him as much as possible. His outlook on life is amazing, no matter what religion you are. I’ve read parts of his autobiography and I don’t think you have to be Hindu to achieve the same kind of views he had. Just reading about him made me realize how diverse things have always been, and that it’s such a good thing.

Any way, I guess how I’m trying to relate the 2 stories together is that it’s always made me mad that people who claim to be close to God and avid church goers aren’t very tolerant of opposing views or other religions, but today maybe I figured out that sometimes it’s not that, it’s just that they are so passionate about their religion that they get a little caught up in it. I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing at all. After all, that’s why you wake up every day.

Our GREAT passion stems from different things. If we were all stimulated by the same things we wouldn’t have made as big of scientific discoveries as we have and we wouldn’t be the same civilization we are.