Ralph Waldo Emerson Reflection Paper

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Between the last few months from September to the present day I believe I have made many spiritual connections within my life. Until recently I have been analyzing what these connections are and what they mean to me. A few of the books we have read this semester actually triggered the journey I am writing of for me. The books were She Who Is, The Female Face of God in Auschwitz, and Living with a Wild God. As well the movie Of Gods and Men and the readings of Descartes in philosophy.

My reasoning for this Journey was to find out who God really was to me. I had always learned within my religion of Catholicism who God was to my church but I had never questioned anything I had been brought up to believe. To start I realized in order to establish a strong base for my argument I must find out where the traditional views of God have come from and some of their oppositions. Luckily enough Elizabeth Johnsons book, She Who Is, is the perfect source to derive such information. Regardless of the religion it is clear in todays world that God is still taught as the high power; and the reading by Johnson
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So I took it upon myself to do some extra reading. What I came across happened to fit my conclusion perfectly. It was an excerpt about Monism by Ralph Waldo Emerson. This embodied a few things. The first being that everything flows from only one source. This to Emerson shows that God and the world are both attributes of the universe. And me it proves that God and the world are not separate from each other so God could quiet possibly be an idea within all of us. The piece of evidence I came across from Emerson was that evil is the lack of goodness. So if God is within all of us and during acts of evil we are lacking goodness during these acts how could he be an almighty power? Lastly Emerson alludes to Jesus not being special since everyone is of God. What set him apart and made him special was that he knew he was of God when others had

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