A Buddhist, a Jewish Guy, and a Catholic…

People frame everything they experience in the world with their core values and beliefs.  There isn’t a single thing that comes into our brains that isn’t filtered.  I’ll give you an example.

I have a Buddhist friend who says that I should just “get it over with” and go to a local Buddhist temple to “get started.”  I have a Jewish friend who told me that I am more Jewish than anyone else they know and that I should consider exploring Judaism some more.  I have a Christian friend who swears that there’s a ministry waiting for me. 

Huh?  I have a hard time understanding what they are talking about.  I mean, how is it that the same experience (me) can elicit a similar response in each of these people (their friendship) yet yield such different results (their assessment of my true spiritual calling)?  Am I a natural Buddhist?  Am I really supposed to be Jewish?  Or is my Catholic upbringing the flock to which I should return?  Only one of my friends can be right.  The other two are wrong.  Right?

Probably not.

As I read each of them again, I get a little teary.  Honestly.  To me, they illustrate that I have touched each of these people in a special way, that I have spoken to them soul-to-soul in a language that transcends everything that makes us different as human beings.  That just seems so beautiful to me.  It must simply be that each of these people expressed to me our spiritual connection in the only way they know how: in terms of their own life experiences.  So, for the Buddhist, I am most like a Buddhist.  For my Jewish friend, I am Jewish.  For my Christian friend, I am so obviously Christian, too.

But that still begs the question: who is correct?

They all are.  And I cannot imagine a more gratifying compliment than that.