Last night I searched through some videos for a project I'm working on for the Geography class I'm taking. I came across one of an elderly Irish woman. She was devout, I'm guessing because she knew no different. Then she said something like, "We feared God, and we feared the Devil even more."

Growing up, I remember this same mentality. It so must be an Irish thing, whether you are Catholic or Protestant. It is funny how generations of people hundreds of years ago still influence much of our religious culture today.

I think it's unfair to put the fear of God in somebody if they don't follow the exact edicts given by the church. An individual needs to discover God's grace and mercy for themselves, not feared into it. Don't get me wrong, I believe religious institutions can be a good thing when they are following God's guidance and direction. However,these institutions are led by men. And whether ordained by the church or not these men/woman are fallible.

For my Irish ancestry, oh Lord, my great great grandmother left Donegal and settled in Michigan way back when. Bridget's family was strict Catholic, stern and unhappy. The funny thing is her father was a cooper, he distilled whiskey. Her sister married a man from the village who happened to be a captain of a ship. The ship happened to be a whiskey smuggling vessel.

Ironically, my great great grandmother was disowned by her family at the age of 16 when she married a Mormon. What was a girl to do? After her mother died, she left her homeland with her father and sister. I'm sure there was probably an entire village that came with them since at the time there were some persecutions going on in Donegal. Shortly after their arrival in America, while they were in New York, Bridget's father died. She was left virtually an orphan on foreign shores.


Anyhow, I got off on a tangent. What I meant was, somewhere along the line the Celtic people worshiped with a semblance of freedom. (Yes, I know not all of it was good, but it wasn't all bad) It seems to me they had this freedom to worship their creator until legalistic religion came along and told them how and when to worship. The praise and worship of their creator no longer came from the heart, it became monotonous, just meaningless words someone else told them to speak.