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Living a religous life
I was brought up religious, then I wasn't and now I am. Since I have been religous - which is about 13 years or so and especially in my business life I have always worn my religion on my sleeve. Judaism is a religion of deeds. We eat a certain way, have lots of holidays, the Sabbath, etc.. According to traditional Judaism, you can not be a 'practicing Jew' just by believing, you have to DO. The Jewish bible - in Hebrew the Torah, translates as "instructions for living". How can someone 'live their faith' without allowing their faith to work it's way into every aspect of their life. In my work, my morality is not based on PeopleJam's (which is high), or the SEC or when at a public company Sarbane's-Oxly, it is based on G-d's morality. When I meet people, I look at them as a person - not better then me, not worse then me - an equal (no matter who has a bigger title, salary, office).
My religion is not on the weekends, it is not at certain times or on certain occasions. It is always. I try to fit my life into my religion and not the other way around.
Allow yourself to be who you want to be in your faith. You do not have to be an apologist. You do not have to change yourself for anyone. People in my life have always respected my dedication and my honesty and I have never encountered anyone who gave me any grief for living my life my way.
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Great story. I was very, very Jewish as a teenager, which was really hard considering my friends didn't practice and I was actually more observant than my entire family. I found a lot of meaning in Judaism, but found it very challenging as a lifestyle. I think it's a religion that really takes a community to observe it. Still, the idea of bringing justice to the world is very much ingrained in me. There are also smaller things such as the rule of never to gossip. I learned from Judaism what this means. The idea is that one must not spread hearsay. So if I have a certain experience with another person, it is fine to share that experience. However spreading something I heard that may or may not be true can be very damaging. To this day I think about it whenever I hear anything negative of another person.
Upon writing this post, it hit me that I think we are always living our religion if we define religion as a belief system for how the world works. Sometimes we may not be conscious of these beliefs. And sometimes they are very explicitly stated such as in the countless number of rules and commentary in the Jewish Talmud! The real question is are we living our faith. Faith is a conscious choice that we are either acting in accordance with or discordance with. This is where I find the real challenge.