Born and bred in the boogie down Bronx, Lizette Morehead had the fortune of being allowed full agency over her spiritual life. Although her mother read the Bible as regularly as she watched Reverend Ike, she told Lizette she only had to go to church if she wanted to. Since she went to a Catholic elementary school, being Catholic (like all her friends) made sense to a young Lizette. In this episode, she explains that the more she matured into a young woman, the less useful Catholicism became for her complex life. She was riddled with guilt and found the concepts of sin and repentance made the mere act of being human something of which to be ashamed. In a defining moment, she sat in Mass wondering who the priest was talking to because she felt no connection to anything he said. The next day, a co worker introduced her to Nichiren Diashonin’s Buddhism and Lizette’s life changed for the better. She shares what practicing Buddhism does for her and how it has been at the center of every decision she’s made over the last thirteen years. She talks about using the principles she learned in Buddhism to withstand her family’s passive-aggressive attempts to trivialize her spiritual practice. She was drawn to Buddhism because it did not teach reliance on a deity to perform a miracle or transform your life. “This practice insists it is up to me to move the universe in the direction I want it to go,” Lizette says passionately. “It is about me and how much I am willing to put into it.”

Listen below and then subscribe to the show on Itunes, Stitcher, Google Play or Tune In.