"What is animism?"

[compatriots.livejournal.com]

My immediate family attends a Baptist church. They are unaware of my differing spiritual beliefs, and were I not sick right now I would be preparing to leave for day three of the church's mission conference with them. Earlier today I picked up one of the little booklets that has information about the attending missionaries and began to flip through it, and a page titled "What is animism?" caught my attention. Here is a link to the article online.

Any thoughts? I'm a newbie to the animist community admittedly, but have yet to run into anyone who views life as "everything in the universe as warring against each other to become the deity or king of the hill." Granted this article is talking about cultures where animism is the dominant belief, and beliefs are certainly different between cultures. Not that everything in my universe is happy dancing through fields of flowers with other spirits, but I'm not concerned with tricking them in order to fight my way to the top of whatever spiritual mountain.

I am just mildly curious if any of you had this warring view on life, or anything to say. Being stuck at home has left me bored and itching for something to talk about, hah, so forgive the lack of pressing questions or serious thoughts in this post.

- Teagan