Sunday In Religious Studies, Not Church

 Sunday is not a typical school day but I went to school in my slippers today because I got an email notifying me that Olivia made an announcement on Canvas, which is THE facilitator of student and instructor communications. I like the Canvas site and I'm learning more about using it every time I visit. I even uploaded a picture today!
Olivia seems to be a great student facilitator of communications in our group, Knosis.
I think I will also like Olivia.
I have been reading the introduction assignment from Introduction to THE STUDY OF RELIGION.
I'm a little fuzzy on what the word religion means and this reading did not provide me with the clarification to define that yet, but I learned a few other things—as you will note in my bullet points below.
I did take special note of the sentence, "Religion is always expressed in action, and among the kinds of actions encountered within religious traditions one frequently finds rituals." and I had to look up a word, semiotics in the next paragraph after I read that sentence.
I like rituals and I like symbols but most of the ones I am attached to have nothing to do with deciphering the definition of religion.
I did not overlook the Oxford English Dictionary (1971) definition of religion, tucked neatly on page 4 of the assignment but I still cannot find a tangible definition of what exactly I am in the process of studying. How does one study a "faith" or a "reverence" or a "divine" something or a "worship" of a divine something?
Okay, so I get the part about how one can observe the evidence of religion through actions of others (you know, rituals and such) but I am still trying to grasp how I will be able to actually "see" the subject I purport to study. This is definitely not like studying something under a microscope.
Oh, wait! Maybe it's like studying something under a macroscope! Yeah, that's probably it. I need to zoom way out here.  I have to get some better tools to practice Religionswissenschaft. 

What I learned on my Sunday Vacation in Religious Studies:

• I wish I could speak German
• The dictionary is my friend (even if it did not show me a picture of religion)
• Ambrose Bierce wrote The Devil's Dictionary but not the Oxford English Dictionary
• Theologians supposedly study the nature of God so they probably have better eyeglasses
• A religious studies scholar has a lot in common with a good actor
• You can can upload a picture to Canvas—watch!