December 2011 – Earthly Religion

America the Beautiful Because of Liberals and Conservatives

December 27, 2011
Byron Carrier

America the Beautiful Because of Liberals and Conservatives An eagle soars high only on two wings. If such a grand bird were to use one of its wings against the other, it would be only crippled and crazy. America is a bird divided against itself. Instead of having a higher view, it flops and flounders on the ground. Such a bird needs psychiatric help or prophetic warning. That is my intent here today: I want to help America soar again. I see my beloved…

December 27, 2011
Byron Carrier

Minor Mind Mending An outgoing, uplifting stage personality killed herself recently. Who would have suspected such a powerhouse of positivity would have such a dark side as to tragically die too early because of it? Everyone was shocked. Towards six hundred people attended her memorial service at our university in Ashland. I wanted to put her loss to the community’s gain and so joined an ad-hoc group. We wanted somehow to help prevent suicides. Quickly, we entered the difficult and overwhelming world of mental…

December 7, 2011
Byron Carrier

Two weeks ago this Thursday I heard the “click of no return” during Stephen Mansfield’s answer to whether a sense of faith is necessarily a good thing, Columbus being an example of deluded faith. He replied that Columbus did things “contrary” to his own faith. Not so. My point was he did those atrocities because of his faith - a god-ordained, self-righteous pillaging, raping, and murdering. Because I couldn’t differ with his first pious fiction he then went into a worse second one: that Bush was in Iraq to “eradicate the militant wing of Islam.” Not so. Iraq was one of the only secular states in the Muslim world.

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The dream of an Earthly Religion…

Earthly: our precious natural earth which allows us our bodies, lives, cultures and future.

Religion: from the old root words religare and religio, meaning “to bind back to the root and be whole again.” This does not assume we need to believe in God or the Bible. Rather, we should be well-related with our own bodies, each other, natural life, and natural existence as it actually is. If there is connection with divinity or God, it is in and through our bodies and beings that we relate primarily, not via scriptures, traditions, rituals, or supposed religious authorities. In short, by religion we mean “relating well with reality.”

The emphasis here is on the earthly. It is not an afterlife or an instead-of-life that interests us. Living well here on earth together does.

While we take our religious perspective and work seriously, we don’t want it to be stuffy. Too often, religions can be alien to the human condition rather than affirming of it. They can be demeaning and demoralizing, dull and bossy, ponderously pretentious. We lean more towards the fun and sexy, natural and lively, human and humane, thoughtful and pertinent.

Reality: the obvious and inescapable stuff of physical existence. We intend to enjoy and tend our lives in these bodies, for our time, in our cultures, for our singular and interrelated ecosystem. There may be more, but there is AT LEAST THIS of which we are born, in which we live, and into which we will die.

God or no-God is not the point; Earth is. Both believers and non-believers are welcome here, for we all share a common source, opportunity, and responsibility: life as it is and could be. This ranges from simply improving one’s own life to your helping save and restore Eden’s, not just to “sustain” it, but veering it to thrive as never before. If you value your life, each other’s, and Earth’s – welcome!

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