Healthy People & Planet | Earthly Religion

Think and Think and Think

October 31, 2021
Byron Carrier

“Think, and think, and think,” Art advised. Art Brayfield, former head of the American Psychological Association, learned but reclusive, liked my thoughtful sermons and occasional visits. His advice seems truer than ever. Thinking has gotten a bad rap in my generation. Positivists and quantum speculators would have us believe no thought is accurate or final. Reason and logic, lauded in the Enlightenment, formerly a pillar for Unitarians, get attacked and dismissed even in formerly sensible UU circles as what created and justified patriarchy. Diverse TV…

September 25, 2018
Byron Carrier

This may be my last Good Earthkeeping Tools and Trends. KSKQ has changed the two-hour Morning Show, changing the first hour to Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! After three years of bringing in such tools and trends, I may start an evening radio show, The Liberal Hour, or invest my time in other related ventures.

September 10, 2018
Byron Carrier

“My Goddess Gave Birth to Your God” reads the bumper sticker. The growing notion that God is not just and only male is well known in our UU churches and in other niches in society. Feminism has grown with us for decades and centuries. Gradually, it spreads around the world, bringing women status, freedoms, compensation, and rights in societies where patriarchy has ruled unquestioned for millennia. We need the Divine Mother, not just Our Father. But let’s also be careful to not just honor the…

September 27, 2017
Byron Carrier

Because I’m a minister long-concerned for the ethics of how we get and use energy, my recent trip to tour the Tesla factory to the San Francisco bay area (Fremont) had an inspiring feel to it, like going on a pilgrimage to a shrine. Tesla doesn’t advertise or use dealerships, yet it is rapidly transforming the car world. This isn’t just for money. CEO and early investor Elon Musk’s life-intention has a “massively transformative purpose.” Above the doorway to the factory it reads, “Our Mission:…

November 17, 2016
Byron Carrier

President elect Donald Trump has a chance to actually make America great and secure a lasting heroic role in history. Or he could could be remembered as just another fascistic glory-glut who does lasting damage before being deposed. I have a lingering glimmer of hope he isn't as bad as he's been portrayed. He seems more pragmatic than ideological. He's no King Ashoka ("he who is without sorrow and regards everyone with affection") but he could be remembered as the surprise president who healed a…

January 13, 2016
Byron Carrier

Doctor Peter Whybrow's 2015 book The Well-Tuned Brain: Neuroscience and the Life Well Lived offers biological and psychological mechanisms for failing societies and successful ones. Would that we read and heed. He opens quoting John Dewey's test of all political institutions and industrial arrangements: whether "they make to the all-around growth of every member of society." Who asks such questions these days, and who has answers? He reminds us of our recent context. Our population has doubled since the 1950's and our economy has increased…

April 4, 2014
Byron Carrier

God’s Goods: Human and Natural I’m so glad you’ve invited me here today and that you’ve come. This brief sermon has been forty years in the making. They say preachers really only have one sermon that they then elaborate on. This is that one. It says what I most care about and intend to serve the rest of my life. I’ll be using some religious terms here. I hope and trust that doesn’t dissuade the more humanistic of you from listening past them to the…

February 21, 2014
Byron Carrier

Friends know I’ve been spending lots of time learning about and addressing Global Warming. What is it? What to do? Here are my favorite sites for easy-to-picture, comprehensive, and reliable information. Click around on the many links in each for a fast and fun view of the slow and problematic predicament we’re in. You might want to visit and bookmark each now for easy reference later. From NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration): http://www.climate.gov/ From NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration); http://climate.nasa.gov/ The World Bank:…

January 25, 2012
Byron Carrier

These letters are acronyms for four kinds of drugs that I would like to explore in this sermon. Basically, I will recommend them as possibly problematic but potentially beneficial for persons and society. On the whole, and especially compared with the Counter Culture, I have not found a lot of interest in entheogens or other drugs in our UU culture. UU’s have concern for civil liberties, curtailing a needless and excessive police/prison state, the right for people to live their own lives as long as…

January 25, 2012
Byron Carrier

(I believe in human wholeness – not fragmentation, not partiality, not alienation. Does this include sex? Yes! What the Creator built in we should not shame and alienate. The topic is vast, the approaches to it are many, and the feelings about it can be prone to upheaval. What I offer here is limited, provocative, reasonable, and sincere. I appreciate my liberal congregation, which took this in thoughtful stride. The version they heard was about half as long as what here follows.) “Oh, God!”…

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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!

Learn more…

Think and Think and Think

Good Earthkeeping Tools and Trends for September, 2018

For all Marys – Mothers, Lovers, Helpers

Tesla Factory a Shrine?

Hail Haley? We’ll See

The Well-Tuned Brain Reviewed

God’s Goods: Human and Natural

Global Warming Explained – 4 Good Resources

THC, MDMA, LSD, DMT, etc.

Sex? Yes!