Reviewing Vern’s Sonnets: “Thanks for Noticing”

I wouldn't have read Thanks for Noticing - The Interpretation of Desire by the Reverend Doctor Vern Barnet were he not my friend from seminary.  Vern was a bold visionary, too much for the staid faculty at our University of Chicago seminary, Meadville/Lombard. His three-volume D. Min. thesis on The Void may have perplexed and overwhelmed them.  True to his brilliant mind and audacious quirks, he brings his encyclopedic knowledge of trans-cultural mytho-religious facts into his penchant to link the sacred and the sexual. I'm…

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Veering the Vast Momentum

We are born of, ride along with, and can slightly veer a vast momentum.  From the cosmos to consciousness, we are in momentums we might veer. There's a cosmic momentum that launched atoms and galaxies billions of years ago; they hum and spin still and will continue.  The rocks on Mt. Ashland seem solid and lasting, but peer inside closely enough and you'll see the momentum of elemental particles coming into and out of existence repeatedly.  The electrons vibrate or spin reliably.  Given enough time,…

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Partial, Yet a Part

I'll bet you're like me.  I tend to think, "I know," and I do.  But what I tend to not know is how much I don't know.  There's not just all the information out there that I don't know, it's all the information in here that I barely remember.  I can access only a bit of what I know, but even that large realm is only a bit of what I should know.  You know things too, but you're like me, partial, limited, only a…

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Gotta Start Somewhere

You gotta do to do.  Big plans and bigger imaginations don't get it done.  Drawers of files of information and ideas just get more crammed.  Needs as wide as a round ball planet go neglected.  I've taken in too much and given out too little of it.  I gotta start somewhere, so I'll start here. I'll start by publishing to the entire world, knowing no one knows I'm doing it.  I publish to all humanity, and not just for these decades, yet I'm alone so…

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Emerson Interview

Here's a lovely one hour interview of me, Brad Carrier, by Aletha Nowitzky, host of her weekly program, "Tasty Topics and Tantalizing Tunes," on KSKQ Community Radio Station in Ashland, Oregon, on May 24th, 2014. I pull out some favorite Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes in response to her prompts. Aletha's pleasant voice and music help make this remembrance of Emerson's ideas an easy and relevant reminder for living up to our selves today. We're still benefiting from what he boldly said in the mid 1800's.

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Fury Fun Folly

George Miller’s Fury Road, fourth in his Mad Max series and thirty years after the original, is a stunning thrill ride of mostly real stunts against a background of preposterous illogic. It left me exhausted and charged up, but uncaring. I loved the stunts. Fights and crashes seemed realistic. The timing felt right. The use of 3-D and computer-generated tricks weren’t overplayed. Much of it seemed experimental; risky movie-making for an audience used to “anything goes,” when what goes here was real, or at least…

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Jobs, Jobs and Job

Jobs, Jobs and Job Jobs, we all want jobs. Or so we repeatedly hear. I don’t join that throng. I’m at that place in life where I only want to do what I want to do, and that is to serve this wayward, wanting world. Yet, as I listened to C-SPAN programs of election debates across the country in this 2014 election season, “creating jobs” was the main mantra. Millions of offshored jobs, and then a lasting recession. People are desperate for jobs, any jobs,…

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Homosexuality in the Human Community

I stand before you today with a mixture of trepidation and daring. Like often, I think we can consider touchy and complex issues with broad-minded thinking and good-hearted caring. I’ve no particular authority or expertise other than tending to think for myself and speak out loud in a setting of the “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” So I dare, though I am uneasy; I trust we can handle it together. The topic is easy for some, unsettling for others. Homosexuality is a…

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God’s Goods: Human and Natural

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…

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Global Warming Explained – 4 Good Resources

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:…

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