Byron Carrier – Page 6 – Earthly Religion

BBC Says – Even if only a few read it

March 31, 2022
Byron Carrier

There I go again - tilting at windmills. (Well, promoting the electricity-generating ones.) Only a few read my tweets and online comments, but maybe there's a reader or two here who might appreciate my comments on Elon Musk, advice to Democrats, Adam Kinzinger, night lighting, electric boats, utilities that exploit their users, the trucker convoy, Dr. Bronner's Soap brothers, Bill McKibbon, taxing all pipelines, Meet the Press staging, changing "You Must Stop" to "Stop When you Must," most Republicans as RINOs, gun control, Steve Martin…

February 24, 2022
Byron Carrier

What a wonderful gathering! We’re here to celebrate the life of this lovely, friendly fellowship, the ministers you’ve had thus far, and this honor in my career. It has been a great opportunity and satisfaction in my life to tend small Unitarian Universalist congregations. Over half of our UU congregations are small fellowships like this one. That’s been my realm, not the mega-churches. Primarily I have been a preacher. I like conducting services and having something to say that open-minded, intelligent, caring congregants find thoughtful…

February 23, 2022
Byron Carrier

Dr. Arvind Vasavada, my guru and friend, my gentle, generous mentor from my seminary days, used to advise me and his analysands (counseling clients), “Be in it.” (Here he is pictured between my friends and colleagues, the Reverend Doctors Bart Gould and Vern Barnet, at my ordination in Saint Joseph, Michigan, in 1972.) Imagine my good fortune upon entering seminary at the University of Chicago in 1969 to meet a man who embodied the two main interests I had – Jungian psychology and Eastern religions. …

February 12, 2022
Byron Carrier

Introductory Comments Let’s take a few moments to remind ourselves America is not only a Christian nation and never has been. Freethinkers are foundational to what we are and could become. I hope this skimpy foray into a few of our freethinking founders helps reassure and orient us. During my Unitarian Universalist seminary years at the University of Chicago, I was fortunate enough to also attend training for humanist leaders. Conducted by the Humanist Institute, held mostly in New York City at the Ethical Culture…

February 4, 2022
Byron Carrier

Readings prior to the sermon: “Managing environmental resources sustainably has always been difficult, ever since Homo sapiens developed modern inventiveness, efficiency, and hunting skills by around 50,000 years ago… [E]very human colonization of a land mass formerly lacking humans – whether of Australia, North America, South America, Madagascar, the Mediterranean islands, or Hawaii and New Zealand and dozens of other Pacific islands – has been followed by a wave of extinction of large animals that had evolved without fear of humans and were easy to…

February 4, 2022
Byron Carrier

Welcome to Saint Patrick’s Day! May your shamrock not fall in your green beer, and if it does, drink it! Even if this day isn’t what we might have thought it was, it is our excuse to wear green and party, even if none of this makes historical sense. I don’t want to ruin it for you, for in these dismal political times we need excuses to party, but even so, the legends of the day need some deconstructing. Saint Patrick wasn’t Irish; perhaps he…

January 31, 2022
Byron Carrier

Don't let the devil sell you what you already have. Good and getting better is a tag line for an impending song extolling our condition. What? Wait! Aren't we weary of Covid, worried about armed crazies, tired of Texas and taxes? Yes, and we're stuck in a dangerously warming planet that the fossil fuel media and lobbyists would have us "don't look up." I would counter that we should look up, not just at the comet of planetary fever increasingly upon us, but at all…

December 31, 2021
Byron Carrier

The huge full moon, the amazingly colorful solstice morning, and Christmas all came together in a beautiful way that seemed to portend a beautiful upcoming year. I hope so. 2021 was a bit of a dreary, frustrating challenge. We're all worn by social, political, and medical worries. I hope and pray we regain a healthy community. Here's the sky on solstice: Solstice Sky Same solstice sky, another view I appreciate those few of you who came here to read what I post. However, it was…

November 30, 2021
Byron Carrier

I don’t want it to. Nor do I believe in some hell in an alleged afterlife. The hell America could go to is an actual one, fires and torment galore! I use this provocative title deliberately in a prophetic way. Prophesies are if/then warnings. If we keep fostering hateful division at home and new enemies to war against abroad, then we could create hell here worse than the Civil War, worse than WWII, worse than we want to think. Besides all the anger and domestic…

November 30, 2021
Byron Carrier

Don't read this unless you'd like to peer into many of the comments I made online these last two months. I'm a bit of a Don Quixote, tilting at various windmills, throwing my opinion into various forums, tweets, and emails. I'm probably a bit ADD too, easily distracted by a variety of topics. I've rearranged the chronological order and omitted some, but tried to group them for your perusal. I used to have appreciative congregations to hear and understand. Now I scatter my interests into…

Join the Newsletter!

Please enter your email address below and click submit to join the Earthly Religion newsletter. The newsletter is a periodic collection of recent writings, podcasts and news. We do not share email addresses with anyone.

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…

BBC Says – Even if only a few read it

Emeritus at UUGP

Be in It

Freethinkers: Paine, Emerson, Ingersol

Earth’s Eden: Love it or Lose it

Simple Days and Splendid Ways – Saint Patrick’s and Other Days

Good ‘n Gettin’ Better

Solstice Signs

America Can Go to Hell

Don’t Read This