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Tired of Trying

December 31, 2023
Byron Carrier

Last moments of the year, late in life, I confess to my readers how spent and irrelevant I’ve become. I try to come up with something interesting and useful every month. Posting here at EarthlyReligion has become the echo of my earlier rounding up pertinent issues and images to codify into a twenty-minute sermon rooted in the larger context of the Sunday Service and the community hosting it. I devoted myself to that as a UU minister, doing the best I could with the limits…

April 30, 2023
Byron Carrier

I’m partial in myself. I occupy only a bit of who I am, what I know. I can’t include It All. It’s too much. I occupy only a fraction of the person I am and could be. You are too. What did you have for breakfast? You probably weren’t thinking about it until I asked. Then you probably can remember. Do you really know what you want? Do you know how others see you? Do they know how you see yourself? These social partialities create…

April 30, 2020
Byron Carrier

I recorded a video on this subject. You can see it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlw7q__tS4Y

March 31, 2020
Byron Carrier

A 52 minute recreation of a shorter sermon I presented 3-29-2020 via Zoom at the Unitarian Universalists of Grants Pass, posted to my YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/TQhTe2_Vy_o

May 26, 2019
Byron Carrier

https://youtu.be/IZ-wJMIPXX0 I gladly welcome you, Pope Francis, to this video of my prayer for you. Although I wish to speak into your eyes, I know others may tune into this if only for the provocative title, and if so, welcome! What follows is a reenactment of a sermon I presented to a mall Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Grants Pass, Oregon. I was hoping to send a video copy to the pope. However, the camera didn’t work, so I’m reconstructing it here for his and your…

May 22, 2019
Byron Carrier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9526P6UlcJY&t=26s A video of my presentationThe text version is available below Thomas Jefferson Then and Now I am honored to speak to the Jefferson Center here in the State of Jefferson, entertained by Jefferson Public Radio – on the topic Jefferson Then and Now. The Jefferson Center takes its name from Thomas Jefferson. Among many ideals associated with him, we are especially drawn to the ideals of curiosity, reason, inquiry, learning, and freedom of thought. Jefferson opposed intellectual or moral authoritarianism of any kind, advocating…

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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…

Tired of Trying

Partiality

Easter for Unbelievers and the Rest of Us

Born Good: How to be Alone Together

An Atheist Embalmer Prays for the Pope

Thomas Jefferson Then and Now