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…
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…
“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…
Here's my tag line for an emerging song: "Good 'n Gettin' Better" Beyond the ample evidence of how bad things are and are becoming, let's go beyond our brain's inherent typical frightened, hurt, wary view of the world. Our amygdala remembers hurt and stays leery of the world. It creates an automatic chatter that can prevent us from seeing how good we have it - personally and culturally. We're better than that. Our prefrontal neocortex brain can remind and orient us that we're good and…
Oh, the stress of it all! We fret. We fume. When comes the fun? Covid spiking locally, the highest in the nation for my own Jackson County! What slowly dwindled from 50 or so new cases a day and had gone down to about 10 has suddenly shot up to 350 cases a day, with deaths to go with it, sometimes children. Then there are the friends and loved ones who are dead sure their paranoid suspicions are more reliable than thousands of people who…
Middle of what - the American experiment, western civilization, human progress? How about the middle of geologic earth with billions of years yet to come? Middle-aged for me? Sure, if I live to be 152. Maybe by then, I'll know what I should know by now. Perhaps we're near the middle of global warming (recently called "climate change" in order to make it seem more ambiguous and less alarming). We're either halfway to halting and reversing it back to familiar and comfortable pre-industrial levels (meaning…
"... to our democracy," goes the extremely ironic script mouthed by scores of hometown reporters on TV stations managed by Sinclair Broadcast Group. Sinclair is now owner-manager of both our local Rogue Valley newspapers, our only major news sources. Sinclair manages all sorts of tv stations and newspapers. It both manages some Fox News and competes against them. Fox, while claiming to be "fair and balanced," has been anything but that. But they aren't extreme enough for Trump and those who support him. Having used…
The cars we use are an ethical concern. Whether we're driving down the road emitting harmful gasses that will linger for hundreds of years or not - matters. When I'm using my Taurus V-6 I'm guilty of fouling our earth a bit. When I use my electric bike instead, the overall impact of my ride is improved dramatically for my part of the "bit." Of course, what I or any single person does or doesn't do matters very little to our collective predicament. Yet, a…
I recently submitted an entry to Awakening Starseeds II, a compendium of awakening experiences. I had written another similar piece in the first Awakening Starseeds book, "Be Embodied." (You can find it here at EarthlyReligion, under Writings, under Stories.) I was honored to be asked to return. I'll post it here and add a few comments for this month's entry. I Did This By Byron Bradly Carrier "I did this," says Steve, my professor-of-botany friend. The "I" he unabashedly affirms isn't just him in his…
