Brad’s Blog – Words – Page 4

Being Religious

June 30, 2023
Byron Carrier

Pope Francis is a religious man in a way that I admire. His papal leadership and care are for the truly poor in this world and for the world's environment itself. That's being religious. For many, religion means believing in God (ever elusive in definition) as felt within or taught by various religious traditions. For me, religion means relating well with reality. The word religion comes from the old words religio and religare, basically meaning, "to bind back to the root and become whole again."…

May 31, 2023
Byron Carrier

While highly distracted with love and hope (I fell for someone – on my face!), I managed to read three good but very different books this month: "Atheist Manifesto," "Proof of Heaven," and "This is Your Brain on Music." Because I owe all six of my regular readers something by the first of the month (when an automatic reminder goes out to this site’s subscribers) and because the events of my love life and non-love life roused up similar concerns, I’ll review them here. After…

March 31, 2023
Byron Carrier

Trump tweeted that "These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just indicated" him. I believe he wanted the word "indicted," because he just was for trying to hide the hush money he paid a porn star after having an "affair" with her. It's the least of his four legal challenges. He'll play the victim, projecting that others are the very Thugs and Monsters he's actively trying to inflict on our government and society. He'll use it and the images of the violent insurrection of January…

January 31, 2023
Byron Carrier

(This is the third article I've published in Maya's and her daughter Radhaa's series, Awakening Starseeds, Volumes 1-3. I appreciate the honor of being included in their book series (which is available on Amazon). I wanted to punch Rajneesh in the nose, pull back my fist, and ask him a question: “If we are not the body, it and the world all being the illusion of maya, would you mind if I punch you in the nose again?” I didn’t, of course. I had nothing…

January 31, 2023
Byron Carrier

News Masochists

November 30, 2022
Byron Carrier

Americans barely rescued our country and democracy in the mid-term election. Over $16 billion dollars was spent, much of it channeled through “dark money” organizations. The Supreme Court has blessed this secrecy, declaring corporations are “persons” and money is their “free speech.” About half of that was spent on federal elections, half on state and local. In some locales, the tv and social media were inundated with gobs of ads, none identifying who paid what for their annoying drone. Here are a couple of reports…

October 31, 2022
Byron Carrier

Remember the 1955 movie “Rebel Without a Cause”? James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo played three distraught teens, alienated from their families, caught up in teenage toughness, resulting in a tragic accident. Those were the days when a switchblade knife at school was considered dangerously wrong. “Blackboard Jungle” that year also showed the disturbing trend, amplified much later in 1972 by “Clockwork Orange,” which portended purposeless violence. The Rebel Without a Cause movie was titled after the psychiatrist Robert Lindner’s 1944 book of the…

September 30, 2022
Byron Carrier

It was a totally nice day as I walked by a guy in a car with the engine running. After I shopped and came out of the store, it was still running. I wanted to grab him, take him to the tailpipe, and put his mouth on it. “Breathe that, you irresponsible dope!” Instant car karma, he gets first what he otherwise sends to everybody else! Unless his starter was broken, he was either misinformed and ignorant of our shared responsibility to not wreck our…

September 30, 2022
Byron Carrier

Here’s what I contributed to various forums, tweets, and emails in the order they were posted: political branding, ecological wishes, critiquing and complimenting media, electrified bikes and other vehicles, public ownership of personal and public power gathering, Israel’s shooting of a journalist, rising fascism, misnomers on the geography of cities, sections, and continents, mob-mind Republicans, support for my local State Senator, the foolishness of “believing in the Bible,” (including my own core biblical theology on how Genesis One can fix the eons of mayhem based…

September 19, 2022
Byron Carrier

I had to create an entire post to have even the slightest chance of having someone at the New York Times read what I had intended to add to the Comments on their report about Russian bots contributing to the shaming of a feminist participating in The Women's March of 2017. So, I'll paste in my commentary and some of thier report here: "I read the Comments here until my eyes glazed over and my scrolling finger cramped. "The vicious botters don't have to create…

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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…

Being Religious

Atheism, Heaven, and Music

Indicated!

The Pursuit and Enjoyment of Happiness

BBC Says in the last five days of January 2023

Barely

Rebels without a Cause

The Storm is Coming: Disinformed is Worse than Misinformed

BBC Says in September of 2022

Dashed by Bots, Then Ignored