Earthly Religion – Page 2 – Earthly Religion

The French Broad, Thomas Jefferson, and a Holy Hope

January 20, 2019
Byron Carrier

Sure, Thomas Jefferson was the sort of man who appreciated the French and their women, but in this case, the “broad” refers to a wide, flat ancient river. Lets review the river and the man towards our honoring both by living up to who we could yet be. I've left the cold of an Oregon winter for the cold of North Carolina's western mountains. I'm five miles out of Marshall, NC, former Madison County seat, now home to about 400 residents supporting three cafes, two…

July 26, 2018
Byron Carrier

I have a new tagline on my outgoing emails: “We are born of Eden and for it.” The more I learn about our garden planet the more I am astonished and in love. I am in awe at whatever mystery and wonder that brought creation into existence. Why is there something rather than nothing? I hope there’s a God to hear my gratitude. I want to take in Eden fully and treat it with reverence, responsibility and joy. I thank whatever Creator may be by…

May 3, 2018
Byron Carrier

And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. (Genesis 1:31) We are born of and live in Eden, and it lives in us. We are made of it and for it. By Eden I don’t mean a mythical land of a biblical past, I mean the actual garden bible writers once loved, and I mean the rest of the garden that we should love. Eden suffers both blunder and attack by us humans, exponentially-so in the last two hundred…

March 11, 2018
Byron Carrier

Gurus My first night in Bombay, sleeping on the woven mat cot, a small lizard dropped on my forehead. “Yeow!” I jumped. “What happened?” I heard from the other room. “A lizard landed on my head!” “Very auspicious,” they said, laughing. In the hot summer of 1971, at age 26, I had left my seminary to tour India with my guru/friend, Dr. Vasavada, and to meet his guru, the Blind Saint of Vrindivan. By the time I got my funeral director’s license in 1967…

December 16, 2017
Byron Carrier

How easy it is to take the goods of life for granted. I realized this in the usual way – by having something injured. Who notices how well their thumbs work? I don’t; they just do. But bang it a few times and infection sets in, making it throb with highly noticeable pain, and you’ll realize all the ways there are to bump it again and again doing ordinary things. Put a key in the lock? Ouch! Open a package? Oww! Type a sermon? …

December 20, 2016
Byron Carrier

I want to remember, rescue and revive Eden, and I want you to help. Eden is more than the natural world. It includes humanity and how we live in it. Yes, sustainability is a good initial step, but that implies barely staying even. I want us to revive nature and sustain it to thrive as never before. I want us to change how we exploit, extract, and poison the life we all rely on - to promote cycles of replenishment. We need systems that…

December 4, 2014
Byron Carrier

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,…

April 4, 2014
Byron Carrier

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…

February 10, 2012
Byron Carrier

Why add another religion to the world’s crowded supply? What would be different about God’s Goods? How would it help? Why participate and contribute? Background I don’t expect that you have to believe in God or the Bible to benefit from reconsidering what the Bible’s opening pages say. Or you can believe in both, in which case, what those opening pages say is even more pertinent. How they’re seen and what is said about them is vitally important to our entire world. Even bible-resenting atheists…

January 25, 2012
Byron Carrier

These letters are acronyms for four kinds of drugs that I would like to explore in this sermon. Basically, I will recommend them as possibly problematic but potentially beneficial for persons and society. On the whole, and especially compared with the Counter Culture, I have not found a lot of interest in entheogens or other drugs in our UU culture. UU’s have concern for civil liberties, curtailing a needless and excessive police/prison state, the right for people to live their own lives as long as…

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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…

The French Broad, Thomas Jefferson, and a Holy Hope

Eden in America – Outer and Inner

Earth’s Eden: Love it or Lose it

Gurus

Harvesting a Good Bounty

Rescuing Eden and Helping it Thrive

Jobs, Jobs and Job

God’s Goods: Human and Natural

Emerging Vision of God’s Goods

THC, MDMA, LSD, DMT, etc.