brain – Earthly Religion

Think and Think and Think

October 31, 2021
Byron Carrier

“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…

January 25, 2012
Byron Carrier

Robert Fulgum was delighted that a student brought an actual human brain to show and tell. The students got to hold the three pound organ in their hands. “I have one of those things between my ears,” he said, reminding them that not only does it serve to monitor and adjust all the functions of the body, from breathing to moods, it holds much more: [It] contains all the limericks I know, a recipe for how to cook a turkey, the remembered smell of…

January 25, 2012
Byron Carrier

The essence of liberal religion lives in you as you. There is no separation between body and soul. You are embodied soul. The worldly and the worthy are not different things or places. Your unique incarnation inherits inherent freedom and responsibility. Who you are and how you live in your spirit, body, community, world, and cosmos is yours to live as you choose. So it is for each and all of us. This is the common existential condition we attempt to understand and care for…

January 24, 2012
Byron Carrier

Our America eagle can’t survive without both a right and left wing. As is, it wars against itself, one wing battering the other, flapping around in circles. The dangerous divide in our country between left and right – between red states and blue states, between city and rural, between educated and not, between moneyed and not – cannot grow in rancor without ruining our common condition. Nor can our Unitarian Universalist congregations be whole without honoring and including so-called left and right types of thinking. …

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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…

Think and Think and Think

Have a Heart to Help your Head

Doctor’s Advice

Why We Need Each Other – A Meditation on Left and Right