embalming – Earthly Religion

Be Embodied

November 28, 2019
Byron Carrier

(This was my entry into the recently published book, Awakening Starseeds, by Radhaa Publishing. While most of the entries of this international assemblage deal with soul shaking/awakening experiences, mine goes to the bare bones of our matter and what matters.) Barely beyond high school, I came face-to-face with death and birth working for a funeral home that also ran the local ambulance. I dealt with old dead bodies, and on the ambulance, watched some die, saved a few from death, and helped deliver a slippery…

March 11, 2018
Byron Carrier

Bodies I saw life and death in bare detail working for a funeral home. The dead body, having festered for four days, reeked. The stench of its rotting flesh filled the embalming room and, unavoidably, my breathing. Fortunately, in such situations, our smell system overloads and goes numb after a half hour. When a person dies, their body dies gradually. At first, the stagnant blood turns blue and the body heats up. Rigor mortis sets in after about four hours, lactic acid locking the muscles. …

December 22, 2015
Byron Carrier

I'll bet you're like me. I tend to think, "I know," and I do. But what I tend to not know is how much I don't know. There's not just all the information out there that I don't know, it's all the information in here that I barely remember. I can access only a bit of what I know, but even that large realm is only a bit of what I should know. You know things too, but you're like me, partial, limited, only a…

December 16, 2015
Byron Carrier

You gotta do to do. Big plans and bigger imaginations don't get it done. Drawers of files of information and ideas just get more crammed. Needs as wide as a round ball planet go neglected. I've taken in too much and given out too little of it. I gotta start somewhere, so I'll start here. I'll start by publishing to the entire world, knowing no one knows I'm doing it. I publish to all humanity, and not just for these decades, yet I'm alone so…

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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…

Be Embodied

Bodies

Partial, Yet a Part

Gotta Start Somewhere