Krishnamurti – Earthly Religion

Be in It

February 23, 2022
Byron Carrier

Dr. Arvind Vasavada, my guru and friend, my gentle, generous mentor from my seminary days, used to advise me and his analysands (counseling clients), “Be in it.” (Here he is pictured between my friends and colleagues, the Reverend Doctors Bart Gould and Vern Barnet, at my ordination in Saint Joseph, Michigan, in 1972.) Imagine my good fortune upon entering seminary at the University of Chicago in 1969 to meet a man who embodied the two main interests I had – Jungian psychology and Eastern religions. …

January 31, 2022
Byron Carrier

Don't let the devil sell you what you already have. Good and getting better is a tag line for an impending song extolling our condition. What? Wait! Aren't we weary of Covid, worried about armed crazies, tired of Texas and taxes? Yes, and we're stuck in a dangerously warming planet that the fossil fuel media and lobbyists would have us "don't look up." I would counter that we should look up, not just at the comet of planetary fever increasingly upon us, but at all…

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

What and who are we, and whither would we go, and why, really? I start to answer these questions, not by copying what others say, or by mouthing what others expect me to say as a minister, but by honestly saying what I think I know. As you know, I entered ministry via a route through embalming. At 18 I looked closely into death. It awakened a wonder at the structure of our bodies and an appreciation for our precious, limited life. Too…

January 24, 2012
Byron Carrier

Speaking to the young graduates of Harvard’s Divinity School in 1838, Emerson said this of Jesus: “One man was true to what is in you and me.” However, he also lamented that because Jesus was seen as the Christ, one of the three persons of the Trinity, his portrait grew to be as “the vulgar draw it.” He wanted the young graduates to themselves come alive fully as persons. “Always the seer is a sayer,” he said, and that, “only he [or she] can give…

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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 in It

Good ‘n Gettin’ Better

Think and Think and Think

What and Wither, Really?

A Person among Persons