Mark Twain – Earthly Religion

Sex? Yes!

January 25, 2012
Byron Carrier

(I believe in human wholeness – not fragmentation, not partiality, not alienation. Does this include sex? Yes! What the Creator built in we should not shame and alienate. The topic is vast, the approaches to it are many, and the feelings about it can be prone to upheaval. What I offer here is limited, provocative, reasonable, and sincere. I appreciate my liberal congregation, which took this in thoughtful stride. The version they heard was about half as long as what here follows.) “Oh, God!”…

January 25, 2012
Byron Carrier

Humanists tend not to believe in prayer. Humanists believe in human ability and choice in a natural universe. Miracles are either impossible or explainable. Working material and social reality by merely thinking something fervently just doesn’t happen. Scientific evidence for the effect of prayer is scant. But personal experience of many is profound. Prayer may not be humanistic, but is human. Many humans in all sorts of cultures pray. They talk as with ancestors, saints, gods, or God. Healing is an act of both…

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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!

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