meditation – Earthly Religion

The Eastern Way in the Western Mind

January 25, 2012
Byron Carrier

Bucky Fuller, one of the more innovative and colorful engineers of our 20th Century, saw early boats as the strong shape of a dome upside down. Typical of his far-reaching sort of thinking, he once speculated that early boats either went with the wind or against it. In the west, we admire the daring-do of earliest ship captains fighting the wind by using it, angling sail and rudder just so to travel zig-zag out of the Indian Ocean, around Africa, and up to Europe. This…

January 25, 2012
Byron Carrier

One of the good things about growing older is that you have ample time to adjust to growing older. When I look in the mirror, I see a face I’ve grown accustomed to. Unlike friends who haven’t seen me for three or four decades, I don’t have to have to suddenly see the older me. I’ve grown accustomed to my face My breathing out and breathing in I’ve grown accustomed to the way my hair won’t rightly lay It won’t lie down I will…

January 25, 2012
Byron Carrier

At memorial services I sometimes refer to Psalm 90: For all our days pass away, our years come to an end, like a sigh. The years of our life are threescore and ten, or even by reason of strength fourscore; yet they are soon gone and we fly away… So teach us to number our days that we might get a heart of wisdom. Long though our lives might be, they will end. We will die, but will we have lived well? Will…

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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 Eastern Way in the Western Mind

Maturity, Lately

A Heart of Wisdom