Russia – Earthly Religion

Left. Right? Wrong.

February 29, 2024
Byron Carrier

Left, right. We used to just walk and talk. It's all messed up lately. The left is a losing label. It can mean left behind, left out. The left is the non-dominant side of the body in most people, the weak, inept side. Meanwhile right is called right, correct, approved, and moral. It’s the strong side. I’d like to be called right, but I’m left moping for the losing side, the naïve idealists, the bleeding hearts. In my life, I’ve seen the right as usually…

July 31, 2023
Byron Carrier

“Do you ever think about dying?” asked Barbie. I do. Do you? I'm on the eve of my 78th, luckily still alive. I think about dying, but not in a morose way. I stumbled into death at age 18 when I worked for a funeral home that also ran the community’s ambulance service. We’d take the big “S” off the side of the Oldsmobile hearse, put the bubble light on top, and clamp in the stretcher. Sometimes we’d deal with accidental or old age death;…

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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…