Christianity

The Evolution of God

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I’ve been reading a fascinating book, Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God. Wright is the author of Nonzero and The Moral Animal, both of which have received great acclaim. I was led to The Evolution of God through an interview in Salon, which led me to the book’s website. The website serves as a wonderful teaser: Wright has the opening thousand words to each of the book’s twenty chapters, which are divided into four sections, one on the birth and growth of gods, and one on each of the Abrahamic religions. Be warned: by the time I finished the third, I knew I was going to buy the book.

Buddhism

Interfaith Weddings in a Unitarian Universalist Landmark

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I perform weddings as a lay minister at First Unitarian Society in Madison. Frank Lloyd Wright built our original church, so many non-members want to get married there — too many for our professional ministers to handle. As a result, I often have the opportunity to perform interfaith weddings where I put my Unitarian Universalist (UU) principles to work. UU’s believe in the “inherent worth and dignity of all people,” “acceptance of one another,” and “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Instead of a creed or dogma, what holds us together is a set of seven principles, three of which I just listed for you.

Culture

Matrifocus – the Breadth of the Goddess Movement

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Before I started blogging for Tikkun Daily, my web publishing consisted of my own website, www.mamasminstrel.net, and articles in Matrifocus, the web magazine by and for Goddess women published four times a year. What I love about Tikkun Daily — the lively interaction that’s beginning to occur — is something I found in embryo in Matrifocus. Matrifocus always has a wide variety of articles that inform me, entice me, lead me to think a little differently, and most importantly, feed my soul. Often it includes essays by some of he most interesting thinkers in feminist spirituality: Patricia Monaghan, Vicki Noble, Susun Weed, Max Dashu, Johanna Stuckey, and even occasionally Starhawk. It always includes poetry and beautiful art, as well reader-submitted reviews of Goddess books, DVDs, theater, and films.
This quarter the articles range from my description of “Tree Divinations” to two articles on permaculture by Mary Swander and Madelon Wise plus a lovely introduction to fairies and devas by Susun Weed.

Culture

To Be in Touch – Wiccan Ritual

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Ritual is not a word that we Unitarian Universalists tend to use. We think of it as formal, rigid, hollow of any meaning, coming out of traditions that have prescribed rules and customs that we no longer perceive as valid. Ritual, as I said, is not a word that we UUs tend to use. Unless we’re pagan UUs. Then the word has very different connotations and meanings.

Culture

Release from Death

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Nancy has gone to the heart of so much anguish in our society in her ‘Death Defying 2’ post.. I had cancer a few years back and was told it had metastasized, so for a few weeks I had a good test of how I would feel about dying (until a PET scan reversed the CAT scan finding and I was OK). I was very unhappy for my family, but to my surprise I was fine about my own after-death prospects, because what I expect is just an end. No more. No Platonic dualism.

Culture

Death Defying – 2

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As I said yesterday, Wicca (my religion) may take an integrated view of death as a part of life, but I was raised here in the old U.S. of A. And that means that death can be just as hard for me to face as the next American. If we look at contemporary American culture, it’s clear that we’re a death-denying society. Death is one of our final taboos. For secularists in the US, death no longer has metaphysical implications. It is the end of life and as such has a physical finality that even in the near past would have been hard to imagine.

Culture

Death Defying – 1

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I seem to be surrounded by issues concerning death lately. It began a week ago yesterday when Barbara Coombs Lee spoke at First Unitarian Society (my church in Madison) about Compassion and Choices, an organization that advocates for more choice and better care at the end of life. This week a friend told me about the suicide of his best buddy. And even the Sunday newspaper had a comic strip about our fear of death. There’s probably a second reason for what some might consider my morbid train of thought.

Earth-based Religions

How Daily Are We? My weekend…

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I came in today to find we had all taken a break over the weekend. That’s fine by me: there is so much to read from last week alone. I spent a good part of the weekend creating a small open air service for members of the First Unitarian Church of Oakland. We met in Tilden Park, a large wild land that starts at the top of the ridge of hills that provide the eastern boundary of the Bay Area metropolis. You can stand at one or two places on that ridge and look one way to the Bay, its famous bridges, Alcatraz, the Oakland harbor and East Bay cities like Berkeley, and beyond to San Francisco’s skyscrapers–one of the most beautiful cityscapes in the world– and then turn and look the other way and see not just wild land all the way to Mount Diablo some twenty miles away.

Earth-based Religions

Giving Back to Gaia

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My husband Mark and I started composting again this week.  I’ve missed it, because giving back to the Earth — in this extremely literal way — is part of my spiritual practice.  In the past, even when Mark wasn’t gardening, I still composted.  We take so much from Gaia, we depend on Her as the very ground of our being, the source of our lives.  The least we can do is compost.

Earth-based Religions

All Acts of Love and Pleasure are My Rituals

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It horrified me to read about the recent exorcism performed on a 16-year-old boy in Connecticut to cast out a “homosexual demon.” I had to ask myself if we’re still living in the Middle Ages. It also reminded me of Doreen Valiente’s “Charge of the Star Goddess,” the Wiccan antidote to the hate and fear-filled behavior of the Manifested Glory Ministries when they abused their young parishioner. “The Charge of the Star Goddess” – one of the best-known evocations of the Goddess as we envision Her in Wicca – states that “all acts of Love and Pleasure are My rituals.” Not just the ones that the Manifested Glory Ministries deem appropriate, but all acts of love and pleasure.