Author: LdeG

Why Do People Become (Islamic) Extremists

LdeG

My friend who reposted this on Facebook commented that it does not just explain Islamic extremism.  Today in class, we talked about human nature, and the service was on our tribe, our community.  Part of our human nature is to want a tribe, community, order, and certainty in our lives.  But when we don’t question what that community teaches us and see for ourselves, we are in danger of becoming a mob of extremists. — Lisa

https://www.facebook.com/prageru/videos/897194363656754/

In Times of Hysteria

LdeG

I know a lot of us are feeling this.

One of the most difficult experiences of democracy is to watch your country going crazy, and feel responsible. In a dictatorship you could just zone out: The Powers That Be will do what they do, and your opinion doesn’t matter anyway. Your neighbors, your friends, your co-workers — their opinions don’t matter either, so there’s no point in arguing with them, or even letting them know you disagree. You might as well just binge-watch something light on TV, and wait for the wave to pass.

In a democracy it’s different: We are the wave.

Doug Muder has a practical (and inspiring) 6-point plan.

http://weeklysift.com/2015/11/23/in-times-of-hysteria/

(In the 90s, I was in an email UU discussion group that included Doug.  It was my second church, and in many ways a better faith community for me than my local church.  We discussed – argued in the best sense – a lot, and I learned so much. Doug’s weekly posts now are a great source of learning and strength for me. – Lisa)

THE WAY OF A PILGRIM Or, How to Save Ourselves & the World

LdeG

So, what about us? You know, you and me, faithful and faithless, quintessential religious liberals. Many of us are caught up today more than most with the questions of peace and war, of terror and response. Us. How can we encounter pilgrimage as our spiritual practice, and use it to help us find where to stand, and how to engage? Well, I suggest we can, each of us, claim pilgrimage as part of our spiritual lives. And it’s not that difficult.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2015/11/the-way-of-a-pilgrim-or-how-to-save-ourselves-the-world.html

Building Your Own Theology Class

LdeG

Schedule, Readings, and Worksheets

“And to use the classic UU Building Your Own Theology curriculum as an example, the starting point is not studying traditional theologies from the past (that comes at the midpoint). The starting point is autobiography: owning more fully how your life story and your firsthand experience affects, shapes, and informs how you construct theology. And perhaps I should also clarify that Building Your Own Theology — at least as far as Unitarian Universalism is concerned — does not require theism, a belief in God. In contrast, there is much potential benefit for both theists and atheists, Buddhists and Pagans, Christians and Jews in doing the hard work of articulating what you do (and don’t) believe about God (or reality), human nature, religious community, ethics, and the future of our species and the universe — and doing all of that in conversation with your religious community.”

From a post by The Rev. Dr. J. Carl Gregg (D.Min., D.A.S.D., M.Div., B.A.), minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Frederick, Maryland.

Starting November 1 we will have a Building Your Own Theology class at 10 am, before coffee and the worship service.  The class will probably run through March, depending on how long we take for discussions each week.

The class won’t teach you what to believe, but to think about what you already believe in a systematic way, how your beliefs have changed, learn what others believe and why, and build our community.

There is homework! Brief (two or three pages) readings every week or two and some exercises to do on your own to prepare for discussion.  By the end of the class, you will have written your own creed.

The discussion is a lot of the learning, so being there for most of the classes is good, but the readings and worksheets will be available online so you can keep up when you can’t be there.

Lisa deGruyter is facilitating; she took the class, and then taught it twice, at First UU Austin years ago. She’s looking forward to seeing how her beliefs have evolved since then (and hopes they have!)

Schedule and materials

Democracy as a Religious Practice

LdeG

You have to learn how to pray. You might spend years trying to master meditation–or coming to understand that meditation isn’t something that you master. The same is true with democracy. In order to practice it, you have to learn it. To meditate you need to learn how to breath, how to sit, how to unfocus your mind. To practice democracy you need to learn rules of order, how to run a meeting, how to bring silenced voices into the conversation, when to speak and when to keep still.

Colin Bossen: Writer, Preacher, Organizer | Blog | Democracy as a Religious Practice

http://colinbossen.com/the-latest-form-of-infidelity/14182745/democracyasreligiouspractice

A Terrible and Beautiful Presence

LdeG

UU minister James Ishmael Ford on his belief

In my youth I prayed to know God. I prayed with complete earnestness, with the fullness perhaps only a youth can muster with a deal. Show me your face and after that you can kill me. I meant it. And I was met with silence.

Many years have passed. Today, by most conventions I’m an atheist. That is I do not believe in a human-like consciousness that directs things. In a universe of uncertainty I come as close as a human mind can to certainty that there is no deity that acts within history.

And, within my experience there is something. Sometimes I call it presence. Sometimes I call it love. I suspect I know the grubby roots of that love, how it arises within my mammalian consciousness. But, it seems to have a larger existence, as well.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2015/09/a-terrible-beautiful-presence.html