rEvolutionary Spirituality

Hola mi gente,
If you can, please consider funding my initiative which is tentatively titled, The People’s Scholar Activist. I am in the process of formulating a concept paper, but for now, you should know that  your funds would go to helping the work that that I do in criminal justice reform with an emphasis on independent, community engaged advocacy/ activism -- helping to include the voices that are often missing in crafting social policy --  and helping upgrade my blog. 

I envision my blog as a place to offer alternative viewpoints often not on the table and including the written and oral narratives of those who don’t make it to visit the president or sit on an MSNBC panel, or sit on city and state advisory boards. More to come later in the week.

You can contribute -- any amount counts -- by clicking here: LINK

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rEvolutinary Spirituality

 

Let me start this way today: As human beings we die if we don’t have connection. This isn’t hyperbole, it is a neurological fact. So, right up front, I am saying that connection is vital to health.  Without touch, for example, infants cannot thrive. So that is where we are starting today… 

The word spirituality comes from the Latin root word meaning “to breathe.” It’s the one common aspect we all share as humans, we all breathe in the same air -- we all share the same air supply on this small green little gem we call earth. And in that way we are all connected. Therefore, I define spirituality broadly. I see spirituality as the web of connection that binds us all to one another and to our ecology. It’s that simple. No burning bushes, no commandments, no having to accept Jesus, or any other historical figure, as your savior before you are saved, born again, experience redemption, etc. -- none of that. I often joke that religion is for those afraid of going to hell, while spirituality is for those who have already been there. 

Faith? Faith is very important, but not the blind faith often adhered to by the unthinking. When I speak of faith, I see it as trusting in the experience of our lives. We use faith all the time and maybe the second step to wellness is to take that one leap of faith that, as human beings, we can realize genuine happiness in this very life.

 

Some ask me if I believe in a God, or in an afterlife, or a heaven or hell and my answer is: what the fuck does any of that have to do with the price of potatoes in the big city?! 

My personal Higher power is love and looks like Halle Berry. LOL

That’s it in a nutshell, a holistic approach that’s psycho-spiritual in orientation -- that’s my path. I won’t go into details about my chosen spiritual discipline because I refuse to be a public relations spokesperson for any spirituality. LOL I think it’s important to connect, to bond with others, sharing our pain as well as our joys, not so we can co-sign each other’s bullshit, but to lovingly and firmly challenge one another to own up to our shared humanity. We have a physiology that is made for connection and when we lose sight of that connection, we become ill. We become as individuals but also collectively. We are ill, but our planet is ill today because of our disconnect from one another and from Gaia. Therefore, recovery, or healing, is about taking steps to re-connect, to celebrate our humanity and our innate essential goodness.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Sunday Sermon [The New Mythology]

Hola mi gente,

My brothers and sisters from the LBGTQ community will be having their annual Gay Pride Parade today in La Gran Manzana, where the modern gay liberation movement was born out of two nights of rioting in June 1969 after a police raid on the Stonewall Inn gay bar in New York. FYI: Puerto Ricans were there at the beginning.

The rioters, once dismissed as “sick” or “perverted” by many, took inspiration from the anti-war and black power movements. Chanting “Gay power,” they started a mass movement that changed the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) people forever. I just wanted to express my solidarity and that your liberation is my liberation as well. Your struggle is my struggle.

The Old Gods

The old gods are dead or dying...

I’ll start with a brief story. Some years ago a group of my leadership development workshop graduates came to me with a problem. It seems they were concerned about a spike in gun violence and drug activity around their housing. What’s interesting is that this group was composed exclusively of men and women who had been formerly incarcerated. They wanted to do something about what was happening where they lived.

Ask me some day to tell you about that story. The relevant part of this story for today was that here was a group of men and women who had previously didn’t have a functional connection to their community or to social institutions. In fact, they were often the ones committing crimes, selling drugs, and committing violence. What had changed was that they now felt a part of rather than apart from their community. They felt they had a stake in their neighborhood and wanted to feel safe and enjoy some measure of serenity and safety.

There’s an important lesson to be learned from that experience. Part of that lessons lies in the challenge to the assumption that punishment is a just response to failures in economics and education. The other part, the one I will concentrate on today, is about connection and spirituality. We have lived too long believing that our essential self is disconnected from our ecology.

Our religions seem to have gotten it wrong when it comes to our relationship to the earth. Those among us who have a relatively large forebrain have no doubt that the scientific story of evolution is true. Perhaps evolution can help us with an upgrade of our collective metaphysics. Haven’t we gone long enough believing that our purpose and our salvation lie somewhere outside the life we are now living? 

Look around at the wreckage of our collective past and the ecological wreckage we are creating now. The only logical conclusion is that the old beliefs are dysfunctional. They rob the divine from the earth and place it in some other kingdom, in the process taking away the reverence of this life. Our major religions regard earth as little more than a place to plunder and a training ground, a glob of mud where we come to learn a few lessons, or burn off some karma, or get saved by a messiah, or some such bullshit. The general idea is that once we’re gone from this little piece of greenery we can all go off to some kind of spiritual Club Med, where we truly belong, and enjoy the happily ever after of our old myths.

Wouldn’t it serve us better if we brought out spiritual attention to the earth? Perhaps we could then learn, as my the participants from my leadership development workshop did, to feel a part of the life in this planet and in that way seek to take better care of our environment. I see too many of us distracted, concentrating on witch-hunts, looking for rapists and pedophiles on the internet, for example. We claim to want to make the internet safe for our children we blab. However, the fact is that the vast majority of you don’t give a fuck that we -- you and I -- are destroying our children’s birthright of a sane and safe earth. You will buy that gas-guzzler; you will blissfully pollute this planet and smoke cigarettes; you will spread deadly chemicals on the lawns your children play on and not give one fuck about it and the theft you're committing. If we were to bring our sense of the divine to this earthly existence, we just might find more joy in living in the here and now rather than waiting for a hereafter.

The story of evolution can offer us many gifts usually glommed from religion. It teaches us humility, liberates us from our narcissistic drama, presenting us instead with as much awe and wonder as any bible. Instead of resisting its truth, maybe we should be mining the story of evolution for whatever spiritual gems it offers, learning our role in the grand scheme of things.

So, stop it: stop looking for some high God-in-the-sky to punish or reward you. Those are old tales created in olden times. Those gods are dead... or dying. Drop your gaze at the wonder of this Earth and all the wonders she offers us. Celebrate and revere Nature, the instrument of our creation and most obvious of all of our gifts.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Sunday Sermon [The New Mythology]

¡Hola! Everybody...
I spent a pleasant eve with a good friend last night. Soon summer will awaken from its doldrums and leave us at that precise moment we most need change...

* * *

-=[ The Old Gods ]=-

The old gods are dead or dying...

I’ll start with a brief story. One day a group my leadership develop workshop graduates came to me with a problem. It seems they were concerned about a spike in gun violence and drug activity around their housing. What’s interesting is that this group was composed exclusively of men and women who had been formerly incarcerated. They wanted to do something about what was happening where they lived.

Ask me some day to tell you about that story. The important part here was that here was a group of men and women who had previously didn’t have a functional connection to their community or to social institutions. In fact, they were often the ones committing crimes, selling drugs, shooting guns. What had changed was that they now felt a part of rather than apart from. They had a stake in their community and wanted to feel safe and enjoy some measure of serenity and safety.

There’s an important lesson to be learned from that experience. Part of that lessons lies in the challenge to the assumption that punishment is a just response to failures in economics and education. The other part, the one I will concentrate on today, is about connection and spirituality. We have lived too long believing that our essential self is disconnected from our ecology.

Our religions seem to have gotten it wrong when it comes to our relationship to the earth. Those among us who have a relatively large forebrain have no doubt that the scientific story of evolution is true. Perhaps evolution can help us with an upgrade of our collective metaphysics. Haven’t we gone long enough believing that our purpose and our salvation lie somewhere outside the life we are now living?

Look around at the wreckage of our past and the ecological wreckage we are creating now. The only logical conclusion is that they old beliefs are dysfunctional. They rob the divine from the earth and place it in some other kingdom, in the process taking away the reverence of this life. Our major religions regard earth as little more than a training ground, a glob of mud where we come to learn a few lessons, or burn off some karma, or get saved by a messiah, or some other bullshit. The general idea is that once we’re gone from this little piece of greenery we can all go off to some kind of spiritual Club Med, where we truly belong, and enjoy the happily ever after of our old myths.

Wouldn’t it serve us better if we brought out spiritual attention to the earth? Perhaps we could then learn, as my leaders did, to feel a part of the life in this planet and in that way seek to take better care of our environment. I see many of you concentrating on witch-hunts, looking for rapists and pedophiles on the internet, for example. You want to make the internet safe for your children you blab. However, the fact is that the vast majority of you don’t give a fuck that we -- you and I -- are destroying our children’s birthright of a sane and safe earth. You will buy that gas-guzzler; you will blissfully pollute this planet and smoke cigarettes; you will spread deadly chemicals on the lawns your children play on and not give one fuck about it and the theft you're committing. If we were to bring our sense of the divine to this earthly existence, we just might find more joy in living in the here and now rather than waiting for a hereafter.

The story of evolution can offer us many gifts usually glommed from religion. It teaches us humility, liberates us from our narcissistic drama, presenting us instead with as much awe and wonder as any bible. Instead of resisting its truth, maybe we should be mining the story of evolution for whatever spiritual gems it offers, learning our role in the grand scheme of things.

So, stop it: stop looking for some high God-in-the-sky to punish or reward you. Those are old tales created in olden times. Those gods are dead... or dying. Drop your gaze at the wonder of this Earth and all the wonders she offers us. Celebrate Nature, the instrument of our creation and most obvious of all of our gifts.

Love,

Eddie