Dorian Gray was above it all, privileged and pampered and proud, without good promise or purpose. Wilde’s implication is that conscience is necessary for the soul to survive.“What does it profit a person if, in gaining the whole world, loses the soul?”
read more“Trans lives are real lives. Trans deaths are real deaths. God works through other people. Maybe you can be those other people.” We are those other people.
read moreI am a physical being with an immortal soul! I have lived many, many times on this earthly plane. Now, today, in our Aquarian Age, is the right time; the consciousness of my life as well as the lives of my fellow human beings. I want to help us all live in Light and Love.
read moreAs we grapple with the existential crisis of human-caused climate change, we will have a hard time making the transition away from fossil fuels if we show disrespect to the people in this industry. We must carefully craft our language to attract rather than insult the people who labor still to this day, extracting the fuels that power our vehicles and warm our houses.
read moreThe Parliament of the World’s Religions is thrilled to announce the launch of the Climate Commitments Project. This web-based resource is the virtual face of the Climate Commitments Project, our effort to coordinate and strengthen interfaith and faith-based climate action campaigns.
read moreCan we convince white people that their future will be better without racism? Can we convince them that there is a place for them in a more open, diverse, inclusive world?
read moreWhen you reside at the intersections of multiple identities, anniversaries of your civil rights struggles can be both bitter and sweet. And, May 17th was a reminder.
read moreReligious Naturalism (RN) has two central aspects. One is a naturalist view of how things happen in the world—in which the natural world is all there is, and that nothing other than natural may cause events in the world. From nature we came, in nature we are, to nature we go… The other is appreciation of religion with a view that nature can be a focus of religious attention – the ‘cosmic religious feeling’ as Einstein called it.
read morePolitically Speaking host Dave Szollosy interviewed me and our conversation revolved around the issues relating to how our religion informs our politics.
read moreNobody wanna talk about it
She used to say I’m too dark, habibi
She used to say I’m too thick, habibi
But even then she was so thin, habibi
Sexual abuse in the church erupted in the 1990s when it was reported on in the Boston Globe and Hollywood brought it to the world’s attention. However, this isn’t merely a recent problem; the history of sexual abuse goes back centuries.
read moreChristianity appears impossible if we focus on the admonitions in the New Testament that Jesus gave his followers. Love your enemies? Good luck with that. Turn the other cheek? Ouch. If a creditor demands your coat, give him your cloak as well? That means you’ll be left naked. If a man lusts after a woman who is not his wife, he’s an adulterer. No heterosexual male can pretend to meet that standard. And the list goes on – culminating in Jesus’ demand that we be perfect, as God is perfect. Nobody can fully follow his marching orders.
read moreIn the horrible crucible of the Civil War and the Indian Wars, Walt Whitman, in the Leaves of Grass, attempted to describe American greatness, not in our legislatures or executives, but in the inherent goodness of individual Americans. Many of us have lately been humiliated by the juvenile tweets of our chief executive and the morally bankrupt race in several southern states to take away women’s rights, but, as Frankel said, no one can take away from us our ability to decide how we will react to what they do. We get to choose who we are and to reject being defined by the racism, sexism, misogyny, classism, and xenophobia of our current political environment.
read moreHow to ‘be there’ for the people who need you most.
read moreTo call these “end times” is hardly hyperbolic. We are in trouble and the signs are everywhere: extreme political divisions; xenophobic violence; enormous wealth inequity; poverty and homelessness; sexism and ageism; arms buildups and unending wars; and, most frightening of all, escalating climate disruption.
read moreWhen Paul dictated a paean to love in his message to Corinth, he was not thinking of wedding ceremonies; rather, he was imploring the community to overcome internal conflict.
read moreThe Green New Deal proposes a set of goals that enumerates the changes necessary to simultaneously save our environment while transforming our economic system. We have already started the 6th period of mass extinction in earth’s history and to avoid a repeat of “the Great Dying” of 250 million years ago, the changes recommended in the Green New Deal are not radical, they are, realistically, necessary.
read moreWestern standards of beauty currently dominate our world because we still live in the imperial model which continues to colonize and enslave. We resist white supremacy, “western” superiority and colonized ways of thinking and being by LOVING ourselves, generously, beautifully and joyfully in spite of any active or subliminal efforts to make us feel unworthy of love and life.
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