At the beginning of November, I dizzied myself in a dervish with 7500 participants at the Parliament of World Religions. In a series of keynote presentations spanning Peace & Reconciliation, Climate, Women, Indigenous Voices, and the Next Generation, one unifying message was consistently offered, “Humans have caused this.” Whatever the challenge before us, it is our species who has created the conditions for our current reality.
In dark times like ours one takes delight in those who are still committed to a search for truth and are still busy hunting gathering for what matters. We are blessed still with such figures in our midst and I want to celebrate two in this essay. One, a citizen of Toronto and of Canada, Naomi Klein, described herself by phone one day to me as “Jewish, Feminist and Atheist.” She is a profound author, social activist and filmmaker. The other, Scott Russell Sanders, celebrates his small town existence in Methodist rooted rural Ohio and on this planet and in this universe in a number of wonderful books. The former’s two recent books, Capitalism vs. The Climate and No Is Not Enough, are as on target to our troubled times as any I know; and Sanders book Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World, complements Klein’s in a profoundly mystical way.
Last night I returned from a conference in Jamaica about Men and Masculinity—they are dealing with a veritable epidemic of violence among young men and killings of men by men. Not unlike El Salvador and many other places around the globe.
Here at home we have our own violence, much of it also spawned by reptilian brain action/reaction responses, efforts of striving to be “number one” at all costs, buttressed by sins of greed and denial and of patriarchy gone berserk.
Speaking of a need for a Reformation makes me question whether the time has arrived for a new religious order that is in fact not tied to a particular religion but is a Spiritual Order, one that might help people of various religious faiths and none to gather around a common value and focus. I think our times call for a focus on the sacredness of the Earth and all her creatures. Therefore I propose a new order called “The Order of the Sacred Earth.” Its members may come from any and all life-styles, married, single, celibate, gay, straight and from any and all occupations so long as their work mirrored the values of honoring and supporting the Earth and her creatures. Blue collar and white collar workers would be welcomed. People of all religious traditions and none would be welcome.
In the last half of the 19th century a country doctor named Edgar Hines lived with his family that included two sons, Edgar jr. and John Elbridge …