religion and spirituality

Fri Jan 9 09:18:38 CST 2009

I would like to suggest a great book by a dear friend, Christian de  
la Huerta.  The book is "Coming Out Spiritually" and covers both  
spirituality and religion, with a focus on the historic role gay,  
lesbian, transgendered people have played and the role religion has  
played to squelch that role.  Christian's book is amazing.

Ed

On Jan 9, 2009, at 9:55 AM, Bud Weiss wrote:

> Take a good look at the history of organized religion and you see  
> basically building power gathered in the hands of a few to control  
> people and justify wars committed on the part of the powerful to  
> gain more power using the poor and misguided middle classes. As  
> General Smedley Darlington Butler once put it as the most highly  
> decorated longest of service general in the Marines, "War is a  
> Racket."
>
> The Abrahamic religions that grew out of the far older African  
> practices honed by the Egyptians into the 144 negative confessions  
> as the guide to life. I like what you wrote here Regina very much.   
> Interesting to note that the 10 commandments are taken whole from  
> the 144 negative confessions that the Egyptian priests had to pass  
> in order to become part of the holy of hollies.
> The Aboriginal people have their laws which they basically shared  
> across that incredible continent despite many different villages,  
> tribes and languages. Their oral history which continues to be  
> passed down even today tells of things accurately, verified by  
> archaeologists and anthropologists,  that happened as much as  
> 50,000 years ago and more. How they have been able to sustain their  
> integrity living more or less in piece as neighbors through all  
> that time until they began to be slaughtered and used by the  
> European invaders is still one of the most poorly understood and  
> least adequately told stories of all time.  Now that's spirituality  
> at its best for me.
> Bud
>
> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 9:59 PM, REGINA SEWELL <sewell.2 at osu.edu>  
> wrote:
> Ivo,
>
> The issue that you bring up...  it reminds me of Marx's declaration  
> that religion is the opiate of the people.  I live in Columbus,  
> Ohio and have a sense that Marx is wrong...  the Opiate isn't  
> religion, it's football....  except when the buckeyes lose, which  
> they just did...
>
> But seriously, you raise the issue of religion/spirituality, but I  
> think that the issue is broader...  it has to do with people  
> getting stuck in a cultural conserve.  And while the downside of  
> religion as cultural conserve of choice are easy to point out (you  
> did in the example of John Travolta's son, and on the surface, we  
> can blame religion for much of the blood that's being shed all over  
> the planet), my sense is that people flock to religion and stay  
> with it because it works for them somehow.  It gives meaning to  
> what may otherwise be a frightening, overwhelming, pointless  
> existence.  It gives them what Joseph Campbell dubbed "Myths" to  
> help them navigate their world.  And it gives them rules for  
> living.  Though we break them all the time, it's easy to see how  
> the "thou shalt nots" of the Abrahamic religions helped to keep  
> societies from killing each other...
>
> Campbell also notes that perhaps the problem with religions today  
> is that they myths have not caught up with the economic and social  
> realities of the world in which we live.  Perhaps what we need are  
> new myths.  Oddly enough, some of the new science and new religion  
> is backing up what the Mary Baker Eddy prosletyzed to her masses --  
> the power of prayer, of "energy" and intention.
>
> So perhaps we should take to heart the words of Bruce Springstein  
> on his album "war"  "Blind faith in anything will get you killed."
>
> According to the press:
>
> "A post-mortem examination determined last night that John Travolta's
> chronically ill son died of a seizure, as controversy erupted over the
> Scientologist actor's handling of the boy's medical condition.  
> According to
> the family, Jett, 16, suffered a seizure and hit his head on a  
> bathtub at
> their holiday home in the Bahamas, where he was found dead on Friday."
> ...Travolta
> and his wife, Kelly Preston, issued a statement saying they were
> "heartbroken that our time with him was so brief. We will cherish  
> the time
> we had with him for the rest of our lives." The couple said that Jett
> suffered from Kawasaki disease, a condition that causes  
> inflammation of
> small and medium-sized arteries. The disease affects the lymph  
> nodes, skin
> and the mucous membranes in the mouth, nose and throat. Experts  
> said that
> the disease was rarely fatal and seldom affected children over the  
> age of
> 8....Critics of Scientology suggested yesterday that Jett may have  
> been
> suffering from autism, a condition that the church does not recognise
> because it considers mental illness to be psychosomatic and argues  
> that it
> should be treated through spiritual healing...." From The Times  
> January 6,
> 2009
>
> Well, I will not discuss the way this church or others deal with  
> humans. I
> think that the problem is deeper than this and deserves an urgent and
> serious consideration. My question is: What are the political  
> consequences
> of spirituality? I will not bother you with this historical  
> problem, but
> with the clear fragmentation between Governments and Institutions  
> related to
> "faith" and "Spirituality" a big and increasing hole is there for  
> we all to
> see if we want and have the courage to see it. The consequences can be
> disastrous if all remains the same. Governments can not pretend  
> that the New
> Age Movement doesn't exist as a genuine mode of discourse or other  
> types of
> movements that are pupping up now. With post modernism the respect  
> for all
> kinds of truth are being mistaken for all truths are equal. And We  
> all know
> this is simply not truth in our relative world.  Note the paradox.  
> They say
> "All kinds of truth are equal" forming in that very moment another  
> kind of
> truth. I will attempt to say that in our relative world there are  
> not only
> various types of truths but various degrees of truths. I will call  
> this
> degrees simply Evolution, defined as a truth that emerge, transcend  
> and
> include the previous truth (but the topic is too complex to expose  
> it here,
> I think, because it would divert from the real intention of my e-mail)
>
> Spirituality have to enter in the political discourse again, I  
> believe,
> simply because spirituality, by whatever name is an intrinsic part  
> of a
> human being, and the bad use of it makes the world poorer. By  
> political
> discourse, I mean in the broadest sense of the world, including the  
> explicit
> consequences of the work and the understanding of science, of arts, of
> culture, etc that have to result in a better informed political  
> decisions.
> This, I believe, can only be met by a real transdisciplinary  
> approach. Is
> Sociatry Era coming at last?
>
> regina sewell, Ph.D.
>
> Grouptalk mailing list
> List at grouptalkweb.org
> http://grouptalkweb.org/mailman/listinfo/list_grouptalkweb.org
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> "The perfect man breathes as if he is not breathing" - Lao-Tzu  
> (circa 4th century BC)
> Breathing is the foundation of life, and good breathing is the  
> foundation of good health. Improve your health by improving your  
> breathing with the BIBH Buteyko Method.
> Call or write me for details or appointments.
> Barnett J. Weiss, MA, LCSW ,
> 7410 Ridge Blvd 2D;Brooklyn, NY 11209
> ButeykoNYC at gmail.com
> Tel: 800-871-9012 code 93462
> Fax only: 718-680-4919
> Web site being rebuilt www.ButeykoNYC.com
> Grouptalk mailing list
> List at grouptalkweb.org
> http://grouptalkweb.org/mailman/listinfo/list_grouptalkweb.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://grouptalkweb.org/pipermail/list_grouptalkweb.org/attachments/20090109/dad7ca97/attachment.html>