The US is built with layer upon layer of racism. The most obvious example is that the US was populated mostly by western Europeans who massacred their way across the frontier, wiping out whole cultures of people along the way.

Racism is a driving force even in our education and health care systems. How can this be?

We Americans just don’t see each other as members of the same family and society. If we did, it would be easy to convince each other of the value of investing in each other. We act very differently when we have that sense of shared commonality with others.

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Social change comes about when a prophet or a small prophetic community advocates for a change to the status quo. Ethics is never subject to majority vote but is, instead, sponsored by tiny minorities who are willing to speak truth to power. Therefore, progressive churches will never be mega churches and very few large churches will ever offer substantive challenge to popular society. Those who are willing to do the work of a prophet must be willing to pay the price of being ignored, derided, even fought, but if your cause is right, time is on your side.

Why are so many people opposed to the conclusions that scientists have reached? No amount of scientific data seems to change some hearts and minds on this issue—even though it should. Sharing statistics, charts, data and reports doesn’t seem to budge the opposition. Most of us do not have advanced degrees in science but usually we do not need that to take what scientists do seriously.

To commemorate and honor the life and work of Professor Wangari Maathai, the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF) opened Forest Day 5, one of the most intensive and influential annual global events on forests, with a short video about the Nobel Laureate.

  We continue the presentation we began in the last column, here offering:   Thesis #4: Normally intelligent and socialized human beings come to recognize and understand death and our mortal nature as an inevitable aspect of …

In my work as a mystic, I have been exploring a new kind of activism – Mystical Activism. Evolving from the experience of divine Self-realization discovered in the New Aging, it has been foretold in the archetypes, myths and prophecies of the world and must now become a lived reality if we are to survive on Earth. This blog describes the nature and place of Mystical Activism in Creation Spirituality theology and human transformation.

Wangari Muta Maathai was an internationally renowned Kenyan environmental political activist and Nobel laureate.

When God made the world, he made it beautifully, stocked with a variety of four legged beasts, aquatic mammals, incredible landscapes, and unfathomable wonder. He also made humans, and while He gave us the gift of curiosity and the intelligence to create spectacular technology, but we have left a lot of destruction because of it.

There is a cost to living like Darth Vader. Every piece of armor replaces your own flesh and blood. Every wall between you and someone else means another wall between a part of your own self. You could drape armor over yourself, never leave home without packing firepower and be always on the lookout for danger. Somewhere along the line, perhaps in shades of gray, you lose your humanity and become a hunted beast— always on the lookout, always afraid, always griping this metal extension of your body tightly. No one can shoot you, no one can beat you . . . but is there any “you” left?

  In the last column, we began our discussion of Thesis #3. Just as a reminder, Thesis #3 states: Thesis #3: Human beings have the intelligence to think abstractly, and to use symbols (esp. complex language, which …

My main point in this blog post is to talk about how some folks continue to believe what they believe, despite all the facts and evidence in front of them. Let me use as an example the great majority of all Christians who, day in, day out, week in, week out, continue to address their prayers, their sermons, their creeds, and their slogans to a god (whom I call NoOneUpThere) who lives in a house (mansion?) above a three-tiered flat world. They continually address their deity with a lot of beseeching, pleading, and, usually, a laundry list of what NoOneUpThere is to do during the coming week. Does this sort of theology come anywhere close to how the real world works? To me, it resembles flat-Earth thinking.

Once a religion is distilled into a creed, a book books of doctrine, or even shared holy writ, it becomes a religion of beliefs rooted in the past. A living faith takes in new information and experience and continues to grow and evolve. Ultimately, we are seeking a faith that moves beyond belief and becomes expressed in meaningful action.

At least from my perspective as a pastor, I think the abortion issue is one of the more complex moral problems of our age. It pits the rights of the mother against those of the child, such that if one takes one side over the other, one is perceived as compassionless by the other side.

Has the latest telescopic view of the universe (universes?) had any effect on liberal thinking concepts of a creator, intelligent design OR ESPECIALLY on the capability of the human species to really understand its source? Are we attempting a task greater than our human intelligence is capable of?

Thesis #3: Human beings have the intelligence to think abstractly, and to use symbols (esp. complex language, which eventually allows a human person to think of himself/herself in the third person.) This is in essence what sets human psychology apart from animal psychology.

Question: I am a New Thought Minister who presents the Bible and the Christ in much the same manner as Bishop Spong does in his articles and books. Can the Christ and Christianity survive the adolescence period where all is in flux, change and turmoil and emerge as the loving empowering way of life that Jesus intended and that we so desperately need or will the Fundamentalists win the day? Will we make it to Spiritual Adulthood?

We are approaching the end of an Age that began eight/six thousand years ago after our movement out of Africa and into Egypt and the Levant and beyond. We had moved out of Africa before that, but this time it was different. Something of positive import to human civilization was taking place. Looking back, there were a broad range of achievements. Yet, many of these “achievements” are now beginning to haunt us. Scientists today are giving us warning. They are telling us we are in many respects living in alienation of Planet earth’s Biosphere.