The Faith of Spring

by Photofarmer, via Wikimedia Commons

crossposted with No Unsacred Place

Spring is the season of faith.

How’s that, you ask? You’re going to take some grain leftover from last Fall, bury it in the ground, and expect it to feed your family in the coming year. You’re going to trust the lives of yourself and your loved ones to some mysterious process you can’t see and can’t control. You’re going to invest countless hours of labor in planting and tending crops and if things work out perfectly you still won’t have anything you can eat for months. And there’s no guarantee things will work out at all.

Can’t you just see the debate between some of our hunter-gatherer ancestors when the first human decided to plant a garden? You want me to do what? And wait how long? When there’s perfectly good roots and berries and critters out in the woods?

Even if that first garden was very small it still took an act of faith to start it. That’s why Spring and planting are such good examples of what faith is and isn’t.

First, unlike what you will hear from both extremes of the unfortunate and unhelpful war between atheism and religion, faith isn’t about mindlessly affirming and following someone else’s made-up story. Faith is about making observations, noticing patterns, and then making reasonable extrapolations. I doubt very many of us really understand how the potential of a seed grows into a plant, but we know that it does – we’ve seen it happen. Our Stone Age ancestors saw that seeds left on the ground would sometimes sprout. Maybe they performed controlled experiments, but more likely they simply saw it happen enough times and one day one of them said “I bet I can do that.”

Our spiritual and magical work isn’t about buying into someone else’s stories. It’s about seeing what works in Nature, seeing what works with other people, making reasonable projections about how things might work for us, and then having faith that they’ll work for us too even though we can’t be sure.

Spring and planting teaches us that faith isn’t about what you believe, it’s about what you do. It doesn’t matter if you believe seeds will sprout. You may think you’re wasting your time and you’re doing all this work just to make your silly old grandmother happy, but if you plant seeds and water them, they’ll sprout and grow. And conversely, you can “believe in” sprouting all you like and think positive thoughts about crops, but if you don’t plant, then nothing will grow.

Beliefs matter because our beliefs define what we think is possible and therefore what we will or won’t attempt. But when it comes to getting results, what matters most is what we do.

Some Pagans have romantic ideas about agriculture. I grew up on a small farm and learned first-hand the Earth does not give up her bounty with ease. The land has to be cleared and tilled. Seeds have to be planted. If the weather doesn’t cooperate, you have to water. Weeds have to be pulled or chopped to keep from choking out your crops. Other animals see your crops as food for themselves – they have to be kept out, scared off, or eliminated. Finally there’s harvesting and preserving, so you’ll have something to eat over the Winter and into next Spring. Growing food is a lot of work!

So is religious and spiritual practice. Meditation, prayer, study and reflection take time and effort. Building healthy communities and caring for each other and our world takes time and effort. Sometimes these activities are immediately rewarding, but most of the time they’re work – planting and tending that will be harvested in the future.

Despite our good, hard work, sometimes we don’t get the payoff we expect. Maybe our seed was bad. Maybe there was a drought. Maybe a hailstorm destroyed our crops before they could mature. Maybe locusts ate them before we could harvest them. When these things happen, it doesn’t mean agriculture isn’t real and it doesn’t mean you’re a lousy farmer! It means the process is big and complex and not entirely within our control.

If our crops fail, we plant again. If our spiritual practices don’t bring the results we want, we keep practicing. Maybe we make some adjustments – less reading and more meditation, or more reading and less meditation. What we don’t do is throw in the towel and go back to spiritual hunting and gathering. The process of spiritual growth is every bit as complex and impossible to control as the process of growing food.

But while we can’t control either process, we can influence them. And we have faith – the faith of Spring, the faith of experience – that if we plant, the harvest will come.

Spring is coming. What will you plant?

OBOD East Coast Gathering

Last year I attended the OBOD East Coast Gathering and had a wonderful time. This year should be even better, with special guests OBOD Chosen Chief Philip Carr-Gomm, OBOD Scribe Stephanie Carr-Gomm, and AODA Grand Archdruid John Michael Greer.

If you are a Druid or have any interest in Druidry, I strongly encourage you to attend. The setting is beautiful and the cost is quite reasonable.

For more information, follow the links shown below.

OBOD U.S. EAST COAST GATHERING

The Arts of the Seer

Thursday, September 13, 2012, through Sunday, September 16, 2012

Camp Netimus, Milford, PA

Special Guests:

Philip Carr Gomm, Chosen Chief OBOD

Stephanie Carr Gomm, Scribe OBOD

John Michael Greer, Grand Archdruid of AODA

Musical Guest

Arthur "ZZ Birmingham" Billington

Activities Include:

Alban Elfed Ritual

Workshops

Guided Meditations

Eisteddfod

Please join us in the Poconos, putting aside the cares of the mundane world as you commune with nature and with other OBOD members. Join us for discussions and workshops concerning druidism in this modern day, and take the opportunity to meet out special guests and listen to their insights. This is a chance to suspend time for a moment and again feel the power and majesty of the natural world. And perhaps, if you listen closely, you will hear the coyote song in harmony with human voices as Awens cascade through the trees.

Group initiations will be offered.  Musicians and performers who would like to provide entertainment, are encouraged to send a sample to eastcoastgathering@druidry.org. In addition, we are looking for volunteers to help with tending the fires, cooking, clean up, etc. In addition, if you are First Aid and/or CPR certified, please let us know.

A non-refundable $25 deposit is requested by July 1, 2012. The early deposit is to help defray the cost of the transportation for our guests. Registration and payment will still be accepted after this date. However, space is limited so please register early

For more information email Lorraine at eastcoastgathering@druidry.org. Or visit http://eastcoastgathering.druidry.org/ for updates.

To Learn and To Grow

Star Foster at Patheos is delving into ancient philosophy – something I wish more Pagans would do. The Greeks and Romans are our cultural as well as spiritual ancestors and their ideas are more prevalent in our common society than many of us realize.

Today Star asks one of the Big Questions: what is our purpose? She says:

Most religions insist we don’t belong here. We’re trying to get back to where we came from. Redeem our fallen state or liberate ourselves from the illusions of the material world. Some Pagan religions have these theologies. Returning to the source, gaining access to the highest plane, becoming like the Gods. Aside from these theologies of transcendence and liberation, what is the purpose of humanity from a Pagan viewpoint?

As Pagans, we differ from other religions because we believe we DO belong here. The Earth is not fallen, it is not illusion and it is not sorrow. The Earth is our Mother and our home. We grew out of the Earth – spiritually as well as physically.

So if we belong here then we must be here for a reason, right? Philosophers and theologians far wiser than me have struggled with this question for millennia. Long before I became a Pagan I tried to figure it out for myself. What I came up with is this: my purpose is to learn and grow, and to help others to learn and grow.

As someone who is naturally curious and who has always loved learning, this conclusion came easily and seemed self-evident. But the longer I’ve studied and the longer I’ve practiced as a Pagan, the more I’ve become convinced I didn’t figure that out on my own. I saw it in Nature.

As an aside, it’s amusing how often we think we come up with brilliant ideas on our own, when it turns out they’re something we read or heard or saw a week or a month or 25 years ago. The brain is a remarkable, mysterious organ.

If the purpose of life is to learn and grow, then to what end or ends? Evolution has no foresight – natural selection rewards helpful mutations after the fact. But look how far it’s brought us! From single-celled organisms to multi-celled creatures to complex life to sentient life to creatures who are capable of contemplating their own origins and purposes. Through the ordinary and painful struggles to survive and reproduce, over billions of years, Great Things have happened.

Is this process what some of us call God and Goddess?

Maybe. Maybe not. But the evidence says it’s brought us this far, so we can trust it to take us further.

I like clear purposes and specific goals. I like detailed plans. I like to preach Isaac Bonewits’ magical maxim “fuzzy targets yield fuzzy results.”

But sometimes we don’t know our purpose. Sometimes we don’t know what we want, much less how to get it. What are we to do at those times? Wait until a clear answer presents itself? Most of us don’t have the luxury of waiting that long. So we do what we can – concentrate on doing the right things for the right reasons and trust that good things will come, in their own season.

And so we learn, and we grow, and we help others to learn and grow. And over time, with hard work, bit by painful bit, something magical happens. A new job appears, a new friend enters our lives, a new species emerges. Magic that wouldn’t have happened – that couldn’t have happened – if we hadn’t done the work.

I believe our purpose here on Earth is to learn and grow and to help others to do the same. If there is some greater purpose than this I don’t know what it is or how to go about finding it. But I’m confident that if we learn and grow, Great Things will continue to happen.

Friends Don’t Let Friends Read “21 Lessons of Hogwash”

I love books. Always have. Books are wonderful and magical and sacred. Few things will get my blood pressure up more than idiots who want to ban books, or worse, burn them. So it goes against my nature to tell someone NOT to read a book.

But sometimes that’s necessary. Today I came across a Facebook friend’s post that said she was getting ready to start 21 Lessons of Merlyn by Douglas Monroe.

My response was “Ack! No!”

Subtitled “A Study in Druid Magic and Lore” this book is supposedly based on a 16th century manuscript called The Book of Pheryllt. Only problem is, that book doesn’t exist. It is a near-total fabrication in the vein of Iolo Morganwy’s Bardas, another legendary fake. At least Morganwy’s fakery was mostly decent on its own merits. Monroe’s garbage is fabricated, ahistorical, misogynistic, and if you take his mistletoe recipes seriously, hazardous to your health.

Others have already skewered Monroe and his books. Here’s Isaac Bonewits offering (and I believe it was Isaac who first retitled the book 21 Lessons of Hogwash). Here’s Celticist Lisa Spangenberg’s piece on The Book of Pheryllt. Also on the Digital Medievalist website is this page by page listing of errors by Ceisiwr Serith, author of A Book of Pagan Prayer. And finally, here’s a review from the OBOD website, where OBOD Chosen Chief Philip Carr-Gomm says “one of the most widely read books on Druidry is unfortunately the worst.”

Why does it continue to sell? A lot of people simply don’t know enough to recognize it as crap. More importantly, it’s presented in a format that people want to be true: as hidden knowledge from a long-lost golden age. It’s an occult secret … but if you’ll just buy the book, they’ll let you in on it.

There are no occult secrets. There are only ineffable mysteries.

If you’re seriously interested in Druid magic and lore, start with a good introductory book by a knowledgeable Druid. From there you can go into the history of Druidry (what little of it we know), and into contemporary Druid beliefs and practices.

That’s where the real magic is. Not in the reading, but in the doing.

I’m happy to report my Facebook friend did a brief internet search and has taken 21 Lessons of Hogwash off her reading list. A disaster has been averted – it’s been a good day!

if you want real magic, look in wild places...

The Sword of Judgment

image from the Robin Wood Tarot

Pantheacon is the world’s largest indoor Pagan gathering, exceeded only by the largest outdoor festivals like Pagan Spirit Gathering. Each year’s lineup of speakers, workshops, rituals and entertainment (not to mention connecting face to face with people you only know via the Internet) is both impressive and broad. Most people who go say it’s awesome. I’ve never been... one of these years I’ll get my travel budget and vacation time aligned so I can.

Unfortunately, for the second straight year the main accomplishments of the convention have been overshadowed by a high-profile dispute over the exclusion of transgender women from a women-only ritual. I wasn’t there and I’m not going to attempt an in-depth analysis of the situation. A summary of last year’s incident is here, including some bigoted and hateful remarks by Z. Budapest, author and founder of Dianic Wicca.

The Wild Hunt has some coverage of this year’s convention, where Budapest led a ritual labeled “genetic women only.” Thorn Coyle organized a silent meditation protest, which drew three times as many participants as the ritual itself. Though not a disinterested report, I think Thorn’s explanation of why she did what she did is the best commentary I’ve found.

My thoughts on this matter are fairly simple:

• I have no interest in single-gender rituals and activities, but I understand they can be meaningful and even therapeutic for some.
• Gender is not a binary thing, and I find it ironic that someone as radical as Z. Budapest is echoing the most conservative Texas Republicans in saying that transgender women are just men who want to be women.
• Therefore, I support the right of people to be included in the activities of whatever gender they identify with.
• If there is value in rituals and activities restricted to ciswomen, their place is in private settings, not in a large public gathering.
• When one traditionally oppressed group is pitted against another traditionally oppressed group, the only winner is the oppressor.

Some Pagans are supporting the right of all people who identify as women to participate in all women’s activities, while others are supporting the right ciswomen to restrict their rituals to other ciswomen. There are good, ethical, compassionate reasons to support either position – this situation is not as simple as some on either side are saying.

A few people are saying the protest was out of line, that freedom of religion demands we tolerate anything that isn’t actively harming others, and that censuring Z. Budapest amounts to establishing a Pagan orthodoxy, or at least is a big step in that direction.

Here is where the rainbow of diverse values congeals into black and white. Z. Budapest’s comments toward transgender women are bigoted and hateful, and her opinions on men are as mean-spirited as they are ill-informed. The phrase “genetic women only” is a blunt instrument, in every sense of the term. Yes, she has contributed greatly to women’s spirituality and yes, her work has been meaningful and helpful to thousands of women. She deserves our honor and our respect for the good she has done. But that does not and cannot give her a free pass for promoting bigotry.

image from the Robin Wood Tarot

In classical magic the Sword is the tool of Air, of the Intellect, of Judgment and of Justice. The Sword is not the tool of Justice because of a threat of violence. It is the tool of Justice because it cuts the False away from the True. The Sword is used to cast the circle and to draw boundaries – to declare some things within and some things without.

We in the liberal religious traditions – and here I include Pagans, UUs, Progressive Christians, and many others – are reluctant to pick up the Sword and draw sharp, bright lines. Maybe we think we’ll look like the fundamentalists who make outcasts of everyone who’s not exactly like themselves. Maybe we aren’t grounded in our own beliefs and ethics and we’re not sure how or where to draw a line. And maybe we don’t want to take a stand that might hurt someone’s feelings and cause them to strike back at us.

We’ve all seen instances – online if not in the material world – where a moderate Christian or Muslim has apologized for something one of their radical co-religionists has done and said “we’re not all like that.” And our response, silently if not openly, is “you don’t have to tell me – go tell them!”

Paganism is perhaps the biggest of big religious tents. It has room for a wide diversity of beliefs, practices and opinions. It is a new religion (or religions, if you prefer) and its boundaries are not well defined. Most of us like it that way.

But there are times when we must pick up the Sword, draw a line and say “this is part of our community and that is not.” This is one of those times. Bigotry, hatred and prejudice based on gender and gender identity is not and cannot be part of Paganism.

The Tale of Gwion Bach

The Tale of Gwion Bach, told as the Story for All Ages at the February 5 Denton UU Sunday Service on "The Cauldron of Transformation."

Thanks to Jake Jacobson for the video editing.

Heathen Women and My Christian Mother

Our mothers are our first and most important teachers.

Stephen T. Abell has a new essay on his “Letters from Midgard” blog on Patheos titled “Thinking of Heathen Women.” The subtitle is “the perspective can challenge the unprepared.”

Heathenry – the recreation of Norse and Germanic beliefs and practices – is different from most other Pagan religions, to the point that many Heathens don’t consider themselves Pagans. Heathens place strong emphasis on the bonds of family and tribe and on individuals’ obligations to their kin. They tend to be politically and socially conservative, as exemplified by Dan Halloran, a New York City Councilman who is a Theodisman and a Republican.

So while Wicca and other Pagan traditions tend to have a liberal feminist flavor, Heathenry – for the most part – does not. This can fire up debates on the role of women in Heathen societies, which Abell addresses in his essay. He points to the goddesses of the Norse pantheon, some of whom take “traditional” women’s roles and some who do not. Abell says “All are women to respect, value, and admire. None are for trifling with.”

What I find most interesting is Abell’s story of his mother, who was a speech pathologist. He makes it clear that she set a good, strong example for him of what women were supposed to be: “intelligent and capable.”

And this brings me to a story of my own mother and one of the most important things she taught me, even though I think it’s unlikely that was her intention.

My father (who died in 2000) and my mother (who recently turned 81) were in many ways a typical couple for their time. My father was the primary breadwinner, while my mother kept the house and took care of the children. She worked part time as an airbrush artist, doing portrait reproductions in the pre-Photoshop era.

My mother also took care of the family finances. My father would sign his paycheck over to her, she’d deposit it in the bank, pay the bills, do the shopping, figure out how much she could save for Christmas or for emergencies, and generally make sure we stayed in the black. One of my most frequent memories from childhood is watching my mother sitting at the kitchen table with the checkbook and a stack of bills, making sure everything got paid and figuring out what was left to spend. We were not poor, but we were a lot closer to poor than to rich. I always had everything I needed and not a lot else.

Though we never had any formal lessons, watching my mother taught me how to manage money.

Then one day, some time in the late 1960s or early 1970s, the small Baptist church we attended needed a treasurer. I knew what the church treasurer did. This was an independent church operating under congregational polity – we had business meetings once a month where the treasurer gave his report of income and expenses. The treasurer did for the church exactly what my mother did for our family. And so, being young and idealistic (and naïve) about leadership roles, I told my mother “you should be the new church treasurer.”

My mother laughed. And it wasn’t a funny laugh.

When I asked why, she said “the men of that church wouldn’t let a woman handle their money.”

I was confused – I genuinely didn’t understand. What did gender have to do with managing money? I knew there were two things involved with managing money. One was being responsible, and I knew my mother was responsible, because I saw her taking care of the bills (and everything else) week after week after week. The other thing was having some basic math skills. I was very good at math, but I knew most of the other kids who were good at math were girls. Clearly, gender had nothing to do with this.

The more I thought about it the madder I got.

As a rational person (from birth, if the other stories my mother tells are true) it made no sense that gender should be a barrier to a leadership role. Beyond that, this was my mother they were rejecting – how dare they assume my mother wasn’t good enough to manage the church finances?!

It offended me rationally and it offended me emotionally .

I didn’t understand the significance of that incident until many years later. I started becoming aware of the wider world in the early 1970s, at the height of the Women’s Movement. My mother didn’t say much about the Women’s Movement beyond a general agreement with their goals. She was too busy taking care of me and my brothers and the house and the finances and everything else involved with ordinary life.

But every time some man told a woman “you can’t play sports” or “you can’t run for office” or “you can’t be a minister” or “you can’t fight for your country” or any of the many “you can’ts” I heard in that era, I flashed back to the men of that church rejecting my mother and I got mad all over again.

Things have changed a lot in the past 40 years. Most doors are now open to all and society has begun to learn what I intuitively knew as a small child – gender is no barrier to any role that doesn’t require the raw size and strength of a professional football player. Women fill an increasing number of senior leadership roles in business and government, and a woman in such a role is rarely a big deal any more.

Yet we still see examples of patriarchal thinking, as with this week’s all-male Congressional hearings on contraception. We see women struggling for basic rights in many parts of the world.

And that still makes me mad.

Helpful Problems and Establishing Practices

I spent the last three days working on a long, philosophical, metaphysical blog post, trying to build a framework to better understand and explain some of my beliefs and practices. I finally got it to the point where I was happy with it yesterday afternoon, but when I went to upload it I ran into some technical issues. It was late in the day and I had a meeting at Denton UU last night, so rather than fight through the computer problems I figured I’d just take it home and post it using a different computer.

I stopped for a sandwich before going to the meeting and as I usually do when I’m eating alone, I started browsing on my phone. As I did, I came across an article that any other day would have been interesting but unremarkable.

This article pointed out something I left out of my long, philosophical, metaphysical blog post. And it wasn’t something I could tack onto the end. No, this was something that simply wouldn’t fit into the framework I had constructed. Either the framework is wrong or incomplete or a certain spiritual practice is meaningless – and I know from multiple first-hand experiences it is far from meaningless. I don’t know if I made an error in my foundational assumptions, if I made an error in logic, or if – as I suspect – I was trying to intellectualize something that can’t (or at least, shouldn’t) be intellectualized. I’m just glad I didn’t post it.

I’ll give it some more meditation and thought and see if I can work through this issue. It may yet make it to the blog, but for now, the lesson of all this is that computer problems aren’t always a bad thing.

At the same time I realized I never posted a follow-up to January’s call for a contemplative season. I said I was going to do this and I asked you all to join me, so I think I should share how it went.

The answer is that it went very well... for the first two weeks. I spent less time on the computer, more time reading and more time meditating. I performed several devotions that were very good. I reduced my distractions, didn’t miss them much and I filled that time with spiritual activities that were far more fulfilling.

And then I went out of town for the weekend. My new routine was upset: I spent two days doing nothing but driving and meeting. It was a good, productive, enjoyable weekend, but it left me no time for reading and little time for the other practices I was trying to start.

When I got home I tried to pick up where I left off. And I did, but the momentum had stalled – it took a lot more effort to do the things I wanted to do on a regular basis. I think I might have done better if I had taken a couple days off and then done a complete re-start.

So what did I learn from this contemplative season? First of all, breaking my mundane (in all senses of the word) routine is neither complicated nor painful. It just takes a little determination and a little effort to get started. Second, establishing new practices and new habits takes longer than two weeks. I’ve had some people tell me it takes 20 days, others have said it takes 30. 14 isn’t enough.

Most importantly, I got a lot out of the devotions. Some of them were as simple standing before my altar and reading from Hoofprints in the Wildwood. Some involved going outside and pouring libations. Others were more receptive, sitting quietly and listening with more than physical ears.

I frequently talk about the main purpose of religion being forming and strengthening connections. For me, devotions do a better job of strengthening connections than just about anything I can do by myself.

Devotions are the one thing I’ve continued from the season of contemplation, though I haven’t set up a regular schedule for them. I probably should – I schedule everything else, and if things aren’t on my calendar, they tend to get overlooked.

I haven’t given up on that metaphysical framework, but for now I think I need to concentrate on devotions.

Introduction to Pagan Religion Class

If you're in the North Texas area, please join us on Saturday, February 25 from 2:00 till 5:00 for our "Introduction to Modern Pagan Religion" class. We'll cover the beliefs and practices of our ancient ancestors, the origins of Wicca and other modern Pagan religions (and the differences between them), basic concepts shared by most Pagans today, the structure of group rituals and how to lead them, and the essentials of personal spiritual practice.

This will be the third edition of this class. It's intended for people who are looking for some live instruction to complement their solitary practice, those who are looking for something beyond all the Wicca 101 books, and those who are curious about modern Pagan beliefs and practices no matter what religion they follow.

Click on the image for a larger version of the flyer.

Evolution Weekend

Charles Darwin

This is the seventh annual Evolution Weekend and Clergy Letter Project, which asks ministers of all denominations to speak on the importance of evolution and the lack of conflict between religion and science. Though I am not clergy (at least not in the usual sense) I feel the need to add my voice to this project.

Last September I wrote on The Great Story of Evolution and why it’s important to us as UUs, Pagans and other religious liberals. I’m not going to revisit that essay – if you didn’t read it then or don’t remember it, go read it now. Instead, I want to talk about why the issue of evolution and the Clergy Letter Project is so important.

According to a Gallup poll in late 2010, 40% of Americans believe God (who of course, is Yahweh, the god of Christians and Jews) created humans in our current form about 10,000 years ago. Forty percent. This despite the fact that Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species over 150 years ago. This despite the fact you can look at gorillas and chimps (or for that matter, pretty much any mammal) and see a common ancestor with humans. This despite the fact that genetic analysis shows our relatedness to every living thing on the planet. The evidence supporting evolution is overwhelming.

For the 40% the evidence doesn’t matter. A few deny it, while most simply ignore it.

Most of us don’t want to be told we’re related to chimps and coyotes and cucumbers. We want to believe we’re “special,” that our opposable thumbs and bigger brains and capacity for speech make us not slightly different but categorically better. We want to believe we were made “in the image and likeness of God.”

When someone tells you something that confirms what you want to be true, you’re very likely to accept that it is true and discount or ignore any and all evidence against it. And when you believe one thing a source tells you, you’re likely to accept other things that source tells you without much questioning.

So when a fundamentalist pastor tells his congregation that evolution is a lie they intuitively accept it. And then they go on to accept what he tells them about the Bible being literally true, homosexuality being a sin, women being inferior (excuse me, “complementary”) creatures and “God’s plan” for a hierarchical, authoritarian society in this world and billions of people in eternal torment in the next world.

This whole worldview doesn’t begin with a denial of evolution, but evolution is a keystone that can bring it all down. If evolution is real then there is no historical Adam and Eve. If there is no historical Adam and Eve then there is no Original Sin, no need for sacrificial atonement, and the divinity of Jesus (which, of course, Unitarians have been disputing for centuries) becomes irrelevant. If evolution is real then the Bible can’t be literally true and all the ancient prejudices it confirms are reduced to just that – ancient prejudices.

Hardcore fundamentalists understand this. That’s why no amount of evidence will ever convince them that evolution is real – it would require them to change their whole worldview. But if the rest of the 40% can be convinced to examine the evidence then the hardcore fundamentalists will be preaching to an ever-shrinking flock.

Evolution doesn’t have to lead to atheism – if evolution is real then Christianity is still a perfectly valid religion. How we got here has no bearing on loving God and loving our neighbors. How we got here has no bearing on following Jesus and caring for the poor and the sick. How we got here has no bearing on building the Kingdom of God here and now.

That message is the purpose behind the Clergy Letter Project.

But it’s not just about winning debates and evangelizing the 40%. It’s also about ourselves.

When we accept the reality of evolution we commit ourselves to seeing things as they really are – not as we wish they were, not as we fear they might be. We commit ourselves to digging a little deeper and not assuming our initial impulses are right. We commit ourselves to understanding that all living things share a common origin, and ultimately, all living things share a common destiny.

Happy Evolution Weekend!