Dear Earthlings,
We are having a family crisis here on planet earth and Church for Our Common Home, an untraditional church and counseling center, is offering you a care plan for Lent including ' the talking cure.' Please join us for the next six weeks on Sundays, at 5 pm (PST) on Zoom or in person, March 1st to April 5, for a conversation about our relationship with God. We will use the inspiration and guidance of Thomas J. Oord's awesome new book, God Can’t How to believe in God and love after tragedy, abuse or other evils. The first chapter is available as a gift on www.godcan’t.com . The following are six relationship issues with God that we will consider and talk about;
3/1 Chapter 1 God Can’t Prevent Evil
3/8 Chapter 2 God Feels Our Pain
3/15 Chapter 3 God Works to Heal
3/22 Chapter 4 God Squeezes Good from Bad
3/29 Chapter 5 God Needs Our Cooperation
4/5 The intertwining of these
5 relationship issues combined together.
Have you ever benefited from the talking cure? I'm sure you have whether you were talking to your spouse, a friend, a taxi cab driver or a complete stranger. Some have experienced this type of healing with a paid counselor or minister. We benefit from talking together to explore in relationship what we think and feel. I believe the benefit of talking to another is almost universal in order to heal broken relationships. We need the talking cure to heal our broken relationship currently with God and the Natural World of Plants and Animals. So, come join us and let's talk and share our feelings about God and the creation!
We will also consider the Six Principles of Biodynamic Farming during the next six weeks and intertwine them with the six relationship issues outlined above about God.We are well served to consider them together. It is not helpful to separate them for when we leave out one, we are leaving out the other for they are interconnected.. Exploring our relationship with God and the Natural World together invites us to explore how they are interrelated and how our thinking and feelings about one affects the other.
Many of us have been alienated from God AND have been alienated from the natural world as well. This began a few hundred years ago when we began to treat the natural world as if it had no feelings and as if God had no feelings and or did not exist at all or was an all powerful force that cared nothing for us. It has been our lack of mutuality with God and nature that has put us on a suicidal course destroying our own habitat and common home, Mother Earth. We have been like self centered teenagers, who are now noticing that we are suddenly in ecologic crisis. This crisis hopefully will lead us into to using the talking cure and a kind of family systems therapy to consider the rest of our families feelings and experiences due to the harm done by our lack of sensitively to the reality that when one member is sick, everyone in the family will suffer. Likewise when any member of the family begins the talking cure about troubled relationships, everyone in the family benefits
One of the best parts of being an untraditional church is that we are able to have discussions, talk and interact with one another more than most churches are able to do during worship. So the next six weeks we will talk about our thoughts and feelings about God AND about Plants and Animals and how they are interconnected- during our worship service!
Steiner's six Biodynamic farming principles include, plant diversity, crop rotation, animal life, composting , homeopathic solutions and life force. In 1924 a group of farmers went to Rudolph Steiner and asked for his help. They shared that their farms and land were sick and suffering. Rudolf Steiner offered lectures and gave us the six principles of biodynamic farming that infuse organic farming with the foundational philosophy and theology that we are an organic whole. This offers us a new metaphysics, not based on dualism and the Cartesian worldview, but on an organic worldview including Spirit, Life Force or God. Earlier, Descarte the called father of science said that the Earth had no soul and this falsehood has been internalized and has impacted all our family relationships! Steiner then postulated a reversal of this false hypothesis.
This Lent, I urge you to talk to others about the ways you may be angry at God or feel s/he does not even exist for you. Many of us have given up on God because when we were abused or suffered from tragedy, we had this bad and inaccurate idea that God could have done something but just didn't. The book God Can't challenges our dysfunctional thinking and invites us to bring our hurt feelings out into the open that we have felt that God has abandoned us. We begin with a God of love who CAN'T stop abuse or evil single handedly but needs the collaboration and cooperation of the human race and other creatures.
Why intertwine this conversation about our relationship with God with biodynamic farming? Because in both our relationships with God and our relationships with Plants and Animals we need to give up our Cartesian worldview that the world is meaningless and other life forms are without feelings or purpose. It is the spiritual dimension of farming and everythings else that we desperately need in our world today. Like process theology and ecofeminist theology, biodynamic farming embraces the metaphysical as well as the physical and asks us to experience the organic wholeness of Gaia aka Our Common Home Planet Earth. We are being called by the land, Gaia and by God to wake up to the suffering all around us and to acknowledge the need and possibility of a process to be in more loving relationship with everyone in our family - including God and our fellow earthlings of Plants and Animals. Our family is not just our human family but all earthlings that share one common home. Check out this great article about the regenerative potential of biodynamic farming for it is truly inspiring how biodynamic farming can actually heal the planet. http://www.churchforourcommonhome.com/biodymanic-farming Similarly, I believe when we heal our relationship with God this will be regenerative and have global effects of healing and wholeness for all earthlings and creatures. biodynamics.com/
On Easter we will celebrate our dedication to improving our relationship with God and the natural world. Six principles to understand healthy farming and six principles for healthy relationships with God promise to us to enjoy our celebrate of Spring and Hope. We are an internet and home church as well as a counseling center and know the practices of good family therapy and the talking cure can be used in all our relationships. Family therapy and the talking cure is the simple and straight forward care plan for a family in crisis and broken relationships. This Lent join our six week family care plan with the talking cure and explore some of the members of our family most often left out. Our vision is to create healthier relationships of mutuality and love.
Please join us at our temporary month to month rental home,1035 22 St. NE Salem, Oregon 97301. We plan to move into our new farm shortly but the exact dates keep changing.............. stay tuned.or join us on the internet Zoom, click link on church website.(If you have difficulty there is help available.)4/12 Easter sunrise worship, 7 am followed by a
CELEBRATION breakfast and Vegetarian Potluck immediately following service at the Mary Magdalene Café!
Love and blessings, Rev. Bonnie Tarwater Minister Church for Our Common Home Co-President of UUSCM https://www.uuscm.org/
Church for Our Common Home is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Call with any questions!Topic: Church for Our Common Home's Personal Meeting RoomJoin Zoom Meeting
Affiliate Community Minister of First UU Church of San Diego Church for Our Common Home | Rev. Bonnie Tarwater | (858) 248-5123
1035 22nd street NE Salen, Oregon 97301 revtarwater@yahoo.com www.churchforourcommonhome.com
