I heard this somewhere (forget where) and thought I'd share it. This is as accurate a description as I've ever heard of my understanding of human nature. Others have commented on missing attributes to either wolf...this is a parable, if something's missing we should be able to deduce which wolf it would end up with.

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said: ‘My son, the battle is between ‘two wolves’ inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.’

The grandson thought about it for a minute, and then asked his grandfather: ‘Which wolf wins?’

The old Cherokee simply replied: ‘The one you feed.’

Is the underlying point of the concept of Original Sin that no one is purely innocent? Not, necessarily, that we stand condemned in front of eternity, but that we are flawed with the potential to do harm to others on some level?

By Doug Muder 3.30.09

What some people call faith—the kind of faith rightfully rejected by [Ambrose] Bierce and [Sam] Harris—is a way to prop up denial, not transcend it. We put aside uncertainty by claiming God’s certainty as our own. God’s plan is not a mystery to which we must adjust ourselves, it is our plan copied over in God’s handwriting. And so the Almighty becomes an agent carrying out our will rather than the other way around. Of course God will cure our loved ones’ diseases, save our factories, restore the value of our 401(k)s, or stave off disaster in some other miraculous way. How could S/He not?

[snip]

Our actions may succeed, they may fail, or they may be completely irrelevant when the hurricane comes. If you know that and act anyway, confidently and yet with total awareness that anything at all can happen—that’s what I’m calling faith. That—not denial—is what people need from a religion in hard times.

Arnold Eisen on Speaking of Faith (6-5-08?): Within the poetry of his language and thought, Abraham Joshua Heschel often used the word "embarrassment." "The cure of the soul," he wrote, for example, "begins with a sense of embarrassment, embarrassment at our pettiness, prejudices, envy, and conceit; embarrassment at the profanation of life. A world that is full of grandeur has been converted into a carnival."

I've been watching the latest delivery from Netflicks: Oddessy 5. Based on the pilot and one episode, it’s pretty good and I am enjoying it. There’s nothing to make a straight comparison. X-Files in that there is a conspiracy to find. Quantum Leap since they’re going back 5 years inahbiting their old bodies. That’s about all that comes to mind.

On a mission the 5 member crew of the space shuttle Oddessy witnesses the destruction of the Earth. An alien shows up shortly thereafter, as the crew is running out of air, and explains that he’s investigated other worlds for life (based on tracking radio signals) always showing up to find the planets destroyed. They are the first survivors that he comes across. He has the ability to send their consciousness back 5 years to seek out the forces that caused this destruction. The final hint: Look for them among their own.

They show up in their own lives 5 years earlier. One has the child and husband who were dead are now alive. One of them is now back in high school. Et cetera. But their influnce can cause tremendous changes: The man who was the flight director on their mission when the Earth was destroyed is killed in a car accident because he looked into something on the request of Chuck Taggert.

Unless the rest of the series tanks, this is yet another SF series that was torpedoed before it’s time.

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Speaking of Faith: Why religion matters and how talk about it (Krista Tippet) This is a little book, 232 5 x 6 pages, that will have to be re-read at some time in the future. Lot’s of little tidbits but nothing overarching stood out to me.

The first-person approach to religious speech is essentially about humanizing doctrine. It disallows abstractions about God, even as it takes into account of the fact that it is hard, and so intimate, to speack about this aspect of life directly. There is a theological idea that she says ilicits this same effect: Narrative Theology. St. Augestine’s Confessions, Sr. Helen Prejean’s Dead Man Walking, and Anne Lamott’s “salty religious memoirs” as examples of this idea of religous ideas shown in everyday experiences.

One of the resaons that I liked this book, one reason that she does this work on public radio: ”We have few models in our public life for religious speech that does not proselytize, exclude, anger or offend.” Throughout this book she pulls examples from her radio show of people talking about faith and belief and religion in meaningful ways without dehumanizing the other beliefs.

We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote

* The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

Twice now I’ve seen postings about people saying they can’t be UU because they don’t “believe the first principle.” (Worth & dignity of every person.) I’ll set aside whether the principles can be used as a test for membership (a concept which violates another section of the UUA Bylaws).

Instead I was wondering if this statement deals with the ultimate or basic worth of a person. To me it’s important because it means the difference between minimum standards of living for people and “All people have the same worth.”

Honestly, I support it as a statement of basic worth. Because I can’t find the idea that all people are of equal worth to be supportable in any philosophical or moral way. For example: Scott Peterson is not of equal worth to Jimmy Carter. But, under a basic worth understanding, Scott has a right to certain basic treatment in a civilized society (liberty not among them…).

What do you think?

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Dang...meant to post in the chalice_circle community...

I went to a church for the dedication of David's nephew today. The service was more of a charismatic bent than the normally staid style of the Unitarian Universalist traditions. that I'm used to. The minister (a self-styled Bishop?) chose as his reading Joshua 1: 1-9, then talked about making changes in one's life. There wasn't anything in his sermon that I found particularly informative or helpful.

But during his wrap up, when he was rambling about some things in general, he said something that may help unlock some meaning here. He said something about having to overcome obstacles, his exact words escape me. But then I thought about the selection a little more. It's about the time just after the death of Moses when Joshua takes up the reigns to lead the people across the Jordan river and into "the Promised Land." Three times he is instructed to "be strong & courageous."

To pull a quote out of antiquity (and paraphrase the minister): Nothing is permanent except change. And changes can be struggles. We have to struggle with the passing of the old ways or things (Moses). It may have been comfortable or worked for us but no longer is good for us. Then we have to struggle with a way through to a new we of doing or being (the river).

To do this we have to be strong & courageous. Because we have to confront obstacles and find ways around or through them if we are to change for the better and grow.

In a recent church newsletter my minister wrote: “’We are the only thing that stands between secularism and fundamentalism.’ The Rev. Ralph Stutzman spoke those words at a continental conference of Unitarian Universalist ministers a few years ago. The ‘we’ he was referring to is the liberal church. If what he says is true--and I believe it is --members of liberal congregations of all faiths bear quite a burden and have quite a responsibility.”

This took me a while to understand. At first I thought he meant we stand against secularism and fundamentalism. The rest of his column was about a group that was talking to schools, religious groups, politicians, or anyone who would sit still long enough to listen as they promote their vision as the “True Christian Vision.” Slowly is dawned on me that this paragraph can mean that we stand as a sort of…Third Way…in religion.

Not everybody is going to embrace the atheist philosophy of secularism nor is everybody going to bundle themselves in the stark theology of the fundamentalists. Liberal congregations, like UU congregations, offer unique ways to deal with finding meaning. For instance, ours is a path that is (in the words of one UU Covenant statement) guided by the universal principles of religion and morality as interpreted by the growing knowledge and conscience of mankind.

The burden and responsibility, though, is to stand up and be counted as that third way.

Interesting...though the quiz is limited to Christian theology. (I'm assuming that "Liberal" here is not a political identifier.)

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What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Classical Liberal You are a classical liberal. You are sceptical about much of the historicity of the Bible, and the most important thing Jesus has done is to set us a good moral example that we are to follow. Doctrines like the trinity and the incarnation are speculative and not really important, and in the face of science and philosophy the surest way we can be certain about God is by our inner awareness of him. Discipleship is expressed by good moral behaviour, but inward religious feeling is most important. Classical Liberal 82% Emergent/Postmodern 79% Modern Liberal 75% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 46% Neo orthodox 39% Charismatic/Pentecostal 39% Roman Catholic 36% Reformed Evangelical 21% Fundamentalist 7%

Unitarian Universalist heads Islamic investing group

At 26, lifelong Unitarian Universalist Blake Goud is already unlearning what he was taught in college. His career in Islamic finance is teaching him that the Western economic ideas he learned are not the only models of how to invest and spur financial growth.

Islam prohibits interest or usury (translated as riba), and it also prohibits risk or uncertainty (known as gharar). That means that many forms of conventional Western finance violate Islamic principles, [snip]. Islamic finance also prohibits investments in businesses that provide goods or services that violate Islamic principles. These include companies that offer alcohol, products containing pork, tobacco, gambling, or pornography.

The prohibition against interest, or riba, grew out of concerns that the wealthy can exploit the poor by giving them loans at high interest rates. Profit is allowed under the Islamic system, but it must be a profit based on assets—not on currency. “The closest analogy in the Western system is venture capital,” Goud explains, “because partners share in the risk and the profits of the business.” One half of the partnership might invest the capital, while the other partner would perform the work. Any profit would be shared equally between the investor and the laborer.

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It's all about mindset. Many Americans still feel that SRI Socially Responsible Investing) is a bad idea because the financial return is lesser than traditional investion (Socially Irresponsible Investing??). I find that I am attracted to ideas of balancing ethical concerns against strictly financial concerns. (We are warned that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil)