Our UU Society, not “church”, is a member of an interreligious justice organizing project, not going so well. Failure to swell.
Our U.S. Religious Right neighbors are not interested, perhaps actively disinterested, in taking beloved community with Us.
Our U.S. Religious Left and MainLine constituency is not interested, perhaps also actively disinterested, in taking beloved community with Them.
That becomes problematic when missioned to reduce irreligious trauma for all interfaith community organizers, and potential collaborative members.
So, our organizer staff thought about this, using systemic thinking/feeling skills, and decided to offer free NonViolent Communication Certification training on a zoom platform. While teaching communication skills, our healthcare case study and beloved community role play scenarios draw from our own economic and political systemic trauma experiences and our own irreligious disassociation from sacred Earth’s organic wellness polycultural history.
To this end, a staff member asked a gay white guy certified in Multicultural Community Mediation, Integral Permaculture Design, and Music and Movement Compassion Therapy to invite every non-professional, non-clergy constituent of all religious communities to a zoom discussion of challenging anthropocentric theological issues.
How Do NonViolent Communications Help Us, and Them?
Our first compassionate community project was to discuss why “love” and “integrity” are not synonyms, and then the eco-political advantages and disadvantages of reconsidering them as if they were synonyms when applied to what is sacred and what is organic, respectively.
That went fairly well for finding a common intelligence ground root of symbiotic sentience.
Then we moved on to more critical consciousness questions.
Many of us hope for life after death. What do all sentient beings hope for life after birth?
If your life after birth experience has been different than what you hope for life after death, how and why?
Have you ever felt an organic sense of belonging within sacred MotherEarth? A connected time and contented place? If so, when and why?
How do you describe peak sentient awareness? Post-peak consciousness?
Do you believe in your ongoing economic life after ego-death? Why and/or why not?
Do you believe in the transcendent power of gladness, joy, after birth? And immanent powers of badness, sadness, madness?
We found these reconnecting questions both challenging and comforting.
Then we realized, we all,
right and left,
male and female,
parent and child,
monotheistic and polytheistic,
monogamous and polyamorous,
yang and yin,
crown and root,
spirit and nature,
mind and body,
1 and 0 cobinary prime relationships,
also find these questions
sacredly uniting and organically curious
Sacred belonging and organic longing,
together
going deeper
toward analyzing feelings,
body sentient needs,
and conscious mind wants.
A popular House Meeting question “What keeps you up at night?”
Generated diverse responses:
need to pee,
horny,
need to clean up after taking care of horny,
need to pee again,
arthritis,
recovering from surgery,
traffic noise,
late night news,
late night TV,
late night lights,
late night…
We shared this with our nonviolent community mediator. S/he strongly supports open questions, and yet, for our critical Beloved Community health risk situation, perhaps a more focused question would be more useful. How about?
Which is more likely to keep you up at night?
a. sex life
b spiritual life
c. lack of a sexy spiritual and spiritually sexy life.
Some deeper one-on-one questions:
Why do we usually associate health with love and disease with hate, and not the other way around?
What would consciousness of “God the Monotheistic Father” lose by recognizing sentient awareness of “Gaia Earth’s PolyAmorous Mother”?
Do you believe all relationships work out for the bipartisan Win+Win systemic best for those who love interfaith community organizing?
What would you lose, and what would you love, if our dialogue resulted in a covenant including
We religiously associate health, well-being, and therapeutic values
with healthy democratic minds and organic bodies.
AND
We irreligiously dissociate disease, chronic anxiety, and traumatic disvalues
troubling anthropocentric minds and unhealthy capital-driven bodies.
We find that two opinions are better than one, especially when at least one of the two is less anthropocentrically toxic and more ecosystemically synergetic.
We are healthier Right and Left enlightened together
than falling disempowered Right v Left apart.

