| I didn't see the show, but I ran across this interesting comment from
the Usenet today:
Article 10172
From: [email protected] (Pease)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.newage
Subject: Ruler, Father, Mother, Lover God
Date: 6 Jun 91 12:34:29 GMT
Sender: [email protected]
Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center - Greenbelt, MD, USA
Last evening I watch a Bill Moyers program "Spirituality and
Nature" on the local public TV station. The program centered
around a conference that was held last year about the role of
religion to environmental crisis. There were representatives
from Christianity, Jewish, Muslem, Buddhist, native american,
and others.
The program gave excerpts from their talks, interspersed with
Bill Moyers interviews with them, music and art that was also
part of the conference, and interviews with students attending
the conference. It made for a very powerful weaving of different
beliefs/perspectives on how God, nature, and man are seen.
I highly recommend this program.
One thread that has been discussed here is the view of God as
the Ruler, the Father, the Mother, or the Lover. A Christian
theologian said that she thought that the Christian religion has
done a disservice by it's view of God as a Ruler in that this
view separates God from that which he rules (man and nature).
The view of God as Father is not much better in that the Father
figure is not generally looked at as one who nurtures. She suggests
that the Christian religion needs to give up this ruler/paternal
view and move toward God as Mother and God as Lover views.
She talked with a group of 5 and 6 year-olds and asked them what
they thought the term "sacred" meant, and who or what did they
think was sacred, and how they treated something/someone who was
sacred. She says that the most common answer was that their mother
was sacred and that they would try to prevent anyone from hurting
her. She then felt that if we viewed God as Mother then we would
be more inclined to view nature (as God's creation) as something
that was sacred and thus we would try to prevent anyone from hurting
nature.
Phil Pease
My witty disclaimer - everything I perceive, through either sensory or
extrasensory means, has been filtered to such an extent that you had better not
attempt to attribute anything I say to anyone else.
|
| I taped this program last night and when I returned home after it was
done I watched about the first half or so of it. It's been excellent
so far. I really wish I had known about this weekend, because I
would've done everything I could have to attend.
The Dalai Lama was one of the participants as well as theologians/
representatives of Islam, Christianity, Native American, Taoist and
Judaism.
I really liked the Christian theologian, Sandy or Sally McVae. She was
the one referred to in the previous note, Mike, who talked about
expanding the language in which we talk about God to include mother,
lover, and friend. (Which is something I did long ago and has made a
tremendous difference in my life.)
But she also had another suggestion that I *really* liked. It was to
think of the entire universe as the "body" of God, rather than the
Kingdom. This struck such a chord of truth in me. The earth *is*
part of God's body.
Hearing this was like a breath of fresh air. It also brings God's
presence even closer to me. I've always thought of the earth as
sacred, but thinking and feeling it in this way deepens this feeling of
sacredness tremendously for me.
This program is also being repeated a few other times this month on
channel 2 and 44, although I don't have the exact dates and times.
If I can I'll look them up and post. For people outside of the New
England area, I'd advise checking your local PBS listing.
Karen
|
| Jim,
Yes, the show is due to be repeated a couple of other times this month
on channels 2 and 44. If I had the listing with me I'd post it, but
unfortunately I don't. I think you'll like the show, and it might
even be more exciting than a town meeting. ;-) :-)
Karen
|