Pantheist organizations

The Pantheist organizations are World Pantheist Movement (WPM) and Universal Pantheist Society (UPS). WPM is larger and more dominant, but I prefer UPS. WPM is more atheist, while UPS is open to all types of Pantheists, including the more spiritual and mystical types. Some links for UPS:

Universal Pantheist Society web site
Universal Pantheist Society Facebook group
Universal Pantheist Society Yahoo group (This group can be very chatty. If you don't like getting a lot of e-mail, you might want to adjust your settings to read messages only on the web site or to receive them as a digest.)
Universal Pantheist Society on Ning

Differences in responses to car accidents

Two stories I heard about how people reacted to car accidents:

1. In Florida, a woman rear ended a car that was stopped for a red light. When the two drivers got out and met each other, she said, "Why did this happen to me? I'm a Christian." My thinking is if she's a Christian, her concern should be for the welfare of the driver whose car she just hit.
2. In Woodstock, NY, after a collision, the two drivers got out and hugged each other. That sounds more like the kind of town I'd like to live in.

Gratitude

Last night I lay on the living room floor listening to music, and I felt so fortunate. I was there, safe at home, not having to worry about food, shelter, or the threat of violence. I may not be energetic, but I was not in pain or uncomfortable. I have my hearing, so I am able to enjoy music. How fortunate I am to have my hearing! I've listened to those CDs many times before, but suddenly I was noticing things about the sounds of the instruments that I never noticed before, and it was beautiful!

Quakerism and Pantheism

Quakerism and Pantheism seem like a natural fit to me. The fundamental idea of Quakerism is that of God in everyone. In Quakerism, we serve God by treating all people with love. Pantheism just extends that to the universe. Not only do we treat all people with love, but we also care for the environment. For me, there is no external heaven or afterlife, it's all right here, right now. The world is a wondrous place.

Too much

I knew that going to the festival would be too much for me. I planned on having two days to rest afterwards. Well, a day and a half. But then I was supposed to be better after that. That's when I get frustrated, when I don't recover on schedule.

When I went back to work on Wednesday, I thought I was recovered. That lasted for about the first two hours that I was back at work. The rest of Wednesday and on Thursday, I had trouble doing my work. Friday and Saturday weren't so bad. I thought I was recovered. I thought Sunday would be better than Saturday. It wasn't.

Embrace the mud!

It rained a lot during the Clearwater festival, and when it stopped raining, the ground was muddy. The ground that we had to sit on when watching musical performances. Most people had chairs. I didn't, but that was okay, because I had rain pants. As I was sitting there in the mud, someone walking past me said, "The thing about mud is once you step in it, the rest of the day is a breeze."

It reminded me of something from when I went backpacking a number of years ago. The trail was muddy. My companions and I were stepping carefully on the least muddy spots. Another hiker came through, trompy merrily through the muddiest spots. He advised us "Embrace the mud!"

What these two stories symbolize to me are that if there is something that I'm avoiding doing, sometimes the best thing to do is to plunge in and get it over with.

So Heavy by Susan Werner

In each verse of "So Heavy" by Susan Werner (http://www.susanwerner.com/music/lyrics/mwsn_track1.html?KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=450&width=350) someone walks away from his or her life.  But we can't walk away from our bodies.