Being Worldly

Dear Folks,

This week finds Bill continuing his travels in Scotland and he has added some fascinating new posts to his Ordinary Life blog titled "Sacred Spaces in Scotland".  You can click the link to the left to see Bill's latest posts and to follow Bill's journey over the coming weeks.

This last Sunday, Ordinary Life was gifted with a most interesting and dynamic speaker, Dr. Jill Carroll.  Jill titled her talk

Being Worldly


The premise of Jill's talk is that religion is a human cultural product, and since it is man made, the study of religion is more about doing anthropology than theology, that is, we learn much more about the nature of humankind than we do about the nature of God when we study religion.

Jill called upon the writings of Feuerbach, Freud, and Nietzsche to show that the God(s) that we worship are a window into ourselves and that the characteristics of our gods are a reflection of our deepest needs, fears, and wants.

Jill concluded her talk by asking, "If the study of religion is really doing anthropology, then where do we look to do real theology," and the answer is that we find the true nature of God in nature itself, from the vastness of the cosmos to existence of life in every form on our planet. Nature is not a human creation and humans cannot control it.  And although we might try to put ourselves above it all, the reality is that we are a part of nature, just like everything else, and to be truly connected to that nature in every way, to embrace our existence as an animal and part of all life, is what it means to be "worldly".
 
The text of Jill's talk, which closely follows her Sunday presentation can be found in PDF version here.

The full audio of Jill's talk can be found below.

Once again, I close with the words of Bill... Be well and much love.  See you next week.

Wayne Herbert