Preaching

I ATTENDED Presbyterian church this past Sunday,where my dear friend and fellow anti-Trumper, a lawyer turned minister, gave one of his characteristically excellent sermons. It seems a pity that there are usually no more than about ten people in the building when he "preaches", but, so be it.He's good enough to be heard by minions, however many that is.This is all well and good, but I have now missed my beloved Unitarian Universalist service several weeks in a row, and I am becoming rather eager to attend one. The sooner I decide about thsi coming Sunday, the more settled I'll be. I am leaning towards making the twenty mile drive to the UU service. I can certainly understand the need to organize religion. Otherwise, we're jsut a unch of individuals running around, each with our own version of reality, theologically. Scientifically, we can unite, and, ultimately, we must, for there is only one version of natural law. As far as we can tell so far, there is only one universe. Stay tuned. Can you imagine having only a single religion on Earth, a global religion, with all other religions being strictly prohibited? I think I can, and it aint pretty. Such a planetary religion would be well organized, perhaps, but stagnant, monolithic, decaying with age. Its difficult to actually imagine that, because, truth be told, we all have a little bit of Martin Luther in us. We all, ultimately, invent our own religions. We have no other choice. As Goethe said: "When I realized that everyone invents his own religion I decided to invent mine." As of now, this moment, I liek my pantheistic, Unitarian semi-Presbyterian Heinz fifty Seven approach, heavy on the Spinoza and Einstein, my religious role models, along with perhaps Jefferson. All religions have antecedents and lifespans. If and when humanity expands human habitat otuward from Earth and into outer space, it will almost certainly take its various religions with it.Perhaps our descendants will engender new religions, to fit their circumstances. One thing we know about Christianity: the Christian messiah appeared at the exact time when it was normal among Jews and throughout the Jewish culture to await and anticipate his arrival, and had been for awhile.This was certainly true of the Jews, and and, to some extent, of the Romans as well, who were as uaual open mnded on te matter, flexible, amenable to religious evolution, quite willing to embrace, to a certain extent, just bout any and every religious bandwagon that came rolling along the Appian Way. The old Roman Gods were losing their power and hold over the vast and varied Roman EMpire. The new Christian God, "the light", was spreading like contagion. Call religion whatever you want. Feel free. I know I do. I have many unflattering opinions about religion in general. So do many people, especially in the "west", where secularism and science are taking over. But it is equally important for everyone to never lose sight of the reality that for billions of human beings, at our current level of spiritual and intellectual evolution, religion plays, demonstrably, indisputably, an indispensable part. I can envisin, vaguely, a future human culture in which the traidtional, ancient, blood sacrificial religions, which evolved from ancient primitive cults, have evolved into a higher level of awareness of reality based on observable reality, which reveals to us a universe of incredible harmonious beauty, more than worthy of admiration and religious veneration.