Earth, Water & Light

The Church has lost its connection with the Sacred. The Church’s inability to merge with the Stone People, or hear the Water voices in the mountains or around their property has been the terror of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the land and the indigenous people targeted for conversion. As forests fall, and churches a...rise in their stead a mourning ascends into the air. Do pastors hear the wailing? Does it tear at their souls the mourning of forests lost as churches are built to worship the Lord? How the religion of a tribe of wanderers became the monolithic totems of dominance over our Mother, the Earth, and our Mothers is a power aching to reclaim its relationship with her Mother. –Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Maura Garcia strolling the beach

Holly Stevens

"I have stopped identifying myself as Christian because the longer I live the more I see that the Church has made a mockery of Jesus' basic principles. I've been reading a book by Phillip Gulley that you might enjoy: "If the Church Were Christian."

Gregory E. Woods

"When I was a Christian I was attracted to the powers employed by the characters in the Bible. Jesus' powers over water, animals, demons, illness, and his relationship with his death, in particular, and in general, as it pertains to humanity. The magic of Moses, and the powers David employed in his words, loins, and life. The powers engaged to keep Jonah in the whale for three days intrigued me. What discouraged Christianity within me were the excepted commitments to mediocrity, and the uniform teachings steering Christians from delving into the realms of power Jesus lived in, and the deep Christian fears around death.

I learned an enormous amount as a Christian, and felt obligated to learn the roots of the religion I was born into. That is, at the least, respectful, and in the long run what good is it to leave the birth religion without being deeply rooted in it? Moving from one’s birth religion is an act of power. The ceremony and prerequisite thought, and ritual of transformation grips the core value in the roots of belief."

mountains Glacier Natl Park & Cedar near Avanche Lake by Moon Red Thunder

Marie-Helene Berglind

"For me religion is about understanding the heart, God's heart, the Messiah's heart, Francis of Assisi's heart, my child's heart etc and making relationships of love based on that understanding."

Holly Stevens

"One of my biggest stumbling blocks with the Church is the emphasis on belief rather than experience as the determinant of one's religious identity. It is quite a different paradigm to approach faith as an experiment, to live this day, this year, this life, as if Spirit exists, to see what comes of it. In the stories of Jesus, as he gathered his disciples, he never interrogated them about their beliefs. Instead, he did something much bolder: He said simply, "Follow me." His disciples risked their livelihoods and all that was familiar to engage in a radical experiment of faith, not knowing from the outset what would become of it.

Still, because I was rooted in the Christian tradition -- my beloved father was a kindly and compassionate Christian who sincerely tried to live out Jesus' commandments of love in his life -- my language and ideas are in part formed from the stories and myths of the Hebrew and Christian testaments. I still value them and feel some sadness that my own children do not see anything of value in them. I'm frustrated that so many people have come to equate Christianity with the definitions that fundamentalists proffer and see little to value in it, either. But I also know, or sense, from personal experimentation, that Spirit is to be found wherever one seeks Spirit, and in people of many different religious paths. You, Greg, are one dear friend in whose presence I can so deeply sense Spirit. I am grateful beyond measure for those individuals in my life who more fully than I live out this quest for Spirit in their daily lives."

Mereana Taki

Make not a temple in my name. These and many other words decry other than a direct relationship with all that is of existence (the sacred). Orthodoxies and dogmas and anything which stifles or fetters our free will to love where we may, to commune without fear, to live with Earth and Sky literacy must of necessity negate all Light seeking its Source for light itself is naught but pure vibration; our Hearts as eyes and Spirit as navigator the temple inwardly built and outwardly lived. In the living fullness is Truth (reality) baptised. No mediators are necessary as WE are direct descendants of all Light.