As I mentioned before, summer is coming up, and I will have fewer responsibilities as the 2017-2018 school year recedes into the realm of memory and, if I am honest, a few nightmares. I have some ambitious goals for this summer and several of them are related to our humble meetup. But, before I get into that, let's do a wrap up for our first two meetings at our new location:
June 3rd, 2018 was our first time meeting at Earth Fare, and I think it went fantastically well. We had close to - later I was told more than - thirty people. Fantastic... aside from the fact that we may already be outgrowing the new location... on the first day... I'll return to that later on. The subject of this was basically, "newness." We talked a lot about the different directions in which our group could head, and a people had a few suggestions regarding this: 1) start with talk of lunch before the meeting, so that we don't hem and haw about where/if we're going to go anywhere once it's done. 2) Make a couple of announcements at the end of the meeting per what people are planning to do during the course of the upcoming week - if you'd like some company seeing a movie or going to an event, or if you'd like a few numbers to add in the even that you're doing something more community oriented.
We also talked a lot about charity and children. While our group has done some fantastic philanthropic work, we don't really have the numbers or money to really do some of the projects that some of the bigger and less insane (yes, I know that's a very sliding scale) churches do. We also talked about the discussed the fact that probably any organization that would have us along would see it as an opportunity to proselytize to us, which we would, in turn, have to expect. The simple faact of the matter is that what a lot of religious people do not realize is that by being Good without God, we're rocking the very foundation of what most of them believe and could easily be achieving that end ourselves. So many people have such a difficult time accepting the very notion that someone would be altruistic without the hope of some divinely given gift. They've been taught that over and over again, that that is how people work.
On a very related note, with children, we talked about the value/dangers of exposing the young to different religions. Critical thinking, questioning, and educating oneself before concluding anything are all valuable as life skills. A few people suggested that to force a child away from religion would be an indoctrination of its own kind. However, allowing a child's friends to dictate truth by popularity is at least equally damaging. So, we talked a bit about what potential resources and activities could be provided by our group for families with children - and, if I am honest, I don't know how much we came up with. We talked about the idea of bringing in some local religious rabbis, reverends, priests, shamans, etc. to have a very nerfed discussion with the group and the possible boons and banes that that could create. Again, we didn't really come to a conclusion (correct me if I am mistaken), but I think this warrants further attention. There are a lot ways that that could turn out well (better understanding within the community, more of a partnership for things that we want to achieve that happen to be in line with the ideals of local houses of faith, etc.) or terribly (shouting matches, awkward silences, Kia converting all of our dogs to Southern Baptist style Christianity, etc.)
This brings me to what I wanted to talk about with regard to our last meeting, but before I move on to that, I wanted to include links to a few of the things we talked about on the third:
Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell
Lamb
On June 10th, we talked about this (I copied and pasted it from the pre-meeting e-mail):
Aaaaannyyyyyway, I was thinking that this Sunday, we'd talk a bit about the "how do you interact" piece upon which we have touched so frequently. There are some specific facets of this that I'd like to address, but they are all connected. So instead of listing them, I'll give you a scenario:
Kia and I went to the Guilford County Commisioner's meeting last night to Oliver Twist them into funding the public school budget a little more. In a room where the Ten Commandments sit above the elected representatives of the local government, Kia and I sat while a good few of the citizens stood to be led in prayer. Not everyone did, though. Shortly after that, they did the quasi-religious Pledge of Allegiance. By the time this was over, Kia was fuming so badly that I halfway expected her to pull one of these and be escorted from the room. And, I'd have felt guiltier than OJ Simpson's use of the conditional tense because she'd have been right - I think.
But, that brings something larger into the picture. I don't think that even the most Panglossian/Pollyanna view of society can get around admitting that there's a lot of stuff out there that needs to change, and the only way it can change is with numbers. So, we march with people with whom we do not fully agree on every issue. A little something like this with the added bonus of the fact that you're not even a herder; you're a cat. At what point though, do you have to split with the others and say, "Sorry, my being a(n) freethinker/atheist/agnostic is more important to me than X"? It's going to be different for everyone, and this is as important a topic as it is complex. But, and we have done this before at the meet ups, perhaps we could cobble together a heuristic that makes a difficult decision a more easily navigable one. Or, maybe, it's fallacious to think that because it's too situationally dependent with too many moving parts...
The two sides that were the most presented were that it can feel like we ourselves are being disingenuous or even immoral to not take a stand when no one else is - this is counterbalanced with the fact that you can't die on every hill - to borrow Ann's words. I mentioned that as far as a heuristic goes, it might be advantageous to take stock of priorities. I am a lot more worried about sitting next to a hungry tiger than maybe being a little thirsty - deal with things in accordance to their severity. Joe Crawford brought up the idea of having material goals that we can check off as far as what we're working toward: is what I am doing going to have some tangible result (sway a vote, build something, feed someone), or am I just basically hanging out with a bunch of people who have an imaginary friend?
People shared experiences and possibilities as far as good work that can be done with allies in the religious community - several people (I think Cheryl mentioned it first) talked about the possibility of pairing with someone like Rev. William Barber for the Moral Monday Movement. Bob talked about working with Habitat for Humanity and the varying degrees of religiosity therein. Preston talked about Dr. King, his power as an orator, his effect on history, and the relationship of these things to his having been a reverend.
INTO THE FUTURE
So, I plan to keep this page better updated, and, maybe - just maybe, I'll try to make it a bit prettier. Over the summer, I'd like to organize a few things like hiking trips, more drinking skepticallys, and some more outreach with the IRC. Please, e-mail me if you have any suggestions. For the time being, here we go:
I will keep you posted and continue posting more updates on here.
Lastly but not leastly, Sunday the 17th - let's have a topic-less talk! We've done two meetings in a row with specific ones. Let's just make some jokes, keep each other company, and air grievances! See you Sunday!!!
love,
Rev. Sean Bienert
