Comment

Comment by shree c k p swamiji on April 27, 2011 at 12:48pm

peace for mind
peace for liveing being
peace for humanbeing
only right knowledge ,faith can support
good hearts alwys thought good will also see bright sight
blessings

Comment by Alona Diaz Dizon on April 26, 2011 at 6:54pm

I personally believe that with PEACE follows with other virtues, all men and women can create a little heaven on earth, whatever religious background they may come from.  For all to enjoy PEACE, UNDERSTANDING is the very key, Understanding leads to PEACE.  All preconcieved opinion that is not base on reason, we call "Prejudice" must be set aside, even if a person may come up with a valid reason, for the sake of PEACE ones must have tolerance, tolerance is an expression of LOVE to attain PEACE.  After all it all comes down to LOVE, with Love Earth can be Heaven too with all its imperfection.  Love is Peace, and Peace is Love.

Comment by Tor Myrvang on January 27, 2011 at 7:41am

Symbols of the months

January

February

March

April

May



June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Comment by Tor Myrvang on May 24, 2010 at 4:26pm

ABNER KNEELAND - A LITTLE-KNOWN PANTHEIST

I stumbled across an article by the Unitariarian Universalist Historical Society concerning Abner Kneeland, (1774 - 1844), who had the distinction of being the last person imprisoned for blasphemy in the United States of America.

The aticle is worth quoting in extenso:

Abner Kneeland (April 7, 1774-August 27, 1844), a pioneer evangelist and minister, was a powerful, if inconsistent, advocate of Universalism for a quarter of a century beginning with the Winchester Convention of 1803. His religious doubts and ever-changing theology posed challenges to his Universalist friends and colleagues. Ultimately he was led beyond Christianity. After he left the Universalist fellowship he became the last man to be convicted of blasphemy in the state of Massachusetts. Clinton Lee Scott wrote that Kneeland was "the most controversial character ever ordained to the Universalist ministry. He anticipated by a century opinions now held without opposition."

Born in Gardner, Massachusetts, Abner was the sixth of ten children of Timothy and Moriah Stone Kneeland. His formal education stopped after a year in an academy in Chesterfield, New Hampshire. At the age of 21 Abner moved, with his older brother Asa, to Dummerston, Vermont in order to follow their father's carpentry trade. While there he also taught school and compiled spelling books. In 1801, after joining the Baptist church in nearby Putney, he began to preach.

While still a Baptist lay preacher, Kneeland was converted to Universalism by reading the works of Elhanan Winchester. In 1803 he met Hosea Ballou, whose theology he shortly afterwards adopted. This discipleship was solidified by a personal friendship with Ballou that lasted, albeit with many vicissitudes, for three decades.

Kneeland began his Universalist career as an itinerant preacher in New Hampshire; he was ordained for this purpose as minister-at-large in 1804 with John Murray preaching the sermon. In 1805 with Ballou delivering the sermon, he was ordained again, this time as the minister settled in Langdon, New Hampshire. He served this church successfully for seven years, and was credited with the conversion of several orthodox preachers.

During the early years of his ministry Kneeland was a consistent participant in the affairs of the New England Universalist General Convention. He was chosen treasurer in 1809 and standing clerk in 1811. He served with Hosea Ballou and Edward Turner on a committee that compiled a new Universalist hymnal. Kneeland contributed 138 of the 410 hymns, most of which have been judged to be inferior. One of these confrontational hymns went, "As ancient bigots disagree, The Stoic and the Pharisee, So is the modern Christian world/ In superstitious error hurl'd." The convention gave the hymnal a lukewarm reception, declining to subsidize the printing.

Kneeland moved to a new church in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1811. Three years after establishing himself in this promising Boston area church, Kneeland suddenly resigned his pulpit, abandoned the ministry, and went into the dry goods business with his wife. The 1814 General Convention disapproved his leaving the ministry, and urged him to return. Although Kneeland claimed to be leaving the ministry for financial reasons, he was at that time also struggling with doubts about the authenticity of the scriptures and the authority of revelation. In this crisis Kneeland appealed to Hosea Ballou. The two friends entered into a friendly debate by correspondence, which was published in 1820 as A Series of Letters, in Defence of Divine Revelation; in Reply to Rev. Abner Kneeland's Serious Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Same. Kneeland was reassured by Ballou's arguments and returned to the ministry.

Kneeland was readmitted to fellowship in 1816 and settled at Whitestown, New York. However, his doubts about revealed religion quickly began to reassert themselves. He eagerly read any skeptical literature that he could find, including the writings of Joseph Priestley. Although Kneeland's colleagues in central New York were impressed with his energy and personal presence, they expressed doubts about the content of his preaching, which one described as dry and metaphysical and the other materialistic and untrue. Such contradictory assessments of his ministry exist to this day.

In 1818, Kneeland was called to the Lombard Street church in Philadelphia, where he alienated some parishioners with his claim that he had the right to interpret the church's articles of faith in his own way. Nevertheless Kneeland's Unitarian and ultra Universalist theology generated sufficient interest in the community at large to more than compensate for the resulting defections.

During the Philadelphia years Kneeland was almost superhumanly busy. He published sermons and tracts, edited denominational and secular newspapers, compiled a hymnal, made a translation of the New Testament, and developed a new system of spelling. Kneeland also engaged in several public debates, most notably a four-day marathon contest with a celebrated Presbyterian clergyman, William McCalla, on whether Universalism is taught in the scriptures. In addition to these ecclesiastical and scholarly pursuits, Kneeland found time to help his wife with a new store and to serve as government inspector of imported hats. Around 1824 Kneeland met and embraced a new mentor, the utopian industrialist Robert Owen, whose skeptical religious ideas supplanted the remaining influence of Hosea Ballou. Before this new revolution in his thinking led to conflict with the Philadelphia congregation, Kneeland moved to New York City.

Although his ministry at the Prince Street church in New York, 1825-27, began as a summer pulpit exchange, it was afterwards transformed into a regular settlement. Kneeland did not tell the congregation the extent of the transformation in his thinking until early 1827, when full disclosure of his theological opinions divided the church in two. Kneeland and his supporters emigrated to form a new congregation, the Second Universalist Society.

The new society but forestalled the end of Kneeland's Universalist ministry. By 1829 he had offended the Second Universalist Society, primarily through his association with Frances Wright, an even more controversial communitarian than Robert Owen. He allowed her to speak in his pulpit when no one else in the city of New York would give her a forum. His freethinking public positions became so embarrassing to Universalists that denominational associations as far away as Maine were passing resolutions disowning him. In 1829 Hosea Ballou prepared a statement of voluntary suspension from fellowship, which he induced his friend to sign. The following year, on the basis of his renunciation of Christianity, Abner Kneeland was considered automatically disfellowshipped by the New England Universalist General Convention.

Abner KneelandIn 1831 Kneeland moved to Boston to become the lecturer of the newly formed First Society of Free Enquirers. He spoke to over two thousand people at gatherings on Sunday mornings at the Federal Street Theater in Boston, and to as many at his Wednesday evening lectures. In that same year he started his own newspaper, The Boston Investigator.

In his Philosophical Creed of 1833 Kneeland declared "I believe . . . that God and Nature, so far as we can attach any rational idea to either, are synonymous terms. Hence, I am not an Atheist, but a Pantheist; that is, instead of believing there is no God, I believe that in the abstract, all is God; . . . it is in God we live, move, and have our being; and that the whole duty of man consists in living as long as he can, and in promoting as much happiness as he can while he lives."

On December 20, 1833 he printed a letter he had sent to the Universalist editor Thomas Whittemore stating his differences with his former religious affiliates: "Universalists believe in a god which I do not; but believe that their god, with all his moral attributes, (aside from nature itself,) is nothing more than a chimera of their own imagination."

For this statement Kneeland was accused of being an atheist and underwent five trials on charges of blasphemy. In his defense Kneeland argued grammar and punctuation with the court. He pointed out that since there was no comma after the word "god" he was only saying he didn't believe in the Universalists' conception of god. He also argued theology, trying to make it clear that he was a pantheist, not an atheist. He claimed he had the religious right to be either.

But the court would have none of it. The prosecution portrayed his blasphemy as part of a pattern with his social thought. They were, in effect, trying him not just for his theology, but for his politics. For Kneeland had not only denounced the conservative influence of religion on society, but he had called for equal rights for women and equality of races. He had suggested women keep their own name and bank accounts. He had spoken out in favor of birth control, divorce, and interracial marriage. The prosecuting attorney for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts warned the jury that if Kneeland were not punished, "marriages [will be] dissolved, prostitution made easy and safe, moral and religious restraints removed, property invaded, and the foundations of society broken up, and property made common."

Kneeland spent sixty days in the Boston jail in 1838. William Ellery Channing put together a petition for his pardon based upon the principles of freedom of speech and press, which was signed by many prominent people, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, George Ripley, William Lloyd Garrison, and Bronson Alcott. Kneeland's old friend Hosea Ballou was not one of these. Ballou did visit him in jail, though he provided more argument than comfort.

After emerging from jail, Kneeland moved to Iowa, and started a small utopian community he named Salubria (near present day Farmington). It did not continue long after his death in 1844.

In becoming the last man jailed for blasphemy in America, Kneeland contributed to the cause of religious freedom. He made it so embarrassing for the powers that be that though the blasphemy law is still on the books in Massachusetts, and there are similar laws in force in several other states, the authorities have never charged, tried, sentenced, and incarcerated another person for this supposed crime.

Further information is found in the Wikipedia entry on Abner Kneeland:

Under the colonial charter of Massachusetts, blasphemy was still a crime, albeit one punished extremely rarely. However, perhaps because his other views inflamed the judiciary, Kneeland was charged with having violated the law. The final trial was held in 1838, five years after he had published the statements that caused the upset in the first place. Kneeland was convicted and served sixty days in prison. He was described by the judge as "a cantankerous and inflexible heretic."

In matters of religion, Kneeland became more and more disenchanted of religion handed down from some prophet and enshrined by tradition. He disdained societal mores, preferring naturalistic and personal quests for truth.

Kneeland believed in equal treatment for all people, both under the law as well as by society. Kneeland applied this even when religious scripture would seem to indicate different roles. This included support of such controversial ideas as divorce rights for women, married woman keeping their own names and property, and refusal to condemn miscegenation (now known as interracial marriage). Kneeland was also in favor of birth control.

Best wishes, Tor

Comment by Tor Myrvang on May 23, 2010 at 3:37pm

THE MAN WHO PLANTED TREES

Dear all,

The Pantheist author Jean Giono published the short story 'L'homme qui plantait les arbres' in 1953.

It is the story of the shepherd, Elzéard Bouffier, and his long and successful singlehanded effort to re-forest a desolate valley in the foothills of the Alps in Provence throughout the first half of the 20th century.

The story was animated by the Canadian film-maker, Frédéric Back. The film adheres faithfully to the text of Giono’s short story and is available on DVD and on YouTube in Italian, as well as in French and English.

The film is about 30 minutes long and is divided in to three parts on YouTube:




With best wishes, Tor

Comment by Tor Myrvang on May 21, 2010 at 3:56pm

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF SAINT FRANCIS


Dear all,

In connection with the 2010 Peace March from Perugia to Assisi, in which I participated on Sunday 16 May, I set out the day before in order to have ample time to prepare for the March and to look around Assisi, which I had not visited for some twenty five years.

I had booked into a hotel in Bastia for two nights, but on arriving there at about 10.30 on Saturday morning, I was told that my room would not be free before 2.30 PM.

I decided to visit the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli, which is about half way between Bastia and the old town of Assisi, and to have lunch in the area, before returning to the hotel.

The basilica is a huge Renaissance church, which encloses in an area beneath its dome, the tiny church known as the ‘Porziuncola’, which Saint Francis restored with his own hands and the help of his companions in the early 1200s, when he was still in his twenties. The original community, which adhered to an extremely simple style of life, was housed in huts near the little church. It was in one of these little huts that functioned as a shelter for sick friars, that Francis died on October 3 1226 at the age of 44 years. The hut has been transformed into the ‘Chapel of the Transitus’, and is incorporated into the basilica. To Francis, everything was holy and he calmly welcomed Sister Death.

Franciscans commemorate the death of Saint Francis all over the world on the night of 3 October with the ritual of the Transitus. This draws on the accounts of Saint Francis’ death by his contemporary, Fr. Thomas of Celano, and by the later Saint Bonaventure. In the last days of his faltering dictatorship, Ferdinand Marcos invited a group, who belonged to the Third Order of Saint Francis, including my mother-in-law, to Malacagnang Palace to re-enact the death of Saint Francis. My mother-in-law recalled that the President was visibly moved. I have always thought of this incident as rather baroque and somewhat reminiscent of the death of General Franco, in a hospital room filled with religious relics.

A part of the adjoining monastery has been converted into a museum. There were two exhibits which interested me in particular. The first was a painting by painting by Francesco Providoni which was produced in 1692 at the time of the canonization of two Franciscan saints, Saint John of Capestrano and Saint Paschal Baylon:

John of Capestrano famously raised an army through his fiery preaching, which joined that of John Hunyadi, the Governor of Hungary and Voivode of Transylvania and raised the siege of Belgrade by the Ottoman Turks in 1456. Although already seventy years old he charged into battle with the troops, bearing a banner, which incorporates the Seal of Saint Bernardino of Siena, his mentor.

The second exhibit was a large hand-coloured print dating back to the mid-seventeenth century, which celebrates the Franciscan Order, the ‘Arbor Seraphica’:

After lunch, I went back to my hotel, put on my ‘Pantheists for Peace’ T-shirt, and made my way to the great Basilica of Saint Francis, where the saint is buried in the crypt, surrounded by the tombs of some of his earliest followers, such as Bernard of Quintavalle.

The Basilica is famous for its cycles of frescoes by early Italian masters such a Giotto, Cimabue, Pietro Lorenzetti and Simone Martini. The upper church includes some 28 large panels by Giotto depicting the life of Saint Francis, including the famous episode of the ‘Sermon to the Birds’ whom he addressed as ‘my little sisters’. Giotto’s fresco captures the spirit of Francis’ love and respect for all living beings:

The museum of the Basilica contains a precious Flemish tapestry dating back to 1479. It represents Saint Francis at its centre under a canopy surrounded by prominent Franciscans:

The iconography is derived from the familiar medieval depiction of the Tree of Jesse, in which Jesse, the father of King David is shown sleeping while a tree grows from his loins, in which are perched the ancestors of Jesus.

In this case Francis is shown at the root of a tree in whose branches are found on his right hand side Saint Elzear (a member of the lay Third Order), Saint Clare and Saint Louis of Toulouse. On his left, we find Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Saint Anthony of Padua and Saint Bernardino of Siena. At the base of the tree, the donor of the tapestry, Pope Sixtus IV, himself a Franciscan, is depicted with Saint Bonaventure and Pope Nicholas IV on his right hand side, with Pope Alexander V and the theologian Peter Auriol on his left.

The richness of the tapestry demonstrates how far many of the conventual Franciscans had strayed from the principles of poverty and simplicity preached by Saint Francis. A long-lasting controversy on the subject raged throughout the Middle Ages. A central part of Umberto Eco’s novel ‘The Name of the Rose’, is a discussion on the legitimacy of possessions or the renunciation thereof. Needless to say, Pantheists are more likely to sympathize with the Fraticelli, who regarded the wealth of the Church as scandalous, and were declared heretical by Pope Boniface VIII in 1296.

Assisi depends totally on pilgrimages and tourism and is very prosperous. It is paradoxical that all of its prosperity derives from the careers of its most famous son and daughter, Saint Francis, and Saint Clare, who renounced all worldly possessions to pursue a life of poverty and simplicity. The stages of their careers are the foundation of a veritable industry.

Thousands flock every day from their birth places, to the sites of reputed miracles, and to their final resting places. Dozens if not hundreds of shops line the narrow streets of the old city, selling souvenirs which range from inexpensive plastic objects, to hand-painted majolica tiles, often bearing the motto ‘PAX ET BONUM’, and large sculptures in wood and in bronze.

In order to escape from this frenzy of commercialism, there is no better place than the slopes of Mount Subasio. There, at some four kilometres to the south east of the city, Francis would retire to a cave, overlooking a steep gorge to pray and meditate as a hermit.

I devoted Monday morning to visiting this beautiful site, which resembles in many ways the sacred groves one encounters in Kyoto and in parts of China, which are also imbued with Pantheist spirituality.

Over the site of Francis’ cave, Saint Bernardino of Siena built a small friary which is called ‘L’Eremo delle Carceri’, the ‘Hermitage of the Cells’:

A low archway surmounted by the motto ‘UBI DEUS, IBI PAX’ (Where there is God, there is Peace) leads into a small courtyard. Going down a narrow flight of steps, one comes to Francis’ tiny cell, where he slept on a rough bed hewn from the living rock:

Leaving the cell, one comes to a gravel path which leads through the woods to a rustic altar, which consists of a slab of rock, surmounting a rock base, bearing a large cast iron symbol in the form of the Greek letter ‘Tau’:

Over the centuries, generations of pilgrims have scratched tiny crosses in the rocks surrounding the altar. I picked up a sharp pebble and scratched a small ‘Pi’ to record my visit, which was in nature something of a Pantheist pilgrimage:

No one knows for certain why Francis preferred the Tau symbol to the more usual four-branched Latin cross. It appears that for him it was a symbol of salvation. This may be linked to biblical references in Ezekiel and the Book of Revelation about placing a seal on the foreheads of the righteous who were to be spared from annihilation. It may also have been due to contact with members of the order of Saint Anthony who wore a black habit with the letter Tau (also known as St. Anthony’s cross) in blue.

At present simple wooden Taus on leather thongs are worn around the necks of millions of people as a sign of their following in the path of Saint Francis. This parallels the practice of a number of Pantheists in wearing a capital letter Pi on a chain around their necks as a symbol of their adoption of Pantheism.

Another notable feature of the site, is a modern group of three life-sized bronze statues representing Saint Francis lying on his back and gazing up at the stars, while Fr. Leo works out the position of the Pole Star by tracing an imaginary line from the constellation of Ursus Major, and the less erudite Fr. Ginepro points excitedly to the star, the symbol of constancy:

I returned to my hotel in Bastia at around 2.00 PM, to prepare for the return train journey to Sabina. Sister rain, as Francis called her, returned in abundance that afternoon, and Father Tiber overflowed his banks at many points along the way!

With best wishes, Tor

Comment by Tor Myrvang on May 20, 2010 at 5:34am

THE PEACE MARCH FROM PERUGIA TO ASSISI

Dear all,

This is a copy of my first posting to the PeaceNext social network, which was sent originally to the group Peace Possibilities, but which also has relevance in this newly created Group.

Assisi has a long history of ecumenism, and both religious and secular oriented people participate in the bi-annual Peace March. This year, the 23 kilometre long Peace March from Perugia to Assisi took place on Sunday 16 May. More than 100,000 people are believed to have taken part, from Italy and around the world, which set off from Perugia at about 9.00 AM.

In the vanguard were a group of boy scouts and girl guides carrying an extremely long rainbow-coloured flag. Some of them are pictured here passing through the town of Bastia, which is somewhat beyond the half-way point, at approximately 12.30 PM, which is where I joined the March:

The Peace Flag, which often bears the word “PACE” (Italian for Peace), was introduced in the very first Peace March in 1961, but participants carried a wide variety of other banners, including those of some 635 Italian municipalities, most of whose mayors were present, recognizable by their tricolour sashes. Many handicapped persons were pushed along in wheelchairs, and babies were pushed in their perambulators, while some youngsters zipped past on roller skates.

My own banner bore the Pantheist Seal and the slogan ‘PANTEISTI PER LA PACE’ on both sides It is shown here propped up against the door of the Cathedral in Bastia:

While the main theme of this year’s March was the protection and promotion of Human Rights, many participants had special concerns ranging from vegetarianism to freedom for Tibet. Participants from all over Italy and Europe approached me to find out about Pantheism, and I distributed a large number of leaflets on the subject.

After two hours of marching over fairly flat terrain, I reached the outskirts of Assisi, and the square of the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli whose dome may be seen in the background of this photo:

The float ahead of me was that of a group of young socialists, who were singing a lively version of the Partisan song ‘Bella Ciao’:

At about 3.00 PM, it began to rain heavily, and I took refuge inside a restaurant, where I was greeted by a group of participants from Rimini, who invited me to join them. When the rain abated, I got them all to sign my rainbow-coloured umbrella with a felt-tipped pen as a souvenir of the March.

From then on, the road became steadily steeper. Many were already making their way down from the walled city to the railway station, and I felt that I became something of a straggler. I persevered up past the lawn in front of the Basilica of Saint Francis where the following photo was taken:

At long last, I arrived at the Rocca Maggiore, just as the television crew were packing up. By that time, I had acquired a crochet rainbow-coloured cap, and had the distinction of being the very last participant to complete the March, so I felt entitled to a small gesture of triumph!

The next Peace March will be on 25 September 2011, which is the fiftieth anniversary of the original March. Hopefully members of PeaceNext will participate in large numbers!

With best wishes, Tor