Co-Creating New Community
Greetings tribe. I'm here with another book from this amazing course, Queer Theologies at New York Theological Seminary, being taught by Dr. Or Rafael Rey as III. And this book is called Religion in the Making by Alfred North Whitehead. This book spoke to me in a different way, and I just want to share that. And what I'm about to highlight is what is amazing to me right now in this moment, but it does not take away from every other page in this book
Aaron, that was a very interesting reading. Ritual and emotion is an interesting part in Whiteheads reading there because they're kind of hand in hand. Right. First of all, there's a pattern that happens which he calls the rituals. And that pattern is created just seemingly almost out of nowhere. It seems because he wants to equate it to like, everything. Right. Birds have habits. But then they start performing these habits regularly. Right
I know we're still arguing over religious views, monotheism and what's one and what's right and all these things. But I think that someday we're going to be able to really navigate this issue more in depth because we have too much distractions in front of us to see that the very basic principle of building community is what is being in question. How do we create new community that can organically, critically think?
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:35
But I think that a lot of people are mesmerized and hypnotized by the ritual of religion, and that becomes sort of their by rote behavior inside their religious community. I think there's so much more to this, and I know you guys are deep into this in your class, and I'm not assuming I know the full context of this conversation, but it's been so nice to be invited into it because you're talking on Swell
Welcome, Deborah. It's so good to have you join this dialogue. But I would also have to be so bold to say that this dialogue has now become indecent because of of the question that you raised like, what does awareness mean? Does that mean you were free? Basically, as I think, what you're asking, can religion thrive without free thought? These are all indecent thoughts when you really think about it
We see religious fanaticism and maybe fundamentalists or Conservatives, and they have their right to think and believe the way they do. I think Whitehead himself and I would agree with him. This is why his book is called Religion in the Making is that we're always making religion. He defines religion as both something that is done in the community. But he says religion is what we do with our solitariness. So there's this back and forth movement, there of our communities and how they affect us
We're going to flaunt it if you will, and show ourselves so that we can be noticed and made aware. Right. This idea of awareness, I think Aaron is onto something there and moving back to how I connect that with Alfred North Whitehead and his book Religion in the Making. It forces religion to recreate itself. Religion is not made to just hold on to the old ways we've heard that. I think religion is if we take it in the basic terms that's what it is
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:16
It's not like you have to go and ask a priest or a Rabbi to bless your life. So I think I'd like to offer to this conversation the idea that true ritual is gratitude for being awake and alive and aware. So for me in that moment with my nephew, he brought my awareness that ritual and awareness of divinity is being in gratitude for every moment of your life. And that's a beautiful way of being