I admit that my last post might have shocked some folks. I talked about leaving religion for a better world. What I didn’t say is that I was leaving ritual, or the truths I find in the stories of our spiritual teachers, or leaving the practice of being moral or ethical in a broken world. But, many who read that post just thought I was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I wish folks would actually breathe when they read, because what I’m interested in is not simple dogmatic formulas, but rather an orientation that creates conditions for us to become human with one another, again. What I want is for all creation to flourish.

I’m interested in becoming.

And, there is so much good stuff in our varying religions that I hope we can find ways to truly build a pluralistic society where difference becomes the norm. When we privilege difference, we privilege multiplicity. And, in this multiplicity we can learn to be a new humanity, but we can’t do that without divesting from the bullshit that keeps us weighed down in the muck and the mire of today’s broken world.

I worry that we can become one out of many, because empire religion has so turned the narrative into one that encompasses supremacy culture and fights to keep the status quo as the reigning norm. So, can we become one out of this reality?

The other question I have is whether we can build a network of solidarity to truly dismantle supremacy culture and chart a new humanity where we flourish; where there is enough for everyone; where violence is not longer the norm. These might be simplistic, but we are in a moment where violence shows up in a multitude of ways and is harming all of us. Just yesterday, I witnessed the pain and suffering of a white man who refused to call me by my preferred pronouns and wrote disparaging things about me from reading my last post. I worry that the ways we don’t encourage white men to deal with their pain and grief and suffering will cost us this new vision of humanity.

That’s part of the reason why I’m writing publicly. To encourage us to come together across lines of deep difference and seek to become one, become whole. Not to become singular, but to become whole.When we become whole, we create conditions for a network of solidarity to become reality. That is the foundation of becoming for me. I hope you see the vision of a new humanity emerging in your own community. It starts with the stories we tell ourselves and knowing he truths about our stories. We’ve got to chart a new vision for humanity, so that we survive ourselves.

Can we become the humans we are called to be?