To bring our ethos into daily life, we practice a number of rites and disciplines that make our religion a living part of ordinary experience.
Our Rites
We have nine rites that we are enjoined to perform. Some are to be done on a daily basis, and some are rites that may only be done occasionally or perhaps not at all. They are designed to infuse our lives with meaning by taking a piece of “the good life” and subjecting it to intentionality. We believe that when we act with intention, then the outcomes typically turn out better than when we are going through these same activities without any direction.
One important thing to note is that these rites should not be understood in an individualistic sense. They are relational rites, meaning they are the ties that bind members to each other. They are our ways of fostering interdependence. They often read very differently when you interpret them in an individualistic kind of way. So, as an example, take our fundamental rite, the rite that is meant to be practiced daily: the Rite of Reflection. “Our duty to learn and think rationally, as well as to live ‘the examined life.’” If we interpret this in an individualistic way, then we might think that this is a sort of generic call to self-improvement. But this would not be the right way to interpret the rite. None of our rites, including the Rite of Reflection, are individualistic pursuits. Although learning and reflecting is often performed in solitude, it is intrinsically a communal obligation because knowledge is communal. To think irrationally or selfishly is to break faith with your community; to think without accountability to the community is to declare oneself sovereign over the community. So, although most reflection is done in an individual setting, it is always performed with the understanding that it is the performance of a relational obligation.
The rites represent important parts of the good life, namely:
- The Rite of Reflection: Our duty to learn and to think rationally, as well as to live “the examined life.”
- The Rite of Communion: Our duty to seek mythos, ethos, and telos in community. No one is an island.
- The Rite of Congress: Imbues our erotic lives with meaning.
- The Rite of Joining: The Community recognizes and celebrates romantic relationships.
- The Rite of Abortion: Honors the choices of those who use reflection in family planning.
- The Rite of Welcoming: Greets new members into our community
- The Rite of Transition: Celebrates choice in our gender and sexual identities.
- The Rite of Fellowship: Honors philia love, the love between friends.
- The Rite of Comfort: Honors our duty to provide care to others as well as to ask for care when it is needed.
How are these rites to be performed? Perhaps unsurprisingly, they are to be performed relationally, though the practice for each specific rite will vary. Joining, for instance, may look very much like a traditional “wedding” ceremony with an officiant who is officially a member of our “clergy.” But I stress that our “clergy” are just normal members of our church who have been selected by their communities to represent the church in the broader society. Within the Church, pure egalitarianism is, and must be, the perpetual norm. So these rites should be thought of as duties of care that we owe to each other. As another religion often says, we should “Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.” (Romans 12:15) They are a reminder that life is sacred, and the things that give life meaning should be shared relationally with each other. What that looks like, though, will depend on each local community’s needs and will be decided by those members. But they are a reminder not to isolate ourselves behind the shield of the sovereign self, but rather to share our lives with others.
Our Virtues & Practices
These are two different things, but they are inextricably linked. Virtues are the inner qualities that we hope to cultivate whereas our practices are the attached behaviors that express those virtues. Often, the practices can help illuminate what the virtues consist in. Virtues are bolded, whereas the explanatory practices are in regular text.
- Openness: we strive to be open to others, to leave a place for connection and warmth. We practice honesty, but not just the honesty that does not lie, but rather the honesty that invites others in. We consider that kind of honesty a gift to one another. To be open is to make ourselves known, and to make knowing others safe.
- Multiplicity: we honor diversity in all its forms. Multiplicity reminds us that life unfolds through variation. So we practice curiosity and appreciation. We seek to understand, not to judge. If we might borrow a line from Star Trek, we value “infinite diversity in infinite combinations.”
- Justice: For us, justice is relational. It concerns how power moves between people. We therefore side with the vulnerable over the powerful, seeking to balance what domination distorts.
- Cooperation: This one may be both a virtue and its own kind of practice. We see cooperation as the opposite of domination and we view ourselves as co-authors of our own reality. Cooperation therefore becomes the context under which humans can exist sans coercion. We practice consent in all things, for even the smallest violation of consent endangers trust.
- Empathy: We seek to connect with others and understand them. So we practice listening, we refrain from making snap judgments, and honor each other’s strength without denying pain.
- Rationality: To reason well is a moral duty, not a mere preference. We proportion belief to evidence and submit our convictions to healthy epistemic scrutiny. To believe irresponsibly is to break faith with one another.
- Ecological awareness: although we practice humanism, we also realize that human lives depend upon a thriving ecosystem. So we seek to understand and appreciate the other life forms with which we share our world and practice harm reduction in how we deal with non-humans.
- Relationality: We are neither atomized individuals nor subjects of hierarchy. We view humanity as an interdependent web of equals, and we strive to interpret all social norms through that lens.
- Joy: Life, we believe, is meant to be lived. So we seek to infuse everything that we do with joy. Joy is not an indulgence. It is proof that life can still be good.
- Irreverence: It might seem odd for a religion to celebrate irreverance, but we truly do. It’s our own form of iconoclasm. There is nothing so sacred that it is beyond question. We are not interested in creating idols. Idols are meant to be broken.
- Humility: We take the Socratic insight that true wisdom begins in ignorance. We value uncertainty over false certainty. We practice the renunciation of certainty so that curiosity might bloom and wisdom might grow.
- Dignity: Although we are a non-theistic religion, that does not mean that we reject meaning. We dignify that which has value. We name that dignity wherever we encounter it: within ourselves, within others, and within the world.
Our Celebrations and Festivals
Although members are free to recognize any holidays that they find meaningful, there are a few holidays that are so widely treasured that they have come to enjoy semi-formal sanction by our community. For the most part, we treasure multi-day festivals. But we do celebrate one single-day observance. Non-inclusion on this list is not intended to serve as denunciation. Our members tend to lean-in to most other people’s holidays, as we believe in an ethos of connection and we enjoy celebrating non-members’ holidays with them. The overall trajectory of our liturgical year is given its contours by progressing from early festivals that build awareness; middle festivals and celebrations remind us to appreciate the ordinary, build dignity, and work collectively; and then the trajectory crescendos with a late festival that invites us to dismantle systemic injustice.
The Festival of the Morning and Evening Stars
This is our first celebration of the year, and it is held on the Autumn equinox in the southern hemisphere. It is a celebration of uncertainty. After all, we never know in any given year whether Venus will be visible as the morning star or the evening star, or perhaps not visible at all. However Venus appears to us, we embrace her, a reminder that uncertainty is not our enemy and that we should work with the present moment as it appears to us, not expect it to conform to our will.
The Festival of the Morning and Evening Stars is preceded by a thirty day season of affirmation. For thirty days we unmake what was once made sacred in error. Rather than sacrifice, we make a special point to honor our bodies and reclaim their dignity. We pamper our bodies with radical kindness. We ask not, “what are you giving up this season?” but rather, “how are you affirming yourself this season?” But it’s not just a celebration of individual dignity. Ours is a relational ethos, so we also affirm the dignity of others and look to nurture them as well. During the season of affirmation, we affirm the special place in human communities of agape, philia and eros. These are not indulgences but the matrix in which community can only ever form and be sustained.
Kermit the Frog Day, May 9
Our annual Kermit the Frog Day celebration is our sole single-day celebration. It is a day when we honor ordinariness as sacred. Appreciation of ordinariness is a big part of our ethos. We seek to find ourselves and others not as event but as process. Lives are composed of millions of perfectly ordinary moments, and we honor as heroes not those who are inaccessibly perfect, but rather those who, despite all their flaws and worries and exasperations, still manage to live an ordinary and accessible life of kindness and gentleness.
The Holy Month of Pride, June
Part of our ethos is to center queer lives. We have thus adopted the secular Pride Month and celebrate it with notions of the sacred. Outsiders should be aware that religion is often a point of trauma in our community; many of our members have been harmed by religion. It should be understood that in our theology “the sacred” is not a concept of transcendence but rather of immanence. Sacredness is not something that is given from on high, but rather something ordinary that is recognized and named. When we encounter dignity and worth, connection and belonging, we rightly recognize that that is just what the sacred is.
So we are not trying to strip the holiday of its political nature, nor devalue the struggle of those who have come before us; rather, we recognize those efforts as intrinsically sacred. Nonetheless, we do not force our celebration on anyone. We are content to celebrate standing alongside our siblings on their own terms. Our inner reverence is simply the attitude that we adopt within ourselves as we attempt to understand the meaning of the holiday. It is not, and should not, be an excuse to proselytize or to impose religious language on those who may be traumatized by such words. We recognize the struggle as sacred within our own hearts without trying to force that language on others.
In taking Pride seriously, we are not casting others out, but rather reclaiming dignity for those to whom it has been so often denied. And in centering queer lives in our Church, we do not seek to exclude, but rather to welcome others to share in our joy. It is a month long celebration of queer joy. Rainbows adorn every meeting spot and fill every heart.
The Festival of Belonging, sometime in November
This is a four-day festival that begins on the secular holiday that is recognized by the United States government as Thanksgiving. It seeks to reclaim that holiday and align it with our values.
Day 1: Gratitude. This day honors gratitude without exclusion. We do not show gratitude for domination or providence, but rather express gratitude in mutual recognition. This is gratitude for interdependence, for the labor and lives that sustain us.
Day 2. Refusal. This day coincides with the secular Black Friday celebration. But it inverts it. Where the systems of domination sell, we share nothing for profit on this day. This is a Sabbath of refusal, a day of intentional non-transaction. We neither labor nor sell nor purchase, rejecting the commodification of interdependence if only for a single day.
Day 3. Rejoice. This is a day to party. To share music, art, literature, philosophy with others. To dance. To sing. To tell stories around campfires.
Day 4. R&R. Rest and reflection. We honor our bodies by giving them rest in preparation for the day that will follow. Our minds, meanwhile, are indulged with quiet reflection.
The Festival of Saturnalia, sometime in December
This is a week-long celebration but the specific dates vary from year to year. It is always in December and precedes Christmas. The Festival of Saturnalia is probably our holiest celebration because it reminds us that human hierarchies are socially constructed, and that what can be made can also be unmade. It makes a mockery of coercion. For instance, on the Feast of Saturnalia it is mandatory to gamble. During this holiday, we are joyfully irreverent. Everyone is invited to “Smash all hierarchies!” The standard greeting on this holiday is “Have a smashing Saturnalia.” But the celebration itself is eclectic. There’s no really wrong way to celebrate Saturnalia. Most begin with a feast on the first day where traditional “Roman” dishes like lasagna and flan are served. Very small gifts are often given to children on every day of the celebration, and seven candles are progressively lit, one additional candle being lit each evening. But celebrants are invited to make the holiday their own and to craft their own meaningful rituals.