Swedenborg & Earth Day Prayer Service

This  week celebrating "Earth Day" is a good time to honor some of the people who have worked to improve our environment - and have been influenced by Swedenborg in doing so.

Dr. Devin Zuber, Associate Professor at the Center for Swedenborgian Studies, an affiliate of the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) at Berkeley, California, wrote in the April 2013 Messenger that he started his doctoral dissertation with the question:

"How was it that several of the writers who were seen as foundational for American environmentalism - such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir - were also readers to one degree of another of Swedenborg?"  He then said:  "I was particularly intrigued by what seemed to be echoes and traces between their absorption of Swedenborg's theology of correspondence and their various projects to spiritualize natural experience outdoors:  to turn the mountains into 'sermons written in stone,' in John Muir's memorable phrasing, and locate spiritual truths in an aesthetic encounter with wilderness, almost as if nature were a divinely written text that had to be described and decoded." 

We look briefly at some of the environmentalists who may have been influenced by Swedenborg.

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Creation & Earth Day Prayer Service

 

 

Visit our website:  www.SwedenborgianCommunity.org

Mini mini Course: Swedenborg & Earth Day

 

 

Visit our website:  www.SwedenborgianCommunity.org

All God's Creatures Prayer Service

 

It’s hard to believe that the earth is undergoing a mass extinction of our creatures.  The very existence of one in five species is threatened!

 

In the United States, the Endangered Species Act has

served as the “Noah’s ark” of our time, ensuring protection

for creatures in peril. The ark in the Genesis flood narrative

is how, God “remembers” (i.e., holds, keeps, protects,

cares for) “all the wild animals and all the domestic animals” (Gen. 8:1). Today, we are called to be mindful of all

creatures, and to take stock of their presence. 

[from Care for God’s Creatures, Creation Justice Ministries ]

 

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Heaven in a Wild Flower Prayer Service

 

 

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Interview with Lois Krebs talking about her work on the topic of modern-day slavery: Human Trafficking. Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing crimes in the US second only to the Drug Trade. 

 

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Easter and U.S. Abolitionists Influenced by Swedenborg

How do we cling to a belief in a world of love and peace with such terror and hate all around us?

 

Easter is about regeneration – not just of ourselves, but of the world.

Easter is not about Jesus leaving the earth for heaven; it is about how the Divine is always with us right here on the earth. Not just “with us” but part of each of us! 

It can be understood as a hologram.  Every part of a hologram contains the whole.  Jesus was a correspondence of God – and we all are.

Easter is not about how God will take evil out of the world.  It IS about each of us, with God, needing to take whatever steps we can to turn hatred into love.  We will transform the world.

 

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William Rotella, student at SHS and active with the on-line community.  He will chat with us about his paper on Abolition and Swedenborg.  

To learn more about this and more, visit our website at SwedenborgianCommunity.org

Carl Bernhard Wadstrom: Swedenborgian Abolitionist

Last week, we celebrated the movie Amazing Grace and the extraordinary life of William Wilberforce.

 

One of the people working with Wilberforce was a Swedenborgian, Carl Bernhard Wadstrom [1746-1799].  Wadstrom is perhaps one of best known Swedenborgians involved in the British abolition movement.

 

Wadstrom was Swedish, and the time frames of his life overlapped with Swedenborg’s life [1688- 1772]. He was impressed with Swedenborg’s references to Africans in the spiritual world, and felt that he had to take a stand against slavery.

 

He worked with a number of people, including British Swedenborgians, to set up a colony on the coast of Sierra Leone for freed slaves.  The colony was attacked by French privateers in 1795, and most of the settlers were killed.  Unfortunately the colony eventually failed.

 

Wilberforce called a number of witnesses in the British House of Commons in support of ending the slave trade.  One person he called on was Charles Bernhard Wadstrom.

Read more about this and more at www.SwedenborgianCommunity.org

Mini Course: Swedenborg & Slavery

Swedenborg's teachings influenced the Abolitionist Movement. Swedenborgians were instrumental in ending the slave trade and slavery in the nineteenth century.   We can expect, again, that their involvement will bring an end to modern day slavery, human trafficking, which is an affront to Divine Love and Wisdom.

For more information including a downloadable study guide for Amazing Grace, visit our Information Page and Resource Page.