GOOD-centric Exterior Spiritual Disciplines:

To live out goodness, fairness, and love

Purchase GOOD-centric Interior Spiritual Disciplines at Amazon.com

Ch. 4: Celebration

Theme Song: “Generation (Light Up the Sky)” - Rare Earth

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is though everything is a miracle.”

~ Albert Einstein

The GOD-centric and GOOD-centric mantra is “How would my action affect the movement of love in the world?” When it comes to the exterior spiritual discipline of celebration, both GOD-centric and GOOD-centric might ask: "How might I join in community with others to rejoice in and rejuvenate our movement of love in the world?" Celebration may be defined as "the action of marking one’s pleasure at an important event or occasion by engaging in enjoyable, typically social, activity." GOOD-centrics will celebrate important events related to our service and stewardship.

The GOOD-centric exterior spiritual discipline of simplicity cleared our physical and temporal clutter to set the stage for our living out our love, goodness, and fairness through acts of service and stewardship. The GOOD-centric exterior spiritual discipline of celebration will fill our well collectively so we are energized to continue to transform our world into one structured based on love, goodness, and fairness.

GOD-centric Christians may find motivation in these biblical calls for celebration:

Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy. (Psalm 47:1)

Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. (Ecclesiastes 9:7)

GOOD-centrics may find motivation to celebration in Abraham Joshua Heschel's wisdom:

People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state--it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle.... Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.

GOD or GOOD-centric, the exterior spiritual discipline of celebration will fill our wells collectively, just as the interior spiritual disciplines do individually, so we can live out love, goodness, and fairness.

GOOD-centric Celebrations

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”

~ Rabindranath Tagore

GOOD-centrics experience the joy of living out love, goodness, and fairness through service and stewardship. The exterior spiritual discipline of service allows GOOD-centrics to organize our educational and economic systems so they reflect and support a world in which love, goodness, and fairness thrive. The exterior spiritual discipline of stewardship allows GOOD-centrics to extend to non-human life our building of a world in which love, goodness, and fairness thrive. The process and results of our GOOD-centric service and stewardship should be celebrated collectively to lift and rejuvenate our spirits and bring us closer to each other as we transform our world.

In keeping with the Understanding Complexity bottom-up approach, I will suggest days of celebration to be worked out at the local level with the strongest new celebrations emerging to become a more-than-local presence. Rather than randomly assigning days to celebrate our loving, good, and fair service to educational and economic systems and stewardship to the environment and animal welfare, the GOOD-centric calendar of celebration will co-opt and expand international days of celebration already in place.

World Day of Social Justice (February 20)

The United Nations' World Day of Social Justice encourages people to look at how social justice affects poverty eradication with the goal of achieving full employment and support for social integration. The GOOD-centric World Day of Social Justice would focus especially on successful efforts to equalize access to jobs, increase fairness in compensation, strengthen the healthcare safety net, move toward good economic production and consumption, and center economic decisions on the values of love, goodness, and fairness.

World Wildlife Day (March 30)

The United Nations' World Wildlife Day celebrates and raises awareness of the world’s wild animals and plants which are facing challenges. The GOOD-centric World Wildlife Day would focus especially on successful efforts to support animal rights laws, allow animals to live lives as natural to their species as possible, end factory farming, and economically support companies with positive animal welfare impact records.

Earth Day (April 22)

Earth Day celebrates this planet by giving voice to an emerging consciousness and channeling human energy toward environmental issues. The GOOD-centric Earth Day would focus especially on successful efforts to encourage richer nations to pay a backdated penalty for the damage they caused to the environment and using that collective penalty to assist poorer nations in developing sustainably and to continue collective human action focused on doing good and avoiding harm to our shared planet.

World Teacher's Day (October 5)

UNESCO's World Teacher's Day celebrates the only international standard-setting instrument on teachers and reaffirms its commitment to the value of the profession. The GOOD-centric World Teacher's Day would focus especially on successful efforts to equalize access to education, develop a truly common core, focus problem and inquiry-based learning on service or mission-driven learning projects that aspire to improve the common good, and create methods of assessment that highlight proficiencies rather than deficiencies.

GOOD-centric Guiding Principles: Celebration:

How might I join in community with others to rejoice in and rejuvenate our movement of love in the world?

    • By celebrating our living out loving, good, and fair service to our educational systems on World Teacher's Day and to our economic systems on the World Day of Social Justice.

    • By celebrating our living out loving, good, and fair stewardship to our environment on Earth Day and to animal welfare on the World Wildlife Day.