Introduction: GOOD-centric Exterior Spiritual Disciplines: To Live Out Good
Theme Song: I Wonder What Would Happen To This World
- Harry Chapin
"May your life preach more loudly than your lips."
~ William Ellery Channing
This trilogy of books started with GOD-centric's challenge to believers: What are the attributes of the God you worship? Are you willing to devote yourself to a God that is not always loving, good, and fair? If not, then you must sift through your religion's holy books and dogmas to filter out their blaspheming God as not always loving, good, and fair. God should come first, before religion, if you are GOD-centric.
The second book of the trilogy, GOD-centric Interior Spiritual Disciplines, put into practice the filtering of sacred texts and verse through the GOD-centric loving, good, and fair lens. GOD-centric prayers from Anglican, Baha'i, Bohemian, Brahmo Samaj, Buddhist, Deist, Eastern Orthodox, Freethinker, Hindu, Humanist, Jewish, Muslim, Pantheist, Pandeist, Protestant, Quaker, Roman Catholic, Sikh, Stoic, Taoist, Theistic Existentialist, Theosophist, and Unitarian traditions and GOD-centric holy book verses from the Bible, Qur'an, Lotus Sutra, and Upanishads were shared. The GOD-centric interior spiritual disciplines of contemplation, prayer, lectio divina, and study invited us to live in our loving, good, and fair God thereby enriching the quality of being we would bring to living out our loving, good, and fair God externally.
This third book of the trilogy, GOOD-centric Exterior Spiritual Disciplines, will focus on our living out love, goodness, and fairness without god which differs not one iota from the living out of a loving, good, and fair God as declared in GOD-centric's sub-chapter "Spiritual Practices & Disciplines":
The most essential GOD-centric practice is the living out of God's love in all creation, not just your designated corner of creation. The GOD-centric person is called to love people outside their family, social group, and comfort zone. The GOD-centric person is also called to act with compassion for non-human life and the environment. I pray with my feet by using the mind, body, and spirit that God gave me to do my best to live out God's love in my interpersonal relationships and commitment to social justice. I repeatedly ask and answer: “What is the movement of love in my life?” You are called to act transformatively by expressing God's love personally, socially, and globally. (Ch. 6)
GOD-centric and GOOD-centric share the same call to transformative action and same mantra: “How would my action affect the movement of love in the world?” While the ideas expressed in this slim volume may not be original, they are examples of a GOOD-centric reframing of the questions and thereby the solutions. Instead of asking “How could the most profit be made?” we will ask “How could the solution to this issue make the world more loving, good, and fair?” Let’s be a force for good!
GOOD-centric Exterior Spiritual Disciplines will focus on the disciplines of simplicity, service, stewardship, and celebration. Simplicity serves as a springboard for the others. A simple life is not bogged down with trivialities and allows the GOOD-centric person the time and freedom to pursue noble objectives like service and stewardship and to collectively express our gratitude for life in celebration. GOOD-centric service will focus on building a world in which love, goodness, and fairness thrive through restructuring our education and economic systems. GOOD-centric stewardship will focus on our caring for our environment and non-human life. GOOD-centric celebration will focus on rejoicing in creation and our building of a world centered on love, goodness, and fairness.
From Hindu sādhana to Buddhist bhavana to the Jewish Musar movement to the Roman Catholic Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius to Sufi practices of Dhikr, Muraqaba, and Sama, to modern Protestant books by Richard Foster and Dallas Willard, spiritual disciplines have been long valued for their formative and transformative power. Let's use this wisdom to develop a good internal quality of being so we can express that goodness externally: "A good life is the only religion.” (Mahatma Gandhi, Harijan 02/16/1934)
