Today marks two distinctive moments in Western religious history, at least as I see such things.
The first of these important moments, I feel, is how today is the seventy-eighth anniversary of the first consciously Humanist religious service, held at the Steinway Hall in New York City and conducted by the remarkable Unitarian minister Charles Francis Potter, one of the signal figures in the development of a spiritual humanist perspective. (Despite what can be interpreted as the assertions of the current Humanist chaplain at Harvard to have pretty much invented the whole idea of a spiritual as opposed to a secular Humanism.) I consider Potter one of my spiritual heroes…
And, second, this is the Feast of the Archangel Michael. I find Michael deeply interesting for a variety of reasons, not the least of which because my principal “past life memory” centers on being an officer in the heavenly armies commanded by the Archangel in his capacity as chief of God’s Heavenly armed host.
So, on this day I salute my chief, my general. (Even if I prefer more conventional psychological explanations for this and similar memories. At the same time, my, how I understand Ralph Waldo Emerson’s counsel that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…”)
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