Material Spirituality
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Material spirituality affirms the intent of making our material lives consistent with our spiritual ideals. Through affirming the parallel culture we may support individuals and communities in finding their own balance of private and common property ownership through economic diversity, and both immanence and transcendence in spiritual expression through religious pluralism. These expressions of balance represent the variety of hues and shades of color in the rainbow of material spirituality.
Living the values of material spirituality affirms a personal responsibility for self, society and nature, by finding a balance between our material needs and wants and our spiritual ideals, such that the two support the practice of rational altruism in the parallel culture.
In order to present the concept of material spirituality in a graphical manner the following symbolic elements are included: The SCALES is an ancient symbol for justice and law, and represents the need for balance in many aspects of our culture. The scales balances the GLOBE or WORLD, suggesting the material universe, against the RADIANT EYE within a TRIANGLE, the symbol (used on the dollar bill) often representing awareness, spirituality, intuition (immanence), revelation (transcendence) or divine inspiration or providence. Balancing the world against the radiant-eye-within-triangle symbol suggests that materialism and spirituality must be integrated. The TRIANGLE itself integrates both stability (geometry) and change (math & science) suggesting that even as the characteristics of a thing change with time, its basic nature remains unchanged. The CIRCLE of the globe represents the cycles of nature and of life, and again the balance of stability and change, as through cycles even as things change they remain the same, or continually return to similar states. The INFINITY symbol represents time, and being the base of the symbol, suggests that time-based economics serves as the foundation of a lifestyle affirming the ideals of MATERIAL SPIRITUALITY. These ideals also represent the balance of POSITIVE LAW, or human-made laws, with NATURAL LAW, as they affirm our desire to respect in our material lives the immanent and/or transcendent values of love, peace, justice, nurturance and harmony.
The ideals of material spirituality can certainly be expressed in various spiritual and religious traditions, and looking at the timeline of communitarian movements elsewhere on this website we can see that many have. Several of the links to PDF documents on this webpage emphasize Native American and Pagan spiritual traditions. Other spiritual and religious traditions can also be and have been related to the concepts of natural law and of material spirituality, including various multi-faith traditions such as the Rainbow Family of Living Light and the Unitarian Universalist Association.
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Earth Religious and Women's Spirituality Chants and Songs
As music is an important method of expression in culture, as well as a great metaphor of how people can live in harmony, links on this page provide both audio files and songbooks for download. These files are for free distribution only and may not be sold.
CAUTION! The three audio file links at left are for downloading zipped files, one of 53 earth-based and women's spirituality chants and songs, the second of 25 Rainbow Family songs and chants, and the third of 25 chants and songs from various sources. The first is 73MB, the second 71MB and the third is 65MB in size, and all require a high speed Internet connection, as well as a file compression application for unzipping (e.g., WinZip).
For access to individual chant files and to share experiences with organizing chant circles, send an email to join the following email list:
DenverChantCircles-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Permission has been secured for distributing FREE these chants and Reclaiming material from most sources. Additional permissions sought. Please contact: 4thWorld@consultant.com
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Another Source for Free Music Download!
RiotFolk is a collective dedicated to "Make Folk Music a Threat Again!" Collective promotion, tours, recording and income-sharing supports individual artists. Songs are anti-copyright. Download free lyrics and MP3 files (after obtaining username and password) at:
This music is free to share under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License.
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Articles of Faith