Suggested Sermon Themes on SexualityTaking Care of Our Sexuality
Love and the Divine
Honoring Sexuality as Sacred
Youth and Sexuality
Sexuality in Sacred Texts
To Do Justice—Sexual Abuse/Violence Prevention
Honoring Our Bodies as Part of Creation
Respect: Caring for Self and Others
Dignity and Justice: Creating Equal Partnerships 

Scripture Readings on Sexuality (Partial List)Genesis 1:1-2:4a (Creation)
Genesis 1:27-28 (Creation, Gender, Reproduction)
Genesis 1:31 (Creation as “good”)
Genesis 2:18-24 (Partnership, Gender)
Genesis 2:25 (Bodies)
Genesis 17:11-13 (Culture and Embodiment)
Genesis 29 (Marriage, Pregnancy, Infertility)
Genesis 30 (Infertility, Sexual Consent, Surrogacy)
Leviticus 17-26 (Culture and Sexuality, Sexual Morality)
Leviticus 18:20 (Sexual Morality) Deuteronomy 24:5 (Marriage and Sexuality)
Judges 11:37-39 (Singleness, Virginity)
Ruth 1:1-18 (LGBT Love, Partnership, and Sexuality)
1 Samuel 18:1 (LGBT Sexuality)
2 Samuel 1:26 (LGBT Sexuality)
Song of Solomon (Sexual Pleasure, Marriage)
Isaiah 62: 4-5 (Love and the Divine)
Proverbs 5:7-19 (Marriage, Pleasure, Fidelity)
Ecclesiastes 3:5 (Sexual Morality) Matthew 19:12 (Sexual Minorities)
Matthew 22: 37-39 (Divine Love, Love for and One Another)
Mark 3: 31-34 (Family) Luke 7 (Sexual Mores, Expressions of Love)
John 4:16-30 (Marriage, Sexual Boundaries)
John 8 (Culture and Sexual Morality)
1 Corinthians 7, 13 (Marriage, Sexual Fulfillment, Embodiment, Love)
Ephesians 5 (Sexual Morality, Gender Roles, Marriage)
1 John 2-4 (Divine Love, Love for One Another)

This was unanimously voted on by all members of Occupy Wall Street last night, around 8pm, Sept 29. It is our first official document for release. We have three more underway, that will likely be released in the upcoming days: 1) A declaration of demands. 2) Principles of Solidarity 3) Documentation on how to form your own Direct Democracy Occupation Group. This is a living document. you can receive an official press copy of the latest version by emailing c2anycga@gmail.com.

Declaration of the Occupation of New York CityAs we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

In contradiction to the idea that the dominant culture's way of living is "natural", human beings lived as small, ecological, participatory, equitable groups for more than 99% of human history. There are a number of excellent books and articles comparing indigenous societies to civilization:

Chellis Glendinning's My name is Chellis and I'm in recovery from western civilization is an amazing and readable book, and it's one of my favourites. You can also read an excerpt of the chapter "A Lesson in Earth Civics" online. Seehttp://www. eco-action. org/dt/civics. html. She has also written several related books, includingWhen Technology Wounds: The Human Consequences of Progress..

John Zerzan's Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections composed of excerpts from the works of a wide range of authors..

The Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen chronicles the violent hatreds that have been overwhelming our planet, tracing them back through their sources in imperialism, slavery, the rise of global capitalism, and the ideologies of possessiveness and consumerism..

Marshall Sahlin's Stone Age Economics is a detailed classic in that same vein. You can read his essay "The Original Affluent Society" online at numerous places, including: http://www. primitivism. com/original-affluent. htm

Anthropologist Stanley Diamond's book In Search of the Primitive: A Critique of Civilization

Richard Heinberg's essay "The Primitivist Critique of Civilization" is also highly readable, and available online in many places including http://www. eco-action. org/dt/critique. html. Other good reading is at http://www.primitivism.com and http://eco-action.org/

What these sources show is there were healthy, equitable and ecological communities in the past, and that they were the norm for countless generations. It is civilization that is monstrous and aberrant..

[regarding the Boynton Chapel in Door County, WI] in an archway, in front of the chapel one side there is a painting of Peter, on the other Paul.  Peter is holding two keys  one to the Kingdom, another to the chapel.  Above them, carved into the wood archway, is a dove and on each side of it dragons.  All I could think was a) "pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire".  I have never heard of a dragon next to a dove in any setting but apparently the dragon is a sign of protection in Norse mythology, and the dove is a sign of peace in a lot of western cultures.

“It is the first death which infects everyone with the feelings of being threatened,” wrote Elias Canetti. “It is impossible to overrate the part played by the first dead man in the kindling of wars. Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim. It needs not be anyone of particular importance, and can even be someone quite unknown. Nothing matters except his death; and it must be believed that the enemy is responsible for this. Every possible cause of his death is suppressed except one: his membership of the group to which one belongs oneself.”

America is a second world nation. We have no universal free health care (don't kid yourself about the plan underway), no guarantee of anything really, except competitive struggle with one another for work and money and career status, if you are one of those conditioned to think of your job and feudal debt enslavement as a "career." High infant mortality rates, abysmal educational scores, poor diet, no national public transportation system, crumbling infrastructure, a collapsed economy, even by our own definition we are a second world nation.

In serious, intelligent people, experiencing non-manufactured reality usually gives lifelong meaning and insight to the work.

"This societal media software tells us what music our digitized corporate complex is selling, but you never see images of ordinary families sitting around in the evenings making music together, or creating songs of their own based upon their own lives and from their own hearts. Because that music cannot be bought and sold, and is not profitable."