Outward Journey / Inward Journey

And what is the object of my love?  I asked the earth and it said: ‘It is not I.’  I asked all that is in it; they made the same confession.  I asked the sea, the deeps the living creatures that creep, and they responded: ‘We are not your God, look beyond us.’  I asked the breezes which blow and the entire air with its inhabitants said: ‘Anaximenes was mistaken; I am not God.’  I asked heaven, sun, moon, and stars; they said: ‘Nor are we the God whom you seek.’  And I said to all these things in my external environment: ‘Tell me of my God who you are not, tell me something about him.’  And with a great voice they cried out: ‘He made us’.  My question was the attention I gave to them, and their response was their beauty.

-Augustine of Hippo (397) Confesssons, Book X, vi (9a).  Trans. by Henry Chadwick (1991).  Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 183.

Another community course, taught by the same person who led the ‘Goddess pilgrimage’:

What would happen [...] if we esteemed her even half as much as our forebearers did?

I will venture an answer: we would be breaking covenant with the One True God shown to us in Jesus Christ?

I’ll wash your mouth out with soap,
get rid of all the dirty false-god names,
not so much as a whisper of those names again.
(from Hosea, Ch. 2, The Message).

That it may be so, Lord!

Again, click on the thumbnail for the full image.

A pilgrimage to the Holy Land?  Maybe to the heartlands of the Reformation?  No, that would be far too orthodox.  From the United Theological Seminary, an apparently Christian seminary affiliated with the UCC: a ‘Pilgrimage to the Lands of the Goddess’, an event open to the community.  From the Spring 2008 issue of Lumen, the catalogue of community programs, your CUE donations hard at work (click for full-sized image):