2025-02-23 - First Meeting: Preamble
The structure, the future, intro to humanism, and a book club
During our first Humanist Sanctuary gathering on February 23rd, 2025, we spent the first part of the meeting discussing general organization and planning for the future. We want to create a forum for people to meet in-person at The Longview Farm & Gallery in Chester Springs, PA - or online, discuss current issues, share ideas, and create a community that is focused on ethics and morality based on humanist principles, or a derivation thereof - and we want to do it in a way that builds on existing and culturally accepted examples and their successes.
One of our founding members, Patrick, brought his background and experience as a (former) Christian Pastor in helping us plan future meetings; we talked about micro-rituals that kick off the meeting, the use of iconology, and using chants and music to bring an element to our meetings that connects us on an emotional level that goes beyond words. While we don’t have all the exact details set, we have a good understanding of the direction we want to take in that regard.
The substance of our meetings will include two or three core directions. One of them will be promoting the understanding and practice of Humanist principles and related philosophical concepts. The American Humanist Association has developed a list of what they call The Ten Commitments, and we’ll be discussing them, perhaps adding a few that didn’t make the list - Art, or Humor, for example.
We will also be providing a list of reading materials for our Humanist Sanctuary book club, and our first book on the list is by Wilhelm Reich’s “The Mass Psychology of Fascism” (you can buy a copy of this book from independent book sellers, or you can reach out to us if you’d like to support our initiative by purchasing it through us). Reading the book is not a prerequisite to participation, as we’ll be discussing a topic from the book or adjacent ideas that spring from it, and performing readings from the book during our meetings.
If you are participating in person, we invite you to bring a dish to share after the meeting (we have an oven and a microwave, if reheating is necessary), and if you are joining us online, please enjoy your favorite dish (or anything on hand) with us, so you can participate in the meal at least in spirit if not in person. We love good food and believe that sharing a meal with others is one of the best human experiences.
Speaking of food - our youngest participant (21 months old) really enjoyed the raisin bread (with butter) that Patrick brought, and I must admit I was a fan as well. I usually go for multi-grain variety, but I think I might be adding raisin bread to our shopping list now and again.
As for next steps, one online participant, Mary, suggested that we send out topics for discussion prior to our gatherings so people have an idea of what to expect - we agree, and the mechanism for such communication will be through this Substack (so please subscribe if you haven’t already). We’ll be creating a separate post for the meeting’s agenda next week!
We had time to discuss some of the preliminary issues raised by “The Mass Psychology of Fascism” - I will post what came out of that discussion separately.
I also read “Living Humanist Values: The Ten Commitments” article from The Humanist magazine to set a baseline of what Humanist values are all about. I’ll list them here, and please take the time to read the article as well!
The Ten Commitments of Humanist Values:
Critical Thinking
Ethical Development
Peace & Social Justice
Service & Participation
Altruism
Humility
Environmentalism
Global Awareness
Responsibility
Empathy
My initial thought on sharing meeting details is to keep the organizational stuff such as this in a special Preamble post and save the Substance for another. What do you think?
Thanks for your support, I am glad you are here!