Saving the World

This last weekend I attended the CSI Leadership Conference where my niece, Jessica Ahlquist, gave a talk about High School student activists fighting church/state issues across the country. Along with Jessica's fine talk there were also a flurry of interesting sessions on Humanism, activism, and organization. The presentations fit in quite nicely with everything I hope to accomplish with HoRI. I wish everyone reading this could have attended. Maybe next year.

One of the best talks came from my friend James Croft (whose website www.templeofthefuture.net is quite excellent) entitled Good (Without God), the Humanist Responsibility to Serve. For this post I'm making extensive use of Ellen Lundgren's excellent notes.

James began (if memory serves) with a slide that said "good WITHOUT GOD" and said that it would be much better for the Humanist movement and the world if we could turn that around to read "GOOD with god." He suggested the way to be good is to do good, and mentioned the concept of service. James' talk was geared to campus groups but they can almost all be applied to our group here in Rhode Island.

9 Ideas to Make Service Work Easy for your Campus Group:

1 - Build service into your regular events
2 - Connect with established service organizations
3 - Do social justice work
4 - Work with your local community "Green without God"
5 - Support national service days (National Secular Service Day)
6 - Link your service to the time of year or other big events/holidays
7 - Reach out to other campus groups
8 - Give Humanist Service Awards
9 - Fundraising for secular charities (Foundation Beyond Belief)

This list is of course just the beginning. I'm taking these ideas to heart, beginning with our volunteer effort with Habitat for Humanity and our CPR training with the American Red Cross. This is present under number 2, Connect with established service organizations.

But more than that, learning CPR with the Red Cross introduces a possible 10th item: Self-improvement with an eye towards service. As the days and weeks pass I will be looking to explore more of these ideas, and how they will help our group grow, and serve the community. I am always looking for more ideas and comments.

Don't be shy. The Meet Up page (there's a link to the right there) is for anyone and everyone. If you have an idea, go for it. If your city park is having a clean up, post it, and your fellow Humanists will come to help if possible. I know that I will do everything I can to make the time. If you have an idea to discuss, throw it up on our FaceBook page. There are people there who want to do things.