Posts
Skeptical,
Practical, Mystical
Over
the last few years I've been retooling my theology some. Over the
years I've discarded, or in some cases lost, so much that I once
believed in that I realized that the tapestry of my faith was looking
a bit threadbare. I needed some new threads to weave in—ones that
are both stronger and more colorful than the one's I'd let go. [And
isn't that the beauty of Unitarian Universalism, when we see a gap in
our faith we have the freedom to go out and seek that which we need
and bring it home to share.] A combination of working with a Jungian
psychologist, a Catholic priest some of you met recently, Father
Bill, becoming an older parent, as well as some reading and
meditation led me to realize some specific needs I have for my
spirituality. I hope to always have a fluid, evolving spiritual
life, but three themes will, I imagine, remain steady. Of my faith,
I choose that it be skeptical, practical, and mystical.
Way
too many years of the academic study of religion left me with a lot
of knowledge about how religion functions sociologically and how all
religions morph over time and steal from other traditions. Someone
once said, “The less the people know about how sausages and laws
are made, the better they sleep at night." I now feel that way
about theology. I cannot take
religious claims at face value—I know too much about how they're
made. And I don't want a religion that flies in the face of basic
science or far worse, common sense. I don't require everything about
it to be literal, but it cannot simply form a bulwark of denial
against reality. Skeptical.
I
also want my spirituality to be practical. I have little interest in
argument for argument's sake. I love a good philosophical discussion
as much as the next fellow, but at the end of the day I want my faith
to have a clear, noticeable impact on the quality of my life and
world. My faith should encourage me toward wholeness and growth—and
moving toward justice in the world. I like author Barbara
Kingsolver's take on this, “I've about decided that's the main
thing that separates happy people from the other people: the feeling
that you're a practical item, with a use, like a sweater or a socket
wrench.” Practical.
Finally,
and I know this may seem at some odds with my other two qualities,
but I do want some sense of the mystical. I define this need for
mysticism in two ways. First, to paraphrase David Eckel, a professor
of mine at Boston University, mysticism is the experience of union or
communion with a larger reality. My spiritual practices have to
engender experiences that get me out of the narrow confines of my own
ego and make me feel connected to and part of something larger than
myself. Second, I also include the meaning of mystic here as
“inspiring a sense of mystery, awe, or wonder.” I want a faith
that inspires me, surprises me, leaves me staring slack-jawed at the
wonder of it all. Too much logic and science makes Nathan a dull
boy. My faith needs wonder. Mystical.
And
so, having come up with this pithy little triumvirate, I set about
trying to see what such an animal would actually look like in the
wild. My immediate concern was that this may be an endangered or
even extinct species. Does such a thing exist? Everywhere I look I
see religions that are mystical, but not practical—too much
self-absorbed naval-gazing that doesn't actually move out into the
real world of oppression and injustice. Some strains of Christianity
suffer from this through an excessive focus on apocalyptic
mythologies. Some American Buddhists also suffer from an excess of
self-absorption, ironic in a faith that seeks to do away with the
ego. Some perspectives offer plenty of skeptical, but no
mystical—all head, no heart, no art. Finally, some are too focused
on the outer world—lots of marches and occupations but no
meditation. I'm not trying to be excessively demanding here, I just
need a rational god, if there is one, and well-balanced diet for my
soul, if I have one. So I thought, read, lived, and struggled with
these questions and challenges looking for another path.
Julia
and I love to spend time up in the Salida/Buena Vista area and I
happened to pick up a flyer for their yearly lecture series during a
weekend trip. Michael Dowd, a pretty well-known name in UU circles,
was giving a talk later that summer entitled, “Evolutionize Your
Life: How a Meaningful, Science-Based View of Human Nature and the
Trajectory of Big History Can Help Each of Us.” That sounded
pretty-darn promising. Julia is the plan-maker par excellence, so I
asked her to help make sure we were up there for Rev. Dowd's talk.
Salida is a little further than I normally go to hear a talk, but I
was really struggling with these questions of faith and I had some
hope that Dowd's perspective might be helpful. I went, and I was
amazed and inspired. How many have heard Michael or his wife, Connie
Barlow, speak? I highly recommend them, and I'll just say right now
I think we should make a strong effort to bring them in sometime
soon.
I
haven't the time this morning or the expertise yet to recreate
Michael's talk—nor would I want to. That said, a lot of what I'll
talk about this morning is directly inspired by his work and I've
liberally incorporated his insights. I'd like to speak about just a
couple elements of his talk that have touched me and helped me move
in the direction of reclaiming an awe-inspiring, consistent, coherent
theology. One made me hopeful for a sense of the past, one made me
hopeful for the future, one I'm still trying to figure out. I hope
you find them as exciting.
Stardust
One of
my favorite bands is Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and one of my
favorite songs of theirs is Joni Mitchel's Woodstock.
Twenty-some odd years ago, while lying in a small room in
Kuzuha Japan, a friend and I were listening to the song. I
opened up the CD case and read the lyrics and were blown away. “We
are stardust, we are golden, we are caught in the devil's bargain,
and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.” I loved the
metaphorical quality of the lyrics—I had no idea that they weren't
all metaphor. The concept that we are stardust is literally true.
You
see, one thing I think we can lose in Unitarian Universalism is a
sense of place in the Universe—perhaps mostly for those of us who
are not theistic or connected through a strong earth-based
connection. My friends who are more traditionally religious have
this clear sense of a personal god. They have this comforting belief
that even amidst the chaos, pain, and suffering that is all but
inevitable in a human life, God has a plan and so each individual has
a place in the cosmic plan. Matthew 10:29-31 expresses this quite
beautifully, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of
them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even
the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid;
you are worth more than many sparrows." I don't know about the
sparrows, but it doesn't take much omniscience any more to count the
hairs on my head. Hell, my toddler can do it. I don't believe in a
god who is in sovereign control of the universe. And yet, I so want
to have a sense of place within the universe and not just be a small,
ultimately insignificant mote of dust on a slightly larger mote of
dust. I'd like to think that I am connected to the whole in some
real way.
Some
of our most beloved and learned scientists offer insight on this
sense of alienation that lies at the intersection of science and
sacred. The holy prophets, one living, astrophysicist Neil Degrasse
Tyson, and one now of blessed memory, Carl Sagan, both connect us to
the universe at a deep level by pointing at the origins of our very
being. In the beginning, the sages tell us, the universe burst forth
in a brilliant explosion that brought forth the most humble
element—hydrogen. From this simple beginning, the stars ignited
and blazed. As with most beauty, raw material combined with pressure
and time gives birth to the new and breathtaking. In this case, the
heavier elements like carbon and nitrogen burst forth as the stars
themselves die and cross the vast distances and time to form the
earth and then, of course, after billions of years more, something
grows out of the earth, the universe has finally reached a level of
complexity that allows the cosmos to contemplate the cosmos. Human
beings emerge. Seemingly so individual, so separate. And yet, each
of us here is made up of atoms that were almost entirely born in the
infinite heat of an incredibly distant star aeons and aeons ago. We
are, quite literally, stardust. Parts of us have been around for
billions of years. I don't think a carbon atom has consciousness,
but I can't help but wonder at what some of my atoms have seen as
they careened across unimaginable distances and through countless
iterations of inanimate and then animate life.
I know this is
different than the kind of connection one gets in a personal
relationship with the Judeo-Christian God, but if that framework no
longer can hold for you, spend a moment acknowledging the literal
truth of your ultimate ancestry. You are a child of the stars, and I
believe blessed with that same beauty and brilliance. Your
millions-times-over great-grandparents smile down upon you every
night and ask only that you shine like they do—each beautiful and
unique. And if you want magic, majesty, and mysticism, just
remember that the stars you see in sky no longer exist in that state.
That light is years old—in the case of Polaris, the North Star, it
is close to 700 years old, and yet we see it right now. We can't see
too much further back without help, but the Horsehead Nebula light is
1500 years old, and the Pillars of Creation were destroyed 6000 years
ago by a supernova, but we won't see it for another 1000 years. And
the Hubble Deep Field Image looks back almost 13 billions years old
to see around 10,000 galaxies. To look up is to look back in
time—and that is magical.
It
was just Ash Wednesday this week and, as I have for years now at
Memorial, I distributed ashes to Christians who want them. The
traditional liturgy includes a line from Genesis, “Remember that
thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.” It is a touching
ritual actually, but this year, as I said the words from that ancient
text, in my heart, I couldn't help but hear, “From stardust you
came, and to stardust you shall return someday.”
Increasing
Diversity, Increasing Complexity, Increasing Cooperation
The
second idea that Michael talks about that I found genuinely hopeful
was what there is a clear overall direction to evolution, sometimes
called 'evolution's arrow”—not one driven by an external force or
designer, but as a natural consequence of the process itself—though
I make no claims to understanding how such a process began—and I
don't mean this as a backdoor invite to some theistic explanation,
though I don't discount such reasoning either. Evolution is the
story of simple structures coelescing into more and more complex
structures. In terms of straight biology, life starts as
single-celled organisms and progresses, primarily as a result of
external stressors, to multi-celled ones to lizard to furry things to
us—incredibly complex creatures imbued with not only
self-awareness, but millions and millions of little single-celled
bacteria now living in our guts in a symbiotic relationship. This
simplicity to complexity has a fractal-like quality in that at each
level of resolution you get this move from simple to complex. The
universe moves from simple elements, hydrogen, to more complex ones
like Oxygen or Carbon. Life goes from simple single-celled to more
complex multi-cellular forms. And Dowd points out that civilization
moves in this direction as well. We go from small roaming tribes to
clans to simple villages to city-states to modern countries to global
alliances and interconnections. And along the way, at each level;
universal, biological, sociological; there are increasing levels of
cooperation as well.
I am
tremendously pessimistic at times, but even still, I cannot deny that
we have far more interpersonal and international cooperation than at
any point in human history. We are, and rightfully so, aghast at the
wars we now engage in, but war is less frequently the answer now than
it was in the past, and we cooperate on so many more things than we
fight on the battlefield for. We are making progress, slow though it
may be.
I see
us as evidence of progress. We are a religious tradition that has,
over centuries, increased its commitment to openness, to science, to
interfaith understanding and wisdom. Last Sunday I went to the
ordination of one of my chaplains. As I sang the hymns and read the
words, I was convinced that we are the future of religion. It may
take a very long time to get there, but to echo the now famously
paraphrased words of our ancestor, Theodore Parker,
when he said, in 1853, "I do not pretend to understand the moral
universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I
cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience
of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am
sure it bends towards justice." Our sight may be limited, but
our aim is consistent on the goal of true wholeness and invitation
into relationship for all humanity. We have a better story and one
that rings true with what our brightest minds have proven—that
human beings are not in the
world, we are of the
world, as Rev. Dowd say, we grow out of the earth like a peach grows
out of peach tree. We understand the interdependent web of existence
and seek to find our right and responsible place within it. We have
a better story, one that understands that the creation accounts of a
thousand religions are true stories, even if they are not literal
stories—and our ability to see that the power of metaphorical truth
is more important in matters of religion than literal truth means
that we will support and promote a free and responsible search for
meaning for all people. I could go on, and engage each of our
principles, but suffice it to say that we have the better story, and
we should be far more willing to let our light shine.
There
is one final insight from scientists like Sagan and sages like Dowd
that I'm still trying to understand the implications of for my own
understanding. Let me quote Dr. Sagan:
“We
are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have
begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars;
organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms
considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by
which, here at least, consciousness arose.”
It has
taken 14 billion years for the universe, at least locally, to achieve
self-consciousness. As is often the case, our wisdom traditions
intuited what we now now scientifically. Hindu myths talk about a
cosmic consciousness that was lonely and so split it's consciousness
so that it might now others, but then forgot that is was ultimately
one. We are creatures that have grown out of the universe, this
earth and yet our actions so often display a forgetfulness of this
basic fact. I'm still figuring out what this means for me
theologically. What does this journey toward awareness mean and what
are its implications. But also more concretely, what does this mean
ecologically. How do I act, eat, move so that I show my awareness of
connection and responsibility to a global ecology and community.
And so
I went to hear Rev. Michael Dowd, and I was inspired. I started
finding a set of understandings that were skeptical, practical, and
mystical. Dowd spent his hour or so talking about what he calls
“evidential theology”—theology that doesn't dismiss science,
but rather draws the sense of awe, mystery, and inspiration from the
scientific history of the universe. He told a story of the universe
and its awesome unfolding, he told what can be a new mythology. One
that can blend science and true religion; one that can ennoble our
journey and not denigrate discovery. I am now a convert to this new
mythology, though I am just learning it's tales. It is tale that can
unite us and help move us forward, both as a specific faith tradition
in need of common language and as an interfaith community. What
Catholic reporter Jane Blewer brilliantly called, “A single tale of
such holy and mysterious content as to capture the soul –
scientific in its data, mythic in its form.” I hope we as a
community will explore this new mythology together: skeptically,
practically, mystically.
Amen, blessed be, namaste.
