STAR ISLAND 2009 NATURAL HISTORY CONFERENCE

MINISTER OF THE WEEK

Note: The following page presents the morning chapel services from the 2009 Natural History Conference on Star Island where I was minister of the week. The text of the services follows with some beautiful and interesting graphics  to be added later.

The focus of these morning chapel services was religious environmentalism and the religious challenge of climate change.


 STAR ISLAND
 NATURAL HISTORY WEEK–2009
 CONFERENCE OPENING WORSHIP SERVICE
SUNDAY JUNE 21, 2009

 

PRELUDE

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION <4.5>
Good Morning! It is a delight to be here with you again this morning in this sacred place. In 1993, I was minister of the week for this conference. I still had two years to go to finish my seminary education then and complete the other various tasks that one much do to become a Unitarian Universalist minister. It can’t have been sixteen years ago! At that time I was working as head of the environmental division for an engineering firm in Pennsylvania. Now after serving churches in Pennsylvania and Delaware, I am minister of a historic Unitarian church in Lancaster, MA that was founded in 1653.

I am grateful for what I experienced here in 1993 for you affirmed me as a minister, and I have always considered that experience 16 years ago as one of the high points of my ministry.

This week I will be picking up on the overarching theme of this conference–sustainability. The question that confronts us as we consider what happened to cod in the Gulf of Maine is on a smaller scale what is happening all over the planet and to the planet itself. Humans are vastly influencing the Earth and altering it in ways that may have tragic consequences. As such, environmentalism is a religious concern–for all of the world’s religions. I will be addressing in part the thorny problem of global warming due to human activities and a religious response that can lead us to a sustainable planet. I will be talking about how what we think about our world influences our actions and how religious thought has contributed to many of the problems that we face on the earth today. I will then describe how we can re-think religion to encourage humnas to act in ways that will encourage a sustainable planet–both regionally and globally. I will be drawing on some exciting ideas of contemporary thinkers–a philosopher, two theologians, a mathematical cosmologist, and two scientists–several of whom have recently attended conferences at Star Island and I have had the opportunity to meet here. Those scientists are Stu Kauffman and George Ellis. The mathematical cosmologist is Brian Swimme. The others, I don’t know if they have been to Star Island or not. The two theologians are Christians–Sallie McFague and Nancey Murphy. The philosopher is Roger Gottlieb, who is Jew and has written an exciting book titled A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet’s Future. I will be telling you more about these people and their ideas about religion, the environment, and sustainability as the week progresses.

We will be considering some of the re-thinking about religion in light of the environmental crisis. One of the criticism of previous religious thinking over the last several one hundred years is the lack of awareness of sacred space and place in our ordinary lives. We have been told by conventional religion that God is remote and in heaven. God, the sacred, is transcendent.

What I want to do with you this morning is to focus on sacred space and place–on Star Island. We say Star Island is our spirits’ home. Let us now enter into the spirit of this place with these opening words.

OPENING WORDS <2, =6.5>

 We enter into this sacred time and place
 On this island of frozen fire
 Thrust from ancient ocean floor,
 Surrounded by the teeming
 Ceaseless bursting and crashing
 Of nurturing waters.
 To this sacred place, we come--
 Place of  the ancient ones,
 Those vision seeking fishers of the Great Spirit,
 Native women and men came here to summer
 Made driftwood fires to smoke fish,
 Nights, amid domed holy majesty
 Crying for visions while meteor
 Bolts flashed silver veins in the speckled black--
 Calling all is mystery, all is mystery, all is holy
 From this place of sacred power.

 Then the Europeans came--explorers,
 Then fishermen, then families--
 Colonials with cattle, chickens, and dogs.
 A chapel built of island rock
 On this native place of power.
 Steeple tall and thrusting upward to catch
 The streaking power of the sky,
 A light in its vault to warn the unaware
 And to guide the lost.
 Psalms, hymns of praise,
 Laments and adorations
 Were sounded here.
 Weddings, funerals, baptisms,
 And communion with holy bread and wine--
 All here in those first years.
 
 Then decades long silence held these walls,
 Ghostly secrets whispering
 Of the vision seekers' place of power, 
 And the wind and the gulls
 And the far whoosh of waves.

 Five generations ago,
 Visionaries stood on rotted chapel boards
 And heard the ghostly whispers
 Of the ancient ones.

 And so with paint and spirit they rebuilt this place,
 So now this chapel hears our voices
 And the whispers of our silent hearts.
 
  
CHALICE LIGHTING <1, =7.5>
 We light this chalice for the light
 that will burn here with us this week.
 For the connections that we make here,
 For the connections with friends, old and new,
 For the connections with this place of sacred power
 For the connections with the world of wind and rain and blazing sun,
 Of clouds and sunsets and northern lights
 Of soft breezes and stinging wind-blown rain.
 We bring ourselves here to connect with the holy
 Burning light of life.

HYMN <3, =10.5>
 Will you join in singing #38 in the Gray Hymnal, "Morning Has Broken."

READING <4, =14.5>
I would like to read something from you written by Thomas Berry. He died at the age of 95 this past June 1st. He was one of the foremost thinkers about religion and the environment. He was a Catholic priest, and described himself as an Earth scholar. I based the chapel services in 1993 on the ideas of Thomas Berry. When I returned to seminary after serving as minister of the week in 1993, as part of a class assignment, I called Thomas Berry and had an hour long telephone conversation with him. A priviledge and inspiration that effects me 16 years later. This is what Thomas Berry wrote in his book The Dream of the Earth. May his words inspire in us to a deeper understanding of our place in the order of things:

  Our relationship [he wrote] with the earth involves something more than pragmatic use, academic understanding, or aesthetic appreciation. A truly human intimacy with the earth and with the entire natural world is needed. Our children should be properly introduced to the wold in which they live, to the trees and grasses and flowers, to the birds and the insects and the various animals that roam over the land, to the entire range of natural phenomena. 
  Such intimacy with the universe we find with the Omaha Indians. When a child is born, the Omaha declare its newborn presence to the entire universe, First, they address the sun, the moon, the stars, and every being that moves in the heavens, declaring: “Into your midst has come a new life. Consent ye, we implore! Make its path smooth, that it may reach the brow of the first hill.”Then to the atmospheric world, to the winds, clouds, rain, mist, and all that moves in the air. Then to the hills, valleys, rivers, lakes, trees, and grasses. Finally, “Ye birds, great and small, that fly through the air, Ye animals, great and small, that dwell in the forest. Ye insects that creep among the grasses and burrow in the ground, I bid ye all to hear me. Consent ye all, we implore! Make its path smooth. Then shall it travel beyond the four hills.”
   This is the entrancing ritual for introducing a child to the world into which the child has been born. In our own thinking we are coming back to this once more out of our new mode of understanding the universe. We now experience ourselves as the latest arrivals, after some 15 billion years of universe history and after some 4.5 billion years of earth history. Here we are, born yesterday. We need to present ourselves to the planet as the planet presents itself to us, in an evocatory rather than a dominating relationship. There is need for a great courtesy toward the earth. (13-14).

May we this morning, in this moment of silent reflection, meditation, or prayer, present ourselves to the planet, to this island, to the rocks, to the birds, insects, bushes, and trees. “Here we are, born yesterday, into this wonder! 

REFLECTION AND MEDITATION <2, =16.5>

HYMN #317 We Are Not Our Own   <3, =19.5>

RESPONSIVE READING #446 “To the Four Directions”
Divide chapel into the four directions <3.5, =23>

HOMILY

I remember the first time that I came to Star Island. I noticed one thing as the week progressed (and I even hesitate to mention it least you start looking for it to happen to you and maybe miss it), but I noticed sometime Tuesday that my sense of time told me it should be Friday.  In my normal frantic pace of living, time flies by, events seem to run into each other, and before I know it the week is gone.  But here on Star Island something happened, I slowed down.  I began to live closer to my more natural rhythms.  I stopped and looked at the oceans for long periods of time.

I realized there was something special about this place.  The late Fred McGill, who spend most of his over ninety years each summer on this island, explains that it has something to do with the ocean, the insularity of the island, and the community traditions here.   I've often it heard it explained as the magic of this place.  I hesitate to use the word magic.  It is too ambiguous, nevertheless there is magic here.  I expressed it in my opening words as a sense of the sacredness of place.  There are sacred places that contain a certain feel or resonance that deepens our experience.  The ocean, the stars at night, our fellow occupants--community of gulls, the long history of worship and friendship and inquiry here, the sense of shedding the world for awhile.  All these are here. 

In 1993, I asked people to share spontaneously about those magic times, those times when the sacred or the holy has come upon you here on this island. Many of those sharings have stayed with me. One man, maybe in his thirties or early forties, said that he was as Navy submarine officer stationed in Kittery, Maine. He said that one of the navigation fixes when entering Portsmouth Harbor is the steeple of the Star Island chapel. He said that is how is feels about Star Island; when he feels lost and out of sorts, he just thinks of the chapel steeple of Star Island and his has his spiritual navigation fix and he get back on the right path. Another person–a man in his mid to late eighties–said that at his age it is a miracle that he did come back for another year, and that for him was enough. “I did come back, I did come back.” He said with a smile.

So for the rest of time this morning, I invite you to share what the spirit moves you to express about this place.  When someone does not speak, we will sit with the silence of these walls that they may speak to use of quiet messages of the heart. 
<<sharings>>

To end our worship service, this morning we will begin by singing "Spirit of Life" once through.   Then keep singing as you leave.

CLOSING HYMN
hymn #123
  Spirit of Life come unto me.
  Sing in my heart
  All the stirrings of compassion.
  Blow in the wind,
  Rise in the sea;
  Move in the hand,
  Giving life the shape of justice.
  Roots hold me close;
  Wings set me free;
  Spirit of Life, come to me come to me.

 STAR ISLAND
 NATURAL HISTORY WEEK--1993
 MONDAY, JUNE 22, 2009
 WORSHIP SERVICE

“God loves the earth fully. By loving one another and each sentient being–even the rocks who cry out–we love God. In this love we are called to resist the poisoning of peoples and the earth.” ~Karen Baker-Fletcher, Sisters of Dust, Sisters of Spirit:
   Womanist Wording on God and Creation. [Gottlieb, 3]

PRELUDE

OPENING WORDS  (1)
 We come here seeking this day
 To increase our movement into the depths of  living.
 We come here seeking the sacred and mysterious
 And those most private places of the heart
 Where we feel our connections to the innermost truths.
 We come here in community,
 Fellowseekers inhabiting for a time a forty acre rocky island
 Amid the teeming ocean of plankton and porpoise,
 And welks and whales.
 Just as we inhabit this rocky island Earth
 Amid the teeming ocean of  nebual and nova,
 Galaxies and the unfolding mystery some call God.

CHALICE LIGHTING (1)

 May our lives be like this flame,
 Illuminating and warm.
 May we each be illumination for the other
 So that the dark will not seem so vast;
 May we be warmth and love-one to another.

HYMN (3, S=5)
 Hymn #21, verses 1-3--"For the Beauty of the Earth"

READING (3, S=8)
In honoring Thomas Berry, I want to read the following section form an essay titled “The Ecological Age:” published in 1988–21 years ago. Consider that what he said then applies today–even more so. We will be exploring the “more so” today.

  As we think our way through the difficulties of the late twentieth century, we find ourselves pondering the role of the human within the life systems of the earth. Sometimes we appear as the peril of the planet, if not its tragic fate. Through human presence the forests of the earth are destroyed. Fertile soils become toxic and then wash away in the rain or blow away in the wind. Mountains of human-derived waste grow even higher. Wetlands are filled in. Each year the ozone layer above the earth is depleted. Such disturbance in the natural world coexist with all those ethnic, political, and religions tensions that pervade the human realm. Endemic poverty is pervasive in the Third World, while in the industrial world people drown in their own consumption patterns. Population increase threatens all efforts at improvement.
 
 Such a description of our human presence on the earth tends to become paralyzing. While that is not my intention, it is my intention to fix our minds on the magnitude of the task before us. This task concerns every member of the human community, no matter what the occupation, continent, ethnic group, or age. It is a task for which no one is absolved and with which no one is ultimately more concerned than anyone else. Here we meet as absolute equals to face our ultimate tasks as human being within the life the life systems of the planet Earth. We have before us the question not simply of physical survival, but of survival in a human mode of being, survival and development into intelligent, affectionate, imaginative persons thoroughly enjoying the universe about us, living in profound communion with one another and with some significant capacities to express ourselves in our literature and creative arts. (36-37)

REFLECTION AND MEDITATION (2, S=12)

RESPONSIVE READING (2, S=14)
#465 “The Wisdom to Survive” This is written by another Berry–Wendell Berry–no relationship to Thomas that I know of. Wendell Berry is a poet, author, teacher, and environmentalist. He is also a Baptist who sometime leans towards Buddhism.

HYMN #303 “We Are the Earth Upright and Proud” (2, =16)

HOMILY  (13, S=27)

In 1993 at this conference, Dr. Edward Brooks, Professor of Geophysics, at Boston University was here as the theme speaker with his lovely wife Sarah. Professor Brooks spoke about long range climate patterns. He was rather good at predicting long-term weather, and businesses sought out his advice to help them manage risks better associated with weather. Dr. Brooks thought that the varying heat output of the sun was what cause warm periods and ice ages on the earth and that the energy input from the sun would make any human contribution to global warming negligible. I was concerned about global warming. I had a 25 year career as an environmental engineer and considered myself an environmentalist. I am not sure when I became concerned about global warming. It probably went back to the mid-1970s when I read a book by Paul and Anne Ehrlich of Stanford University called Human Ecology in which they mention the influence of greenhouse effect and its potential to increase global carbon dioxide levels from deforestation practices and burning of fossil fuels (197-200).  So I had a conversation with Dr. Brooks one afternoon on the path just outside the chapel about global warming due to the greenhouse effect. He said he doubted that global warming was an issue of concern due to human cause greenhouse gas emissions. He said that there was no evidence to suggest that the Earth was warming to . I said it seemed to me that if there was melting of polar icecaps and the permafrost in the arctic, then that might be proof that there was significant global warming occurring. He said that my observation was very perceptive but that he didn’t think that was happening.

I don’t know what Dr. Brooks position would be today, but there is melting of polar ice and permafrost. Over the last 30 years, permafrost melting in some regions of the Northern Hemisphere have increased. Arctic sea ice continues to melt. NASA has recorded that the Greenland’s massive ice sheet it losing ice at significant rates over the last few years. In 2007, the US National Ice Center announced that the fabled polar shipping route–the Northwest passage–was wide open for shipping. Some scientist are predicting if the current rate of arctic sea ice melting continues that the Arctic Ocean will be free of ice in 2030–including the North Pole.

Of course none of this proves that global warming is happening due to human greenhouse gas emissions–proof depends on scientific data, modeling, and verification of those models by other scientists with the data.

I will spend a few minutes now talking about some of the science of global warming. I do this because sustainability and particularly the issue of global warming is a religious concern. In my opinion, anyone who speaks credibly about religion today has to include credible science in speaking of religion. I am going to describe the science of global warming before I speak of the religious implications of global warming and in fact how religion can provide hope for changing the situation. So I want to talk about the science of global warming for a few minutes.

Just to give you a bit of a refresher about the green house effect. The Earth receives solar radiation from the sun and the greenhouse gases are transparent to solar radiation, but not to infrared radiation. When the land and ocean absorbs solar radiation from the sun, it emits infrared. Water vapor and carbon dioxide as well as trace atmospheric gases trap some of the infrared radiation before it goes into outer space–much like the glass on a greenhouse holds the heat in the greenhouse. This is good because without the greenhouse effect the average temperature of the Earth would be minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit instead of its balmy 60 degrees–at least for New England that’s balmy.

But what is happening because of burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and other agricultural and land use practices, the amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are increasing. Higher levels of greenhouse gases mean more infrared heat is trapped and the average global temperature rises.

Right now the carbon dioxide levels are higher than they have been in 800,000 years and ocean and air temperatures are increasing.

With rising global temperatures, we can expect rising sea levels due to melting ice sheets on Greenland and the Antarctic, more violent weather, increased desertification in some areas of the planet, in some areas, increased disease, and so forth.

Most climate scientists think that this is a likely scenario, but not all do. In 2007 the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report confirming most of these findings and stating:

 Warming of the climate is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level.

The UN Panel included the participation of 619 climate scientists from across the globe. Only one of these scientists has signed a position paper skeptical of global warming; whereas, 160 of these scientists who contributed to the UN Panel, have signed statements supporting activists policies on climate change. Now I realize that true science is falsifiable. It only takes one contradictory set of date to upset an entire hypothesis or theory.

Most of the scientific skeptics are so because they say the data and climate models are poor and don’t justify action. One of the skeptics is Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman to  receive a Ph.D. in meteorology. She eventually became NASA's lead weather researcher and has authored or co-authored over 190 articles. She said this about global warming:
 What should we as a nation do? Decisions have to be made on incomplete information. In this case, we must act on the recommendations of Gore and the [ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]  because if we do not reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and the climate models are right, the planet as we know it will in this century become unsustainable. But as a scientist I remain skeptical.
To me her assessment of the situation makes sense. Some have argued that if we go through the expense to reduce greenhouse emissions, it could throw the world into a global economic recession. But if the models are reasonable right, global warming will include a world economic recession plus a planet that all at once will not be able to support its population and great suffering for all species will happen. I have a really good typology to demonstrate this, but I am not going into it here.

The other point is that even if global warming models are wrong and the planet is not warming due to human activities, many of the actions to address global warming would need to be done anyway–like more use of renewable fuels to reduce reliance on dwindling fossil fuels, sustainable use of the oceans and the land, better protection of species diversity, addressing the great disparities between the economic developed and undeveloped countries, addressing global health problems, seeing that no person on this planet dies because of lack of assess to food, shelter, clean water, and medical care.

Global warming is not just a scientific issue, it is a human justice issues and species justice issue, and it is a religious issue. Religions throughout the world influence how people view their world and a person’s worldview affects their behavior. Tomorrow we will look how some of the ideas of western religion–particularly Christianity–have contributed to the situation in which we find ourselves. The present global environmental requires that religion rethink some of ideas in light of this crisis. This rethinking is occurring in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Indigenous people’s religions. This degree of this rethinking of religion hasn’t been seen for over 2000 years. More about that tomorrow.
  
HYMN  (3, S=30)
 # 203 “All Creatures of the Earth and Sky” verses 1-3.

CLOSING WORDS (1, S=31)

 May this day be a day of praise
 May this day be a day of surprise and discovery,
 May this day be a day of deepening friendship’s
 May this day be a day of relaxation.
 May this day be a day of the peace that passes understanding.
 Go now in the light of that peace.  Amen.



 STAR ISLAND
 NATURAL HISTORY WEEK
 TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 1993
 WORSHIP SERVICE
 
The environmental crisis requires a profound shift in religion’s understanding of human existence. (19). Roger Gottlieb, A Greener Faith:
    Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet’s Future

PRELUDE

OPENING WORDS  (1.0)

 We come this morning to worship
 The beauty of the earth
 To hear the singing in our hearts
 Of the treasures of life.
 
 We come this morning to praise
 Our awareness of life
 To give thanks for our lives
 And the lives of those around us
 And those far away.

 We come here to praise
 Through the act of worship
 The  countless women and men
 Who through the sacrifices
 Of labor have made our lifes possible.

  And we are thankful for the life we each hold.
 May we always know how precious is that life.

CHALICE LIGHTING (1.0, S=2.0)
 We light this chalice
 As a symbol of our awareness
 Every human is the light and the awareness,
 And the feeling and sensitivity of the universe.
 Without us, the universe would not be aware
 It is through us, the universe perceives its majesty and beauty.

HYMN #298, "Wake, Now My Senses” (3.0, S=5.0)

READING (4.5, S=9.5)
Roger Gottlieb, Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, from his book A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet’s Future

To commune with nature we must find something within ourselves that is not tied to our social identity, or rooted in complicated verbal self-description. And this we cannot do as doctors or plumbers, Republicans or New Yorkers. We must do it, at least, as beings that breathe and eat, sense the sun, feel the wind and rain, and experience love, fear, and pleasure in their bodies. If trees root to the earth, so do–in rather more mobile ways–our own legs. In the earth’s surface is 80 percent water, so is our own body. Human children frolicking in the grass can surely remind us of kittens playing, and ten thousand ants working together are not, seen in a certain light, all that different from workers headed for a day at the office. As the trees breathe out, we breathe in–and vice versa. Our eyes have evolved to see this landscape, our ears to hear these birds and rustling leaves, our tongues to taste the food that grows here. Trying to cut ourselves loose from the earth is as foolish as denying that we were formed by our families and our native cultures.

We may have forgotten all this, but surely we can, if we choose, remember. To do so, we will have to move out of our normal egos–a move, interestingly, that religion has always asked us to make. Whether it is the state beyond attachment of Buddhism or Islam’s complete submission to God, faiths teach us that we must go a little crazy if we are to become truly sane. We must transform ourselves: literally uproot our physical body (as when Abraham has to leave the land of his father) and our social position (as when Jesus told the rich man to give his wealth to the poor).

It is also true that in most religious narratives we can experience life beyond the ego only after, and in part because of, some kind of crisis. Jesus must die before he can fully realize this Divinity; the Jews have to suffer slavery and wander in the wilderness before they can fully embrace the Torah; fledgling Buddhists spend thousands of frustrating and lonely hours on the meditation mat wrestling with their egos. What those events and processes were to traditional religion, the environmental crisis is to religion now. Sensing the gravity of our situation, bereft from all our losses, knowing that the future may hold much worse, a fundamental ground is being removed from under our feet and a sheltering canopy taken from above our heads. Our need to sense a communion with the earth is not just about how grand the universe is or how complex and marvelous ecosystems are. It is also about the cry of the earth and the cry of other human beings who are suffering. This cry will either provoke a new sense of self, or humanity will choke on its own wastes. (43-44).

REFLECTION AND MEDITATION (2.0, S=11.5)

RESPONSIVE READING (2.5, S=14.0)
 #529-"The Stream of Life" read responsively–I’ll begin with 1st paragraph, we will all read the 2nd together, I will read the third myself, and then we will all finish with the 4th.

HYMN #346 “Come, Sing a Song with Me”  (2.0, S=16.0)

HOMILY (12, S=26.0)
The environmental crisis requires a profound shift in religion’s understanding of human existence. (19).Roger Gottlieb, A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet’s Future.

Yesterday, I began our morning focus on sustainability and its implications with a discussion of religion and environment by speaking mostly about scientific models, scientific consensus, atmospheric chemistry with a smattering of thermodynamics thrown in. If you begin to back off and consider what I did: here is a minister speaking about science–never mind that I have had an engineering career; I am right now a person who make his living speaking and writing about religions matters and I’m talking about science. In fact, more and more, religious people being with science and then start talking about religion. This is especially so when religious people speak about the environment.

This is more than Paul Hull speaking at the 2009 Natural History Conference; this is a trend of significant proportions, for it speaks to a fundamental shift in religious thought. The most progressive religious thinkers are saying that religious statements must be congruent with science–particularly statements about the origins of life, the earth, and the cosmos. Sallie McFague, Emeritus Professor of Theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School and a noted Christian feminist theologian, writes, “It is critical . . . that theology be done within the contemporary scientific worldview” (2). Now there, too, is much that science must remain mute about. There is little science can say for example about the existence of God. For science to say something about the existence of God is for science to move into scientism. But I will be speaking later this week about the religious beliefs of two scientists–both who were on Star Island last year–Stuart Kauffman (a theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher) and George Ellis (a physicist who was co-authored books with Steven Hawking and recipient of the Templeton Prize–the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in religion and spirituality). Stu Kauffman is a humanist who rejects the concept of a transcendent God, and George Ellis is a Quaker who fully subscribes to a God who is both transcendent and immanent. Both use their science to inform religious perspectives about the nature of the universe and the human place in it.

The point being, religion is beginning to pay attention to science and to use science to enhance religious understanding. And what science is saying about the environment has liberal religions thinkers reexamining some fundamental assumptions about the human place in the order of things. Roger Gottlieb writes, “The environmental crisis requires a profound shift in religion’s understanding of human existence (19) [and] the findings of science are leading theologians to reexamine some of the most fundamental tenets of their faith”(20). Theologian Sallie McFague writes “theology within the context of climate change must focus on deconstruction and reconstructing two key [religious] doctrines: who we are and who God is.” (2).

This is the beginning of a two part sermons on first deconstruction of some current religions understanding and then reconstructing them in the second part which will be tomorrow.

So what are those fundamental tenets that need to be reexamined or deconstructed?  Let’s consider the beliefs that have dominated Western civilization for the last several hundred years. It goes something like this: God is completely transcendent. Although God created the world, God is not of this world. God is removed from the earth in heaven. Humans contain a spark of the divine but this spark was covered by the original sin of disobedience to God. Jesus came to earth as God to redeem human sin, but after the sacrifice of a painful death, he returned to heaven and is no longer of this earth, but he will return to judge the living and the dead. The true home of humans is not of this earth but in heaven. If you accept Jesus as your true savior, you will go to your true home for eternity which is in heaven. If you are an unbeliever, your unbelief condemns you to everlasting punishment, not on the earth, but in hell. The purpose of the earth is as a testing ground to test your faith to see if you are worthy of Heaven. The earth is a fallen place in this theology. It is to be used and then left behind. In this theology, humans were placed on the Earth, but are not of the Earth.

It is not just traditional Christianity that reserves a higher unearthly state for humans beings, but other faiths as well. Fundamentalist Islam believes that actions of mass destruction are warranted in a holy war, and the perpetrators will receive great rewards in paradise. Buddhism, in some forms, promotes a detachment from Earthly existence. To be in this world is to suffer. Suffering is caused by desire and attachment. One strives to relinquish desire through the spiritual practice of meditation so one can detach from one’s desire and achieve a state of enlightment–where one is in the world but not of it. Hinduism holds a similar belief in achieving mahasamadhi through spiritual disciplines that allow one to detach from the worldly suffering into a state of bliss. In Hinduism, the truly enlightened being no longer reincarnates into an earthly life but remains in a state of bliss at one with the Godhead.

These views all have a characteristic that the truly desired spiritual state of humans is to be not of this world and one relieves one’s personal suffering ultimately through spiritual practice to pierce the vale of tears that is this world. The suffering of other life forms is not emphasized.

Of course, we could find many exceptions to what I described of these religions but they are prevalent modes of the more conservative or traditional understandings of these religions

Speaking of traditional Christian understandings and its relations to the environmental crisis, Catholic priest and ecotheologian Thomas Berry wrote,
 “While the positive aspects of Western spirituality, can be seen throughout the American experience, there is also the negative, alienating, and even destructive aspects of these same spiritual traditions. The traditional Western spiritualities have not enabled their followers to mitigate or even to understand or protest the terrifying assault of American society on the natural world . . . . When we inquire into the reasons for the inefficacy in our spiritual traditions, we might observe that our identification of the divine as transcendent to the natural world makes a direct human-divine covenant relationship possible, but also we negate the natural world as the locus for the meeting of the divine and the human. The natural world becomes less capable of communicating divine presence. This makes possible the conception of the nature world as a mere external object.”

Thomas Berry helps us understand the spiritual underpinnings for exploitations of the natural world as an object. We conceptualize the Divine as removed from the Earth, and the search of God outside of our experience. . Joseph Campbell once heard noted Buddhist scholar D.T. Suzuki comment about this traditional Christian theology: “God against man. Man against God. Man against nature. Nature against man. Nature against God. God against nature–very funny religion.” This objectification of the natural world is a fundamental idea of traditional Western spirituality. To extend the ideas of Jewish theologian Martin Buber, the natural world has become an “it,” not a “thou.”

So these are some of the old spiritual understandings that have provided a religious basis for the largely uncontrolled exploration of the Earth by humans. So then what are the new understandings? What is this “shift in religion’s understanding of human existence” about which Roger Gottlieb writes? And what spiritual inspirations can be found to help us deal with our present crisis as Sallie McFague writes, in “reconstructing two key [religious] doctrines: who we are and who God is.”
Over the next three days, I will be unpacking these new ideas about God or the sacred dimension of life and how humans fit into that sacred dimension, and how these new ideas might lead us to behave in more healthy ways towards our planet, each other, and other species. There are core ideas and inspirations in all of the world great religions that can help us think in different ways. The sources of these religious inspirations are enormous.

With the dialogue that is happening now between science and religion and with the sense of urgency that has been engendered by the global environmental crisis, we are moving into another great age of human religious expression as great as the Axial Age of religions that happened between 800 to 200 before the current era; when in response to great changes in the economic and social conditions around the Earth, new religions emerged.–“Taoism and Confucianism [emerged] in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India and philosophical rationalism in Europe” with the Greeks philosophers, and in the Middle East with the Jewish prophets.

There is an ancient Chinese curse that says “May you be re-born into interesting times.” Well whether this is a curse or a blessing remains to be seen and you maybe wondering what ancient Chinese we may have offended, but tomorrow. we will change our emphasis from curse to blessings and consider the blessings that world religion hold for us as they engage science to articulate values that can lead to a sustainable world.
 Let us end this time with a spiritual . . . .

HYMN--#208--"Every Time I Feel the Spirit" (3.0, S=29)
Let’s sing a spiritual to lift out spirits to see the blessings about us everywhere.

CLOSING WORDS (1.0, S=30)

 As you go from here,
 Dedicate yourselves  to mindfulness
 Notice the wind against your face,
 The movement of the grass,
 The knock of the boat against the dock
 The feel of the pen  in your hand
 The luminscent waves at midnight.
 The blessings of friends,
 And in the quiet moments
 Notice the miracle of your thoughts
 And the prayers of your beating hearts. 

 STAR ISLAND
 NATURAL HISTORY WEEK
 WEDNESDAY--JUNE 24, 1993
 WORSHIP SERVICE
 

PRELUDE

OPENING WORDS (1.5)

 Walt Whitman worte in "Song of Myself:"

  I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
  And what I assume you shall assume,
  For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

  I loafe and invite my soul,
  I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

 Take into yourselves Whitman's words. 
 Make them a "Song for Yourself."
 Celebrate yourself today,
 Sing yourself

 And what you take on we all will take on,
 For every atom belonging to you belongs to all of us.
 Loafe today a lot and invite your soul to ease,
 Lean and loafe 
 Observing a gull in flight,
 The roll of waves against the rocks,
 The bobbing of lobster trap buoys,
 The glide of a sail boat as it enters the harbor,
 The sunset and the joy of good company.
 Lean and loafe and love today.

 And now may we enter into this time of worship.
 
CHALICE LIGHTING (1.0, S=2.5)

 The light of this chalice
 Spreads out in many directions,
 The unity of the flame breaks down
 Into its constituent elements--
 Heat, light, gasses and soot.
 All in the burning empty and transform–
 Giving light and warmth to the world.

 We reflect today about the awareness of  unity
 That is sweeping the planet
 About a sacred source in nature
 That gave emptied itself to the manifold
 Variations of life.
 All different, all unfolding,
 And all manifest from the original unity of creation

HYMN (2, S=4.5)

 Hymnal #40–“The Morning Hangs a Signal”

READING (7, S=11.5)

 In Brian Swimme’s inspired book, The Universe is a Green Dragon–57-59.
 a conversation between Thomas, the philosopher, and a youth. Thomas is retelling the story of the universe from the perspective of science and religion both. This is the kind of reframing and reconstructing religion that needs to be done in religion today. <A quote follows that is not included here.>

REFLECTION AND MEDITATION (2, S=13.5)

RESPONSIVE READING (3, S=16.5)

  #530--"Out of the Stars"

REFLECTION (2, S=18.5)

HOMILY  (13, S=31.5)

Yesterday we considered some of the old spiritual understandings that have provided a religious basis for the largely uncontrolled exploration of the Earth by humans. I spoke of how religion is beginning to consider science seriously, and then I mentioned that in terms of religious innovation there are new understandings emerging that may well turn out to be a new Axial Age in terms of religious thought as significant as the time between 800 and 200 when the great religions emerged as well as the rationalism of the Greek philosophers.

Today and for the following two days I will be talking about the new understandings that are emerging from a dialogue of science and religion in response to the environmental crisis. This is what Roger Gottlieb wrote about a “shift in religion’s understanding of human existence.” What does this shift look like? And what spiritual inspirations can be found to help us deal with our present crisis as Sallie McFague writes, in “reconstructing two key [religious] doctrines: who we are and who God is.”

So let’s begin unpacking, these new ideas about God or the sacred dimension of life and how humans fit into that sacred dimension, and how these new ideas might lead us to behave in more healthy ways towards our planet, each other, and other species. There are core ideas and inspirations in all of the world great religions that can help us think in different ways. The sources of these religious inspirations are enormous. They however reflect two fundamental points about human relationships to the earth: first nature has intrinsic value in and of itself, and second nature is closer to us than we have realized–as close to us and as integral to us as the beating of our hearts. (Gottlieb 22). So let’s journey through the emerging inspirations in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. I will give you examples of this reconstructing and rethinking of some of the world religions.

In Judaism, for example, there is this sense of the intrinsic value in nature reflected in the ancient Hebrew injunction not cut down trees without good reason–even in war. In Deuteronomy (20:19), it says:
 When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them; for you may eat of them, but you shall not cut them down. Are the trees in the field men that they should be besieged by you?
Jewish theologians observe that even during war humans are to control their destruction of the environment. If this is so even during war, then prevention of destruction of nature during peaceful times is even more important. Talmudic scholars warn that those who waste thoughtlessly are on their way to idol worship because of loss of self-control. (Gottlieb 23) In my way of thinking, idolatry occurs when we confuse a representation for the sacred (either a physical image, an idea, a theology, a person, or a book) for the actual experience of the sacred.

On the negative side of spiritual injunctions and concerns about the human relationship to the Earth, there is also the injunction in Genesis for humans to subdue and dominate the Earth, but theologians point out that this injunction to subdue and dominate occurs only one in Genesis; whereas, after each act of creation in Genesis, seven times God stopped and said “It is good,” Finally when all was done, Genesis says, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good..” (Genesis 1:31 ) All of this says that creation is good, and no mention is made that creation is good for human exploitation and use. It is just good in and of itself. And the human place in all of this goodness according to Genesis is to be tenders of the garden.

Turning from Judaism to Christianity, Christian theologian Sallie McFague says that Christianity must realize that it is primarily an incarational religion–meaning that God is incarnate and present in the Earth. She argues that a new incarnational Christian theology must see the entire Earth and cosmos as part of God’s physical, incarnate body. I will say more about this tomorrow.

This same process of reconstructing religious ideas that Judaism and Christianity are doing is being done in Buddhism. For example, Thich Nhat Hanh has promoted the idea that everything in the cosmos inter-be’s with everything else. He speaks of the path to true peace on Earth as realizing and living in community, feeling this interconnectedness. In this quotation, from the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, the word “sangha” means spiritual community, and he writes:
 To build community, it is important to accept the insight of interbeing, of interconnectedness. We must realize that happiness is not an individual matter. Finding happiness through our separate, individual self is impossible. The family is a sangha, society is a sangha, and the Earth and all life are a sangha; this is why we have to learn to live as a sangha, not only with other human beings but with other species as well. We have to accept animals, plants, and minerals as our partners, as members of our community . . . With this insight we will no longer feel separate and we will know how to behave in a way that brings harmony and happiness to our family, our society, and our mother Earth.

Islamic scholars point out that “any serious reading of the Our’an reveals a perspective in which people, as God’s ‘vice-regents’ on earth, have the responsibility to care for the rest of life and make their own patterns of desire and consumption temperate.”

Similarly there is a ecotheology movement in Hinduism: Ideas of human responsibility to nature are being emphasized such as this quotation from the Bhagavad Gita 3:12: “For, so sustained by sacrifice, the gods will give you the food of your desire. Whoso enjoys [the gifts of the god’s], yet gives nothing, is a thief, no more nor less.” This suggest ethical action toward nature.

In Hinduism all living things have an atman or soul–including plants. In the great Hindu epic Mahabharata, this reverence for all things is stated: “If there is but one tree of flowers and fruit within a village, that place is worthy of your respect.”

We are considering one instance this week of human neglect–the serious depletion of the fisheries in the Gulf of Maine. This situation of depletion of the sustainability of species and ecosystems is repeated all over the world, locally and regionally,  in oceans, rivers, lakes, forests, grasslands, mountain tops, in cities and the countryside. This depletion is too being repeated not just in local areas but to the Earth itself and to the very processes that support life are compromised.

We have considered just a few examples of how people from the world’s religions are rethinking their religions in light of the environmental crisis. Roger Gottleib observes that the world religions when addressing this environmental crisis from the uniqueness of their own religious perspectives and worldviews, demonstrate common themes of who we are and who God or the sacred presence is   • Nature is a gift from God, and should be treasured as such.
 • Nature’s majesty testifies to the granduer of God and its behavior is a celebration of God.
 • Nature is permeated by a Divine Spirit.
 • Because we have emerged from, depend on, and are so much like nature, we must extend our sense of moral value to it. We have responsibilities to nature and must “tend the garden.” Nature is the stranger and the poor for whom we are called to care.
 • Nature awes us with its scope and complexity. It is marvelous and calls forth [to reverence].
 • The interdependence and selflessness that mark the holistic character of ecosystems contain moral lessons.
 • The environment has rights, deserves compassion, and can suffer. . . .
 • Other animals have self-awareness, can communicate, and have family structures–and therefore deserve moral concern.
 • Distinguishing between ourselves and nature reflects a self-centered arrogance that will make spiritual growth impossible. (42)

These common themes demonstrate an emerging new way of thinking about ultimate reality that is firmly rooted in awareness of our place in the nature of things. This is the beginning of a transformation of each of us to a kinder and more aware way of walking on the Earth.

Tomorrow I will relate a remarkable story of two people independently coming from different starting points who arrived at similar conclusions about the nature of God or the sacred and the nature of the universe. One person is Sallie McFague, a Christian theologian, who set out to articulate a Christian theology that responds to the environmental crisis; the other person is Stuart Kauffman,  a  humanist scientist, who found from his study of the science of emergence and complexity theory as sense of the sacred presence that he came to call God.

Yes these are exciting and interesting times! We are participants in a time when religion and science after nearly four centuries of being at odds with each other about divergent worldviews are coming together. Many progressives from all the world religions, while retaining their uniqueness and appeal off their religions, are digging deeply to find sources of praise, appreciation, and hope for renewed inspirations. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s words about the sterility of religion may ring true no more, when he wrote: “But the word Miracle, as pronounced by . . . [the] churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.” The world is miracle enough; religions are more and more saying. The world, ourselves, and the entire starry, creative cosmos is God’s body–our body–a holy, sacred miracle!

So here we are–part of a great shift in the world religions–that holds at their core– a sacred oneness. We are at once separate and differentiated beings and also participants of a great oneness of being. We are truly one with “the blowing clover and the falling rain.” May we hold theses inspirations in our hearts and minds as we go from here.

HYMN (3, S=34.5) #215 “Praise to the Living God”
 Let’s sing as our closing hymn the word inspired Jewish inspirations of a God present in the world and worthy of our praise.

CLOSING WORDS (1, S= 35.5)
 Thanks for each moment,
  for the blue-sky moment,
   the softening earth,
    the freshening wind,
  for the sap flowing,
   the bird nesting,
    the yellow bush,
  for our full hearts
   and the joy rising in each of us.

 Soften us
  to receive whatever comes as a gift
   and to praise the holy in it.

 Thanks for each moment,
  for the twilight moment,
   the pause,
    the good tired,
  for the quiet reflection,
   the slowing down,
    the mysterious sunset,
  for a contented heart
   and the wisdom growing inside each of us.

 O Holy Presence, gentle us
  to feel whatever comes as a gift
   and to praise the holy for that gift.
 AMEN.  So Be It. <adapted from Ted Loder, Guerillas of Grace.>

 Go now in peace and joy--celebrating this day.

  STAR ISLAND
 NATURAL HISTORY WEEK
 THURSDAY–JUNE 25, 2009
 WORSHIP SERVICE
 
“Then all the unfolding of nature is God, a fully natural God. And such a natural God is not far from an old idea of God in nature, an immanent God, found in the unfolding of nature.”
    Stuart Kauffman, Reinventing the Sacred

PRELUDE
 Deb
OPENING WORDS <1.5>

 In this moment, may our deepest prayer be to "gently us,"
 O Spirit of Life,
 "into an unclenched moment,
  a deep breath,
   a letting go
    of heavy expectancies,
     of shriveling anxieties,
      of dead certainties,
 that, softened by the silence,
  surrounded by the light,
   and open to the mystery,
 We may be found by wholeness,
  upheld by the unfathonable,
   entranced by the simple,
    and filled with joy
     that is'" life (Loder 17).
 "Now,"
 may we find "a quietness
  that heals
   and listens,"
 and moulds our longings
  and passions,
   our wounds
    and wonderings
 into a more holy
  and human
   shape.  (Loder 21)

 Let us know worship together.

CHALICE LIGHTING <.5, =2>

 We light this chalice for the light of truth
 That each of us holds within
 We light this chalice for the simple knowing assurances
 Of the truth confirmed,
 Of the light expanded,
 Of the heart made whole,
 Of minds bathed in clarity.
 We hold this light here.

HYMN <3, =5>
#189 "Light of Ages and of Nations”

READING <6, =10.5>
This is a story told by Anthropologist Loren Eisley who grew up on a farm in Minnesota at the beginning of the twentieth century. He wrote about this experience and how his father was an ritual elder for him.

When I was a young lad of that indefinite but important age when one begins to ask, Who am I? Why am I here? . . . . I found myself walking with a small companion over a high railroad trestle that spanned a stream . . . . One could look fearfully down, between the ties, at the shallows and ripples in the shining water some 50 feet below. One was also doing a forbidden thing, against which our parents constantly warned. One must not be caught on that black bridge by a train. Something terrible might happen, a thing called death.

From the abutment of the bridge we gazed down upon the water and saw among the pebbles the shape of an animal we knew only from picture books–a turtle, very large, a dark mahogany-coloured turtle. We scrambled down the embankment to observe him more closely . . . [Coming closer,] I saw that the turtle, whose beautiful markings shone in the afternoon sun, was not alive and that his flippers waved aimlessly in the rushing water. The reason for his death was plain. Not too long before we had come upon the trestle, someone engaged in idle practice with a repeating rifle had stitched a row of bullet holes across the turtle’s carapace and sauntered on.

My father had once explained to me that it took a long time to make a big turtle, years really, in the sunlight and the water and the mud. I turned the ancient creature over and fingered the etched shell with its forlorn flippers flopping grotesquely. The question rose up unbidden. Why did the man have to kill something living that could never be replaced? I laid the turtle down in the water and gave it a little shove. It entered the current and began to drift away. “Let’s go home, “ I said to my companion. From that moment I think I began to grow up.

“Papa,” I said in the evening by the oil lamp in our kitchen. “Tell me how [humans] got here.” Papa paused. Like many fathers of that time, he was worn from long hours, he was not highly educated, but he had a beautiful resonant voice and he had been born of a frontier homestead. He knew the ritual way the Plains Indians opened a story.

“Son,” he said taking the pattern of another people for our own, “once there was a poor orphan.” He said it in such a way that I sat down at his feet. “Once there was a poor orphan with no one to teach him either his way, or his manners. Sometimes animals helped him, sometimes supernatural beings. But above all, one thing was evident. Unlike other occupants of Earth, he had to be helped. He did not know his place, he had to find it. Sometimes he was arrogant and had to learn humility. Sometimes he was a coward and had to be taught bravery. Sometimes he did not understand his Mother Earth and suffered for it. The old ones who starved and sought vision on hilltops had known these things. They were all gone now and the magic had departed with them. The orphan was alone; he had to learn by himself; it was a hard school.”

My father tousled my head; he gently touched my heart.
“You will learn in time there is much pain here,” he said. “[Other people] will give it to you, time will give it to you, and you must learn to bear it all, not bear it alone, but be better for the wisdom that may come to you if you watch and listen and learn. Do not forget the turtle or ways of [human beings]. They are all orphans and they go astray; they do wrong things. Try to see better.”

“Yes, papa,” I said.

REFLECTION AND MEDITATION   <2, 12.5>
Lone Wild Bird – John Priest

RESPONSIVE READING <1, =13.5>
 #518--"Grandfather Look at Our Brokeness"

Choir– REFLECTION

HOMILY

We need a theology and a sense of the sacred that conveys stories, like Loren Eisley’s story of the turtle and his instruction by his papa, that tell us when we go astray, and when we need to try to do better and how that better might look.

We are confronted with a Earth that is in crisis or at least the Earth as we know it and has grown to support human life for the last 200,000 years when Homo sapiens first emerged from north-central and east Africa. Ice core samples in the Antarctic show atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are now higher than in the last 800,000 years. We would most likely have to go back  20 million years to find higher carbon dioxide levels. Twenty million years takes us back to the time when the monkeys and the great apes split from a common species.

Presently there are six billion people on Earth. With the effects of global warming, the capacity of the Earth to support a large human population will diminish drastically within a few decades. The disruption will not destroy the Earth. The Earth will recover, but human life on Earth may not recover–not the extent of the global civilization that we are now experiencing.

It is difficult to conceive of a more significant religious concern than the stark reality of such suffering of humans and other species in the massive shifts of a warming earth. With these stark images, religion is now listening to science. One of the central points of this week is that religion effects what we think about the world and what we think influences our behavior. Religious worldviews have contributed to the problems in which we find ourselves and reconstructed religious worldviews can give us the inspiration and hope to help us work our way out of this situation.

I want to provide you with a brief description of how two people–first a Christian theologian and second a humanist scientist when considering the lessons of science developed a view of God and the human relationship to the world that are very similar to each other. These views model how two very different approaches can find themselves on strikingly common ground. These two people–a theologian and a scientist–started at very different beginning places and arrived a the similar places concern God and the human place in the order of things.. In this coming together of religion and science resides great hope.

The Christian theologian is Sallie McFague,  Emeritus Professor of Theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School and a noted Christian feminist theologian. The humanist scientist is Stuart Kauffman, who became prominent as a scientist at the Santa Fe Institute in his study of biological self-organization, emergence, and the science of complexity. He is a professor of biochemistry at University of Calgary and who I met when he attended IRAS conferences on Star Island. <2.5>

New Climate for Theology. First I want to present Sallie McFague’s ideas. She begins by expressing dismay that traditional Christianity concerns itself largely with matters of personal moral choice that have little bearing on overarching moral issues that face our planet. These traditional moral choices focus on abortion and homosexuality at the neglect of broader moral choice implicit in the over consumption of Western civilization. She calls for Christian theologians to re-think God and human relationship to the Earth in light of the present environmental crisis.

Climate change she writes “‘tells us loud and clear that our conventional consumer-culture anthropology is false. It also warns Christians that a supernatural, transcendent God is neither faithful to the [Christian traditional of] incarnationalism or relevant to our times” (3). 

Let me explain a bit about what she means by incarnationalism. For the last several hundred years, she observes, the Christian view is that “human beings are sojourners on earth, hoping to return eventually to our true home in heaven. God is spirit, the earth is flesh, and our task is to live the flesh and attain life in the spirit. This is a strange understanding [she writes] of incarational religion” (34). She observes that the explicit and empowering good news of the Christian gospel is that God is with us in the flesh as Jesus Christ. This incarnational good news states “that we are not alone on the earth and that we do not belong somewhere else” (34).

She observes that the way to view God is not as a transcendent God, in some remote heaven, but that the Earth is in fact part of the body of God as well as the entire cosmos is part of the body of God. God is always present to the world and present to us through the world and ourselves as part of the very body of God.

She asks the rhetorical question, “since theologies will always be ‘wrong,’ is it better to err on the side of the presence or the absence of God?” (115). “We are created [she writes] to desire God, to love God through the beauty of the earth. It is not fear that prompts us to pay attention to the world’s needs, but delight and joy. . . . Indeed [being here is magnificent]– agonizingly magnificent” (115).

Is is through realizing that the entire cosmos is God’s body that the Christian becomes willing to tend the garden of God’s body and help make it whole and healthy through bringing a sense to the sacred to all of the earth. <4, =6.5>

The God of the Emergent Cosmos.  Theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher, Stuart Kauffman, makes a startling statement at the beginning of his book Reinventing the Sacred that would seem to place him miles apart theologically from Sallie McFague. Stu writes, “A creator God is not needed for the origin of life” (4). That sounds at first like one of the brash statements that some scientists make when they move from science to scientism–where scientists step outside of the scientific method and make statements about politics or religions for which science has no measurement or models. But wait a minute. First impressions are false. That’s not what Stu Kauffman is saying.

He begins by calling the scientific reductionism into question. Scientific reductionism states that you can ultimately reduce all natural phenomena to physical descriptions of atoms and molecules that are total predictable from the molecular level on up. Stu offers a definition of reductionism as “the view that society is to be explained in terms of people, people in terms of organs, organs by cells, cells by biochemistry, biochemistry by chemistry, and chemistry by physics” (11).

But Kauffman says that is not so. He says that atoms, molecules, bacteria, the cells in the human body, and human beings themselves are inherently unpredicable. What! That is not what we were taught. Well that is because we were taught by scientists who accepted scientific reductionism as gospel or by people who were trained by those scientists. Stu Kauffman says atoms, molecules, bacteria, cells in the human body and living organisms on this planet don’t exist alone, then exist in relationship with other entities and because these entities interact and communicate with other entities and the environment is complex ways, their behavior is inherently unpredictable. The  sheer complexity of the interactions makes prediction impossible and outcomes are spontaneous in what is called emergence.  It’s not there is anything wrong with the physics but classical physics does not deal with the interaction of complex networks of entities.

Scientists have been wondering for some time how all of the various molecules got together to form a simple living cell. In the 1950s, most thought that it was just by trail and error and the universe was old, and given enough tries, the universe would get it right. Then molecules would combine to form amino acids, DNA, and the various components in a cell. But when scientists calculated the odds of such things happening by random trial and error, they soon realized that there it was virtually impossible for there to be life. When scientists run up against that kind of brick wall, they say oops there must be something wrong with their thinking.

This is what happened in the 1980s when scientist Robert Shapiro did a thought experiment. He said that bacterial enzymes consist of 200 amino acids that are composed of 20 various combinations of twenty amino acids. He asked, what then are the odds of getting one bacterial enzyme by trial and error?  It’s a rather simple problem from an undergraduate probabilities course. It’s 1 divided by 20 to the 200th  power or 1 in 10 to 40,000 power. So the chances of there being a single bacterial enzyme that is developed by random trial and error is a decimal point followed by 40,000 zeros then a 1. Those are really small odds. If you want to stand on those odds I have some prime real estate that I will sell you on the planet Uranus. Just to put 10 to the 40,000th power into perspective, the total number of hydrogen atoms is 10 to 60 power, so 1 in ten to 40,000th is  “unthinkably improbable.” Also the universe is 10 to the 17th seconds old. You can make some assumptions about the number of tries per second, and basically any way you cut it, there is just not enough time in the universe to have even one bacterial enzyme by trial an error.

These odds of one on ten to the 40,000th are roughly the odds, Stu Kaufman says, of a tornado going through a junkyard and assembling a fully functioning 747.

So there must be something else going on, and that is complex systems interact and  self-organize in ways that are not predicable–in this case the complex system is a system of twenty amino acid molecules. These entities are individuals but interlinked into complex wholes that function spontaneously–be those entities electrons, molecules, bacteria, human beings, or stars in galaxies. These entities that are organized in groups and can share information with each other self-organize into emergent and unpredictible patterns. This unpredictibility is called emergence. <4, =10.5>

Two Paths to One Source.  Stuart Kauffman said that reductionism in science is flawed because of the sheer complexity of systems. In fact, there is a fundamental emergent creativity present in the entire universe from subatomic particles all the way to galaxies and everything in between. When you begin to think about it, Stu argues, the emergence of all of creation is far more amazing than a transcendent God making it all.

Stu Kauffman wrote that the emergent properties of the universe are “so stunning , so overwhelming, so worthy of awe, gratitude, and respect, that it is God enough for many of us. God, a fully natural God, is the very creativity in the universe. It is this view that I hope can be shared across all religious traditions, embracing those like myself, who do not believe in a Creator God, as well as those who do. This view of God can be a shared religious and spiritual space for us all.” (6).

Now hear how close Sallie McFague, as a Christian theologian, is to what Stu Kauffman said. Sallie McFague writes:
 God is not a being, even the highest being; God is reality. This is another way of saying God is “being itself,” or the ground of all that is real, is actual, exists. . . . The Christian tradition can lead us astray when it suggests that God is a supernatural being . . . .  God is the Spirit, the breath, the ether, the atmosphere in which each and every thing grows and flourishes . . .  The world is alive with God . . . .God is that form which all else derives its being, its reality. If we then say that reality is “good,” we make a faith statement about the hopeful, life-giving direction of what “really is” . . . . And this is the most astounding thing of all–that reality is good, that God is love. (163-164). <2.5, =13.0>

Conclusion.  So there we have it! A scientist and a theologian, both standing in awe of the striking fact of the creativity of the universe and what that creativity has accomplished from the smallest deep down subatomic particles to the huge and vast cosmos filled with sublime beauty and vastness unimaginable with 100 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy and 100 billion galaxies. And all of us are co-creators in that emerging reality.

Think of it! It’s amazing! <.5, =13.5>

HYMN
#23 “Bring Many Names”

CLOSING WORDS
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God,
 It will flame out, like shining, from shook foil . . .
nature is never spent;
 There lives the dearest freshness deep down things . . .
Go into this day and feel the world charged with an amazing grace
Let it burn and flame in your inner being
So that you too shine like shook foil.
May you too, no matter your age or health,
 Feel the never spent energy of nature in your bones
And know through your seeing, tasting, hearing, touching
The dearest freshness deep down things
That is you, that is me, that is every rock, plant and animal,
Every star–that too is you.
Shanti, shanti, shanti, shalom, blessed be, amen.

 STAR ISLAND
 NATURAL HISTORY WEEK
 FRIDAY JUNE 26, 2009
 WORSHIP SERVICE
 

PRELUDE

OPENING WORDS

 The opening words are from a poem by Wendell Berry

  Within the circles of our lives
  We dance the circles of the years,
  the circles of the seasons
  within the circles of the years,
  the cycles of the moon
  within the circles of the seasons,
  the circles of our reasons
  within the cycles of the moon.

  Again, again we come and go,
  changed, changing.  Hands
  join, unjoin in love and fear,
  grief and joy.  The circles turn,
  each giving into each , into all.
  Only, music keeps us here,

  each by all the others held.
  In the hold of hands and eyes
  we turn in pairs, that joining
  joining each to all again.

  And then we turn aside, alone,
  out of the sunlight gone

  into the darker circle of return.

 Come let us worship together.

CHALICE LIGHTING

  We light this chalice for the communion
  We have held this week.
  The communion with this island

  The communion with the sea
  The communion of friendships remade and renewed
  The communion with our leisure and quiet thoughts

  We light this chalice with the knowledge
  That not one thing is separated
  From the great web of existence
  Not one thing is removed or disconnected
  
  We find warmth and illumination in this knowledge
  We are truly never alone.
  We are embraced by creation and life!
  For all the days that we have laughed
  And shared

HYMN

  #83--"Winds Be Still"

READING

Black Elk Speaks pages 35-36

This the vision of Sioux shaman Black Elk recorded by John G. Neihardt: 

I was on my bay horse . . . . I looked ahead and saw the mountains there with rocks and forests on them, and from the mountains flashed all colors upward to the heavens. Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and around about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more that I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all things as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.

REFLECTION AND MEDITATION

 

RESPONSIVE READING

 #611--"Brahman" from the Bhagavada-gita

REFLECTION

HOMILY “What Is Required of Us?”

We began this week by reflecting about the meaning of this sacred place–Star Island–our spirit’s home. We then considered the broader issues of exploitation and sustainability, that underlie the theme for this week  about the history of fishing and its effects on the aquatic ecosystems in the Gulf of Maine. These broader issues of exploitation and substainability are global issues that coalesce around the overarching global environmental concern of global warming. We considered an emerging religious response to the global environmental challenge called religious environmentalism and the ways that religious environmentalism might provide vision and hope to address the global issues, as well as local and regional issues. We then considered more traditional and conservative religious worldviews that encouraged exploitation. We noted hopeful signs that religion now is changing and that science and religion are finding congruences. And we considered how religious environmentalism as it emerges in world religions is encouraging the various religions to rethink fundamental beliefs and practices in light of the global environmental crisis. We considered how a scientist and a theologian started at different places–one from the science of complexity as it applies to biology and the other from Christian theology–and how they converged on views of God and the human position in the nature of things. This morning for our last morning chapel service of the 2009 Natural History Conference, I want to consider from where we might find hope to meet the monumental changes of these times amid the perplexing diversity of human cultures, religions, and governments in this one planet.

We need some vision, some hope that we can hold onto. This reminds me of a phrase in the  Robert Frost poem, “Choose Something Like a Star,” when the poet turns to nature in the form of a faint star to ask for guidance  “Say something to us we can learn/ By heart and when alone repeat.” I want to pose a question of Robert Frost’s taciturn star this morning and the question is this, “Given the environmental crisis we face on this planet, What is required is us?”  To explore the possibilities of an answer, I will read the poem to see what wisdom we may find there.

  O Star (the fairest one in sight),
  We grant your loftiness the right
  To some obscurity of cloud–
  It will not do to say of night,
  Since dark is what brings out your light.
  Some mystery becomes the proud.
  But to be wholly taciturn
  In your reserve is not allowed.
  Say something to us we can learn
  By heart and when alone repeat.
  Say something! And it says “I burn.”
  Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
  Use language we can comprehend.
  Tell us what elements you blend.
  It gives us strangely little aid,
  But it does tell something in the end.
  And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,
  Not even stooping from its sphere,
  It asks a little of us here,
  It asks of us a certain height,
  So when the mob is swayed
  To carry praise or blame too far,
  We may choose something like a star
  To stay our minds on and be staid.

The poet implores the star to reveal something of itself as we implore the very Earth and cosmos to reveal something of our purpose here. The poet knows that this something to be revealed  is difficult to reach but not impossible. It has a “loftiness of height” and “obscurity of cloud.”

So we implore a star to guide us. We need something –some vision, some truth in the midst of our world gone mad.  So whatever guidance our star can provide us, this light, this truth, this inspiration, must be something that we can use that will give us comfort in what maybe is the most challenging of times our species has ever faced. Tell us something  “we can learn by heart and when alone repeat.” But this truth must not be given  in obscure language. It must be in the “language that we can comprehend.”

And the star responds, “I burn.” Yet that is not enough. Despite the fact that what we need to hear is often stated simply, in our angst over our lives and times, we need to know the specifics–something that we can latch onto, something concrete–the exact temperature of the burning, what elements that are blended in the burning and other basically useless knowledge that ignores the the deeper purposes for which we are asking. Yet the star–this source of light–does give us something in the end.

The star tells us it burns. Stars give off light because they burn from the inside out. The star has a center that holds the burning that brings forth the light–something that we need and are lacking. So Frost reveals the image of an Eremite from a poem by John Keats. An Eremite is a solitary religious hermit–watching, mindful, and centered on the flow of the natural world. The image is decidedly spiritual. In this age of turmoil, we need a center to quiet the mind so we can hear the stirrings of the heart. We are all like stars, but we have lost contact with our centers–our burning. So what was started as a outward reaching to a remote and taciturn star has returned to us.

Then the poet tell us, this inner center–this burning and light–“asks of us a certain height,

So when the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

So in the midst of the uncertainty of these times when we lack a direction, when our internal compass spins every direction, in William Butler Yeats’ words, when “the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity,” we need a light, a steadfast north star–some inner radiance, that burns in us and shines forth.

The only distinction that I would like to draw between our present situation and that of the world of 1947 when Frost wrote this poems, the challenge is not the mob that is “swayed to carry praise or blame too far” but the challenge is in  carrying despair, denial, and fear too far. So the final lines of our 2009 poem are

So when we may be swayed
To carry despair and fear too far
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

The star that we have been imploring this week casts a new light in the world and new vision of the world and the sacred. The sacred is not removed in a transcendent realm but in Jesus words from the Gospel of Thomas, “The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the Earth and people do not see it.” But yet we can see if we look closely and hear the nature of things–like Loren Eisley’s papa told him in the lamplight 100 years ago:

 “be better for the wisdom that may come to you if you watch and listen and learn. Do not forget the turtle or ways of [human beings]. They are all orphans and they go astray; they do wrong things. Try to see better.”

All we need do is “watch and listen and learn,” and then act on what we see, hear, and know: the Earth will teach us what to do–to save ourselves, our species and other species who are a sister and brother beings. You see because the earth is sacred, as are the stars, as are each of us. The Earth is part of God’s body and we each are part of God’s body. The inspirations and hope are with us.

But there is one thing more we need. Last year another scientist was here on Star Island–a Quaker from South Africa and a physicist–who contemplates the nature of time and black holes and the beginning of the universe. His name was George Ellis. He wrote a book with theologian Nanecy Murphy titled On the Moral Nature of the Universe. They observe that there is a fundamental governing principle of the universe that forms the basis of ethical action. This principle is kenosis. Kenosis is the Greek word meaning self emptying. To see how kenosis works in the universe all we need do is to “choose something like a star” and watch and listen and learn what it has to teach us. When a star dies in a supernova explosion, it’s death is a kenosis–a self emptying– whose remnants in the case of this solar system became the substance of the Sun, the planets, the Earth, and you and me and all of life!

Philosopher Roger Gottlieb reminds us, “To commune with nature we must find something within ourselves that is not tied to our social identity, or rooted in complicated verbal self-description. . . . Our eyes have evolved to see this landscape, our ears to hear these birds and rustling leaves, our tongues to taste the food that grows here. Trying to cut ourselves loose from the earth is as foolish as denying that we were formed by our families and our native cultures. We may have forgotten all this, but surely we can, if we choose, remember. To do so, we will have to move out of our normal egos–a move, interestingly, that religion has always asked us to make.”

This moving out of our ego is the self-emptying kenosis that is demanded by the earth of us. We cannot do what is demanded of us if we continue as the self-centered consumer of products created by a greedy profit driven economy. We must be the givers to the earth and not the takers. This self-emptying is a profound spiritual state.

If civilization survives this crisis, one thing that will come out of it is that humans may well move into a state of more aware and engaged spirituality. Mystics and spiritual masters have speculated that the next phase of human evolution is not physical but spiritual. This crisis may be the evolutionary shock for human kind to get on with achieving our true destiny. Maybe, just maybe, each of us on this island are the ancestors–of a spiritually evolved species–no longer homo sapians–humans the wise, but homo religiosus–humans the religious. If you have ever been blessed to be in the presence of someone who is highly spiritually evolved, you know what I mean. The person exudes a sense of peace and joy despite the fear and trembling of other round about. These spiritually evolved people may well be the harbingers for the next stage in human evolution into humans the religious.

The way, the path for each of us is to allow the crisis to help us relinquish what has kept us  caught and what is still keeping us caught–our focus on possessions and having things. If we are not able to overcome this obsession, someday maybe a million years from now when our world civilization is covered by hundreds of  feet of refuse and dirt, an aspiring young anthropologist of the now dominant planetary species of the biological order Blattaria  (that’s the order that includes cockroaches) will uncover a shiny chrome thing about six inches wide and six feet long and curved and on the chrome thing is some writing stuck on. The Blattarian anthropologist concludes that this chrome thing was associated with a means of humanoid transportation. After deciphering the writing that was stuck on the chrome thing the anthropologist will know the reason for the death of the once flourishing species and its civilization, it reads “the one who dies with the most toys wins!”

But now this is not about winning or even survival; it is about living our lives as the fullest expression of what it means to be a child of the universe. It means living from a sense of the rightness and basic goodness of being here. It means living from praise, appreciation and gratitude. “We have before us the question [wrote Thomas Berry] not simply of physical survival, but of survival in a human mode of being, survival and development into intelligent, affectionate, imaginative persons thoroughly enjoying the universe about us, living in profound communion with one another and with some significant capacities to express ourselves in our literature and creative arts. (37)

May we each find in our lives–each of us–as we go our separate ways–find ways to live in profound communion with all  of the abundant life on this planet, “seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit,” and creating a more human, more earthly, more holy shape to our lives..

HYMN

 Hymn #163--"For the Earth Forever Turning"

CLOSING WORDS
Let me leave you with the words of the Hebrew prophet Isaiah as our closing worlds and vision coming across centuries to this time and this place:

"For  I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
and the former things shall not be remembered
 or come into mind.
But be glad and rejoice for ever in what I am creating;
 for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
 and its people as delight. . . .
No more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
 or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days,
 or an old person who does not live out a lifetime . . . .
For like the days of a tree shall the days of my people will be,
  and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity;
 for they shall be the offspring blessed by the LORD. . . .
Before they call I will answer,
 while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
 the lion shall eat straw like the ox. . . .
They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain,
 says the LORD."

Take hope in these holy words as we go in peace–full of hope and the holy, creative love that pervades the cosmos.