A Touch of Nature Makes the Whole World Kin: So What’s Our Excuse? (A Humanist “Theology” of Radical Welcome)
Mystical and Scientific
The author of the Gospel of Matthew reports Jesus saying, “If you welcome your sisters and brothers only, what are you doing more than others? (5:47)
Monk and mystic Thomas Merton wrote about one of his mystical experiences:
“Yesterday, in Louisville, at the corner of 4th and Walnut, I suddenly realized that I loved all the people and that none of them were, or, could be totally alien to me.” He felt, “. . . as if waking from a dream—the dream of separateness.” He goes on to say, “Thank God! Thank God! I am only another member of the human race, like all the rest of them.”
The insistence of Jesus that more than just our friends deserve welcome and Merton’s mystical insight that “none of them were, or, could be totally alien to me,” and his awakening from “the dream of separateness,” describe the truth of the human condition.
Fact is, human procreation is exponential—two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents . . . Bill Bryson did the math in his book A Short History of Nearly Everything. Twenty generations ago the number of direct forebears for each of us is 1,048,576. Twenty-five generations ago the number jumps to 33,554,432 .Thirty generations ago the number jumps to over a billion.
It is demonstrably true: no person is alien to any other, at least on a physical level.
The Cut Worm Cries Out
As part of his enlightenment, the Buddha felt the pain of the earthworms cut by plows. As in Merton’s case, the Buddha’s is based in reality—human beings and earthworms share 98% of our DNA.
Animals, plants. The earth itself. As a humanist, I’m not allowed the fiction that human beings are the crown of creation. Human beings are part of a complex web, a web we still barely understand. We ignore the other parts at our peril. We consider ourselves better-than others—be they humans, animals, plants, or the planet itself—only out of ignorance of the facts that science teaches us.
Human beings share 99.9% of our DNA with each other. All the diversity we perceive—gender; race; ability; hair color . . . what-have-you . . . it all resides in that point-one percent of our DNA.
How can a humanist not welcome everyone?
And religion, that most divisive of issues—since we view scriptures and religions as products of the teeming human brain, it’s difficult to say one is better than another. All of them paint reality, albeit with a limited palette. Religions are fun . . . as long as nobody looses an eye. Or a tooth. As long as they do not interfere with human flourishing.
And politics. Since humanists know that human beings have made it up, and that there is no “invisible hand” guiding capitalism or any other economic system, we see economic disparity for what it is—not a reward or punishment from a deity or from hard work but as the effect of many causes, mostly of human design. Politics and economics are fun. As long as nobody’s eye gets put out. As long as politics and economics do not interfere with human flourishing.
Brothers, Sisters, and Others
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Earth_Worm.JPG
Since humanists interrogate beliefs intensely—and are open to changing our beliefs when reason and evidence point in a new direction—we focus not on common beliefs but on common values.
Our highest value is human flourishing. Flourishing for each and every human being, because each has inherent worth and dignity, no matter about religion or national origin or social or economic location or what-have-you.
Humanists are human, and therefore full of prejudices, but we can’t hide behind those prejudices. If we do not welcome our sisters and brothers—and those questioning the gender binary—what are we doing more than others?”
Since religions and science are products of the human mind, one story, one truth, does not suffice—be it a scripture or science itself.
Since humanism considers religious thought as a product of the teeming human mind and human flourishing as a primary goal of human activity, our movement is uniquely able to pitch that “big tent” that Unitarian Universalists hope for.
Moses, Jesus, Paul and Sacred Soundbites
What ‘Ol Abe Saw
Moses, Jesus, Paul, et. al. as motivator. Their words as marching orders for how to live and what is right to do.
Sounds good. Yet, as he watched the bloody carnage justified on both sides by Christian theology, Abraham Lincoln perhaps said it best:
“I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.”
Which side is the Lord’s side? Or is it that God plays for both teams? Or is it that human beings are condemned to action that may or may not be “right” until God (or Satan?) sorts it out?
Cherry-Picking and Sound-Biting
This contrast came home to me during the recent fight over gay marriage in the state of Minnesota, where I live. Progressive religious leaders took a long look at the reign of the religious right in politics and decided to counter it. We took the Christian message of love and inclusion to the statehouse. I knew that we had accomplished the goal when a conservative state senator said, “This is about more than religion.”
The worm had turned. And, indeed, the right to marry is now guaranteed in the state of Minnesota.
Many of my religious sisters and brothers believe that the loving and inclusive message of their faith traditions prevailed. Don’t get me wrong—I’m all for loving and inclusion. It’s the message of Moses, Jesus, Paul, et. al. that bothers me a bit.
Weren’t we progressives cherry-picking and sound-biting as crassly as our conservative opponents?
Where were the real Moses and Jesus and Paul in all this?
Perhaps our hearts were telling us things. Perhaps our sense of right and wrong was talking, on both sides. But these sacred thinkers weren’t saying anything new that the scriptures weren’t telling Abe Lincoln and Jeff Davis back in their days of choosing who to slaughter and why based on those old writings.
Using Our Own Little Heads
This gives me pause. Are we really best served as we make decisions in the Twenty-First Century by referring to old texts and deities that pretty clearly don’t do a whole lot of clear talking?
Or might we be better served “using our own little heads”?
That’s a phrase I learned from my fundamentalist Christian mother: “Use your own little head.”
By it, she meant for teenage me to “listen to my raisin’,” another catch phrase, rather than my peers. My mother was cautioning me to use my own head. Further, at least to my future-humanist ears, she was saying that reason, not the religion in my gut, should determine my actions.
Shouldn’t reason, not the religions of our various cultural backgrounds, serve as the arbiter of public discourse and our efforts at realizing a just society?
As a multi-faith leader, I spend a lot of time saying and showing that people of diverse religious faiths can find common ground. I believe in that work.
I’m also convinced that our common evolution as cooperative and rational animals trumps the overlays of religion and culture made since our common trek from the Rift Valley began.
We are rational animals.
After all, which would you prefer as a physician, someone who feels your pain or someone who knows how to stop it? Listening to the heart is a fine thing to do. And, there’s no doubt scriptures make great soundbites.
Listening to our own heads is the hard part.
Eleanor Rigby’s Selfie
We learned from the Beatles that Eleanor Rigby “keeps her face in a jar by the door.” Clearly the Fab Four thought that was not a good thing to do. But what were they critiquing? Was it where Eleanor kept her face? Or that she had a “face to meet the faces that we meet” at all? Should we wear the same face all the time? Is one of our faces the “true” one?
Whether or not there’s noise when a tree falls in the forest, a more pertinent question for us is whether or not we have a face, a personality, when no one is around to experience it. This is why Eleanor Rigby’s plight haunts us still. We know she’s out there. We don’t want to become her. We fear that she is faceless. We fear that for ourselves.
Most of us wish perhaps that we were like the stone imagined by Emily Dickinson,
How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn’t care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears—
Perhaps we wish to be,
. . . independent as the Sun
In our hearts, however, we know very well that we are creatures dependent upon others of our kind. And that’s scary.
Interactions Are Us
In the Nineteenth Century, US prisons adopted the practice of solitary confinement, depriving a prisoner of visual stimulation and human contact. At the time, the idea was that a prisoner with some “alone time” would reflect on his or her misdeeds and come out a better person. It was quickly noticed, however, that instead of becoming a moral paragon, prisoners in solitary confinement began to exhibit symptoms of mental illness.
After this discovery, the practice was for the most part discontinued until the late-Twentieth Century, when US prisons began to transition from a rehabilitation model to one of retribution. Now we know that being alone hurts . . . a lot. And that’s why prisons do it. (There are in the US today something on the order of 80,000 prisoners in solitary confinement at any given time.)
We people don’t like being alone for extended periods. It drives us crazy. Therefore, when we are alone, those of us not under arrest find ways to simulate human interaction—TV, social media, perhaps even writing a letter. We are social creatures. We need human interaction. We need an excuse to put our faces on.
Skip the Sermon
My father died recently, and my mother found herself alone after sixty-five years of companionship. She wonders aloud: should she give up and leave her face in the jar by the door? Is it disloyal of her not to do so? She no longer feels like Emily Dickinson’s independent little stone. She feels the full weight of dependency.
My prescription for my mother (and Eleanor Rigby) is . . . Go to church! Or bowling. Or a book club. Something. Father McKenzie’s message (or disconnected ramblings about a book) may not be much to text home about, but the coffee, wine, or potluck involved might just be the ticket.
A member of my congregation recently brought me one of those graphics called a bubble cloud, generated by a questionnaire concerning what was important to a Christian congregation near my humanist congregation. The most-used word? “Community.” And the congregation I serve would would have the same big bubble, “community.” In their case “Christ” and in our case “reason” would be tiny little bubbles compared with the true reason we gather as congregations, community.
Human interaction reminds us to pull our faces out of that jar.
Bowling with Father McKenzie
As the Beatles knew, denizens of post-industrial countries may exist in utter isolation. We often shop in anonymous supermarkets rather than bustling markets. We buy clothing off a hanger, not from the source of the craft. As Robert D. Putnam pointed out, many of us bowl alone.
I don’t think any of us has an “authentic” or “true” face. We adjust the faces we pull from the jar according to the circumstances of our interactions. We have a “going to a funeral” face. We have a “going to the theatre” face, and so on. These are constructed in the bustle of human relationships. Without the bustle, we don’t bother. And that’s not good for us.
Perhaps Eleanor—and all the lonely people—should share a selfie. Not a bad first step in getting that face out of the jar by the door and spiffed up a bit. Then? Go to church. Or temple or mosque or . . . a bowling team. Perhaps even chat with Father McKenzie. Who knows what he knows when he’s not pontificating . . .
Way to Go, Supreme Court: Another #facepalm
A Primo #Facepalm Moment
To be a citizen of the United States is to experience many face palm moments. And recent Supreme Court decisions have provided some spectacular face palm moments.
Full disclosure: I take oppression of workers a bit personally. I escaped wage slavery only by luck. And my mother worked in the sort of retail store that Hobby Lobby is.
The Hobby Lobby decision this week by the US Supreme Court supplies one more example of why humanists often get irate and irrational about religion. After all, the scenario appears to be a no-brainer: an employer has a particular religious opinion. An employee has another or none. The employer sues, protesting a benefit the employee needs. Tough taco employer. right?
A no-brainer. But . . . #facepalm! . . . not in the United States. Here, individual liberty trumps the the public good a bit too often. Now, I know, the Supreme Court is that branch of government that brought you, oh, let’s see—#facepalm!—decisions such as Dred Scott and Citizens United. But still.
To the Manor Born
Most Supreme Court decisions are routine and uncontroversial. Those don’t make the news, so most citizens get a skewed picture of the court. But, reflect for a moment on the peculiarity that US citizens do not wonder about how our Supreme Court will reason their way through a politicized case to a just decision. We only have to look at the politics of most cases to know how most decisions will go. We only need to know the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties to forecast how “law” and “reason” will turn out.
Such was the case in the Hobby Lobby case. There was never any doubt of the decision. It’s just a matter of counting the judges who have a particular political opinion.
How many babies will be born into this nation of the brave and the free and the frayed social safety net? How much hope does a child born to a parent who works at Hobby Lobby have? Will any of those kids get lucky, like me?
It’s not likely. What’s the percentage of people who make it into the One Percent? #facepalm! (Or like lucky, lucky me, the Five Percent?) And how many of those weren’t born into the One Percent? Or Five Percent?
Cue (and Queue) the Crazies
Does this decision open the door for all kinds of religious objections to all sorts of things? Yes. For Christians, anyway. The unspoken law behind the decision is that Christianity is the only real and true religion, and the merits of others to be decided by whatever local powers there might be, in whatever courts may be nearby. (Read “Christian” jury.)
Humorist Will Rogers once said, “America has the best politicians money can buy.” Also, America has the best religion money can buy—to every citizen a religion custom- tailored to support our prejudices. Here’s the thing: whatever your religious beliefs, or lack thereof, if the top tenant of your religion is not fostering the wellbeing of your fellow human beings, it is bad religion.
As a humanist, I have no excuses for damaging the well being of another. The central focus of my ethics must be promoting the flourishing of my fellow humans, animals, and the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facepalm#mediaviewer/File:Paris_Tuileries_Garden_Facepalm_statue.jpg
As we enjoy the fireworks in the United States, we do well to meditate a bit on the difference between rights and responsibilities. Yes, we are a nation of laws. Often those rights and those laws are (facepalm!) irresponsible.
Roadmaps for the Soul (or: Hunting, Gathering, Singing)
In “Tombstone Blues,” a song released in 1965, Bob Dylan sang, “The National Bank at a profit sells roadmaps for the soul / To the old folks home and the college.” In the context of the song, Bob clearly doesn’t think this is a good thing. Commodifying the meaning of life?
Yes, well . . .
Suppose for a moment that all the religious and philosophical speculation through time, and all the art and architecture to boot, have been about the same thing as the hunting and the fishing, the gathering and farming. Suppose that all human actions—from the sacred to the profane—have been and are still . . . ways to survive. Ways for us to adapt to our environment and, perhaps, thrive.
Sounds Reasonable, Doesn’t It?
Does such a supposition denigrate—or cheapen—all the blood and tears shed in service to the gods? Or in service to art? I don’t think so.
Is a symphony less because it’s an adaptive trait rather than a window onto absolute truth? What if the search for truth and meaning is itself an adaptive trait—a way of surviving.
Put this way, it’s hard not to say, “well, duh!” Yet we often don’t go quite far enough. Yes, human activities of all sorts are attempts at survival. But if our search for truth and meaning in all its manifestations, from fine art to fine dining to religion, is an adaptive trait, doesn’t it follow that the search for truth and meaning is an entirely human construct? It’s filling a need but has no larger purpose.
It’s Easy If You Try
Like most people, I searched for a “really true truth” for a long time. Hey, I’m a Baby Boomer, it’s what we did. It was a brilliant marketing ploy. Forget the gurus; the tax dollars you lose giving churches tax-exempt status is seventy-one billion dollars a year.
That’s a lot of moolah for Moloch. (And full disclosure: as a minister, I ride that particular gravy train.)
The search for truth and meaning puts a lot of food on the table and a lot of money into retirement accounts for various sorts of people. No, this isn’t about tax exemptions. It’s about the price we are willing to pay purveyors of truth and meaning. After all, yoga alone is a twenty-seven billion dollar a year industry.
The Fine Print
We pay a lot for truth and meaning, in bookstores, museums, churches, and storefront meditation centers. To repeat, I think that’s great. It’s an adaptive trait. Yet, it’s good remember that there is no one truth to find.
This particular survival trait only becomes problematic when we fall into the trap of thinking there’s a truth out there to find. It’s problematic when we begin paying a high price for one particular roadmap for the soul, or when those around us begin paying too high a price.
Until someone gets hurt.
Yes, it’s the search itself that is the answer. Not the answers. Or the roadmaps.
Making Sense of Life (or: Three Decorating Ideas for the Mind)
Wallace Stevens once said, “How full of trifles everything is! It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.” At first glance, this perhaps sounds like a Disneyesque reflection on the uses of a hearty imaginal life. Or—since Stevens was a poet—a reflection on the power of metaphor to set solid things flying.
At second glance—since Stevens was both a poet and an atheist—perhaps it is a reflection on what he saw as the most fruitful power in the universe—the human mind’s power to construct meaning as we go along in an otherwise material and un-human universe.
Most likely, Stevens meant all these things and more. After all, his poems sport beautiful and improbable and impermanent “furniture” such as peacocks, round jars in Tennessee, and Emperors of Ice-Cream. Stevens also wrote of “the palm at the end of the mind.” Yes, the palm is a tropical tree. It is also the human hand, our hands. We ourselves are the end of meaning . . . because we are the only creatures in the world that reach for something called meaning, at least something called “human meaning.”
Moment to moment we are faced with a question: How do I make sense of my life? “It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room,” Stevens wrote, “with something more than furniture.” And it is only one’s thoughts that fill a universe full of furniture with meaning.
Religions (and the lack thereof) reflect the values of the cultures in which they develop. Religions (and their lack) serve as both a reflection of the aspirations of particular groups and also as guides for individuals within a group when we may be in doubt concerning what our culture and our religious belief or non-belief requires of us. They also fill the room with more than furniture. They help us make sense of our lives.
Pragmatist philosophers claim that labeling one “truth” as “false” and another as “true” doesn’t reveal much. It is more useful to see all views—religious and otherwise—as devices to get results. After all, if beliefs did not get results, they would not survive the test of time. The question—at least for those who are free enough of theocracy to have a choice—is which of the many ways of seeing produce the most desirable results,which make the most sense our of life.
Is it somehow useful for making sense of life, for instance, to believe that Fridays which fall on the 13th of the month have special properties?
Over time human beings have posited two very different views of how the world works. One view is that the order we see is the order that is: sure, we will keep discovering more and more about that order, but it’s all out there to observe, albeit some of it observable only with a large hadron collider.
The opposite view (the opposite “truth”) is that there is a higher order not discoverable by observation. This is usually accompanied by speculation concerning a god or gods, though it doesn’t have to. (For example, the Renaissance-era belief in alchemy did not require gods in order to function, even though that belief system existed in parallel to Christianity. )
These polar opposites are not always opposite in practice. Many otherwise “materialist” people leave room for “powers unseen,” as the Book of Common Prayer would have it. Be that as it may, there is a great gulf fixed between those who trust observation to reveal “truth” and those who depend up the revelation of sacred texts and seers of various sorts, be they prophets or gurus.
Wallace Stevens was on the side of observation. He found the most reliable way to get results was to posit a lack of meaning (at least human meaning) beyond the human mind.
Is there a difference between the words of Moses and the words of Wallace Stevens? Stevens thought not. Sure, some poets and some poems are better at filling rooms with more than furniture, and large hadron colliders can rewrite all we know about the room and the furniture. Yet, in essence, it’s all about the human imagination. It’s up to us to animate the room with sense and meaning.
We ourselves are the end of (human) meaning . . . because we are the only creatures in the world that reach for something called (human) meaning. Moment to moment we are faced with a question: How do I make sense of my life? For some of us “truth” is our way of animating the furniture, and we assume our sense is not the sense of another. It is an entertaining place to live.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palm_tree_symbol.svg
As Stevens put it,
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
The Proof’s in the Pudding (or What’s Churchy about Church?)
Imagine
I’m sometimes asked how humanists can have “church” without invoking god. Here’s how I think about it:
Imagine this scenario: When Imhotep in ancient Egypt invoked the great god Ra, he was invoking the human consciousness, not Ra Almighty.
Imagine this: When Zadok, son of Ahitub, entered the holy of holies of Solomon’s brand new temple, perhaps he was talking to the greatest power on this earth—the human imagination.
Imagine this: When the evangelist Billy Graham made his vast alter calls in stadiums across North America, the Christ that thousands flocked to . . . was the human psyche. Whatever you think about powers beyond, imagine this for just a moment.
Entertain the thought for just a moment that every shaman, priest, and prophet who has ever lived . . . has created worship without god because . . . there never has been six or three or one to begin with.
Shared Subjective Reality
But wait! Isn’t there more to the question? Because, even granted the accuracy of my imaginings, didn’t Imhotep and Zadok and Billy Graham each have the advantage of speaking to people who shared a subjective reality?
Didn’t the Egyptians of Imhotep’s time have a mental image of Ra and the Hebrews of Zakok’s time have a notion of Yahweh and the Christians of Billy Graham’s time a common picture of Christ the Lord?
Good question. Did they really? Are people really like that? Or did the priests and preachers have, rather, the apparatus of worship embedded in a particular place and time—Ra’s temple, Yahweh’s temple, or the vast football stadiums of Jesus with great PA systems?
Could it be that what they all had is an apparatus for worship that individual psyches journeyed to . . . . Can we seriously argue that each ancient Egyptian had an identical psychological understanding of Ra? Not likely. But they did have a temple, didn’t they? Doesn’t the very fact of the rabbinic tradition argue that Hebrew worshipers exited Zadok’s services with very different views of ultimate reality? Still, they had that temple, didn’t they?
Weren’t there as many Christs as there were Christians in Billy Graham’s vast alter calls? Yet they came to that structure of power and fame called a stadium or an auditorium, didn’t they? They came to hear Billy.
All Churchy
What’s so churchy about church? The apparatuses of worship change with time, as do the words and the concepts. It is the human mind and human needs for purpose and meaning that remain that same and come to the temple, the stadium, or the storefront church. These are what remain the same. For humanists, that’s as holy as it gets. And that’s fine: the proof is in the pudding. Ra’s pudding doesn’t do much for many of us. But the pudding of gathering together into community is quite tasty.
Just imagine that the point of worship (humanists prefer “assembly”) is calling individuals into community. Imagine that a community created in this way agrees to agree—despite individual understandings—on particular values that sometimes—in the best-case scenario—lead to objective common actions that may be considered moral and ethical (actions better because they spring from a common purpose).
That’s what “worship”—uh, assembling—will or won’t do. Gathering to invoke Ra or any of the deities or no deity at all leads to the same thing. It’s the human mind imbued with meaning and purpose and communal action that matter.
Imagine . . .
Spiritual But Not . . . Keep Talking
Literary critic Terry Eagleton said, “The din of conversation is as much meaning as we shall ever have.” I like that. On first glance, it appears to be bleak—human conversation is all the meaning there is?
But imagine what human conversation has given us.
Imagine the din of conversation under the porches and under the trees in Athens during the time of Socrates.
Imagine the din of conversation in Baghdad in the late 700s when an institution called the House of Wisdom opened it’s doors—an attempt to gather all the wisdom in the world.
Think of the din of conversation in Florence that led to the Renaissance. The din of conversation in Shakespeare’s London. The din of conversation in cafes that created the Vienna Circle at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.
The din of conversation in the Paris of the 1920s. Or Greenwich Village. Or North Beach in San Francisco in the 1950s that gave rise to the Beat Generation.
Think of the din of conversation in Liverpool, England that led to the Beatles. Or the din of conversation in a little recording studio called Sub Pop that led to the Seattle Sound, better known as Grunge.
Too often we think of lonely geniuses but genius is seldom lonely. Shakespeare and his Globe theatre were not the only show in town. Shakespeare’s London had twenty-seven public theatre venues. More than fifty British bands made up the so-called British Invasion. The Beatles weren’t alone.
Looked at from this perspective, from the view of what gets created in the crucible of human sharing, Eagleton’s phrase does not sound quite so bleak: “The din of conversation is as much meaning as we shall ever have.” Why ever would we want more than human conversation?
Would we really want a voice from on high coming to proclaim the once and final truth? Isn’t the mystery more beautiful, the stabs in the dark of the millions of human beings who have taken part in this great din of conversation, this lovely human project of creating meaning?
I believe in community. A place where people talk with each other. In coffee houses. In bars. In streets and market squares—public spaces and the din of conversation—this is the meaning of meaning. And it is why totalitarian regimes fear the public square and religions burn books.
The term “conversation” originally meant “intimacy with others.” It also meant “sexual intercourse.” Only later did the term take on its present meaning of talking.
Let’s just say there’s something intimate about conversation.
What if the increasing din of human conversation, and perhaps its increasing complexity, is the hope of humankind? Would it be so bad if the talking that led to the Renaissance and a band called Nirvana is all the heaven we humans shall ever know?
Let’s take one conversation as an example. Two human beings, Michael Murphy (not the pop singer) and Frederic Spiegelberg, started a conversation. They agreed that the human spiritual impulse need not necessarily follow any one religious tradition. They thought that people could be “spiritual but not religious.” That phrase is a cliche now, a whipping boy for various dogmas. But in its day the phrase was a radical new thought. Spiegelberg published a book titled The Religion of No Religion.
The two men founded an institution called the Esalen Institute. Now, whatever you may think of what the Esalen Institute became, look at how pervasive a conversation between two people back in the 1950s has become. “Spiritual but not religious” as a concept is destroying traditional religions in the United States. And Murphy and Spiegelberg would not be upset by that. The Esalen motto is “No one captures the flag.” No religion has all the truth. And science doesn’t either.
Aren’t gratitude and grace and compassion and love and astonishment part of human nature? Part of our evolution? How could any one religion steal the flag of wonder or awe? As a matter of fact, how do any of these things have anything at all to do with religion?
Isn’t gratitude and grace and compassion and love and astonishment just as available in art, in music, in poetry? Available to each of us somewhere in the din of conversation?
Isn’t science a conversation too?
Today, we are creating a new conversation. One that is perhaps even beyond (and free from) “spiritual but not religious.” Yes, the din of your conversation is as much meaning as we shall ever have—but it is enough.
Eduardo Matania Beim Die geschlossene Bank 1870s.jpg
Keep talking. Increase the din. Converse. Remake the human reality.
Pagans, Cheasters, and Nones: Easter and Open-Source Religion
This coming Easter morning, many people will rise and look east. Some will go to a Christian church for their only visit this year. Many will be reminded by priests and preachers that this one day is not enough. Those strangers to churches will be telling the oldest of religious truths: it is the people, not the priests, who make the gods.
“Easter” we call the day, namesake of a deity of the Northlands, Eostre, goddess of the dawn. English speakers still call the direction she arises from “east.” She is the goddess of new beginnings and of fertility, her day celebrated as the earth comes back to life after a long winter.
The holiday (holy day) called Easter is a movable feast, tied to both the cycles of the sun and of the moon—Easter occurs on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox.
Religious holidays are celebrations of recurrence. Children in the Northlands have been searching the wet, awakening grass for eggs on Easter morning for thousands of years. The celebration has spread to other lands; to other religions. To the far corners of the planet.
Nineteenth Century German philologist Jacob Grimm reported that in some remote German villages of his time people still celebrated Eostre with sword dances, bonfires, and the baking of “heathenish pastries.”
It’s difficult this time of year—at least in the top half of the Northern Hemisphere—not to think of new beginnings. Difficult not to dance just a little bit. The iron grip of the deathly ice is finally broken and life is emerging from the long-dead earth again.
This is one of only two days the so-called “C and E” (Christmas and Easter) Christians—also known as Chreasters—fill churches. There are something on the order of eighty-five million Chreasters in the United States.
Statistics indicate that less than one-quarter of US Christians attend church even once a month. But Easter brings ‘em out—even more than Christmas or Mother’s Day(!). Why? Might it be because Easter is such a blend of religious traditions?
Reflect on the potpourri of religions and cultures that make up the concept of Easter as it is celebrated in the United States today. We have a fertility goddess from Northern Europe who survived the invasion of a Southern European tradition, Christianity, based on a Middle Eastern tradition, Judaism, itself an amalgam of religious thinking from the earliest agricultural civilizations of Mesopotamia with a pinch of Zoroastrianism from a certain Babylonian captivity thrown in.
All those ideas added up to create a lunar holiday celebrating a solar god in a myth echoing human sacrifice that originated in Egyptian mythology concerning the god Osiris, a metaphor for the planting and growth of vegetation in the Nile delta.
All that adds up to Easter brunches. And chocolate.
Why Easter? Why is Easter Christianity’s greatest hit?
“Syncretism” is one of those ten dollar words that permeates theology. The word describes the human propensity for combining religious ideas from various traditions.
The poet Wallace Stevens—an atheist by the by—made a very good point when he said, “The people, not the priests, made the gods.” Yes. The people, not the priests, meld ideas to create their religions.
Reflect on one of the greatest failures of human history. In 1231 the Roman Catholic Church opened its Office of Inquisition, nowadays known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. Yes, it’s still in existence. Yet, after nearly 800 years of terror and cajoling, there are more heresies now than ever.
Wallace Stevens continues to be correct: the people, not the priests, make the gods. And we the people continue to vote with our feet. And the more information that flows on our nets and our webs, the more people are going to . . . well, what are we people going to do?
Some will become Cheasters. Some double-belongers. Some nones.
Return to the case of the goddess Eostre. The story goes that Pope Gregory the Great was walking one day in a slave market in Rome. This was in the 600’s CE. Pope Gregory saw a couple of blonde slaves and asked his handlers where blondes came from. The handlers said they were Angles, which at the time meant either the English or Northern Germans. The pope was so taken with these blondes that he decided to devote his life to converting the Northlands to Christianity.
In 601 CE Pope Gregory instructed the missionaries he was sending to England with these words:
. . . the temples of the idols in those nations ought not to be destroyed; but let the idols that are in them be destroyed; let holy water be made and sprinkled in the said temples, let altars be erected, and relics placed.
For if those temples are well built, it is requisite that they be converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God; that the nation, seeing that their temples are not destroyed . . . may the more familiarly resort to the places to which they are accustomed.
Syncretism. Gregory’s order was an act of genius. It was a strategy that led to a Christendom that included the far North. But it also introduced a blue note; a note of mystery. Were those people out in the country—“paganus,” pagans, which means “villagers” or “rustics” in Latin—were those pagans, were those people of the heath, those people of the wastelands, those heath-ans—were those away from the centers of power, away from the army and the police of the king and pope and bishop—were they really Christian? Or were they going to their old temples for other reasons?
No one ever knew for sure. And we never will know. But is it a coincidence that the largest concentration of atheists on the planet today . . . happen to live in those Northlands that Pope Gregory Christianized?
Syncrenism. The people, not the priests, make the gods. In computer speak, it’s called Open Source: people with different agendas; different talents; different points of view, all have access to a program. And the result is a better program than those developed through controlled access. Maybe that’s why Easter is Christianity’s greatest hit.
The people, not the priests, make the gods. Religions are the oldest open source software.
Seriously—Who Said We Can Choose Our Own Mysteries?
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. ~Oscar Wilde
There is more than one type of mystery. Some mysteries aren’t even mysterious. For example, how a diesel engine works is a mystery to many, but only those who haven’t taken the time to look at diesel engines. They are a marvel of complexity, yes. But there’s no mystery to how a diesel engine works. People design them. People build them. People repair them.
How planes fly; how battle ships float; how cereal stays fresh for months in cardboard boxes . . . none of these are mysteries to those who bother to look into them and figure out how they work.
Then there are those things that once were mysteries but aren’t any longer. How Ouija boards work, for example, isn’t a mystery. The motions are due to the “ideomotor effect.” That’s the term that a scientist, William Carpenter, coined in 1882 when he was researching how fortune-telling pendulums and dowsing rods work. He also studied the movements of tables at seances. No, the movers and shakers are not spirits. They are us, ourselves. We don’t even know it, Carpenter argued, but we unconsciously make the movements we expect spirits or magic magnetic forces to make.
How dowsing rods work is not a mystery.
But the reason that Ouija boards are not a mystery is that curiosity led someone to discover the truth. Fact is, the “ideomotor effect” is counter to the evidence of our own senses: we don’t know we are producing the movements that we think are coming from the spirit world. Our senses have fooled us.
Only a deep curiosity to solve a mystery can lead to this kind of discovery.
This is the distinction I’m searching for.
Mystery, it appears, can lead to complacence and even superstition, or it can lead to discovery.
That’s why the battle between science and religion has been so brutal for so long in the Western world. It has been twenty-five hundred years since Socrates was convicted for “refusing to recognize the gods acknowledged by the state, and importing strange divinities of his own.”
Can the gods make rain if there are no clouds? Socrates thought it’s not likely. His assertion threatened to kill a sacred cow.
Yet slowly, over time, more and more people looked at the mystery of rain and decided that perhaps the phenomenon occurred for some reason other than the actions of the gods.
It makes me wonder why the Abrahamic monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—have been so resistant to scientific knowledge while Hinduism, Buddhism, Confuscism, Daoism, and earth-based religions have not.
Is that another one of those mysteries?
Is this resistance to science a product of these religions, or is it a product of the ways of thinking that led to these religions? After all, Socrates died four hundred years before the birth of Jesus.
Could it be that democracy is the problem?
Or perhaps patriarchal rule?
Or perhaps the very oppression itself served to encourage curiosity?
Is it a mystery? I’m curious . . .
We human beings have a sense of awe and wonder that motivates us to ask questions, that motivates us to use our imaginations and our reason. At one time, a time before microscopes and telescopes and oscilloscopes and scoping in general, stories and reason were all we had. Then we began to build instruments. Eventually we figured out why it rains.
How do we answer some of those other mysteries, question such as,
What is the purpose of the universe?
Why are we here?
What is the purpose of our lives?
Who’s in charge here?
For many people, even those living in the industrialized world, the answers to these questions remain steadfastly in the realm of superstition.
Who’s in charge here?
El?
Yahweh?
Astarte?
Quetzalcoatl?
Vucub-Caquix? (a Mayan bird god)
Gods and gods in charge of this and that, gods in human form, gods in animal form. For human beings, at one time, stories were all we had. Eventually a curious Greek named Xenophanes came along and said,
“If oxen and horses and lions had hands and were able to draw with their hands and do the same things as men, horses would draw the shapes of gods to look like horses and oxen would draw them to look like oxen, and each would make the gods bodies have the same shape as they themselves had.”
Xenophanes saw—he was roughly a contemporary of Socrates—Xenophanes saw that our stories concerning these ultimate questions depend upon anthropomorphism. We create gods in our own image. They do things that we understand. “Why would that be?” asked Xenophanes. It was a mystery.
Seriously: What is the purpose of the universe?
Xenophanes told us, 2500 years ago: even if there were a purpose, human beings would not understand it. Purpose is an anthropomorphism, a giving the universe human characteristics. We might as well ask, Does the universe yearn? Does the universe get hungry?
Xenophanes remains, whispering into our ears: the universe just isn’t human, even if we imagine a really, really big human.
Poet Dana Gioia expresses this in a poem called “Words:”
The world does not need words. It articulates itself
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.
The purpose of the universe in relation to human beings is not a mystery: the universe does not need us and our endless words. As Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.”
There. That is where the mystery is.
Because we need purpose, we project purpose upon the universe.
Our first job is to figure out that we do that. And then stop doing that.
Only then can we get down to a real mystery: Each of us can ask ourselves, “What is my purpose?” When each of us figures that out, we have pursued wisdom and caught up with it. Maybe even put a saddle on it for awhile.
Wisdom is knowing that me, you, all of us—nobody has a purpose . . . until we figure it out. And, even after we do manage to wrestle it to the ground and put a bridle on it once, our purpose is very likely to do a little Houdini on us. Purpose is a shape shifter, if you will. It’s a moving target in our lives.
Our own purpose is the greatest mystery. Yet, we know we’ve got it when we feel the excitement of living in this world. As Howard Thurman famously said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Seriously: who said we get to declare our own mysteries?
The age of the earth is not a mystery.
When dinosaurs existed is not a mystery.
That natural selection shaped life on this planet is not a mystery.
Just because I don’t know something—from ignorance, lack of will, or even adamant refusal to see the facts—does not make it a mystery.
As science fiction writer Philip K. Dick put it, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
Our challenge in this world is not to create mysteries that are not there. Our challenge is to adjust to the real. And find our meaning and our purpose in the here and now.
