DANCING INTO AN UNKNOWN FUTURE

A sermon by Ernie Pipes on 7-31-11

READING

Baruch Spinoza, a Portuguese Jew living in Amsterdam and one of the most honored of the early modern philosophers, was excommunicated by the Sephardic community of Amsterdam in 1656 for rejecting the notion of a providential God - holding the proposition that the universe is a single, all-embracing unity, governed by invariable laws. Our relation to the universe, he said, should not be an abject propitiation of some transcendent being, but rather an understanding acceptance of the laws of nature. Just as the mathematician finds a certain awe and ecstasy in contemplating the world as subject to mathematical regularities, he added, so the philosopher can take comfort in adapting to the grandeur of a universe moving imperturbably to the rhythms of natural law. It brings him the peace of understanding, of limitations recognized, and of truth accepted.

Spinoza was centuries ahead of his times - and I borrow some of his ideas in my talk with you this morning.

SERMON

Recently I have been thinking a lot about the value of relationships in my life - something that grows in importance as the years go by. Accordingly, I took down my dictionary and looked up the meanings of relationship: " to make connection with;, to be in association or community or partnership with; the state of attachment and interdependence" were among the definitions. This morning I want to talk with you about the value of cultivating realistic and honest connections or relationships, not only with people, but also the importance of relating more realistically with our mother planet, the earth, and even beyond that, with the infinite universe beyond.

In essence, I want to talk about relationships that are candid, honest and real, free of delusions, wish-fulfillments and false expectations. Connecting with others and with the larger world in such a realistic and penetrating way is challenging - and it is that challenge I want to address this morning.

We humans are interlocked in an inescapable network of relationships and connections which extend, as I see it, in three directions. First, and most obvious, we are drawn into relationships of various kinds with family, friends, colleagues, neighbors. It would be difficult to become a hermit in our interconnected society. To paraphrase John Donne: No one is an island unto himself, but part of the whole. Beyond these inextricable human connections and relationships, we are becoming aware that we are in a closer partnership than we ever realized with our mother planet; that we are directly affecting the health of her delicate ecology and the destiny of her myriad forms of life. We are belatedly realizing that we have to work out a wiser, more sustainable partnership with mother earth. And, third, I am going to suggest something less obvious: that we are also in some kind of relationship with the larger (infinite) universe of galaxies, gravity waves, and black holes. This is a curious and perplexing relationship that philosophers and theologians have argued over for centuries. One of the defining glories of humankind is its long quest to understand its cosmic setting. Science, philosophy. mathematics have been effective tools in helping us gain some reliable knowledge of our cosmic surroundings. But how can we fashion a realistic relationship with the universe of impersonal laws we have discovered? Defining our relationships in these ever-enlarging circles is our subject this morning.

The first impulse of healthy people is to connect with others in a friendly way: "Hello there, my name is Ernie." This invites dialogue and a return of friendliness. If the connection deepens with time and trust, friendliness transmutes into friendship. And friendships provide one of the most enduring foundations for happiness. Other people relate back; there is dialogue or reciprocal communication. Satisfying and lasting human relationships are perhaps the ultimate good we can know. I work, inexpertly, but diligently to be candid, honest, real, fully present and transparent in cultivating friendships and encourage my friends to be the same with me. But when I turn to earth, my home planet, what kind of relationship can I fashion? I can honestly think of her as "mother earth" because I partake of the very elements of her body, and depend for life on her plentiful resources. When I wake up in the morning and look out my window, I can feelingly say "Hello earth." But mother earth doesn’t talk back. It is a very different kind of relationship than those I have with my fellow humans.

Further, she doesn’t appear to be very protective of the great variety of life that has evolved upon her bountiful surface. Time and again whole species have become extinct. It is not correct to say that she is a cruel mother, for she has no conscious awareness of the laws she is following and means no harm to those who depend on her for life. She just follows the universal laws of nature she is governed by as she evolved across her 4.5 billion of years of existence. In so many ways it is a marvelous and beautiful relationship we have with mother earth, but we cannot expect her to stay the path of a tornado, alter the direction of a tsunami or still the movement of her tectonic plates for the sake of our well being. She is a bountiful mother, but deaf to our appeals for protection or our cries for help.

And it is no different with the infinite universe of which our little home planet is but an inconspicuous speck. This unfathomable vastness, of course, is also our home; we are the stuff that stars and galaxies are made of; we evolved here and partake of their elements. And we quite naturally are hungry for some kind of meaningful connection, relationship or partnership or dialogue with this infinity. Throughout the history of humankind we have, accordingly, projected various forms of personhood upon this vastness in order to open some kind of inter-personal dialogue, some form of meaningful and satisfying relationship with the infinite. It is easy to understand and hard to be unsympathetic with this human hunger for connection. After all, finding a cosmic partner might give us a source of appeal in time of need and some control over the vicissitudes of life, some security

amid the fearful randomness of events. Vulnerable people naturally look for sources of comfort and help, for life can be hard and events terrifying at times - and it is tempting to slip into illusion and unrealistic expectations in the quest for meaningful connection.

Not long ago I picked up a book in my library titled ‘THE AGE OF FAITH." I was fascinated to re-read a chapter titled "The Magical Environmental" - the story of how the majority of people in the Middle Ages of Europe struggled for a consoling cosmic connection. The medieval consciousness was populated with a multitude of supernatural beings that had descended into Christianity from pagan antiquity -a world where beliefs in miracles, omens, magic, divination and sorcery were employed to gain some measure of control over the fearful uncertainties just around every corner. In such a mental environment magical rituals provided feelings of some control over events - an ability to negotiate relationships with the unseen world by attributing to it human agency. It was just this consciousness that Spinoza sought to correct.

The intellectual advances of the last few centuries make it cognitively impossible for many of us to return to the magical thinking of the medieval mind. Once the credibility of the received cultural narrative is undermined, its power to guide and comfort is lost. The world many of us live in now is understood, as Spinoza did way ahead of his time, in terms of invariable laws - laws we cannot bargain with or cajole.

This appears to make working out some kind of a relationship or reassuring connection with our larger cosmic home - rather dicey and challenging. It certainly seems desirable to be on friendly terms with the universe, but crafting a relationship with a bunch of impersonal cosmic laws doesn’t offer much hope. The universe, unlike our fellow beings, doesn’t talk back. There appears to be no give and take, no reciprocity here. Worse than this, the universe doesn’t seem to have any moral compunctions or follow any moral laws we can identify. There appears to be no discernable reason why one person is favored and another abused by fortune. We seem to be embedded in some sort of context that follows no moral constraints - a reality, we might say, that bestows upon us either fortune or misfortune with complete indifference - a fate thrust upon us in a random and unpredictable manner, with no connection to what is deserved. Good people die in appalling earthquakes and fires, come down with horrible diseases - all without moral cause or appeal. When bullets fly on the battlefield, which soldiers are killed and which spared follow no discernable guidelines. Randomness and chance seems to rule. When each of us was born, there were no contracts, no assurances, signed by us and any other party. As to our personal destiny, fate or fortune, no promises were made. One is reminded of the familiar saying: "Tell the gods your plans- and watch them smile."

If the observations I am laying before you strike you as being in any measure descriptive of the human condition, a fundamental question arises: what realistic, non-delusional philosophy of life can I adopt that makes sense in this context? Where, in this indifferent environment, am I to find comforting relationship, a responsive connection, reassuring friendship? Where can I say "Hi there, my name is Ernie." and realistically expect a response? Where can I turn for partnership and friendship and reassurance? To other people, of course. What philosophy can I adopt? That of religious humanism. We may be living amid the impersonal laws of an indifferent universe, but we are also embedded in and sustained by a human community with its more humane and caring laws. We are sustained and partnered by friends and neighbors who care about us and lend helping hands in times of need, by religious communities that teach and endeavor to practice love, compassion, brotherhood and sisterhood. To be sure, humanity’s wisdom is fallible and its solidarity segmented and fragile, but our companions are usually there for us when we are suffering. Any realistic and credible quest for responsive connection and caring relationship must be directed horizontally toward our human neighbors and toward human institutions of justice and compassion. Earthquake victims in Haiti or Japan know they can rely only on help and assistance from the larger human community. Religious humanism tells us we are all in this life together, that working together with love and sympathy, hand in hand, to heal our world and sustain one another across all boundaries of race, religion and nation - is, in traditional language, our only salvation.

But, at the end, liberal humanism, like all human enterprises, must be aware of its limitations. Sam Keen, one of my mentors, wrote: "The ultimate truth about human destiny is not that we author it, but that there are imponderable forces at work we didn’t put there. These transcendent, implacable, unpredictable forces, apparently without conscience, that we didn’t put there, DO have to be acknowledged, honored and related to in some adult way.

I use the word "adult" advisedly. Children are entitled to comforting reassurances, stories that do not undermine their feelings of security and safety. They deserve to spend their childhood feeling loved, nurtured, cared for and protected. Grown-ups, however, can be expected to have developed beyond the need for reassuring stories and the consolations of protective authority figures. Liberal humanism is an adult religion, for grown-ups who have found ways, realistically and courageously, to acknowledge, live with and relate to the impersonal and indifferent events that impinge wildly upon life. The Persian sage Rimi wrote: "Only the supremely brave ever admit how helpless they are in the hands of God. As for others, building and decorating their sand castles, look how one wild wave shatters them all." This is a hard realism. Just how can you negotiate a relationship with a mute, unresponsive, wild wave? (Those preferring theistic language can translate the wild wave image to: "How can you negotiate a relationship with a God who seems to be deaf and always looking the other way?")

Buddhist monks have a custom, a ritual: they bow in respectfulness to what is given in life - honoring the awesome, inexplicable, incomprehensible given-ness of events that wash over our lives. They honor the imponderables. Then, having acknowledged their own finiteness before the infinite, and having acknowledged and accepted its inscrutable power, they move on with equanimity to engage events and exercise agency - just as humanists bent on creating a better world everywhere do. More importantly, they, being RELIGIOUS humanists, try to offer loving kindness and compassion to all sentient life. But that preliminary honoring is vital: it leads them beyond ego-centeredness and away from what the Greeks called hubris or overweening pride. They acknowledge their connectedness to and reverence for the awesome realities surrounding all life. And before this unresponsive, awesome given-ness they acknowledge that they must be present, simply present - with no need for appeals or comforting narratives. Just be open and fully awake. That is their way of being adult and real with regard to their cosmic setting.

This stance also seems honest and realistic to me. Still, when I ponder the awesome vastness and indifference of billions of galaxies and black holes - that won’t talk back when I say "Hello, my name is Ernie?" - my response is to go a little farther. I will not only be present, open and fully awake, I, in addition, also want to fashion a relationship and a conversation with the implacable laws of the universe. And I have found that what works for me is to employ the imagery of a dance. My idea of a conversation with the universe accordingly goes something like this: "OK, you"re leading this dance with me in your implacable way and I don’t always much like your steps. But we are in this together and there is no way we can get divorced. So, given this relationship, let’s figure out how we can do this dance together. I’m clearly the junior partner, following a lead that makes all the decisive moves. But I am not without ingenuity, courage and skill and agency - a little like Ginger Rogers dancing with Fred Astaire, who must do it backwards and in high heels. But I can do it whatever your lead may be." And that, more or less, is how this religious humanist relates to the awesome imponderables of life. It’s not quite Biblical, but it’s my gospel.

The image of YOUR relationship to the infinite, doubtless will be different. Cervantes’ windmill jousting Don, at the end of his travels and travails, for example, is moved to forgive the world he cannot understand. That, too, makes good sense. Others may choose the stance of defiance before an obdurate, uncaring and unresponsive universe - a Promethean response. That is another alternative. All I can say is, be open and present to the implacable each in your own way. For me, I will simply bow respectfully before each surprising moment that is given me - and, surrounded reassuringly by my fellow humans, dance confidently into an unknown and open-ended future.

With that imagery in mind, join me in singing our closing hymn, # 311.

CLOSING WORDS

May our lives be enlightened by understanding
Our love ennobled by service
And our faith strengthened by knowledge.