2018.12.16 “Cosmic Humility” Rev. Laura Bogle
READING
for Meditation
"When
I Heard the Learned Astronomer" by Walt Whitman
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were
ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and
diagrams, to add, divide,
and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer
where he lectured with
much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired
and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d
off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and
from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the
stars.
READING
From
the introduction to “Why Religion?” by Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at
Princeton University and author of The
Gnostic Gospels (and many other books)
“And what do you do?” asked a man at the
crowded reception at the New York Academy of Sciences, where my husband, Heinz,
a theoretical physicist, was the director.
“Write—about the history of religion.”
Startled, he backed away, as if afraid I might clamp a hand on his
shoulder and say “Brother, are you saved?”
Hearing this, someone else asked, “Why religion? Why do that?
Are you religious?” Yes, incorrigibly—although I grew up among
people who regarded religion as obsolete as an outgrown bicycle stashed in a
back closet. …
Responding to that question [Why
religion?], I started with one of my own: Why
is religion still around in the twenty-first century? …
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
UU minister Rev. Jeanne Harrison
Nieuwejaar in her book Fluent in Faith, tells
a story about a parent and a young child, out on a cool evening, and watching
the sun go down. A beautiful sunset
appeared, the sky streaked with golden and rosy colors, and the little kid set
aside their toys and just watched quietly.
Then turned to the parent and said, “What makes the sun go down?”
The parent said, “Well, the earth is
like a huge ball spinning slowly in space.
Each time it spins completely around a new day begins. It seems to us like it’s the sun that’s moving,
but really we are the ones that are moving.
The sunset happens when the earth turns away from the sun.”
And the kid looked up and simply said,
“oh, I was hoping it was God.”
The scientific explanation of a sunset
is pretty breathtaking.
And yet the ancient breath of spirit that
speaks in story and poetry and metaphor persists in children, and in us
grown-ups, even in this scientific age. Why is religion still around in the 21st
century?
What is it in us, deep
down, that still is hoping for God – even though we’ve long ago grown up and
learned the scientific explanations and rejected the mythological miracles?
It seems to me that yearning is
especially present during this season of the year. Even the most rationalist,
even atheist folks among us might find themselves caught up in the drama of
stories of the season – whether hannukah or winter solstice or the birth of
Jesus at Christmas.
These days we can also describe the
winter solstice, using the scientific knowledge available to us – the tilt of
the earth away from the sun as it orbits, making the days ever shorter until we
reach the longest night of this year this week.
We enter the season of winter, as the earth begins ever slowly, each day
to tilt back to the warmth and light of our
star.
Now I want you to think about a time
when you were outside on a winter night and the stars took your breath away, and
you felt very small in the world—how big the universe is, beyond our
comprehension. How mysterious are the
biggest questions – the ones that matter—like how it is that we came to be here
on this planet spinning in space, with just the right balance of elements for
life, just the right balance of darkness and light. Why is there so much beauty? Why is there so much suffering? And what is this life for anyway?
We answer those biggest questions with
scientific explorations, and we answer them with the religious stories of the
ages. Often these answers get pitted
against one another, as if they cancel each other out. As if believing in the scientific explanation
of what elements make up the stars means one can’t find deep meaning in a story
about how a star signified the miracle of the birth of a child who would grow
up to be a liberator.
Luckily, we Unitarian Universalists are
a both/and tradition. You don’t have to
choose scientific rationality or
mythological meaning-making.
I loved learning about astronomer Cecilia
Payne-Gaposchkin for our Time for All Ages today – I have to tell you I had
never heard of her before. What a
scientist! What an amazing star gazer
and trail-blazer.
{story about her at 5 years old, seeing
a meteor, deciding right then that she’d be an astronomer}
And I wish I knew more about her
personal life and beliefs. But we know
that she and her husband, also an astronomer, were members of the Unitarian
church in Lexington, Massachusetts. And
we know that she taught Sunday school there, to older elementary aged children. It seems she was quite dedicated.
Her daughter told a story about her mother donning heavy woolen slacks
and walking more than three miles to teach Sunday school one bitterly cold
winter morning when the family car would not start.
Somewhere in her, alongside her
life-long scientific exploration, was the impulse to gather with others in
religious community, to remember and remake the old stories.
Being a woman scientist in her time she
didn’t get much reward—monetary or recognition.
But, she wrote, her reward was the ever-widening horizon.
This is the best of scientific humility—to
know there is always more to know, and you might be wrong. The gift comes in asking the questions.
This is also the best of spiritual
humility—the meaning comes in the seeking, not in the destination.
Perhaps as she matured, she too, entered into
what philosopher Paul Ricoeur called “the second naivete.” As Rev. Victoria Weinstein says, “In Paul Ricouer’s philosophy of second naïveté, we enter
into the mystery of sacred stories not with the naïveté of one who can’t think
for themselves, but by choosing to
engage the poetic sensibility rather than leading with our critical,
intellectual faculties. More simply put, when we have reached the
maturity of second naïveté – a kind of chosen innocence — we make a decision to abide together in wonder rather than to
dismantle sacred narratives in an insistent search for rational facts.”
We don’t set aside our thinking
and inquiry to enter the second naivete – we simply recognize that different
parts of our lives and our selves need different things.
We human beings are more than
rational beings, we are emotional beings and we are spiritual beings. We leave the astronomer’s lecture hall to stand
outside under the night sky, or join with others to sing songs and tell stories
about stars.
Elaine Pagels’ new book Why Religion? is a very personal account
of this balance between rational inquiry and religious feeling in her own
life. She is an academic and scholar of
religion, working primarily on Early Christianity and the complexity of
differing viewpoints present in the early Christian movement. She is one who has brought to light the
so-called heretics, the Christian gnostics who were excluded from the eventual
biblical canon.
She was married to a
theoretical physicist. Her life was full
of rigorous intellectual pursuit.
And she, as she says, has been incorrigibly religious throughout her
life.
Her book weaves reflections on
her academic explorations with her very personal and hard life experiences to
answer that question Why is religion
still around in the 21st century?
As a young mother, she and her
husband learned of the terminal diagnosis of her first son, who lived a few
years before dying at age 6. She writes,
“But whatever the rationalists say, and whatever the doctors could tell us
about how cells break down, nothing they said could satisfy the need to find
meaning. … What is clear is that meaning may not be something we find.
We found no meaning in our son’s death, or in the deaths of countless
others. The most we could hope was that
we might be able to create meaning.”
(103-104)
When her husband suddenly and
unexpectedly died in an accident a year after her son, Elaine worked hard to
create meaning over time—leaning on the contemplative presence and blessings of
Trappist monks and the persistence of life with friends; finding it too in her
exploration of the origin and meanings of Christian story and symbol and how
they could speak to her condition today.
Creating meaning helped her face what cannot be explained or understood.
So, maybe you are an atheist who brings
out the nativity set or menorah each year.
Maybe you are a pagan who gets choked up
by the Hallelujah chorus every dang time.
Maybe you are a scientist who loves to
hear that old gospel tune, “Beautiful, beautiful star of Bethlehem.”
Whether it is the impulse to respond
with awe and wonder to the night sky, or the impulse to find meaning during our
darkest days and nights when the unimaginable happens, it is religious story, music,
community and practice that can help us open up meaning when we fear there is
none, that can help us feel. That can help us feel less alone.
On the longest night of the year, this
Friday night, will you step outside and look up at the stars? If it is a clear night, see what you can
see. If it is not a clear night, see
what you can see. Remember the earth is
tilting on its axis. Feel the weight of
the world shift. Know that the light
will return. Look for a sign in the
sky. Remember that throughout the
history of humanity, people across time and space have done the same. Think about those others here, with whom you
gather week in and week out. Know you
are not alone. Feel your place in this galaxy of stars. Feel
the presence of what is beyond our understanding.
May the stars shine on.
Amen.
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