Germs & Interfaces
PULPIT EDITORIAL Joni
Hahn
Re the proposed Congregational
Statement of Conscience opposing the Amendment to the Wisconsin
Constitution, which would disallow civil unions
One day a disciple was going along the
road when an elephant broke loose and was charging toward him. He just stood
there, looking at the elephant, saying to himself, "All this is Brahman.
Nothing can happen to me." The elephant took him up in his trunk and threw
him off the side of the road, where he was picked up unconscious. They brought
him back to the guru and the man complained: "You said all is Brahman. I
thought the elephant was Brahman -- how can this hurt me?" The guru
replied, "Yes, but the one who was riding the elephant was shouting to you
to get out of the way. And he was also Brahman."
MESSAGE
We have no belfry but we have bats. One
was flying around Yawkey Hall during a meeting this past Wednesday evening. I
wasn’t sure whether to hope it wasn’t carrying rabies or whether to hope it
wasn’t carrying bird flu. Odds are I needn’t have worried. Given the abundance of antiseptic and
antibacterial products on the market today, you might think that we are under
constant siege and that chemical warfare and impermeable barriers are our only
hope for survival: soaps and bandages, plastic hotel cups wrapped in more
plastic, and awkward gadgets on the toilet seats in public restrooms. But these
precautions, biologist Lewis Thomas[1]
writes, “are paranoid delusions on a societal scale, explainable in part by our
need for enemies, and in part by our memory of what things used to be like.”
What things used to be like, of course, pre-antibiotics, was a genuine threat
of death near at hand. Thomas asserts, however, that even in the worst of
times, humans have been of no particular
interest to microbes.
And considering
the huge population of bacteria on earth, pathogenicity is rare. “Disease
usually results from inconclusive negotiations for symbiosis, an overstepping
of the line by one side or the other, a biologic misinterpretation of borders.”
More commonly,
bacteria are our partners, indispensable for breaking down organic matter, in
our guts, our soil, and sea. They create energy and fluorescence. One species
of ant uses bacteria as a weapon in its defense from another species. But for
humans, even the bacteria which can do us harm are not always our enemies. The
bacteria which cause diphtheria, for example, are not toxic to us in their
normal state – they are not toxic to us until they themselves catch a virus.
And while in rare instances bacteria gain evolutionary advantage by infecting
their host, for the most part, when a germ catches us, the consequences are
worse for them than for us.
In general, our
diseases are not characterized by germs causing tissue destruction, but by our body’s reaction and over-reaction
to their presence when we finally notice them. Staphylococci live all over us;
usually we are unaware of them. The trouble only begins when we react to their
presence. We often destroy our own tissues when our systems – desperate to shut
out foreign materials, and mistaking them for genuine toxins – conspire to
produce fever or inflammation, or even cut off our own blood supply.
In short, our
reactions are like “well intentioned but lethal errors” mechanisms which, used
with restraint, could help us to cope with foreign bodies. But instead our
bodies sometimes panic, and we launch all of our defenses at once. Perhaps
these are responses accumulated in our evolutionary memory which are no longer
useful – reactions to symbolic threats which make us more vulnerable to
ourselves than to the outsider.
==
The cartoons
showing white blood cells as cops chasing down invaders are cute metaphors, but
microorganisms recognize one another, of course, not with night-vision goggles,
but by their surface chemistry.
Another class of reactions driven by surface chemistry are catalytic reactions.
Catalysts are materials which help chemical reactions to proceed at a lower
temperature, or a faster pace. Many of our industrial processes are dependent
upon catalysts which, though they remain unchanged in the process, provide a
surface upon which the chemical bonds of the reactive substances are weakened
enough to enable a reaction to go forward.
So next time
someone calls you superficial, tell them “thank you,” and let them know how
essential surfaces are to
life-as-we-know-it.
Ultra-modern
materials with heretofore unheard-of strength, conductivity, or finely
specialized properties are often composites. The same old elements we’ve always
had on earth – combined in ingenious new ways to take advantage not so much of
the properties of the materials themselves... but to take advantage of the interaction between the materials.
Batteries, transistors, silicon chips, and photovoltaic cells are just a few
examples of products with astonishing powers which work not like machines –
with parts banging into one another – but just by sitting there, interacting.
To get a better
picture of why surfaces and the interaction of surfaces matter, imagine a
crystal. You may think of a crystal as uniform – every chemical bond between
every single atom lined up precisely in three-dimensions to make a perfect
whole. But even when a crystal is technically flawless, a very important part
of the crystal is not uniform.
Imagine that you are an atom inside a perfect crystal. Looking in every
direction, you see the other atoms arrayed in their proper positions. But this
is only true if the crystal went on forever. In real life, crystals end – and
therefore the arrangement of atoms at the surface is all messed up. Instead of
the precise arrangement of atoms all around them, for those on the surface, on
one side there is nothing.
This phenomenon
is vitally important to materials scientists and engineers who are finding
incredible new uses for products which are often nothing more than the thinnest
possible film of atoms. Films are so important because they are almost all
surface, making it easier and cheaper to utilize the unique properties which
exist only at the surface of many materials.
And “...thin
films are often only the starting point. When two different surfaces come
together, they form an interface. The properties of each surface [now] depends
on the atoms [on the other surface]. The properties of the interfaces
are often even more unusual than the properties of the surfaces.... Many future
breakthroughs are likely to come from surface and interface studies [and the
properties yet to be discovered from materials] made up of thin films of
different types stacked up layer by layer.”[2]
==
I suppose I
should bring this analogy closer to home. A few days ago, it was still below
freezing, but I watched as on the flat black roof of my patio, the hot sun was
melting a pile of snow, and from the pool of melted water, a haze of vapor was
rising. The water itself was ice-cold, but it was evaporating because, at the
sun-drenched surface, the atoms had enough energy to escape the liquid phase.
OK, rooftop
thermodynamics is still a bit abstract. What does any of this have to do with
human beings? First I’ll make a couple of comments about social organizations
and their interfaces, and then I’ll conclude with the all-important interfaces
between persons.
Let’s consider
the border between Church and State. What does that interface look like? What should it look like? Well, it is not now
and never can be the clean and clear perfect permanent crystalline wall that those of us who venerate
Thomas Jefferson would like to imagine.
Fortunately,
there is no such thing in this country as “Church” or “State” in the sense that
To describe
this reality, James Madison, a staunch advocate for religious freedom, chose a
phrase much more ambiguous than
==
I remember one
of the arguments I had with my father when I first began to discover my liberal
leanings. Gay rights was part of the argument but the more abstract question we
were tussling over was this: “What is the
basic unit of society?” My father argued passionately that the family was the basic unit of
society. I argued equally passionately that it was the individual.
I have since
changed my mind. I haven’t shifted so far as to idolize the brittle concept of
nuclear family. I would say instead, today, that the basic unit of society is the contract, or covenant – the
agreement between two or more parties... voluntarily setting limits upon
themselves out of care for the quality of the relationship between them. The
agreement between two or more parties... voluntarily setting limits upon
themselves out of care for the quality of the relationship between them.
I understand
why governments (of the people, by the people, and for the people) ...why it is
that governments would see fit to put restrictions upon contracts – why some
forms of contract are seen as harmful, coercive, or inherently unfair ...and
thus outside the bounds of legal protection.
What I’d like
to say, then, as a religious person to the State of
==
Same-sex
marriage is one of countless possible examples of “I-you” relationships. I’ll
explain this term.
Martin Buber
was a Jewish philosopher of the early 20th century who described the
distinction between the relationships we have with one another which are I-You
relationships... as opposed to those which are I-It relationships.[4]
Essentially, in an I-You relationship, the “I” recognizes with deep respect the
wholeness and personhood of the one with whom the “I” is relating. In contrast,
in I-It relationships, we simply make an
object of the Other.
The Other may
be a he or a she, a person or an animal or an inanimate object. The Other may
be a book or a culture, or nature as a whole. In each of these cases we have
the choice of how to approach the Other: as I-You, or as I-It.
[You may be
familiar with the more common translation of Buber’s phrase: “I-Thou.” But at
least one translator prefers “I-You” because Buber’s word choice in German
connotes an endearing rather than a formal relationship. Still, “I-Thou” is a
relevant phrase because it connotes the extraordinary respect characteristic of
this kind of relationship.]
The greatest
philanthropist can be I-centered, can be trapped in I-It relationships with
those to whom she gives. The most seemingly self-denying caregiver can be
I-centered by pouring his own “I” onto the needs of others, and never actually
encountering them. The seemingly self-denying caregiver may still not be there at the interface. He may fail
to bring his self to the surface and miss the experience that can happen when
surfaces meet.
Demonizing the
other is only one way to avoid the other – to objectify them. Another way to
miss the “You” of another person is to idolize them, or to become their slave.
Here too an objectification is going on. Or, if we fail to have an identity to bring to the encounter... if we lack
consciousness, if we have no time to have a self, if we are afraid to have a
self, if we have never been loved and recognized as a self.... If we are too
determined to remain objective....
Still another
way to avoid the world of I-You relationships is to live in the world of
We-We... where there is no I-subject, where by inseparably fusing with Others
our unique identity is destroyed.
Of course
there’s also the world of Us-Them. This may be the ultimate disrespect to the I
or the You. In the world of “Us-them” we have only the elect and the damned,
the with-us and the against-us, the with-it and the unfashionable. In the world
of Us-Them, “hope” means nothing more than a triumph of righteousness, the
ascendancy of US.
To treat
another being as an equal, as a subject with their own desires, their own
history, their own ideas, their own purposes, to encounter the here and now in
every person – this is difficult and rare. Too often, we treat everything
outside of our own skin (and maybe even the ideas and the history and the
purposes within our own skin) as soul-less objects. We fail to have meaningful
I-You relationships because there is no You out there.
Why might we do
this? Maybe we’re afraid. Maybe we’re overwhelmed by the complexity, the
multiplicity of the world. Denying complexity can help us to sort through
life’s countless varieties and choices. But it can also kill us spiritually,
cut us off from everything else by objectifying it. By denying complexity (the
unique character of each “You” out there) we can isolate ourselves, protect
ourselves, comfort ourselves, swaddle ourselves in ignorance.
By objectifying
the other, by simplify every being down to 2 choices (to accept them, or to
reject them) we not only sanitize every surface, we also effectively destroy all
interior mystery, and depth.
==
Do you hear what I am saying?
Do I have any clue who you are? Or are you just an audience, a paycheck? Are you just
bio-chemical building blocks with which to build my fantasy fort from which I
might look out and, speaking to no one, proclaim “I!”?
Those sitting
next to you – are they human beings? Persons? Or are they objects of your
affection, curiosities, adornments, strangers? Those of different generations –
are they cute, spry, reminders of the “I” from long ago... are they your goals
or your anti-goals for the “I” of you future? Or is there a “You” sitting
ahead/ behind / adjacent?
Perhaps I first
came to be a subject by being recognized as one – by being loved. I am
confident that I have been loved since birth, and given this advantage, I have
been empowered to be and to be-with now, for You. Though my father
and I have never resolved our old argument over “what is the basic unit of
society,” and though there are many religious and political differences over
which we may never see eye-to-eye, I know that I am (more often than not) a person in his eyes. Not a block to carve
in his image, not a bowl to fill with his wisdom, but a person who would
discover, hope, choose, think, and love.
Not everyone
has had that experience of love. Not everyone has had the benefit of
recognition, of encounter...and being encountered. Not everyone has had direct
experience of divine presence which exists only in the encounter.
What do I mean
by divine presence? What do I mean by “god” in this context?
I’m not talking
about a deity which exists prior to conscious encounter. I’m talking about a
deity which discovers itself even as it discovers its own consciousness.
We often look
too far out for god. We look beyond, past the encounter. And in so doing we
look for a god that is an object, an idol, an It, a god to satisfy our own
needs, or a god of cold matter...rather than a god of interface, a god of
connection.
The god to
which I am referring is the god of the in-between. God not as a thing to encounter... but god who is the encounter.
A new twist on
traditional language (or use of the word “god” at all) may confuse you, or may
incite you to reinforce your borders. I would encourage you instead simply to
consider what properties might be present – when you present yourself to your
next encounter.
[1] The Lives of a Cell, Lewis Thomas, 1974
[2] Techno-Matter: The Materials
behind the Marvels, Fred Bortz, 2001
[3] The Nation with the Soul of a Church, Sidney E. Mead, 1975
[4] I and Thou, Martin Buber, translation by Walter Kaufmann 1970. This sermon is also inspired by Kaufmann’s prologue to this edition.