Naturalistic Theism

December 3, 2006

Rev. Paul Beckel

First Universalist Unitarian Church ~ www.uuwausau.org

It is still the first week in January, and I’ve got great plans. I’ve been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But--and this is the point--who gets excited by a mere penny? … if you crouch motionless on a bank to watch a tremulous ripple thrill on the water and are rewarded by the sight of a muskrat kit paddling from its den, will you count that sight a chip of copper only, and go your rueful way? It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get.

Annie Dillard

For many people today God does not exist in any real, tangible way outside their imagination. That is, they cannot experience God physically. They cannot honor the Holy One with their senses. Such blindness to God's immanence and omnipresence inevitably leads to a trivialization of the notion and reality of God.              Michael Dowd

Arguing over whether it was God, evolution, or the self-organizing dynamics of emergent complexity that brought everything into existence makes about as much sense as debating whether it was me, my vocal cords, or the electrical impulses of my nervous system that caused me to utter this sentence.                  Michael Dowd

GATHERING SONG             Lady of the Seasons Laughter

[A hymn featuring feminine images of the divine and relating the cycles of human life—and its renewal through the generations—to the cycle of the seasons]

READING                                         on “Religious Experience”        Will Saunders

I have always liked to look at stars. But when the first stirrings of a midlife crisis were undermining my youthful dreams, my experience of the starry night sky changed unpleasantly. Since my teens, I had gloried in this experience in a sort of romantic, adolescent way, feeling gigantic while gazing at distant worlds. But two years before my 40th birthday, the starry sky seemed horrific, for what I felt was how utterly overshadowed and expendable I am in the grand
scheme. My own eventual death was viscerally unacceptable to me, and the fact that in the vastness of time and space we are unimaginably small only brought home the fact that I would someday be extinguished forever.

A midlife crisis takes [the reality that you are small and that life is short] and knocks you around with it until you are beaten up and, if you are lucky, you finally cry “uncle.” And when you cry “uncle,” you stop saying, “My existence is nothing,” and you start saying, “Existence is everything, and I am incredibly blessed to take part in it. Death is one of the terms of
life. So be it.”

You look at the night sky, and you concentrate not on how you feel but on how utterly amazing and wonderful it is. And all that exists begins to seem sacred, or, more precisely, single, particular realities beyond your poor shaky self begin to seem miraculous simply because they do exist. This, I think, is a religious experience.

MUSICAL MEDITATION               

RESPONSIVE READING                  “Out of the Stars We have Come”

Out of the stars in their flight, out of the dust of eternity,
Here we have come.
Stardust and sunlight, mingling
through time and through space.
Out of the stars we have come,
up from time…
Mystery hidden in mystery, back through all time;
Mystery rising from rocks in the storm and the sea.
Out of the stars, rising from rocks and the sea,
Kindled by sunlight on earth arose life.
Ponder this thing in your heart,
ponder with awe:
Out of the sea to the land,
out of the shallows came ferns.
Out of the sea to the land
Up from the darkness to light
Rising to walk and to fly
Out of the sea trembled life.

Ponder this thing in your heart,
life up from the sea,
Eyes to behold, throats to sing, mates to love.
life from the sea, warmed by sun,
washed by rain.
Life from within, giving birth
rose to love.
This is the wonder of time;
this is the marvel of space;
out of the stars swung the earth;
life upon earth rose to love.
This is the marvel of life,
rising to see and to know:
Out of your heart cry wonder,
sing that we live.

SHARING OUR GIFTS

MESSAGE

I watched the snow lightly falling yesterday morning. As it fell through the pines I was reminded of the enchanted forest that enveloped my childhood home. As the snow dusted the earth I shivered in anticipation of cold days ahead -- stretching into painfully long months. And still, as the snow continued to fall I saw in its icy bitterness an ecstatic beauty -- both in its capacity to be packed into snowballs and sledding runs (my family’s favorite sporting equipment) and also the intangible beauty which has no practical merit, the shimmer of its lacy flakes both delicate and menacing. And through it all I began to feel a deep sense of joy for my neighbors in southern Wisconsin who must have been reveling in their 17 inches.

Then, I took out the compost pail which I had set outside the door the previous night. And I was temporarily dislodged from my romantic reverie when I found that every yucky bit had become frozen inside the pail. Standing above the compost heap I tried to dig the stuff out of the pail with a stick, which kept breaking in my hand. And I was reminded of the capacity of this earth to move through cycles of darkness and light... through muck to bud to fruit to brittle branches, and back around, again and again.

This is the earth. Unfolding, dynamic... predictable and dependable in its broad outlines, but unpredictable in detail. Comforting, and yet never boring. This is the winter sky and the woods, the homes I have found wherever I have lived. This natural world is my refuge, my entertainment, my source of life. Shall I call it “god”?

==

Over the last couple of months I have spoken and written about religious labels -- what they mean to different people, what they mean to me, and how imperfect and unavoidable they are.  I have noted my discomfort with labels even though technically I can squeeze myself into quite an assortment of them. From one day to the next I might wear a religious label with pride, or self-consciousness. Some days I feel like I understand what I mean by a term and some days I get mixed up. I get mixed up by my own over-analysis and forgetfulness...and I get mixed up when I learn how other people use the same words, and then I find myself stumbling to communicate in words that mean different things to different people at different times.

So let me put it into a summary[1] which is so abstract as to be almost meaningless: I am a secularist who is also a minister; I’m a christian who doesn’t believe in god the father or the son; I’m an atheist who gathers a community to worship.

John Dewey wrote that there is no such thing as “religion.” Though there are, of course, “religions.” In this same sense, it is probably a mistake on our part to even talk about “christianity,” or “humanism” or “atheism,” as if such things actually exists, even though there are certainly christianities, humanisms, and atheisms in abundance.

If you pay attention to your words, you could probably manage without a great deal of effort to remove the singular noun form of these religious categories from your vocabulary. I noticed that Richard Olson, in his sermon a few weeks ago, used the word “christianities” instead of christianity. And though it was subtle, his word choice conveyed something significant. I would encourage you to try this in your everyday speech. It might lead into some interesting conversations, perhaps at holiday dinners.

Subtle variations in religious language can make a big difference in our religious perspectives. In fact there is a key point about the nature of god suggested by some religious people, a point which can be made most succinctly by turning to grammar. The theological perspective of which I am speaking is called process theology (but I suppose I should say process theologies, for indeed there are countless variations). And the point that process theists would like to make with grammar is that God is a verb.

Process theology is one of a cluster of religious perspectives that I’ll describe now that are in some way related to naturalistic theism. Among the many worldviews one could throw into this assemblage are pantheism, panentheism, religious naturalism, feminist theology, the Gaia hypothesis, and process theology. I’m going to describe these perspectives very briefly. Each one is rich with complexity if you want to explore them further.

All of these religious perspectives take issue with classical theism in one way or another. Classical theism holds that God, being perfect, is timeless, unchanging, and unaffected by the world.[2] The more liberal, naturalistic perspectives[3] tend to see the divine as a process rather than an entity. They understand god as dynamic and unfolding. They see god not as distant and unaffected, but intimate with the world, and still creating, even now, in partnership, interdependent with creation.

In contrast to classical theism which posits God as good and immaterial -- such that material existence is vile and ungodly -- the naturalistic perspectives revere the physical world, identifying God as equal to or at least part of nature. And for many the natural world is all there is; so to say that anything exists outside the natural world is simply non-sense.

A particular form of process theology is called panENtheism. There has never been a word big enough to contain an entire theological system, but panentheism tries. Broken down, the word means “everything IN God.” This view was most thoroughly elucidated by Charles Hartshorne, a 20^th century theologian who affiliated on and off with the UUs, guest preaching into his 90s. To sum up panentheism he said, “The world is God’s body.” That is, the earth, the cosmos, you and I, all of our history and memory and experience, along with all of our molecules, are the body of God at this moment. And in the next moment, that body will evolve into something more.

What this view has in common with classical theism is that there is more to God than God’s body. There is a consciousness which extends beyond God’s body.

All of this is somewhat different from pantheism, in which the universe and god are understood to be one and the same. In pantheism the whole is god. The whole is not just a collection but the totality, it is the whole acting as a whole, the synergistic whole and not a master of the parts.

So why call it divine? Why not just take it all in within the rubric of math or science? To me, again, grammar plays a part, because God becomes not just a verb but an interjection. Maybe even a wordless interjection like [open mouth/awe]. To the extent that I use traditional religious language, I do so because what I experience, if it were described scientifically, would lose its punch, would lose its essence.

No, I don’t have to use the word god, I could use Wow, or yes, or thank you. These are all imperfect attempts to say the same thing.

==

Late 20^th century feminist theologies are widely diverse, but they too have offered liberalizing concepts of god as relational, flowing, bodily, and creative in a two-way interaction.

Even mainstream protestants have integrated process theology into the christian story and the christian ethic. One story which blends the interdependent god with both humanity and the natural world has Jesus as the guy who runs a seed store, offering seeds such as “peace-on-earth,” and “reconciliation.” Seeds, of course, which grow nowhere unless planted and tended.

If you want to get really technical, you’ll find that among those who hold these various points of view, some prefer to call it philosophy rather than theology. You’ll have to ask me afterwards if want to know that details. But I bring it up because these questions seem to come up in a variety of fields, and at times it becomes difficult to separate them. Such as the work of Steven Hawking and others attempting to define the origins of the universe -- do their cosmological theories belong to the world of religion or philosophy or science or mathematics?

The Gaia hypothesis, for instance, has been presented as a scientific question: Could the earth, with all of its interdependent processes, be considered a single biological organism? It’s a question with ramifications not only in the natural and physical sciences but in history and anthropology and certainly in politics.

Which brings us to Religious naturalism -- still another variation on all of this -- a way of being in the world with just of respect for the natural world, but reverence, awe, gratitude, hope. A sense that though science is the primary discipline thru which we can learn about the physical universe... still, human emotion, art, philosophy, and culture are also relevant to the fullest possible understanding of the world, and especially our place within it.

Outside of any single book on these matters, there is little consensus as to what all these words mean. Of all of these terms, “naturalistic theism” is not really owned yet by a specific theological system, but it often appears on surveys done by UU congregations. The UUA’s most recent theological survey defined naturalistic theism as the view that: “The powers we have traditionally attributed to a supernatural god are inherent in the natural world. The natural world elicits our respect and devotion.” As defined this way it becomes an awfully broad category, not specifically any of those that I’ve described so far. To some this may be so broad as to be meaningless; to others, that loose-fitting vagueness may feel just right.

I don’t know anyone who goes around calling herself a naturalistic theist, but it’s a phrase compatible with a broad smattering of all of the above: pantheist, panentheist, feminist, as well as pagan and transcendentalist. Still, because all of these worldviews reject at least a portion of classical theism -- either the personal aspect of god or the supernatural, or the static, or the creator/created setup -- you will find ambivalence about the word “god” among those who would affirm any of these labels, even those that contain the root word “theism.”

So despite or maybe because of all of these various ways of saying it, the-interdependent-and-inescapable-web-of-existence-of-which-we-are­-all-a-part is perhaps the most universally appreciated entity-or-process, not just among UUs, but across the human family. It may therefore be a possible meeting place, a place where we can begin to communicate and even work across our differences.

==

What do you feel when you look at the stars, or the snowfall? Do you feel small, or grateful for that great vast beyond? Are you refreshed, excited by its prospects which may lie outside of your own prospects, even beyond your own lifespan?

As Michael Dowd points out, experiencing god physically helps us grasp god’s reality. As Annie Dillard points out, we have to see it in order to get it.

My own experiences of transcendence have included sitting high in a rainforest tree and sitting quietly on an unmade bed. I have experienced the ineffable in relationships, in classrooms, in song, and in books.

I once thought I would have to give up on god when I found that I no longer believed in the supernatural. But I couldn’t help it: miracles continued to abound. And I still feel quite sure of the value in this traditional religious sentiment -- even if my definitions waver I can continue to affirm that my role in life is to love god with all my being, to love my neighbor as myself.

I can still intermittently address the cosmos in personal terms. Even if I don’t conceive of nature as having consciousness or its own will, I can still experience the Earth’s wisdom, what It in a sense “knows” and can teach me. I can appreciate its presence, its generosity, and the grace of things undeserved, such as my own life.

And I can be held accountable -- because even though my life has occurred at random and was in no way a necessity in the grand scheme of things, now that I am here, I am necessarily a co-creator; this is a responsibility I cannot escape.

Yes, I can be held accountable -- because even though my life has occurred at random and was in no way a necessity in the grand scheme of things, now that I am here, I am necessarily a co-creator; this is a responsibility I cannot escape.

==

So, what do naturalistic religious views call us to do? What are the imperatives of these theologies?

The fairly obvious ethic of nature-based theologies is to honor the earth -- both by taking the time to see it, and by taking care with the way we touch it.

On this 25^th anniversary of World AIDS Day, we are reminded that the cycle of life and death is not only complex biologically but emotionally and politically as well. And that care for all of creation means SEEING it, seeing the suffering along with the glories, and searching searching searching until we find a path toward healing its brokenness.

The AIDS epidemic reminds us that within this majestic cosmos, we are all connected. In the villages of Africa and the brothels of Thailand, in the homes in our own neighborhood where IV drugs and sex are used to coerce and to escape, and in our own schools where sexual ignorance is promoted -- in every place we ignore factors contributing to the epidemic -- we are all connected.

In this context, then, our call to be co-creators is to see the world as it is and to touch the world with healing hands. Our call is to subvert cultural assumptions and political systems which perpetuate coercion and ignorance, and to share our unearned gifts by making connections.

We are all connected. The cosmos is still unfolding. We are a part of that unfolding.

An emphasis of naturalistic theism that I too often forget when I put myself in Humanist mode is the emphasis on relationship. I lose track of the-god-that-comes-to-be through relationship...and I avoid the working-out that makes relationships both challenging and rewarding, intangible and baffling. I dodge the reminder that there is more than just me. And that I’m not alone.

When I allow myself to dwell within these theistic metaphors I more readily enjoy the benefit of knowing that even though I’m small, I am an ESSENTIAL part of Its majesty...whether my tenure on earth is an hour or one hundred years, and: whether my life turns out to be heroic or average, I have to, and I get to, play a part.

So whether you find god in the mystery, the unknown before which you are humbled, or whether you find plenty to worship right here in the known world, so big, so ancient, so complex and creative, let us do so, together.

And with the Navajos sing: beauty is before us, beauty is behind us, beauty to our right, beauty to our left, beauty above, beauty below, we walk in beauty.