TOUCHING
THE SUBJECT OF FAITH
May
7, 2006
Last
Thursday In the City for Good, an
interfaith organization to which we belong, held the first Buddhist/Christian
dialogue in
It
was a very interesting day, with engaging speakers and enthusiastic audience
participation. One exchange I found
fascinating, and which relates to our subject today focused on the question, to
whom or what do Buddhists pray?
Dr.
Yosay Wangdi, the GVSU
professor who brought us information about Buddhism, had already told us that
her faith has no deity. The Buddha was
not a god, and Buddhists do not pray to him.
The Christian who asked the question did not understand how someone
could pray if there was no god to hear it.
This
sounded familiar to me. I get asked this
question frequently, both from people inside and outside the congregation. “What is this praying Nana’? Who hears
your prayer?” Dr. Wangdi
answered in much the same way I do.
“We
pray,” she said, “to aspects of the Buddha nature that already exist inside
us.” For example, they may pray to the
aspect of Buddha as the Compassionate Presence.
They may call upon that aspect within themselves, sometimes deeply
embedded, and encourage its development.
“May I become more compassionate toward all beings.”
In
this congregation we often have similar conversations about the word, faith.
“Faith in who or what?” people ask, both inside and outside our
congregation. For many of us, the answer
is similar to Dr. Wangdi’s response. “Faith in the aspects of
love, justice and mercy that lie within us. Faith that they may be called into presence,
that we may become a manifestation of that which is good and true in this
world.”
Deborah
shared with you Mary Oliver’s lovely poem this morning titled, Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of
Faith. Like many other poems, this
one releases its meaning only in stages.
It is not until halfway through that one can deduce that corn is the
metaphor used. And then one must reflect
on why that metaphor is used in connection with faith. I will return to this question later in this
discourse.
For
now, let us look at faith, as it has relevance in a liberal religious
context. Yesterday, at our new UU Café
at the Farmer’s Market, president and coffee entrepreneur, Andy Fink referred
to my use of the term faith
community. “What faith?” he
asked. And I told him to come to church
today to hear a discussion of what that might mean.
Let
us turn the term around. Let us consider
the term, Community of Faiths. Isn’t that what we are, a community of
faiths? We are theist and humanist,
mystics and naturalists. We are
earth-centered religionists and Buddhists.
We are Jewish and Christian. We
are atheist and agnostic. We believe
that life ends at death, that it continues in some form, that we are
reincarnated, and that we just don’t know.
All of these are
faith statements. Oh, yes, you who are
humanist and/or atheist! You are also
making faith statements. Atheists can no
more prove with mathematics or physics or astrophysics that God does NOT exist,
than theists can prove that God DOES exist.
Humanists hold that that which is best and brightest
in our cosmos exists within the human consciousness. This is also a faith statement—as difficult
to continue professing in the face of some of humankind’s worst actions, as is
a profession in a kind and loving God.
All
of us base our lives on some affirmation of belief. The difference in this community of faiths is
that we, at our best, affirm that others can and do hold different beliefs, and
that we will remain in dialogue and community with them. We choose to express our faith, or belief system,
in community with others, whose values are greatly similar to our own.
Our
faith may be in a Universalist vision of a kind and
loving God, but we affirm that the humanist in the next pew shares many of our
values, is a pretty good person, and brings really good potato salad to our
potlucks. The mystic in the pew on the
other side never fails to call or write when we are ill. The earth-centered religionist who often sits
next to us is not here this Sunday. She
is teaching our child in Religious Education classes.
This community of faiths joins together to make a growing,
vibrant congregation. This faith community
is open, diverse and loving. This
religion enjoins its differing faith paths to always use reason as we walk the
path toward our truth and meaning.
Let
us use as an example, the faith path of religious naturalism. This is my primary path, and has been a
presence in Unitarianism since at least the mid 1800’s when Ralph Waldo Emerson
and Henry David Thoreau explored the ideas we now call transcendentalism. We, who follow this path, find The Divine in
the natural world. I think that poet
Mary Oliver is one of us.
The
current issue of the Journal of Liberal
Religion, published by my alma mater,
Meadville/Lombard Theological School, contains an essay by P. Roger Gillette on
Religious Naturalism. Dr. Gillette is a
retired physicist and a student in philosophy and religious studies. I will be drawing on his thought and work in
the following discussion.
Dr.
Gillette first defines nature:
I take the term ‘nature’ to refer to
the whole complex, interrelated and interacting unitary universe of
matter-energy in space-time, a universe of which humans are an integral part. I
base this statement on the findings of modern (current) scientific research. I
judge that this research provides us with the best description available
regarding the nature and operation of our universe. (Gillette, “Theology of, by
and for Religious Naturalism,” Journal of
Liberal Religion,
Having
defined nature he then looks at the assumptions that scientist use in studying
nature. First, that this complex of
matter and energy in our space time complex is real, and not imagined. Second that it operates in
a regular and dependable manner that we call natural law, and third, that by
careful observation and interpretation scientists can gain some understanding
of this law. (Ibid.)
Having established the assumptions
under which he is working, Gillette then makes the following assertions:
Currently
available findings of scientific research provide ample evidence for the
following:
(1)
The universe as we know it and are part of it is the product of a
process that involves both physical-cosmological and psycho-biological emergence
and evolution; that is, no assumption of separate creation of different classes
of entities (such as species of life) is necessary. (So much for Intelligent
Design!)
(2)
A “monist” view of the universe is also justified; that is,
no assumption of a separable “vital force” is necessary to explain the
emergence of life,
or of a separable
“mental force” to explain the emergence of mind,
soul, or spirit.
(3)
If the characteristic we call “personality” can be ascribed
not only to human individuals but also to human groupings such as corporations
and nations (as is being done by
The term ‘naturalism’ will be taken as
referring to a philosophical position based on these assertions. (Ibid)
Having established the scientific basis
of his ideas, Gillette moves on to theology.
He tells us:
The scientifically-based theological
position I take in this paper is that the whole reality-actuality that we
experience, as we live within and as part of it, has emerged and evolved as a
single interrelated and interactive complex of matter-energy in space-time. As an act of faith (like our belief that
the process really and actually exists), I assert that this process of
emergence and evolution constitutes a single creative process—a single
“purposeful creative act” of a single creative principle or agency. Both the
principle and the purpose are probably beyond human comprehension and description.
Nevertheless, I believe I have ample reason for treating the whole process and
its whole product as holy and sacred, …(Ibid.)
(Italics mine.)
And then, because one of the central tasks of theology is
to tell us how to find the meaning and purpose of our lives, he tells us that we
are here to support the achievement of the ultimate purpose of the universe. Acknowledging that we cannot be sure what
that purpose is, he nevertheless says that “it can probably best be achieved by
(the) continued smooth interconnected and interactive operation of the
universe, and particularly of Earth’s psychobiosphere,
with a minimum level of total pain and suffering (mental and physical) for …
humans and others… (Ibid.)
In one of her poems, Mary Oliver says that we are here to
notice the world and to praise it. The
difference between poet and physicist is one of language, rather than
meaning.
Thus
religious naturalism sees the divine in the natural world, just as did the
transcendentalists of the 1800s. The difference
is that “the natural world” has become “the unitary universe”, and the complete
philosophy is based on scientific observation and reasoning. It is a faith statement of a scientific
religious liberal using reason.
We
have used other languages to reference the same sort of faith. We have called it panentheism,
when we are using the language of the religious academy. Pan-en-theism
includes god, or the divine in the natural world, as opposed to theism which
separates the divine from nature, and pantheism which sees the natural world as
divine. Panentheism
sees the divine manifested in nature, as did Ralph Waldo Emerson and those New
England writers and thinkers who visited
What
Gillette is now calling religious naturalism has been a major component of our
community of faith for over one hundred years. Gillette, the physicist, grounds his thinking
and writing in science and reason.
Emerson and his followers skipped right to philosophy to claim that all
of us can have a direct relationship to the divine, and that the beauty and
wonder of nature call us to that relationship.
Now,
let us return to Mary Oliver and her mystical poem using a cornfield as a
metaphor for the divine. She says,
“Every summer/I listen and look/under the sun’s brass and even/in the
moonlight, but I can’t hear/anything. I
can’t see anything—not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks
muscling up/nor the leaves deepening their damp pleats, nor the tassels
making/not the shucks, not the cobs.”
We
can’t see the corn grow, we can’t see the roots spread beneath our feet, we can’t see the leaves, shucks, or cobs expanding. Yet they do so, and very quickly.
We
tend to take the miracles of the growing season casually. I moved to
Mary
Oliver says, “And still/every day/the leafy fields/grow taller and
thicker--/green gowns lofting up in the night/ showered in silk.”
I
learned to see the beauty of corn. I
learned to respect its potential to feed many people and animals. I learned to walk through the field,
protecting myself from the cutting edges of long, long leaves of corn that
captured the energy of the sun and transported it into the plant. I learned to gently squeeze the growing cobs
to sense the development of the kernels within.
Oliver
says, “And so, every summer,/I fail as a witness, seeing nothing--/I am deaf
too/to the tick of the leaves,/the tapping of downwardness from the banyan
feet—/all of it/ happening/beyond all seeable proof, or hearable hum.”
We
cannot see the growth of the roots underground, we
can’t hear the hum of life as water flows from root to leaf to silky
tassel. And yet each plant continues to
reach toward the sky, to fulfill its purpose—to produce the seeds that ensure
its survival. We intercept this process,
saving only some of the seeds, and using the rest for our purposes.
Even
Mary Oliver’s powers of observation are not able to see the leaves unfurl, nor
hear the roots spreading beneath her feet.
“And therefore,” she says, “let the immeasurable come, let the
unknowable touch the buckle of my spine,/let the wind turn in the trees,/and
the mystery hidden in the dirt/swing through the air.”
Life
is a mystery. We plant corn seeds,
having faith that black dirt and water will transform them into life-giving
food. We observe their growth through a season. Although we cannot see the
changes from day to day, the plants stretch ever farther, ever deeper. We could cut open a leaf, and it would bleed
its lifeblood, but we would not see life itself.
Oliver
concludes: “How could I look at anything
in this world/ and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?/What
should I fear?/ One morning/in the leafy
green ocean/the honeycomb of the corn’s beautiful body/is sure to be there.”
Oliver
has faith that the corn will continue to grow.
In this metaphor I believe she means that all life will continue, that even though we tremble and fear, plants will
reproduce, and animals will eat their grain, and we shall have sustenance. Life will continue.
Faith
is expressed in many ways. We cheat
ourselves if we allow ourselves to be limited to ways we learned in our
childhood. We are grown-ups now.
Most
of us have found new ways to live religiously.
We found this community of faiths, and we claimed it. We found new ways to express love of the
divine, new language to express transcendence, new understandings of how we
might envision the divine. We learned
that there are many faith paths, and that we could live comfortably with those
who followed a path that differed from our own.
We found a faith community that fit our needs.
Let
us live joyously, let us never cease from learning, let us acknowledge that
there is mystery in corn and birds and life and death. Let us live in faith, whatever our chosen
path.
Shalom
and Saalat.
Blessed
Be and Amen.