If we can learn anything from monarchies and autocracies, not to mention the worship of corporate executives, it is that many people – perhaps most people – are comforted by the thought that someone (generally someone else) is in control of things. That means the rest of us can relax somewhat, since someone else can be counted on to keep things on track, or make corrections when they leave the tracks. The world is a big, complicated place, and since most people can’t even balance their chequebooks anymore – assuming they still have chequebooks, those artifacts from the past – it’s nice to know that somebody else is in charge.
This is why gods are so comforting – whether singular or plural – since, in addition to helping us explain why things are the way they are, and helping us make choices through the various scriptures that are purported to reflect their will, not to mention the prospect of punishing those we don’t like, deities reassure us that things happen for a reason but everything will be all right in the end. They offer ultimate security and certain benchmarks in an often-uncertain world.
“God is our refuge and strength,” proclaims Psalm 46, “a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.” There is a sense of comfort in these words. Or later, in Psalm 107: “Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out from their distress; he made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad because they had quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven.” It is interesting how often the psalms invoke nature.
These may be comforting thoughts in the springtime, when the river reaches flood stage, or in the summer, when torrential storms bring tornadoes, or during the forest fires of autumn, or in the midst of the fierce blizzards of winter. Many look naturally to the heavens in the face of death, seek divine inspiration in the depths of despair, or welcome an unseen hand when the burdens of everyday life overwhelm them. Who doesn’t want a friend in life’s difficult moments? Even an invisible friend?
But what if life’s trials and tribulations simply flow from the same natural laws that bring us our blessings and bounty? What if the natural worlds in which “we live and move and have our being” is all that there is – the sum total of existence? Well, for some, that is enough.
“I have opened my mind to the open air of the universe, to things as they are,” affirmed naturalist John Burroughs more than a century ago. “Our life depends from moment to moment upon the air we breathe, yet its winds and tempests may destroy us; it depends from day to day upon the water we drink, yet its floods may sweep us away. We walk, climb, work, and move mountains using gravity and yet gravity may break every bone in our bodies. We spread our sails to the winds and they become our faithful servitors, yet the winds may drive us into the jaws of the breakers. How our lives are bound up and identified with the merciless forces that surround us!”
The faith of a naturalist accepts the world as it is, grateful for how nature nourishes us – celebrating the improbable gift of life itself – without the need for supernatural explanations or justifications, recognizing that nature’s blessings and blows, possibilities and perils, are woven together in the interconnected web of existence. That’s not to say that religious naturalists accept society as it is, for society is the result of human action, both individual and collective, and it is well within our power to change it for the better. We may even feel called to do so.
“In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing,” observed Carl Sagan. “But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from? And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed.”
When the Unitarian Universalist Association adopted our beloved Seven Principles in 1985, it was no accident that they concluded with “respect for the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part,” which arguably marked a landmark in how we speak about the metaphysical – language that could be accepted by both the theists and atheists among us. (Well, in one sense it was something of an accident, since the Seventh Principle, as it came to be known, was almost an afterthought – not only the last one to appear, but also the last one to be proposed after those crafting the statement had more or less settled on six.) Beginning with an affirmation of “the inherent worth and dignity of every person” and concluding with the “web of existence,” which is not so much a metaphor as a vivid description of how we see the universe, the principles were arranged from the most particular to the most universal. The Seventh Principle reflected the shift of Unitarian and Universalist thinking over the course of two centuries from the theological to the cosmological, from a faith devoted to the worship of God to one that acknowledged Nature itself as the source of our existence. It reflected a new consensus in Unitarian Universalism. What we call the interconnected web of existence marks the zenith of religious naturalism among us. In the midst an “impersonal universe,” the interdependent web displaced what Burroughs called “our petty anthropomorphic views of things.”
Religious naturalism rebels against a worldview that sets both God and humankind apart from Nature, instead affirming a monistic view of the oneness of creation. Some might embrace Spinoza’s God, which understood divinity and nature as one, but that’s more a semantic assertion than a theological one, while others would affirm that Nature alone is enough. Some use the poetry of theological language when talking about nature, while others content themselves with using scientific language.
“Amid the decay of creeds, love of nature has high religious value,” declared John Burroughs. “This has saved many persons in this world … It has made them contented and at home wherever they are in nature – in the house not made with hands. This house is their church, the rocks and the hills are the altars, the creed is written in the leaves of the trees, in the flowers of the field and in the sands of the shore. A new creed every day, new preachers and holy days all the week through. Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth. There are no heretics in Nature’s church; all are believers, all are communicants. The beauty of natural religion is that you have it all the time; you do not have to seek it far off in myths and legends, in catacombs, garbled texts, miracles of dead saints or wine-bibbing friars. It is of today, now and here; it is everywhere.”
.jpg)
“We separate ourselves from Nature and flatter ourselves that we belong to another and higher order; that we alone are of divine origin, and not involved in the fate of the rest of Creation,” observed Burroughs, while noting that we are composed of the same minerals, or elements, that constitute the physical universe, deriving our lives from the same “cosmic dust and solar radiations” that make up every other species of life on Earth. “Why should we put on superior airs when no one atom of matter will turn aside for us, not one law of physics cease to operate to save us from destruction?” he asked.
On balance, Nature has been favourable towards us as a species, one might even say kind – as favourable and as kind as any beneficent deity can be said to have been. Some may invoke deities and demons to explain why things sometimes go awry, in order to explain life’s disappointments and disasters in the face of our experience that life is generally good to us. Even most of our bad days are pretty good, once we get over our complainte du jour. Most human beings seem to prefer to believe that ill fortune is a punishment rather than concede that our lives are filled with random events over which even the gods have no control, that an element of chance defines of our existence when it comes to our individual lives, even as we see the magnificent order of Nature all around us.
We need to believe that our lives have a purpose external to ourselves, rather than accept the terrible responsibility to shape the meaning of our own lives, when we can scarcely explain why we hold the values and beliefs that we do, the preferences and tastes, the urges and instinct. So we separate ourselves from Nature, rather than embracing our place within it, and we create mythologies and theologies to explain why we fancy ourselves to be something more than the intelligent dust of the universe. We look for a plan where there is only natural law; we look for a creator rather than acknowledge that the universe is self-creating and self-perpetuating. There is a comfort in anthropomorphizing Nature since doing so tames the natural world, explaining its apparent affections and tempers, domesticating it in human terms, making it more relatable and seemingly more controllable. Many find comfort in a deity with a human face, who has created us in their image, as preferable to an impersonal collection of forces and laws, and I wouldn’t deny them this comfort. But for me, Nature is enough – the Earth is my everlasting home – and I am content to rest in its bosom. An infinite and eternal universe is as satisfying to me as an infinite and eternal deity – as Carl Sagan noted, its saves me a step – an in theology, as in life, my capacity for laziness knows no bounds. Yes, let me rest in Nature’s bosom.
“But we are here, the world is beautiful, life is worth living,” Burroughs proclaimed. The world is beautiful. Life is worth the living. “Nature serves us when we know how to use her; when we plant and sow wisely. More things have been for us than have been against us; more winds have blown our barks into safe harbors than have dashed us upon the rocks. There are more refreshing showers than devastating tornadoes; more sunshine than forked lightening; more fertile land upon upon the earth than parched deserts; a broader belt of genial climates than of frigid zones. … Nature as it is; the chances of life have been in our favor; the stream makes its own channel; the waters find their way to the sea; they do not stagnate on the way.”
So, whether you still draw your faith from ancient scriptures, and well-worn and time-tested traditions, or whether you seek “sermons in stones, words in the babbling brooks” – either way, may you, from time to time, take your faith out into the open air, to test it against the refreshing breezes of the natural world, and see if the winds might not bring you something that refreshes you, that rejuvenates you, that reminds you our lives are worth the living.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment