A New Paradigm
Written by Margie King Saphier Sunday, 26 April 2009 00:00
Reading
In One River, Many Wells by Mathew Fox, he quotes Julia Butterfly from her autobiography The Legacy of Luna. Julia is the young woman who for two years lived in an ancient redwood she named Luna to protect it from the threat by the Pacific Lumber Company to cut it down.
“When she first climbed up the tree, she was joined by a young man who lasted three weeks in the tree, because he was so radically angry at the loggers, each day he seemed to grow more drawn. Julia writes, ‘Day by day, his already deep-set eyes … sunk more. … His life seemed to be draining away in front of my eyes. After 25 days, this young man left the tree-sit.’”
“Why was Julia able to endure? She had a spiritual practice that took her beyond her anger.” Julia goes on to write, ‘I began to pray. I knew if I didn’t find a way to deal with my anger and hate, they would overwhelm me, and I would be swallowed up in fear, sadness, and frustration. I knew that to hate and strike out was to be a part of the same violence I was trying to stop. And so I prayed. Please, Universal Spirit, please help me find a way to deal with this, because if I don’t, it’s going to consume me.
One day, through my prayers, an overwhelming amount of love started flowing into me, filling up the dark hole that threatened to consume me. I suddenly realized that what I was feeling was the love of the earth, the love of Creation.’”
Julia was a warrior – a spiritual warrior because she brought love and compassion, instead of anger and hatred, to her mission.
Sermon
Writing this sermon with the theme of Earth Day has been a journey starting in March when I saw Richard Goodwin’s play Two Men of Florence. As I watched the two main characters, Galileo and Pope Urban VIII, I could not help but think Galileo and Pope Urban are men of our times and we are they because the battle for a new world view is very much with us. Then I received from Michael Murphy an excerpt by Thomas Berry, who wrote “we are moving into a new mythic age” explaining traditional Christianity is no longer relevant to our time. Reading Rosemary Radford Ruether’s book Gaia and God: an Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing,
Greta Vosper’s book With or Without God and Mathew Fox One River, Many Wells put me back in touch with liberal Christian theologians who name the destructive constructs of traditional Christianity and offer a new constructs based on mutuality, justice and compassion within the teachings of Jesus. And then last Sunday, the New York Times Magazine had wonderful articles about ecology. So we are going to explore the dynamics of worldviews and how we, as Unitarian Universalists, can affirm and promote the interdependent web of existence. So hold onto your hats, we have a lot of ground to cover.
Greta Vosper writes, “Our world views are primal. We tie them to our existence and cannot interpret our lives without them. If they are challenged, we fight tooth and nail to preserve them.” She goes on to say
“We need a worldview that will help us be creative forces in the world’s ecosystems rather than destructive ones.”
The play Two Men of Florence highlighted the power of world views and how far we will go to preserve them or to introduce new ones when they are no longer congruent with reality as we know it. Galileo was not out to get the Church, he believed his work glorified God. He was the consummate observer and believed man was given his senses and mind to observe and to explore the earth, the sun and stars. Full of awe of all he learned, Galileo exclaimed, “The language of God is the language of mathematics.” He believed, “The Laws of Motion point to the mystery of divine creation.”
In defense of his constant quest for understanding of the movement of the world, Galileo believed his argument was not with the Church as it was with Aristotle, whose philosophical teachings were adopted by the church to substantiate their belief in the inerrancy of the Bible.
Aristotle’s writings supported the belief the earth stood still and was the center of the universe. Having an earth that was stable and not moving was key to the Church’s theology. It allowed for a heaven above earth, where God, Jesus, Mary, the saints and the saintly physically resided; and of course, for a hell below earth, where Satan and evildoers. Because earth’s position had everything to do with salvation and damnation, it also had everything to do with the resurrection and the Second Coming. This theology created a vertical hierarchy with those deemed most worthy at the top, and the least worth at the bottom.
Pope Urban VIII, as Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, was a patron of Galileo’s, and admired Galileo’s intelligence and sharp wit. He supported Galileo against charges brought by other Cardinals. Galileo’s Laws of Motion brought military advantages to Barberini as Cardinal and later as Pope Urban. One such military advantage was Galileo’s mathematical formula that could calculate the distance, time, as well as the arc traveled by a projectile, such as a canon ball, so he could calculate where to place a canon for it to hit its target. As ruler of the Papal States this gave the Pope a military advantage. Galileo also improved on the telescope to detect movement of enemy armies. So Pope Urban was willing to accept and support “the heretical teaching” of Galileo’s Laws of Motion when it supported him militarily. As Cardinal, Barberini had latitude to entertain Galileo’s well-presented scientific experiments. But this latitude rapidly diminished when Barberini became Pope.
Galileo was obsessed (and I don’t mean that in a pejorative way). He knew he was onto to something. “I don’t want to change world,” he said. “I want to change one’s understanding of the world.” When Galileo was successful in changing the general public’s understanding, Pope Urban VIII could not let Galileo’s worldview stand. The power and the teachings of the church and the pope were at risk. I think Galileo did not understand how removing the earth from the center of the solar system would ultimately effect the theology of salvation and damnation, but I believe the Pope did.
Now I want you to leave the 15 and 1600’s and move forward in time to 1984. By 1984 the vertical axis of political and religious power was shifting toward the horizontal. The Civil Rights Movement had increased the rights of African Americans and had given women, the disabled, sexual minorities, as well as the poor and the oppressed throughout the world a vision to pursue their rights. The General Assembly in 1984 was getting ready to vote on a proposal for a new statement of Six Unitarian Universalist Principles. As Kenneth Collier recounts the story, “The 1984 proposal contained versions of the first 6 Principles, but none directly mentioned interdependence. The concept was implicit in some. … But many of us thought there was something important missing: the inherent dignity and worth of every person needed to be extended to non-humans.”
It was Rev. Paul L’Herrou, who proposed the Seventh Principle, “We affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” According to Collier the Seventh Principle has become the most popular, because it is at the core of UU theology. Interdependence has an energy that flows in all directions.
As we continued to explore the interdependent web of existence, we realized five years later there needed to a Source related to the interdependent web of existence. In 1995, in a campaign driven by UU Pagans, the Sixth Source was adopted, stating, “We draw spiritual teachings of Earth –centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of live and instruction us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.” It, too has become very popular.
And now here we are in 2009. Global Warming is no longer being questioned to the extent that it was. Tom Friedman, author of Hot, Flat and Crowded, suggests that fifty years from now, the year 2000 will be looked upon as a new era: ECE or Energy Climate Era, during which energy technology and conservation will be seen as the salvation of humankind. If Friedman is right, this requires a monumental change in the worldview for citizens in the U.S., the world and even for Unitarian Universalists.
So if we affirm and promote the interdependent web of existence and earth-centered spirituality, just how do we do this? Well …. Not easily. First of all, I suggest we UU’s straddle, and not always successfully, two worldviews. We are like Galileo, excited by the discoveries of science and are ready to embrace a new world view and we are like Pope Urban VIII, in that we cling to what is comfortable, to what serves us both in possessions and in power.
So understanding the huge challenge before us, we need this faith community more than ever. If the Principles call us to action, it is First Parish that can provide us with opportunities to multiply our individual effort and overcome our inertia. In last Sunday’s NY Times Magazine there was an article titled “Why Isn’t the Brain Green?” by Jon Gertner. Living through this past winter with all its snow and cold weather, as well as a cool spring, it is difficult for our brains to embrace global warming when it is not being confirmed by our experience. As a result behavioral scientists considered this dissonance between fact and experience, an opportunity to study how we react to long-term trade-offs in the form of sacrifice for far off benefits in the future. The findings stressed the importance of community. We humans need to know we are part of a group. The scientists observed when we work in community on a problem, we start out using inclusive language, like the pronouns we and us as opposed to us and them, helping the community to become a decision-making unit that is more likely to reach consensus. This is why this congregation is so important, because it continually reminds us and invites us to work for social and ecological justice.
We need to be like Galileo and be just as determined and passionate to bring to the world new paradigms based in science that support the interdependence of all existence. Like Julia Butterfly, we need to be spiritual warriors and turn our negative judgments and hatred toward love – unconditional love so that we too can be transformed by experiencing the flow of love of Creation.
May it be so.