A sermon delivered by The Rev. Kathy Schmitz on February 10, 2008
At Pathways Church, A Unitarian Universalist Community in Southlake, Texas
To learn to love is to be in constant change.
The process is endless, for our potential to love is infinite.
From Love: What Life is All About by Leo Buscaglia
Drama before the Sermon: The Lucky Little Seaweed - by Mark McMenamin
(http://thegreatstory.org/parables.html)
When did you first know who you were? When did you first wonder?
When did you first wonder? Where you came from, where you are going, and how and what and why?
As humans we are prone to wondering about all manner of things.
Physicist and science writer, Simon Singh, has this to say about our wondering.
Our universe is dotted with over 100 billion galaxies, and each one contains roughly 100 billion stars. It is unclear how many planets are orbiting these stars, but it is certain that at least one of them has evolved life. In particular, there is a life form that has had the capacity and audacity to speculate about the origin of this vast universe.
(The Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh page 3)
When did you first wonder? Where you came from, where you are going, and how and what and why?
When I was growing up, I attended a liberal Christian church. I knew the story of creation as told in the book of Genesis. I never really thought about, or worried about, the fact that this story was different from the one I knew growing up in a very science oriented home.
In that home, one of my great pleasures was flipping through the Time-Life series of books we had. I could sit for hours in the den. We had both the nature series and the science series. I bet other people here had them, too. I loved most the nature series – a book on each continent, one on each type of animal life – mammals, and reptiles, and birds, and fish. One of the books was titled “Evolution.” I was endlessly fascinated by the amazing things there were to know about nature and science and life on this wonderful planet earth.
The two divergent stories I learned about the origins of the universe inhabited different spheres and so did not collides, at least not until one of those events that insurance companies refer to as an act of god.
It happened the year that I was in 7th grade and it was all on account of the weather.
Those of you who never attended school in a snowy climate may not be familiar with the custom of building snow days into a school calendar. Where I went to school in New Hampshire, it was required that public school students go to school 180 days a year. However, when the school year is planned it has 185 or 186 days in it. This is because it is assumed that we will miss 5-6 days of school due to snow. If we reach May without missing the allotted number of days, then we simply got out early.
Well, the year I was in 7th grade was a tough winter. It snowed and snowed and by April we had used, not only the 5-6 built in days, but an additional 6 days as well.
Now if school systems were run by insurance companies this would have been acknowledged as an act of god and someone would have decided that we didn’t need to go to school 180 days that year. But no, the law says 180 days, and so that is what it had to be.
If the school year had been extended by 6 days we would have still been in school at the Fourth of July and so instead, someone brilliantly decided, that we had to go to school on 6 Saturdays.
As you can imagine, the teachers were no more excited about the prospect of school on Saturday than the kids, so they all planned fun learning events for those day. Games in math – that sort of thing. In science, we decided to have a debate. The topic chosen: Creation vs. Evolution.
After the topic was announced, I wondered, who will be on the side of creation?
When Saturday came, I found out. Turns out it was everyone but me. It was a bewildering experience. I hadn’t seen it coming. In hindsight, I doubt that my teacher had seen it coming either. She certainly did nothing to ensure that my emotional safety that day.
I don’t remember much of the actual debate. What I do remember is the string of words that my best friend called me in the lunchroom that day. It included the word atheist – but the rest of the words I will not say from the pulpit. They were not kind.
The collision of these two views of the universe would cause me headaches, literally, in the short run.
But in the long run, it would awaken in me, a life-long interest in the relationship between science and religion.
Reflection on the relationship between science and religion is one of goals of Evolution Weekend.
And it turns out that this is Evolution Weekend.
Evolution weekend is a movement, driven primarily by mainstream Christians, according to its website, to encourage discussion and reflection on the relationship between religion and science… to demonstrate that religious people from many faiths and locations understand that evolution is sound science and poses no problems for their faith, and to make it clear that those claiming that people must choose between religion and science are creating a false dichotomy. (from www.evolutionweekend.org, accessed 2/9/08)
I believe the timing of Evolution Weekend, which has been taking place for the last few years, was chosen to correspond with the birthday of Charles Darwin. Tuesday will be Darwin’s 199th birthday.
(February 12, 1809)
Darwin not only articulated the science of evolution, but he also recognized the wonder and the beauty of it. In his most famous work, The Origin of the Species, he wrote:
Probably all organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed. There is grandeur in this view of life that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
(The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, 1859)
It was the wonder of that evolving life that fascinated me for hours as I poured though books in the den of my family’s home.
When did you first wonder? Where you came from, where you are going, and how and what and why?
When my daughter, Pam, was about 5 years old, she asked me one day about where people came from. I can’t remember the exact form of the question, but I knew it wasn’t a question about the birds and the bees. Remembering my own experience, I was determined to prepare my daughter for the variety of views in the world. I pulled a Bible off the shelf and told her that some people believed the story it told. I pulled the “Evolution” book, which now was in my home, off the shelf, and told her about what scientists thought. I was quite proud of myself for the well-rounded education I was giving my daughter until she interrupted me to say, “What about the star people?”
“The star people?” I asked. Yes, she wanted to know about the star people. She was quite convinced that we came from stars and wanted to know where the book about it was. I told her she would probably have to write that book. Over time, I asked more questions and eventually evolved an image of stars falling to earth, breaking open, and turning into everything on earth. Some turned into people. Some into trees. Others into houses. Everything we needed.
At some point, months later, I realized that Pam’s star people had originated on a trip to the Museum of Science with her father. While there, she had seen an IMAX film that opened with a voice (I imagine astronomer and astrochemist Carl Sagan but I can’t be sure), saying boldly ... we come from the stars.
And so it was… we come from the stars…never underestimate the power of media on our children.
It would be nearly 2 decades before I would focus on astronomy again enough to understand that Pam was right. We do come from the stars. The stars are our ancestors. We could not, not any one of us, be here now, if ancient stars had not lived and died.
I am talking about the process of nucleosynthesis. How many people know that what nucleosynthesis is?
Let me explain.
At a time in the distance past, currently estimate to be about 14 billion years ago, our universe began in an event scientists call the Big Bang, and the more romantic among us might call the Great Radiance (Michael Dowd & Connie Barlow).
Scientists have agreed for some time that the existence of helium and hydrogen are explained by the Big Bang. However, for a long time, they could not scientifically explain, the existence of the heavier elements. This includes things like oxygen, and calcium, and iron. Which are all incidentally, rather important to our existence.
It turns out these higher elements, critical to life on earth, could only have been created in reactions that are enabled by the implosion of stars. It took the death of stars to create the very atoms that make up our bodies. This is not about some theoretical atoms somewhere else. The actual atoms in our bodies were once inside giant stars.
Simon Singh suggests “Romantics might like to think of themselves as being composed of stardust. Cynics might prefer to think of themselves as nuclear waste.”
(The Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh page 389)
Let me ask you again, star people: When did you first wonder? Where you came from, where you are going, and how and what and why?
As long as there have been humans, humans have wondered.
But the science of nucleosynthesis was not available to previous generations.
One of the most important scientific papers on the topic was published the year before I was born.
("Synthesis of the Elements in the Stars,” Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge, William Fowler, and Fred Hoyle, 1957)
The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for this work the year that my daughter Pam was born.
(William Fowler, 1983)
How could previous generations have possibly known that we come from the stars?
Always there is more for us to know. Listen to this quote and see when you think it might have been written.
The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject...And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them...Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced. Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for every age to investigate...Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all.
(Seneca, Book 7, first century)
These are the words of Seneca, a Roman philosopher who lived 2000 years ago. Nonetheless, his words ring true today. So much has been discovered. And yet, and yet, still there is so much to discover. Surely, there will come at a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them.
Throughout human history people have searched for the truth and meaning.
It is a search supported explicitly in our Unitarian Universalist Association principles.
The fourth of the seven principles listed on the back of your order of service says:
We promote and affirm a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
This search is supported in the covenant recited each week in this and many other UU congregations.
Love is the doctrine of this church,
The quest of truth is its sacrament…
The quest of truth is its sacrament.
What is a sacrament?
Throughout the Christian church a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.
The term comes from earlier terms meaning to make an oath and to consecrate.
It is a sign of a commitment that brings with it both rights and responsibility.
Within the Christian Tradition… the sacrament of baptism brings grace but also expectations.
In the Roman Catholic Church, marriage is considered a sacrament. As the right to legal marriage has been debated in recent years, we have become increasingly aware of the enormous number of both rights and responsibilities that come with marriage.
If a sacrament is an outward sign of something internal that involves both gifts and responsibilities, then what does it mean to say of this congregation, the quest of truth is its sacrament?
It means that the quest of truth changes us and it changes our relationship to the world.
We have deeper understanding.
We have a clearer, more honest view of the world.
A more honest relationship with reality brings us many benefits.
We function better in a world we understand.
And yet, this deeper understanding brings with it responsibilities.
In a world no longer governed by magical forces we must take responsibility for more.
The effects of Hurricane Katrina provide us an example.
Those who view science as the enemy would suggest, at best, that what happened was beyond our control. At worst, they would suggest that it was an act of a vengeful god on a sinful world.
Statements such as this are neither true nor responsible.
When the quest of truth is seen as a sacrament, then we cannot ignore truths that are, as some most surely are, inconvenient.
We have to consider the possibility that human activity has increased the chances of more and stronger ocean storms.
We have to ask hard questions about the human decisions that led to the engineering failures in the levies.
We have to search our collective conscience to understand why our national priorities put such a low importance on human welfare in the months, and now years, that followed.
When our quest of truth opens our eyes to the realities of our world it is both a blessing and a responsibility.
We no longer need to fear that a vengeful god will purposefully cause death and destruction.
That is a blessing.
We must, however, consider the possibility, that death and destruction, and its prevention, requires us to take action.
We cannot use ignorance as an excuse to promote our social or political agenda.
Instead, we may find ourselves compelled to use our knowledge, our understanding, our wisdom, to create social and political agendas that honestly reflect the reality of the world in which we live.
A sacrament is both a blessing and a responsibility.
The quest of truth is both a blessing and a responsibility.
In particular, says Simon Singh, there is a life form that has had the capacity and audacity to speculate about the origin of this vast universe.
(The Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh page 3)
When did you first wonder? Where you came from, where you are going, and how and what and why?
Having developed the capacity and the audacity to wonder… we are blessed.
We are blessed to know our universe more intimately than any generation before us.
And yet, surely, there will come at a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them.
The quest of truth will go on. We do not, can not, know it all.
We can only be open to truth that is ours to know.
We can only live that truth the best way we know how.
Please join me, if you will, in a spirit of prayer and meditation.
Spirit of Life Ever Evolving,
Give us the courage to know deeply the reality
of this amazing universe out of which we have emerged.
Open our hearts and our minds to the wonders and the challenges that come with being alive.
Remind us that we are part of the continuing unfolding of creation.
What we do matters.
How we live matters.
Who we choose to be matters.
Spirit of Life Ever Evolving,
Let our wondering be a blessing.
Let our lives be a gift…
… today and in all our days to come.
Amen and blessed be.