“THE HEART AND ART OF UNITARIAN
UNIVERSALISM”
A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear
Sunday,
All
Sometimes, I get a little punchy in explaining Unitarianism to people, since it happens so often that I am asked to do so. When I wear down on explanations, I get, as I say, a little punchy and, with tongue-in-cheek, I may just tell them that we started as a religion for mathematicians. The Unitarians argued against the doctrine of the Trinity not because of any deep theological issues, but simply because the numbers don't add up. The Doctrine of the Trinity suggests that when it comes to gods, there are three, and those three somehow add up to One. Unitarianism, then, began as a religion of mathematicians who objected that three does not equal one. One equals one. Unitarian.
Of course the Doctrine of the Trinity really has nothing to do with math – it is a mystical sort of insight, not a mathematical principle. Nevertheless, most of us Unitarians have a little trouble with the mathematical implications of the Trinity.
Like most humor, this observation is amusing only because there is something true about it. Not that all UUs are mathematicians, of course, but there is a general stereotype that we are analytical about religious matters. We are in our element if we have data to analyze.
An argument could be made, I suppose, that Unitarian Universalists tend to suffer from a certain kind of brain disease. Our left brain tends to dominate our right brain.
According to theories about the bi-cameral mind, the left side of the brain controls our analytical thinking. It is there that math is ciphered. The left brain is the rational, cognitive, verbal, thinking instrument of our mind. The language it speaks is the language of logic.
The right brain complements this by controlling our more intuitive thinking. It looks more for insights rather than logic, and processes data by metaphor and symbols. The Doctrine of the Trinity, for example, as a symbolic representation of God would fit quite comfortably in the right brain. The right brain looks for patterns and expresses itself not through logical argument, but through art and music and poetry. The language it speaks is the language of the heart.
The brain disease that many of us Unitarian Universalists are thought to suffer from is that our left brain dominates our right brain. It is not so much that our right brain is ill and fragile, but rather that there is some sort of programming in us that, when data enters our brain, the default path is through to the left brain, and the right brain is exercised only by strong conscious effort.
This, as I say, is a common stereotype of Unitarian Universalists. The longer I’m in this work, though, the more I am inclined to suspect that, like all stereotypes, this one is misleading. Probably even wrong.
It could also be argued, as I am about to do, that Unitarianism was created as a religion, not for mathematicians, but for artists. This is not quite as obvious as the opposite claim, but I’m suggesting this morning that there is substantial evidence to support it.
Like the word “religion,” there is no easily acceptable definition of the word “art.” That, of course, doesn’t stop me from attempting to do what no one else can do – that is, to offer a definition of “art.” For my purposes this morning, anyway, I will do it. For my purposes this morning, I think of “art” as describing the creative way humans find to express and interpret our common life experiences. Those creative expressions can take the form of paintings or music or poetry or literature or almost any symbolic representation of life experience.
“Creative” and “symbolic” may be the two key words to approach this topic of artistic expression. These are important operative words to describe the work of the right side of the brain. That part of the brain operates, as I said before, in metaphor (which is symbolism) or creativity (which involves imagination). Why do I suggest, then, that Unitarian Universalism is a religion for artists? There are a number of reasons.
To begin, we tend to approach life as a set of open-ended questions. We don’t presume that there is somewhere a handbook on life that offers final answers to all the important questions. The deepest questions of life –
the “Who am I?” questions,
the “Why am I here?” questions,
the “How do I know what’s right?” questions
the “How do I know what’s true?” questions
the “On what or whom can I depend?” questions –
all these great questions of life are completely open-ended. It is our task to gather together the answers that make sense for us based on our interpretations of life. The making sense of life requires finding interpretations that work. That is a creative enterprise, not an analytical one. Experience needs interpretation to make sense out of life. Art provides creative ways of interpreting experience whose meaning is inherently ambiguous. As the philosopher Albert Camus once said,
“If all the world were clear, art would not exist.”
If all the answers were provided, we would need no interpretations, and therefore no art. In some ways, orthodox approaches to religion are, surprisingly, exercises of the analytical left brain rather than the symbolic right brain. Strict religions offer a handbook on life and truth, and the task of the believer is to follow the literal interpretation of that handbook (not to discover creative interpretations):
God is this way because the book tells us so.
It is wrong to do this because the book tells us so.
If I follow the letter of the law laid out in this book, I will be rewarded.
And so forth. There is little or no room for interpretation. There is virtually no room for creativity, mystery, wonder, or metaphor. It is all to be accepted literally. Therefore, there is no room for art.
(By the way, there are plenty of secular versions of this fundamentalism. Secular rationalists suggest that we not believe anything that can’t be proven in a laboratory or that nothing should be believed that can’t be seen or heard or touched or otherwise directly experienced. To my mind, such a view is as fundamentalist or literalist as the view of the religious fundamentalist. Whether religious or secular, fundamentalist thinking tends not to be comfortable with open-ended questions, nor with ambiguous answers. All questions have an answer; they are either true or false. Even if we haven’t yet discovered the right answer, we can be sure the answer is there. This kind of secular rationalism leaves no room for interpretation or creativity or imagination. Like the religious form of fundamentalism, it leaves no room for art.)
So if Unitarian Universalism is a religion of open-ended questions, that allows for ambiguity and grey areas in our answers, and invites interpretation and metaphor in considering answers, then it may be guided as much, if not more, by the intuitional right brain than the analytical left brain. It is not necessarily a religion created for the mathematician in us; it is a religion created for the artist in us.
Creativity, mystery, imagination, metaphor, interpretation: these are all qualities essential to the work of an artist – whether visual art or musical art or literary art. They are also, it interestingly seems, a part of the inspiration for science.
Last month I spoke on Albert Einstein’s religious views, and I offered a quote in which he identified the sense of mystery as the inspiration for both religion and science. Here is part of what he said:
“The most beautiful experience
we can have is the mysterious. It is the
fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of all true art and true
science. Whoever does not know it can no
longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.”
I believe he is absolutely correct about that. Religion and science spring from the same source. It is the mysterious, the open-ended questions that inspire us to explore, that give rise to both religion and science. The open-ended questions are equally the source of the human artistic impulse.
To illustrate this point, let me turn, as is all too often my inclination, to the philosopher Immanuel Kant. Those of you who have listened to me regularly over the last decade or so realize, I suspect, that Kant delivered one of my all-time favorite quotes. In a deadly dull philosophical tome that requires outside stimulation to stay awake while reading, Kant was able to pen a single sentence that makes the entire document come alive. He wrote:
“Two things fill the mind with ever increasing admiration and awe – …the starry heavens above and the moral law within.”
Indeed, this is metaphor. Consider for a moment his metaphor of the “starry heavens above,” referring, of course, to the splendor and magnificence of nature. It fills us, he said, with admiration and awe. Such a statement is equally true for the scientist and the artist. For the astronomer, there is an absolute marvel in exploring the amazing patterns and life-span of the stars. Admiration and awe, which are right brain activities, are the driving force for the astronomer’s work, though the details of the work are often guided by the analytical left brain.
But admiration and awe equally inspired artist Vincent Van Gogh, whose famous painting “Starry Night” presented the shimmering lights of the night stars. And he gave it his own artistic interpretation. In the painting, the night sky is aglow with stars so magnificent that they overwhelm the status of the quiet village below. He seems to be suggesting, to me at least, that although we humans give far more interest and consideration to our village around us, it remains that the sky above us offers an experience far more momentous than we commonly realize.
Van
Gogh’s artistic interpretation of the stars can also be seen in literary style
by the following excerpt from an essay by Emerson. Emerson
began his most famous essay – his essay on “Nature” – with these words:
"If a person would be alone, let that
person look at the stars. One might
think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design: to give us, in the
heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. If the stars should appear one night in a
thousand years, how we would adore them, but every night come out these envoys
of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. The stars awaken a certain reverence,
because, though always present, they are inaccessible."
Creativity, mystery, imagination, metaphor, interpretation: these are all qualities essential to the work of an artist – whether visual art or musical art or literary art. But these are also qualities found in religions that are grounded in open-ended questions of life.
Along the lines of Kant and Einstein, modern author Willa Cather once observed that, “Religion and art spring from the same root. They are close kin.” Again, I agree with this connection. This time I examine the connection through the concept of “creativity,” which is one of the key right brain activities.
If religion is approached as a set of open-ended questions, then our task in some sense is to create rather than just discover, meaning. The capacity for creativity is central both to art and to a religion of open-ended questions.
In general, I don’t think of myself as an artist, even though writing is one of my major activities in life. The time in which I most identify with artists is when I turn on my computer and look at a blank screen waiting for me to type words on it. It is at that moment when I think of an artist facing a blank canvass or a composer sitting at a piano or looking at a musical paper with no clue of what notes are coming next.
A blank computer screen or a blank canvass, I suppose, can be either intimidating or inviting – or both. There have been times, in preparing a sermon, in which I have faced a blank computer screen for what seems like hours before anything appears on it. I look at the screen and realize I don’t know what is supposed to be there. So, I pick up a book and browse it for some clue as to what I’m supposed to type onto that screen. I get an idea, turn back to the screen and stare. Sometimes nothing happens. Back to a book, and back to a screen. On and on it can go, with increasing frustration.
And then finally, once something begins appearing on the screen, if I’m lucky, it flows. It seems to write itself. Other times, it just trickles out – a sentence, a phrase, or just one word at a time, followed by careful pauses. I sometimes wonder how similar this experience is to the visual artist, creating something to fill the canvass. I suppose the experience is familiar to them. The process of art, regardless of the medium, is a creative one: to create something out of nothing, or else to create meaning out of chaos.
But “art and religion spring from the same root,” according to Willa Cather. “They are close kin.” This is true of religion when the questions are open-ended, and the religious task is to create meaning through interpreting experience. Religions that are not open-ended, that instead provide firm answers, do not face a blank canvass, and do not ask of us to approach life creatively.
There is a longstanding relationship between religion and creativity. The central role of God, in every religion that speaks of God, is that of “Creator”: “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.” Our primary identity as human beings is as part of God’s creation. Even from a strictly orthodox viewpoint, creativity should be an important religious concept.
One of the recent theological systems that many UU religious leaders, including myself, are attracted to is called “process theology,” and is developed out of the work of the 20th century English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead.
Whitehead began with a simple notion that the future is open-ended. We cannot completely predict what will happen tomorrow. We are forever in the act of creating what comes next. Such a belief implies that God – or any kind of divine force – is not ultimately in charge of the future. That future relies as much on our decisions today. Process theologians speak of God and human beings as being “co-creators” together of what will happen in the future.
This may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the point of this theology is that creativity is cooperative between us and the forces that transcend us – that mystery is ultimately interpreted by science, art and religion. The right side of our brain speaks the language of transcendence, it appeals to the concept of something greater than we can identify through the senses. In classical Greek literature, those who are inspired to accomplish great artistic works are in touch with “the Muse.” The Muses were descended from Zeus, and could guide the artists to creativity that awakens or soothes the soul of the audience. Each different Muse offered guidance through different media: there was a muse for comedy, and one for tragedy, and others for dance, poetry, music, astrology, and epic tales.
The connection between art and religion, you can tell, extends far back into human society. They do, indeed, seem to spring from the same root, and are close kin.
But again, I say, that is essentially the case for religion that approaches life as a series of open-ended questions. Religion that is artistic welcomes ambiguity, creativity, metaphor, and interpretation. The religions which are literal and offer strict answers have no room either for Muses or for art.
I
am saying nothing here that wasn’t pointed out by the Unitarian
Transcendentalists 150 years ago in
There is a deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is
accessible to us. Every moment when the
individual feels invaded by it is memorable... The soul's health consists in
the fullness of its reception... Within us is the soul of the whole; the wise
silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally
related. When it breaks through our
intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through our will, it is virtue, when
it flows through our affections, it is love.
If all I’ve said so far isn’t persuasive enough to say that Unitarian Universalism is a religion inclined to art or the right-brain functions of thought, then I can offer a simpler demonstration. We only need to identify some UUs over the centuries who have excelled in the artistic enterprise. There have been musicians from Bela Bartok to Pete Seeger, architects and designers from Frank Lloyd Wright to Buckminster Fuller, imaginative writers like Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Ambrose Bierce, and Kurt Vonnegut, and a whole herd of poets, such as Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, e.e. cummings, Malvina Reynolds, and May Sarton.
I’ve spent my time this morning trying to show how our tradition can be seen as compatible with – even arising from – what I’ve called “the artist”: the right brain functions of intuition, of seeking patterns, and of pursuing creative expressions. I’ve done this largely because I hope to counter the prevailing stereotype that the Unitarian tradition is predominantly driven by what I’ve called “the mathematician”: the left-brain functions of logic and analysis.
In fact, it is clear that a healthy person, and a healthy religion, require the enthusiastic and balanced functioning of both sides of the brain. Logic without intuition and insight, left-brain without right-brain, mathematician without artist, head without heart, presents an incomplete person, and certainly an inadequate religion.
So I raise a toast this morning especially to the artist in all of us. Within Unitarian Universalism, we expect to find the mathematician, the left-brained sorts of people. But since religion and art spring from the same root, I send a special plea to the artist. We need you here. Be welcome.
READING from "Art and Physics"
by Leonard Shlain
Science, custom, and intuition all acknowledge that the right brain is
the artistic side. Right-art-space
belongs principally in one hemisphere.
Yet, though art is contemplated and even inspired in a synthetic,
holistic manner, the actual task of composing music, painting a picture, or
casting a statue is left-brain work: It
takes place one-step-at-a-time and depends on a sequential technique.
Left-physics-time
resides chiefly in one hemisphere. Just
as art need left-sided sequence, so physics depends on right-sided
inspiration. Visionary physicists
frequently report that their insights occur in a flash of intuition: an
epiphany that is at once nondiscursive, nonlogical, and authentic. In these cases, the painstaking labor
necessary to shape each intuition into the language of mathematical proofs
occurs after the insight.
And here [is my thesis] -- that revolutionary art anticipates visionary
physics.... The artist introduces a new
way to see the world, then the physicist formulates a new way to think about
the world. Only later do the other
members of the civilization fit into all other aspects of the culture.
In order to take advantage of the new discoveries in the field of
physics, we will have to begin integrating the two hemispheric functions. It will be a prodigious task: the gulf that divides the right hemisphere
from the left in Western culture is very wide.
To illustrate the chasm separating the two, suppose that in every year
of human history a Nobel Prize committee had granted an award for the
outstanding artistic achievement as well as for the most meritorious scientific
one... Despite the numerous artistic
titans and the many giants of science, the fact that leaps out of the
historical record is how rarely anyone would have ever qualified for both
awards. While there have been
artists who dabbled in science and physicists who displayed an artistic bent,
there are very few who were able to make an outstanding contribution to both
fields.
Upon reflection, one name stands out high above all the others: Leonardo da Vinci. His many inventions and investigation in
diverse areas of science would guarantee him not one but several nominations
for the prize. At the same time, his
artistic legacy is such that he would doubtless have become a Nobel Laureate in
that category as well. How odd that in
all of recorded civilization only one person could lay clear-cut claim to both
prizes. It speaks of the sharp divisions
in our culture between art and physics, right and left hemispheres, space and
time.