“FEELING AT HOME IN THE UNIVERSE”
Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear
Sunday,
All
Few ideas lend themselves more to adage than the concept of “home.” Clichés abound: “Home is where the heart is,” “A house does not make a home,” or “home is wherever you hang your hat.” It is a handy concept for cogent quips. One of the most famous is from Robert Frost:
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
Other quick insights about the concept of home include these:
“Home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules.” G.K. Chesterton.
“Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and you grow old wanting to get back to.” John Ed Pearce.
“The impulse for much writing is homesickness. You are trying to get back home, and in your writing you are invoking that home.” Joan Didion.
“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.” Alice Walker.
“Home is where you can say anything you please, because nobody pays any attention to you anyway.” Joe Moore.
The whole idea of “home” invokes images of comfort and a sense of belonging. Any place where you need to play some role or act pleasant when you don’t feel pleasant, isn’t a home. A home is where you are who you are and there is no pressure for you to be someone else.
Home has also often been blended with religion, for home is where values are taught, and home is where faith is learned. But the whole concept of “home,” it seems to me, is far more deeply rooted in what we know of as human religions.
I have confessed more than once from this pulpit that in spite of my training, in spite of my profession, and in spite of my long-standing study of religion, I have yet to find a definition of the word ”religion” that works well for me. When I am asked to define the word “religion,” as happens from time to time, I either stumble with some awkward description, or I own up to the fact that I can’t define it.
But if the question is asked differently, my answer is swift and fairly sure. Instead of asking me to define what religion means, someone asks me to describe what religion is for – that is, the purpose of religion – then I think I know. The answer was offered over a century ago by the great psychologist and philosopher William James who said religion is what humans use to feel personally that they are at home within in this universe. That is the purpose of religion. It helps us to feel we belong in this curious world.
From the beginning, the human species has been inclined to feel somewhat estranged or alienated from the world around them. In ancient times, some of that sense of estrangement came from simple ignorance about how our world works. The sun and the stars, the rain and the cold, the witness of mystery in birth and death – nearly every aspect of life left humans feeling helpless against the powerful forces of the universe we could not understand.
Religions were developed to offer a sense of protection from the unknown. Religion said, in effect, “You may not understand what is going on out there, but fear not. You are an important part of the universe, and there is a place for you in the grand scheme of things. You belong here.” Religion was designed to help people feel they belonged in the world. To make them feel at home.
As the centuries rolled along, many of the technical mysteries of nature were solved, and people no longer puzzled about things like hurricanes or diseases or life cycles. They may still be challenging, but they weren’t the mystery they once were. But even as science unlocked so many mysteries of nature – exploring the universe, unlocking the mystery of the atom, building airplanes, discovering new medicines, and linking everyone by computer – even with the astounding advances of civilization that broke down so many barriers between human life and the world around us, still the human sense of estrangement and alienation remained. In some ways it was even stronger.
At some point,
the term “alienation” actually became a label to describe life in the 20th
century. One science fiction writer
offered a title that summarized life in modern society: “Stranger in a
And in modern life, religion really serves the same purpose it did in ancient times: not to offer superstitions that make it easier to cope with our ignorance, but rather to say to us now, as it said to others back then, “You may feel helpless in this confusing modern world that changes so fast around you, but fear not. You are an important part of the universe, and there is a place for you in the grand scheme of things. You belong here.” The purpose of religion now, as it was then, is to help people feel at home in the universe.
Many were the predictions that with the rise of science, religions would wither away. It seemed religions were developed to help people cope with the mysteries of nature they didn’t understand, and with those mysteries solved, why would we need religion? So one great mystery of modern life is now why religion hasn’t disappeared in the scientific, industrial, and technological world we live in. Why? In fact, quite the opposite seems to be true. There has been a flowering of religion in the last half century.
Where once one could be Protestant, Catholic, or Jew in our society, now the doors have opened so broadly they leave nothing out. All forms of yoga and meditation, coming from Hindu and Buddhist traditions, are blending into our society. Talk of reincarnation and mind-over-matter is no longer some esoteric “fringe” idea. The vague term “spirituality” has captured the mainstream interest, and in many ways has overtaken the marketplace where once there were just denominations. Bookstores are filled more than ever with works on spirituality and religion – more popular than most books on science.
The quest “to feel at home in the universe” is as strong as it has ever been, undiminished by the advances of modern science. Religion was not created to compensate for our ignorance about the ways of nature. Religion was created to help us feel we belong in a world we don’t fully understand. In ancient days, that had primarily to do with the limitations of our scientific knowledge. In today’s world it has more to do with finding our place in a complex and constantly changing world.
We’ve discovered that science cannot help us decide on questions of ethics and morals – discerning the difference between right and wrong choices. Science cannot supply us a sense of personal self-worth, or assurance that we are living to our best potential. Science provides little help in overcoming feelings of alienation or estrangement. Those things that fill us with hope and confidence and purpose do not come from mere accumulated knowledge. They come from our relationships with the world we live in. Our yearning is to feel like we belong here, and it is the same yearning that people have had from the beginning of human history.
The fundamental religious question, then, is “how?” How do we go about feeling ourselves to be at home in the universe? How do we feel comfortable with our place in the world, and know that we belong here? It would be nice if there were a simple answer or roadmap to this goal, but there isn’t. There are, I think, some clues that should attract our attention. I am going to offer some clues that I’ve found from two different sources – one clue from recent science, and the other from theology. These clues come from decidedly different premises, but they seem to draw us to the same conclusion.
First, the clue from science. What helps us come to feel that we are “at home in the universe”? When this sermon title was published in our newsletter last week, I was approached by a church member who happens to be a professional scientist, who shared with me a book with which I was unfamiliar. The title of the book is, strangely enough, “At Home in the Universe.” The author is Stuart Kauffman, a theoretical biologist who has pioneered the study of life’s origins, and especially life’s biological complexity and organization. It turns out this is, in fact, a pivotal book in modern biological science, and promises to be a compelling re-interpretation of Darwinian evolution. I borrowed the book, and found there some arguments that showed surprising consistency with the theological points I’ll mention later, that were the original outline of this sermon idea.
I begin with a
disclaimer, and a confession. Much of
the book was way beyond my level of scientific knowledge. Yes, I did skip through pages where he talked
about things like “eukaryotic cells” and “ribozymes” and “autocatalytic
sets”. I won’t pretend I knew what he
was talking about in such spots. (I
won’t even pretend that I can pronounce such words). Yet he had a beautiful literary style that
drew me in to understand, if not his specific examples, at least his overall
perspective, and it was, for me, impressive.
Kauffman’s contribution to modern science is to expand on Darwinian
evolution to suggest that something more than
Our common concept of evolution is really that simple and, it turns out, fairly accurate. We have accepted the process of evolution to be somewhat mechanistic – that if we can know the effects of a genetic change, we can predict how it will evolve. Kauffman is not so sure it’s that simple, and he goes about to show how evolution seems to respond to something more than mere natural selection of random mutations. This is where such concepts as “eukaryotic cells” and “autoctalytic sets” come in, and where my eyes gloss over, but there is little doubt that Kauffman’s research is overwhelmingly peer approved. His work is not scientifically controversial, though it is theoretically original.
Kaufmann suggests that in addition to random variation and natural selection, evolution can be affected by something he calls “self-organization” and “complexity.” It is, he says, in the nature of any living organism to arrange itself into effective and meaningful form. It is not just evolutionary selection that guides the way living things evolve, but also within the nature of every living being is an inherent striving, almost, to develop more effectively. Evolution relies on this inherent self-organization to work effectively – variation and natural selection by themselves aren’t sufficient to explain how life evolves.
What in the world does all this have to do with feeling “at home in the universe”? One of the critiques of evolutionary theory has been that it implies that everything that exits, including you and me, is here by sheer accident. The genetic mutations are random – we cannot identify their source or predict their nature. Another word for “random” is “unpredictable.” The process of natural selection, on the other hand, is mechanistic. Whatever random mutation appears, natural selection does whatever it has to do to insure survival. You and I are the products of millions of years of unexpected mutations and mechanical selection. This world could be populated by drastically different beings if mutations had accidentally been different than they are. Our replacements might have had eyes in the back of their heads, like many mothers have, and they could have flapped their wings and flown. But the accident of mutation gave us human beings – we who get goofy if we don’t have enough sleep, and who, most of us anyway, have to wear glasses when we turn forty. Our species is an accident of nature.
By saying that variation and selection are not the only elements of evolutionary change, Kauffman suggests that we no longer have to think of ourselves as being here “by accident.” In fact, the process of “self-organization” suggests that it is in our own nature that we move, as a species, in one direction rather than another. Here is one way he says it:
“Organisms are not just tinkered-together contraptions, but expressions of deeper natural laws. If all this is true, what a revision of the Darwinian worldview will lie before us! Not ‘we’ the accidental, but ‘we’ the expected.”
We are expected, not accidental, Kauffman says. It is not the world outside of us that entirely creates who we are, but there is something deep within our nature that lures us into a healthy relationship with the world around us, that nurtures us to feel at home in the universe, at home in the world we live in.
Since
“Life is not located in its parts, but in the collective emergent properties of the whole they create. . . . The collective system does posses a stunning property not possessed by any of its parts. It is able to . . . evolve. The collective system is alive. Its parts are just chemicals.”
Kauffman hangs his theoretical hat on the peg that the science of evolution is never entirely predictable. Quantum physics has demonstrated the fundamental unpredictability in sub-atomic worlds. Chaos theory has further shown conclusively that inherent in the natural world is an almost capricious element that eludes prediction. If the natural world contains factors that are essentially unpredictable, then nature, rather than being merely mechanistic, is also creative. Here is how he stated it in another article called “Beyond Reductionism”:
“The evolution of the biosphere is radically unknowable. . . . Thus the evolution of the biosphere is radically creative, ceaselessly creative, in a way that cannot be foretold. I find this wonderful.”
Again, what has this to do with humans feeling “at home in the universe?” We are not machines, brought about by accident and following some pre-ordained path of genetically designed behavior. We are, in fact, part of the universe, and one crucial element of our universe is the quality of creativity. We share that quality, and it is within our natural power, as humans, to seek creative relationships with the world we live in. It is, after all, our home.
There is no need to feel alienated and estranged from this world. (These are my words, not his.) We belong here, and it is within our power, if we care to utilize it, to find ways creatively to feel comfortable, even welcome in this world.
And now the question, “how do we come to feel ourselves at home in the universe?” What can we do to achieve that?
Kauffman approaches this with a very simple answer: to welcome, in fact to seek out, diversity in the world around us. He reaches this view as a biologist who can’t help but be impressed with the results of “bio-diversity,” the flowering of different species on the earth. Here is one way he said it:
“Species live in niches afforded by other species. They always have and presumably always will. Once initial life arose and began to diversify, exchanging molecules that might poison or feed one another, organisms joined into a co-evolutionary dance, jockeying for places next to one another as mutualists, competitors, predators and prey, hosts and parasites.”
How do we find our place in the universe? By seeking relationships with the diverse offerings of the human family. “Diversity begets diversity,” he writes, “driving the growth of complexity.” To withdraw into our own isolated world, to retreat from the richness of different life in the world we encounter is to deny our rightful home in the universe.
I’ll shift now to a theological perspective, rather than scientific one. This is the approach I originally perceived as I planned this sermon, and I hope you will see how it appears to be blend well with the scientific view I just outlined from Stuart Kauffman.
I want to talk
about Henry Nelson Wieman, among the best known theologians to the twentieth
century who spent much of his career at the
Wieman built a philosophy and a theology around what he called Athe creative interchange@ and growth that happens in human interaction. Beginning with the study of organic evolution (which was still a somewhat new science in his student days), Wieman asked the question about the evolution of a person's ideas and beliefs.
Evolution, Wieman suggested, is a creative process. In the course of evolutionary change, something new, something novel, something creative and original has occurred. Through the process of random variation or mutation, the product of evolution is not entirely explainable by the sum of its parts. The whole is something greater than that which preceded it. It is in this sense that evolution is a creative process. In this, Wieman and Kauffman begin with the same premise.
On an even grander scale, Wieman would say, the evolution of human thought is the product of creative human interaction. Our ideas and value systems take monumental leaps simply because we are able to interact with one another and share our thinking. Deeply imbedded in the very nature of human relationships is the creative seed that allows for human growth and maturity. Wieman wrote several books based on this one insight. Here is how he explained it in one of them:
"The creative interchange is a process in relationship in which individuals express themselves truly and fully to one another; in which each welcomes and seeks to understand the undisguised individuality of the other; each understands the view held by the other and absorbs [that understanding] into a personal view. In this way, each expands and enriches the fullness of personal experience.”
The very process of human learning, from the infant who learns the difference between hot and cold to the aging person who learns about the fragile nature of the human body, these learnings are all the product of creative interchange between a person and the environment: creative in the sense that the learning is somehow greater than the mere facts that are learned. The most dynamic interchange, and one with the potential for the greatest creative growth, is not person and environment, but person to person, idea to idea, heart to heart. In discussing the idea of a creative human community, Wieman says this:
"[Community] includes both intellectual understanding of one another and the feeling of one another's feelings, the ability to correct and criticize one another understandingly and constructively.
There have been, I suppose, a hundred or more books written over the years attempting to explain Henry Nelson Wieman's idea of creative interchange. To my mind, it says this: we need diversity if we are to grow and mature. Creative interchange is how we come to feel we belong here in the world, that this is our home. And the broader and more diverse the creative interchange, the more deeply we feel that way.
If religion is the human quest to feel at home in the universe, Wieman the theologian and Kauffman the biologist seem to identify the same insight. The path to feeling “at home” in life is by welcoming and celebrating the diversity of life experience.
For both writers, the heart of the sacred is found in creative forces. In speaking of the concept of God, Kauffman said this: “I want God to mean the vast ceaseless creativity of the only universe.” In Wieman’s work, he frequently discusses God as the process of creative interchange with the world around us. And again, for both the key to discovering the sacred is through embracing the rich diversity of life.
Let’s say it differently. The path away from religion, the path of despair and estrangement in life is the one that isolates us into a cocoon of our own ideas and values. The more rigid in our thoughts, the more we resist opening ourselves to others who a different, the more likely we will separate ourselves from the richness of life this world offers.
Kauffman begins his book citing a conversation he had with his friend N. Scott Momaday, a Pulitzer Prize winner and native American. Drawing from his native roots, Momaday told Kauffman the central issue we humans face today is to “reinvent” the sacred. Over the growth of civilization, we have lost that sense, and it is time to redefine it so it makes sense.
However we may reinvent the sacred, it will need to help us find where we fit in the changing world around us, and help us feel that this is where we belong.
(a 20 year veteran of the space program,
and Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society)
On my desk sit two little stories, one a trilobite fossil, about half-a-billion years old, the other an iron meteorite, of unknown age. They represent the two greatest turning points in science: the Darwinian and the Copernican revolutions. . . .
(Humanity) has suffered numerous displacements from what we thought was out proper and rightful place at the center of the universe and at the pinnacle of creation. We now know we live on a small Darwinian branch, out on a pale blue dot of a planet somewhere out in the cosmic boondocks.
Drawing from within the scientific revolution, I suggest a cure for our bruised ego. As a thought experiment, try turning things on their heads. Begin by viewing these revolutions not as demotions but as inclusions. See yourself as a part of the natural world and thus as part of the unfolding of a remarkable and mysterious universe. Consider yourself, as Carl Sagan suggested, “star stuff” contemplating “star stuff.” The more you understand about our origins, our evotution, and our place in the universe, the more you can feel yourself a part of this inclusion. At some point you might even feel more at home. In fact, it could make you feel downright spiritual. As the American psychologist William James suggested, you may find a true religious sense “when you have a feeling of being at home in the universe” . . . .
The little fossil and meteorite on my desk hole for me a sense of wonder and adventure. As they whisper of the mysteries of deep-time and deep-space, they tell some wonderful stories, stories that I hope we will all come to know and to cherish. They are the stories of science, stories that should make us all feel more at home in the universe.