pts 2 a renaissance of wonder - pitt street uniting...

Painting the Stars © 2013 livingthequestions.com, LLC Session 2: A Renaissance of Wonder - 1 Licensed for use for one year from date of purchase

Living the Questions’

Science, Religion and an Evolving Faith

2. A Renaissance of Wonder

“I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you…” —Job 42:5 “Forfeit awe and the world becomes a marketplace…”

—Abraham Heschel “Holy, holy, holy …the whole Earth is full of your glory.” —Isaiah

Much of modern life is lived in a state of what sociologist Max Weber called “disenchantment.” By this he meant that over the course of the modern period—roughly the last 500 years—the cosmos has systematically been voided of Spirit. A distinctive feature of the modern period is that if somebody were to walk into your home and find you on your knees praying, or catch you with your arms flung open in a gesture of thanksgiving to the cosmos you would be embarrassed. This is the first period in the history of humanity in which this was true. Modernity brought us many wonderful gifts. Medicine that has increased our life span by decades; technology that has enhanced our standard of life in many ways; and we have been liberated from superstition and mythic interpretations of Truth that are at the root of so much violence. But in its zeal for progress and to transcend mythic religion, it threw the baby out with the bath water. Science emerged as King of Castle, and then, for fear of regressing to a traditional worldview, the most public defenders of science steadfastly refused to allow Spirit a place in the cosmos. The industrial era proceeded in a state of dissociation from Earth as a living organism. Once non-human reality was voided of soul or spirit, we looked at the planet as little more than a natural resource to convert into commodities. As Chief Seattle put it, “what your people call natural resources, our people call kin.” Cosmologist Brian Swimme reminds us of a time when children and youth would be initiated into the sacred world of the cosmos by sitting around a fire and


hearing their creation myths. They would receive a cosmic identity, connected to a sacred sense of place upon the earth. A recent study showed that children are more likely to be able to identify the top ten corporate jingles and brands than name the planets in our solar system. Where primal peoples were initiated into the universe in caves, vision quests, and sacred stories, today children are initiated into the world-that-matters through television and video games. By the time a child enters first grade, she has ingested some 30,000 advertisements. Thirteenth century theologian, Thomas Aquinas, has written that as humans we are capax universi – capable of the universe. But we give our children McDonalds and Nike. There is nothing inherently wrong with these corporate brands, but they are poor substitutes for the felt sense of belonging to a sacred and evolving cosmos. And make no mistake, advertisers exploit our capacity and longing for sacred mystery, diverting it toward goods and services: Eternity is now a perfume, Mystery and Infiniti are cars.

A Spirituali ty of Awe A spirituality of awe and wonder is our way back to an enchanted cosmos, one that is teeming with the ancients called the “animus mundi,” the soul of the world. Matthew Fox invites us to think of the word “a.w.e.” as an acronym for Awakening to Wonder Everywhere. We need to become re-enchanted with our home. Think, for a moment about your own experiences of awe. When was the last time you gave yourself the gift of time to take in the wonder of being alive on the planet earth? I remember walking with my daughter when she was two years old. It took an hour to walk a block. Every twig and blade of grass and insect was a showstopper. How do we regain the wonder of a two-year old? Notice what happens when we are lost in wonder. We discover that we already have everything we need. When I was twenty-seven I found myself standing at the edge of field of wheat at dusk. The sacred radiance of creation came pouring into my being. I understood what Isaiah, the 8th century Jewish prophet must have experienced when he wrote the words: “Holy, holy, holy God, the whole Earth is full of your glory.” A radical reorientation occurs when we recover the wonder we lost somewhere along the road of life. We understand that life is a precious gift that is intrinsically holy. Gratitude for what is replaces yearning for more stuff. Swami Premgeet declared: “Life is full of wonder. We taste it in our childhood, lose it as we grow up, and if we are lucky catch the magic again in those precious moments which make life a joy. The echo may return in the eyes of a beloved, in the first burst of morning light, or in a thousand unexpected forms. When it comes we are suddenly in the presence of the miraculous, we are taken by that elusive sense of being part of a great whole. These are the moments when our energy expands to encompass something beyond ourselves.”


Evolution itself is a portal into mystery and wonder. For the first time in the history of our species, we are able to shift into a radically expanded identity. We can know ourselves, both empirically and mystically, as evolution awakening to itself in, through, and as us. After 13.8 billion years, the evolutionary process gained the capacity for conscious self-awareness. We are the eyes, hands, and heart of the dynamism and creativity of the universe, as a single unfolding whole, expressing itself and experiencing itself through us. Contemplating this mystery can drop us into a state of reverie and effect a radical shift in identity. No longer should we imagine ourselves as small, insignificant and separate beings. The illusion of separation dissolves as we realize an evidence-based mystical connection with All That Is. When we look out through a telescope at the starry night sky, we are looking, not so much at the universe, but rather as the universe. The universe awakens to itself in this act of observation of itself. We are not separate from the process that gave birth to life. Rather we are the presence of the whole, dynamic process intimately connected to everything that preceded us. Rather than diminish our sense of awe and wonder, science can deepen our spiritual feeling for mystery. Nobel Laureate, Dr. Barbara McClintock spent her lifetime researching corn. Her theory countered the neo-Darwinian notion that changes occur randomly in genes, giving rise to variations that may or may not prove beneficial. Rather, she discovered that purposeful changes occur in genes, that transposable elements jump to specific places to insert themselves into genetic material and alter it. Furthermore, she was the first to recognize that genes can repair themselves. She came to this by developing what she called “ a feeling for the organism.” McClintock entered into the mysterious depths and deep intelligence of corn. Only by suspending what she called “the arrogant eye,” which assumes the absence of a subject in non-human reality, would the corn, over time, reveal its secrets to her. “Consider the lilies,” Jesus taught his disciples, “they neither toil nor spin yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Considering the lilies is less an intellectual exercise than a contemplative one. Of course, Jesus was referring to the natural beauty of a lily, trying to help the disciples realize their own inner beauty and radiance. But the “consideration” Jesus was advocating was not merely an intellectual exercise. It was an invitation to wonder. Consider the astonishing creative intelligence to produce a lily, and then notice that this miracle occurred without a human brain or pair of hands anywhere on the scene. It took some twelve billion years for that creativity to patiently organize reality with sufficient elegance to support the emergence of a lily. All of the intelligence, and beauty, and creativity of the Whole Process is located, for those with eyes to see, in the astonishing radiance of that part we call a “lily.” What’s more, this is true of everything. The whole of the universe centers itself in every part. We are involved with an omni-centric cosmos. We are the


presence of all the creativity of the universe, after billions of years, in the radiant form of humans. Albert Schweitzer captured this succinctly when he wrote:

“If you study life deeply, its profundity will seize you suddenly with dizziness.”

In his book, The Last Temptation of Christ, Nikos Kazantzakis has Jesus, after being requested to perform a miracle, disdainfully proclaim, “Everything is a miracle ... What further miracles do you want? Look below you: even the humblest blade of grass has its guardian angel who stands by and helps it grow. Look above you: what a miracle is the star-filled sky! And if you close your eyes...what a miracle the world within us!”

-- Bruce Sanguin

Love all Creation, The whole of it and every grain of sand Love every leaf Every ray of God’s light Love the animals Love the plants Love everything If you love everything You will perceive The divine mystery in things And once you have perceived it You will begin to comprehend it ceaselessly More and more everyday And you will at last come to love the whole world With an abiding universal love.

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky

thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth day of life and love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any-lifted from the no


of all nothing-human merely being doubt unimaginable You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

—e. e. cummings Discussion Questions (pause DVD at each appearance of the LtQ logo for conversation in small groups)

Segment 1

Rossing speaks of the primacy of wonder and Dowd refers to science as a global collective intelligence awaiting inspiring interpretation by various regional wisdom traditions. Share an example of how the evolving universe inspires awe in you.

Fox describes the universe as a huge, living organism that has given birth to us. What feelings are evoked when you consider the idea that this living organism is expressing itself through you? Where is the divine for you in that knowledge? Clayton says it makes his brain ache at the sheer complexity of it all. How is this an important aspect of the spiritual journey? Fox says that scientific discovery, like Job’s experience, can drop us into a state of awe, of silence. In what ways can the spiritual discipline of “shutting up” be the womb of wonder?

Segment 2

How is cultivating the experience of our insignificance and the acknowledgment of the preciousness of life a more fundamental religious task than perpetuating a particular dogma?


“Same rush. Same rapture.” Discuss. Dowd suggests that we are in the beginnings of an evidence-based reformation that will help us to see knowledge as revelatory, a kind of second scripture. How is this different from belief-based inspiration and divine guidance?

Segment 3

Dowd advocates for a less constricted understanding of evolution, one that includes “big history,” the story of everyone and everything, of “14 billion years of grace.” In what ways might such an understanding change people’s spiritual outlook? What are some of Theilard de Chardin’s ideas regarding evolution, Christian faith, and an expanding consciousness? Discuss Sanguin’s three core insights of an evolutionary world view. What does the idea of “emergence” have to do with evolutionary spirituality?

Additional Questions:

Share an experience in/of nature that evoked awe in you. How did it affect you? In what way(s) did the experience affect how you live your life?


John Shea called Jesus a “border walker,” one who spent time at the margins of society, where different cultures came into contact, intermingled, and sometimes clashed—much like the life that happens biologically at the membrane of a cell. Where do you see yourself (or your church/faith community) being a “border walker” today?

Spiritual Practice Assign someone to be a timekeeper. Light a candle and repeat the words, “I am the universe, in human form, evolving” as a sacred mantra or phrase. Once you learn it, close your eyes, and repeat it silently. It might help to hold your hand over heart as you do this meditation exercise. After five minutes, the timekeeper finds a gentle way to bring you back into the space. Share what happened for you.

Praying what we see, hear and read… Key words and phrases in Session Two: All-connected. Wonder, amazement, awe, reverence, humility. What is real and what is important. And … here we are! Pushing the limits of my puny mind. Awe renders you silent. The preciousness of this small life. We are not separate. We are the universe become conscious of itself. On the move …becoming… alive!

WONDER by Michael Morwood We give thanks that… “Here we are!” Here we are: the universe become conscious of itself. Here we are: the universe capable of awe and wonder. Here we are: the universe aware of new possibilities.


Here we are: connected with all that ever was, is now and ever will be. Here we are: pushed to the limits of our puny minds, trying to grasp the wonder of it all. Here we are: precious, on the move, alive! Here we are: reverent, reflective, appreciative, silent… We open our minds and hearts to the possibilities that here-we-are offers… if only we would reverence more, reflect more, appreciate more, be more silent. To becoming, to being fully alive, to being real, to allowing the Divine Presence to emerge ever more clearly in us, we give our Amen.

pts 2 a renaissance of wonder - pitt street uniting...

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