Lori Allen        

Several years ago when I had begun a personal quest to define my own personal spirituality, I came across an idea I had never heard of before.  It was curious to me that I had not heard of this concept.  I lived on a farm as a child.  My grandparents were “pagan Lutherans”.  They planted and harvested their crops according to the cycles of the moon and cursed the troll spirits for interfering with everything from the weather to the farm equipment.  Midsummer was just as fun as Christmas, even without the presents. 

With all these earth based values, why was it that it had never occurred to me or my ancestors (that I know of) that we were working WITH the earth?  It was apparent that the earth responded to what we did to it.  It provided our livelihood.  Yet, the powers that be were “out there” somewhere.  It was as if the earth was a dead medium that God used to reward and punish us with.  The lack of rain or an abundant crop had nothing to do with how we treated the earth.  The level of our existence was simply a reward or punishment, usually the latter, from a complicated God.

            I’ve spoken to the children before about a theory I cam across more than a decade ago.    In 1975, a scientist named James E. Lovelock wrote a book titled Gaia, A New Look at Life on Earth.  In this book, Lovelock rejects the notion that the earth we live on is an inert lump of rock and water.  Instead, he asserts  “the entire range of living matter on Earth, from whales to bacteria and from oaks to algae, could be regarded as constituting a single living entity . . .endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts.”[i] 

            In other words, Lovelock claimed the earth was a giant living creature that sustains life in the same way a human body sustains bacteria.  He calls this entity Gaia, after the Greek Mother Earth Goddess. 

            Lovelock used the techniques of gas chomotography to measure and compare the atmospheres of Gaia and Mars.  He made an astounding discovery that while Mars had been dead for millions of years, someone or something had been manipulating the Earth’s atmosphere during all that time, maintaining a perfect temperature for life to be sustained, and even to thrive.  Lovelock maintained that the land, the oceans, the air and living matter, were part of a system which was able to control temperature, composition of the air and sea, and the pH of the soil so as to be optimum for the survival of the biosphere.

            And finally, the correlation to philosophy and human nature; Lovelock carries his idea on step further.  He suggests that the human race, collected together as a species, is Gaia’s emerging nervous system and brain.  We are the planet becoming aware of itself, awakening to some kind of incredible consciousness, greater than anything any individual human could ever hope to know.[ii]

            This idea of a living, participatory Earth made sense to me.  Could this be the world as God’s body that theologist Charles Hartshorne taught about?  It seems likely.  What a radical thought – God being affected by events and actions of the earth rather than causing them.   How did humans make the switch from philosophers who defined the meaning of life in our human nature and the will of God to these radical academics who define meaning and God in terms of occasions that happen, not a static persona?  And what does this have to do with ethics and religious education?

            Perhaps I should clarify what I mean by ethics.  This word had taken on many meanings over time.  If you go to the dictionary, you will find such things as “protestant ethic”, which means a commitment to productive labor, thrift and good works.  We also hear about ethics when we talk of our jobs and how we live in the world.  We are to act “ethically”, something akin to the golden rule.  However, if we go back to the root of ethics, we will see that ethics is one of the four elements of philosophy.  There was metaphysics, the part of philosophy that had to do with nature.  It was like asking, what is reality.  Science surpassed metaphysics in the 1600’s.  Over time, metaphysics has taken on another meaning, but that’s another sermon.  The second part of philosophy deals with epistemology, or, how do we know, what is the truth?  A third strain of philosophy is aesthetics, what is beautiful.  This part of philosophy is totally subjective.  We’re able to accept that each individual has the ability to decide for themselves what is beautiful.  Finally, there is ethics.  What is right or good?  What ought we do?  And how do we justify what we do? 

            How do we know what is right and good to teach our children?  What must they learn and experience to have a religious education that is right.  Briefly, here is an abbreviated account of the history of western philosophical ethics.

            Going back to Socrates, we see that he believed that our inherent human nature, our soul, was what mattered.  Socrates believed that the body was merely a housing for the soul and that we should take good care of it in so much that it was the vessel for the soul, but he believed that it did not matter in the larger picture of things.  Eventually, our bodies dissolve into matter that can be reused by the earth.  It is our soul that lives on as a greater part of the cosmos.  This radical thinking got him in trouble with his peers back some 500 years before the common era.  Socrates believed that there was no fear in moving to the next level of existence beyond death.  The drinking of the hemlock was a peaceful transition from this existence to the next.  There was no need for salvation or hope of getting into a kingdom of eternal blissful life. Transcendence through transformation.  This take on teaching ethics or religious education has definite advantages.  People can feel responsible for their present lives and look forward to a progression into another realm. 

            Next I move to Aristotle.  Here was a man who believed that our human nature is good, and that culture, or teachings, can skew this human nature.  Aristotle identified the virtues that he believed were intrinsic in all of us.  Honesty, courage, compassion and several others line Aristotle’s path to a meaning filled life.  According to Aristotle, human nature is a good thing and if we pay attention to the virtues, everything else will fall into place.  The community we live in will be a better place, God will smile on us, and humanity will live in harmony.  The fact that each culture or society develops their own way of thinking, or cultural relativity, is something that we are to strive to overcome.  Passing beliefs and behaviors off as just a part of a particular society is to deny our human nature.  Just think how alike cultures would be if we could overcome this cultural relativity.  If we were more alike, perhaps we would not be plagued with prejudice, sexism and classism.  This would also mean a loss of diversity.

            Then there is my favorite of the ancient white male philosophers, Plato.  Here is a person who set, I believe, the ground work for Maslow’s  development of the Hierarchy of Needs.[iii]  I like the idea that Plato acknowledges that we evolve in our lifetime if we become more enlightened.  The basic needs and pleasures of the body are what we focus on from the time we are born.  There is this eros, or passionate energy, that drives us to look beyond these bodily pleasures for something even more satisfying.  This is when we become aware that there is more to our body than the physical realm.  We have feelings and emotions.  We question where we fit in the large picture of life, and ask why we even exist.  What is the purpose of life?  As we explore these things, our personal evolution moves forward as we see that arts and sciences can help us explain some of the questions and chaos of life.  Science and math gives concrete proof that there is some order to life.  Art expresses what we feel in ways we cannot express in everyday language.  When we have spent enough time contemplating arts and sciences, we can see that our more highly evolved mind we have can become a part of the collective human mind and create beauty and wisdom that is beyond the comprehension to many.  We move in and out of these tiers, or stages, depending on what is happening around us, and what we have to deal with in our every day life.  Plato acknowledges that not everyone becomes aware or even interested in the higher tiers of thinking.  Yet, he also validates that there is meaning in every level.  It is not a bad thing, for Plato, go be hung up on the body and physical pleasures, it is merely a distraction on our way to transformation or transcendence.  I see very strong similarities between Plato and humanist philosophers.  There is a belief that we are all capable of self-actualization and that we all have an inherent need to be fully self-actualized.  I’m surprised that Unitarian Universalists have not claimed that Plato was a UU.  It seems his philosophy parallels many UUs.

            Jumping ahead in time, Maslow, a humanist psychologist has organized his Hierarchy of Needs somewhat similar to Plato’s tiers of transcendence.  The four elements in the hierarchy, in ascending order are, 1) physiological and safety needs, 2) belonging and love needs, 3) soul stage, and 4) esteem needs.[iv]  Maslow believed that progression through this hierarchy had to happen in an ordered fashion, not skipping any of the steps.  He also acknowledged that not everyone is aware of or interested in reaching the final stages, and that we move back and forth through the hierarchy depending on what is happening in our personal life and the world around us. This is a secular explanation of human nature.  Maslow tells us we all have a path that we are to find and follow.  He doesn’t give hints as to where this path might lie for all of us or how to recognize it.  He also does not warn about good and evil.  Hopefully our ultimate, our esteem needs, would lead us to be virtuous people. 

            I could continue on with the nuances of later philosophers.  What happened, quite simply put, is that all philosophers have tried to define what is important in our lives, what gives meaning to our existence.  These philosophers have used guilt, sin, science, mathematics to try to define how we should live.  Women such as Carol Gilligan, Rosemary Raford Reuther and Starhawk have pointed out that early philosophy did not take women’s lives into account when searching for meaning.  We owe a debt of gratitude to the feminist philosophers who reminded us that women that women need images they can identify with to help with the search for meaning in their lives.  To strive to know the goddess as men have strived to know god has brought credibility to philosophy and ethics for women.  It has also expanded opportunities for men searching for meaning and truth.

            I conclude my parade of philosophers with a modern day thinker,  _______ Becker.  His thesis that all people tend to be self-justifying is, well, understandable.  Especially in today’s culture.  People try to define themselves as a primary asset to the universe.  The term “value added”, a term from corporate America comes to mind.  It seems that we have to justify the existence of or purpose of everything and everyone we come in contact with.  New titles for old roles evolve as we try to express our importance to the world.  Care providers, technologists, representatives, and other ambiguous positions have replaced roles and job descriptions from times past.  We all imagine our life as more meaningful or important than the person sitting next to us.  We keep this information about our importance to ourselves, lest we’re criticized or ridiculed for being arrogant or conceited.  These private bits of information come out in ways that are not flattering to us, and have no role in furthering the collective evolution of humanity.  Being rude, snide or obnoxious are our ways of saying, “I am more important than you, and I am tolerating being by you until my real importance is revealed to the world.”  This is a sad way to live.  People who feel that life is one continual justification of their importance to the universe can live very isolated lives.  Living in urban areas amidst people who are more like us than not, we can’t express our sameness to each other because that would be admitting that perhaps we are not a “cosmic hero” waiting to be discovered.  Becker feels that this self-justification is a major motivating factor in our lives.  Becker’s view leaves one feeling cold, with a dismal outlook for the mental and spiritual well being of humanity.  Perhaps because he lived in the modern era, and because of his writing style, we are left with the feeling that humanity could benefit a great deal more from psychotherapy than from an ethical existence.

            It is no accident that I have not identified a model of philosophy from anyone from Socrates to Becker on which to base religious education.  There are flaws and merits in most of the philosophers ways of thinking.  Modern day religious education is as varied as the doctrines advocated by the world’s many religious organizations.  And the philosophies of each religion can be argued as good and right by those who interpret them as such.  Each religion has it’s own subjective view about the teachings they endorse.  These views are open to a wide range of interpretation from persons within and outside the particular religion.

            I am drawn back to the charm of the Gaia Hypothesis and Process Theology.  These two philosophies share the thesis that God or nature are not a static part in human’s quest for understanding and meaning in their lives.  In all the  previous philosophies, from Socrates to Becker, God or nature are static forces, never changing.  God is always good and all knowing.  Nature has a natural order that is near perfect.  It is we humans that must change and make concessions to these higher powers.  Coming into enlightenment is the responsibility of humans.  If any changes are to be made, they are to be made by humans.  Perhaps it is because I am an extrovert and a team player, but I want a God who responds to me.  A God that I can feel is celebrating and grieving right along with me.  I live in the now.  I want my god to live in this time with me.

            There is a wonderful potential for humanity in Charles Hartshorne’s idea that the world is God’s body . . .God has the world’s experience as God’s own, overcoming the “monopolar bias” of classical theism in which God is construed only to act as cause, not to respond as effect.[v]  (repeat)

            As humanity has evolved there has been a move to embrace science and technology.  Humans see that when they interact with theories and technologies, they  can create an affect.  While science and technology can’t be substituted for spirituality, perhaps they can help expand our way of thinking about early models of philosophy.  We have seen that our use of resources on the planet have had a negative effect on the biosphere.  We have worked with Gaia to change the universe.  This is a new model of natural law.  We can see that nature is not the ultimate, humans influence natural law now more than ever.

            Process thinking also poses new positive paradigms for humanity.  The most basic concepts of process thought, however, are fairly simple, even though they go contrary to popular wisdom.  These simple ideas are: 1) that the whole of everything is not made up of things, but of events becoming, as opposed to being and 2) that every event, however small, affects every other event, all events are related.[vi]

            I am not a proponent of throwing out old ideas for the sake of replacing them with new.  However, I do advocate holding the mind open to the possibility of integration of the old and new.  A good religious education helps us understand past ideologies and the influences they have had in the world.  A good religious education is fluid, flowing into the recesses of our mind.  New ideas and old flow together to clarify what has meaning and how we interpret that meaning.  A good religious education pays attention to humanity’s roots and is cautious of things that it may project for the future.  A good religious education subsists in the here and now.

            How do we take all this information about philosophies, old and new, and determine what we will teach our children?  I suggest that we look at our church metaphorically, as a body.  I realize this has been done before.   Let’s throw out the idea that the church is only a body responding to a god or figurehead at the helm.  Let’s see our church as a holistic body, complete as it is.  I see the beliefs of our members, and the experiences they share as the heart.  The heart, the all important center of life and energy, pumps these beliefs and experiences into the rest of the church body.  This is the energy we send out to all those who consider themselves a vital part of this church community.  This is what we teach our children.  There are curriculums that reflect some of our thoughts and beliefs, and these are wonderful tools to use in our sharing.  I suggest, however, that the most valuable thing we can share with our children is a little bit of ourselves and our time.  Time to share our stories, time to listen to their ideas, time to step intentionally into their world. 

            What is your story?  What are your ethics?  How do you find meaning in your life?  How will you share these energies with this church?  Will the next generations have something from  you to pass on?  I hope so.

            “But where I live is here and now, in all the wonderful grubbiness of the present, and little miracles happen all around me.  I don’t need a future to validate me.  Heaven may happen, but it’s this world and my body that is my home, my place to become. . . for every choice I make is a making of myself and of my world and of my God.”