Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Darwin Day sermon

 I haven't posted here in a long time, but it is the easy place to post the sermon I gave at Peace Church 2/11/2024.

God is Still Speaking

Today is the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday, and the reading is always the transfiguration of Jesus, found in Matthew, Mark and Luke. We have Mark this year, without much description of what happened beyond that Jesus’s clothes became dazzling white. Matthew says Jesus’s face shone like the sun. In either case, Jesus’s physical body and clothes become the shining form of God’s light in the world. Notice that what happens here is that God is expressed in matter, rather than being separate.

 

The week before last I hosted a young man who is walking across the United States, from Washington State to Washington DC and beyond. I asked him for a word of wisdom from his journey, and he said “Find your walk.” He then asked me for a word of wisdom in exchange, and I said “Notice the small joys of life, like the sunshine.” When I notice the joy of the sunshine, or the roses I bought myself this weekend, I experience a small transfiguration of the physical world making visible God’s light.

The church has sometimes strayed into dualism that says spiritual things are good and the physical world is evil. I would argue there are many reasons to reject that interpretation. Remember instead our image of creation in which God says each thing is good. The goodness of God is in all of creation, even mosquitos!

The transfiguration is a particularly dramatic example of being able to see the physical and the spiritual at the same time. The physical and the spiritual are always co-present. Richard Rohr says that “Through the Incarnation, God in Jesus became flesh; God visibly moved in with the material world to help us overcome the illusion of separation… The Incarnation proclaims that matter and spirit have never been separate.” In other words, God became manifest in the physical world as Jesus, and the transfiguration made especially visible that physical body and God’s glory were merged. And it isn’t just Jesus; we are all body and spirit. Thomas Merton wrote: “There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

Keep transfiguration in mind, as I turn to the science of the physical world. Today is part of Religion and Science Weekend, what was called Evolution Sunday when it started in 2004. It is celebrated at the service closest to Darwin’s birthday on February 12. The goal is to promote the idea that religion and science are compatible and to discuss the relationship between religion and science.

There are several ways to understand religion and science as compatible. Some people see them as separate spheres that apply to different parts of life. I would agree at least that science and religion have and should have somewhat separate methods. I was at the Episcopal Convent of St. Helena in Augusta once when someone asked one of the sisters how she discerned whether God was in a choice she made. She said if it turned out to have good fruits, then God was in it. From a scientific point of view that is backwards logic, that that you know the right choice by whether it worked. From a faith point of view it is a helpful answer. Yet I don’t want to separate matter and spirit, I don’t want to compartmentalize my thinking to separate faith and science.

Another common approach to reconciling religion and science is to see God working through evolution. Actually, this is tricky if you study biology a step deeper; scientists have come to understand evolution simply as adaptation to an environment rather than as progress towards higher forms of life. Scientists now believe that evolution is not fundamentally progressive. That doesn’t fit with our usual assumptions about God’s work in the work; many of us want to believe that God bends the arc of history toward justice. But be careful, perhaps that idea of progress is a remnant of imperialist thinking, a way of claiming that white Europeans are more advanced than everyone else.


Perhaps we can avoid getting stuck there by remembering the United Church of Christ advertisements that said “God is still speaking.” Evolution is about change, even if we take out progress. That can be a threatening idea or it can be a hopeful idea. The ancient Greeks tended to assume that any change was bad news, and we inherited from the ancient world an idea of God as absolutely unchangeable. Some conservative Christians even refuse to acknowledge climate change because they believe the physical world created by an unchanging God is in at least a larger sense fixed and unchanging. We can take a different approach but be patient with me, let me throw in a little history of science to get there.

Historically, there are several reasons why the theory of evolution seemed threatening to Christianity. You may assume opposition started from the literal interpretation of the bible, but the idea of a literal interpretation was actually mostly a result rather than a cause of Christian opposition to Darwin’s ideas. More significant was that Darwin’s key contribution was a mechanism for evolution, a mechanism that replaced God's creation of each individual species. Evolution conceptualized the world as always changing rather than perfectly created by an unchanging God. In addition, some of the opponents of evolution also rejected as unchristian the social Darwinist idea that people were poor because they were unfit. And indeed that was a danger of applying Darwin’s theory of evolution too broadly and led even in the United States to a strong development of eugenics, which still creeps in our thinking in all the ways we fail to provide opportunities for people with disabilities.

 So one reason for opposition to Darwin’s ideas was that it made change central and at least necessary (and necessary was easily interpreted as good). Evolution fundamentally went in a different direction from the traditional principle that the good and God were unchanging. If science teaches us that change and growth are fundamental in the world of matter, and matter and spirit are never separate, do we then believe that God changes? I think I do, though a friend surprised me by saying “of course not.” In any case, “God is still speaking” at least tells us that our understanding of God can and should change as the world changes. We can update our vision, or in the words generally credited to Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

A few of you might have heard me use the phrase “update your vision” before. It was actually suggested to me by a therapist when I reflected on my role as guardian for my disabled sister. Her group home did keep up to date with new understandings how to provide as much autonomy and community participation as possible to intellectually disabled people, When I became her legal guardian I had to learn those new ideas as well. “Update your vision” became one of my principles of life, along with “there are always more than two alternatives.” And that commitment to keep evolving has led me to the path I’m now setting out on, looking for my post-career creativity in a new city and a new kind of community. It’s time to cast the nets out on the other side of the boat (John 21:4-6).

I do believe that God is a deep spiritual flow that suffuses our physical reality and coaxes us towards love and healing. I tend to make decisions not by counting pros and cons but by what has energy and excitement for me. More than a year ago, when I had the idea of moving to St. Louis, it had great energy for me, and it still does now even as downsizing my possessions seems endless. There is so much I need to let go of to make room for the new. I hope that as I work out the details I am listening to a deep enough intuition, an intuition that is an expression of who God created me to be and of the force of healing inside me.

To give a silly example, I was worried that I don’t have a good sense of how my furniture will fit into the small apartment I am moving to in St. Louis. I had picked out a new sofa to buy, but I hesitated, fearing it would be too big. Then I got a call last week from the manager of the senior apartment house I am moving into saying the larger of their two elevators had failed inspection and it was going to take two months to get the needed part. Some of my furniture may not fit into the smaller elevator, so it may have to be kept in an apartment on the first floor until the larger elevator is fixed. Instead of frustration, I felt relief. Suddenly it was a good thing I hadn’t ordered the sofa yet and the pressure is off to figure out in advance where I want the movers to put all the furniture. My hesitation turned out to fit the flow of events and I took that as a sign that I am on the right path.


My new home in St. Louis will be a ninth floor apartment on a south east corner in an independent senior living building. Why St. Louis when I have never lived west of the Appalachians? Because my daughter lives there but also because I am looking forward to being in a city again. I have started visiting churches and in fact I attended a UCC church online that also gave out epiphany stars the same day Peace Church did. Amazingly, at both churches I got the same word: “insight”! I’m not sure what that means, but I will start by listening for what is inside me waiting for a chance to be expressed. This move feels like an opportunity to let go of what I built as a Clemson professor and start a new life, one that is smaller and deeper. Over the 38 years I have been in Clemson I have changed a lot on the inside, but not as much on the outside. Now I will have a new life in which to keep evolving and changing.

If we were to read further in the gospel text after the Transfiguration story, Jesus and his disciples come back down the mountain and Jesus immediately returns to the gritty work of healing. Life necessarily includes both mountain top moments and doing the work. God keeps asking new things of us in community. The natural world keeps evolving, and history shows us that our human world does as well, whether for the better or not. I love the United Church of Christ for saying that our faith will change with the world. We will keep updating our vision of what it means to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God and our community.

Thank you.

 


Thursday, December 31, 2020

End of the year questions

 Since Facebook no longer does Notes, I am going to try going back to posting here.

 
What was a new discovery you made this year?
--Even very well established knowledge can be looked at in new ways, even by those of us who grew up in the old ways. My favorite example was a webinar on Decolonizing Thoreau.
 
What achievement are you most proud of from this year?
--Speaking out for faculty in more vulnerable positions, particularly about health and safety issues. Also teaching a large class and communicating to my students that I cared about them.
 
What was your favorite purchase of the year and why?
--Warm fleece backed pants. Also a very special jigsaw puzzle from Liberty Puzzles: https://www.libertypuzzles.com/wooden-jigsaw.../ocean-life
 
What was a new habit or routine you created this year that has improved your efficiency at home or work?
--Walking around the block every morning before breakfast. I only miss one or two days a month. Also going to the supermarket only once every two weeks.
 
What did you ask for help with this year where you're glad you did?
--I told my kids I wanted a fuss made over my 65 birthday even though I used to not like birthday celebrations.
 
What's a skill you have learned or gained confidence with this year?
--Growing my own microgreens. More obviously, teaching online.
 
What simple pleasures have you especially enjoyed this year?
--So many! Sunshine in my living room. Foggy mornings. Tea.
 
What's a type of technology you've integrated into your life this year and it's working out well for you?
--Zoom, both for work and family time.
 
What did you change your mind about this year?
--Using group projects in teaching.
 
What did you try that didn't work out, but the process of trying it moved your thinking forward in a helpful way?
--A grant proposal for international virtual exchange (my students will do a group project with students in Germany this spring even though we didn't get the grant).
 
How has what you enjoy shifted this year?
--I definitely have learned to enjoy staying home more.

Monday, December 31, 2018

Elizabeth's wedding planning

Elizabeth and AJ got engaged more than two years before their wedding, so it has been a lot of planning!
They thought about getting married on the 10th anniversary of their first date but settled instead on June 23, 2018.  Definitely wedding season in Massachusetts, so almost all the vendor contracts were made more than a year in advance.

After many conference calls, AJ's parents, Liz and Jamey, arrived with a very full car the Monday before.

Elizabeth and AJ and best man Zach arrived the same day and we started the final organizing and ate Jamey's homemade lobster rolls:
The rest of the wedding party arrived on Wednesday and AJ and his friends had a very successful fishing trip early Thursday morning while Elizabeth and her friends had a spa morning:

The tent went up Thursday:

Friday morning's first priority was a visit to John's grave to leave flowers and pebbles.


Friday, June 23, 2017

Road Trip!


A lovely civil rights memorial in Montgomery Alabama where we stopped for dinner the first night, then oysters in Louisiana for lunch the next day.




We stayed in Houston with a friend of John's, who had three kittens!






 
 Some interesting museum sights in Houston:


 We stayed with friends in College Station then visited John's grandfather's grave:
 

In Austin we met up with John's brother and his son by his second marriage 
and sprinkled a little of John's ashes on his parents' grave



 On our way out from Austin to Dallas we stopped at Waco Mammoth National Monument, which is well worth a stop
 A lovely water garden in Fort Worth by Phillip Johnson




This was one of the sights we found on the RoadTrippers app
 

 Two interesting chapels in northwestern Arkansas

 
And then one of our goals, the Crystal Bridges Museum


 



 The civil rights museum was closed on Tuesday but in Memphis we went to a scale model of the Mississippi river and the National Ornamental Metal Museum


We particularly enjoyed the Hampson Museum State Park in Wilson, AR
for beautiful artifacts from Mississipian Native American Cultures


 


 No pictures allowed in the National Quilt Museum, which was excellent, but then we crossed the Ohio river and made a stop in Metropolis
And then on to Olney Illinois

 

 We visited the grave of Aunt Florence's parents (John's maternal grandparents) 
and the remains of the bird sanctuary that had brought him to Olney








And then on to Louisville, where we walked on a footbridge over the river
went to the art museum, and did a Bourbon tour



Wednesday, November 30, 2016

#accompany me

I have been thinking this last year about building new kinds of community. One theme is the importance of organizations where we feel we belong. But another theme is how might we get away from the pressure our culture puts on us to be independent, either as an individual or as a couple.

After the election, when many vulnerable people feel so much more at risk, I wear a safety pin to say that I will walk with you or accompany you to the bathroom if you feel unsafe. But I would like to see this not as protecting the weak, but as a commitment to community, to being there for each other. How do we build communities where we can all show our vulnerabilities and be seen and valued?

I want to experiment with the idea of seeking someone to accompany me when I have a lonely task. We understand this already with difficult medical appointments, and we seek someone to accompany us. But could it be something we do more often, as a way of spending time with friends and as a way of not feeling so alone? I've posted on Facebook where friends will see that I am looking for someone to help me clear out and sort the papers in my husband's aunt's safe deposit box tomorrow. (She was obsessive about what she saw as important papers.)

The Advent meditation I am following gives this verse for today, from Matthew 24:31:
And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
The featured meditation yesterday talked about the communion of struggle. How do we commit to valuing all lives? We do that by political work, but we also do that by building community where we know each other more deeply and admit that we are all vulnerable.

So what to do with those angels and their trumpets?  My first reaction is that we need to save ourselves, together, not wait for angels with trumpets to replace this world with a better one. I think that is more in the spirit of the word prompt: STFU.  But in the spirit of Advent when the Messiah is both coming and already here, we also need to understand that we are gathered, here and now, and that the people we don't want to see are part of the elect are with us as well. What steps can we take, in our lives as they are now, to make our communities more open and more supportive? We need that to get through the harsher times that are coming politically.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

a prayer I wrote for Advent


Prayer 
  
This Advent, as we prepare for the incarnation, we pray for all the troubles of the world.
  That the arc of history may bend towards peace.

As we prepare for the incarnation, we pray for the leaders of our nation and of all nations.
  That the arc of history may bend towards justice.

As we prepare for the incarnation, we pray for the leaders of all faiths.
  That they will be part of bending the arc of history towards hope.

As we prepare for the incarnation, we pray for our community in Clemson and the Upstate.
  That the arc of history may bend towards caring for each other.

As we prepare for the incarnation, we are grateful for all with which we have been blessed.
  That the arc of history may bend towards joy.

As we prepare for the incarnation, we pray for all who are hurting and struggling.
  That the arc of all our lives may bend towards love. 

As we prepare for the incarnation, we pray for all who have died.
  We entrust them to the arc of God’s love.

[closing collect from the prayer book]
Dear God, accept the fervent prayers of your people; in the multitude of your mercies, look with compassion upon us and all who turn to you for help; for you are gracious, O lover of souls, and to you we give glory, Creator, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.