Prospero's Books

Ultimate and Absolute Mystery

Chet Raymo, whom I often refer to as today's finest science writer, has posted a characteristically thoughtful piece on "A Reality Inscrutable." He begins with a quotation from 19th-century thinker Herbert Spencer (as quoted in turn by Jeremy Campbell):

In the early days of Darwinism, the nineteenth-century scholar Herbert Spencer wrote that religions tend to harbor a secret fear that everything may some day be explained, which suggests they are hiding a residual doubt as to whether God as an Incomprehensible Cause is really as incomprehensible as they supposed. What they must face up to, Spencer said, is that it is only in the assertion of a reality utterly inscrutable that religion can be reconciled with science. "A permanent peace between science and religion," he said, "will be reached when science becomes fully convinced that its explanations are proximate and relative, while religion becomes fully convinced that the mystery it contemplates is ultimate and absolute.

Raymo responds:

As Campbell notes, the first of Spencer's two conditions has arguably been met. As we enter the 21st century, I don't know any scientist or philosopher of science who does not admit that scientific knowledge is partial, tentative and subject to change. There is no theory of science so thoroughly entrenched that it would not be overthrown if the evidence demanded it or if a more economical theory came along.

But we are no closer to meeting the second condition than we were in Spencer's time. Indeed, it could be argued that God as Ultimate Mystery is in full retreat. Billions of people right across the planet claim to know God's mind, or claim a personal relationship with the presumed creator of the universe. The God of many churches, mosques and temples is not Ultimate and Absolute Mystery -- to which all of us might reasonably bend our knee in adoration -- but a cross between an avuncular Bill Gates and Michelangelo's po-faced Moses, a God who turns his ear to the congregant's every prayer and asks nothing in return but a generous tithe, or perhaps blowing oneself up in a crowded marketplace.

I agree fully with Raymo. But I would want him to know (as he surely does) that there are many of us religious people, in all faith traditions, who rejoice in the findings of science but who also give the totally inadequate name "God" to the Ultimate and Absolute Mystery--as an inexpressible answer to the unanswerable question "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

Back in May 2006, I quoted Bruce Feiler, author of Where God Was Born, Walking the Bible, and other books:  

Religion . . . breeds overconfidence, and one challenge for today's believers is to rediscover in the fire of faith the source of warmth that can overpower the flames of destruction. This change can only be achieved by fellow believers, I think. The first conviction I took from my journey is that the only force strong enough to take on religious extremism is religious moderation.

Feiler's term "moderation" should not be read as "halfheartedness." Rather, it denotes, for me,

• radical love, acceptance, and respect for all our fellow creatures regardless of their religious faith or lack thereof
• the practice of gratitude, humility, and celebration in the face of the Ultimate and Absolute Mystery

Raymo continues to demonstrate wonderfully that he joins a great many of us people of faith in striving to practice gratitude, humility, and celebration. The outward forms that our gratitude, humility, and celebration take may look different. But that's hardly important.

A myth before the myth

I'm reading Wallace Stevens's long poem "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction" with one of my grad students. Here's a passage that has stood out for me:

The clouds preceded us.

There was a muddy centre before we breathed.
There was a myth before the myth began,
Venerable and articulate and complete.

From this the poem springs: that we live in a place
That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves
And hard it is in spite of blazoned days.

We are the mimics. Clouds are pedagogues.

(Among the categories into which I've put this blog posting are Signs, Systems, and Spirit, but also Emergence. Those tags may help you see some of the things Stevens is saying to me.)

So big-boned that they crush us into inactivity

"Is your faith endo- or exoskeletal?"

So asks Kester Brewin, author of The Complex Christ, published in the United States as Signs of Emergence.

He explains:

Snails have exoskeletons. A protective shell within which to hide. Our early cities were simply exoskeletal defensive structures to protect communities against constant pillage and plunder, thus allowing culture and community to grow.

Mammals have developed endoskeletons. Non-protective, they instead allow huge improvements in a body's motion control. We can stand, run, hold, sew, build.

He then challenges us to think about our faith community:

Is it there as hard external shell to protect and shield us from the plundering of 'the world'? Or is it an internal strength, allowing new forms of motion control, allowing a gathered people to join and stand and build?

The question is pertinent for all of our networks. Are they protective covers that help us feel connected, but prevent real engagement, and are they in fact in danger of being so big-boned that they crush us into inactivity?

Stairway to Heaven

A few years ago, friends took Bette and me out to our city's leading rock venue, to hear their son's band. His girlfriend was assigned (or perhaps self-assigned) to be our host. An hour or so into the evening, she leaned into us and said, in one of the most condescending voices I've ever heard, "So are you enjoying this kind of music at all?"

"We invented this music," I replied.

(I did refrain, however, from launching into "We built this city on rock and roll . . . ," so I should get points for that.)

Anyway, check out the latest issue of the online comic strip XKCD. If you're a Boomer like me, it will do your heart good.

You can sing

If you can walk
You can dance.
If you can talk
You can sing.

--A saying from Zimbabwe (courtesy of Jim Wallis's God's Politics blog)

In 1995, after conducting training in Botswana, I made a side trip into Zimbabwe, mostly to see Victoria Falls, which were spectacular beyond words.

By chance, I saw Robert Mugabe reviewing troops outside my hotel, where regional chiefs of police were convening. And throughout my two-day stay I saw the devastating effects of Zimbabwe's recent history.

So I rejoice to find this little poem, a reminder of the deep spirit of the Zimbabwean people.

Remember to anzray

How we think is closely tied to the language we speak.

I just came across a clipping from the September 2002 issue of Harper's Magazine. The brief Harper's item quotes Mark Abley, writing in the Spring 2002 issue of Brick.

Abley provides a list of verbs in Boro (or Bodo), a language spoken in India. Some seem merely odd:

• egthu: to create a pinching sensation in the armpit
• gagrom: to search for a thing below water by trampling
• gobray: to fall in a well unknowingly

But others seem strikingly useful:

• anzray: to keep apart from an enemy or wicked company
• mokhrob: to express anger by a sidelong glance
• khonsay: to pick an object up with care, as it is rare or scarce
• onguboy: to love from the heart
• asusu: to feel unknown and uneasy in a new place

These verbs denote actions or states of being familiar to anyone. How would our experience be different if we had single words for them?

The broad, yet common patterns of human life

"Living in a society with increasingly complex patterns can be quite difficult," writes scientist/artist Karmen Franklin, of Chaotic Utopia, in an article, "The Empath Meets the Skeptic: Tarot in the 21st Century." She continues:

Many inventions have been tools to ease the necessary adaptations to such a pace. Humans need a way to sort out the puzzles. The broad, yet common patterns of human life all appear in the Tarot, reflected as repeating cycles and symbolic representations. Indeed, what better tool could there be for reading the patterns of events so complex no single science or discipline can cover their whole?"

And later:

Storytelling, not occultist devil-worship, is the purpose of the Tarot. Like the veiled lessons in fairy tales or bedtime stories, the Tarot contains warnings and cautions. Unlike these children's tales, however, the listener is the character in the stories described by the cards. This is true storytelling. The Tarot and the stories it tells are offering pure reflections of our perceptions, which are simply reflections in themselves. Certainly, the message of the tarot is strange, obscure, and veiled, but so are all lessons in the best stories... or in the best moments and most cherished memories of real life. In either case, one simply interprets what they see by associating events with familiar symbols, and then forming those symbols into patterns.

Thanks, Karmen. Nothing I've read recently captures so well the big-picture thinking--from signs, stories, systems, spirit--that I try to note in Prospero's Books.

Dreaming the author's dream

Bob Thompson, at the Washington Post, reports the speech given this past Tuesday, at Georgetown University, by the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature. Thompson writes:

Pamuk thinks novels are our best hope to understand the unique history of other peoples.

"Obviously we cannot hope to come to grips with matters this deep merely by reading newspapers and magazines or by watching television," he said.

Near the end of his talk, the novelist spoke of "a vision that I entertain from time to time." Sometimes, he said, he tries to "conjure up one by one a multitude of readers hidden away in corners, nestled in their armchairs with their novels."

Then, before his eyes, "thousands, tens of thousands of readers will take shape, stretching far and wide, across the streets of the city, and as they read, they dream the author's dream, imagine his heroes into being and see his world. So now these readers, like the author himself, try to imagine 'the other' -- they are putting themselves in another's place."

By the end of this vision, Pamuk said, he sees his novel readers as "an entire nation . . . imagining itself into being."

(Thanks to my friend Hrothgar for the tip.)

An organism with a life history of its own

A new addition to the Sacred Text library is the 1908 book The Grateful Dead, by Gordon Hall Gerould, from which Jerry Garcia may have taken the name for his band.

Deadheads (fans of the band) will doubtless agree with one of Gerould's conclusions:

The Grateful Dead is an organism with a life history of its own.

Rest in peace, Jerry.