COMING TOGETHER, GOING APART

If science is a religion, what are the principles?

Big Bang

Everything is connected, since the original Big Bang.  It has all unfolded in a pattern.

Everything is changing all the time, esp. each person and each culture.

What you do to others will affect you.  This is a moral lever.

You are connected, even though you may feel totally cut-off and isolated.  If you are breathing, you are connected to the atmosphere of the whole planet -- if you are dead, the molecules that were you are busy transforming, but they are still connected.

Even alive, you are changing in ways that might not be either chosen or connected to you directly, because your nature is in the relationship between self and everything else.

The universal principle is survival.

Survival is not always achievable or even desirable.

The group may want survival in a way that excludes you, even kills you, and vice versa.

Much of life is a matter of finding the right group, creating the right group, coming to terms with a group.

Thomas Kuhn and others have proposed several ways for cultures to change:

*The evidence begins to fall through, the efficaciousness of methods fail, and new evidence and methods appear that work better.  

*Somehow there is a going-apart of the population so that a section of it develops by itself on an island or in a retreat or as a tightly interacting -- for instance -- deaf community.  Then at some point it comes back and reunites with the mainstream.

*Two or more elements of the culture coalesce, forming something unexpected, maybe just a new balance of power, maybe a huge shift in population.

*An enveloping force bigger than any single element -- something like global climate change -- forces everything to reconfigure.

*A key element ends, like the supply of fossil fuel.  Or begins, like a breakthrough source of energy.

Medicins Sans Frontieres

Most of our religious institutions are dogma-based, but they are also place-based.  The place-based groups develop when people don’t move around much and everyone in an area is pretty much alike, sees the world in the same way.  Affinity-based congregations develop in a pluralistic society, however that plurality happened.  Maybe it was immigration, maybe it was education, maybe it was history, and even possibly the affinity is an attempt to relate to a charismatic person.  Maybe it’s compassion-based, like the many semi-religious NGO’s:  Amnesty International or Doctors without Borders.

The problematic side of religion comes from their nature as institutions.  I’m not sure it is possible to create a spiritual institution.  An institution starts with a committee (even if you call them Apostles); then it begins to write resolutions and make lists of members; pretty soon it needs money because it wants to build; then it sees that more members would make bigger ideas possible and pretty soon it is missionizing.  In the attempt to “sell” themselves, members become narcissistic and inflated, and spirituality -- connection to what feels holy -- is lost.  

I read an interesting piece on http://boyinthebands.com.  If there is any place that our convictions connect between our personhood and our society, it’s food.  Scott Wells is a Universalist on the boundary of the UUA.  

Rev. Scott Wells

He says:  "I’m 45 and a Georgia native, living in Washington, D.C. since 2000.  1991. A.B. University of Georgia, 1997. M.Div. Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University.  I was ordained to “the Ministry of the Gospel” in 1999 and have pastored churches in Georgia and the District of Columbia and served others in Texas and South Carolina in a less formal arrangement. Currently, I have a Day Job in the exciting (really) world of nonprofit operations."

In this post from his blog he talks about his affinity for vegetarianism as a model for churches.  It is a practice supported from several different angles: health, consideration for living beings, history, participation with others, access to the necessary foods and information about how to manage them in meals. 

“Think about churches. There are true believers and people who are invested in the institutions. The “churchiness” of it. The theology. But many will care about the stained glass or the organ. A kind word over coffee. Or learning in a class with other oddballs. “Unchurchy” reasons. One reason that you can find non-Christians in all kinds of Christian churches; a liberal approach to participation.

“The secret lesson of the vegetarians is that the high — no, not high, but particular, formal and sacrificial — commitment approach to church life, which works for “churchy” people like me, is a turn-off for people who want to make their own experience in our shared setting. There’s room for all kinds of people, including those who are “churched” for their own needs and own convenience.”

One of the constant themes of the Alban Institute (RIP) was the difficulty of moving from a one-celled church where everyone was on the same page, no matter how they got there, and felt they must do everything together versus the multi-celled church where sub-groups had formed: maybe one to study international politics, one to support mothers, one to work on the building, and -- of course -- the choir.  On Sunday there were opportunities for everyone to sing together.

Sid Gustafson, veterinarian and novelist

I’m also on an automated list that comes from Sid Gustafson, who is sending passages from his new book about horses: “Equine Behaviour, The Nature of Horses.”  Read him at sidgustafson.blogspot.com.  He's talking about the scientific justification for his kind of horse training, but it comes off as close to being something like the spirituality of horses.  They do not form institutions, though we force them into captivity.

Icelandic horses

“Stabled horses [urban people?] require 24/7 forage, and miles and miles of daily walking, as well as abundant socialization to re-create a natural existence. When these needs are not provided in adequate measure unwelcome behaviors develop . . .  Foals raised by the mare and herd in a grazing setting develop into easily trainable animals, as it is the mare and herd that teach growing horses how to learn. It is the in-depth socialization and interaction with the herd of mares and foals that nurtures and develops athletic ability and prowess of the growing horse. . . The herd teaches the horse how to prevail. Horses learn how to cooperate from other horses. They learn how to see and graze and move, and perhaps most importantly, how to communicate with others as taught by other horses. This is socialization. . . .It is the herd that provides the foundation for the horse to learn, endure, and prevail in athletic competitions. . . .  All physiologic, behavioural, and metabolic functions of the horse are dependent on abundant daily walking."

“Social behavior in natural feral settings is the 'natural' behavior that 'natural' horsemanship utilizes to appreciate the nature of the horse . . . As to dominance, the science reveals that free-ranging horses form social hierarchies that are complex and rarely linear. Under natural open range conditions with adequate resources, horses seldom have the equivalent of an alpha individual because the roles of leadership and defense are more critical than domination . . . Leadership is shared and alternated and variable and context dependent in established harems in natural settings. Dominance is rare, and certainly not prevalent. When present at all, it facilitates group protection and stability. Horses share leadership. Survival is herd based, rather than individual based.”

Walden Pond

One of the other mantras of Alban Institute was that a church is not a boundaried, confined group, but what they called a “passing parade.”  A congregation is a group of people that are like a pond along a stream: some coming in, some going out, some always there.  A group with no inlet or outlet is likely, in the terms of water science, “eutropified.”  Stagnant.  Soon filled with algae and silt.  One of the interesting things about Walden Pond is that it would eutropify, except that there are springs under it.  I take the metaphor to mean spirituality in “religious” institutions.  A welling up of the sacred.  It keeps things moving.

Walking a labyrinth is an old form of spiritual meditation.

What if someone formed a walking church where people set out together and didn’t even talk!  But that’s too literal.  Even people sitting in pews can let their heads and hearts travel together as they develop thinking, feeling, awareness, access to the sacred.  Unfolding, changing, never fearing mutation or adaptation, giving up what doesn’t work, surviving.  Making room for difference, letting the spirituality well up from within.