Wrestling with 'G-d':

Finding the rights words to speak sacred truth

A sermon given by Rev. Rachele Rosi

at The First Parish of Bridgewater

Sunday, April 6, 2003

Reading: from Eclipse of God by Martin Buber. (Please excuse the older, non-inclusive language of this 1953 book. I've altered it slightly but not enough.)

“['God'] is the most heavy-laden of all human words. None has become so soiled, so mutilated. Just for this reason I may not abandon it. Generations of men have laid the burden of their anxious lives upon this word and weighed it to the ground; it lies in the dust and bears their whole burden. The races of man with their religious factions have torn the word to pieces; they have killed for it and died for it, and it bears their fingermarks and their blood. Where might I find a word like it to describe the highest! If I took the purest, most sparkling concept from the inner treasure-chamber of the philosophers, I could only capture thereby an unbinding product of thought. I could not capture the presence of [the One] whom the generations of men have honoured and degraded with their awesome living and dying. I do indeed mean [the One] whom the hell-tormented and heaven-storming generations of men mean. Certainly, they draw caricatures and write 'God' underneath; they murder one another and say 'in God's name' ... And just for this reason is not the word 'God,' the word of appeal, the word which has become a name, consecrated in all human tongues for all times? We must esteem those who interdict it because they rebel against the injustice and wrong which are so readily referred to 'God' for authorization. But we may not give it up ... We cannot cleanse the word 'God' and we cannot make it whole; but, defiled and mutilated as it is, we can raise it from the ground and set it over an hour of great care.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell, served six months in prison

as a war resister during World War I.

As is customary in prison, Russell's incarceration began with an interview with the Prison Warden.

He was asked the customary questions – name, age, place of residence. Then the warden inquired, 'Religious affiliation?'

'Agnostic,' Russell replied.

The poor man looked up, 'How do you spell that?'

Russell spelled 'a-g-n-o-s-t-i-c' for him.

The warden wrote the word carefully on the prison admission form,

then sighed, 'Oh, well; there are a great many sects nowadays,

but I suppose we all worship the same God!'¹

:-)

The 17^th century scientist and Christian apologist Blaise Pascal

divided humankind into three groups:

1. those who know God and love him;

2. those who do not know God but seek him; and

3. those who neither know God nor seek him.

In other words, there are three types of people in the world:

Affirmatist, agnostic, and atheist.

Colleague Tom Owen-Towle's recent book Wresting With God is subtitled: “A Unitarian Universalist Guide for Skeptics and Believers.”

This little book, less than 150 pages of text, in a large easy-to-read font,

is a great resource for anyone who is struggling with questions of belief and unbelief – that is most of us!

Agnostics, Atheists and Affirmatists.

All of these categories relate to the cognitive process of belief and all of them have a role to play in all religions, but especially in Unitarian Universalism.

To summarize Owen-Towles,

atheists are the rebels, the purifiers,

the protesters against distorted visions of divinity

that support xenophobia, bigotry,

and even violence in the name of God.

Atheists shake things up, they are the true heretics,

calling humanity to a vision beyond the worn-out

words and concepts of entrenched religious traditions.

Most religions began as a protest against earlier religions

and the cry of “atheist” and “heretic” were charged

against many a prophet of goodness and reason.

Atheists have always existed and

have challenged traditional religions to go deeper.

Agnostics, probably the majority of members of our faith

and of most faiths in fact, are the middle-of-the-road folks.

Agnosticism is the permanent suspension of belief, and, at it's best,

is a continual willingness to be open-minded and humble,

that is, humbly in awe of everything

we do not know and can never know.

As Owen-Towle puts it,

“Humility encourages us to preserve a flexible disposition

as we cultivate any relationship with divine mystery, reminding us that our hunches might prove wrong.”

The key element to proudly claiming the agnostic label is trust.

To know that we do not know,

but still can trust that what we do not know is good -- this is real trust.

The Sanskrit antecedent to the Greek word “agnostic”

adds to the meaning “not knowing”

the ability “to stand in awe before the unknown.”

A true agnostic reveres what they cannot understand.

Finally, affirmatism is a devout and solemn willingness to say YES to life.

The word YES itself, the affirmatist might say,

is perhaps the best synonym for God!

To affirm that God exists,

by no means requires that we accept a god as defined by others. Whatever divinity may be in reality,

to our perception, it will always be a mystery.

How we each experience the mystery is personal.

What matters is that our experience of the mystery

be one of awe and love, rather than of pain and loathing.

Yet awe and love rarely come at once.

The origin of the word “awe” is fear,

as in the biblical caveat:

“the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord.”

Fear of the Lord, in this case,

is a recognition of our lack of control over earthquakes

and AIDS and car crashes and death.

When we can truly accept that we are not in control,

we can begin on the path of wisdom.

Once we accept our vulnerability and learn to love

that which bring vulnerability, we can YES to life.

The three A's -- Atheism, Agnosticism, and Affirmatism –

have their place in the on-going religious debate

about the meaning of life and the meaning of God.

But why, you may wonder, do human beings think about God at all?

Another recent book you my find useful is called:

Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science & the Biology of Belief.

It is also a very small and accessible book.

According to the authors' research on Zen Buddhists and Catholic Nuns, regular dedicated mediation and prayer actually do produce

profound change in the brain that opens up

what is called the “orientation area” of the brain

-- that part of our brain that tells us where we end

and the chair we're sitting on begins –

so that the mental boundary between the self

and the outside world simply disappears. ...

The experience of the mystic is one of Absolute Unitary Being.

Now before you say it's all in the brain,

the authors have anticipated your response and go on to show

how we are born without an understanding of this boundary and how our baby brain must create the boundaries in the first place.

A baby must learn that she is not her mother, that she is an separate entity.

This is felt as a profound loss for the child,

though it happens so young we don't remember it.

In deep meditation or prayer our brains remove the barrier

we had created as a child

and we are able to feel a connection we otherwise do not feel.

Mystics of all religions describe this connection as more real

than the reality of our every day lives.

It is reality beyond reality.

It is ultimate truth,

a unity beyond the disunity we experience every day.

Science has corroborated this vision of the mystics beginning with

the post-modern physics of Einstein's theory of relativity

and Edwin Schrodinger's theory of quantum mechanics.

This new science teaches that the material reality of the everyday world

is merely an illusion

built upon a strangely mystical reality of waves and particles, the space/time continuum,

and the beautiful mathematical art of fractals.

The dance of the universe is real -- a continually colliding chaos,

altered forever by the smallest movement of a butterfly

or even a thought in our brains. All energy is in motion. Nothing is dead. Ever.

Einstein and Schrodinger were the first of many scientists to

have written in mystical language about the reality they discovered.

Einstein spoke of the longing for connection,

the sense that “individual existence [is] a sort of prison

and [that we seek] to experience the universe

as a single significant whole.”

And Schrodinger wrote these beautiful words:

Inconceivable as it seems to ordinary reason, you -- and other conscious beings as such – are all in all. Hence, this life of yours you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole. ... Thus, you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth with a certain conviction you are one with her and she with you.

Einstein and Schrodinger would likely agree with the opinion of biologist Edwin Chargaff, who believes that “all scientists are driven by

the mysterious intuition that something immense and unknowable dwell in the material world.”²

He writes:

“If [a scientist] has not experienced, at least a few times in his life,

this cold shudder down his spine, this confrontation with an immense,

invisible face whose breath moves him to tears, he is not a scientist.”
***

I've talked about different modes of belief or unbelief

and the science behind certain convictions and beliefs.

But, so far, I have not talked about God language as my title promises.

My hope is that my brief introduction to the science

behind mystical experience will convince you

that any language we use to describe that immense mystery

is inadequate and perhaps even inappropriate.

Yet a conversation about religious language is necessary anyway.

We are creatures of language.

We use words to order our reality.

The words we use to describe reality become the reality we know.

As Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote,

“The limits of one's language are the limits of one's world.”

If our world cannot encompass the larger holy

discovered by science and mysticism,

it really doesn't matter what words we use to describe the holy,

because we don't really know what it is we're describing.

But if you have experienced something holy in your life,

then you need some language to describe it to others.

To date, feminism has offered the most cogent critique

of traditional western religious language.

Christian theologian Sallie McFague follows the feminist inspiration

of lifting up the feminine aspects of divinity

especially the idea that nature is God.

Mother Nature is an ancient concept that is at

once nurturing and life-giving.

In her book The Body of God, she speaks of a transcendent divine breath

enlivening the immanent body of the earth and the universe.

Many other theologians have, in different ways, found this vision useful.

The word “transcendence” means outside of us,

The word “immanence” means right here with us.

Where traditional western images of God focus on transcendence,

modern liberal images borrow from Pagan and Eastern traditions;

that is, they focus on the immanence of the divine in our everyday life.

The immanence of the Biblical God was always there,

and it has always been feminine.

Wisdom or Sophia or Logos are all feminine words for God in the Bible.

Jesus, actually, as the Logos was the female Logos come in a male form. Pretty strange huh!

Many Christians Muslims and Jews are reclaiming

this feminine side of God in order to bring more balance

to an overly patriarchal western religious tradition.

***

Our western knowledge of divinity is generally limited to Biblical images

but there is a wealth of other metaphors for the holy in the East.

The Tao or Nirvana, or Brahman all connote a unity

inside and outside of creation that encompasses all of life.

Native American and Native European Traditions

add complimentary metaphors to this vision of unity.

What is being described by these different religions

is NOT a different divinity than the authors of the Bible were seeking,

only the language we use creates a different way

of understanding that divinity.

This is key for Unitarian Universalists.

We are a religion that honors Unity in many forms,

and we recognize the Universality of this Unity.

All is one. All creatures are children of the same divinity.

It is in our interest as a religion to find words

that speak to the unity we seek.

The difficulty, of course, lies in our diversity

and in our individual experiences of this underlying unity.

In another book of McFague's called Metaphorical Theology,

she acknowledges the difficulty of changing religious language and offers one possible reason for our reticence.

“The current resistance to inclusive or unbiased language,” she writes,

“...indicates that people know instinctively

that a revolution in language means a revolution in one's world.”

Here in this church, for instance, we have people who prefer

one version of the hymns over another.

This happens in all religious community.

The same can be said for finding common words for the divine.

We each get used to what we grew up with

and either prefer to keep those words or reject them outright, never clear on how to incorporate new ones.

Even words we disagree with, when they are all we know,

are easier than new and possibly strange words.

Yet without some appropriate language,

we leave a hole in our worship services,

a hole in our prayers, a hole in our philosophies.

Unitarian Universalists are generally some of the smartest people around.

Surely we can come up with some genuine

and powerful UU religious language.

And “Spirit of Life” doesn't cut it!

***

Discussion of religious language is a revolutionary act.

It requires that we cultivate a healthy agnosticism,

recognizing that our knowledge is partial at best,

and possibly outright wrong.

It requires that we question not only words but entire concepts of male and female, nature, animals, right and wrong, space, time, and matter.

This sermon is just the beginning of a discussion

I hope we can continue to have together on the nature of belief, the nature of the divine,

and the nature of religious language.

Many people think that being UU means never having to make a decision about faith, about God, or about divine language.

If that is so, why be a religion?

We might as well just be a support group for the disaffected.

***

On Friday, a member of this congregation ask me to pray with them.

They were slightly embarrassed,

and maybe they hoped I would suggest prayer first.

Anyway, we prayed together, sharing different words and silence

to express our sadness for the war, our hope for the future,

and our gratitude for the power of love that binds us together.

Prayer is an avenue towards unity.

It brings us in union with the divine within us and beyond us

and, in communal prayer, it brings us in union with each other.

Right now our world needs more unity.

I challenge you to seek it in private meditation and prayer.

I challenge you to seek it here and with your friends

in serious conversation about the nature of God.

I challenge you to seek it in a humble willingness to be

surprised by the mystery that we will never understand.

I believe the mystery exists and is full of love.

It is fearful and chaotic and uncontrollable,

but full of love none the less.

I challenge you to discover your own path to God.

She, He or It is waiting for you. Amen.