Earth-Centered Spirituality Group

Sunday Sermon Archives

A sermon delivered by Lorraine Ellis to the Concord Unitarian Universalist Church on January 28, 2007.
(Read the rest of the service.`)

I need to make a disclaimer, right at the beginning. Pagans are nearly as diverse and eclectic in their beliefs as Unitarian Universalists. I can’t claim to speak for all pagans, so I will just say that the following is one pagan’s perspective. If pressed, I will suggest that it is probably a fairly mainstream view. At the worst, I don’t think it will get me ex-communicated from the pagan community.

Chief Noah Seattle is credited with writing a letter to the president of the United States in 1854, during a land deal proceding. Whether he actually wrote the letter is subject to debate, but the words are powerful, whomever the author. He.. or she… wrote, in part:

This we know, the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.
This we know.
All things are connected like the blood which unites one family.
All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

“Respect for the interdependent web of all existance, of which we are a part,” is the Seventh Unitarian Universalist Principle. It is often translated as “taking care of our mother earth.” While I completely support taking care of our mother earth, as a pagan I believe there is an even greater and more profound spiritual message here.

What is Chief Seattle's web of life? In its simplest interpretation, it is all of the living organisms on the planet. All of the plant and animal life, from the tallest trees to the smallest bits of fungus and algae. From the largest whales to the tiniest protozoa, bacteria, and viruses. The old testament God separated man from the earth and gave him dominion over it. But our seventh principle insists that humans are a part of nature. We cannot be separated from the web of life. It is not a matter of us, and them. It is a conscious awareness that we are all one, connected and interconnected.

What is the difference, you may ask, between being connected, and being interconnected? Simply put, when we are interconnected, the connection runs both directions. It’s the difference between a one-way radio and a two way walkie-talkie. Likewise, when we are interdependent, we are mutually dependent We depend on each other. Each of us has needs that the other can meet, and each of us is affected by what happens to the other.

Martin Luther King understood this concept well, as evidenced in his “I have a dream” speech of 1963. ... Many of our white brothers,” he said, “as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.”

Perhaps no one expressed it more clearly and simply than John Muir, the great conservationist, and founder of the Sierra Club, who said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

When it comes to religion, the ideas of interconnectedness and interdependence take on even greater meaning.

The Biblical book of Matthew gets at this concept in chapter 25, verse 40: "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done unto me."

I was raised in a mainstream protestant church and as I grew up I learned an essentially dualistic view of God and creation – one that built on the Old Testament human separation from and dominion over the earth. Many of you may recognize this orientation.. It goes like this. God, the almighty creator, created man in his image and placed him on earth. The earthly garden was created for man’s use and enjoyment. God , is above us, and is ultimately, unknowable. His place is in heaven, where we will go when we die. God may sometimes cross over and touch the word of humans, but he is ultimately separate from us and from the world of nature. God created the universe, but is not, in the final analysis, part of it. The verse from Matthew would have been heard in a context that confirms that, while God is above man, he cares about what happens to man and is pleased when we help each other. He is disappointed , hurt, even when we when we hurt each other. However, there is no suggestion that God is injured we injure the earth.

When I began my conversion to a pagan world view, I began to think of my old view of God like a carpenter building a house. After the house is done, the carpenter may go back, go inside to visit now and then, interacting with the inhabitants, but he is not part of the house. He may spend long periods of time hanging out on the sofa, puttering in the kitchen, but if he wants, he can withdraw, go out the door, and go to his own house. To heaven, if you will. When he leaves, a sense of his lingering presence may be felt when one looks at the personal touches and marks he has left on the house, but he is not there.

One of the hallmarks of pagan religions, and of many indigenous religions around the world, is a monistic world view. Not to be confused with monotheistic, monistic means that the world of earthly life and the world of the divine are never separate. They are one and the same. For the monist, the divine carpenter is the house. He… or she, or they…are smoothly integrated into the rafters, and the carpets, the windows and the furniture. The divine is also in the dusty spots on the stairs, the messy closet and the garbage disposal. It is in the family dog, the fishtank, and, in the human inhabitants. The divine cannot leave the house and go to its own separate place because it is the house. And the front walk. And the street outside. And the mountains and sky in the distance. And the cosmos beyond that.

This is why we can talk seriously about an earth-centered or nature-based religion. Because the divine is part of nature, we are not talking about worshipping the earth. We’re talking about revering the divine spirit that is integrated into the earth, and into the natural world, and exists in all natural things, both living and non-living. Ancient Druids, who are often portrayed as worshipping trees were, in reality, worshipping the divine spirit that is expressed in trees.

In recent months I’ve begun reading, in short snippets, about some of the newest scientific theories about the nature of the universe. Quantum theory is not for the faint of heart, and I can only deal with it a little at a time. Too much at once tends to leave me feeling stupid and boggled.

In 1964, John Stewart Bell proposed that after two sub-atomic particles meet, they continue to influence each other. The influence is not caused by nuclear forces, gravity or electromagnetism, but exists because each particle leaves a part of itself with the other, thus allowing them to communicate instantaneously. What do they leave? Not a piece of matter, but a piece of information. Sub atomic particles are less like balls of stuff and more like information packets. Instantaneous communication is theoretically not possible in a universe limited by the speed of light, so Bell proposed that this connection between particles occurs outside of space-time. His theory was later proven by laboratory experiment, and instantaneous communication between separate particles, became a provable fact.

Before that, In 1928, scientist Niels Bohr, proved that at the sub-atomic level, the universe is made up of waves of energy, but when electrons are directly observed and measured, they change in nature and behave like particles.

More recently, since 1980, the work of David Bohm has been gaining greater and greater acceptance in the scientific community. He expanded upon the work of Niels Bohr, and theorized that the universe is constantly flitting back and forth between particles and waves, between existence and non-existence, redrawing itself perhaps millions of times per second This is the idea that boggles my mind - a thing exists because there is an observer. The very act of observation makes it concrete. When there is no observer, a thing reverts from particle back to energy. How does that particle know it is being observed?

Quantum experiments are confirming what most pagans already know – that all parts of the universe, from the smallest to the largest, are alive with a spark of intelligence, and that the universe communicates, responds and shares information instantaneously among all parts of itself. What scientists see as interconnecting energy, the average theistic pagan would likely describe as God, or Goddess, or a whole pantheon of gods and goddesses.

Last month I attended the first leadership development workshop offered by the NH/VT district. We were given time to journal, and were asked to take a stab at writing down a personal credo. The time was right, and I launched into the task full bore.

“I believe,” I wrote, “That there must be some greater power and intelligence in the world, than that of humans. I don’t want to believe that humans are as good as it gets.”

(I was feeling empowered that day, and decided to let the cynicism rip.)

“Although there are many beautiful and enlightened souls in the world,” I continued, “there are also many closed and terrifying souls. I don’t want human beings, en masse, to be the best that the earth has to offer.

"I believe we are all connected. That at the root of existence we are all energy. That energy runs through us and between us and among us, connecting us with each other, with all life on earth, and ultimately, with the cosmos. The question is, does that energy have the will and self direction that defines it as “God?” Today, I want to believe that it does, so I choose to relate to that energy in a somewhat anthropomorphic way. At least as far as to say that the energy has both male and female aspects. For ease of reference, I adopt the pagan convention of referring and relating to those aspects as God and Goddess.

"For me, the universal energy, that which goes everywhere, is God-slash-Goddess. But there may also be different flavors of that energy in different localities. As the local inhabitants interact with it, it is changed and molded. I would like to believe that in addition to a relationship with the universal God-slash-Goddess, we can also cultivate a relationship with local energies – those of our homes and surrounding fields and forests. Through those local energies we get a glimpse of the whole.

"The second, and scarier question for me is this: If the energy is God, did God exist before mankind? Or did the attention and manipulation of man actually mold the universal energy into God? If humans created God, I am back to the original question – is this all there is? Mankind with both its beauty and its terrifying flaws?

"When I begin to think this way, I must remind myself that we are not the only force acting on the creation of God, and this brings me ultimately to a pagan point of reference:

"God is in all. God is in nature. God is the collective energy of all things living and not living. The peacefulness of trees, the strength and patience of the oceans. The consistency of the phases of the moon. The protectiveness of the mother bear, the tiny worlds and awarenesses of plankton, absorbing sunlight and selflessly converting it to oxygen for the rest of us to breathe. And then I look at photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope. At the stunning pictures that show thousands of galaxies (not stars, but galaxies) that exist in a seemingly empty area of space the width of the moon. We are tiny. I am tiny. So tiny as to seem completely insignificant.

"But if the Interdependent Web of Life is to be trusted, I know that I am interconnected with the entire universe. I am interconnected with those distance galaxies, just as I am interconnected with everything in our own solar system, and on our own planet. We are tiny, and we are part of everything at the same time. So is everything else, from the plants and animals to the stars, to the dark matter between stars, and to all other life, intelligent, or not, that exists in the universe. Everything has an influence on the divine, and we are constantly creating and co-creating each other."

It’s frightening. because it’s a great responsibility. But comforting because it is a shared responsibility.

So, let us care for our planet earth, but let us also remember that the web of life extends far beyond our earth and far beyond the limits of our conscious minds.

The Seventh Principle – Respect for the interdependent web of all existance, of which we are a part. How will you play your part?

*****

The web of life teaches us that everything we give away will eventually be returned to us. In that spirit, the morning offering will now be gratefully received.