ecospirit

J.L. Schellenberg is an analytic philosopher and a religious skeptic. But because he takes evolution seriously, he recognizes the vast potential for future development of the process of “reflective intelligence” which began for us, and from the perspective of Thomas Berry, the universe itself, roughly 50,000 years ago. Though a skeptic with regard to specific beliefs and their truth-claims, he is an imaginative being with a wide-open sense of awe and wonder, which he correctly recognizes as the basis for faith, but not necessarily belief. In the current argument between “scientistic” atheists and creationists, Schellenberg prosecutes both sides for being immature and premature in their judgments, “rationally unsustainable.” (64) “Because we are immature, belief is premature.” (49) But if belief is unwarranted, so is the attack on the very possibility of ultimate reality by militant atheistic writers such as Richard Dawkins. And he criticizes naturalists (Barbara Forrest), who “ regularly overestimate the accomplishments of science and underestimate the potential of religion.” A “beliefless faith“ supports that potential, which he feels is huge over the billion-year future evolution of complex life on Earth. As opposed to the systematic universal doubt of science, Schellenberg argues for an “evolutionary religious skepticism,” that remains open to continuing revelation of the divine over that vast period.

Labels: Advaita, beliefless faith, Evolutionary Religion, George Fox, Joanna Macy, Krishna Prem, Permian catastrophe, philosophy of religion, Quakerism, Richard Dawkins, Rmana Maharshi, sixth extinction, Thomas Berry

Advent has become the season of UN Climate Framework talks. Always my favorite season, these annual negotiations now both deepen and heavily freight the season, a real test for the depth of my belief. Two years ago, I wrote here of a “Tiny Advent Star,” a fragile little symbol of hope in the snow pattern on my deck. This year, that star is gone. No Obama coming to “save” the talks, not one single person from the US Congress at the proceedings. In the middle of the current talks, a binding international climate treaty seems further away than ever.

I wrote then of the hope in the international community; that even if our politics were dominated by climate change denialists, other countries, including Russia and Japan (and of course Europe), were solidly convinced by the science. This year, Russia and Japan have joined the US and Canada in an attempt to block renewal of the Kyoto Protocol. Obama claims to be hamstrung by the domestic politics that George Bush and colleagues from his party engineered. There are powerful leaders, eloquent voices at Durban, but they come from civil society and First Nations, not the UN's constituent states. Bolivia's Evo Morales was impressive at Copenhagen, but only a massive peasant uprising prevented him (for now) from building a highway right through the heart of the forested Motherland he spoke so eloquently about preserving. Our leaders have feet of clay, and politics at all levels have increasingly ruled the proceedings. The hosts at Durban were embarrassed by an ugly outpouring of secular politics as the ANC youth brigade disrupted the massive protest parade on Saturday.

Last week I was in despair over the state of things in Durban. Unable to use coginitve tools or meditation techniques to stop the worsening spiral, I went deeply inside, and found the image of a very young child with purple eyes, looking straight at me, the very picture of Advent. This image stayed with me the rest of the morning, and has buoyed me since, even as the news from Durban has worsened. Jesus Christ is not my personal master, but while singing in the chorus for “Amahl and the Night Visitors” the next evening, I heard Balthazar sing of a child he had never seen, but “with eyes of a king.” If ever we needed a Second Coming, it is now.

Speaking at Durban Saturday, Desmond Tutu reminded us that few imagined South Africa would emerge from apartheid without major bloodshed, yet we all witnessed a political “miracle.” He asked us to believe in one more, a climate treaty breakthrough in that same country fifteen years later. Many have prayed deeply for such a miracle over these last few days. Today, it has been pronounced dead by a key tireless champion, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.

A tough, binding inernational treaty with all major polluters signing on, including the US, China, and India, has been at the core of my commitment to mitigating massive climate change. Now, without such an agreement, the landscape looks bleak. We now must have the courage to keep the movement outside the convention center alive and growing. George Fox, founder of the Quaker movement to which I belong, said in the mid-seventeenth century that “Jesus Christ has come to teach his people himself.” What he meant was that Christ never left this world, but awaits our awakening to Him within our hearts as the Inner Light.

So the miracle Tutu speaks of is now in our hands, if we submit to the governance of that Light. It is abundantly clear that elected officials and international bodies are not capable of achieving what we must do ourselves. We need to establish a people's agreement akin to the Occupy movement outside the halls of formal treaties that will require the politicians to join us if they want to be part of the New Order. Advent is an eternal moment where we reawaken to a spiritual reality that already exists. If this earth is to remain the occasion for such a reality, then we need to make the streets, the squares, and the sanctuaries ours in the same spirit of non-violent resistance that lead Christ and Gandhi. If we do, the halls of Congress will resonate with a new sound, or else become irrelevant to history's tide. Now is the time to become those we have been waiting for, re-empowering the dispossessed and healing the suffering earth. May we be blessed with courage for the immense struggle ahead.

Labels: ANC, Ban Ki Moon, Christ, Cop 17, Desmond Tutu, Durban, Evo Morales, Gandhi, George Fox, Kyoto Protocol, Obama, Occupy movement

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.
-James Baldwin

A few weeks ago at our small rural Friends Meeting, I spoke on the theme of the fading dream of humanity living gently on the earth. A dear friend had requested that we sing “I Dreamed a Dream” - an iconic song of innocent hope. When we got to the line, “The dream fades...”, I thought of our present dilemma, caught under the towering tsunami of climate change. The songwriter moves from fading dream to present vision, but my heart did not. After we settled into worship, I spoke about this feeling, recounting a brief history of climate change public opinion and politics since the wake-up occasioned by “An Inconvenient Truth.” I noted that many, including some sitting in our lovely meeting house, have gone back to sleep, and, given the present alignment of Congress and a weak Executive, the window for ordinary political action has closed.

The Meeting had recently supported my civil disobedience and arrest at the White House over the tarsands pipeline. I acknowledged this, and called for folks to join me. I did not speak from a place of helplessness, but owned my sadness, and the sense that this Woodstock era song felt dated. Feeling pulled into the maw of despair, I fumbled a bit to recall words from another time, when I spoke of the need for “honest hope.” But in the end the power of the song, still ringing in my heart, took over, and I heard my last words as I sat down, that sustainable life on earth was a “fading dream.”

I have been speaking in churches for almost a decade now, and learned from my early experiences in the pulpit that people need hope even more than they need to face the facts of our present predicament. So I tend to end all my messages on a hopeful tone, which for me, consists in a deep faith in our Creator, a faith that extends beyond the present universe into the depths of Her power to create anew, no matter how badly we may fail as stewards in this one. But this time I did not end on a note of hope.

If matters had been left there, with the words “fading dream” still reverberating as we closed meeting, I would have failed in my role as a faith leader in my community. Fortunately, traditional Quakers do not have ministers who control the liturgy and the pulpit. So, at the end of Meeting, two Friends rose to speak. One recounted recently hearing the Dalai Lama speak, who reaffirmed hope even in the face of seemingly insurmountable problems. As a teacher of religious studies at a Quaker secondary school, he added that hope is the wellspring of all religions. The second simply affirmed George Fox's statement, to look for that of God in everyone. So the collective ministry of the Meeting ministered to the congregants' need for hope.

Though I have clerked two Quaker meetings and served many years as clerk of Ministry and Nurture for yearly meeting, I have been eldered more than once for being too despairing. After all, it is our task to wait silently until we clearly hear the voice of God prompting us to speak. Given God's infinite potency, God's speech is not a message of despair. We may despair before the vision of God in the Whirlwind, or the Tsunami of Climate Change, but God within these powers and visions works thus to awaken us. What I want to acknowledge is that despair is a sign of honest awakening from the torpor of apathy and denial. If love is the first motion, then awakening to the recognition of our sin – being cut off from God and Her Creation - is the beginning of the motion back. Fox, in his journal passage prior to the famous quote on that of God in everyone, spoke of his prolonged experience of the Ocean of Darkness that leads to the Ocean of Light, if we have the courage to cross it.

So I reaffirm the need to face the facts of the present human and planetary condition, not to deny or gloss over them. If we really take in the depth and scope of our predicament, we may well despair. I also reaffirm that a practice such as Joanna Macy's despair and empowerment is critical in keeping our hope honest. We need to go into our despair, not avoid it, which only leads to a deadening, quickly becoming apathy. Into it and through it, either with the help of a trainer like Joanna in the context of group wisdom, or through a well-grounded personal spiritual practice. On the other side of despair, one frequently experiences a heightened sense of creativity and energy to deal with our dilemmas. If we block negative emotion, we close down the full range of response that unlocks our innate evolutionary creativity, opening the door to honest hope.

But is “honest hope” a non-sequitur? In the sense that hope is boundless, yes. And if we interpret honest hope to be a synonym for rational odds, then we're not talking about hope. On the other hand, innocent, untested hope has blind faith that our “unnegotiable” way of life, our capitalist religion, will save us, even in the face of a climate catastrophe whose parameters are being set more deeply every day. Hope for this world is always incomplete, ultimately a lie. The ultimate hope is in the Lord, the Creator, wherein dwells the possibility of the Phoenix Universe beyond this one. And that is where my ministry, even as it traverses the Ocean of Darkness that dominates our present world, needs to rest.

Labels: An Inconvenient Truth, collective ministry, George Fox, Joanna Macy, Phoenix Universe, tarsands action

“Swamiji, I fear for the tigers. They are on the brink of extinction. Such a magnificent creature, yet people don't seem to care, busily building lives that will seal its doom. But even more than the tigers, I fear for the earth. Climate change is going to wipe out so many species, and civilization itself is at risk. We are changing the atmosphere, creating another earth than the one that has provided our home.” Swami Premanand listened with his familiar look of intelligent attention. He is the living link to my wife Geeta's lineage of Himalayan teachers, a swami beloved by our entire family. I searched his face for the sympathy that I so often found when relating a personal problem. Then he said abruptly, “And I fear the sky will turn pink.” He laughed, and that was that. Stunned, I didn't know what to say. It was morning, and the household of our Bangalore hosts was waking. He had devotees to attend to, a talk that evening. I just sat there, wanting to extend the conversation, to hear his stories about tigers – he always had a story about everything. And yes, to defend my life focus, doing what I could to preserve a livable earth. But there were no landing places to carry this conversation forward. Now, several months later, I want to try again, in the form of an open letter. Premanandji, You may recall the conversation we had in Bangalore in February. I brought up my fear for the tigers, on the brink of extinction, and for the earth itself, with human activity creating carbon emissions that are rapidly changing the world's climate (I didn't mention last year's floods in Pakistan, with areas affected in your adoped Himalaya as well). You listened to my concerns, answering, “And I fear the sky will turn pink.” Swamiji, we all are beset by various fears, some more rational than others. Yes, I understand what you were saying. Our fears, both rational and fancied, have nothing to do with Brahman, the very foundation of the apparent world. They have everything to do with Maya, the world as various forms of illusion: dream, thought, matter in its sundry forms and patterns. You told Geeta that you have climbed the Mountain very far, not to the top, but close, and that you can see others traveling various paths to the summit. Well, Swamiji, I must be climbing on the other side of the mountain, perhaps very near the base. I love this earth, and I love the possibilities given with a human birth. For me, such a birth necessitates the challenge of living in a way that sustains the earth herself as a context for life and the continuing challenges and joys of humans and other beings living within her web. As you know, this is the main reason I don't often see you, for I am concerned about the carbon emissions associated with air travel. Coming to your land where she still has a pawhold, I love the tiger, beset as she is by encroaching human development and, especially in the remote mountains north of you, poachers. The tiger, if it is an illusion, is a particularly beautifully designed one. My son Jesse, whom you know, said that seeing a tiger his last day at Jim Corbett Park was the most profound experience of his life. Like Jesse, I feel that this world would be much poorer if they were to vanish forever. Is it foolish to have a sense of beauty? To judge a creature as magnificent, and to have awe before it? My own understanding is that everything, including Maya, is fashioned by God, and that is also the understanding of the English poet William Blake, who wrote this poem: Tyger! Tyger!, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare sieze the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears and water'd heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? As for the sky turning pink, your mockingly fanciful “fear,” this leads us to whether or not science is a special case, a special form of inquiry, alongside the other examples in Vedanta's exposition hall of illusions. Postmodern theory often lumps science with all other forms of knowledge, calling it the “myth of science.” According to this view, all forms of knowledge are simply asserting their own particular story of how the world came to be and how it works. None of them has any privileged position, any stronger truth claim. Swamiji, my first “conversion” was to Plato and his theory of Forms. Vedanta teaches that Brahman, the unnameable, is the only reality. Plato's vision is that the only reality is the eternal form of things, and that our changeable world is but a play of shadows cast by the Forms, flickering on the walls of a cave. Resting on this view of things, I studied the theory of symbolic forms. According to this view, each of the disciplines has a particular form, a set of criteria, for looking at the world: history, art, myth and religion, science. Science has a particularly powerful lens upon the world, for it is bound by a stringent set of rules of inquiry, comprising the scientific method. Science requires that a hypothesis be predictive and the results replicable over many instances. Even then, it never asserts that it has found “Truth,” but, when a given hypothesis gains enough predictive and replicable power, it gains the privileged title “theory.” This is where climate science is now, its models displaying a frighteningly uncanny ability to predict with ever-increasing accuracy the kinds of unusual weather events that come with a changing climate. This is not, dear teacher, a matter of individual fancied fears, but the working of a powerful set of tools, utilized by a global set of trained experts backed up by 25,000 data sets from all imaginable settings. What we are seeing is the work of the laws of physics and chemistry, displayed throughout this remarkable living earth system, driven by human activity on a scale that amounts to an assault on the stable weather patterns of the Holocene. As a Christian minister said on his blog in response to those who would deny climate change (a very powerful group in this country), “I believe in the laws of physics.” These laws operate independently of whether or not we believe in the “myth of science.” When the colonial Quaker statesman William Penn earnestly inquired whether he should cease wearing his sword, a sign of his social class, our prophet George Fox answered, “Wear thy sword as long as thou canst.” Swamiji, science, the laws of physics, is the sword I still hold. And I find it significant that our dear friend and environmental champion Sunderlal Bahuguna, whom you know, argues that the union of science and Vedanta is the chief hope of this poor world. Last night at dinner with friends, I related the topic of this post. The response was illuminating. One friend, a medical person with Buddhist training who accepts the findings of climate science, seized instead upon the form of the emotion, fear. He pointed out that fear was not a good motivator, and that perhaps you were not denying the science at all, simply mocking my fear – as well as affirming the Vedantic perspective on the illusion of material form. This of course places the entire conversation in a new light, leading to stronger forms of motivation to combat climate change. Going back over this post, I see love, a sense of beauty, and awe instinctively creeping into my defense of the tiger. Awakening the kind of awe which Blake displays in his poem, which brings with it gratitude, love, as well as the most profound sense of godly fear, could truly transform the human presence on this planet. As for my worries about creation and what we humans are wreaking upon it, I have posted before – answered by yet another swami. Clearly I still have much to learn.

Labels: " Plato, "The Tyger, climate change, George Fox, Swami Premanand, symbolic forms, theory of Forms, tiger extinction, Vedanta, William Blake, William Penn