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Sermon: “Original Potential: Human Nature” 2009

Celebrants: The Rev. Dr. Gretchen Woods,
Shirin Caldwell

Organist: Gerard van den Bemd

Reading: “Psalm 1” by Stephen Mitchell
Blessed are the man and the woman
who have grown beyond their greed
and have put an end to their hatred
and no longer nourish illusions.
But they delight in the way things are
And keep their hearts open, day and night.
They are like trees planted near flowing rivers,
Which bear fruit when they are ready.
Their leaves will not fall or wither.
Everything they do will succeed.

Sermon: “Original Potential: Human Nature”

As we continue our exploration of a possible “Living Ultimology,” we return once again to the origins of the cosmos and humanity. To begin, we seek the answer to the question, “Why is there something, instead of nothing, given the “Big Bang?” Physicist Chet Raymo points out:
It seems that just before the universe was one millisecond old, matter and antimatter annihilated each other in a sweeping extinction (as could be expected). But a tiny asymmetry was built into the universe so that matter dominated over antimatter by one part out of 100 billion. (Raymo, Natural Prayers, p. 31.)
Isn’t it refreshing to know that there is something, rather than nothing, because there was an imperfection in the whole process. The “Big Bang” was not perfect, therefore the formation of matter and anti-matter was not equal. We exist because of imperfection. We can all breathe easier about our own imperfection!
So, as we understand the process now, following an incredibly massive vibrating explosion, gases whirled through a newly created time/space continuum. Gases mixed, converged, coalesced; physics became actual. Stars (fire), planets (earth), atmosphere (air), seas (water) appear. Ooze churning at the bottom of the sea, super heated becomes what we call “life.” Life continues to experiment with creation: bacteria, yeasts, fungi, protozoa, algae, plants, insects, fish, reptiles, birds, mammals, homo sapiens. Who says Source does not have a sense of ongoing creativity and humor? Consider a giraffe - or a platypus – or sexuality!
Still process continues, as it will through all time/space, unfolding. Possibility becoming actuality, reality: Source’s incarnation. Collectives of cells proliferate and procreate: being as process. Humanity emerges, a complex collective of cells, bacteria, life forms we barely experience, yet upon which our very being depends. Humanity manifests many aspects: physical, mental, emotional, moral, spiritual. And still we struggle to understand what our nature is. We are unique beings in process who seek to understand our being. No wonder we are engaged in a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”
As beings becoming, human being is always in process,
never finished, yet always as perfect (“worked through” ) as can be in any given moment. Our perfection exists in our being wholly what we are in each moment. Therefore, human beings are not born in original in, nor original blessing , but with original potential. I believe that sin arises through dissonance, in archery literally “missing the mark,” intentionally obstructing Source and the natural flow of life. In contrast, blessing comes to us through being in tune with the best resonant vibration of possibilities of Source beyond and the best potential of Source within, creating love.
I am also convinced that much of human nature comes with the package: genes speaking to the future. (My father often said he gave his children the most he could at the moment of conception.) Still, some of what we call human nature is a function of choice
and some is a function of chance.
We are influenced by choices those related to us made while we were in utero – and long before – choices of mates, nutrition, physical activity, to name just a few. We also are made by chance: moments of co-creation in process that could not have been anticipated, like natural disasters or illnesses. These most likely both affect and challenge our further choices.
It is easy to blame others for the trials of our lives: our parents, our communities, society. Yes, all affect who we become and are not to be taken lightly, but ultimately, each of us is called to radical responsibility for our choices and the way in which we respond to chance in our lives. This means that what we choose to do matters greatly. All that we do and say and think is held in the energy/ consciousness of Source, its memory and ultimacy, forever. This is a basic understanding of Unitarian Universalism since the very beginning with Origen’s choice to assert a loving
G-d in opposition to the concept of “the elect” (You get to heaven; I don’t; and this has been predestined from the beginning of time.)
Ontology, our study of human ways of being, involves many aspects: physical, mental, emotional, moral, and spiritual. In our physical form we live and move and have our being. We cannot be without our physical form. Just try it . . .
Our mental aspect, our thinking, includes the way in which we function generally and the processes through which we make choices and act in our world. Through evolution, according to most brain scientists, the emotional aspect appeared before the mental, providing the basic building blocks of survival of the individual and the species. As our emotions evolved, our primitive brain felt the fear, anger, love that motivates our lives. Then we refined choice through the thinking process of our cerebral cortex and frontal lobe.
Our moral aspect is difficult to pinpoint in the evolutionary process, but it is clear that, by the age of six, children generally find a sense of right and wrong within them, as well as absorbing the mores of those around them. It is up to us to assist them in refining this human sense through our religious exploration classes. Finally, though it is still difficult to trace the origins of the spiritual impulse, human beings clearly seek and perceive continued experiences of connection and even immersion in a larger consciousness, a Source that affects their entire sense of what it is to be human and to engage in the process of living.
Source comprises all of these aspects, holding them and the whole of our lives in the totality of consciousness forever. The physical forms each of us inhabit limit Source and give Source expression, as do our mental, emotional, moral, and spiritual forms. All these forms interact with those of others, in dissonance or resonance, throughout our time of conscious being: Source experiencing, creating through us as we are called “to study life, to serve life, to celebrate life.”
As we grow in consciousness, creating with greater and greater resonance with our Source as we know it, all of life and Source are blessed. Each being has special gifts, particular resonances, unlike those of any other, that need to be nurtured and brought to fruition. Each of us is called to respond to all of our ways of being human, rather than denying any or all of them.
Unfortunately, true nurture of our ways of being happens all too rarely. I see so many people who feel bereft of support. More often, power-over intrudes, demanding control of consciousness (original sin? ), “breaking the spirit,” twisting or destroying awareness of resonances with Source. In this way, ontological essence lost: a person becomes less than being or becoming.
As beings connected to Source, lured toward greater intensity and harmony, we experience spiritual inevitability. This is not predestination, nor providence, nor fate. In contrast, issues that we find difficult and/or challenging to our very being come up over and over again for us to work and rework. I constantly have to deal with my desire to eat everything and lots of it, probably inherited from my gourmand father. I am effective in moderating this predisposition only by maintaining an awareness of the physical limits of my body, the cues that I am actually full, as I am willing to be aware of it and not preoccupied by other, non-nutritional issues.
Clearly, we have free will to avoid issues that feel uncomfortable. We can always ignore the reality of the challenges we face day to day. Yet, if we continue to work to grow in consciousness, to engage spiritual practice, those issues re-appear and re-appear and re-appear to challenge our spirits in a process toward greater being and becoming. Thus, we repeatedly face the particular challenges of our lives through spiritual inevitability.
So, we human beings are processes with original potential, neither cursed nor blessed, but engaged in attempting to maximize our possibilities through our own consciousness. We therefore, are radically responsible for ourselves and our engagement with all that is our world. We are essentially called to make the world a better place for all as we best can through our unique gifts and talents. Finally, we live with spiritual inevitability, whereby we can assume that we shall again and again experience opportunities to deal with the issues most challenging for our lives.
We can make being human an onerous task or we can address all of living as it is – a game for our creative fun. We can respond to what is before us, opening our selves to all aspects of being and allow our creative juices to flow into the world. We are clearly not the pinnacle of evolution; there is far more yet possible than we can imagine. Still, we inevitably contribute to the future, through our choices and our chances.
I love Mary Oliver’s way of expressing how we can engage this process of being human, as explained in “Wild Geese”:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clear air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
(Oliver, New and Selected Poems, p. 110.)

May each of us come to know more fully our place in the creation of life, with respect, with responsibility, and with relish for the process!
So Be it! Blessed Be!

This is our ultimate salvation: all that we are, were, or will be is maintained within the loving memory of Source, as genetic material speaking to the future, as decisions informing others, and as love – or something else - moving through all of life. Alfred North Whitehead affirms this with this quote:
The consequent nature of God is his judgment on the world. He saves the world as it passes into the immediacy of his own life. It is the judgment of a tenderness which loses nothing that can be saved. It is also the judgment of a wisdom which uses what in the temporal world is mere wreckage. (Whitehead, Process and Reality. P.346.)