Sermon: “Who – or What – Is God”Rev. Dr. Gretchen Woods Sunday, March 15 2009

Celebrants: Christine Whelan Organist: Gerard van den Bemd

Reading: “Brahman” from the Bhagavad-Gita

I am the Self that dwells in the heart of every mortal creature;

I am the beginning, the life span, and the end of all.

I am the radiant sun among the light givers;

I am the mind; I am consciousness in the living.

I am death that snatches all;

I also am the source of all that shall be born.

I am time without end;

I am the sustainer: my face is everywhere.

I am the beginning, the middle, the end in creation;

I am the knowledge of things spiritual.

I am glory, prosperity, beautiful speech, memory, intelligence,

steadfastness, and forgiveness.

I am the divine seed of all lives.

In this world nothing animate or inanimate exists without me.

I am the strength of the strong;

I am the purity of the good.

I am the knowledge of the knower.

There is no limit to my divine manifestations.

Whatever in this world is powerful, beautiful, or glorious,

That you may know to have come forth from a fraction

of my power and glory.

 

Sermon: “Who – or What – Is God”

Since the 1930’s, God has been a touchy subject for Unitarian Universalists. The existentialism of post World War I and the nihilism of Europe of the same era created a response among thinking Unitarians that was notable for its sense that not only are human beings alone in the universe and on the planet, but also that we are separate from Nature and responsible for any positive outcomes in the cosmos. This sense included a very realistic feeling that any worthy God would not allow the horrible experiences of World War I to have happened. We are abandoned in a random universe, and it is up to us to make life more humane. There is merit in this premise, but, like any blanket statement, it has its limitations.

I remember recognizing considerable anxiety among the humanists when I first came to serve the congregation I now serve. In response, I sought an opportunity to chat with them. When I entered my office, which was already filled with folks who self-identified as humanist, atheist, or non-believing, I began with this statement: “I need you to know that I don’t believe in the god you don’t believe in.” I meant it then; I mean it now. (Let me also note that what they turned out wanting to discuss was paranormal experiences.)

This realization was also stimulated by many conversations with my, then atheist, now self-described agnostic, husband. He pointed out to me that I was not communicating accurately when I used the word “God.” He knew that my conception of that term and traditional understanding did not match at all. This led me to resort to the term “Source” to try to describe what I experience as ultimate in my life. Still, I know that regular use of any term limits and creates a situation where the word becomes reified, deified, and ossified. That is not my goal for this discussion. Rather, it is my hope that sharing these ideas together will enrich the understanding of each one of us and help us collectively create a richer, fuller meaning for our lives.

As I said two weeks ago, this is the process of religion, as defined by Lloyd Averill: “Religion is the search for that meaning that has power to give shape to our experience, purpose to our existence, and motivation and moral energy to our human enterprises.” You will readily note that this does not require an institution, a set of laws, nor an inspired – or even not so inspired – leader. It asks us to pay attention to our experiences, our choices, our lives. It asks us to fulfill a major quality of evolved humanity: to attend to meaning making and the search for truth.

Of course, the ground work was laid for me far earlier when the minister of my high school years, the Right Rev. Arnold John Van Lummel, asserted that we students should not be expected to believe what did not make sense to us, given our life experience. With that statement, that righteous Dutch Reformed minister stated succinctly a basic tenet of Unitarian Universalism: our understanding of what is ultimate, of what is our source or our god, must make sense given our experience.

Now, it is true that any number of human beings can honestly assert that money or sex or power is ultimate for them; that these are their gods. Madonna happily asserts that she is a “material girl,” and Lewis Lapham has baldly stated that money is the American Civil Religion. We now see how our worship has corrupted our planet. Recent economic events certainly uphold this view. We do indeed worship lesser gods all the time. J.B. Robinson lists many lesser gods in his thought-provoking book, Your God Is Too Small! We know our gods, even if we don’t give them names. Our actions are our worship. And as we struggle together to make sense of what is ultimate for us, we need to examine and to share our thoughts. We need to become more conscious, more aware.

So I offer you my thinking, tempered in the forge of my experience. It seems only right to begin with one of the toughest concepts: G-d. (Some of you wanted to know why I left the “o” out of the term in the title of this sermon. I do that to acknowledge the Jewish understanding that even naming G-d is an act of blasphemy, limiting the ultimate in ways that limit our knowing of

G-d. More on this as we go along.)

I suppose there is some merit to returning to my conversation with our humanist, atheist, and non-believing friends. I do want first to say what I don’t think god is. I don’t think god is a judge, a king, a puppet- master pulling strings. I can’t use anthropocentric terms to describe what is ultimate in my experience. I also do not believe in all the “omnis” that traditional theologians assert for what is ultimate: omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresent, etc. Finally, I believe that all that we can know is natural, so god cannot be “super-natural.” This identifies me with natural theology as described by Charles Hartshorne.

Further, my ecstatic mystical experience as an eleven-year-old experiencing the first day of warm weather after a long, cold, northeast winter clearly formed my sense of what is ultimate. When first I left my house that morning, I could see and feel the motion of each molecule of each discreet entity: the trees, the flowers, the grass, the concrete under my feet: all vibrating, singing a song of life and dancing for joy. I was astonished, intoxicated, and forever changed. I have had similar experiences while singing, playing music, watching sunsets, and conversing deeply with those who stimulate my mind. For me, this was an experience of energy and of consciousness that helped me understand things I cannot find words to convey. It also gave me a sense of love for life that cannot be taken away.

As I continue to make sense of that and subsequent ecstatic experiences, I find that the thought of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne most influences the words I use to share those experiences. Hartshorne describes what I experience as Source this way: “Eternal-Temporal Consciousness, Knowing and including the World. Panentheism.” (Charles Hartshorne and William L. Reese. Philosophers Speak of God. University of Chicago Press, Midway, reprint. 1953. P. 17.) In other words, whatever is ultimate in our lives knows all that is and was and embraces the universe – and whatever might be beyond that is beyond our possible knowing. I agree with Hartshorne that this has a monistic element that moves in and through all I experience: energy/consciousness (Northhead’s element was time. In fact, I think that Whitehead got stuck on Einstein’s “arrow of time, missing out on the cyclical nature of experience.”). Hence, I call my understanding of what is ultimate “monistic panentheism”: energy/consciousness that moves in and through all that is, was, or will be.

Clearly, this is informed by contemporary physics, which recognizes that its grossest form is what we call matter. Through physics, we know matter is more open space and energy than solid. The table that I bruise my shin on in the dark is full of this energy/ consciousness, but not nearly so much as any biological form, which could be the next layer of a “pulsating onion” of Source. And, so far as I know, consciousness is stronger in the biological form. This understanding harkens to the “perennial philosophy” of the Vedic religions of India, which observes increasing levels of consciousness from the physical to the biological to the mental through several spiritual levels too esoteric to consider in our brief time this morning and beyond to “consciousness as such” which is very like the “collective consciousness” of C.G. Jung - only comprising everything.

It is my experience that these layers of what is ultimate do not increase or decrease in value according to consciousness. They are all interconnected and needing one another. In other words, they are all contingent upon each other. I describe the layers to make sense of discreet types of experience. Ultimately, as my experience as a pre-teen told me, they are all one. And the deepest experiences of energy/consciousness interchange I identify as Love, for they not only energize me, they also inform me, give me a better understanding of my self, my world, and my relationships within that context.

This energy/consciousness, as Source, is both impersonal, encompassing all that is, and totally personal in its presence within each of us – or, perhaps more aptly, our presence within it and its presence in our every cell and all our tissue. I believe it is eternal, preceding the Big Bang, in comprising and comprehending all time as we know it. I believe it can know - or be conscious of - all possibilities, but not all future actualities, because there are so many contributing possibilities in any one choice that no one can know until after the moment of decision. And each decision any of us makes contributes to the next set of possibilities – but I am getting ahead of myself. All of this is comprised in the totality of what is ultimate: what is, for me, creation or Source or G-d.

Alfred North Whitehead has called this ultimate experience “the divine lure toward greater intensity and harmony.” This is not so much A Being, as “being through time,” god as verb, as process. Therefore, it is easy to assert that I do not believe in the god, the being who directs traffic for those who are holy – or not. And I do not need belief. I have an experience of knowing that goes far beyond belief: mystical experience. I do not have to prove it. I do not have to defend it. I can rest in it and take comfort in it and try to share it with those who wish to experience and/or understand it.

Spiritual practice is intentional “paying attention” to our experience so that one is open to such experience, to Source, to

G-d. Prayer is one such practice, but there are as many practices as there are types of learning styles and human foci. As the Vedic scholars know, one may practice through physical activity, through attending to feelings of love, through, simply being fully present to the moment (Vipassana). One can practice in any way one can deepen one’s sense of preparedness for greater consciousness.

I do believe that the experience of Source ultimately is an experience of love, of creative energy interchange, which does not seek for one’s self, but knows that greater energy and consciousness for all is the best result of this exchange. As the apostle Paul asserts, in one of his mystical moments: “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. (I Corinthians 13: 4) This is the heart of Source. I strive – and mostly fail – to bring such love into the world, but I know in my deepest being, that this is Source truly experienced.

Of course, all of this is metaphor, signs that point toward something beyond words: some experience larger, more profound, and more demanding than we can convey through our language. It cannot and should not be reified, deified, nor ossified. Still, as one among many meaning makers, I feel inspired to share these thoughts with you.

How does this understanding of Source, of G-d, affect my day to day life? It brings me hope when I despair. It helps me to keep going when I run into road-blocks in my life. It energizes and lifts my spirits. It fulfills Averill’s definition of religion. I wish this for you, each and every one of you.

Since this is truly a series of conversations we will have while I am with you, let me not so much close as leave you with a parting thought to enrich your week ahead. It comes from Matins by Denise Levertov:

Marvelous Truth, confront us

at every turn,

in every guise, iron ball,

egg, dark horse, shadow,

cloud

of breath on the air.

dwell

in our crowded hearts

our steaming bathrooms, kitchens full of

things to be done, the

ordinary streets.

thrust close your smile

that we know you, terrible joy.

 

May you come to know intimately what brings you that joy, that sense of connection to all that is, was and will be; to know that it is within/beyond your very being, what is ultimate for you, what is your Source. So Be It! Blessed Be!