The World is My Cathedral

The World Is My Cathedral

April 2, 2006

The Rev. Penny Rather

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Laramie

The reading is from As You Like It by William Shakespeare. The Duke, having been exiled to the forest of Arden addresses his lords:

Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods

More free from peril than the envious court?

Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,

The seasons’ difference? – as the icy fang

And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,

Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,

Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say

‘This is no flattery: these are counselors

That feelingly persuade me what I am’ . . .

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head:

And this our life: exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

I would not change it.

Sermon:

One of the things I like to do when traveling is to visit other Unitarian Universalist congregations. It is a nice way to make connections with people around the country, and I enjoy experiencing the wide variety of worship within our movement.

So I was pleased to discover a UU Fellowship in Juneau, Alaska when we got off the ferry there a few years ago. Since we were going to be in Juneau over the weekend, I called the number listed in the phone book to see where and when services were held. But I was disappointed to find that they don’t meet over the summer, and had had their last service of the church year the week before.

I sort of forgot about it and we went about the next few days doing the usual Juneau tourist things – hiking, eating seafood, museums, hiking, laundry. We had a beautiful campsite right next to Mendenhall Lake with a view of Mendenhall Glacier, and when I came out of the camper and walked down to the shore on Sunday morning, my husband said, “It’s too bad you missed visiting the UU Fellowship here by just a week.” I looked around me at the glories of the landscape and said, “That’s okay. I don’t really need to go to church. The world is my cathedral.”

Have you ever heard someone say that they don’t belong to a church because they find religion in nature? That they would rather go for a hike on a Sunday morning than sit in church. Maybe you have even said something like that yourself. As a matter of fact, on this exquisite spring day, I imagine there are more than a few members of The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Laramie communing with nature instead of attending church. And I wouldn’t think of being critical of that choice.

But is it sincere to claim that a day in the mountains is a religious experience? Could it be that some adults who were required to go to church every Sunday as children maintain that a fishing trip or a ski weekend is a religious experience out of residual guilt? Sure, we all find relaxation and renewal in nature. But religion? . . . . . . . Why not? Not every experience in nature is religious – for that matter, not every experience in church is religious, either – but there is a good case for a religious experience of nature.

We know it intuitively when it happens to us. Our breath may falter or our pulse quicken, and we experience a oneness that is out of any particular time and place.

We recognize it when we read about it. Unitarian Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “The man, who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight, has been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the world.”¹ And in our reading this morning we heard what William Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It: “And this our life, exempt from public haunt finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything. I would not change it.” (2:3)

What is it then that makes an experience of nature more than just a pleasant and relaxing outing or the witness to the raw power of a terrifying storm? That lifts it to a spiritual or a religious experience?

Certainly nature and experiences in nature can be a spiritual part of any religion. Muslims are advised to pray outside whenever possible, that they might feel their connection with Allah’s creation. And listen to the words of one of my favorite Christian hymns:

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

When through the woods, and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees.
When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur
And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.

Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.

But both of these examples have nature playing a supporting role to a Creator God. I am intrigued by the idea of nature itself as the focus of religious commitment and concern. I think this is an idea held implicitly by many Unitarian Universalists. I am drawn to the explicit arguments for such a religious focus made by Donald Crosby, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Colorado State University. In his book A Religion of Nature Crosby argues “for recognition of nature as among the significant claimants for religious aspiration or devotion, alongside more familiar claimants such as God, the gods, Brahman, or [the] Tao.”²

So let me comment on three points of Crosby’s definition of nature.³

1. First, nature is the system of things and relations that gives rise to unique individuals and types of individuals, and sustains their existence.

This system we call nature is described by the natural sciences. It is also experienced by individuals. Crosby puts it this way:

We are interested, for example, not merely in physical, chemical or biological phenomena but in the presence in nature of conscious, purposive, questioning physicists, chemists, and biologists who identify and inquire into those phenomena. Our concern is not just with nature as the subject of scientific theorizing but also with nature as lived, as encountered in the concreteness and immediacy of everyday experience.⁴

This understanding is important to me as a Unitarian Universalist because it reflects our tradition’s regard for many sources in our religious search for truth and meaning. It means that, in addition to the scientist’s lived experience of nature, we are interested in the lived experience of the poet, the artist, the child, the stranger. Our neighbors across the street or around the world. Ourselves. All are part of nature. And that leads into Crosby’s second definition of nature.

2. Secondly, there is nothing beyond, outside, or behind nature, including human beings.

A division between human beings and nature is a false distinction. This is a point wisely pointed out to me by a member of this congregation when I spoke once about experiences in nature. Crosby puts it this way:

Nature includes us; we are not apart from it but a part of it. We are not disembodied spirits but fully embodied beings, one of earth’s biological species among an incredible number and variety of others. We are not outside of nature looking in but inside of nature looking around . . . ⁵

So even though in everyday usage we may use the designation “nature” to mean the outdoors, the plant and animal world, or the geographic features of earth, we need to keep in mind that human beings are part of nature.

This part of Crosby’s definition, of course, is also a profound statement about the power that some people call God. To many people the label “God” implies something that is beyond nature, or super-natural. But the religion of nature is a religion without reference to a God or Goddess, or “animating spirits of any kind, [or]any source of explanation beyond itself, [or] an externally imposed design or purpose for its being.”⁶

Now, some religious people – including some Christians, Jews, and Unitarian Universalists – understand God in a way that is fully consistent with Crosby’s definition of nature. And I respect and welcome their use of the language that has meaning for them. Even as a non-theist, I am moved by so-called “God language” used poetically, metaphorically. It’s why I can be moved to tears by music like the hymn I quoted earlier. But the third part of Crosby’s definition of nature explains why I choose not to use the word “God” as descriptive of my religious experience.

3. Nature itself lacks inherent purpose, sentience, or consciousness, but abounds with value, including religious value.

The “God” that many people speak of implies inherent intention or purpose. Personally, I can’t get beyond that understanding of God, and I don’t need to, to be a religious person. Religion deals with things and ideas of value, and I believe, like Crosby, that nature abounds with value. The word “worship” comes from the old English woerthscrippen, meaning to ascribe worth to something, to lift up something of value. When we worship we are making meaning.

Just because nature may inherently have no purpose, we can still identify things of value in it. Just because there may be no inherent purpose in the events of our lives, we can make meaning from them. Have you not heard from someone who survived a terrible accident or illness say that the experience helped them appreciate life and live it to the fullest? Or from someone whose experience of poverty or discrimination led them to service to the poor and the oppressed?

I reject any notion that tragedies happen for a reason, but embrace the idea that we can make of them a purpose. Likewise I reject any purpose behind the blessings we enjoy. None of us has earned life or love or for that matter most of our material blessings. They are gifts. From no particular giver. And meaning can flow from our gifts in the form of gratitude, generosity, compassion.

So if we now understand what is meant by “nature” in this context, let’s come back to my original question: What makes the experience of nature a religious experience? The answer will, of course turn on the definition of religion. And that is too big a task for this morning. So let me just give a few examples of how nature fulfills some of the commonly understood functions of religion.

One of the characteristics of most understandings of religion is that it is at least partially transcendent. It goes beyond our usual experience and points to a reality that is bigger than we are. It is expressed in the first source of the Living Tradition of Unitarian Universalism: “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life.” When an experience of nature is transcendent, it becomes a religious experience.

This is the kind of religious experience Isaac Newton referred to when he wrote,

I must confess to a feeling of profound humility in the presence of a universe which transcends us at almost every point. I feel like a child who while playing by the seashore has found a few bright colored shells and a few pebbles while the whole vast ocean of truth stretches out almost untouched and unruffled before my eager fingers.⁷

It is what I sometimes feel when I gaze at the stars or marvel at the tenacity of the tiniest alpine wildflowers. It is the Tao Teh Ching calls the transcendent “Mystery of mysteries [that] is the Door of all essence.”⁸ The reverence and awe and utter amazement that come from contemplating the grandeur or the subtlety of nature are religious feelings. The sense of gratitude for the unearned gifts of nature that transcend our ordinary expectations – the sublime sunrise, the humbling power of a hurricane, the intimate and profound moment of death – is a religious feeling. Our absolute dependence on natural events that are beyond our control, and that occur by chance rather than by design, is a religious feeling.

Another function that is routinely assigned to objects of religious devotion is the role as source, sustainer, and restorer of life. The theory of evolution is not anti-religious; indeed, with nature as the object of religious commitment, it is profoundly religious. An amazing variety and complexity of life has evolved naturally. Particular life-forms may disappear, but new ones emerge. Nature has amazing healing and restorative powers. These are the religiously functional aspects of nature.

What about the religious experience of nature? Surely that is life-sustaining and life-restoring. Listen to this prayer form the Ute tradition:

Earth teach me stillness

as the grasses are stilled with light.

Earth teach me suffering

as old stones suffer with memory.

Earth teach me humility

as blossoms are humble with beginning.

Earth teach me caring

as the mother who secures her young.

Earth teach me courage

as the tree which stands alone.

Earth teach me limitation

as the ant which crawls on the ground.

Earth teach me freedom

as the eagle which soars in the sky.

Earth teach me resignation

as the leaves which die in the fall.

Earth teach me regeneration

as the seed which rises in the spring.

Earth teach me to forget myself

as melted snow forgets its life.

Earth teach me to remember kindness

as dry fields weep with rain.

Imagine the religious and cultural revolution that could happen if we all learned these lessons from our experiences in nature.

And finally, the true measure of authentic religion is that it leads toward compassion. Can nature fulfill that function of religion? I believe it can. First of all in the results of the processes of nature. Again from Donald Crosby:

There is something in us that aspires toward goodness. This something . . . is a gift of nature or, to put the matter somewhat differently, a fundamental aspect of our own nature as an evolved species. We crave goodness in ourselves, in others, and in the world that surrounds us. We want to be better than we are, we want the world to be better than it is, and we want to find ways to work for our own and the world’s improvement. . . . We have instincts and impulses of sympathy and fellow feeling that drive us to identify with the needs of others and to actively seek their good.⁹

But if humans aspire toward goodness, why is there evil in the world? Part of the explanation lies in the complexity of the world that prevents us from seeing every cause of behavior and every ramification. Part lies in the various definitions of “goodness.” But ultimately, I suppose, it is a leap of faith to assert that humans are basically good, falling short sometimes – more brutally and more often that we would like – because their basic goodness is obscured. This is the Buddhist understanding of human nature. And the understanding of many Jews, Muslims, and Christians. It is the Unitarian Universalist principle that is reflected in our affirmation of the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

I choose this view of human nature over the one that I was taught as a child – that we are born depraved and must constantly struggle to overcome our sinful nature. I choose it because it provides the most hope for my life, the lives of those I love, and for the survival of the planet. I choose it also because it coincides with my experience. And the experience of nature, as well as its functioning, can lead to compassion. When you combine compassion born of our nature and our experience with two other of our characteristics as an evolved species – our rational brains and our functioning bodies – a religion of nature can lead us to act our out compassion.

When we see the abundance of nature and understand that hunger and starvation in the world can be eliminated, and we see that we can do something to help that happen, we can make a difference. When we return to a favorite vacation spot and see that the wildlife has changed – that there are no more California condors, or that bears have been frequenting urban areas as we invade their natural habitat – we realize that species are becoming extinct every day. And when we understand that we can do something to keep that from happening, we can make a difference. When we are saddened by the ugly scars of clear cut foresting or strip mining, and we realize that it is within the power of human beings to stop those practices, we can make a difference.

The hope for a better future and the call to action to achieve it are religious values. When an experience in nature awakens these values, it is a religious experience. May our religious experiences abound in the cathedral of the world.

May it be so.

¹ Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Emerson’s Essays. New York: Harper Colophon, 1951. 13.

² Crosby, Donald A., A Religion of Nature, Albany: SUNY Press, 2002. 117.

³ Crosby 21.

⁴ Crosby 53.

⁵ Crosby 53-54.

⁶ Crosby, Donald A. “The Relations of Transcendence and Immanence in a Religion of Nature.” Senior Regional Scholar Presentation. Rocky Mountain/Great Plains Region annual Meeting of AAR/SBL/ASOR. Boulder, CO, 4 April 2003.

⁷ Newton, Isaac.

⁸ Tao Teh Ching, 1.

⁹ Crosby 165-166.