It’s a good question, a kind of Zen focusing question. There are obviously many audiences. My adviser, for one, and the reading committee at the end of the process. Myself, I suppose– after all, part of what this dissertation process is all about is kind of summing up what I think I’ve learned in the last (gasp) 17 years since seminary, and almost 50 years of living. (Has it really been that long?)

Those answers are OK, but they’re hard to get motivated to write for. Most of my writing to this point has been fairly dry, the kind of careful and precise and fully documented writing that is often the stock in trade for academic writing. To be frank, it’s the kind of writing that I’m not sure I’d want to read.

So, my adviser’s question really hit close to the heart of my struggle. Who am I writing this for? Who is the intended audience? And, if there is an intended audience, how do I need to write those so that they can read it, so that they might want to read it?

Here’s what I think . . .

1. The audience I would love most to have for my writing (and music and preaching and as my companions on this journey) are people who are passionately concerned about growing spiritually close to the Center, to the Divine– passionate about finding as best they can the kind of experiential knowledge of the Divine that can reshape life and make the journey of living worthwhile, meaningful, even fun.

2. At the same time, they have a certain ambivalence about the Great Stories told by the meaning-making communities of our time. (These Great Stories can be explicitly religious in nature, but truthfully any community of people who have a narrative within which they define their understanding of their shared experiences tells a Great Story.) They are respectful of the Great Stories, but aren’t quite able to make any one of those Great Stories an ultimate source in their lives. They can see the power of the Great Stories to give shape to the lives of those who belong to them– the power for living that all of the Great Stories offer to their followers– but they aren’t quite able to give themselves completely to any one of the great Stories that are out there.

3. The reason for their ambivalence is that each of the Great Stories tell all the others that only one Great Story is True, and that all the rest are false. This characteristic is present not only in explicitly religious Great Stories, but also is political, economic, and social Great Stories. One of the universal human characteristics that gives shape to this reality is our human preference for “dualism,” or binary thinking. Things are either one thing or another; people are either friend or foe, familiar or strangers. There is Spiritual or Material, one or the other– this mode of thought expresses itself repeatedly in the cognitive structures by which we organize the world of our experience.  This fundamental and universal human cognitive pattern gives support to this exclusivist core belief at the heart of all the Great Stories and sets up an irresolvable conflict between people– irresolvable because ultimately, such a claim is unprovable except by faith, which is a subjective experience convincing to the one who holds it and not so convincing to one holding a differing viewpoint.

4. The audience I would love to find suspects that beneath all of the Great Stories that are being told within the various communities of meaning-making that compose our world today, there is an even Greater Story within which all of the other Great Stories have a place.

I believe that it is this suspicion (desire, yearning?) that has given rise to the recently expanding phenomenon of people who count themselves as ‘spiritual but not religious.’ Spiritual– yearning for, questing after the deep connection to the Ultimate that sets all of life’s experiences into a context. But, not religious– not quite willing to allow some single community’s Great Story to define (even judge) their own very personal set of experiences.

++++

I believe that we are at a critical nexus point in the history of Life on Earth. Not only human life, which has only been around for the smallest fragment of the several-billion year expanse of Life’s experiment on this planet– but I believe that what is at stake has to do with the survival of all of Life Itself on this planet.

I believe that this nexus point is the convergence of many different strands, so to speak– many different streams of events and experiences that are coming together in this unique moment of history. All of the important strands combining to create this critical  nexus wind their way through the unfolding of human history within Life on Earth. Of all the life-forms in the history of the expression of Life on Earth, only we have evolved to the point where we have the capability to act with sufficient power to affect the viability of Life on Earth. Throughout the billions of years that have come before us, only cosmically significant events– comet or large meteor strikes, for example– possessed such capability.

Now, that capability is within our hands. Among all the life-forms that have evolved on this planet, only we have as an innate characteristic of our being the desire and ability to use our tools and technology to reshape Nature as we find it, attempting to remake it into something that suits our own sense of our own needs and wants. While archeologists and anthropologists have named the various kinds of human that have appeared through the ages– Homo habilis, “tool-using human,” Homo erectus, “upright-walking human,” and Homo sapiens, “human who thinks”– I believe all the different kinds of human life fit within a larger classification– Homo technologicus, “technology-creating human.”

From our earliest days, taming fire so that we could make tools and cook food and have light in the dark night, to this present moment our kind of life-form has always striven to use our ability to create new technology (systems of tool making and tool usage) to change the natural world to suit ourselves. Among all the other forms of life that have ever been, we are alone in that ability. The various technologies we have created have been astounding– engineering marvels from thousands of years ago, artistic expressions that have survived for 30,000 years or more, social systems that organize people into various communities for support, production, commerce, and security. All of these technologies are part of the human pattern of life-within-Life-on-Earth. They have marked our progress and travels across this planet and throughout the time we have been here.

And they have led us to this point, where our exploitation and consumption of this planet’s resources threaten to bring down not only our own life-form, but the viability of the planet itself to support any kind of Life. Our engineering has been so ruthlessly effective that we can force the Earth to provide us what we want, even at the cost of the rich diversity of life-forms that have been part of the creative beauty of Life’s expression on Earth.

We engineer plants that will grow where we want them to grow, and choke out the plants that have grown naturally in all the varieties of environments on Earth. We engineer animals to provide food in just the way we want, and the great herds of these animals replace the naturally-developed kinds of animal life that lived within and supported the viability of their environments. Now, our food-producing animals cause damage to the environments where we grow them– if you doubt this, go visit a large scale pork or chicken farm and take a big, deep breath. Go downstream from them and try to find clean water.

Other engineering technologies that are bringing us to the edge of viability have to do with our energy usage technologies. Energy production and consumption is the core of the vast network of social and commercial technologies that bind our various societies to themselves and to other societies in the endeavor to survive and thrive. And, it is the havoc created by these production and consumption technologies that is at the core of the instability in our political and commercial systems, social technologies that lead to or prevent deadly conflicts between peoples depending upon their health and effectiveness.

As we have seen in our recent economic trouble, all of our technologies– engineering, social, commercial– are linked together. Instability or failure in one leads to instability and failure in others. Throughout the network of the technologies that, woven together, create the fabric of our various societies and of our world culture as a whole, instabilities and collapses of one or another of the technologies we use to support and extend human life does and will continue to lead to conflicts between humans and between humanity and the natural world that could ultimately lead to an end of viability for Life on Earth.

It is indisputable that this power lies within our hands. Homo technologicus has evolved to the point of godlike power on and within the systems of Life on Earth. And, all of our Great Stories warn of what happens when human beings seek to usurp the power and position that belongs only to the Divine.

++++

To this point in history, evolutionary development has been driven by biological factors and their interaction with the natural world. One kind of biological change or another advantaged a life-form in one way or disadvantaged a life-form in another. One life-form advanced, another became obsolete, irrelevant, and perhaps even extinct. This has been the inexorable biological process of Life on Earth– of all the life-forms that have come into being since Life first began to express itself, only 1 in 1,000 have survived to our present day– 1/10th of 1 percent.

But now, something new presents itself to us as members of Homo technologicus. We can take a next step in our continued evolution as a life-form, that step driven not by biological imperative but by volition, by our own choices. Homo technologicus, having come to the natural result of the pursuit of the craving to dominate and reshape the natural world to suit itself, has the opportunity to make a different choice that will lead to a different way of Being in this world.

Homo technologicus, “technology-creating human,” can choose to become Homo spiritus, “spiritually-focused human.”

The work I am doing is work that I believe outlines what that transitional choice might look like. I am working on what I call a “pedagogy for a new spiritual work,” a way of teaching spirituality that can increase our potential to have experience of and focus ourselves on the Divine One who is behind, beneath, and beyond the reality of our senses.

This pedagogy will expand our awareness of and ability to use what I identify as our “spiritual sense,” a sense-faculty that is as much a part of our physical nature as our other more physically-oriented sense faculties such as sight and hearing. This spiritual sense faculty is activated and enhanced by practices that integrate the intellectual, emotional, and physical aspects of our human being. I have identified some of those integrative practices, and have been using them in my own spiritual formation work with others.

And while these practices have been, for the most part, found in every expression of human spiritual practice throughout history, they have been practices that have been more and more pushed aside as homo technologicus has blossomed into fullest majesty during the last several centuries of truly astounding advances in human technological accomplishment.

The explosion of technological capability without adequate acknowledgment of and grounding in the spiritual reality from which the world we inhabit arises (and within which the world we inhabit exists) has been the fundamental cause of our current condition of threat and danger. There is no further that homo technologicus can go– as our spiritual traditions teach us, left to our own ingenuity we can only fail. Our selfish desires can only lead us to suffering; our sinful selves will always choose selfish action over the generosity and lovingkindess of the Divine seeking to express itself through our own lives.

As our spiritual traditions teach us, only by turning and focusing on the Divine One, ultimately Transcendent and wholly Other than our own experiences of reality and at the same time fully Immanent, present to every moment of our awareness and experience, can we find the strength and wisdom needed to become Homo spiritus.

I know this is a long post, but after a month of struggle to gain clarity on the arc of thew writing I want to do, this is where have arrived. There is still much work to do, and much for me to learn about how all of these ideas come together and, more importantly, how to communicate such ideas in a way that embody and invite this next step forward.

I hope you, and others like you, will be excited by this journey– turned on by its possibilities– and I hope that as we journey together we discover what is as yet unimaginable, an even deeper sense of spirit and connection and joy.

Blessings!

Allen

One of my goals for this month was to create four prayer songs for use in my spiritual formation work. This is the fourth song, a Taize song called Veni Sancte Spiritus, or Holy Spirit Come to Us.

I hope you’ll allow this to be an experience of prayerful listening for yourself. The song itself is an invitation to the Spirit to come and be with us– but in truth, by singing or participating in a song like this we are not inviting the Spirit to come (the spirit is always with us). Rather, we are deepening our own awareness, slowing down our own hurried existence, so that we can sense the ever-present One who is with us.

This is a longer song, about 8 minutes. Give yourself a work break, or a busy-ness break, and practice awareness of the One who is with you– than, let that awareness change the quality of your work, your busy-ness, and perhaps even help you to be at work or in the working out of your life in a way that feels sacred and at peace.

Blessings!

Allen

“Well,” they always continue. “did you get everything done?”

Ahhh.

It’s hard to say, really. Of course, I have one more week to go, and more will get “done” in that week. I have two chapters pretty much roughed in, and hope to get two more roughed in before the end of the week. That would complete the theoretical section of my paper– the background for this “new spiritual work,” as I am calling it.

But “roughed in” is pretty far form “ready to go.” And I anticipate at least three more chapters beyond the four I hope to have “roughed in” by the end of the week. Those chapters are the more practical chapters– methods for planning how to engage people in this “new spiritual work,” and then reporting on events I have led that were all about helping people find this “new spiritual work” and how they seemed to respond to it.

So, I got a lot done– chapters roughed in, three songs composed and produced– but . . .

The other night Lori and I were having dinner. That’s something that really only happens about once a week when I’m in my full schedule. She travels, most of my work with parishioners is in the evening, so if we get dinner together once a week it’s a big deal. during the past week or so that I’ve been home, we’ve eaten together nearly every night. Quite a treat.

Anyway, she looks up from dinner and remarks on how relaxed I seem, how little I have complained lately of feeling fatigued, run down, “tired.”

Now, how do I count that on the “done” scale?

I’ve spent time in the library, chasing down some articles in journals from 20 or more years ago. I’ve read several books, taken a few naps, watched some movies (with Lori and by myself– even went to the movie theater one afternoon in Myrtle Beach).

How do I count that on the “done” scale?

During seminary, one student was remarking on the church where he was doing his student ministry. “They have a sign on my door there–’Pastor’s Office.’ What a terrible thing to call it.”

I was puzzled. Why was ‘office’ so bad and what, I wondered, would be a better name?

Office, he explained, was part of the same word family that gives us “official,” both in the sense of an approved action or in the sense of a person who has the authority to grant or withhold approval. Office is where executives “work,” he said.

And, I said . . .

And, he said, that’s not what pastors are. They aren’t executives with authority to grant or deny approval, with a place of “work.” Pastors are spiritual leaders, students, practitioners, learners in a spiritual pathway that they share with others. Pastor’s don’t need an “office,” he said. They need a “study.”

I’ve mulled over the consequences of that conversation for the more than 20 years I’ve been a pastor. I don’ think I agree or disagree entirely with his contention–how’s that for taking a strong stand! By Discipline, the organizing document for the United Methodist church, we as appointed pastors are in fact designated “pastor-in-charge,” meaning both pastor appointed to a charge AND the one responsible for the conduct of ministry within the bounds of that charge. There is an element of official, or executive, implied in that title.

But that notion has never been entirely satisfying. I’ve wondered about that idea, about how I might embody that notion of ministry, or whether I ought to embody some other notion of ministry. I’ve listened to a lot of pastors through the years describe how they thought about what they did– in fact, the coolest pastoral introduction I ever heard was when, in a group of pastors, someone introduced himself with the words from one of Paul’s letters, as “a steward of the mysteries of God.” I get that– the work of being pastor is ultimately about being a steward of whatever it is God has given you to share with others.

Some pastors have been given the role and bearing of “authority,” to grant or withhold approval, to organize the “work” of the church. But more than that, since most lay people’s practical experience with getting things done comes from the workaday world, the role most often and most easily offered to us as pastors is that of a kind of “boss,” someone with something like executive authority in the church, someone asked to arbitrate disputes and lead decision processes and encourage and organize the “workforce” of church members toward getting something “done.”

Or, the church sometimes makes it clear that there is no role for the pastor in any of the official business of the church. Just preach on Sunday, show up for dinners and events, and don’t get in our way as we do or don’t do whatever it is we do or don’t do. I’ve pastored in both settings– both the “tell us what to do” setting and the “don’t dare tell us what to do” setting.

Neither one works well.

So, even though I had a strong idea about how I’d like to spend this renewal leave in terms of ‘things” to “do,” this has also been a great time at something like a halfway point in my life and career to think and pray and meditate about “how” I want to “do” whatever it is that is coming next for me.

What would it be like, I wonder, to have a study and not an office. To be a steward, and not an official. How would my ministry be different as a “steward of the mysteries of God,” one who tried to use and share what God has given me with those to whom God has given me?

And, how could I keep that thought in the front of my mind in the days after my renewal leave is done?

Lots of questions, not so many answers yet– but then again, as a steward perhaps it’s not my place to have the answers. Questions might help keep me in a better place, spiritually speaking.

Blessings to all of you on this wodnerful sunny and snowy Sunday.

Allen

Good afternoon, all! (At least, it’s after noon here. I don’t know what time it is where you are.)

Click on the arrow above, and you’ll hear my new prayer song, “Be Free.” The words came to me as I was meditating on John 20, where Jesus appears to his disciples on Easter, later in the evening. It is John’s commissioning passage– the place where John’s gospel records Jesus’ “sending forth” message.

In John, Jesus does and says some unique things. He gives the Holy Spirit there on Easter, compared with the story of Luke and Acts where the spirit comes some 50 days after Easter. In John, Jesus lets his followers know that he has put them on his level, to do the work he has done– “Just as the Father sent me, now I am sending you.” (earlier in the gospel, John records Jesus telling his followers that they will do the same works he has done–”even greater works,” he says.)

And then, John remembers Jesus sending his followers forth to give forgiveness. The word used here for forgiveness is a word that also signifies to “release” or to “set free.” Forgiveness, as Jesus implies, involves releasing someone from their sin– setting them free.

When I post a prayer song, I give a suggestion for the prayer experience. For this song, it is a simple suggestion. As you listen, see if a person or situation that waits for you to set it free or release it presents itself to you in your spiritual center. All of us carry grudges– sometimes, they are small and even kind of fun to nurture and hang on to. Other times, they get in our way, trapping us in a negative emotion or cycling us through hurtful thoughts or even actions over and over again.

You have the authority to set that person or situation free– to release it, to send it on its way, to let it go. Maybe that would be a good prayer exercise for this song– to practice letting go, setting free– and releasing some person or thing, finding you are actually setting yourself free most of all.

***

Writing is going well– I have two chapters roughed in, and a list of research to do in order to finish them off properly. Two down, two to go to have four done by the end of my renewal leave.

I am feeling renewed, relaxed, refreshed. Lori even notices– the other night, she remarked that I seemed a lot less tense, more rested and present.

So, good for me. And her. And, I guess, everyone else.

Blessings!

Allen

I’m sipping coffee this morning, sitting in front of my computer and thinking about the last two weeks and the upcoming two weeks. I truly enjoyed some time away, even though I got homesick for Lori and all my friends. I was able to focus on my work in an important way, and I was able to do that work AND find time for some renewing pursuits.

Now, two more weeks, but here at home in a familiar place. The plan?

• Take the four chapters of outline I have created (35 pages) and begin to flesh them in.
• Do two more songs– a Taize song, and one of my own
• Lead two Joy-Us-Spirit workshops as part of my continuing practice of what I am learning how to do. These workshops will be the District Schools of Christian Mission for two of our district UMW’s (Louisville, Columbia) and will be somewhat condensed and different versions of the workshop I gave this past summer.

I feel ready to work on all of this, and to find renewal in this kind of immersive creative experience. It’s a real blessing to be able to be “selfish” in this work, to be focused on doing this work without feeling the urgency to stop and do other things. Of course, this isn’t “normal” life– normal life is engagement with all sorts of different things all at once. But this is a fun change of pace.

Now, about yesterday, briefly . . .

Lori and I went to St. Michael the Archangel Orthodox Church in Lousivlle, Ky, for morning worship. We discovered this church when we lived in Louisville. They have an annual fall festival– actually, it ought to be called a “feast-ival,” since the primary feature is food. The congregation has people from all over the world– immigrants newly here from every inhabited continent as well as people with heritage from all over the world but whose families have been here for some time. So, the food is a real world smorgasbord . . .

Although, come to think of it, I don’t think there were any Nordic people there.

Anyway, from time to time Lori try to experience worship with that congregation. It is a truly different worship experience– holy and sacred and strange and in a very ancient and beautiful way, authentically Christian. As we entered the sanctuary yesterday, the lights were dimmed and three cantors in robes were chanting hymns, psalms, and prayers. The music was very medieval, very modal, very different from what I would expect in even our traditional worship service at Memorial. There were candles lit in front of the many, many beautiful icons that line the walls of the sanctuary. The chancel has as its most noticeable feature the iconostasis– a golden wall, with numerous panels displaying icons of saints or of famous scene s from the life of Christ. Behind the iconostasis is the altar, and it is from that altar position that the priests conduct most of the service. The sanctuary itself is dominated by a dome directly in the center of the space. Within the dome are layers of iconic paintings– the lowest circle of figures are the apostles (with Paul, without Judas Iscariot). The next circular layer are paintings of Old Testament figures– patriarchs and prophets. The dome itself is filled with an icon of Jesus, surrounded by an ancient verse of scripture reminding us that the Lord looks down upon all the works of people all of the time, and hears our prayers.

Suddenly, while the cantors were chanting, the lights came up and bells began to ring. The words of the chant changed to praises for the resurrection, and Holy Worship had begun. Now, the liturgy moved in a rhythm, from the priests at the altar behind the iconostasis to the choir, behind and above us, answering the invitations of the priests to praise and pray in chanted choral music. Back and forth the movement of the service went, the choir answering the call for the people to respond.

Several times, one of the priests “censed” the altar area, and the chancel, and the congregation. Incencse is the Biblical symbol for the prayers of the saints, rising perpetually before God. The sanctuary had become, symbolically or even iconically, an outpost of the heavenly realms, filled with the fragrance of the prayers of the saints rising before God.

After the homily (a short sermon) there was a procession of all the attendants at the altar and the priests. The priests carried the elements that would be used for Eucharist, and as they followed in the procession (there were about a dozen altar attendants, carrying various symbolic elements denoting the royalty of Christ and the light of God) people would kneel along the pathway of the procession. The priests would stop and touch the heads of the kneeling worshippers with the large cup holding the Eucharistic elements, the worshippers offering their reverence to the presence of Christ and the priest offering the blessing of that presence in a very physical way.

As the procession moved down the center aisle, it stopped with the priests directly under the dome, under the gaze of Jesus looking down from heaven. There, the priest offered the morning prayers, remembering by name all of the congregation’s sick and homebound and troubled as they had been provided to him, and then more general prayers for the congregation, the nation, and the world.

Two thoughts–

1. The congregation was full of young families– loads and loads of children, babies, moms and dads with one child and the mother “with child” again. Now, the complex of buildings for this church does not include a gym. The “youth room” was a simple classroom, with folding chairs and a lectern– nice, but not a “fun” place. There were pews of families– three or four generations sitting shoulder to shoulder, all of them managing the children and sharing in the experience of worship together. and, unlike our Protestant expectation that the worship experience needs to be easily accessible to all, very few people seemed to share in the performance of the liturgy. We all stood together at the right times, kneeled together at the right times, and when the creed was said (the longer and more elaborate Nicene Creed, not the shorter and simpler Apostles’ creed) everyone did seem to chime in on that one. The congregation was noisy, as you would expect for a congregation with more thasn a dozen babies and several dozen toddlers under pre-school age– and a service that went longer than 90 minutes. No children’s moment, and perhaps no nursery since so many parents were there with their babies. Something about this congregation’s worship life included everyone in it and bonded them together in a way unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in a Protestant worship environment.

2. Before worship, Lori and I found a memorial icon in a lobby. It was an icon of St. Michael the Archangel and St. George (of dragon fame). I noticed that each of the figures in the ocon were holding a building in their hands, and as we walked around outside it became clear to me what they were holding, St. Michael the archangel was holding the main building, the sanctuary building. Appropriate, since Michael is trhe patron saint of the church. St. George was holding another building– the chapel, a separate building on the campus. On the front of the chapel is a plaque that tells you the name of the chapel is the Saint George Chapel.

We returned to the icon, and I saw it clearly– an image of the church being held in protective care by its patron saints, a symbol of the Holy Presence with this church and its work. I looked to the foot of the icon. It had been donated as a memorial by a family in honor of two of its sons– sons named George and Michael. The life of the congregation, the faith, and the families within it, all woven together into one piece, symbolized by an icon.

Blessings!

Allen

So today, I’ve rearranged my workspace, putting my studio and writing space together. I’m all set now to spend the rest of February writing and making prayer songs like the two I’ve already posted to this website.

To recap– I’ve outlined four chapters of my dissertation and created two new prayer songs. Chapters 5 and 6 of the dissertation will be a reporting out on work I’ve already done. I have about 60 rough pages written for those chapters already– reports kept from prayer workshops, the School of Christian Mission, and the retreat for the college students at Union College.

So, the plan for between now and March 1 is to begin to write the four chapters I have outlined. Those four chapters are the “theory” section of my dissertation. I have a good outline– but now is the hard part. I have a lot to try and write about in such a way as to sound coherent, concise, and compelling. I look forward to the challenge– but I expect this will be a hard couple of weeks ahead.

A “renewal” note– Lori and I will be attending a Greek Orthodox service tomorrow. It’s one of our favorite “vacation” things to do. It’s such a different experience than what we usually do– such an ancient kind of service, mysterious and sensual and holy all at once. So tomorrow, we will hear prayers spoken and sung in Greek, smell incense offered as an aid to prayer, stand and sit and kneel and feel our worship in our whole being.

More later!

Blessings!

Allen

Some things I’ve learned form shelling this week:

1. You can only find what the ocean gives. There have been days when I wanted shells of a certain style or color, for example. There are days when I found a number of shells that I thought I’d like to have– but they were broken or marred in some way that made them less desirable to me. But through the week, I learned to take what I find– you can only find what the ocean gives.

2. You never really know what you’re looking for until you find it. again, I spent time early on looking for certain kinds of shells– shells of a particular size or color or shape, for example. But then, I would discover a whole different kind of shell– one I had not expected to find, one that just captured my eye. You never really know what you are looking for until you find it.

3. You can’t really look for shells until you learn how to see them. Today– my last day here at the beach– I began to find a shell I had not seen all week. Each day, in fact, I saw a few more kinds of shells than I saw the day before– saw a few more colors or shapes or textures than I had seen the day before. Now, I don’t believe that those kinds of shells– perhaps even those very shells– weren’t there before. I think that it is more likely that I simply hadn’t known how to see them before–I’d been too busy, my eye wasn’t relaxed enough or focused enough (or both) to see those shapes or textures– perhaps my mind was not open enough to notice them. You can’t really look for things until you learn how to see them.

I’m sure there are other lessons about shelling I have learned– but perhaps this is enough for now, enough to share with you a little part of the spiritual practice I have enjoyed during the last week or so here.

I don’t think I’ll be posting tomorrow– I expect it will be a travel day. See you soon!

Blessings!

Allen

PS– scroll down and see some pictures of my shells.

More shells

Some of my shells from the week

Wilson’s book is a reasoned examination of all that is being talked about these days in relation to climate change, global warming, and the future of life on Earth. He begins his book by writing a letter to Henry David Thoreau, thinking aloud on such topics with Thoreau’s “ghost” while wandering around Walden Pond.

Wilson is no extremist– which makes him both palatable and powerful for me to read. He is, it appears, a materialist– meaning that he expresses no belief or faith in anything beyond Nature observed and experienced by human beings. Even so, he recognizes that the spiritual traditions of human beings are important, and could open the door for human beings to have a deeper and meaningful experience of nature if they would let those spiritual traditions guide them.

All that said, Wilson’s point is simple and direct. Whatever else might be able to be said about cyclical planetary cycles of cooling and warming, the ebb and flow of life in all it’s diversity as reflected in literally billions of years of fossil evidence, the operative truth of our time is simple and important:

Human Beings are affecting the quality of life by their collective choices and behaviors in this present moment for the entire planet, and, if the current pattern is unchecked, threaten the viability of the future of life on this planet. His evidentiary trail leads from the close-in and particular to the planetary. His arguments are based upon a lifetime of rigorous scientific examination and practice. And, he is above all a pragmatist.

I read his book, and some others in this vein, because the opening section of my paper on spirituality considers what it means to be human in the midst of all that is around us. Disclaimer–I do not see a conflict between scientific understandings and faith in God, so I am comfortable using science’s numbers and observations in my reasoning and thinking. Others are not, and that’s fine with me.Hopefully we will always grant grace to one another to do the best we can by the light we have.

. . . For perhaps 15 billion years, the universe in which we sit has existed. What was before this universe is a matter of some speculation, and truthfully is beyond our ability to know. Like the story of the little Native American girl being quizzed by the missionary about her view of the universe, she told what she had been taught by her ancestors– that the world sits on the back of a great Turtle.

“And what is beneath that turtle?” asked the missionary.

The little girl smiled. “It’s just turtles all the way down.”

Whatever was before all that we now know is for me in the category of “turtles all the way down.” What we know is that sometime after the 13-15 billion year beginning time of the universe and somewhere around 4 billion years ago, the planet Earth came into being as part of a system of planets and other objects rotating around the Sun.

Perhaps as long as 2 billion years ago, life came into being on planet Earth in the form of simple single celled organisms. More than a billion years passed as those simple forms of life became more and more complex, evolving all sorts of inner and outer structures to make their life process more and more efficient. At some point, life moved from the oceans to the land, as plants and vegetation, then as simple animals with exoskeletons. Hundreds of millions of years passed, cycles of climate change and planetary disasters thinning out living beings and then allowing Life to flourish again and again in new and creative manifestations.

Somewhere around 4 million years ago, the earliest recognizable cousin to human beings, australopithecus afrarensis, or Lucy as the best surviving fossilized skeleton came to be known, walked on two feet in the savannas of what is now Africa. Several more millions of years passed before the first hominid recognizable enough as our ancestor came to be. The first animal to be classified in the genus Homo, Homo habilis, tool-making man or “Handy Man,” lived and made tools in what is now known as Africa.

For another half million years or so, earliest humans slowly migrated and changed, covering Africa, the Middle East and China, and even into Southern Europe. Known now as Homo erectus, “Upright man,” this early ancestor made more and more sophisticated tools and lived in small bands of hunter/gatherers. This kind of human being was the one whose remains are found during a period of time from 1.5 million years ago to only about 200,000 years ago.

It is at about 200,000 years ago that the remains of nearly modern humans begin to appear. These were the “cave men,” the Neanderthals, the Cro Magnons. The record they leave behind begins now to include not only tools used for surviving in a harsh world, but also evidence that they could make and control fire and that they understood the world they lived in to be made up of the natural and the supernatural. Artwork, burial decorations, even cultic remains dating to between 200,000 and 60,000 years ago point to the growing sense of mind and spirit among these ancient ancestors of ours.

Somewhere around 60,000 years ago, modern human beings emerge as the dominant kind of human being. Over a period of 50,000 years, the period known as the Upper Paleolithic Era, language developed; the basic arts and crafts that humans practice even to this day– painting, sculpture, music, textile working– were in place. The major ethnic groups that have homelands were in those homelands by about 10,000 BCE, or about 12,000 years ago.

By 8,000 BCE, humans had begun to live in settled communities, leaving behind the hunter/gatherer life. These settlements were the places where agriculture and architecture began to be used by humans. 5,000 years ago or so, the first of the great civilizations in Sumer, Ur, and even Egypt were emerging. There is written language from these periods of time, some of which we have been able to decipher.Their lives were consumed by many of the things which consumer our own– administration of business and commerce, the inventory of good, the laws that regulate society, even some ritualized love poems and letters from the front by soldiers have all been found and read.

All of this is to say– we are here and now a part of life on Earth that has been growing and adapting and changing and developing for perhaps 2 billion years. For millions of years, our kind has lived within the cycles of the planet’s life, adapting to ice ages and warming periods, learning how to harvest the food and energy we need to survive in every environment we have discovered to be liveable.

But now, within the last hundred years or so, George Carlin’s famous rant aside, it is within our ability to destroy this fragile thing we call life by our own choices and behaviors.

It is indisputable that human activity is having an impact on what may or may not be manifestations of the natural cycle of climate change and geophysical changes on our planet. It is indisputable that our refusal to change those behaviors will exacerbate the effect of those cyclical events– and it is even more than likely that some events which are or will occur will be unique to the history of the earth–they will be entirely attributable to human activity.

We are, as a species, at a unique moment in the history of the life of any species ever to have lived on Earth. Our ability to use technology in ways that can devastate life has evolved more rapidly than our sense of connection to and responsibility for that very life which we share with all other living things.

This is the conviction underneath my work in my doctoral program. We simply need to find a new way to do our spiritual work that can move us past the battles of kith and clan and help us sense deeply within our being our connection to God, to the Life God has made on Earth, and our responsibility as part of that Life to be the stewards of it which we have been made uniquely capable of being.