Last preached on September 1, 2013
We human beings are pretty incredible,
when you think about it.
Universally, I mean.
If you think about the universe,
and then consider our place in it,
we are actually quite amazing.
There is a Disciples of Christ minister whose work I love.
His name is Rev. Michael Dowd.
For the last ten years or more he and his wife Connie
have been traveling the United States
preaching a Gospel of Evolution.
When I met them 8 years ago
they were traveling from town to town,
going to schools and churches,
quite a few of them Unitarian Universalist,
teaching a new way to understand Evolution…
not as just a Scientific Theory,
but also as a Sacred Story,
as a Creation Myth to rival that
which is in the Hebrew book of Genesis.
Some of you have seen a version
of that kind of sacred story,
in the “We Are All Stardust” ritual
that Rev. Jan has made a part
of the life of our church for so many years.
Imagine that as the basis for an entire theology
arising from the scientific understanding
of the beginnings of the universe,
and you touch on the life work of Rev. Michael and Connie.
When they pulled into the parking lot
of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
of Galveston County, Texas,
where I was serving as the student minister,
I was struck by the decoration on the side of their van…
it was of a Christian Fish and an Evolution Fish kissing,
with cute little hearts floating up into the heavens.
Starting later this spring, I will be offering
an Adult Spiritual Growth Class
where we explore the theological work of Michael and Connie,
called Journey into the Great Story,
and if you are interested I would love it if you would join us.
One of the parts of his theological work
that I have been most moved by
has been his evolutionary understanding
of the place and importance of humanity
amidst all of the cosmos.
One of the problems my conservative Christian friends have
with accepting the truth of evolution
or scientific understandings of the beginning of the universe
is that it seems to them to reduce humanity
to being rather unimportant.
I admit, I’ve had that feeling more than a few times.
When I think of all of the stars,
and the universe, and the planets…
when I try to wrap my brain around all of the images
that have been collected
by the Hubble Space Telescope and others…
And to know that even what we have been able to see
is only a part of all that is…
it has had the tendency to make me feel small,
inconsequential even.
My conservative Christian friends have shared with me that,
besides evolution and the big bang not being in the bible,
they are disturbed by how they perceive
the theory of evolution and of how the universe came to be
seems to make humanity unimportant…
less than an afterthought,
living on a small, inconsequential Blue Green planet,
on the remote end of a backwoods planet
in the western spiral arm of a minor galaxy,
to paraphrase Douglas Adams.
For someone who has been raised in a theology
that the earth was created just for us,
where we are the center of the attention
of the greatest power in the universe,
and therefore we, humanity, are of the utmost importance…
than it is understandable how threatening evolution
and a scientific understanding of the creation
of the universe can seem.
It is less about whether or not the Bible is true,
and more about whether or not humanity
is important in the grand scheme of things.
That is what I love about this one part
of the Great Story theology
that Rev. Dowd and his wife Connie have developed…
because they see in humanity
not an inconsequential nothingness
in the western spiral arm of a minor galaxy…
but rather the pinnacle for which all of this creation,
all of these stars and planets,
atoms and cells, nebulae and clouds…
they see humanity as the pinnacle and purpose
of all of this immensity in the universe.
That’s a big statement, right?
All of the universe exists to produce humanity,
or something like humanity.
I dare say that’s even more egotistical
than the idea that God created the heavens and the earth
to be a garden for humanity.
Humanity, or something like it,
is the forefront of the next major development in the Universe.
That is… if we can keep from destroying ourselves.
Michael Dowd frames the place of humanity
in the universe this way.
We humans, each and every one of us sitting here.
We are part of the universe.
We, our bodies and our minds,
we are made up of the stuff of stars…
the origin of every atom in our bodies
was in the heart of a star.
Our existence is as deeply rooted in the natural processes
of this universe as is every nebulae, every star, every galaxy,
every plant, every animal, every element.
We are not separate from this universe that surrounds us,
we are an integral part of and product of that universe.
When we speak of the Universe,
we have to include ourselves in it.
The Universe is as much in here as it is out there.
Are you still with me?
Now, there is a way that we, humanity,
we are a new and unique development within the universe.
Well, as far as we know we are a new and unique development…
I still have my laptop set to scan radio signals from space
hoping to be wrong about the unique part.
But we are at least a representative
of a new development in the Universe.
We, I, you, all of us… we are the universe waking up.
We are the universe becoming self-aware.
We are the part of the universe
that can look upon other parts of the universal whole in awe,
and wonder, and can explore that universal whole
in a detail never understood before.
Stop and think about that with me for a minute.
Feel about that with me for a minute.
Say to yourself, “I am the Universe becoming Self-Aware”.
I mean really say it with me …
“I am the Universe becoming Self Aware”.
Let’s try it again… “I am the Universe becoming Self-Aware”.
A bit awe-inspiring, isn’t it?
Far from being humbled by the immensity of it
and my own little physical location in it,
when we feel our connection to all that there is,
our connection to the interdependent web of all existence
of which we are a part,
and when we see that we, humanity,
are the part of this immense universe
that can perceive that it is immense.
That we are the part of this beautiful universe
that can perceive that it is beautiful.
That we are the part of this intricate universe that can study,
and learn, and develop, and create
even more new and intricate stuff…
Well, it is hard to feel inconsequential after that realization, isn’t it.
Try saying it to yourself sometime,
when you are feeling small and unimportant…
“I am the Universe becoming Self-Aware”.
See if you don’t start to feel a little better
about your place amidst it all…
and if you do not then feel a bit inspired
to do something with that Universal Self-Awareness.
What I believe that Universal Self-Awareness
most often calls us to do is to explore and create.
Our theme for the month of September is Creativity…
but before I moved into our theme directly
I wanted to share where I think
our creativity as human beings comes from…
I think it comes from our new and unique place in the universe.
I think it arises as a natural growth
from our being the part of the universe that grew into the ability
to look up at the stars and see something that was inspiring.
Something to sing to. Something to tell stories about.
Something to paint. Something to worship.
I have never met any human being who was not creative.
I have met a lot of people who believed they were not creative…
but not a single one of them was right about that.
We are not the only creatures who are creative… that is true.
Anyone who has ever watched a group of squirrels
trying to get into a birdfeeder knows
that humanity does not have a monopoly
on the conscious act of creativity in the universe.
No, what I think makes human creativity different
is that it arises from within our unique state
that we are both individually self-aware,
and universally self-aware.
We humans, we are not the only creatures
that are individually self-aware.
The tabby-cat who lives with Sandy and I,
Athena Warrior Princess,
she is individually self-aware.
She knows who she is,
and has in fact a very strong opinion
about how wonderful she is.
She has trouble understanding why Sandy and I
do not spend every moment of our time
luxuriating in how wonderful she is.
Yet, her understanding of or interest in
anything involving the rest of the universe
is limited to how it may intrude
upon her luxuriating in her wonderfulness.
So while she may be quite creative at times,
usually in her many strategies to refocus
my and Sandy’s attention upon the wonderfulness
that is Athena Warrior Princess,
and away from anything that might be distracting us
from our obvious purpose of petting and feeding her…
no matter how creative she may indeed be,
that creativity is limited to the sphere immediately around her.
The human development that has led to
an explosion of our creative impulse
has been our developing the Universal Self-Awareness
that Rev. Michael Dowd names for us.
It has been our developing the ability
to look beyond our immediate personal sphere,
and into the vastness of our wider universal self
in awe and wonder.
Like the universe, our spheres of creativity
expand outward from us.
In the closest spheres, our creativity might begin
with the stories we tell ourselves.
We do like to tell ourselves stories,
sometimes quite amazing and complex stories.
I’m not knocking that!
I love to tell stories, and some of the best ones I have
are the ones I tell myself!
We humans can be endlessly creative within our own minds.
I have invented whole universes within my own mind,
for good and for ill.
We are also creative in the relationships
that we build among each other.
I sometimes wonder if those who try to enforce
a single set of relationship values and ideals
are really just afraid of the endlessness of human creativity.
Among each other we create relationships, stories,
ways to make each other laugh…
and we also create injustices,
hurt feelings, and painful memories…
sometimes without meaning to, but sometimes with hurtful intent.
You see, human creativity is neither good nor bad… it simply is.
What we create, through our self-awareness
and universal awareness,
can be positive for the overall whole of the universe
or it can have a negative impact
on the overall whole of the universe.
One person might view something we create as good,
while another might view it as bad, or evil.
Something created with intentions towards the good
might be used for the bad or the evil,
either intentionally or unintentionally.
Because, our creativity does not end with the stories
we tell one another or the relationships we form.
We humans have the ability to create symbols
for the universe within and without
that we have grown into awareness of…
Art, Music, Maps, Dance, Mathematics,
Chemistry, Language, Molecular Biology…
All efforts to express some of our self-awareness…
of our individual self and of our universal self,
in a form which we can more easily grasp and share.
And from this exploration, our creativity bursts again
into more and more spheres,
from the beauty of poetry that transcends time and place
and becomes an expression of human longing and need,
to the creation of new elements
that have never existed in nature,
and only exists for a fleeting moment
when we intentionally smash two other elements together,
to create, for fleeting milliseconds, something brand new…
just to show it is possible.
My favorite of these new elements
we have created for such fleeting moments
is Element 117 on the periodic table,
known temporarily as UnUnSeptium,
and signified by the Atomic Symbol UUS.
I love that we Unitarian Universalists have,
at least for now, an element named after us…
So, why are we unique in the universe?
Why has not the universe created a species of life like us before?
Why has this vast, ancient, and immense universe
not woken up before, not become self-aware before?
Humanity has created many theories about this…
like the one that the timeline of the Universe
has just taken this long for the natural processes
to have developed something like humanity.
Another is that the Universe is actually waking up all over…
that there are lots of different beings
all waking up out there just like us,
being creative just like us…
only the distances between us are so vast
we are not yet able to be aware of each other.
Someday, one of us, perhaps humanity,
will use our creativity to find a way
all these different forms of universal self-awareness
can share what they have created and learned.
And… there is another more challenging
and less-hopeful theory that our human creativity has arrived at.
Carl Sagan and Iosif Shklovsky theorized together
that the reason that the universe
does not seem to be brimming to wonderful, successful beings
who are both individually aware and universally aware is that,
with sentience and creativity comes the ability
for said individually and universally aware beings
to destroy themselves.
That with the ability to see the immensity of the universe
comes an ability to manipulate the smallest parts of the universe
in ways that can have disastrous consequences,
like leaking nuclear power generators.
With the ability to find planets around other stars
comes the ability to create enough pollution
to damage the planet we are living on.
With the ability to create new chemicals
that can help us to understand the building blocks of life
comes the ability to create chemicals that can destroy life,
and then use those chemicals as weapons upon each other.
In essence, Sagan’s and Shklovsky’s theory
is that the reason we have not yet been contacted
by other self-aware beings in the universe is that,
each time the universe has been waking up to say
“Wow, isn’t all of this amazing”,
we, the self-aware universe,
have also created the method of our own destruction.
We, we humans… we are the universe waking up.
We are the universe becoming self-aware.
We are the part of the universe that can create
something new, something sacred.
We are unique and wonderful,
and we have developed the ability
to bring new things into existence…
from a new poem, never written before
by anyone that you jotted on a napkin
while you were out with friends one night,
to elements that have never existed before anywhere we know of,
we have the ability to create the new…
And it is possible that misusing that ability to create the new
is why we seem to be all alone in this vast universe…
Let that realization be the guide as we ask not the question,
can we make and use a new something…
but should we make and use a new something.
So may it be, blessed be, and amen.