Challenges of 'New Thinking'

                                                                                                                         Series  -  1st      

            There are times in history when our understanding of the world and how it operates makes a giant leap forward and we are called upon to readjust our thinking.  As when Galileo (under the influence of Copernicus) defined the structure of the cosmos; when Pasture presented his germ theory; when Einstein re-defined time and space—each new concept met with opposition because it became necessary for people to let go of what they had previously believed and embrace new understanding.  Such reordering is arduous, painful and its veracity is vehemently denied.

            In this past century, human knowledge has been presented with another sea-changing concept that alters—not how we see the earth’s structures and functions—but how we see ourselves and our place in this vast universe.  This change began with Charles Darwin’s publication of On Origins of the Species in which he expounded the theory of evolution, postulating that all life developed by chance through random selection.   God was not mentioned.  A Jesuit scientist paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin is the newer face addressing this revolutionizing concept of evolution.  Teilhard in no way disputes Darwin but rather develops what Darwin left out—the purpose and direction of evolution and man’s place in it.

            Originally the pursuit of knowledge was a comprehensive search for both a material understanding of the what and how of things but also a quest for cause and purpose—the why of being.  With the Renaissance there was a sundering, a separation wherein the search for what and how became the domain of Science while the search for cause and purpose was left to Religion.  Each specialty had little concern for the other.  Science increasingly won our attention. 

            As evolution came into public awareness the divide between Science and Religion widened, fueled by the question, ‘Where did humans come from? . . . did we evolve from lower species or were we created by God?’  In 1925 the Scopes ‘Monkey Trial’ became an international sensation when a new Tennessee law prohibited teaching evolution in schools and a teacher was arrested and tried for doing so.  The sensationalism of it had the effect of creating the illusion that Science and Religion are incompatible.

            Science does not oppose Religion—it simply ignores it.  Religion as a whole is not opposed to Science; it holds it in high regard.  It is only the religious fundamentalists, insisting upon literal interpretation of everything in the Bible, who stand in opposition to scientific findings.  A tenet of Fundamentalism is “the word of God is inerrant”.  I would agree that ‘the word of God’ is without error, but we have so few ‘words of God’!  I can think of only three.  In Exodus: the Ten Commandments; also in Exodus, to Moses in answer to his question about his name God said: “I Am who I Am; tell the Israelites ‘I AM has sent me to you’”.  Then in Deuteronomy: “I set before you life and death . . . Choose life.”  There are few other direct quotes from God, mostly the rest is from human attempts to preserve and relay perceived valuable information as it passes through the lens of that time.   

            I agree that the writings in the Bible are inspired and the inspiration comes from God, but the stories and narratives that we have, came through the minds and words of men.  God does not give dictation.  Our present understanding of the world and how it operates is light-years away from what was available to the Bible writers.  We need to respect the Bible’s great value and search out the kernel of its inspired wisdom and coordinate it with our advanced understanding because it is the best guidebook we have for navigating life.

            Throughout time humanity has had to adjust and re-define our knowledge.  Copernicus and Galileo paved the way to expanding our knowledge from a static geocentric world-model to a heliocentric model.  By changing our world-view it opened us out to the future.   Much to the shock and denial of the people of his day, Pasture described an unseen tiny world of microbes—germs too small for eyes to see yet causing diseases.  Initially even doctors couldn’t accept as so powerful, what they could not see, but eventually all had to readjust their thinking and Pasture’s discovery revolutionized the field of medicine.  Albert Einstein developed the theory of relativity and radically changed what we knew about space, time and matter; his ideas vastly changed the field of physics.  In later life he invested belief and his efforts into finding a Unified Field Theory which would incorporate all the laws of the Universe—although he died before reaching his goal, it continues to motivate research in theoretical physics . . . such a theory would substantiate the idea that all that is, is part of one whole interacting system.  That concept agrees with Teilhard’s views on evolution.

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PS  --With this entry I begin what is to be a series explaining aspects of Teilhard de Chardin’s work.  His is one of the 20^th Century’s most brilliant minds—which he focused upon evolution and the human’s place in it.  His writings fill more than 20 volumes, all of which he was forbidden to publish in his lifetime, they were published after his death in 1955.  He is highly regarded in the intellectual community but many people fine his books daunting.  I have made a life-long study of his works, as a teacher I hope to make his ideas easier to understand.              (I recommend that you Google him)                      

Motherhood

       Sunday was Mother’s Day; it sent me back to look over poems I’d written while raising my children.  This one I wrote as they began leaving the nest.  For several days I played with re-writing it, but it kept returning to how it was first written so I let it be –it seems to sum up motherhood.      

SEPARATING

We used to be so connected

that my breathing sustained you.

Then your needs and cries

determined the pulse of my days.                 

Soon our worlds were linked

by held hands and shouts of “Mommy, watch me!”

There were years of gradual letting go

as you wandered farther and farther from me . . .

But shared laughter, permission granting,

car-trip vacations and meals-at-the-table

held the edges of our worlds together

so our lives were still connected.

Now you build a life apart;

It’s as it should be,

I don’t want to hold you --

But this birthing tears my soul

       . . . and nothing fills my arms to erase the pain.

Of don Quixote

I don't usually post twice in the same week, but in looking through my journal I found this and it seemed an appropriate follow-up to my last entry.

Dear don Quixote,

little did I know

those many years ago

when reading your story,

I was to follow in your footsteps.

Maybe I did know,

     but didn’t know I knew,

     for thoughts of you

            stayed with me

            as I collected trinkets

            to remind me of you.           

Your little carved wooden statue

     that graced my home

     for many years

     now stands proudly

     on a pillar

     near my daughter’s front door.

I believe, that for her,

     it represents us both

     and perhaps our kinship

            (yours, Don, and mine)

     which she recognized

            even before I did.

Oh noble don Quixote,

     bravely you trumpeted the call

     to return a fallen world

     to the chivalry of old,

            in your heart it truly existed

            —had, and could again—

     as you trudged the miles

            and fought the giants,

     unswayed by on-lookers

     who laughed and called you fool

            for you knew the value

            of what you pursued . . .

Yes, my daughter sees

     shades of me in you

     and you in me,

     so in her love

     she revers that statue

     even while she too 
     laughs at the fool.

Consider The Impossible

        In the words of Teilhard de Chardin: ‘The Age of Nations is past.  The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to build the earth.’

        There are those who say it is foolishness to speak of unity among humans, to think of different races, nationalities and cultures working together cooperatively and living in peace.  “Impossible!  There has always been conflict and human nature doesn’t change.”

        It is true that our nature is determined.  Self-preservation is a fundamental instinct and there is a broad spectrum of emotions that we come into the world with.

                        — Yes, nature is determined . . . but our spirit evolves—

We are born and slowly we grow into consciousness.  We see, learn, understand and thought emerges, then it complexifies throughout life; with that we build and create.  Animals exist and survive by adapting to their environment; only the human animal with intelligence and reflective awareness has adapted the environment to fit his needs.

        Glancing over the arc of time we see the human species awakening to thought, evolving from cave-man/animal existence to the marvelous creative/inventive being that changes the face of the earth.  With our history and science books we can look back and see the slow improvement of human shelters from cave-dwellings to simple structures of sticks and grasses to more endurable structures of stone and wood . . . a continual advancement to finally creating the amazingly complex structures that now define our modern landscape . . . back again to see mankind meeting nourishment needs by moving from hunting and gathering to domesticating animals and planting crops, to finding ways to preserve food for future needs . . . of finding means to cross rivers and chasms, to building bridges. . . of devising vessels to move loads over land and sea then inventing mechanical devices to make work easier, then inventing more complex machines to go farther and faster, to finally lift him from earth and fly through the sky.

        Millions of years ago the human animal shaped his grunts and sounds into words and developed languages to convey meaning, then invented coded markings to enable the permanentizing of those words and continued to find different ways to ‘send them forth’ covering distance and time; first writing, then printing press, telephones and telegraphs, computer, electronic devices . . . the world we occupy today is not the world to which the first human beings awoke.  It has been transformed by the countless effort of the millions of individuals over eons of time who slowly added bit by bit to the store of knowledge and innovation that enables us today to do marvelous unthinkable thing that were not possible when humans first walked the earth.

        Consider our world and realize that the pattern of choices made over time has shaped our present existence . . . these choices have been both marvelous and terrible—mostly they were made without awareness of the ‘whole picture’, but in the 1960’s when for the first time we left the confines of planet earth and looked back at our home we saw it was one whole self-sustaining unit, now we are called to understand what that means.  Teilhard told us: ‘The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to build the earth’.  To continue on the present course of wars, terrorism, and self-interest exploitation of earth’s resources is counter to a sustainable future.  

        Can human choice-making advance enough to leave self-interest behind and work for what will take eons (so never seeing efforts rewarded) to achieve the goal of building a sustainable earth?  Impossible you say?  Look how far we’ve come, we’ve already done the impossible if you consider where we started—we just have to do it again with conscious intent.

A Minor Miracle

       Two and a half weeks ago I experienced a minor miracle and I can’t stop thinking about it.  Perhaps ‘miracle’ is too strong, but at least a blessing.

      I’m staying alone in a house in Ormond Beach, Florida.  I’d flown into Daytona Beach Airport after a brief trip to D.C., I’d planned the trip to reach the airport at mid-day and take the bus which services the airport hourly.  The day was unseasonably cold and windy.  After waiting an hour and a half with no sign of a bus, I called the number on the bus schedule I carried, the response was, “Oh, we have no service to the airport today, the Bike Week traffic is too heavy to allow for that”.  Almost speechless, I finally said, “I have no car, what can I do?”  “Walk out to International Speedway Boulevard, I think you are near there, look for a bus stop, take any bus, it will go to the Transfer Plaza where you can then take the correct bus to your destination” was the response.

      A bit dazed, carrying a suitcase (without wheels) and fighting whatever illness had begun the night before, I headed down the winding airport roads, somewhat disoriented I asked the parking lot attendant for directions.  I estimate my walk to have been about a mile.  As I neared the Boulevard I saw to the left a large Harley-Davidson tent with dozens of bikes and bikers, as I got to a branching road that turned off to the right a mass of bikes, I estimate 25-30, passed in front of me as I waited; when it cleared I crossed.  As I stepped onto the sidewalk, a woman (accompanied by a man) asked, “Do you have a problem?  I can see you aren’t a biker chick”.  I briefly explained the bus problem and she said, “Where do you live?”  “About 20 miles North, off of A1A” I replied.  She said, “I have a car, I can drive you.”  First I said thank you but I’m almost to the Boulevard and should be able to get a bus.  She responded, “In this crazy traffic?  It will take till dark for you to make it back home, come on, I’ll drop my husband off at the place we’re staying and take you.  We’re here for the bike races, we come every year so I know the area.”  At that point I was beginning to feel light-headed and a bit feverish. 

      For the briefest few seconds I thought of all the warnings about ‘strangers’, but as she took my arm and led me to her car I felt no fear, only gratitude.  She did indeed drop off her husband, bring me a bottle of cold water and we headed out into the snarled traffic.  It took about an hour to reach my house, as I reached for my purse to offer her some gas money she said, “Don’t even think of it, you do something nice for someone else some day.”  In my muddled state of mind I didn’t even get her name or address.  She waited as I fumbled with keys, then, when I opened the door, drove off with a smile and wave.

      I pretty much collapsed in bed, had a raging fever through the night, got up only to change the wet bedclothes and sheets and did not get out of bed the following day.  When my daughter arrived the next morning she immediately took me to a walk-in clinic where I was diagnosed with pneumonia and extreme dehydration and sent to a hospital for the next four days.

      Why do I call that a miracle you may ask?  . . . How often do strangers pay any attention to those who pass by?  How did this kind-hearted person happen to be on that corner at that time?   And with her car just a few steps away? 

      An angel?  God or the Universe sending aid?  The Holy Spirit responding to a prayer?  Synchronicity?  

      Something bridged the gap between my need and the circumstances in which I found myself by motivating a stranger to offer an unusual kindness.  I choose to call it a miracle or a blessing and give thanks.  There are unseen dimensions to life beyond our understanding.