Earthlings
Rev. Linda Simmons
April 29, 2015
In the movie Shall We Dance, Richard Gere plays a bored middle-aged attorney who
takes up ballroom dancing but does not tell his wife, played by Susan Sarandon. She
hires a private detective to figure out what her now often missing husband is up to.
When she finds out it's ballroom dancing, she decides not to say anything. In a scene
when she and the detective meet in a bar to end the investigation, they discuss why
people marry in the first place. The detective says it’s because of hormones and
passing interest.
She disagrees and says it’s because “we need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion
people on the planet…I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in marriage,
you’re promising to care about everything, the good things, the bad things, the
terrible things, the mundane things...all of it, all the time, every day. You’re saying,
‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness.’ ”
I think it is true that we all need witnesses in order to find meaning and hope,
whether in marriage, friendship, partnership or community. Witnesses reflect us
back to ourselves, witnesses that hold up a loving image of who we are when we feel
lost, between identities, unable to sustain a sense of self that is whole enough to
keep us sewn together.
Knowing this, knowing that we need witnesses, not only reminds us to reach beyond
ourselves and technology for connection, it also requires something of us. Our
interdependence on each other, the species of our planet (for not only human
witnessing has power), and the earth itself that we feel witnessed by in the warmth
of the sun, sustained by the presence of clean water and good food, encouraged by
the sweet breeze, and called home and out into the world by the undulating waves,
asks something of us. But to discern what this requires of us, we need to decide who
we are in relation to each other, all species, and this earth.
There is a principle that some call scientific, others philosophic, others cosmologic,
others theological- called the Anthropic Principle. The anthropic principle (from
Greek anthropos, meaning "human") is the supposition that the universe must have
conditions that allow life to develop. Let me unpack that some.
Many scientists have discovered a very large number of coincidences in the universe
that allowed life to come into being on this planet. For some, this leads to the
conclusion that the universe appears to have been created specifically for the
existence of life as we know it on earth.
Leonard Susskind author of, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of
Intelligent Design writes, “It seems as though the laws of physics were chosen, at
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least in part, to permit our existence.”1 He goes on “extraordinary coincidences are
required for life to be possible.”2
Physicist John Wheeler agrees when we writes, “It is not only that [humanity] is
adapted to the universe…The universe is adapted to [humanity]. Imagine a universe
in which one or another of the constants of physics is altered by a few percent one
way or the other? Humanity could never have come into being in such a universe.
That is the central point of the anthropic principle. According to this principle, a lifegiving factor lies at the centre of the whole machinery and design of the world.”3
Scientists hotly contest these arguments and the principle at large. That
extraordinary fine-tuning exists for the specific life forms we see around us and
embody is clear but many argue that this does not lead to oft stated conclusion that
God is the fine tuner, the argument for intelligent design, or that all that we see was
designed by an omnipotent force for us to inhabit.
The fruits of that statement are ones so many of us find objectionable, including
creationism and that human beings have no effect on what only God can control, like
the climate. In a series of non-binding amendments, the US senate voted 98-1 that
climate change is real but only 50-49, short of the 2/3rd majority needed, that
humans have a significant impact on climate change.
Dr. Michael West in his class at the Antheneum called Super Earth and Life talked
about another version of the Anthropic Principle, The Participatory Anthropic
Principle which states that the universe gives rise to life and life gives meaning to
the universe. The participatory version of the anthropic principle is one that I think
we all find ourselves meandering within from time to time.
We experience something like this principle when we are suddenly so struck by
nature, a rising or setting sun, a flower filled field, a vast expanse of beach and sand
and wind and it is hard to imagine that all of this is random and that we are not
somehow in a communion with all life and nature, a communion, a force, an
interdependence that is bigger than us all. It’s just all too gorgeous sometimes to
imagine as an accident, a random outcome of random events, though that is most
likely true string theorists tell us.
So we give meaning to our experience, we feel that we matter, we feel connected to
something that matters, even if this something is the wind, animals and the grass
and the trees, even if this something is connection to each other.
1
Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design
(Boston: Back Bay Books, 2006), 88.
2 Susskind, 21.
3 John A. Wheeler, in Barrow, John D. & Tipler, Frank J., The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1988) vii.
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Whether this world experiences us as here or was shaped so that we could live here
by an intelligent being or if all of this is a mystery beyond reckoning that has
nothing to do with supernatural forces, or if all of this is random chance- here we
find ourselves, utterly dependent on each other and our environment for survival,
for freedom, for love, for sustenance, for transcendent experiences that take us from
our everyday lives and offer us a sense that we are not only this flesh and these
bones but that somehow, our connection is bigger than each of us.
Although we can never know why we are here or what ultimate meaning there is,
here we are utterly dependent on each other and the earth, brought into meaning by
all of it and if we are lucky, witnessed through love often enough to make our lives
into something we are proud of living.
Rev. Galen Guengerich, minister of All Souls Church in NYC, in his book, God Revised,
How Religion Must Evolve into a Scientific Age, considers that our inter-connection
demands something of us. He writes, “As we glimpse our dependence upon other
people and things, we also glimpse our duty to them. This sense of obligation leads
to an ethic of gratitude…(which asks of us that all of our relationships) among
humans, as well as between humans and the physical world- are fair, constructive,
and beautiful.”4
I love the invitation to be fair, constructive, and beautiful in all of our relationships.
What does this look like for you in your current relationships with human beings,
animals, and the earth? I know I do not live into this as often as I like. This knowing
tugs at me, asks me to show up more fully, more open minded and hearted.
For me, this is worth devoting a life to, indeed, I can think of nothing else that is.
So, if there were a formula, a practice, a recipe to help us get to this place of being
fair, constructive, and beautiful in all of our relationships, what would it be?
The New York Times recently printed an article called, “The Moral Bucket List,”
written by David Brooks who says of himself, “I’m a pundit, more or less paid to
appear smarter and better than I really am.” I thought he could have replaced pundit
with minister! In the article, Brooks writes that so many of us lack what he calls a
moral vocabulary because we live for external achievement. He goes about studying
people who “radiate an inner light” and decides that “wonderful people are made,
not born — that the people (he) admire(s) had achieved an unfakeable inner virtue,
built slowly from specific moral and spiritual accomplishments.”5
Brooks then makes what he calls a moral bucket list. Here is one item from that list
4
Galen Guengerich, God Revised, How Religion Must Evolve in a Scientific Age (New York: Pallgrave
Macmillion, 2013), 142.
5 David Brooks, “The Moral Bucket List” New York Times, April 11, 2015.
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“THE DEPENDENCY LEAP [P]eople on the road to (building moral) character
understand that no person can achieve self-mastery on his or her own. We all need
redemptive assistance from outside.
People on this road see life as a process of commitment making. Character is defined
by how deeply rooted you are. Have you developed deep connections that hold you
up in times of challenge and push you toward the good? (People of character)…
committed to tasks that can’t be completed in a single lifetime.”6
The recipe for being fair, constructive and beautiful in all of our relationships is
realizing that without them, we are utterly lost to our own humanity, our capacity to
be redeem and be redeemed when to redeem is transform and be transformed
through loving witness.
We all need redemptive assistance from outside.
While writing this sermon, I received some redemptive assistance. I read an article
in Yes Magazine written by Robin Wall Kimmerer called, “Nature Needs a New
Pronoun: To Stop Extinction Let’s Start by Ditching the Word It.”7 Kimmerer tells us,
“Grammar is how we chart relationships through language, including our
relationship with the Earth.”
She goes on to write about how in her Native American language all things are
spoken of with familial pronouns: the birds, trees, fish, wind. She reminds us that
when we speak of the world around us using the word it, it becomes an object, not a
subject, not something through which we are witnessed, not something that we
share a soul and this earth with. She suggests changing it to the word kin. Now, I
thought this a little too far out for this sermon at first and was not going to use it,
until I was sitting with a friend and we saw a rabbit come into the yard. She said,
What a sweet rabbit. I wonder where it came from?” And I responded, “I think kin
came through that hole in the fence over there.” She was surprised and I told her
about the article. She listened and told me “When you said kin instead of it, I felt
some connection to whether the rabbit would make it safely back through that hole
in the fence.”
My friend redeemed me in that she made something that I was not sure had
meaning into something meaningful and offered that meaning back to us both. And
so I was reminded, that that it is only through sharing and the offer of a loving
witnessing, and only from being present inside of others’ stories, that we are made
whole.
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Ibid.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Nature Needs a New Pronoun, Let’s Start by Ditching the Word It” Yes
Magazine Spring 2015, http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/together-with-earth/alternativegrammar-a-new-language-of-kinship.
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Galen Guengerich in his book, God Revised, that I mentioned before has an
interesting answer to the question: What makes a religious community different
from a book group or beach walking club or spinning class, he writes that a religious
community asks that we transform ourselves, each other and the world.8
And so we come full circle my friends. We began with the exploration of our
relationship to the universe and the universe’s relationship to us, knowing that
where we stand in that dynamic allows us all some possibilities and makes other
more tenuous. We moved on to how participation changes us and the world we live
in, how connection defines us, how this can obligate us to live all relationships with
care, through beauty, and we then considered that language is part of our connective
web and how we use it can change not only us but how we honor all beings in this
web and ended right here, with us, now, with the hope that when we meet, when we
gather in doubt and love and inquiry and suffering and joy, we do so because we
wish to be transformed, to participate in each other’s transformation and to
transform the world.
And all of this is and has been a conversation about climate change because the art
of how we make sense of the world while making sense of ourselves in it leads us to
the understanding that we influence all we touch, that indeed human beings impact
climate change significantly. So what are we to do knowing this?
The Unitarian Universalist Association recently initiated a project called
Commit2Respond. It’s about committing to change what we can change and to what
we know we will never be changed in our lifetimes, committing to local, personal,
manageable actions and committing out further than ourselves to others, to the
planet, to political and social engagement.
It’s a commitment to learning how climate change does not affect us all equally. It is
those already marginalized who are the first hit by the rising costs of food due to
drought and fuel increases, housing market fluctuations that respond in part to
decreasing viable land to build on, water shortages and much more.
What can we do together my friends? How can we be of use? How can we both be
accountable to the world around us that we have changed irrevocably and live with
hope?
Together here at the Meeting House we are experimenting with how to show up in
all of this. Our finance committee has invested 100,00 in socially responsible
investment options with the Unitarian Universalist Association. Our social justice
group called grassroots nantucket has a garden plot at the community garden that
we are in the midst of turning and planting. We give 80% of the proceeds to the food
pantry. We have clothing drives for food pantry clients that we offer at the American
Legion. We have community potlucks with Faro de Luz, the Spanish speaking
8
Galen, 142-152.
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Christian community primarily from El Salvador that meets here 3 times week and
calls this home. We are learning Spanish together at the parsonage so that we can be
better citizens of this world, so that we can meet people where they are in the
compassion of their own language, and we are working on a Green Sanctuary
initiative.
Green Sanctuary is a movement that asks us to look at all of our lives through the
lens of environmental justice and equity. It involves all of us, our building, our
children, our neighbors, and our island. Without your input, your love, your
redemptive power of witness, beauty and truth, without your participation there is
no journey. We are the journey. We will be telling you more about this over the next
months. We all have gifts to give that matter. Join us!
We say to each other not only as married and partnered people as Susan Sarandon
said of Richard Gere but as citizens of this earth, as wanderers of this time and place,
as co-inhabitants of each other’s lives, we say with our arms open and our chests
wide, to each other and to all life:
Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness.
Amen.
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