Cosmologies

Foreword

Since my retirement from active appointment I have not spent much time in theological thinking. Perhaps I have become intellectually lazy. The more likely explanation, to me, is that I have been preoccupied with the business of living. However, from time to time I am asked to comment on something as someone who might have the perspective of one who thinks theologically. More and more I find that to be an uncomfortable position.

I freely admit that since my retirement I have not been a frequent attender of worship services. When I have attended I find myself very uncomfortable with hymns, scripture, and especially with the sermons. I have worshipped with the Quakers from time to time and find their silence to be more conducive to meditation. None of this is to be construed to be critical of anyone or any practice. It is where I happen to be at the present time.

I sometimes wonder at my lack of interest in something that was the chief preoccupation of my life for most of my adult years until a couple of years ago. In the essays which follow I attempt to examine some of what has been going on in my thinking and experience. Again, none of this is intended as a reflection on anyone's beliefs or practice. Nor do I intend to discourage anyone from engaging in activities that are important and significant to them.

At the same time, it is an invitation to any who find themselves in similar circumstances to join in the conversation. As I have talked with people over the years I find that as I have shared some of my ideas others express their gratitude as it opens an opportunity for them to share some of what they have been thinking and troubling about. I have come to the understanding that Truth with a capital T is a very rare commodity. So rare, indeed, that if it does exist, few of us are ever likely to apprehend it.

On the other hand, there is much that we share in terms of our common human experience. Even though we sometimes think, "I must be the only person in the world who feels like this," it is more likely that anything that we think or feel is rather commonplace. We hesitate to talk about it because we think that other people may take offence or think less of us for it.

This, then, is intended to be the beginning of a conversation. I lay no claim to having any kind of exclusive grasp of Truth or truth. At the same time I do not hold my experience or understanding to be any less (or more) valid than any one else's. In that spirit I offer these reflections.


ON COSMOLOGIES or
Reflections on a Poem Learned in Childhood

What A Bird Thought

I lived first in a little house,
And lived there very well;
The world to me was small and round,
And made of pale-blue shell.

I lived next in a little nest,
Nor needed any other;
I thought the world was made of straw,
And covered by my mother.

One day I fluttered from the nest,
To see what I could find.
I said, "The world is made of leaves
I have been very blind."

At last I flew beyond the trees,
And saw the sky so blue;
Now, how the world is really made
I cannot tell--can you?


This simple child's poem from one of the readers of my childhood has become for me a powerful statement of how our cosmologies change throughout our maturing experience. The way we view the world around us; the way we construct the universe in our minds; the way we learn to relate to the world around us and beyond; that is what I refer to as our cosmologies.

I remember the first time my first childhood cosmology was shattered. It was early in my career in elementary school that some precocious classmate communicated to me some bits of scientific information that he had heard somewhere. The first cosmology-shattering bit of information was that there as no sky; it was all space up there. The thought that there was a not a blue dome up there covering and protecting the earth was not only inconceivable, but it was totally unacceptable to me. It was clear to me that there was a sky. I could see it. I loved to gaze into the blue dome above.

The second bit of information that shook my view of the universe was that there were not different seas, but it was all one body of water. Although I had never been to the beach at that time of my life I knew that there was Quinam Beach, and there was Mayaro Beach which was somewhere else, and there was Maracas Beach, which was far away in another place. The idea that all these seas were somehow one was in total conflict with my childhood construction of the universe.

I lived first in a little house,
And lived there very well;
The world to me was small and round,
And made of pale-blue shell.
I wish I could say that after that first crack in my cosmic egg it was easier and less traumatic for me to accept new ideas of how the universe was constructed. The truth is that my comfortable world, "small and round, and made of pale blue shell," provided all the security I needed. Any cracks in that cosmic egg threatened not only my intellectual understanding of the universe, but it seemed a threat to undo the entire fabric of my very being.

Eventually our childhood cosmology becomes too small and tight to hold us, and like the little bird we break out of it just by being alive and growing. Our new cosmology provides us of the security of that warmth and comfort of a world that is "made of straw and covered by (our) mother." We are just as loath to have this cosmology violated as we had our first. Yet it is inevitable that we will grow up, learn new things about ourselves, other people, and our universe, however it is constructed. Each succeeding cosmology provides us with a shell of security which we are loath to leave behind. Eventually we must flutter from the nest and discover the world beyond. Then too our utter surprise we discover a new reality and exclaim,
"The world is made of leaves
I have been very blind."

When Christopher Columbus advanced his proposition of going east by traveling west he was challenging the cosmology which defined the world as being flat. When Copernicus advanced a new cosmology in which the earth was not the center of the universe he was denounced as a heretic. When Einstein proposed that the atom, which by definition was indivisible, could be split, he was opening a crack in the cosmology. Over and over the "obvious" truths are challenged and give way to new understandings. These new understandings become the new obvious truths. As the shell of one cosmic egg is shattered, we find our comfort and security in a new cosmology. At each succeeding stage we fight to protect the universe which we have constructed and only go "kicking and screaming" into new understandings.

It may, indeed, be the final stage of enlightenment to come to the understanding, like Socrates, that true wisdom consists in the acceptance that we know nothing. The heart of enlightenment may be, not so much in arriving at a complete understanding of our cosmos, or "finding the answer" as we are trained to think. It may be that the heart of enlightenment consists in arriving at an understanding of our utter inability to comprehend the incomprehensible. The ultimate state of enlightenment may not be scientific or spiritual certainty, but a sense of awe and wonder at the mystery of it all. Even if one were able to read all the books in the world, pay attention to all the television documentaries, know all the scientific theories, master all of the information that is available, know all the wisdom of the sages, there is no ultimate truth to which we can cling. Only a sense of wonder at the mystery of which we are a part comes close to the appropriate cosmology.
At last I flew beyond the trees,
And saw the sky so blue;
Now, how the world is really made
I cannot tell--can you?