what gives me hope

last week I was asked during a job interview what gave me hope--interview questions for ministers are a little different than for, say, retail workers--and my answer was something akin to the following but lynn margulis does a much better job of putting it together. it is knowing this that helps me to keep on keeping on when a bush is elected or a walker is reelected.

[T]he brilliant American bacteriologist Lynn Margulis has proposed that every kosmos, from the microcosmic organism on up to our macrocosmic planet, has evolved through a very long game of symbiosis, "the coming together that leads to physical interdependence and the permanent sharing of cells and bodies."  Two billion years ago, free-floating bacteria combined to form what Margulis calls "bacterial confederacies."  These confederacies gradually formed a thin membrane that held them together.  Then some of the bacteria turned into the oxygen-using mitochondria, and a command center, the nucleus, took shape.  The cell was born, or rather, self-made through what some scientists today call autopoiesis.  Then cells took up residence inside larger organisms that in turn developed into their own protective membranes.  And they are still with us.  "The descendants of the bacteria that swam in primeval seas breathing oxygen three billion years ago exist now in our bodies as mitochondria," writes Margulis...The larger flora and fauna in turn formed communities within forests and other ecosystems that also acted as even larger, self-regulating organisms.  And all of these biomes are finally protected by an even larger membrane, the atmosphere.  Margulis refers to her theory, her scientific creation story, as symbiogenesis.

--from an american gospel:  on family, history, and the kingdom of god by erik reece

despite all that's been done to it--and earth and the cosmos have done more to it than puny mortal creatures like us can do to it (although that's not to say we can't make it uninhabitable for ourselves or other creatures)--the earth and existence has carried on.  and even despite what we do to ourselves, we continue in more or less the same shape.  that gives me hope on both a species and an individual level.

what if, again?

this is an excellent article in which a couple seti (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) researchers comment on exactly the question I've written on previously.  their takeaway:  because humans haven't been at the center of existence for a while, most religious would simply take it in stride and continue.  I'd like to believe that.  unfortunately, that presupposes a willingness to adapt to circumstances that isn't always borne out by history.  would most religious accept extraplanetary bacteria as evidence of a diversity to the universe we can only guess at or as creations of the adversary meant to be destroyed?  my religious mind believes the former; my political mind suspects the latter.

did jesus die for klingons too?

this fascinates me and I've started a conversation about it in the past which I will doubtless talk about again.

busted buddha

earlier this year I was introduced to a webcomic called darwin carmichael is going to hell. the titular hero lives in a polytheistic universe where mythical creatures like minotaurs and muses exist and karma is a regulated essence. he's damned because he's responsible, through his inattention, for the mental retardation of the current dalai lama. in the most recent storyline, he comes face-to-face with his victim and is, if not exactly forgiven, given reason to hope for his redemption.

the current issue of uu world, the unitarian universalist magazine, carries an essay by meg barnhouse called "the broken buddha" that touches on exactly this theme. when I was in sesshin, buddhist retreat, decades ago--when I first shaved my head--I had gone there because I'd done an uncharacteristic act of violence and wanted to atone for it. the abbot and my fellow sesshinists helped me to understand that atonement wasn't necessary; what was necessary was my acknowledgement of what I'd done and acceptance for its result. I couldn't turn back the clock so it was as if it had never happened and I could never make up for it but I could behave better. no one said it in so many words but I've come to understand this teaching as "we aren't responsible for our situation but we are responsible for how we respond to it." as barnhouse writes, "sometimes agony is appropriate...life is not neat."

for me, the image is not only of a broken buddha but one that's busted by both the state of being broken and by being found out. one day in my second in sesshin I went into dokusan with the abbot to tell him I had acheived enlightenment. his response: "I'm so sorry." enlightenment meant I had begun to notice the effect I had on existence and my responsibilities toward it. the busted buddha reminds us of the imperfection not only of the people we're responsible to but the okayness of our own recognized and accepted flaws. in 80s terms the busted buddha feels the fear and does it anyway.

what if?

this is an idea I've long considered and I intend to think in greater earnest about it after having read this essay. what would be the consequence theologically of our finding life elsewhere? not necessarily nasty or enlightened life and not even intelligent--by which we almost always mean "more intelligent than we are"--life, but life of a sort we would recognize?

this would have a tremendous impact as most faiths assume this planet is alone in the universe as a site for god's or nature's or ultimate reality's experimentation. it's a science fiction topic ripe with possibilities and I almost never see it handled in novels or movies. almost invariably extraterrestrial life is handled almost like we handle new neighbors we hadn't realized were building over the hill: surprise and then reaction to their behavior that has an impact on us.

what if the raelians and scientologists and ufo cults are right, not in their particulars, but in their generality that we share the universe with other independently developed beings? would faiths adapt, accepting these unknowns as co-existers? would the unknown itself become the new god or some aspect of a new god? or would most religions retreat into isolationism, claiming that there really isn't any other life or that it isn't important or it's a development of the adversary (as some have done with fossils)?