Sunday Sermon: What's the Point?

Everything, good morning. Thank you for all things. Thank you for this existence and its opportunities to behold and serve you. Thank you for our beautiful planet, and help us to do justice to its beauty with wise action. Amen.

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The purpose of the individual beyond the interests of the individual and her home is the interests of the collective and the commons.

I have a text today, courteous readers, a parable from nature from a gem of a book, Lewis Thomas's The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974). It is a beautiful book, ahead of its time, foreshadowing James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis and, in many ways, a modern spirituality. Anyway,

Two or three termites in a chamber will begin to pick up pellets and move them from place to place, but nothing comes of it; nothing is built. As more join in, they seem to reach a critical mass, a quorum, and the thinking begins. They place pellets atop pellets, then throw up columns and beautiful, curving, symmetrical arches, and the crystalline architecture of vaulted chambers is created. It is not known how they communicate with each other, how the chains of termites building one column know when to turn to the crew on the adjacent column, or how, when the time comes, they manage the flawless joining of the arches. The stimuli that set them off at the outset, building collectively instead of shifting things about, may be pheremones released when they reach committee size. They react as if alarmed. They become agitated, excited, and then they begin working, like artists.

Now we are not termites, though when we are alone and alienated it can sometimes feel like we are, apart from surviving, merely moving pellets from one part of the chamber to another. On the other hand we might also find in this analogy a reason to believe, even if we do just feel like we're randomly moving pellets around, that something bigger is happening that we are not properly aware of.

The preliminary answer to the question of the meaning of life is that it is to live and procreate. All life does it and it doesn't seem to need any other motivation. But cursed with the comprehension of all this there are many times in life when we need more to live for. If we are privileged (ie. live in a developed economy), many of us find ourselves struggling with the question of higher purpose, a reason to try to shine all the brighter. When all is horrid on the other hand we may find we need a reason to keep pushing pellets at all. We also all face death, some time, and we all have a need to avoid madness.

It may help us think about higher purpose if we stay away from humans for a bit yet. I suggest that if we are considering the purpose of a possum we would be considering its ecological environment, and especially that which is in any way adjacent to or downstream from the possum. We would be speaking of an ecosystem, a larger system of which the possum is a part.

In many ways we are not so different to a possum, but similarly if we were to discuss the purpose of an astronomical body we would be looking at the gravitational relationships with other planetary bodies in their various orbits and trajectories, and if we were to ask the same question about a Hydrogen atom we would find ourselves referring to its chemical environment.

In short, a simple approach to defining higher purpose (than existence and survival) of a given element is, tautologically enough, identifying needs for existence and survival of the larger system of which the element is a part. Simple, but also very practical, for both ourselves and the purposes, hidden or not, of Everything.

My apologies to readers if this does not sound especially transcendent. It terms of "What do I do?", God does not help us much, and the thing we all have in common is that not one of us knows what the purpose of the totality is, or the purpose of God. If we spend too much time and effort trying to be impossibly profound, I suspect we might miss out on actually helping anything at all. And that is not generally the human need. The existential human need is for purpose higher than self.

In terms of human needs - our needs - the transcendental scholasticism is not important. What is important for everyday psychological survival and fulfilment is embodiment as contrary to alienation. To be doing more than merely moving pellets from one part of the chamber to another we need to be grouped in place as well as in spirit, not just one-off but over a long enough period to build a cathedral, or indefinitely, whichever comes first. But I've discussed that before.

Family is a higher purpose than self, as is community, and millions live for these things and indeed will die for them. Disturbingly at times millions find deep purpose in tribe and nation, but with humans all sorts of collectives have emerged and there is a fulfilment of the need for purpose in larger collectivity. That larger system of which we are apart, however, is not merely human.

Let me cut to the chase. The sacred duty of the House of Every is to pursue the interests of all of humanity: the interests of ten thousand years of future civilisation, inextricably the interests of the ecological earth, in a sacred manner - a manner distinct and independent from (but not disregarding) the political and economic interests of our world. That is enough purpose. We can not yet know, after all, if the earth itself is not merely a termite, unwittingly a part of a far greater emergent patterning.

But first of all, beyond ourselves, the point of life is our place, and our community. If people are connected to it, that is enough almost all of the time, even whilst the ultimate purpose remains mysterious. Together our moving pellets can become a cathedral, a better world. This is a profound and challenging task, a worthwhile one and I believe a sacred one.

For one implication of worshiping Everything is that serving nature, including human nature, is itself a holy act. The point is not to render religion secular - we have thousands of secular organisations. The point here is to enchant and enrich reality, with embodiment, story and song. And a result of this will be effective agency.

Before I sign off, there is a key difference between us and termites which I feel obliged to note carefully. We move pellets of knowledge about. Next week will be the first (of several, at least, before this first series is complete) sermons about logos, the living word of Everything, the uniquely human layer of cathedral building. There is a brief introduction to the subject linked above.

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Every, forgive me for my rambling presentation of something so important as the purpose of our existence. I am humbled by the very absurdity of attempting it. Help my readers think about this one, and to critically discern from my sermon that which is helpful to them, and to disregard the rest. So be it.

Sunday Sermon: The Baby in the Bathwater of Religion (Embodiment 1)

Everything, I pray that my sermon spring from a love of truth and a desire to bring truth to life. If there be wisdom in my words, known or unknown to me, let the wisdom be heard and be fruitful. If there is foolishness in my words, let readers see through the folly. Amen.

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The baby in the bathwater of virtually all traditional religion is the embodiment of a community for truth seeking, song and mutual aid. Any society can be described as highly embodied or highly alienated or something in between. Embodiment is a large factor in the health of society.

I'm aware that to those with no religious background at all this is a pretty abstract notion. Millions live their life without such an institution and they will report they are doing just fine without it. They may also think that our society has many problems, and they may even describe one of the modern issues as 'alienation', but these aren't their problems and it is a long way from nothing to see that repertory community worship might be one of the keys to getting society on a healthier keel.

In my experience however, people who have had religious backgrounds and yet have left their religions (generally for very good reasons) will immediately recognise what I'm saying. It's impossible not to occasionally miss the music and singing, the companionship that was taken for granted, the spontaneous acts of mutual aid and support that occurred, the rich content of conversation and just the security of knowing there was always the community of worshipers to turn to.

We experience embodiment in many ways outside religion of course, and it remains what health there is in society. Our family embodies for Christmas, we have parties, events and festivals, we go to sporting contests, concerts and the theatre. Some (I'm told) still gather around a table for meals. In Australia we consider the barbecue a national institution, even though I can't remember ever going to one.

But a repeated, regular embodiment of whole community (not meaning everyone but young and old, rich and poor etc), with ritual and song, is a feature of virtually every society in history, except our own. The word the English translators translated 'church' is the Greek word, ekklessia, which means 'assembly' and is used in the New Testament (and the Old Testament Septuagint) to describe secular gatherings of people as well as church gatherings. Even before the first century however it had a double meaning, but the specific meaning referred to something political, the assembly of people in the polis. The 'Church of Corinth', for example was not a new invention, but a Christian re-invention of an ancient Corinthian institution. Note that these earlier assemblies existed whether or not they had democratic power as in Athens, just as the Forum in Rome existed even though it never attained such power. It is political theorists rather than religious theorists who have recognised community assembly as a feature of every traditional society. But these assemblies were almost all religious to some extent, including the Athenian ekklessia. In our own social formations which emerged from the Europe of the Middle Ages, the remnant of it was the church.

The proposition here is not religious at all in itself. It is that when people form regular embodied community, stuff happens. None of it happens which doesn't otherwise happen outside religion (thankfully, as much of it comprises uncompromising human needs), but it's with regular embodiment that things happen constantly, developmentally (the happening can get better indefinitely over time) and easily.

One of the churches near me has a community garden, for example. Now people start community gardens (wonderful things), and they don't need a church, but it's not easy. You need to organise disparate people, find land (in practice often church land incidentally), source materials and maintain momentum when key people drop out. With an institutionalised body, it's not just that a community garden is easy to get off the ground, it is that an infinite variety of things might get off the ground. It is the collective part of human agency dealt with and assumed.

People meet each other. Yes, courtship happens. Again, people seem to get on with meeting spouses without church, but apparently our society needs a massive dating industry, and loneliness is epidemic, so again, it's not easy.

And courtship is only one reason for people to meet one another. Friendships occur, artistic projects, business ventures. Elderly people have company and the young have a variety of role models. This isn't abstract theory. Anyone who, like myself, has been involved in churches before, recognises all of this.

The local economy is stimulated in fact. If someone has a box of oranges they can't eat and someone else is poor, the connection is made. A small but healthy degree of communism occurs (though don't tell that to a conservative Christian). If an old pensioner needs weeding to be done in their garden, it is no trouble finding the young person who needs some weekend work. Again, this is not abstract unless you've never seen it. People do things for each other for the joy and love of it as well. Even without any ethical motivation, many people really like doing things for others. It's a matter of opportunity.

Music and song are another function of embodiment. But hey, we're surrounded by sound. Why do we need music? Well, apart from a few professionals, are we singing? Are we developing our God given musicality? Unless we're privileged are we learning instruments from an early age? Going a little deeper, are we developing cultures of music? That is, authentic community musical style? Clearly my view is no, and that embodiment facilitates these things.

Again this is not abstract. In terms of musical culture, the pentecostals have become one of the fastest growing and most influential forces in music. (Incidentally, in my mind the key to the current success of pentecostalism is that they get the importance of music.) A music director friend of mine, certainly no Christian, informs me that the best singers he encounters had a church background. It's no mystery. Doing anything repetitively from an early age makes one good at it.

When Christians travel, for fun or for work, they can go to the similar church at their destination and immediately find welcome and community once again. Loneliness, apparently, is for the secular.

The religious institution, ideally with land in a central place and a building, is a refuge and haven, a mobilisation point in a time of crisis and a point of contact for other communities. It performs these functions regardless of the theological teaching.

It is for all of these reasons that I am driven to promote the idea of modernising religion rather than abolishing it. In the end it is about a society that is healthy and fulfilling human needs. It is not the existence of religious institutions that is the problem any more than the existence of governance was the problem in the feudal 18th Century. It is the content that needs critique and reform.

One of the many questions which arrises is whether religion requires reformation or replacement with new institutions. For my part the question isn't closed, though this blog is clearly an attempt to articulate a new religion. But, without such an alternative, would I really encourage people to leave their church or place of worship? The reason I do not, and why I'd encourage others to think very carefully before doing so, is because at this time that church or place of worship is providing for the person's needs in ways that I probably can't imagine. I may vehemently oppose superstitious beliefs, but I'd prefer superstitious beliefs to alienation.

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Thank you to anyone who reads my sermons. My authority is the same as everyone else's (ie pretty much none) and if there is anything useful in what I'm saying, what I'm needing to say, I hope that people find it by looking very critically at it. And if my thoughts and conclusions are wrong or unhelpful, then I hope I am properly dismissed. So be it.