With Praise and Thanksgiving (Quest Nov 2010)

[Alex]

With Praise and Thanksgiving
by GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL, ADULT PROGRAMS DIRECTOR FOR THE UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST ASSOCIATION
November 2010
Quest
http://clf.uua.org/quest/2010/11/vail.html

...How can we embrace this kind of gratitude as 21st century Unitarian Universalists? What kind of language will we use? What story will we share?

Once upon a time, five billion years ago, the Earth was a ball of very hot lava. Our solar system—even our sun—was new by universe standards, and energy was flying everywhere.

It’s a very long story—billions of years long—a story of elements combining, earth shifting, waters rising and falling, cells forming and living and dying and changing in a grand experiment called life that began longer ago than you or I can imagine.

And that life would continue to bump and jostle, whirl and swirl, eat and be eaten, gather energy and learn to clump in ever more complicated clumps and colonies and beings. And it has never been still. Even unto this day, when the whirling and swirling, bumping and jostling, clumping and sharing, energy eating and energy using restless motion happens inside all of us. We are born of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen, of stardust brought by meteors, of water raining down, of the joining of bacteria and eukaryotes and mitochondria.

We are born of motion and energy and chaos and danger and cooperation. This is our inheritance. This is our beginning. And it is with us still, even in our own bodies.

Gratitude begins with wonder and awe. It begins with remembering who we are—remembering our way back to the beginning. To that great explosion that launched the universe. To the great dramatic births and deaths of stars—to the stardust carbon that arrived here on our planet carrying with it the possibility of the beginnings of life. What improbable events billions of years ago created the conditions where life on this planet began? What force of energy drove those early colonies of cells to cooperate one with another—to link together—to grow and evolve? How did life ever manage to figure a way out of its pollution problems? Its extinction problems?

How did that bumping and jostling, whirling and swirling, living and dying energy lead to us? And not just to us. To hammerhead sharks, to jellyfish, to 5,000 species of frogs, to conifers that release their seeds only in the presence of the hottest of forest fires to the most lovely and delicate of orchids.

A recent issue of the Boston Globe reported on the results of a census of deep sea life. They found 17,650 species living below the depth of 656 feet in the ocean, the point where sunlight ceases. Along with squid, hermit crabs and jellyfish are transparent sea cucumbers and tubeworms that feed on oil deposits.

Just take that in for a minute. Surely we can conceive of more to be grateful for than those beings which make our own lives richer.

The recent PBS series on evolution explored the science that indicates that wild shifts in climate on the African continent millions of years ago forced our hominid ancestors to adapt, to be creative, to solve problems, and to teach one another. Human culture was born fifty million years ago in response to risk, danger, chaos and death.

Take that in for a minute. Surely we can conceive of more to be grateful for than those things which make our own lives richer.

A recent issue of Atlantic features an article about “orchid children” —children who are genetically at risk for depression, anxiety, and anti-social behavior. And yet, when these orchid children are raised in a nurturing environment, they are creative, innovative, and the carriers of much that moves human culture forward. Their presence in the gene pool is risky for our species, and yet it is their presence which has shaped much of what makes us uniquely human, assuring that our species is capable not only of stability, but also of motion, adaptation, originality, creativity.

There’s a message in all of this, a sense that we can only just begin to grasp. We are part of a whirling, swirling, chaotic, energetic force of life—a force that loves complexity, loves creativity, loves adaptation, loves cooperation. Whether you call that force God, Spirit of Life, Creative Spirit, or simply evolution, it is not a play-it-safe sort of force. It is fearless in the face of challenge, and danger, and death. It surrounds us and inhabits us. We are one of its manifestations.

Take that in for a minute. Feel the force of life inside you. Feel your kinship with other living things—with the transparent sea cucumbers, the extraordinary orchids, the honey bees, the finches. Know deeply the motion and energy of life teeming all around you – and deep inside you.

How can we not be filled with wonder? How can we not bring praise and thanksgiving for this wonder of being here, being alive, being part of this great unfolding pageant of life? How can we not experience the gratitude that moves beyond our immediate, individual needs and joyfully embraces our place and our part in the universe?

This is a story—and an inheritance—that invites us all, no matter what age or life stage, to offer praise and thanksgiving. This is a story that holds true even in the face of personal challenge, grief, and pain. This is a story that calls us to give thanks, truly and deeply, for our beating hearts, our circling blood, and for all that we share with sea cucumbers, orchids, and frogs—and with one another.

Let us give thanks.



Alex's comment:
Thank you, Evolution, thank you!  (this is a terrific sermon of Religious Naturalism)
進化，謹此誠心獻上感謝！（這是一篇很好的、可說是「宗教自然主義」的感恩節講章）