"Mystery generates wonder, and wonder generates awe."
Winterviews concludes today. From the Solstice (Dec. 21st) till the next Cross-quarter (Feb. 4th), we’ve brought you non-stop interviews and other goodies from big-name authors. Missed some? Catch up on your reading with the links below.
The last of our Winterviews authors is none other than Professor Ursula Goodenough. It is still relatively rare to find a readable, moving, awe-inspiring narrative of science. From the dynamics of cells to human emotion, The Sacred Depths of Nature reveals the throbbing heart of the universe. Goodenough is not just a scientist, she’s also a storyteller. Today, she graciously shares with us an excerpt from her book.
I’ve had a lot of trouble with the universe. It began soon after I was told about it in physics class. I was perhaps twenty, and I went on a camping trip, where I found myself in a sleeping bag looking up into the crisp Colorado night. Before I could look around for Orion and the Big Dipper, I was overwhelmed with terror. The panic became so acute that I had to roll over and bury my face in my pillow.
All of the stars I see are pat of but one galaxy.
There are some 100 billion galaxies in the universe, with perhaps 100 billion stars in each one, occupying magnitudes of space that I cannot begin to imagine.
Each star is dying, exploding, accreting, exploding again, splitting atoms and fusing nuclei under enormous temperatures and pressures.
Our sun too will die, frying the Earth to a crisp during its heat-death, spewing its bits and pieces out into the frigid nothingness of curved spacetime.
The night sky was ruined. I would never be able to look at it again. I wept into my pillow, the long slow tears of adolescent despair. And when I later encountered the famous quote from physicist Steven Weinberg – “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless” – I wallowed in its poignant nihilism. A bleak emptiness overtook me whenever I thought about what was really going on out of in the cosmos or deep in the atom. So I did my best not to think about such things.
But, since then, I have found a way to defeat the nihilism that lurks in the infinite and the infinitesimal. I have come to understand that I can deflect the apparent pointlessness of it all by realizing that I don’t have to seek a point. In any of it. Instead, I can see it as the locus of Mystery.
The Mystery of why there is anything at all, rather than nothing.
The Mystery of where the laws of physics came from.
The Mystery of why the universe seems so strange.
Mystery. Inherently pointless, inherently shrouded in its own absence of category. The clouds passing across the face of the deity in the stained-glass images of Heaven.
The word God is often used to name this mystery. A concept known as Deism proposes that God created the universe, orchestrating the Big Bang so as to author its laws, and then stepped back and allowed things to pursue their own course. For me, Deism doesn’t work because I find I can only think of a creator in human terms, and the concept of a human-like creator of muons and neutrinos has no meaning for me. But more profoundly, Deism spoils my covenant with Mystery. To assign attributes to Mystery is to disenchant it, to take away its luminance.
I think of the ancients ascribing thunder and lightning to godly feuds, and I smile. The need for explanation pulsates in us all. Early humans, bursting with questions about Nature but with limited understanding of its dynamics, explained things in terms of supernatural persons and person-animals who delivered droughts and floods and plagues, took the dead, and punished or forgave the wicked. Explanations taking the form of unseen persons were our only option when persons were the only things we felt we understood. Now, with our understanding of Nature arguably better than our understanding of persons, Nature can take its place as a strange but wondrous given.
The realization that I needn’t have answers to the Big Questions, needn’t seek answers to the Big Questions, has served as an epiphany. I lie on my back under the stars and the unseen galaxies and I let their enormity wash over me. I assimilate the vastness of the distances, the impermanence, the fact of it all. I go all the way out and then I go all the way down, to the fact of photons without mass and gauge bosons that become massless at high temperatures. I take in the abstractions about forces and symmetries and they caress me, like Gregorian chants, the meaning of the words not mattering because the words are so haunting.
Mystery generates wonder, and wonder generates awe. The gasp can terrify or the gasp can emancipate.
Reprinted with permission from:
Goodenough, U. (1998). The Sacred Depths of Nature. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 9-13.
The author
Ursula Goodenough is Professor of Biology at Washington University. One of America’s leading cell biologists, she is the author of a best-selling textbook on genetics, and has served as President of the American Society of Cell Biology and of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science. She and her family live in St. Louis, Missouri, and in Chilmark, Massachusetts, on Martha’s Vineyard. (bio text from Sacred Depths book flap, courtesy of Ursula Goodenough)
Winterviews continues! From the Solstice (Dec. 21st) till the next Cross-quarter (Feb. 4th), we’re bringing you non-stop interviews and other goodies from big-name authors. Mark your calendar!
Contemporary Paganism is quietly hiding a revolutionary feature: it emphasizes practice over belief. In other words, shared participation in ritual activity is considered more important than shared doctrine. The term for this is orthopraxy, as opposed to orthodoxy, and it’s what allows a polytheist, a pantheist, and an atheist to come together around the same altar without a fistfight.
To learn more about this peculiarity, I interview Reverend Michael J Dangler, ordained priest of the Neopagan Druid organization Ar nDraiocht Fein (ADF).
“What is the relationship between practice and belief?” I ask.
“Practice begets belief,” he answers.
This is a radical statement. Most of us are accustomed to thinking that belief ought to beget practice: Why do ritual if you don’t believe in it?
What this standard view misses is the power of outward human activity to mold and transform the self. Our beliefs are based on our experiences, and only through experience – through doing – do beliefs emerge. Thus, Michael says (to paraphrase):
“It almost always feels like going through the motions at first, but the more you do it, the more the practice comes to reflect the beliefs that emerge.”
What’s key here is that the beliefs that emerge are not predetermined, and are always open to revision. ADF enshrines non-dogma as a core value, and beliefs are entirely up to the individual. How you interpret your experience is your business.
While the majority in ADF are probably polytheists, there is variety. I’ve even heard a former Archdruid joke, “I’m a Monday-Wednesday theist, and a Tuesday-Thursday atheist.”
This is a radically different approach to spirituality than the traditional dogma of Abrahamic religions. It may be more consistent with democracy, insofar as what matters first and foremost is that you vote, not who you vote for. It may also be more consistent with science, insofar as what matters most is that you employ good scientific method, not that you start with a particular theory.
In view of these considerations, I believe orthopraxy may have powerful implications for the Western religious landscape.
Find out what Rev. Michael J Dangler has to say about it in this audio interview.
Here’s what’s in store:
We introduce our paths.
We share stories of experiences illustrating the relationship of practice and belief.
We speculate on what the modern Pagan emphasis on practice over belief may contribute to the religious landscape
The author
Rev. Michael J Dangler has been an Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship (ADF) member for over 10 years. He is currently an ADF Senior Priest and a Grove Priest of Three Cranes Grove, ADF, in Columbus, OH. He currently serves as the ADF Clergy Council Preceptor, overseeing all formal clergy and initiate study within ADF. His academic background is in history and religious studies, and he has written several books on Druidry for ADF. His personal webpage is at http://www.chronarchy.com/
"This new way of thinking about things... attempts to actually restore some of the magic and wonder of things, and to restore meaning and desirability to life."
Winterviews continues! From the Solstice (Dec. 21st) till the next Cross-quarter (Feb. 4th), we’re bringing you non-stop interviews and other goodies from big-name authors. Mark your calendar!
Our interview with Dr. Brendan Myers concludes today with an in-depth discussion of the revelation of “presence” in nature, and a peak at his upcoming book Circles of Meaning, Labyrinths of Fear.
B. T. Newberg: Last time we talked about the universal experiences you call Immensities, and whether gods might have some relation to them. I don’t want to push the gods question too far, but there’s another of your key concepts that seems too relevant to pass up: your notion of presence. One of the issues we’ve been discussing on this blog is how to talk about gods in a naturalistic way without reducing them to archetypes, metaphors, etc. We need to find a way to let the sense of the numinous come through. Your book Loneliness and Revelation speaks in an almost numinous way about the revelation of presence by nature, works of architecture, and other entities. What is this “presence”? What does it mean for something to “reveal” its presence?
Brendan Myers: Presence is, quite simply, the here-ness and the now-ness of something-that-is-not-nothing. It has to do with something’s being in front of you, available to your senses and to your contemplations.
Presence is also that aspect of a being’s identity, reality, or selfhood which that being reveals to you. It is what you experience when someone or something shows itself to you, or deliberately allows you to see and to hear what it is. And here I do mean a “being”, not an object or a mere “thing”: presence has to be revealed as a statement, a deliberate act.
But perhaps controversially, my thoughts are rather flexible concerning what could count as a presence-revealing statement. Much of the time, a being asserts its presence just by showing up. You are here, and you are now, and your very existence here and now makes a statement to others who might be in a position to see and hear it. At minimum, the statement is “I am here!”.
Remember, not all statements are expressed in words. Some are expressed in gestures, symbols, artworks, bodily postures, and other movements. And I’m also open to the possibility that animals and plants reveal presence in a similar way.
But it seems to me that the very possibility of speaking intelligibly about ethics, and the very foundation of eudaimonia, the good and worthwhile human life, begins in the revelation of presence, where two beings show themselves to each other and they do not fear.
Incidentally, my understanding of the importance of presence is one of the places where my thinking diverges away from existentialism. Existentialists always claim that existence precedes essence; or in other words, the fact of your bodily existence on earth comes before any discussion of your nature, your character, your soul, your fate or destiny, or anything else that could count as an “essence.”
By contrast, my argument is that existence and essence always come together: that the revelation of your presence is an essence, of a sort, which is always bundled with your existence. The two are inseparable, and there is probably no point in asking which one came first.
You ask about the gods. For the most part, I am inclined to leave questions about the gods to more theologically inclined pagan writers, such as John Michael Greer (his book A World Full of Gods seemed to me very well-reasoned).
I am a big fan of the idea of apotheosis, which is the immortality of a person’s life-story which continues to be told long after her death. I’m mostly convinced that the gods are, or rather were, living human beings from many centuries ago who lived outstandingly heroic or exemplary lives, and whose stories continued to be told, and exaggerated too, until they became the mythologies we have today.
Add a little animism to the mix, in the form of the belief that the souls of these people survived death and may be seen in dreams or in omens, and you have the basis of a Pagan polytheism.
The interesting thing about presence and revelation, as I have described these ideas in my work, is that while existence and presence are inseparable, it may not always be strictly necessary for a body to be in front of you for a revelation to present itself. A person’s presence can be revealed in the story of that person, even when that person is elsewhere, or long dead. You tell the story of your grandmother on the anniversary of her funeral, and she is there with you, in the story.
The storytelling event is the existing thing, inseparable from the presence. You may also experience this presence when visiting places in the world that figure into that person’s story: this is why we make pilgrimages to the birthplaces or the graves of famous musicians, for example (the graves of Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison come to mind here).
Some people may also experience something like presence revealing itself through nonhuman events, like thunderstorms, sunrises, blizzards. Some people experience presence in landforms like great mountains, mist-shrouded lakes, vast deserts, and the sea. The experience of encountering such things often produces in people the feeling of being in the presence of a god.
The idea that the world as a whole has a presence is perhaps the basis of monotheism, although I think this is a direction well worth pursuing for anyone, whether monotheist or polytheist.
Whether the god of revealed presence is the same as the creator-god of Genesis or the Koran, however, and whether the appropriate relationship to have with such a god is “worship”, is entirely another question. If the gods are presences that reveal themselves through heroic storytelling and environmental events and the like, there doesn’t seem to be much point in worshipping them, or even “believing” in them in the usual way.
As the philosopher Beaudrillard wrote, “If God exists, there is no need to believe in Him. If people do believe in Him, this is because the self-evidence of his existence has passed away.”
BTN: Experiencing presence in this way, especially through thunderstorms or mist-shrouded lakes, strikes a powerful chord. I certainly have felt it, and no doubt many others have too. There’s one part that thoroughly confuses me, though: “presence has to be revealed as a statement, a deliberate act.” How is the statement “I am here”, delivered just by showing up, deliberate? It seems quite unintentional to me, accomplished without deliberation and whether you like it or not. To push it further, how can animals or especially plants make deliberate statements?
BM: The basic statement of presence, “I am here”, is only the very simplest, very first movement of the whole revelation. It is always bound together with whatever else you may be doing at the same time. The deliberateness of the basic statement of presence underlies or hides behind your other purposes and projects, yet also participates in them.
In the book I discovered this statement by following a method invented by the philosopher Husserl, called “epoché”, or “reduction”. The method involves looking at the world and “standing back” from all the utilitarian or practical purposes that things appear to have, in order to see what remains.
If, for example, I am watching a man plant a tree, I see that he digs a hole, places the seed in the ground, waters it, and so on. But I also see that together with these practical actions, he also exists, shows up for life, reveals his presence, makes himself available to be seen and known by others. The revelation of presence, the “I am here”, is the substance, the hypostasis, of your practical way of being in the world, and inseparable from it, no matter what it is.
Yet just showing up is only the first movement of revelation. There are three more that follow it, which account for these practical matters more closely.
Concerning animals and plants: I also understand “a deliberate act” in a very flexible way here. This is because adult human beings are clearly not the only creatures in the world who act with intentionality. Newborn babies do too; and so do our pets, as any dog owner could tell you.
We normally assume that intentionality flows from consciousness and will. But following the work of philosophers like Merleau-Ponty, I’m suggesting that the truth is the other way around: that consciousness and will flows from intentionality. Any living organism which acts intentionally – hunting for food, or turning its leaves to face the sun – is acting in an intentional way, whether it is “conscious” of its act in a human sense or not. And bound together with its way of being will be its own peculiar way to assert the basic statement of revelation, “I am here.”
A scale of complexity is in play, from the simplest and smallest intentional movements, such as a paramecium swimming, to the most sophisticated and self-aware examples, such as a human reading these words.
Perhaps we are stretching the word “deliberate” a little bit too far here; and it may also be too difficult to see this kind of intentionality in sunrises or thunderstorms. Perhaps this is my last concession to animism.
I recognize this problem right in the book itself – writers should be honest with their readers, and should not pretend to know everything – yet I’m confident that I or some future writer may be able to solve it.
In the meanwhile, let us not lose sight of the more ultimate aim of this new way of thinking about things. It attempts to understand the world systematically and logically, but without at the same time stripping away its magic and wonder. In fact, it attempts to actually restore some of the magic and wonder of things, and to restore meaning and desirability to life.
BTN: Fair enough. And yet, perhaps this line of questioning can lead us to other insights. Let me try to explain what I mean…
First off, how can a person deliberately reveal their presence to generations to come through story, if it is not in their power to control whether and how their story is told? For that matter, if your story is told exaggerated to god-like proportions, how is it still a revelation of your presence, and not something entirely different?
The kind of revelation of presence described seems decidedly unintentional, completely without deliberation, a presence that goes beyond any kind of egoistic deliberation, and cuts to the heart of what we share with all things in the universe: existence itself.
If there is any deliberation, it seems like it is on the part of the beholder: we may deliberately open ourselves to seeing a presence in the person or thing before us. We might intentionally allow ourselves to see not a “mere thing” as you say, but a “being.” Would that be a misunderstanding of your work?
BM: In the case of storytelling, we find that the storyteller supplies the material: the words that are spoken, the act of speaking them, etc. But from that material emerges more than just the teller’s own presence. We also find the presence of the characters in the story.
Think of how an excellent actor can sometimes portray her role so well that you forget you are watching a scripted and rehearsed performance. You sense that character’s presence in the actor’s gestures or the storyteller’s words; you know that something more is there. In this way we can understand the old proverb of the Celtic bards, that a seannachie can raise the dead.
The revelation of presence is, indeed, that which cuts through the ego and reaches the very heart of existence itself. Yet I want to understand this existence without falling into the black hole of solipsism. Revelation is something that you experience, but it is not an anthropomorphic projection. There’s something out there, revealing itself to you. A closed-minded or fearful person might prevent himself from seeing it. But it’s out there nonetheless.
And the more self-aware its intentionality is, the more it will reveal to you. And the more it will want the same things that you want: to not be alone, to know that it is something-and-not-nothing, and to know that its existence matters.
And this, it seems to me, is the very foundation on which we can build healthy relations with each other, and lead worthwhile lives.
BTN: Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts in this interview. Or should I say, thank you for revealing your presence to us? (grin).
Before we conclude, can you give us a brief teaser about your next book? What’s it about, and when can we expect it on store shelves?
BM: I have several irons in the fire for the near future. In March of 2012, I will publish Circles of Meaning, Labyrinths of Fear.
In this book we’ll see how sacred places, sacred writings, relics, and rituals, holy days and magical times of year, and so on, are actually representations of relationships that people have with each other and the elements of the world.
Some of these relationships environmental: they involve landscapes, animals, and the streets of your home town. Some are personal, such as families, friends, and elders. Some are public, involving musicians, storytellers, medical doctors, and even soldiers. This book studies twenty-two of them, from a variety of traditions, and shows their place in “the good life.”
Yet these relations are always fragile, and threatened by fears, from the fear of loneliness, to the fear of the loss of personal or political freedom, to the fear of death. To escape from these fears, people often trap themselves into ways of life that are bad for everyone, including themselves. This book studies how that happens, and how to prevent it.
Just this week I signed contracts for two short books to be part of the “Pagan Portals” series from Moon Books (O Books’ pagan imprint). One will be about Druidry and Celtic mysticism, the other will be about philosophy.
A few months ago I invented a strategy game that I used to teach basic political science to my students. It turned out to be surprisingly popular, so I will be publishing it very soon.
And before the end of this year, I will self-publish my first novel: “Fellwater”. This is the story of two lovers who, while having problems in their relationship, accidentally get caught in the conflict between two factions of an ancient secret society.
News and information about these projects will be announced on my web site, my blog, and my Facebook page, as publication dates arrive.
BTN: Wow, let no one say you are not prolific!
Thanks for talking with us, Dr. Myers.
BM: Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to you and your readers!
The interviewee
Canadian philosopher and writer Brendan Myers is the author of several well-respected books on mythology, folklore, society and politics, ethics, and spirituality. His work is studied by college professors, social activist groups, interfaith groups, Celtic cultural associations, and even Humanist societies, in many countries around the world. In 2008 he received OBOD’s prestigious Mount Haemus award for professional research in Druidry. Since earning his Ph.D in environmental ethics at the National University of Ireland, Galway, he has lectured at several colleges and universities in Ontario, and toured much of Canada and Europe as a public speaker. In his varied career Brendan has also worked as a musician, a labour union leader, a government researcher, an environmentalist, and as a simple country gardener. Brendan’s books in print to date include:
Winterviews concludes today. From the Solstice (Dec. 21st) till the next Cross-quarter (Feb. 4th), we’ve brought you non-stop interviews and other goodies from big-name authors. Missed some? Catch up on your reading with the links below.
