The prevailing thought then was that religions were losing their impact. In fact, some felt that dramatic acknowledgment of the death of God might be just what was needed to shock people back to serious religious questions.

Well, God is back, and religion as well. And as is historically all too true, religion is once again demarcating battlegrounds, figuratively and in reality. The religion that is attracting most attention is fundamentalism, whether evangelical Protestantism or conservative Islam. Opposing it is a kind of fundamentalist secularism, which had seemed to triumph 40 years ago. These are engaged in battle, not because they are so different, but because they have common goals. They both strive to reduce life to its lowest common denominator. Fundamentalist religion accomplishes this goal through a literal faith, and fundamentalist secularism through reductionistic reasoning.

And so they argue back and forth over basics. For example, religious fundamentalists profess a personal, literal God. Secular fundamentalists are atheistic. Religious fundamentalists profess strict morals. Secularist fundamentalists espouse ethical relativity. They fear each other, but they have more in common than we might at first assume.

I think we are more aware of the deficiencies of religious fundamentalism than we may be of the liabilities of fundamentalist secularism, so it is this form of reductionism on which I wish to focus this morning. The primary tool of fundamentalist secularism is not unquestioned faith, but exclusive reasoning, what environmental writer Wendell Berry refers to in this quote as the Rational Mind. He writes:

The Rational Mind, without being anywhere perfectly embodied, is the mind we all are supposed to be trying to have. It is the mind that the most powerful and influential people think they have. Our schools exist mainly to educate and propagate and authorize the Rational Mind.
The Rational Mind is objective, analytical, and empirical; it makes itself up only by considering facts; it pursues truth by experimentation; it is uncorrupted by preconception, received authority, religious belief, or feeling. Its ideal products are the proven fact, the accurate prediction, and the "informed decision." It is, you might say, the official mind of science, industry, and government. It has in effect withdrawn from all of human life that involves feeling, affection, familiarity, reverence, faith, and loyalty. (The Progressive, November 2002, p.22.)

This mind makes a wonderful servant, but it is a terrible master.

II.

Contrasted with this mind is what I call the compassionate mind, or, if you like, the mystical mind, or the sacred mind. It balances the innocence of faith and the objectivity of reason with the intimacy of the heart and the awe of everything that is beyond our expectations. Berry calls this the Sympathetic Mind. He writes:

The Sympathetic Mind differs from the Rational Mind, not by being unreasonable, but by ... making reason the servant of things it considers precedent and highest. The Sympathetic Mind is motivated by fear of error of a very different kind: the error of carelessness, of being unloving.
Its purpose is to be considerate of whatever is present, to leave nothing out. ... Its impulse is toward wholeness. It is moved by affection for its home place, the local topography, the local memories, and the local creatures. It hates estrangement, dismemberment, and disfigurement. (The Progressive, November 2002, p.22.)

Berry believes that "The separability of the Rational Mind is not only the dominant fiction but also the master superstition of the modern age." Exclusive reliance upon it has led us to technological marvels, but also to personal alienation. The contradiction of high- tech control and low intimate connection struck me a few years ago through the words of a wise, blunt and humor-filled Hopi elder.

I was fortunate to be one of six Euro-Americans who were invited to a ceremonial dance of the traditional Hopi, at their only remaining traditional village, Hotevilla, Ariz. (Now the last of the traditional elders have passed on.) One of the dancers approached me and asked, "What is your religion?" I answered, "I am a Universalist." Of course, he had to further ask, "What do Universalists believe?"

I tried to think of a succinct reply that would be respectful of his religion. I responded, "We believe that there is only one God but many people and many paths." "Aha," he trumpeted, with a half-scornful voice, a half-loving twinkle in his eye. "That's your problem, you have created too damn many people and have too damn few gods."

We need a larger context in which to embed our mind and our faith. Without it, the literal mind becomes a misdirected recognizance drone plane with a robot pilot. The computer pilot just naturally assumes that it is well motivated.

The rational mind does not like to acknowledge the fact that objective knowledge can be used for evil as well as for good. Knowledge is, of course, power, and power sooner or later becomes available to everyone, to terrorists as well as to those who would sell us personal convenience. Yesterday's paper carried a warning from the FBI that cell phones can be rigged to detonate bombs.

It is hard for us, as 21st-century technophiles, to absorb the lesson that human power is as indifferent to human desires as the solar power that reigns "on the evil and on the good," or as capricious as the God many of us rebelled against. We work with an often- unquestioned assumption that rational knowledge -- logic, analysis, replication and prediction -- will lead us to human advancement in areas besides technological ones. We think we are just getting started: that bigger, mightier things lie ahead, that progress will be better. But as Berry writes:

That in an age of reason, the human race, or the most wealthy and powerful parts of it, should be behaving with colossal irrationality ought to make us wonder if reason alone can lead us to do what is right.

The reductionist secular mind is informed by an implicit and mostly unconscious mythology very similar to that of the mind of naïve faith. The latter believes that the world is a faulty place and that God will redeem it. People can help if only they have the faith of the preacher. The secular mind believes also that the world was not originally done very well, that it needs to be improved, but that intelligent beings can do the job. Although it will vehemently argue to the contrary, the rational mind also believes in evil, or at least that there is something intrinsically wrong that needs to be corrected -- and could be, if only everyone were as rational as the protagonist.

We are tempted to rely upon our fundamentalist mind because we think it will free us from risk, loss and suffering. We would like to feel very comfortable in a world where every product can be safely wrapped in plastic, every playground insured against children getting hurt, and every disease genetically correctable. We would like to live for the future, because we believe that the future may bring us the freedom to live without loss.

Michael Saylor, the CEO of Micro-Strategy, speaks eloquently for this point of view. According to a writer in Newsweek:

He says that just as Caesar's mission was to "spread civilization," his is to "purge ignorance from the planet" ... He wants to create a "technology to place the right piece of insight with the right decision maker at the right time." ... a society in which choices are always well informed, an environment where danger is avoided and opportunities are never lost. He wants to eliminate waste and vanquish mediocrity. He believes he can accomplish this by placing a wireless device one-tenth the size of a watch on your wrist and a tiny speaker in your ear, whispering practical information pulled off the Web. (Newsweek, Jan. 1, 2000.)

How did we ever survive so far? As one pundit has noted, those of us who were kids in the '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s or even the early '80s probably shouldn't be here:

We had no childproof lids or locks on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking. We were without benefit of seat belts or air bags, and in the summer we would drink water from the garden hose. We would share one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this. We would leave home in the morning and play all day, when no one was able to reach us, and we wouldn't come back home until the streetlights came on. We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and healed without the help of lawsuits. Finally we made up games with sticks and tennis balls, and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out anyone's eyes.

III.

The glory as well as the tragedy of our human species lies in our imperfections. We are subject to temptation; we are fallible, contextually dependent, and limited in vision. These limitations provide us the opportunity to be moral, aspirational, to find some things sacred, to be utopian, and to indulge ourselves in kindness without underwriting.

It is a gift to be treasured that we can enjoy a forest without having to convert its value into the profit from timber sales, and that we can enjoy open space without the need to build on it. It is a joy that emotionally we can feel hate without having to act upon it, joy without becoming dependent upon it, and pain without having to succumb to it. As Berry puts it: "The Sympathetic Mind accepts loss and suffering as the price, willingly paid, of its sympathy and affection -- its wholeness."

It is a joy that our goals outstrip our abilities and that our desire to love is not founded upon the predictability of our partner. It is a joy to be able to accept that some things are acceptable, even the ones we don't like, and one of these is that people do not always do what we want, life is full of surprises, God's ways stretch our imagination.

I do not believe that we will be stimulated to save the world by a rational understanding of global warming, nuclear proliferation or decreased biodiversity. Images of catastrophe will not work, either. In fact, the more scared we become, the more likely we are to resort to cold, detached reason or naïve faith.

We are moved to take care of things when we love them. If we were in love with the Earth, its creatures, and stunned by its wonder, we would never want to exploit it. Living with a compassionate mind will lead us to care for things even if it is unreasonable, just as a mother will strive to save her baby at the expense of her own life; and do some things when they make no sense, as when we speak to stars. Living with a compassionate mind, we will change the world and ourselves by increasingly falling in love with everything that is important, and thereby discovering that everything is.

Sometimes I wonder what it means that you and I are born at this time, this turning point in history. What are we to contribute? How can we help? Can we respect our own imperfections, so that we do not have to project them upon the world, and then attack others? Can we ourselves become whole, so that we can bring our peace to others? We live in the midst of a revolution. In the words of writer Rebecca Solnit:

It's a revolution, as is the whole antiglobalization movement, to protect what could be called the poetry of the world, its local customs, foods, and powers, its biodiversity both wild and agricultural, the voices of the small, the unmarketable, the unmanageable, the unpopular, the insubordinate, the eccentric, the things that can't be controlled and sometimes can hardly be described, but in poetry. (Orion, January/February 2003, p.83.)

Theoretical physicists, as much as anyone, are inspiring our mystical mind. In contrast to the more practical and pedagogical physicists, theoretical particle physicists and theoretical mathematicians are describing to us a universe that is more breathtaking than we have ever before dreamed, one with many possible dimensions, one in which spirit and matter are not separate, and in which our observations themselves affect and reflect the character of the universe in which we are embedded.

IV.

We do not have to choose development over the landscape. We balance the virtual reality we create with the wild reality, which has created us. Could we live so fully that every experience would be as if it were filled with a god? Can we choose to close the separation between ourselves and the Earth and everyone else who is different?

Each of us, in our unique way, can reclaim the expansiveness of a metaphorical, mythological mind, with its share of wonder, intimacy and human warmth. Each of us can run our own personal transcendence program. Perhaps you can:
* Connect with time, rather than trying to overcome it or use it up. But if this is too much effort, then go ahead and "waste" it.
* Next time you are in New York City, look up at the decorative cornices atop older buildings, and the meaning of things that are only visible if you take the time to look up.
* Before you go to bed, make sure you know what the moon's phase is and the time of the sunset.
* Pay attention to your yearnings, as well as to your rationalizations, especially to those you don't want to pay attention to.
* Dance.
* Remember images from your nighttime, and see what they suggest for your day.
* At your day's end, recall your three best moments. You may be surprised at how little they cost, and how much they mean.
* Always leave some open space.
* Pay as much attention to your attitude as to your acts, and as much to your solitude as to your solicitations.
* When you exercise, relax your thoughts concerning strength and health, and sing the song of your sinews, muscles and subtle meridians.
* Observe balance. For everything, there is an opposite. If it's true for nature, it's true for us. Accept the toppling.
* Enjoy eccentricities. Even one of Jupiter's moons goes around in the wrong direction.

Ruth H. Sohn, in a poem, asks:

How can I sing?

To take the first step --
To sing a new song --
Is to close one's eyes
and dive into unknown waters.
For a moment knowing nothing risking all --
But then to discover

The waters are friendly
The ground is firm.
And the song --
the song rises again.
Out of my mouth come words lifting the wind.
And I hear
for the first
the song
that has been in my heart
silent
unknown
even to me

Begin with this "koan," a question that comes from theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who asks: "What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?" ("Assailed," Orion, p.78.)

The sermon in a Unitarian Universalist setting is never the last word on any subject, but rather an invitation to further dialog.

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