Who Are the Wise, I've Wondered.
Empowerment comes from seeing that we are the wise. Scholarship is part of community and life everyday.
*note: this too (like the last post) was a class assignment for theology school. The task assigned was to learn to cite scholarship. Having already done this often as an academic since I was 22 years old, I chose to cite mostly scholarship outside academia. In this my biggest and deepest questioning and exploration phase of life, I want to center the wisdom of many, of all. So I cited the Indigo Girls, folks in my town and what they have said to me, a 13th Century monk, and a film, then relate it all to the U.S. Fifth National Climate Assessment. Enjoy.
This winter in a rural SW Colorado town, there were two talks on God and science in the same week. Two. At the Presbyterian church, they said it had been over 14 years since there had been a science and God presentation. A space being opened to further exploration into what we can know through science. I’ve identified as a scientist since 4th grade. My hopes have long been to inspire others to know, honor and love the Earth. That this would reduce suffering. And even better lead to flourishing.
When I enrolled in theology school in fall 2023, I landed in Dr. Albert Hernández course on ‘Rivers of Justice’. I intended to take a different course, but couldn’t figure out how to register before it filled. It was humbling. To learn the other side of teaching. To learn to be a student in a world so different from when I was a student in the 1990’s for my Bachelor’s and PhD.
Once the course began, I also knew that I needed to be in this course to explore the relationship between science and religion, and their mutual aspiration for flourishing and justice.
In his course, I received a chapter from his book on Pentecost, the arrival of Spirit into our lives, and learned that reducing suffering and experiencing flourishing have been the aspirations for science for a very long time (Hernández, 2010). By scientists who loved and spoke of the Divine. By theologians who were also scientists. By scientists who “knew God in their hearts” (St. Bonaventure, 1956), and therefore that something bigger than themselves was involved in the formulation of ideas, their exploration of the ideas, and most of all when ideas get shared, growing and connecting us, or running us into obstacles. Obstacles like the Church in the Middle Ages and the inertia in science now.
Yet, two churches in my town are ready to talk science and God. The rooms in which the talks were given were packed. Insights were shared by the speakers – their committed efforts to make sense of the universe from what we know in science (Craig, 2024; Miller, 2024). They referenced books, films, and quotes from speeches given by scientists such as Einstein. I don’t believe any peer reviewed papers were cited.
During the presentation at the Presbyterian church a man in the back noted, “I want to smoke whatever Einstein was smoking”. There was laughter. Some agreement too.
When speaking of what we can know and how we know, a psychologist in my town offered that drugs are not necessary, because “we can get there other ways” (D. Miller, personal communication, April 2022). Then, he taught me how.
There is brilliance in our world. Lots. Much of it outside the academy. Much of it spoken, offered among friends and at town events. Some written in letters, though more often emails and texts. I’ve been part of academics my whole career and seen its many limitations. Its attention to what is published or presented at a conference.
I think that for shifts in us and in culture to take place, scholarship, the universe of ideas, needs to include brilliance of all kinds offered in all forms. The transformation that is essential to get to a just world necessitates this.
Last summer, I learned that Einstein got in trouble with other academics when he began to speak of the ‘Universe’, of God. Colleagues questioned his ideas, then his credibility as a scientist. In a letter to a Rabbi who was working to care for Jewish boys found alive at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp and who lost his son to polio while away, Einstein wrote:
A human being is part of the whole, called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion for his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind. (Levy, 2017, p. 13)
Children of one of us are children of all. Ideas of one, ideas of all. We are one. Religion has a purpose aligned with, entwined with science. There are stories of Einstein, Jung, Curie, Sagan and many more scientists that reveal there are obstacles as we explore how we are all partners together in science, they, you, me and the Divine. They are systemic ones stuck, cemented, Gorilla glued in our culture. The Indigo Girls said it well, “Galileo’s head was on the block, the crime was looking up the truth” (1992).
The obstacles are the consequence of systems of power that divide science from faith, and bury the mystics, scientists and theologians who are often one and the same. There is a lot that is tough for a scientist to offer, to state publicly. The film Don’t Look Up is a parody of this, and there is so much more to say than “we are all going to die” (2021). Now in the 21st Century, scientists may be restricted the most by the judgement of other scientists in a system that serves us well, but not well enough. One that is attentive to the material world that can be seen and measured.
“Add love,” I said (Berwyn, 2023). Love is how we include the quantum and virtual worlds, how we understand who we are and why we are.
I’m stepping into conversations with people who have also arrived into these ideas of the interdependence of science and faith as slow and fast paths to knowing, and both as transformation and transformational. Faith and science are vital partners in a world influenced for too long by systems of domination.
Conversations about faith and science, about the climate crisis and its solutions, about justice are happening everywhere. I keep reminding myself that what matters most is to take part in some way, often small ways. What did Jesus do? He spoke to one and many. On mountains and next to seas. Not at conferences and often not even in temples. He committed time to engagement. To connection. He didn’t tuck himself away to write a book, though writing a book may still be something I do.
I chose to include less traditional forms of scholarship – talks in my community, a song, a film and personal communication, voices from the back of a room, and books. Because ideas to transform our world to get to the transformational adaptation spoken of in the 5th U.S. National Climate Assessment (2023) are in us and everywhere.
“Ideas are an offering to us through a collective subconscious from a benevolent Universe, the Creator, God.” What might change for you, in you, and for our world, if we embrace this and shift our attention for scholarship to the insights, experiences, and wonderings of the people with whom we share our lives (Steltzer, 2023)?
I think this is how we bridge divides, ones like science and faith, that exist more for those with power than for you or me.
References:
Berwyn, Bob. (2023, March 23). New IPCC Report Shows the ‘Climate Time Bomb Is Ticking,’ Says UN Secretary General António Guterres. Inside Climate News. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20032023/ipcc-report-ar6-climate-change/.
Bonaventure, Saint. (1956). The journey of the mind to God (P. Boehner, Trans.). Franciscan Institute.
Craig, Geoff, J.D. (2024, January 25). God on trial: How science and scientific discoveries have proven the existence of God. [public talk]. Theology Night at the Library by St. Columba Church, Durango, CO.
Hernández, Albert. (2010). Subversive fire: the untold story of Pentecost. Emeth Press.
Indigo Girls. (1992). Galileo. [Song]. On Rites of passage [Album]. Epic Records.
Levy, Naomi. (2017) Einstein and the rabbi: Searching for the soul. Flatiron Books.
McKay, Adam. (2021). Don’t Look Up. [Film]. Hyperobject Industries Bluegrass Films.
Miller, Eugenia, M.D. (2024, January 28). Science reveals the glory of God. [Adult Sunday School]. First Presbyterian Church, Durango, CO.
Steltzer, Heidi. (2023, July 13). A journey through the years: Transforming ourselves to transform the world [Conference panel]. Transformations Conference 2023, Transformations Community, Sydney, Australia.
USGCRP. (2023). Fifth National Climate Assessment. Crimmins, A.R., C.W. Avery, D.R. Easterling, K.E. Kunkel, B.C. Stewart, and T.K. Maycock, Eds. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA. https://doi.org/10.7930/NCA5.2023.