The Divine Universe

Much in religion, philosophy and science is based on dualisms; God and creation is the prime religious example. Philosophers talk of psyche and soma – mind and body. Plato taught of universal ‘substances’ and ephemeral ‘accidents’ – mere projections from the real world on the canvas of our day-to-day world of sense. Conservative scientists think of reality as matter and energy in space. They regard space as emptiness, having no real existence of its own. Time is another kind of emptiness, filled with happenings as we go along. More advanced scientific thinking, however, since the acceptance of relativity and quantum theory, conceives of four-dimensional ‘space-time’ as an active partner of matter-energy forming one dynamic reality.

The dualisms we create while organising our thoughts and analysing our experience are sometimes useful but they are artificial. If they are regarded as absolute truths or fundamental facts, as they often seem to be, they hide deeper levels of truth. For non-dualist or ‘monist’ believers there is, ultimately, only one reality: God, in whom, through whom and by whom all things have their being. For scientists there is one ultimate physical reality – energy in space-time. Matter consists of dynamic formations of tiny energy concentrations. Space-time is a part of matter essential to its existence, and space-time only exists in relation to formations of energy. Bear with me, I’ll explain more further on.

The Big Bang story, quantum theory, relativity, “chaos” theory – all of cutting edge contemporary physics, in fact, confirms cosmic interconnectedness. Physicist, Brian Swimme (THE UNIVERSE STORY), thinks of the universe as a spiritual event rather than a collection of material objects. Ernest Laszlo (THE WHISPERING POND) and others see it as a living organism. We are in the midst of the cosmic event; we are part of the cosmic organism.

God is the infinite source, essence and the sum of all being. We cannot think of God plus something else because you cannot add something to infinity. Our universe has being because it is in God. God is the one total reality. A number of theologians these days talk of all of physical nature as the embodiment or ‘incarnation’ of God. This is an idea that emerges with Paul (Col:15-20) and in the Fourth Gospel (1:1-4). It is also a central concept in Hindu and other traditions. We can distinguish between God in his total being and in his incarnate ‘body’ or manifestation, but we cannot separate them.

God is more than a physical body, just as you and I are. Paul told the Corinthians that we ultimately dwell in a spiritual body, whatever that might mean. He seems to think embodiment is essential to being. And so long as there is a physical universe embodying God, God is, in that body, mortal. Incarnate God is living and also dying till the end of time. God is immanent in transient things, yet also transcendent and immortal. This is not a contradiction. Christians speak of incarnate God (Christ) as having two natures, one physical (immanent) and one divine (transcendent), but never speak of two gods.

Returning to space and time (known by scientists simply as space-time) we encounter some very weird ideas. J.B.S. Haldane remarked that nature is not only weirder than we thought, it is weirder than we can possibly imagine. Physicists today do not see space-time as emptiness but as something emerging with matter in a boundless and ubiquitous sea of seething energy called the quantum vacuum.

The quantum vacuum gives birth to and nurtures every particle of matter, each in its dimensions of space-time. Particles of matter can also be observed as waves in the energy field rather than self-contained entities. Dynamic and complex agglomerations of subatomic ‘wave-particles’, as they are called, the micro-world of molecules and they form the macro-world of stars and planets, bacteria and bees, biologists and bishops. Within this boundless sea there is creative power, partially but not completely explained by chaos theory. Everything exists, everything happens in the quantum vacuum: it contains all matter, all space, all time. There is some similarity between the physicist’s theory of the quantum vacuum and the believer’s notion of a creator God, in whom, through whom and by whom everything exists and happens.

Our known universe is not everything. It extends beyond our power to observe. And there may be many essentially similar ‘universes’. Only minute proportion may be capable of generating living organisms. Or ours may be the latest in a succession of increasingly finely tuned universes (Laszlo again). Once we free ourselves from the old mechanistic and materialistic conceptions of nature, the possibilities are endless. And God is more greatly glorified in our thinking; our theology is enriched.

A poem by the medieval Tibetan, Longchenpa, could have been written by a modern physicist. Philosophically it’s quite post-modern!

After constant deconstructing, investigating keenly,
not even the slightest real substance can be found;
and in the undivided moment of non-dual perception
we abide in the natural state of perfection.

Absent when scrutinised, absent when ignored,
not even an iota of solid matter is attested;
so all aspects of experience are always absent -
know it as nothing, but a magical illusion.

I’m not altogether happy with the expression “magical illusion” though. To the modern mind, the word illusion means unreal. I believe everything is real, even our illusions and imaginings, though they are not material. We all agree that magic is completely discredited in the modern world, yet “the supernatural” seems to have some credibility. As well as religious traditions, shows like the X Files and spooky movies make a considerable impact on people’s thinking.

Personally, I don’t believe in the supernatural if it involves another dualism – natural and supernatural. Everything is natural, even what we cannot understand (and there is a great deal of that). Nature is of God and in God. Matter, dark matter, anti-matter and all energy fields, known and unknown, are God’s self-creating embodiment. God also shares our feelings and imaginings. I think that much of what we call the supernatural is simply part of nature that we do not understand, and much of it is a product of the imagination. Most scientists would admit that what we don’t understand about nature is probably much more than what we do understand.

Finally, I like very much the phrase, “the undivided moment of non-dual perception”. I am a wholehearted monist, but I admit dualisms can be helpful. We can accept the ones we commonly use, but recognise their artificiality and limitations. Looking beyond them we view a far deeper perspective of reality and the divine mystery.

Religion is a difficult word to define; yet it is a very significant part of human experience and a powerful influence in political and cultural history. In an age in which the dominant western culture seems to be drifting towards scepticism and rejection of religion, it is still a major factor, both for good and evil, in world affairs and in individual lives.

There can be no peace without religious peace. Religiously motivated violence is one of the worst problems facing the world today. Fundamentalist Christians and Muslims, Hindus and Jews believe they serve God by killing people. It is hard to think of a single war in which God has not been conscripted by both sides.

In spite of these horrors, and acknowledging the fine and heroic work of purely humanist organisations, religious belief still inspires much if not most of the organised works of compassion, local and international, large and small. The majority of those who have most famously advanced human wellbeing, justice and peace have been men and women of religion.

One of the great works of compassion, though it is not widely recognised as such, is interfaith dialogue and fellowship, and it requires humility, sympathy and courage. Those passionately committed to finding the way of peace for all religions have become a religious identity in themselves. Several leading theologians of our time have more than one religious allegiance. New multi-faith movements attract numerous disciples and we even hear of ordained multi-faith ministers.

Conservative religionists, especially those in leadership, are not at ease with this. They speak disparagingly of syncretism and relativism, of watered down theology and shallowness of faith, of infidelity and even apostasy. They will tolerate inter-faith dialogue only on the understanding that their religion has exclusive access to absolute truth; its superiority must be recognised. New on the religious landscape are deeply religious and sometimes very learned and wise individuals who believe that we are not qualified to make an absolute value judgement of any religion, and that exclusive claims to absolute authority have no validity. At the same time they stress the importance of deep understanding of and commitment to at least one religious tradition.

Is there religion in heaven? Is everyone religious in the kingdom that Jesus spoke of? Are sceptics, agnostics and atheists, excluded, however wise and good? The German theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, referred enigmatically to “religionless Christianity”. Is it possible to have Christianity without religion?

The prophet Micah strips religion bare: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (6:8) These words are addressed specifically to mortals, and they are not about the after-life. Jesus spoke of heaven as being here and now, inhabited, at least in part, by mortals. Amos positively vilifies the formal and ceremonial side of religion: “I (the LORD) hate and despise your feast days; I loathe your solemn assemblies.” (5:21) Isaiah writes in similar vein: “Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination to me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies: away with them; they are iniquity, even the solemn meetings.” (1:12-14)

Religion is not only about rules of behaviour and ceremonial assemblies; there is also a rich intellectual heritage. Christian theology is probably the most complicated and detailed in any of the main world religions, embracing the riches of Classical philosophy and, sometimes, modern philosophy too. You could almost say that Christians invented theology. Judaism, has no elaborate systematic theology like Christianity, but it has a rich tradition of religious debate. This characteristically Jewish passion is clearly evident in the Gospels and continues to the present day. And there are Moslem, Hindu and Buddhist scholars and philosophers who also contribute richly to religious debate, understanding and knowledge.

But, as the Law, the prophets and Jesus’ teachings show, Judaism and Christianity are originally and essentially about social conduct rather than theology. Educated Jews, including Jesus, could sum up the law and prophets in one “Golden Rule”, a basic ethical principle to be found in ancient traditions from China to the Americas.

It is a moot question whether morality and ethical systems can exist without the rules, ceremonies and theologising of religion. Cave dwellers probably had moral conventions before they had religious ceremonies and theology (don’t violate the space or persons of others in your cave, for example). But most religionists hold the view that religion is a necessary foundation for morality. This is the subject of lively debate today.

The kingdom of heaven is certainly a moral society, living by the “law” of love. But, to quote the prophet Jeremiah: “I (the Lord) will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.” (31:33) It is not something written on stone tablets or in statute books and liturgical primers. Paul makes this point over and over again. Christianity did not, in Paul’s time, have the accoutrements of a full-fledged religion; it was a new, radically reformed way of living Judaism, freed of almost all its ceremonial and legal baggage.

In the cosmic scheme of things, it may eventually emerge that religion is only a temporary phenomenon. The evolution of the cosmos towards its final perfection in Christ is not a process that began and will end with humankind; it was going on for billions of years before Jesus was born (something Paul draws attention to in Romans (8:22)) and will still be going on when the only traces of Homo sapiens are fossils. We humans have a natural tendency to exaggerate our own importance. We are not only hubristic about our religions; we are hubristic about ourselves. We need more of that humility that is so central in the teaching and example of our most venerated spiritual guides.

I think religion will continue for many centuries yet, but it will continue to change and evolve. Though originating in independent tribal cults, and suffering a history of conflicts and schisms, there has also been a less obvious process of merging. Migrations and conquests that caused interracial and cultural merging have also merged religions. But I do not see a future world super-church (a horrible thought!); I see rather the gradual development of less and less institutionalized expressions of human spirituality – “Every man will sit under his own vine and his own fig tree.”(Micah 4:4) Yet there will be fellowship and communion. However, to sum up, I would say that, in eschatological heaven, there will be nothing we would recognise as a religion.

Jesus’ disciples were fascinated by Jesus’ long periods of prayer, all night sometimes. And he seemed wrapt in joy. I can imagine they were more than curious, and felt that prayer, so much a part of Jewish tradition, must be more than they reckoned. They asked Jesus to teach them to pray like him, and he tells them to begin by calling God “Father”. That wasn’t a new idea; there are plenty of references to God as Father of Israel in the OT, but it was controversial. The Pharisees were indignant when Jesus referred to God as his father. The Sadducees, at his trial made a capital charge out of it. It was the main excuse for having him crucified. Calling God “Father” may be routine to us, but to Jesus’ disciples it would have been surprising, daring, shocking even.

Jesus begins by saying that praying in public is hypocritical. He doesn’t, of course, mean that prayer in a group is wrong but he is hard on people, often public figures, who like to be seen in church just to enhance their image. He recommends praying in a secluded place. “Close the door,” he says. It is not, strictly speaking, private prayer because prayer is an effective part of our relationship with everyone and everything. You will, however, be undistracted by company, except for God; but that’s rather the idea.

Jesus also tells the disciples not to “keep babbling like pagans”. Pagans treated prayers like magic spells. The more you said the better. Our church prayers, especially ex-tempore ones, tend to get repetitive and clichéd. Even the Lord’s Prayer can become a formality. For Jesus, it was the framework of his whole conversation with God, including, of course, listening while God had his say. It covered everything.

Let’s consider the familiar words*. “Hallowed be your name.” For Semitic peoples, all names were significant. They even believed that knowing people’s names gave you some power over them. For Jews, the name of God is sacred: never even to be spoken. And the meaning of the “name” offered to Moses from the burning bush has never been deciphered anyway. Jews use the word “Adoni”, a symbolic title that means Lord. The true and living God was Lord over all the earth, but especially over Israel. Our modern word, “Yahweh”, replacing the older “Jehovah”, has no clear meaning. The fact is that we don’t have any meaningful name for God, certainly nothing that gives us power over him. We address our prayers through Jesus, however, and, in John’s Gospel, Jesus seems to suggest that using his name has decisive influence with God. However, the phrase “in my name” means more than adding “through Jesus Christ Our Lord” to our petitions; in means more like “with Christ’s intention”. “Hallowed be your name” means that there is no name for God that can be uttered by the ignorant lips of humans. We believe God knows when we are talking to him without any formalities. The address “Father” simply expresses our relationship with God as it was understood by the prophets and Jesus.

“Your kingdom come . . . ” We all wish for a world of perfect peace and loving harmony, yet, if we think about it deeply, it becomes increasingly difficult to say in detail what it would be like. The Jews filled five books trying to define its rules. But Jesus and Paul said that the truth is from the Holy Spirit, not from lawbooks.

“Your will be done on earth as in heaven.” This does not, of course, refer to two places, one where God has his way and one where he doesn’t. “Earth” and “heaven” are states of being, not places. Heaven is the ultimate perfection of God’s creative work. Maybe there is no final end when God stops creating and embodying himself – the incarnation will never end. Even the end of our universe as predicted by scientists – thermodynamic equilibrium, absolute zero, the disappearance of all ‘things’, even subatomic particles, is not the end. The quantum vacuum remains, and it can produce another “big bang” universe, and must eventually do so by statistical theory, being unrestricted by time or subject to decay. “Earth” is the point in space-time where we are now. It is somewhere in the middle of God’s creative process. We are not finished; God’s ultimate will is not fulfilled here and now, or even known to us.

“Give us today our daily bread,” enough for each day. But even this is not fulfilled. In spite of our wishful prayers, many thousands, mostly very young children, die of starvation every day, while ten percent of people have ninety percent of all the wealth in the world. There is enough for everyone if it can be fairly distributed. We have a lot to do if our prayers are to be fulfilled. Prayer is work as well as words.

“Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” It is not a simple trade-off: if I forgive her or him for something, God will forgive me the same amount. Forgiveness is a state of mind, rather than a specific act. It dwells at the deepest level of our relationship with others and with God. If we know we are a forgiven person, we will discover we are also able to be a forgiving person. If we cannot seek and accept forgiveness, or even forgive ourselves, we will not know how to forgive others. This is a subject of intimate conversation with God.

“Save us from the time of trial.” There are many renderings of this petition, and scholars admit they are baffled. We are right to ask not to suffer; Jesus did, sweating blood. But, in spite of our prayers, bad things still happen. Through prayer, however, we may discover some hidden benefit emerging from our suffering. It may meet hitherto unrecognised needs. Suffering can actually result in strengthening rather than weakening of faith, and often in a deeper appreciation and enjoyment of life. Intimate dialogue with God brings understanding, and understanding brings peace. We can learn to embrace the God who suffers in us. The creative genius knows agony as well as ecstasy.

It is hard to think of anything in life that the Lord’s Prayer doesn’t cover. So it is not something to be recited as a duty; nor is it a kind of mantra, valuable as mantras are in their own way. It is the basis of thoughtful intimacy with God.

* International Commission for English Texts version.

Life is a journey; some would say an uphill journey, and everyone, including atheists, looks for guides or leaders along the way. Most people choose several mentors at different stages of their journey.

In his gospel, Luke tells us about Christian discipleship led by Jesus. Describing his final journey to Jerusalem he tells of several encounters that illustrate this theme. It was a dangerous mission, fatal as it turned out, and Christians are encouraged to see their discipleship as an adventure. There can be dangers but, in this country at least, church membership is a fairly safe adventure.

Luke’s first story is about dealing with conflict. The people of a Samaritan village were hostile because Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem for Passover. There was an ancient religious dispute between Jews and Samaritans going back to the time of Solomon.

Jesus’ disciples were more offended and angry than Jesus was himself. James and John wanted divine retribution – fire from heaven. Today we don’t call for divine intervention from on high; we rain fire and destruction from high-altitude bombers and helicopter gunships. President Bush and his band of right-wing, born-again Christians even invoke God’s support for their war in Iraq, making it a sort of Christian jihad.

We all know what extremist Moslem jihad looks like: beheading women who don’t wear headscarves, shooting little girls who dare to go to school, cutting off thieves’ hands and, of course, suicide bombers, but we are less willing to recognise extremist Christianity. Extremist Christianity or ‘power Christianity’ led to the Crusades and the Inquisition, but there are still power Christians around today, spreading fear, hatred, prejudice and violence. The total sum of innocent deaths, orphaned children and wrecked lives they have caused in Iraq may never be known.

Traditionally we refer to the Church militant. Jesus was militant. He fought against hypocrisy, bigotry and prejudice; against political and religious corruption; against all the perverted thinking and the politics of power that use religion and God’s good gifts for self-serving ends.

But Jesus was a radical pacifist. In his final confrontation with his enemies he wouldn’t allow his disciples even to use what we might see as reasonable force in his defence. He told Peter to put away his sword. On this occasion he rebuked James and John for their misguided zeal. But trying to find a non-violent way to deal with people who hate us, make impossible demands or attack us is sometimes just too difficult, so we resort to violence.

In Luke’s next episode, Jesus said to a would-be disciple, “Birds build nests and foxes dig holes, but the Son of Man (the Messiah) has nowhere to lay his head.” Humans have, in fact, built nests for themselves ever since they left the caves, and we’ve created a wealth of art and technology in the process. Jesus left home to become a vagrant. Vagrants have always been and still are an unwanted embarrassment in society. Jesus chose this, the lowest way of life possible. It was another example of his militant challenge to mainstream social values.

We might also detect a subtler message in Jesus’ words. Suppose he was using “son of man” as a general term for humankind rather than as a messianic title. In sensitive people there is always a deep, underlying feeling of homelessness: a feeling of being exiles in an alien land. It is not only that we crave a more luxurious lifestyle or greater wealth and fame. They are blind alleys anyway. Our feeling of alienation is really a yearning for the Kingdom, a longing to be at home with God.

To be honest, I don’t always find God easy to live with, and I know God cannot find me easy either, yet I also know I can’t live without him and I want to know and understand him better. Then, I believe, life will be more complete and happy. I will be more fully at home with God. But it takes patience and perseverance.

In the next encounter, Jesus invited someone to follow him, but the man wanted to stay home till his father died. Jesus was very blunt: “Let the dead bury their dead.” He was not asking this man to do anything he hadn’t done himself. I don’t know how his mother and his brothers and sisters (if he had them) felt about him leaving the home and family business. His father was dead and he was the eldest. Conservative tradition holds he was the only son. Abdicating such a responsibility was a breach of custom, of family values. But Jesus was saying that if we’re seriously looking for fullness of life, not even family must be allowed to stand in our way. We need to check for unnecessary inhibitions and things that tie us down, social, material or even domestic.

Luke’s third story is about another would-be disciple, but he too has family to think of. Jesus told him that a ploughman must keep his eye on the ground ahead, not look back. In talking with his family, the man might lose his direction. Conflicting desires and responsibilities, and family pressure especially, can be confusing. If you decide to follow Christ in a new way, let go of the past.

In these short anecdotes, Luke makes me think about the decision my parents made for me in infancy and my subsequent Christian discipleship. Luke’s stories are not primarily about specific actions; they’re primarily about what kind of person I will become if I follow Jesus. James said that faith without works is dead, but actions depend on one’s basic attitude to life, one’s beliefs and values.

The stories reveal Jesus’ personal character. He was courageous, adventurous, militant, but a radically non-violent person. We all prefer non-violent ways; we are horrified by war and terrorism, but we resort to force and even war in emergencies.

Jesus was also a totally liberated person. He broke free of convention, even family obligations, and he completely contradicted popular expectations of Messiah. He lived life completely. He was more alive than we are. We are often tied down by convention, by the expectations of others, by social or religious duties. We are still partly in the womb. Our lives are still enclosed by structures of security and the mores of respectability and convention. If we checked our beliefs and attitudes and maybe took some risks to follow Jesus more closely, we might become more alive and free. This is what Luke’s stories all seem to be saying

From the atom to the galaxy, and everything in between, there is evidence of design. From Newton till the twentieth century – the era of ‘modern’ science – scientists saw the universe as a complex machine. Since Einstein and Max Planck, however, relativity and quantum theory have led to a radical revision of scientists’ perception of nature and the universe – what might be called ‘post-modern’ science. Early last century Julian Huxley said, “Nature is not only weird, it is weirder than we can possibly imagine.” I don’t think he would revise that statement today.

Today, scientists are more and more seeing the universe as a living organism rather than a machine.
Since Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding, cosmologists have realized that it is also evolving over time: becoming ever more complex. Quantum theory holds that this complexification is a process of infinitely small, random events. Physicists deal, not with simple cause and effect, but probabilities. The probability of the Universe developing as it has is incalculably small. It depends on extremely finely tuned initial ratios between the strength of energy fields and certain other physical factors.

After fourteen billion years of such random events, bringing increased order out of chaos, thinking organisms have emerged and with them what we call intelligence. But what is intelligence? Psychologists measure intelligence experimentally as an individual’s ability to make deductions from given data, but it is more than the use of formal logic. It includes memory and intuition; it overlaps with the direct perception of patterns, of beauty and ugliness, harmony and discord.

Most people associate mind and intelligence only with humans and tend to regard humankind as separate from the rest of nature, a different order of being. But there are many people who do not think this way. Australian and American aborigines and mystics like Saint Francis and Teilhard de Chardin, for example, see the whole of nature as an interrelated community. Today scientists recognise that humankind is an integral part of the universe. We are of the earth, a product of cosmic process. We are not outside observers, alien invaders or an added extra; our species is a transient phenomenon in a cosmic evolutionary process.

Many scientists recognise mind, not simply as electric currents in the brain cells and nervous system, but as something that exists in its own right. Even plants seem clever and ingenious in their tricks of survival and the promotion of their genes. There is no detectable trace of intelligence in a rock, but no one has identified a definable cut-off point. Earth, and humankind in particular, may be the cosmic centre of gravity for mind, or may not be. There may be other concentrations in other places in the universe in similar or possibly in very different life forms. It is not unreasonable to suppose mind is distributed throughout the universe, albeit very unequally, the way matter is. Some scientists have coined the term ‘psi field’, as in psychology and psyche: an energy that there is at present no means of observing experimentally or measuring quantitatively.

It seems mind is a cosmic phenomenon that we cannot locate precisely. It is everywhere. Some have suggested that a cosmic “mind” directs the process of complexification. The uncertainty and randomness observed by particle physicists does not eliminate the notion of direction and even purpose; it only indicates nature’s infinite flexibility and potential. Anything can happen, though with varying degrees of probability. The probability of thinking beings made of matter emerging through random events out of the total chaos of the primordial universe is incalculably small, and it took fourteen billion years; but it has happened.

Religious believers generally embrace the notion of transcendent intelligence, though wisdom is a more popular word. Monotheists believe in an infinitely wise God. Hindus believe in a transcendent power that is infinitely wise and just, whose judgments are experienced as karma. They believe that the individual evolves through a succession of incarnations that advance forward or decline backward according to the disposition and conduct of the individual.

This introduces the notion of something that overrules the mind. We call it the will. The will is not a rational faculty that deals with data; it is something that generates motion, action. All action is either creative or destructive. Some people speak of positive and negative energy. It seems that the energy of the universe is, on balance, positive and creative. The cosmic mind seems set upon self-creation, not destruction and, although increasing entropy is an inherent tendency in nature, the opposite, increasing order, has been the overriding phenomenon since the beginning.

According to Darwin, biological evolution results from adaptation to environmental change. Those members of a species in which random changes in genetic code fit them better for their environment thrive and reproduce more than less lucky ones. But recent research in France has revealed a new, mysterious evolutionary driver that is not related to environmental change. The formation of the bones of the skull is largely dependent on the changing shape of one particular bone near the spine. This coincides with changes in the form, posture and behaviour of the higher primates and, ultimately, Homo sapiens. The adoption of the upright position, for example, has been found to be unrelated to the environmental changes in Africa that were previously thought to be the cause. It occurred simultaneously world wide. It is also hard to prove that the development of larger brains, and with them enhanced consciousness and intelligence, bestowed any real advantage.

The process of advancing levels of consciousness and mental power cannot be attributed simply to environmental advantage. It is easier in fact to link moral sense with adaptation to the environment than pure intelligence. The ‘altruism’ and social responsibility of ants, for example, has been a major factor in their success. There is something else driving evolution.

It is as though heightening of consciousness is something the universe values and promotes for its own sake. It could be argued that mystics are the highest development of evolution. Intelligence, or thinking power, is only a stage of development towards the direct perception, deep insight and intuition of the mystic. The universe manifests its greatest sense of its own reality in humankind, but this is an ongoing process. It is not over yet. We are not Mother Earth’s last word.

Ultimate total self-awareness and wisdom belong to God, embodied in a yet-to-be-perfected universe. The universe is in the process of becoming what it truly is – the embodiment of the mind of God: the Cosmic Christ, the Logos.

A sermon for Trinity Sunday.

During the last six months we have celebrated the birth, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Today is Trinity Sunday, so fasten your mental safety belts and ensure your seats are in the upright position because we’re scheduled to take off into the dizzy realms of abstract theology. The Trinity image of two men and a bird is, of course, metaphorical; the doctrine of the Trinity is an intellectual abstraction.

We like to see things in threes. In many mystic traditions three is an especially holy number. If asked for a definition including absolutely everything we would perhaps say, first, the natural or material world, second, the supernatural or spiritual world, and third, God. Many people believe in that trio without recognising its unity. They see it as a three things, not a trinity. We seem scared of the idea that there is a single unity of total being. Splitting something up into its component parts makes it easier to understand, whether we are talking about motorbikes or the universe, or God; but if you don’t put it together again it won’t work.

Often we just split things in two. It’s called dualism. God and creation is the ultimate dualism. Creation is a thing God put together. God is an entity out there, beyond the sky. That is our favourite dualism, but the doctrine of the Holy Trinity abolishes that.

The Holy Trinity was not invented to take God apart for analysis; it was invented to unite God with everything, the ultimate unity, the union of God and creation. For us Christians the key to this ultimate atonement (at-one-ment) is Jesus Christ

St Paul realised this. He wrote to the Colossians that everything is in Christ: not just Jesus, not even just the Church, but everything that exists. St John later said the same thing but differently, calling Christ the Logos, the Word, the utterance of God. “All things came into being through him,” he wrote, “And without him not one thing came into being.” And he, the Word, the utterance of God, is not something God made or did; it is God. The Word is the manifestation of God’s mind.

At this point we should note that ‘things’ did not just come into being, full stop. Every thing has a limited lifespan, including human beings. So creation, the “all things” that Paul and John refer to is not an inert collection of things; it is a process, an ongoing event, with things appearing and disappearing all the time. That is why we distinguish God from things. God is not a thing, an entity or even a person. God is eternal, not temporary. We distinguish between God and things, but we must not separate them. Every single thing is in God. There is no ‘outside’ of God; God doesn’t have a ‘skin’.

The Creed says we believe in one God, the Father, yet both the Son and the Spirit are equally God: not a trio but a trinity. People speak of the ‘incarnation’, the embodiment of God. Although some people still think that the incarnation just means Jesus, Paul soon realised it didn’t end there.

Jesus said, “In as much as you do it to the least, you do it to me.” He was referring primarily to other people, but we are now realising that we cannot separate humankind from everything else. We are part of a global organism, the biosphere, which spreads over the whole planet, and this emerged from the geosphere, the earth and sea. We have begun to speak of respect for the environment, both biological and geological, and to realise that what we do to our environment we do to ourselves and to God. Today Homo sapiens and many other species are at risk because we have failed to see our organic unity with the world around us. If we wound it, we wound ourselves. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity has very practical implications and important links to science.

Jesus also said, “I am the vine and you are the branches.” One of the most learned theologians of our time, Pope Benedict XVI, observes in a book just published that the vine is not just something God made or planted: if Jesus is God, then the vine is God. God dwells in us and in everything. The universe is not something God built in his workshop; God gives birth to it in a continuous act of procreation, it is his offspring, one flesh.

But we can’t stop there. The materialization of God, the cosmic Christ, is not all that God is. Humankind seems from the dawn of our higher consciousness to have been aware that the world is not only what the senses can perceive, the world of matter. Theoretical physicists are now talking about fields of energy beyond gravity, electromagnetism and two atomic ones, the four they’ve studied. And there may be many more than four dimensions. They recognise that reality extends beyond the observable and measurable, and they are exploring that discovery.

We know God through his embodied presence, but we also sense that there is a source of knowledge beyond the reach of our senses. Theologian, John Taylor, has called it the “Go-Between God”, the communicator of love, knowledge and understanding. Jews and Christians have called it the Holy Spirit, the spirit of love, the energy of creation. But the Holy Spirit is not all that God is any more than Christ is. It is the one Jesus called “Father” who is the whole of God. The 12th century German mystic, Meister Eckhart, said it beautifully: “God is everything, but everything is not God.”

If you feel a bit confused, wrestling with these abstractions of systematic theology, don’t switch off. I am deliberately trying to melt your ideas about God. I don’t want to leave you confused, but with a deep sense of awe, living within an ineffable mystery that cannot be analyzed or defined because we are inside it, part of it.

Though God cannot be analyzed or defined, we have seen that he can be partially known through his embodied presence in everything around us. But he seems to look so un-godlike – so ordinary, sometimes even scandalous. But if you want to know how God can be ordinary and scandalous, read the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth and death.

And God can also be known by simply spending time in the shade of the cloud of unknowing, waiting for him to take the initiative and open the conversation. And you may need to be very patient.

The publication by leading biologist, Richard Dawkins, of new book vilifying religion and belief in God in a rather ignorant and arrogant way prompts me to depart from my usual theme about heaven.

From his previous writings I cannot doubt Dawkins’ intelligence and wit, but he could make a more useful contribution to the study of religion if he approached the subject scientifically rather than ideologically. Instead of engaging in polemic against the evils of what one might call ‘religion abuse’ he might ask the basic scientific question made famous by Professor Julius Sumner Miller: “Why is it so?”

Religion is one of the seminal elements in human cultural development. Its origins go back seemingly almost to the beginning of what we think of as the distinctive feature of human consciousness – the awareness of self in relation to other persons and powers. Why is it so? Why is there religion?

You don’t have to be religious in any formal sense to address this question. Non-religious psychologists, anthropologists as well as religious ones who study human nature have offered valuable observations and insights that are of value to any open minded person interested in what some call the Big Questions. But Dawkins’ treatment of religion is equivalent to the creationist’s treatment of evolution – deliberate selection of data in pursuit of a foregone conclusion. Anything less scientific than his recent diatribe against religion, THE GOD DELUSION, would be hard to imagine. His knowledge of religion is patchy, to say the least, and his ignorance of theology appears to be encyclopaedic.

Religion per se is neither good nor bad. Like evolution, it is an undeniable phenomenon and a fact of life. As with evolution, theories about it are still developing. Religion has itself evolved over, possibly, hundreds of thousands of years, depending on how you define it, so theories about religion and theories about evolution are related. Religion has sometimes been creative, enlightening and ennobling, and sometimes destructive and brutalising, darkening the mind and corrupting intention. It can enrich and empower people or it can impoverish and enslave them.

Sense of the sacred and the religions arising from it are together one of the mysteries of human life, like love or the appreciation of beauty. But instead of asking bold questions and searching, by intuition, experiment and reason, for a deeper understanding, like a proper scientist, Dawkins selects his data in a very biased and unprofessional way and arrives prematurely at a flawed conclusion.

I share his natural horror at the grotesque abuses and inane silliness of some religion, but Dawkins convinces himself that that is all religion is: an abuse and debasement of human nature. For him all religious people are murderous fanatics, predatory exploiters, deluded fools or victims of fraud.

Religion begins with awareness and naming of mysterious powers within nature and ends up in the search for ultimate reality. It moves on to deism and theism when the Ultimate is personified and often anthropomorphised. Religion offers a relationship with a personal Divinity, transcendent to and, in the major traditions of both East and West, also immanent in all things.

Closely associated with religion, but often in conflict with it, are seers, prophets and mystics. Not all mystics have a specific religion and quite a number today are scientists. The numinous experience of being one with everything is not confined to those seeking a personified god. And scientists are good at intuitively sensing a relationship, a unity between things hitherto thought to be quite separate. The mystical experience of union with everything is not outside the scientific realm. The search for words or symbols to describe ultimate reality is as much the work of scientists as it is of theologians, though the language is different. Layer by layer they probe more and more deeply into the fundamental nature of matter, energy, space and time, towards the goal of a unified understanding of everything – a “grand unified theory”. Science and theology overlap. The late Stephen J Gould, a much more open-minded atheist than Dawkins, referred to it as “interdigitation”.

Scientists also create images, though not personal ones. The image of Rutherford’s atom and the DNA molecule are familiar to everyone; high school students create computer images of black holes. Science, like religion, seeks to give expression to the inexpressible; it seeks, through visual art, to give mysteries visible forms. Where an object emits light or measurable radiation, it can be observed, but such visibility fades as one goes more deeply into matter or out into space-time. Science needs myths and images. The Big Bang story is one of the richest legends of our day.

Some theologians are not content to study particular theories about God. Like theoretical physicists, they seek a unified understanding of reality. They are unsatisfied with the ancient dualism of God/creation. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity, with its recognition of the incarnation or embodiment of God in the cosmic Christ, the sum total of all things, is a powerful tool in the search for a unified theory of Total Reality. God is seen but only through divine embodiment or ‘incarnation’ in material objects and the forces of physical nature.

Religion has inspired a tremendous wealth of painting, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry, dance, drama and every form of art. In fact it is probably true to say that the majority of art is connected with religion and mystical experience. Science has also inspired works of art, both in the laboratory and beyond, but not on the same scale. It is impossible to respond emotionally to aesthetic beauty without recognising that there is more to existence than solids, liquids and gases. We cannot do without the word spirit, however unsure we may be of its meaning; and God is one logical conclusion of whatever that meaning is. In fact we cannot even use the word inspired without hinting at a so far unidentified field of energy or source of knowledge. The recognition that spirit and matter are part of one total reality leads logically (though not imperatively) to religion of one kind or another. It is also leading many scientists to set their sights beyond the artificial walls that conventionally surround their own field of study.

But not Dawkins. Sadly, Dawkins remains imprisoned by nineteenth century materialism – what Paul Davies calls “nothing butism”. He obviously has quite a passionate interest in religion and theories about God, but he settles for an ideology every bit as blinkered and irrational as the creationist who stubbornly refuses to recognise the fact of evolution or respect the validity and nobility of real science.

St Francis is the most popular saint in Protestant Christendom. Even agnostics and atheists have a soft spot for him for his unspoken challenge to the corrupt and worldly 12th century Church. Pet-lovers adore him – a kind of patron saint of birdbaths. But the Francis of prayer cards, stained glass windows and statuettes ring slightly untrue to me – that long, clerical habit (the habit preserved in Assisi is a short worker’s tunic), the ever-present birds and often a rather soppy expression.

The Francis I read about in the early hagiographies however also makes me uncomfortable. Extravagant legends of his sanctity evoke a slightly embarrassed scepticism. Challenges in his written exhortations to a literal interpretation of the Gospels make me feel ashamed and inadequate. I am neither holy enough nor devout enough to really identify with all this, though I often wish I could.

However, G K Chesterton’s popular biography of the mid-20th century gave me a clue to something I can identify with. He suggested that Francis was one of the great nature mystics. Christian mystics such as Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckart and Teilhard de Chardin have not enjoyed a warm welcome by the Church authorities, but mysticism has had a revival in recent years. New-agers, post-modern philosophers, theologians and quantum physicists have been rediscovering what Western culture lost during the Enlightenment, the modernist scientific era. I refer to our intrinsic unity with the living organism we call our universe.

During the modernist era we regarded humankind and the rest of physical nature as quite separate. We imagined that we observed nature objectively. Nature was perceived as an intricate and wonderful machine, designed and created by a God who still manipulated the controls occasionally from a distance. We are still in the eventide of that era. Dinosaurs like Richard Dawkins and Bishop Spong still wave the banner of modernism.

St Francis anticipated the Renaissance; he also anticipated post-modernism. The resergence of mysticism is linked to the post-modern era. I suppose you’ve heard about the mystic ordering a hamburger: “Make me one with everything.” Francis obviously felt this union deeply, though he never expressed it in philosophical, theological or scientific terms. He saw God, worshipped and glorified in everything around him, and felt it all as an extended family. Everything was God’s offspring and his sibling. Only in self-centred and self-destructive humans, including himself, did Francis see cause for sorrow.

This unity is clearly expressed in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. God is not simply a spirit; God is also embodied, incarnate in physical nature – the cosmic Christ. The Father and Son are not two gods, but one God: one single, dynamic total reality, transcendent and immanent. Ultimately, God is the only reality.

During the industrial revolution, people almost totally lost sight of our relationship with the rest of nature. The result of that now threatens human survival and many other species as well. Nature is now delivering a prophetic ultimatum and the first to hear this cry of warning has not been theologians but scientists; not devout religionists, but the sceptical, inquisitive and rigorous interrogators of nature.

The resurgence of mysticism in the West, some of it in the church, may have come at a providential time. Those with a mystical and contemplative bent were probably the first to appreciate what the scientists were saying. There are mystics in the science community too. Quantum physics has made a strong appeal among many who are interested in what they call “spirituality”. Quantum physicists recognise clearly the unity of everything in a mysterious, dynamic dance of energy. Each of us is not only related to everyone else; we are remotely related in cosmic energy fields to everything, even the most distant galaxies.

I don’t know how Francis would have reacted to industrialisation. I suspect he would not have been comfortable with it. It would not be the affluence of the industrial world that he would weep about, but the mindless and destructive exploitation of nature.

Ordinary people have recently woken up to the crisis, though we still need to discover within ourselves our unity with everything and a love that only the Holy Spirit can inspire. We still love our cars, our interstate and overseas flights, our coal-powered heating and cooling, and all our gadgets, and politicians are afraid to act. But scientists have been to first to see light beyond the tunnel. We have the technology to meet our needs with renewable energy sources. At first the cost will be considerable, but many new jobs will emerge, and later on the savings will be enormous.

Long-term survival, the whole process of life and evolution, involves dying as well as living, and we are all dying even while we think we live. “Unless a seed enters the ground and dies, it remains a bare grain,” said Jesus. Francis loved life as passionately as we do, but he welcomed “Sister Death”. For him, living and dying were one glorious process.
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The post-modern philosopher, Don Cupitt, once nearly died of heart failure several times within a few days. In a book written later I came upon these words.

“We seem to have forgotten how to die. . . . We live by dying, unattached, pouring ourselves into the flux of life in such a way that death, when it comes, is not a threat but a consummation.”

He could well have had St Francis in mind. In this age of individualism, such thoughts of total absorption into the flux of life totally contradict the spirit of our time. Francis was one of the outstanding and very eccentric individuals of European history, but he rejected fame and fortune, pouring himself, destitute, into the flux of life. The heavenly fool saw Christ as his model. The self-giving life of Christ, glorifying the Father and glorified in him, is manifest in all the world around us, living and dying. This was Francis’ wonderful discovery.

What we do about climate change is still being debated. Scientists have done all the real work so far. Politicians have been the most timid and tardy. We all fear and resist change. Public awareness is awakening, but I believe the real problem is more spiritual than technical or political. Francis and the great nature mystics of every age, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Australian and American aborigines and even non-religious mystics can teach us. We must share something of their vision of mystery and beauty. Saving grace first, then saving technology and political action will follow.

It is Good Friday and I am reflecting on the death of Jesus. Jesus died through an act of extreme brutality and cruelty, and one is horrified to realize that it was a routine procedure throughout the Roman Empire. It happened to thousands of people. Jesus was just one of a batch of three done together. But I may miss the point of today if I focus too much on the horror of crucifixion. This obsession reached a climax in Mel Gibson’s almost pornographically sadistic horror movie, The Passion of Christ.

The gospels actually say nothing about the gory details, they simply state that Jesus was scourged and crucified. They do tell quite a bit about the political and religious pressures and machinations that led to his unjust execution, and they offer many insights into flawed religion and politics. But these are not the main message of the passion stories either.

The essential message of today is that Jesus died. John’s gospel in particular convinces me that Jesus had a unique relationship with God, yet he also says quite unequivocally that Jesus died, and that a spear was thrust through his heart, just to make sure. The great theologians of Nicea, three centuries later, decided by a substantial majority that Jesus was God. I might therefore have difficulty in believing he really died. Maybe the whole thing was just pretending. In fact the final word is that Christ is immortal. He is immortal, but he is also mortal, as mortal as we are. If political and religious conditions had been different, if people had been less ruthless in pursuit of their own narrow-minded logic, Jesus might have died in old age; but he would still have died.

If Jesus was God, then that means that even God suffers and dies. Suffering, death and resurrection are innate and continuous features of God’s incarnate being. The famous 17th century scientist and philosopher, Blaise Pascal, said that Christ suffers till the end of time. In Christ, I too am both mortal and immortal. (It is evidently possible to be both.) And Good Friday, by focusing on Jesus’ suffering and death, invites me to reflect upon my own vulnerability and mortality.

This is a perfectly healthy thing to do. People tend to be in denial about death. Even at funerals these days the “d” word is almost taboo. We are urged to celebrate the life of the departed one. Mourning his or her passing is permitted but not encouraged.

Unfashionable as it may be, I am moved to reflect on the place of death in my life, on what it means to be mortal, like Jesus. It means that I am embodied in a biological organism that has a finite life expectancy. And I am also part of a larger organism – Earth’s biosphere. Every plant and animal on Earth is organically interrelated. And everything lives, dies and is recycled into new living organisms. Birth, death and new birth constitute a continual process which my own body is part of.

As I meditate, my thoughts travel beyond Earth, to non-biological, astronomical objects and I find they too follow the same cyclic process. Galaxies, stars and planets form, exist for a few billion years and eventually disintegrate in various ways. The material is later recycled into new planets, stars and galaxies. Death and resurrection are cosmic phenomena.

But there is a difference between me and our galaxy or the Sun or planet Earth, or even the plants and other animals. I know I’m going to die; they don’t. I can even feel the process going on. I notice physical changes that tell me my body is approaching its use-by date. Some of my childhood friends are already compost or ashes.

I have mixed feelings about that. I am tempted to be anxious about what will happen to me after I die. Some people solve the problem by choosing to believe there is nothing; others create attractive fantasies. Some have claimed to have been there. I am more in sympathy with Hamlet, with his uncertainty about what might follow after he “shuffled off this mortal coil”.

Jesus and the New Testament writers urge me to be hopeful, and I freely choose that option. I do not expect that my faults and imperfections will be ignored or eliminated by magic. But I do believe that God is infinitely patient with me, and I must be patient with God. God’s uncompromising and persistent demand for perfection is sometimes hard to accept, but I know that, ultimately, God is not making deals.

So I trust and hope. I see wonderful signs in the world and in the universe around me. The new burst of life in spring, the cosmic evolution from chaos to order, from inert to living matter, towards higher and higher states of complexity and consciousness: all these miracles reinforce my optimism.

Looked at in the timescale of my own mortal lifespan, progress is desperately slow because evolutionary change takes millions or billions of years rather than centuries. In the immediate present and historic past everything seems frighteningly chaotic, and change to be imperceptible. But human history is only a tick of the cosmic clock.

With such hope I can, like Francis, begin to say, “Welcome Sister Death!” Of course, Francs really had had enough of his body. It was unbearably weak and painful. I am not in that state. I look forward to some more active and creative years. But death does not frighten me. It is not a taboo subject.

Some religious zealots thunder out scary fantasies, but they do not, I think, come from God. God hasn’t created hell; we have. And we live now in a purgatory of our own making. Anyway, there are better reasons for living responsibly and lovingly than fear of hell. A moral life, a loving life, is much happier than an immoral and selfish one – that is God’s message, and experience confirms it. Heaven is about living in love.

So I reflect on the death of Jesus – a horrifying event but, in view of what we humans are like, fairly inevitable. (We tend to hate prophetically good people.) As I reflect I can relate Jesus’ mortality to my own and to my certain death. The death and resurrection of Jesus is an invitation to share his perfect mortality by letting the Holy Spirit teach me godly and holy living. I am also invited to share his immortality, and I say yes, even though I don’t really know what it means.

You may be surprised when I say that my prayer begins at my bottom. At the risk of repeating what I have said elsewhere, I will tell you why.
It begins with St Paul. He referred many times in his letters to the body of Christ, by which he meant the community of faith. He declared that we are members, limbs and organs of the body of Christ. But he doesn’t stop there. He told the Colossians that, “all things in heaven and on earth were created” in Christ, and a few sentences further on, “in him all things hold together.”
St John, in the prologue to the fourth Gospel, says the same thing in a more imaginative way. “In the beginning was the Word (Greek, Logos), and the Word was God. He (the Logos) was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him.” He was referring to Jesus, the mortal human manifestation of an eternal and divine being who is infinitely more than a mortal man.
The word Logos (from which we get our word, logic) suggests the mind, the knowledge, the intention or wisdom of God, uttered not only through Jesus, but also in and through all things, our whole universe, and all universes if there are others. This is the embodiment of God. God is pure spirit, according to the Catholic Catechism, but not a disembodied spirit. The Bible knows nothing of disembodied spirits. Even angels in the Bible have bodies.
In recent times, theologians have taken to referring to the Cosmic Christ to distinguish the man Jesus from the eternal being Paul and John wrote of. The incarnation is manifest in all of physical nature, as well as being focused historically in Jesus. The leaders at the Council of Nicea finally defined the eternal incarnation of God as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.
Recent discoveries in astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology offer us a far richer understanding of our universe than Paul, John or the Nicene fathers had. It is no longer even seen as a collection of independent material objects waltzing around in space, under the influence of gravity, according to the principles of general relativity. An organic interdependence has been recognised, as intimate as the organic interdependence of the parts of our bodies. The universe is, in fact, a living organism.
Physicist Brian Swimme holds that the universe is not just a material entity; it is a spiritual event. We tend to separate spiritual and material reality. We speak of the “natural” and the “supernatural”. This dichotomy is a peculiarly Western notion. It is tenuously connected with Plato’s idealism, but we really owe it to the 17th century philosopher, René Descartes. ‘Cartesian’ dualism is firmly entrenched in Western philosophy and in Christianity today. Material objects are not permanent realities; they are events in the universal field of energy, the quantum vacuum. Scientists distinguish between energy and matter, but now recognise that they are of the same essential nature: matter is energy. Energy, on the other hand, is not seen as a temporary entity. The quantum vacuum is regarded as being outside time and space. This causes us to review our traditional dualism. Monism is gaining influence.
And it is important for our understanding of prayer. Prayer is an activity of the whole person. It is not my disembodied ‘spirit’ going walkabout on its own. Paul described an experience when he was unsure if he was “in the body or out of it”. But he was still feeling and thinking; he “heard words that cannot be uttered”. So his ‘spiritual’ experience was certainly embodied. The resurrection appearances of Jesus to the disciples suggest some sort of quasi-material body. I am one who believes that the gospel accounts refer to real experiences, even if their nature is uncertain.
And this has a practical application that has been discovered by many people. For me the best way to still my mind is to focus my attention on my body. I feel the pressure of the chair I am sitting on. This is what I mean by beginning with my bottom. It is the start of a process of feeling my relationship to the world around me, and ultimately to God, immanent in the world. I try not to leap too quickly into thinking about distant things and situations. I spend a little time getting ‘in touch’ with my body, literally ‘coming to my senses’, then to the traffic on the road, the birds in the garden and other local sounds. I can ask myself in what way God loves the source of these. Only then do I allow my attention to move outward, to things beyond the range of my senses: the wider community, its wisdom and its foolishness, its happiness and its pain.
This is a danger point. I have to make an effort not to wander off aimlessly in my imagination and thinking. There is a purpose in connecting myself to the outside in this way. It is to feel myself part of it all, and to look for epiphanies and miracles of God in nature and in acts of generosity, kindness, tolerance and forgiveness. So I still need to focus my mind.
I also perceive God in what I know of the continuous creative process going on throughout the universe – new plants, animals and people, new planets, new stars, new galaxies, coming into being from the remnants of those that have previously lived and died. The death and resurrection of the Cosmic Christ is happening all the time throughout the universe.
This reflection on the wider universe also gives me a sense of proportion. I ask myself why I think that our human species is of such tremendous importance in the cosmic scheme of things. Even Jesus said that the very hairs of our heads are numbered, and that that every sparrow is important too. But I don’t think this is a statement about our relative importance or the sparrow’s; I think it is a statement about the intensity of God’s love. When we speak of natural things we are speaking of God’s incarnate self, his only begotten Son, God’s cosmic incarnation, the Second person of the Trinity. God’s love of the world and us is his love of himself too.
Finally I come back to myself. Where am I? What am I doing? What am I going to do today? The answers to those questions are of miniscule cosmic impact, but they are important for me because I have real responsibilities as part of the cosmic organism, however small.