glintofpewter

thanks George

Sermon I gave 8/7/11 ~#6 in this life Scripture Colossians 1:15-20 Passage from The Shack about God being a verb. To move from a dead noun to a live verb is to move from law to grace. Last night as I was trying to wrestle the final draft of this sermon into completion I thought, “I don’t know anything. I’m just a kid who is exited by new ideas.” So I brought something I need to hear and maybe some things that you will find interesting. If you ask a theologian about the relationship between science and religion a common answer is that science is about discovering how the universe is evolving and religion is about understanding why the universe is evolving. What is the purpose and what is the meaning. Usually how and why questions are answered by the left brain through experiments, scientific method, rational inquiry and reason. At best the theologian might have had a God experience, think about it logically and abstractly, bringing rational statements to the conversation with science. Its as if rational science and rational religion divided the left brain world in half. With the right brain, and what it knows, left out. What does the right brain know? What can it add to the conversation between religion and science? And does science have anything to say about religious experiences of the right brain? In our conversation today I’ll introduce you to a Franciscan nun and a neurophysiologist who has been studying religious experiences for over 15 years. The neurophysiologist is Andrew Newberg. His most recent book for the general audience is “How God Changes Your Brain”. His research can show us what a left brain person can understand about how the right brain works. His observations about the science of religious experiences can put us in our right mind. Ilia Delio is a Franciscan nun and former neurophysiologist. Her life moves from the lab bench to the prayer bench. From the left brain to the right brain she says with laughter because she knows that brain structure and functioning is not so clear cut. In her first career she worked as a neurophysiologist in spinal cord research. One day she noticed with a sense of wonder and awe, a single living motor neuron firing. It just “ripped me in its awesomeness”. She says. A moment of grace. A turning point. Ilia finished her research and joined the Carmelites to learn to pray and learn to garden. Later a Mother Superior would suggest that Ilia was better suited to the Franciscans and their studies. But as a Carmelite she sat daily with other women praying and working in the garden for 4 years. This sitting in prayer daily and daily working in the garden as an active way of focusing or paying attention is a way of knowing with body. As a result the body, the bones, the heart know a reality not accessible in words or reducible to objects that science and reason can examine directly. It is the kind of knowing that a verb gives you. Andrew Newberg began his brain imaging research with Tibetan monks in “mindfulness meditation’ and Catholic nuns in active prayer. They both experience a loss of sense of self, a timelessness, spacelessness, a transcendence or union with what one is meditating on. The nuns might say that when we give up our sense of self then we experience communion with God. These spiritual disciplines result in increased consciousness, increased alertness, and an increased ability to resonate to other people’s feelings and thoughts. To resonate means to vibrate in sympathy with another matching their vibrations. To be empathetic. This experiential knowledge the body gains in the daily disciplines of praying and gardening is an example of the right brain knowledge that was lost 500 years ago with the beginning of the Enlightenment. The modern era chose scientific method, rational inquiry and reason as the only ways of knowing what is real. Up to that time, Ilia Delio says, both the experiential and the experimental were accepted ways of gaining knowledge about the world. Now experiential and spiritual ways of knowing were dismissed as subjective. They became personal, private, closeted. I think Andrew Newberg’s research into the science of the religious experience is one example of efforts in bringing the experiential, body, and spiritual way of knowing what is real out of the closet. After many years of research on brain activity during spiritual experiences he and his team have developed very specific meditations or prayers that improve mental, social and psychological – sounds like a self help book doesn’t it? His book has collected many of the relaxation techniques that have been around for a while. The practice of any these has a positive effect on health and mental well being. But it is in the spiritual disciplines like mindful meditation of the Monks and the focused active prayer of the nuns where one experiences the loss of sense of self and a transcendent feeling of communion or union with ultimate reality, God. – these are the experiences which change our brain. Quiet prayer time is relaxing and has a positive effect on our health and well being but does not have the same effect – increased consciousness, increased alertness, and an increased ability to resonate to other people’s feelings and thoughts. Abilities are what the right brain acquires. It’s activity does not result in more information or facts but it makes you more able to do something. During meditation or active prayer the positive emotions relax the parietal lobe where our sense of self is maintained. Its activity decreases. After meditation the right brain , under less control of the left brain can, use it newly improved abilities, to love and to be compassionate It is this increased ability to be aware of ourselves and others, to feel a greater connectedness with a larger world, to have greater sense of self, to have increased ability for love, compassion, and empathy – it is this spiritual and experiential knowledge that Ilia Delio sees as the other half of the dialog with the science. If we read the science books and look at the universe with wonder, awe and trust, in the present moment, with empathy and compassion one reaches a deeper knowing about what is real. Ilia suggests that this is real wisdom. As our brains develop from infancy to adulthood different ideas about God become available to us. As adults we have several gods in our conceptions. We move between these during a day or week. We center on one of the Gods, preferring it over others. Surveys asked for descriptions of God and how the believer interacted with God. The data suggested five gods, which are Authoritarian, Critical, Distant, Benevolent and Mystical. We would all recognize this benevolent god who loves and cares for us, answers our prayers and occasionally allows suffering. From a neuro-scientific perspective, choosing to believe in a benevolent God is the healthiest choice. Has the greatest benefits and enhances ones ability to be compassionate. From the development of the brain to the evolution of the brain – Newberg sees correlates between the gods and which area of the brain is activated when people are thinking about each kind of god. Thoughts about an authoritarian god increase activity in the oldest part, the reptilian brain. Here are our basic concerns for survival, food and reproduction. We want an authoritarian God to tell us exactly what to do to be safe. When our anxiety or fear rise up this is God we seek. Our earliest primitive conceptions of God occurred about 100,000 years ago. As our human groups grew in size so did our conception of God. The brain evolved to handled a different conception of God. It was not a straight and forward path. Sometimes we are able to widen our circle of compassion, to include more and more people under one God. Sometimes life is so frightening that God’s commandment to love one another reaches only a tight circle of friends. Some today are saying, along with Andrew, that as a whole humans, through the processes of evolution, are becoming more empathetic and this is coincident with the need for larger circles of compassion that must reach around the world in an age of global consciousness. Human evolution is moving in the direction of empathy and we, as part of that evolving, we can also move in the direction of more compassion and empathy through spiritual disciplines. From Ilia Delio - there’s a whole line in the Christian tradition which had another way of thinking about things and that is that Christ was first in God’s intention to love. For the Franciscan theologian Duns Scotus God is love. From all eternity God willed to share that love with another and therefore the Christ was willed to grace and glory prior to any sin. Scotus was basically saying that Christ is first in God’s intention to love and in order for Christ to come, there had to be a creation. In Ilia Delio’s words, Christ, as God’s first word of love, is in the very processes of becoming in the universe. Christ as the head of creation, in whom and through whom all the universe in coming to be. It is Christ incarnating, Christ sacrificing when a supernova explosion creates all the elements in our periodic table which makes carbon based life forms possible. As part of the universe evolving we are Christ emerging. We are in this present moment Christ, the first word of love, emerging into the universe. And this is a story that you can make your own. Andrew Newberg, the neurophysiologist, says that if this story informs your meditations it will change your brain and change the world around you. Really. Scientifically and Spiritually.

I want to apologize to anyone who takes offense at any negative terms I used in discussion of the Modern stage. Any ladder or steps of development has that inherent problem of not seeing some stages as inferior to others. Ulitmately I don't feel that way but I was not able to overcome that problem. I apologize. Dutch

I didn't get quite what I expected - what a blessing! What interested me when I posted that link and quote was the stages of development as expressed in Integral thinking. It is similar to Fowler's stages of faith and Peck's? After reading your responses I had to step back and reflect because of the depth of your answers. Bruce Sanguin concludes his post If we refuse to offer intercessory prayers are we denying Spirit a voice? Is it possible that our intercessory prayers are in themselves God’s way of answering prayers? Our love and compassion goes out and into this seamless, interconnected universe and is brought to bear on illness, loneliness, and grief. It’s not a distant God intervening, but the God within our very own sighs of compassion and longing for wholeness. Your responses and his don't avoid the language of intercessory prayer but take it deeper and wider in a self transcendent movement. It has become 'articulate-able' to me that the Modern's "It's superstitious." seems a childhood and adolescent stage of development - a moment of doubt, disappointment, and an effort to be an adult. Many get stuck here in anger and alienation. Others are not able to take the next step due to their sub-culture, models available to them, own inclinations and perhaps genetics. But the Modern stage has the potential to push one deeper through doubt. Your responses and Sanguin's Integral view says to the Modern, "That's OK. I know how you feel." without any condescension. And we may be in a place to put those thoughts into action as Bill and Jenyll have related. I think there is continuum from the primitive expressions of relationship with ultimate reality such as sacrifices to satisfy the angry gods or to invoke friendly gods - exterior actions as ego centric attempts to control the exterior forces - to our ideas of of being at one with ultimate reality - a self transcendent inaction of profound effect. The development of Israelite need for the exteriority of a Divine Warrior to the development of the interior beliefs after the return to Jerusalem after the exile is one example. Thanks Dutch

(This topic is not about whether intercessory prayer 'works, is superstitious, etc.) Bruce Sanguin discusses an integral view of prayer in his blog. Does God Answer Prayer? an excerpt The short answer is that it depends on one’s worldview: Traditional: Yes. If you don’t get what you prayed for, just remember that God’s ways are not our ways, and who knows if that “no” might not be, in the great scheme of things, the way things were meant to be. Modern: No. It’s all superstition. Postmodern: Define your terms. Define “answer”. Define “God”. Define “prayer”. Most folks here, especially those who are “spiritual but not religious”, regard intercessory prayer as the kindergarten of the prayer world, and prefer to meditate. Post-postmodern: Here, you are willing to take another look at prayer. You might imagine God as the Unified Whole of which you are a part, and yet which is not itself a part of any greater whole. You might even imagine this Whole in personal terms—not necessarily “a” being, totally separate from you, but rather the personalization of Being Itself. Let’s call that Love. Your own evolving personhood is an expression of That. . . . . If we refuse to offer intercessory prayers are we denying Spirit a voice? Is it possible that our intercessory prayers are in themselves God’s way of answering prayers? I see this as a reminder that we say what makes sense to us at our location on the journey and we can't claim our view as Truth. Bruce also has good language to describe "ultimate reality". Dutch

Our pastor asked for volunteers to take his place in the pulpit. Two of us responded. Sunday I gave mine. That makes ~6 this life. Evolution with Half a Brain was the title. A few people asked for copies. That 3 of the 4 songs we sang were less than 40 years old and new to the congregation was, in away, more exciting. Dutch

Congratulations! When we had our second child we were four times as busy. Sounds like you have good help. Dutch

Dionysius the Areopagite, Works (1897) p.130-137. The Mystical Theology

minsocal, Did he at least bring the feathers?

I was surprised to see he used terms like "eternal objects" because, well, they are objects not occasions. I found here a discussion of the "disappearance" of 'eternal objects'. I understood a little of it. The conclusion was either simple or profound or both: "something matters." On Value and Values in later Whitehead(Or – Where did all the eternal objects go?)Michael Halewood – University of Essex.

Does anybody mind if I take links we post in a variety of threads and post them in the links thread. I would encourage you to also put your link there. We post many links in our various discussions. We'd have quite a resource if they were all in one place. Dutch

Happy Birthday soma Dutch

Again, congratulations Nick. Is it still appropriate to wish you a long honeymoon? If so I do. Dutch

Thanks

is it available online?

I had to throw the Delio quotes quickly so I would have a chance of going to sleep. Someone of you may latch on to "faith". Seeing that evidence of supernaturalism will lead you astray from my understanding of Delio. If you read other of her writing, 'You would feel affirmed that she is talking from supernatural data. But her writing is at 2nd or 3rd level remove from the center or core of her experience. The closest science ever gets to experience is a first level abstraction: description. (My definitions of levels of abstraction may be idiosyncratic.) The core of Delio's knowledge comes from what I call a "butt on the bench, hand in the soil" experience. She had an "a-ha" when, as a neuro-scientist, she was watching one human neuron firing, an experience that had a different quality than the gathering of scientific data. She became a nun and learned how to garden and how to pray (supernatural I know, just close your eyes, it is not essential in this case.) sitting on a bench with other women for months. Gardening and being in the presence of others in silence have a quality that is not accessible by science, when science believes it is only about data gathering. If science looks like the temple-like set for the TV series Cosmos and the fake star that so often appears as they travel through space - second coming anyone? - or if science is set in the rich language and imagery of Michael Shermer above I think scientism reveals a reverential aspect that is attractive. Well Cosmos seems out dated in its imagery and pseudo-religious trappings. But Dennett has been on one too many panels and in one too many debates. He has stripped down his arguments and, dehydrated the flesh of his knowledge so that he sounds like a sputtering fundamentalist. Michael Dowd suggests an empirical reformation is at hand where there is Pentecostal and almost mystical fervor around the multitude manifestations of ultimate reality, "what ever you want to call it". As an evidentialist and Christian naturalist, the evolution of the universe is the great story and our religious practices as Christians, or Hindus or Muslim necessarily are part of that story. Our particular stories are most often differentiated by how we personify ultimate reality. For Michael, I think, there are three ways to interact with ultimate reality: 1) to talk about it; 2) to personify it - and this often done in meditations, counseling, and self help contexts without any claims of knowing that is similar or competes with science - and 3) as self-aware self conscious manifestations of this scientific and wondrous great story, we have a responsibility to move evolution forward. While science lies at the core of Michael's experience, I think, only people like Shermer approach this qualitatively stance. In one series of comments on a science blog, someone raised the example of an aid worker in Africa who, order to make any headway in delivering appropriate medical care had to work within the worldview of the village chief. She was limited in what she could accomplish for the well being of the village by the supernatural world views of the chief: she had to frame her project in his terms and abide by his limitations. One commenters felt that "scientists" should as "conquistadors" (my pejorative term) and make it happen according to the best science. Devil damn the chief. For me, this represents scientism at its worse. This distorted scientism fails to deal with the two worlds delineated by CP Snow, mentioned above, fails to take into consideration the learnings of sociology and psychology as data after a methodologically well design experiment sees the data crunched this way and data and fails to understand individual human experience as part of the average.

Now I know why Dennett makes me uncomfortable but why bring up bad examples? Discussing naturalist and supernaturalist ways of knowing misses a third way, what our body, our soul, experiences from Ilia Delio It’s interesting that Augustine spoke of love as the weight of the soul and, you can speak of love as the gravity of the soul. As physical gravity bends the space-time fabric of the earth, intense love bends the soul and opens it up to more love or to more relationship. .... But we know that knowledge itself is much deeper than reason alone. The deepest knowledge is really wisdom. And wisdom is knowledge deepened by love. Wisdom is the bridge, between the rational knower and the faith knower. The one who knows, who can use reason, a reason now deepened by faith and by love—this one knows the world and the things in this world in a much deeper way.

Now is reality and science will always be this far away from knowing reality. It can make no observations now. All observations are about something that has happened, not something that is occurring. Reality is the unmediated moment. Observation, measurement are ways of mediating, thinking about, they are not in the moment. Now. In pop science vernacular I suppose science is left brain, unmediated experiencing is right brain. from a book review of Why Beliefs Matter by E. Brian Davies book review is titled "The faith that underpins science". Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, did not believe that science grants us access to an objective reality and insisted that the task of physics was not to find out "how nature is" but only "what we can say about nature". Einstein, on the other hand, maintained an unshakeable belief in a reality that exists out there. Otherwise, he said, "I simply cannot see what it is that physics is meant to describe". In good company I guess -- discussing reality. Dutch

I have this fantasy that significant portions of the Bible would be rewritten as dialogs and conversations amongst the different authors. Examples: 1. The four authors of the Gospels discussing their accounts with attention to any disagreement about what really happened and what points were important to them and why. 2. Parallel accounts of David and Solomon in Samuel, 1 Kings and the Chronicles. 3. The J/E authors and Priestly authors discussing the Creation, Garden, Flood, and Babel accounts. I imagine that one would often hear, "No, that's not how it was." or "what I meant when I wrote that is ...." and "You don't understand the problems we were having when I wrote that."

AmenI enjoyed reading your posts. Our family were addicts for reasons you've mentioned. Dutch

Oops, I meant LOTF (Lord of the Flies) Dutch