[12/11/05] Winter Light

by Rev. Patti Pomerantz

When I was a little girl, I was afraid of the dark; actually, I was terrified of the dark, so much so that I still remember the images that would come to me at night in my bed. There was the room filling up with water and sharks swimming all around me, and there was the horse drawn carriage that would come to get me and take me away. I would hide from it under my covers even in the humid Philadelphia summers. When these waking dreams would get too overwhelming, I'd wake up my mother who, in her very practical parental fashion would reassure me that the fish weren't real and that my bedroom was fine. Then she'd send me back to bed.

These visions came from my very active imagination--something that in my practical family was discouraged, however unwittingly. According to Dorothee Soelle, a twentieth century feminist scholar, ecological and political activist, theologian and teacher, my story is an example of our culture's tendency to deaden childhood imagination at as early an age as possible. So, as adults, we have lost the language and the memory of our imagination. With this loss we have also silenced the articulation of the sacred in our lives. She explains how this process occurs:

We label [imaginative] experiences as craziness or silliness and then hide or trivialize them in terms of our 'nothing but . . . " formulae . . . By banishing them from our children, we destroy them within ourselves at the same moment. The trivialization of life is perhaps the strongest antimystical force among us. [12]

Some might say, 'so what.' Mysticism doesn't move me. And that's as it should be. But I gotta tell you it is my mysticism-my direct experience of my own inner truth - that is my primary defense against our materialistic holiday culture--what some may call the dark side.

Let me tell you how--and invite you to try it on. I never have outgrown my childhood problem with darkness. It's still scary, and aging isn't helping much. The manifestation of the fear has simply aged with me. Add to that the darkness of chronic depression and I can be one blob of paralysis at this time of year. If the growing darkness doesn't sap my energy, the depression surely will. But I have learned over the years that my reaction to darkness doesn't mean that it is evil or out to get me. Like other shadows, there is an opportunity to learn.

One of the tools I've been using is something called the dark night of the soul. St John of the Cross a sixteenth century Carmelite monastic wrote about this in his own journey to know God during his imprisonment for refusing to obey an order of his provincial supervisor. He was almost totally in the dark in a small, airless cell. He wrote some incredible poetry at the time, which he would memorize bit by bit as he had nothing with which to write. What I find remarkable about St John is how he used the darkness to move into a deeper connection with the larger universe. Along with his mentor, Teresa of Avila, he developed an understanding that in order to be fully in relationship with the Holy, one must loose even their most basic belief in the Holy--the experience they termed the dark night of the soul.

Only by letting go of all expectations of hope or salvation, by facing our own doubt in the existence of truth, can we fully experience truth. Like bottoming out in addiction counseling, you must let go of what you think you know or how you think you are, in order to truly heal. St John's dark night helps me in two ways. First, it gives me hope. I don't imagine I'll ever really know if I've hit bottom, if I've had a true dark night of the soul. But I know I've been close--and when I am, I'm pulled toward knowledge that the light, the other side of whatever darkness I am in will be glowing stronger when I return to it--or it to me. It's a metaphor that seems particularly apt these days. By looking at our national leaders, our imperialism as this country's dark night, I can imagine there may be a light of truth waiting to emerge--incubating in all this craziness. I don't mean to minimize the crimes committed in our name, or the hatred cultivated in the name of democracy. But I can't see living through this time without a hope that as all life is part of a cycle, so, too, are the modern travesties we struggle against. I believe I will be reborn--reintroduced to the light.

The dark night of the soul also reminds me that there is meaning in the darkness--not necessarily apparent while I'm stumbling around in it, but available as I move through it. One of my life's most difficult lessons is that in order to grow into who I can become, I must let go of who I was, that holds me back. Letting go often plunges me into darkness. This is really a very pragmatic lesson. If I'm holding on to something behind me, I can't move towards what waits ahead of me. It is a challenging practice to believe in this paradigm. But I'm not sure I could be here with you today if I did not take it into my heart over and over again. In order to get out of the darkness I must not only face it, but trust enough to turn within it to face a light only promised.

Nils Peterson helped me with this next part. In conversation with him just the other day, Nils helped me to name the other important tool I use during this time of year. It is the appreciation of twilight--the in between time when neither darkness nor light claims precedence. Twilight has a number of uses in my metaphor. Let me give you two. First, twilight reminds me that nothing is absolute--that there is light in darkness just as there is darkness in light. It helps me to keep a sense of balance in my own moods whether I name them good or bad. I also believe that important things in life manifest in twilight times, when my vision is not clear, when the path is not brightly lit, when I'm unsure.

Twilight often serves as a beacon of sort in my journey. Twilight prepares me for the coming of the dark, gives me something familiar when I can't see. And it also gives me something to look toward in the dark. It doesn't always take very much energy to change complete darkness to twilight. Just that thinnest line on the eastern horizon and I know the cycle will continue. Both twilights--coming out of the dark as well as moving into it--are hints of returnings. I need to remember that even in my time of light and joy there will be a return to dark and sadness. It is the movement of my life. Accepting the cycle keeps me from manic responses to both light and dark. I use other tools - medication, good self care, understanding scientific descriptions all help me hold onto the continuity of the cycle--the movement from darkness to light to darkness. These things enhance my faith that there is a rhythm in the universe, manifested in my own life, that will feed me regardless of my tendency to ignore its nurture.

In the few months I've been here with you we have had many conversations about the cycles of the universe--the origin of energy and matter, the criteria of scientific inquiry, the beginning of the world as we know it, and the ending. I listen with rapt attention to these conversations, the scientific explanations of our universe; I try also to listen for some kernel of agreement in the tirades of conservative creationists as well--not because I think they are correct in their beliefs, anymore than I think the scientifically tested laws of the universe are incorrect. But my understanding of the cycles of darkness and light, and their relationship to each other instruct that I cannot hold exclusively to either side. They each need the other to exist.

The nature and depth of our universe will always be a mystery to me. And I like to believe that some of that mystery that will remain always beyond our grasp. Like the relationship of the dark to the light, the Taoist Yin and Yang, both science and faith must be real for me. It is my job to weave the two together. What we understand scientifically cycles with the unknown, the as yet undiscovered. To be fully present each of us must find appreciation and value in both the known and the unknown parts of the cycle of knowing. How much does it matter if what is unknown today is ultimately unknowable? I can't imagine being human without the darkness of the unknown--knowing would pale without not-knowing. Where would our drive to explore come from? What would we do without questions to answer?

Perhaps accepting the cycle of mystery has its own lesson. Regardless of where I find myself today, I must always believe that there will be another twilight, another time to learn, to integrate both the darkness and the light. I may not like the dark, but I must embrace it. The light may be blinding, but I must live in it. I need both. Do you?

(c) 2005 Rev. Patti Pomerantz

[12/4/05] The Fabric of Our Universe

by Petr Kuzmic
December 4, 2005

Throughout history, science and religion have been asking the same big questions. When and how did our universe come into existence? What, if anything, existed before that? Is the Milky Way a river, as in our children's story today? In the words of our hymn, who or what is the "Dear Weaver of our lives' design"?

Today I'd like to talk about three things. One, what does current science know about the very beginnings of the universe. Two, what does science know about the long-term fate of our universe. And finally, as a working scientist and a religious humanist, I'd like to share a few reflections on how current cosmological research influenced my philosophical and ethical beliefs.

The first question on our list is what does current research tell us about the very beginning of the universe. The simple answer is: nothing, nothing at all. Now, by the very beginning of the universe I mean the exact moment at which it appeared, technically speaking "time zero". We do know that our universe came into being very abruptly in something like the Big Bang, but current physical theories say literally nothing about that particular moment. Physics begins its story very shortly after that, a tiny fraction of a second after "time zero". It is a very short amount of time, but currently accepted research has nothing to tell us about what happened before that short fraction of a second elapsed.

We could talk for a long time about the technical reasons why there is this problem. We could talk about "singularities" in solving general relativity equations. We could talk about the profound contradictions between two branches of physics, general relativity and quantum theory. We could talk about efforts to create a Grand Unified Theory, where these internal contradictions in physics would be resolved, so we could at least start talking sensibly about the very beginning of the universe. But the fact is, at this moment we don't have a widely accepted physical theory applicable to the very early universe.

One prominent theoretical physicist, Brian Greene, puts is this way in one of his popular books, The Fabric of the Cosmos:

"We don't know what the initial conditions of the universe were, or even the ideas, concepts, and language that should be used to describe them. No one has any insight on the question of how things actually did begin. In fact, our ignorance persists on an even higher plane: We don't even know whether asking about the initial conditions [...] lies forever beyond the grasp of any theory."

Now let's turn to our next question: what is the long-term fate of our universe. In that area, we actually know quite a bit, and a lot of it was learned in the last six or seven years. The main message seems to be that, in the long term, things won't stay as they are now.

First of all, it's been known for a long time that, in a few billion years, our sun will turn into something called a "red giant", envelop the entire solar system, and in the process incinerate our planet. That's a big change, I would say... You may say that a billion years is an unimaginably long period of time, but I'll try to show that it isn't. Let's play a little mathematical game. Let's use as our yardstick the duration of one average human life, say 75 years. Let's measure with this yardstick how far into the past we could reach, if we could ever stagger the lives of a certain number of people.

So, how far into the past we could reach if staggered the number of people who could fit into this room, let's say 130 people? Well, 75 x 130 is about ten thousand years. That's much farther back than to the arrival of first Europeans in America. It's much farther back than to the Egyptian pyramids. In fact, we could reach back in time to the most recent ice age. And one billion years is only the number of staggered human lives of people currently living in New York City, so in some respects it's not a very long time at all.

Aside from our little corner of the Milky Way getting swallowed by the sun in not too distant future, things will not stay the same even in the much larger cosmic neighborhood. Already in 1929, Edwin Hubble discovered that our universe is expanding. That was probably the second most important revolution in astronomy, after Copernicus discovered that the Earth goes around the Sun, and consequently we humans are not the center of the universe. In fact, not only we are not in the center of the universe anymore, but the universe also is being inflated under our feet, like one giant birthday balloon.

For several decades after Hubble's discovery, the question was whether the expansion will continue forever, or will it eventually stop and reverse itself. In the second case, the universe might eventually collapse on itself because of gravitation and perhaps begin a new cycle in a giant explosion. Well, now we know. Based on very precise astronomical measurements conducted between 1998 and 2003, the answer is in, at least tentatively. The answer is, not only is only our universe actually expanding faster and faster as time goes on, but also the amount of matter and energy in the universe suggests that it will never stop expanding.

But what could it mean to say the universe will "never stop expanding"? What will happen with the fabric of our universe, as the threads continue to be pulled apart? The answer to this question has to do with Albert Einstein and his special theory of relativity published in September 1905, almost exactly a hundred years ago.

If you can imagine somehow stretching a piece of regular fabric as our universe expands, first the threads would come apart; then the tiny fibers of cotton or silk in each thread; then the molecules in each fiber, then the atoms in each molecule and so on. Eventually, even subatomic elementary particles would be pulled apart into constituent pieces. But where would all this material go? This is where Einstein comes in, with his equivalence between matter and energy, the famous "E equals M C squared" equation. The very early or young universe was composed mostly of energy (meaning radiation, or light) but very little or no mass. Our own middle-age universe happens to have both mass and energy in it, but as the fabric of the cosmos continues to be pulled apart and stretched, an old-age universe will return to a state of pure energy or radiation.

Here is how Brian Greene puts it:

"In the far, far future, essentially all matter will have returned to energy. But because of the enormous expansion of space, this energy will be spread so thinly that it will hardly ever convert back to even the lightest particles of matter. Instead, a faint mist of light will fall for eternity through an ever colder and quieter cosmos. The guiding hand of Einstein's E = mc² will have finally come to rest."

I remember how I felt when I first learned about the inevitable end of all life on our planet, after the sun grows into a giant fireball. I felt horrified and panicked, even though I knew this would happen long after I am gone.

I realized then how much of my core beliefs were based on the assumption that life, which started in our nook of the Milky Way, will go on forever. And if not here, then somewhere else. Apparently I believed in a humanist equivalent of the eternal soul; I believed in some humanist equivalent of the final judgment; and I was placing the reference point in my ethical universe not here and now, but to a very distant time. I was basing my faith in an eternally unbroken chain of future generations, just like revealed religious traditions place their faith in an eternally unchanging God, a source of ultimate moral authority, who will forever judge our actions.

The most recent results in cosmology and theoretical physics focused my attention again on the here and now. I no longer look to eternity as a reference point. This, here and now, my friends, is really all we have however briefly. We now know that everything material is temporary on at least three different scales of time. We always knew that our individual human lives don't last forever. We've know for few decades that our earthly home inevitably will come to an end, as soon as our sun's lifecycle is completed. This will happen in a relatively short amount of time, a time it would take for all the inhabitants of a small handful of major cities to live out their lives one after another.

But now we also know that all matter in the universe will be converted back into pure energy. The fabric of our forever-expanding universe will be gently pulled apart into its constituent threads. The atoms of matter themselves will be gently pulled apart into its constituent particles, and ultimately all matter will disappear: only a faint mist of pure light will remain.

I myself don't find this vision discouraging. I hope that being increasingly aware of my own temporary nature, and of the temporary nature of all matter in the universe, will continue to encourage me to get up in the morning and do what needs to be done.

Amen and blessed it be.