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R R v FIRST READING From scripture: John 12:24 I tell you most solemnly, unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest. SECOND READINGS 1. The purpose of todays learning is to defeat yesterdays understanding. MIYAMOTO MUSASHI 2. We have become what our thoughts have made us. THE DHAMMAPADA 3. There is nothing so dangerous as an idea ---when its the only one youve got. EMILE CHARTIER 4. When we come to a point of rest in our own being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest, and then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud becomes a revelation, and each person we meet a cosmos whose riches we can only glimpse. DAG HAMMORSKJOLD REFLECTION This morning, I want to share the thinking of a few writers whose books I have been reading lately. One focuses on early Christian history and the others on the current corporate world. In her recent book, What is Gnosticism, Karen King, Professor of the history of ancient Cy at Harvard, points out that early Christianity was theologically and sociologically diverse. For instance, works like the gnostic Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Truth built their theologies and Christologies with hardly any reference to scripture at all. Though uniformity was never truly achieved, there was eventually a kind of stable unity under episcopal authority and imperial patronage inthe 4th and 5th centuries. This was consolidated with the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine. To create a sense of unity, writers who came to be known as the church fathers, wrote polemical treatises again other Christians. I looked up polemic in the dictionary - it says, an aggressive attack on or refutation of the opinions or principles of another. They were not inclusive guys. They used two primary tools.: First, they branded opponents as heretics. That label became so powerful that merely invoking it caused rejection and exclusion. The second less recognized tool was to consolidate diverse ancient religious practices into three mutually exclusive groups, which will sound familiar to us: Jews, Christians and pagans. To this day, we think of these categories as historical givens, with clear distinctions. I found this an interesting point that I had never thought about. I do tend to look more at the differences between religions and see each one as more homogenous than it probably is. The goal of the early writers was to minimize actual differences within the group called Christians and maximize the differences with outsiders. One way this was done was to make those on the inside with differing ideas look like outsiders. Real differences had to be fully exploited and even exaggerated, while similarities were best overlooked altogether or portrayed as malicious or superficial imitation. Since early Christians were all basing their theological positions on revelation from Jesus Christ, the church fathers developed these strategies to show that they and they alone could make accurate interpretations of these revelations. One of these, Irenaeus, had a powerful impact because he expressed the idea that truth is single and unified, whereas falsehood comes in many divergent forms. It was based on a fundamental ancient value that located unity and harmony in sameness; chaos and disorder in difference. I must say that it has taken me a lifetime to realize that the unknown and even chaos is not bad per se, but a field from which creativity and the new can arise. King makes the point that historical phenomena never have a pure origin but are always in media res - in the middle of a sequence of events; there is no purity, only mixtures; no essence, only continuity in difference. From her analysis, King concludes that we need to abandon certain inherited assumptions: 1. The belief that truth is chronologically prior to error. Rather, we need to realize that something earlier is not necessarily more true or superior. This has major implications for a revealed religion such as Christianity. 2. The belief that truth is pure. King points out that all religions are combinations of different forms of belief or practice. 3. The belief that truth (orthodoxy) is characterized by unity, uniformity and unanimity; falsehood (heresy) by division, multiformity and diversity. She further emphasizes that continuity in difference affirms that tradition and identity are not pure and fixed but constantly in process of formation, deformation, and reformation if they are alive. Diversity, not purity, characterizes historical processes. She stresses that we need to shift from understanding religions as ready-made systems of meaning awaiting interpretation. Instead, we need to look to the fundamental assumption that people are always trying to make sense of their lives, always weaving fabrics of meaning, however fragile and fragmentary. If, as the current UCC banner says, God is still speaking - dont put a period but a comma, what does that mean for us individually? I would now like to turn to contemporary writers, addressing the question of learning in corporate life. Dawna Markova and Andy Bryner work with corporations in the areas of learning and perception. Listen for the similarities of their observations to those of Karen King: From Pg... 24-5 of An Unused Intelligence by Andy Bryner and Dawna Markova: We have been trained to climb the ladders of success using logical thinking to solve problems and binary thinking to make decisions. We have been trained to eliminate all possibilities as soon as we can in order to come up with the right answer. We are then promoted and given a prize--a high score on an examination, a degree, or a higher salary. We have been trained to sort information in two categories, as if it were laundry: clean or dirty, white or colored, valuable or useless. Then we stand between the two and choose the right one. .......... In fact, this is about information accumulation, not learning. It is based on the assumption that what we need to learn is always external to ourselves, that who we are equals what we know, and that our ability to acquire knowledge is fixed, limited, and predetermined by circumstances beyond our control. Nothing is further from the truth. In fact, the human brain is unsurpassed as a learning mechanism. It can distinguish and store, on the average, three hundred thousand different voice tones, two million shades of color. The sophistication of our capacity is literally astronomical--we have the same number of neurons in our central nervous system as there are stars in the galaxy--one hundred billion. It takes one-fiftieth of a second for a message to get from your brain to your foot. The memory capacity of this system is almost infinite. So.......what? Here we are. Today. With the teachings of a religion that was revealed and/or created 2000+ years ago. I am not, repeat NOT, saying that we toss any of it out. Or that we cant learn anything from someone else. Some of my best ideas are triggered by the thoughts of others. In fact, most of the earlier part of this reflection, originally came from other people. Neither am I saying that everything is relative. I just want to emphasize that it is our own experience, our own inner knowing, that provides us with true learning and wisdom. We need to listen to the ideas and beliefs of others and weigh them against our own experience, imagination and intuition. It is within our own hearts, minds and souls that we experience the presence of God, of the holy, of that which inspires awe and love. To live out of that awareness means we will not always know the answer. Living the questions can feel less secure. In spite of my familiar apprehension with that, I believe that is the most rooted path of all. And it only happens in the present moment. But thats another vast topic. In the poetic words of Wendell Berry - It may be that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.
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