As you know by now, I am taking my leave of you in a few weeks. I will be going to General Assembly, taking personal vacation time out west and returning here in mid July to tidy up the office and clean out the files and generally finish up the odds and ends. You'll be in good hands. I promise. For the time being, you will have a curriculum consultant working with your curriculum committee on content and a Sunday morning go to person - either volunteer or paid. The search for a consulting or interim Religious Educator is on and I have no doubt that you will attract a top notch candidate. All will be well.
As I said last Sunday, everything and everyone has their place. Birds have their nests and the sky and animals have their burrows and their lairs. For a while this was "our" place, but "my" place is somewhere else now and this is again "your" place. I hope you will care for each other well within it. Many blessings and many thanks to all of you for making my time here so rich.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Thinking outside the box.
Quote du jour: "Broadly stated, a quantum superposition is the combination of all the possible states of a system (for example, the possible positions of a subatomic particle). The Copenhagen interpretation implies that the superposition undergoes collapse into a definite state only at the exact moment of quantum measurement." ~ Anonymous
(This is for Bonnie as a thank you for all those hours of singing!)
There's a very famous theoretical experiment in quantum physics. In it (the experiment is known as Schrodinger's Box) a cat is described as inhabiting a sealed box with a random explosive device. The device may or may not have discharged and the cat may or may not be alive. You don't know the outcome until you open the box. And in opening the box you may influence the outcome, causing the device to discharge. I read this one years ago and it still makes my head hurt to consider it. It's a kind of magic where we shape reality. That two possibilities exist until the moment when one is measured and defined.
In a more recent reading, I came across the notion of our human mortality as that kind of a box. And God, may or may not exist outside the box. The belief in the presence or absence of God is one which holds open the possibilities of both until we *know*in absolute terms if God waits for us outside the box. Does your head hurt yet?
Most religions hold space for belief. Belief in one god or many, belief in a cosmology which can explain the ills and woes of the world, belief in an afterlife and belief in the part of us that is undying and immortal. Religions offer comfort in the belief that we and those we love can transcend death and/or return to another embodied existence. There are other systems of belief, although one may be hard pressed to call them religions - I think they are, whatever label they use. Belief in a rational order to the universe, belief in an evolutionary trajectory that is guided by adaptive selection and a certain amount of luck. Belief in a time to live and a time to die. Those are very appealing beliefs, they have a certainty to them.
I find absolutes to be rather comfortable. My head doesn't hurt as much when I consider them. But in Unitarian Universalism we also hold room for disbelief, for uncertainty, for the possibility that in Schrodinger's box, the cat is both alive and dead until you open the box. We hold space for the possibility that outside my box, there is a God, and that outside yours there is not. I like that. I like the idea that my belief in God does not make you wrong or that your belief in no God does not make me wrong. I like the idea that as Unitarian Universalists it's all equally possible or equally impossible. I like the idea that whatever waits outside our respective boxes, it will be very familiar to each of us, because we taken this whole lifetime to become acquainted with it's nature and possiblity.
Now I'm going to go take an aspirin.
(This is for Bonnie as a thank you for all those hours of singing!)
There's a very famous theoretical experiment in quantum physics. In it (the experiment is known as Schrodinger's Box) a cat is described as inhabiting a sealed box with a random explosive device. The device may or may not have discharged and the cat may or may not be alive. You don't know the outcome until you open the box. And in opening the box you may influence the outcome, causing the device to discharge. I read this one years ago and it still makes my head hurt to consider it. It's a kind of magic where we shape reality. That two possibilities exist until the moment when one is measured and defined.
In a more recent reading, I came across the notion of our human mortality as that kind of a box. And God, may or may not exist outside the box. The belief in the presence or absence of God is one which holds open the possibilities of both until we *know*in absolute terms if God waits for us outside the box. Does your head hurt yet?
Most religions hold space for belief. Belief in one god or many, belief in a cosmology which can explain the ills and woes of the world, belief in an afterlife and belief in the part of us that is undying and immortal. Religions offer comfort in the belief that we and those we love can transcend death and/or return to another embodied existence. There are other systems of belief, although one may be hard pressed to call them religions - I think they are, whatever label they use. Belief in a rational order to the universe, belief in an evolutionary trajectory that is guided by adaptive selection and a certain amount of luck. Belief in a time to live and a time to die. Those are very appealing beliefs, they have a certainty to them.
I find absolutes to be rather comfortable. My head doesn't hurt as much when I consider them. But in Unitarian Universalism we also hold room for disbelief, for uncertainty, for the possibility that in Schrodinger's box, the cat is both alive and dead until you open the box. We hold space for the possibility that outside my box, there is a God, and that outside yours there is not. I like that. I like the idea that my belief in God does not make you wrong or that your belief in no God does not make me wrong. I like the idea that as Unitarian Universalists it's all equally possible or equally impossible. I like the idea that whatever waits outside our respective boxes, it will be very familiar to each of us, because we taken this whole lifetime to become acquainted with it's nature and possiblity.
Now I'm going to go take an aspirin.
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