Falling into Wonder. September 25, 2016 Alan Claassen

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1 Falling into Wonder September 25, 2016 Alan Claassen Proverbs 8:22-31, The Inclusive Bible translation Yhwh gave birth to me at the beginning, before the first acts of creation. I have been from everlasting, in the beginning, before the world began. Before the deep seas, I was brought forth, before there were fountains or springs of water; before the mountains erupted up into place, before the hills, I was born before God created the earth or its fields, or even the first clods of dirt. I was there when the Almighty created the heavens, and set the horizon just above the ocean, set the clouds in the sky, and established the springs of the deep, gave the seas their boundaries and set their limits at the shoreline. When the foundation of the earth was laid out, I was the skilled artisan standing next to the Almighty. I was God s delight day after day, rejoicing at being in God s presence continually, rejoicing in the whole world and delighting in humankind. Look for Sophia beneath God s left arm. This passage from Proverbs is one of my favorites from the Hebrew Scriptures. Let me tell you why. Let s look at the very first verse: Yhwh, one the many names of the divine. Sometimes pronounced Yahwah. We may be more familiar with the Anglicized version of the name, Jehovah. But I once heard the way to pronounce this name is to take a deep breath in and say, Yaaahhhh. and release the breath saying, Wehhhhh. In breath, Yaaaaa, release, Wehhhh. And in this breath we embody the beginning of the myth of Creation told in the first Chapter of the Book of Genesis, when it was spirit, breath, that hovered over all that was still without form. Catch your breath: Yaaahhh.. Release your breath, Wehhhh. See a tree changing colors right before your eyes and feel a sense of awe? Yaaahhh. Release your breath, Wehhhh, and it s almost like praying. Feel a sense of anxiety, anger, frustration? 1

2 Catch your breath: Yaaahhhh...; release, Wehhhh. And it is praying, and it is creating space for something new to become real, for the formless to take shape. You see why I like this passage so much? That s just the first word. But wait! There s more. There is another form of the divine hiding in these verses. Yhwh gave birth to me at the beginning, before the first acts of Creation. Who is the me in this sentence? It is Wisdom personified. Proverbs 8:22-31 is a striking passage that describes the indispensable role of Wisdom in creation, and the infusing of Wisdom throughout the created order. And one reason why it is striking is because Wisdom is portrayed as feminine. In the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scripture the word is Sophia; in the Hebrew the word is Hochma, the Divine Feminine. Sophia was created at the beginning of Yahweh s work. Wisdom proclaims her presence at the creation: When Yahweh established the heavens, drew a circle on the face of the deep that separated the seas from the skies, marked out the foundations of the earth, Wisdom was there. These echoes of Genesis 1 establish Wisdom as the ordering principle of creation, by which God establishes the boundaries of created things, embedding Wisdom into the very creation. Nature is a sacred text. And science provides us with a Creation story for our times. This passage shows us the Sacred in Breath, the Divine in the Feminine, and Nature itself as holy, and I especially enjoy how it ends. In verse 30, Wisdom describes herself as being at God s side at each moment of creation, either (depending on the translation) like a master worker or like a little child. Sophia Wisdom is working with God, playing with God. Yaaaahhhh...; Wehhhhh... Fydor Dostoevski, in his book The Brothers Karamozov, said it this way. Love all Creation. The whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God s light. Love the animals; love the plants; love everything. If you love everything you will perceive the divine mystery in things, and once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it ceaselessly. More and more every day. And you will at last come to love the whole world. Yaaaa...; Wehhhh... And we tend to care for what we love. Yaaaa...; Wehhhh... Brian Swimme is a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he teaches evolutionary cosmology to graduate students in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program. Brian Swimme has written extensively about the connections between spirituality and science. His short summary of evolution is You take hydrogen, give it enough time, and you will have butterflies, and opera. Why is that so? Because there is wisdom right from the very beginning. Wisdom in the form of gravity and electo-magnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Wisdom in the form of hydrogen, which becomes helium when placed under extreme heat. Then from those two atoms when heated up in exploding supernovas come the basic elements of the universe: carbon, iron, nitrogen. And somehow, in 2

3 some great mysterious way, ripples that went through the galatic clouds of hydrogen and helium made some of those galactic clouds bunch up in places, and those bunches of dense clouds came under the force of gravity, and got to spinning themselves in to galaxies, and stars, and us. Yaaaa...; Wehhhh. Imagine that what you release into this room creates a ripple that brings people together to form a program known as REST where homeless men get a meal and a good night s sleep and a conversation with a stranger who loves them just for who they are, because we are a people who believe that all people are children of the Indwelling Spirit, and that all the inhabitants of the earth and everything that makes earth, the solar system, and the Universe are connected in a web of Holy Love that is beyond our comprehension. Albert Einstein said, The most beautiful experience we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. And I would add, spirituality. Yaaaaah ; Wehhhh. In these times that we are living in we have just moved from the end of summer to the beginning of autumn. The colors are beginning to change. The sun is setting earlier. There is no end to zucchini. And soon, the warm days will become consistently cooler. What is the wisdom embedded within this holy season of Autumn? In our Food for Thought reading for this morning we have a gift of an image of this particular moment when summer hands itself over to autumn, and while it is natural to feel a sense of sadness that we have to let go of the long afternoons, it is good to look forward to a quieter time, a time for reflection. September entry Marv and Nancy Hiles An Almanac for the Soul The all too short lease of summer ends. The planet comes into balance, equinox. Summer closes the door to the warmth of long afternoons, and like a parent, reluctantly lets her child walk down the steps to the street. We turn to look away only to see autumn waiting at the foot of the stairs to lead us to quiet, upper rooms and autumn s native reflection. It is with a sense of achievement that we arrive at this handing-over time. We have lived another round of days following the rhythm of skies, lands, seas, and listening to the ever-accompanying voice within. We let it happen and say with Emily Dickinson, Our summer made her light escape into the beautiful. 3

4 My teacher, Parker Palmer writes beautifully about the paradoxical wisdom of autumn. Autumn is a season of exhilarating beauty. It s also when the days become shorter and colder, the trees shed their glory, and summer s abundance starts to decay toward winter s death. Then I began to understand a simple fact: all the falling that s going on out there is full of promise. Today, at age 76 as I weather the autumn of my own life I find nature a trustworthy guide. I ve come to understand that life composts and seeds us as autumn does the earth; I ve seen how possibility gets planted in us even in the most difficult of times. Looking back, I see how the job I lost pushed me to find work that was mine to do, how the road closed sign turned me toward terrain I m glad I traveled; how losses that felt irredeemable forced me to find new sources of meaning. In each of these experiences, it felt like something was dying, and so it was. And yet deepdown, amid all the falling, silently and lavishly the seeds of new life were always being sown. In the visible world of nature, a great truth is concealed in plain sight. Diminishment and beauty, darkness and light, death and life are not opposites: they are held together in the paradox of what Thomas Merton called a hidden wholeness. The moment we say yes to both, light and dark, abundance and scarcity, the two conspire, breathe together, to make us healthy and whole. When I try to fabricate a life that defies autumn s diminishments, I end up in a state that s less than human. When I give myself over to organic reality to the endless interplay of darkness and light, falling and rising the life I am given is as real and colorful, fruitful and whole as this graced and graceful world and the seasonal cycles that make it so. Though I still grieve as beauty goes to ground, autumn reminds me to celebrate the primal power that is forever making all things new in me, in us, and in the natural world. In these times we are living in right now, amidst the beauty of the fall harvest and colors, we are also living in a time when democracy itself seems diminished, and we wonder how many deaths will take till we know that too many people have died? especially people of color, people living in poverty, and people forced to leave their homeland. How might we look at this diminishment, and find beneath and within it the hidden wholeness from which the power of divine wisdom can show us the way to sustainable peace? I mentioned a moment ago the ripples in the galactic clouds that may have led to the formation of galaxies and stars and us. Here is another quote about ripples. This one is from Robert F. Kennedy. Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, they send forth a tiny ripple of hope. These ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. 4

5 As we move into this season of autumn and this election cycle, I invite us all to listen to the everaccompanying voice within us, and with our ballots and voices begin a ripple that works for an end to racism in this country, in India, Pakistan, Africa, in all God s colorful creation, for economic equity for all people, and for the healing of our planet. With the grace embedded within all creation at our side, we can do this hard thing. Yaaaaaa...; Wehhhhh. Amen. 5