February 8, 2009
Rev. LoraKim Joyner
Darwin: Yes, do you believe in God?
LoraKim:
In this country about 90% believe in God or a higher power. For us here, we don’t worry so much about what you believe, but how you act in the world.
Perhaps like your successful marriage Mr. Darwin, it can be a good thing we can’t reconcile our beliefs with each other. It causes alteration, which might just be about the healthiest thing about having beliefs.
Darwin:
That’s right. Ah, our marriage was so healthy. Emma told me that her love was stronger than her faith.
LoraKim:
You mean, you didn’t need to think alike, to love alike?
Darwin:
By Jove, that’s right, you’ve got it!
LoraKim:
You did get it, even way back then. Through you we may have slipped further from belief in heaven, but we became greater lovers of earth.
Lincoln:
Are you lovers of humanity?
LoraKim:
That’s a bit harder. I believe that as the decades proceed we humans have a greater sense that we are interconnected with all of life. Charles you helped us see this, I even carry with proof this in a discovery of yours. Look at my ear.
Charles:
My, it’s a Darwin’s pinnacle – the vestige of the tip of formerly erect and pointed ears from our ancestors that occasionally appear in humans.
Lincoln:
But what happened to our animal nature, violence and competition?
LoraKim:
Well, some used Mr. Darwin’s theory to develop social Darwinism to say that our lives are about survival of the fittest and if you aren’t fairing well, it’s because you aren’t fit, and you are subhuman. It has fed a runaway capitalism and fueled bigotry, racism, war, violence, and habitat degradation.
Charles:
But I spoke of collaboration, and cooperation!
LoraKim:
Indeed you did. But we haven’t quite figured out the mix of nature and nurture to forswear our descent into chaos. Now I’m beginning to talk like the two of you!
Lincoln:
You mentioned capitalism as a problem. How so? In my time it was the way and hope forward.
LoraKim:
If you had lived just a few decades longer you would have found that unscrupulous business practices took over, and are with us today, wrecking great havoc.
Charles:
What of science and religion? Do you believe in evolution?
LoraKim:
Sixty percent believe humans and other animals always existed as they do now or evolved over time under guidance of a Supreme Being. Only 25 % believe life evolved through natural selection.
Charles:
What happened?
LoraKim:
Well we are still shifting from a view of life that dictates that what the most powerful people say is true. From you we learned not so much to ask “what,” but to see that there is quality in asking why is something this way and what is the relationship to us the observer. To truly ask that question one must be open to uncomfortable and changing understandings – to the unknown in ourselves, in others, and in existence.
Charles:
So the theory of evolution didn’t give you the meaning of life and unify the earth in harmony?
Lincoln:
And the Civil War didn’t end all wars and bloodshed?
LoraKim:
Not yet, though I believe we are on our way.
Evolutionary theory told us, and faith in humanity informs us that if we want rule of law, free speech, and individual rights, equality of races and sexes, a sustainable earth, that there is nothing in biology to tell us we can’t. Furthermore these days, we are learning more and more that biology says we can have freedom and flourishing for all. It’s in us, though no certainty that it shall come to pass.
Lincoln:
So you live with even more doubt than I did, for I had Providence.
Charles:
And I had evolution.
LoraKim:
Don’t get me wrong. Liberalism may accept a plurality of hats, but we do this in order to arrive at a working majority of hearts. We have confidence in this in part because of you Mr. Lincoln who confirmed in us materialist certitudes and rationalist confidence of enlightenment when you said government of the people, by the people and that we could be the better angels of our nature. Somehow we have maintained values of the enlightenment in the face of pessimistic truths of the universe and political conduct. There may be no plan, but we can still describe the maze; describing the maze is, in fact, the first step in getting out of it. (Adam Gopnik in Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life)
Lincoln:
But your maze is so thick, I can read it in the faces of the people here, what do you do while you are stuck not being able to see over the hedgerows of human failing?
LoraKim:
Well, we are mystical materialists, like you both. You see we have faith in what the eyes see and what the mind knows, and we still recognize that the heart and soul seek more. (Gopnik). For us “religion has become for most an affirmation not of a certain understanding of history, but of a way to live in the present; it is an expression of a social practice, of community ritual, and life seems sad without it.”
Lincoln:
Oh, you have learned to mourn as we did in my day, and on a massive pubic scale. We had so much anxiety and doubt. How could a good God would allow so much death of the young? We had to feel death fully as unappeasable loss. The only thing that made sense was that so many died for freedom, and now I’m not so sure that they did.
LoraKim:
Dear Mr. President, you’ve had so much pain, and so have we. We must live with the dual reality that our motives are pure, but also with the harm that comes to the victims of all kinds, species, and the very earth. No one escapes from the curtain of their life being drawn to discover our days of are harm and loss, and of giving and abundance.
Lincoln:
Curtains, curtains. I recall this in my last moments. What happened? I was shot wasn’t I?
LoraKim:
You were. And when you finally died the words uttered over your still heart were either you now belong to the ages, or to the angels. We don’t know which. All we know for sure was that “everyone was weeping and the room was full.” (Gopnik)
Not much has changed today.
The earth is full, watching, waiting, and we are weeping. We look to the past as you did to look at slavery and humanity, Mr. Lincoln, and as you did Mr. Darwin with your birds and worms, so that we can face forward and be led into the mysterious unknown.
We also face inward to have empathy for tortoises and for those suffering, so that we gather a deep knowing of the world and see if we can make things a little better.
Our hope is to study life, to see all life, no matter how lowly, to know where we come from, who we were, who we are, so that we can be all of who we might become. We are not here to be at the top of a great chain of being, but in the midst of the web of life that holds us in this truth; “There is more to human than the breath in her body, or the hat on his head. It is the hope in our heart.” (adapted from Adam Gopnik)
For this hope we gather, and in hope, let us sing.
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