Spiritually homeless in the cosmos

Originally published 25 March 1996

I was recent­ly at Grin­nell Col­lege in Iowa talk­ing with a group of tal­ent­ed young nature writ­ers. They had read a cou­ple of my books, and gen­er­al­ly approved of the way I tried to relate sci­ence to human val­ues. How­ev­er, they took me to task for what they per­ceived as con­de­scen­sion towards astrol­o­gy, crys­tal ther­a­py, para­psy­chol­o­gy, and oth­er New Age superstitions.

I had called these things “baloney.” Don’t be so cock­sure, they said. Remem­ber, that even Galileo was a vic­tim of close-mindedness.

Their point is well-tak­en. There is more to the world than meets the eye and it behooves us not to dis­miss any­thing too quick­ly. How­ev­er, I do not dis­miss these pseu­do­sciences quick­ly; I have stud­ied the evi­dence and it is unconvincing.

But I will try to be more sym­pa­thet­ic with young believers.

The stu­dents are look­ing for spir­i­tu­al mean­ing in their lives. They val­ue the sci­en­tif­ic way of know­ing, and some of them have turned away from tra­di­tion­al reli­gious faiths that they per­ceive to be in con­flict with sci­ence. But they have not found much in sci­ence that answers their need to feel at home in the universe.

What they are look­ing for, it seems to me, is a sense of stew­ard­ship for the Earth. They want to feel part of an organ­ic sys­tem in which their indi­vid­ual exis­tences make a difference.

So they turn to the “Move­ment,” a col­lec­tive New Age open­ness to forces and pos­si­bil­i­ties that flick­er about the mar­gins of sci­ence. They align them­selves with pow­ers and spir­its that they per­ceive to be con­sis­tent with sci­ence, but which escape the grim cal­cu­lus of the reductionists.

Their quest is sin­cere, but I wish they could find some­thing bet­ter to latch onto than pseu­do­science. Sci­ence has unfold­ed a cre­ation sto­ry that is infi­nite­ly more majes­tic and mean­ing­ful than any mish­mash of New Age enthusiasms.

But we have not yet learned how to con­nect the sci­en­tif­ic cre­ation sto­ry to our search for spir­i­tu­al ful­fill­ment. That’s not the stu­dents’ fault, nor is it the fault of sci­en­tists. We have been failed by our philoso­phers, the­olo­gians, and spir­i­tu­al leaders.

Cul­tur­al his­to­ri­an and Roman Catholic priest Thomas Berry is one of the few schol­ars to address the prob­lem head-on. He roots the dif­fi­cul­ties we face today in the Black Death of the late Mid­dle Ages.

The Plague that began in Con­stan­tino­ple in 1334 killed off one-third to one-half of the pop­u­la­tion of Europe with­in 20 years. Sub­se­quent vis­i­ta­tions like­wise dec­i­mat­ed the pop­u­la­tion. It is dif­fi­cult for us to grasp today the hor­ri­ble dimen­sions of the dying.

There were two respons­es to this trau­ma, says Berry: One part of the com­mu­ni­ty sought to enlist the inter­ven­tion of super­nat­ur­al forces in a world that seemed increas­ing­ly hos­tile to man; anoth­er part sought to rem­e­dy earth­ly ter­ror by under­stand­ing earth­ly process.

The first response led to forms of reli­gious faith that empha­size redemp­tion rather than cre­ation; the sec­ond led to sci­ence. The first sees the mate­r­i­al world as the ene­my; the sec­ond sees mat­ter as an amoral matrix upon which we can impose our will.

We have not yet resolved this split in our cul­ture, says Berry. We have a new sci­en­tif­ic cre­ation sto­ry, but we have not inte­grat­ed the sto­ry into our lives as believ­ers and seek­ers. An inte­gral sto­ry of cre­ation and redemp­tion has not emerged, he says, and no com­mu­ni­ty can exist with­out a com­mu­ni­ty story.

If Berry is right, the Grin­nell stu­dents are strug­gling with a prob­lem that should con­cern all of us.

There are two com­mu­ni­ties in Amer­i­ca today. One rejects the sci­en­tif­ic cre­ation sto­ry in favor of an obso­lete sto­ry that at least had the virtue of work­ing in its time. The oth­er com­mu­ni­ty buys into the sci­en­tif­ic sto­ry but lan­guish­es with­out a col­lec­tive means for express­ing wor­ship and praise.

The antag­o­nisms between the two com­mu­ni­ties are deep­er than they appear to be, says Berry: “This is pre­cise­ly why com­mu­ni­ca­tion between these two is so unsat­is­fy­ing. No sus­tain­ing val­ues have emerged. The prob­lems of the human are not resolved. The human adven­ture is not dynamized.”

In con­ver­sa­tions with the stu­dents, I sensed a dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the par­tial answers of both com­mu­ni­ties and a deter­mi­na­tion to do some­thing about it. Their pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with pseu­do­sciences will pass. Behind it is some­thing deep­er and truer: A com­mit­ment to the Earth that is inte­gral, organ­ic, and ground­ed in sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge; and a con­vic­tion that every being on the plan­et has its own self, val­ue, and mystery.

Only when we see our­selves as inte­gral and wor­thy parts of cre­ation, with a pro­found sense of stew­ard­ship, will cre­ation and redemp­tion come togeth­er. If we are to save the Earth (our­selves includ­ed), sci­ence must pro­vide the knowl­edge and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty the motivation.

It had bet­ter hap­pen soon, or there won’t be much left to save. My vis­it to Grin­nell gave me hope that the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of edu­cat­ed young peo­ple, faced with a bios­pher­ic cat­a­clysm com­pa­ra­ble to the Black Death, will not set­tle for the half-way answers of their parents.