February 2009

REsources For Living

BY LYNN UNGAR, MINISTER FOR LIFESPAN LEARNING, CHURCH OF THE  LARGER FELLOWSHIP

You might have noticed: the world is full of some fascinating, not to say funky, holidays. And February is home to a few of the funkiest. Of course there’s Valentine’s Day, when people give cards and candy either to their sweethearts or to everyone in their class, whether they like a person or not. And there’s Mardi Gras, when people have a big crazy shindig to lead into 40 days of trying to be really good before Easter. But these are the least surprising of the bunch. You’ve also got Tu B’Shevat, the Jewish New Year for trees, which, it turns out, is when all trees (or at least all Jewish trees) celebrate their birthdays. You’ve got Setsubun, a Japanese Shinto festival, which celebrates the arrival of spring by throwing beans around. And, of course, you have Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day. A day when legend says that if the groundhog comes up out of its burrow and sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter. Honestly, you can’t make this kind of thing up. Somehow, if it’s sunny on February 2nd, that’s supposed to predict a late spring, based on the magical powers which for some unknown reason are bestowed on a fat rodent. You gotta love it. In fact, I do love it. The world just seems to me to be a more exciting place knowing that on February 2nd a bunch of folks in Pennsylvania are going stand around in the cold to watch a guy haul some sleepy groundhog up out of his hole to see if he casts a shadow. I think it’s fabulous.

But I can’t say I believe it. I have lived in enough different places to know that whatever the groundhog has to say on the matter, it’s a really good bet that it will be a heck of a lot colder six weeks down the line in Chicago than in California. I love the groundhog, but I’d rather choose my clothing based on a weather report or a chart showing average temperatures for mid-March in a certain location.

What I mean to say is that there is plenty of room in my life as a person and as a Unitarian Universalist for mystery and wonder, for magic and imagination. I think celebrating the birthday of trees and flinging beans around to welcome the spring are wonderful. But I also think it’s important that religion doesn’t confuse wonderful stories and myths and rituals with science and history and fact.

There are different versions of most of the world’s religions. All kinds of Christianity aren’t the same, nor are all kinds of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. And most religions have a fundamentalist version that believes that their holy books and religious teachings should be treated literally, as facts that everyone must follow. For instance, in the US there have been a lot of arguments about the way schools should teach how life developed on this planet. Scientific evidence tells us that the earth has been around for something like four and a half billion years, and that life has slowly evolved since that time, with simple living cells showing up around 3.8 billion years ago, land plants in evidence around 475 million years ago, birds about 150 million years ago and beings that looked more or less like us coming on the scene roughly 200 thousand years ago. But the creation story in the Bible says that God created the world in six days—and if you work out the math based on the life spans of the people listed in the Bible, it seems that all this happened about 5,000 years ago. So some fundamentalist Christians think that schools should include the Bible story of how the world was formed when they’re teaching science.

Now, UUs are generally in favor of letting everybody have their own religious viewpoints and a chance to say what they believe. But there’s a problem when you confuse stories and facts. The biblical story of creation is a great story, with a wonderful repeating refrain about how God saw that each created thing was good. It makes an excellent teaching story about how everything in the world is sacred and special and good just the way it is. But it makes lousy science. There’s overwhelming evidence that the heavens and the earth and all the living beings couldn’t possibly have shown up within days of each other. Saying that it has to be so because it’s in the Bible simply doesn’t make it true, any more than loving Groundhog Day makes it an accurate way to predict the weather.

On the other hand, while religion makes crummy science, it turns out that there are enormous parts of life where religion has plenty of important things to say. Like it’s a good idea to treat people lovingly, whether you like them or not. That it’s important to have times of celebration and play and wildness, as well as quiet times for thinking and trying to be your very best self. That our lives as human beings are connected to those of the trees and, yes, the beans. That the world is full of startling shadows which we sometimes hide from and sometimes choose to face and explore. So here’s wishing you happy February holidays in this world which is, in fact, full of mystery and wonder.