HomeSTARS AND GALAXIES; LIFE AND DEATH
If life is to be, death is a necessity not only at the end of life but in order for life to be. There is a message in the stars about our personal lives.
Readings:
Job 38:22-33
And:
Galaxies twirl and spin in a dance untold ages old.
Billions of stars for billions of years have spun and circled, threading through each others paths as they do-si-do in a waltz of grace and grandeur.
Orbs of blue and white, red and yellow;
dwarfs and giants together, flying through the ether, joining in immense circles that then circle one another.
The dance of the universe is done to unheard music; yet it is music which our hearts beat to, keeping time with the ages, the stars, the galaxies, the all.
Like the suns that formed our substance we too twirl and swirl, passing in and out of one another’s lives, touching gently or flying past in a rush;
sometimes coupling, sometimes communing, sometimes solitary; yet always part of the one great cosmic dance.
We and the stars, moving to the silent rhythm if life;
We the children of the stars in swaying, circling clusters of being;
each taking different steps, hearts singing varied emotions, all in flowing harmony.
Feeling the pulse of the universe dance, on; dance on.
SERMON
Good Morning!
Last autumn I preached a sermon that was inspired by the news report about a star that was on a course of travel which, if continued, would cause the star to leave our galaxy in some number of years of years. This caused me to think about community and belonging. Today I am going to think a bit more about that star, but with reflections stirred by another part of the report.
Astronomers believe that the star once had a companion, and that the two of them swung in towards the center of the galaxy. Coming close to the black hole which is at the core of the galaxy, the two would have been endangered by the immense gravitational pull of the black hole. The companion star then is believed to have been sucked in to the black hole and the star we now see is believed to have been flung by a gravitational sling shot effect out towards the edge of the galaxy and soon, beyond the edge and into intergalactic reaches.
In a sense, then, the price the star pays for survival is to lose the community of other stars, and to lose the presence of its former companion.
But there is more: The only reason this wandering star now survives is that its companion died. That was the trade off: One of you dies; the other is flung into the vast emptiness of space. Presumably this decision was made on the basis of what we would call random chance rather than on the basis of choice. There was no long discussion, no process of rational determination, no moment of secret treachery between the two; the one that was in position to be swallowed by the black hole was engulfed and the other was thrown back out among the other stars.
Stars themselves exist only because previous stars lived and died and in their dying created new stars; life from death.
And it may be that the black hole which killed the companion star created the galaxy by pulling stars together. It created the galactic community which it now slowly feeds upon; life from death, death from life.
In a universe of one hundred billion galaxies, each of one hundred billion stars, does the existence or destruction of one star mean anything? Does it count for anything? Does it matter?
And yet this celestial saga points to what for me is a sad truth: the existence and survival of any thing requires the death of something else.
Among living things, the survival of each of us, even the existence of each of us, depends upon the death of other living things.
This is most immediately and readily seen among carnivores like myself, those creatures that eat other living creatures.
I was sitting in my yard some weeks ago watching birds at one of our feeders, including a flack of grackles. Suddenly a small raptor of some sort—a falcon or a small hawk—not much bigger than the grackles themselves, swept into the yard and towards the feeder. The grackles scattered, and the hunter followed closely behind one, chasing it around behind a tree, then back towards the feeder and then into the woods, closing in on it ever so surely. I did not see, but can guess, the outcome of the chase.
My thought was: how terrible it must feel to be the one cut out from the herd, the one chosen of the flock and selected for death.
And that must be true no matter what the particular circumstances are. Whether fish or bird; wildebeest or gazelle; soldier or prisoner; to be designated for and heading towards death must be terrible and horrifying.
And the process of death is all too often gruesome beyond measure or expression.
And as another thought, how must it feel to be spared? How must if feel to be grateful that it was not me but my brother who died? How must it feel to be grateful that though I was the one in the hawk’s sights, I was able to outfly, outrun, outswim my sister and it was she who died instead?
What is the mix of joy and guilt in that event?
As I thought these things I wondered what kind of a god could possibly create such a world. How can such pain and cruelty be seen as good or blessed? Like Job I questioned and challenged. No answers to these questions have come to me. If there is no God, then simple evolution explains how this came about. If there is a God, the questions are left unanswered. It simply remains to say that the earth is established in such a way that creature kills and feeds upon creature.
Some of us do or have chosen at some point to refrain from taking part in this process, to refrain from eating meat. I have done that at various times in my life.
The fact that I do not practice vegetarianism today causes me guilt and sorrow on occasion.
Is it the case that life exists only to feed and feed on other life? What a cynical and despairing view; yet, is it true?
The fact is that my very existence destroys other beings, and requires that destruction. I drove here today in a car that burns gasoline; I heat my home with fuel oil; I live in a house and shop in stores that stand where forest once was. Each of these requires damage and death.
I eat food. Even if I eat only vegetables, that process requires the destruction of habitat in order to develop farm land. In fact, over time we have destroyed so much forest and plain and meadow, and have diverted so much water to the production of crops that one could argue that the human turn to agriculture and the attendant destruction of habitat has eliminated more species and living beings than the alternative. Had we remained a hunter gatherer species, we would still be living in small bands with population limited by available resources. So which was truly the moral alternative for our species, hunting or farming?
And what is a living creature? What is the line between plant and animal? Why is killing a fish wrong but pulling up a living radish or cutting down a living tree not immoral?
Well then, if it is true that our very existence is destructive and that we cannot help but be part of destroying other living beings, what is one to do and think? One choice would be cynicism.
Cynicism would tell us that we live in a dog eat dog world; that killing is part of life; that we should accept and even revel in that fact. Do for yourself, do whatever serves your needs and desires.
Forgo compassion; it is the sentiment of the naďve, the weak, those unwilling to recognize reality. Take what you can from life.
I prefer compassion, but recognize the destruction. I am left therefore with Compassionate Destruction which is to acknowledge that my existence causes destruction. More than that, it is to acknowledge that part of the process of the universe and of earth is destructive evolution; that is, evolution requires both destruction and creation.
When blue green algae came into being, they pumped poisonous oxygen into the atmosphere, killing most of what then lived.
The dinosaurs ruled and then died off or evolved into other life forms.
Had neither of these destructive events occurred, we human beings would not exist.
Our living today--and the damage it does--is preparing the way for future steps in evolution, for new creations and beings.
This is not about wallowing in guilt for doing damage to the earth or to other creatures, and it is about not doing that damage heedlessly; it is about recognizing the awesome and unavoidable truth that my life does harm to others. I can choose to be more destructive, or less; to minimize the damage that I do and to restore some of what I destroy, but I can never choose not to destroy.
Like stars flowing through space we and all things, living or not, are part of an ongoing panoply of change and renewal, of coming into being and going into extinction, of being born and dying, of rising to heights of self-important grandeur and of falling into the abyss.
In a universe of one hundred billion galaxies, does it matter that I eat or do not eat another living creature? In a universe in which whole worlds are sacrificed for the future, does it matter that a bird or a mammal is sacrificed that I may live? In a universe in which entire galaxies crash into one another does it matter that another person dies for me or suffers so that I may live well?
My incongruous, irrational and absurd response is that it does matter. My foolish, simplistic and wholly unsensible faith is that even the smallest act of kindness or goodness or gentleness can tilt the universe just a little bit towards compassion. There is no reason for me to say that other than faith. There is nothing I can point to that proves it, other than to those moments in your own lives when someone or some being has shown you kindness or gentleness or acceptance.
And so I say, not with guilt but with respect, not with despair but with humble recognition that if it is true that--like that lonely star which lives only because its companion has died--the universe demands destruction of some kind that I may live, still I will strive to limit the harm that I do, to limit the harm that others do, to give nurture to others, to honor and pay homage to the deaths that give me life, and to recognize that my death will feed other life..
And still I will strive to stand, like Job, in awe before the stars, to watch in wonder their dance of death and rebirth and to look upon the vast stretches of time and space as a work of stunning beauty, as an impenetrable mystery, as a gift, and as my home; the place where—despite all the pain and suffering that fills the world, I am at peace.
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