Scott Neely

“Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub; / it is the center hole that makes it useful.”
(Lao-Tse)

Throughout human history in cultures around the world, people have argued over whether or not an ultimate power exists. This disagreement has resulted in creative brilliance, and in destructive cruelty.

What lies at the heart of life,

and how can we choose 
brilliance?

A meditation offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spartanburg on Sunday, July 30, 2017.

A recording of the sermon may be found here:

An excerpt from the text of the sermon may be found here:

+++

Let me go straight to the heart:

Is there something, or is there nothing?

Is there an ultimate power in our world, or not?

Does a God exist, or something else, or is there simply

nothing at all?

 

Throughout human history, in cultures around the world,

people have been arguing about this.

We peer into our lives, we peer into the cosmos,

and we come back with very different answers.

 

And the disagreement has often not gone well.

People have been arguing with each other,

yelling at each other,

disowning each other,

killing each other

over what the nature of ultimate reality is

for a long, long time.

 

It seems so often

to bring out the very worst

in us.

 

There are so many good reasons

not to believe in God—

not least the absence of justice in our world.

 

And yet even when we stare into nothingness

a magic moves,

connections that should not happen,

a kindness in people who have no reason to be kind,

a presence, a breath.

 

What is this? What is the ultimate nature of reality?

 

Teofilo Ruiz, a scholar of history who teaches at UCLA,

calls this “The Terror of History”.

We could call it as well “The Terror of Life” or “The Terror of Existence”.

 

Ruiz, who was born in Cuba and fought against Batista in the revolution there

until himself being imprisoned and eventually fleeing to the United States,

 

Ruiz, whose first name, “Teofilo”, means “Loved by God”,

 

Ruiz argues that at the center of our existence lies an emptiness

that terrifies us,

threatening us with disorder and chaos and meaninglessness,

against which we as individuals and societies react—

often with violence, trying

through the exclusion and oppression of a marginalized other

to establish ourselves more solidly and safely against our own essential

nothingness.

 

And we have seen this week

the irony of this—

 

how forces of chaos and disorder

lashed out against those of us

who are transgender,

seeking to demean and distract

in order to shore up

fast eroding power.

 

And we should be quick to check our own smugness.

Every administration,

every person,

every one of us

has a propensity to do this.

 

If we are people of justice,

we must be truly just.

 

We can gaze into our lives

and see within them

an emptiness and a nothing

that frightens us,

and in an attempt to make ourselves feel safe

we act with cruelty

 

even toward the very people

willing to risk their own lives

for our safety and security

people who would give their lives

to protect our own.

 

We can be such cruel, foolish creatures.

We can be so endlessly unjust.

 

The paradoxes here only mount:

 

there are people who are ardent atheists

whose lives evince such goodness

that we could rightly claim to see in them

exactly the love and wisdom and justice

often attributed to divinity—

 

we see in them

exactly who God should be

if a God existed.

 

and there are people who are ardent theists

whose lives wreak such destruction

on those around them

in the name of all they call holy

           

that their actions are themselves

the strongest argument against

the very God

in whom they so zealously believe.

 

And vice-versa:

 

there are people

of every belief and non-belief

who have acted with such callousness and cruelty

taking the fate of one person or millions into their own hands

because they could,

believing themselves exempt from

the just consequences

of their unjust actions—

both in this world

and in others that may be.

 

And there are people

of every belief and non-belief

whose lives preach love,

walking among us,

using words only when necessary.

 

What are we to make of this dichotomy?

 

Who is right, and how can we live

lives that speak

the deepest and best

of what human being can be?

 

Perhaps the greatest paradox of all in this

is that for all of our disagreements and endlessly different perspectives,

we share a reality.

We seem fated never to agree

and yet here we all are, living

whatever this is.

 

Mystics of every spiritual tradition

have urged us

not to think in strict binaries

that can harden into dogma

 

but instead

to gaze into our shared reality,

into whatever this is,

 

and to live in tune with it.

 

Whether there is

something

or nothing,

 

here we are,

 

and these teachers through time

—of all kinds, theist and atheist and agnostic and all other possible variations alike—

 

urge us to gaze into our shared reality

whatever any of us calls it,

 

to gaze into our reality

which may seem empty, and meaningless, and may strike us with terror

 

but to pass through that fear

with courage,

 

to pass through

to something deeply human and possible

in us:

 

a something that comes from nothing.

 

 

They speak to us from every path,

 

including from that most stringent of mystical paths, science—

which asks

with every new discovery

 a relentless and endless “Why?”,

 

which teaches

that on the atomic level

we are in large measure

nothing—

empty space,

a nothingness

through which the smallest particles move.

 

But so what? Why does any of this speculation and philosophy matter in the real world?

And I think the answer is

exactly because our lives matter in this world

 

how we face this world

whether with fear

or with courage

 

and how we treat one another in it

whether with exclusion and oppression

or with wisdom and compassion

 

matters for existence.

Our existence.

All of us.