spiritual gifts

Audubon Society: Eight-Step Philosophy

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When I began teaching environmental biology (1964) it seemed prudent to join The Audubon Society. The society was formed in 1905 probably inspired by John Muir’s creation of the Sierra Club in 1892. The membership included a monthly magazine that contained stunning Nature photos and relevant current event articles. At the beginning of each issue, the editors included: “A Statement of Audubon Philosophy.”

  • We believe in the wisdom of Nature’s design.
  • We know that soil, water, plants and wild creatures depend on each other and are vital to human life.
  • We recognize that each living thing links to many others in the chain of nature.
  • We believe that persistent research into the intricate patterns of outdoor life will help to assure wise use of Earth’s abundance.
  • We condemn no wild creature and work to assure that no living species shall be lost.
  • We believe that every generation should be able to experience spiritual and physical refreshment in places where primitive nature is undisturbed.
  • So we will be vigilant to protect wilderness areas, refuges, and parks and to encourage good use of nature’s storehouse of resources.
  • We dedicate ourselves to the pleasant task of opening the eyes of young and old that all may come to enjoy the beauty of the outdoor world and share in conserving its wonders forever.

– Audubon: March 1954

It is no wonder that the opening line of “The Audubon Philosophy” became part of the title and foundation that The Biodesign Class was built on.

Although I knew the steps by heart, my relationship with “step 6” was purely intellectual and definitely not soul-stirring. That all changed in 1972 when Lettie asked her fateful question (Biodesign Out For A Walk, Page 2) which led to meeting John Muir and hundreds of Naturalists, saints, sinners, sages and poets who were seeking a spirit-filled life.

 

My relationship with students was not unilateral, but reciprocal. I was supremely blessed to see Yosemite, Grand Canyon and California’s Mendocino Coast through the eyes of over 700 students. Mother Nature may have been opening their eyes and in turn, they were opening mine.

This is exactly what the Audubon Society was promoting and it was an honor to identify with and represent their philosophy.

Lowell H. Young
Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

young.lowell@gmail.com

In the Presence of Spiritual Giants

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This letter is a rebuttal to the Sierra Club’s odious attempt to besmirch the legacy and writing of John Muir, their legendary founder. It is my contention that, like every human on Earth, Muir was imperfect yet he achieved the status of two world-renown spiritual paragons.

St. Francis of Assisi

Indulged by his parents, Francis lived the high-spirited life typical of a wealthy young man. He was handsome, witty, gallant, and delighted in fine clothes. He spent money lavishly until a chance encounter with a beggar. The encounter transformed every fiber of his being and led to him taking vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

 Francis preached the Christian doctrine that the world was created good and beautiful by God but suffers a need for redemption because of human sin. As someone who saw God reflected in nature, St. Francis was a great lover of God’s creation. In the Canticle of the Sun he gives God thanks for Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind, Water, Fire, and Earth, all of which he sees as rendering praise to God.  (adapted from Wikipedia)

The spirit of St. Francis is alive and well with over 1,000 friars and over 40 Franciscan colleges or universities throughout the US.

St. Ignatius of Loyola

There are accounts of Ignatius of Loyola being a fancy dresser, an expert dancer, and a womanizer. However, during a religious awakening the writing that most particularly struck him was the De Vita Christi of Ludolph of Saxony. This book would influence his whole life, inspiring him to devote himself to God and follow the example of Francis of Assisi and other great monks.

After his conversion he created the brotherhood of Jesuits and sent his companions as missionaries around Europe to create schools, colleges, and seminaries. Currently there are 189 universities around the world that are dedicated to his values.

The spirit of Ignatius is alive and thrives in the hearts and minds of millions of teachers, students and followers throughout the world.

 John of the Mountains

John Muir was born into a poor Scottish family with a father who brutally mistreated him ostensibly for religious reasons. As a young man he no doubt carried his youth-born scars to Yosemite where he underwent a transcending healing experience. Although most followers of Muir’s life and legacy tacitly understand that some of his descriptions of non-Caucasians were the result of using the vernacular of the times, they understand that historical context is often as important as anecdotal evidence.

Although Muir was mostly self-taught, he was highly educated. He would have known about brilliant scientists Galileo and Newton. He would have been familiar with great musicians such as Bach and Beethoven.  He would have known great artists like Michelangelo and Rembrandt and he often carried a copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost and The New Testament with him.  Robert Burns was his favorite poet and he knew many Shakespeare passages by heart. In that time period, knowing what he did, it would have been illogical for him to regard people who could not read or write or add a column of numbers as equals.

Muir went on to arguably become the greatest Naturalist in the world, whose life and legacy have inspired, guided, and encouraged countless millions to become “baptized in Nature.”

“John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God’s mountains.”

For many extended periods in his adult life, Muir lived alone, in the wilderness, sustained by dried bread balls and tea. This is a life-style that is practiced only in some of the most austere monasteries and it should not be surprising that his writings often convey a message of holiness.

His vision of “eco-spirituality” and preserving natural wonderlands as places to “play and pray” has spread globally. Before Muir’s time there were zero national parks in the world; today there are over 4,000. In the US, there are 62 designated  National Parks and 559 National Monuments, Preserves and historical sites with 327 million annual visitors. State Parks in the US number over 10,000 with more visitors than the USNPS.

So the Sierra Club has proclaimed that Muir’s life and legacy encourage racism and white supremacy. In a profound irony, if he were alive today, I submit that he would be the first to agree that some of his vernacular would not be appropriate. However, the president of The Sierra Club has exercised his God-given right of free will in a cowardly act of casting the first stone. He may have his 5-minutes of fame, but Muir will maintain his saintly aura in the hearts of millions of devoted followers long after “what’s-his-name?” has left the planet.

Lowell H. Young
Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

young.lowell@gmail.com

Lenten Meditations: God vs. Science

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“It’s déjà vu all over again.” Yogi Berra

In 1946, anthropologist Loren Eiseley exposed the hypocrisy of scientists who dismissed the Biblical story of creation as mythical and unprovable and then proceeded to replace the poetic metaphor with The Big Bang Theory, which is equally mythical and unprovable.

Eiseley, who has been described as one of the great science/spirituality writers and along with many honors, was awarded the Pierre Lecomte du Noüy award to writers who described the overarching themes uniting science and religion.

When he wrote; “The story of Eden is a greater allegory than man has ever guessed,” he was aware that secular scientists were using their God-given gift of free will to devise theories and models that supposedly proved that God did not exist.

Like the eminent naturalist, Louis Agassiz, he was not convinced that Darwin had answers for any of the “big” questions in biology: The origin of the Universe; the origin of living things; the Precambrian explosion; the origin and rapid dispersal of the angiosperms, the rapid increase of the human neocortex; the origin of human “values—consciousness—free-will;” the origin of non-genetically transferred “gifts” of music—art and logical/mathematical genius.

70 years later, physicist Alan Lightman published, Searching the Stars on an Island in Maine. While the book may be a personal “tour de force” of his academic brilliance, as a self-described “humanist,” he confesses that science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. To his credit, he questions his own credibility and that of other secular scientists who have eschewed Newton’s laws of conservation of matter/energy, the very laws that hold the universe together. Collectively they boldly proclaim that “The Big Bang Theory” is the Alpha and Omega solution to the Universe, without describing what the Universe was at T minus 1, or how a universe could exist before time was created. Lightman is not alone. There is a legend that on his deathbed, Einstein smiled and said, “But I still wonder how nothing can become something.”

Evidently Lightman was inspired by a transcending experience; “looking up at the stars off the coast of Maine.” He also shared a goose bump-inducing account by clergyman William James: “I stood alone with Him who made me, and all the beauty of the world and love, and sorrow, and even temptation. I did not seek Him, but felt the perfect union of my spirit with His…”(Varieties of Religious Experience).

Surely he knows that neither of those accounts can be explained by Darwinism and the great naturalists John Muir, R-W Emerson and Henry Thoreau described them as transcendental events that are essential components of being fully human—fully alive.

Lightman touches briefly on human ego, but in the debate of science vs religion the issue is of paramount importance. It is intriguing to wonder if he is familiar with the acronym “EGO” (edging God out) that is frequently used by people of faith. One of the extreme examples of “EGO” can be found in Stephen Hawking’s book, The Grand Design. Hawking has risen to a Greek-god-like status in academic circles and I suspect that his book has replaced the Holy Bible on the bookshelves of many secular scientists. He boasts that believing in God is obsolete because the universe is so complex that it made itself out of nothing. To many people of faith this represents the highest form of ego/narcissism by inferring that he is smarter than God.

When I share his theory with non-scientists their responses range from shock, disbelief, derision and even laughter. One of my “cowboy” friends scoffed and asked, “Do intelligent people really believe that “b s”?”

The cowboy prefers Albert Einstein’s more humble theology to the arrogance of secular scientists:

“The scientists’ religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”

Lightman suggested that most cosmologists are atheists and I can envision a group of them on a starry night, shaking their fists upward and chanting, “There is no God!” and toasting each other with a glass of Napa Valley Cabernet.

It is intriguing that he does not entirely share Hawking’s unbelief, but seems to admire people of faith and the huge contributions they have made to civilization. In a hauntingly transparent passage he wrote:

“But nonbelievers have a great deal of difficulty. It may be that quantum physics can produce a universe from nothing, without cause, but such an accidental and unanalyzable origin for EVERYTHING seems deeply unsatisfying, at least to this pilgrim. [A person who journeys to a sacred place for religious reasons]. In the absence of God, we still want causes and reasons… I respect the notions of God and other divine beings. However, I insist on one thing. I insist that any statements made by such beings and their prophets about the material world, including statements recorded in the sacred books, must be subject to the experimental testing of science.”

One of his saddest confessions is; “I will admit that incoming stimuli are not forming patterns to my personal satisfaction.”

Again his lamentation contrasts sharply with Albert Einstein:

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.”

 Perhaps, instead of searching for God in the ivory towers of Babel, Lightman might consider embracing King David’s profoundly penitential Psalm 51 (Hebrew Bible). Or contemplate the wisdom of Albert Einstein, one of the great scientist/humanitarian/spiritual writers in human history.

In a splendid irony, Lightman may have become an unwitting advocate of Genesis 1:27; “So God created man in his own image.”

Comments welcome.

Lowell H. Young
Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

young.lowell@gmail.com

Darwin’s Dilemma—Spiritual Gifts Part II

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Sometimes it is aggravating when IT “reads” my posts and sends me links and ads that “they” think I will like (or buy). However, this was not the case when, after I posted the blog involving Darwin, Mozart and Sunny Choi. Quite mysteriously, a YouTube video of Yeol Eum Son’s performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto #21 popped up. I sat mesmerized by what I was seeing.

As if Ms. Son’s stunning performance were not enough evidence of her virtuosity, she frequently closed her eyes and silently commanded her fingers to find 1000s of notes “in the dark.” The concerto was 32 minutes long, which required her to commit perhaps as many as 30,000 notes to memory. From my highly limited musical ability, I could not detect a single error.

The fact that it is highly unlikely that 99.99% of the world population will ever be able to do what she can do lends credence to the reason why many biological and behavioral scientists call her “gifted.” However, if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, perhaps the ability to discern spiritual gifts is as well.

A well-known British biologist has spent much of his career (and made millions of dollars) railing that there is no evidence for the existence of God. Poor chap. I wonder if he has ever hiked to the top of Yosemite’s Half Dome or to the bottom of Grand Canyon; walked through the Louvre in Paris, visited St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, listened to Handel’s “Messiah,” Mozart’s “Requiem,” or Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony.”

Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson, people have been endowed by their Creator with the spiritual gift of “free will.” It may be the greatest human irony that some of them have chosen to use that gift in an attempt to deny their Creator’s existence.

Lowell H. Young
Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

young.lowell@gmail.com

Darwin—Mozart—Sunny Choi—Spiritual Gifts

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It is a rare human being (especially male) who is not vexed by being shown that his logic is faulty. Charles Darwin did not belong to that group and reportedly became furious when Alfred Wallace pointed out that his Theory of Evolution did not explain the origin of exceptional human talents involving music, mathematics and creative arts.

Over 150 years after Darwin’s, “On the Origin of Species” was published scientists reluctantly concede that the origin of Wallace’s triad is still completely enigmatic.

Like Darwin and Wallace, they understand that the three extraordinary talents are not genetically transferred or controlled by instinct and cannot be predicted. Therefore, intellectually honest scientists are obligated to regard these talents as “gifts,” thereby allowing that they must come from beyond the recipients. For devout scientists, this realization can be quite disturbing and require acquiescing to the real probability that, if “gifts” are involved, there must be a “giver.”

Serious “birders,” meticulously maintain a “life list” that records every species of bird they have observed first hand. Likewise, serious “seekers” maintain a spiritual list of wisdom, stories, and events that point to the existence of the “intelligent design” of the universe. This lofty approach of striving for greater spiritual awareness was reflected in the 1954 Audubon Society statement of their philosophy, which began with:

“We believe in the wisdom of nature’s design.”

All of these thoughts gushed forth as I watched Sunny Choi perform a beautiful interpretation of John Denver’s, “Annie’s Song.” Choi is not only a highly gifted musician; she is capable of using a piano as an extension of her body, mind and soul. And if her recital were not enough, to further showcase her gift, about half way through the performance she closed her eyes and silently commanded her fingers to find the notes “in the dark.”

Although it is highly unlikely that 99.9% of the world population will ever be able to do what Choi can do, her gift is not unprecedented.

Wolfgang Mozart lived only 35 years, but demonstrated a level of musical genius that many musicologists regard as “superhuman” and predict will not likely ever be equaled. Although his lifespan was only half of the average of 70 years, he composed an estimated 600 works of music. His music has been featured in over 300 movies. He composed 50 symphonies, 25 piano concertos, 12 violin concertos, 27 concerto arias, 26 string quartet opuses, 103 minuets, 15 masses, and 21 opera works. Some of his most famous operas include “Don Giovanni”, “Magic Flute”, “The Marriage of Figaro”, and “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik or (a little night music)”.

“There is a story that Mozart once said, ‘when the angels sing for God, they sing Bach; but when they sing for themselves, they sing Mozart’”. (Googlesearch.com). There are also reports that some of his works were “note-perfect” on the first draft, which meant that not a single note had to be changed.

Like Mozart, Charles Darwin was spiritually gifted and at the tender age of 19 began to see that the Genesis story of Creation must be allegorical and more profound than man had guessed. He eventually arrived at the conclusion that Creation and evolution must be the result of cybernetic interaction. Evidence of this can be found in, “The Autobiography of Charles Darwin:”

“Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with reason and not feelings, impresses me as having more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity for looking backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist”

Although I don’t recall him citing Wallace’s triad, he did accept his failure to explain human evolution, which includes the wonderfully mysterious origin of musical, mathematical and artistic gifts.

Lowell H. Young
Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

young.lowell@gmail.com