A fairly common and close definition of the word theology is talk about God. Now that is a Unitarian Universalist definition of theology, if I've ever heard one. An old joke goes that two UUs are walking along a path and they come to a fork in the road where a sign points in two directions. In one direction is "heaven" and in the other direction is " a discussion of heaven". The two UUs take the path to....? Right, the discussion of heaven.
So here is this word 'theology' -- talk about God. If the signs on that path had said to turn this way to meet God and the other had said turn this way to talk about God, I think I know which way many of us would turn. And if there were a third path that was a discussion of anything but God, some among us would go there.
Many of you know that my sermon series this summer follows my preparation to see our UU committee which fellowships new ministers. This week has been the culmination of the packet preparation, including the writing of a four page essay: "What is the theological context of your call to UU ministry; refer to at least one theologian, sacred text, and personal experience." A wonderful crew of First U folk joined me Thursday night to go over the not quite complete rough draft and we talked theology.
So this morning's sermon, to keep me from having to think and write about more things than I can manage, is grounded in that study and the resulting essay. Ah, ha. Grounded.Actually, well-composted, I hope!
So, we have a definition of theology. We need a definition of compost! I've got to be careful here. As a certified Michigan Master Composter, I could go on and on about compost. Compost is wonderful stuff. It's beautiful. It's texture and the smell of the earth in it -- black gold. But a definition.
I like Elaine Morse's definition of compost in our morning reading: "Compost from Latin compos'ita, the fem. Form of compositus, is the rich decomposed organic matter useful for enriching and conditioning the soil. Mixed with air and water, proteins are converted via bacteria into stable compounds..."
Compost is the natural result of the breakdown of organic matter into new humus-like matter. What lies on the floor of the forest is compost. The compost most of us talk about is not the long term decomposition of the leaves on the forest floor but the managed result of the breakdown of organic matter in our backyards. We moisten it, mix and stir it. And we choose particular stuff at that, partly because we don't want it to smell other than of the earth. We manage it in bins in our back yards, to speed the process of decomposition. And we can't get enough of it!!!
What, then, with these two definitions, is a theology of compost? If theology is talk about God, or perhaps, we might say talk about that which is ultimate or the deepest possibility, and compost is what happens as vegetable and lawn matter transforms, then a theology of compost, ---- thinking metaphorically here ---- is, for me, an understanding of God, that also changes and responds.
A good and useful scholarly term for a theology of compost is process theology. Process theology evolved from Alfred North Whitehead's wonder, near the beginning of the 20th century, at quantum physics, Einstein's theory of relativity. A mathematician and a philosopher, Whitehead blended this new science with philosophy and developed process philosophy, a complex systematic filled with new terms and expressions to try and understand, inbreaking new possibilities in philosophy - philosophy grounded in 20th century science. Theologians got wind of Whitehead's ideas and applied them to the nature of God and ultimacy. Henry Nelson Wieman, Charles Hartshorne, most famously. There is a UU Process Theology study group.
Process thinking's most significant contribution to theology was its recognition that as the new science saw all things in movement -- even the atoms that we earlier thought were little hard balls of substance - were, actually, fragments of moving matter, cohering in relationship to one another. Then it only makes sense, and adds to the wonder and qualities of God, that God also is movement and in relationship.
Classical Christian theology had taught that God was the "unmoved mover", immutable and perfect. Process theologians claim, and I am fascinated by this, that if God's perfection requires that God be unmoving and unchanging, then that is not God. Requirements like that actually limit God. And if God is limitless, then in process thinking God changes.
When our group met Thursday night we had a lot of discussion around even our use of the term God. One thing I said was that God is not the name of God. That some think of the word God as a noun and others as a verb. I also said the I didn't want to leave the use of the word to religious traditions that nail God down to only one way of Being and Doing. "What does that mean? - that God is not the name of God," somebody asked. And, so here we are right in the middle of theology - we're doing "talk about God". What does that mean that God is not the name of God?
It is what I can say that helps me keep stirring up the sediment of my own old ideas about God. We use the word God and it becomes a name of an entity, perhaps a personage, a something that we end up putting conditions on like being the "unmoved mover" and perfectly unchangeable. When I keep reminding myself that God is not the name of God, I keep myself moving, so that how I think about this word and what it might represent of use to me and ministry and a UU community, also keeps moving, keeps on-the-stir.
So that God, and my ideas and all that lives and moves and has its being in this world, changes and transforms into something like the black gold compost, that gardeners can't get enough of.
When I was in training for hospital chaplaincy, I said to my rather fundamentalist Christian colleagues, with no malice, but with a bit of expectation of reaction, that when I died I'd be happy to be compost. The reaction was pretty good. Dropped jaws and deep skepticism lined several faces. It is true. I'd be happy to be compost. Compost amends the soil and goes back to the earth in a different form but belongs to the earth -- and it only makes sense to me to be in the earth. And I mean that even more strongly metaphorically. When I die I will leave residue of some sort; and I mean it to be positive. Compost amends the soil in positive ways no matter the soil. It loosens clay; it bulks up sand. Our lives leave residue at our deaths - not necessarily positive residue.
I want mine to be compost - positive amendment to the soil of life, that adds possibility and hope. Again, from the Elaine Morse reading: "This homely process [of composting] can serve as a metaphor for the life of the spirit; our sufferings, sorrowings, and struggles can be fruitful ground for the nourishment of patience, compassion, gratitude and the fully awakened heart."
The closing of her piece, which I didn't include this morning, reads: "In the places of our struggles and vulnerability there are both blessings and curses. Difficult circumstances and difficult people, losses and loneliness, fear and confusion, wounds and longings are vital elements for the cultivation of our spiritual practice, only waiting to be transformed by our attention into life-sustaining, fertile ground...."
We didn't get that far in our discussions at the hospital (not the metaphorical part), just my body happily decomposing into the earth. Elaine Morse speaks of life's exigencies and realities in a way that speaks of the work of living, spiritual practice and transformation that suggests ongoing change and the power of relationship. And there is where I find a useful place for God. The deepest of relationships that works in the needs and actions of the world as well as in the wee hours of the morning when I am resisting change and call and a need to be in the world.
God as unmoved mover, immutable, is not mine. Such use of the word God solidifies, paralyzes, what we can understand of God and what God can be. That sounds like idolatry to me. That we somehow know God, can describe God. No human being, no religious tradition has the power to describe what is ultimate, deepest possible, Supreme Being, Ground of Being, named God or not. And I don't want to throw this word God out. It appeals to me.
First of all, it restores my Christian religious heritage to me. Not that I become Christian, but that I need not reject something of the core of it that taught me who I was and offers something, still, especially when I read the remarkable work of Christian theologians like WWII martyr Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sallie McFague, James Cone and our own Unitarian James Luther Adams. And -- as I am learning to use it (the word God), -- it incorporates room for other religious heritages as well, traditions that use the term God but are not limited to ideas Christians use. Most importantly I don't want an image of God that ends up defending the status quo. God stirs the world, is alive in the sense of being capable of change and growth and responsiveness.
God - as change and the potential for change and the ongoing presence of ethical, growing relationship. Compost is about the power and possibility of change. Modern quantum physics is also about the power and possibility of change.
The poem I wrote at the end of a remarkable seminar, and that I read before the sermon is about the power and possibility of change and the wonder felt in that recognition in the very stars. That we live IN change and ongoing possibility and potential. Change, ongoing and remarkable in nature. And vitally connected to relationship.
Unitarian Universalist minister Maureen Killoran (Asheville, NC) writes: "My theology holds that we love God into being along the lines of relationship. In hard times I am touched by God along those same relationship lines. And when I can't feel it, the community feels it, and I see it there and somehow manage to hold on and believe. How is this UU? Revelation is not sealed. Truth wears many faces. The Holy inheres in the lived moment of the present, as well as in the community of memory of hope."
AMEN
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