[Some or all of "Hymns in a Man's Life", by David Herbert Lawrence, 1928, was read in this service.]
D.H. Lawrence has his own unique angle on the ongoing battle between science and religion whose present manifestation, of course, is the evangelical promotion of so-called "intelligent design" as something to be taught alongside evolution in our public schools. The religion/science controversy, in one form or another, has plagued our culture since Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published. The controversy always generates more heat than light. There is a funny side to it! In a formal debate at the Royal Society in London, the agnostic, Thomas Huxley, defended Darwin's theory against Bishop Wilberforce's religious objections. At a critical point, the good bishop asks, "Do you mean to tell me that my father is descended from the apes?" Huxley said, "Well, Yes." And then Wilberforce asks incredulously, "Are you suggesting that my mother is also descended from the apes?" Huxley lifted his eyes towards heaven and said, "The Lord hath delivered him into my hands."
It isn't my purpose to raise the old debate about science and religion, going back to the Scopes trial and going forward to Intelligent Design. I'm not saying that a genuine debate between science and religion is unimportant, but I suggest, Lawrence allows the discussion of science and religion in a fresh and provocative way that creates more light than heat by placing the emphasis on wonder as the basis for approaching the great questions and the very meaning of life.
For behind the old arid debate between science and religion, lies the question of meaning. Neither science nor religion can tell us "Why idiot, harlot, and clown, lived and wept, and wept and died." Like Lawrence, we might well talk of the sheer wonder of existence separate from religious or scientific prejudice and like Lawrence feel again towards the roots of our emotional life, the memories, dreams, and reflections which have made us what we are - all the hymns and songs which have cradled us in childhood and, like a talisman, have accompanied us like a hidden stream or current and moved us on. One of the central issues - perhaps the central issue - is the conflict between mind and heart. My mind tells me one thing and my heart tells me quite another! And what we call "religion", whether we believe or not, has a way of creating the most painful conflict, setting mind against heart, reason against emotion - to press us to choose one against the other. However, as much as we value the intellectual chastity of science, we must confess with Lawrence that great art, music, and drama could not exist without the human heart's participation. Mozart's operas, Shakespeare's plays, Rembrandt's paintings, whatever may be said of them aesthetically, explore the range, depth, and intensity of human feeling -even unto catharsis where we burst into tears again at the intrinsic pathos and promise of human life. Religion, in the very best sense, should attempt to do no less than great art - to remind us of the emotional depths and claims of our existence.
The truth is that our culture is at least mildly schizophrenic! A funny thing happened to and from the "The Age of Reason" - that great age that gave us science, civility, and the American Constitution! Our debt to reason and science is great, but we have been seduced into a subtle, or not so subtle, put down of the emotional, and I would add, the imaginative and spiritual aspects of the human quest for truth. I believe that as modern people, we have secured our measure of rational truth against the superstitions of the past, but we may have lost an equal measure of emotional and spiritual depth. I believe it's the role of chastened religion and/or a larger humanism to witness to a true relation between reason and religion. We must embrace as well as understand our world. The human heart taking again its "baby steps" from childhood to maturity to rediscover the love of truth and truth of love - the things beyond religion and science in the narrow sense which have truly mattered in our lives.
"It's a long way back to childhood if only we knew the way," said Matthew Arnold. "You can't go home again," we say wisely, but if Lawrence is right, we can go back to childhood to refresh and reclaim - if only for a moment - our first images of wonder and desire. In the old hymns or tunes we might just find the clue to what we may have lost along our way, and even now, the stirrings of a fresh emotional wholeness. As Lawrence says, it hardly matters whether Galilee really existed. It is a place in the heart, and I confess, I find his insight moving and healing. I well remember as a small boy at school and church singing,
O God of Bethel by whose hand/thy people still are fed who through this weary pilgrimage/Hast all our fathers led."
What solemn thoughts for a young child's mind, but a little more cheerfully we sang,
I to the hills will lift mine eyes/from whence doth come mine aid; My help it cometh of the Lord/who heaven and earth hath made.
Childhood, of course, was not always happy, but our deepest feelings of happiness, wonder and awe are ultimately related to that high, sharp, childhood joy. Of course, some will see these old hymns as just sentimental, but maybe, as with Lawrence, they put us in touch with a lost richness of feeling which our adult years so often bereft of wonder and desire have largely lost. Of course, we cannot just live out of the emotions of the past, but church is one place to remind ourselves of the continuing reality and richness of our feeling life. The words of our old hymns may change, but the melody lingers on. The presence of each one of us here and now constitutes both word and sacrament. Here, perhaps, our memories are felt more poignantly. Here the lonely heart, as well as the restless mind, has its place.
I think if we are to mature, grow wiser in our personal lives, we must acknowledge the power of the emotional factor and feeling values - all the old power of wonder and desire. Let's face it, the deepest failures of our lives are not intellectual. They are failures of the heart and the heart alone may forgive these failures. My very worst moments have been those where I have savaged people, and ideas, and life itself with that supercritical, analytical part of myself. My best have come when I have allowed my heart the priority in response to people and to life in its emotional depth, but walk carefully in matters of the heart for every passion of the mind or flesh or heart change everything and cannot be undone. But a the depth of our emotional reality - as we hear all the lovely words and melodies that men and women have written, or behold the beauties of nature and art - we shall be more alive to the claim of our neighbor and find ourselves again - and again - as we recall and hear the deepest songs and hymns of our own soul, and we are surprised by the joy and, yes, the grace of new beginnings.