"We believe that the Universe itself is conscious in a way we can never truly understand. It is engaged in a search for meaning, so it breaks itself apart, investing its own consciousness in every form of life. We are the Universe, trying to explain itself."
"The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make this station and the nebula outside, that burn inside the stars themselves. We are star-stuff. We are the Universe, made manifest, trying to figure itself out. And, as we have both learned, sometimes the Universe needs a change of perspective."
--Delenn, "Babylon 5"
Recently, I've been reconsidering religion.
In my religious ethics course on creating sustainable communities within the context of globalization, I'm learning to embrace the rejection of andocentrism, a concept that previously felt anathema. I feared there was a slippery slope from letting go of our beliefs in human beings as the most valuable form of life to the devaluation of particular human beings on the basis of race, gender, class, sexuality. In part because of the frequent scapegoating of poor people of color for environmental degradation, I felt it was important to emphasize human rights as a higher priority than environmental health. But increasingly, I find myself understanding biodiversity as a prerequisite for human justice. To understand advocacy for environmental sustainability as somehow opposed to the welfare of marginalized human communities is but another manifestation of "divide and conquer." Environmental wholeness facilitates diversity in human communities. I am claiming new concepts of "relationality." Until now, I've embraced intersectionality in relation to systems of domination and oppression, yet have not considered myself intertwined with creation at a more individual and embodied level.
I found the above quotes, delivered by the Minbari Ambassador Delenn on the sci-fi series "Babylon 5," to be deeply resonant. It is mildly embarrassing to find inspiration in a television character. Posting this dialogue here, I am afraid it sounds like new-age drivel. Even before my disconnect from institutionalized religious practice, when I was still involved as an activist within the United Methodist Church, I avoided all expressions of belief that did not highlight justice, liberation and resistance to oppression; they seemed to me to be hollow and sentimental. But at their best, professions of faith are cosmological. They situate us, clarifying our relationship to creation and to one another. This is far from sentimental.
I am the universe, trying to explain itself.
Last year, as Diversity Outreach Consultant for DePaul University's Queer student organization, I screwed up royally by intellectualizing religion as "cultural systems" for meaning-making, forgetting the extent to which individuals' identities are emotionally embedded in religion. Seeking a more grounded experience of myself within community, I find myself wanting to re-embrace the emotionality of religious practice through tradition and ritual. I want to humble myself to mystery and the unknowable, to consider my body a loaner whose stewardship I'm entrusted rather than an object that I own. I do not know where this development will lead me... but as Delenn says, "faith manages."
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