A Bird By Any Other Name
A Homily for Darwin Sunday - a Spirited Multigenerational Service
By Rev. Daniel Gregoire
On this Spirited Multigenerational Service join us as we celebrate the spirit of Charles Darwin and the guidance of reason and experimentation in understanding our natural world. This service is dedicated to the birds that inspired what became the theory of evolution by natural selection, and the efforts underway to find new names for our fine, feathered friends.
“Darwin’s Finches” from On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin 1856
Homily:
There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.
These are the closing lines of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, and probably the most powerful sentences in the history of Western science and philosophy.
Authors Charlotte and William Irvine wrote a biographical sketch of Charles Darwin that describe his theory of evolution by chance variation and natural selection, as radically altering every single field of thought; zoology, botany, anthropology, ethics, religion, philosophy, all forever changed by this one person's new understanding.
Altering-every-field-of-thought.
I am just imagining the fear and trembling, the worry Darwin had about altering every single field of study, by bringing this fantastic new idea, (one based on the foundations of other great thinkers, who were his predecessors and contemporaries,) to the forefront.
Evolution by natural selection.
Can you imagine doing such a brave new thing, stepping all the way out of your comfort zone and into a brave space?
A liberating space that frees others as well as yourself?
What makes such a move possible?
One of the things that I like most about the character of Charles Darwin, was his endless curiosity, which is a strong desire to learn more about something.
And, the way that we learn about something, is to courageously ask beautiful questions about ourselves and the world around us.
We can all ask beautiful questions.
Questions that help us; questions that open us up to endless possibilities.
Questions that show our curiosity about the people around us, the wonderful world that is our home, a wonderful world that is filled with creatures big and small, especially our fine feathered friends, the birds.
We can ask questions about birds. Beautiful ones, like:
How do we choose what to call the many different birds that live in North America, and why does a name matter?
(The American Ornithological Society AOS is asking itself this question right now, and it is endeavoring to change the English names of many birds in the Americas in the coming years to promote greater inclusion in the field of Ornithology, the study of birds.
The OAS efforts with community input will mean the renaming of birds with new names that focus attention on the unique features and beauty of the birds themselves, rather than the names of historic individuals. Bye bye Audubon's Oriole, Hammond's Flycatcher and Harris’ Sparrow, even Darwin’s finches, hello new more imaginative, and inclusive, and just plain better names)
https://americanornithology.org/about/english-bird-names-project/
https://birdnamesforbirds.wordpress.com/?fbclid=IwAR3p-BSraShbWoxj_eNDugAxcI9eReEZhGy816I-dVQogC3Sy7NN87OQ9BM
We will come to many different answers to these and other questions.
The thing about beautiful questions is that they allow for life sustaining answers that help us to grow.
But the thing to do is to question, and to let those beautiful questions take us on a journey.
Charles Darwin’s questions led him on a journey, where in 1831 (when our first meetinghouse was being built here in Grafton) he took a boat, a sailing ship called the HMS Beagle on a five year voyage around the world to better understand the plants and animals that lived on the coastal areas and islands of South America, among other places.
His encounter with so many different kinds of life and so many different landscapes helped him to begin to understand that there are some basic rules about how nature works and those simple patterns in nature lead to the surprising and unpredictable diversity of life that we see today.
From Darwin's questions and observations on that trip, from the things that he saw, felt, heard, tasted, and his intuition, all the things he wrote and drew in notebooks, he was able to learn that all living things are part of a process, a step by step plan, that includes accidents, that is as old as time itself, and never ending.
That all life is one life, and all life is evolving.
We evolved!
In this church year we are seeing the Patterns of Nature for ourselves, and we are taking on the job of Naturalist as our collective spiritual practice, like Darwin did while aboard the Beagle.
We even have a nature journal, that everyone can contribute to.
As Unitarian Universalists, we can celebrate Darwin’s theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, and the later insights born out of that foundational understanding because we believe that all things are changing, that all things can change, that we ourselves are changing, and we encourage one another in this never ending process of spiritual growth.
This is our third Unitarian Universalist principle of acceptance.
There is [indeed] a grandeur in this view of life…
By following the example of Charles Darwin’s character trait of endless curiosity about the world, by following his love of learning, and his special way of asking beautiful questions we might live more courageously!
So, Let us be guided by reason and inspired by faith, so that we might create a more just and noble world for the birds who still have so much more to teach us.
Amen.
A Homily for Darwin Sunday - a Spirited Multigenerational Service
By Rev. Daniel Gregoire
On this Spirited Multigenerational Service join us as we celebrate the spirit of Charles Darwin and the guidance of reason and experimentation in understanding our natural world. This service is dedicated to the birds that inspired what became the theory of evolution by natural selection, and the efforts underway to find new names for our fine, feathered friends.
“Darwin’s Finches” from On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin 1856
Homily:
There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.
- Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species
These are the closing lines of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, and probably the most powerful sentences in the history of Western science and philosophy.
Authors Charlotte and William Irvine wrote a biographical sketch of Charles Darwin that describe his theory of evolution by chance variation and natural selection, as radically altering every single field of thought; zoology, botany, anthropology, ethics, religion, philosophy, all forever changed by this one person's new understanding.
Altering-every-field-of-thought.
I am just imagining the fear and trembling, the worry Darwin had about altering every single field of study, by bringing this fantastic new idea, (one based on the foundations of other great thinkers, who were his predecessors and contemporaries,) to the forefront.
Evolution by natural selection.
Can you imagine doing such a brave new thing, stepping all the way out of your comfort zone and into a brave space?
A liberating space that frees others as well as yourself?
What makes such a move possible?
One of the things that I like most about the character of Charles Darwin, was his endless curiosity, which is a strong desire to learn more about something.
And, the way that we learn about something, is to courageously ask beautiful questions about ourselves and the world around us.
We can all ask beautiful questions.
Questions that help us; questions that open us up to endless possibilities.
Questions that show our curiosity about the people around us, the wonderful world that is our home, a wonderful world that is filled with creatures big and small, especially our fine feathered friends, the birds.
We can ask questions about birds. Beautiful ones, like:
- How did the birds come to be the way that they are?
- How do birds fly?
- How is it that their beaks come in so many different shapes and sizes?
- How do we share the land with birds? How do we make a home together in this Earth for bird kind and human kind?
How do we choose what to call the many different birds that live in North America, and why does a name matter?
(The American Ornithological Society AOS is asking itself this question right now, and it is endeavoring to change the English names of many birds in the Americas in the coming years to promote greater inclusion in the field of Ornithology, the study of birds.
The OAS efforts with community input will mean the renaming of birds with new names that focus attention on the unique features and beauty of the birds themselves, rather than the names of historic individuals. Bye bye Audubon's Oriole, Hammond's Flycatcher and Harris’ Sparrow, even Darwin’s finches, hello new more imaginative, and inclusive, and just plain better names)
https://americanornithology.org/about/english-bird-names-project/
https://birdnamesforbirds.wordpress.com/?fbclid=IwAR3p-BSraShbWoxj_eNDugAxcI9eReEZhGy816I-dVQogC3Sy7NN87OQ9BM
We will come to many different answers to these and other questions.
The thing about beautiful questions is that they allow for life sustaining answers that help us to grow.
But the thing to do is to question, and to let those beautiful questions take us on a journey.
Charles Darwin’s questions led him on a journey, where in 1831 (when our first meetinghouse was being built here in Grafton) he took a boat, a sailing ship called the HMS Beagle on a five year voyage around the world to better understand the plants and animals that lived on the coastal areas and islands of South America, among other places.
His encounter with so many different kinds of life and so many different landscapes helped him to begin to understand that there are some basic rules about how nature works and those simple patterns in nature lead to the surprising and unpredictable diversity of life that we see today.
From Darwin's questions and observations on that trip, from the things that he saw, felt, heard, tasted, and his intuition, all the things he wrote and drew in notebooks, he was able to learn that all living things are part of a process, a step by step plan, that includes accidents, that is as old as time itself, and never ending.
That all life is one life, and all life is evolving.
We evolved!
In this church year we are seeing the Patterns of Nature for ourselves, and we are taking on the job of Naturalist as our collective spiritual practice, like Darwin did while aboard the Beagle.
We even have a nature journal, that everyone can contribute to.
As Unitarian Universalists, we can celebrate Darwin’s theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, and the later insights born out of that foundational understanding because we believe that all things are changing, that all things can change, that we ourselves are changing, and we encourage one another in this never ending process of spiritual growth.
This is our third Unitarian Universalist principle of acceptance.
There is [indeed] a grandeur in this view of life…
By following the example of Charles Darwin’s character trait of endless curiosity about the world, by following his love of learning, and his special way of asking beautiful questions we might live more courageously!
So, Let us be guided by reason and inspired by faith, so that we might create a more just and noble world for the birds who still have so much more to teach us.
Amen.