Readings

Richard P. Feynman, from The Pleasure of Finding Things Out:

Richard P. Feynman, from “The Role of Scientific Culture in Modern Culture,” (delivered to a room full of scientists):

Sermon

On a road trip decades ago, I became acquainted with the theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, through listening to the NPR “Radio Reader” show.  Hearing the book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! , his sense of humor reeled me in right away.  And over the years, I’ve greatly enjoyed getting to know him through his own books and resources about him.

A website devoted to all things Feynman describes him “a unique and multi-faceted individual.” That’s an understated summation of this “scientist, teacher, raconteur, and musician” who “assisted in the development of the atomic bomb, expanded the understanding of quantum electrodynamics, [and, incidentally,] translated Mayan hieroglyphics.”

You might remember Feynman for his participation on the Commission investigating the space shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986; notably, the dramatic moment when he revealed the cause of the disaster simply and elegantly: by dropping a ring of rubber into a glass of ice water and pulling it out, misshapen.

More than any other person, I associate Richard Feynman with what it means to live a life of curiosity, so this morning I draw largely on his words. I find him inspiring, partly because, to my mind, his insatiable curiosity is naturally linked with almost limitless possibility – for when we recognize that life holds infinite possibilities, we can indulge what I think is a natural impulse of curiosity.

This is a religious notion, reflected in the words of my colleague Victoria Safford:

Richard Feynman was a Nobel Prize winning physicist, who always said that he was motivated for the fun of it, for the sheer pleasure of finding out how the world works, what makes it tick. (Robbins)

Hear Feynman’s own words:

That innate curiosity inspired Richard Feynman from a young age to question what he did not understand, whether it was the properties of science or the miracle stories he learned in Jewish “Sunday school.” In one of his books, Feynman recalled what he experienced there:

Some miracles were harder to understand than others. The one about the leaves was easy. When I was walking to school, I heard a little noise: although the wind was hardly noticeable, the leaves of a bush were wiggling a little bit because they were in just the right position to make a kind of resonance. And I thought, “Aha! This is a good explanation for Elijah’s vision of the quaking bush!”

As an adult, he compared his disbelief in the stories of the Bible as miracles to another common childhood understanding.

But the story of Santa Claus seemed inconsequential to him compared with what he heard at the temple. That was more dramatic, in young Richard Feynman’s mind, and it led to a crisis of faith when he was about eleven years old. Here’s how he described it:

That was too much for me. I felt terribly deceived: I wanted the straight story – not fixed up by somebody else – so I could decide for myself what it meant.

Richard’s parents never insisted that he go to temple after that, and he says this “crisis” resolved his difficulty

Dr. Feynman said that to contemplate the vastness of the universe, fully appreciating the

Feynman admitted that for some, what he described could be interpreted as a religious experience; but the sort of religious experience, he said, that is too great for what he understood as the religion of the church. “The God of the church isn’t big enough,” he concluded.

Well, I wish I could have told Richard Feynman about Unitarian Universalism. We do make room for the wonder of science and the mystery of what is unknown. We value curiosity as a means of expanding the range of our knowledge and the depth of our experience, to learn more about our lives and our world. Feynman would have described this as “data” to enable us to make better decisions about the way we live.

The Reverend Galen Guengerich says that curiosity, when combined with discernment, is the basis of wisdom.

We “question authority,” to quote a once-popular bumper sticker. It’s an outright dare to defy dogma, encouraging first-hand knowledge; a dare to try out new frameworks, rather than to try to make every new idea fit into the frame we already have; to let go of certainty, in favour of being willing to embrace the paradox that is living with ambiguity; accepting the potential for discomfort.

That’s not always easy. We’re called to accept ourselves and one another as we are, but at the same time to never stop trying to learn and grow – as the Reverend Thom Belote puts it:

When we stretch the boundaries of our certainties, greater understanding, deeper compassion, more joy, and a greater sense of peace can be the consequences. But we’re taking a risk when we dare to live a life of curiosity; for when we ask “why” – when we stretch those boundaries of what we think we know for sure – we risk having to change: to change our usual patterns of thought, or even our lives.  That’s a tough call, isn’t it?

But chances to stretch the boundaries emerge all the time, for human beings are questioning machines. One of the songs we sing from our hymnal – “We Laugh, We Cry,” – says this well, in its final phrase:  “to question truly is the answer.”

Curiosity usually begins with a question.  And of course, there will always be questions we cannot answer. We can and do apply our experience and our understandings, but we have not experienced everything. The great religious studies scholar Huston Smith, in his autobiography, related an encounter between a Zen master and student:

A fellow named Brandon Trean, whose website boasts “wisdom without the calories,” writes in favour of living a life of curiosity, cautioning against letting “some authority, regardless of how subtle or likable, stop you from…inquiring, growing, and evolving.” He continues:

This reminds of a line from one of Mary Oliver’s poems:  “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”  Why not invite into it more wonder and mystery and awe?!  That’s where the connections are – connections with other people and other ideas. Why not let your curiosity carry you along to new discoveries!

But there’s no need to rush the process. As the nineteenth century Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke advised, be patient:  “… have patience with everything unresolved in your heart, and…try to love the questions themselves … Live the questions now. “

And there’s no need to do this by ourselves, in isolation. To carry forward a metaphor from last Sunday’s reflections: Like jazz musicians who embark on a riff without knowing exactly where it will take them, we embark on a quest backed up by this community, as surely as a soloist is backed up by the band. And all along, we get to be not only the player, but the composer, too.

Somewhere I read that, to mystic poets – like Rilke, perhaps – everyday people are like sponges, floating on an ocean of sweetness and blessing, trying very hard not to get wet. Living a life of curiosity, in this curious faith, let us dare to immerse ourselves in the questions – in the sweetness and the blessing.  May it always be so. Blessed be.

Selected Resources