May 4, 2025: "The World Turned Upside Down"

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray

If it is true that once we think we are wise, we are fools, then, the search for wisdom becomes essential. And one way to keep searching is to intentionally look at our world, our circumstance, our lives, from new perspectives. In this tumultuous time, how do we keep seeking wisdom? And what is its role when we find ourselves in defensive mode?

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Sermon Text

The World Turned Upside Down

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray

UU Church of Bloomington

May 4, 2025

READING

Our reading this morning is from the book Orbital by Samantha Harvey. The book follows 24 hours in the life of 4 astronauts and 2 cosmonauts on the International space station as they orbit the earth.

“They look down and they understand why it’s called Mother Earth. They all feel it from time to time. They all make an association between the earth and a mother, and this in turn makes them feel like children … they all have moments up here of a sudden obliteration of their astronaut selves and a powerful sense of childhood and smallness. Their towering parent ever-present through the dome of glass …

Think a new thought, they sometimes tell themselves. The thoughts you have in orbit are so grandiose and old. Think a new one, a completely fresh unthought one. But there are no new thoughts. They’re just old thoughts born into new moments – and in these moments is the thought: without that earth we are all finished. We couldn’t survive a second without its grace, we are sailors on a ship on a deep, dark unswimmable sea.

The earth, from here, is like heaven.

It flows with colour. A burst of hopeful colour.

When we’re on that planet we look up and think heaven is elsewhere, but here is what the astronauts and cosmonauts sometimes think:

maybe all of us born to it have already died and are in an afterlife.

If we must go to an improbable, hard-to-believe-in place when we die, that glassy, distant orb with its beautiful lonely light shows could well be it.”

SERMON The World Turned Upside Down

It feels a bit audacious to set as our theme this month – Wisdom and Growth. There is an old saying from the Hebrew poet and philosopher, Solomon ibn Gabriol, that says, “We are wise only while in search of wisdom; when we imagine we have attained it,
we are fools.” 

But our goal here is not to define wisdom – or lay a claim to it. Rather, it is to explore how we seek it, how we remain on a journey to grow in wisdom and understanding.

Wisdom also feels strange to speak of in this time when so much about our lives, our country, our future feels precarious. It would feel absurd except for how dangerous it is. The instability and uncertainty of these times – politically, economically, globally and environmentally – what is the role of wisdom in these times when we are quite literally playing defense, trying to defend our communities, our neighbors, our rights, our constitution.

As I spoke about a couple of weeks ago, while we have to be a community of courage and resistance, of sanctuary and resilience, we also need spaces and opportunities to dream, to imagine, to create art and beauty, to bring curiosity and wonder to our lives in ways that draw us beyond the daily struggle. This is essential to renewing in us what is good – what is life giving – what is loving and creative. This reminds us why we are in the struggle, and it helps us nurture love and wisdom, care and compassion in how we resist and protect our communities, our loved ones, and still invest in a hopeful future.

For me, Samantha Harvey’s work of fiction, Orbital, was this type of gift of imagination and curiosity and wonder. After all, knowledge may take us to the stars, but wisdom will help prevent us from just continuing war in the stars.

The book is stunningly beautiful. It's more poetry and meditation than novel. There is not a plot really – it is just a description of what 24 hours might look like, feel like, be like for four astronauts and two cosmonauts on the International Space Station. For example, 24 hours – “one day” – for us here on Earth, is an arbitrary construct in space. One day here is the time it takes the earth to make one rotation on its axis from sunrise to sunrise. But in space, in 24 hours, the International Space Station orbits the earth 16 times. In that one day, the astronauts and cosmonauts move through 16 sunrises, 16 periods of day light, 16 sunsets and 16 nights.

Part of the inspiration for the book was the author’s practice of watching the live feed from the International Space Station. Harvey says she watched that feed for months

when she first started writing Orbital more than 10 years ago. She didn’t get far with the book, but during the pandemic she picked it up again and found the spark to keep writing. She described it as an escape while stuck at home; a way to – in her words – “escape our web of concerns about our impact on each other and on the planet.”

Reading it in February – I had the same experience. It felt like an escape, to spend an hour a day off planet – far from the heartbreak and fears of our politics and the day-to-day struggles, griefs and losses that are also present.

But more than just an escape, I experienced deep wisdom in the poetry and meditations of the book.

Harvey describes everything from the changes that space travel has on the human body, to the mundane routines and exercises of the astronauts, to their thoughts about their lives and the people they love on Earth, to the observations they must make of a super storm typhoon over the Pacific – that is growing faster and stronger than any previous storm, to their meditations on the earth, on humanity, and as in our reading, on religion and heaven.

Especially captivating was the reflection that from the darkness of space, the “deep, dark, [cold], unswimmable sea of space” that earth is like heaven.

She writes, “When we’re on that planet we look up and think heaven is elsewhere, but here is what the astronauts and cosmonauts sometimes think: maybe all of us born to it have already died and are in an afterlife. If we must go to an improbable, hard-to-believe-in place when we die, that glassy, distant orb with its beautiful lonely light shows could well be it.”

This thought – this reflection – it is not a new thought – yet it is profound. (Pause)
What if we’ve got it all turned around. What if too much of religion has it all wrong – all backward. That this is not a way station onto some glorious yet-to-come – but this is it – the miraculous gift?

I love the way this question invites us to think differently about our lives and our planet – to turn some long held assumptions right on their heads.

[Now, to be clear, not all religions teach of a heaven up in the sky – as a destination after death. Pagan traditions – both ancient and contemporary – are rooted in practices that celebrate the earth as our Mother – and honor the gift we already experience here and now. Buddhism honors cycles of rebirth here on Earth and the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Han writes of the miracle that is present in everyday things – especially the gift of life (all life) on this planet. The traditions of Humanism and religious naturalism within our own Unitarian Universalism keep their focus here – in this life, and celebrate the beauty of

returning in death to the earth, becoming nutrients and supporting new life in the trees, the plants, and the life that continues. And in one of my favorite teachings of Jesus, he told his disciples that if the Kingdom of God were in the sky, then the birds would reach it first. Rather the kingdom is within us and among us. I interpret his teaching to mean that heaven is present right here if we would only choose to see it; honor it, nurture it in ourselves and each other.]

If wisdom is not a destination, but a path of wonder and curiosity, of growth and learning, then one of the keys to that path seems to be in always trying to expand our thinking, to move back, to get a higher vantage, a different point of view. To seek out and try to understand new perspectives. And this also requires humility, to question your own thinking – to remain open to new questions, new revelations, to seeing things from inside out and upside down.

One of our members, Alain Barker – on seeing my sermon title for today “The World Turned Upside Down,” – shared with me (a story) about a South African sculptor, Dina Cormick. In response to Donald Trump’s first election, she sculpted a series of upside down figures. In her own words, she wrote of the series,“So in a crazy world one has to explore radical solutions, stretching to the outermost limits of credibility and possibility. After all, the only truth is the experience of the moment, awakening to a realization that one must risk everything to find equilibrium.”

For some, things in our country – the direction of things – feels like the world has been turned upside down. Although, it is just as true to acknowledge that there has been a long progression – for decades and through many administrations and parties – of an erosion in the trust of institutions and the government and a long progression of increasingly valuing property and profits over people, increasing inequality and poverty, growing systems of surveillance, mass incarceration and the militarization of police forces and the undermining of human and civil rights. So, we can just as easily argue that what we are experiencing now is fully in line with that progression, so what we need is to turn things upside down, inside out, right side up – to find another way of being.

Either way, I appreciate the artist Cormick’s assessment that in this world, one has to widen our exploration and the range of possibilities. To stretch our thinking of what is possible.

Under stress, our perspective – our world – can get smaller. Sometimes this is helpful and needed. But art and beauty and wonder – and taking time to stretch our perspective is essential.

In the midst of stress and uncertainty – we can reach for control (arising out of fear or arrogance), or we can reach for curiosity and wonder – trying to remain open and receptive to the gifts, the learning and the wisdom around us.

Many months ago, in one of my early sermons here, I spoke about Ruha Benjamin’s book Imagination: A Manifesto. In her book, she explains how we invest billions in certain people’s imaginations, like new weapons of war or of colonizing Mars – while we say that imagining a world where everyone has enough to eat and shelter and healthcare is impossible.

One of the gifts of reading Harvey's Orbital was not just the escape it offered but the wisdom of seeing with fresh eyes the gift that has already been given and what it would mean to turn our imaginations to honoring, caring, nurturing and protecting this gift and our lives here – rather than dreaming of some improbable, hard-to-imagine future.

I’ll end by reading Samantha Harvey’s words again from our reading, because they contain some of the keys to wisdom, including a sense of wonder that keeps us open, curious, able to be struck by that old thought but in a new moment, and a sense of humility as she imagines the “obliteration of their astronaut selves” and that feeling of being children again – and the feeling of smallness within the awesomeness of the Earth and our utter dependency on it.

“They look down and they understand why it’s called Mother Earth. They all feel it from time to time. They all make an association between the earth and a mother, and this in turn makes them feel like children….they all have moments up here of a sudden obliteration of their astronaut selves and a powerful sense of childhood and smallness. Their towering parent ever-present through the dome of glass….

“Think a new thought, they sometimes tell themselves. The thoughts you have in orbit are so grandiose and old. Think a new one, a completely fresh unthought one. But there are no new thoughts. They’re just old thoughts born into new moments – and in these moments is the thought: without that earth we are all finished. We couldn’t survive a second without its grace, we are sailors on a ship on a deep, dark unswimmable sea.

“The earth, from here, is like heaven. It flows with colour. A burst of hopeful colour. When we’re on that planet we look up and think heaven is elsewhere, but here is what the astronauts and cosmonauts sometimes think: maybe all of us born to it have already died and are in an afterlife.

“If we must go to an improbable, hard-to-believe-in place when we die, that glassy, distant orb with its beautiful lonely light shows could well be it.”