I've been learning a new word -- "emergent." One of my dictionaries doesn't include the word at all. The others describing something that arises, comes to attention. The root, of course, is the verb “emerge.”

            Author Nancy Ellen Abrams uses the word to mean a reality that emerges from, but is quite different from, something else.

            She uses the analogy of an ant hill. I prefer a termite mound -- something I happen to know more about.

            Your average termite, you see, is a stupid creature. It's a whitish grub. It has only rudimentary senses; it can't really see where it is going. It can do only two things -- crawl and chew.

            But put a number of termites together and they will immediately start to build a home for themselves.

            The mound that emerges is astonishingly complex. Really big termite mounds can stand 17 feet tall, and go 8 feet underground. Although a mound feels rock solid, it’s actually an interlocking mass of rigid bubbles.

            With up to two million termites in a mound, the mound must be engineered to exhaust all that stale air. So it incorporates its own air conditioning system. When the sun heats one side of the mound, hot air rises through a complex network of internal channels, which in turn draws in cooler air in from the far side of the mound.

            The solar-powered heat pump circulates air through the entire mound, keeping the queen, her progeny, and her workers at just the right temperature.

            And the termites do this with no direction. No blueprints. No planning.

            No one termite – especially not even the queen, who is little more than a living ovary -- has the intelligence to direct this construction. None of the termites knew what they were doing when they created it. But it is unquestionably real.

            Abrams calls this an "emergent" phenomenon. It derives from the collective activity of those termites. But it is not them. It is more than them.

Emergent institutions

            I read her reasoning, and I think "emergent" might apply to much more than termite mounds.

            A corporation, for example. A multi-national corporation is more than any of its individuals, whether staff or management.

            In the past, I have derided corporations as economic fictions, figments of our imagination. Abrams helps me see that they are not. Like a termite mound, they are a reality that emerges from certain kinds of collective human activities.

            Of course, the same could be said of many other organizations. Charities, for example. Service clubs. Protest movements. Political parties.

            Sportswriters natter (endlessly) about team spirit. A team may have individual superstars. But when a team rides a winning streak, the whole transcends its individual members. When it happens, team spirit is real. It can't be rationalized away as socio-psychological jargon.

            How about churches? Rather than creations of a supernatural deity, they are an emergent reality, a phenomenon that arises out of, and surpasses, human activities.

            In her book, A God That Could Be Real, Abrams argues that even God can be seen as an emergent reality. A reality that transcends us humans. Neither a figment of wishful thinking nor a physical being, but a reality nevertheless. And just as real as a termite mound.

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Copyright © 2017 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.

                  To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

Last week’s column was a little difficult – how do we know what we know, even when we don’t know we know it?

Tom Watson applied the conundrum to voting: “Why, even though we ‘know’ that a particular candidate is better than the one running for the party to which we hold allegiance, we mark our X beside the candidate for our party? Why? Because that's we've always voted that way.

            “Or although we ‘know’ that voting for the lesser of two evils (the devil we know being somehow better than the one we don't) is not sound logically, we do it anyway.

            “Fumbling into the future blindfolded seems a common occurrence.”

Mike Crockett followed up on the automotive analogy: “I learnt to drive on a '56 Morris Minor 850 cc.

            “Accepting that 'autopilot ' was not your major point, it did remind me how that just three weeks ago at Kirstenbosch Gardens in Cape Town, two ladies, obviously Irish by their accents, walked by where I was meditating, speaking derogatorily about a colleague back home. About 25 minutes later I had moved on to enjoy a particularly beautiful display of proteas, and there they were again, this time discussing a new parking area at their offices.

            “I would like to be present when they boast to their friends back home that they had been to Kirstenbosch, one of the worlds top botanical gardens and a world heritage site. I would put my hand up and interrupt them saying, ‘Indeed your bodies were at Kirstenbosch, but you missed it because you were walking on autopilot while your consciousness was still here in Ireland.’

            “Some say that because of the abuse of autopilot, which has its uses, we actually allow some 60% of our awake life to pass us by.”

Robert Caughell offered some wisdom: “The older I get I realize just how much I do not know about things. Instead of opening my mouth I listen to others who know what they are taking about. I ask questions to find out more Too many opinionated ‘experts’ out there.”

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PSALM PARAPHRASES

Two images come to mind about Psalm 93. One is a blue-green planet, bright against the eternal darkness of space, the picture taken from a moon mission. The other is Grunewald's Isenheim Altarpiece, showing God not so much clothed in light as a creature composed of light itself.

1          The Lord wears light like a royal robe;
it dazzles those who gaze upon the Lord.
The whole world is God's royal throne;
like a sapphire, it shines in the darkness of space.

2          The earth has been God's home from the beginning;
Before time began, God was there.

3          What is so irresistable as a river in flood?
Its banks cannot contain it;
trees and homes are swept along.
As thundering waters dominate the valley,

4          So God dominates this planet.
But God is greater than any flood,
greater than surf that pounds a rocky shore into sand.

5          For God is not capricious, ruling by random whim;
God embodies justice and fairness.
Thus is the whole earth made holy.
Hear, O earth! The Lord, the Lord alone, is God.
Now, and forever.

For paraphrases of most of the psalms used by the Revised Common Lectionary, you can order my book Everyday Psalms from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

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YOU SCRATCH MY BACK…

•        Ralph Milton most recent project, Sing Hallelujah -- the world’s first video hymnal -- consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.ca

•        Isabel Gibson's thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com

•        Wayne Irwin's "Churchweb Canada," an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca>

•        Alva Wood's satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town are not particularly religious, but they are fun; write alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.

•        Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at twatson@sentex.net

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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            My webpage is up and running again -- thanks to Wayne Irwin and ChurchWeb Canada. You can now access current columns and about five years of archives at http://quixotic.ca

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