While giving a talk, a while ago. I became aware of how many levels of thought can be going on at once in my mind.
At one level, of course, I’m thinking about the words I’m saying at that moment. But I’m also thinking ahead to the words I’m going to say, the way these words will lead into the next point.
At the same time, I’m watching the audience. Looking for signs of interest -- or perhaps boredom. For a smile. A smothered tear. Anything that helps me connect.
I also need to be conscious of the setting. Have I moved and put my face in shadow? Is the person clicking the computer ready for the next visual? Is the room too hot?
And at yet another level, I notice that my shoelace has come untied. I must remind myself not to step on it when I next move, to avoid falling on my face.
All these perceptions are happening at once.
Scientists who study the human brain would tell me that various parts of my brain were handling each of these concerns. Brain scans help scientists determine that different parts of the brain respond to words, to music, to facial expressions, to tastes.
It’s almost as if we have not one mind, but several.

Our four brains
In fact, we do have several minds. As theologian and psychologist Michael Dowd explains it, human brains are composites, reflecting their development through evolution.
At the top of our spinal cord, we have what he calls our “lizard brain,” the most primitive part, the part that reacts to threats and opportunities with the four F’s -- fight, flight, freeze, and, um, procreate.
Next comes the “small furry mammal brain,” the part that wants to be nurtured and cuddled.
Then our “monkey mind,” the hyperactive area that leaps from idea to idea. It’s creative but undisciplined.
Finally, there’s the massive prefrontal cortex, the part that makes rational decisions, that deals with meaning and purpose. Dowd puns this as our “higher porpoise” mind.
So is it a single brain? Or many brains?

Am I really me?
I could extend that question. Do I have a single body? Or am I a collective effort? My body consists of millions of cells. Each one contains my DNA. But each one performs its own specialized function. Each cell is alive, although it can only continue living as part of a cooperative body.
But my body also includes millions more cells that are not mine at all. They are bacteria, with their own DNA. They work on my skin, in my gut, in my bloodstream. Without them, I -- whatever “I” is -- would not survive either.
And is that “I” truly independent? Everything I do affects someone else -- positively or negatively. I affected other people by being born; my final act will continue to affect other people after I am gone. Similarly, others affect me. Am I a solo performer, or an ensemble?
An image of a beehive pops into my mind. Do individual bees think they’re acting independently, when it’s the whole hive that’s the living entity?
As we humans busy ourselves with our individual tasks, are we functioning like thoughts in some vast universal brain?
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Copyright © 2016 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

Responses to last week’s column (about extinctions, of magazines and cultures) fell into three groups: about the principle of extinction; about publications; and about churches. 

Ted Wilson saw “Extinction as part of evolution. There’s no escaping it. To survive a life form needs to evolve and keep up with change. If it doesn’t it dies. In this electronic age that applies to the news media as much as anything. 
“It was much easier [for me] to Google ‘A road less travelled’ and find out the title of Frost’s poem than to go upstairs to my library, find his book of poems, and look that one up. 
“As far as censorship is concerned we’ve always had that. Editors chose what they print. We, the readers, chose what we read, Trump supporters included. 

Jack Dreidger thought it wasn’t just magazines going extinct: “The internet as I knew it is no more. It has become extinct. I used to get a lot of good information from it. No more. All I get is somebody trying to sell me something.”

Margaret Mills wrote, “I was not aware of Macleans and The Record's demise. At one time, my church sent The Record to every member. Due to cost, this was discontinued. I subscribed for years, but due to time restraints never seemed to get around to reading it. It DID contain good articles, but like other subscriptions, I never took the time to read them but felt guilty throwing them out. Thus they accumulated. To save stress and guilt trips, I stopped all subscriptions.”
She added, “I agree that given a digital copy, I often skim over it. If given a hard copy, at least I would be exposed to a bit of content, even if I did not read it.”

The recycling bin also influenced Sheila Carey: “It’s sad to see treasured publications disappearing (Macleans and Chatelaine!!!) – but as one of those who hasn’t been to a religious service other than weddings and funerals for nearly 30 years, I can’t comment on church publications. I’m one of those switching to on-line magazines. Not that I don’t like the print versions but for those I want to save, storage space is becoming a problem. And for the rest – why cut all those trees to read something once and put it into the recycling bin?”

John Shaffer of Auburn, WN: “The magazine for my (United) Methodist Church, Together, ceased publication so long ago that I can't remember the date. Printed materials will probably cease before I do, but I am not setting the date for either event. We continue to subscribe to a newspaper only because my spouse wants the luxury of reading it in bed in the morning. I still enjoy a few of the comics, but most of the pages go unread.”

Steve Roney considered my analysis of the media effects “spectacularly wrong. To begin with, the chief effect of the improved technology is that it is far cheaper to disseminate news and opinion. That means a far greater range of news and opinion is available, and it costs the consumer less… Before, with much more limited access to news and opinion, people tended to accept the judgements of the media. Now, with access to many more divergent views, they are no longer doing as they are told, but making up their own minds. It is a matter of more democracy, for better or worse, not less.”

And then Frank Martens tackled the decline in churches: “There could be several reasons why membership in all churches is on the decline. With more education, people are starting to think for themselves. Children are no longer inclined to heed all their parental admonitions. The scare [tactic] a lot of preachers use in church of hell and damnation no longer causes the anxiety it used to… The church no longer offers the social connections that it once did in the horse and buggy era. The process has become a continuous decline -- you no longer go to church because your friend no longer goes to church because his friend has decided not to go to church, and so on. 
“I don’t go to church because I never was a believer. I attended heavy-duty Baptist religious schools for over eight years. I knew all the people with their fake confessions of faith who in their adulthood were the same fake businessmen, the fake husbands who ran around, the fake wives who professed love and devotion to husbands and had affairs with other fake husbands. I could carry on, but you get the idea.”

Several readers were caught by the metaphor of my Lutheran contact: “A sea of words washing over people without anyone getting wet.”
Allan Baker wrote, “The absence of the prophetic in the United Church of Canada these days leads me to think that the metaphor applies.”

Tom Watson was also hooked by the same metaphor: “Me too. I have been sitting here pondering it ever since I first read it in your column almost two hours ago.
“Then you ask, of those who still attend, ‘So why are they there?’ I asked a friend yesterday the same question. He doesn't buy the liturgy, doesn't find much in the sermons he hears, hasn't for ages believed the things that Gretta Vosper is in hot water for saying she doesn't believe either. The best answer he could come up with for still attending was, ‘Because my wife goes and wants me to go with her.’ Clearly, he doesn't get very wet when he goes.”

Isabel Gibson mused, “It will be interesting to see where the Christian churches are in 50 years. Oops, I guess I won't see it. An odd notion. Maybe this is what my 94-year-old mother means when she says she'd like to see how things turn out. We forget that we're seeing now how things from a century ago ‘turned out,’ or, continue to turn, I guess.”
Incidentally, Isabel also wrote to me about the column on faith and trust, but I lost her letter before going to publication. Sorry. 

Brian Ames connected his own experience to the decline in churches: “When I was a kid (I'm now 71) my mother made us go to Sunday school and church service. Neither she nor my father attended church. My mother was a British War bride who had served in the British army and my Dad was an army veteran and an amputee. I asked both of them in later life what their objection to religion in general was. Neither would reply, although my mother who went through the Blitz in Birmingham said that her experiences didn't lend her to believe in a God that allowed the horrific waste of life and human suffering that the war brought on the entire world. 
“I became involved with the Lutheran church as a young married adult partially as a result of a young Lutheran minister moving next door. I studied scripture and took part in many discussions on virtually every subject… Over the years I began to see a hypocrisy and what I refer to as ‘wearing blinders’ and an increasing refusal to catch up with the changing world. I left the church in my late forties… A few years ago I went back to church (Lutheran) and found services completely boring, no stimulation, nothing new… I haven't been back. 
“Since then I have had occasion to attend a few Evangelical services and was surprised to see a full church with all age groups. Regardless of their leanings, i.e., Mennonites for the most part, they seem to have a warm and welcoming vision for worship and a camaraderie that is pleasant at best.”

Rachel Pritchard took a different approach: “At our Parish Council meetings we have a 10-minute reflection time prior to business. As current chair I have the privilege of choosing this. Tonight I read them your Soft Edges column. There were some interesting comments:
1. That is was a very negative look at the subject.
2. Perhaps look at this in relation to a time of reformation (being 500 years from the last Reformation) and as the beginning of a new time as well as the end of the old ways
3. Interesting that you should use the very format that you are criticizing to get your point across. 
4. In the bigger picture, the Living Planet Report from the WWF [describes a situation] far more injurious to humans than the loss of reading material -- the very paper you are bemoaning the loss of is contributing to this impact on our earth. 
[JT note: The WWF report that populations of vertebrate animals—such as mammals, birds, and fish—have declined by 58% between 1970 and 2012 can be found at https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/living-planet-report-2016

PSALM PARAPHRASES

The lectionary gives me a choice of psalms for this coming Sunday, so I chose Psalm 98, mostly because I happened to like this paraphrase of it. 

1   How different God's creation is from human society.
The clamor of human conflict creates a cacaphony
like orchestras competing with their conductor. 
Dysfunctional families sacrifice their favorite songs,
And nations murder each other's melodies. 
2   But God plays other music. 
3   The colors of nature never clash with each other.
4   In a garden, every shade of leaf and flower joins a joyous chorus; 
bare branch and bonsai provide a counterpoint 
balancing the beauty of blossoms. 
5-6   In the depths of the jungle, 
the sounds of termite and tiger weave a wondrous harmony;
eerie descants echo through the ocean's deeps. 
The rhythm of life throbs in every cell, 
and the seasons swell and ebb away.
7-8   From the farthest nebula to the tiniest atom, 
all creation dances to honor its choreographer.
9   God applauds each performance. 

But God does not applaud the discords. 


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 has a new project, called Sing Hallelujah -- the world’s first video hymnal. It 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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