You Mustn’t Be Cold

People wonder how I come up with ideas to write about in my spiritual discipline of reflection and writing these inspirational pieces.  I am not sure there is only one answer. Sometimes I am fortunate, and something pops into my mind and the thing feels half written.  But more often, I find an idea because I am open and I am looking for one.  It is probably obvious much of this comes from reading quite a bit and reading rather broadly.  Sometimes it comes from a comment someone makes.  Be curious, be open and be engaging.  That actually sounds like a pretty good way to live life.

I always feel fortunate when I bump into something that intrigues me.  Often, I will begin reading it without knowing whether there is an idea I want to ponder and about which I want to write.  That just happened when I was reading one of my favorite regular publications.  I spotted a headline that immediately drew me to it and I knew I had to read it.  The headline said, “Religion entered into me”: A Talk with Jane Goodall, 2021 Templeton Prize winner.”  Of course, I knew who Goodall was and I am aware of the Templeton Foundation as the place that supports religion and science working together to help us understand our world and to life more peaceful lives together.

I know a little about Sir John Templeton who is described as “the late investor and philanthropist.”  We were told that he set up the Foundation and the aware “to honor those who use science to explore humankind’s place and purpose within the universe.”  It is a prestigious award and $1.5 million nice sum to pocket.  The article says Goodall is 87 years old and has lived a wonderful life.  She spent a long time in the jungle in Tanzania.  She was 26 when she went there from her native England.  Now she has retired back in her home country. 

The article quotes Templeton’s granddaughter, Heather Templeton Dill, who said of Goodall, “Her discoveries have profoundly altered the world’s view of animal intelligence and enriched our understanding of humanity in a way that is both humbling and exalting.”  I am sure this is true, and we could leave it at that.  However, when I ponder that sentence, I realize it can be reflective of a spirituality.  Clearly, God is not mentioned.  I recognize that some folks think God needs to be explicitly talked about for religion to be present.  But I am more subtle than that.

I always thought Goodall approached her work from a spiritual perspective.  She was patient and sensitive.  She did not rush and was not pushy.  Most folks I interact with are in too much of a hurry actually to see anything---much less discover something.  Often, we are in so much of a hurry, we don’t even discover ourselves.  My deceased monk friend, Thomas Merton, talks eloquently about this.  He says we are living out of our false selves.

I sense this is what the author of the article also picked up.  Yonat Shimron interviewed Goodall and has this to say about her.  “Her conviction that humans are part of nature, not separate from it, led her to develop her own unique cosmology.  She has said she believes in a higher power, what she has called a divine intelligence.”  Those words hold some important truths.  Contemporary humans tend to see humans as somewhat apart from nature.  We talk about human nature and nature, as if they were separate entities.  

Apparently, Goodall affirms her belief in a higher power, as Shimon described it.  When she was asked about her growing up years, she said her family was loosely affiliated with the Congregational Church in her English hometown of Bournemouth.  Goodall told the interviewer, “We weren’t a particularly religious family.  We went to church sometimes.”  She confessed that she fell in love with the minister there when she was 16.  She meant basically she had a crush on him.  At this point, she comments, “Religion entered into me. It felt like I had a secret understanding of something other people perhaps didn’t share.  But I had no compulsion to share it.”

I appreciate her humanness here.  And I value her humor and humility.  I think I can also identify with religion coming into me.  I am sure it did not come into me like it did for Goodall.  But it does come into people.  That is good and a joy.  And when religion comes into you, you have to do something about it.  Goodall did.  She went into the jungle to deal with chimps and, it turns out, God.  

Listen to what she says.  “After I’d begun to succeed with the chimps, that’s when I had time to pause and that’s when I developed a really strong feeling of spiritual connection with the natural world.”  I wish we all could develop this strong feeling of spiritual connection.  I am confident we would be nicer people and would treat our world much better.  That is a vision worth chasing.  

This becomes clear when Goodall was asked what advice she would give to a 10-year-old aspiring scientist.  She replied, “I would tell them you mustn’t be cold.”  By that she means we need to learn empathy.  I take it further.  We need love, compassion and working for peace in this world.  All this is work of spiritual folks.  We are all needed.  You mustn’t be cold!