From Ursula Goodenough’s “The Sacred Depths of Nature.”

Used as the introductory reading for Rev. Jane Page's sermon "The New Atheism" delivered on Sunday, January 27, 2008.

"As a cell biologist…I experience the same kind of awe and reverence when I contemplate the structure of an enzyme or the flowing of a signal-transduction cascade as when I watch the moon rise or stand in front of a Mayan temple. Same rush, same rapture.

But all of us, and scientists are no exception, are vulnerable to the existential shudder that leaves us wishing that the foundations of life were something other than just so much biochemistry and biophysics. The shudder, for me at least, is different from the encounters with nihilism that have beset my contemplation of the universe. There I can steep myself in cosmic Mystery. But the workings of life are not mysterious at all. They are obvious, explainable, and thermodynamically inevitable. And relentlessly mechanical. And bluntly deterministic. My body is some 10 trillion cells. Period. My thoughts are a lot of electricity flowing along a lot of membrane. My emotions are the result of neurotransmitters squirting on my brain cells. I look in the mirror and see the mortality and I find myself fearful, yearning for less knowledge, yearning to believe that I have a soul that will go to heaven and soar with the angels.

William James said, “At bottom, the whole concern of religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe.”

The manner of our acceptance. It can be disappointed and resentful; it can be passive and acquiescent; or it can be the active response we call assent. When my awe at how life works gives way to self-pity because it doesn’t work the way I would like, I call on assent -– the age-old religious response to self-pity -- as in “Why Lord? Why This? Why ME?” and then, “Thy Will Be Done.”

As a religious naturalist I say “What Is, Is” with the same bowing of the head, the same bending of the knee. Which then allows me to say “Blessed Be to What Is” with thanksgiving. To give assent is to understand, incorporate, and then let go. With the letting go comes that deep sigh we call relief, and relief allows the joy-of-being-alive-at-all to come tumbling forth again.

Assent is a dignified word. Once it is freely given, one can move fluidly within it."