The crimson glow on the sky and harbour progressed to orange and deep purple before it faded to a promise of rain.

That sunrise was my prayer for the morning.

It perfectly described the fire of Pentecost that, paradoxically, sets us alight and then refreshes our dryness.

Perhaps you also saw that sunrise, and you dissolved into wordless prayer.

If you, like me, spend your days paddling through a swimming pool of words, you will treasure these moments.

They are precious.

And since "theology" literally means knowledge of God, I call these moments, "Theology of Nature."

Have you ever touched the bark of a large tree, expecting to feel the rough texture, and instead, have come in contact with a surge of God-life?

What happens inside you when you pick up a shell, a flower or the feather of a bird, and hold it close to your eyes as you did when you were a child?

Do you feel wonder? Blessing?

And did those feelings mingle to form silent prayer?

Not long ago, the neighbours' two children were at our back door, each carrying a hen's egg in a cupped hand.

The eggs, still warm from the hen house, were a gift that felt like Eucharist as they were quietly transferred to my hands.

Nothing was said, but God was everywhere.

Smiling, the children scampered off and an old woman stood in the doorway, holding two warm eggs, one white and one a caramel colour.

I could hear Jesus saying, "Except you become as little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven."

For me, the operative word in that quote is "become."

We do not stay as little children.

In becoming, we turn full circle and arrive at a place of eloquent simplicity that has life experience behind it.

Having worked with words most of my life, I now find that some nouns elude me.

This can be inconvenient, but it also reminds me that words fragment the Oneness of God's creation.

Naming things creates separation.

This is not an error. It is a process we go through, and it is recognised by all religions.

In Buddhism, it is said that when we are young, a tree is simply a tree.

As we grow, we learn the parts of a tree: roots, trunk, branches, leaves.

We define further to talk about xylem, phloem, cambium layer, chlorophyll, photosynthesis and so on.

Eventually, a tree is simply a tree again, but now we know what it is like to be a tree.

I'm aware that when I forget words like xylem and phloem, God is in the space.

Our mystical poets have always known the sacred Oneness beyond our divided thinking.

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote: "The world is charged with the grandeur of God." Then he adds, "There is the dearest freshness deep down things…"

That dearest freshness is deep in our liturgy if we look for it. It is also in every shell, flower, feather and sunrise.

Jesus called it the kingdom of God.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

International researchers, including the University of Auckland's Associate Professor Quentin Atkinson, have published the results of their study in the journal Nature.

They found people who believe their god is more punitive and knowledgeable behave more honestly and generously towards others who share their religion.

The relationship between supernatural beliefs and cooperativeness could not be accounted for by a wide range of other variables such as gender, age, education, material insecurity and number of children.

The research took place across eight communities from Brazil, Siberia, Tanzania, Vanuatu, Fiji and Mauritius.

The religious attitudes of nearly 600 people were surveyed.

Their belief systems ranged from Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism to more localised beliefs in spirits and deities.

Participants included hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists, herders and farmers, and people living in modern economies who earned wages or ran businesses.

The study used behavioural economic games and ethnographic interviews.

The games included elements of random chance and the ability to skew results to benefit either the player, other individuals or groups.

The study found that overall, participants who rated their gods highly as all-knowing and concerned with moral behaviour allocated more money to people who believed in the same god.

This was the case even if their co-believers were strangers from another community.

But it wasn't true for those who shared beliefs in local spirits and deities not considered so "all-knowing" or concerned with moral behaviour.

Dr Atkinson said that the relatively dramatic rise in human cooperation since the advent of agriculture isn't explained by genetic evolution.

"It turns out that putting the fear of god into us may have had a lot to do with it," he said.

"These gods acted as a kind of social engineering so that people who believed in a morally-concerned god were more likely to follow the rules of the game and give money to their fellow believers over themselves and their village."

Sources

• New Zealand Herald
• Voxy
• Image: The Odyssey Online

Aimee was eventually rescued. But Tia was too battered to look after her. While Tia tended to her wounds, her acquaintance Mike offered to take care of baby Aimee.

Mike's generous behaviour, observers agreed, was the very definition of compassion. In a bygone era, it might even have been called gentlemanly.

Mike, a squat and especially hairy fellow, didn't exactly look the part of a knight in shining armour. Like his fellow chimpanzees, Tia and Aimee, he wasn't even human.

The trio are research subjects of primatologist Jill Pruetz, whose fellow researchers rescued Aimee from a group of poachers in Senegal several years ago. Mike's altruism was especially remarkable given the violent behaviour that male chimps are generally known for. Just last year, an adult male chimp killed a baby chimp at the Los Angeles Zoo in front of a large group of visitors.

Is it correct to say that Mike's actions were "moral"? Where does morality come from? Are human beings born with an innate moral sense, something like a conscience that helps us tell right from wrong? Or are we born as blank slates and learn morality as we make our way through life from infancy to childhood and beyond?

If morality is innate, are we born good and corrupted by society, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau thought? Or are we born as brutes and civilized by culture, as "Darwin's bulldog" T.H. Huxley thought? Continue reading.

Source: The Atlantic

Image: Shutterstock