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Birthdays for a Small Planet

Today's birthdays:

• Ursula K. Le Guin, 1929
• Frances FitzGerald, 1940
• Carrie Fisher, 1956

The entry below, "Theology for a Small Planet," sketches an issue that society has failed to address since the fall of 1989, when it was first raised by the Harvard Divinity Bulletin.

In honor mainly of Ursula K. Le Guin, but also of her fellow authors above, I offer Le Guin's solution. It is not new. It has been ignored mainly because of the sort of hateful and contemptible arrogance shown by

• executives in the tradition of Henry Ford and later Ford Foundation and Ford Motors employees McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara (see yesterday's entry below for Ford himself), by
• theologians in the tradition of the Semitic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — and by
• self-proclaimed "shamans of scientism" like Michael Shermer in the tradition of Scientific American magazine.

Here is an introduction to the theology that should replace the ridiculous and outdated Semitic religions.

According to Le Guin,

"Scholarly translators of the Tao Te Ching, as a manual for rulers, use a vocabulary that emphasizes the uniqueness of the Taoist 'sage,' his masculinity, his authority. This language is perpetuated, and degraded, in most popular versions. I wanted a Book of the Way accessible to a present-day, unwise, unpowerful, and perhaps unmale reader, not seeking esoteric secrets, but listening for a voice that speaks to the soul. I would like that reader to see why people have loved the book for 2500 years.

It is the most lovable of all the great religious texts, funny, keen, kind, modest, indestructibly outrageous and inexhaustibly refreshing. Of all the deep springs, this is the purest water. To me it is also the deepest spring."

Tao Te Ching: Chapter 6
translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

The valley spirit never dies
Call it the mystery, the woman.

The mystery,
the Door of the Woman,
is the root
of earth and heaven.

Forever this endures, forever.
And all its uses are easy.