Letting Reality Unfold

In your hurry to get to church this morning, you may not have found time to read your horoscope in the morning newspaper. As part of the continuing effort of this church to meet your needs, I have consulted the stars and planets. I want to share with you what they predict for your future.

Could those of you who are Aries, that is, born between March 21 and April 19, raise your hands? If you are born between March 21 and April 19, "today you will find yourself laughing at things no one else thinks are funny."

Taurus, April 20 to May 20, please raise your hands. "Keep a close watch on loved ones -- they are in the mood for a conflict."

Geminis, May 21 to June 20, please raise your hands. "Avoid dentists with goatees. Listen to your heart, feed your stomach and re-fold your linens."

Cancers, June 21 to July 22, please raise your hands. "Today you will nit-pick and nag until you drive everyone around you crazy."

Leos, July 23 to August 22, please raise your hands. "Postpone potluck suppers and out-of-town shopping trips until Venus gets out of the way of your moon."

Virgos, August 23 to September 22, please raise your hands. "Dig deep into a neighbor's past. If you know someone at the bank, he or she could help you obtain credit information. Ask lots of questions. Children can be helpful."

Libras, September 23 to October 22, please raise your hands. "Be careful not to divulge secrets at a family gathering. Someone is counting heavily on your keeping your mouth shut."

Scorpios, October 23 to November 21, please raise your hands. "When you least expect it, something that will happen will embarrass you."

Sagittarius, November 22 to December 21, please raise your hands. "Whatever happened to you yesterday will happen again today."

Capricorns, December 22 to January 19, please raise your hands. "Your family and friends look strange today. Something about them just does not seem right."

Aquarius, January 20 to February 18, please raise your hands. "Nothing can harm you as you enter a 'lunar protection' phase. This is a good time to see how fast the family van will go."

Pisces, February 19 to March 20, please raise your hands. "This week you can expect a letter informing you that the government is auditing your tax returns. You may daydream, or leave for coffee, during the sermon."

What is the future? We all want to know. We live in a rational, sensible, scientifically enlightened age, but the horoscope remains a popular section of the daily newspaper. Millions peek at the prediction for the day, drawn by a strange fascination. It is a quest for clues to the future. It is the urge to know what life may bring.

Predicting the future is a central preoccupation of human existence. It is as old as the earliest manuscripts in the Bible and as modern as the latest scientific journal. What will happen this afternoon? What will happen in a week? What will happen in a year? In ten years? In one hundred years? We expend much human energy in trying to find the answers.

A new book has just been published containing the predictions of the future by famous people. The authors asked two hundred and fifty "people of accomplishment" from eighty nations to forecast what will happen between 2001 and 3000.

Retired baseball manager Earl Weaver foresees world championships for both the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox.

Geoffrey Howe, Britain's former foreign secretary says "A single worldwide and virtually universal currency will replace the present diversity of national coinages and notes."

Departing Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich predicts "Permanent colonies on Moon, Mars and asteroids by 2100."

Ex-moon walker Harrison Schmitt expects "The movement of humans into the vast reaches of the Milky Way galaxy."

Musician and songwriter Bruce Hornsby expects in the next thousand years to see "A robot mowing your lawn and an African American U.S. president."

Cartoonist Mort Walker predicts that in the next 100 years, "People will be laughing at 'I Love Lucy' reruns."

Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke expects us to find, "Proof of intelligent life elsewhere."

Sports writer Frank Deford believes that "Race will all but disappear as an issue."

Doctor and suspense writer Robin Cook predicts a breakthrough in genetics that "will enable medicine to make organ transplants unnecessary."

British chemist and winner of two Nobels, Frederick Sanger, expects that by the year 3000 "the average life span will be around 100 years."

Geneticist Joseph Goldstein predicts that "The common ailments of today (heart attacks, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease) will be maladies of the past."

The wine maker Robert Mondavi believes there will be "An increase in interest among all people in the varieties of wine and foods available on the Earth."

Mario Andretti envisions "auto racing on Mars before the year 3000."

The weight control expert Jenny Craig expects science to discover "a way to control fat storage in our bodies."

Another book on the future claims that soon a personal computer screen on a bedroom dresser will automatically suggest different outfits suitable for a morning business meeting. We will equip ourselves with "Body Net" computers that will "record, index, and retrieve everything we have read, heard and seen." And we will all have smell generators that will create odors for us. The main allure of the technological future is its promise of effortless service and magical ease. Gadget lovers describe the future as a world in which machines anticipate and satisfy our every need or want. There will be no need to dial a phone, or even find one. We will embed the phone in our glasses and respond to voice commands. There will be no need to go to a doctor's office; a small machine will transmit one's vital signs electronically. Cars will have navigation systems and will take over some driving.

However, a look at past predictions by experts, shows the difficulty of predicting the future.

For example, more than one hundred years ago, an official with the Western Union Telegraph Company predicted that "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."

In 1928, an MGM executive reacting to Fred Astaire's screen test said Astaire, "Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little."

In 1935, when a reporter asked Phil Wrigley, the owner of the Chicago Cubs, about night baseball, Wrigley said baseball at night was a "Just a fad, a passing fancy."

In 1939, Irving Thalberg said to Louis B. Mayer regarding Gone with the Wind, "Forget it, Louis, no Civil War picture ever made a nickel."

In 1948, the newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann wrote, "Among the really difficult problems of the world, [the Arab-Israeli conflict is] one of the simplest and most manageable."

In 1962, a staff person at Decca Recording Company declined to make a record for an English group called the Beatles. He predicted that "Groups of guitars are on their way out."

In 1977, the President of Digital Equipment Corporation predicted, "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."

In November 1987, Robert R. Prechter predicted in Business Week, "The message of the stock market crash of October 1987 should not be taken lightly. The great bull market is over."

And in 1995, a year before the presidential elections, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal predicted that in 1996 "Bill Clinton will lose to any Republican nominee who doesn't drool on the stage."

It turns out that we humans are not very good at predicting our own future behavior. A new book called The Fortune Sellers looks at the various kinds of experts who predict the future, including economic forecasters, stock market gurus, demographers and technology assessors.

Weather forecasting has improved in the last few decades, but the other forecasting professions remain as inaccurate as ever. The Federal Reserve Board's economists correctly predicted just three of the six turning points in G.N.P. growth in the fifteen years leading up to 1995, and neither of the two turning points in inflation. The Council of Economic Advisers correctly forecasted turning points in the economy in the years between 1976 and 1995, only 36 percent of the time.

There are many stock market prophets, and because there are so many, one or two may, by chance, look brilliant at predicting one major turn in the market. However, they seldom repeat their success. For example, Elaine Garzarelli, at Shearson Lehman Brothers, called the 1987 crash correctly, making her an instant celebrity. However, in thirteen subsequent market calls, she was right only five times, and her own mutual fund outperformed the market only one year in six.

The prediction business takes in some $200 billion a year. However, except for meteorologists, the experts do no better than a child with a ruler who projecting past trends into the future. Experts in all fields routinely fail to predict major turning points. And the experts have often not anticipated the greatest changes in society and technology at all.

When I hear predictions for the future, I am reminded of a conversation I had years ago when I was working as a laborer harvesting apples in New Hampshire. We worked every day except the days it rained. While I enjoyed the work, I was always glad when we had a day or two of rain. When the temperature began to change and the clouds in the sky began to hint of rain, my fellow workers and I would start to have serious conversations, trying to decide the moment when the rain would fall. If the clouds appeared in the morning, we would try to decide whether it was worth it to walk all the way out to the orchard from the bunkhouse. Walking half a mile or so and then get caught in a downpour in the middle of a field felt pointless. And if the clouds appeared in the middle of the day, we would be concerned about being caught in a rain shower that would force us to go inside, leaving an apple tree half picked or a bin half filled with apples. So we would discuss the weather in great detail.

One morning during one of these discussions, a veteran New England apple picker wandered by with a ladder on his shoulder. Because of his many years of experience we turned to him and asked him when it would rain. He looked at the sky and then he looked at us. "Let reality unfold," he told us, and he wandered off into the orchard.

It is good advice. It is a theological statement about human limitations. My interest in anticipating the moment it would rain, took me out of the beauty of the present moment and focused my energies on the future. Over the years I have meditated on these simple words, "Let reality unfold" until they have become a kind of theological stance, a personal approach to living.

The image is of a flower, unfolding. I need not be passive in relation to a flower. There is much I can do to care for it: I place it in the sunlight, nurture it, water it, and fertilize it. Nevertheless, I know what my limits are. I realize that I cannot pull open the blossom with my hands. I can help the flower become what I wish it to become by nourishing the plant. Yet I cannot reach down and open the petals without destroying what I intended to nurture. Living is the art of constantly learning what our limitations are.

In being a parent, how far can I go before the child becomes like a flower bud pulled open before it is ready? Many of us push too hard, too fast.

In being a minister, how far can I go before the congregation becomes like a flower pulled open? Ambitious clergy can sometimes press too hard and too fast.

In being an adult, how far can I push with relationships before those around me feel pulled open like a flower bud? People sometimes press each other too hard and too fast.

Living is the art of constantly learning what our limitations are. We all share a strong curiosity about the future. We wonder what the weather will be like this afternoon. We wonder how much the interest rate will be in three months. We wonder what life will be like in ten years. We gather the best information we can. We make assumptions about the future, and based on these assumptions we plan our lives.

Yet, I have become increasingly aware of how limited I am when it comes to predictions of the future. I believe that in our society we try to predict and control the future more than we can. We focus on our need for control, and we deny our human limitations. This results in stress, frustration and unhappiness.

Keeping a sense of humor is better. In the Roman Republic, a college of sixty soothsayers provided forecasts by examining the liver and entrails of sacrificed animals. Cato the Elder remarked that he wondered "how one soothsayer could look another in the face without laughing." It is good to have a sense of humor when reading predictions about the future.

There is no reliable guide to the next year or the next century. It is likely that death and taxes will remain certainties. Love will retain its mystery. And the virtual reality of computers will still require physical reality as a home base no matter how much digital equipment we use.

However, predicting what life will be like in the future is beyond the limits of any human being. Today we can nurture the roots of reason and love in our families, our community and our world. Nevertheless, we cannot know the future. That day in the apple orchard, after my friend reminded me to let reality unfold, I stopped thinking about when the rain would come. Later the sun broke though the clouds. A bird sang. The beauty of the day reminded me that rain or shine, every moment is a sacred moment. Our lives have a potential for joy, beauty, and meaning. If we do not experience that potential, if it does not unfold into our busy days, it is not because it is not there. It is because the anxiety inside us causes us to thinking about the past or the future instead of the present. If we let the shining light break through, if we open our ears to the sounds of the birds singing, if we see and smell the beauty of this late December day, then every moment can be holy.

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
9601 Cedar Lane, Bethesda, Maryland 20814-4099
Tel: 301-493-8300    Fax: 301-897-5713
e-mail: office@CedarLane.org
Sunday Services at 10 a.m.
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