Project Description

(This was originally given at the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship on August 2, 2105.)

Now, I know this isn’t going to be all that terribly shocking to people, but I am a geek. And I’ve been a geek for a really long time. I’m willing to bet I’ve always been a geek, but I really came into my full geek glory when I was in Middle School.

The summer before my 6th grade year, I went to a special weeklong summer camp for gifted and talented kids in Columbus, Georgia, where I learned about chemistry and debate. It was the first time I had had any sort of intense summer learning program, and I loved it. But, we couldn’t really afford summer camps like this very often, and the next couple of years during the summer I was stuck at home. But I wanted to keep on learning.

Now, I loved school, so summer always kind of bummed me out. I wanted to be learning, not stuck at home. Stuck with my MOM and sister of all people. So, I decided that each summer during middle school I would try to learn something new. The summer before my 7th grade year I decided to teach myself the basics of HTML. This would have been the summer of 1994, and HTML was still pretty new back then. The summer before my 8th grade year, 1995, I decided to learn about a new branch of science and math that was being talked about – the Chaos Theory. How many of you here have heard about the chaos theory? How many of you had read up or studied it before?

Well, I had heard of it, and craved to learn more. I convinced my mom to take me to the bookstore, where I bought this book that I still have today. And during that summer, I read it. I didn’t only read it though, I devoured it. I didn’t understand a lot of it – I was only about to start Algebra after all – but what I did understand blew me away. And what I learned about the chaos theory back 20 years ago is still a part of my current spiritual beliefs, and it still shapes how I see the world. And after today, I bet it will change how you see the world, and your own personal spiritual beliefs too.

But, before I get into why the Chaos Theory is so spiritual to me, I should talk a little about what the Chaos Theory is. And, I promise I won’t speak TOO much math, but there will be a little in there.

The Chaos Theory was really first described by a Meteorologist, Edward Lorenz. Now, this is actually another reason why I liked the Chaos Theory back in Middle School – at the time, I wanted to be a weatherman, and thought it was pretty neat that this whole branch of hardcore mathematics was discovered by a weatherman. Anywho, in the 60s, Lorenz had this basic computer program that modeled the weather – it wasn’t all that advanced, it had only about 6 equations to it, but it was one of the first computer weather models out there and other people would come to study the model. Lorenz liked tinkering with it, and would change some initial conditions to see what would happen at the end.

One day, he decided he wanted to run an experiment again. He had run it once before and wanted to verify something mid way through his simulation. He picked a data point mid way through his simulation and typed in the number in question, but he rounded. Now, this doesn’t seem like a huge world changing moment, but it changed the world. Before, the computer used whatever number the computer had calculated in the step before, but when Lorenz rounded to the nearest ten thousandth, his data went wonky. In fact, it went completely out of phase – where one line peaked, another dipped into a valley.

This graph became famous, and is still famous today in the world of Chaos Theory. What Lorenz realized is that one small, infinitesimally small, change, can lead to a dramatically different result. And he had just proven it with math. In a complex system, one small change can lead to a result that hadn’t ever been imagined. And the global weather is a vastly complex system – it’s why any weather report more than 8 days out should be pretty much thrown out. It’s not because computers and meteorologists can’t run their guesses that far out in advance, it’s because there are so many opportunities for chaos to enter the equation, that the result more than 8 days out could be absolutely anything.

Meteorologists dubbed this the butterfly effect, which some of you may have heard of before. The butterfly effect hypothesizes that a butterfly flapping its wings in China could cause a tornado here in New Jersey. The weather system is too complex to fully ever be predicted – that one small change, the butterfly flapping its wings, could lead to a dramatic difference in the end. The more complex the system, the more likely it is a small change can have a drastic impact.

Now, what system out there is more complex than life? If the Chaos Theory proves mathematically that in complex systems, small changes lead to dramatic results, then it follows that the Chaos Theory also proves that in life, a complex system, a small change can also lead to a dramatic result.

The reason why it’s called the Chaos Theory? It’s because at each step along the way, two things happen – the initial change is amplified, and there’s a new chance for another small change. These small changes can keep being introduced at every step along the way, and soon, it becomes way too chaotic to predict with any hope of accuracy.

Those small steps build off each other, and in fact, that’s what fractals are. Fractals and the Chaos Theory go hand in hand – fractals are a graphical representation of the chaos theory. Fractals at their core are images that repeat themselves – they’re a small change that gets amplified over and over again, just like the Koch snowflake: a infinitely complex shape, an infinitely long line, contained in a finite area.

Now, I think this whole idea fits in quite nicely to our Unitarian Universalist theology. Our seventh principle, to me, partly enshrines the Chaos Theory into our greater UU theology – the interdependent web of which we’re all apart.

We’ve known for ages, in fact spiritual people of all traditions have known for ages, that we’re all connected to each other and to the Earth. If one small thing happens to one part of our interconnected web, then it reverberates and affects us all. If one small thing changes, the results can be dramatic and felt across the globe. We’ve known it for ages and now mathematics has proven it too.

It’s also part of our Sources too. One of the Six Sources of Unitarian Universalism is all about science after all – Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.

I’ve been a humanist as long as I can remember, and I’ve built the foundation of my own personal spirituality off things I’ve learned in various science and math courses I’ve taken throughout my years of schooling. I’m sure I’ll go on and on some day about how some of my geology classes taught me to love myself unconditionally, but the Chaos Theory ranks right up there in things I’ve learned through science and math that have affected me on a deeply spiritual level. The Chaos Theory is part of my own personal religious beliefs, and I argue, it’s right at home within Unitarian Universalism.

One small change can change the entire world.

Another core value we Unitarian Universalists hold dear is the belief that it’s our responsibility to make the world a better place, that it’s our responsibility to make heaven on earth. After all, all it takes is a domino right?

We saw earlier in the time for all ages how a tiny domino falling can make a huge difference. And how we can each take a small step toward social justice, because that change can be amplified over and over again. This is the Chaos Theory at its core – one small difference can be magnified over and over again in complex systems to produce wildly different results.

So often I’ve felt overwhelmed about social justice. How can I change the entire world? How can I ease all the suffering I see? There are so many social ills plaguing the world, there’s so much to do, it’s so easy to get discouraged. It’s easy to see social justice as an all or nothing situation – I either have to do it all, or I should just not even bother. It’s too hard, too complicated to change the world, when there’s so much suffering, and I never seem to make a real impact. I’m just one person. How many here have had thoughts similar to that?

Well. One person doing something small can indeed change the world. It’s hard to think of something so small as a single tweet on Twitter, when compared with our grand global interconnected, complex system, can change the world. But sure enough, one tweet in 2013 has totally changed our world.

In an article on The Feminst Wire, Alicia Garza describes the creation of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag.

“I created #BlackLivesMatter with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, two of my sisters, as a call to action for Black people after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was post-humously placed on trial for his own murder and the killer, George Zimmerman, was not held accountable for the crime he committed. It was a response to the anti-Black racism that permeates our society and also, unfortunately, our movements.”

For those who don’t know what a hashtag is on twitter, it’s a way for people to find other people talking about the same thing. People make up hashtags all the time and most of them are inconsequential. But, occasionally, one takes off and gets popular. Just like how every small step we can take, how every small change we make to a complex system, doesn’t always lead to a dramatic result, sometimes it can. And the #blacklivesmatter hashtag was one of those small changes in a complex system that has fundamentally redefined how we talk, how we think, how we believe, how we feel, and how we teach.

One small change can change the entire world.

Take a look at our own denomination. The Standing on the Side of Love campaign has been our denomination’s major social justice campaign for the past 5 to 10 years. It’s helped galvanize people around marriage equality, around immigration rights, and more. People now know our loud yellow shirts at protests, count on UUs to be there, and in Arizona, they started calling us the “Love People.” Without a doubt, the Standing on the Side of Love campaign has changed our faith and our world. And it began as an answer to a question from reporter.

In 2004, minister and composer Jason Shelton was listening to our UUA President at the time, Bill Sinkford, prepare for a press conference where the UUA was announcing its opposition to a proposed federal ban on same sex marriage. In fact, this was seven days before the decision in Massachusetts that legalized marriage equality in their state. Bill Sinkford at some point during the preparation, said that UUs were, quote, standing on the side of love. Jason Shelton thought it was a great line, wrote it down, and later that week composed the hymn, Standing on the Side of Love.

From the Standing on the Side of Love website, the “Standing on the Side of Love campaign, born out of that slogan and song by Rev. Jason Shelton of the same name, was launched after the 2008 shooting at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, which was targeted because they are welcoming to LGBTQ people and have a liberal stance on many issues. The Knoxville community responded with an outpouring of love that inspired the leadership at the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) to launch the campaign in 2009, with the goal of harnessing love’s power to challenge exclusion, oppression, and violence based on sexual orientation, gender identity, immigration status, race, religion, or any other identity.”

Our national social justice campaign, which has had huge effects across our faith and across our country, began with an off hand remark while preparing for a news conference.

Just like how every small step we can take, how every small change we make to a complex system, doesn’t always lead to a dramatic result, sometimes it can. And that off hand remark was one of those small changes in a complex system that has fundamentally redefined how we talk, how we think, how we believe, how we feel, and how we teach.

It was one small change that has changed the world.

I can think of some small changes I made in my life that, looking back, were the first step in changing my own personal world. One immediate example pops into mind – the moment I told the director of religious education at my old congregation in Atlanta that I could help teach if she really was that desperate for teachers. And, well, now I’m not only a DRE but have been elected to our denomination’s governing body, the UUA Board of Trustees. Can’t say I ever would have thought that was in the cards for me, but all it took was one small step, one small change, and the complex system of my life has never been the same.

There’s a spirituality to these small steps. We have to have faith to take these small steps. We have to have faith that in the end our small steps matter, that our small steps will lead to the result we want. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. We can’t predict what will happen when a small change has been entered into a complex system, the only thing we can predict is that we’ve chanted the future in some way.

Well, it’s time to change the future. Every single one of us can make a change, today, will change the future in ways we couldn’t even possibly imagine today. What small change are you going to make, right here, right now, that will change the world?

Lorenz found that just the smallest rounding difference could lead to an entirely opposite result. And, in a complex system, there are infinite places where those small changes can lead to such different results. Imagine the difference we’ll make when our small steps are added together, when our small steps have built off each other. The fractal that will result from our efforts will be as beautiful as the new world we are co-creating.

One small change can indeed change the entire world. It’s time.