“Emergence Through Constraint: How Life, Ecosystems, Cultures, and Spiritual Experience Get Cobbled Together” with Dr. Ursula Goodenough

“Emergence Through Constraint: How Life, Ecosystems, Cultures, and Spiritual Experience Get Cobbled Together” with Dr. Ursula Goodenough
Our February theme, “Practicing Resistance,” was beautifully addressed a few weeks ago by Vicky Hanjian in its societal and political contexts. Today, following a snow gap, we will think about how resistance, in the form of constraint, has allowed the emergence
of life from non-life, creating order from randomness and hence resilient selves with aims and expectations. Constraints are also vital to the resilience of ecosystems, including the system we call human culture, and they undergird spiritual experience. These understandings are helpful guides in our quest to make good trouble.

Ursula Goodenough is Professor of Biology Emerita at Washington University who lives in Chilmark and is a member of the UUSMV. She taught cell biology and molecular evolution and engaged in research that focused on Chlamydomonas, a green soil alga. Her honors include election to membership in the National Academy of Sciences. She and others are developing what we call a religious naturalist orientation, and she co-founded the Religious Naturalist Association (www.religious-naturist-association.org). A new edition of her book (www.sacreddepthsofnature.com), The Sacred Depths of Nature, describes her understandings of this orientation. She has five children and ten grandchildren.
View our Order of Service here: UUSMV OOS March 1, 2026