The great state of Kansas is requiring ninth-grade science teachers to present “creative intelligence” in science classes as an alternative to evolution. Creative intelligence, or its doctrinal cousins, creationism and intelligent design, depends on the existence of a supernatural force to explain the universe.


Scientists explain the natural world in a language that is evidenced-based. Creationism explains the universe as an “intelligent design” by a higher power, in a language that is faith-based. These are different stories: one is science that speaks in reproducible data, the other is faith that speaks of something beyond explanation.

I don’t believe these stories are incompatible; there are lots of good scientists who believe in God. The world of science and the world of God are not overlapping universes; one looks for explanations in the natural world, the other provides explanations in the existential world of morality and meaning. They are both good stories and without either, we would probably not survive as a species, but they don’t need to be given equal time from the same platform. This is not a debate.

Unfortunately, the Darwin vs. Divinity debate has been raging since 1860. Religious leaders, fearing that science would undermine their precepts attacked “Darwinism” (as they later attacked Freud who said religion was an illusion derived from our “instinctual wishful impulses”). In 1925, Tennessee teacher John Scopes was convicted in the famous “Monkey Trial”of violating a state law prohibiting the instruction of evolution. In 1948, the Supreme Court banned religious instruction in public schools, affirming First Amendment guarantees. In 1981, Arkansas passed The Balanced Treatment for Creation Science-Evolution Science Act, and it was declared unconstitutional the following year. But the idea that life created by an “intelligent designer” is science and deserves to be taught in public school science classes has enormous staying power. According to the American Museum of Natural History, less than half of all Americans believe in evolution. In today’s age of religious revivalism, we are still debating which one is right, and it’s ridiculous.

Our founding fathers drafted a Constitution whose First Amendment guaranteed separation of church and state. They bore witness to the price of persecution, religious fervor and zealotry as exemplified by the doofus, Rev. Pat Robertson. He’s the televangelist, who, a couple of weeks ago, issued a pronouncement warning the people of Dover, Pennsylvania, that God would strike them down with natural disasters, because they removed the school board members who favored teaching creationism in their public schools.

Both science and creationism tell a story that we need to pay attention to, but let’s not make it a debate in science class.

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I love the Arizona State Fair. It’s the only time I watch sheep, pigs and cattle being judged and where I hold the rabbits, some with fur thick as velvet. I even “ooh and aah” at the gigantic pumpkins and can imagine what grandma’s prize-winning strawberry-rhubarb pie tastes like. My grandchildren do not mirror my enthusiasm for these pursuits, however.


I took four kids: two boys, 13 and 10, and two girls, 10 and 8; their enthusiasm centered on the Midway with its games of chance and death-defying carnival rides. There was something called “G Force” which promised rocket-propelled thrills; another featured a giant ball suspended a 100 feet in the air, inside people were twirling. I got sick just looking at it.

I gave them each $30 for rides and games and told them that was it — when it ran out we’d meet up and eat. The two boys couldn’t wait to get off on their own. No way they wanted to hang with the old man and their little sisters. It was immediately clear that I would never be able to watch them all. The boys wanted to exercise their independence, make their own choices, and I sympathized with them. But in today’s climate of fear, one is always reminded of risks. It’s the Arizona State Fair for God’s sake, surrounded by security on a sunny Saturday afternoon. They believed they could fend for themselves, and I thought so too. We established a meeting place, and I knew they’d show up when they got hungry.

The girls were happy to stay with me and convinced me to join them on the “Tilt-o- Whirl.” I blithely carried on a frozen cappuccino, but when they dropped the bar in our laps, I had a vague recollection that maybe the coffee was not a good idea. When it was mercifully over, I staggered off to their hysterical glee. After that, I watched as they exhausted themselves on giant slides and spinning things. Even when I couldn’t see them, I could always identify them by their screams. The barker’s sucked them in with their patter about the easy chance to win big, plush toy animals. They won prizes and were ecstatic.

The boys showed up a couple of hours later. I was surprised that their tickets had lasted so long. That’s when they told me they’d spent another hundred dollars they brought on their own. They were surrounded by inflatable sledgehammers, stuffed animals, posters, a basketball — it was unbelievable. “How could you spend that much money?” I asked incredulously. They said it was easy. The TV advertisements told them to “go and satisfy your craving.” They said it was their money, and they did it, they satisfied their cravings. Then, without pause they asked, “Can we get an ice cream?”

Why not? I knew I would already be in deep doo-doo when I brought these kids home. First, I would have to explain why I left them on their own for two hours; then I would have to face letting them blow their piggy-banks in a couple of frenzied hours of bliss. I caught a little grief, but the kids and me, we’ll never forget it.

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I just finished the second annual retreat for healthcare professionals entitled, “Sacred Healing: From Torah to Tipi.” I led the retreat along with Rabbi Gershon Winkler, Dallas DeLowe, and, this year, a new relative, Miriam Maron. I look forward to doing this event for the entire year, because I love to listen and watch them.


Together, we tell our story about how people get sick and how they get well from the perspectives of modern science and ancient shamanic traditions. Seamlessly picking up the thread line of each other’s thoughts, we flow from brain imaging to biblical tales, to drumming, dancing and native ceremonies.

Gershon was ordained in Jerusalem in the Orthodox tradition and is an initiate into Jewish mysticism. Fluent in Aramaic and Hebrew, he has served as Scholar-in-Residence at colleges and spiritual retreat centers all over the world. He currently directs the Walking Stick Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the dissemination of aboriginal Jewish spirituality.

Dallas is a spiritual leader in the Native American Church and a healer who has shared his vision with audiences in Europe, North and Central America, and Canada. We have known each other for more than 25 years — he conducted my daughters’ wedding ceremonies and has been instrumental in teaching me how to pray (by which I mean to speak from the heart without thinking about it first). This year Miriam joined us; she's a nurse, musician and exercise physiologist who integrated movement, chanting and imagery into our healing work.


The year before last, the majority of the participants were Jews. This year, the attendees were equally divided between Jews, Gentiles, Buddhists, Wiccans, and a Muslim. At the retreat’s conclusion, we actually create healing ceremonies where everyone has the opportunity to integrate and practically apply these basic principles.

Participants were arbitrarily divided into small groups. One of the groups happened to end up comprised of five Christians and one Jew. The volunteer “patient” asked for this ceremony because she needed to say goodbye to her old life and face her fear and uncertainty about the future. The group came up with the idea of a new baptism ceremony and translated her wish into story, poetry, chanting, and drum beat. At its conclusion, each member poured water over her head while giving her a personal blessing. For the only Jewish participant in this group, it was the first time she had ever shared this powerful symbolism, and was so moved that she will include its metaphor into her therapeutic repertoire.

The power of these ceremonies is always intensely moving for both “patients” and healers. A room of 30 teachers, rabbis, chaplains, counselors, social workers, dentists, doctors, a deacon, and an Indian chief, makes for a powerful healing gathering. Perhaps the experience is best captured in this poem written by a participant:

This day I see, with third eye,
This day I hear, with other ear,
This day I smell, with scorched nostril
This day I taste, with stinging palate
This day I walk with Hermes' feet
This day I think with Carl's soul
This day I talk with Gershon's tongue
This day I feel, with Marta's nerve ends
This day I pray with Dallas' universe
This day I sing with Miriam's rapture
This day I dance with the sparks off the rocks
This day I love with thirty hearts
This day I live in ceremony
This day I heal me, then you
This day I am spirit

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Our entire extended family recently gathered at the Corona Horse Ranch in south Phoenix to celebrate my granddaughter’s Bat Mitzvah. This is the traditional Jewish coming-of-age ceremony; once the exclusive purview of boys, it is now open to girls.


The setting wasn’t quite typical for this event, although it was the perfect venue for the carnival celebration that followed the traditional ceremony. Hayley read beautifully from the Torah, a long portion that told the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Her paternal grandmother, Iris, prepared her for an entire year; her maternal grandmother, Nainie, (my wife Elaine) made the prayer shawl for her. This garment, called a Tallis, is worn for the first time at this initiation ceremony. Nainie cut out small squares of material and sent them to all the close female relatives asking them to decorate it and return it to her, so she could incorporate them into the Tallis she was making.

The plan was that these women would present the Tallis to Hayley at a women’s circle that would precede the actual Bat Mitzvah service. I desperately wanted to attend but was told, in no uncertain terms, to get lost. The women of her clan wanted to share the power of their sisterhood and create their own entrée-into-womanhood ceremony. I understood this completely but felt left out nevertheless. Having spent my life surrounded by women, I have always marveled that something good always happens when women come together in a circle. They share a soul connection that men have much more trouble getting in touch with. I think it’s because they are all mothers and daughters and know what it feels like to be connected to another life. Feeling a biologic responsibility for another human being is the unique purview of sisterhood. Men get together in groups and the first thing they do is size each other up; they are biologically programmed and culturally reinforced to be more competitive and defensive.

The women’s circle, of course, turned out to be an extraordinarily moving experience that I learned about piecemeal over the next several days and never in its entirety. A friend from Hawaii draped leis on the celebrants, and led the women into the sacred circle while hula-dancing. There, they were smudged with sage and eagle feather and welcomed into the sacred space. There were prayers to the four directions, singing, and commentaries on Torah. They spoke about the secrets of womanhood, and the ceremony culminated in their circling around Hayley as her grandmothers placed the Tallis on her shoulders. Each one spoke to Hayley about their contribution to it and their wishes for her. When they emerged from the ceremony, they all wore a red string on their ankles. It was a story only they knew, and nobody was talking.

I love sacred ceremonies, and we need more of them because, at the soul level, we are all tribal people. Ceremony — its special language of prayer, songs, music, dance, dress, holy objects, a credible story that helps people face their lives better — is a powerful way of connecting to others. All tribal ceremonies, even secret red strings, have symbolic meaning, no matter what your tribe. They are what bind us together in community.

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