Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Learning the Rainbow

Reverend Darcey Laine
October 3, 2004
Palo Alto, CA

When I ask people who grew up Unitarian Universalist what they remember about Sunday School, I often hear about an experience called Neighboring Faiths which I personally count as one of the coolest things I did at my own UU church. The idea is that we would study a variety of religious traditions, and make a visit to their places of worship. I remember visiting a Greek Orthodox church, a reform synagogue, and a fundamentalist Christian church. I remember how empowering it was to go into a completely foreign religious community, like the Greek Orthodox church, prepared by our teachers and surround by other kids my age. We were greeted by a leader in the church who welcomed us, showed us to our special spot in the balcony, and could answer questions like an we take communion? His answer, anyone who has been baptized can take communion here left us with even more questions like does a UU dedication count as a baptism for purposes of taking communion? We decided it probably didn't.

This congregation will be offering Neighboring Faiths again this year for our teens and hopefully some of our adults. I believe this is a cornerstone of our Religious Education and is grounded in a central concept of our tradition. Consider, for example the Unitarians and Universalists who lived and thought during Transcendentalist movement in the 19th century. Emerson, Channing and Thoreau were reading the Bhagavad-Gita and Buddhist Sutras. The teachings deeply impacted their work and writings. It was during this period, late in the summer of 1893 that Swami Vivekananda arrived in the United States for the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago. He had taken a ship from Calcutta to Vancouver and traveled by train to Chicago, but arriving a month early for the Parliament he quickly ran out of money. On the train from the West coast he met a woman, Kate Sanborn, who invited him to her house in the countryside outside Boston. At her estate, Swami Vivekananda was introduced to a number of Bostonians, including Harvard Classics professor J.H. Wright. At Professor Wright's invitation, Vivekananda delivered his first public lecture at the Unitarian Church. Vivekenanda was the first Hindu many in New England ever heard speak about his own religious tradition. So the Unitarians played some small part in the early teaching of Hindu ideas in this country.

Our radical idea of an essential unity among the world diverse traditions became the driving force behind a church called The Charles Street Meeting House, an experimental church in Boston created by the Massachusetts Universalist Convention to revive a dying church. This intestinally experimental church redefined the meaning of the word "Universalism" by bringing the arts of all religions and cultures into what they hoped would be "a religion for one world." The lobby was filled with artifacts from dozens of religions, big and small. 65 copper symbols of the world faiths outlined their circular hall. Their hymnal was a living, evolving collection of traditional music from the world faiths, and newly commissioned works that helped create a liturgy that could support such a religion for one world.

• The essential truth of diverse religions
• A common utility among religions for our common humanity
• The ultimate reunion of all beings

These are compelling and important ideas for our tradition. Our religious tolerance, openness and curiosity lead us to explore and I believe this is a good thing. It also has a shadow.

A lay leader in one of our Midwest churches told a story at GA this summer, about a youth in his church who asked in all earnestness do you teach us about the world religions because you expect us to leave the UU church? Another religious educator told me that in the years her students studied the Jewish and Christian traditions their UU kids became confused. Were they Christian? Were they Jewish? This raises some important questions for us so as we try to engage religious diversity with integrity: What is our intention in studying and participating in these faiths? What is our role? What ethical precepts shall guide our engagement? I'd like to look at these questions one by one and finally see if there are any central principles that can guide our way.

First: intention. When the curriculum committee originally considered this alternation between a Chalice year, (one focused on UU identity and history), and a Rainbow year (one focused on religious diversity) we struggled with this question of intention. We were worried about the kinds of identity confusion that had troubled our children in the past. We were worried about cultural appropriation. Then we looked at the 6 sources of our UU tradition that were passed into our denominational by-laws in 1985. [these are in your hymnal a couple of pages before Hymn #1] It felt different to study say, Judaism, as a source of Unitarianism, than solely as the religion of our neighbors. When I look at the sources of my own faith, I not an interloper, and I'm not leaving my tradition to visit another. By understanding Buddhism, Christianity or Wicca as having this particular relationship to our own tradition, it helps us understand not only the wisdom they offer, but it helps me understand my own tradition and indeed myself. The influence of Hinduism on our Transcendentalist forbearers was enormous, and this stream of thought is an important part of who we are today. The copy of the Bhagavad-Gita that Emerson carried, that chance meeting of Vivekenanda and Kate Swanson on the train changed the direction of our movement.

Our 6 sources were added to the basic statement of our self understanding because openness to the ideas we encounter at the religious crossroads allows us to be changed and moved. We call this a living tradition because change and growth are an innate part of the tradition we inhabit. Our intention, therefore, can be to understand our own roots, both historic and contemporary. Some root systems go down deep, like the Acacia, others reach out along the surface, connecting neighbor to neighbor, like the redwood. They show organic our connections to our ancestors and to our neighbors.

And what roll will we take as we open the Upanishads or visit a Catholic Mass. Are we sociologists? Are we seekers? At this time in my life when I feel a deep personal commitment to the Unitarian Universalist tradition, I am no longer seeking a religious home when I witness other faith traditions. The role of sociologist or cultural anthropologist is a popular stance for UUs, but this has some limitations. If we use ONLY the objective gaze of evaluation, we miss the chance to let any of the religion in to our own hearts or spirits. The role of religious consumer is common in our contemporary culture. I could go to East West books or the grocery store to buy the scriptures or ritual objects from a great variety of traditions, but I want something different. I come to this church because I believe that religion is both safer and more powerful when practiced within a community of people who inspire and watch out for one another. If we participate in religion only as a consumer, we loose the grounding and context being part of religious community provides. The Kabalistic tradition so popular with celebrities right now is an ancient aspect of Judaism that was hidden for centuries, taught only to initiates who had proven themselves ready. Now its sacred symbols are sold at teen accessory stores.

More and more I like to take the role of guest. For example, I love attending a Passover Seder with family or friend, but when I learned that it would fall to me as a minister of this church to lead our Passover celebration, I was uneasy. I felt somehow that I was overstepping. And so over the past 4 years the parish ministers and I have developed a new custom, asking members of the church who did their own roots in the Passover tradition to lead the service, and I am once again their guest.

Finally, what are the ethics and manners for exploring our religious roots this way? Let's take that communion question my Sunday School faced at the Greek Orthodox church. I nervously asked the same question at a Catholic Mass I attended with my roommate in college. She replied "Oh, no. Even if you are Catholic you can't take communion unless you've been confessed, and sure enough as I looked around I saw almost 30% of the congregation remain in their seats as others formed lines in the aisle to receive the host. But later that year, when I attend a Presbyterian service with a friend in her tiny old white steepled church, she looked amazed that I would even ask. "How could we turn anyone away from God's table" she responded, and so as the basket of rough cubed bread passed hand to hand, I took a piece and ate. As a Unitarian Universalist minister, I am not going to tell you whether or not you may take communion in a particular tradition. I can only encourage you to act with integrity. Does the gesture feel false and empty? Then please don't sacrifice your personal integrity. But if you are invited to participate in a ritual that is sacred to your friend or neighbor, and you want to be in communion with that community in that moment, I encourage you to accept that gift in the spirit it was offered.

Perhaps the most important questions are answered at the front door of the synagogue or mosque. Am I prepared to enter a sacred space that is not my own? Can I, with integrity, align myself with this worshipping body for this time? Can I help them hold a sacred space? Can I honor and respect their sanctuary while being true to my own core? Christianity is an evangelizing faith, and so it seems natural for many Christian communities to share their sacred texts (as the Gideons do) and to invite their neighbors to hear the words they hope will hold salvation to a newcomer. Not all traditions feel the same about their sacred rituals and traditions. Some Native Americans, for example, feel that religion is local. It belongs to the people and the land they share. And so when European-Americans borrow a chant or an icon, it can feel like appropriation, it can feel like one more act in the imperialism that destroyed the very cultures we now turn into objects of consumerism. And so when we study Christianity we might be bolder than when we study indigenous traditions. We look for ways to share without opening these old and unhealed wounds.

As the vilification of Islam began to gain momentum in this country in recent years, Dr. Conde Frasier, a professor at Claremont Theological Seminary, a Christian School, asked a Muslim friend to talk to her about Islam. She wanted to have something real, personal and deep to inform her thinking about her Neighbor's faith. After several conversations, her friend invited her to worship. And so after receiving instruction in the Moslem way of prayer Dr. Frasier covered her head, entered the mosque, kneeled on her prayer mat, and prayed to Allah, and she reports that she did experience something of Allah that day. Dr. Frasier remains a Christian, but I have to imagine that she now has a much deeper experience and knowledge of Islam that brings her closer to her Muslim neighbors, and gives her a new understanding each time Islam is in the news, each time she is in the classroom teaching. She also experienced something that enriched her own religious life.

One of the concerns people have about reaching out for the world's religious diversity is that it can be done in a very shallow way. It takes patience and intention to get beneath the surface, where most of the gifts of a religious tradition lie. A religion's integrity lies in its wholeness. A passage from the Torah taken out of context loses the wisdom of history and Rabbinic Scholarship. Easter and Lent balance one another. Think how different Dr. Frasier's experience would have been the first time she joined her friend in prayer if she had done so without all the study and preparation. When I heard Dr. Frasier tell her story during the Fahs lecture at General Assembly this summer, I was moved by her courage, and by the clear respect she showed to her friend, and to the ancient tradition she engaged. Keeping her example in mind, I offer respect, humility and integrity as the primary ethics of our sojourns in other traditions.

It might interest you to know that every month or so I get a phone call from someone wanting to visit our church. They ask if they are welcome at worship, they ask what worship will be like, they want to know whether we really welcome the stranger, and they want to know how they can be a good guest.

This is and will continue to be a complex issue. But imagining ourselves as guests in a friend or neighbor home might provide a central organizing metaphor for our explorations. We treat their space and treasures with respect. We observe the house rules, as some of my friends like me to take my shoes off when I visit, and others like me to leave them on. We listen from a place of shared humanity. And we humbly remember there are dynamics, history, wounds and gifts here of which we are not aware. We take only what we are given, and offer our gratitude in return.

This Rainbow year we learn together as a way of connecting to the sources of our own religious wellspring. There is much we don't know about our neighbor faiths, so much they have to teach us about ourselves, about our roots, and about the world. As humble and respectful guests we undertake this journey, grounded in this our religious home, centered in the wisdom that lies in every human heart.

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