Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

One Light Many Colors

 

Reverend Amy Zucker Morgenstern
September 17, 2006
Palo Alto, CA

Reading: 
Our rainbow of sources (adapted from the Principles and Purposes of the Unitarian Universalist Association)

The living tradition which we share draws from many sources, like the many colors of the rainbow.  

Red is the direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life.

Orange is the words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion and the transforming power of love.

Yellow is the wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life.

Green is Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves.

Blue is 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.

Violet is spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

One truth, shining brilliant white; refracted into all the colors of human wisdom and experience.

 

Sermon: “One Light, Many Colors”

The September I was twenty years old, I flew with 24 other college students from around the United States to New Delhi, India. We enjoyed a few days there before taking a train across the country to our final destination, and on the recommendation of people who had traveled to Delhi before, I decided to spend one afternoon at the Baha’i temple. It rose out of a large field, a great, graceful lotus of white stone. A monkey ran across the field as I approached, giving me a thrill. The even greater thrill was the temple itself and the message it conveyed with its architecture. Like all nine of the Baha’i Temples around the world, it had nine doors. One could enter from any direction.

The reason was evident from the readings carved in the stone at the temple’s welcome center, the Golden Rule in the language of many religions: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” Christianity … “Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you,” Hinduism … “None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself,” Islam … “The heart of the person before you is a mirror. See there your own form,” Shinto …

The Baha’i believe that all religions have truth to teach us. Their writings teach that “The gift of God to this enlightened age is the knowledge of the oneness of mankind and of the fundamental oneness of religion.”¹ (The language is old-fashioned, but the Baha’i faith also advocates complete equality of the sexes.)

We are one. Truth is one. We enter it through many doors; it enters us in many languages. I knew I was looking for a religion like that. Baha’i wasn’t quite the one for me, but a few years later I discovered another religion that draws on many sources, that affirms the one truth shining through the religions of the world and the many other ways human beings come to understanding. It was Unitarian Universalism, and when I walked through that door I knew I would never need another one—because it would welcome the truth I discovered no matter what form it took.

In introducing our Rainbow Year last week, Darcey used the image of the prism. A prism takes white light and splits it into many colors, beautiful and various. Our Rainbow Year, which alternates with a Chalice Year focusing on Unitarian Universalist history and identity, celebrates the many sources of our tradition. We focus on these sources in Children’s Religious Education and Adult Religious Education, and they shape our worship year.

A rainbow on a poster is six colors, maybe seven. In real life, light comes in hundreds, thousands of hues, with differences so subtle we can hardly see them, much less name them all. William James confidently called his book The Varieties of Religious Experience — he could as easily have called it Some Varieties of Religious Experience.

Our six sources do not exclude other sources. They are a sampling, a list meant to suggest that the actual paths down which truth travels to us are varied beyond what words can convey. The third source, world religions—how many sources is that, really? Dozens. The fifth source, the results of science—do they have a definite number, or an end? And the first source, ah, that is not one source but billions: direct experience as mediated through each person who lives, breathes, and wonders.

It’s not that everything every source has to say is the truth. Distortion and confusion dog every human endeavor, including religions, including science, including reason. And I am not saying that every source is exactly the same at bottom. But there is one clear light that creates all of them, one thing that runs through every one of them, and I’ll tell you how I know: because they all, at some point or another, cause people to say, “My life is about service to others.”

The Rev. Charles Blustein Ortman says, “I am a Unitarian Universalist Mystic. That means I must always bring my reason to bear upon the meaning I make or find in my experience. It means that even my mystical experience must affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”²

The Rev. Thomas Schade is a UU Christian because, in his words, “I believe that God calls us to extend the same respect and love to others that God extends to us. The covenant of mutual care between free persons that lies at the heart of our Unitarian Universalist churches is the embodiment of how God intends for people to relate to each other.”³

Have a look through the pamphlets titled “The Faith of a Humanist,” “The Faith of a UU Buddhist,” et cetera … you’ll see this theme over and over. Our faith, whatever form it takes, tells us to work for justice and to serve the world’s needs. That’s why I led our kids in service to our Hotel de Zink guests earlier this morning, and why they spend a significant portion of their religious education every year making justice in our “Cool Deeds for Kids” program.

The theme this Friday in our Evensong group was hospitality. As we always do, we read many quotations on the theme, with time to reflect in silence and in speech. One was from the Reverend Rebecca Parker, president of Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley: “As religious liberals, our particular vocation is to provide hospitality for the human spirit in a way that is open and gracious.”

This month, as we do each September, we are demonstrating hospitality for the human body, which needs food and shelter. And for the human spirit, which needs to know that it is wanted, not shunned. That is why, as religious liberals, our vocation includes being one of the twelve congregations that make up Hotel de Zink. It was a great risk when we first decided to make our church into a shelter. We argued among ourselves and worried about what would happen. Finally, we took the plunge, and I daresay it has transformed us as much as any one of our dozens of guests. It has kept us aware of the too-often hidden problem of homelessness. It helped inspire us to work for structural change in Palo Alto housing through Peninsula Interfaith Action. Over the past three years, it has inspired us to give over $100,000 to the Opportunity Center.

Hospitality for the human spirit also means being hospitable to each other’s ways of approaching truth. Others’ paths may appear aimless to us, but if they lead them to truth, such as the truth of loving service, then they must have a goal that we cannot see. Our diverse faith is grounded in the belief that if we are generous with each other and accept that we each need a way to truth that is right for us, we will strengthen each other along that path. And heaven knows the world needs more people who have found the truth of loving service to others.

Hospitality for the human spirit also means being open and gracious with ourselves. Ours is a generous faith, but sometimes it is as hard to be generous with ourselves as to be generous with others. Even harder. Sometimes we are stingy with ourselves, and this is nowhere more true than in the selective shutting-out of the sources of truth. Denying ourselves the teachings of Jesus because the Pope or Pat Robertson has said something outrageous … denying ourselves the wisdom of the Muslim hadith because some people preach that violence is the way of Islam … this is not wisdom but stinginess.

It’s not that every single source has to be right for every single one of us. It’s unlikely that it will be. But the light flows through us regardless. Our lives, our particular personalities and needs, will refract it into any number of colors, sometimes surprising ones, maybe colors that don’t fit our interior decorating scheme. Do you usually prefer the rich saffron of Buddhist robes? Don’t be surprised if St. Julian of Norwich speaks to you one day. Most of all, don’t shut out her voice. Its rich colors may be just what you need to enliven your understanding.

Do you usually receive the truth through humanist teachings? Paganism may yet shine its shimmering violet light on your world, helping you to see the beauty and meaning in the turning of the earth in a way they have never quite appeared to you before.

Some of us are very eclectic, happily looking through the kaleidoscope of colors that many sources offer us. Others of us are quite set on a particular path, one color that is most illuminating for us. Both are fine. The important thing is to be open to the light of truth whatever shade it takes. Truth is truth. And it has a way of surprising us, if we let it.

- - - - -

The reason I was in India was for a Buddhist Studies semester abroad. How did a Jewish girl from suburban Connecticut end up in New Delhi, on her way to four months of meditation and study in Bodh Gaya, ancient birthplace of Buddhism? Who could have predicted that the Buddha would call to me down the centuries and say, Follow this eightfold path and it will change your life? But that’s what he did, via a few teachers, such as Douglas Hofstadter, the cognitive and computer scientist, who sprinkled Zen stories through a book I read as a teenager, and Professor James Stone, who stood at the front of a lecture hall my first semester of college and said, in a voice both stern and mischievous, “Life is dukkha! — suffering!” Finally, a religion that considered that the central problem of life, just as I did–and knew why we suffer, and what to do about it. I was hooked. I wrote my senior thesis on Zen poetics, got two degrees in religion that concentrated on Buddhism, and made Buddhist meditation the center of my spiritual practice. And while my meditation practice is slipshod and is squeezed into an eclectic mix, no single source has taught me more about life or brought me more happiness.

What if I had decided that Judaism was the only path for me, and that no weird guys in robes chanting Sanskrit were going to budge me off it? I’m sure I would have led a fine life, as devoted Jews all over the world do. Judaism is a source rich in colors of its own. But there was something I needed to learn that it had not quite succeeded in teaching me. It took Buddhism to give me practical instruction in how to experience and accept impermanence. I’m grateful for the Buddha, the dharma (the teaching), and the sangha (the community), and I’m glad I had my eyes open at the key moment.

I wonder what other colors are trying to shine through my mind and heart right now and are shut out because I think those sources have nothing interesting for me … ?

I wonder what colors are trying to shine through you … ?

Friends, let them shine, let them shine, let them shine.

---