"If Our Walls Could Talk "

READING

Diana Eck is Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies at Harvard University. She is also Director of The Pluralism Project, which has broken new ground in exploring and generating dialogue in our increasingly multifaith society. This reading is from her book, "A New Religious America," which describes the religious landscape of our time and the diversity it now contains.

"Today all of us are challenged," Diana Eck writes, "to claim for a new age the very principles of religious freedom that shaped our nation. We must find ways to articulate them anew, whether we are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or secular Americans. We must embrace the religious diversity that comes with our commitment to religious freedom, and as we move into the new millennium we must find ways to make the differences that have divided people the world over the very source of our strength here in the U.S. It will require moving beyond laissez-faire inattention to religion to a vigorous attempt to understand the religions of our neighbors. And it will require the engagement of our religious traditions in the common tasks of our civil society. Today, right here in the U.S., we have an opportunity to create a vibrant and hopeful pluralism, in a world of increasing fragmentation where there are few models for a truly pluralistic, multi-religious society."

SERMON

Up until very recently - and for as long as many of you can remember, our sanctuary wall displayed banners with the symbols of six major world religions, and the seventh, of our own Unitarian Universalist flaming chalice, along the south side. Our minister emeritus, Ernie Pipes, commissioned and installed the banners many years ago. They were the most dominant visual feature in this space.

But time passed, and the banners began to show their age. An attempt at restoration revealed just how fragile the old banners had become, as a gentle hand washing caused one to disintegrate. The banners came down, the wall was repaired and painted, and a committee has been hard at work designing their replacements. The sanctuary doesn't seem complete without them. Many of you have expressed how much you miss seeing them each Sunday. Welcoming the new banners, which will include the addition of the spiral symbol of earth-centered traditions, is a celebration for another day. On this day, during their brief absence, we pause to reflect on what they say - and cannot say - about who we are. For the message they have conveyed over the years is a powerful one.

Consider the stranger to our sanctuary. Whether attending a Sunday service for the first time or visiting for a wedding or concert or lecture, virtually every person who has crossed our threshold has taken in the banners. The symbols of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism offered a visual welcome to the visitor, as if to say, "Whatever your faith, you have a place inside."

That welcome has been particularly effective for interfaith couples and families. Just as my own parents - Protestant and Jewish, found the Unitarian Universalist church a welcoming community for our family, so have many others found a way to honor their diverse heritage and worship together. Many of you are blending family religious traditions, raising children, and pursing your own spiritual bent all at the same time - and are including all these different approaches in one household. When you come into this sanctuary, the world religion banners on the wall say, "Yes, different views and experiences can meet and mingle and become one community, and that is good."

The banners are also a visual representation of tolerance and interfaith cooperation. Just seeing the symbols side by side, Christian and Jewish, Muslim and Hindu, Taoist and Buddhist, has offered a measure of reassurance in a world in which religious differences coexist uneasily, if at all. After September 11, 2001, our banners took on deeper, more urgent meaning as an affirmation of tolerance in an atmosphere of distrust and fear.

Our world religion banners also say that we are interested in learning about faiths beyond our own. This interest is part of our tradition, going back to the nineteenth century. Unitarian and Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his cohorts Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller, discovered Hinduism and other eastern religions when their sacred texts were first translated into English. It wasn't long before their enthusiasm spread among religious liberals, resulting in unprecedented east-west interfaith dialogue. By 1893, when the World Parliament of Religions convened in Chicago, Unitarians were sponsoring Hindu swamis as guest speakers.

The encounter with world religions has had a profound effect on us. Not only is our history full of interesting contacts, but emerging out of that experience is a world view that values knowledge of other faiths, and that encourages curiosity and learning. One of our most popular religious education classes is called "Neighboring Faiths," for sixth and seventh grades. "Neighboring Faiths" is an exploration of the wide variety of religious communities here in Los Angeles, one of the most religiously diverse places in the world.

Religious literacy promotes interfaith understanding. It also influences our personal spirituality. I studied Taoism in college, but I have absorbed its principles experientially in my weekly Taoist yoga class. And while I'm no expert - at yoga or at Taoism, I can assure you - I appreciate the effect of both on my life. Some of you are practitioners of Buddhist meditation and philosophy, and have found Buddhism to be especially compatible with the values of Unitarian Universalism. The presence of symbols representing these traditions, or others that have influenced you and led you to your personal faith, is a validating experience.

Having world religion symbols displayed side by side in our sanctuary, however, is also a challenge for most of us. We don't have an equal knowledge or appreciation of the faith traditions they represent. Quite likely we reject many of their beliefs, don't really understand their stories, and shake our heads in disapproval over their squabbles with each other. Some faiths lay claim to an exclusive truth, which only their followers can know; we don't agree. We believe there are many paths to follow in this world.

Yet we have been selective in our choice of symbols to display. The Mormon Angel Moroni and the Christian Science symbol (which I just learned is actually copyrighted), probably won't ever make it onto our walls. We might have included the Bahai or the Sufi symbols, as both groups are active in our interfaith community. And we haven't considered the atheist symbol or the humanist logo - known as the "happy human" - even though many of us identify much more closely with one of them. The banner display is an expression of breadth and openness, and a suggestion of attitudes we encourage, but it is not a comprehensive exhibit of influences on our own faith. If you look at the "sources" of our "living tradition" as they are described in our statement of Principles and Purposes, you will see that we note many influences in addition to the world's religions and Jewish and Christian teachings: everything from the "direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder" to the "guidance of reason and the results of science." The committee working on the design of the new banners did ponder how to illustrate these sources, but wisely concluded that they were wandering too far from their original charge, at least for now. What the banners really are meant to express is our commitment to religious pluralism.

Diana Eck, in her book "A New Religious America," argues convincingly that whoever we are, religious or secular, we need to "embrace the religious diversity that comes with our commitment to religious freedom."[1] A peaceful society requires people to take the time to learn and understand each other. There are not enough models of a "vibrant and hopeful pluralism, in a world of increasing fragmentation."[2] The Unitarian Universalist Community is one such model, and the banners on our wall remind us of that commitment. They do not say everything about us that can be said, but what they say is powerful.

They say that wherever you have come from, you are welcome here. They say that we hold ourselves to the standard of tolerance and mutual respect, even for traditions that are very different from our own. They say that freedom thrives in an environment of diversity and self- expression. They say that there is much to learn from each other.

What they cannot say is that we are the same as any or all of them. Whatever our affinity for the world's religions, Unitarian Universalism is its own tradition, not a composite of everyone else's. We owe as much - if not more - to the truth within our own hearts and the everyday experiences of our lives, when it comes to our faith.

We come from a tradition of seekers, of people who chose to break away from rigid dogma and absolute scripture, in order to listen to the still small voice and the guidance of reason. Our tradition is rooted in the value of democracy, which allows us to stay true to each other while staying true to ourselves. Experiences may affect us deeply, beliefs may change, and we will travel where we will, always searching, never settling for anything less than truth.

We may be touched by the consolations of other faiths, but Unitarian Universalists seek beyond faith, and are able to live without faith, if that is what it means to be honest about who we are. We are willing to live without certainty as long as we have each other. We may have come from many different paths, but gathering here, we are going somewhere together. Where that is only we can say. But we'll take those banners along wherever we go, because they still say so much about who we are.

[1] Diana L. Eck, A New Religious Freedom (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001).

[2] Ibid.