Many Names and None
As a pluralistic spiritual community, we need to be able to give voice to the sacred in ways that nurture acceptance and spiritual growth. The question of how to name God (or not name God) will inevitably come up; we may wish to begin with questions about our lived experience and our deepest longing as background for the ways we perceive the sacred. This sermon was written for the Unitarian Universalists of Fallston, January 23, 2011.
My former boss, who I adore, invited me to lunch with the Director of Campus Ministry at the college where she worked. This was a few years ago, when I was more involved with young adult and campus ministry. We sat down in this little storefront Mediterranean restaurant in DC. When our food came, I was all ready to chow down. Luckily, I was delayed for a moment figuring out which fork was mine. My former boss suggested that I offer a prayer. I tried to look like a graceful deer in headlights.
This doesn’t happen to me as often as one might imagine. One of my seminary classmates said that her family asked her to pray over everything on her first semester break home. They were so excited for her, they created a separate grace for ice cream. My family is more into the silent witness aspect of faith, not really given to public displays of religion. There’s something to be said for both orientations, I think. Anyway, I’m always surprised when I’m asked to give a spontaneous prayer. Glad. Grateful. Honored. And surprised.
The biggest hurdle for me is figuring out to whom the spontaneous prayer should be addressed. If I have time to plan ahead, I can ask around or try to figure out what forms of the Divine are revered in the gathered community. Then I need to figure out a name to use based on the content of the prayer. Even if I’m in a group that’s generally composed of Christian theists, there are choices. Are we hoping for inspiration from the Creator, or are we seeking a comforting presence in times of grief? Are we invoking our ancestors, calling on the God of Sarah and Hagar, Judith and Esther, Mary and Martha? It really depends on the context.
Different traditions have different ways of addressing a divine force too large for one-word names. In our “Understanding the Bible” group this morning, we talked about two of God’s names appearing within the first few pages of Genesis. There’s the four-letter name of God, the name that can’t be spoken out loud. Not speaking the name leaves a lot of room for the unknowable mystery. There’s another Biblical name of God, Elohim, which grammatically speaking would be plural. “G-o-d” is sort of a nickname, but it’s still considered polite to be careful with that three-letter word. In the Bible, which name gets used depends on the situation and on the community where that particular fragment of text came from.
In Paganism, the Divine is recognized in many forms. Some people serve one particular deity, some address prayers to various gods and goddesses within a single tradition. It’s difficult to make generalizations. Pagan gatherings tend to have an interfaith mission. To recognize that the Holy appears in many guises, it’s not unusual to begin rituals by chanting the names of relevant goddesses and/or gods from around the world. For a full moon ritual, Diana from Greece meets Isis from Egypt and Inanna from Sumer.
Creator. Elohim. Inanna. Spirit of Life. When we gather as Unitarian Universalists, we may hear many names, or we may hear none. Among us, we have mystics who prefer not to confine the Holy to a named box. We have Atheists who don’t believe in a reality beyond the physical world, and don’t pray to a God of any name. We have Buddhists who may or may not believe that the spiritual world involves a god or gods. We have seekers who haven’t decided, and are comfortable with leaving the question open.
Thoughts like these went racing through my head in the moment after I was asked to pray at lunch. My former boss is a UU. I hadn’t asked her about her personal view of God. The campus ministry director is a Catholic lay woman, and I’ve learned not to make assumptions based on that information. For myself, I need to address my prayers in a way that feels personally authentic as well as inclusive. That leaves a wide range, but there are limits.
I don’t precisely remember how I solved the question that time. Often, I will begin a prayer with, “Spirit of Life and Love.” I may have sidestepped the name question and skipped to, “We are thankful for this company and this food. We remember with gratitude our connection with all who have helped to bring this meal to our table: the farmers who sowed the fields, the workers at harvest, the truck drivers and the dock workers, the chefs and the waitstaff. May this food sustain us for the work of justice, that all may eat and be filled with the knowledge that we are one.”
Whether we are praying or meditating or just talking about spirituality, questions about whether and which god are likely to come up. Our theme for December and January is the third of seven UU principles: Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth. Acceptance and encouragement doesn’t just happen with tacit tolerance. We need tools for sharing our experience of what is sacred, whether or not that involves a deity or deities. There are so many ways of conceiving the inconceivable. Where to begin? I’m not suggesting that we have to agree on the existence or the essence of God. We do need entry points for our diversity. We can approach our lived experience with the sacred among us, we can seek perspective from our sense of the universe beyond us, and we can leave room for that experience in reverent silence between us. Let’s look for openings in immanence, transcendence, and silence.
Immanence
An encounter with the Divine may be as close as the person sitting next to you. Immanence refers to the sacred that is within and among us. What sustains you? What gives you comfort? Some of us will perceive the presence of God in moments of reflection and resilience. The name of the presence is hard to talk about. We can begin by talking about our lived experiences. UU poet Nancy Shaffer writes of immanence:
But—this may work in the night:
something that breathes with us, as others
sleep; something that breathes also
those sleeping, so no one is alone.
Something that is the beginning of love,
and also part of how love is completed.
Something so large, wherever we are,
we are not separate; which teaches again
the way to start over.
-Nancy Shaffer, “A Theology Adequate for the Night” (excerpt), from Instructions In Joy: Meditations
For Shaffer, the experience of a comforting presence in the night is as close as breathing, as omnipresent as air. The divine is within us, among us, and all around us. There is no place where the holy is not, and we are all part of the sacred. In the theology that Shaffer outlines, all of us are part of the breath of God.
We can begin a conversation about immanence with questions about what comforts and sustains us. What calls us out of despair? What infuses our lives with love? Understanding that immanence is everywhere, not just a personal privilege, the conversation quickly moves beyond the individual.
In our opening hymn (“Gathered Here,” words and music by Philip A. Porter, #389 in Singing the Living Tradition), we invoked immanence with the mention of “one strong body.” In this view, being part of a church means breathing together with the spirit of love, taking note of the fact that we are part of the divine and the divine is part of us. So, as a united embodiment of the sacred, what do we want to do together? If we listen to the breath of the holy that flows around us and through us, what are we called to do as one strong body?
Here we have arrived at the mission of the Long Range Planning Committee. They are busy framing the questions about our shared calling and how each of us can give of ourselves in response. Their leadership and the congregation’s participation are religious endeavors.
Immanent and transcendent, I like to think of the many images of holiness that we bring together are like chords of music. Immanence provides the tonic notes, the assurance of resolution to which the music can return. Transcendence provides the suspended chords, the questions that add complexity to the pattern and encourage us to develop themes of beauty.
Transcendence
Transcendent divinity is something beyond or larger than ourselves. This is the image that usually comes up first when gods or goddesses are mentioned; a force that can step back and take a celestial view. From that distance, it becomes clear that we are all related. But the big picture can be divine in other ways. Some find the sacred in the pursuit of discovery or in the creation of new forms of art. For some people, the persistence of life on this planet, following the laws of chemistry and biology to the wonderful and unlikely spectacle of what actually exists, is all the holiness they need. All of these imply a feeling of belonging in the universe, perhaps a sense that there is order.
UU minister Robert Fulghum has a chapter about God in his book, Uh-Oh: Some Observations from Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door. He starts off with a story about an interview:
“Do you believe in God, Mr. Fulghum?” (The journalist interviewing me had shifted scale suddenly from the details of dailiness to the definition of the Divine.)
“No, but I do believe in Howard.”
“Howard? You believe in Howard?”
“It all has to do with my mother’s maiden name.”
“Your mother’s maiden name …”
“Was Howard. She came from a big Memphis clan that was pretty close and was referred to as the Howard Family. As a small child, I thought of myself as a member of the Howard family because it was often an item of conversation as in ‘The Howard Family is getting together’ and ‘The Howard Family thinks people should write letters to their grandmother.”
Fulghum goes on to say that when he learned the Lord’s prayer at age four, he thought “hallowed be thy name” was “Howard be thy name.” He continues:
“When I knelt beside my bed each night and prayed, ‘Our Father, who art in Heaven, Howard be Thy name,’ I thought about my grandfather and what a big shot he was because, of course, the prayer ends with ‘for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.’ I went to bed feeling pretty well connected to the universe for a long, long time. It was a Howard Family Enterprise … at the heart of that childhood image there is no alienation. I belonged to the whole big scheme of things. I lived and worked and had my being in the family store.”
So ends the reading. Fulghum identifies his image of Howard as a transcendent God. In his experience, holding an image of God as something “up there, somewhere else, separate from us” does not preclude feeling connected. By extension, he felt related to all creation. Looking at the world from an imagined heavenly viewpoint, Fulghum as a child found “no alienation.”
In our effort to accept one another and encourage spiritual growth, we can ask questions about the big picture. If you could step back and give your impression of how things work, what would be most important? When have you felt you had a valued place in a larger system? Have you ever felt able to draw on reserves of strength and hope that came from outside? Often, these questions help us describe our images of the transcendent divine.
In a few minutes, we’ll sing a hymn that describes some metaphors of a higher power larger than ourselves (“Bring Many Names,” words by Brian Wren, music by Carleton Young, #23 in Singing the Living Tradition). One of the verses imagines a “young, growing god … willing to be changed by what you’ve started.” I do yearn for change and growth: for myself, for this congregation, for our country. It may very well be that all of the power we need for transformation is in our hands. A transcendent image of laughing, learning change might inspire us to use those powers. As a mutually accountable community, we can discern together the best way to cooperate with the Spirit of Life.
Silence
If conversations about immanence and transcendence provide the chords for our musical metaphor, reverence silence provides the measures of rest. We need all three for a harmonious community, encouraging concerted spiritual growth.
I had been asked to provide an invocation at an organizing breakfast for the local senior activist group. They were meeting to discuss health care strategy. One of the members of the congregation I served at the time was active in the organization. She was hoping to hear something a little closer to her own theology than the guest clergy people usually provided, so she wrangled me an invitation.
Climbing up to the podium, I looked out into a room of faces. They seemed serious and kind. The sounds of clinking glasses and wrapping-up conversations floated to the ceiling. I was sensitive to the diversity of responses to the word “prayer,” so I began: “I invite you to join me in an attitude of reverence.”
The entire room fell silent. I had the distinct impression that the participants were unanimously paying attention, not to me, but to the voice of stillness. I took a breath and offered a few words. I have to tell you, the silence was the best part. Nothing I said could have improved on it.
Silence has sort of a bad reputation. Too often, people are coerced into silence, stifling their humanity. That is an empty silence, a hole where someone’s gifts ought to be singing. There is another kind of silence, infused with quiet mystery. That is a full silence, where an absence of words leaves space for something else.
There are many reasons why we might observe silence instead of naming the holy. The things we hold sacred may be more vast and deep than we can describe, even with a litany of names. Alternately, names might imply a consciousness, and some of us don’t assign a sentient personality to the ground of being. If we can find a stillness that is rich and full without words, we can hold both of those views and more while practicing spiritual growth.
I’m not talking about silence that comes from if-you-can’t-say-anything-nice avoidance. We need conversations, too. We can learn from disagreeing in love. I’m talking about silence that waters our thirsty souls, whether we are growing the roses of skepticism or the sunflowers of theism, the apple blossoms of goddess spirituality or the star lilies of scientific wonder.
Reverent silence can provide an opening for a shared experience of the sacred, by whatever name we call it or don’t call it.
Conclusion
In a pluralistic spiritual community like ours, giving and receiving each other’s wisdom about the sacred is an important part of our life together. There are a lot of conversations to be had. There is also a lot of not-talking to be done.
In our approach to some of the big questions, we can share our experiences of immanence. In the moments when love breathes with us, we find ourselves united. We can describe our images of transcendence, the big picture views that inform us about what is most important. We can find time for stillness, reverent silence being a well from which the travelers of many paths can draw.
Let us give thanks for all of the holiness we seek and find, known by many names and by none.
So be it. Blessed be. Amen.
