Paradigm shift.
(Laughter)
Friends, let's begin in the tradition
of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.
Can I invite you to uncross anything you're sitting with crossed.
Now, a reference to a religious tradition just creates some openness.
And let's begin together in his tradition of receiving three good breaths
to remind ourselves of the preciousness of this moment
and to just absorb some of the amazingness we have already received today.
I want to extend a special shout out
to the people who are joining us through the miracle of technology
in remote locations.
I got to thinking that at the State Theatre over there,
they're getting, you know, soda and popcorn and Jujubes,
(Laughter)
and over here, you've just got Jew.
(Laughter)
But it is through the miracle of technology
that once insurmountable distances
have created an opportunity for a shared experience,
a wonderful metaphor for the idea
that across what once were insurmountable distances and differences,
we are able to come into a spirit of oneness.
A few weeks ago,
I had the privilege of being with a group
of 40 or so Protestant ministers and deeply committed lay people
from across several Protestant denominations.
We had Baptists and Disciples of Christ
and Lutherans
and several brands of Methodist -
I didn't know that that existed.
And they came together across these denominations
in a Catholic retreat center
to spend at least part of their day learning with a Jewish rabbi.
And I realized that the game has already begun to change.
Sometime during that week,
we took a moment to unroll the Torah scroll,
the sacred stories of the Jewish people,
and when I stood in the Catholic retreat center,
looking down the roll of the scroll
at these beloved friends from across Protestant denominations,
I realized that the game has really changed.
And that each and every one of those people,
having come into this shared experience,
will then go back out into the world
and light a little bit of that light
for the people in their home communities as well.
This was a real game changer.
Friends, no scientists tell us that in the course of any given moment,
in the course of any sentence,
we are literally showered with 11 million pieces of data.
And at best, on a good day,
we are able to pay attention to about seven of them.
So the question arose in human evolution:
How do we take this shower of information, this shower of data,
and turn it into something that is manageable, that is handleable?
Because from the most ancient times in human consciousness,
we have been asking the question
who are we?
These ancient cave paintings,
some of them dating from 40,000 years ago,
already asking the question who are we?
And who are we in relation to the natural world around us?
How do we learn to not only survive but thrive in the world?
Evolutionarily, this problem of how to take all of that information,
all of that data,
and make it - in the words of Timothy Wilson -
"persuasive, useful and transmissable,"
that problem was faced and a solution was found.
And the solution was storytelling.
The storytellers of all cultures are the keepers of the wisdom
that is passed from one generation to the next,
and it didn't stop with asking the questions
about this world and day-to-day existence.
Storytellers,
even in the most ancient times,
were beginning to ask the question
who are we in relation to the cosmos -
to the things that are much bigger than us
and what we can see and experience in the world?
I'm reminded of a wonderful comedy routine
when Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks were at a dinner party
and Mel Brooks was playing the 2000-year-old man.
Carl Reiner was interviewing him
and asked him about a number of different subjects,
and finally the conversation turned to religion.
And Carl Reiner said,
"Well, did you have a, you know, a supreme being?"
And Mel Brooks said, in his beautiful Yiddish accent,
"A supreme being?
Of course we had a supreme being,
and his name was Phil."
(Laughter)
Carl Reiner said,
"Wow. That's amazing."
And Mel Brooks said,
"Oh yes. Phil was incredible.
You could go to Phil for anything - for food, water, shelter -
whatever you needed."
Carl Reiner said,
"Well, whatever became of Phil?"
"Well," says Mel Brooks,
"one day, Phil was walking through the valley
and a thunderstorm rolled in
and he was struck by lightning.
And in that moment, we knew
there was something bigger than Phil."
(Laughter)
Now, friends, a lot of what is paradigm shifting in my business,
or my vocation,
is the idea that there is something a lot bigger than Phil.
At the heart and center of all religious and spiritual experiences,
the longing that each of us has at the center of our being
to touch into that basic goodness that is our true nature,
to touch into that little bit of the infinite
that lives at the center of our being.
For the moment,
let's use the Hebrew letter "aleph" as an abbreviation of this.
It's the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet,
and so it is the number one.
It stands for "one-ness."
And it also is important because it makes the sound ...
Not "ah."
It makes the sound ...
It is the sound of silence.
(Laughter)
Because silence is really the only thing
that is large enough to contain the infinite that we seek,
that longing that we seek.
And so we find ways of coming into this oneness,
and it might be prayer or meditation or sacred times or sacred places,
and over time,
we start to want to transmit these ways into that oneness -
to our community, to our children -
and so we create a little membrane around our ways into oneness.
But over time,
that permeable membrane that at one time allowed in what was new
and allowed us to release
what no longer served this coming into oneness,
that membrane can become a very solid wall.
And perhaps worst of all,
you get people like me, who are keepers of the way,
and our job is to protect the institutions
and to protect the denominations
and to protect our ways of coming into that one,
and our institutions get so busy running around the outside of the circle
that we forget that the purpose of the endeavor
is to help one another come into that basic goodness
that is at the center of our being.
And when people come to visit,
sadly,
they step through our doors, often, in religious institutions,
and that oneness at the center
has shrunk to be so small as to be almost invisible.
Sadder still, we build walls between our way into the one
and your way into the one,
and we say,
"Keep your ways into the one out of our ways into the one
because our way is the way."
This is when triumphalism -
"our way is the way,"
"it would just be better if you thought like we think" -
we build walls between our ways into the infinite oneness.
And when people approach us who are spiritual seekers,
they often come and they see the walls
and forget the center that is at the heart of the endeavor.
But there have always been people who were game changers.
There have always been people who saw beyond the walls.
A Protestant wife and a Catholic husband who could not be buried together
chose to have their graves built next to the wall
and asked that their children put above that their hands joined
because they remembered and they knew
that, yes, there is a wall that divides Protestant and Catholic,
but it is the love and the goodness and the oneness
that is the real message of their lives.
There has always been game changers who saw beyond the walls.
And one of the things that's really interesting right now
in the evolving history of religion
is this group called the "SBNR"s,
the "spiritual but not religious."
(Laughter)
Does this describe you?
What? Is this funny because it's you?
(Laughter)
And these are the people who are demanding
that the people who work in the vocation of religion
change the game.
Because they are longing to enter into that infinite oneness,
that basic goodness,
but on Friday morning and Saturday morning and Sunday morning,
you will not find them sitting in mosque and temple and church.
You will find them sitting on the beaches of Lake Michigan
or walking in the woods
or listening to beautiful music
or sitting quietly with friends and having holy conversation.
And these people are game changers.
The paradigm-shifting, game-changing moment that we are in
is called deep ecumenism:
the ability that we can honor our own tradition
while also being comfortably inspired by the truths of many traditions.
And this game changing is the sacred technology
that will change every single one of our institutions.
Now, I have to admit to you,
I have always been drawn to this.
Even as a young child, I really felt the need to stretch
although I was raised in a very committed Jewish home.
But with the help of my family,
I was taught to stretch and grow.
(Laughter)
Oh, Catherine, you thought your picture was amazing ...
My brothers were trying to help me be taller -
(Laughter)
what was actually going on here,
God bless them.
But even at a very early age,
I felt drawn to exploring and stepping into new places.
A number of years after this photo was taken,
I had been dropped off at the mall for my hangout time,
and there I ran into a group of Hare Krishnas.
And I was fascinated with their ecstasy.
I was fascinated with their joy, with their song and their dance,
and one of them came over
and gifted me with a copy of the "Bhagavad-Gītā As It Is,"
and I tried and I tried to read the text,
but I simply could not penetrate it at that time.
Luckily for me, there were pictures.
(Laughter)
One of the pictures that appeared in that version of the Bhagavad Gita
is an illustration of the 5th chapter, the 18th sloka,
which says that the wise person looks into the heart of all beings
and there sees the same oneness at the center of all beings.
And this picture changed my life,
and it changed how I saw everything.
One of the ways that this has manifest -
and I am very, very blessed
to be the co-clergy of a wonderful 20-year-old experiment.
As many of you know, every other week for the last nine and a half years,
I have flown to Chicago to work Friday night in a synagogue -
Friday night and Saturday in a synagogue that welcomes interfaith families,
and on Sunday morning, I work at Old St. Patrick's Catholic Church,
just in case.
(Laughter)
My father, of blessed memory, used to say,
"You never know who's going to turn out to be right."
(Laughter)
At Old St. Patrick's Catholic Church
is a wonderful experiment called the Chicago Interfaith Family School,
and we are perhaps 80 or 90 families
with one parent Jewish, one parent Catholic,
raising the kids in both religions,
and I am honored to be the co-clergy of this school,
and I'd like you to meet some of my students.
(Video) Boy 1: Being Catholic and Jewish isn't that hard actually,
especially when you're in Family School
and you see some of the other people that are both Catholic and Jewish.
It doesn't seem like a challenge:
it seems like a blessing.
[20 years & Growing The Family School]
Father Tom Hurley: The Family School
really has, I think, unveiled something absolutely beautiful
in terms of how families can do this.
It's not picking one over another.
It's saying this is the gift that we give to each other
and it is the gift that we give to our children.
Chava Bahle: How do you answer somebody who says, "You can't be both"?
Girl 1: Well, I say, "Yeah, I can."
(Laughter)
Girl 2: Family School has helped teach me which parts I like of a religion
and which parts I want to be in.
Girl 3: It's been really nice knowing about both religions
and kind of get to know about the history of both
and how they're different, alike.
CB: I think that any time
people step into and choose their own faith lens,
it's much stronger than if it's just merely imposed on them.
Boy 2: Family School - it makes you curious to learn,
not just about your religion but about who you are.
Boy 3: It's a way to find out who you really are,
not just like what your parents are.
You can learn what to be for yourself.
TH: I think it's giving the child and the family together
a place to take this journey,
a place where it's okay to ask
and that all the answers are given.
Girl 1: I can now, like, question things and [inaudible] things about my religion,
which is something a lot of people can't do.
And I've always felt really safe here
in having people just like me to grow up with.
TH: God created it; God calls us into this mystery.
And I think all of us enter the mystery of God through various ways,
and it's not to say that one way is right and one way is wrong:
every way is right.
Every way that we celebrate through our religious tradition
is a way of mystery of God.
I believe that's what God desires.
That brings God to life.
Girl 2: Family School
brings people together from different opinions
and lets you share them.
Woman 1: I think that acceptance is a huge part of Family School.
Girl 3: So many other people grow by -
have such discrimination against other religions
because they only believe in theirs
and they really don't understand what it's like to be different religions
and they don't accept it.
And it's just so nice coming here to Family School
and having those beliefs from the start.
Woman 2: After 25 years of marriage and 20 years of the Family School,
I actually see myself as both Catholic and Jewish.
Man: And I do too.
TH: People who are various traditions fall in love,
and I think that the Family School is really a great, great testimony
of how, you know, we can say,
"Hey, we can be a gift to each other."
It doesn't mean we have to check somebody's tradition at the door,
but it means we can continue to live in the mysteries of our traditions.
CB: And so, for all of you as a group,
I bless you to remember that it is vital
that you trust your own experience of your inner world.
There will be many times and forces and people
who try to talk you out of knowing what you know,
and I bless you to trust the experience of your inner world.
Boy 4: My view is ever changing,
and I don't think it's going to stop changing.
I think that there will be days when I lean more towards Judaism
and there will be days when I lean more towards Catholicism.
I think that's the beauty of being both -
is that, you know, you can believe both.
You can believe what you want.
[www.the-family-school.org]
(Applause)
Every year I cry through the entire graduation,
as you can see,
because this work is one of the great prides of my life.
The idea that we are raising a generation of people
who are able to think in both/and
and not just the paradigm of either/or
is a game changer.
But, beloveds, as you know,
game changing doesn't just happen in the big cities:
it's happening right here in our own community.
There is a group of game changers
at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Grand Traverse
who, for the first time in the history of their denomination,
have hired someone of a different religion to be their spiritual leader.
Now, I admit it didn't hurt my chances at all
that one of the requirements of the job
was that my hair color had to match the pulpit cover.
(Laughter)
But one of the things that is true
of all of the game changers that you will hear today
is that game changers are the people who are seeking the common heart.
And ultimately, in the area of religion and spirituality,
game changers are the people who look at the brick walls that separate us
and who realize that with just a little bit of rearrangement,
those brick walls can be rearranged into stepping stones
that remind us of the greatest truth,
and that is that there is no them anymore.
There is only us.
Thank you.
(Applause)