(Sermon only) Holding the Light Together UU Church of Berkeley February 15, 2026

In the beginning,

according to the Jewish legend of

Tunolom, the

holy God stepped back to make more space

in the universe.

And when God stepped back, God infused

vessels with the holy light of

existence, the spark of the divine. And

this light in these vessels sailed forth

out into the universe and shattered

because the vessels couldn't hold the

light.

And those shattered fragments of light,

they scattered everywhere into

everything and everyone. And our

work on this planet,

our

job in these lives is to bear and find

that light to participate in the repair

of the world. Dunam.

So much is broken.

I was talking to a friend recently about

the astronomic rise in her health care

costs which we're feeling too in my

family with our church staff, our

budget. I'm sure many of you are facing

the challenging reality of how broken

that system is still.

My friend was having a conversation with

the HR person responsible for navigating

this with her and

she said, 'You know, what are we going

to do about this, my friend? What what

are we going to do? And the HR person

said, I don't know, it just looks like

we're moving more and more to the

society of the halves and the have nots.

And what my friend told me walking the

other day was, I wanted the response,

the quick quip, to say back to her, to

deflect that cynicism, to respond to it

with some faithful conviction,

it doesn't have to be this way.

Now, my friend is a theologian. And so

as we were talking about this, we got on

to talking about how light is both a

wave and a particle. I can't quite get

you from one thing to the other there,

but that that's what we ended up talking

about.

And uh and and and isn't that amazing

that light is both a wave and a

particle? It's it's it it brings to mind

our process theology. this idea that

that God is is somehow the movement of

the universe becoming God is

encompassing all that is and is in the

movement of becoming what it is going to

be. And and so this white being a

particle and a wave, it actually is the

place one of the many places now where

science is degrading its own foundation.

Here's what I mean by that.

The foundation

of our scientific worldview

is modernity, right? The house of

modernity.

And modernity

is in the words of Chief Ninwa Hunikui

built on the foundation of separability.

the idea that you can separate

one thing from anything else to isolate

it to analyze it and and understand just

exactly how it functions alone in the

universe.

Chief Kui says

that separability which is entangled

with colonialism, it's a metabolic and

neuroysiological

impairment that affects us all.

separability.

This idea that it's that it's possible

even that it's that it's conceivable to

see or touch or talk about or describe

or analyze or understand anything as a

separate entity apart from anything

else. It is a a foundational part of

modernity's worldview.

But in fact he says that has become a

metabolic and neuroysiological

impairment. We are at a cellular level

hindered in our ability to perceive

reality as it is because of this disease

of separability.

The metaphor we've been using these past

several weeks, many windows, one light.

That cathedral of the world that I was

describing a few weeks ago,

you can imagine it

as a rationalistic, well-ordered version

of the cathedral.

the one that that sits comfortably

within modernity's habits of mind. Has

its windows all laid out in a sensible

pattern,

rooms ordered by various religions and

philosophical traditions.

And even so, it's a beautiful truth that

one light, many windows, one sacred

source,

infinite hues and dimensions of its

expression.

And Forest Church, whose words I was

using to describe it a few weeks ago, he

says, "In our congregations, we we honor

this truth by encouraging our members to

reflect on the light through whatever

set of windows they find most

illuminating.

We only require, he says, that this

freedom, this same freedom be honored

for others."

But the true cathedral of the world is

a really much messier place.

It's a messier place where everything is

entangled with everything. One light,

many windows, and an infinite

entanglement.

Worship at whatever windows you find

most illuminating. Sure, but you'll

never be able to avoid the particles

passing over your left shoulder,

filtered through the window of your

neighbor whose faith you claim you

cannot fathom.

To live in the cathedral of the world is

not an orderly division of me at my

window and you at yours and a respectful

tolerance between us. No, to live to be

truly alive in the cathedral of the

world requires what I would call the

wisdom of the wilder mind.

The wilder mind that tries to hold light

as a particle and a wave all at once and

laughs at its inability to do so.

It was the wilder mind that Rabbi Isaac

Lura inhabited, the 16th century rabbi

who first taught that story of Dacun

alum.

He was a student of the cabalav of

Jewish mysticism, born to a generation

trying to make meaning in the aftermath

of catastrophe. He was born in 1534 and

it's likely that his parents or

grandparents were part of the diaspora

that were kicked out of Spain in 1492.

You know about 1492, right? Rough year

for most of the world.

Spain in 1492, a moment of the what I

hear some of our political leaders call

the so-called greatness of of Western

civilization

when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella

ordered the Alhamra decree, scapegoating

the Jewish and Muslim people of the

land, forcing them to flee the country

just as they set Christopher Columbus to

sail the ocean blue on the under the the

banner of greatness, the spread of a

Catholic hegemony, they ruptured the

countries the the centuries of thriving

multiculturalism in Andalucia, this

region in Spain, which had been one of

the centers of cultural and scientific

achievement since the 8th century.

And Lucia, where Muslims and Jews and

Christians had worked together, had

cooperated and shared their cultural

innovations

became now inhospitable to much of the

population.

After the Alhhamra decree, the refugees

fled in every direction, including to

Palestine.

And Rabbi Lura or the Ari as he was

known was born in Jerusalem then lived

in Egypt and eventually found himself in

a refugee community of Sephed,

a hub for textiles.

This little city on the hill full of

narrow alleys

and the smell of wool dye

became the place where students flocked

to his light.

under the religious tolerance still

practiced there promoted by the Ottoman

Empire

inspired by the Muslim interest in

religious freedom and tolerance.

The mystical religious imagination

flourished and Rabbi Lura inspired

students with a vision of the fractured

cosmos reflecting the fractures within

them of a world and of a people. A light

with the sparks of divine light despite

all the brokenness in their lives. Of a

process of healing that was never

complete but nonetheless necessary

and real.

His

students

knew he was a little bit crazy.

They described him as being in a

constant conversation with the unseen,

the wilder mind.

Do you know your own wilder mind?

Have you been to those places where

people might think if you said it out

loud you were a little bit crazy?

might call them extreme states or you

might get diagnosed if you go into the

wrong room and talk about them.

I've I've shared before and some of you

know I've I've experienced psychosis a

couple of times in my life and one of

the times I was on an airplane and

suddenly I was in communication with

some aliens very far away.

one of those things you really shouldn't

tell people.

And and they were contemplating what to

do with humankind and the earth. And

because it seemed like we really had

kind of, you know, we've we've we've

come to the end of this experiment,

haven't we?

And I found myself on the plane talking

to these aliens, pleading for just a

little while longer

that we might have a chance to let this

catastrophe of our civilization collapse

and regrow something new.

I could see it so viscerally clear in

that state what it would look like.

These communities coming to life across

the earth, learning to live in harmony

with the land and with each other,

learning a new humanity, a new earthling

ship.

Imagine you also know moments of the

wilder mind.

Maybe not psychosis, but a child's

intuition.

Or the wisdom of a dream, or that sense

of being driven mad by a project you're

working on, or entranced by a piece of

art.

Every one of us has been blessed with a

sacred piece of the truth

has been illuminated in this cathedral

of the world.

And the wild and disturbing differences,

they're the point.

The wild and disturbing differences

among us and all around us, they're the

point.

This is a a core truth of our tradition,

a healing truth that the broken places

in our country and our world and

ourselves are calling for. In every

tradition, every culture, every person,

there is beauty and wisdom.

Those whom with we most vigorously

disagree, who most disgust and disturb

us, our truth says we must refuse to

demonize them.

We put faith in their inherent worth and

dignity. We put faith in that whatever

they know about God, about the ultimate

nature of reality, even if it doesn't

make any sense to us, they too somehow

hold a piece of the truth.

This truth calls us to humility,

to bow before those many windows. Bow in

the face of mystery. Bow to the other

who thinks so differently. Acknowledging

in reverence that whatever light we

ourselves have seen, it shines just as

brightly on them.

But our truth doesn't end with this

humility.

We only require that this same freedom

be honored for others.

This too is our faith that because we

all hold a piece of the truth, because

we are illuminated by the same light,

because every one of us, all beings are

born into this cathedral of the world,

the ideologies that hold that there is

one and only one path to God, to love,

to salvation,

are hollow and bankrupt.

that white supremacy or xenophobia and

misogyny and heteropatriarchy,

anti-semitism and islamophobia, these

ways of thinking, they have no place in

the cathedral of the world.

This is our conviction.

Many windows, one light. We need not

think alike to love alike. And here's

the ironic but honest truth. Don't you

wish everyone thought like that?

Don't you wish everyone honored the

other with curiosity and respect?

Don't you wish we could convert the

whole world to unitarian universalism?

What I mean is this. We have a vision of

a pluralistic world community that roots

its moral framework in a profound

interdependence.

And it is good and right to spread this

vision with conviction.

I don't wish everyone in the world to

call themselves Unitarian Universalists,

to worship like us or organize their

committee meetings like us, God forbid,

or start lighting chalicees all the time

or anything like that. But I do want the

whole world to approach beliefs

different than one's own the way we

aspire to. I want the whole world to

look around and see in our differentness

and diversity the cathedral of the

world.

I want us to all worship at the feet of

Audrey, Lord, the prophet who said,

"It's not our differences that divide

us. It's our inability to recognize,

accept, and celebrate those differences.

It is the metabolic

and neuroysiological

healing from separability.

The spiritual practice that requires our

entire beings to keep deepening and

growing into more accountable

and relational bearers of the light.

It's about a faith that carries not

certainty but conviction. A humility

that is not self-deprecating but curious

and open and playful and grounded.

humility, which comes from hummus,

meaning of the earth. It's the same root

as humor and humiliation, all having to

kind of do with a closeness to the

earth, a willingness to get dirty.

And many have noted that in our

president and other authoritarians,

there's a real lack of a sense of humor

that perhaps it's driven by a need to

stay on top, a profound fear of being

humiliated, of being brought down to

earth. It's

typical of these strong men leaders. The

lack of humor of the authoritarian is a

distancing from the humus from

participating in the painful

vulnerability of being human, of

admitting their entanglement

in this vast web of interrelatedness.

And that instinct to try and separate

ourselves from the reality of our

entanglement to just just pick one

already. be a particle or a wave

to try and refuse

the humiliation of our earthly

existence.

That impulse,

it's in all of us, isn't it?

But you,

you are both wave and particle.

You are a finder and bearer of the

original light stuff of the universe. A

broken vessel and one more redeemer. An

earthling entangled with all the other

earthlings. And together there's no

telling all the light we can hold

between us.

My friend found her quip,

the retort she would bring to bear to

shine a holy light in the face of the

cynicism that eats at so many of us that

we are powerless to do anything as the

cracks in our society rip us apart.

Well, you know, she'll say in Germany,

in just one generation after the defeat

of the Nazis, they grew into a society

that could provide universal health

care, child care, and university

education to anyone who wanted it.

So much is still possible.

With humility and conviction, let us

celebrate difference and unlearn

separability.

We are finders and bearers of light. And

we are lucky enough to have found one of

the rare communities in the world where

atheists and theists, crazy newagy

mystics and hard-nosed, tough-minded

rationalists

gather and break bread together in the

same humble cathedral and call

themselves one people.

Isn't that good news?

Isn't that the very good news that a

confused and broken world, a people torn

apart by hatred and bigotry, by violence

in the name of God, a people whose

realities are tearing further and

further apart? Isn't that just the good

news they need to hear?

And who will proclaim it if not you?

May it be so. And amen.