This Sunday I am preaching about religious pluralism in terms of focusing on what unites us over what divides us. In the spirit of tomorrow’s sermon, I present to you a cyberspace that may tickle you:
The Virtual Church of the Blind Chihuahua, whose introduction reads:
“Welcome to the Virtual Church of the Blind Chihuahua (VCBC)! This is a sacred place in cyberspace named after a little old dog with cataracts, who barked sideways at strangers, because he couldn’t see where they were. We humans relate to God in the same way, making a more or less joyful noise in God’s general direction, and expecting a reward for doing so. Hence our creed:
We can’t be right about everything we believe.
Thank God, we don’t have to be!
We are dedicated to enlarging religion as a source of inspiration and diminishing religion as a source of conflict in the world. This means we each practice the religion (or none) to which we are called, and we help each other do likewise. We do this because we admit that, like the little Blind Chihuahua, none of us gets our religion exactly right, and we want to learn from each other.”
But what if we think other religions are having a negative and harmful impact on the earth and her people? We know what atrocities have been committed in the name of religion. Do we not have an obligation to stand out and say, “This is morally wrong?”
Right now, our community and our religious communities are likely divided over Amendment 2. Some religious communities fear “the gay agenda” entering into public life, while those people of faith who oppose the amendment see a single-minded religious agenda being imposed upon public law.
As a Floridian, I am concerned over the potential losses our seniors and young families in domestic partnerships will face if employers are forced by judicial interpretations of Amendment 2 to abolish health care benefits for partners. I am troubled that people in loving committed relationship who are not legally married could lose the right to make end-of-life decisions about their beloved. So, ultimately, our lives hold a tension between our longing for unity and our need, particularly as Unitarian Universalists, to bring heaven here on earth, by begging to differ. Our working for justice on earth will engage this push-pull of life itself.
But at the end of the day, we can hope that we still hold love and understanding in our hearts for those with whom we disagree. Life has shaped that person differently than you. In the meantime, we can model how our religious life shapes us to care for what is here and now, with an eye for the eternal call to unity.
